Johanna Faust, a mixed race Jew, prefers to publish pseudonymously. She is committed: first, to preventing war, ecological disaster, and nuclear apocalypse; last to not only fighting for personal privacy & the freedom of information, but, by representing herself as a soldier in that fight, to exhorting others to do the same. She is a poet, always. All these efforts find representation here: "ah, Mephistophelis" is so named after the last line of Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, whose heretical success flouted the censor for a time.

You Ought To Be Mad As Hell! (or, Look Here)



Reminds me of that excellent English translation of that revolutionary French book, Indignez something.  Now where did I put that?

Google Starts Speak2Tweet for "Egyptians on the Ground"





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UPDATE from Egypt NOT via MSM

Repost widely. From A. Peasant's post at Twelfth Bough.




1. The police are using snipers and shooting live ammunition at the protesters.
2. The army is not protecting the people. Egyptians do not want the army.
3. The MB is not leading the opposition. Egyptians do not want the MB.
4. The situation in Suez is particularly violent, no doubt due to the STRATEGIC LOCATION.
5. There is no love for Obama or El Baradai. Egyptians do not want El Baradai.
6. Egyptians don't want Suleiman either.
7. Egyptians would like INFORMED PROTESTS FROM ABROAD IN FRONT OF EGYPTIAN EMBASSIES.






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Oakland Elementary School Evacuated After Caller Reports 'Man With Rifle'

by Johanna Faust.

Oakland police have partnered with multiple agencies to evacuate an Oakland elementary school after a receiving a tip that a man with a rifle had entered one of the "portable classrooms" on the campus. 

The caller, using the non-emergency number, reported the sighting at about 12:45 p.m..  Corroborative evidence has not yet surfaced.

A police helicopter, borrowed for the occasion, hovered loudly over downtown Oakland for most of the afternoon.  Officers with weapons drawn stood at the ready near the classrooms as kids were led from the school, located at 1100 Third Avenue (at 12th Street) -- close to Laney College.

No student or teacher has been reported hurt or missing as of 3:15 Monday afternoon (January 31) when the last of the evacuees were leaving.  The alleged gunman has not yet been found; SWAT teams were waiting for full evacuation to thoroughly search the school.


-----------------------------

A summary of available newsitems, with a hat tip to Sean Maher.


Written to explain the loud helicopter sounding its fascist mating call all afternoon


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BP Oil Disaster: Test Results




Often, when samples (air, water, blood) are taken, it is months before results are expected.  These results need to be more widely publicized, and therefore I am reposting them, and encourage you to do the same. 




Wednesday, 05 January 2011
Evaluation of the Results of Whole Blood Volatile Solvents Testing 
By Wilma Subra
Subra Company
for the
Louisiana Environmental Action Network

Samples of blood were collected on December 16, 2010, from four males, age 3, 36, 42 and 43, and one female, age 38.  The individuals tested  were a diver who came in contact with the BP spill chemicals, individuals who visited the coastal communities and wetlands, documenting the impacts of the BP spill, and individuals exposed along the beaches.   The whole blood samples were analyzed for Volatile Solvents by Method 0762, Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry, by Metametrix Clinical Laboratory in Duluth, Georgia

Ethylbenzene

Ethylbenzene was detected in all five blood samples in excess of the NHANES 95th Percentile value.  The male diver had the highest concentration of Ethylbenzene, 0.63 ppb, which was 5.7 times the 95th Percentile NHANES value.  The male diver also had the highest value of Ethylbenzene when compared to the other 9 individuals whose blood had been previously tested (1.3 times the highest previous value).  The previous samplings of blood for volatile solvents were performed on residents exposed along the coast and BP cleanup workers.

The second highest concentration  of Ethylbenzene was 3.3  times the 95th Percentile and occurred in the 3 year old male.  The third highest concentration of Ethylbenzene was 2.8 times the 95th Percentile and occurred in the 38 year old female.

m,p-Xylene

m,p-Xylene was detected in four of the five blood samples in excess of the NHANES 95th Percentile value.  The male diver had the highest concentration of m,p-Xylene, 1.93 ppb, which was 5.68 times the 95th Percentile NHANES value.  The male diver also had the highest value of m,p-Xylene when compared to the other 9 individuals whose blood had been previously tested (1.5 times the highest previous value).  The 36 year old male did not have detectable levels of m,p-Xylene.

