Category: General Interest

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40% Winter Dieoff In US Bee Colonies

Bayer Bee Petition

America’s bee crisis is getting worse. And if you don’t think this affects you, think again! If Australia’s food supply is substantially owned by foreign interests and there is a food crisis in their home country, we stand to go hungry too!

Our nation’s beekeepers recently reported the largest recorded winter losses of pollinating honeybees ever — nearly 40 percent. Why are these once-thriving insects dying at some of the highest rates?

A catastrophic flood of highly toxic pesticides — neonicotinoids or “neonics” — pushed by Big Ag is a leading cause of this collapse. Studies show that neonics sicken and kill bees. Reckless use of these poisons threaten our food supply — and possibly even our health. We need to put a stop to it, and together we will.

NRDC is currently waging a courtroom battle against Trump’s EPA that aims to restrict the use of bee-killing neonic products that also threaten endangered species. But to save our pollinators, we need to stop bee-killing uses of neonics on all fronts — so we’re putting the pressure on the world’s largest manufacturer of these toxic chemicals, Bayer-Monsanto.

Tom, we’re amassing a groundswell of public pressure against Bayer-Monsanto and we need your voice to send a message to its CEO, Werner Baumann, that’s too loud to ignore. Sign our petition demanding they STOP selling bee killing neonic products!

Why is the decline of honeybees causing so much alarm? Well, the future of our food supply is at stake. In fact, 70 percent of the world’s major food crops rely on bees.

And the neonic pesticides made by Bayer-Monsanto are poisons designed to kill insects — and are so toxic that, even in minute doses, they weaken the immune and navigation systems of bees, as well as their stamina and memory, making them less likely to survive.

The European Union and Canada have already restricted use of these toxic chemicals, but Trump’s EPA has opened the floodgates for agrichemical giants like Bayer-Monsanto to make millions off this assault on our pollinators.

We’re taking on Trump’s EPA in court to restrict the use of bee-killing neonic products, but we need your powerful voice to send a loud message to Bayer-Monsanto: Stop selling these toxic bee-killing poisons.

Toxic neonic pesticides aren’t only harming bees — they could be harming us, too. Neonic residues are found in 86% of our honey, as well as on apples, cherries, strawberries, and can even be found in baby food. Federally-funded research suggests that exposure to neonics in the womb and by children could increase the risk of developmental defects, autism, heart deformations, memory loss, and muscle tremors.

But instead of protecting pollinators and our food supply, the Trump administration and his EPA are coddling big chemical companies and ignoring critical information about honeybee losses. The EPA approved continued use of these bee-killing neonic pesticides, which are already used on 190 million acres of crops, and the administration reversed bans on using neonics in all national wildlife refuges.

So while NRDC takes on Trump’s EPA and neonics in court, we need to also build public pressure on Bayer-Monsanto. Sign our petition to Werner Baumann, Bayer-Monsanto’s CEO: the American people won’t sit by as our bees are poisoned and our health is threatened.

Thanks for taking on this agrichemical behemoth with us. Your voice is critical to our success.

https://act.nrdc.org/letter/sept-pollinator-toxics-190923

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We Are Witnessing The Descent From The Golden Age to Tyranny and Thought Slavery

James R Flynn

James R Flynn writes: I recently completed a book defending free speech. Emerald Press scheduled it for publication but then decided not to proceed. Here’s what it said about the book in Emerald’s September 2019 catalogue:

In Defense of Free Speech: The University as Censor
Author James R. Flynn, University of Otago, New Zealand

Synopsis: The good university is one that teaches students the intellectual skills they need to be intelligently critical—of their own beliefs and of the narratives presented by politicians and the media. Freedom to debate is essential to the development of critical thought, but on university campuses today free speech is restricted for fear of causing offence. In Defense of Free Speech surveys the underlying factors that circumscribe the ideas tolerated in our institutions of learning. James Flynn critically examines the way universities censor their teaching, how student activism tends to censor the opposing side and how academics censor themselves, and suggests that few, if any, universities can truly be seen as ‘good.’ In an age marred by fake news and social and political polarization, In Defense of Free Speech makes an impassioned argument for a return to critical thought.

https://quillette.com/2019/09/24/my-book-defending-free-speech-has-been-banned/
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The government just admitted it will use smart home devices for spying

Amazon Echo

Many consumers are wholly unaware that the smart devices making their home more custom and responsive are making data that can be hacked or collected.

If you want evidence that US intelligence agencies aren’t losing surveillance abilities because of the rising use of encryption by tech companies, look no further than the testimony on Tuesday by the director of national intelligence, James Clapper.

As the Guardian reported, Clapper made clear that the internet of things – the many devices like thermostats, cameras and other appliances that are increasingly connected to the internet – are providing ample opportunity for intelligence agencies to spy on targets, and possibly the masses. And it’s a danger that many consumers who buy these products may be wholly unaware of.

“In the future, intelligence services might use the [internet of things] for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and targeting for recruitment, or to gain access to networks or user credentials,” Clapper as part of his annual “assessment of threats” against the US.

Clapper is actually saying something very similar to a major study done at Harvard’s Berkman Center released last week. It concluded that the FBI’s recent claim that they are “going dark” – losing the ability to spy on suspects because of encryption – is largely overblown, mainly because federal agencies have so many more avenues for spying. This echoes comments by many surveillance experts, who have made clear that, rather than “going dark”, we are actually in the “golden age of surveillance”.

