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11/25/2005

China: Environmental Cataclysm, Millions without Water :.

Officials in Jilin City in China misled the public and then tried to dilute a huge benzene spill that had contaminated drinking water, it was revealed yesterday.

One hundreds tons of the carcinogenic chemical were discharged into the Songhua river earlier this month after an exposion at the 101 Chemical Plant in Jilin. The river supplies water to Harbin, the largest city in north-east China, which had its mains supply cut off this week.

Despite knowing that the blast had caused the equivalent of 10 tankerloads of benzene to enter the river on 13 November, Jilin officials told Chinese media the next day that the blast did not cause any air or water pollution. They also wanted to use reservoir water to dilute the pollution. The handling of the incident was an embarrassing and untimely reminder of the Chinese authorities' propensity for covering up bad news.

In a further blow to the credibility of the authorities, it was also revealed that another chemical plant had suffered an accident. The explosion at a chemical plant in Dianjiang county in Chongqing in western China killed one worker and caused the closure of two schools and the evacuation of at least 6,000 people, after strong-smelling smoke enveloped the area.

The incident, earlier this week, was not made public until yesterday - a cover-up reminiscent of the way Beijing tried to conceal the Sars outbreak in 2003.

There has been outrage in the Chinese media over the plight of 3.8 million of Harbin's nine million residents, who have been without water since midnight on Tuesday, but senior officials were still insisting that the authorities acted in an appropriate manner.



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ASPARATAME IS A MULTIPOTENTIAL CARCINOGENIC COMPOUND :.

I'm starting to wonder if aspartame was designed, from the beginning, as a mass culling agent:

A statistically significant increase in the incidence of malignant tumors, lymphomas and leukemias in rats exposed to varying doses of aspartame appears to link the artificial sweetener to a high carcinogenicity rate, according to a study accepted for publication today by the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP). The authors of the study, the first to demonstrate multipotential carcinogenic effects of aspartame administered to rats in feed, called for an "urgent reevaluation" of the current guidelines for the use and consumption of this compound.

"Our study has shown that aspartame is a multipotential carcinogenic compound whose carcinogenic effects are also evident at a daily dose of 20 milligrams per kilogram of body weight (mg/kg), notably less than the current acceptable daily intake for humans," the authors write. Currently, the acceptable daily intake for humans is set at 50 mg/kg in the United States and 40 mg/kg in Europe.

Aspartame is the second most widely used artificial sweetener in the world. It is found in more than 6,000 products including carbonated and powdered soft drinks, hot chocolate, chewing gum, candy, desserts, yogurt, and tabletop sweeteners, as well as some pharmaceutical products like vitamins and sugar-free cough drops. More than 200 million people worldwide consume it. The sweetener has been used for more than 30 years, having first been approved by the FDA in 1974. Studies of the carcinogenicity of aspartame performed by its producers have been negative.

The treated animals showed extensive evidence of malignant cancers including lymphomas, leukemias, and tumors at multiple organ sites in both males and females. The authors speculate the increase in lymphomas and leukemias may be related to one of the metabolites in aspartame, namely methanol, which is metabolized in both rats and humans to formaldehyde. Both methanol and formaldehyde have shown links to lymphomas and leukemias in other long-term experiments by the same authors.

The current study included more animals over a longer period than earlier studies. "In our opinion, previous studies did not comply with today's basic requirements for testing the carcinogenic potential of a physical or chemical agent, in particular concerning the number of rodents for each experimental group (40-86, compared to 100-150 in the current study) and the termination of previous studies at only 110 weeks of age of the animals," the study authors wrote.



Black Friday: Dawn of the Dead :.

Now playing at a shopping mall near you:

Orlando police officers were called to break up some fights between shoppers early Friday as Central Floridians flocked to stores for one of the busiest shopping days of the year, according to Local 6 News.

Line jumpers at a Best Buy at the Fashion Square Mall apparently started a fight at around 11:30 p.m. Officers responded and there were no arrests.

However, one person may be arrested for starting a fight at a Wal-Mart in east Orange County early Friday.

Some shoppers waited for as long as seven hours to be the first in the doors for bargains.

The day after Thanksgiving is known as "Black Friday" because traditionally it's seen as the day most retailers go into the "black" and start earning a profit for the year.

"I am looking for a plasma TV," Central Florida shopper Laura Campbell said. "I can get it for $287 instead of $700."

Local 6 News showed video of store shelves already empty.


11/23/2005

Black Market Raw Milk :.

The wanderers will come from miles around to hear the stories by the fire. Those of us who left the centers of "progress" and "innovation"---before the simplification---will talk about how the Machine destroyed the mind of man and made an enemy of the natural world...

Or something like that.

I've said it once, and I'll say it again: Know that there will be pockets of survivors and hope that they will not make the same mistakes that we did:

Fans of organic raw milk are going to extremes to get their fix.

