(Oh, how I miss CSPAN…even though it is slowly becoming mostly conservative views.)
Speaks his mind on President Obama using MLK’s bible to be sworn in. He has strong words about “using King’s fire” and not following up with actions, such as putting Wall St bankers in jail, putting Bush torturers in jail, getting rid of the drones, doing something about poverty...etc.
Susie Madrak has a post up on MLK’s birthday celebration. This is my view, too, on how everybody brings up “I Have a Dream” speech, and then fail to acknowledge his “Beyond Vietnam” speech (which he gave a year to the day before his murder).
He was expanding from the Civil Rights protests towards protesting the condition of the poor and of the terrible consequences of war. This was more of a threat to the status quo than anything he had done prior. Indeed, even his friends that had supported him during the Civil Rights era were abandoning him when he started advocating for the poor and protesting against war. According to those that knew him, he never felt so alone.
He knew that advocating those positions was dangerous.
And he did it anyway….
I came back to look at the Cluster link…and North Haven, Connecticut caught my eye. I wondered how close it was to Newtown.
From the Cluster website:
Researchers have doubled the scope of their investigation into brain cancer cases at a jet-engine manufacturing company and are requesting another two years and an additional $4 million to complete the work. This study was prompted by the deaths of at least several dozen workers from the same rare, very fast-growing form of brain cancer. The study initially had been expected to look at the medical and work records of about 100,000 current and former workers. But that number increased to 200,000 during routine searches of company records, said a biostatistician at the University of Pittsburgh who is conducting a portion of the research. The due-date for the study is 2008, but researchers now want to push back the completion deadline to 2010.
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I looked at the distance between the two cities: about 42 miles…close enough to possibly affect them?
When I looked up Newtown contamination, I found this. <sigh>
These piles are contaminated with high levels of metals including cadmium, lead, tin, chromium, copper, zinc, and nickel, as well as PCBs.
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…the only one missing is mercury, but the article does mention that it was a site of aluminum smelting.
So…you have poisons giving people brain cancer and 40 miles away, you have the toxic soup further messing with brain function, if they were lucky enough not to become sick (at least noticeably sick, i.e., cancer). But many others will likely suffer from chronic fatigue, low thyroid/adrenal function, ADD, memory loss, and on…and they won’t likely be counted. It’s sooo much easier to ignore a problem when you only count those most severely affected, and not the overall decline of health of many others….and if someone commits a horrible crime because of those toxins…
I was thinking about my post here over the weekend, and thought I should expand on it. I write what I know (which is what they tell you), but perhaps I was being myopic.
I did a search on susceptibility and African Americans, but had very few articles to choose from. I found this.
Here are some of the issues I have with this article–
One is that pollution stays in one place, so it affects just the nearest geographical area. It spreads all over. Articles on it here and here and here.
Air pollution in FW is particularly bad–there were many, many ozone days last summer where I could not go outside for any length of time. I thought I could at least jog in the morning of an ozone day, but was sadly mistaken when I started wheezing as I climbed the stairs to my apartment afterward.
The lung disease thing I am confused about because in my building, the only folks with oxygen tanks are whites–several of them. And nearly all the ones in wheelchairs are white. At one time, there have been seven whites in wheelchairs, several more using walkers but only one black gentleman in a wheelchair. Just my own little world….
I suspect that heavy metals are affecting African Americans, but like whites, are not being noticed or investigated. The information may be out there, but I didn’t see it in my research. I would love to explore this more.
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And no, I don’t think that nuclear energy is the answer (if one wants to reduce coal production to lessen the impact of lead, arsenic and mercury in the environment). Nuclear has many, many problems, one of which is thyroid cancer levels go up around nuclear power plants. I think one of the first things that has to occur is for Americans to stop wasting so much energy and going off grid would be the first step–one has to be more conscious of the energy they use if they are responsible for that energy. Another step would be to build sustainable housing, like earth ships. Gotta love that name. And I love the design on this page—Isn’t that cool? Who would think such an artsy design is also sustainable?
A paper here by Joseph Mangano on the rising thyroid cancer rates and nuclear energy. (PDF)
A map on disease clusters here.
Yep, the evidence is out there that we are killing ourselves with the toxic environment. I’d rather sacrifice a little and be able to breathe than have the conveniences of modern life that are killing us, slowly.
...according to Gen. McChrystal.
News Flash: we are not the cops of the world. We don’t have any right to tell other nations how to run their lives–nor invade them to get at their oil.
(I’m sooo far behind, I think I’m ahead…)
Trying to play catch up–here are some highlights of issues sent out by Center for Media and Democracy–
I love that he is holding Whole Foods accountable for the food they are saying is organic….but not quite telling all of the possible ingredients (heavy metals and other contaminants)…
The “Don’t ask, don’t tell” I-see-no-evil, I-hear-no-evil is pretty standard. They aren’t counting on folks like Mario asking questions, either. The more people ask questions, the harder it is to come up with evasive answers.
Like I’ve said before, know where your food is from–buy locally if at all possible, because the gossip is at least one other national organic food store is selling conventionally grown (using chemical fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides) food is being marketed as organic.
