Food safety is important, but it is not the only consideration when choosing foods.
For example, for people in the U.S., the aversion to dog meat and horse meat is more a cultural matter than a safety issue. For Jews and Muslims, the aversion to pork might have begun as a safety issue historically, but now it is more a religious and cultural matter. Some people shun genetically modified foods because they fear such foods would be unsafe to eat, and some shun them for other reasons, such as their environmental or economic impacts. Some people prefer eggs from free range chickens not because it makes a big difference in the quality of the eggs, but because of their concerns about animal cruelty. Foie gras was banned in California because of concerns about animal cruelty, not food safety. Pink slime may be viewed as disgusting even if it is safe to eat. Some people might wish to avoid certain foods because they are farmed or manufactured in ways that harm the environment. No one has argued that whale meat or turtle meat is unsafe. Shark fin soup is not unsafe. Products might be shunned because they are produced under onerous conditions for workers. Some people think particular foods should be controlled because they increase the likelihood of becoming overweight.
Snack manufacturers argue that there are no bad foods, only bad diets. What should regulatory agencies do about that, especially when many people do have bad diets?
A clear distinction should be drawn between unsafe products and unsafe practices. If infants are fed with tea or cola, perhaps along with breast milk or infant formula, they might not get sick immediately, but they may experience health consequences in the future. What about the case in which, to save money, one grandmother diluted the infant formula by half, because, she said, the baby wouldn’t know the difference? Here it is not the products but the practices that are unsafe. Where does one draw the line between safety concerns in the traditional sense, i.e. pathogen contamination, and other food-related concerns?
Agencies with responsibilities for food regulation should be explicit about what is within the scope of their work, and what is excluded. They should explain how they do their work, and be plain about its limitations. This is important because non-specialists don’t make sharp distinctions between questions such as “is it safe for you?” and “is it good for you?” Many people take approval of a product by an official-sounding agency as an endorsement of that product. The manufacturers take advantage of this. They know that if they claim something has been approved by an agency, many customers will think that means it is good for you, or has other virtues. On close examination we might see that approval is actually based on little more than the manufacturers submitting the proper forms, with the agency making no independent assessment of any kind.
If the national food regulatory agency’s mandate is to look only at safety in the narrow sense of worrying about immediate harm to users, which agencies would attend to other considerations that might be important?
To illustrate, there is good evidence that long chain fatty acids in the diets of pregnant women and infants affect the child’s development, not only physically but also intellectually. Ocean fish and beef from grass-fed cows have good fatty acids in them. However, some industrially produced meats – cultured fish fed mainly with grains and cows fed with grains rather than grass – are not as rich in these crucial fatty acids. How should factors that affect consumers’ long-term intellectual development be addressed? Which government food agencies should look after them?
If infant formula manufacturers make bogus claims that synthetic fatty acids added to infant formula make important contributions to infants’ development, who will call on them to account for these claims? If these are not safety issues, what should we name them?
It was a battle over agricultural biotechnology that didn’t happen — at least not in the House Agriculture Committee’s July 11 markup of its version of the proposed new Farm Bill.
After a long day of discussing, and then voting on, more than 100 proposed amendments, the wearied-looking legislators finished the markup without addressing some controversial biotech riders tucked into Title X: Horticulture.
But that doesn’t mean heated debate over these riders won’t flare up as the Farm Bill makes its hopeful way toward approval in September.
Critics of agricultural biotechnology say that genetically engineered crops can be harmful to human health and to the environment. They point to warnings from an array of scientists that the artificial insertion of genetic material into plants could cause significant problems such as an increase in the levels of known toxicants in food, the introduction of new toxicants or new allergies, and the reduction of the nutritional value of food.
On the other side of the health divide, the American Medical Association’s House of Delegates recently reaffirmed its support of biotechnology in the production of safe, nutritious food. AMA also pointed to the continuing validity of federal regulation, saying that food produced through biotechnology poses no more risk than food produced in conventional ways.
In an effort to boost the public’s understanding of this new way of producing food, the International Food Information Council Foundation has released five videos featuring leading physicians in the fields of pediatrics, food allery and obstetrics who answer frequently asked questions about food biotechnology.
In 1992, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration established a policy declaring that there is no substantial or material difference between genetically engineered foods and foods that haven’t been genetically engineered.
Even so, many consumers are wary, if not downright opposed, to this new technology.
In a July 12 press release, the Center for Food Safety vowed to continue its strong opposition to the bill’s attachments, describing them as “irresponsible and unnecessary changes to USDA regulations” that would severely weaken the agency’s oversight of genetically engineered crops, and thus “fundamentally erode science-based review.”
Remaining optimistic, the Center expects the riders to be eliminated on the House floor when the full House considers the draft version of the Farm Bill, or when the House and Senate bills go to conference.
On the other side of the biotech fence, Karen Batra, spokesperson for Biotechnology Industry Organization, BIO, told Food Safety News that the organization doesn’t want to speculate on how Congress will vote on a final package, “but we are pleased with the bipartisan support shown in the committee for clarifying the US regulatory system for ag biotech.”
The fact that the provisions remain in the proposed bill is good news, she said, because they offer common-sense modifications that would benefit an approval system that has become “duplicative, unpredictable and costly.”
Summary of the Riders
According to the summary of the proposed bill, the biotechnology provisions in Title 10 reiterate that the USDA is authorized to regulate the introduction and cultivation of products of biotechnology if the products pose a plant pest risk.
When a petition for deregulation of a biotech variety is received, a comprehensive plant pest risk assessment is conducted. Once it is determined that the product poses no plant pest risk, the authority to regulate the product under the Plant Protection Act ceases and a final decision is made to deregulate the product.
Recent petitions for deregulation have taken several years, though the actual review takes only weeks, and USDA regulation provides for a maximum limit of 180 days.
The current framework of the Plant Protection Act, which is intended to ensure the safety of biotechnology crop reviews, has been impeded by numerous procedural lawsuits. Many of these lawsuits have been proven to include frivolous claims and have been based on extraneous statutes that conflict with USDA’s statutory mandate to regulate based on plant pest risk.
These challenges have strained the limited resources of the USDA, imposed millions of dollars in unnecessary costs on taxpayers and hundreds of millions of dollars in lost opportunity costs on our national economy, and endangered the United States’ leadership role in this new and beneficial field of science.
Agricultural biotechnology is an evolutionary technology with revolutionary potential to feed an ever-increasing world population, while enhancing environmental stewardship.
