TF News, Action and Analysis

From Food & Water Watch, by Wenonah Hauter
March 10, 2008

“What the recent story about traces of pharmaceuticals in our drinking water makes very clear is that access to safe drinking water is an issue that affects everyone. All our water sources –– rivers and reservoirs, springs and aquifers –– may contain drugs flushed down our toilets and off factory farms somewhere up stream. But scaring people away from their taps into the bottled water aisle at the grocery store will cost them thousands of dollars a year without making them any safer. Nearly 40 percent of bottled water is simply repackaged tap water. What’s more, there’s no government agency testing bottled water contamination from known hazards such as bacteria, synthetic contaminants, or heavy metals. While the Associated Press did not test bottled water, earlier testers have found dangerous substances such as arsenic and bromate, both known carcinogens. And bottled water comes with its own list of unknown hazards from chemicals leached into the water from the plastic bottles. Tap water is still the best choice for most Americans.”
Click here for the full article
[It is useful to consider that, while this article is correct in many respects, increasing numbers of people refuse to drink tap water because the majority of public water supplies in the U.S. contain fluoride and chlorine, both industrial poisons. There are also serious deficiencies in the monitoring of municipal water systems. Click here for more info on the dangers of fluoridation. Click here for information on the dangers of chlorination. - Ed.]

From Live Science via MSNBC, by Charles Q. Choi
March 10, 2008

“As environmentally friendly as hybrid and fully electric cars are, it turns out replacing normal vehicles with them might dangerously strain already scarce water reserves. Plugged-in hybrid electric vehicles run on electric mode for a limited distance before they switch to an internal combustion engine for longer trips, while fully electric vehicles operate solely off batteries. Both are presumed to be better for the planet than normal vehicles, because they release fewer emissions into the air. But these hybrid and fully electric cars rely in part on water.”
Click here for the full article
[Moral of this story & others like it: there’s no easy answer to the mess we’ve created, though it would help mightily if more emphasis were placed on diverse methods of conservation. -Ed.]

From Live Science, by Sam Hughes
March 2008

“Whether it took the Earth 4.5 billion years to get to where it is today (or a mere seven days), destroying it might take a lot less time. Sam Hughes presents a host of methods for ending the planet — and life — as we know it. Enjoy!”
Click here for an amusing exercise that will appeal to quantum physics buffs and science-literati! [Explore other corners of the website for useful information presented in entertaining style. - Ed]

From Counter Punch, by Mike Whitney
March 8, 2008

” ‘Market conditions are the worst anyone in this industry can ever remember. I don’t think anyone has a recollection of a total disappearance in liquidity…There are billion of dollars worth of assets out there for which there is just no market.’ Alain Grisay, chief executive officer of London-based F&C Asset Management Plc; Bloomberg News. The hurricane that began with subprime mortgages, has swept through the credit markets wreaking havoc on municipal bonds, hedge funds, complex structured investments, and agency debt (Fannie Mae). Now the first gusts from the Force-5 gale are touching down in the real economy where the damage is expected to be widespread.”
Click here for the full article

From Environmental Science & Technology Online
February 20, 2008

“Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) end up in the tons of solid sludge left behind by wastewater treatment processes. Those so-called biosolids are often repackaged and sold as fertilizers for both industrial and small-scale agriculture. In a new survey, published in ES&T (DOI: 10.1021/es702304c), researchers show for the first time that those compounds can turn up in earthworms…Bioaccumulation of PPCPs by worms is not entirely a surprise, according to Stockholm University’s Cynthia De Wit, who points to her own work looking at PBDEs and other persistent compounds in earthworms. However, the new research underscores that worms could serve as monitoring organisms, she says. Because the worms seem to concentrate compounds that may be present at undetectable levels in the soils, they can be ‘a sort of sentinel, or magnifying glass of what’s in the soil,’ she adds.”
[Why should this pollution be confined to our water supply? Will this and other recent revelations propel our sleeping ‘watchdogs’ to monitor the currently unregulated scores of products disgorged into the environment - which is being treated like a giant garbage dump?? - Ed.]
Click here for the full article
Click here to read an article on how eating worms affects the songs of male starlings [registration req., but free]

From Global Research (CA), by Jonathan Cook
March 8, 2008

“Israeli Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai’s much publicised remark last week about Gaza facing a “shoah” — the Hebrew word for the Holocaust — was widely assumed to be unpleasant hyperbole about the army’s plans for an imminent full-scale invasion of the Strip. More significantly, however, his comment offers a disturbing indication of the Israeli army’s longer -term strategy towards the Palestinians in the occupied territories. Vilnai, a former general, was interviewed by Army Radio as Israel was in the midst of unleashing a series of air and ground strikes on populated areas of Gaza that killed more than 100 Palestinians, at least half of whom were civilians and 25 of whom were children, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.”
Click here for the full article

From Huffington Post, by Lenore M. Lapidus
March 7, 2008

“On the eve of…the 98th Annual International Women’s Day, the international human rights community is sending a clear message to the United States government that it needs to step up and put an end to violence against and exploitation of immigrant women, Native American women, and women of color…[T]he Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) & the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants, Dr. Jorge Bustamente, both issued reports denouncing the U.S.’s record on human rights & highlighting numerous egregious violations. Both CERD & the Special Rapporteur issued a number of recommendations pertaining specifically to women, recognizing the compound forms of discrimination faced by women who are racial and ethnic minorities, undocumented immigrants, live in marginalized communities, & work in undervalued professions…Of particular concern to CERD were the extraordinary rate of sexual violence against Native American women & female migrant workers, especially domestic workers, & the U.S.’s denial of justice to these women.
Click here for the full article, with links to reports, agencies, more.

Click here for a related article on the International Criminal Court

From Food Navigator, by Chris Jones
March 5, 2008

“A coalition of ethical stock market investors have called on 63 US food, beverage and restaurant companies to stop using genetically modified (GM) sugar beet. The coalition of nearly 300 faith-based investors with over $100bn in invested capital, which goes under the name of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), has launched a web-based campaign against the planting of GM sugar beets from the April 2008 planting season.”
Click here for the full article
Click here to go to the campaign website

From AP (via Yahoo business news), by Jeannine Aversa
March 7, 2008

“Dangerous cracks in the nation’s job market are deepening. Employers slashed jobs by the largest amount in five years and hundreds of thousands of people dropped out of the labor force - ominous signs that the country is falling toward a recession or has already toppled into one. For the second straight month, nervous employers got rid of jobs nationwide. In February, they sliced payrolls by 63,000, even deeper than the 22,000 cut in January, the Labor Department reported Friday.”
Click here for the full article

From International Herald Tribune, by Carl Hulse
February 28, 2008

“The question has nagged at the parents of Americans born outside the continental United States for generations: Dare their children aspire to grow up and become president? In the case of Senator John McCain of Arizona, the issue is becoming more than a matter of parental daydreaming.”
Click here for the full article