....it felt as if the ocean itself was dead....

Below is a particularly damning article of the ocean destruction caused by garbage dumping...

Ivan Macfadyen aboard the Funnel Web. (photo: Max Mason-Hubers)

The Ocean Is Broken

By Greg Ray, The Herald

31 December 13

T was the silence that made this voyage different from all of those before it. See your ad here

Not the absence of sound, exactly.

 

The wind still whipped the sails and whistled in the rigging. The waves still sloshed against the fibreglass hull.

 

And there were plenty of other noises: muffled thuds and bumps and scrapes as the boat knocked against pieces of debris.

 

What was missing was the cries of the seabirds which, on all previous similar voyages, had surrounded the boat.

 

The birds were missing because the fish were missing.

 

Exactly 10 years before, when Newcastle yachtsman Ivan Macfadyen had sailed exactly the same course from Melbourne to Osaka, all he'd had to do to catch a fish from the ocean between Brisbane and Japan was throw out a baited line.

 

"There was not one of the 28 days on that portion of the trip when we didn't catch a good-sized fish to cook up and eat with some rice," Macfadyen recalled.

 

But this time, on that whole long leg of sea journey, the total catch was two.

 

No fish. No birds. Hardly a sign of life at all.

 

"In years gone by I'd gotten used to all the birds and their noises," he said.

 

"They'd be following the boat, sometimes resting on the mast before taking off again. You'd see flocks of them wheeling over the surface of the sea in the distance, feeding on pilchards."

 

But in March and April this year, only silence and desolation surrounded his boat, Funnel Web, as it sped across the surface of a haunted ocean.

 

North of the equator, up above New Guinea, the ocean-racers saw a big fishing boat working a reef in the distance.

 

"All day it was there, trawling back and forth. It was a big ship, like a mother-ship," he said.

 

And all night it worked too, under bright floodlights. And in the morning Macfadyen was awoken by his crewman calling out, urgently, that the ship had launched a speedboat.

 

"Obviously I was worried. We were unarmed and pirates are a real worry in those waters. I thought, if these guys had weapons then we were in deep trouble."

 

But they weren't pirates, not in the conventional sense, at least. The speedboat came alongside and the Melanesian men aboard offered gifts of fruit and jars of jam and preserves.

 

"And they gave us five big sugar-bags full of fish," he said.

 

"They were good, big fish, of all kinds. Some were fresh, but others had obviously been in the sun for a while.

 

"We told them there was no way we could possibly use all those fish. There were just two of us, with no real place to store or keep them. They just shrugged and told us to tip them overboard. That's what they would have done with them anyway, they said.

 

"They told us that his was just a small fraction of one day's by-catch. That they were only interested in tuna and to them, everything else was rubbish. It was all killed, all dumped. They just trawled that reef day and night and stripped it of every living thing."

 

Macfadyen felt sick to his heart. That was one fishing boat among countless more working unseen beyond the horizon, many of them doing exactly the same thing.

 

No wonder the sea was dead. No wonder his baited lines caught nothing. There was nothing to catch.

 

If that sounds depressing, it only got worse.

 

The next leg of the long voyage was from Osaka to San Francisco and for most of that trip the desolation was tinged with nauseous horror and a degree of fear.

 

"After we left Japan, it felt as if the ocean itself was dead," Macfadyen said.

 

"We hardly saw any living things. We saw one whale, sort of rolling helplessly on the surface with what looked like a big tumour on its head. It was pretty sickening.

 

"I've done a lot of miles on the ocean in my life and I'm used to seeing turtles, dolphins, sharks and big flurries of feeding birds. But this time, for 3000 nautical miles there was nothing alive to be seen."

 

In place of the missing life was garbage in astounding volumes.

 

"Part of it was the aftermath of the tsunami that hit Japan a couple of years ago. The wave came in over the land, picked up an unbelievable load of stuff and carried it out to sea. And it's still out there, everywhere you look."

 

Ivan's brother, Glenn, who boarded at Hawaii for the run into the United States, marvelled at the "thousands on thousands" of yellow plastic buoys. The huge tangles of synthetic rope, fishing lines and nets. Pieces of polystyrene foam by the million. And slicks of oil and petrol, everywhere.

 

Countless hundreds of wooden power poles are out there, snapped off by the killer wave and still trailing their wires in the middle of the sea.

 

"In years gone by, when you were becalmed by lack of wind, you'd just start your engine and motor on," Ivan said.

 

Not this time.

 

"In a lot of places we couldn't start our motor for fear of entangling the propeller in the mass of pieces of rope and cable. That's an unheard of situation, out in the ocean.

