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Thomas Paine

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

25 September - News Picks

In case anyone is curious about the timing of the 'Blogs I'm Following' post, it 'vanished' in the body after being Zemified...and was trying to drive me nuts between computer reboots for ID verification, crashes, FF 'freezing', and more when revising.

Murray Murmurings: Postcard from Mildura

November 5, 2010 – 10:22 am
I didn’t meet a single person who did not agree that the river is dying and needs more water. The question of how we go about this change is what remains in dispute, writes the Australian Conservation Foundation’s economic adviser Simon O’Connor.

Murray Murmurings


House Bill Cuts Disaster Assistance; U.S. Already Has 11 Naval Fleets


The U.S. Navy has the world’s largest carrier fleet, with 11 in service, one under construction (two planned), and one in reserve.  A startling statistic when one recognizes that the US Navy has no international competition.  Even the Russian Navy pales in comparison.  Is there a need to spend more on such over-the-top funding since the world does not ghost Navies?
On the other hand the 112th Congress seems to have a problem with funding for natural disasters. You and I are candidates to be victims of a natural disaster at any moment.
If there is a place on the Earth that is immune from natural disaster, would someone please let me know?
Better yet, localize it back from the Earth to the Untied States. If there is a place in the United States that is completely immune from natural disaster, please let me know.
....

The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined.[4] The U.S. Navy also has the world’s largest carrier fleet, with 11 in service, one under construction (two planned), and one in reserve. The service had 328,516 personnel on active duty and 101,689 in the Navy Reserve in January 2011. It operates 286 ships in active service and more than 3,700 aircraft.[2]
Now that all is in perspective, what sense does it make to cut spending to help with national disasters, in light of the information about our naval forces?  Isn’t it literally illogical to believe in the need for such forces and even worse to lionize the usefulness of 11 active naval fleets?
Yet, the Leader of the (112th Congress) House of OZ would deny you and me the opportunity for federal help if our homes were flooded to the ceiling?
Disaster relief September 2011   (Larger version)

Brain Evolution: The Accidental Mind, Parts 1, 2, 3

The Accidental Mind is a book by David J. Linden. It seeks to explain how brain evolution has given rise to those qualities that most profoundly shape our human experience.
http://accidentalmind.org/free_chapters/
Neurons have hardly changed from those of prehistoric jellyfish. “Slow, leaky, unreliable,” as Linden calls them, they tend to drop the ball: at connections between neurons, signals have a 70 percent chance of sputtering out. To make sure enough signals do get through, the brain needs to be massively interconnected, its 100 billion neurons forming an estimated 500 trillion synapses.
Just as the mouse brain is a lizard brain “with some extra stuff thrown on top,” Linden writes, the human brain is essentially a mouse brain with extra toppings. That’s how we wound up with two vision systems. In amphibians, signals from the eye are processed in a region called the midbrain, which, for instance, guides a frog’s tongue to insects in midair and enables us to duck as an errant fastball bears down on us. Our kludgy brain retains this primitive visual structure even though most signals from the eye are processed in the visual cortex, a newer addition. If the latter is damaged, patients typically say they cannot see a thing. Yet if asked to reach for an object, many of them can grab it on the first try. And if asked to judge the emotional expression on a face, they get it right more often than chance would predict especially if that expression is anger.
 
 

FOCUS: Lloyd's Sues Saudi Arabia for 'Funding 9/11 Attacks'
 
readersupportednews.org
In other words, absent Saudi support, the Twin Towers would still be standing - along with nearly 3,000 Americans.' Investor's Business Daily
 

Watford CoalitionofResistance

 Watford Coalition of Resistance is a local branch of The Coalition of Resistance - a broad united national campaign against cuts and privatisation in our workplaces, community and welfare services, based on general agreement with the Founding Statement issued by Tony Benn in August 2010. Repeated below.

It is time to organise a broad movement of active resistance to the Con-Dem government's budget intentions. They plan the most savage spending cuts since the 1930s, which will wreck the lives of millions by devastating our jobs, pay, pensions, NHS, education, transport, postal and other services.

The government claims the cuts are unavoidable because the welfare state has been too generous. This is nonsense. Ordinary people are being forced to pay for the bankers' profligacy.

The £11bn welfare cuts, rise in VAT to 20%, and 25% reductions across government departments target the most vulnerable – disabled people, single parents, those on housing benefit, black and other ethnic minority communities, students, migrant workers, LGBT people and pensioners.
 

