Image by Creativity+ Timothy K Hamilton via FlickrEmails expose BP's attempts to control research into impact of Gulf oil spill
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/15/bp-control-science-gulf-oil-spill?intcmp=239
BP faces billions in fines and penalties, and possible criminal charges arising from the disaster. Its total liability will depend in part on a final account produced by scientists on how much oil entered the gulf from its blown-out well, and the damage done to marine life and coastal areas in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The oil company disputes the government estimate that 4.1m barrels of oil entered the gulf.
There is no evidence in the emails that BP officials were successful in directing research. The fund has since established procedures to protect its independence.
Environmental campaigners angry as green laws labelled as red tapehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/apr/17/environment-green-laws-red-tape
All of the UK's more than 21,000 pieces of regulation are included on the government's website for an evaluation. Users are told only the issues of tax and national security are exempted. Participants are assured the "onus" will be on ministers to make the case for keeping a regulation recommended for cutting.
U.S. "not happy" with F-35 engine cost overruns
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/13/us-fighter-engine-idUSTRE73C84J20110413
Hat Tip 3Ds Blog
Mark Collins - Libya mission not based on R2P
http://www.cdfai.org/the3dsblog
Mark Collins' blog
Further to this post, a letter in the Toronto Star:
April 10, 2011What NATO Libya Mission?
Re: R2P: More than a slogan, Opinion, April 6
This opinion piece states that Libya is an “R2P-based mission.” While in some general sense the Libyan mission may be based on the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, the UN Security Council did not formally invoke it in this case.
The language authorizing force in UN Security Council Resolution 1973 carefully makes no reference, as a basis for the decision, to council Resolution 1674 of 2006 that established the doctrine in international law. One suspects strongly this was so in order to ensure that certain important council members — Russia, China, India? — did not vote against Resolution 1973. The omission seems clearly intended to avoid setting the precedent of a first formal invocation by the council of the doctrine; a doctrine with which many UN members remain distinctly uncomfortable.
Mark Collins, Ottawa
http://www.cdfai.org/the3dsblog
How often do we notice the more delicate fibs told by our own leaders? It isn’t quite so blatant as fake blood, but when Western leaders talk about the Libyan campaign as a “NATO operation” they are, at the very least, being economical with the truth.
Think about it: There was no NATO discussion of the operation, no debate, no vote, no joint planning. Technically, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization operates only in the wake of an attack on a NATO member. The war in Afghanistan followed such an attack and was, in the beginning, widely perceived as a war against a common enemy. Libya is different: There was no attack, there is no common enemy, and now there is no consensus.
Two very important NATO members, Germany and Turkey, openly oppose the Libya mission and are refusing to play any operational role…
…Norwegian planes, meanwhile, are apparently allowed to bomb air bases but nothing else. Italy’s planes have flown more than 100 missions but have not yet dropped a single bomb. The Canadians are doing a bit more, it is true — though Canadian politicians are bending over backward to avoid talking too much about it.
As for the United States, one could be forgiven for thinking that the American military is no longer a part of NATO at all. It has been odd and somewhat eerie to hear American officials refer to “NATO” the past few days as if it were something alien and foreign…
- This week’s essential Afghan reading
An excerpt from a post well worth reading in full by BruceR. at Flit (note later on the firefight between US Army/ANA and Taliban), a Canadian Army reserve officer who served as a mentor at Kandahar:The generally reliable Tim Lynch is somewhere between despair and needing a really long vacation…he hits his Afghan points in rapid fire, all of which I’d say are pretty much inarguable at this point:
–The Kandahar City suicide ambulance attack was fiendish, and effective;
–”General Petraeus can say what he wants but we all know he doesn’t know because he has no human intelligence capacity. That is the price he must pay for having unlimited funds with which to build little islands of America all over the country, isolating most of the forces completely from the Afghans.” (See also Alex Berenson on the human tragedy that is Kandahar Air Field; I will only say what I’ve said here before on this, that any minute one spends beyond what is absolutely necessary on a megabase like KAF is a minute utterly wasted, both personally and militarily.)
