Monday, September 23rd, 2013
CAROLYN LOCHHEAD, - SFGate
Stephan: The overuse of antibiotics in industrial animal husbandry is an enormous threat to all of us. It is instrumental in creating superbugs. This is a failed system of food production, propped up and permitted through lack of regulation. It enriches the few while threatening the wellbeing of the many. Ironically, even the uber-rich will be at risk. That this use of antibiotics is allowed is another example of the corruption that is destroying the country.
WASHINGTON — The Centers for Disease Control on Monday confirmed a link between routine use of antibiotics in livestock and growing bacterial resistance that is killing at least 23,000 people a year.
The report is the first by the government to estimate how many people die annually of infections that no longer respond to antibiotics because of overuse in people and animals.
CDC Director Thomas Frieden called for urgent steps to scale back and monitor use, or risk reverting to an era when common bacterial infections of the urinary tract, bloodstream, respiratory system and skin routinely killed and maimed.
‘We will soon be in a post-antibiotic era if we’re not careful,’ Frieden said. ‘For some patients and some microbes, we are already there.’
The discovery of penicillin in 1928 transformed medicine. But because bacteria rapidly evolve to resist the drugs, and resistance is encouraged with each use, antibiotics are a limited resource.
2 million infections
Along with the annual fatalities, the report estimated at least 2 million antibiotic-resistant infections occur each year. Frieden said these are ‘minimal estimates’ because they count only microbes that are resistant to multiple antibiotics and include only hospital infections, omitting cases from dialysis centers, nursing homes and other medical settings.
At […]
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Monday, September 23rd, 2013
JAKE THOMPSON and ELIZABETH HEYD, - National Resources Defense Council
Stephan: That non-carbon energy is both cheaper and less damaging to the environment is becoming ever more evident, as this report explains. Now we will see how great a stranglehold carbon energy interests have on the Congress and the economy. I predict that because of the extreme corruption in our government this is going to be a painful struggle, and many are going to be hurt before we accept this reality. But it is inevitable.
WASHINGTON — It’s less costly to get electricity from wind turbines and solar panels than coal-fired power plants when climate change costs and other health impacts are factored in, according to a new study published in the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences.
In fact-using the official U.S. government estimates of health and environmental costs from burning fossil fuels-the study shows it’s cheaper to replace a typical existing coal-fired power plant with a wind turbine than to keep the old plant running. And new electricity generation from wind could be more economically efficient than natural gas.
The findings show the nation can cut carbon pollution from power plants in a cost-effective way, by replacing coal-fired generation with cleaner options like wind, solar, and natural gas.
‘Burning coal is a very costly way to make electricity. There are more efficient and sustainable ways to get power,
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Sunday, September 22nd, 2013
ABDEL BARI ATWAN, - Centre for Research on Globilization
Stephan: This is what the awful endless wars of Bush and Obama have created. Iraq is a disaster. Afghanistan is as bad, and now a report on Libya. No wonder they hate us in the Islamic world. If the situation were reversed how would you feel? Nothing good has come out of any of these lethal follies. Your tax money was squandered, many of your children were maimed or killed. Nobody can give you a rational reason for any of it happening.
Welcome to the new Libya, a country ‘liberated’ by NATO which now finds itself without the oil revenues which could make it rich, with no security, no stability and assassinations and corruption at unprecendented levels.
Last Friday, the Economist magazine published a report about the implosion of Libya. My attention was caught by the pictures that illustrated the piece – particularly one of some graffitti on the wall of a sea front cafe in the capital Tripoli. ‘The only way to Heaven is the way to the airport’ it read.
The joke is indicative of the troubled state of Libya nowadays following ‘liberation’ by NATO warplanes in the sky and the revolution on the ground which toppled the dictatorial regime of Muammar al-Ghadaffi.
Recently I have met many peope who are visiting London from Libya and they tell stories of life there which are hard to believe.
The capital Tripoli had no water or electricity for a whole week.
The armed militia dominate and rule the streets in the absence of a workable government, a national security establishment and basic municipal services.
Onoud Zanoussi, the 18 year-old daughter of Abdullah Zanoussi, the former chief of Ghadaffi’s security establishment, was kidnapped on her release from prison following […]
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Sunday, September 22nd, 2013
Stephan: Here is the very interesting trend showing the next transition in communications. Except for 60 Minutes on CBS, and the local PBS station I don't think I have seen a broadcast program in several years. Cable has replaced it and, now, it would seem, cable is being rejected by under 30s.
For the first time, the total number of Americans who pay for a TV subscription is on pace to decline this year, Bloomberg News reports. It’s a sobering statistic for the cable industry, which has been fighting for years to thwart ‘cord-cutters’ who ditch their subscriptions in favor of streaming video online. It’s becoming increasingly clear this is a losing battle.
It isn’t just cord-cutters who are the problem for the pay-TV industry, Bloomberg’s Ian King points out. It’s ‘cord-nevers’-young people who have never paid for cable or satellite TV and have no intention of doing so in the future. The piece leads with an anecdote about a 23-year-old cord-never from Mountain View who says she spends four hours in front of the TV every day just streaming shows and movies from Netflix, Amazon, and broadcasters’ websites. She describes this approach as ‘very typical
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Sunday, September 22nd, 2013
TRAVIS GETTYS, - The Raw Story
Stephan: I am really at a loss that a person like this would even be considered as a candidate. It is a measure of what they Republican Party has become that he is viable as a candidate.
A former New Hampshire state senator who’s announcing his candidacy to unseat Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen says women in the workplace are at least partially to blame for mass shootings and other violence by men.
‘Bottom line: the collaborative, flexible, amorphously-hierarchical American economy is shutting out ordinary men who were once the nation’s breadwinners in living-wage labor and manufacturing jobs,
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