John Farnham commented on thinkprogress.org.
Iranian Jews have no interest in "Right of Return" to Israel. That should be an 'informed judgement' worth noting.
WikiLeaks Cable: U.S. And Israel Kept Lid On Bomb Sale To ‘Avoid Any Allegations’ Of Preparations To
 
thinkprogress.org
On Friday, journalist Eli Lake published a story about the Obama administration’s sale of so-called bunker-busting bombs to Israel. According to Lake’s reporting, the Bush administration had put off the sale in order to avoid the perception that delivery of the 55 GBU-28 bombs represented a “green l...

John Farnham
We have no defense against government intrusion except one : complain !
OpenMedia.ca
www.facebook.com
OpenMedia.ca - Stop invasive surveillance bills here: *** Stop the pay-meter on your Internet here: - General Information: For those of you looking for ways to raise awareness you about Usage-Based Billing - you can: 1. Share on Facebook with this link: 2. Use this video to educate people: 3. Us...
 

Monsanto Denies Superinsect Science

 2011 is emerging as the year of the superinsect—the year pests officially developed resistance to Monsanto's genetically engineered (ostensibly) bug-killing corn.

Scientists have been warning that the EPA's rules for planting the crop were too lax to prevent resistance since before the agency approved the crop in 2003. And in 2008, research funded by Monsanto itself showed that resistance was an obvious danger.

Researchers found that within three generations, rootworms munching Monsanto's Bt corn survived at the same rate as rootworms munching pesticide-free corn—meaning that complete resistance had been achieved. Takeaway message: rootworms are capable of evolving resistance to Monsanto's corn in "rapid" fashion. 

And now those unheeded warnings are proving prescient. In late July, as I reported recently, scientists in Iowa documented the existence of corn rootworms (a ravenous pest that attacks the roots of corn plants) that can happily devour corn plants that were genetically tweaked specifically to kill them. Monsanto's corn, engineered to express a toxic gene from a bacterial insecticide called Bt, now accounts for 65 percent of the corn planted in the US.
The superinsect scourge has also arisen in Illinois and Minnesota. "Monsanto Co. (MON)’s insect-killing corn is toppling over in northwestern Illinois fields, a sign that rootworms outside of Iowa may have developed resistance to the genetically modified crop," reports Bloomberg. In southern Minnesota, adds Minnesota Public Radio, an entomologist has found corn rootworms thriving, Bt corn plants drooping, in fields.

Monsanto Superinsects Eating Your Corn? Diversify!


British Inventor Claims Generator ‘Breaks The Laws Of Physics’

Video: Inventor makes machine that 'breaks the laws of physics'

 

The (Terrible) Occupations Of The Future

Inside Haiti's Tent Cities 

Welcome to Haiti's Reconstruction Hell

Chart: How The Climate-Change Deniers Won

Shelved ozone standard would have had modest impact on business, politics

The proposed new limit, which would have lowered the allowable concentration of ozone in the air from 84 parts per billion to 70 parts per billion, could have cost $19 billion to $25 billion to implement, according to the EPA’s analysis. But the costs of the proposed 70 parts per billion standard would have been offset, the analysis said, by financial benefits ranging from $11 billion to $31 billion and health benefits that include 4,300 deaths avoided annually.

The Recurring Re-Oiling of Horn Island: A Model of BP’s “Disaster on the Installment Plan” | Stuart.
 
www.stuarthsmith.com
 
More than 16 months after BP's Macondo Well began spewing 200 million gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico, it still reeks of oil on Horn Island – a long
Goldman Sachs Report Predicts USA Will Be Top Oil Producer by 2017 | Before It's News
 
beforeitsnews.com
The Sunday Times recently quoted a report released by Goldman Sachs which predicts that the United States will become the world's largest oil producer by the year 2017. This estimate was obtained by using a different definition of oil and utilizing generous estimates for liquids-rich shale productio...
 
GRANVILLE SUMMIT, Pa.—Sherry Vargson has cooked with water from a five-gallon jug for the past year. It's inconvenient, but preferable to using tap water containing enough methane gas that she can light a match and see an orange flame flare out of the faucet.
Drillers Face Methane Concern
 
online.wsj.com
Many water supplies in northern Pennsylvania have long contained detectable levels of methane, because of poorly constructed water wells and the unusual geologic features here. The gas-drilling industry agrees that methane leaks are a risk of drilling, and it says it can prevent them, and the outcom...
 

