Category Archives: Of Interest

A Next Step for The Occupy Movement

Posted on by

Occupy’s National Gathering: A Vision for the Next Step Forward?

The movement has been accused before of lacking direction. But this week in Philadelphia, delegates to the first-ever national Occupy gathering created a streamlined vision for the change they want to see.
posted Jul 06, 2012

 

Natgat photo by James Trimarco

Photo by James Trimarco.

Occupy participants from every region of the United States poured into Philadelphia from June 30–July 4 for the movement’s National Gathering. Many arrived in caravans from far-flung states like California, Texas, and Alabama, and about 500 people attended the event in its final days, according to Occupy Wall Street’s Linnea M. Palmer Paton.

“It feels exactly like an Occupy,” said Michael Wilson, who came from his hometown of Salt Lake City with three fellow occupiers, each of them driving a three-hour shift. “It’s like all the months of an occupation compressed into just five days.”

The activities of the National Gathering—or “Natgat,” as occupiers invariably called it—covered a wide range of styles, tactics, and approaches to social change. At the gathering’s center was a visioning process in which small groups of occupiers spent days carefully hammering out their ideas about the kind of changes they’d like to see. Then, these groups were combined and began compiling their ideas into a single document, which is rumored to now be 75 pages long.

Attendees held nightly General Assemblies, or GA’s, open meetings that form the heart of most local Occupy groups. Their marches and demonstrations saw relatively little of the police violence that has marred other Occupy events. And there were daily workshops on topics like direct action, maintaining encampments, and interactions between activists. Many attendees said the workshops and skillshares were their favorite part of the week.

“I’m just here to learn,” said Jacqueline Lundy of Occupy Chicago, pointing out that activists from around the country often faced similar dilemmas. For example, she said, everyone seemed to be talking about ways to improve on the structure of the General Assemblies. And indeed, a large GA on Wednesday focused on the need for more voices to be heard and for people who felt marginalized to have those feelings addressed.

Other events included a baseball game that pit the 99% against the 1% Tax Dodgers, and a “Wells Fargo Circus” in which ersatz bankers forced acrobats playing the role of loan applicants into all kinds of contortions—literally. These moments showed off the movement’s talent for comedy, costumes, and playfulness.

Reverend Billy photo courtesy of Reverend Billy
The Importance of Being Sassy
How Occupiers, pranksters, and artists speak louder than money.

While some aspects of the gathering could have been stronger, there was no doubt that the movement is alive—and kicking. The Natgat was “smaller than what was hoped for,” said Pete Tridish, a local Philadelphian and a founder of a community radio advocacy group called Prometheus Radio. But he remained hopeful about the future of Occupy: “The main goals of the gathering have been to think through the next steps of the movement, and they’re meeting those goals.”

Linnea M. Paton Palmer of Occupy Wall Street shared that feeling, pointing to an inspiring march through Downtown Philadelphia on the night of the Fourth of July. She’s already rolling up her sleeves for the next big event, Occupy’s first-year anniversary on September 17.

from:      http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/occupys-national-gathering-a-vision-for-the-next-steps-forward

The SIns of Monsanto

Posted on by

Monsanto: A Modern Day Plague

15th July 2012

By Lisa Cerda – citywatchla.com

Monsanto’s history is one steeped with controversial products, deadly consequences, massive cover ups, political slight of hand, and culminates as a modern day plague on humanity, a plague that is about to peak to biblical proportions. Created in 1901, the company started producing its first form of poison, the artificial sweetener saccharin. The rise in use of saccharin really began 70 years later. Monsanto had plenty of time for a realistic and long term study on the impact of saccharin on human health. Instead, Monsanto learned how to finagle political support and grow its empire despite the growing consensus that saccharin caused cancer.

