Saturday, April 27th, 2013
Stephan: Here is yet another study showing the dangers of using the herbicide Roundup -- this time including effects on humans. If you, or a neighbor, is using this stuff you are putting yourself, your family, and those nearby, as well as bees, butterflies, and birds at risk.
You can get the actual study at: http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/15/4/1416
Heavy use of the world’s most popular herbicide, Roundup, could be linked to a range of health problems and diseases, including Parkinson’s, infertility and cancers, according to a new study.
The peer-reviewed report, published last week in the scientific journal Entropy, said evidence indicates that residues of ‘glyphosate,’ the chief ingredient in Roundup weed killer, which is sprayed over millions of acres of crops, has been found in food.
Those residues enhance the damaging effects of other food-borne chemical residues and toxins in the environment to disrupt normal body functions and induce disease, according to the report, authored by Stephanie Seneff, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Anthony Samsel, a retired science consultant from Arthur D. Little, Inc. Samsel is a former private environmental government contractor as well as a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
‘Negative impact on the body is insidious and manifests slowly over time as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body,’ the study says.
We ‘have hit upon something very important that needs to be taken seriously and further investigated,’ Seneff said.
Environmentalists, consumer groups and plant scientists from several countries have warned that heavy use of glyphosate is causing problems for plants, people and […]
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Saturday, April 27th, 2013
TOM PHILPOTT, - Mother Jones
Stephan: Yet further corruption of our food system to the benefit of corporate profits. The Obama Administration is no better than the Bush Administration in this regard and, therefore, a tremendous disappointment. Once again, we have an example of the disconnect between Obama's words and his actions. He talks social progressive; he acts corporate servant.
The Obama administration is on the verge of dramatically scaling back the US Department of Agriculture’s oversight of the nation’s largest chicken and turkey slaughterhouses-while also allowing companies to speed up their kill lines.
Currently, each factory-scale slaughterhouse has four USDA inspectors overseeing kill lines churning out up to 140 birds every minute. Under the USDA’s new plan, a single federal inspector would oversee lines killing as many as 175 birds per minute. That would mean there are three fewer inspectors for a production line running 25 percent faster. (The line rates at turkey slaughterhouses are, for obvious reasons, slower, but would also be sped up under the new rules).
After the idea was floated last year, it was met by massive pushback from food safety and worker advocates, who argued that the combination of more speed and fewer inspectors would lead to dangerous conditions for both consumers and workers.
Since then, the proposal has been caught in the federal rulemaking process. But on April 10, the administration released a prospective USDA budget indicating that the agency plans to implement the new rules by September 2014. And in testimony before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture on April 16, Vilsack said the rules […]
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Saturday, April 27th, 2013
CARLOS SADOVI and RAFAEL GUERRERO, Reporters - Chicago Tribune
Stephan: I have been holding this story for two days waiting to see if it was picked up and went national. In that way I wanted to gauge how complacent the media has become about mass gun deaths. Note that more people died in this little town then in the Boston Marathon. The story has not been picked up. Read it, then ask yourself two questions: How have we become a society this inured to gun death? Why is it, particularly given Sandy Hook, that this event is hardly noticed?
After he shot his way into a home in the small town of Manchester, police say Rick Odell Smith gunned down a great-grandmother, a young couple and three young children. Then he did something that puzzled authorities.
He scooped up one of the children, a 6-year-old girl who was still alive, and carried her to a neighbor’s home. Then he jumped into his white Chevy Lumina and sped off. Police caught up with him hours later and he died in a gunfight with officers.
State Police Lt. Col. Todd Kilby couldn’t explain Smith’s apparent concern for the girl. ‘All I have is that it was a neighbor’ who took her in, he told reporters.
A source said the man told the neighbor to take her to a hospital. The neighbor called police.
The girl, Kassidy Ralston, remained in critical condition at a hospital in Springfield with facial injuries, according to family and a source.
The girl’s great-grandmother, her parents and her younger brothers all died in the rampage. While oficials have not released their names, relatives identified them as Joanne Sinclair, 65, Brittany Luark, 22, her boyfriend Roy Ralston, Nolan Ralston, 5, and Brantley Ralston, 1.
Smith, 43, approached the family’s home southwest of Springfield shortly […]
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Saturday, April 27th, 2013
KRISTEN GWYNNE, - AlterNet (U.S.)
Stephan: This report is a trifecta of corrupted capitalism. It starts with the latest in the Prison Privatization trend, followed by the New American Slavery trend. In every way that one can measure these prison companies they consistently show what I can only characterize as depravity.
Consider for a moment the requirement that private prison companies be assured by the government paying them -- that is to say you and me -- that they will keep them at least 90 per cent stocked at all times. Just contemplate the implications of that sentence.
Then it moves on to the corruption of real estate investment trusts (REIT), the latest in the Deregulation trend.
Earlier this year, the Corrections Corporation of America offered to take over state-run prisons, provided that they remain 90% stocked full of inmates ready for cheap labor. Now, the CCA — which runs 44 private prisons and detention centers across America — is gearing up to avoid paying taxes by claiming to be a real estate investment trust (REIT). The CCA is using the new trend in corporate maneuvering to basically claim that money its collects from the government to hold prisoners is just cash for rent.
The Internal Revenue Service has quietly approved the change, and the shady move is expected to save the CCA $70 million in tax dollars in 2013.To save millions, however, requires no changes to business as usual for the CCA. The chief executive of the Corrections Corporation, Damon T. Hininger, told investors in February that the new arrangement should help the CCA achieve its goal of ‘housing more and more population for federal, state and local levels as they grow or deal with overcrowding.
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Stephan: Finally, we may have some good news about the bees. It's not a done deal yet, but it looks possible. It appears that whereas the American Congress, captured as it is by corporate forces, cares nothing for facts concerning the crisis of the bees, the EU has begun to recognize officially what is happening with these small creatures upon whom our wellbeing depends. And they are seem to be willing to do something about it -- ban the insecticides that a growing body of research say are at least a major cause of the problem.
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM — The EU appears set to impose a two-year ban on the use of insecticides blamed for a sharp and worrying decline in bee populations, an EU source said Thursday.
A committee of experts is due to vote Monday on the ban in an effort to protect bees and other insects which play an indispensible role in food production through plant pollination.
A vote earlier this year failed to produce a large enough qualified majority in favour, forcing the European Commission to try a second time.
Under EU procedure, if Monday’s vote is the same, the Commission has the authority to proceed on its own with the ban.
‘The most likely outcome will be the same as last time … and in that case, the Commission will decide to put the ban into operation,’ the source said.
The Commission wants the insecticides banned for use on four major crops — maize (corn), rape seed, sunflowers and cotton — in a bid to protect the bee population.
‘The nightmare scenario that there would be a qualified majority against the ban is virtually impossible,’ the source added.
Experts have isolated three compounds causing concern — clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam, known as neonicotinoids — which are present in […]
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