Trends That Will Affect Your Future …

i have posted several articles here in regards to this phenomena - this should not be a mystery to those who read this thread...that the Bee colony collapse...once limited to Europe and America... is now being seen in Asia and Africa

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In some ways it seems such a small story. Except for the British paper The Independent it hardly gets any mainstream media coverage. After all, it's just little bees. But if this continues the food crisis we presently face will be dwarfed by the crisis arising from the demise of the bees. Food production will fall drastically.


Decline of honey bees now a global phenomenon, says United Nations



By Michael McCarthy, Environmental Editor -
Thursday, 10 March 2011

The mysterious collapse of honey-bee colonies is becoming a global phenomenon, scientists working for the United Nations have revealed.

Declines in managed bee colonies, seen increasingly in Europe and the US in the past decade, are also now being observed in China and Japan and there are the first signs of African collapses from Egypt, according to the report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The authors, who include some of the world's leading honey-bee experts, issue a stark warning about the disappearance of bees, which are increasingly important as crop pollinators around the globe. Without profound changes to the way human beings manage the planet, they say, declines in pollinators needed to feed a growing global population are likely to continue. The scientists warn that a number of factors may now be coming together to hit bee colonies around the world, ranging from declines in flowering plants and the use of damaging insecticides, to the worldwide spread of pests and air pollution. They call for farmers and landowners to be offered incentives to restore pollinator-friendly habitats, including key flowering plants near crop-producing fields and stress that more care needs to be taken in the choice, timing and application of insecticides and other chemicals. While managed hives can be moved out of harm's way, "wild populations (of pollinators) are completely vulnerable", says the report.

"The way humanity manages or mismanages its nature-based assets, including pollinators, will in part define our collective future in the 21st century," said Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director.

"The fact is that of the 100 crop species that provide 90 per cent of the world's food, over 70 are pollinated by bees.

"Human beings have fabricated the illusion that in the 21st century they have the technological prowess to be independent of nature.

"Bees underline the reality that we are more, not less, dependent on nature's services in a world of close to seven billion people."

Declines in bee colonies date back to the mid 1960s in Europe, but have accelerated since 1998, while in North America, losses of colonies since 2004 have left the continent with fewer managed pollinators than at any time in the past 50 years, says the report.

Now Chinese beekeepers have recently "faced several inexplicable and complex symptoms of colony losses in both species", the report says. And it has been reported elsewhere that some Chinese farmers have had to resort to pollinating fruit trees by hand because of the lack of insects.

Furthermore, a quarter of beekeepers in Japan "have recently been confronted with sudden losses of their bee colonies", while in Africa, beekeepers along the Egyptian Nile have been reporting signs of "colony collapse disorder" – although to date there are no other confirmed reports from the rest of the continent.

The report lists a number of factors which may be coming together to cause the decline and they include:

* Habitat degradation, including the loss of flowering plant species that provide food for bees;

* Some insecticides, including the so-called "systemic" insecticides which can migrate to the entire plant as it grows and be taken in by bees in nectar and pollen;

* Parasites and pests, such as the well-known Varroa mite;

* Air pollution, which may be interfering with the ability of bees to find flowering plants and thus food – scents that could travel more than 800 metres in the 1800s now reach less than 200 metres from a plant.

"The transformation of the countryside and rural areas in the past half-century or so has triggered a decline in wild-living bees and other pollinators," said one of the lead authors, Dr Peter Neumann of the Swiss Bee Research Centre.

"Society is increasingly investing in 'industrial-scale' hives and managed colonies to make up the shortfall and going so far as to truck bees around to farms and fields in order to maintain our food supplies.

"A variety of factors are making these man-made colonies vulnerable to decline and collapse. We need to get smarter about how we manage these hives, but perhaps more importantly, we need to better manage the landscape beyond, in order to recover wild bee populations."

Source:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/decline-of-honey-bees-now-a-global-phenomenon-says-united-nations-2237541.html

The Illness Profit System at work; our healthcare model just gets more Orwellian year by year.




How Does the Drug Industry Get Away with Broadcasting Those Deceptive Ads?


By David Rosen, AlterNet
Posted on March 12, 2011, Printed on March 13, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/149909/

We’ve all seen them in newspapers and magazines, on TV and the Internet -- cheerful people in glossy, picturesque ads claiming that by taking a little magic prescription pill their lives were immeasurably improved.

As the TV ad fades, a cautionary voice quietly recites a host of “risk factors,” potentially catastrophic consequences that could result from taking the magical pill. One can’t but wonder if the cure is worse than the ailment.

A well-known ad features Dr. Robert Jarvik, a pioneer in the development of the artificial heart, pitching Pfizer’s cholesterol drug Lipitor. He comes across as a trusted expert with your best interest at heart, but viewers would not know that he is neither a cardiologist, nor licensed to practice medicine. (Lipitor’s 2009 sales were $5.4 billion.)

Another ad features Dorothy Hamill, the Olympic skating champion, skating effortlessly while promoting Merck's arthritis drug, Vioxx. The viewer would not know that Merck had for years knowingly withheld incriminating research from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The data would have barred the drug’s commercial release and may have saved the lives of an estimated 27,000 people who suffered heart attacks and sudden cardiac deaths after taking it. After Merck made billions, the drug was taken off the market.

These are two of a never-ending barrage of pharmaceutical advertisements known as direct-to-consumer (DTC) ads that bombard Americans day in and day out. Such ads are permitted only in the U.S. and New Zealand. They are intended to provoke an individual consumer to request a specific prescription drug from their doctor. In 2009, the pharmaceutical industry spent an estimated $4.5 billion on such advertising. Total 2007 U.S. pharma industry sales were $315 billion.

DTC ads give viewers the illusion that they can and should be their own doctor; they are designed to make viewers believe that they can and should prescribe for themselves. By fostering a false sense of demand for prescription-required drugs, DTC drug ads undermine the real knowledge that doctors should have when, in consultation with the patient, a treatment plan is established.

Next time you see one of these ads, make sure you are aware of the detailed risk factors that are either buried at the bottom of the page or mentioned at the commercial’s end. These risks tell only half the story of the drug’s real potential harm; the other half usually doesn’t get told: how the pharmaceutical industry is harming the health of Americans.

* * *

Federal regulation of drugs was the result of public outrage over scandals exposed by early-20th-century muckrakers, most notably Upton Sinclair, who revealed widespread adulterated food products and poisonous patent medicines. This led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. In 1938, Congress passed the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act that gave the FDA authority over drug company marketing materials. In 1962, FDA authority was further extended to regulate advertisements of prescription drugs.

However, things began to change in the 1980s. In 1981, Merck published the first DTC ad for a prescription drug, Pneumovax, in Reader’s Digest. It was followed by numerous print ads, and in 1983, the first television prescription drug ad for Boots Pharmaceutical’s Rufen, prescription strength ibuprofen.

Over the next decade-plus, the pharmaceutical industry, emboldened by the Reagan-era belief in “limited government,” steadily pushed to deregulate DTC ads. In 1997, the FDA loosened advertising rules leading to an enormous increase in DTC ad spending. For example, in 1996, less then $1 billion ($985 million) was spent on DTC ads out of the industry’s total promotional spending of $11.4 billion; in 2005, total pharma promotional spending nearly tripled to $29.9 billion and the amount spent on DTC ads quadrupled to $4.2 billion.

According to an invaluable 2007 study led by Dominick Frosch, “Creating Demand for Prescription Drugs,” a typical American television viewer can expect to spend 16 hours per year watching DTC drug commercials. This does not include the ads on radio, newspapers and magazines, billboards and the Internet. DTC ads typically focus on a handful of chronic conditions like depression, erectile dysfunction and insomnia.

