ubuweb [MP3 link] A recitation of all the rock songs the US played during the PSYOP campaign against Noriega: http://is.gd/fzUSL
Wednesday, 29 September 2010
♪♫ Grinderman on 'Later'
Show the little upstarts how it's done guys!!!
At the beginning of this last clip there is an old boss of mine Simon Raymonde behind Sandie Shaw (to the left) probably better known to most of you as one third of the Cocteau Twins!!!
(Thanx JC!)
At the beginning of this last clip there is an old boss of mine Simon Raymonde behind Sandie Shaw (to the left) probably better known to most of you as one third of the Cocteau Twins!!!
(Thanx JC!)
Q & A w/ Adrian Sherwood tonight...
onusherwood doing a Q&A session tonight on the On-U Sound messageboard at 2100 GMT http://www.onu-sound.com/messageboard/
Side effects of drugs in water still murky
After a recent study found traces of eight illicit drugs, including cocaine, ecstasy, and methamphetamines, in the waterways of a Spanish national park, fear started to circulate along with the headlines.
Is the environment, people have started to wonder, becoming a wasteland for discarded and partially digested medications?
As studies continue to find a growing number of pharmaceuticals and illegal drugs in a growing number of places, experts say, there are some real concerns about threats to wildlife and human health. But most substances are at levels far too low to cause problems. Many others are big question marks.
Scientists still don't know how a lot of chemicals, especially the illegal ones, might affect animals or at what level they become dangerous. Those studies just haven't been done.
"The vast majority of compounds do not pose a threat," said Paul Sibley, an aquatic toxicologist at the University of Guelph in Ontario.
"For illicit drugs, we're not quite as sure," he added. "My gut sense is that we probably don't need to be worried about this. But because studies have never been done looking at their toxicology or the responses of animals, we can't say there won't be a problem."
Whether over-the-counter or under-the-table, the most common way for drugs to escape into the environment is through the sewage system. When you pop a pill, your body breaks down some, but not all of the active chemicals in a drug. Whatever is leftover comes out in your excrement and goes down the toilet.
Most sewage treatment plants are designed to break down biological matter in substances like human waste and food scraps. But pharmaceutical chemicals often slip right through, either in wastewater that flows into streams and lakes, or in sludge that is often spread on agricultural fields.
Farm animals often consume antibiotics and other drugs, too, and their manure also helps taint agricultural run-off. From there, the chemicals end up in streams, lakes and other waterways.
Hundreds of studies have found traces of pharmaceuticals in water, Sibley said, especially downstream of treatment plants. Other studies have found these compounds in the tissues of fish and other animals. In most cases, at least in the developed world, levels are too low to have major consequences. But there are some major exceptions.
Scientists are particularly concerned about a class of pharmaceuticals known as endocrine-disruptors. Traces of estrogen from birth control pills, for example, are now known to affect animals at really tiny concentrations.
Antibiotics are another concern, because once they are unleashed in the environment, they can prompt the development of dangerously drug-resistant bacteria.
Even drugs that don't fit into those categories have been shown to cause problems in some cases, especially when levels get high enough, said Bryan Brooks, director of the Environmental Health Science program at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.
A 2004 paper in the Journal Nature, for example, documented a catastrophic vulture die-off in India. It turned out that the birds were eating the carcasses of cows that had been given a type of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medication, similar to ibuprofen or naproxen. The drug was making the birds sick.
In a paper published earlier this year in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, scientists reported that minnows exposed to certain antidepressants were slower to flee from predators. Another paper in the same journal issue found that tadpoles exposed to antidepressants -- at levels similar to what might show up in the environment in some places -- ate less and grew more slowly.
"We don't really have a good handle at all about how drug side effects may present risks to aquatic organisms," Brooks said. "Where the science is going now is trying to scrutinize the available data for pharmaceuticals and how they act in animals, and to prioritize which drugs may require further study."
A similar toxicological focus on illegal drugs will probably soon follow, Sibley said. The new study out of Spain looked at water in a park that is surrounded by nightclubs and malls. Many places face the same type of exposures.
"I'd be willing to say you could go to any major urban center globally, including in the U.S. and Canada, and find trace levels of these compounds, especially if you've got an active area of social life," Sibley said. "They are likely very, very ubiquitous."
Emily Sohn @'Discovery'
Is the environment, people have started to wonder, becoming a wasteland for discarded and partially digested medications?
As studies continue to find a growing number of pharmaceuticals and illegal drugs in a growing number of places, experts say, there are some real concerns about threats to wildlife and human health. But most substances are at levels far too low to cause problems. Many others are big question marks.
Scientists still don't know how a lot of chemicals, especially the illegal ones, might affect animals or at what level they become dangerous. Those studies just haven't been done.
"The vast majority of compounds do not pose a threat," said Paul Sibley, an aquatic toxicologist at the University of Guelph in Ontario.
"For illicit drugs, we're not quite as sure," he added. "My gut sense is that we probably don't need to be worried about this. But because studies have never been done looking at their toxicology or the responses of animals, we can't say there won't be a problem."
Whether over-the-counter or under-the-table, the most common way for drugs to escape into the environment is through the sewage system. When you pop a pill, your body breaks down some, but not all of the active chemicals in a drug. Whatever is leftover comes out in your excrement and goes down the toilet.
