Privatizing a Public Resource: WATER

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Water, like air, is a necessity of human life. It is also, according to Fortune magazine, "One of the world's great business opportunities. It promises to be to the 21st century what oil was to the 20th."

In the past ten years, three giant global corporations have quietly assumed control over the water supplied to almost 300 million people in every continent of the world. A 12-month investigation by journalists in Canada, the U.S., Europe, Asia and Latin America shows that the results range from questionable to disastrous. And it shows how well-meaning municipal governments in the U.S. and Canada can become vulnerable to the persuasive techniques of these high-powered corporate giants.

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Conservatives for Civil Liberties

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Four prominent conservative thinkers are set to launch a campaign "to restore checks and balances and civil liberties protections under assault by the Executive Branch," arguing that, "since 9/11, the President has acquired too much power."

Former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr, who led the effort to impeach President Clinton, is one of the organizers of the effort, called the American Freedom Agenda. Others are David Keene of the American Conservative Union, writer and conservative direct mail pioneer Richard Viguerie, and constitutional scholar Bruce Fein, who served in the Reagan administration as associate deputy attorney general.

At a 1 p.m. news conference today at the National Press Club, they will pitch a legislative package "to restore congressional oversight and habeas corpus, end torture and extraordinary rendition, narrow the President's authority to designate 'enemy combatants,' prevent unconstitutional wiretaps, email and mail openings, protect journalists from prosecution under the Espionage Act, and more."

In a statement, the four said the president "has encroached on the power of Congress to make laws, and on the power of the courts to interpret the law - a scenario that the Founding Fathers foresaw and warned against." As a result, they said, "We are issuing this call to Americans of all political and philosophical persuasions to join us in urging Congress to enact The American Freedom Agenda." ...

More on Science Censure...

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A former White House official accused of improperly editing reports on global warming defended his editorial changes Monday as reflecting views expressed in a 2001 report by the National Academy of Sciences.

House Democrats said the 181 changes made in three climate reports reflected a consistent attempt to emphasize uncertainties surrounding the science of climate change and undercut the broad conclusions that manmade emissions are warming the earth.

Philip Cooney, former chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, acknowledged at a House hearing that some of the changes he made were "to align these communications with the administration's stated policy" on climate change.

The extent of Cooney's editing of government climate reports first surfaced in 2005. Shortly thereafter, Cooney, a former oil industry lobbyist, left the White House to work at Exxon Mobil Corp.

"My concern is that there was a concerted White House effort to inject uncertainty into the climate debate," said Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the Government Reform Committee in the House of Representatives.

Cooney's appearance before Waxman's committee on Monday marked the first time he has spoken publicly or was extensively questioned about the issue...

More Dimensions Than You Can Shake a Stick At..

Math Geeks Unite and Celebrate!

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After four years of intensive collaboration, 18 top mathematicians and computer scientists from the United States and Europe have successfully mapped E8, one of the largest and most complicated structures in mathematics, scientists said late Sunday.

Jeffrey Adams, project leader and mathematics professor at the University of Maryland said E8 was discovered over a century ago, in 1887, and until now, no one thought the structure could ever be understood.

"This groundbreaking achievement is significant both as an advance in basic knowledge, as well as a major advance in the use of large scale computing to solve complicated mathematical problems," Adams said.

He added that the mapping of E8 may well have unforeseen implications in mathematics and physics which won't be evident for years to come.

E8 belongs to so-called Lie groups that were invented by a 19th century Norwegian mathematician, Sophus Lie, to study symmetry.

The theory holds that underlying any symmetrical object, such as a sphere, is a Lie group.

Balls, cylinders or cones are familiar examples of symmetric three-dimensional objects.

However, mathematicians study symmetries in higher dimensions. In fact, E8 itself is 248-dimensional.

Dolphins in Texas

Mysterious deaths of Dolphins washing up on Texas shores...

Article Source

The stranding deaths of about 60 bottlenose dolphins on Texas beaches over the past three weeks has puzzled researchers and is a cause for concern during the calving season, a senior scientist said on Monday.

"This is the calving season so we often have strandings at this time of the year. It's tough to be an air-breather born in the water," said Dr. Daniel F. Cowan, professor of pathology at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and director of the Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network.

"But over the last few weeks we have had about 3 to 4 times the usual mortality," he told Reuters.

Most of the carcasses were in an advanced state of decomposition, suggesting that they were carried to Texas beaches from areas further off or up the shore.

