June 22, 2011

Published on Wednesday, June 22, 2011 by TalkingPointsMemo

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/06/poll-support-for-immediate-withdrawal-from-afghanistan-hits-record-high.php

by Jon Terbush

One day ahead of an address to the nation in which President Obama will announce his plans for the nation’s future involvement in Afghanistan, a Pew survey finds that a record high level of Americans now support an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Obama has faced mounting pressure from both the public and members of Congress to begin scaling back the country’s presence in Afghanistan, particularly in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death. In the survey, 56% of respondents said they thought troops should come home “as soon as possible.” At the same time, 39% said the military should remain until the situation in Afghanistan has stabilized, a record low in Pew’s surveys.

By Marla Cone

Editor in Chief

Environmental Health News

June 22, 2011

 http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/altered-mammary-glands/document_view

Exposure to chemicals early in life may alter how breast tissue develops and raise the risks of breast cancer and lactation problems later in life, scientists concluded in a set of reports published Wednesday.

The scientists are urging federal officials to add new tests for industrial chemicals and pesticides to identify ones that might disrupt breast development. In some cases, they said, mammary glands are more sensitive to effects of hormone-disrupting chemicals than any other part of the body, so low levels of exposure may be causing breast changes.

“Few chemicals coming into the marketplace are evaluated for these effects,” said one of the reports, based on the findings of more than 60 scientists who convened a workshop in Oakland, Calif., in 2009.

Although many experts have long debated the role of the environment in breast cancer, the possibility that chemicals are changing how and when breasts develop is a relatively new concern for scientists.

by Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

http://naturalnews.com

(NaturalNews) Conventional farming methods may gradually be going the way of the buffalo, at least for many smaller-scale farmers who are discovering the practical and financial benefits of switching to organic techniques. The Morning Call (TMC) reports that many dairy farmers are making the transition to organic because they are realizing it is better for their herds, better for the land, better for consumers, and ultimately better for business.

When James Burkholder, a Pennsylvania dairy farmer, made the decision to switch his dairy herd of 60 conventional cows to organic, it was almost a no-brainer. The conventional dairy market has seen profitability wane considerably in recent years, and Burkholder told reporters that he and his family had considered starting a new business altogether because it was almost no longer worth their while — that is, until they discovered the benefits of operating an organic dairy farm.

Times of India | Jun 22, 2011, 05.53pm IST

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/health/Junk-food-destroys-brain-cells/articleshow/8951935.cms

A study has found that eating too much of fatty junk food destroys the brain cells that control weight, leading to a vicious circle of obesity.

Researchers fed rats what they described as a “typical high-fat American diet” and found they had doubled their calorie intake three days later.

It also showed they had an inflammation in the hypothalamus, the part of the brain containing neurons that control body weight, and though the inflammation stopped a few days later, it recurred after four weeks.

Lead researcher Dr Joshua Thaler, of the Diabetes and Obesity Centre of Excellence at the University of Washington in Seattle, said scientists also detected a healing response to brain injury called gliosis.

“Gliosis is thought to be the brain equivalent of wound healing and is typically seen in conditions of neuronal injury, such as stroke and multiple sclerosis,” the Daily Mail quoted him as saying.

By Barry Estabrook

Onearth, June 13, 2011

http://www.onearth.org/article/tomatoland-book-excerpt

Excerpted from the new book “Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit”

In Vermont, where I live, as in much of the rest of the United States, a gardener can select pretty much any sunny patch of ground, dig a small hole, put in a tomato seedling, and come back two months later and harvest something. Not necessarily a bumper crop of plump, unblemished fruits, but something. When I met Monica Ozores-Hampton, a vegetable specialist with the University of Florida, I asked her what would happen if I applied the same laissez-faire horticultural practices to a tomato plant in Florida. She shot me a sorrowful, slightly condescending look and replied, “Nothing.”

“Nothing?” I asked.

“There would be nothing left of the seedling,” she said. “Not a trace. The soil here doesn’t have any nitrogen, so it wouldn’t have grown at all. The ground holds no moisture, so unless you watered regularly, the plant would certainly die. And, if it somehow survived, insect pests, bacteria, and fungal diseases would destroy it.” How can it be, then, that Florida is the source for one-third of the fresh tomatoes Americans eat? How did tomatoes become the Sunshine State’s most valuable vegetable crop, accounting for nearly one-third of the total revenue generated?

From a purely botanical and horticultural perspective, you would have to be an idiot to attempt to commercially grow tomatoes in a place like Florida. The seemingly insurmountable challenges start with the soil itself. Or more accurately, the lack of it. Although an area south of Miami has limestone gravel as a growing medium, the majority of the state’s tomatoes are raised in sand. Not sandy loam, not sandy soil, but pure sand, no more nutrient rich than the stuff vacationers like to wiggle their toes into on the beaches of Daytona and St. Pete. “A little piece of loam or clay would go a long way,” said Ozores-Hampton. “But, hello? — this is just pure sand.” In that nearly sterile medium, Florida tomato growers have to practice the equivalent of hydroponic production, only without the greenhouses.

