Monday, September 30, 2013
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Lake Michigan PPCP polluted: we are killing our planet
But conservatives (76% of Republican party now!) will never believe it... And so, as they deny global warming, ignore the pollution of our planet's water, air and earth, and proceed to shut down the U.S. government, another empire comes to a close--and a once-beautiful planet dies, along with its inhabitants. Comments of Tea Party conservatives heard as we all died out: "But, oh boy, didn't we make a hell of a lot of money?!! Hey, didn't we have some great wars?!!! And, by God, those nuclear weapons and Drones!--we really did ourselves proud with them!" --then, wistfully, "But I'd sure like to have tortured some more of those towelheads on our way out...."
By Ashley Woods, Huffington Post
Researchers testing water samples in the Great Lakes found alarming traces of prescription drugs, caffeine and other chemicals in Lake Michigan.
Scientists from the School of Freshwater Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee were examining water samples for PPCPs, chemicals that have been derived from pharmaceuticals and personal care products. The effects of these pollutants have been studied in rivers, harbors and other watersheds. But no previous studies ever assessed PPCPs offshore in Lake Michigan -- the world's sixth-largest lake by volume. It was thought human, industrial and agricultural wastewater contaminants would be diluted by the sheer amount of water that Lake Michigan holds.
"There's a belief with very large bodies of water that the solution to pollution is dilution," Rebecca Klaper, one of the co-authors of the study at the School of Freshwater Sciences, told The Huffington Post.
Instead, a cocktail of pharmaceutical drugs, caffeine and other toxins were found farther out from shore and at higher levels than the researchers expected.
"There's basically a soup of all these chemicals at very low levels," she said.
The researchers found 32 PPCPs, some located two miles offshore from two Milwaukee wastewater treatment plants, the Detroit Free Press reported. PPCPs are often present in wastewater, as the human body usually can't entirely absorb pharmaceutical chemicals, according to the EPA.
"It was surprising that [Metformin] was so prevalent and it wasn't broken down in the sewage treatment plant -- and we could find it three kilometers out in the lake," Klaper said.
The most frequently found PPCPs were Metformin, the diabetes medication found in every single water sample; caffeine, likely from energy drinks and soda; suflamethoxazole, an antibiotic used to treat urinary tract infections; and Triclosan, an antibacterial agent that's commonly used in soaps and toothpaste. These four pharmaceuticals and chemicals were all found in more than 50 percent of the offshore samples the team collected over the past two years.
All in all, 14 of the PPCPs present a “medium” or “high” ecological risk, the researchers say.
And given their prevalence so far out from shore, the researchers say the initial findings from the study have implications for other large bodies of water -- "the potential ecological risk for large lake systems in much higher than previously understood," the study concludes.
The researchers note that fish and animals who call Lake Michigan home could be in danger from exposure to these chemicals, but the EPA says that scientists haven't found any adverse human health affects of PPCPs.
A better understanding of the occurrence of PPCPs in large water systems, particularly in areas with substantial urban development, needs further investigation, the report said. Right now, Klaper and her team are looking for more funding. They'd like to go out to the middle of Lake Michigan to keep testing water samples, but they'd also like to pinpoint which of these chemicals should be targeted for removal or replacement.
She says there still isn't enough information about what happens when these chemical compounds combine and react, and what that does to the environment.
"The study doesn't suggest that people should stop taking these medications, or that all chemicals are bad," she said. "It's that we need some more information on the environmental effects, and to consider that when we put it out on the marketplace and target that for removal with our treatment technologies."
Friday, September 27, 2013
Sy Hersh: one of the very few REAL truth-telling investigative journalists left
Can't wait to read the book he's working on...at least it will be reporting truth and not White House balderdash.
Seymour Hersh on death of Osama bin Laden: ‘It’s one big lie, not one word of it is true’
Seymour Hersh has got some extreme ideas on how to fix journalism – close down the news bureaus of NBC and ABC, sack 90% of editors in publishing and get back to the fundamental job of journalists which, he says, is to be an outsider. (YES!)