Hexane

Hexane was detected in all five blood samples.  The highest concentration of Hexane in the blood occurred in the 3 year old male and the 36 year old male..  The hexane concentrations in the blood of the 3 year old male and 36 year old male were in the 40th Percentile.  The Hexane values detected in the five blood samples fell in the same range as the previous 9 blood samples. 

2-Methylpentane

The concentrations of 2-Methylpentane were highest in the 3 year old male and 36 year old male.  The 2-Methylpentane values in the 3 year old male and 36 year old male were elevated and  in the 82nd Percentile.  The 2-Methylpentane values were in the same range as the previous nine blood samples analyzed.

3-Methylpentane

The concentrations of 3-Methylpentane were highest in the 36 year old male.  The 36 year old male value was in the 2nd Percentile.

Isooctane

The highest concentration of Isooctane occurred in the male diver and was in the 3rd Percentile.  The Isooctane values were in the same range as previous blood samples examined.  

Conclusions

All five individuals tested had Ethylbenzene in their blood in excess of the NHANES 95th Percentile.  Four of the five individuals tested had m,p-Xylene in their blood in excess of the NHANES 95th Percentile.

All five individuals had Hexane, 2-Methylpentane, 3-Methylpentane, and isooctane in their blood.

The diver had the highest concentration of Ethylbenzene, m,p-Xylene and Isooctane in his blood.  The 3 year old male and 36 year old male had the highest concentrations of Hexane, 2-Methylpentane and 3-Methylpentane. 

The Ethylbenzene, m,p-Xylene and Hexane correlate to the volatile organic chemicals in the BP Crude Oil.  The blood of all five individuals had chemicals that corresponded to the chemicals in the BP Crude Oil.

Monday, 03 January 2011

Results of sampling performed by the Lower Mississippi River Keeper from Atchafalaya Bay eastward to the Louisiana/Mississippi state line, in the Gulf of Mexico coastal areas of Louisiana.
January 3rd 2011

by Wilma Subra
Subra Company

Paul Orr
Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper

Michael Orr
Louisiana Environmental Action Network

In response to the BP Oil Disaster, the Lower Mississippi River Keeper (LMRK), Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN), and Subra Company have performed monitoring, sampling and analysis of the environment and seafood in the coastal estuaries and wetlands of Louisiana. Monitoring of the environmental and human health impacts were initiated immediately following the Deepwater Horizon explosion and resulting crude oil spill on April 20, 2010.  Physical and chemical field sampling and analysis of the wetlands and ecosystems, along the coast of Louisiana, were initiated on August 2, 2010. The field sampling has been performed and continues to be performed on an ongoing basis since August 2, 2010, from Atchafalaya Bay eastward to the Louisiana/Mississippi state line.

Tuesday, 21 December 2010
Results of sampling performed by the Lower Mississippi River Keeper in St. Bernard Parish on October 26, 2010

by Wilma Subra
Subra Company

Paul Orr
Lower Mississippi River Keeper

Michael Orr
Louisiana Environmental Action Network

Tissue samples were collected from a cove, 1.4 miles from the southern end of a “spoil canal” south of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO). The sample of oysters contained 84 mg/kg of Petroleum Hydrocarbons and 2 Polynuclear Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) (3.6 ug/kg). The redfish sample contained 84 mg/kg Petroleum Hydrocarbons.
Michael and Paul processing oyster samples
A blue crab sample from the northeast side of Lake Machias in a shallow pond south of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO) contained 147 mg/kg Petroleum Hydrocarbons and 3 PAHs (84.6 ug/kg).
Shrimp sample ready for the Lab


Shrimp and oyster tissue samples collected from the East side of Lake Fortuna just off a small island in Pass Fernandez contained 96 mg/kg Petroleum Hydrocarbons and 5 PAHs (69.4 ug/kg) in the shrimp sample and 108 mg/kg Petroleum Hydrocarbons in the oyster sample.


Monday, 13 December 2010

We have all had frustrations with the response to the recent Gulf oil disaster. One such frustration that we at Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper felt early on was the lack of solid data about the impacts from the disaster. This frustration prompted us to begin an environmental sampling project.
LEAN/LMRK technical advisor, award winning chemist Wilma Subra, put together the sampling protocols. We coordinated with world-class commercial laboratories who would process the samples. We prepared Julia the LMRK patrol boat and were ready to go.
On August 2, 2010 we made our first sample collection trip. Since then we have made 8 sampling trips, from the western edge of Terrebonne Parish to the Louisiana/Mississippi line, and collected over 50 samples.
Samples of water, soil, plants and animals have been collected. As the project progressed we have decided to focus on seafood species as these have the greatest impact on people.

