Wednesday, April 13th, 2016
YURI KAGEYAMA, Reporter - Japan Today (Japan)
Stephan: As I have said in SR over and over, just because Fukushima has gone off corporate media's radar, and is rarely mentioned, does not mean it has been resolved or has stopped being a lethally toxic cancer on the planet. Here is the latest and it is not going to reassure you. The best most scientific analyses on Fukushima suggest to me our children will be dealing with this catastrophe. At the present state of technology nuclear accidents like this are "forever," and constantly present scenarios like the choice of what do about tritium polluted radioactive water.
A worker in front of the tritium water storage tanks
Credit: Toru Hanai/AP
TOKYO — To dump or not to dump a little-discussed substance is the question brewing in Japan as it grapples with the aftermath of the nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima five years ago. The substance is tritium.
The radioactive material is nearly impossible to remove from the huge quantities of water used to cool melted-down reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, (emphasis added) which was wrecked by the massive tsunami in northeastern Japan in March 2011.
The water is still accumulating since 300 tons are needed every day to keep the reactors chilled. Some is leaking into the ocean.
Huge tanks lined up around the plant, at last count 1,000 of them, each hold hundreds of tons of water that have been cleansed of radioactive cesium and strontium but not of tritium.
Ridding water of tritium has been carried out in laboratories. But it’s an effort that would be extremely costly at the scale required for […]
No Comments
Wednesday, April 13th, 2016
Lorraine Chow, - Nation of Change
Stephan: It is my belief that the function of the state is to enhance wellness from the individual to the planetary. It is the job of the private sector to develop businesses that do this, and they are free to make whatever profit they can. Elon Musk is an example of what I mean. This is the only viable future that I can see. All others lead to dystopia.
From that wellness perspective the response to the data contained in this report would be to immediately outlaw the sale or use of these toxins. Control them just as DDT was controlled.
I went to Costco today and walking down an aisle experienced an odd sickly smell. I looked over to my left and saw I was walking past shelves of Roundup. In the United States the function of the state at this moment is to enhance profit wellness is not really a significant consideration; this being the core of the Great Schism Trend.
The Center for Biological Diversity, as well as a number of farmworkers, child-safety and environmental advocacy groups, sent a letter to the EPA last month urging it to ban several organophosphate pesticides that are currently under review.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released its first-ever analysis on the effects of three common pesticides—chlorpyrifos, diazinon and malathion—on endangered and threatened species and designated critical habitat nationwide. The resounding conclusion? Pesticides are terrible for them.
According to the report, malathion and chlorpyrifos harms an astounding 97 percent of the 1,782 animals and plants protected under the Endangered Species Act. Diazinon harms 79 percent. (emphasis added)
Malathion is often used on fruit, vegetables and plants for pests, as well tick removal on pets. Chlorpyrifos is used to exterminate termites, mosquitoes and roundworms. Diazinon is used against cockroaches and ants.
The three chemicals species are “
No Comments
Wednesday, April 13th, 2016
Stephanie Coontz , Director of Research and Public Education for the Council on Contemporary Families - Alternet (U.S.)
Stephan: The Theocratic Right's misty eyed vision of marriage being only between one man and one woman, a dominate husband, and a submissive wife is pure fantasy as anyone who reads either fiction or non-fiction about past societies knows. Historically marriage has been a contract made for many reasons, frequently the participants having no choice in the matter, and frequently involving multiple partners. The Biblical arguments against marriage equality have no substance either Biblically -- many marriages in the Bible are plural -- or secularly, as this article lays out.
We need to stop torturing the lives of decent people by making social policy on the basis of hate and discomfort with something unfamiliar. The function of the state is to produce wellness; stable relationships based on love, particularly if they nurture children do that regardless of gender, and should be encouraged.
Draupadi, a princess and queen in the Indian epic Mahābhārata, with her five husbands (the Pandavas)
The following is an adapted excerpt from the updated edition of The Way We Never Were by Stephanie Coontz (Basic Books, 2016):
There is a tendency for many Americans to view present-day family and gender relations through the foggy lens of nostalgia for a mostly mythical past.
Nostalgia is a very human trait. When school children returning from summer vacation are asked to name good and bad things about their summer, the lists tend to be equally long. As the year goes on, however, if the exercise is repeated, the good list grows longer and the bad list gets shorter, until by the end of the year the children are describing not their actual vacations but their idealized image of “vacation.”
So it is with our collective “memory” of family life. As time passes, the actual complexity of our history—even of our own personal experience—gets buried […]
No Comments
Tuesday, April 12th, 2016
Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director of the Executive Director of the Center for Food Safety - Yes!
Stephan: Excellent news and a clear example of the power of the 8 Laws and the collective Quotidian Choice in action. GMO labelling is occurring because of the collective intention of ordinary people and their willingness to vote with their purse. Particularly we owe thanks to the people of Vermont. Here is the story.
For the last 15 years, numerous organizations and legislators have been battling to require the labeling of genetically engineered (GE) foods. During that time 64 other countries have mandated this labeling, but not the United States. Many of us in the food movement have said that it was not a matter of if we would join with these countries and have GE labeling, but when. Well, it looks like when may have finally arrived.
Several major companies have announced they will label GE products.
Over the course of just a few days, several major companies have announced they will label GE products, including Kellogg’s, ConAgra, Mars, and General Mills. Earlier this year, Campbell’s announced it would label. What caused this wave of GE labeling? It certainly hasn’t been a sudden realization that more than 90 percent of Americans want labeling, which polls have shown for many years. And these companies have never been pro-labeling. Just the opposite. Each has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund massive PR campaigns opposing various state GE labeling initiatives.
This sudden turnaround was actually triggered by […]
No Comments
Tuesday, April 12th, 2016
James Salzer, Political Reporter - Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Stephan: This is what concerns me, the roaring boys of gundumb, waving their weapons around at a public gathering. What could go possibly go wrong you ask?
Georgia State Capital
Credit: Branden Camp
State Capitol police put out a warning Monday about a Martinez man planning an unpermitted,gun-toting, anti-Islam rally outside the statehouse on April 18.
The organizer has promised to shred a Koran as part of the event.
“The Georgia Department of Public Safety and the Georgia Building Authority anticipate a non-permitted, anti-Islamic protest on the sidewalks of the Georgia State Capitol,” said Capitol Police Director Lewis G. Young, in his advisory to state employees. “You are hereby notified that protest organizers have encouraged their participants to carry loaded long guns.
“DPS is currently monitoring the threat risk and, together with GBA, is taking precautions to make Capitol Hill a safe environment,” it continued.
The Georgia Building Authority had earlier turned down a request for a permit for a “United against Islam and Islamic immigration refugee rally” at Liberty Plaza from James Stachowiak, who dubs himself the founder and editor of “Freedom Fighter Radio.”
In a February email obtained by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Stachowiak says the rally is to “raise public […]
No Comments