Nevertheless, a perfect target for pharmaceutical intervention is America’s children and youth, and no condition has been more aggressively pursued than Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Shire introduced Vyvanse in 2007 to replace its old blockbuster drug, Adderall XR, which had just lost its patent protection. The drug is targeted at children 6 to 12 years old, so the first DTC ads were placed in women’s magazines.

Some raised concern that the DTC ads violated the UN’s 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, but the FDA brushed it off. The drug did include the following ominous warming: “MISUSE OF AMPHETAMINE MAY CAUSE SUDDEN DEATH AND SERIOUS CARDIOVASCULAR ADVERSE EVENTS.” Gone unstated in the DTC ads was the fact that Vyvanse is chemically based on methamphetamine, a Schedule II controlled substance like methadone, morphine and oxycodone. (Vyvanse’s 2009 sales were $660,000.)

Scheming pharma execs and ad agency hacks are not above inventing an illness to sell a new drug. A couple of years ago, Eli Lilly discovered a "new" female condition, Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD), to promote Sarafem, a form of Prozac. It was the first and only FDA-approved prescription drug to treat a woman’s menstrual cycle. Menstruation can be painful, and for some women even debilitating. Lilly exploited this, turning one of nature’s most primal bodily functions into a "disorder." The ad promised women that the drug would "help you feel more in control."

This new condition was a surprise to the American Psychiatric Association, which did not recognized PMDD as a disorder. It has proved so profitable because it turned a real, bodily experience (with, for many, pain and discomfort) into a disorder that can be cured. A magic capsule could now control an all-too-human condition that is as old as humanity itself, one that facilitates the species’ reproduction. Science had become witchcraft -- and with a hefty profit.

* * *

A DTC drug ad is designed to address two pharmaceutical industry concerns. First, it is intended to promote both new and established prescription drugs. Second, it is used to offset a drug’s competitive challenge from a generic drug.

Two questions determine a DTC drug ad’s effectiveness. First, does it work in terms of medical factors; i.e., does it help a person effectively address a medical condition? And, second, does it work as measured in corporate terms; i.e., does it get consumers to ask their doctors about the drug, get a prescription and get a sale?

While an answer to the first question remains unresolved, the answer is clear with regard to the second question. In 2010, Thomson Reuters polled some 3,000 Americans about drug advertising. The study’s principal findings were revealing:

* Nearly two-thirds of respondents say they've seen, heard or received some kind of advertising for a prescription drug in the last six months.
* One-third of respondents say they talked to their doctor about a drug and got a prescription for it.
* Three-fifths of respondents said their doctor was the principal source for information about the prescription drug.

Not surprising, given the way people watch television, the study also found that many people didn’t pay much attention to the ads. Dr. Ray Fabius, chief medical officer for Thomson Reuters' health care and science business unit, noted "at least one-third of people aren't hearing them or tune them out."

Clearly, effectiveness of DTC ads is in the eyes of the beholder, whether measured against medical or business criteria. The pharma industry’s principal lobbying group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), supports DTCs, since “getting that information to patients and consumers is the goal of direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising about prescription medicines.”

And DTCs seem effective, particularly in generating new sales. According to a Kaiser study, Americans in 1992 got an average of seven prescriptions per year; however, in 2008, the average number of prescriptions nearly doubled to 12 prescriptions a year. Either people have gotten a lot sicker or DTC ads are doing their job. The report notes, DTCs have “added about $180 billion to our medical spending.”

Direct-to-consumer drug ads are ostensibly educational or informational messages designed to help Americans address critical medical issues. While the jury is out as to their medical efficacy, the ads' contribution to the bottom line is undeniable. The question that remains unanswered is how much DTC ads are harming the health of Americans.

Source;
http://www.alternet.org/media/149909/how_does_the_drug_industry_get_away_with_broadcasting_those_deceptive_ads?page=entire

This increasingly looks like the real deal. If it is we have a game changer.

Cold Fusion Steams Ahead at World's Oldest University

HANK MILLS trans. by SEPP HASS - Pure energy Systems

The saga of Andrea Rossi's Nickel-Hydrogen Cold Fusion technology is only accelerating and not slowing down. Physicists are warming up to the technology, new calorimeter tests are forthcoming, media announcements are on the way, and a year long testing program at the University of Bologna has started. With a demonstration of the one megawatt system in the USA in the works (before it is shipped to Europe) and the opening of the one megawatt plant in Greece by late this October things are only going to keep moving faster.

Let's get down to business. We have some ground to cover!

One Year Research and Development Program

Andrea Rossi has announced a one year program is starting at the University of Bologna to study his cold fusion (LENR) technology. Apparently, this is happening as we speak. Here is the quote from his blog...read more...
[url]http://pesn.com/2011/03/07/9501782_Cold_Fusion_Steams_Ahead_at_Worlds_Oldest_ University/[/url]


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt2JqEmaUGc&feature=player_embedded

And right on cue - Here is the Hero to take Us away from Nuclear Power as We are using It today.



And then Suddenly...

This piece is polemic, but it is also correct, which is why I am running it. Longtime readers know I am unutterably opposed to the nuclear power industry. My perception of this power source was formed initially by the final Congressional testimony of Admiral Hyman Rickover, the father of the American nuclear naval fleet. He requested the opportunity to testify before Congress because he wanted to put on the record his conviction that the civilian nuclear power industry was a disaster waiting to happen. My views were subsequently powerfully reinforced by Three Mile Island, and my visit to Chernobyl, just months after that disaster occurred, and my experience at seeing the abandoned city of Pripyat.

The nuclear power industry was created during the cold war as a way of assuring that there would be a technological base of scientists, engineers, and technicians skilled in nuclear technology that would be available to the military, and to provide corporations involved with military nuclear power with a civilian profit making vector of activity. From the beginning, although it was not admitted, it was understood that nuclear power held the potential for disasters of a kind never before seen in nature -- although this was concealed from the public, which was shown happy images of nuclear fantasy. That is why from the get go the industry was indemnified by the government. When nuclear power goes bad it goes bad in a unique and horrifying way. No one will live in Pripyat ever again, period. Full stop. A part of the Ukraine has been blighted forever. That Obama is supporting the resurrection of nuclear power is just another of those nasty little compromises in which he seems to specialize.

Tokyo Electric to Build US Nuclear Plants: The No BS Info on Japan's Disastrous Nuclear Operators


Texas nuclear plants planned by Tokyo Electric. (Image: NINA)

Monday 14 March 2011

I need to speak to you, not as a reporter, but in my former capacity as lead investigator in several government nuclear plant fraud and racketeering investigations.

I don't know the law in Japan, so I can't tell you if Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) can plead insanity to the homicides about to happen.

But what will Obama plead? The administration, just months ago, asked Congress to provide a $4 billion loan guarantee for two new nuclear reactors to be built and operated on the Gulf Coast of Texas - by TEPCO and local partners. As if the Gulf hasn't suffered enough. Here are the facts about TEPCO and the industry you haven't heard on CNN:

The failure of emergency systems at Japan's nuclear plants comes as no surprise to those of us who have worked in the field.

Nuclear plants the world over must be certified for what is called "SQ" or "Seismic Qualification." That is, the owners swear that all components are designed for the maximum conceivable shaking event, be it from an earthquake or an exploding Christmas card from al-Qaeda.

