Louisiana officials: Parts of coastline still heavily oiled
More than eight months after an oil rig explosion launched the biggest oil disaster in U.S. history, Louisiana officials say they’re still finding thick layers of oil along parts of the state’s coastline.
“Every day, this shoreline is moving inland,” lessening flood protection for residents, Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said.
On Friday, Robert Barham, secretary of Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, joined Nungesser on a tour of portion of Louisiana’s coastline still heavily oiled by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, according to a statement from the wildlife and fisheries department.
“It has been eight months since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion, and five months since the well was capped. While workers along the coast dedicated themselves to cleaning up our shores there is still so much to be done,” Barham said in the statement.
During a walking tour of an area called Bay Jimmy, Nungesser said oil can be seen from a distance.
“When the tide is out … you can see thick oil onto the water for 30, 40 feet out,” the parish president said. “There’s been no mechanism to clean that up thus far.” Read more…
Why Americans are so angry
By Linda Feldmann, / Staff writer
posted March 8, 2010 at 3:46 pm EST
Heather Gass always felt she had to suppress her conservative views, living as she did in the liberal San Francisco Bay area. A year ago that all changed.
CNBC financial reporter Rick Santelli had just blasted the Obama administration’s plan to help homeowners facing foreclosure, and called for a “tea party” protest in Chicago. The idea caught fire around the country, and soon Ms. Gass, a 40-something real estate agent, was organizing weekly street-corner demonstrations in her hometown of Orinda, Calif.
Her focus was fiscal discipline, aimed not just at the $75 billion mortgage bailout but also the administration’s $787 billion stimulus package and President Obama’s budget. She remembers her first signs well: “Stop printing money” and “China owns us.” By Congress’s summer recess, when opposition to Mr. Obama’s healthcare plan burst forth, she had 100 people protesting on street corners, she says.
Fast-forward to February 2010. Gass is still out there every Friday, her 6-year-old son in tow. Political operatives are calling her up for advice. Her roster of influential tea party activists – “Heather’s list,” as local politicos call it – is creating buzz. “We’re not dangerous,” says Gass. “We’re your neighbors. But we’ve been underground. We’re not underground anymore.”
Gass says she’s beyond anger over the direction of the country and is in “action mode.” Whatever it’s called, that intensity of feeling – the passion that led her to travel last month to the Tea Party Convention in Nashville and that drives her to tears when she worries out loud about the America her son’s generation will inherit – is unmistakable. Read more…
Early Cancer Screening Could Cause Millions of Deaths
The Liberty Doctor
Infowars.com
January 9, 2011
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| Despite well-meaning warnings in government propaganda, early detection via full body scanning can pose a greater risk to radiation-borne cancers. | |
My early training was in biochemistry. I did several years of rotations through the department at MD Anderson that did human testing and development of new chemotherapeutic agents such nucleoside analogs. This department is called “Developmental Therapeutics”.
Part of our interdepartmental philosophy was to have brainstorming meetings with premiere researchers and clinicians from all over the world almost every day. One of the things that all these fathers and mothers of the chemotherapeutic industry agreed on was a particular “Cancer Model.” The model was essentially that cancer arises when cells get deranged by having their genetic programming changed in expression (covering and uncovering areas on the genes) or from actual mutation of the code and in some cases modification of the code by viruses (plasmid injection).
Most agreed that every man, woman and child under this model would develop cancers somewhere in their bodies every year several times (but they normally go away). Fortunately, the most common thing that happens to a cell when it is modified is for it to die (rather than it losing its inhibition to grow greedily into its neighbors and stimulate capillaries to support it and become a malignancy). Most mutations are non-viable. In addition, our cells have very aggressive repair mechanisms that fix transcription errors on a genetic level. In the event that the error is not fixed and some cells do grow, the immune system recognizes the cells as foreign and kills them.
My concern is that early detection of cancer at the cellular level will have us aggressively looking for the location of these early cancers. The main tool for finding early cancer location when you don’t know if it is in the lung, liver, colon, prostate, mouth or wherever is full body scanning. If you check out background radiation experience and compare it to other radiation experience you will find (on Wikipedia for example) that most of our exposure, other than background, is occupational or from medical testing and therapy. 75% of our exposure is from CAT scans.
It is very likely that aggressive use of scanning technology will double or triple the incidence of radiation-caused cancers in the diagnostic patient’s future. It is also likely that in cases the cancer cannot be found (it is occult), it is because it has already been destroyed by natural process or has died on its own. People will be encouraged to undergo “preventive regimes” of chemotherapy which also will cause a direct increase in other forms of cancer.
