Category Archives: planetkillers

When Your Healers Become Your Killers | Inter Press Service

There is a major though silent global threat to human and animal health, with implications for both food safety and food security and the economic well-being of millions of farming households. It is so-called anti-microbial resistance.The problems arises from the indiscriminate, excessive use of synthetic products, such as anti-microbial medicines, to kill diseases in the agricultural and food systems, which may be a major conduit of the anti-microbial resistance (AMR) that causes 700,000 human deaths each year and has the potential to raise this number to up to 10 million annually.AMR is a natural phenomenon of micro-organisms such as bacteria, viruses, parasites and fungi that are no longer sensitive to the effects of antimicrobial medicines, like antibiotics, that were previously effective in treating infections.Nevertheless, commercial practices meant to increase benefits have been leading to the dramatic fact that these drugs are more and more used to practically solely promote animal growth.

Source: When Your Healers Become Your Killers | Inter Press Service

Arctic ice melt now affects world weather | Green Prophet

Polar vortex, the term attributed to the recent frigid weather patterns that recently put much of North America, Europe and even the Middle East into the deep freeze, is now slated to become even more frequent, due to the increasing melt-down of the earth’s Arctic ice cap. This phenomena is caused by a weakening of the normal jet stream air currents that encircle the earth’s arctic regions, due to higher than average summer temperatures. As a result, these “meandering” jet stream air currents are now dipping into the more southern regions, bringing with them frigid Arctic air.Fortunately, these polar air dips usually last only a week or two; but they are intense enough to make northern American cities like Chicago, Detroit and New York City experience frigid temperatures of well below zero; often combined with heavy snowfall and strong winds. Many European cities experience intense these winter weather bouts as well. Climatologists and other scientists studying the adverse weather patterns are now tying these jet stream dips to faster than expected melting of Arctic ice, especially in the polar region.

Source: Arctic ice melt now affects world weather | Green Prophet

Russia Requires Apple and Google to Remove LinkedIn From Local App Stores – The New York Times “Money first, Morals/Principles pfft!”

Direct blocking of websites has been done by China, Russia, Turkey and several other nations for years, usually through their state-run internet service providers. But civil rights groups say the pressure authoritarian governments are now placing on Apple and Google is a new wrinkle.“Apps are the new choke point of free expression,” said Rebecca MacKinnon, who leads a project on open internet tracking at New America.Increasingly, United States tech companies are complying with those demands.

Facebook lets rightwing site repost torture video after it was removed | Technology | The Guardian “Cause Facebook does not really care about anything but ca$h”

A video showing the brutal attack of a young man with disabilities in Chicago that was broadcast on Facebook Live has resurfaced on the social media network, attracting millions of new viewers.The 30-minute attack, which shows a man bound, gagged and cut with a knife, was viewed live by 16,000 people and eventually removed by Facebook for violating its community standards. Facebook prohibits the celebration or glorification of crimes on its platform.Facebook refuses to explain why live torture video wasn’t removed sooner Read moreOn Thursday, conservative news site the Daily Caller repackaged the same footage and re-uploaded it to Facebook, along with the message: “Share if you think this is a hate crime.”The video, which appears to be three minutes shorter than the original but otherwise appears to be identical, has since been watched more than 7m times and shared more than 200,000 times.Facebook appears to be content to allow the video to exist on its network.

Source: Facebook lets rightwing site repost torture video after it was removed | Technology | The Guardian

Coachella owner denies donating to anti-LGBT groups amid outrage | Music | The Guardian “Talking from both sides of mouth – he uses funds from Coachilla to fund Trump supporters!”

A major Republican donor, Anschutz gave more than $1m to conservative candidates and political fundraising groups in 2016, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan watchdog. Employees of the Anschutz Corporation also leaned heavily toward Republican candidates. The businessman has attended political events hosted by the Koch brothers, the billionaire scions of an oil fortune and also Republican donors, and Anschutz has donated to their political group Americans for Prosperity, which opposes climate change research and regulations. Anschutz’s natural gas company has also sued small towns in pursuit of fracking rights, and the businessman has invested heavily in a gigantic Wyoming wind farm.

Source: Coachella owner denies donating to anti-LGBT groups amid outrage | Music | The Guardian

Is Marine Le Pen’s Russian cash pipeline drying up? – France 24 – Wonder how much they lent to Trump?

