Category Archives: big oil

Blackwater, Monsanto, and Gates Foundation

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In keeping up with all the dirty little deeds the Gates Foundation promotes….here is an article on the link between Gates, Monsanto, and Blackwater.   Really disturbing.

The article mentions The Nation with Jeremy Scahill—while looking for the Scahill article, I happened upon this with a scathing reply by the authors:

We agree that it will ultimately be up to farmers to decide what is best for them. Our concern continues, however, to be that the choices farmers face is systematically skewed, with some ideas being amplified over others. Any policies that involve redistribution–such as land reform–are off the Gates agenda, despite being a live concern to many African farmers’ movements. This demonstrates our broader point. Despite the foundation’s best efforts to be accountable once the policy has been laid down, the Gates Foundation’s interventions reflect, at heart, the undemocratic vision of a single very powerful and ultimately unaccountable organization.

Sincerely,

RAJ PATEL
ERIC HOLT-GIMENEZ
ANNIE SHATTUCK
www.foodfirst.org

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(italics are mine.)
Jeremy Scahill’s article here.

One of the most incendiary details in the documents is that Blackwater, through Total Intelligence, sought to become the “intel arm” of Monsanto, offering to provide operatives to infiltrate activist groups organizing against the multinational biotech firm.

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Another fracking/nuclear/oil toadie on CSPAN

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Michael Levi was on CSPAN this morning…he was vague in his assertions, but reading between the lines, I saw “fracking toadie”.

He has written a book on energy that they were highlighting on CSPAN.  It has the words  “battle for  America’s future”  ….words that are emotional and raise an immediate red flag.

Brookings Institute fellow—another huge red flag.

From the wiki page on it:

Funders

At the end of 2004 the Brookings Institution had assets of $258 million and spent $39.7 million, while its budget has grown to more than $80 million in 2009.[64] Its largest contributors include the Ford Foundation, the Gates Foundation, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and her husband Richard C. Blum, Bank of America, ExxonMobil, Pew Charitable Trusts, the MacArthur Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, and the governments of the United States, Japan, Qatar, the Republic of China, the District of Columbia, and the United Kingdom.

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The Gates Foundation.  ExxonMobil. Republic of China.  Bank of America.  All giving money…for what payback…because these folks play to win and they don’t throw their money after something without expecting something in return.

And why is our government contributing to a think tank??

Here’s another piece I found on the Brookings Institute and their treatment of Diane Ravitch.  Pretty much says it all, doesn’t it?  I don’t know why they are considered liberal?

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And the fact that Levi is a doctor doesn’t necessarily impress me–Mengele and Freud were also doctors who skewed things towards their point of view.  It’s especially troubling that his doctorate is in War Studies.

He was advocating “clean energy” another industry catch phrase that actually means “keep on doing what we’ve always been doing, but keeping our dirty business out of the public eye as much as we can…”  (as seen by the non-coverage of the Arkansas oil spill.)

He was also stating that fracking should be done, and concern for the environment should be a priority. Sounds good, eh?  But then….he states further in the interview that the *only* problem was what to do with the contaminated water once they had extracted the natural gas…um, yeah, he totally ignores that there is a HUGE problem with the chemicals traveling through the earth to people’s wells, contaminating them.   My blog on that here. And here. And here.

There was a male caller making outrageous statements about green energy and allowing even more leasing to oil/gas companies…and he was not characterized as emotional…

…but when a woman caller called in and raised the earthquake question and the contamination from the chemicals…whoa…she was *cough*  “emotional”.  (I can’t remember if that was Levi’s exact wording, but the meaning was the same.)  In other words, even though she brought up facts, she was discredited as being emotional.  ::don’t worry your pretty little head, darling, we men folk will take care of this important stuff::   Grrrr.

So, my conclusion from the above is the Michael Levi is an energy industry toadie.  He’s dirty.

 

Back….

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…I’m here….waiting for the crash, so to speak….this is usually the day that I start to feel the effects of the round…

Anyhoo, I’m here.

I thought I’d post the symptoms of mercury poisoning again for the benefit of those who might be new here.

This page is very informative.  You can see the dramatic effect of the mercury poisoning on her. In 2010, my face slightly drooped but not quite as dramatically as hers.  But I was severely toxic, there is no doubt.