Treasury Five-Year Notes Advance as Bernanke Predicts Slow Growth in Jobs
Treasury five-year notes had the first back-to-back weekly gains since October as U.S. payrolls grew less than forecast and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the labor market’s recovery will be gradual.
Yields on the notes touched the lowest level in two weeks yesterday after Labor Department data showed nonfarm payrolls expanded by 103,000 last month, versus a median forecast of 150,000 in a Bloomberg News survey. The Treasury will sell $66 billion in securities next week in the year’s first note and bond auctions.
“The five-year leads the way up, and it leads the way down,” said Brian Edmonds, head of interest-rates at Cantor Fitzgerald LP in New York, one of central bank’s 18 primary dealers. “The Fed chairman is setting expectations back further and making people aware that there aren’t a lot of quick fixes and it’s not going to turn on a dime.”
The yield on the five-year note fell five basis points yesterday, or 0.05 percentage point, to 1.96 percent, from 2.01 percent on Dec. 31, according to BGCantor Market Data. It touched 1.93 percent, the lowest since Dec. 21. The yield hadn’t declined for more than a single week at a time since Oct. 8.
Benchmark 10-year note yields rose three basis points to 3.32 percent, from 3.29 percent at the end of last week. Two- year note yields were little changed at 0.59 percent. Read more…
THE POWER OF HAARP
THE HAARP SITES ARE LOCATED GLOBALLY WHERE THE RICHEST MINERAL BELTS ARE LOCATED. SUBSURFACE MINERAL EXPLORATION HAS BEEN DONE FROM SATELLITES BY RADIOTOMOGRAPHY THAT IS 100% ACCURATE.
The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) is an ionospheric research program jointly funded by the US Air Force, the US Navy, the University of Alaska and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
Although Russia has accused the US of holding such a type of weapon, a Georgia Green Party leader claimed that Moscow, allegedly possessing similar weapons, caused an earthquake on Georgian territory several years ago.”
I wonder if Wikileaks will have a leak on this…
Global Seed Vault in Depth
About the Seed Vault:
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is designed to safeguard more than 2 billion seeds in case of natural or man-made disaster.
Located on a Norwegian island in the Arctic Ocean near the village of Longyearbyen, the vault is built into permafrost deep inside a mountain. It opened Tuesday, with 75 boxes of seeds.
Norway owns the facility — nicknamed the “Doomsday Vault” — and the Global Crop Diversity Trust is funding the seed collection.
Cary Fowler, the group’s executive director, says the world is losing a significant amount of diversity “on a daily basis.”
“When a crop variety becomes extinct, we lose the ability to use any unique trait that it might have in the future. So if it turns out that one of those crop varieties held the key to resistance to a particular insect pest or disease, or was really heat tolerant and could be used in the future to help us adapt to climate change, then it’s sort of tough luck,” Fowler tells Melissa Block.
The three storage rooms inside the vault are sealed behind air-tight doors and kept at a temperature below zero. Each one can hold about 1.5 million small packages of seeds.
The seeds that are viable for the shortest amount of time — lettuce, for example — can stay healthy for about 50 years, Fowler says.
But at the other extreme, experimental results suggest that other seeds — such as sorghum — could be safely stored in these conditions for nearly 20,000 years.
Monitoring of the seed vault will take place electronically — and no one will work at the site physically on a day-to-day basis.
Fowler says the seed vault’s annual operating cost will be about $150,000.
“We think that’s about the cheapest insurance policy anybody can imagine for the world’s most valuable natural resource,” he says.
The true meaning behind the Seed Vault : Read more…
Food Stamp Usage Hits New High Of 43.2 Million
Ever wonder where all the money for equity inflows came from? Here’s the answer: with all the money saved from participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as foodstamps, which in October hit a brand new record, 43.2 million Americans decided to join in on this “wealth effect” they had been hearing so much about and buy Apple stock. After all 190 hedge funds are doing it: and there is no way that 190 hedge funds can possibly be wrong. As a result, the chart below shows our nation’s pending wealth effect in its full glory. Just think: 43.2 millionaire in waiting. Just consider the guaranteed explosion to money velocity…
Utah’s $1.5 billion cyber-security center under way
CAMP WILLIAMS — Thursday’s groundbreaking for a $1.5 billion National Security Agency data center is being billed as important in the short term for construction jobs and important in the long term for Utah’s reputation as a technology center.
“This will bring 5,000 to 10,000 new jobs during its construction and development phase,” Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said on Wednesday. “Once completed, it will support 100 to 200 permanent high-paid employees.”