It doesn’t take much to fire up Hersh, the investigative journalist who has been the nemesis of US presidents since the 1960s and who was once described by the Republican party as “the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist”.
He is angry about the timidity of journalists in America, their failure to challenge the White House and be an unpopular messenger of truth.
Don’t even get him started on the New York Times which, he says, spends “so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would” – or the death of Osama bin Laden. “Nothing’s been done about that story, it’s one big lie, not one word of it is true,” he says of the dramatic US Navy Seals raid in 2011.
Hersh is writing a book about national security and has devoted a chapter to the bin Laden killing. He says a recent report put out by an “independent” Pakistani commission about life in the Abottabad compound in which Bin Laden was holed up would not stand up to scrutiny. “The Pakistanis put out a report, don’t get me going on it. Let’s put it this way, it was done with considerable American input. It’s a bullshit report,” he says hinting of revelations to come in his book.
The Obama administration lies systematically, he claims, yet none of the leviathans of American media, the TV networks or big print titles, challenge him.
“It’s pathetic, they are more than obsequious, they are afraid to pick on this guy [Obama],” he declares in an interview with the Guardian.
“It used to be when you were in a situation when something very dramatic happened, the president and the minions around the president had control of the narrative, you would pretty much know they would do the best they could to tell the story straight. Now that doesn’t happen any more. Now they take advantage of something like that and they work out how to re-elect the president.
He isn’t even sure if the recent revelations about the depth and breadth of surveillance by the National Security Agency will have a lasting effect.
Snowden changed the debate on surveillance
He is certain that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden “changed the whole nature of the debate” about surveillance. Hersh says he and other journalists had written about surveillance, but Snowden was significant because he provided documentary evidence – although he is sceptical about whether the revelations will change the US government’s policy.
“Duncan Campbell [the British investigative journalist who broke the Zircon cover-up story], James Bamford [US journalist] and Julian Assange and me and the New Yorker, we’ve all written the notion there’s constant surveillance, but he [Snowden] produced a document and that changed the whole nature of the debate, it’s real now,” Hersh says.
“Editors love documents. Chicken-shit editors who wouldn’t touch stories like that, they love documents, so he changed the whole ball game,” he adds, before qualifying his remarks.
“But I don’t know if it’s going to mean anything in the long [run] because the polls I see in America – the president can still say to voters ‘al-Qaida, al-Qaida’ and the public will vote two to one for this kind of surveillance, which is so idiotic,” he says.
Holding court to a packed audience at City University in London’s summer school on investigative journalism, 76-year-old Hersh is on full throttle, a whirlwind of amazing stories of how journalism used to be; how he exposed the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, how he got the Abu Ghraib pictures of American soldiers brutalising Iraqi prisoners, and what he thinks of Edward Snowden.
Hope of redemption
Despite his concern about the temerity of journalism he believes the trade still offers hope of redemption.
“I have this sort of heuristic view that journalism, we possibly offer hope because the world is clearly run by total nincompoops more than ever … Not that journalism is always wonderful, it’s not, but at least we offer some way out, some integrity.”
His story of how he uncovered the My Lai atrocity is one of old-fashioned shoe-leather journalism and doggedness. Back in 1969, he got a tip about a 26-year-old platoon leader, William Calley, who had been charged by the army with alleged mass murder.
Instead of picking up the phone to a press officer, he got into his car and started looking for him in the army camp of Fort Benning in Georgia, where he heard he had been detained. From door to door he searched the vast compound, sometimes blagging his way, marching up to the reception, slamming his fist on the table and shouting: “Sergeant, I want Calley out now.”
Eventually his efforts paid off with his first story appearing in the St Louis Post-Despatch, which was then syndicated across America and eventually earned him the Pulitzer Prize. “I did five stories. I charged $100 for the first, by the end the [New York] Times were paying $5,000.”