 Countrywide protected fraudsters by silencing whistleblowers, say former employees

Mortgage industry tanks, fraud continues at Countrywide

As the mortgage industry melted down, fraud investigator kept up the pressure, soon lost her job

 

Justice Dept. Accused of Misleading Public on the Patriot Act

The senators also criticized a recent statement by a department spokesman that "Section 215 is not a secret law, nor has it been implemented under secret legal opinions by the Justice Department." This was "extremely misleading," they said, because there are secret legal opinions controlling how Patriot Act is being interpreted - it's just that they were issued by the national security court.
"In our judgment, when the legal interpretations of public statutes that are kept secret from the American public, the government is effectively relying on secret law," they wrote.

 

 Decades after war, millions of unexploded U.S. bombs haunt Laos

 Peace bomb bracelets have a story to tell: each one has been made with repurposed Vietnam War scrap metal. And Article 22 founder and designer Elizabeth Suda has a story to tell about the people of Laos and the Secret War that effects their lives to this day.

Real Coastal Warriors
Enviroment Pollution in USA on Thursday, 25 August, 2011 at 15:36 (03:36 PM) UTC: Oil is again bubbling to the surface of the Gulf of Mexico near the epicenter of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. Reporters from Mobile, Alabama’s Press-Register loaded into a boat Tuesday to inspect the site. Equipped with cameras, the reporters discovered “hundreds of small, circular patches of oily sheen” within a mile of the well. “Floating in a boat near the well site, Press-Register reporters watched blobs of oil rise to the surface and bloom into iridescent yellow patches,” the paper reported Wednesday. “Those patches quickly expanded into rainbow sheens 4 to 5 feet across.” According to the Press-Register, “Each expanding bloom released a pronounced and pungent petroleum smell. Most of the oil was located in a patch about 50 yards wide and a quarter of a mile long.” Petroleum engineers are concerned that oil is leaking from the floor of the Gulf near the sealed well. (Oil trade groups: Drilling deregulation could create 190,000 jobs) Louisiana State University chemist Scott Miles conducted a chemical analysis of the oil to identify its “fingerprint.” Miles said that, “It is possible it could be [from the Deepwater Horizon well] . It’s south Louisiana crude for sure.” BP said in a statement to the Press-Register: “We stand by what we said last week, neither BP nor the Coast Guard has seen any scientific evidence that oil is leaking from the Macondo well, which was permanently sealed almost a year ago.” 
 
Real Coastal Warriors
But from early next year the endangered Southern Right Whales, which come to the area to calve, are going to have some noisy new neighbours - BP. Curiously, the approval to explore was given the day after the US government launched its final and most scathing report on the BP Deepwater Gulf disaster. The report fell over itself heaping blame on BP, including observations like; "BP's cost or time saving decisions without considering contingencies and mitigation were contributing causes of the blowout."
BP planning to try deepwater drilling in Australia – Opinion – ABC Environment (Australian Broadcast
 
www.abc.net.au
 
Drilling for oil in the Great Australian Bight is technically risky and environmentally damaging. So why would we want anyone to do it?
 
RSOE Emergency and Disaster Information Service
 
hisz.rsoe.hu
 
Newsvine - Urgent Questions on the survey-research cruise by NOAA Okeanos Explorer
 
bklim.newsvine.com
Updated continuously by citizens like you, Newsvine is an instant reflection of what the world is talking about at any given moment.
 
Comet Elenin Could Hit Earth!
 
reinep.wordpress.com
Comet Elenin was just discovered this past Dec. 2010 by a Russian Astronomer Leonid Elenin. The question is why media hasn't said anything about it? They have always made a big fuzz in the past abo...
 
Tunnels to at least 13 underground bases being sealed off
 
dancingczars.wordpress.com
Posted by PC World news At least 13 very powerful underground explosions rocked the United States Midwest in the last 48 hours. They registered as small shallow earthquakes with the USGS. Ma...
 
Planet X, Nibiru // Arizona with Inside information speaks out on revolution radio
 
www.youtube.com
 
Arizona on Revolution radio explaining the Effects of Nibiru / Planet X. Your welcome to join our pal talk room to discuss this topic and other worldly event...
 
 
Mongabay.com
Activists worldwide push for leaving fossil fuel age behind http://sns.mx/r5e0y0
 
Activists worldwide push for leaving fossil fuel age behind
 
sns.mx
On six continents, in over 75 percent of the world's countries, people came out en masse yesterday to attend over 2,000 events to demonstrate the power of renewable energy to combat global climate change. As apart of the 'Moving Planet' campaign organized by 350.org, activists created a giant human-windmill in Paris, gave out bike lessons in Buenos Aires, practiced evacuation measure in the Pacific island of Tuvalu imperiled by rising sea levels, and marched in Cape Town for a strong agreement a
 
 
Posted by opit at 9:28 PM

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