 

"If we did decide to motor we couldn't do it at night, only in the daytime with a lookout on the bow, watching for rubbish.

 

"On the bow, in the waters above Hawaii, you could see right down into the depths. I could see that the debris isn't just on the surface, it's all the way down. And it's all sizes, from a soft-drink bottle to pieces the size of a big car or truck.

 

"We saw a factory chimney sticking out of the water, with some kind of boiler thing still attached below the surface. We saw a big container-type thing, just rolling over and over on the waves.

 

"We were weaving around these pieces of debris. It was like sailing through a garbage tip.

 

"Below decks you were constantly hearing things hitting against the hull, and you were constantly afraid of hitting something really big. As it was, the hull was scratched and dented all over the place from bits and pieces we never saw."

 

Plastic was ubiquitous. Bottles, bags and every kind of throwaway domestic item you can imagine, from broken chairs to dustpans, toys and utensils.

 

And something else. The boat's vivid yellow paint job, never faded by sun or sea in years gone past, reacted with something in the water off Japan, losing its sheen in a strange and unprecedented way.

 

BACK in Newcastle, Ivan Macfadyen is still coming to terms with the shock and horror of the voyage.

 

"The ocean is broken," he said, shaking his head in stunned disbelief.

 

Recognising the problem is vast, and that no organisations or governments appear to have a particular interest in doing anything about it, Macfadyen is looking for ideas.

 

He plans to lobby government ministers, hoping they might help.

 

More immediately, he will approach the organisers of Australia's major ocean races, trying to enlist yachties into an international scheme that uses volunteer yachtsmen to monitor debris and marine life.

 

Macfadyen signed up to this scheme while he was in the US, responding to an approach by US academics who asked yachties to fill in daily survey forms and collect samples for radiation testing - a significant concern in the wake of the tsunami and consequent nuclear power station failure in Japan.

 

"I asked them why don't we push for a fleet to go and clean up the mess," he said.

 

"But they said they'd calculated that the environmental damage from burning the fuel to do that job would be worse than just leaving the debris there."

 

 

The rest of RSN:

 

Andy Borowitz | People Who Can Still Afford to Live in New York Praise Bloomberg

Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
Borowitz writes: "As the curtain comes down on the Michael Bloomberg era, the three-term mayor of New York received fulsome praise last night from his most appreciative constituency: the people who can still afford to live there."
READ MORE

Robert Reich | A New Years Message
Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog
Reich writes: "Despite do-nothing congressional Republicans, we ARE making progress around the country because Americans are organizing and mobilizing. Together we can make 2014 the year we turn the tide on economic inequality."
READ MORE

The Most Important Surveillance Order We Know Almost Nothing About
Alex Abdo, ACLU
Abdo writes: "Over the last seven months, we have learned an incredible amount about the government's post-9/11 surveillance efforts. But there is a crucial gap in our basic understanding."
READ MORE

Uighur Detainees Held for 12 Years Leave Guantanamo
Spencer Ackerman, Guardian UK
Ackerman reports: "Twelve years of detention without trial have ended for three Uighur men who have left Guantanamo Bay for Slovakia, the US Department of Defense announced on Tuesday, ending a clear mistake of the 9/11 era."
READ MORE

Kathy Kelly | Afghan Street Children Beg for Change
Kathy Kelly, Voices for Creative Nonviolence
"Kabul, Afghanistan is 'home' to hundreds of thousands of children who have no home. Many of them live in squalid refugee camps with families that have been displaced by violence and war."
READ MORE

 

 

A Man Who Changed History! + ALEC's Terrorism, TEPCO dumping radiation

Much will be said in the coming days about the legacy left by Nelson Mandela's legacy. There is much to learn.

News Updates from Citizens for Legitimate Government
05 Dec 2013
http://www.legitgov.org/
All links are here:
http://www.legitgov.org/#breaking_news

Breaking: Nelson Mandela dies at 95 05 Dec 2013

Guantánamo Bay detainees claim Poland allowed CIA torture --Terror suspects subjected to extraordinary rendition tell European court of human rights they were waterboarded 03 Dec 2013 Lawyers for two men subject to extraordinary rendition by the CIA told the European court of human rights (ECHR) on Tuesday that Poland, which permitted a secret "black" site to operate on its territory, should be held responsible for their torture. The two-day hearing at Strasbourg was the first time a European country has been taken to court for allowing US agencies to carry out "enhanced" interrogation and "waterboarding" programmes. In a highly unusual legal move, the media and public were barred from the opening day's session.