He was hired by the New York Times to follow up the Watergate scandal and ended up hounding Nixon over Cambodia. Almost 30 years later, Hersh made global headlines all over again with his exposure of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
Put in the hours
For students of journalism his message is put the miles and the hours in. He knew about Abu Ghraib five months before he could write about it, having been tipped off by a senior Iraqi army officer who risked his own life by coming out of Baghdad to Damascus to tell him how prisoners had been writing to their families asking them to come and kill them because they had been “despoiled”.
“I went five months looking for a document, because without a document, there’s nothing there, it doesn’t go anywhere.”
Hersh returns to US president Barack Obama. He has said before that the confidence of the US press to challenge the US government collapsed post 9/11, but he is adamant that Obama is worse than Bush.
“Do you think Obama’s been judged by any rational standards? Has Guantanamo closed? Is a war over? Is anyone paying any attention to Iraq? Is he seriously talking about going into Syria? We are not doing so well in the 80 wars we are in right now, what the hell does he want to go into another one for. What’s going on [with journalists]?” he asks.
He says investigative journalism in the US is being killed by the crisis of confidence, lack of resources and a misguided notion of what the job entails.
“Too much of it seems to me is looking for prizes. It’s journalism looking for the Pulitzer Prize,” he adds. “It’s a packaged journalism, so you pick a target like – I don’t mean to diminish because anyone who does it works hard – but are railway crossings safe and stuff like that, that’s a serious issue but there are other issues too.
“Like killing people, how does [Obama] get away with the drone programme, why aren’t we doing more? How does he justify it? What’s the intelligence? Why don’t we find out how good or bad this policy is? Why do newspapers constantly cite the two or three groups that monitor drone killings. Why don’t we do our own work?
“Our job is to find out ourselves, our job is not just to say – here’s a debate’ our job is to go beyond the debate and find out who’s right and who’s wrong about issues. That doesn’t happen enough. It costs money, it costs time, it jeopardises, it raises risks. There are some people – the New York Times still has investigative journalists but they do much more of carrying water for the president than I ever thought they would … it’s like you don’t dare be an outsider any more.”
He says in some ways President George Bush’s administration was easier to write about. “The Bush era, I felt it was much easier to be critical than it is [of] Obama. Much more difficult in the Obama era,” he said.
Asked what the solution is Hersh warms to his theme that most editors are pusillanimous and should be fired.
“I’ll tell you the solution, get rid of 90% of the editors that now exist and start promoting editors that you can’t control,” he says. I saw it in the New York Times, I see people who get promoted are the ones on the desk who are more amenable to the publisher and what the senior editors want and the trouble makers don’t get promoted. Start promoting better people who look you in the eye and say ‘I don’t care what you say’.
Nor does he understand why the Washington Post held back on the Snowden files until it learned the Guardian was about to publish.
If Hersh was in charge of US Media Inc, his scorched earth policy wouldn’t stop with newspapers.
“I would close down the news bureaus of the networks and let’s start all over, tabula rasa. The majors, NBCs, ABCs, they won’t like this – just do something different, do something that gets people mad at you, that’s what we’re supposed to be doing,” he says.
Hersh is currently on a break from reporting, working on a book which undoubtedly will make for uncomfortable reading for both Bush and Obama.
“The republic’s in trouble, we lie about everything, lying has become the staple.” And he implores journalists to do something about it.
A stroll down memory lane!
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
"Exceptional hunting" killing an elephant
Yeah - how exceptional. Non-threatening elephant standing in a clump of trees, just standing there. NRA lobbyist with big "Tyrannosaur"gun sneaks up and shoots it between the eyes. Yeah. Exceptional hunting. What bravery. Bring out the champagne and let's celebrate! And great white Republican hunter goes home with ivory trophy. This is what Republicans call "a fantastic sporting event" and "very, very special occasion." To witness this "special" event in living color, follow the link above.
The NBC Sports network came under fire this week after it aired an NRA-sponsored program that included gun lobbyist Tony Makris shooting an elephant in the face and then drinking champagne.
Deadspin noted on Tuesday that the Botswana hunt had aired during this week’s episode of Under Wild Skies.