–”The United States could easily send half the people deployed in Afghanistan home without diminishing combat power.” I wouldn’t put it that high, but it’s not zero, either.Image via Wikipedia
–”You could easily cut the intelligence effort in half because Afghan intel is an echo chamber with endemic circular reporting coupled to sycophantic analysis. And you can close the COIN Academy – setting up a new “innovative” school house is a loser move…”
–The United States is like pre-Caesarian Rome, he concludes: and in short, “we’re losing in Afghanistan.”..
( 'Losing' ? In a sandbox full of starving people who have been in that fix for years, a declaration that a foreign force of occupation is not 'succeeding' in a mission without stated objectives is almost as much an oxymoron as saying there is any good reason for having foreign state branded murderers hunt natives for the killing.
Of course, when one is continuing the policies of the British raj in a coalition originally designated as a defensive alliance to protect the shipping lanes of the North Atlantic merchant marine as they apply to a naval 'coalition' waging land 'war' against an 'entity' defined, harassed, and reported upon by those executing these creative narratives far from the site of these objectives using 'defense' forces in extreme geographical error...reason never enters into the picture. Not any given reason, at least.)
U.S. "not happy" with F-35 engine cost overruns
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/13/us-fighter-engine-idUSTRE73C84J20110413
The Pentagon ordered GE and Rolls-Royce to stop building the alternate engine last month, but the companies said they would spend their own money to keep it alive. The Pentagon has sought for five years to kill the engine as an economy measure.
South Korean "super gun" packs hi-tech killing power (2:28)
Feb 14 - South Korea has developed an automated, turret-based weapon platform capable of locking onto a human target three kilometers away. Tara Cleary reports.Think-Tank Keeps Pushing For Arming Of Libyan Rebels By US
http://www.warisbusiness.com/items/think-tank-keeps-pushing-for-arming-of-libyan-rebels-by-us/
Rand - who else ? http://www.rand.org/commentary/2011/04/13/CSM.html
The Global Risk of Arming Libya's Rebels
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/04/the-global-risk-of-arming-libyas-rebels/236994
Flooding the country with guns could set off an unpredictable and dangerous chain of events. We've seen it happen before. What happens in a post-conflict Libya awash in arms, heavily populated by young men who know how to use them, who lack jobs or money or any prospect for either?
60 Years Of American Arms Exports To The Muslim World
Names Named: The 30 Blackwater Front Companies—And Some Of Their Aircraft
Nuclear Power's Little Problems
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/04/nuclear-powers-little-problems/237418
The Tennessee Valley Authority announced today that they were considering upgrading some of their facilities in wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Three of the TVA's six nuclear reactors have the same design as the Japanese plants. But it's the little changes that the TVA is considering that are most interesting because of the problem set that they imply.
Uranium Is So Last Century — Enter Thorium, the New Green Nuke
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes
Thorium Fuel: No Panacea for Nuclear Power
http://www.nuclearfreeplanet.org/thorium-fuel-no-panacea-for-nuclear-power.html
The use of thorium also creates waste at the front end of the fuel cycle. The radioactivity associated with these is expected to be considerably less than that associated with a comparable amount of uranium milling. However, mine wastes will pose long‐term hazards, as in the case of uranium mining. There are also often hazardous non‐radioactive metals in both thorium and uranium mill tailings.
A MEDICAL PROBLEM OF VAST DIMENSIONS
http://www.nuclearfreeplanet.org
There are billions and billions of dollars at stake for the nuclear industry, which has, as I’ve written earlier, managed to bamboozle governments around the world , much of the press, and many ordinary citizens into believing that nuclear power is green and clean. Nothing could be further from the truth. The industry will not walk away from that money without a fight.
How to minimize consequences of the Fukushima catastrophe
Alexey V. Yablokov speaks from the experience of years studying the aftermath of Chernobyl. The figures from ECRR are chilling in the implication of what Japan will face in the future. While ECRR has had challenges to the severity of their predictions, one thing is absolutely true. The "official" predictions, like those after Chernobyl, bear no resemblance to the reality that will follow.Denying the health crisis that arose from the Chernobyl accident has served no-one but the nuclear industry. It has not served the sick and dying, the Drs. jailed for doing their jobs, the clinics closed due to pulled funding. It has not served the people. It has served the needs and desires of industry. Information vital to treating Japan's medical future lies buried in the myth that Chernobyl harmed no-one.