The most inexpensive way to meet your SQ is to lie. The industry does it all the time. The government team I worked with caught them once, in 1988, at the Shoreham plant in New York. Correcting the SQ problem at Shoreham would have cost a cool billion, so engineers were told to change the tests from "failed" to "passed."

The company that put in the false safety report? Stone & Webster, now the nuclear unit of Shaw Construction, which will work with TEPCO to build the Texas plant. Lord help us.

There's more.

Last night, I heard CNN reporters repeat the official line that the tsunami disabled the pumps needed to cool the reactors, implying that water unexpectedly got into the diesel generators that run the pumps.

These safety backup systems are the "EDGs" in nuke-speak: Emergency Diesel Generators. That they didn't work in an emergency is like a fire department telling us they couldn't save a building because "it was on fire."

What dim bulbs designed this system? One of the reactors dancing with death at Fukushima Station 1 was built by Toshiba. Toshiba was also an architect of the emergency diesel system.

Now be afraid. Obama's $4 billion bailout in the making is called the South Texas Project. It's been sold as a red-white-and-blue way to make power domestically with a reactor from Westinghouse, a great American brand. However, the reactor will be made substantially in Japan by the company that bought the US brand name, Westinghouse - Toshiba.

I once had a Toshiba computer. I only had to send it in once for warranty work. However, it's kind of hard to mail back a reactor with the warranty slip inside the box if the fuel rods are melted and sinking halfway to the earth's core.

TEPCO and Toshiba don't know what my son learned in eighth grade science class: tsunamis follow Pacific Rim earthquakes. So, these companies are real stupid, eh? Maybe. More likely is that the diesels and related systems wouldn't have worked on a fine, dry afternoon.

Back in the day, when we checked the emergency backup diesels in America, a mind-blowing number flunked. At the New York nuclear plant, for example, the builders swore under oath that their three diesel engines were ready for an emergency. They'd been tested. The tests were faked; the diesels run for just a short time at low speed. When the diesels were put through a real test under emergency-like conditions, the crankshaft on the first one snapped in about an hour, then the second and third. We nicknamed the diesels, "Snap, Crackle and Pop."

The forces against independent journalism are growing. Help Truthout keep up the fight against ignorance and regression! Support us here.

(Note: Moments after I wrote that sentence, word came that two of three diesels failed at the Tokai Station as well.)

In the US, we supposedly fixed our diesels after much complaining by the industry. But in Japan, no one tells TEPCO to do anything the Emperor of Electricity doesn't want to do.

I get lots of confidential notes from nuclear industry insiders. One engineer, a big name in the field, is especially concerned that Obama waved the come-hither check to Toshiba and TEPCO to lure them to America. The US has a long history of whistleblowers willing to put themselves on the line to save the public. In our racketeering case in New York, the government only found out about the seismic test fraud because two courageous engineers, Gordon Dick and John Daly, gave our team the documentary evidence.

In Japan, it's simply not done. The culture does not allow the salary men, who work all their lives for one company, to drop the dime.

Not that US law is a wondrous shield: both engineers in the New York case were fired and blacklisted by the industry. Nevertheless, the government (local, state, federal) brought civil racketeering charges against the builders. The jury didn't buy the corporation's excuses and, in the end, the plant was, thankfully, dismantled.

Am I on some kind of xenophobic anti-Nippon crusade? No. In fact, I'm far more frightened by the American operators in the South Texas nuclear project, especially Shaw. Stone & Webster, now the Shaw nuclear division, was also the firm that conspired to fake the EDG tests in New York . (The company's other exploits have been exposed by their former consultant, John Perkins, in his book, "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.") If the planet wants to shiver, consider this: Toshiba and Shaw have recently signed a deal to become worldwide partners in the construction of nuclear stations.

The other characters involved at the South Texas Plant that Obama is backing should also give you the willies. But as I'm in the middle of investigating the American partners, I'll save that for another day.

So, if we turned to America's own nuclear contractors, would we be safe? Well, two of the melting Japanese reactors, including the one whose building blew sky high, were built by General Electric of the Good Old US of A.

After Texas, you're next. The Obama administration is planning a total of $56 billion in loans for nuclear reactors all over America.

And now, the homicides:

CNN is only interested in body counts, how many workers burnt by radiation, swept away or lost in the explosion. These plants are now releasing radioactive steam into the atmosphere. Be skeptical about the statements that the "levels are not dangerous." These are the same people who said these meltdowns could never happen. Over years, not days, there may be a thousand people, two thousand, ten thousand who will suffer from cancers induced by this radiation.

In my New York investigation, I had the unhappy job of totaling up post-meltdown "morbidity" rates for the county government. It would be irresponsible for me to estimate the number of cancer deaths that will occur from these releases without further information; but it is just plain criminal for the TEPCO shoguns to say that these releases are not dangerous.

Indeed, the fact that residents near the Japanese nuclear plants were not issued iodine pills to keep at the ready shows TEPCO doesn't care who lives and who dies, whether in Japan or the USA. The carcinogenic isotopes that are released at Fukushima are already floating to Seattle with effects we simply cannot measure.

Heaven help us. Because Obama won't.

Source;
http://www.truth-out.org/tokyo-electric-build-us-nuclear-plants-the-no-bs-info-japans-disastrous-nuclear-operators68457

There are a number of things about which I disagree with Ralph Nader, but this assessment is fact based, and accurate. I chose it from more scientific papers because it had all the relevant data in one report.



Nuclear Nightmare

Friday, March 18. 2011

The unfolding multiple nuclear reactor catastrophe in Japan is prompting overdue attention to the 104 nuclear plants in the United States—many of them aging, many of them near earthquake faults, some on the west coast exposed to potential tsunamis.

Nuclear power plants boil water to produce steam to turn turbines that generate electricity. Nuclear power’s overly complex fuel cycle begins with uranium mines and ends with deadly radioactive wastes for which there still are no permanent storage facilities to contain them for tens of thousands of years.

Atomic power plants generate 20 percent of the nation’s electricity. Over forty years ago, the industry’s promoter and regulator, the Atomic Energy Commission estimated that a full nuclear meltdown could contaminate an area “the size of Pennsylvania” and cause massive casualties. You, the taxpayers, have heavily subsidized nuclear power research, development, and promotion from day one with tens of billions of dollars.

Because of many costs, perils, close calls at various reactors, and the partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979, there has not been a nuclear power plant built in the United States since 1974.

Now the industry is coming back “on your back” claiming it will help reduce global warming from fossil fuel emitted greenhouse gases.

Pushed aggressively by President Obama and Energy Secretary Chu, who refuses to meet with longtime nuclear industry critics, here is what “on your back” means:

1. Wall Street will not finance new nuclear plants without a 100% taxpayer loan guarantee. Too risky. That’s a lot of guarantee given that new nukes cost $12 billion each, assuming no mishaps. Obama and the Congress are OK with that arrangement.

2. Nuclear power is uninsurable in the private insurance market—too risky. Under the Price-Anderson Act, taxpayers pay the greatest cost of a meltdown’s devastation.

3. Nuclear power plants and transports of radioactive wastes are a national security nightmare for the Department of Homeland Security. Imagine the target that thousands of vulnerable spent fuel rods present for sabotage.

4. Guess who pays for whatever final waste repositories are licensed? You the taxpayer and your descendants as far as your gene line persists. Huge decommissioning costs, at the end of a nuclear plant’s existence come from the ratepayers’ pockets.

5. Nuclear plant disasters present impossible evacuation burdens for those living anywhere near a plant, especially if time is short.