In conclusion, says the summary, the provisions “will ensure that the transparent, comprehensive and scientifically-based review of these products occurs in a timeframe that facilitates continued innovation and adaptation of new tools to meet the challenges of food security.”
Over the past three years, scientists at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have conducted whole genome sequencing on over hundreds of foodborne pathogens to get a detailed map of their DNA. Now, with the help of university researchers and a private company, they’re expanding that figure to 100,000.
The initiative, aptly titled “The 100K Genome Project,” is a private-public collaboration between FDA, the University of California Davis and Agilent, a testing technology company.
By developing this new database, FDA hopes to help health officials cut down on the time it takes to identify the source of an outbreak.
Right now, investigators are able to identify clusters of illnesses by uploading pathogens isolated from different individuals to the government-maintained PulseNet database. But the information in PulseNet can only tell which cases are related. It does not provide the genetic details needed to figure out what food the bug is coming from.
For that, investigators must question victims to see whether they ate a common food in the days preceding their illnesses.
“Humans tend to move around a lot and they don’t have a good memory of what they ate, so getting good information from humans is really hard,” explains Steven Musser, Director of the Office of Regulatory Science at FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.
Musser, who is working on the genome sequencing project, says this new database will supplement PulseNet by providing high-resolution data, such as where an organism was found, whether it is resistant to any antibiotics and perhaps even the food on which it was found.
“In terms of resolution it would be sort of like looking at the stars with the Hubble space telescope versus looking at them with binoculars,” he explained in an interview with Food Safety News.
This new database will be comprised mostly of genetic information on pathogens isolated from food, he says, so if a human isolate is uploaded and matches a pathogen already in the database, investigators will know what region, or even business, the matching food sample came from.
Sign Change.org Petition to Save the Program.President Obama, you probably do not remember my three daughters: Morgan, Olivia and Sydney, hanging out with Sasha and Malia and Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers backstage before one of the inaugural parties, but $50,000 out of my pocket does. As you might remember, I went all in for your 2008 campaign, and judging by the calls and emails that I get on a daily basis from your campaign, you want me to do it again.
Within a few months of taking office, you came face to face with what I have seen for decades – another multi-state foodborne illness outbreak. The now infamous Peanut Corporation of America Salmonella tragedy sickened several hundred throughout the United States and killed nine. I thought you got it when you were quoted as saying:
“That’s what Sasha eats for lunch probably three times a week. And you know, I don’t wanna have to worry about whether she’s gonna get sick as a consequence to having her lunch.”
True, that outbreak – and several others in proceeding years – prompted Congressional action on the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) – that you very, very quietly signed into law. However, the law still remains unfunded and many of the food safety rules remain hidden away in the your White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
And, now because of industry pressure, your administration wants to kill the $4.5M budget for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Microbiological Data Program (MDP). Ironically, to this long-time democratic supporter, the program was launched under President Bush’s 2001 Food Safety Initiative, and until the end of July tested about 15,000 samples of fruits and vegetables each year, far more than any other federal or state program.
Here is how MDP works: Public health officials pull samples of tomatoes (cherry, round, roma), cantaloupe, lettuce (leaf, romaine, cut, and pre-washed), celery, parsley, cilantro, spinach (bunched and bagged and pre-washed), hot peppers, sprouts (alfalfa and clover), onions (bulb and green), and yes, even Sasha’s peanut butter, and test for pathogens that can kill your kids and mine.
The samples are collected from distribution centers in 11 states that represent about 50 percent of the United States population. Any isolated pathogens are sent for pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) testing and the resulting genetic pattern is uploaded to the Centers for Disease Control PulseNet database so that it can be matched against human isolates or outbreak patterns. MDP also tests all isolates for antimicrobial resistance and contributes data to the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring (NARMS) database.
From 2009 to 2012, MDP found Salmonella 100 times, E. coli O157:H7 twice and Listeria monocytogenes 8 times. Over the same time period, the program sparked 23 Salmonella recalls, two E. coli O157:H7 recalls and five Listeria recalls. Of the pathogens the program identified during that time, 39 Salmonella isolates were matched to human illnesses – as were the two E. coli O157:H7 and all eight Listeria isolates.
Last month, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed a controversial cap on sugary drink portion sizes. If the proposal is passed, sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces will no longer be able to be sold in the city’s restaurants, stadiums, food carts and movie theatres.
The group bills itself as a “coalition of citizens, businesses, and community organizations who believe that consumers have the right to purchase beverages in whatever size they choose.”
But the “organizations” listed on the website simply run the gamut of businesses that sell soda, ranging from AMC Entertainment to the Chik-Fil-A.
Goddard Gunster is not a group of concerned citizens in New York City. It is based in Washington, D.C.
If this is all sounding familiar to you, you’re not imagining things. Back in 2010, the New York Times reported on a “grassroots” coalition dedicated to killing Governor David Paterson’s proposed penny per ounce soda tax:
Enter New Yorkers Against Unfair Taxes, set up by the beverage industry, grocers and the Teamsters, who work as drivers and in production. The organization’s Web site describes it as a humble coalition of “hard-working individuals, struggling families and already burdened small businesses,” like Benny’s Pizza and Kay’s Deli.
But behind the scenes, much of the strategic work came from Goddard Claussen, the public affairs company whose “Harry and Louise” commercials helped defeat President Bill Clinton’s health care overhaul efforts. The company was retained by the American Beverage Association to lobby against the New York tax.
Goddard Claussen was so proud of killing the NYS soda tax, that it highlighted its New Yorkers Against Unfair Taxes coalition on its website with a full page write-up that boasted: “As part of a comprehensive outreach effort, we recruited over 10,000 citizens and 158 businesses to join New Yorkers Against Unfair Taxes.” Shortly after this web page was discovered by the media, it was removed from the website.
Goddard Gunster continues to promote its work derailing soda taxes. Subsidiary Goddard Claussen West currently highlights the California astroturf coalition it formed in 2009-2010:
GC coordinated with the national effort (now known as Americans Against Food Taxes) and created a California coalition, Californians Against Food and Beverage Taxes (CAFBT).
CAFBT initially recruited hundreds of supporters throughout the state including organizations whose leaders and members could serve effectively as spokespeople for the coalition in the press and as messengers to key legislators. The California Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Neighborhood Market Association and California Retailers Association took lead roles in that regard.