Deadly car bomb at Yemen defence ministry in Sanaa 05 Dec 2013 A car bomb has exploded at Yemen's defence ministry building in the capital Sanaa causing deaths and injuries, security officials say. Smoke was seen rising from the complex in Bab al-Yaman district, at the entrance to the old city. Witnesses heard gunshots as an ambulance rushed to the scene.

Obama war chiefs widen drone kill box --Lethality of collateral damage 'must not be excessive' 03 Dec 2013 The Pentagon has loosened its guidelines on avoiding civilian casualties during drone strikes, modifying instructions from requiring military personnel to "ensure" civilians are not targeted to encouraging service members to "avoid targeting" civilians. In addition, instructions now tell commanders that collateral damage "must not be excessive" in relation to mission goals, according to Public Intelligence, a nonprofit research group that analyzed the military's directives on drone strikes. Because drone strikes are classified operations, the U.S. typically does not acknowledge when they occur, or reveal how many combatants and civilians are killed or injured.

TEPCO may consider dumping radioactive water into Pacific Ocean: IAEA --Water containing tritium will keep rising, topping 700,000 tons in two years 04 Dec 2013 The head of an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) mission in Japan monitoring the decommissioning process at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station said Wednesday that discharging contaminated radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean might be an option for the plant's operator. The embattled utility firm, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), is struggling to contain massive influxes of contaminated water on a daily basis and must now weigh the risks of dumping excess radioactive water into the adjacent Pacific Ocean. Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority, highlighted the fact that...the amount of water containing tritium will keep rising, topping 700,000 tons in two years.

ALEC calls for penalties on 'freerider' homeowners in assault on clean energy --Documents reveal conservative group's anti-green agenda --Strategy to charge people who install their own solar panels 04 Dec 2013 An alliance of corporations and conservative activists is mobilising to penalise homeowners who install their own solar panels – casting them as "freeriders" – in a sweeping new offensive against renewable energy, the Guardian has learned. Over the coming year, the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec) will promote legislation with goals ranging from penalising individual homeowners and weakening state clean energy regulations, to blocking the Environmental Protection Agency, which is Barack Obama's main channel for climate action. Details of Alec's strategy to block clean energy development at every stage -- from the individual rooftop to the White House -- are revealed as the group gathers for its policy summit in Washington this week. [For a solution to the ALEC terrorist group, start reading.]

Martin Bashir resigns from MSNBC after Sarah Palin flap 04 Dec 2013 Martin Bashir has resigned from MSNBC as a result of the derogatory comments he made on the air a few weeks ago about Sarah Palin. Bashir, who apologized on the air a day later, was not suspended and he and the network have come under increasing pressure from Palin supporters because he was not punished. [And yet, Joe Scarborough remains at MSNBC, even though a dead pregnant intern was found in the (then) Florida Congressman's office in 2001.]

*****

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FUKUSHIMA EARTHQUAKE

Vermont Yankee and Pilgrim Nuclear, both operated by Entergy, are of the same design and age as FUKUSHIMA. Still think nuclear power is harmless?

Breaking: Magnitude 7.3 Earthquake Strikes off Fukushima Region of Japan, Tsunami Warning Issued 25 Oct 2013 Magnitude 7.3 earthquake strikes off Fukushima region of Japan, US Geological Service says. A tsunami warning has been issued. (Wires) [This story will be updated]

Radiation doubles to new high in Fukushima No. 1 plant water ditch 24 Oct 2013 Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Thursday that radiation rose to a new record in water collected from a drainage ditch at its stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant. Tepco said it detected a maximum of 140,000 becquerels per liter of beta ray-emitting substances, including strontium, from a water sample collected Wednesday from the ditch, which extends to the sea beyond the plant's port. The figure is 2.3 times higher than the previous record of 59,000 becquerels detected in water sampled at the same location Tuesday, and was more than 11 times the previous day's reading. The measurement location is about 600 meters from the open ocean and close to the storage tank that leaked some 300 tons of radioactive water in August. [And, not a peep from cable news! Apparently, 300 tons of radioactive water leaking into the sea doesn't rate as high as Obama's website glitches. --LRP]

Human rights experts rap U.N. report dismissing concerns about Fukushima radiation 25 Oct 2013 Human rights experts, including a U.N. special rapporteur, are criticizing a U.N. scientific report dismissing concerns about the effects of radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster on the Japanese public. Speaking Thursday at an event organized by U.S. and Japanese nongovernmental groups, U.N. special rapporteur on the right to health Anand Grover took issue with the report's conclusion that "there is nothing to worry about" for members of the public exposed to radiation from Fukushima No. 1. The report was prepared by the U.N. Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation.

