Yeah Washington! Leading the change...

Washington state launches groundbreaking 'Label It Wa' grassroots GMO labeling campaign

 

Wednesday, February 13, 2013 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

(NaturalNews) The state of Washington appears to be leading the charge these days in the fight for honest food labeling, as two new pieces of legislation are now being considered that would require the labeling of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) in food. I-522, also known as The People's Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act, and House Bill 1407 both tackle the GMO labeling issue head on, the former at the state level and the latter at the local level, and Washington voters will soon have the opportunity to let their voices be heard on these two proposed laws.

As we reported just after the turn of the new year, proponents of GMO labeling in Washington have already successfully gathered more than 350,000 petition signatures, exceeding the minimum number required by more than 100,000, to get I-522 on the 2013 ballot. This means Washington voters will have the opportunity this coming fall to vote in favor of the initiative which, if passed, will require that all foods produced using GMOs and sold within the state be properly labeled. (http://www.naturalnews.com)

And in the event that this initiative ends up getting railroaded like Proposition 37 did in California last fall, HB 1407 will allow local communities to decide for themselves how to handle both the labeling and cultivation of GMOs in their areas. Introduced by Representative Cary Condotta, a Republican from Washington's 12th District, HB 1407 specifically provisions that local governments will be free to regulate GMOs however they see fit, independently from whatever the state decides to do.

"When we saw San Juan do this, we thought it was great, so we see this on a different path than I-522 but we made sure to put a provision in HB 1407 that none of it would override I-522," explained Rep. Condotta about the proposed legislation, comparing it to the recent passage of Measure No. 2012-4, which banned the cultivation of GMOs in Washington's San Juan County. "So if the labeling bill passes, all food will still be labeled statewide. This just give the local level even more control."

HB 1407 would recognize right of local communities to label, ban GMOs

This two-pronged approach to GMO labeling is groundbreaking, as it addresses some of the failures of other GMO labeling proposals in other states. And particularly with HB 1407, the decentralization of power in matters relating to GMOs will help prevent corporate interests from hijacking efforts to increase food labeling transparency at the local level.

"It is within the jurisdiction of the local legislative authority to determine the parameters of regulation, which may include the production, use, advertising, sale, distribution, storage, transportation, formulation, packaging, labeling, certification, registration, propagation, cultivation, raising, or growing of genetically modified organisms," explains HB 1407.

Both bills are uniquely important because, together, they will procure the legal framework needed to ensure that the people of Washington, and not the biotechnology industry, are the ones calling the shots when it comes to GMO policy.

To learn more about I-522, visit: http://www.labelitwa.org/

To learn more about HB 1407, visit: http://apps.leg.wa.gov

Sources for this article include:http://www.labelitwa.org/

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/039078_Washington_state_GMO_labeling_campaign.html#ixzz2KpG8FrcE

Imported seafood is full of chemicals, drugs and feces - yet the FDA inspects hardly any of it

Wednesday, February 13, 2013 by: PF Louis

(NaturalNews) Most imported seafood, including shrimp, is from large fish farms in Asia, including China, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam. There are also seafood or fish farms in Canada, Mexico, and South America that export to the U.S. and others countries.

Fish farming is just that. Breeding, cultivating, and harvesting fish from ponds, drainage ditches, or cages in lakes and even the open sea. There are also green houses with large containers of water. Unusual tropical fish, catfish, and salmon are farmed and sometimes deceptively sold as wild caught.

Farmed fish and shrimp pro and con

Proponents of fish farming point out that it's more ecological since wild fish areas are invaded less as fish farms proliferate. Of course, there is the added incentive of not having to resort to seafaring vessels or fleets to come in with catches. Fish farming is more reliable and less expensive.

Since recent innovations of stacking indoor pools for breading shrimp was innovated, there is an incredible amount of farmed jumbo shrimp that is retailed and used in restaurants. These stacked pools permit up to 25 kilograms of shrimp to be bred in one cubic meter of water.

The stacked pool idea was spawned in Texas. So less farmed shrimp is imported now than a few years ago. But that doesn't preclude antibiotics, bacterial, and chemical contamination from getting into those stacked pools.

Just like massive factory farms for sending hoofed meat to slaughter houses, there are problems with overcrowding and feeding in fish farms. Antibiotics are used in crowed aquatic conditions. And what they are fed can include even salmonella laced pig feces, as discovered in several Chinese fish farms.

