Allegra Kirkland, Associate Managing Editor - Alternet (U.S.)
Stephan: If one wishes to remain healthy today I think it is essential that one limit exposure to environmental chemicals. That's most of the stuff advertised in television. Care should be taken over allowing any chemical into one's home. Use "green" soaps and cleansers. Never use poisons and, particularly, never use glyphosate yard and garden products. It requires vigilance and a strong commitment to label reading. But is there really an option?
Credit: Sustainablepulse.com
Back in 1974, the agricultural multinational Monsanto developed a class of herbicides using glyphosate as the key ingredient. By the 1990s, the company had created corn, soy and cotton seeds genetically altered to resist glyphosate herbicides, meaning farmers could kill weeds without fearing for the health of their crops. Today, Monsanto’s Roundup is the most widely used weed-killer in the world.
One problem: we now know with certainty that glyphosate is carcinogenic to humans and animals. Though Roundup has been plagued by controversy for years, a report released this March by scientists affiliated with the World Health Organization definitively linked the herbicide to increased risks for non-Hodgkin lymphoma, as well as DNA and chromosomal damage in mammals.
Roundup is only one of tens of thousands of chemicals we encounter every day in our food, clothing, furniture, electronics and cosmetics. Over 84,000 chemicals are used in U.S. commerce, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, most of which have never been tested for potentially toxic effects on human and wildlife health and the environment. The Human Experiment, a new documentary narrated by Sean Penn and directed by journalists Dana Nachman […]
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Kira Lerner, - Think Progress
Stephan: This is how crazy the Theocratic Right has become. These people very genuinely feel under siege. They really believe that Islamic extremists are taking over the U.S. and trying to impose Sharia law here. They're not faking it. The problem is, of course, that it has no basis in fact, it is an alternative reality, it is a form of mental illness. They literally cannot think rationally, and this is what is tearing America apart. About 30 per cent of us have overactive right amygdalas, and are easily manipulated through fear. This is the foundation of the Great Schism Trend.
National Rifle Association members hold hands during the opening prayer at the annual meeting of members at the NRA convention Saturday, April 11, 2015, in Nashville, Tenn.
Credit: AP Photo/Mark Humphrey
NASHVILLE, TN — Islamic extremists have seized control of cities across the United States and have enacted sharia law, according to a speaker at the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting who spoke about current and emerging threats to American gun owners. (emphasis added)
Author Steve Tarani said during a presentation in Nashville on Sunday that he has witnessed the alleged “no-go zones” — areas where police cannot enter — while shadowing a friend who serves on the Detroit Metro SWAT Police on a drive in Dearborn, MI. He described pulling up to one of the alleged Muslim-controlled areas:
The street signs suddenly went from English to Arabic. There wasn’t a single English word on any shop […]
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Tim McDonnell, - Mother Jones
Stephan: This is the best assessment I have read about the trend of the coal industry. I agree with this essay, and think it is very good news.
Republicans blame Obama’s regulations, but the free market is crushing coal too.
Credit: Charles Bertram/ZUMA
Coal, the No. 1 cause of climate change, is dying. Last year saw a record number of coal plant retirements in the United States, and a study last week from Duke University found that since 2008, the coal industry shed nearly 50,000 jobs, while natural gas and renewable energy added four times that number. Even China, which produces and consumes more coal than the rest of the world put together, is expected to hit peak coal use within a decade, in order to meet its promise to President Barack Obama to reduce its carbon emissions starting in 2030.
According to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), this is all the fault of President Barack Obama’s “war on coal”—specifically the administration’s new limits for carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, which probably will force many power companies to burn less coal. […]
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Paul Pickering, - EDN Network
Stephan: Paul Pickering's EDN report will give you a good grounding on the current status of LENR research.
The history of scientific discovery is littered with examples of “pathological science” – an area of research where experimenters are tricked into accepting false results by a combination of subjective effects, unrecognized experimental errors, and wishful thinking. The term was first used by Nobel-winning chemist Irving Langmuir in 1953. Langmuir described pathological science as an area of research that simply refuses to die long after it was given up on as false by the majority of scientists in the field. He called pathological science “the science of things that aren’t so”.
Enter Cold Fusion. From the initial spectacular announcement by Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons (at a press conference, no less), to its equally spectacular flameout under the weight of irreproducible results, the lack of a theoretical framework, and scathing accusations of “incompetence and delusion” on the part of Fleischmann and Pons, cold fusion appears to have been consigned to the scientific landfill along with perpetual motion, polywater, and the canals on Mars.
Or perhaps not. Although mainstream science has long since turned its attentions elsewhere, Cold Fusion, these days known as Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR), has been kept alive by a small but dedicated band of mostly fringe researchers, publishing […]
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Saturday, April 18th, 2015
Stephan: It is four years and the truth is no one knows how to deal with the catastrophe of Fukushima. Everything is an experiment, a best guess. As I write this Fukushima is still spilling radioactivity into the ocean. The site is still only partially controlled and no one has any certainty whether it ever will be. A whole section of Japan, some of its most important and historic rice land, may never be habitable again.
This judge's decision is, as discussed in this report, I think, the first really good news to come out of this sorry mess in months and months.
Unless some technology for dealing with radioactivity is discovered, it will require maintenance for centuries or even thousands of years. Absurd amounts of time. And decommissioning a nuclear reactor is wildly expensive. The British government estimates that it would cost more than $100 billion to decommission existing plants, and could end up costly many billions more. Nuclear power was the unnatural child of the Cold War and the geopolitics of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), and should be phased out as quickly as possible. I believe Judge Hideaki Higuchi should be seen as an international hero, a force for wellness.
The damaged Takahama nuclear power plant.
Credit: Beyond Nuclear
A Fukui Prefecture court in Japan has ruled that the only real protection from a catastrophic nuclear accident is to keep the nation’s atomic reactors shut down. Hideaki Higuchi, a local judge for Fukui, ordered that the Takahama nuclear power plant remain closed as there is not adequate proof that another disaster caused by an earthquake can be reliably averted if the atomic reactors are operating. Judge Higuchi had previously ordered that the Ohi nuclear plant in Fukui also remain closed for the same reason. Judge Higuchi’s Takahama order overruled Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority’s decision to restart under revised regulatory standards. In spite of the Abe government’s push to restart atomic power, Japan remains “Zero Nuclear” by popular demand and legal authority.
The court order occurs as TEPCO officials admit that environmental cleanup of the Fukushima Daiichi disaster is centuries away. Naohiro Masuda and Akira Ono […]
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