Archive for March, 2011
Over 2,000 Vaccinated Babies Dead: The Cost Of Doing Business
Neil Z. Miller writing for Natural News:
Earlier this month (March 2011), Japanese authorities ordered doctors to stop using pneumococcal and Hib vaccines because four children died after receiving the shots. However, the real news was never reported: more than 2,000 babies died in the United States after receiving vaccines for these very same diseases, yet authorities refuse to warn parents and halt production. A safety review is vital to determine whether a recall of the dangerous shots may be necessary to protect additional American babies from disability and death.
According to Paul Offit, media spokesperson for the vaccine industry, “the Japanese Ministry of Health was foolish to suspend the Hib and pneumococcal programs.” Offit thinks the deaths were probably caused by SIDS, or underlying conditions, or another cause – anything except the vaccines. Often, children get sick and die by chance.
William Schaffner, chairman of the department of medicine at Vanderbilt University…
The World As A Theater Of The Absurd
It’s been a long time since I sat in a college literature class and learned about the theater of the absurd, the work of great writers like Beckett, Ionesco, Genet and Camus, among others. Their writing was their way of reacting to a world that seemed out of control and maybe out of its mind.
Wikipedia tells us “It expressed the belief that, in a Godless universe, human existence has no meaning or purpose and therefore all communication breaks down. Logical construction and argument gives way to irrational and illogical speech and to its ultimate conclusion, silence.”
Significantly, the word theater is used for places putting on plays and countries conducting wars. The battlefield is considered as much a “theater” as Broadway.
Without waxing philosophically and commenting on the many unknowns that so obsessed Donald Rumsfeld, our modern day philosopher king of the Pentagonian School, one has to abandon logic and rationality to…
Over 12,000 NEW Chemicals Are Registered Every Day
Photo: Mehran Moghtadai (CC)
Dr. Mercola writes at mercola.com:
There are forty-five million different chemicals which are currently commercially available around the world, and many of them have never been tested. In the interview with Professor Patricia Hunt linked below, she reveals that there are 12,000 new substances registered every day.
Of greatest concern may be the ones that act like hormones in your body, especially high-volume chemicals that you likely encounter on a daily basis. The standard set of guidelines toxicologists use for testing doesn’t work very well for chemicals that mimic the actions of hormones.
According to Hunt, as reported by Living on Earth:
“There are hundreds of studies looking at the effects of bisphenol A — most of them using experimental animals. And when the regulatory panels sit down and look at them, quite frankly, they don’t know what to do with a lot of the research … And the problem with…
Video: Brazil Officers Shoot 14 Year-Old Boy Being Questioned
A 14 year-old boy was shot last August by five military officers in Brazil who claimed they were questioning him about a crime. The officers were arrested on Wednesday after a security camera video was found capturing the incident. The boy was hospitalized for ten days and luckily survived after one of the bullets just missed the boy’s lungs. The video is quite shocking. Via the Associated Press:
GE’s 2010 Tax Bill? A $3.2 Billion Credit
It’s absolutely scandalous that the United States’ largest companies pay almost no tax; the New York Times devotes a major story to showing how one of the best tax-dodging corporations, General Electric, does it:
General Electric, the nation’s largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010.
The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.
Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.
That may be hard to fathom for the millions of American business owners and households now preparing their own returns, but low taxes are nothing new for G.E. The company has been cutting the percentage of its American profits paid to the Internal Revenue Service for years, resulting in a far lower rate than at most multinational companies.
Its extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying…
The Push To Suppress Young Adult Voting
Ever heard baby boomers bemoan young people’s lack of political engagement? Well, some feel the opposite.
William O’Brien, the newly-minted speaker of the state House in New Hampshire, is peeved that college students are able to vote: “Foolish…Voting as a liberal. That’s what kids do.” They lack “life experience,” and “they just vote their feelings.”
State Republican lawmakers across the country share O’Brien’s sentiment. In disregard of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, they are mounting a concerted and sustained push to reduce young adults’ voting rights, the Washington Post reports:
New Hampshire’s new Republican state House speaker is pretty clear about what he thinks of college kids and how they vote. They’re “foolish,” Speaker William O’Brien said in a recent speech to a tea party group.
“Voting as a liberal. That’s what kids do,” he added, his comments taped by a state Democratic Party staffer and posted on YouTube. Students lack “life experience,” and “they just vote…
Japan’s Safety Regulators: Fukushima No. 3 Nuclear Reactor May Have Been Breached
David Jolly & Hiroko Tabuchi report in the NY Times:
TOKYO — Japan’s effort to contain the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant suffered a setback, an official said on Friday, citing evidence that the reactor vessel of the No. 3 unit may have been damaged.