 

 

This from:

 

News Updates from Citizens for Legitimate Government25 Oct 2013http://www.legitgov.org/
All links are here:http://www.legitgov.org/#breaking_news

 

Please consider subscribing and supporting independent news.

 

 

A defining commentary on what we are doing to our environment......

Van MacFadyen says he was shocked by absence of sea life during his 37,000km voyage between Australia and Japan. (photo: Van MacFadyen)

Yachtsman Describes Horror at 'Dead', Rubbish Strewn Pacific Ocean

By Oliver Milman, Guardian UK

23 October 13

Ivan MacFadyen says he was shocked by absence of sea life during his 37,000km voyage between Australia and Japan

n Australian sailor has described parts of the Pacific Ocean as "dead" because of severe overfishing, with his vessel having to repeatedly swerve debris for thousands of kilometres on a journey from Australia to Japan.

 

Ivan MacFadyen told of his horror at the severe lack of marine life and copious amounts of rubbish witnessed on a yacht race between Melbourne and Osaka. He recently returned from the trip, which he previously completed 10 years ago.

 

"In 2003, I caught a fish every day," he told Guardian Australia. "Ten years later to the day, sailing almost exactly the same course, I caught nothing. It started to strike me the closer we got to Japan that the ocean was dead.

 

"Normally when you are sailing a yacht, there are one or two pods of dolphins playing by the boat, or sharks, or turtles or whales. There are usually birds feeding by the boat. But there was none of that. I've been sailing for 35 years and it's only when these things aren't there that you notice them.

 

MacFadyen said that the lack of ocean life started at the edge of the Great Barrier Reef, describing Queensland waters as "barren" and "unquestionably overfished".

 

"We saw a boat come towards us and we thought they might be pirates, but they had bags and bags of fish," he said. "We said 'there's only two of us, we can't do anything with all that' and they said 'don't worry, just throw it over the side'.

 

"There was around 100 large fish there. But it was valueless for them because they were after tuna and nothing else. They just trawled the whole ocean and everything other than tuna was bycatch."

 

For the majority of the voyage to Japan, MacFadyen had to ensure that his yacht wasn't holed by clumps of rubbish he said were "as large as a house".

 

"There were fenders from ships, balls of net and telegraph poles with barnacles on them that were never going to sink," he said. "There was nothing like that 10 years ago. I couldn't believe it.

 

"We wouldn't motor the boat at night due to the fear of something wrapping around the propeller. We'd only do that during the day with someone on lookout for garbage. When you stood on the deck and looked down you'd see the rubbish shimmering in the depths below, up to 20 metres under the water.

 

"We went onto the US and back again. We did 23,000 miles [37,000km] and I'd say 7,000 of those were in garbage. The boat is still damaged from it. We had to free the rudder of rubbish one night, which was scary. We were terrified of something ripping a hole in the boat."

 

MacFadyen said that the trip had made him "very cranky" and has inspired him to encourage better monitoring of ocean rubbish to ensure governments' anti-pollution policies are working.

 

"Humans are such a blight on the planet that we will just trash an area because it is out of sight most of the time," he said. "It completely changed the way I look at things. I used to chuck rubbish away without thinking twice but there's no way I will do that now."

 

According to marine conservationists, overfishing is a global problem affecting nearly 90% of the world's fisheries.

 

The problem has resulted on catch quotas being placed on many species of fish, although the exact extent of overfishing in Australia is slightly unclear.

 

Government fisheries data shows only bluefin tuna and the school shark are dangerously overfished in Australian waters. However, the Australian Marine Conservation Society's guide to sustainable seafood places 26 species - including kingfish, snapper and tiger prawns - on a "red list" that should not be consumed due to their fragile status.

 

Pamela Allen, marine campaigner at the Australian Marine Conservation Society, told Guardian Australia that there have been improvements in Australian fisheries in recent years but problems remain.

 

"The quota for bluefin tuna has just been increased by 10%, despite there being no evidence to justify this," she said. "There are also issues in state fisheries - Queensland has no scientific observer system, for instance, and rely just on fishers' logbooks for what they catch in sensitive areas such as the Great Barrier Reef.

 

"Trawling the ocean results in a high level of bycatch because it's hard to be exact with what you're catching when you're dragging a gigantic net along the sea floor.

 

"People don't realise that flake is shark and that sharks are threatened due to overfishing. There is no single sustainable source of shark in fisheries. Consumers have a choice every day to make a small difference.

 

"Fish is one of the last wild foods we eat, along with mushrooms, and we have to realise that once it has gone, it is gone. Governments and fishers are making some changes but they need to move more quickly or there won't be any fish left."

