Tuesday, August 14th, 2012
AMY LOU JENKINS, - Examiner.com
Stephan: It's clear that once again several special interest virtual corporate states have corrupted their regulatory oversight agency. That seems pretty straightforward. What I really do not understand, even accepting the fact that in our present system there is no other priority but profit, is how the issue of the collapse of the bees is not creating more alarm. Is it really possible that we are that shortsighted?
I urge you to contact the EPA and register your outrage.
Last month, for the second time, the EPA refused to intervene to stop the use of the pesticide clothianidin, which scientists believe is at least partially to blame for the alarming rise in bee colony collapse The sudden bee die-off which has claimed about 30% of the U.S. honey bee population each year since 2006. The EPA has no plans to review clothianidin again until 2018. By then it may be too late. A public comment period is now open and citizens may share their concerns with the EPA.
One of three bites of food you eat is reliant on honey bee pollination. Everyone who eats needs bees.
Senator Senator Gillibrand from New York, a heavily agricultural state that depends on the bees, is demanding that the EPA step up its formal review process of the nicotines from 2018 to 2013. In her letter to EPA Administrator Shelia Jackson, Senator Gillibrand wrote:
‘Protecting honey bees and other pollinators is vital to American agriculture. In fact, one in three bites of food is reliant on honey bee pollination, and threats to pollinators concern the entire food system and could drive up the cost of food in this country. Highlighting the […]
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Tuesday, August 14th, 2012
MARTHA ROSENBERG, - Truthout.org
Stephan: Once again, just with a different agency, we see the corruption that has eaten away the American government.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is often accused of serving industry at the expense of consumers. But even FDA defenders are shocked by reports this week of an institutionalized FDA spying program on its own scientists, lawmakers, reporters and academics that included an enemies list of ‘actors’ and collaborators.
The paranoid and retaliatory email monitoring program, which sought to suppress the safety opinions of those hired to give their safety opinions, has provoked swift action from Capitol Hill. ‘I am writing to express my disappointment and disbelief with the way the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has retaliated against whistleblowers who expressed concern to Members of Congress and the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) regarding safety concerns about medical products,’ wrote Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, to FDA Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg, the day after the breadth of the surveillance was reported in The New York Times.
Government agencies cannot discourage whistleblowing and reporting of wrongdoing by monitoring employees, echoed a White House memo sent to all government agencies about the FDA spy program.
‘Devicegate’ dates back at least to January 2009 when scientists in the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health wrote President Obama […]
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Monday, August 13th, 2012
Stephan: Little by little experimental research is taking us beyond space time.
A preprint of the work is available on the arXiv server
What you do today could affect what happened yesterday – that is the bizarre conclusion of a thought experiment in quantum physics described in a preprint article by Yakir Aharonov of Tel-Aviv University in Israel and colleagues.
It sounds impossible, indeed as though it is violating one of science’s most cherished principles – causality – but the researchers say that the rules of the quantum world conspire to preserve causality by ‘hiding’ the influence of future choices until those choices have actually been made.
At the heart of the idea is the quantum phenomenon of ‘nonlocality’, in which two or more particles exist in interrelated or ‘entangled’ states that remain undetermined until a measurement is made on one of them. Once the measurement takes place, the state of the other particle is instantly fixed too, no matter how far away it is. Albert Einstein first pointed out this instantaneous ‘action at a distance’ in 1935, when he argued that it meant quantum theory must be incomplete. Modern experiments have confirmed that this instantaneous action is, in fact, real, and it now holds the key to practical quantum technologies such as quantum computing and cryptography.
Aharonov and his co-workers describe an experiment for a […]
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Monday, August 13th, 2012
ARTURO GARCIA, - The Raw Story
Stephan: The distortion of human sexuality within a religious context, as this and the next story indicate, contitutes one of the most destructive trends in human culture. Its power is so great people will put themselves through individual and social mutilations that cripple both them and their culture.
In a bid to offer more women career opportunities without running afowl of Sharia law, the Saudi Arabian government is putting together a group of all-women cities.
According to Russia Today, construction on the first new municipality, an industrial hub slated to be part of the city of Hafuf in the eastern part of the country, is slated to begin next year, under the direction of the Saudi Industrial Property Authority (Modon).
Officials say the new hub will focus on the textile industry and create about 5,000 jobs, with women figuring in in both managerial roles and working on production lines.
‘I’m sure that women can demonstrate their efficiency in many aspects and clarify the industries that best suit their interests, their nature and their ability,
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Monday, August 13th, 2012
Stephan: This reminds me of the recent $166 million settlement by the Jesuits with another population of Native American children. It is sexually corrupt at an astonishing level. it is clear that vulnerable populations like these children were treated as essentially exploitable sex objects., and thousands of them were involved.
I cannot get over a memory: Going to mass many years ago with a Catholic friend and having the collection basket be passed as a special request to finance several priests so they could go that summer to 'help Indian boys' at a school somewhere. Was the congregation underwriting the costs of sending their favored clerics on what amounted to a pedophile's dream vacation?
HELENA, MONT. — New claims of sexual abuse at the hands of Roman Catholic clergy are coming from the Blackfeet Indian reservation, bringing to at least 280 the total number of plaintiffs in two lawsuits seeking damages from the diocese that oversees western Montana.
One lawsuit alone has 200 plaintiffs after eight more were added Monday. Many are Native Americans who claim they were abused as children at schools, in orphanages, in church or in their homes.
They say the Roman Catholic Diocese of Helena knew or should have known about the abuse, but covered it up instead of stopping it. The lawsuit says 26 clergy members were involved in the abuse that stretches back to the 1940s.
Plaintiffs’ attorney Tim Kosnoff said more alleged victims may emerge from Blackfeet tribal members as he and his associates meet with people on the remote northwestern Montana reservation.
‘I think we’ve just hit the tip of the iceberg up in that community,’ he said.
Kosnoff and the diocese are pursuing a settlement, and both sides are now interviewing the alleged victims before they meet with a mediator in November.
Kosnoff said about 140 people have been interviewed so far, but he acknowledged the November timeline could be […]
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