The Keystone XL pipeline was already a bad idea three days ago. It is a terrible idea today.This weekend, the Orwellian-named Exxon Pegasus pipeline spilled thousands of barrels of oil into a residential neighborhood in Mayflower, Arkansas. Twenty-two families were evacuated from their homes and clean up, days later, continues. Check out this appalling video of crude oil leaking into the streets of this everyday American community:The oil is the same heavy crude from tar sands that oil companies behind the Keystone XL pipeline want to extract. In fact, the only difference between the Pegasus pipeline that leaked and the proposed Keystone XL? The proposed Keystone XL is longer — over 300 miles longer than the pipeline that leaked in Arkansas on Friday. That means the Keystone XL pipeline is even more likely to leak. Not exactly a comforting prospect.Continue Reading… … Read More
Arms Trade Treaty Set to Pass United Nations; “U.S. Virtually Certain to Go Along”
After
failing last July to negotiate a treaty on global arms control,
the United Nations held a
second, final conference this week, with today as a deadline to
agree on a treaty. All 193 U.N. member states have to agree on the
final draft in order for the treaty to move on to the approval
process of individual countries. The Associated Press is now
reporting that U.N. diplomats and international gun control
advocates are confident the conference will adopt the final draft
of the treaty. The optimism will be short lived; the U.S. is the
largest exporter of arms in the world. Even though the AP reports
UN diplomats are “virtually certain” the U.S. will accept the final
draft, the treaty doesn’t have the two-third majority in the Senate
it would need to be ratified. Oklahoma’s Jim Inhofe
inserted an amendment into the recent budget bill opposing the
UN treaty. The amendment passed with 53 votes, all 45 Republicans
plus 8 Democrats, revealing a hostile environment for the
treaty.
Ted Bromund, a senior research fellow at the Heritage
Foundation,
explained earlier this week that the most recent draft of the
treaty meant for the United States; the adoption of a “knowledge
standard” about humanitarian abuses means the U.S. could be
investigated by the U.N. for what it ought to have known about who
it was selling weapons too. More importantly for individual
firearms owners, Bromund writes that the draft “still refers to
‘end users’—individual firearm owners—in Article 11. It effectively
makes the definitions of arms contained in the U.N. Register of
Conventional Arms nationally binding, which turns part of this
voluntary program into a binding treaty commitment and would
increase the ;pressure ;on the U.S. to include small arms
in the formal register.” At Fox News, John Lott says the “national
control list” the treaty wants each country to maintain
could be used to regulate domestic firearm ownership.
Finally, the treaty draft looks set to keep the India-sponsored
“defense cooperation exemption,” which would exempt arms transfers
from one country to another if they had a defense arrangement
(don’t they all if they’re trading arms with each other?)
As I pointed out at the outset of this final round of
negotiations, although supporters of the treaty insist its meant
only to control the international trade in arms, governments’
ability to exempt themselves and interpret the meaning of the
treaty themselves, its far more likely to be used to regulate
domestic arms transfers governments want to crack down on rather
than to regulate the arms transfers of the governments
themselves. … Read More
Some Health Giving Fruits Can Be Killers
Once the enzyme can no longer do this far more of the drug escapes from the digestive system in its original form and hits the liver and the kidneys, the areas most drugs are excreted from with a much higher dose than they can cope with. … Read More
More than 130 arrested during Chicago schools protest
People carried banners with slogans like ‘Strong Schools, Strong Neighborhoods’ and ‘Protect Our Children,’ calling for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s resignation.”We’re signaling that there is going to be a large and determined movement that will use the tactics of civil disobedience and direct action in order to keep these schools open,” Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jesse Sharkey, who was among those arrested, told the Guardian. Emanuel and school chief Barbara Burd-Bennett said that schools are being closed because they are half-empty and failing academically.At a rally before the march, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis called the closings “injustices” and vowed to file lawsuits. He addressed the protesters in a speech, urging them not to give up: “On the first day of school you show up at your real school, don’t let these people take your school.”Making a stop in front of the City Hall, the protesters chanted “Save our Schools,” and called for Emanuel’s ouster. More than 100 held a sit-in protest in the middle of the street, and continued chanting until police cleared them from the area.