Makris is a longtime friend of NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre and is best known for orchestrating Charlton Heston’s rise within the organization.
In a video of the hunt, Makris spots an elephant in the brush, walks up and shoots it in the the face twice. After a short chase, Makris fires again and the elephant is dead.
The NRA lobbyist then takes a moment to pose with his .577 “Tyrannosaur” rifle and the dead pachyderm.
As the episode ends, the group of hunters enjoys a glass of champagne while watching the sunset.
“To hunt an elephant and to harvest an elephant and to bring the ivory back to camp is a very, very special occasion,” one hunter says.
Botswana announced in 2012 that an all-out ban on commercial elephant hunting would go into effect in January of 2014 over concerns of sharp declines in wildlife species.
The outrage over the NBC Sports broadcast comes as authorities in Zimbabwe this week said that poachers seeking ivory had used cyanide to poison at least 81 elephants.
I'm on the same page with this author
EXCERPT: The single greatest strength of the modern Republican Party, the source of all their power, what gives them their ability to confuse and derange any national conversation, is their utter and complete lack of shame. They will say anything - literally anything, no matter how contradictory or antithetical to what they said just yesterday - if it gives them the upper hand in a TV debate, allows them to play the victim or the victor at turns, and gives them the chance to keep genuine debate at arm's length. Genuine debate is not their purpose in Washington DC. They know full well how full of it they are. They simply do not care. It is just another clown show.
SEND IN THE CLOWNS
By William Rivers Pitt
Don't you love farce?
My fault, I fear
I thought that you'd want what I want
Sorry, my dear
And where are the clowns
Send in the clowns
Don't bother, they're here...
— Stephen Sondheim
When I was young, a certain segment of my summer would be carved out and set aside for visiting my father and family in Alabama. I would board a plane all by myself like a big boy and wing my way south, where I would spend a joyously eccentric slice of time in Montgomery, Mobile, Birmingham and Decatur with my Dad, my Memaw and my Grandad.
The thing is, I loved my Grandad, but hated the room I had to sleep in whenever I visited him, because of the clown picture. It hung right over the bed, but was somehow completely visible no matter where you were in the room. Even when you closed your eyes, you knew it was there: the image of a boy, wearing a dotted and pointed clown hat, with white facepaint and rogued cheeks, mouth open in what was obviously a cry of mortal terror...or at least, that's how it seemed to me. The thing was utterly harmless in the daylight, but took on a demonic life of its own once darkness fell, and is, without doubt, the reason I hate and despise clowns to this day.
So when the Koch Brothers decided to fund and air this anti-Obamacare TV ad aimed at convincing young adults that having health care will get you raped by a giant speculum-wielding Uncle Sam clown beast, needless to say, it gave me a nasty turn...and I don't have a vagina, so I can only guess how women who see the image of Rapey Uncle Sam walking into an OBGYN exam room to greet a woman with legs high in the stirrups feel about it.
You have to see the ad to believe it.
Friends of mine who saw the thing were appalled that a GOP front group could be so brazenly hypocritical as to air an ad that showed Uncle Sam with a speculum, preparing to plunder the private parts of an innocent woman. After all, these are the old white men who are working overtime to make it mandatory in states all across the nation for women seeking abortions to get transvaginal ultrasounds, what Jezebel writer Erin Gloria Ryan brilliantly referred to as a "penalty dick."
You don't understand, I tell them. The single greatest strength of the modern Republican Party, the source of all their power, what gives them their ability to confuse and derange any national conversation, is their utter and complete lack of shame. They will say anything - literally anything, no matter how contradictory or antithetical to what they said just yesterday - if it gives them the upper hand in a TV debate, allows them to play the victim or the victor at turns, and gives them the chance to keep genuine debate at arm's length. Genuine debate is not their purpose in Washington DC. They know full well how full of it they are. They simply do not care.
It is just another clown show.