It is time to lift the veil and break the governmental silence on the health danger from internal emitters. It's time to step from behind the curtain of studies carefully designed to avoid inconvenient answers. It is time to say, in words every one can understand: there is no safe dose of radiation.
The carefully worded news releases of officials carry within them the implication the official story seeks to deny. "No immediate danger" does not mean no danger. It means the danger will become apparent later.
Read full text
Obama Seeks to Revive Space Nuclear Power
The planet strikes back: Why we underestimate the Earth and overestimate ourselves
http://www.grist.org/climate-change/2011-04-16-planet-strikes-back-underestimate-earth-overestimate-ourselves
Nearly half of supermarket meat is tainted
http://www.grist.org/list/2011-04-15-nearly-half-of-supermarket-meat-is-tainted-says-disgusting-new
Half of the bacteria found in the study were resistant to at least three antibiotics. So if you buy meat at the grocery store, you've got a one in four chance of bringing home a drug-resistant superbug.
As long as you're cooking your meat properly, it's not like you're serving up MRSA and potatoes for dinner. But if your meat cross-contaminates stuff in your kitchen -- cutting boards, other food, your hands -- then watch out.
It's definitely enough to put you off meat forever. But factory farming is to blame for these stomach-turning findings -- animals are housed in cramped quarters and constantly hopped up on antibiotics. So starving out industrial farms by buying your meat from small organic farmers may help cut the problem off before it begins.
Lessons on the food system from the ammonia-hamburger fiasco
http://www.grist.org/article/2010-01-05-cheap-food-ammonia-burgers
far from sterilizing a batch of burger mix, pink slime can actually add to the pathogen cocktail:
In a brilliant chapter in his book 2007 book The End of Food, Paul Roberts demonstrates how the profitability of large food companies depends completely on keeping costs as low as possible.
As companies scramble to slash costs, you get the rise of vast environmental calamities, like massive, feces-concentrating hog factories. Yet get human atrocities, like slavery in Florida tomato fields and systematic worker abuse in factory slaughterhouses. And you get public-health nightmares, like soaring diabetes rates tied to the rise of cheap, highly subsidized sweeteners.
The National School Lunch Program, which forces cafeteria administrators to feed students lunch for $2.68 per student per day, is a microcosm of our cheap food system. Two-thirds of that outlay goes to overhead and labor, leaving much less than a buck to spend on ingredients. No wonder the lunch program is such a massive buyer of pink slime--3.5 million pounds last year alone, the Times reports.
School lunch officials said they ultimately agreed to use the treated meat because it shaved about 3 cents off the cost of making a pound of ground beef.... In 2004, lunch officials increased the amount of Beef Products meat allowed in its hamburgers to 15 percent, from 10 percent, to increase savings.
Real News
Honduran coup
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=33&Itemid=74&jumival=408
Special Report: Honduran Teachers Get Shock Treatment
Post-coup regime in Honduras carrying out unprecedented assault on most organized sector of the resistance, the teachers
Brutal Repression in Honduras Targets Teachers, Popular Resistance
Weeks of demonstrations continue against de-facto regime and its plans to privatize public education
Students Battle Police at Honduran University
Students and teachers defend against police attack on resistance movement at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Honduras
Report from Land Occupations in Post-Coup Honduras
Poor farmers are taking land from agribusiness that supported the 2009 military coup--and paying with their lives
Honduran Regime Targets Musicians
Café Guancasco, a favorite of the coup resistance movement, sees concert attacked by police and military
Honduran campesinos under the gun Pt.2
Land conflict in Aguán is setting precedents for conflicts to come in post-coup Honduras
Honduran campesinos under the gun Pt1
Government mobilizes thousands of soldiers during negotiations with peasant plantation occupation
U.S. covering up reality in Honduras
State Department campaign denies the systemic repression that continues, nine months after coup
TRNN Exclusive: Honduran elections exposed
Honduran coup regime's claims of more than 60% participation in free and fair election revealed as fraud
Honduras political crisis unleashes media wars
President Micheletti's coup government cracks down on media and limits access to news about elected Pres
History’s 10 Most Bloodthirsty Rulers
http://www.onlinedegreeshub.com/blog/2011/historys-10-most-bloodthirsty-rulers
( Idi Amin didn't make their cut Neither did Saddam Hussein
The file note on the Saddam bio is interesting
Make no mistake: The ouster of Saddam Hussein was a victory for human rights, and if there is any silver lining to come from the brutal Iraq War, it is that Hussein is no longer slaughtering and torturing his own people. But we should fully recognize that every indictment, every epithet, every moral condemnation we issue against Saddam Hussein also indicts us. We should all be ashamed of the atrocities that were committed under our leaders' noses, and with our leaders' blessing.
Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Bagram AFB Afghanistan, School of the Americas
The 'Law' files show these are institutional policies spanning decades. In fact, I recall reading that natives residing in what became Canada and the USA started 'scalping' to collect British rewards for doing so - no different in intent than those for skins of American Bison or wolves. )
10 Scariest Journalist Arrests in American History
http://www.toponlinecolleges.com/blog/2011/10-scariest-journalist-arrests-in-american-history
U.S. Federal Budget Primer
http://useconomy.about.com/od/fiscalpolicy/tp/US_Federal_Budget.htm
The Top 10 Charity Scams of All Time
http://www.accountingdegree.com/blog/2011/the-top-10-charity-scams-of-all-time
Charity Navigator
25 Important Global Health Facts Every American Needs to Know
http://www.nursingdegree.net/blog/755/25-important-global-health-facts-every-american-needs-to-know
Is Sugar Sapping Your Memory?
http://www.care2.com/greenliving/is-sugar-sapping-your-memory.html10 Caffeine Substitutes Every Student Should Know About
http://www.bestuniversities.com/blog/2011/10-caffeine-substitutes-every-student-should-know-about
Type 2 diabetes 'cut' after weight-loss surgery
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13052309
379 patients had type 2 diabetes before surgery, while one year later that figure had fallen to 188.
There were also improvements in blood pressure and in everyday tasks such as climbing stairs.
The authors argue that by reducing the associated costs of obesity, such as treatment for diabetes, bariatric surgery offers "a real bargain for the health economy and for wider society".
The beam of energy that could save you from blindness
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1373348/The-beam-energy-save-blindness.html
Gigantic New SuperOrganism with 'Social Intelligence' is Devouring the Titanic
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/04/gigantic-new-superorganism-with-social-intelligence-is-devouring-the-titanic-todays-most-popular.html
In 2000, Roy Cullimore, a microbial ecologist and Charles Pellegrino, scientist and author of Ghosts of the Titanic discovered that the Titanic --which sank in the Atlantic Ocean 97 years ago -- was being devoured by a monster microbial industrial complex of extremophiles as alien we might expect to find on Jupiter's ocean-bound Europa. What they discovered is the largest, strangest cooperative microorganism on Earth.
World Health Day – Awareness Campaign for Antimicrobial resistance and its global spread
http://www.indiansocialstudy.com/2011/04/world-health-day-7-april-2011.html
Hydrocarbons Deep Within Earth: New Computational Study Reveals How
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110415104540.htm
The work provides a basis for understanding experiments that demonstrated polymerization of methane to form high hydrocarbons and earlier methane forming reactions under pressure.
Hydrocarbons (molecules composed of the elements hydrogen and carbon) are the main building block of crude oil and natural gas. Hydrocarbons contribute to the global carbon cycle (one of the most important cycles of Earth that allows for carbon to be recycled and reused throughout the biosphere and all of its organisms).
The Heavy Cost of Nitrogen Pollution
http://news.discovery.com/earth/nitrogen-pollution-impact-environment-farming-110411.html
The Communications Center: Breaking Space News
esa space scienceAtmosphere of the planets - Universe Today
Methane Glows in Alien Planet’s Atmosphere
NASA - Martian Methane Reveals the Red Planet is not a Dead Planet
Transparent Cement Lets in Light
http://news.discovery.com/tech/transparent-cement-lets-in-light-110106.html
Hemp Tech Sneaks Over the Border
http://news.discovery.com/tech/hemp-tech-sneaks-over-the-border.html
Penguin, Krill Populations in Freefall
http://news.discovery.com/animals/chinstrap-adelie-penguins-krill-110411.html
# Chinstrap and Adélie penguins have declined by more than 50 percent since 1980.
# This is because their main food source -- krill -- have declined by up to 80 percent.
# Krill rely on sea ice to reproduce, and sea ice levels have declined dramatically.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment