New app for boycotting Koch Brothers, Monsanto, etc.

This video from the USA is called Koch-blocked! App Helps You Boycott Koch Brothers and Monsanto.

From Forbes magazine in the USA, by Clare O’Connor:

5/14/2013 @ 8:57AM

New App Lets You Boycott Koch Brothers, Monsanto And More By Scanning Your Shopping Cart

In her keynote speech at last year’s annual Netroots Nation gathering, Darcy Burner pitched a seemingly simple idea to the thousands of bloggers and web developers in the audience. The former Microsoft MSFT +2.29% programmer and congressional candidate proposed a smartphone app allowing shoppers to swipe barcodes to check whether conservative billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch were behind a product on the shelves.

Burner figured the average supermarket shopper had no idea that buying Brawny paper towels, Angel Soft toilet paper or Dixie cups meant contributing cash to Koch Industries through its subsidiary Georgia-Pacific. Similarly, purchasing a pair of yoga pants containing Lycra or a Stainmaster carpet meant indirectly handing the Kochs your money (Koch Industries bought Invista, one of the world’s largest fiber and textiles companies, in 2004 from DuPont).

At the time, Burner created a mock interface for her app, but that’s as far as she got. She was waiting to find the right team to build out the back end, which could be complicated given often murky corporate ownership structures.

She wasn’t aware that as she delivered her Netroots speech, a group of developers was hard at work on Buycott, an even more sophisticated version of the app she proposed.

“I remember reading Forbes’ story on the proposed app to help boycott Koch Industries and wishing that we were ready to launch our product,” said Buycott’s marketing director Maceo Martinez.

The app itself is the work of one Los Angeles-based 26-year-old freelance programmer, Ivan Pardo, who has devoted the last 16 months to Buycott. “It’s been completely bootstrapped up to this point,” he said. Martinez and another friend have pitched in to promote the app.

Pardo’s handiwork is available for download on iPhone or Android, making its debut in iTunes and Google GOOG +0.52% Play in early May. You can scan the barcode on any product and the free app will trace its ownership all the way to its top corporate parent company, including conglomerates like Koch Industries.

Once you’ve scanned an item, Buycott will show you its corporate family tree on your phone screen. Scan a box of Splenda sweetener, for instance, and you’ll see its parent, McNeil Nutritionals, is a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson JNJ +0.73%.

Even more impressively, you can join user-created campaigns to boycott business practices that violate your principles rather than single companies. One of these campaigns, Demand GMO Labeling, will scan your box of cereal and tell you if it was made by one of the 36 corporations that donated more than $150,000 to oppose the mandatory labeling of genetically modified food.

Deciding to add that campaign to your Buycott app might make buying your breakfast nearly impossible, as that list includes not just headline grabbers like agricultural giant Monsanto but just about every big consumer company with a presence in the supermarket aisle: Coca-Cola, Nestle, Kraft, Heinz, Kellogg’s, Unilever and more.

Buycott is still working on adding new data to its back end and fine-tuning its information on corporate ownership structures. Most companies in the current database actually own more brands than Buycott has on record. The developers are asking shoppers to help improve their technology by inputting names of products they scan that the app doesn’t already recognize.

And if this all sounds worthy but depressing, be assured that your next trip to the supermarket needn’t be all doom and gloom. There are Buycott campaigns encouraging shoppers to support brands that have, say, openly backed LGBT rights. You can scan a bottle of Absolut vodka or a bag of Starbucks coffee beans and learn that both companies have come out for equal marriage.

“I don’t want to push any single point of view with the app,” said Pardo. “For me, it was critical to allow users to create campaigns because I don’t think it’s Buycott’s role to tell people what to buy. We simply want to provide a platform that empowers consumers to make well-informed purchasing decisions.”

Forbes reached out to Koch Industries and Monsanto for comment and will update this story with any responses.

Update: Tuesday’s traffic surge is causing some problems for Buycott. Pardo says he’s working to fix issues with the Android app in particular. “The workload is a bit overwhelming now,” he said. “For example, our Android app was just recently released and the surge of new users today has highlighted a serious bug on certain devices that needs to be fixed immediately. So all other development tasks I was working on get put on hold until I can get this bug fixed.”

Update 2: Pardo has had to temporarily remove the Android app from the store to fix glitches. He told Forbes on Wednesday: “Things are *slightly* more stable, but the app is now #10 in the App Store overall, which is pretty unbelievable. I simply didn’t set up the servers to be prepared to handle 10+ new users every second. I was expecting a more manageable rise. I had to pull the Android app from the store because I haven’t had a second to address the issues with it and I’ll take any relief I can get right now. Will continue to try and get it in decent shape but I’ll eventually need some sleep!”

Related articles

• New phone app allows users to boycott Koch Brothers and Monsanto products (rawstory.com)
• New app helps liberals avoid grocery items from conservative companies (redalertpolitics.com)

Where The Deer & The Antelope Play

Reblogged from MisBehaved Woman:

• 

Just a short video we took of two adorable antelope that were running and playing in the foothills during one of our trips back down from Cloud Camping...

They are very beautiful creatures and usually pretty friendly, curious and willing to come up close & check you out. These guys were as relaxed as can be which may have had something to do with it being the start of Elk season, eh?

This video and this post are about pronghorn antelope in the USA.

Family tree of all snakes and lizards

This video is called The Beauty of Snakes (Animal Planet Documentary).

From George Washington University in the USA:

Biologist Maps the Family Tree of All Known Snake and Lizard Groups

A George Washington University biologist and a team of researchers have created the first large-scale evolutionary family tree for every snake and lizard around the globe.

The findings were recently published in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology. Alex Pyron, the Robert F. Griggs Assistant Professor of Biology in GW’s Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, along with researchers from the City University of New York and Arizona State University, detail the cataloging of 4,161 species of snakes and lizards, or squamates.

“Squamates include all lizards and snakes found throughout the globe, including around 9,500 species on every continent except Antarctica, and found in most oceans,” said Dr. Pyron. “This is everything from cobras to garter snakes to tiny geckos to the Komodo Dragon to the Gila Monster. They range from tiny threadsnakes that can curl up on a dime to 10 feet monitor lizards and 30 foot pythons. They eat everything from ants to wildebeest.”

The evolutionary family tree, or phylogeny, includes all families and subfamilies and most genus and species groups, said Dr. Pyron. While there are gaps on some branches of the tree, the structure of the tree goes a long way toward fully mapping every genus and species group.

“It’s like building an incomplete family tree for your family, but with half of the ‘children’ sampled. You’re in it, but not your brother, one of your cousins is, but not another. However, because it’s so complete, we know where the missing relatives go because there’s no longer as much mystery as to how the missing species, or cousins, are related, with a few notable exceptions for some remaining species.

“This is also a community effort. We sequenced hundreds of these species ourselves but took thousands more from public databases, building on the work of others.”

Understanding how various snakes and lizards are connected to each other fills a major gap in knowledge, said Dr. Pyron, because before this, there were no single reference for how all lizards and snakes were related or what their classification was.

“A phylogeny and taxonomy is fundamental for all fields of biology that use lizards and snakes, to understand how to classify the species being studied, to interpret biological patterns in terms of relatedness, and even at a more basic level, to count how many species are in an area, for example, for conservation management purposes.”

This project has been in the works since 2008 with the last five years being the most intense. It was funded by the National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biological Informatics.

The researchers used DNA sequencing technology to genotype, or identify, the DNA of thousands of lizards and snakes.

“We have laid down the structure of squamate relationships and yet this is still the beginning,” said Dr. Pyron. “As hundreds of new species are described every year from around the glove, this estimate of the squamate tree of life shows us what we do know, and more importantly, what we don’t know, and will hopefully spur even more research on the amazing diversity of lizards and snakes.”

Related articles

• New snake discovery in Sri Lanka (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Phylogenetic Analyses of Novel Squamate Adenovirus Sequences in Wild-Caught Anolis Lizards (plosone.org)
• Global Taxonomic Diversity of Living Reptiles (plosone.org)
• Daily Prompt: The sidewalk for the lizard (theroad2cuteshoes.wordpress.com)
• Aorun zhaoi : New Species of Meat-Eating Dinosaur Found in China (hngn.com)
• I Don’t Like Lizards or Snakes, But That Ain’t What it Takes to Love You Desert Botanical Garden (traveling-az.com)

United States high infant death rate

This video is called Edited film for the State of the World’s Mothers report 2013.

By Naomi Spencer in the USA:

US surpasses other industrialized countries in infant death rate

9 May 2013

A new report on motherhood paints a devastating portrait of social conditions for poor women and their babies around the world. In both developing and industrialized countries, the first month of birth is the most dangerous of an infant’s life.

“State of the World’s Mothers,” a report from the humanitarian organization Save the Children, released May 7, finds more than three million babies die within the first month of their birth. A staggering one million infants die on the day they are born.

The US has by far the highest first-day death rate in the industrialized world. The report states, “An estimated 11,300 newborn babies die each year in the United States on the day they are born. This is 50 percent more first-day deaths than all other industrialized countries combined.” The 33 other industrialized countries for which data was collected recorded a combined total of 7,500 first-day deaths each year.

The report, done in conjunction with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, is the first global analysis of newborn day-of-death data. Its findings are an indictment of social inequality created by the capitalist system worldwide. Because the report analyzes 2011 statistics, it is likely that the ensuing year and a half have seen a worsening of these indices.

Within wealthy countries, a widening section of the working class are subject to poor living standards and extreme disparities in health care. Millions of Americans as a result fare little better—and in some aspects worse—than their counterparts in some of the poorest countries in the world.

Some US counties, clustered in the deep south, Indian reservations, and in Appalachia, as well as distressed urban centers such as Detroit and Cleveland, have mortality rates equivalent to those in “developing” countries, where 98 percent of all first-day deaths occur.

India recorded the largest number of first-day deaths: more than 300,000 per year. Nearly 90,000 Nigerian babies die the day they are born. Somalia registered the highest first-day death rate at 18 per 1,000 live births.

Save the Children estimated that an investment in four simple medical products costing between 13 cents and $6 each could save one million newborns every year. These products, including resuscitation devices and antiseptics, have been on the market for decades and would cost next to nothing to provide worldwide. That such investments have not been made is an exposure of the indifference of governments and global organizations such as the United Nations and World Bank to the suffering of billions around the world.

The high US infant death rate compared to other developed countries is a focus of the report. “The large US population size explains some of this disparity,” the report states, “but it does not explain all of it. The US represents 31 percent of the population in these 34 industrialized countries and 38 percent of the annual live births, but it has 60 percent of all first-day deaths.” The European Union, which has 1 million more births than the US each year (5.3 million versus 4.3 million), registered half as many first-day deaths as the US.

While the report does not analyze disparities among socio-economic groups within wealthy countries, it notes that “newborn and infant mortality are often higher among the poor and racial/ethnic minorities, and populations with high newborn mortality rates also tend to have high first-day death rates. Poor and minority groups also suffer higher burdens of prematurity and low birthweight, which likely lead to first-day deaths in the US and elsewhere.”

One in eight babies in the US are born preterm, or less than 37 weeks gestational age. This is second only to Cyprus for preterm birthrate in the industrialized world, and 131st out of the 176 countries surveyed. Complications of preterm birth are the direct cause of one-third of all newborn deaths in the US.

A major factor behind the high rate of preterm birth in the US is poverty. Tens of millions of Americans live in destitution, including millions of young mothers and their children. Some 16 million children in the US live in “extreme poverty,” in households whose annual income is less than half the official poverty line. Since the onset of the 2008 recession, many social outreach, nutrition, and public health programs serving these women and their babies have been gutted.

This state of affairs has made it more difficult for young poor women to access prenatal, family planning, and general health care. The US has the highest adolescent birthrate in the industrialized world. Teenage mothers are overwhelmingly poor, less educated, and receive less prenatal care than older mothers. They are also more likely to suffer malnutrition and lack transportation and access to information about maternal health. As a result, their children are much more likely to be low-birthweight and premature.

Preterm births present special problems, such as undeveloped lungs and an immature immune system. These conditions require constant and intensive care at quality hospitals. Across the US, hospitals have been cutting such care and raising costs over the past decade. In Philadelphia, for example, which the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ranks as 196th out of 200 urban counties for infant mortality, 15 maternity wards have been closed down. Only six remain open.

The growing ranks of the uninsured and Medicaid recipients have also put the strain on hospitals that receive state reimbursement for services to the poor. As states slash reimbursement rates, hospitals have tightened admissions and scrapped charity care programs. According to reproductive health organization the Guttmacher Institute, one in five US women of childbearing age are uninsured. Another 15 percent are enrolled in Medicaid.