Before I self-diagnosed myself, I was so sick that I was sleeping only four hours per night.  My chronic fatigue was so bad that after work,  it was all I could do to fix dinner and then crash the rest of the night.  It’s hard to admit, but my dishes went unwashed for days because of the exhaustion.  I also had hand tremors along with the severe short term memory loss.  It was during this period that I forgot my own children’s names!   I truly believe that I had Parkinsons’.  I was afraid to tell anyone what was going on.   It was a terrible, lonely period.

Thank God I was led to the cause of my symptoms.  My Guardian Angel kept putting “mercury” in front of me.  Like most people, I trusted my dentist to tell me the truth and doctor to be smart enough to diagnose what was wrong.  It was hard to go against what I was being told and what my symptoms were telling me.

What a miracle the body truly is that I could be that sick and recover from it. (Or I should say continue to recover from it.)

I have been blessed.

 

Energy regulation

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CSPAN featured Jon Wellinghoff, chairman of Federal Energy Regulatory  Commission.  Politico has this up.

A couple of callers commented on Wellinghoff’s demeanor.  He seemed to be no-nonsense.  He was formerly a consumer energy advocate.  It seemed that he was pro-consumer…but I couldn’t shake a bad feeling I had…

…he mentioned fracking as a viable practice for extracting natural gas at least two or three times during the short interview…and my heart began to sink…

He barely mentioned off grid and solar power, although when he did mention it, it was in a positive light.  What I would like to see is federal support for off grid classes in communities.  Let people create their own power for their needs, instead of huge coal plants and monstrous pipelines that spill oil (something else he said he was for.)

I hope that I’m wrong, but I can’t shake the feeling that he’s going towards the fracking industry.  He kept repeating that it could be done in an environmentally sound way.  Bullshit.

A woman caller had the same sentiment as me when she revealed that she is suffering from breast cancer due to methane gas released from fracking.  She said that he was feeding people a line and that her own governor was selling her state out from under the people.  (Unfortunately, I didn’t catch the state.)

Wellinghoff would not back down and repeated that fracking could be done in an environmentally friendly way. <sigh> So…another former consumer advocate has been bought off…

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Speaking of pipelines….

Why am I hearing about this after the fact?  Where was public radio BEFORE this took place?

And the Save the Dunes group apparently knew about it but, hey, as long as Enbridge *cough* promises to not spill any of its nasty ole’ oil into our rivers, lakes, and streams, hey, it’s okay with them….because, you know, Enbridge has such a stellar history of concern for the environment and the people and animals that inhabit it.  /very snarky, indeed.

From the article:

“IDEM, through its certification, is allowing Enbridge to disregard alternate pipeline routes and other opportunities to reduce and eliminate water quality impacts, in likely violation of the Clean Water Act,” said Kim Ferraro, staff attorney at the Hoosier Environmental Council.

Both Michigan and Illinois have laws governing interstate pipeline routing, requiring companies to assess environmental and community risks, but currently Indiana does not.

Good Grief….my head is about to explode…

 

 

 

More on Rosen and the attack on investigative journalism

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I missed this from Glenn Greenwald.  It’s more in-depth on the specifics…and what it means to investigative journalists.  In essence, it is criminalizing the act of journalism.

From the article:

Under US law, it is not illegal to publish classified information. That fact, along with the First Amendment’s guarantee of press freedoms, is what has prevented the US government from ever prosecuting journalists for reporting on what the US government does in secret. This newfound theory of the Obama DOJ – that a journalist can be guilty of crimes for “soliciting” the disclosure of classified information – is a means for circumventing those safeguards and criminalizing the act of investigative journalism itself.

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Our democracy depends on being able to inform the citizens of their government’s actions, so that they can make informed decisions towards that government.  As Greenwald points out—the media was silent with Julian Assange…and only now are they starting to squawk now that AP has been caught up in the assault on the freedom of speech and the press…

 

Why Detroit Matters

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I’m bopping around the web this morning reading up on Detroit….I just can’t get the dumping of petroleum coke out of my mind.

Whatever happens to Detroit happens to all of us….

Here’s a piece up on a refinery fire…by Marathon…where the residents were not even told what was going on.  It is just unconscionable that these folks were not told what was going on and that some were evacuated but others across the street were not.

This piece spouts the pro-corporate view that anything that supports the environment is bad for business.  Tell me, what good is business if so many are sick or even dead because of toxic overload?  Who will be left to buy your product?