FDA oversight grossly lacking

While the FDA orchestrates raids on raw milk providers, alternative cancer clinics, supplement companies, and issues threatening letters to nut and fruit growers for promoting actual scientific health findings on their products, they barely sniff imported seafood or locally farmed fish and shrimp from a distance.

According to the CDC, 44 percent of the 39 food borne illness outbreaks caused by imports from 2005 to 2010 involved seafood. In 2011, 91 percent of the 4.7 billion pounds of seafood consumed in the U.S. was imported. The FDA tested samples from only two percent of this at best. It seems 2012 was a better year.

They inspected 330 samples of Vietnamese farmed shrimp exported to Little Rock, Arkansas, and found 67 samples containing the bacteria Klebsiella, which is resistant to most antibiotics and causes urinary infections and pneumonia.

In addition to bacterial contamination, certain antibiotics used in fish farming are problematic. Residues of nitrofuran antibiotics have been discovered in imported farm fish. Nitrofurans are carcinogenic.

A U.S. wild shrimp trade association, the Southern Shrimp Alliance, complained to the FDA recently that three Vietnamese shrimp farms were ordered to test all their exports with Canadian authorities after extremely dangerous fluoroquinolone antibiotics were detected. But the FDA did nothing for U.S. imports from those companies.

The Global Aquaculture Alliance (GAA) claims to pick up the slack from FDA's inadequate screening. Their Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) label supposedly assures your seafood is totally safe. But the GAA is a fox guarding hen house industry group of seafood provider executives. (http://www.gaalliance.org/bap/wheretobuy.php)

The University of Victoria's Seafood Ecology Research Group placed the BAP seal at 16th out of 20 total certifications for seafood safety standards.

Inadequate food safety screening for imported seafood leaves us with equally ignored, locally farmed fish and shrimp as well as wild fish and shrimp from our BP Corexit contaminated gulf. It's time to be very picky about seafood.

Sources for this article include:http://en.wikipedia.org

http://www.popsci.com

http://www.motherjones.com

http://www.nationofchange.org

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/039077_seafood_chemicals_FDA_inspections.html#ixzz2KpFaaiN0

Big News on Privacy. Specifically take a look at the bold red text...

 

07 February 2013

New Measures in Airport Security
In USA Travel Tips

By Sean O'Neill

 

The International Air Transport Association's proposed "checkpoint of the future”. (IATA)

By 1 June, the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will have removed a total of 250 full-body backscatter scanners from US airports – machines that had been criticized for generating overly detailed passenger images from low-dose x-rays.

The TSA has been replacing those machines with ones that use millimetre-wave technology, which generate images that better protect passenger privacy and rely on radio waves to check for weapons and explosives.
The TSA’s move is yet another example of how governments across the globe struggle to provide effective security while ensuring passenger privacy and efficient queues. As such, airports in the US are trialling new security measures – including facial recognition and iris scanners – to achieve this difficult balance.

Managed inclusion
Currently at checkpoints at Indianapolis and Tampa airports in Indiana and Florida respectively, the TSA is testing a system called “managed inclusion”, in which officials inspect the queues, sometimes with explosive-sniffing dogs, and select passengers to move into expedited security lanes.

The process – also known as behaviour detection – involves each passenger having a conversation with an officer, who asks questions while looking for signs of fear. Passengers who act suspiciously may be subjected to secondary screening measures, such as more invasive pat downs. A similar experiment ran for 60 days at Boston’s Logan Airport in 2011. There’s no word on whether this system will be deployed at other airports nationwide.

As a downside, some critics, such as author and security consultant Bruce Schneier, have said officers practicing behaviour detection are prone to racial and ethnic profiling, or the undue singling out of individuals based on stereotypes. Such profiling has happened frequently at European airports, according to a 2012 study by the consortium Behavioral Modeling of Security in Airports.

PreCheck
Since October 2011, the TSA has been testing PreCheck, a programme in which passengers voluntarily sign up for background checks in return for access to speedier lanes at checkpoints. Expanded last year to 35 major US airports, including most recently San Francisco International and Baltimore Washington, the service is open to elite loyalty programmes members for Delta, United, American, US Airways and Alaska – the only five airlines currently participating. PreCheck is free to frequent flyers, but other travellers may have to pay an application fee to apply via the US Customs and Border Protection's trusted traveller programs, such as Global Entry.

