and other questions related to the fluoridation chemicals being added to U.S. water supplies
by Jenny Miller / October 18th, 2022
1. Why would anyone be opposed to water fluoridation? Doesn’t fluoride occur in the water naturally anyway?
The fluoride products used in water fluoridation (sodium fluoride or fluorosilicic acid) are classified as hazardous waste products of the fertilizer, aluminum, and nuclear industries. They are even more toxic than naturally-occurring fluoride, since they contain other components, such as arsenic, lead, barium, and/or aluminum.
Water fluoridation also causes more lead to be leached from pipes into the water supply.
However, even naturally-occurring fluoride, in areas with high concentrations (over 1 ppm) has …
A few decades ago, responding to the growing market for improved anti-depressant drugs, several drug companies developed “selective-serotonin re-uptake inhibitors” (Prozac, Zoloft, etc.). While under its exclusive patent (20 years), a new drug is expensively-priced, thus generating huge profits for its maker. (This accounts for the constant introduction of new drugs which, despite claims to the contrary, may not be any more effective than their now-generic precursors.) Nonetheless, the SSRIs, with fewer side-effects, seemed a distinct advance. The drugs focused on the neurotransmitter serotonin: by inhibiting its re-absorption, the drugs artificially prolonged its active circulation in the brain, thus modulating …
A lot has been going on at KPFA/Pacifica, much of it bad or not so great. So brace for the bad news.
An election for the LSB (Listener Station Board) was scheduled for this year, but it didn’t happen. Pacifica didn’t have funds for it. As you probably know, Pacifica is in a dire financial crisis. The situation is not improving. Of the 5 Pacifica stations, KPFA is doing the best, it’s surviving, but not doing great. It’s not meaningfully increasing the listenership.
A mysterious uptick in atmospheric methane (CH4) was first detected 15 years ago. Of major concern, CH4 is a potent greenhouse gas that’s ~80 times greater than CO2. It’s like a turbo-charged booster heating up the planet. It is a climate change event that keeps scientists up at night, sleepless bouts of tossing, turning, sitting up, screaming on occasion.
“In the past few years, however, that uptick has accelerated into a surge. The implications for global warming are immense.” ((L. Hook and C. Campbell, “Methane Hunters: What Explains the Surge in the Potent Greenhouse Gas?” Financial Times, August 22, 2022.))
The moment that Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba was ousted by his own former military colleague, Captain Ibrahim Traore, pro-coup crowds filled the streets. Some burned French flags, others carried Russian flags. This scene alone represents the current tussle underway throughout the African continent.
A few years ago, the discussion regarding the geopolitical shifts in Africa was not exactly concerned with France and Russia per se. It focused mostly on China’s growing economic role and political partnerships on the African continent. For example, Beijing’s decision to establish its first overseas military base in Djibouti in 2017 signaled China’s major geopolitical …
The Tory Party is like a knight dying in his armour.
— Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday, October 16, 2022
Liz Truss is proving to be the architect of her own spectacular demise. She laid the mines in a fit of drunken ecstasy and decided to skip across them with an almost childish arrogance that has stunned her own party members. Along the way, a few have gone off, doing her what can only be regarded as terminal political damage.
The effort to shift sole responsibility for the abysmal economic plan on tax cuts outlined in the “mini-Budget” to her Chancellor suggested a …
by Pedro Aibéo, John Keane and Saskia Sassen / October 17th, 2022
Can we, as limited cognitive beings, ever be able to cope with the growing complexity of cities and be a part of its decision-making structure or are we doomed to go into an automated democracy?
One thing we can say about a city, unlike a power regime, is that cities have very long lives. They may suffer massive destruction, but they recover in a way that a king etc might not. Cities are resilient. ((Fraccascia, L., Giannoccaro, I., & Albino, V. “Resilience of complex systems: state of the art and directions for future research,” Complexity, 2018. “A common property of many …
Short and Long and of United States’ Destruction of the Palestinian People
by Dan Lieberman / October 16th, 2022
The Short Letter
Dear President Barack Obama,
You entered office with a call “for a new start to relations between the Muslim world and the West based on common interests and mutual understanding and respect.” We assumed your statement and dedication to social justice would orient your administration policies into halting Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people and finding an equitable solution to the Middle East crisis.
