Stephan: We are beginning to see actual data on the effects of radiation arising from the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents. People who claim there have been no long-term effects and that this has not proven to be a catastrophe simply don't know what they are talking about.
Click through to see the many charts that make this very clear.
Radiation Facts and Myths
Many have claimed that wildlife is thriving in the highly-radioactive Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.
Some claim that a little radiation is harmless … or even good for you.
One of the main advisors to the Japanese government on Fukushima announced:
If you smile, the radiation will not affect you. If you do not smile, the radiation will affect you.
This theory has been proven by experiments on animals.
Are these claims true? We Ask an Expert
To find out, Washington’s Blog spoke with one of the world’s leading experts on the effects of radiation on living organisms: Dr. Timothy Mousseau.
Dr. Mousseau is former Program Director at the National Science Foundation (in Population Biology), Panelist for the National Academy of Sciences’ panels on Analysis of Cancer Risks in Populations Near Nuclear Facilities and GAO Panel on Health and Environmental Effects from Tritium Leaks at Nuclear Power Plants, and a biology professor – and former Dean of the Graduate School, and Chair of the Graduate Program in Ecology – at the University of South Carolina.
For the past 15 years, Mousseau and another leading biologist – Anders Pape Møller – have studied the effects of radiation […]
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ASHLEY CAMPBELL, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: Science is rarely absolute; good science is always committed to correcting earlier findings with new and better data. The story I ran recently about the drop in youth obesity, although peer-reviewed and from a significant research institute appears to have been flawed. As part of SR's policy to pursue accuracy with no consideration for politics and polemics, here is the correction. A search of Google News revealed not a single major American media outlet was featuring this correction.
A study published late February in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that obesity rates in U.S preschoolers had dropped an astonishing 43 percent in 10 years. It now appears that the results of the study on obesity rates of preschoolers may be false. Public health advocates had used this study as proof of success.
The results of the study by the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were a shock. Experts did not have an answer as to why the obesity rate had dropped so significantly for this age group.
It turns out that the group of preschoolers, children ages two to five, included in the study were not a large enough group. In order for these results to be considered accurate, the study should have used a larger sample size. The study included 871 children, ages two to five, in its sample group. Because the obesity rate for this age group is fairly low, using low numbers makes the likelihood of errors from random chance higher. The CDC knew that their sample size was limited, and included that information with their study.
The 43 percent that the CDC claimed was determined by rounding up the 5.5 points […]
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IAN MILLHISER, - Think Progress
Stephan: It is clear from this evidence that all three branches of the American Federal government are controlled by the Virtual Corporate States, and their associated lesser baronies.
Click through to see the voting record of each Justice. It makes the reality of the Supreme Court and its take over by corporatists very clear.
So far this term, the Supreme Court handed down eight cases where the United States Chamber of Commerce filed a brief – and a majority of the justices sided with the Chamber in all but one of these decisions. The one outlier decision was a case involving anti-retaliation protections for whistleblowers where the justices votes broke down along unusual lines, with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg writing the majority opinion and Justice Sonia Sotomayor in dissent.
This most recent data is part of an ongoing project by the Constitutional Accountability Center, which scored the Chamber’s ‘win rate” before the justices going back to 1981. As their data reflects, corporate America got a big boost in the nation’s highest Court shortly after Chief Justice John Roberts (and his conservative colleague Justice Samuel Alito) became justices:
CAC SCOTUS data
Several Chamber cases remain to be decided this term, including two major environmental cases and an attack on President Obama’s recess appointments power.
CAC’s data also shows a sharp divide between the Court’s conservative bloc and its four more liberal members:
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CRAIG TIMBERG, - The Washington Post
Stephan: This is a major turning point in the history of the net, a consequence in part of the rise of the American surveillance state. The truth is no one quite knows how this is going to play out.
U.S. officials announced plans Friday to relinquish federal government control over the administration of the Internet, a move that pleased international critics but alarmed some business leaders and others who rely on the smooth functioning of the Web.
Pressure to let go of the final vestiges of U.S. authority over the system of Web addresses and domain names that organize the Internet has been building for more than a decade and was supercharged by the backlash last year to revelations about National Security Agency surveillance.
The change would end the long-running contract between the Commerce Department and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a California-based nonprofit group. That contract is set to expire next year but could be extended if the transition plan is not complete.
‘We look forward to ICANN convening stakeholders across the global Internet community to craft an appropriate transition plan,” Lawrence E. Strickling, assistant secretary of commerce for communications and information, said in a statement.
The announcement received a passionate response, with some groups quickly embracing the change and others blasting it.
In a statement, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) called the move ‘consistent with other efforts the U.S. and our allies are making […]
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JAMIE DETTMER, - Voice of America
Stephan: The geopolitical crisis of Crimea is far from over. Here I think is a good assessment as to where things stand. The media will lose interest soon but in ways great and small this transition is going to go on for years.
SIMFEROPOL, UKRAINE — When Crimea’s two million people wake up Monday after likely having voted in Sunday’s snap referendum to break with Ukraine in favor of joining the Russian Federation they will quickly feel the impact in their pockets from the secession and will endure months of economic disorder, say analysts.
‘It is going to be a long and painful process and the chaos is going to hit and cost ordinary people hard,” says Panchenko Hryorovych, a professor at Crimea’s Economics Institute, a branch of the Kyiv headquartered National University.
A lack of planning for how the region will manage the split with Ukraine – how Ukrainian state property will be handled, whether Ukraine will be compensated on assets losses or when existing private-sector business contracts have to be re-written to comply with Russian law – will compound the turmoil, he says.
No plan for the future
Russian and Crimean officials have discussed none of the economic or legal repercussions of breaking with Ukraine apparently. On March 14 at a press conference in Simferopol, Crimea’s newly installed Russian separatist Prime Minister, Sergei Aksyonov, said that all the technical details will be examined by working groups meeting in Moscow following today’s vote on a break-up.
An […]
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