The following list details a few of our findings to date:
Sample:
Date:
Location:
Total Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons:
Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons:
Oysters
8/2/10
Terrebonne Parish
0.016 mg/kg
9,780 mg/kg
Blue Crab
8/2/10
Terrebonne Parish
NT
2,230 mg/kg
Oysters
8/3/10
Plaquemines Parish
0.063 mg/kg
12,500 mg/kg
Mussels
8/3/10
Plaquemines Parish
0.386 mg/kg
6,900 mg/kg
shrimp
8/12/10
Sr. Bernard Parish
0.017 mg/kg
8,350 mg/kg
Flounder and Speckled Trout
8/12/10
St. Bernard Parish
ND
21,575 mg/kg
Seagull Viscera
8/19/10
Terrebonne Parish
ND
23,302 mg/kg
Fiddler Crabs and Periwinkles (snail)
8/19/10
Terrebonne Parish
0.012 mg/kg
6,916 mg/kg
Blue Crab
10/26/10
Plaquemines Parish
0.078 mg/kg
147 mg/kg

The high levels of petroleum hydrocarbons are troubling particularly since many of these species are consumed by people. It is our understanding that there should be no detectable levels of petroleum hydrocarbons in seafood.
It should be noted that none of the samples listed above were visibly contaminated nor did they have any unusual odors. The seafood species, in particular, appeared pristine. We have made an effort to test a broad sampling of areas across the coast.
Based on our sampling project we believe that the government's pronouncement that Gulf seafood is safe is premature.
This information is particularly valuable in determining possible public health concerns related to contamination from the oil disaster. Information gathered will help us to understand what possible precautions should be taken now and what actions are necessary to fully restore the environment of the impacted areas.
We hope that the results from our sampling project will help to fill in some of the unanswered questions about the impacts of this disaster. As a small nonprofit, our scale and scope is limited greatly by budget but it is our hope that this research contributes to an accurate, independent and publicly accessible analysis of the state of the Gulf environment.We are currently waiting for the results of two more trips worth of samples which are being processed at the lab.
We will continue to collect this important data as long as we can afford to. As always we will continue to assist the communities we serve and strive to find answers to the questions vital for maintaining healthy and sustainable coastal communities.
To help continue this project go here: http://www.indiegogo.com/Gulf-Seafood-Safe
 Also see

http://www.southernstudies.org/2011/01/bps-spilled-oil-is-washing-up-in-people.html

BP's spilled oil is washing up in People

by Sue Sturgis, http://www.southernstudies.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=5&id=20
the Online Magazine for the Institute for Southern Studies

Though the gushing well was capped last July, oil continues to wash ashore along the Gulf Coast. BP's oil is also washing up in people's bodies, raising concerns about long-term health effects.

This month the Louisiana Environmental Action Network released the results of tests performed on blood samples collected from Gulf residents. Whole blood samples were collected from 12 people between the ages of 10 and 66 in September, November and December and analyzed by a professional lab in Georgia, with the findings interpreted by environmental chemist and LEAN technical adviser Wilma Subra.

The individuals tested were two boys ages 10 and 11, four men and six women. They included cleanup workers on Orange Beach, Ala., crabbers from the Biloxi, Miss. area  and people living on Perdido Key, Ala.

Four of the people tested -- including three adults and the 10-year-old -- showed unusually high levels of benzene, a particularly toxic component of crude oil. Subra compared the levels found in the test subjects to the levels found in subjects in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a research program conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics.

Specifically, Subra compared the benzene levels in the Gulf residents to the NHANES 95th percentile value -- that is, the score below which 95 percent of the NHANES subjected tested. In other words, she compared the benzene levels found in Gulf residents to some of the highest levels found in the general population.

That comparison shows cause for concern, as the benzene levels in the blood of four Gulf residents ranged between 11.9 and 35.8 times higher than the NHANES 95th percentile value of 0.26 parts per billion. Benzene is known to cause a host of health problems including anemia, irregular menstrual periods, ovarian shrinkage and leukemia.