 

 

 

Fukushima etc

Radioactivity level spikes 6,500 times at Fukushima well 18 Oct 2013 Radioactivity levels in a well near a storage tank at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan have risen immensely on Thursday, the plant's operator has reported. Officials of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) said on Friday they detected 400,000 becquerels per liter of beta ray-emitting radioactive substances - including strontium - at the site, a level 6,500 times higher than readings taken on Wednesday, NHK World reported. The storage tank leaked over 300 tons of contaminated radioactive water in August, some of which is believed to have found its way into the sea through a ditch.

Senior adviser for Fukushima cleanup says foreign assistance needed 17 Oct 2013 One of the senior advisers of the Fukushima cleanup said that Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) needs foreign assistance. The utility operator may have already sought foreign assistance, but the ones currently available seem to be not enough to ensure that the defunct nuclear plant causes no more trouble. "They need to have a number of foreign firms to come in and assist them with the cleanup," said Lady Barbara Judge in an interview in Tokyo.

Meet Fukuppy, the inadvertent Fukushima mascot 15 Oct 2013 It wasn't a refrigeration company's decision to use a cartoon egg with wings, of indeterminate gender and with "a strong sense of justice" as its corporate mascot that got Japan-based internet users giggling. It was, simply, the character's name. Fukuppy has become an unlikely online star... This led to inaccurate reports that Fukuppy was being used to promote the regeneration of Fukushima Prefecture - given the long list of problems to have hit the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant since 2011, some thought the name would have been inadvertently fitting. "I'm Fukuppy. Nice to meet you," the mascot says on the company's website.

 

 

Here's the balance of CLG articles:

 

Breaking News and Commentary from Citizens for Legitimate Government18 Oct 2013http://www.legitgov.org/
All links are here:http://www.legitgov.org/#breaking_news

 

 

 

Targeted Killings Defender Jeh C. Johnson Will Be Nominated as Homeland Security Chief 18 Oct 2013 President Obama plans to nominate Jeh C. Johnson, a former general counsel for the Defense Department, to become the next head of the Homeland Security Department, according to administration officials. If confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Johnson will fill the vacancy left by Janet Napolitano, who resigned in July to lead the University of California system. Mr. Johnson shaped the Obama administration's policies on detainees prisoners and military tribunals.

Documents reveal NSA's extensive involvement in targeted killing program 16 Oct 2013 It was an innocuous e-mail, one of millions sent every day. But this one was of particular interest to the National Security Agency and contained clues that put the sender's husband in the crosshairs of a CIA drone. Days later, Hassan Ghul -- an associate of Osama bin Laden who provided a critical piece of intelligence that helped the CIA find the al-Qaeda [al-CIAduh] leader -- was killed by a drone strike in Pakistan's tribal belt. The U.S. government has never publicly acknowledged killing Ghul. But documents provided to The Washington Post by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden confirm his demise in October 2012 and reveal the agency's extensive involvement in the targeted killing program that has served as a centerpiece of President Obama's counterterrorism strategy.

Edward Snowden: I brought no leaked NSA documents to Russia 18 Oct 2013 Edward Snowden, the source of US National Security Agency leaks, has revealed that he left all the leaked documents behind when he flew from Hong Kong to Moscow and there was no chance of them falling into the hands of Russian or Chinese authorities. In an interview with the New York Times (NYT), Snowden said he had decided to hand over all the digital material to the journalists he had met in Hong Kong because it would not have been in the public interest for him to hold on to copies. Snowden conducted the interview over the past few days, communicating from Russia, where he has been granted a year's asylum, with an NYT journalist in the US via encrypted email.

Snowden leaks: David Cameron urges committee to investigate Guardian 16 Oct 2013 David Cameron has encouraged a Commons select committee to investigate whether the Guardian has broken the law or damaged national security by publishing secrets leaked by the National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. He made his proposal in response to a question from former defence secretary Liam Fox, saying the Guardian had been guilty of double standards for exposing the scandal of phone hacking by newspapers and yet had gone on to publish secrets from the NSA taken by Snowden.

New US charges in Blackwater shootings 18 Oct 2013 The US Justice Department has brought fresh charges against four former Blackwater Worldwide security contractors [mercenaries], reviving an internationally charged case over a deadly 2007 shooting on the streets of Baghdad. A new jury indictment charges the men in a shooting that inflamed anti-American sentiment in Iraq and heightened diplomatic sensitivities amid an ongoing war. The men were hired to guard US diplomats. The guards are accused of opening fire in busy Nisoor Square on September 16, 2007, killing 17 Iraqi civilians, including women and children.