If you’re wondering about the national anti-soda tax coalition effort cited above, the Center for Media and Democracy’s Source Watch has this to say about it:
Americans Against Food Taxes (AAFT) is a front group funded by the beverage industry, which consists of major restaurant chains, food and soft drink manufacturers and their associated lobbying groups. It was organized by the American Beverage Association to fight a proposed three to ten cent tax on soda, sugary drinks and energy drinks to help fund health care reform in the United States….its extensive membership consists mainly of lobbying groups for packaged food and soda companies, chain restaurant corporations and the world’s large food and soft drink manufacturers and distributors, including the Coca-Cola Company, Dr. Pepper-Royal Crown Bottling Co., PepsiCo, Canada Dry Bottling Co. of New York, the Can Manufacturers Institute, 7-Eleven Convenience Stores, and Yum! Brands.
Its domain name, http://www.nofoodtaxes.com, was formerly registered to Goddard Claussen public relations, based in Washington, D.C. The website’s domain registration has since changed to Domains By Proxy, Inc., which allows registrants to remain anonymous.
Ties run long and deep between the beverage industry and Goddard Claussen. According to her bio, American Beverage Association President Susan Neely previously worked for Health Insurance Association of America and “created and managed numerous issues campaigns, including the award winning ‘Harry and Louise’ TV commercials and campaign” in 1994, which was created by Goddard Claussen.
With the beverage industry on overdrive to halt sugary drink taxes and now the Bloomberg portion cap proposal, it’s not surprising that almost everywhere a soda tax or portion cap has been proposed, an anti-soda tax or anti-portion cap coalition and website has quickly appeared. In Richmond, California, which will have a soda tax measure on the November ballot, the Community Coalition Against Beverage Taxes was recently created by the beverage industry. The coalition’s website domain is registered under Goddard Claussen Public Affairs in Washington. Anti-soda tax coalitions have also been created in the following locales. Note the similarities in many of the domain names:
The deep-pocketed American Beverage Association, which is funded by Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Dr. Pepper/Snapple and others, has been successfully framing the sugary beverage tax issue across the nation with the help of astroturf coalitions created by Goddard Claussen/Goddard Gunster. Mayor Bloomberg’s recent portion cap proposal is getting the same treatment with the industry’s creation of New Yorkers for Beverage Choices. Until public health advocates can effectively undermine the legitimacy of these fake coalitions, Big Beverage will continue to have the messaging advantage.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — President Obama’s reelection campaign filed a federal lawsuit against Ohio’s top elections official Tuesday in a dispute over the battleground state’s law that restricts in-person early voting in the three days leading up to Election Day.
The lawsuit, filed in Columbus, follows a series of election-law changes that were passed by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature and signed by Gov. John Kasich (R).
Graphic
Obama’s campaign and other Democrats argue that the law unfairly ends in-person early voting for most Ohioans on the Friday evening before the Tuesday election while allowing military and overseas voters to cast ballots in person until Monday.
Before the changes to the law, local election boards had the discretion to set their own hours for such voting on the days before the election. And in-person voting on the weekend varied among the state’s 88 counties.
The state’s elections chief, Secretary of State Jon Husted, has argued that all counties should have the same early-voting hours and be open on the same days. Husted and his fellow Republicans contend it is unfair that a voter in one county can cast an early ballot on a day when a voter in a neighboring county cannot.
Obama for America was joined in the lawsuit by the Democratic National Committee and the Ohio Democratic Party.
Ohio is one of 32 states that allow voters to cast early ballots by mail or in person without an excuse. About 30 percent of the total vote in swing states — or roughly 1.7 million ballots — came in ahead of Election Day in the last presidential election.
Obama won Ohio in 2008, but Republican challenger Mitt Romney is expected to make a strong play for it in November.
Bambang Muryanto and Arya Dipa, The Jakarta Post, Yogyakarta/Bandung | Archipelago | Tue,
Mount Merapi, located in Yogyakarta, emitted high-pressure gas on Sunday afternoon that caused its crater wall to collapse and volcanic ash to fall on its western slope, as smoke billowed up to 1 kilometer into the sky.
As the gas discharge was not followed by other dangerous volcanic activity, the phenomenon was regarded as a small-scale volcanic eruption and the volcano’s alert status remained normal.
“Mount Merapi’s status remains normal because there was no dangerous volcanic activity,” said Volcanic Technology Development and Research Center (BPPTK) head Subandriyo on Monday.
According to Subandriyo, the incident was due to the accumulation of gas produced by the volcano’s magma. As the gas’ exit fumarole was too narrow, the volcano eventually released all the buildup of very high pressure gas by erupting, which caused the crater wall to collapse and this emitted a massive rumble.
“The incident can be called a small-scale ‘volcanic eruption’,” said Subandriyo.
In Bandung, West Java, Geological Disaster Mitigation and Volcanology Center head Surono said the collapse of the crater wall of Mount Merapi on Sunday was a natural process. The collapse was not due to an increase in volcanic activity of the most active volcano in Indonesia.
The lava dome collapsed because rocks and eruption material from the 2010 eruption were still not completely set and stable. “The force of gravity or the weight of the rocks has caused the crater wall to collapse,” Surono said in a text message on Monday.
The lava dome collapsed on Sunday at 6:02 p.m. local time. According to Surono, officers at the Babadan observation post, located more than 5 kilometers from the mountain park, heard a rumbling sound which was a result of the collapse.
They also observed smoke billowing at a height of 1,000 meters above the peak, slanting westward. Surono added that a slight ash cloud occurred, followed by the smell of sulfur. “Based on a report, a rain of ash took place in Jurang Jero and Srumbung. The smoke was not emitted from an eruption, but rather by the collapsed crater dome,” Surono said.
Surono urged residents living around the volcano to remain calm and not panic due to unclear rumors. “Information on volcanic activity can be obtained from the Yogyakarta BPPTK,” added Surono.
Subandriyo said the amount of gas pressure was unclear, as his office was unable to conduct the measurements. The crater emitted thick smoke mixed with gas and ash and rose up to 1 kilometer. Its shape resembled a pyroclastic flow.
According to Subandriyo, the phenomenon was the first after it erupted in 2010. “The volcanic magma is currently rich with gas. This did not occur before the 2010 eruption,” he said. He added that in the past month, the crater dome of the 2,800-meter tall volcano often collapsed because the structure of the dome was not yet stable and due to the drought.
He also called on residents living along the slope of the mountain to remain calm because the status remained remains normal. However, he has advised trekkers not to approach the peak as it was quite dangerous. “Climbers should only hike up to Pasar Bubrah,” said Subandriyo. Pasar Bubrah is located around 400 meters from the peak.