The Save the Children analysis does not account for the huge increase in the number of Caesarean sections performed in the US: one in three births are done on a pre-scheduled basis, including many well before full-term. The C-section is a lifesaving operation when it is undertaken to deliver breech births or in cases where the mother has a serious medical condition. However, many US hospitals have used the operation to schedule births, particularly those of Medicaid recipients, in order to maximize profit.

A University of Minnesota analysis of 593 hospitals nationwide, published in March 2013, found that C-sections accounted for nearly 70 percent of all deliveries at some hospitals. The states with the highest rates, according to the CDC, are in the deep south.

While only one percent of the world’s newborn deaths occur in industrialized countries, the report states, “The percentage of child deaths that occur during the newborn period is rising in wealthy countries, as it is in poor countries.”

The US is not alone in rising infant mortality rates among the developed countries. Canada and Switzerland rank second and third in first-day mortality rates in the industrialized countries. Switzerland has the highest share of infant mortality cases whose deaths are within the first day: 71 percent. The Save the Children report notes that this is the highest percentage of first-day deaths of any country in the world.

The report also features Save the Children’s annual “Mothers’ Index,” a global ranking of conditions for new mothers and their children.

Overall, the “worst place in the world to give birth” is the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where 1 in 30 women die delivering their babies. The other countries in the bottom ten of the list are also in Africa: Somalia, Sierra Leone, Mali, Niger, Gambia, Nigeria, Chad, and Ivory Coast. Mothers in rural areas confront lack of health care providers in their communities, the report said.

The US ranks number 46—the worst among developed countries—in maternal health, and 41st in child well-being. Overall, the US ranks as the 30th “best place to be a mother,” just above Japan and South Korea, but below all of Western Europe, Slovenia, Poland, Belarus, and numerous other countries.

An American woman faces a 1 in 2,400 risk of death during childbirth. Only five other industrialized countries—Albania, Latvia, Moldova, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine—fare worse on maternal death rates. “A woman in the US is more than 10 times as likely as a woman in Estonia, Greece or Singapore to eventually die from a pregnancy related cause,” the report states.

American children under the age of 5 are far more likely to die than their counterparts in other industrialized countries. The US under-5 mortality rate is 7.5 per 1,000, a rate on par with Bosnia-Herzegovina, Qatar, and Slovakia.

Qatar is a comparatively very rich country. However, like in other rich countries, its (oil) riches are distributed very unevenly.

Related articles

• Canada has 2nd-highest infant death rate: report (metronews.ca)
• More US babies die on their first day than in 68 other countries, report shows (vitals.nbcnews.com)
• U.S. has highest first-day infant mortality out of industrialized world, group reports (cbsnews.com)
• REPORT: The U.S Has The Highest First-Day Infant Death Rate In The Industrialized World (thinkprogress.org.feedsportal.com)
• No Child Born To Die (birthandbabynetwork.com)
• Early infant mortality in Canada called 2nd worst in developed world (cbc.ca)
• US chalks up more first-day newborn deaths than rest of industrialized world combined – report (rt.com)

American Indians, George Catlin paintings in London

This video is called George Catlin: American Indian Portraits (Trailer).

From The Art Newspaper:

Painter of a vanishing and vanished world

“George Catlin: American Indian Portraits”, National Portrait Gallery, London, until 23 June

By John Chu

In the summer of 1830, the American painter George Catlin (1796-1872) embarked upon the first of five journeys deep into the Indian territories that stretched west of the Mississippi River. Having abandoned a burgeoning law career and failed to establish himself as a society portraitist, this Pennsylvanian was busily reinventing himself as an artist-ethnographer possessed of an urgent mission to document the “looks and modes” of the Native American peoples before they were overtaken by the geographic encroachments of the United States. The result was a large body of oil paintings documenting the terrain and rituals of their ways of life, and an even more substantial collection of portraits detailing the continent’s wondrous variety of facial characteristics and tribal apparel— Mandan, Pawnee, Omaha; beads, plumage and face-paint were never arrayed in such dazzling variations as here.