No surprise then that the company continued on a path of controversy. Here’s a bullet point history.
•    Contributed to the research on uranium, for the Manhattan Project, during WWII.
•    Operated a nuclear facility for the U.S. government until the late 1980s.
•    Top manufacturer of synthetic fibers, plastics and polystyrene (EPA’s 5th ranked chemical production that generates the most hazardous waste).
•    A top 10 US chemical company.
•    Agriculture pesticides producer.
•    Herbicide producer – herbicides 2,4,5-T, Agent Orange, Lasso, and DDT.

•    Agent Orange (used in Vietnam), had the highest levels of dioxin and contaminated more than 3 million civilians and servicemen of which only partial compensation awarded

•    Nearly 500,000 Vietnamese children were born deformed and never compensated.
•    Lasso was banned in USA, so weed killer “Roundup” is launched in 1976.
•    A major producer of both dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which generated many law suits and environmental cleanups
•    $180 million settlement for Vietnam War veterans exposed to Agent Orange
•    Fined $1.2 million for concealing the discharge of contaminated waste water
•    Ordered to pay $41.1 million due to hazardous waste dumping
•    Paid $600 million in settlement claims to more than 20,000 Anniston residents in Abernathy v. United States.
•    Produced GM cattle drug, bovine growth hormone (called rBGH or rBST)
•    Acquiring seed companies from the 1990’s and forward.
•    Monsanto Filed 144 lawsuits against struggling farmers and settled out of court with 700 farmers, for reportedly violating seed patents.  A full time staff of 75 Monsanto employees investigates patent infringement. They are dedicated solely to finding farms that have been contaminated by their unwanted seed. As of 2007, Monsanto was awarded in 57 recorded judgments against farmers a total of $21,583,431.99. Monsanto vs. Farmers.

The Washington Post reported:

For nearly 40 years, while producing the now-banned industrial coolants known as PCBs at a local factory, Monsanto Co. routinely discharged toxic waste into a west Anniston creek and dumped millions of pounds of PCBs into oozing open-pit landfills. And thousands of pages of Monsanto documents — many emblazoned with warnings such as ‘CONFIDENTIAL: Read and Destroy’ show that for decades, the corporate giant concealed what it did and what it knew.

PCB’s are considered an absolute threat to our world. Environmentalists rightfully want a pound of Monsanto’s flesh!  In 1969, Monsanto knew the impact of their products and put together an abatement plan for the entire United States, Canada and sections of Europe, especially the UK and Sweden. It’s disingenuous to suggest it could be done, for any amount of money. In the town of Anniston, Alabama, where the Monsanto plant was located, residents had PCB levels hundreds and sometimes thousands of times higher than the average person. They were dying or ill.

Monsanto decided to look at other products they could produce because their economic reliance on one profitable product was precarious at best. They split the company and Monsanto spawned Solutia, so that the massive lawsuits would not take down the entire company. Found guilty of conduct “so outrageous in character and extreme in degree as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency so as to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in civilized society.” The court decisions were destroying profitability.

Monsanto was just getting started with its assault on our ecosystem. Roundup was being marketed in 115 countries. Meanwhile Solutia was going down by means of Chapter 11 bankruptcy and lawsuits.

With the popularity of Roundup, the company became increasingly concerned about the patents expiration in 2000. They sold off the plastics division in 1996 and their phenylalanine facilities in 1999. Here again, Monsanto was trying to avoid financial liability for its hazardous waste producing past.

Monsanto merged with Pharmacia, and became legally a different corporation, despite sharing the same name, the same corporate headquarters, the same executives and employees, not to mention most of the liabilities from its former activities.

The new focus was genetic engineering and particularly creating genes that are resistant to glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup.  Can you imagine farming without weeds? Farmers were intrigued and some delighted. Growing food and spraying poison at the same time did nothing to boost the confidence of consumers. False claims that it was biodegradable lead to its frequent use. Health complaints came from neighbors of farmers and farmers themselves. Soon the biodegradable claim on the packaging was removed.

Heading in a new direction, Monsanto was buying up seed companies left and right. They became the world’s largest seed company, acquiring a quarter of the global proprietary seed market. By coupling their sale of Roundup with their gene modified seeds, they began dominating the agriculture market. By 2007, almost 90% of the world used GM seeds carrying at least one genetic trait for herbicide tolerance. Now Monsanto was a dominating the food chain, the farmers, and its assault on mankind.