Yoto, a resident in Jengglik hamlet, Ngablak district, Magelang, Central Java, who was at the western slope of Mount Merapi, said he heard a loud rumble coming from the peak of the mountain on Sunday afternoon. “I heard the rumble at around 6 p.m.” he said.
According to him, the gas emission led to ash rain which lightly covered Purwosari hamlet, Ngablak village.
Jamin, head of Kali Tengah Kidul hamlet, Cangkringan, Sleman, Yogyakarta, located around 4 kilometers from the peak, said he also heard the rumble on Sunday afternoon.
However, the incident did not cause residents to evacuate due to the ash rain. “I heard the rumble, but residents remained calm. We are used to hearing these rumbles,” said Jamin.
Mount Merapi, located in Yogyakarta, emitted high-pressure gas on Sunday afternoon that caused its crater wall to collapse and volcanic ash to fall on its western slope, as smoke billowed up to 1 kilometer into the sky. As the gas discharge was not followed by other dangerous volcanic activity, the phenomenon was regarded as a small-scale volcanic eruption and the volcano’s alert status remained normal. “Mount Merapi’s status remains normal because there was no dangerous volcanic activity,” said Volcanic Technology Development and Research Center (BPPTK) head Subandriyo on Monday. According to Subandriyo, the incident was due to the accumulation of gas produced by the volcano’s magma. As the gas’ exit fumarole was too narrow, the volcano eventually released all the buildup of very high pressure gas by erupting, which caused the crater wall to collapse and this emitted a massive rumble. “The incident can be called a small-scale ‘volcanic eruption’,” said Subandriyo. In Bandung, West Java, Geological Disaster Mitigation and Volcanology Center head Surono said the collapse of the crater wall of Mount Merapi on Sunday was a natural process. The collapse was not due to an increase in volcanic activity of the most active volcano in Indonesia.
The lava dome collapsed because rocks and eruption material from the 2010 eruption were still not completely set and stable. “The force of gravity or the weight of the rocks has caused the crater wall to collapse,” Surono said in a text message on Monday. The lava dome collapsed on Sunday at 6:02 p.m. local time. According to Surono, officers at the Babadan observation post, located more than 5 kilometers from the mountain park, heard a rumbling sound which was a result of the collapse. They also observed smoke billowing at a height of 1,000 meters above the peak, slanting westward. Surono added that a slight ash cloud occurred, followed by the smell of sulfur. “Based on a report, a rain of ash took place in Jurang Jero and Srumbung. The smoke was not emitted from an eruption, but rather by the collapsed crater dome,” Surono said. Surono urged residents living around the volcano to remain calm and not panic due to unclear rumors. “Information on volcanic activity can be obtained from the Yogyakarta BPPTK,” added Surono. Subandriyo said the amount of gas pressure was unclear, as his office was unable to conduct the measurements. The crater emitted thick smoke mixed with gas and ash and rose up to 1 kilometer. Its shape resembled a pyroclastic flow. According to Subandriyo, the phenomenon was the first after it erupted in 2010. “The volcanic magma is currently rich with gas. This did not occur before the 2010 eruption,” he said. He added that in the past month, the crater dome of the 2,800-meter tall volcano often collapsed because the structure of the dome was not yet stable and due to the drought.
He also called on residents living along the slope of the mountain to remain calm because the status remained remains normal. However, he has advised trekkers not to approach the peak as it was quite dangerous. “Climbers should only hike up to Pasar Bubrah,” said Subandriyo. Pasar Bubrah is located around 400 meters from the peak. Yoto, a resident in Jengglik hamlet, Ngablak district, Magelang, Central Java, who was at the western slope of Mount Merapi, said he heard a loud rumble coming from the peak of the mountain on Sunday afternoon. “I heard the rumble at around 6 p.m.” he said. According to him, the gas emission led to ash rain which lightly covered Purwosari hamlet, Ngablak village. Jamin, head of Kali Tengah Kidul hamlet, Cangkringan, Sleman, Yogyakarta, located around 4 kilometers from the peak, said he also heard the rumble on Sunday afternoon. However, the incident did not cause residents to evacuate due to the ash rain. “I heard the rumble, but residents remained calm. We are used to hearing these rumbles,” said Jamin.
LOUISVILLE KY
WILMINGTON OH
CHARLESTON WV
MOUNT HOLLY NJ
STATE COLLEGE PA
LINCOLN IL
PADUCAH KY
KANSAS CITY/PLEASANT HILL MO
BLACKSBURG VA
WAKEFIELD VA
OMAHA/VALLEY NE
QUAD CITIES IA IL
HASTINGS NE
SIOUX FALLS SD
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BALTIMORE MD/WASHINGTON DC
INDIANAPOLIS IN
NEW YORK NY
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Greece’s hottest day this year is forcing authorities to shut down the Athens Acropolis six hours before schedule in the interests of visitor health, the site’s guards said on Monday.
The country’s top monument was to shut down at 1100 GMT instead of its normal 1700 GMT closing time, a guard told AFP.
The ancient citadel is perched on a rocky plateau rising amid a sea of concrete in the Greek capital of over four million, offering precious little shade to thousands of tourists who visit it daily.
Temperatures in Athens were set to exceed 42 degrees Celsius (107.6 Fahrenheit) at the close of this year’s hottest week that earlier forced authorities to make air-conditioned halls available to the public.
The environment ministry said air pollution was also above warning levels in various parts of the capital as it warned people with respiratory problems and heart trouble to stay indoors.
Looking for relief from the heat over much of the Lower 48 states? Head to coastal Alaska where they are experiencing the coldest first half of July on record!
Through the first 14 days of July, the average temperature in Anchorage was 53.1 degrees factoring in daily highs and lows, which makes it the coldest first half of the month on record according to the National Weather Service in Anchorage.
Should this temperature trend continue, it could threaten the record for the coldest July ever, which occurred in 1920 and had an average temperature of 54.4 degrees.
Typically this stretch of time is the warmest of the year. Instead, temperatures in the city of Anchorage are running 5.3 degrees below average.
Somedays have even turned out colder than cities on the Arctic Coast such as Barrow. On July 12th, the high temperature topped out at 54 degrees in Anchorage, while temperatures soared to 62 in Barrow (a whooping 15 degrees above average.)