“George Catlin: American Indian Portraits” presents a small but representative sample of this prolific output which now resides principally in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. By way of a centrepiece, its organisers have recreated a miniature version of the vast “Indian Gallery” that Catlin toured around Europe in the 1840s, including an initial spell up the road in a cavernous showroom on Piccadilly. Only around 5% of the original 500 exhibits have made it back to London, although many of the returning pictures have been arranged to approximate the dense, grid-like scheme of the Catlin’s travelling show. Stirring and poignant, the “Indian Gallery” was designed to capture the imagination of a wide, ticket-buying audience, and it still packs an impressive punch. A multitude of faces, one after another, attests to the astonishing diversity of “First Nation” culture and the enormity of its destruction.

As well as re-acquainting the British audience with this exotic, yet once-famous, body of works, Stephanie Pratt, a Dakotan and associate professor of the University of Plymouth, Joan Carpenter Troccoli, founding director of the Petrie Institute of Western American Art, Denver, co-curators of the how, and Peter Funnell, the gallery’s 19th-century portraits curator, have succeeded in advancing its claim to more than purely ethnographic attention. By placing the charismatic figure of Catlin squarely at centre stage, a story of artistic and commercial opportunism emerges as surely as his vision of a noble, doomed world.

The manifest struggle to transcend an extremely limited technique is itself a point of considerable fascination (Catlin was a virtual stranger to chiaroscuro, glaze-work, and convincing figure drawing). Indeed it appears to have been thanks to a mixture of chance and sheer, bloody-minded persistence that moments of pictorial grace did occasionally shine through in his profuse outpouring. Catlin’s approach is most successful when, paradoxically, a composition remains incomplete. In the masterpiece of the show, La-dóo-ke-a, Buffalo Bill,

sic; Buffalo Bull

a Grand Pawnee Warrior, 1832, a virtually unworked background allows the explosion of the sitter’s hairstyle to pop off the canvas, along with the starkly outlined buffalo heads that stain various parts of his body. In Hee-oh’ks-te-kin, Rabbit Skin Leggings, a Brave, 1832, the inscrutable, hieratic mask of a painted face dissolves into vague, fly-away wisps of hair and fringing, as if the whole confection might at any moment be carried off on a breeze.

The subject of this exhibition raises a host of cultural and political questions that easily exceed the capacity of a three-room gallery. Perhaps wisely therefore, the organisers have opted to broach the complex politics involved in the Western representation of indigenous cultures in a substantial catalogue and in an associated programme of events.

In the particular context of the National Portrait Gallery, it seems, however, a little perverse not to address this oeuvre’s peculiar contribution to the history of the painted likeness as part of the main presentation. I wanted to know, for example, what Catlin’s subjects might have made of this entirely foreign yet peculiarly intimate act of representation. In Europe, could a phenomenon so comprehensively removed from the early 19th-century business of commission and polite self-presentation have been unquestioningly understood as portraiture? Or was something more generically ambiguous in play? And what can portraiture’s dominant role in this episode of proto-anthropology tell us about its documentary authority at the dawn of the photographic age? With different outcomes and at vastly contrasting stakes, Catlin’s art bears witness not to one, but to two visual cultures on the brink of transformation.

John Chu is studying for a PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, writing his dissertation of 18th-century genre painting.

Related articles

• Review: George Catlin, American Indian Portraits. National Portrait Gallery (steviepreater.wordpress.com)
• George Catlin: American Indian Portraits – NPG until 23 June 2013 (plainspeakingart.wordpress.com)
• Colonial tourism at the National Portrait Gallery (jolyondrew.wordpress.com)
• George Catlin: American Indian Portraits / Exhibition at National Portrait Gallery (thelondonesque.co.uk)
• Shut Your Mouth (texthistory.wordpress.com)
• Cash Crunch Prompts Controversial Sales At Chicago’s Field Museum (wnyc.org)
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US concerns about Japanese nuclear weapons

This video is called How the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Severely Injured the Civilians – GRAPHIC & UNCUT.

By Peter Symonds:

US concerns about Japanese nuclear reprocessing

7 May 2013

The Wall Street Journal published an article on May 1 entitled “Japan’s nuclear plan unsettles US.” It indicated concerns in Washington that the opening of a huge reprocessing plant could be used to stockpile plutonium for the future manufacture of nuclear weapons.

The Rokkasho reprocessing facility in northern Honshu can produce nine tonnes of weapons-grade plutonium annually, or enough to construct up to 2,000 bombs. While Japanese officials insist that the plutonium will be used solely to provide nuclear power, only two of the country’s 50 nuclear power reactors are currently operating.

