Anna-Louise Taylor - Up to 900 tropical bird species could 'go extinct'

Up to 900 species of tropical land birds around the world could become extinct by 2100, researchers say.

The finding is modelled on the effects of a 3.5C Earth surface temperature rise, a Biological Conservation Journal paper shows.

Species may struggle to adapt to habitat loss and extreme weather events, author Cagan Sekercioglu says.

Mountain, coastal, restricted-range, and species unable to get to higher elevations could be the worst affected.

Birds at risk:

Read More:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/17212765

Duncan Meisel - ACTION: Tell Your Senators to Vote No on Keystone XL Today

By now I’m sure you have some idea what I’m writing about—the Senate is still up to no good with the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, and we need to remind them that this pipeline must be stopped. It looks like the big vote that we thought would come a week or two ago is happening today or tomorrow.

You’ve gotten a few emails from me about this over the past few weeks, so I’ll keep it as short as possible. We’re in a good position overall—there’’s a lot of money on the other side of this fight, but a lot of energy and resolve on ours. This is the first time that the pipeline has had an up or down vote in the Senate. If we can block Keystone on this vote, we will be in a much stronger position to keep it bottled up in the future.

I was hoping you could send a strong message to your Senators to put a nail in the coffin of this project. There are two ways you can send a message:

Read More:

http://ecowatch.org/2012/action-tell-your-senator-to-vote-no-on-keystone-xl-today/

Suzanne Humphries - Smoke, Mirrors, and the 'Disappearance' Of Polio

“The tendency of a mass vaccination program is to herd people. People are not cattle or sheep. They should not be herded. A mass vaccination program carries a built-in temptation to oversimplify the problem; to exaggerate the benefits; to minimize or completely ignore the hazards; to discourage or silence scholarly, thoughtful and cautious opposition; to create an urgency where none exists; to whip up an enthusiasm among citizens that can carry with it the seeds of impatience, if not intolerance; to extend the concept of the police power of the state in quarantine far beyond its proper limitation; to assume simplicity when there is actually great complexity; to continue to support a vaccine long after it has been discredited;… to ridicule honest and informed consent.¹”

There is plenty of confusion on the topic of vaccination, especially amongst brainwashed doctors who trusted their medical schools.  Then the unsuspecting, trusting public trusts them…because the medical establishment must know best, right? And doctors are nice people, trying to do a good thing.  True.  I was once one of those brainwashed doctors who believed in the benevolence of the medical system and believed that all I learned was the best that modern times had to offer. It is blazingly clear to me now though, that much of what is taught in medical school is enormously limited. I now see that most doctors are little more than blind slave-technicians who follow the dogma they were taught and were rewarded for repeating, even as the truth unfolds in front of them dictating otherwise.

Read More:

http://www.vaccinationcouncil.org/2011/11/17/smoke-mirrors-and-the-disappearance-of-polio/

What We Learned From The Accelerated Aging of Astronauts

Did you know that astronauts undergo vastly accelerate aging during space flights?  According to a recent review in the journal Clinical Interventions in Aging: 

“The loss of the functional capacity of the cardiovascular system with space flight is over ten times faster than the course of aging on Earth.”

It has been postulated that magnesium (Mg) deficiency may be the major contributing factor underlying these observed pathological changes. Indeed, the review pointed out that “With space flight there are significant reductions of serum Mg (P<0.0001) that have been shown in large studies of astronauts and cosmonauts.”  

Due to the fact that magnesium is an antioxidant and calcium blocker, and is also required for ATP production within the mitochondria of the heart muscle cells, it is likely that a correction of Mg deficiency would be an effective strategy to reduce space flight-associated cardiovascular decline and accelerated aging.

Read More:

http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/what-we-learned-accelerated-aging-astronauts?utm_source=www.GreenMedInfo.com&utm_campaign=8aabd20cbc-Greenmedinfo&utm_medium=email

FDA Proposes Up to 30,000 Nutritional Supplements Be Removed From the Marketplace With the NDI Draft

The Alliance for Natural Health USA (ANH-USA), a national grassroots advocacy group based in Washington, DC committed to natural and sustainable healthcare, estimates that between 15,000 and 30,000 nutritional supplements will be permanently removed from the marketplace if FDA is able to implement its New Dietary Ingredient (NDI) Draft Guidance for the supplement industry. "The Natural Products Expo West is an outstanding opportunity for ANH-USA to connect with the 58,0000 attendees of world's largest natural and organic products trade show and ask them to help protect access to vitamin supplements," said Gretchen DuBeau, executive and legal director of ANH-USA.

At issue is the NDI draft guidance, which if implemented, would have disastrous effects on the entire natural health community. A report commissioned by ANH-USA estimates that the proposed FDA regulation would cost nutritional supplement manufacturers and distributors up to $6.1 billion just to meet the onerous new requirements. The report also found that if the new rules are implemented, 52.5% of nutritional supplements currently on the market would be banned from sale, at an annual loss of up to $14.7 billion. "One thing is certain," DuBeau stated. "If the FDA adopts its NDI draft guidance, the disastrous impacts will be felt throughout the entire community--manufacturers, retailers, health practitioners, and consumers will have far fewer choices and far higher costs."