Which brings me, quite parenthetically, to my point: by all reports, Ted Cruz and John Boehner and President Obama and all the other gibbering DC nitwits are tying themselves in knots over Obamacare, a looming government shutdown, and a potential debt default, the latter two of which run the risk of causing the Earth to crash into the sun. That is what every "mainstream" news outlet would have us all believe, anyway. Their coverage of it is utterly captivating; try to imagine a nightly newscast about a street fight between 536 clowns to decide the fate of the world, multiply it fourscore, and you'll have a sense of how our sainted scribes are dealing with the matter.
Two things:
First, they'll work it out one way or another before doom strikes us all, even if they just kick the can down the road a ways. If one party or the other looks bad nationally, that is just the price of doing business. Most of the Republicans behind this whole thing are doing it for the sole purpose of fundraising in their far-right gerrymandered districts, and that's a fact. Most of the Democrats sitting on the sidelines are perfectly happy to let the GOP make perfect fools of themselves for their own fundraising purposes. Almost none of them have a real taste for Armageddon. Trust me: this whole kerfuffle will get settled with a few ticks left on the clock, and the "mainstream" news coverage will be breathless, and the gears will grind on.
Second, and by orders of magnitude more importantly, the Trans Pacific Partnership is approaching fast-track approval, the Keystone XL pipeline continues to grind towards its own approval, and you don't hear a word about either, because they are what is really important to the people putting on the clown show. It's not a conspiracy, for a wink is as good as a nod to a blind man, and blind men are what we are.
So go right ahead and get all worked up over the dismal spoon-fed press clown show that is this mess over Obamacare, the shutdown and the debt ceiling. In the meantime, a deal that forever enshrines corporate power over you and your country, and a pipeline that will ooze poison into the aquifer you drink from, slide into existence with bi-partisan lubrication.
Ignore the clowns. As my grandfather used to say, keep your eye on the main tent.Tuesday, September 24, 2013
20 White Males in the Power Elite
20 White Males from the Power Elite Who Belong in the American Hall of Shame
Out of 300 million Americans, a few thousand wield disproportionate economic and political influence because of their positions at the pinnacle of America's corporate and media establishments or their roles as political allies (or puppets) of the corporate ruling class. C. Wright Mills described this group in his 1956 book, The Power Elite, G. William Domhoff has updated this analysis in his book, Who Rules America? (now in its 7th edition), and Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson have described how the power elite wields its influence in Winner-Take-All Politics.
Many of them have overlapping memberships on the boards of the largest corporations, business lobby groups, universities and think tanks, foundations, and media conglomerates. They are not part of conspiracy. They do not meet secretly to plot America's future. And they disagree with each other on some issues, particularly same-sex marriage, abortion and gun control. Some are corporate conservatives and moderates; some are right-wing reactionaries and racists; others are lunatic libertarians.
But they agree on the essential concerns about the economy. The top Wall Street and Wal-Mart CEOs, the media monopolists and their talk-show agitators, the billionaire benefactors, and the business lobbyists share an antipathy toward unions, progressive taxes, and government regulations that protect consumers, workers, and the environment. They fund think tanks and hire college professors to promote their views and to cry wolf about government rules -- denying the reality of global warming, warning that raising the minimum wage or strengthening regulations on banks will "kill jobs," and attacking Obamacare (and Obama) as "socialist." They work closely with right-wing, conservative, and moderate politicians to carry out their agenda. They act on behalf of big business and the super-rich, but to translate their ideas into public policy they have to persuade voters that their agenda benefits middle class Americans -- a task that is getting harder and harder to do.
Yet even among the few thousand members of the power elite, there are a small number whose influence is greater than the others. Here is a list of the 20 most influential members of the power elite:
Congressmen Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan, corporate lobbyist and Americans for Tax Reform head Grover Norquist, Chase CEO Jamie Dimon; Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf, David and Charles Koch, Walmart CEO Mike Duke, Sen. Mitch McConnell, Newt Gingrich, Wall Street titan and Fix-the-Debt funder Pete Peterson, Sen. Rand Paul, sleazy corporate front man Rick Berman, Fox News president Roger Ailes, media mogul Rupert Murdoch, Radio reactionary Rush Limbaugh, casino billionaire benefactor Sheldon Adelson, Sen. Ted Cruz, Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue, NRA hit man Wayne LaPierre.