The Journal article reported that Tatsujiro Suzuki, vice chairman of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission, discussed the issue last month with senior US officials, including Deputy Energy Secretary Daniel Poneman and Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Countryman.

Their message, as paraphrased by Suzuki, was: “Allowing Japan to acquire large amounts of plutonium without clear prospects for a plutonium-use plan is a bad example for the rest of the world.” In a separate article in the Japan Times, Suzuki declared: “It was an unprecedentedly severe reaction.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, Washington was concerned that other countries would follow suit. “US officials believe Japan’s neighbors, particularly China, South Korea and Taiwan, are closely monitoring Rokkasho and its possible commissioning to gauge whether they also should seek to develop their own nuclear-fuel technologies, or in Beijing’s case, expand them,” it stated.

The South Korean government is already pressing the US to alter the nuclear co-operation agreement between the two countries to allow plutonium reprocessing and uranium enrichment—technologies that can be used to produce fuel for power reactors or for nuclear weapons. While South Korean negotiators have assured Washington that Seoul is only seeking to manufacture fuel for its power reactors, senior figures inside the ruling right-wing Saenuri Party have publicly called for the country to build its own nuclear weapons to counter North Korea. Last month, South Korea acquiesced to US demands for a delay and prolonged the existing co-operation agreement for another two years.

As with South Korea, the Obama administration’s real concern over the Rokkasho reprocessing plant is that Japan is edging toward building its own nuclear arsenal. If either country did so, it would trigger a nuclear arms race in the region. A nuclear-armed Japan would dramatically alter relations in Asia, as it would be less dependent on the US militarily and more able to independently prosecute its economic and strategic interests.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who took office in December, is a right-wing nationalist who has called for a “strong Japan” and a “strong military.” He has not openly supported the building of nuclear weapons, but has called for the restarting of Japan’s nuclear industry, which was largely shut down after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.

The Abe government is well aware of the deep-seated hostility in Japan, especially in the working class, to the construction of nuclear weapons. That opposition stems not only from the devastation of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by US atomic bombs in 1945, but also from the repression and crimes committed by Japan’s wartime militarist regime.

Within Japanese ruling circles, however, there has been a barely concealed ambition to have a nuclear arsenal. Japan’s extensive nuclear industry was established in part to ensure that the country had the capacity to build such weapons. Leading members of Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) have on more than one occasion sought to open up a public debate on the issue.

Abe’s finance minister Taro Aso, a former prime minister, declared in 2006 that there was nothing wrong with discussing whether Japan should possess nuclear arms. A Japan Times article last month, entitled “Nuclear arms card for Japan,” noted that politicians who had advocated nuclear weapons, officially and unofficially, included former prime ministers—Nobusuke Kishi (Abe’s grandfather), Hayato Ikeda, Eisato Sato, Yasuo Fukuda and Aso.

During the election campaign last year, Shintaro Ishihara, who was an LDP member until last year and now leads the extreme nationalist Japan Restoration Party, declared: “It’s high time Japan made simulations of possessing nuclear arms,” saying that it would be a form of deterrent against China. He has previously insisted that Japan had to have nuclear weapons.

The same Japan Times article reported that the Japanese government in September 2006 compiled an internal report examining “the possibility of domestically producing nuclear weapons.” A Defence Ministry source told the newspaper that the secret document had been produced by the Foreign Ministry and had aroused serious concerns in the US State Department.

According to the article, the report found that it would take three to five years and 200 to 300 billion yen ($US2.2 to 3.3 billion) for Japan to manufacture nuclear weapons. A significant obstacle was the impurity of the plutonium produced in Japan’s commercial power reactors. The Rokkasho reprocessing facility, which has taken more than $US21 billion and two decades to build, would be able to provide weapons-grade plutonium. No date has been set for its start up but the Japan Atomic Energy Commission and the plant’s operator, Japan Nuclear Fuel, say it could be as early as October. However, the Nuclear Regulation Authority has indicated that safety guidelines will not be ready until December.

At present, it appears unlikely that the Japanese government has made a decision to build nuclear weapons. To do so would require ending international inspection of its nuclear facilities, withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and abrogating other nuclear agreements, including with the US. Yet, the issue is clearly being discussed in ruling circles and preparations are being made.