Not only has it been cool, but residents of the Alaska city haven’t seen much sunlight due to overcast skies and a persistent flow off the ocean. Rainfall through the first 14 days is running slightly above normal at 120 percent. But the clouds and cool temperatures have been the bigger story.
The reason for the cool weather along the coast has been due to jet stream position. Normally it will fluctuate northward sending storms into western Alaska and allowing ridging to build over the southern and central part of the state at times.
Well this summer it’s been consistently farther south sending storm after storm into the Gulf of Alaska, keeping a cool southeast flow of air aimed on the southern coast.
While heavy rain isn’t common with this kind of a storm track, the flow will keep clouds and cool temperatures in the offing as long as it persists.
Anchorage hasn’t been the only southern city feeling the chill. Homer, Alaska is running 5 degrees below normal for the month thus far while Palmer is running 3.8 degrees below average.
Residents of Anchorage and the southern coast shouldn’t expect any big warm ups anytime soon as this pattern of storms moving into the Gulf of Alaska looks to persist at least through next weekend.
Since early June, the Midwest and parts of the northern and central Plains have faced a devastating drought. The lack of substantial rainfall has had severe effects on corn production and has resulted in desertlike conditions for some areas. Paired with the recent heat wave, the situation has become a disaster for corn growers and has significantly driven down yields in the United States for 2012.
Some parts of the nation are better off than others when compared to a week ago, in terms of dryness and drought. However, some areas, including part of the corn belt, have gotten worse.
Waves of downpours have greatly eased the drought in portions of northern Florida and southern Georgia in recent weeks, while dry conditions have gotten worse in parts of the corn belt.
Even though the recent heat wave has ended, weeks of drought and days of 100-degree temperatures have already taken a toll on this year’s corn crop in a large part of the Midwestern United States.
Spotty downpours will grace northern and eastern areas of the corn belt into August, but not enough rain will fall on a large part of the corn belt, leading to a disaster.
A 640-acre wildfire on California’s Central Coast has forced evacuations of about 50 homes in rural San Luis Obispo County. State fire spokeswoman Tina Rose says the fire covering about one square mile was burning Monday in grass, brush and oak woodlands, forcing the evacuation of homes on Parkhill Road near Highway 58 about five miles east of the town of Santa Margarita, where an elementary school has been opened as a shelter. The evacuation order will remain in effect overnight. More than 200 firefighters are battling the blaze with help from six aircraft. It was 20 percent contained. Firefighters are being challenged by the fire’s location in very rough terrain. Wind gusts up to 21 mph are being reported in the area and temperatures were in the mid-70s.
A surfer struggles to keep upright on a large, rough wave off the Southern California shore at El Segundo Beach in El Segundo, Calif., Friday, Dec. 15. 2006. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)
While Fabio should weaken as it heads northward in the eastern Pacific, Southern California will feel some impacts.
Fabio will encounter cooler Pacific water and stronger wind shear, causing the system to weaken into a remnant area of low pressure by Wednesday.
However, rough surf, increased clouds and spotty showers are in store for Southern California Wednesday night and Thursday as the remnants of Fabio move into Southern California or the northern part of Baja California.
Large swells up to 4-6 feet will be stirred by the remnants of Fabio.
Showers will be more likely in Southern California on Wednesday night, especially in the higher elevations. Flash flooding could be a concern in the Southern California mountains if any heavier downpours develop.
Clouds will increase with some spotty showers farther north across central California on Thursday.
17.07.2012
Tornado
Poland
Greater Poland Voivodeship, [Region of Pomerania (Tuchola Forest area)]
A freak wave of tornadoes ripped through northern Poland on Sunday, wrecking houses and swathes of forest and leaving one person dead and another 10 injured. Tornadoes are not unknown in the European Union’s largest eastern country but the scope and power of Sunday’s twisters was unusual and comes in a summer already marked by flash floods, hailstorms and gales. Some 1,200 rescuers were working to remove fallen trees, unblock roads and restore utilities in the hardest hit Baltic region of Pomerania. Trees were uprooted, buildings damaged and power lines downed, while some 550 hectares of woodlands in the Tuchola Forest area were flattened. “I saw a black column coming our way,” an injured inhabitant of the Wycinki village, whose farm was destroyed by the tornado told state television. “It carried everything away with it … birds, debris, sucked up water from the lake.” A caravan with a family of three inside was seen flying through the air in the village of Stara Rzeka and breaking into pieces upon landing, but its occupants suffered no serious injuries. “The sole fatality was a 60-year-old man in the Pomeranian village of Wycinki who was crushed to death by his collapsing summer cottage,” fire brigade spokesman Pawel Fratczak told Reuters by telephone. The tornadoes were the latest outburst of violent weather that has battered Poland since the start of the month with hailstorms, gales, cloudbursts and flash floods. Meteorologists categorising the twister as a class two tornado with wind velocity of up to 200 km/h.
Flooding and landslides caused by record torrential rain on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu have killed six people and left 20 missing. Rescue workers had been unable to reach some of the areas where people were believed to be buried under landslides, television reports said on Thursday. Authorities in the prefectural capital of Kumamoto ordered about 48,000 residents to flee the city. Blackouts hit about 10,000 households in Kumamoto and Oita prefectures, the Kyushu Electric Power Company reported. Railway services and motor traffic were suspended, Kyodo said, while some bullet train services were temporarily halted in the island’s north and centre. The Japan Meteorological Agency said rainfall in some parts of the island had reached levels that have “never been experienced”. It said hourly rainfall in the morning topped 120mm in Aso and reached 120mm in Ubuyama. The agency warned of more heavy rain and landslides in northern parts of Kyushu before the downpours move north to the main island of Honshu later on Thursday.
17.07.2012
Flash Flood
India
State of North Bengal, [Area of Teesta, Jaldhaka and Torsa river basins]
Flash floods hit North Bengal with three main rivers – Teesta, Jaldhaka and Torsha – flowing over the danger levels at several places and displacing nearly 2,000 people from their homes. State Irrigation Minister Manas Bhunia on Monday visited North Bengal to take stock of the situation. “Heavy rainfall in parts of North Bengal pose a serious threat to river embankments. The rivers with its origin in Bhutan have not been maintained properly in the past resulting in a rise in their river bed. The work to repair breached embankments has started,” Bhunia said. He will visit Nagrakata in Jalpaiguri on Tuesday where uninterrupted rainfall has played havoc. Bhunia said he has informed Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee about the situation over the phone. “Cooked food and tarpaulins have been distributed among those displaced,” he added. In the last three days, Jalpaiguri district has received 40mm, 102 mm and 81 mm rainfall, respectively, said disaster management department. During the same period, Darjeeling recorded 248 mm rainfall. Cooch Behar, too, has recorded heavy downpour in the last three days. The areas severely affected by rainfall include Nagrakata, Domohani, Fulbari, Hasimara. The administration is suspecting landslides.