Read More:

http://www.anh-usa.org/

William K. Black - Wall Street's Broken Windows

James Q. Wilson was a political scientist who often studied the government response to blue collar crime. The public knows him best for his theory called “broken windows.” The metaphor was what happens to a vacant building when broken windows are not promptly repaired. Soon, most of the windows in the abandoned building are broken. The criminals feel little compunction against petty destruction because the building’s owners evince no concern for the integrity of their building. Wilson took social norms, community, and ethics seriously. He argued that as community broke down fewer honest citizens were active in monitoring and policing behavior. The breakdown in community was criminogenic – it led to widespread serious blue collar crime. He urged us to take even minor blue collar crimes and breaches of civility seriously and to demand that they be contained through social pressure and policing. 

Read More:

http://www.neweconomicperspectives.org/2012/03/wall-streets-broken-windows.html

UCS - Nuclear Regulatory Commission Needs a More Comprehensive Approach to Post-Fukushima Nuclear Safety, Report Finds

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is jeopardizing reform by failing to heed its post-Fukushima task force’s top recommendation to clarify its “patchwork” of regulations for “beyond-design-basis” events that reactors are not intended to withstand, according to a report released today by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). The report, “U.S. Nuclear Power Safety One Year After Fukushima,” also found that the nuclear industry is moving ahead with its own post-Fukushima initiative before the NRC has had time to determine whether it will adequately protect the public.

“The NRC has put the cart before the horse by not addressing its task force’s primary recommendation before doing anything else,” said Dave Lochbaum, director of the UCS Nuclear Safety Program. “By putting it off, the agency has potentially undermined the effectiveness of the other recommendations, which all hinge on this critical issue.”

For example, one of the other task force recommendations called on the NRC to require plant owners to implement measures enabling workers to better cope with a loss of off-site and on-site emergency backup electric power—a “station blackout.” The precedent comes from the NRC’s post-9/11 requirement that plant owners install portable diesel-fueled pumps and generators to protect their facilities from a prolonged station blackout caused by an aircraft attack. However, because the NRC defines an aircraft attack as a beyond-design-basis event, it did not require this equipment to meet high quality and reliability standards or be hardened to withstand other potential events, such as natural disasters. Indeed, post-Fukushima inspections have confirmed that at many plants some of the equipment would not survive earthquakes or floods.

Read More:

http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/nrc-needs-a-more.html

Video BBC1, Human Planet: Arctic - Race against the tide, risking death under huge blocks of ice

The people of Kangiqsujuaq in Canada go to great lengths to add variety to their diet of seal meat, venturing under the sea ice during the extreme low tides of the spring equinox to gather mussels.

It's a race against time. They have less than half an hour to search these temporary caverns before the tide rushes back in. A look-out keeps watch for the returning tide, but warning shouts can't be too loud in case the echoes bring down the ice.

Learn and read more:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/humanplanet 

George Lakey - The More Violence, The Less Revolution

In the discussion within the Occupy movement on whether violence is necessary for making change in the United States, the debate has so far conflated three of the movement’s possible goals. Are we talking about using violence to produce regime change? Or do we really mean “regime change with democratic institutions following the change”? Or is what we really mean “regime change followed by democracy in which the 1 percent lose their grip on power”?

Movements have sometimes produced regime change with no real democracy and the same 1 percent still in charge. The American Revolution did that: King George was booted out and the resulting government, to its credit highly innovative, was still not a democracy for women, the enslaved, and working class people. A couple of centuries later, the 1 percent are still running the United States. A number of other anti-colonial struggles had a similar result.

Many regimes are so oppressive that people will give their lives to change them, even without guarantees that the new regime will be a whole lot better. But as we consider what we want out of our sacrifices to the cause, we should ask: What’s the track record of movements that depend on violence to overthrow their regimes?

Read More:

http://www.nationofchange.org/more-violence-less-revolution-1331133523

Lee Fang - Why Can’t You Smoke Pot? Because Lobbyists Are Getting Rich Off of the War on Drugs

John Lovell is a lobbyist who makes a lot of money from making sure you can’t smoke a joint. That’s his job. He’s a lobbyist for the police unions in Sacramento, and he is a driving force behind grabbing Federal dollars to shut down the California marijuana industry. I’ll get to the evidence on this important story in a bit, but first, some context.

At some point in the distant past, the war on drugs might have been popular. But not anymore — the polling is clear, but beyond that, the last three Presidents have used illegal drugs. So why do we still put hundreds of thousands of people in steel cages for pot-related offenses? Well, there are many reasons, but one of them is, of course, money in politics. Corruption. Whatever you want to call it, it’s why you can’t smoke a joint without committing a crime, though of course you can ingest any number of pills or drinks completely within the law.

Read More:

http://www.republicreport.org/2012/exclusive-why-cant-you-smoke-pot-because-lobbyists-are-getting-rich-off-of-the-war-on-drugs/