From the article:

The document claims city planners fail to take into consideration that Metro Detroit’s poor and minority neighborhoods are already deluged with excessive pollution and contaminated industrial, commercial, and hazardous waste sites.

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Claims of “environmental injustice” (and environmental racism) are little more than catch phrases used by green activists to draw attention to the purportedly disproportionate negative effects of pollution in poor and minority communities. The accusation is that federal, state, and local governments have conspired to permit more pollution in impoverished black communities than in affluent ones.

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He goes on to say that there are the same health problems in more affluent neighborhoods.  He thinks the problem is their lifestyle rather than the toxic environment.  I think that’s too simplistic as it doesn’t take in the whole picture.  It is known that mercury damages a person’s DNA.  So…if the parents of affluent African Americans were poor and lived in these more toxic areas, being exposed to lead and mercury and arsenic, their DNA will be affected and pass that on to their children.  It gets worse with each generation.  Also, toxins do not stay in a particular geographical area, although it will be more concentrated in that area, it will drift, and also cause health issues (on a lesser scale) to those in affluent neighborhoods.

As far as environmental racism…it is a well known occurrence.  Probably should be better categorized as environmental “poor-ism” because it’s done towards the poor.  I say this with the thought in mind that it does not follow blacks whom have moved into more affluent neighborhoods.  Perhaps one can say that it is because whites also share that neighborhood.  Well….I guess you could say that, BUT then whites also share the poor neighborhoods with blacks….which leads me to conclude that it is against the poor rather than exclusively against blacks.

The last line about the gov’t allowing the poor to bear the brunt of toxins ignores the above~~you don’t see the petroleum coke being dumped on the Koch’s front lawn, do you?  When that happens, you can tell me that gov’t officials have not discriminated against the poor.

I notice that the author was once a commissioner….so I am left to wonder whether he, in his official capacity, willfully went along with poisoning the poor and is now trying to justify it?

On to the financial woes of Detroit, I found some interesting articles.

This one details the bad news. Note that they’re going after unions.  HUGE RED FLAG that Disaster Capitalism and ALEC are in the midst.  (related to this is a strike by fast food workers to form unions.)

This article on Slate paints a different picture of the stuff going on behind the scenes.  Note the link to the NY Times’ article on Dan Gilbert trying to make a fortune rebuilding the city…

The article talks about the cityscape with abandoned houses, empty spaces after demolition of houses, and the population dwindling from 2 million down to 700,000.    When reading that Gilbert’s solution is to bring business in, to spur people walking the streets (shoppers)…and it strikes me that there is so much opportunity here….but it feels like trying to fix the problem with the same old, same old…

With all the demolished houses…what about the urban farmer?  I know that would be difficult if the ground were polluted, as Detroit seems to be the dumping ground, but if the soil were not toxic, why not encourage that? It would help those in the inner cities to feed themselves as well as sell produce to earn income.

Why not encourage planting of trees to help the air quality?  As I blogged before, we need to include nature into our plans and stop ignoring the impact we have on nature and the colossal impact nature has on us.

It also ignores the devastating impact that Big Box stores have had on our local economies.  Walmart moves in….independent small businesses die…and entire downtowns are destroyed…not only do the businesses die, but our feeling of connectedness dies with them…

 

Lead and zinc

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A member of the mercury support group posted today that a brand Nutricology, has a notice on its bottle that reads:

“California Proposition 65 Warning: This product contains lead, a chemical known to the State of California to cause birth defects or other reproductive harm”

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I did a search to see if the form I use, zinc glycinate (Now brand) also contained lead.  I couldn’t find anything confirming or denying it.

I looked up Now brands on the web.  Here is their customer service number:  888-669-3663.  The company nutritionist told me this:  “the product does not contain more than 1200 parts per billion.”

Toxic metals study links to Autism

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Seventy-four percent!

74% of the studies examined showed a significant relationship between an ASD diagnosis and toxic metal exposure. These investigators concluded that the balance of studies support a link between ASD diagnoses and toxic metal exposure.

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Note further down that they also link heavy metals such as cadmium, arsenic and lead (from coal dust).

Okay, can we now stop drugging up our children with psychotropic drugs to help control symptoms and start addressing the real problem–our toxic environment and toxic amalgams?? It’s truly heartbreaking how many children have been misdiagnosed as autistic when they are displaying symptoms of heavy metal toxicity and acting out because they’re toxic…

 

More on mercury causing brain damage:

 

How many times do they have to find a correlation between mercury and neurological damage?  When do they stop “studying” and start putting solutions in action?