Suspected causes include parasites, an outbreak of infectious diseases or red tide, an algal bloom prompted by fertilizers or other excess nutrients.

Most of the dolphins have been too decomposed for a necropsy -- the animal version of an autopsy -- and so volunteers have been burying them on the beaches.

Several of the dolphins which have washed up on shore have been young with umbilical cords still attached.

Rivers Lifesblood Threatened for People All Around The World

Many of the major rivers in the world are in danger of drying up and/or ceasing to be the critical supply of fresh water and food for people all over the globe.

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Climate change, pollution, over extraction of water and development are killing some of the world's most famous rivers including China's Yangtze, India's Ganges and Africa's Nile, conservation group WWF said on Tuesday.

At the global launch of its report "World's Top 10 Rivers at Risk," the Geneva-based group said many rivers could dry out, affecting hundreds of millions of people and killing unique aquatic life.

"If these rivers die, millions will lose their livelihoods, biodiversity will be destroyed on a massive scale, there will be less fresh water and agriculture, resulting in less food security," said Ravi Singh, secretary-general of WWF-India.

The report, launched ahead of 'World Water Day' on Thursday, also cited the Rio Grande in the United States, the Mekong and Indus in Asia, Europe's Danube, La Plata in South America and Australia's Murray-Darling as in need of greater protection.

Rivers are the world's main source of fresh water and WWF says about half of the available supply is already being used up.

Dams have destroyed habitats and cut rivers off from their flood plains, while climate change could affect the seasonal water flows that feed them, the report said.

Fish populations, the top source of protein and overall life support for hundreds of thousands of communities worldwide, are also being threatened, it found.

The Yangtze basin is one of the most polluted rivers in the world because of decades of heavy industrialization, damming and huge influxes of sediment from land conversion.

Climate change, including higher temperatures, also means devastating consequences for fishery productivity, water supply and political security in Africa's arid Nile basin.

The Ganges basin makes up almost a third of India's land area and one in twelve people in the world depend on this river for activities such as fishing and farming, the WWF said.

Water On Mars

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Mars is unlikely to sport beachfront property anytime soon, but the planet has enough water ice at its south pole to blanket the entire planet in more than 30 feet of water if everything thawed out.

With a radar technique, astronomers have penetrated for the first time about 2.5 miles (nearly four kilometers) beneath the south pole's frozen surface. The data showed that nearly pure water ice lies beneath.

Discovered in the early 1970s, layered deposits of ice and dust cap the North and South Poles of Mars. Until now, the deposits have been difficult to study closely with existing telescopes and satellites. The current advance comes from a probe of the deposits using an instrument aboard the Mars Express orbiter.

"This is the first time that a ground-penetrating system has ever been used on Mars," said the new radar study's lead author, Jeffrey Plaut of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "All the other instruments used to study the surface of Mars in the past really have only been sensitive to what occurs at the very surface."

(NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft also carries instruments designed, among other things, to probe beneath icy polar surfaces.)

Deep probe

Plaut and his colleagues probed the deposits with radar echo sounding, typically used on Earth to study the interiors of glaciers. The instrument, called the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding, or MARSIS, beams radio waves which penetrate the planet's surface and bounce off features having different electrical properties.

The reflected beams revealed that 90 percent or more of the frozen polar material is pure water ice, sprinkled with dust particles. The scientists calculated that the water would form a 36-foot-deep ocean of sorts if spread over the Martian globe.

$0 Energy Bill

Here is one man making it happen. It has to start somewhere, and trailblazers are necessary to show us (and our government) a blueprint for working towards it.

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Mike Strizki lives in the nation's first solar-hydrogen house. The technology this civil engineer has been able to string together – solar panels, a hydrogen fuel cell, storage tanks, and a piece of equipment called an electrolyzer – provides electricity to his home year-round, even on the cloudiest of winter days.

Mr. Strizki's monthly utility bill is zero – he's off the power grid – and his system creates no carbon-dioxide emissions. Neither does the fuel-cell car parked in his garage, which runs off the hydrogen his system creates.

It sounds promising, even utopian: homemade, storable energy that doesn't contribute to global warming. But does Strizki's method – converting electricity generated from renewable sources into hydrogen – make sense for widespread adoption?

According to some renewable-energy experts, the answer is "no," at least not anytime soon. The system is too expensive, they say, and the process of creating hydrogen from clean sources is itself laced with inefficiency – the numbers just don't add up.