During your eight years in the Executive office, the destruction of the Palestinian people continued unimpeded. In September 2016, less than two months before a national election …
Imran Khan had been the extremely popular progressive populist secular (non-sectarian) democratically elected Prime Minister (PM) of Pakistan during 18 August 2018 to 10 April 2022, when he then became overthrown by a U.S. coup and replaced by Shebaz Sharif, the younger brother of Pakistan’s Nawaz Sharif, who was Pakistan’s 5th-wealthiest billionaire and who had been Imran Khan’s immediate predecessor as the PM. On October 14th, Geo TV in Islamabad Pakistan headlined “Imran Khan to be hung upside down if he launches long march: …
To the superficial observer, it may be a blessing the despots and dictators, human rights abusers, like Argentina’s Mauricio Macri, Colombia’s Iván Duque; Ecuador’s Lenin Moreno; Chile’s Sebastián Piñera; to name just a few, are gone, have disappeared from the Latin American political arena, in what was made believe to be democratic elections.
Good, you may think. These countries have a better future ahead. So, who are the new “leaders” of just these four “demo-countries”?
Argentina: Alberto Fernández; label “center-left”;
Colombia: Gustavo Petro; label “left”;
Ecuador: Guillermo Lasso; officially described as “the country’s first center-right president in nearly two decades”. What a lie! Moreno …
• UN votes against US’ Xinjiang proposal
• Xinjiang exports to more than 80 countries
• US policy of semiconductor “chokehold”
• China moved from 34th to 11th position in the Global Innovation Index
As a prince, the new British monarch developed some curious attitudes to architecture. He also proved to be a dedicated meddler behind building projects he did not like. Combined, this led to a number of interventions that cast a shadow over his accession to the throne. What will Charles III do when it comes to the next grand building proposal to interrupt the London skyline?
On the evening of May 30, 1984, the then Prince Charles told leading architects assembled at Hampton Court to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Royal Institute of British Architects how exactly he felt about …
President John F. Kennedy created the national fallout shelter system in 1961. Within two years, the five boroughs of New York City were home to about 18,000 officially designated shelters.
This designation process was as faith-based as any religion I’ve ever encountered!
Local “civil defense agents” would survey a building to decide if it could survive (!) a nuclear explosion. Any building deemed indestructible would receive a government-issued placard (see my photo above) to be mounted outside to guide anyone who happened to be fleeing from World War III.
Canada’s obsession with NATO is escalating the conflict in Ukraine and increasing the possibility of nuclear confrontation.
During a press conference with her US counterpart last week foreign affairs minister Melanie Joly said Canada supported fast tracking Ukraine into NATO. If that transpired, alliance members would be treaty bound to invoke Article 5 of the NATO charter, which commits member states to consider an armed attack against one member an attack against all. It could lead to a formal declaration of war with Russia, which would greatly increase the odds of a nuclear exchange.
In July, 2006, Israel bombed Lebanon. The news released fury and anguish in me that was beyond words. I visualized innocent, helpless babies swimming in their blood as bombs blasted away their lives. I struggled to grasp the needless, wanton destruction of lives, homes, futures, and dreams. Why? Why had the decision been made to do this? Who made it? Who benefited? These questions exploded in my mind. I was driven to put on canvas what I couldn’t write on paper.
What appeared was a larger-than-life furious woman holding a dead …
Below the elevated platform at the Astoria Boulevard/Hoyt Avenue N train station, my neighborhood plays host to Columbus Square — which is actually shaped like a warped triangle. Let Manhattan have its mundane Columbus Circle, we in Queens are far more geometrically sophisticated. It’s a square triangle for us.
Naturally, a statue of Christopher Columbus adorns this triangular square. As you can see from the photo above, the city has given the bare minimum effort to protect this particular monument from being, um… canceled.
Anyway, if one were to believe sculptor Angelo Racioppi’s …
Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar had so much money that he literally could not spend it fast enough. He and the Medellín cartel he started dominated the cocaine trade in the 1980s. By then, he was earning about $420 million per week.