The Obama administration might not want a nuclear-armed Japan, but its aggressive “pivot to Asia” aimed at containing China, has encouraged right-wing, militarist sections of the ruling elite in countries throughout the region. Abe has already announced the first increase in the Japan’s defence budget in a decade and has declared his determination to counter, including militarily, any Chinese move to claim disputed islands in the East China Sea.

In March and April, Washington deliberately inflamed tensions on the Korean Peninsula, provocatively sending nuclear-capable strategic bombers to South Korea, supposedly to counter North Korean threats. The US sought to use the crisis to put pressure on China for economic and strategic concessions, including to rein in Pyongyang.

However, the Abe government also exploited the North Korean “threat” to deploy anti-missile systems in Japan, and establish a political climate of fear to justify military rearmament—including potentially with nuclear weapons. The US is directly responsible for creating the conditions for a nuclear arms race in Asia that would enormously heighten the danger of conflict and war.

Related articles

• Whitehouse Worried over Japanese Nuclear Plans (darkgovernment.com)
• US objects to Japan’s plans for Rokkasho nuclear reprocessing (japandailypress.com)
• Anti-nuclear activists set out on three-month march to Hiroshima (japandailypress.com)
• 9 tons of plutonium yearly from Japan’s Rokkasho nuclear reprocessing plant (nuclear-news.net)
• U.S. officials concerned about Japan’s plan to reprocess nuclear fuel (rdmag.com)
• U.K. Stockpiles Plutonium in Hopes of Future Energy (scientificamerican.com)
• How do you solve a problem like plutonium? (thebulletin.org)
• Utilities unable to devise plan on use of reprocessed fissile plutonium (japantimes.co.jp)

Cicada invasion in the USA

This video is called Invasion East Coast! Billions of Cicadas Will Swarm the Region after 17 Years Underground!

From Wildlife Extra:

Vast cicada swarm due in USA

April 2013. Residents of north-eastern USA will soon observe an event not seen since 1996: The coming mass emergence of the Brood II cicadas.

1.5 million per acre!

After spending 17 years living underground as nymphs, these large, winged insects will emerge to live out their short adult lives above ground. As many as 1.5 million cicadas can live per acre, and they are noisy too, they will certainly be heard: Cicadas have a unique call that can reach a whopping 90 decibels.

As alarming as this sounds, cicadas are actually quite harmless. In fact, they have positive effects on plants and provide food for many different animals, including birds, mammals, reptiles, even other insects.

Brood 2 cicadas appear every 17 years across New York, Washington, D.C., Connecticut, Maryland, North Carolina, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. They measure just 1½ inches long and live for just 2 weeks. They live underground for 17 years, feeding on the juices of tree roots, before emerging to mate once every 17 years (That’s a long wait. Ed.). They live above ground for just 2 weeks before they die.

There are several broods that appear once every 13 or 17 years in a very unusual life cycle, and when they overlap, it must be like the biblical plague.

From Cicada Mania blog in the USA:

May 1, 2013

The Brood II Emergence Has Begun

It has begun!

Over on the Entomology-Cicadidae cicada group a gentleman named Tommy Joseph has posted photos of periodical cicadas which have emerged this week in Greensboro, North Carolina This makes sense as North Carolina is the southern-most state with a Brood II population, and southern states warm up before northern states.

There are also plenty of sightings (mostly nymphs, but some adults) on the Magicicada.org map. Don’t forget to post your sighting there.

Related articles

• The swarm: stand by for the deafening cicada orgy (newscientist.com)
• 17-Year Cicadas Primed To Emerge (npr.org)
• Brood II Cicadas in the news and on the move; non-Brood II Cicadas feel slighted (dcmontreal.wordpress.com)
• The Cicadas are Coming, And So Are the Terrifying Spores That Eat Them Alive (blogs.smithsonianmag.com)
• Cicadas, the Wedding Crashers Who Can Jitterbug (bloomberg.com)
• This Spring’s Cicada Invasion (pigpedigree.com)
• 17-year cicada hatch to bring billions of bugs to U.S. East Coast (ctvnews.ca)
• Cicada invasion generates early buzz (cosmiclog.nbcnews.com)
• They’re back! 17-year cicadas return to N.C. (newsobserver.com)
• Cicada invasion on the way as insects with bulging red eyes crawl out of the earth after 17 years underground (independent.co.uk)

Urban warfare drills in Chicago, USA

This video from the USA is called Urban Warfare Drill Chicago 2012 Blackhawk helicopters NATO | G8.