Strizki's response: "Nothing is as wildly expensive as destroying the whole planet."

Life free from the power gridStrizki lives with his wife in a rural section of Central New Jersey. His 12-acre property is surrounded by trees and his gravel driveway leads to a winding country road. His 3,500-square-foot house has all the amenities, including a hot tub and a big-screen TV.

It was here, four years ago, that Strizki set out to do something that's never been done in this country – power his home completely through a combination of solar and hydrogen. "My motivation was, I saw what fossil fuels were doing to the environment," he says.

Strizki works for a company that installs solar panels. In previous jobs, he's helped integrate hydrogen fuel cells into cars, a boat, a fire truck, and an airplane. His latest project, the one involving his house, is an extension of that expertise.

National Wildlife Refuges Suffer Setbacks

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Faced with a $2.5 billion budget shortfall, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is eliminating hundreds of jobs, cutting back programs and leaving more than 200 national wildlife refuges unstaffed.

In all, the agency is planning to cut 565 jobs from wildlife refuges by 2009 — a 20 percent reduction.

The national refuge system encompasses 547 wildlife refuges and more than 96 million acres in all 50 states, attracting more than 40 million visitors a year.

Environmentalists say the staffing cuts — which follow two years of reductions — will leave an already lean work force depleted and result in a decrease in habitat management, restoration projects and education projects. More than 200 wildlife refuges across the country will be unstaffed.

"Our national wildlife refuges are literally crumbling before our eyes. Across the country we're seeing how the culmination of years of negligent funding devastates these special places," said Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife.

William Reffalt, director of the National Wildlife Refuge System in the 1980s, lamented the deterioration in the refuge system, which celebrated its 104th anniversary this week.

"Our nation had the foresight to establish these sanctuaries to conserve fish and wildlife, but we are failing to provide the ongoing stewardship that is required," he said. "We need leadership in the spirit of Theodore Roosevelt," who established the first wildlife refuge in Florida in 1903.

..snip...

"If the Service does not act decisively now, it will become unable to effectively operate most national wildlife refuges within a few years, even if budgets remain level," said David Eisenhauer, an agency spokesman.

The job cuts should increase efficiency and free up funding for refuge management and operations, Eisenhauer said.

But critics said leaving refuges unstaffed could lead to problems with invasive species — and increased crime or vandalism on the rustic sites, many of which are within an hour's drive of a major city

"In this day and age, no land can really be left alone," said Noah Matson, director of federal lands programs for Defenders of Wildlife. About 8 million refuge acres nationwide are infested with invasive species such as beetles and carp, Matson said.

The cuts also mean fewer law enforcement officers. In the Pacific region, only six officers will patrol a four-state area. In Oregon, just one full-time officer patrols the entire coastline, with a half-dozen wildlife refuges.

"That's just pathetic," Matson said.

..snip...

About 221 refuges will be unstaffed after the staffing reductions are finished, Eisenhauer said. All refuges will continue to be managed, he said, although some will become unstaffed "satellite units" of larger refuge complexes with no day-to-day management.

More Pics of Mayans at the Temple...

...performing a cleansing ritual to clean out the bad ju-ju from GB's visit there.

A whiff of incense, a sputter of candles, a hum of prayer. Mayan Indian activists on Thursday offered the gentlest protest yet to the Latin American tour of President Bush as they held a purification ceremony to drive out the "bad spirits" they said he had left behind during a stop at their ancient pyramid.

Bush visited Iximche, capital of the prehispanic Kaqchiqueles kingdom, during his daylong trip to Guatemala as part of a five-nation tour of Latin America.

The activists said the bad spirits were roused by Bush's policies, including the U.S.-led war in Iraq and an immigration raid last week in Massachusetts that netted several Guatemalan immigrants and left dozens of their children stranded at schools.

"Today is a special day on the Mayan calendar," said Jorge Morales, director of the Young Mayan Movement. "That's why we are taking advantage to do this special event to clean and get rid of the bad spirits and re-establish this sacred place's harmony."

The group of about a dozen ascended a partially restored stone pyramid to a central altar, where they burned incense, scattered holy water and bowed to the ground in prayer.

The organizers of the protest are leaders of Indian rights organizations associated with the left-leaning National Indian and Peasant Coordinating Committee.

And the Cleansing of the Bush...

