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“If a man has an apartment stacked to the ceiling with newspapers we call him crazy. If a woman has a trailer house full of cats we call her nuts. But when people pathologically hoard so much cash that they impoverish the entire nation, we put them on the cover of Fortune magazine and pretend that they are role models.”
-– B. Lester
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 | The News: Those Uninvited Guests at Your Barbecue |
With most samples of several common store-bought meats testing positive for antibiotic-resistant "superbugs," factory farming practices must change.
By Jill Richardson
Planning a Memorial Day barbecue? When you buy meat for that festive meal, watch out for some uninvited guests. An alarming amount of American meat harbors not just pathogens, but “superbugs” — antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
For now, you’d better cook your meat well enough to kill the germs (165F is the magic temperature), but there might be hope for safer alternatives in the future. Consumer advocates and lawmakers are trying to push changes that make these superbugs a thing of the past. That’s never been so important because industrialized agriculture delivers efficiency, productivity, and profit at the expense of food safety.
Our modern-day factory farm system has for too long served up meat that too frequently comes with a side of with pathogens like Salmonella and E. coli. Packing animals into cages and pens and feeding them the cheapest possible diets results in fast growth and tidy profits. But it also sets up sanitary conditions worse than a medieval city. With so many immune-depressed animals packed tightly together (along with their waste), these “farms” are a boon for bacteria.
That’s bad enough because food poisoning can kill you. But the news is even worse because many of the pathogens found in meat aren’t just bugs — they’re superbugs. If they infect you, antibiotics won’t help. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Thursday, May 16 @ 23:09:14 EDT (24 reads)
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| The News: The American Tragedy That Time Forgot |
 by Ray Lemire, streamingoldies.com
Death Comes To Mississippi
The Jackson State Murders
May 14-15, 1970
It was one of the most colossal blunders in Mississippi law enforcement history. Two young men killed, twelve more wounded. A farce of an investigation and trial following the tragedy. All in the name of squashing people's rights to be free and equal citizens of this country.
Since its establishment as a teacher's college in the late 1800s, Jackson State had been subject to racism. The school moved from its original location because it was too close to an all-white area, and established a new campus in an entirely black neighborhood. Lynch Street, named for Mississippi's first black congressman, bisected the new campus and linked west Jackson, a white suburb, to the downtown area.
In the early 1960s, a Masonic Temple just down the block from the university on Lynch Street was the headquarters for the Mississippi civil rights movement. Despite the proximity of the headquarters to the school, JSU students participated little in demonstrations and protests. A state school, Jackson could not afford to alienate the all-white board of education.
In the Spring of 1970, campus communities across this country were characterized by a chorus of protests and demonstrations. The issues were the escalation of the war in Vietnam and the U.S. invasion of Cambodia; the ecology; racism and repression; and the inclusion of the experiences of women and minorities in the educational system. No institution of higher education was left untouched by confrontations and continuous calls for change. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Tuesday, May 14 @ 20:25:39 EDT (35 reads)
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| The News: The Koch Brothers' Dangerous Plan |
 From: U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders,
bernie@bernie.org
Earlier this year, it was announced that the Tribune Company was exploring the possible sale of some of its major newspapers including The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, and Hoy, amongst others.
More recently, it has been rumored that one of the strongest potential buyers is Koch Industries, owned by the billionaire Koch brothers.
As you no doubt know, Charles and David Koch are right-wing extremists who already exercise enormous economic and political power in our country. As a family worth some $50 billion dollars they have reportedly spent at least $400 million attempting to influence the 2012 national elections. They have also established and funded dozens of organizations that actively support the privatization of Social Security, massive cuts in programs for working families, attacks on workers' rights, more tax breaks for billionaires and large corporations and other causes benefitting the rich and powerful. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Friday, May 03 @ 20:18:50 EDT (82 reads)
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| The News: Flying Over an Act of Monumental Stupidity |
The great victims of this sequester will be our children, the unemployed, the poor and the elderly — all groups with feeble lobbies or no lobbies at all.