59 killed, 196 wounded in violent attacks in Iraq 18 Oct 2013 At least 59 people were killed and 196 others wounded on Thursday in separate violent attacks across Iraq, including a wave of car bombings in the capital of Baghdad that left 40 people dead, police said. At least 11 people were killed and 21 others injured when two car bombs exploded near a popular restaurant in the Alwaya area in central Baghdad, a police source told Xinhua. Ten people were killed and 20 others wounded when a car bomb went off in the Husseiniyah area in northeastern Baghdad, while another car bomb attack in the Mamel area in eastern Baghdad killed six people and wounded 15 others, the source said.

Next round of Afghanistan deployments announced 24 Sep 2013 Almost 9,000 soldiers will deploy to Afghanistan this winter, the Defense Department announced Tuesday. The deploying soldiers represent six major Army units, including a corps headquarters, a division headquarters, three brigade combat teams and a combat aviation brigade. The BCTs will go as Security Force Assistance Brigades, which are smaller, tailored units designed to train, advise and assist the Afghan National Security Forces [to protect the CIA's opium routes].

San Francisco's Union Square reopens after bomb scare 17 Oct 2013 San Francisco's Union Square is getting back to normal after it was evacuated earlier Thursday. Hundreds of tourists and shoppers were rushed out of the plaza after a police officer spotted a suspicious backpack. For two hours, Union Square's garage and surrounding streets remained closed while police with bomb-sniffing dogs searched the area.

Canadian pleads guilty to terrorism charges in U.S. --Prosecutors alleged Nadarajah and co-conspirators negotiated with an undercover FBI agent to buy and export $1 million of high-powered weapons and military equipment 16 Oct 2013 A Canadian man has pleaded guilty in the United States to two terrorism offences in connection with the Tamil Tigers. Piratheepan Nadarajah, from Brampton, Ont., admitted to a conspiracy to acquire anti-aircraft missiles and attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. Online court records, updated Wednesday, show that Nadarajah pleaded guilty last week in New York to the two counts.

Canadian First Nation anti-fracking protest: Arrests, pepper-spray, snipers, torched cars 18 Oct 2013 An anti-fracking protest descended into violence when an estimated 100 police officers sought to control hundreds more Canadian protesters who set cars on fire and threatened officers mounted on horseback. Tension spilled over Thursday when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) moved in to take down barriers erected by members of the Elsipogtog First Nation tribe in New Brunswick, Canada. Activists and local aboriginals have held demonstrations for a week to protest shale gas exploration in the region.

BART workers go on strike 18 Oct 2013 (CA) BART workers went on strike early Friday morning, leaving hundreds of thousands of Bay Area commuters scrambling for ways to get to work. After a marathon bargaining session that lasted nearly 30 hours, Roxanne Sanchez, president of Service Employees International Union Local 1021, walked out of the Oakland negotiations late Thursday afternoon and said the talks were over and that union workers would walk off the job at 12:01 a.m. Friday. SEIU spokeswoman Cecille Isidro confirmed shortly after midnight that the unions were on strike. "We made concessions, but you can only bend so far before you break," Sanchez said. "This is the way they want to solve the conflict, in a fight, a street fight."

Ex-Halliburton Manager Pleads Guilty to Destroying Evidence 15 Oct 2013 A former Halliburton manager pleaded guilty Tuesday to destroying evidence in the aftermath of the deadly rig explosion that spawned BP's massive 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Anthony Badalamenti, 62, of Katy, Texas, faces a maximum sentence of 1 year in prison and a $100,000 fine after his guilty plea in U.S. District Court to one misdemeanor count of destruction of evidence. Badalamenti was the cementing technology director for Halliburton Energy Services Inc., BP's cement contractor on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. Prosecutors said he instructed two Halliburton employees to delete data during a post-spill review of the cement job on BP's blown-out Macondo well.

Across US, parks and memorials reopen, federal workers back in offices after 16-day shutdown 17 Oct 2013 From the Liberty Bell to Alcatraz, federal landmarks and offices reopened Thursday. Furloughed employees were relieved to get back to work -- even if faced with email backlogs -- but many worried about another such disruption in a matter of months. "We'd hate to have to live through this all over again," Richard Marcus, a 29-year employee of the National Archives in Washington, said after the government shutdown finally ended. Nationwide, from big-city office buildings to wilderness outposts, innumerable federal services and operations shifted back into gear after 16 days.