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Mayan priests spiritually "cleansed" a Guatemalan religious site with incense and candles on Thursday after a visit earlier this week by President Bush.

Two priests lit colored candles on the four corners of the ruins to represent natural elements, burning incense and beating a ceremonial drum on top of a pyramid visited by Bush and Guatemalan President Oscar Berger on Monday.

The priests said they wanted to purify the site before a visit by Bolivia's indigenous President Evo Morales later this month.

"During President Bush's visit here snipers occupied this entire area," said Mayan youth leader Jorge Morales Toj. "It's a violent way of showing how disrespectful the U.S. empire is toward indigenous people."

The head of security at the U.S. embassy in Guatemala said it was standard practice for two sniper teams to protect President Bush while he was traveling.

The official, who asked not to be named, said he did not know if snipers had been positioned at the ruins for the visit.

Bush was dogged by protests throughout last week's five-country tour of Latin America, where he is widely unpopular.

His visit sparked violent scuffles with police and protesters in all the countries he visited.

At the Iximche ruins on Monday, Bush watched a reenactment of an ancient Mayan ball game played by young men in costumes using a soccer ball painted gold. Some Mayans said the show-game was an offensive portrayal of their culture as a tourist attraction.

The United States supported military governments in Guatemala during the country's 1960-96 civil war, which had its roots in the overthrow of a left-leaning government by a CIA-supported coup in 1954.

Entire Mayan villages were destroyed during the military's scorched earth counter-insurgency campaign that left nearly a quarter million people dead or missing.

At Thursday's ceremony, two spiritual guides said prayers in Spanish and the Kaqchikel Mayan language, handing corn that had been used as decoration during Bush's visit to kneeling women. Corn is sacred in Mayan culture and is the origin of man in the Mayan holy book the Popul Vuh.

The ceremony was meant to clear out residual "bad energy" at the ruins, the capital of the Kaqchikel Mayan people before the 1524 Spanish conquest, in preparation for the arrival of Morales, who will attend an international convention of native leaders here at the end of the month.

Morales is Latin America's first indigenous head-of-state and a close ally of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, the United States' principal antagonist in the region.

Two Steps Back, One Step Forward

Brushing aside a veto threat, the House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to overturn a 2001 order by President George W. Bush that lets former presidents keep their papers secret indefinitely.

The measure, which drew bipartisan support and passed by a veto-busting 333-93 margin, was among White House-opposed bills the House passed that would widen access to government information and protect government whistleblowers.

"Today, Congress took an important step toward restoring openness and transparency in government," House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman said.

The presidential papers bill nullifies a November 2001 order, criticized by historians, in which Bush allowed the White House or a former president to block release of a former president's papers and put the onus on researchers to show a "specific need" for many types of records.

Among beneficiaries of the Bush order was Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, a former vice president and president.

The order gave former vice presidents the right to stop the release of their papers through an executive privilege that previously only presidents could use. And it extended to deceased presidents' designees rights to keep their papers secret indefinitely.

...snip....

Also passed by the House by a 331-94 margin, despite another veto threat, was a bill aimed at bolstering protections of government whistleblowers who report wrongdoing, especially those with private contractors and national security and scientific agencies.

A third bill, which passed 308-117, was aimed at speeding requests for government information made under the Freedom of Information Act. The White House stopped short of threatening to veto it but said it could not support the bill.

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The Borneo Cloud Leopard

...now genetically proven to be its own species. Let's hope this is a boost to conservation efforts in the heart of Borneo where the WWF have found more than 52 new species.

Fox on Blacks

Fox Attacks: Black America is a new video on Fox Cable Channel's coverage and portrayal of African Americans.

James Rucker of ColorOfChange.org conceived of the video after learning the Congressional Black Caucus Institute considered partnering with FOX Cable Channel on an upcoming debate.

Read more at Foxattacks.com

Honor Due to Real Heroes

wow...

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A 97-year-old woman credited with saving 2,500 Jewish children during the Holocaust was honored by parliament Wednesday at a ceremony during which Poland's president said she deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.

Irena Sendler, who lives in a nursing home in Warsaw, was too frail to attend the special session in which members of the Senate unanimously approved a resolution honoring her and the Polish underground Council for Assisting Jews.

The group's members, mostly Roman Catholics, risked their own lives to save Jews from the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland.

Sendler was cited for organizing the "rescue of the most defenseless victims of the Nazi ideology — the Jewish children."