By Donald Kaul
I knew that Congress would come to its senses eventually, that it would realize that the ham-handed budget cuts ordered by the so-called “sequester” weren’t going to work, that some government functions were too important to be cut.
And I was right, kind of.
Last week it restored funds to the Federal Aviation Administration. There had been big lines and flight delays at airports around the country, you see, and we can’t have that.
Congresspersons have to get back to their districts every Friday so they can beg for money and corporate executives have to get to their appointments on time so they’ll have the money to pay off the beggars. It’s called politics.
The way things were going at airports, however, was beyond inconvenient; it was a national crisis. Why, it was probably harming the war effort. I don’t know which war— terror, drugs, Afghanistan — pick one.
So, in a heart-warming example of bipartisanship, Republicans and Democrats joined hands to get the FAA back up to strength and the Republic was saved. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, May 01 @ 21:53:55 EDT (105 reads)
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| The News: The Price of Our Fertilizer Addiction |
Compared to the lifetime of grieving ahead for the people of West, Texas, a few years of reduced crop yields is a small price to pay for converting from "conventional" to organic farming.
By Jill Richardson
My heart aches for the people of West, Texas, the tiny town where a fertilizer plant recently blew up. Many of the folks who perished in the blast were heroic volunteer firefighters who ran into danger instead of away from it.
With 14 dead and 200 injured, and a nearby nursing home, school, and apartment complex either badly damaged or destroyed, West’s brave citizens have hard work ahead.
As a nation, we must prevent a disaster like this from happening again. For starters, we can make fertilizer plants safer and locate them away from schools and nursing homes from now on.
This tragedy is even more painful because the factory was making a product — nitrogen fertilizer — that perhaps should not be used at all....
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, April 24 @ 22:18:51 EDT (100 reads)
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| The News: Who's investigating the FBI investigators?: |
Something's Rotten in Boston
by: Dave Lindorff
I’m not a conspiracy-minded person, but something definitely stinks about this whole Boston Marathon bombing story.
From what we’re reading about the case, the FBI had for at least two and possibly as many as five years been investigating Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the 26-year-old older brother killed during a shootout between police and the two brothers, Tamerlan and 19-year-old Dzhokhar. They had interviewed Tamerlan in his home, warned him they were watching what he ate, what he looked at on his computer, etc. They knew he had gone to Russia, Dagestan and Chechnya.
Then there’s the money thing. We’re told that Tamerlan had dropped out of community college because of money problems, right? Community college? That costs almost nothing to attend. That’s the whole point of community colleges: everyone can afford them. And he was reportedly only going part-time! But then, the two brothers are driving around in a Mercedes and wearing fancy clothes?
We’re talking about two brothers, both in school, with a father who was ill and living in Dagestan, who had worked as a curbside mechanic while in the US, and a mother who had a home beauty salon business, and these lads somehow were stylish dressers and drove around in an expensive car -- expensive to buy even used, and terribly expensive to maintain, too.
Where did all that money come from? ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, April 22 @ 22:31:14 EDT (109 reads)
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| The News: Free speech for feminists only, please |
 From: Abram Spritzler
I posted a leaflet recently, today in fact, that went like this. Boy, did I get some comments about it...
Men's Rights
Are
Human Rights.
Across the world, governments - not the people -
are making laws that discriminate against men and boys.
Men and women are being pitted against each other in order to weaken us all as part of a divide and rule strategy being carried out by Big Money and the governments that Big Money bought.
*************
To hear about what is going on,
as well as let YOUR voice be heard,
contact Abe at mhrmboston@gmail.com
Wouldn't you know it, one was defaced and a couple torn down. The one that was defaced had two comments on it, with different pens, though possibly the same group, of course. One went like this: ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Thursday, April 11 @ 21:23:30 EDT (164 reads)
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| The News: Eyes Wide Shut on the Iraq War |
 By Ray McGovern
Ten years ago, as President George W. Bush and his administration were putting the finishing touches on their unprovoked invasion of Iraq, the mainstream U.S. news media had long since capitulated, accepting the conventional wisdom that nothing could – or should – stop the march to war.