Government open again, Obama bemoans damage 17 Oct 2013 The government unlocked its doors Thursday after 16 days, with President Barack Obama saluting the resolution of Congress' standoff but lambasting Republicans for the partial shutdown that he said had damaged the U.S. economy and America's credibility around the world. "The American people are completely fed up with Washington," Obama said in stern remarks at the White House, just hours after signing a last-minute measure from Congress that headed off the threat that the nation would default on its debts. The nation's cr*dit rating was jeopardized, economic growth and hiring were slowed and federal workers deprived of p*ychecks, Obama said, all because of "yet another self-inflicted crisis."

U.S. Congress ends default threat, Obama signs debt bill 17 Oct 2013 The U.S. Congress on Wednesday approved an 11th-hour deal to end a partial government shutdown and pull the world's biggest economy back from the brink of a historic debt default that could have threatened financial calamity. Capping weeks of political brinkmanship that had unnerved global markets, President Barack Obama quickly signed the spending measure, which passed the Senate and House of Representatives after Republicans dropped efforts to use the legislation to force changes in his signature healthcare law. The White House budget office told hundreds of thousands of federal workers, the bulk of whom had been idle for the past 16 days, to be ready to return to work on Thursday.

Shutdown Deal Includes Over $2.8 Billion in Pork for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell 16 Oct 2013 A deal to reopen the government and avert a debt default also includes language authorizing more than $2.8 billion in funding for a locks and dam project championed in the past by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). The provision would steer $2.918 billion in funding to the Army Corps of Engineers for the Olmsted dam and lock project on the Ohio River, and would benefit Kentucky, Tennessee, and Illinois. The language is only one of several provisions lawmakers have tucked into the must-pass spending and debt bill which would reopen the government through Jan. 15 and extend the nation's credit line until the middle of February. Although the language was inserted by Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R), whose home state of Tennessee would also benefit from the project, McConnell has been its historical champion. In fact, the Kentucky lawmaker secured hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks for the Olmsted project before lawmakers ended the practice several years ago.

House Roll Call: Vote to End Govt Shutdown 17 Oct 2013 The 285-144 roll call Wednesday night by which the House passed and sent to President Barack Obama legislation to avoid a threatened federal default and end the 16-day partial government shutdown.

Who voted against the Senate bill to end the government shutdown? 16 Oct 2013 Eighteen Senate Republicans vote against the deal to reopen the government and extend the debt ceiling, which passed 81-18. Here’s the breakdown of the 'no' votes

Cory Booker elected to Senate in NJ 16 Oct 2013 Newark Mayor Cory Booker won a special election Wednesday to represent New Jersey in the U.S. Senate, giving the rising Democratic [and Wall Street] star a bigger political stage after a race against conservative Steve Lonegan, a former small-town mayor. Booker, 44, will become the first black senator from New Jersey and heads to Washington with an unusual political resume. Booker was elected to complete the 15 months remaining on the term of Frank Lautenberg, whose death in June gave rise to an unusual and abbreviated campaign. If he wants to keep the seat for a full six-year term -- and all indications are that he does -- Booker will be on the ballot again in November 2014.

African Americans in the U.S. Senate 16 Oct 2013 Newark Mayor Cory Booker won the special election Oct. 16 for the U.S. Senate. With the victory, the New Jersey Democrat becomes only the ninth African American appointed or elected to the U.S. Senate. Here is a list.

Cervical cancer vaccination probe kicks off 16 Oct 2013 (Japan) Two groups set up by the health ministry have started full-scale studies of whether cervical cancer vaccines are directly linked to severe pain that has affected some young women. The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare started recommending in April that girls between the sixth grade and the first year of high school be given cervical cancer vaccines under a free vaccination program. However, the ministry suspended the recommendation in June following reports of adverse reactions.

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Don’t Lather, Don’t Rinse, Don’t Repeat

Microbeads, found in many cosmetics, are the latest addition to the marine plastics problem. Yes: you may be dirtying our waters every time you clean your face.

—By Susan Freinkel

| Mon Sep. 9, 2013

 

Africa Studio/Shutterstock

 

This story originally appeared on the OnEarth website.

 

In the summer of 2012, when they set out to measure levels of plastic pollution in the Great Lakes, a team of researchers expected to find lots of bottles, six-pack rings, and plastic bags. They expected, too, to discover plenty of microplastics: those minuscule pieces of free-floating plastic that typically result from the degradation of much larger pieces.

 

But these researchers were unprepared for just how much micro-size trash they would discover. Some of the samples they collected from Lakes Huron, Superior, and Erie indicated the presence of as many as 450,000 bits per square kilometer—twice as many as had ever been recorded. And the scientists were mystified by the form that so many of these microplastics took: multicolored, perfectly spherical balls a fraction of a millimeter in diameter.