President Lech Kacyzinski said in an address to senators that Sendler is a "great hero who can be justly named for the Nobel Peace Prize."

"Every child saved with my help and the help of all the wonderful secret messengers, who today are no longer living, is the justification of my existence on this Earth, and not a title to glory," Sendler said in a letter read by Elzbieta Ficowska, who was saved by Sendler as a baby. "Over a half-century has passed since the hell of the Holocaust, but its specter still hangs over the world and doesn't allow us to forget the tragedy."

Sendler led about 20 helpers who smuggled Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto to safety between 1940 and 1943, placing them in Polish families, convents or orphanages.

She wrote the children's names on slips of paper and buried them in jars in a neighbor's yard as a record that could help locate their parents after the war. The Nazis arrested her in 1943, but she refused — despite repeated torture — to reveal their names.

Anyone caught helping Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland risked being summarily shot, along with family members.

"I think she's a great lady, very courageous, and I think she's a model for the whole international community," Israeli Ambassador David Peleg said after the ceremony. "I think that her courage is a very special one."

Toxic Corn?

Mmm, good fer growin' boys and girls...oh, and to make all our cows fat and happy (never mind that cows can't naturally digest corn and need chemical help to do so) Corn Fed Beef! Its whats for dinner....

Anyways, interesting tidbit for the debate over GMO foods.

Article Source

Environmental group Greenpeace launched a fresh attack on genetically modified maize developed by U.S. biotech giant Monsanto, saying on Tuesday that rats fed on one version developed liver and kidney problems.

Greenpeace said a study it had commissioned that was published in the journal Archives of Environmental Contamination and Technology showed rats fed for 90 days on Monsanto's MON863 maize showed "signs of toxicity" in the liver and kidneys.

"It is the first time that independent research, published in a peer-reviewed journal, has proved that a GMO authorized for human consumption presents signs of toxicity," Arnaud Apoteker, a spokesman for Greenpeace France said in a statement.

Campaigners against Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) say that genetic modification technology is unproven and potentially dangerous and that GMO crops can contaminate other crops.

The industry says the technology offers vast potential benefits, poses no health risk and has never been shown to contaminate other crops.

"All the experts agree that the maize in question is as safe as traditional maize," Yann Fichet, director external relations for Monsanto France told France's TF1 television.

He said the maize had been authorized in more than 10 countries and in the European Union but he declined to comment specifically on the allegations raised by Greenpeace.

MON863 is a form of maize genetically modified to make it resistant to corn rootworm. It has been authorized by the European Union for use in animal feed since 2005 and for human consumption since January 2006.

Geothermal Power Dissed by Administration

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The Bush administration wants to eliminate federal support for geothermal power just as many U.S. states are looking to cut greenhouse gas emissions and raise renewable power output.
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The move has angered scientists who say there is enough hot water underground to meet all U.S. electricity needs without greenhouse gas emissions.

"The
Department of Energy has not requested funds for geothermal research in our fiscal-year 2008 budget," said Christina Kielich, a spokeswoman for the Department of Energy. "Geothermal is a mature technology. Our focus is on breakthrough energy research and development."

The administration of George W. Bush has made renewable energy a priority as it seeks to wean the United States off foreign oil, but it emphasizes use of biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel for vehicles and nuclear research for electricity.

"In spite of its enormous potential, the geothermal option for the United States has been largely ignored," a recent study led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said.

Last year, the DOE requested no funding for geothermal for the 2007 fiscal year, after funding averaged about $26 million over the previous six years, but Congress restored $5 million. This year, the DOE's $24.3 billion budget request includes a 38 percent federal spending increase for nuclear power, but nothing for geothermal.

Advocates say they hope Congress can restore at least $25 million in funding to keep geothermal research on track.

"It's too early to pick our resources. We need them all," said Karl Gawell, executive director of the Geothermal Energy Association.

New geothermal power projects by 2050 could provide 100,000 megawatts of electricity -- enough to power about 80 million U.S. homes, or as much as U.S. nuclear power plants make today, the MIT study said.

But U.S. geothermal development will need $300 million to $400 million over 15 years to make this type of power competitive versus other forms of power generation, the study said.

Native Tribes Get A Break...

for now. Thanks to a ruling in favor of their religious rights. The battle is not over for them though, and it never is. But hey, maybe all those skiers would welcome someone spraying poop on their churches, and then I guess it would be all fair.