Imagine evacuating the long-troubled Indian Point plants 26 miles north of New York City. Workers in that region have a hard enough time evacuating their places of employment during 5 pm rush hour. That’s one reason Secretary of State Clinton (in her time as Senator of New York) and Governor Andrew Cuomo called for the shutdown of Indian Point.

6. Nuclear power is both uneconomical and unnecessary. It can’t compete against energy conservation, including cogeneration, windpower and ever more efficient, quicker, safer, renewable forms of providing electricity. Amory Lovins argues this point convincingly (see RMI.org). Physicist Lovins asserts that nuclear power “will reduce and retard climate protection.” His reasoning: shifting the tens of billions invested in nuclear power to efficiency and renewables reduce far more carbon per dollar (http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/whynewnukesareriskyfcts.pdf). The country should move deliberately to shutdown nuclear plants, starting with the aging and seismically threatened reactors. Peter Bradford, a former Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) commissioner has also made a compelling case against nuclear power on economic and safety grounds (http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/whynewnukesareriskyfcts.pdf).

There is far more for ratepayers, taxpayers and families near nuclear plants to find out. Here’s how you can start:

1. Demand public hearings in your communities where there is a nuke, sponsored either by your member of Congress or the NRC, to put the facts, risks and evacuation plans on the table. Insist that the critics as well as the proponents testify and cross-examine each other in front of you and the media.

2. If you call yourself conservative, ask why nuclear power requires such huge amounts of your tax dollars and guarantees and can’t buy adequate private insurance. If you have a small business that can’t buy insurance because what you do is too risky, you don’t stay in business.

3. If you are an environmentalist, ask why nuclear power isn’t required to meet a cost-efficient market test against investments in energy conservation and renewables.

4. If you understand traffic congestion, ask for an actual real life evacuation drill for those living and working 10 miles around the plant (some scientists think it should be at least 25 miles) and watch the hemming and hawing from proponents of nuclear power.

The people in northern Japan may lose their land, homes, relatives, and friends as a result of a dangerous technology designed simply to boil water. There are better ways to generate steam.

Like the troubled Japanese nuclear plants, the Indian Point plants and the four plants at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon in southern California rest near earthquake faults. The seismologists concur that there is a 94% chance of a big earthquake in California within the next thirty years. Obama, Chu and the powerful nuke industry must not be allowed to force the American people to play Russian Roulette!

Source;
http://www.nader.org/index.php?/archives/2251-Nuclear-Nightmare.html

What Benjamin Franklin began is now winding down, a further testament to our switch to electronic communications. I think it is pretty clear we are going to five day service, and the truth is... who cares.



U.S. Postal Service announces sweeping job cuts, district office closures

By Lisa Rein, Thursday, March 24, 2011

The U.S. Postal Service announced Thursday that it will reduce its workforce with layoffs and offers of buyouts and will close seven district offices from New England to New Mexico to help address record losses.

The reorganization, designed to eliminate 7,500 administrative, executive and postmaster jobs this year, came as a commission that is evaluating the Postal Service’s plan to eliminate Saturday delivery concluded that one in four letters would be delayed by not just one but by two days.

The independent Postal Regulatory Commission also said that postal officials underestimated the losses the agency would suffer from handling less mail— and overestimated the cost savings.

Five-day service and a smaller workforce are among the Postal Service’s strategies to become solvent after losses of $8.5 billion in fiscal 2010, the result of declining mail volumes. Projected losses for 2011 are $6.4 billion.

Once buyout decisions aimed at administrative staff are final in April, the agency plans to eliminate the jobs of thousands of postmasters and supervisors, many through layoffs, officials said.

“Nobody did anything wrong, but we’re a victim of the economy and past legislation,” said Anthony Vegliante, the Postal Service’s chief human resources officer and executive vice president. The cuts are expected to save $750 million a year.

District offices that handle managerial work will close in Columbus, Ohio; Albuquerque; Billings, Mont.; Macon, Ga.; Providence, R.I.; Troy, Mich.; and Carol Stream, Ill., the Postal Service said.

The closures will pave the way for the agency to close up to 2,000 local post offices throughout the next two years, a plan announced in January.

Vegliante said he expects about 3,000 administrators to take the buyouts, which will offer $20,000 to employees over age 50 with at least 20 years of service, or any age with at least 25 years of service. Layoffs will then be used to help reach the 7,500 goal, he said, though he would not commit to a number.

The Postal Service has eliminated 105,000 full-time positions in the last two years, among them clerks, plant workers and mail handlers. Those cuts were made mostly through attrition and early retirements.

The Postal Service announced plans for five-day service in 2009, although Congress, which must approve the change, has showed little interest in pursuing it.

Among the findings of the 211-page opinion from the Postal Regulatory Commission:

• Five-day service would delay by two days delivery of 25 percent of first class and priority mail.

• The Postal Service did not adequately evaluate the effect of five-day service on rural areas.

• While the Postal Service estimated net savings from the reduced service at $3.1 billion, the commission’s estimate is closer to $1.7 billion.

• Lost revenue from mail volume declines from the service cuts would be $600 million a year, not the $200 million the Postal Services estimates.

Margaret Cigno, the regulatory commission’s chief analyst, said many letters normally delivered on Saturday would not arrive until Tuesday because Saturday mail would no longer be transported and processed over the weekend. “Saturday would not just end delivery, but mail would not go out,” she said.

Postal officials said they would continue supporting the plan.

“I’m comfortable that people did their due diligence,” Vegliante said, calling five-day service “an inevitable question.”

“Whether it’s tomorrow or 10 years from now, sooner or later it’s got to be dealt with.”

Source;
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/us-postal-service-announces-sweeping-job-cuts-district-office-closures/2011/03/24/ABu3EpRB_story.html

Note ~ for the last few days it has been raining buckets here in the greater Seattle area. Just this afternoon, asi was driving past a local farming pasture, i glanced over and observed some cows who were grazing seeming obvious to the pouring rain ~ i couldn't help wondering about the accuracy of the following news report?



Radiation Traces Found in U.S. Milk
By Stephen Power

March 30, 2011

The U.S. government said Wednesday that traces of radiation have been found in milk in Washington state, but said the amounts are far too low to trigger any public-health concern.

The Environmental Protection Agency said a March 25 sample of milk produced in the Spokane, Wash., area contained a 0.8 pico curies per literlevel of iodine-131, which it said was less than one five-thousandth of the safety safety guideline set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The EPA said it increased monitoring after radiation leaked from Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. It expects more such findings in coming days, but in amounts "far below levels of public-health concern, including for infants and children."

Iodine-131 has a half-life of about eight days, meaning levels should fade quickly. "These findings are a minuscule amount compared to what people experience every day," the agency said.

For example, a person would be exposed to low levels of radiation on a round trip cross country flight, watching television, and even from construction materials," Patricia Hansen, an FDA senior scientist, said in a written statement distributed by the EPA late Wednesday.

The FDA last week said it will block imports of Japanese milk products and certain other foods produced in the area around the Fukushima nuclear facility because of concerns about radiation contamination.

An EPA spokesman said that while the agency isn't certain that the iodine-131 found in the sampled milk came from Fukushima, its discovery is "consistent with" what the agency knows has been released so far from the damaged nuclear reactors there.

"We know we don't normally see iodine-131 in milk. We know there's been an incident where it's been released," the spokesman said. "And now we're seeing it."

Dairy industry officials stressed that products remained safe.