The Eurosceptic, anti-immigrant party had heaved a sigh of relief in September 2014, when it secured a €9 million loan from Russian lender First Czech-Russian Bank (FCRB).The decision to take out the loan, even as the rest of Europe was slapping sanctions on Moscow over its actions in Ukraine, kicked up a storm in France, where it was widely seen as evidence of Le Pen’s growing coziness with the Kremlin.The FN is France’s only party to have hailed Russia’s annexation of Crimea. It regularly praises Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “patriot” and a bulwark for traditional European values.But then the Russian bank went bust last year, and Le Pen lost a financial lifeline.According to Russian and French media reports, the Moscow-based Deposit Insurance Agency (SVA), which administers FCRB’s assets and debts, has now started legal proceedings to get the money back.

Source: Is Marine Le Pen’s Russian cash pipeline drying up? – France 24

When Good People Don’t Act | Dame Magazine

History remembers us for our actions, not our intentions, after all. Do you want to be the one who trembled in the corner while someone suffered or the person who spoke up bravely, with a quaver in your voice, and made a difference?

Source: When Good People Don’t Act | Dame Magazine

Gates Foundation Project to Eliminate Malaria Focuses on Insecticides | News | PND-  “Being a billionaire and inciting greed and status seeking behavior of all who come close can ruin any serious effort to understand and control malaria.”

The two technologies could be “transformational,” said Dan Strickman, a senior program officer at the foundation. The next challenge, however, will be to identify the approaches that work best in combination with existing medical treatments so as to shrink the footprint of the disease over the next ten to fifteen years, Karl Malamud-Roam, manager of Rutgers University’s public health pesticides program, told the Seattle Times.

Source: Gates Foundation Project to Eliminate Malaria Focuses on Insecticides | News | PND

Finding out how human behavior facilitates the expansion of growth of malaria carrying mosquitoes would cost less but would show that industrial farming and deforestation are the chief facilitators of malaria’s continual comebacks.

Chilean court imposes heavier sentences on German cult leaders | News | DW.COM | 31.12.2016 “Wonder, how many more have not been identified? And who frequents them?”

A court in the Chilean capital, Santiago, has lengthened by one year sentences already imposed on three Germans found guilty of forming a criminal organization at “Colonia Dignidad,” a German colony located in the Andean foothills.The three men – Kurt Schnellenkamp, Gerhard Mücke and Karl van den Berg – were among the leaders of the commune, now called “Villa Baviera,” where systematic child abuse took place between 1961 and 1997. They have now been sentenced to five years and one day in prison.The 15,000-hectare (37,066-acre) settlement, sealed off from the rest of the world, was also used as a secret detention and torture center for political prisoners during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet from 1973-1990. Several opponents of the Pinochet regime were murdered there. Paul Schäfer was arrested in Argentina in 2005The court also handed down similar sentences to former Chilean intelligence agents Fernando Gomez and Pedro Espinoza. Four other defendants were released.”Colonia Dignidad” was founded in 1961 by cult leader Paul Schäfer, an ex-Nazi corporal, who fled Germany for Chile with 250 followers after authorities in his home country began to investigate him for sexual abuse of children.Schäfer was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2006 for his role at the “Colonia Dignidad,” and died in prison in 2010, aged 88.

Source: Chilean court imposes heavier sentences on German cult leaders | News | DW.COM | 31.12.2016

AMAZON WATCH » New Witch Hunt in Ecuador Against Indigenous and Environment Defenders

The Shuar situation about which Acción Ecológica had been sounding the alarm involved the escalation of the conflict between the Shuar community of Nankints, the government, and a Chinese mining conglomerate Explorcobres S.A. (EXSA). The government had granted EXSA rights to mine for copper in the area of San Carlos Panantza, which overlaps with Shuar ancestral territory, without seeking the consent of – let alone properly consulting with – the Shuar, despite the fact that international and Ecuadorian law require such consultation. As the mining project moved forward, the Shuar tried to engage various government entities in dialogue.Those attempts at dialogue were brutally interrupted in August when military and police forces forcibly evicted Shuar families from land the company needed for the mine. After a lack of adequate response from the government, in late November the Shuar attempted to return to those lands and were met with heavy police and military presence, including air assaults. When the vice president of FICSH tried to mediate, he was arrested. Instead of heading calls from regional and national indigenous federations for mediated dialogue, the government continued its heavy-handed approach, and the conflict escalated. Last week those protests turned violent, resulting in several injuries and the death of one policeman. The government then declared a 30-day “state of emergency” – essentially the suspension of rights and due process – and sent in the military, complete with armored tanks. President Rafael Correa wasted no time in taking to the airwaves and Twitter to defame the Shuar, calling them “semi-delinquents” and implying that they’re using extortion for material gain.

Source: AMAZON WATCH » New Witch Hunt in Ecuador Against Indigenous and Environment Defenders