The development, described at a news conference by Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director-general of the Japan Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, raises the possibility that radiation from the mox fuel in the reactor — a combination of uranium and plutonium — could be released.
One sign that a breach may have occurred in the reactor vessel, Mr. Nishiyama said, took place on Thursday when three workers who were trying to connect an electrical cable to a pump in a turbine building next to the reactor were injured when they stepped into water that was found to be significantly more radioactive than normal in a reactor. The No.…
Religious Americans Twice As Likely To Become Obese
Is this why mostly secular Europe’s citizens are so much skinnier than still religious America’s? Courtney Hutchison reports for ABC News:
Americans who are religious are more likely to be happy, healthy … and hefty?
According to research from Northwestern University, youths of a healthy weight who frequently participated in religious activities were twice as likely to become obese by middle age than their less-religious peers.
Even when controlling for race, sex, education and income — several factors that could independently be affecting likelihood of obesity, this affect remained. Researchers drew on data from the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults study, which tracked weight and a number of physical and behavioral variables, including religious involvement, in more than 2,000 men and women over the past two decades.
“We had previously found that those with high religious involvement were more likely to be obese [as middle-aged or older adults], but we wanted to follow…
Are We All Martians?
Ray Walston as "My Favorite Martian"
Sounds a bit like panspermia but occurring within our inner solar system. Interesting post from David L. Chandler of MIT News Office:
According to many planetary scientists, it’s conceivable that all life on Earth is descended from organisms that originated on Mars and were carried here aboard meteorites. If that’s the case, an instrument being developed by researchers at MIT and Harvard could provide the clinching evidence.
In order to detect signs of past or present life on Mars — if it is in fact true that we’re related — then a promising strategy would be to search for DNA or RNA, and specifically for particular sequences of these molecules that are nearly universal in all forms of terrestrial life.
That’s the strategy being pursued by MIT research scientist Christopher Carr and postdoctoral associate Clarissa Lui, working with Maria Zuber, head of MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary…
Outrage Over South Korea’s Mass Live Burial Of Pigs
Factory farming practices are always bloody and cruel, but this seems to go above and beyond. Following an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, since December South Korea has killed 20% of its domestic livestock — 3 million animals have been exterminated, mostly pigs, who are being buried alive by the thousands in gigantic pits. The practice is traumatizing workers (who hear the pigs’ screams in their sleep) and provoking outrage around the world. Video footage is difficult to sit through:
The Onion: Facebook ‘Is Truly A Dream Come True For The CIA’ (Video)
Thanks to Erick Schonfeld on Techcrunch for the find.
Even though this is intended to be a joke, the CIA’s interest in what it calls “open source intelligence” has been documented (see here and here).
Via the Onion:
After years of secretly monitoring the public, we were astounded so many people would willingly publicize where they live, their religious and political views, an alphabetized list of all their friends, personal emails addresses, phone numbers, hundreds of photos of themselves, and even status updates about what they were doing moment to moment. It is truly a dream come true for the CIA.
Fake Plastic Trees For Our Urban Future
A Parisian design team has conceived the Treepod, a synthetic tree that soaks up CO2 and expels oxygen without requiring water, soil, or years spent growing to full size. Should our planet’s trees be killed off by plague, pollution, or water shortfalls, this is what will fill the void. Via My Modern Metropolis:
When tasked with creating a synthetic urban tree for the City of Boston (or any city) that could provide all the benefits of a real tree (de-carbonization and protection) without requiring soil and water, a team from Paris rose to the challenge. Their innovative concept is called Treepods. The systems are capable of removing carbon dioxide from the air and releasing oxygen using a carbon dioxide removal process called “humidity swing.”
Inspired by dragon blood trees, its wide branches and umbrella style tops support large solar panels. After some testing, they found out that the trees couldn’t be powered…
‘Knowing It in Your Gut’: Cross-Talk Between Human Gut Bacteria and Brain
Stephen "Gut Feeling" Colbert. Photo: Cliff (CC)
ScienceDaily reports:
A lot of chatter goes on inside each one of us and not all of it happens between our ears. Researchers at McMaster University discovered that the “cross-talk” between bacteria in our gut and our brain plays an important role in the development of psychiatric illness, intestinal diseases and probably other health problems as well including obesity.