Where there is market control, there is price gouging. In 2006 Roundup cost $32 per gallon, and by 2008 it was up to $75 per gallon. Not satisfied with this dominance of the world food chain, Monsanto began patenting their glyphosate resistant seeds. They hiked up the price of corn seeds by 35% and soy by 50%, leaving farmers financially plundered. Farmer suicide went from a trickle to a torrential rain. Averaging about one farmer suicide every 30 minutes.

Soy, corn, sugar beets, rice, alfalfa, cotton seed oil, canola oil, Hawaiian papaya, zucchini, crookneck squash are now the sources of genetically food. But it gets worse. Corn and soy products are being fed to livestock, the livestock that you eat; chicken, eggs, sheep, pig, cows, goats, turkey, etc. Unless you have removed meat from your diet you are being systematically poisoned and perhaps even sterilized like the livestock that eats GMO corn and soy products.

The rights of farmers to save or exchange seeds have been stolen from them. Something that has been done for centuries, that guaranteed the survival of our species, changed overnight. Like a game of chess, Monsanto has with absolute intent, created a food crisis, offered up its poisonous solution, and has knocked chess piece after chess piece down in a calculated plan.

Just look at the list of players behind the schemes and profiteering. Monsanto, U.S. regulators and judicial bodies have become strange bed fellows:

•    U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a former Monsanto lawyer, wrote the majority of the opinion in a key Monsanto case.

•    Lawyer Michael Taylor, FDA employed, represented Monsanto sometime after, then returned as the FDA’s Deputy Commissioner for Policy right as rBGH was granted approval. He was appointed as a senior adviser to the Food and Drug Administration (United States) Commissioner on food safety in August 2009 by President Barack Obama.

•     Dr. Michael A. Friedman, prior deputy commissioner of the FDA, hired as a senior vice president of Monsanto.

•    Linda J. Fisher, prior assistant administrator at the US Environmental Protection Agency, became a vice president at Monsanto from 1995-2000. In 2001, Fisher returned as the deputy administrator of the EPA.

•    Donald Rumsfeld, Former Secretary of Defense, former chairman and chief executive officer of G. D. Searle & Co., (Monsanto purchased in 1985). Rumsfeld privately made at least $12 million from the transaction.

If by now you are feeling paranoid, targeted, and overwhelmed by this information, I understand why.

You will move through all the stages of rage in time. Resist the urge to kick the produce man. Don’t hire a plane to spray Roundup on the White House, Senate, or House, I don’t advocate stooping to their levels.

You can now expect the spread of Monsanto’s mutant genes and seeds across the nation, contaminating other farms, and taking down other farmers by lawsuits.

A Swedish study found that spraying Roundup doubles the risk of getting cancer for farm workers’ and rural residents’. More worrisome is the fact that Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) do not require safety testing, nor labeling identifying them as GMOs.

Anti- GMO efforts by organic companies, who demanded labeling and oversight, will begin to accept the so-called “natural” foods that are routinely contaminated with GMO’s. Companies like Wal-Mart, Kroger, Costco, Supervalu, Publix, Target and Safeway shy away from the attacks on GMO’s that they sell to their unwitting customer base.

Consumers must learn the difference between products marketed as “natural,” and those products that are “certified organic.” They are misleading you by masquerading natural as organic.

GMOs and organics cannot coexistence. They are polar opposites in every way imaginable. GMOs destroys biodiversity, damages the environment and public health, economically devastates farmers, and destabilizes the climate.

In the European Union, all foods containing GMOs or GMO ingredients must be labeled. Thus the market shelves are empty because consumers are not buying them. American consumers want mandatory labels on GMO foods, and according to the polls by a strong 85-95%. They don’t want the top poison producer, to monopolize the agricultural industry and have anything to do with the worlds food supply.