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An Arizona ski resort's plan to use treated sewage to make snow on a mountain sacred to several Native American tribes violates religious freedom laws, a U.S appeals court ruled on Monday.

The decision on Arizona Snowbowl was a victory for Native American tribes after years of setbacks in their fight to bar the resort from using waste water on the federally owned mountain 150 miles north of Phoenix.

"It's like stomping on the scriptures in the world of Christianity," Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr. said in a telephone interview. "This is my essence, the essence of who I am."

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the tribes that the treated waste water should be barred under the U.S. Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which says the federal government may not "substantially burden a person's exercise of religion."

Meditating Young Man

Poof!

an update on an interesting spiritual boy in Nepal that we first heard about in 2005.

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A Nepalese teenager hailed as a reincarnation of the Buddha has vanished for a second time in southern Nepal

Plastics Causing Obesity?

Finally, someone comes up with a reason for my flab that I can easily swallow...er, buy, er....never mind...

Full Article

Too many calories and too little exercise are undeniably the major factors contributing to the obesity epidemic, but several recent animal studies suggest that environmental exposure to widely used chemicals may also help make people fat.

The evidence is preliminary, but a number of researchers are pursuing indications that the chemicals, which have been shown to cause abnormal changes in animals' sexual development, can also trigger fat-cell activity -- a process scientists call adipogenesis.

The chemicals under scrutiny are used in products from marine paints and pesticides to food and beverage containers. A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found one chemical, bisphenol A, in 95 percent of the people tested, at levels at or above those that affected development in animals.

Mayan Holy Men to Purify Ancient Site of Bad Spirits after Bush Visit

:)

Mayan priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate "bad spirits" after President Bush visits next week, an official with close ties to the group said Thursday.
"That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture," Juan Tiney, the director of a Mayan nongovernmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders, said Thursday.

Bush's seven-day tour of Latin America includes a stopover beginning late Sunday in Guatemala. On Monday morning he is scheduled to visit the archaeological site Iximche on the high western plateau in a region of the Central American country populated mostly by Mayans.

Tiney said the "spirit guides of the Mayan community" decided it would be necessary to cleanse the sacred site of "bad spirits" after Bush's visit so that their ancestors could rest in peace. He also said the rites — which entail chanting and burning incense, herbs and candles — would prepare the site for the third summit of Latin American Indians March 26-30.

Bush's trip has already has sparked protests elsewhere in Latin America, including protests and clashes with police in Brazil hours before his arrival. In Bogota, Colombia, which Bush will visit on Sunday, 200 masked students battled 300 riot police with rocks and small homemade explosives.

Link To Article


Bush Protester Beaten by Police in Brazil

Expulsion from the Cherokee Naton

Full Article Here

The Cherokee Nation’s decision to revoke the tribal citizenship of about 2,800 descendants of slaves once owned by the tribe is a moral low point in modern Cherokee history and places the tribe in violation of a 140-year-old federal treaty and several court decisions. The federal government must now step in to protect the rights of the freedmen, who could lose their tribal identities as well as access to medical, housing and other tribal benefits.

This bitter dispute dates to the treaties of 1866, when the Cherokee, Seminole and Creek agreed to admit their former slaves as tribal members in return for recognition as sovereign nations. The tribes fought black membership from the start — even though many of the former slaves were products of mixed black and Indian marriages.

Conditions at Walter Reed Known about for Years

Full Article at CQ

Senior Republicans who knew about problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center while their party controlled Congress insist they did all they could to prod the Pentagon to fix them.

But C.W. Bill Young, R-Fla., former chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, said he stopped short of going public with the hospital’s problems to avoid embarrassing the Army while it was fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Young and Thomas M. Davis III, R-Va., the former chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, both acknowledged in interviews that they were aware of patient care problems at Walter Reed long before The Washington Post exposed them two weeks ago.

At a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing Wednesday, Young detailed his efforts to assist patients at Walter Reed during visits he or his wife made to the hospital as early as 2003. He described repeatedly confronting the hospital’s then commander, Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, about patients who, they discovered, had received poor care.

Young said his wife, Beverly, found one Walter Reed patient lying in his hospital bed without sheets or blankets, having soiled himself. Another, who suffered from a battlefield brain injury, had fallen out of his bed three times, even after Young had told Kiley about the problem, the lawmaker said. And he said a third patient, who had an aneurysm, died after a respiratory therapist ignored family warnings about the patient’s fragile condition and treated him anyway.

