Wednesday, September 23rd, 2015
Tom Philpott, Food and Ag Correspondent - Mother Jones
Stephan: Here is some good news for bees. Dow AgroScience, another corporation with as I see it questionable ethics has been blocked by the court even though they have bamboozled the EPA. The evidence against the poisons used in industrial agriculture just keeps piling up. With the French court's decision about Monsanto, and now this one against Dow, there is a glimmer of hope emerging.
Credit: Shutterstock
On Thursday, a federal appeals court struck down the Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of a pesticide called sulfoxaflor. Marketed by agrichemical giant Dow AgroSciences, sulfoxaflor belongs to a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids, which have been implicated by a growing weight of evidence in the global crisis in bee health. In a blunt opinion, the court cited the “precariousness of bee populations” and “flawed and limited data” submitted by Dow on the pesticide’s effects on beleaguered pollinating insects.
“I am inclined to believe the EPA…decided to register sulfoxaflor unconditionally in response to public pressure for the product and attempted to support its decision retroactively with studies it had previously found inadequate,” said a circuit judge.
Before winning approval for sulfoxaflor back in 2013, the company hyped the product to investors, declaring that it “addresses [a] $2 billion market need currently unmet by biotech solutions,” particularly for cotton and rice.
US beekeepers were less enthusiastic—a group of national beekeeping organizations, along with the National Honey Bee Advisory Board, quickly sued the EPA to withdraw […]
1 Comment
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2015
JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN, - The New York Times
Stephan: I suggest you read this story at two levels. The first is the obvious one about what American military command decided to do. To any student of Afghanistan this sexual exploitation of boys would have been known. As would the fact that this behavior has been going on for centuries. The military defaults to pragmatic. Not surprising actually, just realpolitik.
The other level is that this is yet another data point attesting to the sexual dysfunctionality common to the adherents of all fundamentalist religions. I could do a story almost every day about Christian pastors, youth leaders, and the like and their abuse of children. There is an ongoing scandal about ultra-orthodox Jews. I think Fundamentalism is a culturally augmented mental illness with a neurophysiological basis couched in religious terms.
The child abuse discussed here is the result of the other symptom that defines this dysfunctionality: a need to sexually dominate and control females of all ages, and restrict access to their vaginas. And where that religious belief becomes dominate there is nearly complete gender segregation. This leads inevitably to men having sex with boys, and a high degree of anal sex in heterosexual marriage.
Dan Quinn was relieved of his Special Forces command after a fight with a U.S.-backed militia leader who had a boy as a sex slave chained to his bed.
Credit Kirsten Luce for The New York Times
KABUL, Afghanistan — In his last phone call home, Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley Jr. told his father what was troubling him: From his bunk in southern Afghanistan, he could hear Afghan police officers sexually abusing boys they had brought to the base.
“At night we can hear them screaming, but we’re not allowed to do anything about it,” the Marine’s father, Gregory Buckley Sr., recalled his son telling him before he was shot to death at the base in 2012. He urged his son […]
No Comments
Tuesday, September 22nd, 2015
Frank Newport, - The Gallup Organization
Stephan: It is a very sad day when, as this latest Gallup Survey reports, "Almost half of Americans, 49%, say the federal government poses 'an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens...'" Obviously that means different things to different interest groups, but there is one commonality: Nearly half the population of a supposed democracy, which is to say America, doesn't trust the government. A democracy cannot properly function under those conditions.
I believe much of this can be traced to the blatant ideological propaganda, and disinformation purveyed by the Fox Network. Study after study, check the SR archive, shows that watching Fox makes one more ignorant than if one didn't watch television at all, and that Fox has the highest rate of disinformation of any network. More than anything Fox reminds me of state controlled television in the old Soviet Union.
And see this in the context of public schools showing lowering achievement levels in grade school, and decreased scores on SATs in highschool. We are watching and participating in the degradation of our country.
We can put the country on a compassionate and life-affirming path through voting. It will take several elections, but it can be done. We got this way mostly in the last 16 years.
Credit: The Gallup Organization
PRINCETON, N.J. — Almost half of Americans, 49%, say the federal government poses “an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens,” similar to what was found in previous surveys conducted over the last five years. When this question was first asked in 2003, less than a third of Americans held this attitude. (emphasis added)
The latest results are from Gallup’s Sept. 9-13 Governance poll. The lower percentage of Americans agreeing in 2003 that the federal government posed an immediate threat likely reflected the more positive attitudes about government evident after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The percentage gradually increased to 44% by 2006, and then reached the 46% to 49% range in four surveys conducted since 2010.
The remarkable finding about these attitudes is how much they reflect apparent antipathy toward the party controlling the White House, rather than being a purely fundamental or fixed philosophical attitude about government.
Across the four surveys conducted […]
2 Comments
Tuesday, September 22nd, 2015
Tim Dickinson, - Rolling Stone
Stephan: Water is destiny, even when the immediate issue is fire. Climate change Is going to be very unpleasant.
California fires
Credit: snowbrains.com
In May this year, the nearly unthinkable happened in the Pacific Northwest: The rainforest of the Olympic Peninsula, one of the wettest places on the continent, caught fire. By August, an inferno was stirring in the forests east of the Cascades. A wind-whipped blaze near the mountain town of Twisp, Washington — a “hell storm,” to quote a local sheriff — claimed the lives of three Forest Service fire scouts. That blaze soon exploded into the worst wildfire in state history, charring more than 300,000 acres and destroying dozens of homes.
As they raged, the wildfires in eastern Oregon and Washington devoured an area nearly the size of Delaware. The states called up more than 1,000 members of their National Guards, and the Army mobilized 200 active-duty troops to the fire lines. Ten Blackhawk helicopters and four C-130 Hercules aircraft deployed to help fight fire from the skies. With Gov. Jay Inslee calling the blazes an “unprecedented cataclysm,” Washington even deputized citizen volunteers to fight the […]
1 Comment
Tuesday, September 22nd, 2015
, - Psych Pedia/New York Times
Stephan: The growing greed of the pharmaceutical industry is amply illustrated in this report. Healthcare cannot be modulated only by profit. People are not widgets, and societies operate better, cheaper and more efficiently when wellness is the first priority. Compare any social outcome you like between say Norway and the U.S., and the U.S. outcome is inferior, sometimes notably so.
Risperdal
Risperdal is a billion-dollar antipsychotic medicine with real benefits — and a few unfortunate side effects. It can cause strokes among the elderly. And it can cause boys to grow large, pendulous breasts; one boy developed a 46DD bust.
Yet Johnson & Johnson marketed Risperdal aggressively to the elderly and to boys while allegedly manipulating and hiding the data about breast development. J&J got caught, pleaded guilty to a crime and has paid more than $2 billion in penalties and settlements. But that pales next to some $30 billion in sales of Risperdal around the world.
In short, crime pays, if you’re a major corporation.
Oh, and the person who was in charge of marketing the drug in these ways? He is Alex Gorsky, who was rewarded by being elevated to C.E.O. of J&J. He earned $25 million last year.