The neocon conquest of the major U.S. news outlets – the likes of the New York Times, the Washington Post and the national TV news – was so total that the Bush administration could reliably count on them as eager co-conspirators in the Iraq adventure rather than diligent watchdogs for the American people.
By now a decade ago, the New York Times had published Judy Miller’s infamous “mushroom cloud” article about Iraq’s aluminum tubes, the Washington Post’s op-ed page had lined up in lock-step to hail Colin Powell’s misleading United Nations speech, MSNBC had dumped Phil Donahue after he allowed on a few anti-war voices, and CNN had assembled a chorus of pro-war ex-military officers as “analysts.”
Despite massive worldwide protests against the impending invasion, the U.S. news media only grudgingly covered the spectacle of millions of people in the streets in dozens of cities. The coverage mostly had a tone of bemusement about how deluded such uninformed folks could be.
The U.S. news media’s consensus was so overwhelming that it may have freed up a few lesser outlets to publish some undeniable facts, which then could be safely dismissed and ignored. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, February 25 @ 20:21:52 EST (218 reads)
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| The News: ACLU Sues to Protect Privacy of Drug Prescriptions |
ACLU Challenging Government Efforts to Access Confidential Records Without a Warrant
From: ACLU.org
PORTLAND, Ore. – The American Civil LibertiesUnion and the ACLU of Oregon filed a complaint in federal court today challenging the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's authority to obtain Oregonians' private prescription records without a warrant. In November, the State of Oregon sued the DEA to prevent the agency from circumventing a state law requiring a warrant for such access, and today the ACLU filed a motion to intervene in the case on behalf of several patients and a doctor whose prescription records are in the database.
In 2009, Oregon enacted legislation to create the Oregon Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP), which records information on millions of prescriptions for Oregon patients. The database tracks prescriptions needed to treat chronic and acute pain, anxiety and panic disorders, weight loss associated with AIDS, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and other conditions.
In order to safeguard the privacy and security of these records, the Oregon law prohibits the PDMP from releasing records to any federal, state or local law enforcement official without a judicial warrant based on probable cause. However, the DEA has been issuing the PDMP administrative subpoenas, which do not involve a judge, seeking prescription records of patients and physicians. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, January 28 @ 19:20:22 EST (177 reads)
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| The News: Border Fears Riddled with Holes |
 Despite the rhetoric from immigration hardliners, we are indeed securing our borders.
By Raul A. Reyes
Senator John Cornyn recently discussed immigration reform at a meeting of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “I think there have to be some conditions satisfied. One is that people know we’ve done everything we can to secure the border,” the Republican said at the Austin event.
The Texan lawmaker warned that a “porous” border could leave the country “vulnerable to the sorts of attacks that we sustained on 9/11.”
Cornyn and other Republicans just don’t get it. Although securing the border is important, studies show that we’ve already done that. The biggest problem facing our immigration system isn’t border security. It’s what to do with the undocumented immigrants who are already here. The solution is to create a path to citizenship for them, and the time to do it is now.
Regarding immigrants and the threat of terrorism, recall that all 19 of the 9/11 hijackers had valid tourist visas. Increased border security alone wouldn’t have prevented them from entering the country. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, January 23 @ 19:16:43 EST (179 reads)
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| The News: ACLU Responds to President Obama’s Announcement on Gun Control |
More police in schools could threaten students’ civil rights and liberties.
From: ACLU.org
WASHINGTON — President Obama today announced 23 executive actions and proposed legislative action stemming from Vice President Biden’s Gun Task Force. The ACLU had this reaction to the President’s announcement:
“Many of the presidential actions announced today are thoughtful, and the ACLU is assessing all of the proposals that have been put forth. We have several concerns about the administration incentivizing police departments and school districts to put more police officers in schools,” said Laura W. Murphy, director of the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office. “We fear that neutral sounding safety policies, such as putting more cops in school will lead to the over-incarceration of school-age children, especially students of color and students with disabilities, who are disproportionately arrested and prosecuted for issues that would normally be handled by school administrators when law enforcement is introduced into schools.” ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, January 16 @ 18:26:21 EST (154 reads)
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| The News: Big Food Fight |
If the products they sell us are as great as they say, what are General Mills, Kraft, and other processed food giants hiding?