“We got in Gen. Kiley’s face on a regular basis,” Young said, adding that he even contacted the commander of the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda in the hopes of getting better care there for the patient with the aneurysm, though doctors at Walter Reed declined to transfer him.

“What else do you want me to do? I am not going to go into a hospital and push my way into a medical situation,” Young said after the hearing.

Young said he “separates my life as a member of Congress and the work I do on a volunteer basis,” visiting military hospitals with his wife almost every week.

Young said he used his role as an appropriator to push to fund a new lab at Walter Reed and a new phone system at Fort Carson so patients could more easily make appointments.

But he said he purposely opted to bring concerns about individual patients’ care privately to the attention of Walter Reed commanders, rather than wield his clout as an Appropriations subcommittee chairman.

“We did not go public with these concerns, because we did not want to undermine the confidence of the patients and their families and give the Army a black eye while fighting a war,” Young said.

At the time, Young said, he believed “what I was dealing with was basically isolated cases, solder by soldier,” rather than a systemic problem at the hospital.

Even now, Young said, he’s not sure what more he could have done.

“Appropriations alone cannot solve all problems,” he said. “It takes more. It takes skill, it takes experience, it takes determination, and it takes attitude.”

He placed the blame for the hospital’s substandard conditions on Kiley, who now serves as the Army’s surgeon general, its top-ranking uniformed doctor. Young said he was not satisfied with Kiley’s answers at the hearing Wednesday and predicted that he would be relieved of his post by the weekend.

“The rumor around the Capitol is they’re keeping him here to take all the spears,” Young said.

Davis’ Panel Aware Since 2004

Davis, the former chairman of the committee with responsibility for oversight of government programs, said his options also were limited. He said his committee staff first learned in 2004 about problems with wounded soldiers’ health care while investigating their pay problems.

At a February 2005 hearing on care for wounded Army Guard and Reserve soldiers, Davis said, “I’m appalled that these men and women not only have had to face the recovery from their war wounds, but are simultaneously forced to navigate a confusing and seemingly uncaring system of benefits.”

Davis said he directed the Government Accountability Office to conduct several studies, “some of them coming from complaints from veterans that were stationed” at Walter Reed.

Davis’ committee staff aides fielded calls and attempted to help wounded soldiers and their families who called with complaints about pay and health care problems. At the committee’s March 5 hearing at Walter Reed, Annette L. McLeod testified that only after calling Davis’ office in 2006 did she make progress in getting proper care for her husband, Army National Guard Spec. Wendell W. McLeod Jr., who was injured while deployed in Iraq.

But Davis says he never pressed other committees or Republican leaders for legislation or new money to address problems his staff had identified.

“We are not appropriators. . . . I don’t know what else we could have done,” Davis said. “If generals don’t go around and look at the barracks, how do you legislate that?”

Democrats Also Aware

Democrats said they did all they could while in the minority.

John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, who was the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, said he sought appropriations to address problems he found during visits to military hospitals. For example, he obtained money for air conditioners for the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and modern stretchers for a Baghdad field hospital.

Murtha focused blame for the Walter Reed scandal on the Bush administration and said the Pentagon discouraged patients from talking to lawmakers in both parties.

“My impression is that the military was constrained, even intimidated, from telling me and other congressional members about the real problems and the real needs,” Murtha said.

Democrat Henry A. Waxman of California, who now chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, defended how his predecessor as chairman had handled the problems at Walter Reed.

“It isn’t that Chairman Davis didn’t ask them to account for it,” Waxman said. “I don’t think the problem is in our committee. The problem is in the Department of Defense.”

John F. Tierney, D-Mass., the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, made a point to praise Davis and former subcommittee Chairman Christopher Shays, R-Conn., at the March 5 hearing at Walter Reed. “I want to thank those members for their leadership so far,” Tierney said.

Gag on Polar Bears, Arctic Ice, and Global Warming..

Some call it SCIENTIFIC CENSORSHIP. Others just call it SOUND POLICY. Whatever you call it, however, government officials and scientists are asked not to speak in any Public Forum on these particular topics.

Heaven forbid that the Public should hear what Scientists and our Government actually think and know on the topics.......we only pay the paychecks!


Full Article Here

Polar bears, sea ice and global warming are taboo subjects, at least in public, for some U.S. scientists attending meetings abroad, environmental groups and a top federal wildlife official said on Thursday.