By CONN HALLINAN

http://counterpunch.org/hallinan06212011.html

“We are facing a massive mental health problem as a result of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a country we have not responded adequately to the problem. Unless we act urgently and wisely, we will be dealing with an epidemic of service related psychological wounds for years to come.”

Bobby Muller, President Veterans for America

“The multiple nature of it [multiple tours and longer deployments] is unprecedented. People just get blasted and blasted and blasted.”

Maj. Connie Johnmeyer, 332nd Medical Group

According to official Defense Department (DOD) figures, 332,000 soldiers have suffered brain injuries since 2000, although most independent experts estimate that the number is over 400,000. Many of these are mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBI), a term that is profoundly misleading.

As David Hovda, director of the Brain Injury Research Center at the University of California at Los Angeles, points out, “I don’t know what makes it ‘mild,’ because it can evolve into anxiety disorders, personality changes, and depression.” It can also set off a constellation of physical disabilities from chronic pain to sexual dysfunction and insomnia.

MTBI is defined as any incident that produces unconsciousness lasting for up to a half hour or creates an altered state consciousness. It is the signature wound for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where roadside bombs are the principal weapon for insurgents.

Most soldiers recover from mTBI, but between five and 15 percent do not. According to Dr. Elaine Peskind of the University of Washington Medical School, “The estimate of the number who returned with symptomatic mild traumatic brain injury due to blast exposure has varied from the official VA [Veterans Administration] number of 9 percent officially diagnosed with mTBI to over 20 percent, and, I think, ultimately it will be higher than that.”

Posted on Jun 22, 2011

By Bill Blum

More than 1.7 million students graduated from four-year colleges across the country over the past two months. Along with their parents, all have a story about what they took from their commencement ceremonies, and all have a story about what they expect once they enter our sorry excuse for a job market.

My parental story unfolded as the morning fog rolled away and sunlight streamed across the blue-gray expanse of Monterey Bay. I sat down for breakfast with my wife, oldest son Max and youngest offspring Sam, who would be donning the cap and gown that afternoon at the University of California Santa Cruz.

Our waiter, a young man about Sam’s age, attentively refilled our coffee cups and carefully recorded our orders. I breached the normal customer-server barrier and asked if he, too, was connected with the University of California. “I graduated last year,” he answered. “Philosophy major. Berkeley.” He gave us a knowing smile, wished us a great day and moved on to another table. I opened my wallet and left him an oversized tip. Despite our having taking out a personal loan and having scrimped on everything from cable TV to wintertime heating to help finance Sam’s education, this was no time to get frugal.

Posted on Jun 21, 2011

By Robert Scheer

Does Bill Clinton still not grasp that the current economic crisis is in large measure his legacy? Obviously that’s the case, or he wouldn’t have had the temerity to write a 14-point memo for Newsweek on how to fix the economy that never once refers to the home mortgage collapse and other manifestations of Wall Street greed that he enabled as president. 

Endorsing the Republican agenda of financial industry deregulation, reversing New Deal safeguards, President Clinton pursued policies that in the long run created more damage to the American economy than any other president since Herbert Hoover, whose tenure is linked to the Great Depression. Now, in his Newsweek piece, Clinton has the effrontery to once again revive his 1992 campaign mantra, “It’s the economy, stupid,” as the article’s title without any sense of irony, let alone accountability. But that has always been the man’s special gift—to rise above, and indeed benefit from, the messes he created.

His list of safe nostrums—painting tar-surface roofs white and seeking more efficient solar and battery production—to be featured at his lavishly funded Clinton Global Initiative conference in Chicago next week is vintage Clinton hype. All of those solutions are of the win/win sort that he loved to ballyhoo as president; who in his or her right mind would be against green job creation? But that hardly speaks to a crisis in which, as was reported Tuesday, the housing meltdown continues unabated as the toxic mortgages sold and packaged by the leading banks and investment houses clog the real estate market, destroying consumer confidence and hobbling job creation.

Posted on Jun 21, 2011

By Robert Scheer

Does Bill Clinton still not grasp that the current economic crisis is in large measure his legacy? Obviously that’s the case, or he wouldn’t have had the temerity to write a 14-point memo for Newsweek on how to fix the economy that never once refers to the home mortgage collapse and other manifestations of Wall Street greed that he enabled as president. 

Endorsing the Republican agenda of financial industry deregulation, reversing New Deal safeguards, President Clinton pursued policies that in the long run created more damage to the American economy than any other president since Herbert Hoover, whose tenure is linked to the Great Depression. Now, in his Newsweek piece, Clinton has the effrontery to once again revive his 1992 campaign mantra, “It’s the economy, stupid,” as the article’s title without any sense of irony, let alone accountability. But that has always been the man’s special gift—to rise above, and indeed benefit from, the messes he created.