By Jill Richardson
I'm going to sell you something to eat, but I won't tell you what's in it. Trust me, the ingredients are perfectly safe — but I absolutely oppose telling you what you're eating. I also won't let independent scientists study the ingredients. And I'm making a bundle of money by selling these unlabeled products. But trust me, they are safe. Go ahead, take a bite.
Does that sound ridiculous? Well, chances are, your pantry is full of products made by companies that are spending millions in California to avoid telling consumers what's in their food. On Election Day, Californians will vote on Proposition 37, a measure to require mandatory labeling of foods containing genetically engineered ingredients. Coca Cola, PepsiCo, General Mills, Kellogg, and Nestle have each kicked in more than half a million bucks to defeat the measure. And even if Californians win the right to know what's in their food, the rest of the country may remain in the dark. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Friday, October 12 @ 20:22:01 EDT (176 reads)
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| The News: A Congressional Report Card for the 99 Percent |
The grades are in, and you can see how lawmakers fare on the most important issue of our time: the grand divide between America's rich and everybody else.
By Sam Pizzigati
Lots of Americans today are watching how members of Congress go about their business. Environmentalists and electrical workers alike keep track of key congressional votes. So do retailers and farmers. Even poker players are following how members of Congress rate on the issues that hit home.
All these groups have, of course, their own specific priorities. Their representatives are looking out for their own supporters, not looking at the "big picture."
That big picture, meanwhile, hasn't been particularly pretty for some time now. The vast majority of Americans — the 99 percent — have been racing on a treadmill ever since the 1970s. We're working harder, with little to show for our effort. But for our top one percent, it's an entirely different story. They've been doing just fabulously. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Friday, October 05 @ 08:05:07 EDT (187 reads)
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| The News: The US is still Executing Teens and Locking Kids Up for Life |
by: Dave Lindorff
The United States never misses an opportunity to castigate other countries for “uncivilized” behavior, and certainly there is enough of that to go around almost anywhere you look in the world. But there’s plenty of it here in the U.S. too.
Just consider the case of Terry Williams.
Williams, a 47-year-old black man, has spent almost 30 years on Pennsylvania’s crowded death row while lawyers appealed his death penalty for two murders committed back when he was a 17 and 18-year old boy. Now he’s about to be killed by the state for those crimes.
At the time he was tried and convicted, although it was known to prosecutors that his two victims were adult men who had forcibly raped Williams when he was as young as 13, and that he had been a victim of sexual abuse since he was six, the jury was not informed about any of this. In recent years, a number of the 12 jurors who originally convicted him and sentenced the teenager to death have now said that had they known about the abuse he suffered -- particularly at the hands of the two men he later killed -- they would have decided the case differently, and certainly would not have voted for the death penalty. Even the wife of one of his victims has pleaded with the state to spare him.
Nevertheless, the state’s governor, Tom Corbett, a hard-on-crime Republican who, prior to being elected to the state’s top post, served as attorney general, making him the state’s top lawyer, had no hesitation in signing his death warrant earlier this month, with an Oct. 3 execution date. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, September 24 @ 18:08:45 EDT (211 reads)
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| The News: The Latest Battle in the War on Voting |
The kind of big government the Right likes is the kind that keeps certain people from voting.
By Marge Baker
The Republican Party claims to be the party of small government — with the obvious exceptions of denying marriage equality and reproductive rights. But there's another kind of big government that the party has overwhelmingly and enthusiastically gotten behind: expensive and intrusive attempts to make it harder for Americans to vote.
A recent trio of federal court decisions in Florida, Ohio, and Texas have ripped the lid off the increasingly successful right-wing campaign to limit opportunities for low-income people, minorities, and students to vote — especially, and not coincidentally, in swing states. These decisions, from even-handed and moderate federal judges across the country, show just how far the Right has gone to use the power of government to make it even harder for traditionally disenfranchised groups to vote. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, September 17 @ 20:16:12 EDT (161 reads)
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