"Consumer safety is the highest priority for dairy farmers and dairy foods companies, and today's report by EPA and FDA confirms that our nation's dairy products continue to be safe to eat and drink," said Rob Vandenheuvel, general manager of the Ontario, Calif.-based Milk Producers Council, which represents dairies in Southern and Central California. "We recognize the concerns of our consumers, and the U.S. dairy industry will continue to work closely with federal and state government agencies to ensure that we maintain a safe milk supply."

Source;
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703806304576233221749626458.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

comments: giovonni

The issue of the bees does not merit the attention of mainstream media; they are too focused on Donald Trump's verbal farts for bees to command their attention.

But of the 100 crops humanity lives on 70 exist only because bees pollinate them. Both honey and bumble bees are in precipitous decline; if this continues the health or you and your family are going to be catastrophically affected.

However, there are powerful corporate special interests working against humanity's self-interest, and the sheeple are passive, so I don't anticipate a happy outcome.

***********

Government asked to investigate new pesticide link to bee decline

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor

Wednesday, 30 March 2011

The Government is being asked to investigate a possible link between a new generation of pesticides and the decline of honey bees. It is suspected that the chemicals may be impairing the insects' ability to defend themselves against harmful parasites through grooming.

The Environment Secretary, Caroline Spelman, will have to answer a question in the Commons from the former Home Office minister David Hanson about whether the Government will investigate if the effect of neonicotinoids on the grooming behaviour of bees is similar to its effect on termites.

The pesticides, neonicotinoids, made by the German agribusiness giant Bayer and rapidly spreading in use, are known to be fatal to termites by damaging their ability to groom themselves and thus remove the spores of harmful fungi.

In a leaflet promoting an anti-termite insecticide, Premise 200SC, sold in Asia, the company says it is the direct effect on the insects' grooming abilities of the neonicotinoid active ingredient, imidacloprid, which eventually kills them. Now bee campaigners in Britain want to know if this mechanism could also be at work on European honey bees and other pollinating insects which are rapidly declining in numbers.

"Grooming protects insects from all kinds of pests and viruses, while helping to maintain general health and functioning," Ms Williams said yesterday. "A defence for honey bees against the varroa mite [a parasite causing colonies to decline] is to groom the mites away from the body. Do we know for sure that neonicotinoids do not hamper the ability of honey bees to deal with varroa?"

Matt Shardlow, chief executive of Buglife, the invertebrate conservation charity, said: "Scientific studies have shown that neonicotinoids significantly reduce the activity of honey bees, and it is highly likely that this would include a reduction in the amount of grooming that they do.

"Hence there is a clear potential mechanism for these pesticides to damage the first line of defence that insects have against disease. Again it seems clear that insecticides are linked to sickness in bees and impairment to pollination services."

The possibility fits in with what has already been discovered about the harmful effects of neonicotinoids – in that bees treated with imidacloprid, which is Bayer's biggest-selling insecticide worth £500m a year in sales to the company – are far more susceptible to disease, even at microscopic doses. This has been shown by two independent studies carried out in the past two years.

In its publicity material for Premise 200SC, Bayer says: "The termites are susceptible to disease caused by micro-organisms or fungi found in soil.

"A principal part of their defence system is their grooming habits, which allow the termites to get rid of the fungal spores before these spores germinate and cause disease or death. Premise 200SC interferes with this natural process by lowering defences to nature's own weaponry."

Dr Julian Little, Bayer's UK spokesman, said: "We do a lot of tests of the effects of insecticides on bees, and impairment of grooming has never shown up."

Specific tests to see whether or not bees' grooming ability was impaired by neonicotinoids had not been carried out, he added.

Source;
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/government-asked-to-investigate-new-pesticide-link-to-bee-decline-2256737.html

This is like one of those cartoons where it says go no further bridge out, and the characters speed up.

***********

The Mellon Doctrine


By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: March 31, 2011

“Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate.” That, according to Herbert Hoover, was the advice he received from Andrew Mellon, the Treasury secretary, as America plunged into depression. To be fair, there’s some question about whether Mellon actually said that; all we have is Hoover’s version, written many years later.

But one thing is clear: Mellon-style liquidationism is now the official doctrine of the G.O.P.

Two weeks ago, Republican staff at the Congressional Joint Economic Committee released a report, “Spend Less, Owe Less, Grow the Economy,” that argued that slashing government spending and employment in the face of a deeply depressed economy would actually create jobs. In part, they invoked the aid of the confidence fairy; more on that in a minute. But the leading argument was pure Mellon.

Here’s the report’s explanation of how layoffs would create jobs: “A smaller government work force increases the available supply of educated, skilled workers for private firms, thus lowering labor costs.” Dropping the euphemisms, what this says is that by increasing unemployment, particularly of “educated, skilled workers” — in case you’re wondering, that mainly means schoolteachers — we can drive down wages, which would encourage hiring.

There is, if you think about it, an immediate logical problem here: Republicans are saying that job destruction leads to lower wages, which leads to job creation. But won’t this job creation lead to higher wages, which leads to job destruction, which leads to ...? I need some aspirin.

Beyond that, why would lower wages promote higher employment?

There’s a fallacy of composition here: since workers at any individual company may be able to save their jobs by accepting a pay cut, you might think that we can increase overall employment by cutting everyone’s wages. But pay cuts at, say, General Motors have helped save some workers’ jobs by making G.M. more competitive with other companies whose wage costs haven’t fallen. There’s no comparable benefit when you cut everyone’s wages at the same time.

In fact, across-the-board wage cuts would almost certainly reduce, not increase, employment. Why? Because while earnings would fall, debts would not, so a general fall in wages would worsen the debt problems that are, at this point, the principal obstacle to recovery.

In short, Mellonism is as wrong now as it was fourscore years ago.

Now, liquidationism isn’t the only argument the G.O.P. report advances to support the claim that reducing employment actually creates jobs. It also invokes the confidence fairy; that is, it suggests that cuts in public spending will stimulate private spending by raising consumer and business confidence, leading to economic expansion.

Or maybe “suggests” isn’t the right word; “insinuates” may be closer to the mark. For a funny thing has happened lately to the doctrine of “expansionary austerity,” the notion that cutting government spending, even in a slump, leads to faster economic growth.

A year ago, conservatives gleefully trumpeted statistical studies supposedly showing many successful examples of expansionary austerity. Since then, however, those studies have been more or less thoroughly debunked by careful researchers, notably at the International Monetary Fund.

To their credit, the staffers who wrote that G.O.P. report were clearly aware that the evidence no longer supports their position. To their discredit, their response was to make the same old arguments, while adding weasel words to cover themselves: instead of asserting outright that spending cuts are expansionary, the report says that confidence effects of austerity “can boost G.D.P. growth.” Can under what circumstances? Boost relative to what? It doesn’t say.

Did I mention that in Britain, where the government that took power last May bought completely into the doctrine of expansionary austerity, the economy has stalled and business confidence has fallen to a two-year low? And even the government’s new, more pessimistic projections are based on the assumption that highly indebted British households will take on even more debt in the years ahead.

But never mind the lessons of history, or events unfolding across the Atlantic: Republicans are now fully committed to the doctrine that we must destroy employment in order to save it.

And Democrats are offering little pushback. The White House, in particular, has effectively surrendered in the war of ideas; it no longer even tries to make the case against sharp spending cuts in the face of high unemployment.

So that’s the state of policy debate in the world’s greatest nation: one party has embraced 80-year-old economic fallacies, while the other has lost the will to fight. And American families will pay the price.