- Utah’s NSA spy center will house data, not analysts – Jan. 7, 2011
- Utah firm to work on NSA data center – Sept. 27, 2010
- National Security Agency data center at Camp Williams drawing huge interest in Utah – Jan. 13, 2010
Officially named the Utah Data Center, the facility’s role in aggregating and verifying dizzying volumes of data for the intelligence community has already earned it the nickname “Spy Center.” Its really long moniker is the Community Comprehensive National Cyber-security Initiative Data Center — the first in the nation’s intelligence community.
A White House document identifies the Comprehensive National Cyber-security Initiative as addressing “one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation, but one that we as a government or as a country are not adequately prepared to counter.” The document details a number of technology-related countermeasures to the security threat.
Hatch said Utah was chosen for the project over 37 other locations. He characterized the cyber-security center as the “largest military construction project in recent memory.”
Hatch said he promoted Utah’s favorable energy costs, Internet infrastructure, thriving software industry and proximity to the Salt Lake City International Airport in the bid process that ended up with Camp Williams earning the data center.
The Army Corps of Engineers is overseeing the project that is under contract to a joint venture between Big-D Construction in Salt Lake City, U.K.-based Balfour Beatty Construction and DPR Construction out of California.
“This project is going to give an opportunity for an awful lot of Utahns” who have seen construction jobs in Utah drop from 100,000 in 2008 to about 66,000 today, said Rob Moore, president and COO of Big-D and chairman of the Associated General Contractors in Utah. “My subcontractors, suppliers and vendors are very appreciative of the work that will be available on this project.”
Grading work is already under way for the complex, which is scheduled to include 100,000 square feet for the data center and 900,000 square feet for technical support and administrative space. The center is designed to be capable of generating all of its own power through backup electrical generators and will have both fuel and water storage. Construction is designed to achieve environmentally significant LEED Silver certification.
“It is so unique and so intensive,” Hatch said. “This will establish our state as one of the leading states for technology.”
One in four Germans wants microchip under skin: Poll
Raw Story | It sounds like something from a sci-fi film, but one in four Germans would be happy to have a microchip implanted in their body if they derived concrete benefits from it, a poll Monday showed.
The survey, by German IT industry lobby group BITKOM, was intended to show how the division between real life and the virtual world is increasingly coming down, one of the main themes of the CeBIT trade fair that kicks off Tuesday.
In all, 23 percent of around 1,000 respondents in the survey said they would be prepared to have a chip inserted under their skin “for certain benefits.”
Around one in six (16 percent) said they would wear an implant to allow emergency services to rescue them more quickly in the event of a fire or accident.
And five percent of people said they would be prepared to have an implant to make their shopping go more smoothly.
But 72 percent said they would not “under any circumstances” allow electronics in their body.
The results appeared to surprise even the high-tech sector.
“This is of course an extreme example of how far people can imagine networks going,” said BITKOM chief August-Wilhelm Scheer.
The CeBIT, the world’s biggest high-tech fair, throws its doors open to the public on Tuesday, with Spain, the current EU president, this year’s guest of honour.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero were due to speak later Monday in an official opening ceremony before touring the exhibition early Tuesday.
A total of 4,157 firms from 68 countries are to unveil their latest gadgets, a decline of three percent on last year as many high-tech firms stay away amid strong competition from other events.
Bumblebee Species Decline 96 Percent
New research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found that another vitally important pollinator, the bumblebee, is in serious decline. According to the figures, there has been a shocking 96 percent decline in four major species of the bumblebee, and an up to 87 percent decrease in their overall geographic coverage.
“We provide incontrovertible evidence that multiple Bombus species have experienced sharp population declines at the national level,” explained researchers in their report. And in a phone interview with Reuters, study author Sydney Cameron from the University of Illinois, Urbana, explained that these bumblebee species are “one of the most important pollinators of native plants.”
Over the course of three years, the research team evaluated 382 different sites in 40 states, and mulled data from over 73,000 museum records. They determined that bumblebees are needed to pollinate various fruits and vegetables, and that they accomplish this task in a very unique way.
“The 50 species (of bumblebees) in the United States are traditionally associated with prairies and with high alpine vegetations,” said Cameron. “Just as important — they land on a flower and they have this behavior called buzz pollination that enables them to cause pollen to fly off the flower.”
In other words, without bumblebees and the special way in which they pollinate, entire segments of agriculture are threatened with extinction. Like honeybees and bats, bumblebees are vital in order to grow food. Without them, humanity will starve to death.
Misleadingly, many experts largely blame various pathogens, fungi and viruses for the die-offs of these pollinators, while giving only a brief mention — if any at all — to the toxic pesticides and herbicides that are increasingly being linked to things like colony collapse disorder (CCD), the name given to the mass bee die-off phenomenon. A recently leaked report, for instance, has revealed that a popular Bayer herbicide is responsible for killing off bees.
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