Flood-battered Japan warily eyes typhoon
Fears it could heap further misery
AFP
Ukiha: Flood-battered southwestern Japan on Tuesday braced for a typhoon amid fears it could heap further misery on an area where at least 32 are dead or missing after record rainfall.
Typhoon Khanun was lashing the Amami island chain south of Kyushu where four days of torrential rain have sparked landslides and flooding, forcing hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.
Khanun – “jack fruit” in Thai – packing winds of up to 126 kilometres (78 miles) per hour, was moving west-northwest at 30 kilometres per hour and was expected to graze the west of Kyushu island through Wednesday afternoon, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
Tuesday brought a lull in the rainfall for most of the region as the weather agency said there was up to 9.2 centimetres (3.6 inches) of rain in the 24 hours to 4.20pm (0720 GMT) in the north of Kyushu.
In hard-hit Minamiaso in Kumamoto prefecture, more than 670 people remained unable to return to their homes on Tuesday afternoon because of landslide fears.
“We started reconstruction work on damaged roads yesterday, but workers have been forced to step aside repeatedly by occasional rains,” said local official Hideki Kuraoka.
“Even a small amount of rain could trigger mudslides and more downpours are expected this afternoon. We remain on high alert,” he said.
Kuraoka said even though forecasters did not expect a direct hit from the typhoon, it was still a worry.
“We cannot know what damage will be caused by the typhoon,” he said. “We are being extremely vigilant about it.”
Most of the 400,000 people who were ordered or advised to leave their homes were allowed to return after authorities began lifting evacuation orders on Sunday.
Roads in Aso city remained flooded and inaccessible.
Troops who were called in to help over the weekend on Tuesday continued their search for three people officially recorded as missing.
They recovered a man’s body from a ditch in Aso on Tuesday, raising the total death toll from landslides and floods across the affected area to 29.
“The body belongs to a man, 55, who was one of the missing people,” said a Kumamoto official.
Aso, which sits at the foot of a volcano, has seen more than 80 centimetres of rain over the last few days, triggering huge mudslides that swamped whole communities and killed at least 21 people in the city alone.
An AFP photographer who visited the city said some people who had been evacuated from their homes were seeking shelter in municipal buildings.
In scenes reminiscent of last year’s devastating tsunami, families sat on mats on wooden floors, or gathered around televisions to watch the latest forecasts.
Other parts of Japan were dealing with soaring temperatures as the first really hot days of the sometimes punishing Japanese summer took hold.
The weather agency said temperatures of 39.2 degrees Celsius (102.6 Fahrenheit) were recorded in Tatebayashi, north of Tokyo, and 37.5 degrees Celsius in Hachioji, a city in western Tokyo.
On Monday, a man in his 80s died in central Niigata prefecture apparently from heat stroke, while nearly 700 people were taken to hospital due to heat exhaustion, local media said.
With the vast bulk of Japan’s nuclear power stations offline in the aftermath of the tsunami-sparked Fukushima disaster, the country is being urged to cut down on electricity usage and the excessive use of air conditioners is being discouraged.
Dorset landslide: Two bodies found in car hit by tunnel entrance collapse near Dorchester
The numbers on Cuba’s cholera outbreak continued to grow over the weekend, with officials reporting 12 new confirmed cases, bringing the total to 170, and eight new suspected cases in the southeastern province of Granma. Cuba’s Public Health Ministry, in a statement published in the official news media on Saturday morning, declared that the outbreak was “decreasing” with 158 confirmed cases and three deaths confirmed. But the numbers provided by lead Granma province epidemiologist Ana Maria Batista during her appearance Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings on provincial television showed increases in all the categories. “The numbers show it is growing,” said Santiago Marquez, a physician in the Granma city of Manzanillo who has watched Batista’s nightly reports for more than a week and provided the details to independent journalists in Cuba and El Nuevo Herald. Batista reported 158 confirmed cholera cases in the province on Friday, 163 on Saturday – though her town-by-town breakdown added up to 164 — and six additional cases on Sunday for a total of 170, Marquez said.
She noted on Sunday that eight new cases of suspected cholera had been reported, and that 27 people were hospitalized on Saturday alone with diarrhea and vomiting, the key symptoms of the disease, according to the physician. More general cases of diarrhea and vomiting, which spike every summer with the rains and heat, rose from 5,680 in her Saturday report to 6,002 in her Sunday appearance, Marquez reported. About 97 percent of those already have recovered, she added. The number of Granma’s 13 municipalities where cholera has been reported rose from seven to nine, Batista noted. Appearing with Batista on provincial television Sunday, Deputy Director of Provincial Transportation José Mendoza González again advised residents to put off unnecessary travel in order to avoid spreading the disease. Cuban officials have repeatedly assured since early July that the cholera outbreak was under control and that the rising number of confirmed cases was because laboratories need a week or more to confirm a diagnosis of cholera. Dissidents and independent journalists have alleged that the cholera death toll stands at five to 15 but that the government has confirmed only three to avoid scaring tourists, one of the country’s main sources of hard currency. They have also reported cholera cases in Havana, Santiago de Cuba and other parts of the island.
The Health Ministry announcement published Saturday confirmed a few cases had been reported outside of Granma, but noted that all were people who had been in the province. It was not clear if the 158 cases it reported referred to all the island, or Granma province alone. Batista has made it clear her numbers are for the province only. The ministry announcement was only the national government’s second comment on the epidemic since July 3, when it confirmed three deaths and 53 cases caused by the bacteria Vibrio Cholerae but did not use the word cholera. Saturday’s statement did use the word.
This satellite image from Monday shows an iceberg, top center, breaking off from the Petermann Glacier in northwest Greenland.
OurAmazingPlanet
A massive iceberg larger than Manhattan has broken away from the floating end of a Greenland glacier this week, an event scientists predicted last autumn.
The giant ice island is 46 square miles, and separated from the terminus of the Petermann Glacier, one of Greenland’s largest.
The Petermann Glacier last birthed — or “calved” — a massive iceberg two years ago, in August 2010. The iceberg that broke off and floated away was nearly four times the size of Manhattan, and one of the largest ever recorded in Greenland.