Source;
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/opinion/01krugman.html?_r=3&src=me&ref=homepage

Once, years ago, walking across Louis Kahn's magnificent campus designed for the Jonas Salk Institute, Jonas Salk answered my question about how he had seen so clearly what others had not seen. He said, 'The answers are not the hard part. It is the questions. Asking the right question. That's hard.”


An Appraisal of The Illness Profit System
STEPHAN A. SCHWARTZ, Columnist - Explore - Schwartzreport

We are about to enter yet again into the great debate over American healthcare, and the discussion once again will be mostly couched in financial terms. I want to suggest money is the wrong question, and it leads us to the wrong debate. Here's what I think we should be asking: Is the health of the American people an essential part of our national security and prosperity? Is America better equipped to deal with the challenges of the 21st century when it has a healthy population more capable of working at its full potential? If the answer is ...

Once, years ago, walking across Louis Kahn's magnificent campus designed for the Jonas Salk Institute, Jonas Salk answered my question about how he had seen so clearly what others had not seen. He said, “The answers are not the hard part. It is the questions. Asking the right question. That's hard.”

We are about to enter yet again into the great debate over American healthcare, and the discussion once again will be mostly couched in financial terms. I want to suggest money is the wrong question, and it leads us to the wrong debate. Here's what I think we should be asking: Is the health of the American people an essential part of our national security and prosperity? Is America better equipped to deal with the challenges of the 21st century when it has a healthy population more capable of working at its full potential? If the answer is yes, then the next question to ask is: why is our healthcare system so very bad—37th in the world according to the World Health Organization?1 To answer that, we need to accept this reality and start fixing it by telling the truth to ourselves about money.

The Center for Defense Information estimates the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will total over $1 trillion by the end of fiscal year 2010.2 We have almost nothing to show for these wars and the sacrifices made by young men and women motivated by honor, duty, and a call to serve. Yet we have made these wars such a priority that in the midst of the worst economic downturn in two generations, we continue to fund them at a cost of tens of millions of dollars each and every day. It's not about the money.

We have a defense budget that is larger than the defense budgets of every other nation in the world combined—$683 billion, going to $743 billion in 2015.3 It's not about the money.

As Senator Bernie Sanders forced the Federal Reserve to reveal, “we found 3.3 trillion” to bail out our financial sector—to the benefit of a tiny percentage of the population.4 How can anyone say that when the priority is there, the money can't be found? And, anyway, we already spend more on our healthcare system than any other nation on earth.5

If we believe a healthy nation is a national priority, why aren't we getting results? Because, measured in a dozen different ways, our healthcare system is not about health. What we have in the United States is an Illness Profit System. The illnesses and traumas of human beings are just the mechanism by which the money taps are opened. It is part of the human condition that everybody gets something that requires medical attention some time in their life, and the Illness Profit System is structured to exploit this. If you get well, it makes money on your treatment. If you don't get well, it makes even more money on your treatment. The system is profitable at either end but is weighted toward illness. It's more profitable. To hide its rapacity, the Illness Profit System relies on the humanitarian face presented by the health professionals who administer the treatments. It understands and exploits their calling to the service of healing, and our natural deference to the men and women who care for us, even as the system is constantly and cynically trying to corrupt them.

The Project on Government Oversight is an independent nonprofit that “investigates and exposes corruption and other misconduct to achieve a more effective, accountable, open, and ethical federal government.”6 On November 29, 2010—just a few days ago—they wrote Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), urging the NIH to curb “the practice of ghostwriting in academia. As the Director of the world's largest and most prestigious funding source for biomedical research, you must set policies that require NIH-funded academic centers to ban ghostwriting to strengthen scientific integrity.”6

Why did they make this request? Perhaps because the medical world has been increasingly challenged by ghostwriting—medical studies ostensibly written by the named authors that are, in fact, written under for a pharmaceutical company by a contract writing group.

This is a problem so pervasive that it has developed its own literature. I will cite one, this by Jeffrey Lacasse of the School of Social Work, College of Public Programs, Arizona State University, Phoenix, and Jonathan Leo of Lincoln Memorial University, Harrogate, TN. They recently published in the peer-reviewed journal PLoS Medicine an assessment of medical ghostwriting, citing particularly two drugs and the published studies that got them on the market. One concerned rofecoxib, a Merck & Co nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug sold under the brand names Vioxx, Ceoxx, and Ceeoxx, that was taken off the market in 2004 when, in contradistinction to the published studies, it was withdrawn over safety concerns. The other concerned paroxetine, an anti-depressant marketed by GlaxoSmithKline (formerly known as SmithKline Beecham) under the brand names Aropax, Paxil, and Seroxat. Lacasse and Leo describe the role of medical ghostwriting using these drugs to illustrate their point this way:

Medical ghostwriting, the practice of pharmaceutical companies secretly authoring journal articles published under the byline of academic researchers, is a troubling phenomenon because it is dangerous to public health. For example, ghostwritten articles on Rofecoxib probably contributed to ‘… lasting injury and even deaths as a result of prescribers and patients being misinformed about risks.' Study 329, a randomized controlled trial of Paroxetine in adolescents, was ghostwritten to claim that Paroxetine is ‘generally well tolerated and effective for major depression in adolescents,' although data made available through legal proceedings show that ‘Study 329 was negative for efficacy on all 8 protocol specified outcomes and positive for harm.'7

Lacasse and Leo conclude: “The practice of ghostwriting explicitly violates the usual norms of academia. We are not aware of any other academic fields where it is acceptable for professors to allow themselves to be listed as authors on research papers they did not write, or to purposefully conceal the contributions of industry coauthors in order to mislead readers.”7

Why would pharmaceutical companies, a major component of the Illness Profit System, be interested in ghostwriting? Profit of course. Before it was withdrawn, sales revenue from Vioxx totaled US$2.5 billion.8

To fully understand the implications of ghostwriting, however, one has to place it in its larger context, which Donald Bartlett and James B. Steele do very well in the January Vanity Fair:

In 2009, according to the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, 19,551 people died in the United States as a direct result of the prescription drugs they took. That's just the reported number. It's decidedly low, because it is estimated that only about 10 percent of such deaths are reported. Conservatively, then, the annual American death toll from prescription drugs considered ‘safe’ can be put at around 200,000. That is three times the number of people who die every year from diabetes, four times the number who die from kidney disease. Overall, deaths from F.D.A.-approved prescription drugs dwarf the number of people who die from street drugs such as cocaine and heroin. They dwarf the number who die every year in automobile accidents.9

Can one overemphasize the importance of ethical accurate medical literature? I don't think so. And why don't we read a constant litany of reports in all the media concerning these deaths? Could it be the advertising, the dubious grant funding, and sponsorships the Illness Profit System can marshal?

Another wrong question you will hear in the debate: is it all the fault of the bad health choices Americans make? As it happens, at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University researchers Peter A. Muennig and Sherry A. Glied asked just that question. They compared the healthcare systems of 13 first world nations, including the United States, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland.10

Their study, which covers the years 1975 to 2005, is particularly important, not only because it is recent and well designed, but because in addition to healthcare expenditures in each country, it focuses on 15-year survival for people at 45 years and for those at 65 years. As they say in their report published in the journal Health Affairs:

Many advocates of US health reform point to the nation's relatively low life-expectancy rankings as evidence that the health care system is performing poorly. Others say that poor US health outcomes are largely due not to health care but to high rates of smoking, obesity, traffic fatalities, and homicides. We used cross-national data on the fifteen-year survival of men and women over three decades to examine the validity of these arguments. We found that the risk profiles of Americans generally improved relative to those for citizens of many other nations, but Americans' relative fifteen-year survival has nevertheless been declining. For example, by 2005, fifteen-year survival rates for forty-five-year-old US white women were lower than in twelve comparison countries with populations of at least seven million and per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of at least 60 percent of US per capita GDP in 1975. The findings undercut critics who might argue that the US health care system is not in need of major changes.10

Nicholas Bakalar, writing in The New York Times said:

In 1975 the United States was close to the average in health care costs, and last in 15-year survival for 45-year-old men. By 2005 its costs had more than tripled, far surpassing increases elsewhere, but the survival number was still last—a little over 90 percent, compared with more than 94 percent for Swedes, Swiss and Australians. For women, it was 94 percent in the United States, versus 97 percent in Switzerland, Australia and Japan.