His list of safe nostrums—painting tar-surface roofs white and seeking more efficient solar and battery production—to be featured at his lavishly funded Clinton Global Initiative conference in Chicago next week is vintage Clinton hype. All of those solutions are of the win/win sort that he loved to ballyhoo as president; who in his or her right mind would be against green job creation? But that hardly speaks to a crisis in which, as was reported Tuesday, the housing meltdown continues unabated as the toxic mortgages sold and packaged by the leading banks and investment houses clog the real estate market, destroying consumer confidence and hobbling job creation.

June 21, 2011

By michael payne

Many millions of Americans are currently experiencing intense, unrelenting stress and feelings of despair and futility as they try to cope with a myriad of personal problems largely brought on by this nation’s economic crisis. They are not unlike the millions of people in the Middle East that find themselves caught up in protests and violent civil disobedience; in fact they have one thing very much in common with them.

And that is that humans, no matter the nation or the culture, living under these kinds of extremely stressful conditions of despair and hopelessness, will eventually reach a breaking point when they have had all that they can take and they just can’t take anymore; and then they react. Americans haven’t reached that point, at least not yet. But conditions are continuing to deteriorate and many signs now indicate that a societal implosion is looming on America’s horizon.

What we’re talking about is an inward collapse of this society and its institutions. What exact form this collapse would take, how severe and far reaching it might be, and what it might do to this nation and its people is difficult to predict. But it’s not the least bit farfetched to think that, at some point in the not too distant future, the American people will reach that breaking point and there will be a violent societal reaction.

Let’s consider when that might happen and what would trigger such a reaction:

Associated Press, June 21, 2011

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_aging_nukes_part2

BRACEVILLE, Ill. – Radioactive tritium has leaked from three-quarters of U.S. commercial nuclear power sites, often into groundwater from corroded, buried piping, an Associated Press investigation shows.

The number and severity of the leaks has been escalating, even as federal regulators extend the licenses of more and more reactors across the nation.

Tritium, which is a radioactive form of hydrogen, has leaked from at least 48 of 65 sites, according to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission records reviewed as part of the AP’s yearlong examination of safety issues at aging nuclear power plants. Leaks from at least 37 of those facilities contained concentrations exceeding the federal drinking water standard — sometimes at hundreds of times the limit.

While most leaks have been found within plant boundaries, some have migrated offsite. But none is known to have reached public water supplies.

At three sites — two in Illinois and one in Minnesota — leaks have contaminated drinking wells of nearby homes, the records show, but not at levels violating the drinking water standard. At a fourth site, in New Jersey, tritium has leaked into an aquifer and a discharge canal feeding picturesque Barnegat Bay off the Atlantic Ocean.

It’s worse, a lot worse.  The lies told by TEPCO and the Japanese government are but the tip of the iceberg.  More than 80% of the Japanese people distrust anything their government says about Fukushima.  Shinbun news reports on the propaganda:

“The government has been trying to stress at home and abroad the safety of nuclear power plants ahead of an International Atomic Energy Agency ministerial meeting scheduled to start Monday.”

It seems the new (and quite laughable) message of safety is designed to get all those shut down reactors back on-line in Japan, except for the destroyed plants obviously.  The cryptic reference to the IAEA is curious.  Why anyone cares what the IAEA wants is beyond me.

For those interested in following the horror show enenews.com reposts articles, many of them translated from the original Japanese. 

Tokyo now features “hot spots” of significant radiation.  Sewage slag containing “170,000 Bequerels/kilogram” radioactivity has been detected and recycled into building materials!  Soil in Koto Ward of Tokyo measured “2,300 Bq/kg.” 

A report by Bloomberg tells of soil samples about 25 kilometers to the northwest of the Fukushima plant, “with radiation from Cesium-137 exceeding 5 million becquerels per square meter.”  Other test sites 30km from the plant, “showed radiation exceeding 1.48 million becquerels per square meter.”

At 4:10 AM, Sunday, 19 June 2011, the Cooper Nuclear Power Plant near Brownsville, NE. declared an “Unusual Event” due to rising flood waters along the Missouri River.  (NRC # ?46969) 1

The Ft. Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant declared an “Unusual Event” on 06 June 2011,  due to rising flood waters.  (NRC # 46929) This plant is located about 18 miles north of Omaha, an urban population area of some 800,000 people.  It is currently in “Cold Shutdown” with no production of electricity.  It was shut down in April for refueling and never restarted due to Missouri River flood conditions.  The reactor is reported to be at 200 degrees with only normal atmospheric pressure.  This is a Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR).

The Cooper Plant is in service and operating at or near 100% capacity.  It has not shut down due to the rising flood waters.  Cooper is a Boiling Water Reactor, manufactured by General Electric (BWR-4) with a Mark I Containment System.  Sound familiar?  Think “Fukushima”.