Monday, January 11th, 2016
Adam Johnson, Associate Editor - Alternet (U.S.)
Stephan: If you follow trends instead of looking at isolated incidents, stories like this one are very important; they provide a data point that illuminates much. We are hated in the Middle East, and it is not hard to see why that is, as this report describes. What would we think if the Cuban airforce began routinely bombing neighborhoods in Miami in support of a Latino gang? How do you think the unhappy burghers of Miami would respond? How would you feel?
Council of Foreign Relations resident skeptic Micah Zenko recently tallied up how many bombs the United States has dropped on other countries and the results are as depressing as one would think. Zenko figured that since Jan. 1, 2015, the U.S. has dropped around 23,144 bombs on Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, all countries that are majority Muslim. (emphasis added)
The chart, provided by the generally pro-State Department think tank, puts in stark terms how much destruction the U.S. has leveled on other countries. Whether or not one thinks such bombing is justified, it’s a blunt illustration of how much raw damage the United States inflicts on the Muslim world:
It does not appear to be working either. Despite the fact that the U.S. dropped 947 bombs in Afghanistan in 2015, a recent analysis in Foreign Policy magazine found that the Taliban control […]
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Monday, January 11th, 2016
Lindsay Gibbs, - Think Progress
Stephan: There is a peculiar kind of stupidity that pervades Texas politics. Here is a classic example of what I mean. People carrying guns in mental institutions, what could possibly go wrong?
Credit: Shutterstock
This week, Austin State Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Texas, pulled down the “no guns” signs that had long been posted throughout the building. That’s because, thanks to new legislation, guns are now permitted in all 10 of the state-run psychiatric hospitals in Texas.
While guns are still banned in state-licensed general and specialty hospitals, that doesn’t include these 10 hospitals because they aren’t officially licensed by the state.
There are disagreements among officials as to whether new laws simply clarify the rules of previous legislation or establish new parameters. However, the open-carry law enacted at the start of the year, combined with another law that fines state agencies for displaying “no guns” signs, make it clear that state-runs psychiatric hospitals are now legally gun-friendly.
The hospitals are still discouraging visitors from bringing guns onto the premises, though. Austin State Hospital now has signs up asking visitors to leave guns in their cars or at least voluntarily conceal them.
Democratic state representative Celia Israel called this an “unintended consequence” of the open-carry legislation, […]
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Monday, January 11th, 2016
Jacob Barker, - St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Stephan: Here in Washington we have problems with the Hanford site where nuclear material was processed and waste stored. It's leaking. Now St. Louis, and elsewhere, and I think this is just the beginning. No one has ever solved the puzzle of nuclear waste and the storage facilities where millions of gallons of waste are stored are literally breaking down, out of age and the effects of radioactivity.
This is why anyone proposing more nuclear facilities be built is not thinking clearly, or in a fact based manner.
A new study suggests radon is leaving the West Lake Landfill and leaving small traces of its radioactive lead byproduct nearby.
The authors of the study, published in the peer-reviewed “Journal of Environmental Radioactivity,” found levels of the radioactive isotope lead-210, a daughter of radon, that they say can’t be attributed to natural radioactive decay.
“Levels of (lead-210) in key samples were well above background activities, and were significantly out of secular equilibrium with other members of the uranium decay chain,” the authors wrote. “This is strong evidence that the (lead-210) originated by decay of short-lived, fugitive radon gas that escaped the landfill.”
The Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees the Bridgeton landfill contaminated with nuclear processing waste, has said radon gas is emitted from the landfill at higher levels because of the waste there. The new study suggests at least trace amounts of it are showing up beyond the fence that keeps the public out of the long-contaminated landfill.
“That’s where the problem lies,” said Marco Kaltofen, an engineer and scientist with the firm Boston Chemical Corp. who co-authored the report. “Anytime one of these isotopes is more mobile, it’s going to be more likely to expose people.”
Kaltofen […]
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Monday, January 11th, 2016
Tom Boggioni, - The Raw Story
Stephan: Here is about as clear an example of institutional racism as one is ever likely to see.
Millionaire rapper Blac Youngsta being busted for being a rich Black man.
A rapper exiting an Atlanta bank, found himself in handcuffs and on the ground with guns pointed at his head after police stopped him for making a substantial withdrawal from his account, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is reporting.
According to Sam Benson — who goes by the stage name of “Blac Youngsta” — he had just exited a Wells Fargo branch in the upscale community of Buckhead after withdrawing $200,000 in order to buy a new car.
“I come out the bank, I see the police, I’m walking to my car, I see one of them point to my bag like ‘him,’” explained the rapper. “They come bum-rushing me at the car, put me on the ground, putting guns to my head.”
“I’m like ‘What I’d do,’” Benson continued. “A lady was like I’m not supposed to have $200,000 on me. I’m like, ‘I’m […]
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Sunday, January 10th, 2016
Jan A. Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams , Senior Lecturer in Palaeobiology, University of Leicester, Professor of Palaeobiology; University of Leicester - The Conversation
Stephan: Here is the latest in science on the debate as to whether humans have created an Anthropocene Epoch. I think the evidence will eventually generate a consensus that we have.
Is the Anthropocene real? That is, the vigorously debated concept of a new geological epoch driven by humans.
Our environmental impact is indeed profound – there is little debate about that – but is it significant on a geological timescale, measured over millions of years? And will humans leave a distinctive mark upon the layers of rocks that geologists of 100,000,000AD might use to investigate the present day?
Together with other members of the Anthropocene Working Group we’ve just published a study in Science that pulls much of the evidence together.
The case for the Anthropocene might be distilled into five strands:
1. Carbon in the atmosphere
Carbon is important, both due to its growing impact on global warming and because it leaves long-lived geological traces. The increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – now higher than at any time in at least the past few million years – can be found as fossil bubbles in the geologically short-lived “rock” that is polar ice.
But there are wider and more long-lived traces too, in the form of changed patterns of carbon isotopes (absorbed by every living thing) and in tiny, […]
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