The numbers for 65-year-olds in 2005 were similar: about 58 percent of American men could be expected to survive 15 years, compared with more than 65 percent of Australians, Japanese and Swiss. While more than 80 percent of 65-year-old women in France, Switzerland, and Japan would survive 15 years, only about 70 percent of American women could be expected to live that long.11

Muennig and Glied10 concluded: “We found that none of the prevailing excuses for the poor performance of the US health care system are likely to be valid. On the spending side, we found that the unusually high medical spending is associated with worsening, rather than improving, fifteen-year survival in two groups for whom medical care is probably important.”10

The Commonwealth Fund in its State-by-State Look at Health Insurance Costs reveals just how truly bizarre that “unusually high medical spending” has gotten:

Health insurance premiums have risen three times faster than incomes. according to a new Commonwealth Fund state-by-state analysis of employer coverage. In 2009, total premiums—including employee and employer contributions—equaled or exceeded 18 percent of the median household income in 26 states, up from three states in 2003.

The analysis of state trends from 2003 to 2009 finds family coverage in employer-sponsored health plans increased 41 percent across states, ranging from a 21 percent increase in Delaware to a 59 percent increase in Louisiana. The report found that by 2009, premiums were highest in Alaska, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, Wisconsin, and Wyoming, with family premiums in those states exceeding $14,000 a year. Annual family premiums in the lowest-cost states—Alabama, Arkansas, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Utah—were also high, ranging from $11,000 to $12,000 per year by 2009.12

Now let's take it down to individual procedures where the grotesqueness of the Illness Profit System's reality becomes even clearer. The International Federation of Health Plans has just released its 2010 Comparative Price Report: “The survey data showed that average U.S. prices for procedures were once again the highest of those in the 12 countries surveyed for nearly all of the 14 common services and procedures reviewed.”13

Here are some results:

•delivery of a baby: $2,147 in Germany, $2,667 in Canada, and an average of $8,435 in the United States;

•hip replacement: $9,637 in the UK, $20,069 in Australia, $75,369 in the United States;

•appendectomy: $3,456 in the UK, $4,624 in the Netherlands,$25,344 in the United States;

•cost for a typical hospital stay: $1,679 in Spain, $7,707 in Canada, $14,427 to $45,902 in the United States.13

And through the entire weave of healthcare runs the pharmaceutical component of the Illness Profit System. It's hard to ignore, if you're one of the millions of Americans on a prescription drug regime. Its drive for naked profit is breathtaking: Nexium (brand name for esomeprazole), commonly prescribed for reflux conditions, is $30 in the United Kingdom, $186 is the average cost in the United States. One could go through the entire pharmacopoeia and see this differential, or worse, for almost every drug. It is enormously profitable, but is it consistent with health as the first priority?

And there is this reality: the Illness Profit System has not proved capable of designing a system of universal coverage, because when health is made the first priority, although it may be profitable, it cannot be as profitable as it could be.

As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention frames it:

In the first quarter of 2010, an estimated 59.1 million persons had no health insurance for at least part of the year before their interview, an increase from 58.7 million in 2009 and 56.4 million in 2008. Of the 58.7 million in 2009, 48.6 million (82.8%) were aged 18–64 years. Among persons aged 18–64 years with family incomes two to three times the federal poverty level (approximately $43,000–$65,000 for a family of four in 2009), 9.7 million (32.1%) were uninsured for at least part of the preceding year. Persons aged 18–64 years with no health insurance during the preceding year were seven times as likely (27.6% versus 4.0%) as those continuously insured to forgo needed health care because of cost. Among persons aged 18–64 years with diabetes mellitus, those who had no health insurance during the preceding year were six times as likely (47.5% versus 7.7%) to forgo needed medical care as those who were continuously insured.14

The data of the past three decades also tell us that just being a participant in the Illness Profit System can damage your life. Medical bankruptcy is a concept almost unknown in the rest of the world. In the United States it is quite common. In 2001, Harvard's Medical and Law Schools teamed up to look at this and discovered 1.458 million American families filed for bankruptcy.15 A research team led by David Himmelstein surveyed 1,771 personal bankruptcy filers in five federal courts and subsequently completed in-depth interviews with 931 of them, and published the results of the study in 2005 in the journal Health Affairs.16 Their report noted that “about half (the bankruptcies) cited medical causes, which indicates that 1.9-2.2 million Americans … experienced medical bankruptcy.” As if this were not cruel enough, about 700,000 of those affected were children.

One of the sure signs a system is working against the national interest is that it continues its destructive behavior even in a time of great stress, and that is exactly what we are seeing. In the midst of the worst financial environment since the Great Depression, as people are dropping from the insured ranks by the thousands, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies in the spring of 2009 began raising drug prices. As The Wall Street Journal reported, the profit illness industry has “been pushing through hefty price increases aimed at bolstering earnings, even as government and private insurers are struggling to rein in healthcare costs.”17

Good health and good healthcare are national assets that increase a nation's functionality, giving it a much better chance to prosper. The data on this are quite clear. Viewed from this perspective, the Illness Profit System damages national security, because its priority is not national health—but profit. This is not an argument against profit, categorically. There may be a place for profit, but the first question we should be asking is: how can we design a system that produces the healthy citizenry essential to our national security and prosperity, a healthcare system that is designed with that priority—and not profit—as its goal?

We need to ask the right questions. I think Jonas Salk was right.

Source;
http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307%2810%2900291-0/fulltext

This is so amazing it boggle the mind. And yet not as I would expect these things to be happening and that we are just now uncovering what is hidden.

I just put my new bee hive out in the garden and am excited... now all I need is a queen bee.

Carol / Gio - The story about a Satellite Orbiting Saturn may be an April Fool's Joke...

My Explanation in another Thread

Mercuriel wrote:Carol / Gio - The story about a Satellite Orbiting Saturn may be an April Fool's Joke...

My Explanation in another Thread

Yes that was a good one !

Thanks Mercuriel, i never say those pics before
And yes John Keel was a pioneer and legend ~ he was the one who put forth the concept that these strange visitations labeled UFO's were perhaps ~ energies from other dimensional realms

This is part of two trends: first, the demise of the pharmaceutical industry as it is presently constituted; and, second, the development of Homo Superiorus.

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Live human heart grown in lab using stem cells in potential transplant breakthrough



By David DerbyshireLast updated at 12:22 PM on 4th April 2011

The organs were created by removing muscle cells from donor organs to leave behind tough hearts of connective tissue.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1372938/Live-human-heart-grown-lab-using-stem-cells-potential-transplant-breakthrough.html#ixzz1Id1vkROO

When this was first reported, i was reluctant to post this...now i am absolutely convinced there is no coincidences in this world.

***********

Although my views on nuclear power are well-known in fairness i must report that an alternative nuclear technology is arising in China;
one that does not have at least some of the many drawbacks that plague the American, French, and Japanese reactors.