Months after the state's only raw organic dairy was shut down, black-market buyer groups have emerged, drophouses are cropping up, and FedEx is making special deliveries to the Valley from California.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has long refused to budge from its stance that raw milk is dangerous, possibly carrying high levels of potentially deadly pathogens such as salmonella and E. coli. State dairy regulators, also concerned about the health risks, enforce strict rules on raw-milk producers and sellers and are cracking down on illegal practices.

Still, consumer demand is brisk. Nationally and in Arizona, people are breaking the law to get their hands on raw organic milk, claiming it is superior in health and taste to the pasteurized, homogenized milk found on the supermarket shelf. They swear it tastes like melted vanilla ice cream.

"It's like heroin right now," said Tony Spaltro, a night manager at Gentle Strength Co-Op in Tempe, one of the few places Arizona consumers can purchase raw milk.


Research Credit: hereticfig.com



Padilla Indicted After Three Years :.

Arbitrary imprisonment at the whim of the president:

Three years after the Bush administration labeled U.S. citizen Jose Padilla an enemy combatant and denied him normal access to the courts, he's facing criminal charges that he trained as a terrorist in preparation to fight a jihad.


11/22/2005

A Gutless, Draft-Dodging Coward Named Dick Cheney :.

The last thing we need in the increasingly bitter Iraq debate is a gutless, draft-dodging coward like Dick Cheney criticizing those who did serve their country.

The Vice President, who used multiple deferments to avoid serving his country during the Vietnam conflict, jumped into the fray big time last week and again on Monday with an acrid broadside against those who properly question the President’s motives for dragging the country into the bloody dead-end called Iraq.

"This is revisionism of the most corrupt and shameless variety," Cheney said yesterday. "It has no place anywhere in American politics."

Sorry Dickie boy, but it is you and your cronies at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue who have "no place anywhere in American politics." It is hypocrites like you, you shameless, cowardly son-of-a-bitch, who should be led from the White House in chains and locked away in some hellhole to rot for eternity.


Related: Cheney's Shotgun Rampage



Report: Bush Talked of Bombing Al-Jazeera :.

Let the D notices fly!

A civil servant has been charged under Britain's Official Secrets Act for allegedly leaking a government memo that a newspaper said Tuesday suggested that Prime Minister Tony Blair persuaded President Bush not to bomb the Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera.

The Daily Mirror reported that Bush spoke of targeting Al-Jazeera's headquarters in Doha, Qatar, when he met Blair at the White House on April 16, 2004. The Bush administration has regularly accused Al-Jazeera of being nothing more than a mouthpiece for anti-American sentiments.

The Daily Mirror attributed its information to unidentified sources. One source, said to be in the government, was quoted as saying that the alleged threat was "humorous, not serious," but the newspaper quoted another source as saying that "Bush was deadly serious, as was Blair."


Related: Control Room Is a Great Documentary



JFK: All These Secrets Are the Same Secret :.

Old essay.



Gold Approaches $500

Session high: $495.30



Off Topic: Grain Mills

Do any of you have hands on experience with either the Country Living or Diamant mills?

We're thinking about going with the Country Living mill because it employs sealed ball bearings and carbon steel burrs. It's also hundreds of dollars less than the Diamant.

Discussion



Cryptogon Donations

Some Cryptogon readers have sent donations over the past several days:

AF $20
GC $25
MW $20

Thank you all for your kind words and congratulations on my marriage to Becky.


11/21/2005

What is Google Doing? :.

I don't know what Google is up to, but they aren't kidding around:

So why buy-up all that fiber, then?

The probable answer lies in one of Google's underground parking garages in Mountain View. There, in a secret area off-limits even to regular GoogleFolk, is a shipping container. But it isn't just any shipping container. This shipping container is a prototype data center. Google hired a pair of very bright industrial designers to figure out how to cram the greatest number of CPUs, the most storage, memory and power support into a 20- or 40-foot box. We're talking about 5000 Opteron processors and 3.5 petabytes of disk storage that can be dropped-off overnight by a tractor-trailer rig. The idea is to plant one of these puppies anywhere Google owns access to fiber, basically turning the entire Internet into a giant processing and storage grid.



General Motors Slashes 30,000 Jobs :.

General Motors said on Monday it would cut 30,000 North American manufacturing jobs and close a dozen plants as it struggles to compete with fast-growing rivals led by Toyota Motor. The cuts affect about a quarter of the North American factory work force at GM and are the deepest since it eliminated 21 plants and 74,000 jobs over four years beginning in December 1991.


11/20/2005

Ireland Cleans Up with Low Corporate Tax Rates :.

Ireland faces a threat to its tax revenues from the European Union and the United States as international concerns grow about the attractiveness of Ireland's low-tax regime for companies.

The European Commission has published proposals for the harmonisation of the European corporation tax base, effectively standardising the way tax is calculated across Europe, which Ireland's EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy has described as tax harmonisation "by the back door".

Now pressure is also growing on the US government following news stories which have shown that US companies such as Microsoft and Google are avoiding hundreds of millions of dollars in US taxes by paying the lower rates of corporate tax in Ireland.




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