As in all eras of American history, there are a handful of members of America's upper class who are traitors to their class. They sympathize with and even fund progressive causes, campaigns, and candidates. They side with the growing movement that is emerging to challenge the domination of America's power elite.
Like Yertle the Turtle, these 20 men sit atop an unstable foundation of widening inequality and social injustice. And like Mack, the turtle at the bottom, there are more and more Americans angered and frustrated by the status quo. Polls show that most Americans prefer "responsible capitalism" over "no rules" capitalism.
If history offers any lessons, it is that these men -- and the interests and ideas they represent -- are not invincible. Martin Luther King said, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." But it takes movements and activists to bend it.
Monday, September 23, 2013
First part of Holographic Universe film is good
Very interesting Holographic Universe film
Sunday, September 22, 2013
We can run, but we can't hide: What a drone can see at 17,500 ft.
Daniel Sheehan Talk and Book Signing at Logos Books & Records
Subject: Daniel Sheehan Talk and Book Signing at Logos Books & Records
A very important talk and book signing will be taking place in our own town of Santa Cruz, by a man whose voice is being heard round the world. Logos Books almost NEVER hosts a book signing event, but they are making an exception for this major event at their store.
I will be attending this talk and urge you to come, too. Danny Sheehan will be talking about how the people have lost the reins of our country -- and offering a definite, workable plan as to how we can change that. Not just talk, but local action. Whenever change for the good of the people has taken place in any country around the world, it has always started at the local level and has always been initiated by the people. That's us.
We can't ignore what is happening in our country, where corporate money has bought politicians and changed laws to benefit themselves, completely ignoring the needs of "We, the People." We see this happening now in Washington where our government is barreling towards shut down in a few days because of the demands of the few against the welfare of the many. You may be someone who has been economically affected by the ruthless greed of the military/industrial complex Eisenhower warned about in his farewell speech as President. You may see what is happening, are appalled, but up to now have felt helpless to do anything about it. Come hear what Danny Sheehan has to say, and listen to his plan to start a take-back of our country and its Constitution. Ask yourself: If not now, when? If not you, who?
Come to Logos this Wednesday, Sept. 25 at 7:30 p.m., and listen to the plan of one of America's foremost lawyers and advocates for the people. Sheehan is positive and action-oriented, achieving many successes in his life that have greatly benefited people. As the Logos invitation below says, this is a major event and is sure to gain national attention. And it is beginning here in Santa Cruz. Please be part of it.
| We are happy to invite you to Danny Sheehan's talk and book signing at Logos Books & Records, at 7:30pm, on Sept 25. The release of this book, "The People's Advocate: The Life and Legal History of America's Most Fearless Public Interest Lawyer" is a major event and sure to gain national attention. As you may know, Logos does not host many book signings; as a matter of fact, we do this about once a decade and only for those projects we deem highly important. This is one of them. Daniel Sheehan has played a key role in many of the most famous public interest cases of our time. These include the Pentagon Papers Case, Eisenstadt v. Baird, Black Panther 21 Trial, the Watergate burglary case, the Wounded Knee trials, the Silkwood Case, Three-Mile Island Incident, American Sanctuary Movement Case, Greensboro Massacre, and the Iran-Contra Affair. He is currently lead attorney and general counsel for the Lakota People's Law Project. Sheehan, who is well-known as a great speaker, will give a talk and then sign copies of the new book. We hope you will attend, and let your friends know too! See you then, Logos staff Who: Daniel Sheehan Where: Logos, 1117 Pacific Ave, Santa Cruz, 95060 When: Wednesday, Sept 25, 7:30 pm Contact: 831-427-5100 (#6) logos@logosbooksrecords.com www.logosbooksrecords.com |
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