“We need the mayor to invest in our schools, not take them away ,” a grandmother of two students said. “We need our schools for the safety of our children .”A group of Chicago ministers also went to City Hall on Wednesday to deliver a letter asking Emanuel to halt the closings. Chicago officials have claimed that the move will save the budget nearly $560 million over the next 10 years in capital costs, and an additional $43 million per year in operating costs.Nearly 30,000 students, the majority of who range from Kindergarten to 8th grade students, will be affected by the closings.Critics argue that the closings disproportionately affect minority neighborhoods and will uproot kids who need a stable and familiar learning environment. They also worry that students will have to cross gang lines to get to a new school, and that the vacated buildings will be blight on already-struggling communities.There are also concerns that hundreds of school staffers will be left jobless.Opponents of the plan will get another chance to argue their case at a series of public meetings to be scheduled for the coming weeks, though the Chicago Board of Education, whose members are all appointed by Emanuel, is expected to approve the closings in late May. The closings would take effect beginning at the start of the 2013-2014 school year. Around 100 schools in Chicago have already been closed since 2001; the overwhelming majority of students affected by those closings were black. … Read More
State’s Keystone report authors also OK’d explosive Caspian pipeline
As Salon noted earlier this month, following the release of the State Department’s Environmental Impact Statement, which greenlighted the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline, it emerged that the report’s authors were outside contractors with oil industry ties. The contractor that produced the bulk of the report was Environmental Resources Management, DeSmog Blog reported, which had ties to tar sands extraction companies. On Tuesday, DeSmog Blog’s Steve Horn added yet another layer of discreditation to the Environmental Impact Statement — namely that ERM has a terrible track record when it comes to greenlighting pipeline projects.ERM also authored a report that argued that the 2002 BP Caspian pipeline was environmentally and economically sound – as the firm has also determined with the Keystone XL project. Horn notes that the predictions about the Caspian pipeline were dramatically wrong — the project failed to deliver on jobs and the pipeline has been the site of explosions and oil spills. Via DeSmog Blog:Continue Reading… … Read More
Mars mishap: Technical glitch halts NASA rover
Scientists had previously said that operations would be resumedon Monday after a problem with the Rover’s computer memory causedthe mission to be put on hold two weeks ago.However, the latest technical upset that arose on Sunday forcedengineers to extend the unexpected break in the mission.”This is not something that is rare or even uncommon,” JohnGrotzinger, lead scientist at the California Institute ofTechnology assured press at a news conference during the Lunar andPlanetary Science Conference in Houston. He added that the setbackis likely to delay the latest science results from the rover forthe next couple of days.The latest hiccup occurred during an information transmission toEarth on Sunday night.The problems have arisen at a crucial time in the rover’s mission,just after the mission uncovered the first ever telltale signs thatthere was once life on the red planet.Chemical analysis of a sample obtained by NASA’s curiosity lastmonth revealed traces of a benevolent environment capable ofsupporting life. The analysis also unearthed a life-sustainingchemical footprint comprised of sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen,phosphorus and simple carbon.The rover’s camera and Russian-manufactured probe are currentlylocated in Mars’ Yellowknife Bay region, where more evidence ofwater has been discovered than anywhere else on the planet.”I see the difference between Yellowknife and the area which isjust before Yellowknife … showing the different distribution ofwater. This is a significant variation,” Maksim Litvak of theSpace Research Institute in Moscow told reporters.The rover mission, which was extended indefinitely in December oflast year, seeks to ascertain whether Mars’ Gale Crater was able tosupport microbial life at some point in its history. Thegroundbreaking discoveries made by NASA’s mission are expected topave the way for possible habitability studies during futureexploration missions.“We have found a habitable environment that is so benign andsupportive of life that probably if this water was around and youhad been on the planet, you would have been able to drink it,”said Grotzinger. … Read More
State Dept. report okaying Keystone XL linked to oil industry
The State Department study published last month okaying the Keystone XL pipeline was partly compiled by “oil-industry connected” firms, according to new reports.The Environmental Impact Statement, as Salon noted on its release, angered environmentalists for its assessment that the project was sound and would have limited negative consequences. As DeSmog Blog’s Steve Horn noted Tuesday, however, “Unmentioned by State: the study was contracted out to firms with tar sands extraction clientele, as revealed by InsideClimate News.”InsideClimate News reported that two firms, EnSys Energy and ICF International provided the State Department that basis for their claims:Continue Reading… … Read More
