All posts by nedhamson

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

Pig Virus Migrates to U.S. – Cr**!

The virus has been confirmed in about 200 hog facilities in 14 other states including Arkansas, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and South Dakota, according to the American Association of Swine Veterinarians.

Dr. Lisa Becton, director of swine health information and research for the National Pork Board, an industry trade group, said the impact on the availability of pork and meat prices is difficult to estimate.

“At this point, I really don’t have any indications what that potential impact would be. Obviously, we know for individual farms the impact is severe, especially if it’s a sow farm that has baby pigs, because baby pigs do suffer the most from the disease,” she said.

According to the Iowa Pork Industry Center, an industry advocate, the ability to test for the disease is limited. It is believed to be transmitted by infected food or feces, and can be contained by quarantining infected animals and washing down trucks and production facilities.

Becton said the disease can spread quickly and has killed entire populations of pigs under 7 days old.

“As they get older, by the time they’re weaned at around 3 weeks of age, death loss can be around 80 percent or in severe cases upwards of 100 percent. Typically, after weaning mortality declines dramatically,” she said.

via Pig Virus Migrates to U.S..

So who has not been watching the importation of pigs or food for pigs and allowed the virus in. We take better care of oranges than this!

Turkey Has a Role in Egypt

Nervana

Originally published in  Al-Monitor

On July 9, Egypt’s Foreign Ministry summoned the Turkish ambassador over Ankara’s calls for UN intervention in Egypt, following the controversial ouster of President Mohammed Morsi. The sharp deterioration in the relationship between the two nations could not be more different than the warmth Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan received on his visit to Cairo in September 2011. The hero’s welcome Erdogan received — which came only a few months after Egypt’s revolution against former President Hosni Mubarak — stemmed mainly from his ability to present the Egyptian public with a possible third way for politics, which was distant from the traditional fight between the generals and the Islamists. Many in Egypt viewed Erdogan as the man who stood against the military, and also offered the right balance between Islam and politics.

In post-Mubarak Egypt non-Islamist Egyptians trusted neither the ruling Supreme Council of the…

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Turkey Has a Role in Egypt – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East

It is disastrous to interpret the crisis in Egypt as a war against Islam, as the Islamists like to portray. Morsi is neither the prophet of democracy nor the Jesus of political Islam. He is a good but stubborn man who contributed deeply to his own demise. It is about time for Islamists in Egypt and their Turkish allies to understand that fact. The only way for Egypt to emerge peacefully from this crisis is by convincing the Muslim Brotherhood that rejoining the political process does not mean legitimizing the “coup.” In fact, it is the only way to save Egypt’s democracy. Most Egyptians do not want to uproot political Islam out of their country, but they want to reintegrate it in a more pluralistic, democratic system. There is still time to reconcile Egypt and heal its bleeding soul. Turkey can help, but only if it is sincerely willing to help.

via Turkey Has a Role in Egypt – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East.

Republicans Drop Food Stamps from Farm Bill

The split bill is an attempt to gather support from conservatives who voted against the $100 billion-a-year farm bill. The House rejected the farm bill in June by a vote of 234-195, with 62 Republicans voting against it.

The idea of a split bill is that the farm portion, which would cost about $20 billion a year and contain about $2 billion a year in cuts to farm subsidies, could pass without the food stamp provisions. Republicans would then be able to make bigger cuts in food stamp programs and pass that bill with conservative support.

via Republicans Drop Food Stamps from Farm Bill.

www.german-foreign-policy.com Not News – German and US spies worked together

New reports are confirming the close cooperation of the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) with the National Security Agency (NSA). According to these reports, BND agents have repeatedly visited the NSA headquarters at Fort Meade to discuss technical issues. The NSA has also furnished the BND instruments for analyzing intercepted data. A former head of the Austrian intelligence service has confirmed that it was a “common understanding among all European intelligence services” to be “aware” of the NSA Prism surveillance program. Already years ago, officials of the US military have been quoted saying that the US military espionage center that is being established in the Hessian capital Wiesbaden – and that will reportedly also be used by the NSA – is destined to gather information “on the current situation of friend and foe, and everything that can influence our mission.” The German government has also admitted that the Western block’s cooperation of the intelligence services – which includes abduction and torture of suspects in the so-called war on terror – dates back to secret agreements between the leading NATO powers during the post-WW II decades.