The US Department of Defense conducted urban warfare training drills in the Chicago suburb of Tinley Park this week, including the use of explosives to train soldiers in the raiding of homes and other structures: here.

Urban warfare exercise in Tinley Park frightens some residents: here.

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• ‘Urban Warfare’ Exercise Conducted In Tinley Park (chicago.cbslocal.com)
• Dept of Defense conducts urban warfare training in Tinley Park (illinoisreview.typepad.com)
• Militarized police assault weapons and grenades terrorize residents during urban warfare training (lissakr11humane.com)

United States ranchers turn to avitourism

This video from the USA says about itself:

The Gunnison Sage-Grouse is a spectacular but declining bird of the western sagebrush. It is restricted to seven isolated locations in Colorado and one tiny population in Utah. In early 2013, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service placed it under consideration for listing under the Endangered Species Act. The males have an extravagant spring display in which they puff out their bodies, fan their tails into a starburst, and make low, gurgling sounds with bizarre froglike air sacs in their chests—watch them here.

By Melissa Mayntz, About.com Guide in the USA:

Ranchers Turn to Avitourism

It’s no surprise to birders that many grassland game birds, including sage-grouse and prairie-chickens, are facing a critical loss of habitat, but what does come as a surprise is help from an unlikely source – the same ranchers who used to advocate more agricultural land at the birds’ expense. According to the Washington Post, more ranchers are realizing the economic boon birds can provide when they open their land – preserving it in a prairie state – to visiting birders eager to view leks and see the outrageous courtship dances of many of these species.

Avitourism is growing in many areas, and as communities learn how attractive birding can be for visitors – who pay to stay in hotels, eat meals, register for festivals, hire guides, etc. – more birding festivals and local tour companies are being organized. In April alone there are more than 30 festivals available, with three dedicated just to popular game birds.

Does your area host any birding festivals? Share them in the comments so they can be added to the birding festival directories!

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• Wild horses aren’t the problem (billingsgazette.com)
• What Do the Birders Know? (nytimes.com)
• Oregon farmers, ranchers adapt to environment and climate as they celebrate Earth Day (guest column) (oregonlive.com)
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David Cameron helps Shell polluters of Nigeria

This video is called Shell Nigeria: Clean up for human rights.

By Paddy McGuffin in Britain:

Amnesty hits out at Britain’s intervention in Shell case

Thursday 18 April 2013

Amnesty International condemned today the British government’s intervention in a US Supreme Court case brought against oil giant Shell over alleged human rights abuses in Nigeria.

The charity said that the dismissal of the case of Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum Co on Wednesday was a severe blow for victims of human rights abuses in the Niger Delta and severely limits access to justice.

Amnesty accused the British government of contradicting its pledge to tackle corporate human rights abuses after the government intervened on Shell’s behalf arguing that the US was not the correct jurisdiction for such cases to be pursued.

The case was brought by members of the Ogoni community in the Niger Delta region in relation to alleged human rights violations committed against them and their families in the mid-1990s by the military government in power in Nigeria at the time.

The plaintiffs allege that Shell was complicit in these abuses, which include extrajudicial killings, torture, rape and crimes against humanity.

They had hoped to secure justice by taking a civil action against Shell under the alien tort statute, which allows courts in the US to hear cases brought by non-US citizens about human rights abuses committed elsewhere.

However the Supreme Court ruled that the statute does not apply to conduct that occurs outside the US.

Amnesty law and policy director Michael Bochenek said: “Today’s court decision dashed the hopes not only of the Ogoni survivors, but of the countless others who might have benefited from a law that enabled people to challenge human rights abuses which had gone unpunished elsewhere.”

Shell spill reported in Nigeria: here.

Related articles

• U.S. Supreme Court Dismisses Lawsuit Against Shell in Nigeria (moorbey.wordpress.com)
• Divergent Views about the United States’ Place in World as Supreme Court Limits Reach of Alien Tort Statute (jaypinho.com)
• U.S. high court rules for Royal Dutch Shell in Nigeria rights case (news.terra.com)