Privacy advocates have known about the potential for government to exploit the internet of things for years. Law enforcement agencies have taken notice too, increasingly serving court orders on companies for data they keep that citizens might not even know they are transmitting. Police have already been asking Google-owned company Dropcam for footage from cameras inside people’s homes meant to keep an eye on their kids. Fitbit data used in court against defendants multiple times.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/09/internet-of-things-smart-devices-spying-surveillance-us-government

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Stressed Out? 10 Adaptogenic Herbs That Help With Chronic Stress

Stressed out

The American Psychological Association (APA) warns that chronic stress is directly linked to at least six (and likely more) of the most common causes of death in modern America.

Longstanding stress wreaks some of its worst havoc on the glandular and endocrine systems of the thyroid and adrenals.

There are many ways that stress shows up in the body – both physically and emotionally.

There is an entire class of herbs known as adaptogens that are uniquely suited to support the body’s efforts to combat prolonged stress.

Adaptogens modulate the release of Cortisol, the “aging” hormone and help to uplift the body while simultaneously leveling it out.

10 adaptogens with powerful stress-killing potential:

Ashwagandha
Astragalus
Cordyceps
Eleuthero
Holy basil
Licorice root
Maca
Panax Ginseng
Rhodiola rosea
Schisandra

ALL of these are in my top bars and powders as well as scores of other ingredients beneficial for many other body functions and conditions. My NutriBlast Greens Plus powder has 199 ingredients and costs between $1.44 and $3.00 a day (depending on how many tubs you buy at a time). Check it out! https://www.healthelicious.com.au/Nutri-Blast-Greens-Plus.html

https://organixx.com/chronic-stress/
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Eat your heart out: native water rats have worked out how to safely eat cane toads

Native Water Rat

Australia’s water rats, or Rakali, are one of Australia’s beautiful but lesser-known native rodents. And these intelligent, semi-aquatic rats have revealed another talent: they are one of the only Australian mammals to safely eat toxic cane toads.

Our research, published today in Australian Mammalogy, found water rats in Western Australia adapted to hunt the highly poisonous toads less than two years after the toads moved into the rats’ territory.

The rats, which can grow to over 1kg, are the only mammal found to specifically target large toads, neatly dissecting the toads to eat their hearts and livers while avoiding the poisonous skin and glands.

https://theconversation.com/eat-your-heart-out-native-water-rats-have-worked-out-how-to-safely-eat-cane-toads-123986

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Bookstore employee writes this on Facebook after “little old lady” shocks everyone at the register

Indie Bookstore Shop Assistant

A bookstore worker recently wrote this Facebook post describing an encounter with a “little old lady” who shocked everyone at the register. The post has since gone viral, and for good reason. Read it below.

Posted by Christine Turel

I work in a decent sized, local, indie bookstore. It’s a great job 99% of the time and a lot of our customers are pretty neat people. Anywho, middle of the day this little old lady comes up. She’s lovably kooky. She effuses how much she loves the store and how she wishes she could spend more time in it but her husband is waiting in the car ‘OH! I BETTER BUY HIM SOME CHOCOLATE!’ She piles a bunch of art supplies on the counter and then stops and tells me how my bangs are beautiful and remind her of the ocean (‘Wooooosh’ she says, making a wave gesture with her hand.

Ok. I think to myself. Awesomely happy, weird little old ladies are my favourite kind of customer. They’re thrilled about everything and they’re comfortably bananas. I can have a good time with this one. So we chat and it’s nice.

Then this kid, who’s been up my counter a few times to gather his school textbooks, comes up in line behind her (we’re connected to a major university in the city so we have a lot of harried students pass through). She turns around to him and, out of nowhere, demands that he put his textbooks on the counter. He’s confused but she explains that she’s going to buy his textbooks.
He goes sheetrock white. He refuses and adamantly insists that she can’t do that. It’s like, $400 worth of textbooks. She, this tiny old woman, boldly takes them out of his hands, throws them on the counter and turns to me with an intense stare and tells me to put them on her bill. The kid at this point is practically in tears. He’s confused and shocked and grateful. Then she turns to him and says ‘you need chocolate.’ She starts grabbing handfuls of chocolates and putting them in her pile.

He keeps asking her ‘why are you doing this?’ She responds ‘Do you like Harry Potter?’ and throws a copy of the new Cursed Child on the pile too.

Finally she’s done and I ring her up for a crazy amount of money. She pays and asks me to please give the kid a few bags for his stuff. While I’m bagging up her merchandise the kid hugs her. We’re both telling her how amazing she is and what an awesome thing she’s done. She turns to both of us and says probably one of the most profound, unscripted things I’ve ever had someone say:
‘It’s important to be kind. You can’t know all the times that you’ve hurt people in tiny, significant ways. It’s easy to be cruel without meaning to be. There’s nothing you can do about that. But you can choose to be kind. Be kind.’

The kid thanks her again and leaves. I tell her again how awesome she is. She’s staring out the door after him and says to me: ‘My son is a homeless meth addict. I don’t know what I did. I see that boy and I see the man my son could have been if someone had chosen to be kind to him at just the right time.’

I’ve bagged up all her stuff and at this point am super awkward and feel like I should say something but I don’t know what. Then she turns to me and says: ‘I wish I could have bangs like that but my darn hair is just too curly.’ And leaves. And that is the story of the best customer I’ve ever had. Be kind to somebody today.