 

356,000 microbeads are found in one 4.2-ounce tube of a leading facial cleanser

Further investigation solved the riddle. The tiny balls were plastic microbeads, of the kind found in many popular exfoliating facial scrubs. “It was like someone had taken an entire bottle of facial cleanser and poured it into our sample container,” says Sherri Mason, an environmental chemist at the State University of New York at Fredonia, who conducted the study with scientists from the University of Wisconsin–Superior and the 5 Gyres Institute, a nonprofit research and advocacy group.

 

 

While microbeads may be less visible than plastic bags, they are no less environmentally problematic. For one thing, they “look just like fish eggs, and thus like food” to a variety of aquatic organisms, says Mason. All marine micro-plastics are troublesome, given their tendency to absorb and concentrate persistent organic pollutants that can potentially accumulate in the fatty tissues of anything that eats them. Moreover, when plankton, lugworms, mussels, or fish fill up on toxic junk food, they may well lose their appetite for healthier fare. Dutch scientists who fed mussels tiny nano-particles of polystyrene found that the shellfish subsequently ate less and grew less.

 

90 percent of floating

ocean debris is made

of plastic

 

It’s bad enough that microbeads are contributing to our ongoing microplastics problem. But unlike most other microplastics, which result from plastic litter that has broken down over time, microbeads are actually designed to go down our drains and through our pipes. Once they do, they’re small enough to pass through the filters in wastewater-treatment systems—and right into lakes, rivers, and oceans.

 

Microbeads have been detected in more than 200 different consumer products; most fall under the category of facial cleansers, but the beads also make their way into soaps, sunscreens, even toothpaste. Manufacturers like them because they’re smoother than many natural exfoliants like salt, apricot pits, or walnut husks. And American consumers like them enough to buy cosmetics containing more than 573,000 pounds of them each year.

 

 

36.5 percent of fish in

the English Channel

have plastic within

their gastrointestinal tracts

 

Now, however, a campaign is afoot to scrub out the scrubbers. Responding to pressure from groups like 5 Gyres, a number of cosmetics companies—including Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, and the Body Shop—have pledged to remove microbeads from their products. Eventually.

 

Unfortunately, they say, it will take a few years to find safe and effective natural alternatives. “We’re not happy that P&G is taking three and a half years to phase this stuff out,” says 5 Gyres spokesman Stiv Wilson, citing just one of the protracted timelines.

 

While he and others wait, the anti-microbead movement looks toward other consumer markets, including Asia. In the meantime, America: how about just using some soap and a washcloth?

 

 

Susan Freinkel

Susan Freinkel is the author of Plastic: A Toxic Love Story (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Her previous book, American Chestnut: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree (University of California Press), won a 2008 National Outdoor Book Award. She also writes for magazines including Health and Discover.

 

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/09/microbeads-cleanser-ocean-pollution

 

 

Dirty Coal Spill

From: 350.org ---- Dirty Coal should stay in the ground!

Capesize coal shipment set for China sinks off South Africa's Richards Bay

London (Platts)--20Aug2013/1035 am EDT/1435 GMT

A Capesize ship carrying coal from Richards Bay Coal Terminal to China's Fangcheng port has run aground and partially sunk off South Africa's west coast while exiting the port due to adverse weather conditions and rough seas.

South Africa's National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) said in a statement that the coal bulk cargo ship, the MV Smart, had been pushed into a shallow sand bank adjacent to RBCT's exit channel by 10 meter swells while heading out to sea Monday afternoon.

Transnet National Port Authority also said in a statement that the vessel had experienced engine failure on leaving the port due to the adverse conditions, while no longer under TNPA pilotage.

The TNPA had said late Monday that traffic from the 91 million mt/year RBCT was temporarily suspended until further notice due to the adverse weather conditions, but a spokesman told Platts Tuesday afternoon that the terminal was open and operating as normal.

Market sources said that the ship had been chartered by Chinese trader Minmetals and was carrying 5,500 kcal/kg NAR South African thermal coal bought from a Swiss trading house. Fangcheng is a key facility in southern China for imports from South Africa and Australia.

Both the TNPA and NSRI and said that three tug boats attempted to pull the vessel, containing 147,650 mt of coal, free from the bank. However, the vessel buckled and broke in two later in the afternoon, with the 23-member crew having to be airlifted to land after the vessel became partly submerged.

The ship remains stranded off the channel, with the port authority noting that it was closely monitoring the environmental impact of the incident.

The NSRI said that the South African Maritime Safety Authority would investigate and evaluate the situation

http://www.platts.com/latest-news/coal/london/capesize-coal-shipment-set-for-china-sinks-off-26198789