Wednesday, May 15th, 2013
Stephan: You have probably noticed, if you have thought about it at all, that you haven't seen the usual aerial video of the Mayflower, Arkansas Tar Sands Spill. The story has passed from public awareness. Why? Carbon energy special interests learned from the BP catastrophe that it is the images that damn them. Their solution: Don't allow those videos to be made. In television no images no ongoing story.
It is a measure of the grotesque corruption of the American government, that a company like Exxon can pull this off.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has had a ‘no fly zone’ in place in Mayflower, Arkansas since April 1 at 2:12 PM and will be in place ‘until further notice,’ according to the FAA website and it’s being overseen by ExxonMobil itself. In other words, any media or independent observers who want to witness the tar sands spill disaster have to ask Exxon’s permission.
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette revealed that the FAA site noted earlier today that ‘only relief aircraft operations under direction of Tom Suhrhoff’ were allowed within the designated no fly zone.
Suhrhoff is not an FAA employee: he works for ExxonMobil as an ‘Aviation Advisor’ and formerly worked as a U.S. Army pilot for 24 years, according to his LinkedIn page.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has had a ‘no fly zone’ in place in Mayflower, Arkansas since April 1 at 2:12 PM and will be in place ‘until further notice,’ according to the FAA website and it’s being overseen by ExxonMobil itself. In other words, any media or independent observers who want to witness the tar sands spill disaster have to ask Exxon’s permission.
Mayflower is the site of the recent major March 29 ExxonMobil Pegagus tar sands pipeline spill, which […]
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Wednesday, May 15th, 2013
, - Center for Food Safety
Stephan: Further evidence of the corruption of the regulatory agencies that are supposed to oversee the safety of the food system but which are actually agencies to protect corporate interests.
Click through to see a very useful chart showing the reality of our fowl food products (pun intended).
Also I recommend that you download the actual report: http://www.iatp.org/files/421_2_80529.pdf
Arsenic is commonly added to poultry feed for the FDA-approved purposes of inducing faster weight gain on less feed, and creating the perceived appearance of a healthy color in meat from chickens, turkeys and hogs, yet new studies increasingly link these practices to serious human health problems.
Attorneys at Center for Food Safety (CFS) filed a lawsuit on behalf of CFS, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) and seven other U.S. food safety, agriculture, public health and environmental groups to compel the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to respond to the groups’ three year-old petition which calls for immediate withdrawal of FDA’s approval of arsenic-containing compounds as feed additives for food animals. Filed the same day Consumer Reports released an alarming study on antibiotic resistance in turkey, the lawsuit highlights yet another gaping hole in FDA oversight of animal feed additives.
Arsenic is commonly added to poultry feed for the FDA-approved purposes of inducing faster weight gain on less feed, and creating the perceived appearance of a healthy color in meat from chickens, turkeys and hogs. Yet new studies increasingly link these practices to serious human health problems. The lawsuit filed last week seeks to force the FDA to […]
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Wednesday, May 15th, 2013
JOSSEPH ROMM, Editor Climate Progress and Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress -
Stephan: The disinformation campaign being carried out by the Theocratic Right, I believe, constitutes a form of treason against the planet, and will be seen in a generation as one of the great evil movements of human history.
Nowadays, in an age of rising population and scarcities of food and water in some regions, it’s a wonder that humanitarians aren’t clamoring for more atmospheric carbon dioxide.
No, it’s not The Onion. It’s the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which nowadays is much the same thing.
Once again, the country’s leading financial newspaper is recycling long-debunked myths from disinformers with PhDs posing as climate scientists - in this case, Harrison H. Schmitt and William Happer, ‘In Defense of Carbon Dioxide: The demonized chemical compound is a boon to plant life and has little correlation with global temperature.
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KATHLEEN DOHENY, - HealthDay/USA TODAY
Stephan: It is fascinating to watch the process that is ending Marijuana prohibition. One big force is the growing medical literature showing positive benefits. This is the latest example.
New research says smoking pot may be less likely to cause bladder cancer than smoking cigarettes.
The finding is potentially valuable, the study authors said, given the ongoing debate over legalizing marijuana for medical purposes.
But one urologist not involved with the study was skeptical of the finding, and noted that nonsmokers weren’t among the men included in the study.
For the study, the researchers compared the risk of bladder cancer in more than 83,000 men who smoked cigarettes only, marijuana (cannabis) only, or both substances. The investigators found that men who only smoked pot were the least likely to develop bladder cancer over the course of 11 years.
‘Cannabis use only was associated with a 45 percent reduction in bladder cancer incidence, and tobacco use only was associated with a 52 percent increase in bladder cancer,’ said study author Dr. Anil A. Thomas, a fellow in urology at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Los Angeles.
Smoking both tobacco and marijuana raised the risk of bladder cancer, but less so than for those who only smoked tobacco, Thomas found. He presented the findings Monday at the American Urological Association annual meeting in San Diego.
Dr. Karim Chamie, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen […]
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GREG GORDON, - Idaho Statesman
Stephan: Here is another potential game changer in the transition to non-carbon energy. More and more breakthroughs are popping up. One can only wonder what it would have been like if we had put the trillions we have spent on war into eliminating carbon energy, and transitioning to energy technologies that were non-polluting.
WASHINGTON — Ronald Ace says that his flat-panel ‘Solar Traps,’ which could be used in electric power plants, will shatter decades-old scientific and technological barriers that have stymied efforts to make solar energy a cheap, clean and reliable alternative.
‘This is a fundamental scientific and environmental discovery,’ Ace said. ‘This invention can meet about 92 percent of the world’s energy needs.’ The transformation also could blunt global warming.
His claimed discoveries, which exist only on paper so far, would represent such a leap forward that they are sure to draw deep skepticism from solar energy experts. But a recently retired congressional energy adviser who has reviewed the invention’s still-secret design, said it’s ‘a no brainer’ that the device would vastly outperform all other known solar technology.
‘OUTSIDE THE BOX’
Ace said he is arranging for a national energy laboratory to review his calculations and that his own crude prototypes already have demonstrated that the basic physics for the invention work.
If the trap even comes close to meeting his futuristic vision, its impact could be breathtaking: It could reorder the world’s energy landscape, end the global economic drag of soaring energy costs, and eventually curb greenhouse gas emissions that are blamed for climate change.
That all […]
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