Storing piles of cash in fields and warehouses, he’d write off 10 percent of it each year (that’s more than $2 billion) accepting that it would inevitably be lost, destroyed by the elements, or eaten by rats.
Of his many palatial homes, the King of Cocaine’s favorite was a $63 million/7,000-acre …
Wilfried Balima (Burkina Faso), Les Trois Camarades (‘The Three Comrades’), 2018.
On 30 September 2022, Captain Ibrahim Traoré led a section of the Burkina Faso military to depose Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, who had seized power in a coup d’état in January. The second coup was swift, with brief clashes in Burkina Faso’s capital of Ouagadougou at the president’s residence, Kosyam Palace, and at Camp Baba Sy, the military …
Demographic angst is a terrifying thing, especially to leaders concerned about poor returns from horizontal folk dancing. Viktor Orbán of Hungary is particularly apprehensive that precious Hungarian blood is not being propagated, facing dilution, if not disappearance, from hordes of swarthy immigrants from the Middle East and Africa.
In Italy, the country’s imminent first female prime minister is much of that same view. Giorgia Meloni speaks about being a “woman, mother [and] Christian” with messianic purpose: to defend “God, country and family”. The stress is on mother virtue rather than female rights, the latter only being relevant when it comes …
Children of my Gaza refugee camp were rarely afraid of monsters but of Israeli soldiers. This is all that we talked about before going to bed. Unlike imaginary monsters in the closet or under the bed, Israeli soldiers are real, and they could show up any minute – at the door, on the roof or, as was often the case, right in the middle of the house.
The recent tragic death of a 7-year-old, Rayan Suliman, a Palestinian boy from the village of Tuqu near Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank, stirred up so many memories. The little boy with olive …
A year ago, October 16, the long arm of US extra-territorial judicial overreach abducted Alex Saab and threw him into prison in Miami, where the Venezuelan diplomat has languished ever since.
The official narrative is that Saab had bilked the Venezuelans in a “vast corruption network” and the US as the world’s self-appointed cop was simply enforcing good business practices. However, commentary by Washington insiders corroborates that Saab’s “crime” was trying to obtain humanitarian supplies in legal international trade but in circumvention of the illegal US sanctions on Venezuela.
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / October 12th, 2022
You know, when police start becoming their own executioners, where’s it gonna end? Pretty soon, you’ll start executing people for jaywalking, and executing people for traffic violations. Then you end up executing your neighbor ‘cause his dog pisses on your lawn.
— “Dirty Harry” Callahan, Magnum Force
When I say that warrior cops—hyped up on their own authority and the power of the badge—have not made America any safer or freer, I am not disrespecting any of the fine, decent, lawful police officers who take seriously their oath of office to serve and …
Tensions are heating up between the United States and Saudi Arabia after Riyadh-led OPEC and allied oil producing countries announced a big output cut, defying Washington’s pressure.
US Secretary of state, Antony Blinken, says the government is working closely with Congress to review alternatives regarding ties with Saudi Arabia. That’s a day after the 23 countries, together known as OPEC-Plus agreed to reduce the output by 2-million barrels per day from the coming November.
Oil producers insisted they want to boost the crude market already reeling from the global economic crisis. But the decision came amid soaring energy prices. Washington …
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / October 11th, 2022
Attack on Kerch Strait Bridge linking Crimea and Russia Credit: Getty Images
On March 11, 2022, President Biden reassured the American public and the world that the United States and its NATO allies were not at war with Russia. “We will not fight a war with Russia in Ukraine,” said Biden. “Direct conflict between NATO and Russia is World War III, something we must strive to prevent.”
It is widely acknowledged that U.S. and NATO officers are now fully involved in Ukraine’s operational war planning, …
Much like individual change, societal developments happen gradually, often painfully; even when sudden shifts take place, seemingly ‘out of the blue’, they are the result of an accumulation of incremental steps – the last straw on the camel’s back as it were. Small developments may slip by unnoticed, major events scream out and demand our attention. Take man-made global warming – going on for 70 years or so, ignored for most of that time, until one July, when, in 40°C heat people collapse, crops are wiped out, water is rationed and drought blights the land.
