Stephan: Here is more on one of the most amazing areas of medicine. Resuscitation research is expanding its knowledge of death with such rapidity that, I think, within five years we will have a definitive demonstration that consciousness has a nonlocal, non-physiological aspect.
This interview with Sam Parnia, one of the most prominent and innovative researchers in the field, offers an excellent explanation of the issues involved and where they seem to be leading.
Sam Parnia practices resuscitation medine. In other words, he helps bring people back from the dead – and some return with stories. Their tales could help save lives, and even challenge traditional scientific ideas about the nature of consciousness.
‘The evidence we have so far is that human consciousness does not become annihilated,
No Comments
ANNIE-ROSE STRASSER, - Think Progress
Stephan: Finally a Congressperson, Peter DeFazio (D-OR) has stepped up to stop the destruction of the public postal system. The drive to privatize the Post Office is of a piece with the prison and school privatizations. Each is a demonstration that in the America today profit is deemed to be more important than national wellness. DeFazio understands the real life of the country, and the Post Office's vital role in that national wellness.
This is the oldest government agency in the country. As I have experienced myself, to this day the Post Office remains a critical network, particularly in rural America.
The attempt to privatize the post office should be resisted. Add your voice where you can.
Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) has introduced legislation to try to save the US Postal Service from its incipient bankruptcy, and he is asking for the public to help him pass it.
DeFazio’s bill would repeal the needless requirement – one no other business or entity must face – that the Postal Service pre-fund 75 years’ worth of employee health benefits. That requirement has hugely contributed to the USPS defaulting for the first and then second time in its history last year. Analysis from 2012 estimated that the USPS would have a $1.5 billion surplus without the benefit requirement.
But DeFazio recognizes that facts alone will not influence his colleagues to take up and pass the legislation, so he has also turned to the White House’s petition platform, We The People, to petition President Obama to take a stand against the health benefit requirement. He also points out many of the other flaws in how Congress has managed the postal service:
About 80% of USPS financial losses since 2007 are due to a Congressional mandate to prefund 75 years of future retiree health benefits over 10 years. In 2012 USPS lost a record $15.9 billion, but $11.1 billion of that […]
No Comments
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 […]
No Comments
Thursday, April 25th, 2013
STEVE HARGREAVES, - CNN Money
Stephan: Here is some lovely news, because it tells us that even though the Congress is almost dysfunctional, and the Presidency conflicted, ordinary Americans are moving on in support of the transition away from carbon energy. The snarky bottom paragraph about $1 billion government support, should be seen as a typical CNN attempt to appear balanced through the use of a false equivalency.
According to Oil change International, '$52 billion. Highest credible comprehensive estimate. Includes some costs associated with defending pipelines and shipping lanes in the Persian Gulf. Earth Track, an NGO that specializes in subsidy valuation, estimates that annual oil, gas and coal subsidies total about $52 billion annually.' Not quite the same thing.
NEW YORK — There are more solar energy workers in Texas than there are ranchers. In California, they outnumber actors, and nationwide, America has more solar workers than coal miners.
Those stats come from solar research group The Solar Foundation, which rolled out a map last week showing which states have the most solar jobs. Unsurprisingly, sunny states like California and Arizona are near the top of the list. But some Northern states like New Jersey and Michigan — not known for their splendid weather — also show a high number of solar jobs.
What those states lack in climate they make up for in high electricity prices and favorable tax and regulatory policies, which attracts solar developers, said Andrea Luecke, executive director of The Solar Foundation.
Solar supporters are going on the offensive about their field’s jobs angle. The industry receives considerable government support, and talking about its employment advantages broadens the conversation beyond global warming.
Related: China trounces U.S. in green energy investments
In addition to tallying up solar jobs by state, The Solar Foundation’s map contains information like how many solar companies are headquartered in each state and what their local workers are doing.
Nationwide, nearly half of all solar works are employed […]
No Comments
Thursday, April 25th, 2013
, - Government Accountability Project
Stephan: Here is further evidence of the point I have been making about the ongoing nature of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and the consequences. Like the West, Texas fertilizer plant explosion these disasters resulted from lack of proper oversight by corrupted, and consequently incompetent, regulatory agencies. This is what happens when profit becomes the only real priority, and government and corporate interests are intertwined.
Click through to download the actual report.
WASHINGTON — Today, the Government Accountability Project (GAP) released Deadly Dispersants in the Gulf: Are Public Health and Environmental Tragedies the New Norm for Oil Spill Cleanups? The report details the devastating long-term effects on human health and the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem stemming from BP and the federal government’s widespread use of the dispersant Corexit, in response to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
GAP, the nation’s leading whistleblower protection and advocacy organization, launched this effort in August 2011 after repeatedly hearing from Gulf residents and cleanup workers that official statements from representatives of BP and the federal government were false and misleading in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Over the next 20 months, GAP collected data and evidence from over two dozen employee and citizen whistleblowers who experienced the cleanup’s effects firsthand, and GAP studied data from extensive Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Taken together, the documents and the witnesses’ testimony belie repeated corporate and government rhetoric that Corexit is not dangerous. Worse than this, evidence suggests that the cleanup effort has been more destructive to human health and the environment than the spill itself.
Conclusions from the report strongly suggest that the dispersant Corexit was widely […]
No Comments