Safe nuclear does exist, and China is leading the way with thorium


Thorium could be a much safer option for China which has been unsettled by the nuclear crisis in Japan where fears over radiation levels are rising

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
March 20, 2011

This passed unnoticed –except by a small of band of thorium enthusiasts – but it may mark the passage of strategic leadership in energy policy from an inert and status-quo West to a rising technological power willing to break the mould.

If China’s dash for thorium power succeeds, it will vastly alter the global energy landscape and may avert a calamitous conflict over resources as Asia’s industrial revolutions clash head-on with the West’s entrenched consumption.

China’s Academy of Sciences said it had chosen a “thorium-based molten salt reactor system”. The liquid fuel idea was pioneered by US physicists at Oak Ridge National Lab in the 1960s, but the US has long since dropped the ball. Further evidence of Barack `Obama’s “Sputnik moment”, you could say.

Chinese scientists claim that hazardous waste will be a thousand times less than with uranium. The system is inherently less prone to disaster.

“The reactor has an amazing safety feature,” said Kirk Sorensen, a former NASA engineer at Teledyne Brown and a thorium expert.

“If it begins to overheat, a little plug melts and the salts drain into a pan. There is no need for computers, or the sort of electrical pumps that were crippled by the tsunami. The reactor saves itself,” he said.

“They operate at atmospheric pressure so you don’t have the sort of hydrogen explosions we’ve seen in Japan. One of these reactors would have come through the tsunami just fine. There would have been no radiation release.”

Thorium is a silvery metal named after the Norse god of thunder. The metal has its own “issues” but no thorium reactor could easily spin out of control in the manner of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, or now Fukushima.

Professor Robert Cywinksi from Huddersfield University said thorium must be bombarded with neutrons to drive the fission process. “There is no chain reaction. Fission dies the moment you switch off the photon beam. There are not enough neutrons for it continue of its own accord,” he said.

Dr Cywinski, who anchors a UK-wide thorium team, said the residual heat left behind in a crisis would be “orders of magnitude less” than in a uranium reactor.

The earth’s crust holds 80 years of uranium at expected usage rates, he said. Thorium is as common as lead. America has buried tons as a by-product of rare earth metals mining. Norway has so much that Oslo is planning a post-oil era where thorium might drive the country’s next great phase of wealth. Even Britain has seams in Wales and in the granite cliffs of Cornwall. Almost all the mineral is usable as fuel, compared to 0.7pc of uranium. There is enough to power civilization for thousands of years.

I write before knowing the outcome of the Fukushima drama, but as yet none of 15,000 deaths are linked to nuclear failure. Indeed, there has never been a verified death from nuclear power in the West in half a century. Perspective is in order.

We cannot avoid the fact that two to three billion extra people now expect – and will obtain – a western lifestyle. China alone plans to produce 100m cars and buses every year by 2020.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said the world currently has 442 nuclear reactors. They generate 372 gigawatts of power, providing 14pc of global electricity. Nuclear output must double over twenty years just to keep pace with the rise of the China and India.

If a string of countries cancel or cut back future reactors, let alone follow Germany’s Angela Merkel in shutting some down, they shift the strain onto gas, oil, and coal. Since the West is also cutting solar subsidies, they can hardly expect the solar industry to plug the gap.

BP’s disaster at Macondo should teach us not to expect too much from oil reserves deep below the oceans, beneath layers of blinding salt. Meanwhile, we rely uneasily on Wahabi repression to crush dissent in the Gulf and keep Arabian crude flowing our way. So where can we turn, unless we revert to coal and give up on the ice caps altogether? That would be courting fate.

US physicists in the late 1940s explored thorium fuel for power. It has a higher neutron yield than uranium, a better fission rating, longer fuel cycles, and does not require the extra cost of isotope separation.

The plans were shelved because thorium does not produce plutonium for bombs. As a happy bonus, it can burn up plutonium and toxic waste from old reactors, reducing radio-toxicity and acting as an eco-cleaner.

Dr Cywinski is developing an accelerator driven sub-critical reactor for thorium, a cutting-edge project worldwide. It needs to £300m of public money for the next phase, and £1.5bn of commercial investment to produce the first working plant. Thereafter, economies of scale kick in fast. The idea is to make pint-size 600MW reactors.

Yet any hope of state support seems to have died with the Coalition budget cuts, and with it hopes that Britain could take a lead in the energy revolution. It is understandable, of course. Funds are scarce. The UK has already put its efforts into the next generation of uranium reactors. Yet critics say vested interests with sunk costs in uranium technology succeeded in chilling enthusiasm.

The same happened a decade ago to a parallel project by Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research). France’s nuclear industry killed proposals for funding from Brussels, though a French group is now working on thorium in Grenoble.

Norway’s Aker Solution has bought Professor Rubbia’s patent. It had hoped to build the first sub-critical reactor in the UK, but seems to be giving up on Britain and locking up a deal to build it in China instead, where minds and wallets are more open.

So the Chinese will soon lead on this thorium technology as well as molten-salts. Good luck to them. They are doing Mankind a favour. We may get through the century without tearing each other apart over scarce energy and wrecking the planet.

Source;
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8393984/Safe-nuclear-does-exist-and-China-is-leading-the-way-with-thorium.html

This is what privacy has come to. We have just allowed it to be nibbled away.




Laptops and Other Electronics May Be Seized on Entry to US

Ned Smith, BusinessNewsDaily Senior Writer,
LiveScience.com Ned Smith, Businessnewsdaily Senior Writer,
livescience.com Thu Apr 7, 5:20 pm ET

If you can’t let a day go by without accessing your personal data and files, you’d better think twice about crossing the border back into the U.S. with your computer. That’s because digital devices such as a laptop computer can be seized at the border without a warrant and sent to a secondary site for forensic inspection.

That ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit last week is the second in less than a year that allows the U.S. government to conduct offsite searches of digital devices seized at the border without a warrant, Network World reported.

This could have big implications for business travelers, in particular, who are increasingly mobile and frequently carry laptops and other digital devices containing sensitive personal and company information across our borders. If your data reveals traces of criminality or illegal kinkiness when examined, your troubles will go way beyond temporary data denial.

The Ninth Circuit Court ruling came in a case involving a man whose laptop was seized at the Mexican border when he re-entered the country at Lukeville, Ariz. Because he was a registered sex offender, custom officials confiscated his laptop computer for inspection.

Though an initial scan of the data revealed nothing incriminating, the agents sent the computer 170 miles away to a digital forensics lab in Tucson because so many of the files were password protected. That search detected images depicting child pornography and the man was subsequently arrested and indicted.

He filed a motion asking that the evidence be suppressed because it was the result of an unreasonable search in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights.

Several lower courts agreed that the extended search of his laptop was unreasonable because the government didn’t have any reasonable suspicions that incriminating material would be found.

The government appealed, contending that border search doctrine allowed such actions, according to Network World.

In upholding the government’s argument, the Ninth Circuit Court noted that several other courts including the U.S. Supreme Court have recognized that by definition all border searches are reasonable because they occur at the border. The transportation of his computer was justified because the forensic tools needed to adequately search the computer were not available at Lukeville, a small, unincorporated community with a population of 35.

Writing for the majority, Judge Richard Tallman said, “The border search doctrine is not so rigid as to require the United States to equip every entry point — no matter how desolate or infrequently traveled — with inspectors and sophisticated forensics equipment.”

Source;
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20110407/sc_livescience/laptopsandotherelectronicsmaybeseizedonentrytous/print