Critics of PreCheck say that technical glitches, such as minor inconsistencies in how passengers' information is presented in various databases, often prevent the effective functioning of the system, resulting in passenger delays. For example, if a paper record has a passenger’s middle initial but the computer has the passenger’s full middle name, the system may fail to make a proper match. The TSA counters that it is working out the kinks in the system.

The checkpoint of the future
In 2011, the International Air Transport Association proposed a collection of airport security improvements that it dubbed “the checkpoint of the future”. Passengers vetted via background checks would have a biometric identifier, such as their fingerprint or iris pattern, in their passport or other travel document. On arrival at an airport, a traveller would be directed to one of three lanes – Known Traveller, Normal or Enhanced Security – according to their biometric identifier. Some travellers would receive intensive levels of checks, such as hands-on pat-downs, while others would speed through.

At a testing centre at Dallas’ Love Field Airport, many of IATA’s ideas are being experimented with in a prototype checkpoint, according to USA Today. One of the highlights is the use of next-generation security cameras, with lenses that are sharp enough to see the faces of passengers from far away in much sharper and more recognisable detail than the present cameras at most US airports and can transmit those high-definition images to hand-held devices carried by guards patrolling the airport. Currently, guards mostly use less sophisticated cameras that only broadcast to monitors in fixed locations. Officials at Love Field hope to deploy the improved checkpoints within the next three years.
Unfortunately, the new systems are expensive. The TSA’s annual budget is $8 billion a year, an amount that some people deem out of proportion to the relative threat terrorism presents.
Sean O’Neill is the travel tech columnist for BBC Travel

Bhutan set to plough lone furrow as world's first wholly organic country

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2013/feb/11/bhutan-first-wholly-organic-country

 

By shunning all but organic farming techniques, the Himalayan state will cement its status as a paradigm of sustainability

 

Stooping to conquer … Already an overwhelmingly agrarian state, Bhutan is aiming to become the world's first completely organic country. Photograph: Alamy

 

Bhutan plans to become the first country in the world to turn its agriculture completely organic, banning the sales of pesticides and herbicides and relying on its own animals and farm waste for fertilisers.

But rather than accept that this will mean farmers of the small Himalayan kingdom of 1.2 million people will be able to grow less food, the government expects them to be able to grow more – and to export increasing amounts of high quality niche foods to neighbouring India, China and other countries.

The decision to go organic was both practical and philosophical, said Pema Gyamtsho, Bhutan's minister of agriculture and forests, in Delhi for the annual sustainable development conference last week.

"Ours is a mountainous terrain. When we use chemicals they don't stay where we use them, they impact the water and plants. We say that we need to consider all the environment. Most of our farm practices are traditional farming, so we are largely organic anyway.

"But we are Buddhists, too, and we believe in living in harmony with nature. Animals have the right to live, we like to to see plants happy and insects happy," he said.

Gyamtsho, like most members of the cabinet, is a farmer himself, coming from Bumthang in central Bhutan but studying western farming methods in New Zealand and Switzerland.

"Going organic will take time," he said. "We have set no deadline. We cannot do it tomorrow. Instead we will achieve it region by region and crop by crop."

The overwhelmingly agrarian nation, which really only opened its doors to world influences 30 years ago, is now facing many of the development pangs being felt everywhere in rapidly emerging countries. Young people reluctant to live just by farming are migrating to India and elsewhere, there is a population explosion, and there is inevitable pressure for consumerism and cultural change.
But, says Gyamtsho, Bhutan's future depends largely on how it responds to interlinked development challenges like climate change, and food and energy security. "We would already be self-sufficient in food if we only ate what we produced. But we import rice. Rice eating is now very common, but traditionally it was very hard to get. Only the rich and the elite had it. Rice conferred status. Now the trend is reversing. People are becoming more health-conscious and are eating grains like buckwheat and wheat."

In the west, organic food growing is widely thought to reduce the size of crops because they become more susceptible to pests. But this is being challenged in Bhutan and some regions of Asia, where smallholders are developing new techniques to grow more and are not losing soil quality.
Systems like "sustainable root intensification" (SRI), which carefully regulate the amount of water that crops need and the age at which seedlings are planted out, have shown that organic crop yields can be doubled with no synthetic chemicals.