Most sewage treatment plants are designed to break down biological matter in substances like human waste and food scraps. But pharmaceutical chemicals often slip right through, either in wastewater that flows into streams and lakes, or in sludge that is often spread on agricultural fields.
Farm animals often consume antibiotics and other drugs, too, and their manure also helps taint agricultural run-off. From there, the chemicals end up in streams, lakes and other waterways.
Hundreds of studies have found traces of pharmaceuticals in water, Sibley said, especially downstream of treatment plants. Other studies have found these compounds in the tissues of fish and other animals. In most cases, at least in the developed world, levels are too low to have major consequences. But there are some major exceptions.
Scientists are particularly concerned about a class of pharmaceuticals known as endocrine-disruptors. Traces of estrogen from birth control pills, for example, are now known to affect animals at really tiny concentrations.
Antibiotics are another concern, because once they are unleashed in the environment, they can prompt the development of dangerously drug-resistant bacteria.
Even drugs that don't fit into those categories have been shown to cause problems in some cases, especially when levels get high enough, said Bryan Brooks, director of the Environmental Health Science program at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.
A 2004 paper in the Journal Nature, for example, documented a catastrophic vulture die-off in India. It turned out that the birds were eating the carcasses of cows that had been given a type of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medication, similar to ibuprofen or naproxen. The drug was making the birds sick.
In a paper published earlier this year in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, scientists reported that minnows exposed to certain antidepressants were slower to flee from predators. Another paper in the same journal issue found that tadpoles exposed to antidepressants -- at levels similar to what might show up in the environment in some places -- ate less and grew more slowly.
"We don't really have a good handle at all about how drug side effects may present risks to aquatic organisms," Brooks said. "Where the science is going now is trying to scrutinize the available data for pharmaceuticals and how they act in animals, and to prioritize which drugs may require further study."
A similar toxicological focus on illegal drugs will probably soon follow, Sibley said. The new study out of Spain looked at water in a park that is surrounded by nightclubs and malls. Many places face the same type of exposures.
"I'd be willing to say you could go to any major urban center globally, including in the U.S. and Canada, and find trace levels of these compounds, especially if you've got an active area of social life," Sibley said. "They are likely very, very ubiquitous."
Emily Sohn @'Discovery'
Tea & Crackers - How corporate interests and Republican insiders built the Tea Party monster
It's taken three trips to Kentucky, but I'm finally getting my Tea Party epiphany exactly where you'd expect: at a Sarah Palin rally. The red-hot mama of American exceptionalism has flown in to speak at something called the National Quartet Convention in Louisville, a gospel-music hoedown in a giant convention center filled with thousands of elderly white Southerners. Palin — who earlier this morning held a closed-door fundraiser for Rand Paul, the Tea Party champion running for the U.S. Senate — is railing against a GOP establishment that has just seen Tea Partiers oust entrenched Republican hacks in Delaware and New York. The dingbat revolution, it seems, is nigh. "We're shaking up the good ol' boys," Palin chortles, to the best applause her aging crowd can muster. She then issues an oft-repeated warning (her speeches are usually a tired succession of half-coherent one-liners dumped on ravenous audiences like chum to sharks) to Republican insiders who underestimated the power of the Tea Party Death Star. "Buck up," she says, "or stay in the truck."
Stay in what truck? I wonder. What the hell does that even mean?
Scanning the thousands of hopped-up faces in the crowd, I am immediately struck by two things. One is that there isn't a single black person here. The other is the truly awesome quantity of medical hardware: Seemingly every third person in the place is sucking oxygen from a tank or propping their giant atrophied glutes on motorized wheelchair-scooters. As Palin launches into her Ronald Reagan impression — "Government's not the solution! Government's the problem!" — the person sitting next to me leans over and explains.
"The scooters are because of Medicare," he whispers helpfully. "They have these commercials down here: 'You won't even have to pay for your scooter! Medicare will pay!' Practically everyone in Kentucky has one."
A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment. If there exists a better snapshot of everything the Tea Party represents, I can't imagine it...
Continue reading
Matt Taibbi @'Rolling Stone'
Iran jails pioneering blogger for 'anti-state activity'
An Iranian court has sentenced a prominent Iranian-Canadian blogger to more than 19 years in jail, rights groups and Iranian media say.
Hossein Derakhshan was charged with "propagating against the regime" and "co-operating with hostile states".
Mr Derakhshan was arrested in 2008 during a visit to the country.
He is credited with launching Iran's blogging revolution. Originally critical of the government, he later backed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Derakhshan was also sentenced for promoting counter-revolutionary groups, insulting Islamic thought and religious figures and managing obscene websites, Mashreq news website reported.
Judicial sources said he could appeal the ruling.
After moving to Toronto, Canada, from Tehran in 2000, he posted simple instructions in Farsi on how to publish blogs - thus helping to spark an explosion of blogging in Iran.
He paid a highly-publicised visit Israel - Iran's arch-enemy - in 2006, saying he wanted to act as a bridge between the two countries.
Pressure group the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran called Derakhshan "a prisoner of conscience, prosecuted and sentenced solely for his opinions and writings".
The group says there are more than 500 prisoners of conscience in Iranian jails.
Iranian opposition bloggers continue to be active despite a government crackdown since disputed elections last year that saw President Ahmadinejad re-elected.
Opposition leaders said the election was rigged.
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