Although the new iceberg isn’t as colossal as its 2010 predecessor, its birth has moved the front end of the massive glacier farther inland than it has been in 150 years, Andreas Muenchow, an associate professor of physical ocean science and engineering at the University of Delaware, said in a statement.
Jason Box, a scientist with Ohio State University’s Byrd Polar Research Center, has also been monitoring the Petermann Glacier and in September 2011 he told OurAmazingPlanet that a growing crack likely would sever the glacier once warmer weather took hold during the summer months.
“We can see the crack widening in the past year through satellite pictures, so it seems imminent,” Box said at the time.
Muenchow said that the newest ice island broke away on Monday morning (July 16).
Although iceberg birth is a natural, cyclical process, when the process speeds up, there are consequences.
The floating ends of glaciers, known as ice shelves, act as doorstops. When these ice shelves suddenly splinter and weaken or even collapse entirely, as has been observed in Antarctica, the glaciers that feed them speed up, dumping more ice into the ocean and raising global sea levels.
“The Greenland ice sheet as a whole is shrinking, melting and reducing in size as the result of globally changing air and ocean temperatures and associated changes in circulation patterns in both the ocean and atmosphere,” Muenchow said.
NASA has released still images of a red sprite which Expedition 31 Astronauts aboard the International Space Station captured April 30, 2012:
“‘Red sprites are short-lived, red flashes that occur about 80 kilometers (50 miles) up in the atmosphere. With long, vertical tendrils like a jellyfish, these electrical discharges can extend 20 to 30 kilometers up into the atmosphere and are connected to thunderstorms and lightning.”
These images of a red sprite were captured with a digital camera by Expedition 31 astronauts on the International Space Station as they traveled southeast from central Myanmar (Burma) to just north of Malaysia. The still images are part of a time-lapse movie collected from 13:41 to 13:47 Universal Time on April 30, 2012. View the footage here.
The sprite occurs about 6 seconds into the video, above a bright, wide lightning flash in the upper right quadrant.
Red sprites are difficult to observe because they last for just a few milliseconds and occur above thunderstorms-meaning they are usually blocked from view on the ground by the very clouds that produce them. They send pulses of electrical energy up toward the edge of space-the electrically charged layer known as the ionosphere-instead of down to Earth’s surface. They are rich with radio noise, and can sometimes occur in bunches.
For decades, pilots reported seeing ephemeral flashes above storms, but it was not until the 1990s that scientists were able to verify the existence of these electrical discharges. A sprite was first photographed by accident from an airplane in 1989, and observers on the space shuttle captured several more images with low-light cameras in 1990 and in subsequent missions. Viewers on the ground can occasionally photograph sprites by looking out on a thunderstorm in the distance, often looking out from high mountainsides over storms in lower plains.”
Dozens of pet birds smuggled from southern China into Taiwan tested positive for the deadly H5N1 avian flu virus and were destroyed, Taiwanese authorities said Tuesday. The smuggler bought the 38 birds in the Chinese city of Guangzhou and was caught at the Taoyuan international airport in northern Taiwan when he returned via Macau earlier this month, said the Centers for Disease Control. The birds later tested positive for the H5N1 virus and were killed, it said, adding that nine people who had contact with the birds had not shown any flu symptoms during a ten-day screening. Taiwan has no recorded cases of the deadly H5N1 strain, although in 2005 health authorities said eight pet birds smuggled from China tested positive for the strain and destroyed. The island has reported several outbreaks of the H5N2 bird flu, a less virulent strain of the virus, in recent years. China is considered one of the nations most at risk of bird flu epidemics because it has the world’s biggest poultry population and many chickens in rural areas are kept close to humans.
Biohazard name:
H5N1 – Highly pathogenic avian influenza virus
Biohazard level:
4/4 Hazardous
Biohazard desc.:
Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.
Symptoms:
Status:
confirmed
17.07.2012
Biological Hazard
USA
State of California, [Leucadia and Encinitas, Encinitas beaches]
San Diego County area lifeguards reported a surge in the number of beachgoers stung by jellyfish on Sunday. One-hundred thirty people were stung at six beaches in Leucadia and Encinitas, Encinitas lifeguards said, while state lifeguards reported that 30 people were stung at Torrey Pines State Beach. Jellyfish follow plankton, their main source of food, as they move closer to shore during the summer, said Fernando Nosratpour of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. As they get closer to beaches, strong currents from along the coast push the fragile jellyfish to shore and break them up into little pieces. The most common types of jellyfish found around San Diego are the moon and the purple-striped jellyfish, Nosratpour said. The moon jellyfish is about 10 inches long and has short tentacles, while the purple-striped jellyfish is about 12 inches long and has long, thick tentacles, he said. Even after breaking up and dying, the purple-striped jellyfish’s tentacles can sting people, Nosratpour said. The moon jellyfish’s sting cells do not work after the jellyfish dies. Jellyfish generally do not attack people. People usually get stung when they rub up against them in the water or touch them once they’ve washed up on the beach. A small rash will appear where the sting occurred. Lifeguards recommend that people keep on eye out for jellyfish pieces in the water and sand. Sting rashes can be treated with diluted vinegar and usually disappear in an hour, although some people may have stronger reactions. Fresh water and sand can aggravate the rash. No one was hospitalized.
Biohazard name:
Jellyfish invasion
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Eight firefighters along with two others were transported to the hospital for evaluation after a hazardous material fire south of Canyon Monday evening. According to the Canyon Fire Department, firefighters arrived to the fire at about 7 p.m., Monday and discovered there was a hazardous material involved. The Amarillo Hazmat Team, Amarillo/Potter/Randall EOC and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality all responded to help ensure the hazardous materials stayed inside the fire scene. Fire officials said the 10 people were transported to the hospital only as a precaution. There was no risk to the general public and the scene has now been neutralized. All 10 people taken to the hospital are fine, officials said.
Four people have been taken to hospital after being exposed to a chemical leak at the Port of Brisbane. The four wharf workers were treated by ambulance paramedics at the Patrick Container Terminal on Port Drive for headaches and nausea after being overcome by chemical fumes about 6am. They were taken to hospital for precautionary reasons only. A 150-metre exclusion zone has been established around 10 containers understood to have been unloaded from a Chinese vessel. It is understood six containers have been tested and cleared, but firefighters are assessing four more containers. ‘‘Firefighters in breathing apparatus are also conducting atmospheric testing in the area,’’ a Department of Community Safety spokeswoman said. Business and traffic at the Port of Brisbane has been largely unaffected.