"We are experimenting with different methods of growing crops like SRI but we are also going to increase the amount of irrigated land and use traditional varieties of crops which do not require inputs and have pest resistance," says Gyamtsho.

However, a run of exceptionally warm years and erratic weather has left many farmers doubtful they can do without chemicals.

In Paro, a largely farming district in south-west Bhutan, farmers are already struggling to grow enough to feed their families and local government officials say they are having to distribute fertiliser and pesticides in larger quantities to help people grow more.

"I have heard of the plan to turn everything organic. But we are facing serious problems just getting people to grow enough", said Rinzen Wangchuk, district farm officer.

"Most people here are smallholder farmers. The last few years we have had problems with the crops. The weather has been very erratic. It's been warmer than normal and all the chilli crops are full of pests. We are having to rely on fertilisers more than we have ever had to in the past and even these are not working as well as they initially did."

Dawa Tshering, who depends on his two acres of rice paddy and a vegetable garden, says that for decades his farming was chemical free.

"But its harder now because all our children are either in the capital or studying. Nobody wants to stay, which means we have to work harder. It's just my wife an myself here. We cannot grow enough to feed ourselves and take crops to the market, so we have to use chemicals for the first time. We would like to go back to farming how we used to, where we just used what nature provided."

But in a world looking for new ideas, Bhutan is already called the poster child of sustainable development. More than 95% of the population has clean water and electricity, 80% of the country is forested and, to the envy of many countries, it is carbon neutral and food secure.

In addition, it is now basing its economic development on the pursuit of collective happiness.
"We have no fossil fuels or nuclear. But we are blessed with rivers which give us the potential of over 30,000megawatts of electricity. So far we only exploit 2,000 megawatts. We exploit enough now to export to India and in the pipeline we have 10,000 megawatts more. The biggest threat we face is cars. The number is increasing every day. Everyone wants to buy cars and that means we must import fuel. That is why we must develop our energy."
Agriculture minister Gyamtsho remains optimistic. "Hopefully we can provide solutions. What is at stake is the future. We need governments who can make bold decisions now rather than later."

Joe Russo’s Almost Dead: January 26, 2013 Brooklyn Bowl – Flac/MP3/Streaming

January 28, 2013

By nyctaper

[photo by nyctaper]

If you have any interest at all, even passing, in the music of the Grateful Dead, then what happened at Brooklyn Bowl on Saturday night was an important milestone in the post-Dead era. I do not exaggerate, this was a big deal.,..
Stream “Viola Lee Blues”:

Stream “Shakedown Street”:

Download the Complete show [MP3] / [FLAC]
Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct links or the files on other sites without our permission. Please respect our request.

Joe Russo Almost Dead
2013-01-26
Brooklyn Bowl
New York, NY USA

FOB Four-Track Audience Recording
Sennheiser MKH-8040 Cardioids + Neumann KM-150s > Edirol R-44 (Oade Concert Mod) > 2x 24bit 48kHz wav file > Soundforge (level adjustments, mixdown, set fades) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and tagging via Foobar)
Recorded and Produced by nyctaper
2013-01-27
Joe Russo – Drums and Vocals
Marco Benevento – Keyboards
Scott Metzger – Guitar and Vocals
Tom Hamilton – Guitar and Vocals
Dave Dreiwitz – Bass

Setlist:
Set 1
[Total Time 1:24:31]
01 Bertha
02 Althea
03 Jack Straw
04 Deal
05 Mr Charlie
06 [band introductions]
07 Brown-Eyed Women
08 Tennesee Jed
09 Shakedown Street
10 Jam
11 China Cat Sunflower
12 I Know You Rider

Set 2
[Total Time 1:42:58]
13 Estimated Prophet
14 Eyes Of The World
15 Help On The Way
16 Slipknot
17 Franklins Tower
18 St Stephen
19 The Eleven
20 Caution Jam
21 The Other One
22 Viola Lee Blues
23 [encore break]
24 US Blues
If you download this recording from NYCTaper, we expect that you’ll please support these artists, visit their websites and purchase their office merchancise. Benevento-Russo Duo [HERE], Marco Benevento [HERE], Tom Hamilton [HERE], Scott Metzger [HERE], and Dave Dreiwitz [HERE].