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Addressing the gun violence issue. Like in my previous post, you can use other weapons for violence instead of guns–it’s the acceptance of violence in our society (and others) that encourages this. It’s so much easier to throw a rock than to try to reason with someone and to compromise and to recognize one’s own responsibility towards making peace. A gun is a quick way to end whatever problem there is…
And the argument that everyone carrying a gun would stop violence…oy vey…
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ALEC member Scott nominated to fill Demint vacancy.
IRS audit for ALEC? The question becomes “are you a charity if you have a political action committee and go from state to state trying to heavily influence legislation?”
Michigan and ALEC’s right to work law. This is part of the religious right’s assault on fairness, which I’m finding out in the book Holy Terror. (I’m slowly getting through it, a better report later.)
Well, I guess I didn’t know that one has to have loyalty to Israel to be Secretary of Defense.
I’ve had to take a break from it–the combination of the effects of the migraine and the children being shot was getting to me.
I kept seeing the faces of the children I used to teach. I always looked forward to the days that I got to teach the 1st grade–they were so eager to learn and had so much to learn that every day was an adventure to them. I had to stop listening to the news for a day to balance.
My son and I were talking about it-and the laws that have already been in place did not stop what happened. The guns were legally owned. Even though guns were not allowed in school and the school was secure as it could be, the tragedy still happened.
I’m not trying to dash all hope that there are solutions. Laws only go so far.
It’s so much easier in a culture that does not value peace to take the easy way out.
…that 90% of the Democrats endorse and support Hillary Clinton for president in 2016. (Of all the times to forget my earphones–so I can’t watch this, but I have heard parts of it.)
She actually thinks Henry Kissinger, Tony Blair and Benjamin Netanyahu are upstanding people that speak well of her integrity and leadership skills?
Kissinger quotes that are alarming:
“Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”
“Intelligence is not all that important in the exercise of power, and is often, in point of fact, useless.”
“Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.”
In other words, power turns him on–ego, ego, ego. Intelligence is not needed when you’re trying to bomb the hell out of another country–you only need bigger bombs than they have. And lastly, starving people will do wonders at gaining their compliance to do things they would not normally do. And he who has the gold makes the rules….
Tony Blair and his compliance with invading Iraq.
And, of course, we know of Netanyahu’s connections to Romney and his exaggerating the Iran threat….for twenty years…
Clinton is a war hawk who would love to push that fabled “red button” at the slightest provocation….or none at all.
One of the employees bought a converter for our TV in the main room for the residents, so I get whatever our antenna picks up. I watched ABC This Week on Sunday morning and was stunned at Carville’s statement that 90% of Dems have already decided that Clinton will be the nominee.
First of all, how dare you make such an assumption of what the voters are thinking?? I am so sick and tired of politicians and pundits using the phrase “the American people believe/want/need…” when they can only speak for themselves.
…and from where this writer sits, I’d vote for Romney before I’d vote for another Clinton in the White House. I’m sick of Bushes and Clintons in the White House. We can thank Clinton for NAFTA, and Bush II for No Child Left a Mind, and for getting us into two wars on false claims of weapons of mass destruction…between all of them, they’ve done a bang up job of ruining this country. And let’s not leave out the Godfather of it all, Ronald Reagan. I’m ashamed to say that I voted for him the first four years, but thankfully, not the second four…
They had stopped spraying so much of the chemtrails here. At least, during the day…but then for two weeks, you couldn’t see the sunrise…there was a solid “cloud” blanket over the sky. I also noticed that I was having a more difficult time breathing. I passed it off to all the cigarette smoke I’m exposed to in the building, or the deodorants they use in cleaning, or paint fumes…but then another resident complained to me that she was also having trouble breathing. It’s a more serious event for her because she has severe asthma. I’ve also noticed that I am really tired after jogging in the morning, instead of feeling the “runner’s high”, I feel wiped out–and if the skies are clear? I feel that runner’s high and energized. The conclusion points towards them spraying at night…
Now, it could be all of the above…but consider this: my car’s protective coat, which was intact before I moved here, began peeling away this past year, only one year after moving here. I went out to it the other day, and saw this horrible “alligator” patch about twelve inches in diameter. I was driving in town, so my speed wasn’t that fast, when the protective film just started flying off in bits–some of sticking in the windshield wiper. Another resident’s car, which is also massively peeling, had the same phenomenon–pieces of protective film lay on the ground near the car. It’s important to note that this happened the same time mine happened. And this car was not as old as mine, so you can take the age factor out.
I searched “chemtrails and asthma” and found this at natural news. This link is particularly good, with a physician explaining how devastating they are.
This link is also good–be sure to look at the video of the gelatinous material falling over Oakville Washington.
Human white blood cells….?? And a bacteria that makes its home in the human digestive tract…holy crap…tell me that isn’t causing digestive distress and issues with the gut? And one can’t argue against the pets dying–a red flag that something is terribly wrong. Where are the samples?
I found this after searching “chemtrails and meteorologists”. Since it’s so long, I can’t watch it entirely, but he is a meteorologist that is debunking chemtrails as non-existent. He said that most meteorologists are either stupid or know of them and going along with it. I know the local weather kid actually pointed at a chemtrails photo recently, saying they were cirrus clouds. He named them in a meteorological term that I can’t remember. I was just stunned.
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