The Gulf residents with the highest levels of benzene in their blood included a family of crabbers -- a 46-year-old man and woman and a 10-year-old boy -- and a 51-year-old woman crabber, all from the Biloxi area.

Ethylbenzene was detected in all 12 blood samples from Gulf residents over the NHANES 95th percentile value of 0.11 ppb, with some individuals testing over three times that concentration. Ethylbenzene is known to cause dizziness, damage to the inner ear and hearing, and kidney damage, and it's also thought to cause cancer.

Eleven of the 12 individuals tested had relatively high concentrations of xylenes, with some of them testing up to 3.8 times higher than the NHANES 95th percentile value of 0.34 ppb. Xylene exposure can lead to headaches, dizziness, confusion, skin irritation, respiratory problems, memory difficulties and changes to the liver and kidneys. The blood test results also found high levels of other toxic petrochemicals including 2-methylpentane, 3-methylpentane and isooctane.

The two boys showed some of the highest blood concentrations of the chemicals, and the 10-year-old boy from the Biloxi area suffered severe respiratory problems as a result. His mother, the crabber, also had some of the highest concentrations of the chemicals in her blood.

Earlier this month, residents from across the Gulf called on members of the President's oil spill commission -- which recently released its final report on the disaster -- to address the region's growing health crisis. One of them was Cherri Foytlin, co-founder of the grassroots group Gulf Change, who recently learned her own blood has alarming levels of ethylbenzene.

"Today I'm talking to you about my life," she told the commission. "My ethylbenzene levels are 2.5 times the [NHANES] 95th percentile, and there's a very good chance now that I won't get to see my grandbabies."

Foytlin reported seeing children from the region with lesions all over their bodies. "We are very, very ill," she said. Meanwhile, doctors in the region are treating patients with high levels of toxic petrochemicals in their bodies -- even in people who do not live right on the coast and were not involved in the cleanup.

Commission member Frances Beinecke, chair of the Natural Resources Defense Council, pledged to take the health concerns back to the White House. But nine months since the disaster began unfolding, Gulf residents are still waiting for the government to address the ongoing environmental health crisis. 




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PROJECT CENSORED'S TOP 25 OF 2011



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Archive for the Category ‘Top 25 of 2011’


In Guantánamo, the notorious but seldom-discussed thug squad, officially known as the Immediate Reaction Force (IRF), deployed by the US military remains very much active. Inside the walls of Guantánamo, the prisoners know the squad as the Extreme Repression Force. In reality, IRF is an extrajudicial terror squad, the existence of which has been documented [...]



A little more than a year before he was fired on June 23, 2010, for making potentially insubordinate remarks in a Rolling Stone profile, General Stanley McChrystal was appointed by President Barack Obama as commander in charge of the war in Afghanistan. He had been formerly in charge of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) [...]



The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has become history’s first global army. Never before have soldiers from so many states served in the same war theater, much less the same country. At the eighth anniversary of the United States’ invasion of Afghanistan, the world is witness to a twenty-first-century armed conflict waged by the largest [...]



India’s 1.2 billion citizens are to be issued biometric identification cards. The cards will hold the person’s name, age, and birth date, as well as fingerprints or iris scans, though no caste or religious identification. Within the next five years a giant computer will hold the personal details of at least 600 million citizens, making [...]



Speaking in advance of the climate summit in Copenhagen, Rajendra Pachauri, the United Nation’s leading climate scientist, warned that Western society must enact radical changes and reform measures if it is to avoid the worst effects of climate change. Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told the Observer that Western society [...]



Charter schools continue to stratify students by race, class, and sometimes language, and are more racially isolated than traditional public schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan area in the country. Charter schools are often marketed as incubators of educational innovation, and they form a key feature of the Obama administration’s school reform agenda. [...]



On April 24, 2009, US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner hosted meetings with finance ministers from the world’s top economies to discuss increased oversight of the global financial system in the wake of the meltdown. The meetings preceded semi-annual gatherings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank in Washington, DC. The April G20 meeting [...]



Chevron’s 2008 annual report to its shareholders is a glossy celebration heralding the company’s most profitable year in its history. Profits of $24 billion catapulted Chevron past General Electric to become the second most profitable corporation in the United States. The oil company’s 2007 revenues were larger than the gross domestic product (GDP) of 150 [...]