Natural Disasters have always occurred, but all across the world and in the U.S they have been happening with greater extremes/force/gravity, more frequently. What I'm wondering is will people continue to demonstrate the same fervor for helping for others and supporting (either by donation or physical efforts) when all types of extreme climates become common place. I sure do hope. I think we all better buckle up and start helping each other, were gonna need it...

Whopping winter storm marching in Sandy's path

By Ben Brumfield, CNN

updated 5:40 AM EST, Fri February 8, 2013

'Monster' blizzard to slam northeast

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• The storm is brewing out of two fronts
• One is a subtropical wet system coming up from the gulf
• The other is a polar system coming in from the Midwest
• The storm will punish the same regions Superstorm Sandy did, the National Weather Service says

(CNN) -- Elizabeth Frazier grabbed the last bottles of water in sight, then left the store.

"It's a zoo in there," she said. "There's nothing left on the shelves," the Reading, Massachusetts, resident told CNN affiliate WHDH.

A gathering snowstorm is driving droves of New Englanders into shops to seize up the last supplies, then dash home to stock their cupboards, baton down the hatches and brace for a potentially long haul. Its icy rage will commence Friday afternoon, the National Weather Service predicts, and will last into Saturday.

In addition, it will produce high winds and stir up trouble at sea.

Blizzard could wallop East Coast

Northeast braces for 'historic' blizzard

New York, Boston brace for blizzard

Snow could lock some residents indoors for days, as the forecast calls for a "potentially historic winter storm." It is on a trajectory reminiscent of the path Hurricane Sandy took and is poised to deliver its harshest blows to regions that have already taken a lot of punishment.

Local politicians are taking to the stump to warn their citizenry to be prepared, and power companies and public works are shoring up their resources.

Transportation outlets were announcing shutdowns in the air and on land ahead of its ominous arrival, and motorists are being warned not to drive.

Airlines have already cancelled more than 3,200 flights to and from affected regions. Amtrak canceled many trips in the Northeast corridor.

The blizzard is predicted to smother places where the superstorm left behind the deepest scars, from the New Jersey shoreline through the boroughs of New York City and throughout Connecticut.

But forecasts call for the worst of the storm to extend into eastern Massachusetts and reach up the southern shoreline of New Hampshire.

Early Friday, Boston motorists stood in long lines to fill up their tanks at gas stations, and the city's public works filled trucks with sand to spread on roads and deployed snow plows to strategic points ahead of time.

"We are hardy New Englanders," said Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, "and used to these types of storms."

But Boston could see flakes falling at a rate of 2 to 3 inches per hour, and the storm has already drawn comparisons to the "Great Blizzard" of 1978, when thousands were stranded as fast-moving snow drifts blanketed highways and left several people dead.

Putting toughness aside, Menino told Bostonians to "use common sense" and "stay off the streets of our city." "Basically, stay home."

The most severe weather is expected to hit Massachusetts between 2 and 5 p.m. on Friday.

The rest of New England will see heavy snow into Saturday, the weather service said, which could also reach blizzard intensity in places, when a wet subtropical system rising from the Gulf Coast collides with a polar front rolling in from the Midwest to produce a whopping winter storm.

Residents from New Jersey to Maine will likely be digging themselves out of a foot or so of snow, the National Weather Service predicts.

In New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the timing of the storm could actually benefit municipal workers.

"If it's going to happen, having it happen Friday overnight into Saturday is probably as good timing as we could have," Bloomberg said. "The sanitation department then has the advantage of being able to clean the streets when there's normally less traffic."

In shades of Sandy, gales will whip up waves along the Atlantic coast, triggering small craft advisories as far south as Georgia, but hurricane force winds are predicted to churn up off-shore maritime tempests, particularly from New Jersey to Massachusetts, with waves cresting at up to 30 feet at the height of the storm.

Coastal flooding is possible "from Boston northward," the weather service said.

Strong winds are expected to push up high snow banks. The combination of snow and gusts "as high as 60-75 mph will create significant impacts to transportation and power," the weather service said.

After Superstorm Sandy left much of Long Island without power for days, power company National Grid is working to prevent a second act to that tragedy.

It is adding hundreds of extra crew members to more than 500 lineman already on site for the Long Island Power Authority.

The storm could knock out power for more than 100,000 customers on Long Island alone, National Grid said.

CNN's David Ariosto, Steve Almasy and Marina Carver contributed to this report