Bush, Clinton, and Obama administrations have prevented consumer GMO truth-in-labeling laws. A new bill by Congressman Dennis Kucinich (Democrat, Ohio) calling for mandatory labeling and safety testing for GMOs is in Congress now. But Monsanto is allowed to buy vote’s thanks in part to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and the Citizens United case. In 2010, big corporations and billionaires got the right to spend obscene amounts of money to buy media coverage, elections, and do it anonymously,

Recent news is … 5 million farmers are now suing Monsanto. They are fighting for the right to use seeds from previous year’s harvests. Seeds they harvested, but Monsanto patented. The bad news is … it’s still GMO seeds, a toxic transgenic breed, in markets without labels and health studies, and we have a government that finds this all acceptable.

Resources

Monsanto Food wars, GMO seeds and Animals

The world According to Monsanto video

The Health Dangers of Genetically Modified Foods

What is in your milk is not in the news

Stop Monsanto from Poisoning Hawaii

GMO rice with human genes

Article Source

citywatchla.com

from:    http://wakeup-world.com/2012/07/16/monsanto-a-modern-day-plague/

Comet 96/Maccholz Visits our Solar System

Posted on by

HOT COMET: Periodic comet 96P/Maccholz is passing by the sun today deep inside the orbit of Mercury. At closest approach, the icy visitor from the outer solar system will be less than 12 million miles (0.13 AU) from the solar surface. Coronagraphs onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory are monitoring the encounter:

“Discovered in 1986, Comet 96P/Machholz is a fascinating comet that has passed through SOHO coronagraph images four times now,” says Karl Battams of the Naval Research Lab. “It’s not a huge comet but it is very photogenic, and puts on quite a display with its beautiful dusty tail.”

In an essay posted on his web site, Battams explains why the comet is so fascinating. Many researchers suspect 96P/Machholz is not a native of our solar system; some chemical evidence suggests it came from another star. Also, 96P/Machholz appears to be dynamically related (that is, the comet’s orbit is related) to a diverse collection of other objects in the solar system including asteroid 2003 EH1 and the Quadrantid, Southern Delta Aquariid, and daytime Arietid meteoroid streams. All of these things–the asteroid, the comet, and the meteoroids–might be fragments of a single “foreign” body that broke apart thousands of years ago.

fr/spaceweather.com

New Solar Archipelago Flare

Posted on by

SOLAR ARCHIPELAGO: Sunspots are magnetic islands on the sun. Sunspot AR1520 is a complete archipelago. Scroll down to scan more than 200,000 miles of island chain:

Amateur astronomer Alan Friedman took the picture on July 10th from his backyard observatory in Buffalo, New York. “AR1520 is a tremendous archipelago and a wonderful target for backyard solar telescopes,” he says.

The tangled magnetic canopy of the sunspot group, shown here in an extreme UV image from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, harbors energy for strong solar flares. NOAA forecasters estimate an 80% chance of M-class flares and a 15% chance of X-class flares during the next 24 hours.

from:    spaceweather.com

Voter Fraud vs. UFO Sightings

Posted on by

UFO Sightings Are 3,615 Times More Common than Voter Fraud

By: Life’s Little Mysteries Staff
Date: 06 July 2012
A UFO, or flying saucer, above a dark city and under a full moon.
A UFO, or flying saucer, above a dark city and under a full moon.
CREDIT: oorka | Shutterstock

People are 3,615 times more likely to report a UFO sighting than they are to commit in-person voter impersonation, according to national data.

The striking statistic has surfaced at the same time as the news that a new voter ID law in Pennsylvania could render nearly 10 percent of the state’s residents ineligible to vote in the presidential election this fall.

National UFO Reporting Center records show there were 47,000 reports of UFO sightings between 2000 and 2010. During the same period, just 13 people were convicted of impersonating someone else in order to vote in their name, according to research by Justin Levitt, associate professor of law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. [UFO Quiz: What’s Really Out There]

Mother Jones assembled the numbers in order to fact-check claims by many Republican lawmakers that their states are facing rampant voter fraud.