Nanotech Particles Pose Serious DNA Risks to Humans and the Environment Personal products you may use daily and think are harmless—cosmetics, suntan lotion, socks, and sports clothes—may all contain atom-sized nanotech particles, some of which have been shown to sicken and kill workers in plants using nanotechnology. Known human health risks include severe and permanent [...]



In October 2009, under great pressure from the United States, the government of Spain decided to limit its own jurisdiction in cases of genocide and crimes against humanity, thus closing one of the last windows of accountability for the most serious crimes committed by the most powerful nations on Earth. Under international law, such crimes [...]

Archive for the Category ‘Top 25 of 2011’


Around midnight on December 2, 1984, the citizens of Bhopal, India, a city of over 500,000 people in central India, were poisoned by approximately forty tons of toxic gases pouring into the night air from a largely abandoned chemical insecticide plant owned by the US-owned Union Carbide Corporation (UCC). The long-predicted gas leak at UCC [...]



Several contentious issues still plague the US government and their version of the events of September 11, 2001. Those in political power along with media elites would like to see the ongoing grassroots debates surrounding unanswered 9/11 questions and discrepancies disappear, despite the mountains of evidence that suggest that American citizens were told little about [...]



President Obama’s decision to increase military spending this year and in the future will result in the greatest administrative military spending since World War II. This decision is being made in spite of continued evidence of extreme waste, fraud, abuse, and corporate welfare in the military budget. At the same time, spending on “non-security” domestic [...]



Cuba was the first to come into Haiti with medical aid when the January 12, 2010, earthquake struck. Among the many donor nations, Cuba and its medical teams have played a major role in treating Haiti’s earthquake victims. Public health experts say the Cubans were the first to set up medical facilities among the debris [...]



The H1N1 virus has spawned widespread panic and fear throughout the world. However, upon closer examination, many of the claims made by the World Health Organization (WHO) seem to be based on weak and incomplete data. The Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has created and used data to grossly exaggerate the need [...]



In a continuous flow of money, American tax dollars end up paying members of the Taliban and funding a volatile environment in Afghanistan. Private contractors pay insurgents with the hope of attaining the very safety they are contracted to provide. Concurrently, US soldiers pay at checkpoints run by suspected insurgents in order to get safe [...]



The Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa (HSRC) has released a study indicating that Israel is practicing both colonialism and apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territories. The HSRC commissioned an international team of scholars and practitioners of international public law from South Africa, the United Kingdom, Israel, and the West Bank to conduct the [...]



On World Environment Day, June 5, 2009, Peruvian Amazon Indians were massacred by the government of Alán García in the latest chapter of a long war to take over common lands—a war unleashed by the signing of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Peru and the United States. Three MI-17 helicopters took off from the [...]



Resource exploitation in Africa is not new, but the scale of agricultural “land grabbing” in African nations is unprecedented, becoming the new colonization of the twenty-first century. State violence against Kenyan indigenous pastoralists and Nigerian civilians in oil-rich regions has heightened, leaving thousands dead as the military burns whole communities to the ground and police [...]



Despite national legislative health reform, health care in the US will remain dismal for many Americans, resulting in continuing deaths and personal tragedies. A recent Harvard research team estimates that 2,266 US military veterans died in 2008 due to lack of health insurance. The figure is more than fourteen times the number of deaths suffered [...]

Archive for the Category ‘Top 25 of 2011’


At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives inside and outside Pakistan. The Blackwater [...]



Agents of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are holding thousands of US residents in unlisted and unmarked subfield offices and deporting tens of thousands in secret court hearings. “If you don’t have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he’s illegal, we can make him disappear.” Those chilling words were spoken [...]



Following in the steps of its predecessor, the Obama administration is expanding mass government surveillance of personal electronic communications. This surveillance, which includes the monitoring of the Internet as well as private (nongovernmental) computers, is proceeding with the proposal or passage of new laws granting government agencies increasingly wider latitude in their monitoring activities. At [...]



The US military is responsible for the most egregious and widespread pollution of the planet, yet this information and accompanying documentation goes almost entirely unreported. In spite of the evidence, the environmental impact of the US military goes largely unaddressed by environmental organizations and was not the focus of any discussions or proposed restrictions at [...]



Nations have reached their limit in subsidizing the United States’ military adventures. During meetings in June 2009 in Yekaterinburg, Russia, world leaders such as China’s President Hu Jintao, Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev, and other top officials of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organisation took the first formal step to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve [...]

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