Environmental activists called this scientific censorship, which they said was in line with the Bush administration's history of muzzling dissent over global climate change.

But H. Dale Hall, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said this policy was a long-standing one, meant to honor international protocols for meetings where the topics of discussion are negotiated in advance.

The matter came to light in e-mails from the Fish and Wildlife Service that were distributed by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for Biological Diversity, both environmental groups.

Listed as a "new requirement" for foreign travelers on U.S. government business, the memo says that requests for foreign travel "involving or potentially involving climate change, sea ice, and/or polar bears" require special handling, including notice of who will be the official spokesman for the trip.

The Fish and Wildlife Service top officials need assurance that the spokesman, "the one responding to questions on these issues, particularly polar bears" understands the administration's position on these topics.

Two accompanying memos were offered as examples of these kinds of assurance. Both included the line that the traveler "understands the administration's position on climate change, polar bears, and sea ice and will not be speaking on or responding to these issues."

ARE POLAR BEARS 'THREATENED'?

Polar bears are a hot topic for the Bush administration, which decided in December to consider whether to list the white-furred behemoths as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act, because of scientific reports that the bears' icy habitat is melting due to global warming.

Hall said a decision is expected in January 2008. A "threatened" listing would bar the government from taking any action that jeopardizes the animal's existence, and might spur debate about tougher measures to cut the greenhouse gas emissions that spur global warming.

Hall defended the policy laid out in the memos, saying it was meant to keep scientists from straying from a set agenda at meetings in countries like Russia, Norway and Canada.

For example, he said, one meeting was about "human and polar bear interface." Receding Arctic sea ice where polar bears live and the global climate change that likely played a role in the melting were not proper discussion topics, he said.

"That's not a climate change discussion," Hall said at a telephone briefing. "That's a management, on-the-ground type discussion."

The prohibition on talking about these subjects only applies to public, formal situations, Hall said. Private scientific discussions outside the meeting and away from media are permitted and encouraged, he said.

"This administration has a long history of censoring speech and science on global warming," Eben Burnham-Snyder of the Natural Resources Defense Council said by telephone.

"Whenever we see an instance of the Bush administration restricting speech on global warming, it sends up a huge red flag that their commitment to the issue does not reflect their rhetoric," Burnham-Snyder said.

Whale Songs Researched

Perhaps the most amazing part of this story is that the Blue Whale population has dwindled from 200,000 to 300,000 to the now estimated 1,000 that exist worldwide.

How incredibly sad, and alarming, and indicative of how much trouble our planet is in.


Full Article Here

Deep below the ocean's surface, blue whales are singingóand for the first time, scientists think they know why. Researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography recorded the sounds and say they offer new insight into the behavior of the passenger jet-sized animals.

• Video: Starving Whales
• Audio: Hear Whales Sing

Using tags suctioned to the whales' bodies, researchers tracked the whales and found that as they feed, they send out calls to let each other know where they are, each group employing a different sound.

The noises play a similarly important role during mating season when males sing long, low-pitched songs to indicate their reproductive fitness to females. Females select mates based on size and estimate that by evaluating males' songs: Larger males can take in more air and hold notes longer.

The research appears in the January 25 issue of the Marine Ecology Progress Series journal.

A related study, also by Scripps researchers, found that there are distinct "dialects" of whale-speak in different regions of the ocean. The finding could have implications for preservation efforts.

The scientists used acoustic recordings to delineate nine population regions worldwide. They found the whales weren't evenly distributed, though: Populations using a "Type 1" call, for example, live within a narrow band of ocean hugging the North American coast, while whales that use a "Type 4" call are spread over a large swath of the Northern Pacific Ocean.

The second study was published in a recent issue of the Journal of Cetacean Research Management.

The scientists say the dialect findings could help guide conservation efforts for blue whales, whose numbers dwindled to dangerously low levels before whaling moratoria were enacted: There were once an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 in the Southern Hemisphere, but today that number is closer to 1,000, Scripps scientist John Hildebrand told LiveScience.

"By listening to the animals," he said, "you can tell something about the areas in which they are interacting to breed and that's important to know for managing and conserving the animals."

• The World's Biggest Beasts
• Image Gallery: Small Sea Monsters
• Whales Set Deep-Sea Diving Record
• Grammar Revealed in the Love Songs of Whales
• All About Whales