Since 2011, 24 voting restrictions have passed in 17 states. This fall, new laws could affect more than 5 million voters in states representing 179 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency, Mother Jones reports. Studies indicate low-income and minority voters are most often disenfranchised by laws requiring voters to have government-issued photo IDs. For example, 25 percent of voting-age African-Americans don’t have valid IDs.

Following Mother Jones’ lead, Comedy Central’s Indecision blog rounded up a few more national statistics to help put the 13 confirmed cases of voter impersonation into perspective:

Each year, 15 Americans are crushed to death by their furniture or televisions. Fourteen are injured by exploding toilets, and 100 are accidentally set on fire by their doctors during surgery. And Americans are 3 million times more likely to have a favorable view of North Korea than to commit voter fraud.

from:    http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/2656-ufo-sightings-3-615-times-common-voter-fraud.html

Nessie Exists, QED Evolution Does Not, at least at Some US Schools

Posted on by

Loch Ness monster cited by US schools as evidence that evolution is myth

The Loch Ness monster: Used as evidence that evolution is mythThe Loch Ness monster: Used as evidence that evolution is myth

By CLAIRE MCKIN
Published on Monday 25 June 2012 14:05

THOUSANDS of American school pupils are to be taught that the Loch Ness monster is real – in an attempt by religious teachers to disprove Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Pupils attending privately-run Christian schools in the southern state of Louisiana will learn from textbooks next year, which claim Scotland’s most famous mythological beast is a living creature.

Thousands of children are to receive publicly-funded vouchers enabling them to attend the schools – which follow a strict fundamentalist curriculum.

The Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) programme teaches controversial religious beliefs, aimed at disproving evolution and proving creationism.

Youngsters will be told that if it can be proved that dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time as man, then Darwinism is fatally flawed.

Critics have slammed the content of the religious course books, labelling them “bizarre” and accusing them of promoting radical religious and political ideas.

One ACE textbook called Biology 1099, Accelerated Christian Education Inc reads: “Are dinosaurs alive today? Scientists are becoming more convinced of their existence.

“Have you heard of the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland? ‘Nessie’ for short has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur.”

Another claim taught is that a Japanese whaling boat once caught a dinosaur.

One former pupil, Jonny Scaramanga, 27, who went through the ACE programme as a child, but now campaigns against Christian fundamentalism, said the Nessie claim was presented as “evidence” that evolution could not have happened.

He added: “The reason for that is they’re saying if Noah’s flood only happened 4,000 years ago, which they believe literally happened, then possibly a sea monster survived.

“If it was millions of years ago then that would be ridiculous. That’s their logic. It’s a common thing among creationists to believe in sea monsters.”

Private religious schools, including the Eternity Christian Academy in Westlake, Louisiana, which follows the ACE curriculum, have already been cleared to receive the state voucher money transferred from public school funding, thanks to a bill pushed through by Republican state governor Bobby Jindal, a Hindu convert to Catholicism.

Boston-based researcher and writer Bruce Wilson, who specialises in the American political religious right, said: “One of these texts from Bob Jones University Press claims that dinosaurs were fire-breathing dragons. It has little to do with science as we currently understand. It’s more like medieval scholasticism.”

Mr Wilson believes that such fundamentalist Christian teaching is going on in at least 13 American states.

He added: “There’s a lot of public funding going to private schools, probably around 200,000 pupils are receiving this education.