The BND at Fort Meade

Recent reports have confirmed the close cooperation between the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) and the National Security Agency (NSA). Last Thursday, the German TV magazine “Monitor” presented a document reporting on a working visit by leading personnel of the BND to NSA headquarters at Fort Meade in February 2010. For its cooperation with foreign intelligence services, the NSA has established a “Foreign Affairs Directorate” at its headquarters, to exchange intelligence information and organize the delivery of relevant equipment. A former NSA Technical Director confirmed to “Monitor” that he had witnessed “joint meetings and conferences” with BND officials, where “technical and other issues” were discussed.[1] According to a report in the German weekly “Der Spiegel,” NSA has also furnished the BND the instruments for analyzing the cross-border telecommunication passing through German lines. The BND is drawing on data passing through five internet hubs with particular focus on the connections to the Middle East. BND President Gerhard Schindler has confirmed the cooperation with NSA.[2]

via www.german-foreign-policy.com.

The Gun Report: July 10, 2013 – NYTimes.com

Two children were hit by gunfire when their father fired a shotgun near them last week at their home in Leavenworth, Wash. Police were dispatched to a domestic disturbance call at around 8:45 a.m. Friday, and they found a 2-year-old boy with injuries to his head and shoulder and an 11-year-old girl with chest, arm and hand injuries. The children were treated at the hospital. Police arrested their 36-year-old father, who was reported to be heavily intoxicated earlier in the day when he threatened to kill the children as well as a woman in the house.

via The Gun Report: July 10, 2013 – NYTimes.com.

And Illinois last state to allow conceal and carry –

Why Is Google Supporting a Climate-Denying Senator? : Compass

Senator Inhofe is notorious for his climate denial and disgust for clean energy. He regularly repeats misinformation and outright lies about climate science, going so far as to say that carbon pollution and warming temperatures are “beneficial to our economy and our environment” and calling climate change “the greatest hoax perpetuated on the American people.”

(Update: As of Wednesday afternoon, he even took to the Senate floor to mock and rail against the President’s climate action plan!)

Inhofe’s rhetoric doesn’t really mesh with a company whose chairman, Eric Schmidt, recently said, “You can lie about the effects of climate change, but eventually you’ll be seen as a liar.”

Google’s fundraiser for Senator Inhofe comes on the heels of the news that Google also donated $50,000 for a fundraising dinner for the anti-environment Competitive Enterprise Institute. CEI staff also deny climate disruption and the organization receives significant donations from the dirty fuels industry.

Yet Google’s donation to CEI even outdid donations from the Koch brothers!

This is no way for Google to lead on clean energy and climate action. Google’s support of the most outspoken climate denier in the Senate is backwards, out of place, and doesn’t stand with their strong clean energy credibility.

via Why Is Google Supporting a Climate-Denying Senator? : Compass.

Erdogan Plays the Headscarf Card – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East

One of the lessons of the protests is that younger Turks are far more accepting of each other’s differences. This helps explain why there were covered women who marched shoulder to shoulder with anarchists and gays. A group of uncovered women academics and journalists — myself included — recently petitioned the government to scrap any law that prevents covered women from holding elected or bureaucratic office.

 

Not that it will make a difference. Erdogan’s reluctance to allot power to covered women has less to do with politics than with a deeply engrained patriarchy that cuts across party lines. Only 79 of Turkey’s 550 lawmakers are women. More than half (45) are from the AKP. “Women are twice removed from power,” comments White, “once by their sex, and also by their piety.” And if covered women are fielded by the AKP in the 2014 local elections, she says, “They will end up in ‘the shop window’ — as the Turks say — not in any position of responsibility or power.”

via Erdogan Plays the Headscarf Card – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East.

Learning to love – or at least like – my race photos

Fit and Feminist

By now it’s pretty much part of my racing routine. A few days after running a race, I’ll get the email directing me to my race photos, which I will then follow (even though I know what awaits me, because I am a masochist), and then I will click through my race photos with a growing sense of dismay and horror that supplants the feelings of pride and badassery that once occupied the part of my brain dedicated to feelings about that particular race.

Here, listen in my brain as my internal Anna Wintour starts in with the inevitable litany of criticism.  What am I doing with your face? Why does your face look like a big, shiny eggplant?  That top makes you look like a rectangle – never wear it again. Your thighs look like a waterbed. Your belly is bulging over your shorts. Why are your arms so…

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Some Vegetables and Fruits With a Side of Rape

Nuestra Vida, Nuestra Voz


Our vegetables and fruits come with a side of rape and sexual abuse. That’s right. Rape.

Did you know that many of the farm workers who pick our fruits and vegetables are undocumented? It isn’t enough that they’re underpaid and exploited for their labor. Many are also raped and sexually assaulted while being threatened with being fired if they say something.

It is almost as if immigrant bodies have become public property. Property for many to use and misuse as they please. From not having access to health services, being deported and exploited to being raped.

The fear of deportation and of not being able to provide for their families forces immigrants to stay silent. But not anymore.

Frontline‘s latest documentary entitled, Rape in the Fields, follows a group of women who are raped and/or assaulted at work. The documentary also highlights the rape culture that dominates our…

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