Detroit buried in petroleum coke

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(migraine…pardon my faux pas)

They ought to take this three-story, one-block long pile of coke and dump it on the Koch’s front lawn.  And for every shipment afterward, dumped on every Tea Party supporter’s front lawn who denies the pollution coming from oil and its byproducts.

More here on the residents’ concerns.  Same stonewalling over health concerns for residents living around this poison.  They say they’re sending in samples to find out if it’s hazardous.  Here’s the Material Data Safety Sheet (MSDS) on Petroleum Coke.  It’s pretty evident from this that it IS a serious health concern.   One of the warnings is not to breathe the dust.  Wonder how many residents breathe in particulate every single freaking day?

From the sheet:

Inhalation of excessive dust concentrations may be irritating to the upper respiratory
system. Repeated chronic inhalation exposure may cause impaired lung function.
There is no evidence that such exposures cause pneumoconiosis, carcinogenicity,
or other chronic health effects.
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I would question the last sentence–anything that can cause impaired lung function is causing inflammation…inflammation kills cells over a period of time.
Note that is is a combustible dust….just laying around….which the MSDS specifically states this is not proper storage–it states it should be in containers.  (Not that I personally believe containers are any better.  The stuff is toxic, toxic,toxic, creating problems of disposal…in somebody’s neighborhood.)

Anybody wanna bet this is located in a poor neighborhood in Detroit?

So…now BP wants to start operations for processing this filthy sludge in Whiting, Indiana, which is near Gary and Hammond  and Chicago….right on Lake Michigan. Um-hmmm…Anybody wanna guess if the toxic environment is a factor in Gary Indiana being the murder capital of the United States.  Note the article stating this area is one of the worst in air quality in the U.S.

And here we have the latest in *cough* BP cares….about our profits over your health and safety…

More here.

A video of yet another explosion in Whiting, Indiana:

Indiana has a sad history of putting business over its environment.  Just look at the lack of trees compared to, say, Ohio.  You can actually tell the air quality difference once you leave Indiana and venture into Ohio.  Nevermind the beauty of all the trees, but the air is breathable.  Anyway, Indiana’s own Dept. of Environmental Management *cough* has told manufacturers several years ago that once they were given a good report, they could slack off, er I mean, they could continue their good environmental practices until the IDEM inspected them three years later.

The Indiana Dunes, which we used to go to nearly every summer, have been polluted by the lack of concern of the environment.  Lake Michigan was once reasonably clean.  I took my kids up there after many years and was depressed to see the condition of the water.  It was no longer clear and had that polluted look to it.  I saw nuclear cooling towers off to my left.  At least, I thought they were nuclear cooling towers…turns out they were from another power plant–the one thing Indiana has going for it is that we don’t have nuclear power plants here.  I don’t hold my breath that they won’t eventually appear, especially with Mike Pence and the ALEC team now in charge here.  Besides, there are nuclear plants in Illinois and Ohio bordering our state, so…yeah…we’re still susceptible to nuclear radiation or the China Syndrome.  All it would take is one of the reactors melting down and we’re done.

And then there’s the curious case of radiation in Delaware,  Indiana that is mentioned in this blog.

Angelina Jolie

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Has this at the New York Times on having a double mastectomy.  First, I want to say that I hope she is doing well and on her way to healing and recovery.  It must have been a difficult decision to make.

My grandmother died of breast cancer.  There is a lot of cancer in my family.   But I would not make the same choice as Angelina has done, even if I knew that I had the “breast cancer gene”.  There are too many unknowns about genes and their impact on disease.  As I have posted about before, there are factors about genes and the expression of their purpose that is *still* not understood by scientists.

More here on genes and the nutrition of the mother. Very interesting.  The usual focus is treating the problem after it occurs (or in Angelina’s case, before it occurs, but with drastic measures)…instead of  turning the focus to the toxic soup we’re living in that is the root cause of the disease.   Also, it does not focus on the understanding that diet of organic fruits and vegetables are key to good health and allowing the body to do what it miraculously does:  fight disease.

Why is that so hard to do?

Why can’t we be more proactive in trying to eliminate the causes instead of allowing it?