All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

Oarfish Mystery: Why Are They Washing Ashore?: LAist

Oarfish Mystery: Why Are They Washing Ashore?: LAist.

According to traditional Japanese lore, the Daily Telegraph wrote in 2010, the fish rise to the surface and beach themselves to warn of an impending quake.

Shortly before the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, about 20 oarfish stranded themselves on Japanese beaches, suggesting the fish could possibly have known that the temblor was coming, Mark Benfield, a researcher at Louisiana State University who’s remotely videotaped the mysterious creature, he told Live Science earlier this year. Or of course, as he added, it could just be a coincidence.

However, Japanese folkore has long connected the two. “In ancient times Japanese people believed that fish warned of coming earthquakes, particularly catfish,” Hiroshi Tajihi, deputy director of the Kobe Earthquake Centre, told the Daily Telegraph. He dismissed the connection as “older superstitions,” saying, “there is no scientific relationship between these sightings and an earthquake.

Earlier this year, sea lions were beaching themselves in record numbers along California beaches, which experts speculated might be due to a lack of food fish.

A rare 15-foot Stejneger’s beaked whale washed ashore in Venice Beach on October 15, but no one knows whether that’s related to the oarfish strandings.

So, either we’re all doomed or it’s just been a banner week for weird fish photo ops.

A Men’s Rights Group Crowdfunded $25,000 for Extra Security Because of ‘Bullies’ – The Wire

A Voice For Men’s homepage currently links to a change.org petition demanding that society “class feminism as a terrorist group.”

A Voice for Men has said that it welcomes “peaceful” protests of their conference, which makes sense. As a philosophy, Men’s Rights depends on the conviction that men and men’s rights activists are the most persecuted people on the planet. Protesters — not to mention fundraising for a security detail — helps to sell that idea.

via A Men’s Rights Group Crowdfunded $25,000 for Extra Security Because of ‘Bullies’ – The Wire.

Trading missiles for captives of Iran – The Iran-Contra Affair . Reagan . WGBH American Experience | PBS

In 1985, while Iran and Iraq were at war, Iran made a secret request to buy weapons from the United States. McFarlane sought Reagan’s approval, in spite of the embargo against selling arms to Iran. McFarlane explained that the sale of arms would not only improve U.S. relations with Iran, but might in turn lead to improved relations with Lebanon, increasing U.S. influence in the troubled Middle East. Reagan was driven by a different obsession. He had become frustrated at his inability to secure the release of the seven American hostages being held by Iranian terrorists in Lebanon. As president, Reagan felt that “he had the duty to bring those Americans home,” and he convinced himself that he was not negotiating with terrorists. While shipping arms to Iran violated the embargo, dealing with terrorists violated Reagan’s campaign promise never to do so. Reagan had always been admired for his honesty.

Corbis

Reagan during the Iran-Contra Affair

The arms-for-hostages proposal divided the administration. Longtime policy adversaries Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and Secretary of State George Shultz opposed the deal, but Reagan, McFarlane and CIA director William Casey supported it. With the backing of the president, the plan progressed. By the time the sales were discovered, more than 1,500 missiles had been shipped to Iran. Three hostages had been released, only to be replaced with three more, in what Secretary of State George Shultz called “a hostage bazaar.”

When the Lebanese newspaper “Al-Shiraa” printed an exposé on the clandestine activities in November 1986, Reagan went on television and vehemently denied that any such operation had occurred. He retracted the statement a week later, insisting that the sale of weapons had not been an arms-for-hostages deal.

via The Iran-Contra Affair . Reagan . WGBH American Experience | PBS.

You Want Pictures, You’ve Got Pictures: Conservative Backlash Gets Visual in White House’s Soldier – Taliban Prisoner Swap — BagNews

Certainly, the prisoner exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is red meat for an opposition that hasn’t had that as vivid an issue to really sink its teeth into. The deal to trade Bergdahl for five high profile Gitmo detainees, however, threatens to dust off the visual genre of the “war on terror,” a vocabulary that has been more in remission.

Of course, I’m not showing you anything here that isn’t already circulating in the caustic hothouse of the political and social web. Rather, I’m just taking those visuals boiling to the surface and putting some air quotes around them. One thing that can be said, though, is that visual memes are moving faster and lending themselves to more chaotic and viral expression then anything we saw during the heyday of Bush’s Iraq intervention. The DailyMail put together the Homeland/Nicholas Brody analogy, by the way, as if Bowe was actually a one man Taliban sleeper cell, not just a young man who has had some seriously mixed feelings about the war.

via You Want Pictures, You’ve Got Pictures: Conservative Backlash Gets Visual in White House’s Soldier – Taliban Prisoner Swap — BagNews.

More police attacks on media 12 months after unpunished Gezi violence – Reporters Without Borders

Reporters Without Borders condemns police violence against many journalists during demonstrations throughout Turkey on 31 May to mark the first anniversary of the start of the “Occupy Gezi” protest movement.

After Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned in advance he would permit no demonstration in Istanbul’s Taksim Square, the epicentre of the protests a year ago, the media were denied access to the square from the start of the afternoon. At least 25,000 policemen and 50 water cannon trucks were deployed in Istanbul alone.

In the course of using teargas and rubber bullets to disperse the protesters, the police also targeted journalists. At least ten journalists were attacked and the members of a CNN International crew were detained.

“A year after Gezi, the security forces are still using unjustifiable violence against journalists covering demonstrations,” said Johann Bihr, the head of the Reporters Without Borders Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk.

via More police attacks on media 12 months after unpunished Gezi violence – Reporters Without Borders.

Chikungunya cases surge in Dominican Republic, Haiti | CIDRAP

Chikungunya infections in Caribbean countries spiked last week, led by quickly growing numbers mainly in the Latin parts of the region, according to the latest update from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).

Also two new countries—Barbados and Chile—are investigating their first suspected or confirmed imported cases, according to media and infectious disease reporting system sources.

via Chikungunya cases surge in Dominican Republic, Haiti | CIDRAP.

Quality Egg Agrees to Pay $6.8M Fine for Selling Tainted Eggs

If you were a young and dumb kid who steals an egg truck – it’s see ya in 5 years! Endanger thousands of people and make many ill? Pay a fine! Buy local or forget eggs.

An Iowa company has agreed to pay $6.8 million in fines for crimes that include selling the tainted eggs that caused a nationwide salmonella outbreak in 2010.

A plea agreement filed Monday by federal prosecutors calls for Quality Egg to plead guilty Tuesday to charges of bribery, selling misbranded eggs and introducing adulterated food into interstate commerce.

The company is admitting that, between 2006 and 2010, it intentionally sold eggs to customers in Arizona, California and elsewhere with false labels that disguised how old they were.

The company says its employees twice bribed a U.S. Department of Agriculture inspector in 2010 to approve eggs that didn’t meet federal quality standards.

Company owners Austin and Peter DeCoster are expected to plead guilty Tuesday to introducing adulterated food into interstate commerce.

via Quality Egg Agrees to Pay $6.8M Fine for Selling Tainted Eggs.