“The majority of parents now home schooling their kids are Christian fundamentalists too. I don’t believe they should be publicly funded, I don’t believe the schools who use these texts should be publicly funded.”

from:http://www.scotsman.com/news/odd/loch-ness-monster-cited-by-us-schools-as-evidence-that-evolution-is-myth-1-2373903

Another Solar Flare

Posted on by

ANOTHER BIG SUNSPOT: As one big sunspot (AR1515) turns away from Earth, another one is turning toward our planet. AR1520, now emerging over the sun’s southeastern limb, stretches more than 127,000 km (10 Earth diameters) from end to end:

AR1520 has a ‘beta-gamma’ magnetic field that harbors energy for M-class solar flares. So far, however, the sunspot’s magnetic canopy is crackling with lesser C-flares. The calm before the storm? NOAA forecasters estimate an 80% chance of M-flares during the next 24 hours.

fr/spaceweather.com

No More Critical Thought in Texas

Posted on by
 Check this out, an article by Danny Weil:

Texas GOP Declares: “No More Teaching of ‘Critical Thinking Skills’ in Texas Public Schools”

Saturday, 07 July 2012 08:03 By Danny Weil, Truthout | News Analysis

Texas Textbooks.Textbooks, which are assigned and shared, in a classroom at Hutto High School in Hutto, Texas, April 5, 2012. (Photo: Ben Sklar / The New York Times)

from the article:     “The Republican Party of Texas has issued their 2012 political platform and has come out and blatantly opposed critical thinking in public schools throughout the state. If you wonder what took them so long to actually state that publicly, it is really a matter of timing. With irrationality now the norm and an election hovering over the 2012 horizon, the timing of the Republican GOP announcement against “critical thinking” instruction couldn’t be better.  It helps gin up their anti-intellectual base.

The Texas GOP’s declarative position against critical thinking in public schools, or any schools, for that matter, is now an official part of their political platform. It is public record in the Republican Party of Texas 2012 platform. With regard to critical thinking, the Republican Party of Texas document states: “Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.” (page 20, Republican Party of Texas, 2012).

Yes, challenging beliefs or claims is considered insubordinate, immoral and could lead to rebellion, disobedience or perhaps worse: revolution. For the Republican Party and their followers, thinking is subversive, imagination is a sin and the Republican Party in Texas and elsewhere is working to codify this into public policy. The plutocrats can’t have a working-class citizenry that is asking questions of those in power, be they parents or bosses; instead, the people must be taught the ideology of what is morally acceptable, what rules and regulations to follow. and even more importantly, how to accept and internalize hierarchical authoritarianism. Critical thinking is a direct challenge to the “leaders” and their claims on authority, and any opposition to vertical arrangements is ethically unacceptable to those in power.”

And there is much more in the article.  To read the full article, go to:

http://truth-out.org/news/item/10144-texas-gop-declares-no-more-teaching-of-critical-thinking-skills-in-texas-public-schools

AR 1515’s X-Class Flare

Posted on by

X-FLARE: For days, giant sunspot AR1515 has looked capable of producing a really strong explosion. On July 6th it finally did. Yesterday, the sunspot’s magnetic canopy erupted, producing a brief but potent X1.1-class solar flare. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the extreme ultraviolet flash:

The explosion hurled a CME into space. According to this movie from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, the cloud appears to be heading south and away from Earth. However, we cannot yet rule out a glancing blow to our planet on July 8th or 9th. Stay tuned for further analysis.

Look at the CME movie one more time. The speckles near the end are caused by energetic protons accelerated by the flare. Guided toward Earth by solar magnetic fields, the protons are peppering Earth-orbiting satellites, causing “snow” in imaging systems and posing a slim threat for single-event upsets (computer glitches).

from:   spaceweather.com

Ionization Waves on the Way

Posted on by

WAVES OF IONIZATION: Sunspot AR1515 is strobing Earth with C- and M-class solar flares. Each pulse of x-rays and extreme UV radiation creates a wave of ionization in our planet’s upper atmosphere. These sudden ionospheric disturbances, also known as “SIDs,” alter the propagation of radio signals around Earth. Yesterday, amateur scientist Roberto Battaiola detected a series of SIDs over Pantigliate, Italy:

“I monitored the radio frequency of 21.75 kHz,” he says.

More SIDs are in the offing as AR1515 continues to crackle with strong solar flares. In fact, a really big SID could occur if, as expected, AR1515 produces an X-class flare before it rotates off the solar disk a few days from now.

fr/spaceweather.com