Monday, February 23rd, 2015
Stephan: The role of neonictinoids in the decline of the bees was suspected but still controversial. The controversy, as this report describes, has ended. These toxins have put the entirety of humanity's food at risk, so that a small group can make obscene wealth. This is as bad as the DDT crisis, and should have the same outcome. These toxins should be outlawed throughout the world. What actually happens will give us the measure of the agricultural chemical industry's power over the world's governments.
The reasons behind the global decline of bees and other insect pollinators have been as mysterious as they’ve been controversial, but now we have the first evidence to suggest that commercially available insecticides are impairing the brain activity of individual bumblebees, and the performance of entire colonies.
The culprit? Neonicotinoids – a relatively new class of insecticide, developed by Shell and Bayor around 20 to 30 years ago, that are now considered the most widely used class of insecticides in the world. According to Elizabeth Grossman at the Yale Environment 360 website, in the US, neonicotinoids are used on about 95 percent of corn and canola crops, and are the most commonly used insecticide on cotton, sorghum, and sugar beets, and are used on about half of all soybean crops. The majority of fruit and vegetable crops in the US, including apples, cherries, peaches, oranges, berries, leafy greens, tomatoes, and potatoes, are also treated with the stuff.
But the widespread use of neonicotinoids, despite serious questions regarding their safety around bumblebees and other insect pollinators, has not gone unnoticed. In 2013, following […]
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Monday, February 23rd, 2015
Suzanne Goldenberg, - The Raw Story
Stephan: Being a denier in science it may surprise you, although weird as an intellectual position can, as a career move, be very lucrative. And in certain communities where the use of your name by a third party makes you useful, one can be prestigious. The process costs the funder surprisingly little, and is nothing more to, the purchasing agent, than a business expense
Harvard-Smithsonian researcher Willie Soon Credit: YouTube
A prominent academic and climate change denier’s work was funded almost entirely by the energy industry, receiving more than $1.2m from companies, lobby groups and oil billionaires over more than a decade, newly released documents show.
Over the last 14 years Willie Soon, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics , received a total of $1.25m from Exxon Mobil, Southern Company, the American Petroleum Institute (API) and a foundation run by the ultra-conservative Koch brothers, the documents obtained by Greenpeace through freedom of information filings show.
According to the documents, the biggest single funder was Southern Company, one of the country’s biggest electricity providers that relies heavily on coal.
The documents draw new attention to the industry’s efforts to block action against climate change – including President Barack Obama’s power-plant rules.
Unlike the vast majority of scientists, Soon does not accept that rising greenhouse gas emissions since the industrial age are causing climate changes. He contends climate change is driven by the sun .
In the relatively […]
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Monday, February 23rd, 2015
Daniela Drake, MD, MBA , - The Daily Beast
Stephan: I know very few doctors who are genuinely happy with the state of medicine in the U.S., and there is no question that we have notably inferior healthcare. The illness profit system is incredibly lucrative for its corporate owners. Absolutely top of the line in terms of profit. In terms of health, not so much. We pay more than any other country in the world for what outcome data shows is the 37th best healthcare.
Pharmaceutical companies have more power than ever, and the American people are paying the price—too often with our lives. By now you have probably seen John Oliver’s comic take on the pharmaceutical industry’s influence on doctors’ prescribing habits. Media outlets from Mother Jones to the Wall Street Journal commented admiringly, and even the American Medical Association felt compelled to declare they were “committed to transparency” around drug company payments to doctors.
But satire will do very little to focus on the real problem if we’re distracted by the humor inherent in self-important doctors being bought off by a steak. What’s not funny is that America is the most medicated nation on earth, with some 70 percent of Americans taking prescription drugs—yet we have worse health outcomes than other industrialized countries. Part of the problem may be the drugs themselves. As Slate’s devastating expose on the fraud in clinical drug trials shows us: We don’t know much about the drugs we prescribe.But as physicians, we have very little good information to go on. Even our most prestigious journals publish research based on falsified studies, according to Charles Seife, a […]
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Monday, February 23rd, 2015
LUIS ANDRES HENAO and SETH BORENSTEIN, - The Associated Press
Stephan: Here is the story of one of the great Earth adventures.
In this Jan. 20, 2015 photo, a church is lit in the town of Villa Las Estrellas on King George Island, Antarctica. Geologists are entranced by Antarctica’s secrets. Clues to answering humanity’s most basic questions are locked in this continental freezer the size of the United States and half of Canada: Where did we come from? Are we alone in the universe? What’s the fate of our warming planet?
Credit: AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
DECEPTION ISLAND, Antarctica (AP) — Earth’s past, present and future come together here on the northern peninsula of Antarctica, the wildest, most desolate and […]
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Sunday, February 22nd, 2015
Jeremy Scahill and Josh Begley, - The Intercept
Stephan: I have been telling my readers for several years now to operate on the assumption that all information that can be digitized is being collected by the state in conjunction with corporate allies, for whom surveillance is also useful. This report describes just one aspect of what America (and the U.K.) has become
Credit: genius.com
AMERICAN AND BRITISH spies hacked into the internal computer network of the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world, stealing encryption keys used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the globe, according to top-secret documents provided to The Intercept by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The hack was perpetrated by a joint unit consisting of operatives from the NSA and its British counterpart Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ. The breach, detailed in a secret 2010 GCHQ document, gave the surveillance agencies the potential to secretly monitor a large portion of the world’s cellular communications, including both voice and data.
The company targeted by the intelligence agencies, Gemalto, is a multinational firm incorporated in the Netherlands that makes the chips used in mobile phones and next-generation credit cards. Among its clients are AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint and some 450 wireless network providers around the world. The company operates in 85 countries and has more than 40 manufacturing facilities. One of its three global headquarters is in Austin, Texas […]
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The reasons behind the global decline of bees and other insect pollinators have been as mysterious as they’ve been controversial, but now we have the first evidence to suggest that commercially available insecticides are impairing the brain activity of individual bumblebees, and the performance of entire colonies.