“The wave of the future is full of opportunity as we think about how microbiota or bacteria influence the brain and how the bi-directional communication of the body and the brain influence metabolic disorders, such as obesity and diabetes,” says Jane Foster, associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences of the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine.
Using germ-free mice, Foster’s research shows gut bacteria influences how the brain is wired for learning and memory. The research paper has been published in the March issue of…
America’s Most Vulnerable Nuclear Power Plants
Is this list a case of fear-mongering? Possibly, but I would want to be aware if I lived nearby one of these wildcards. The Daily Beast presents a ranking of our nation’s most ripe-for-disaster nuclear reactors, as determined by a panel of experts, with Indian Point (Buchanan, NY), San Onofre ( San Clemente, CA), and Limerick, PA rounding out the top three:
1. Indian Point
Location: Buchanan, NY (24 miles north of New York City)
Reactors: 2
Electrical Output (megawatts): Unit 2: 1020; Unit 3: 1025
Year Operating License Issued: Unit 2: 1973; Unit 3: 1975
Population within 50 Miles: 17,452,585
Relative Safety Rating: bottom third
Obama Quietly Rolls Back Miranda Rights
Evan Perez reporting for the Wall Street Journal:
New rules allow investigators to hold domestic-terror suspects longer than others without giving them a Miranda warning, significantly expanding exceptions to the instructions that have governed the handling of criminal suspects for more than four decades.
The move is one of the Obama administration’s most significant revisions to rules governing the investigation of terror suspects in the U.S. And it potentially opens a new political tussle over national security policy, as the administration marks another step back from pre-election criticism of unorthodox counterterror methods.
Once again, the threat of terrorism has given the executive branch carte blanche to roll back rights. Miranda rights, which required law officers to make you aware of your “right to remain silent”, were ubiquitous until 9/11. Today, Miranda warnings are archaic, filled with holes that make national security a higher priority than a person’s knowledge of their constitutional rights…
[continues in…
Egyptian Women Forced To Take ‘Virginity Tests’
Women in line to vote at 2011 Egyptian constitution referendum. Photo: Mona (CC)
Amnesty International has today called on the Egyptian authorities to investigate serious allegations of torture, including forced ‘virginity tests’, inflicted by the army on women protesters arrested in Tahrir Square earlier this month.
After army officers violently cleared the square of protesters on 9 March, at least 18 women were held in military detention. Amnesty International has been told by women protesters that they were beaten, given electric shocks, subjected to strip searches while being photographed by male soldiers, then forced to submit to ‘virginity checks’ and threatened with prostitution charges.
‘Virginity tests’ are a form of torture when they are forced or coerced.
“Forcing women to have ‘virginity tests’ is utterly unacceptable. Its purpose is to degrade women because they are women,” said Amnesty International. “All members of the medical profession must refuse to take part in such…
Earthquake Hits Burma
Just in case things weren’t shaken up enough, Burma gets a taste of Mother Nature. CBC News reports:
An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.8 has hit northeastern Burma, also known as Myanmar.
The quake struck at 8:25 p.m. local time Thursday near the Southeast Asian country’s borders with Thailand and Laos, about 110 kilometres from the northern Thai city of Chiang Rai.
Two earthquakes were initially reported with a 7.0 magnitude, but the U.S. Geological Survey soon amended its report to confirm one shallow quake, centred 10 kilometres below the surface of the earth.
“Overall, the population in this region resides in structures that are highly vulnerable to earthquake shaking, though some resistant structures exist,” said a report posted on the monitoring agency’s website shortly after the quakes. “The predominant vulnerable building types are wood and unreinforced brick masonry construction.”
The monitor said 600,000 people would have experienced shaking anywhere from strong to violent and…
The Chemtrails App For Your iPhone
Zen Gardner writes about how he finds chemtrails with his iPhone at Before Its News:
Wanna know when the chemtrails are coming? Check your phone and look at the forecast.
Yes, the “weatherman” is in on it, folks, and they know the spray days. All to make it look “natural”.
See for yourself
I checked my phone for the weather while walking under a clear blue sky in San Diego this morning. Sure enough, that nasty filmy cloud was over the sun on my iphone weather app.
Probably gonna be chemtrails today. It may turn out to be a real weather system coming in but let’s see what happens. It’s been clear a while and the chemtrails are overdue. They may also be laying low somewhat with the increased radioactivity from Japan, especially in the upper atmosphere.
We’ve had nice clear skies for partial days with the rains and wind clearing the air. We may have more…