Search teams pulled the bodies of 10 people from the rubble of four buildings that collapsed yesterday in Egypt’s coastal city of Alexandria, as efforts to find other missing people continues, the official Middle East News Agency reported today citing a health official. Five casualties found so far by Civil Defense forces were hospitalized with injuries ranging from fractures to bruises and suffocation, Ahmed Al-Ansari, chairman of Egypt’s Ambulance, said according to the news service. An 11-story building collapsed yesterday afternoon, toppling three adjacent properties.
Sinister clouds hang low over Virginia as tens of thousands lose power in destructive thunderstorms
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Boehner rakes in $8.5M second quarter, has raised $80M as Speaker
By Molly K. Hooper
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) raked in nearly $8.5 million in the second quarter of fundraising this year to protect his hard-fought GOP majority in the House.
According to a memo released by his political office on Sunday afternoon, the highest-ranking House Republican has raised close to $80 million dollars for GOP candidates – through his political committees, appearances at member events and contributions solicited from Boehner-signed National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) fundraising letters – since taking the gavel in 2011.
Cory Fritz , spokesman for Boehner’s leadership political action committee, The Freedom Project, attributed the hearty fundraising for House GOP races during a presidential election year, to the current policies of President Obama.
“Millions of Americans continue to struggle in the Obama economy, and they are looking to Speaker Boehner and House Republicans to keep fighting to create a better environment for jobs by preventing tax hikes, repealing ObamaCare, cutting spending and eliminating excessive federal red tape,” Fritz said in a statement accompanying the latest figures. “Speaker Boehner appreciates the support he’s received from across the country, and he’ll continue working tirelessly to return the conservative House majority that’s focused on jobs and the economy.”
Treasury Department officials have been cited for soliciting prostitutes, breaking conflict-of-interest rules and accepting gifts from corporate executives, according to the findings of official government investigations.
The revelations of unethical behavior at Treasury are detailed in little-noticed documents posted this month on governmentattic.org, which publishes agency responses to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
While it is not uncommon for departments within the executive branch to have personnel issues, it is unusual for these types of documents to become public. They provide a rare glimpse of internal probes within the Treasury Department, exposing different episodes of misconduct.
Investigators at the Treasury’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), which responds to tips and official referrals from within the department, found that employees had engaged in unethical, and perhaps criminal, conduct.
The emergence of the OIG probe findings come in the wake of embarrassing scandals for the Obama administration at the General Services Administration (GSA) and the Secret Service. Even though the wrongdoing at Treasury is not as far-reaching or as embarrassing as those controversies, it could put the administration on the defensive with less than four months to go before the election.
Some of the OIG’s work focused on the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), an agency housed within Treasury that was created by Congress to oversee banking institutions. It also homes in on the now-defunct Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS), which recently became part of the OCC as a result of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law.
Postal Service rescue bill stalls in Congress as cash woes mount
By Bernie Becker
The House’s delay in considering a postal reform bill is sparking concerns that the rescue of the U.S. Postal Service could be delayed until after the November elections — or even until the next Congress.
Republicans signaled last week that the House would likely not vote before the August recess on a postal bill from Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the Oversight Committee chairman, and Rep. Dennis Ross (R-Fla.).
Senators and outside industry observers decried that holdup, saying that any delay reduces the chances of lawmakers coming together on a broad postal reform package. The Senate passed its own postal reform bill in April, and key senators are waiting to negotiate a compromise bill with the House.
“The longer the House delays reforming the Postal Service, the more likely it is that nothing happens,” said Art Sackler of the Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service, a group that represents the private-sector mailing industry.
The postponement of work on the postal bill also comes as House GOP leaders have shown little to no interest in advancing the chamber’s farm bill, another piece of legislation that could be a tough vote for some in the Republican rank-and-file.
At the same time, with the November elections less than four months away, GOP leaders in the House have scheduled a series of messaging votes meant to highlight the differences between the parties on issues like healthcare repeal and extending current tax rates.
That has left some observers concerned that, even if the House can pass its bill after it returns in September, final negotiations on a postal revamp could spill over into the lame-duck session after the election.
With work in the lame duck expected to center on the so-called “fiscal cliff,” postal reform could be tacked on to a massive, must-pass bill at the end of the year. Otherwise, the next Congress might have to start from scratch come January.
Meanwhile, the Postal Service is on pace to lose billions of dollars this fiscal year, and owes $11 billion, in two separate installments, over the next two and a half months in prepayments for retiree health care.
A House GOP leadership aide said this week that Republicans were onboard with the bill from Issa and Ross, and “cognizant” of the deadlines USPS faces and its financial situation.
“We remain committed to postal reform, but a decision hasn’t been made about when the House bill will be considered,” the aide said.
Ross told The Hill this week that he wanted to move forward with the postal bill during the current work period, and that he believed he and Issa had the votes to get the bill through the House.
But the Republican freshman acknowledged that the final decision rested with leadership.
“I think it’s something that we can’t afford to not do,” said Ross, the chairman of a House Oversight subcommittee that oversees the Postal Service. “It’s something that can’t be postponed. Eventually it’s going to have to be addressed. I’m ready, willing and able to do it right now, and I’ve let my leadership know that.”
Democrats and Republicans on the Oversight panel are also meeting to see if they can find more common ground on a postal bill, according to the committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.).
“There are just certain things that the Democrats are very concerned about,” Cummings said. “And hopefully we’ll be able to resolve them.”
Democrats, as well as postal unions, have sharply criticized the House GOP bill for creating a control board charged with overseeing spending, and a BRAC-style panel to recommend a plan for consolidating post offices.
A House GOP aide said that Republicans were happy to talk with Democrats, but would demand that mandatory spending restraint be part of any postal bill.
The Postal Service has said that, unless Congress acts, it will default on the separate prepayments for retiree healthcare, which are due in August and September. But even if that should happen, USPS would still be able to pay its employees and deliver the mail, the agency says.
In the early 2000s, Germany was struggling to adhere to euro-zone criteria aimed at ensuring common currency stability. Instead of introducing austerity, however, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder simply launched an effort to change the rules. New documents show just how key his role was in weakening the Stability Pact.
In moments of triumph, modesty is the largest casualty. It was March 21, 2005, a day that German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, a member of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), felt was “a good day for Germany, a good day for Europe and a good day for economic development.”
After a more than two-year struggle with an intransigent European Commission, reluctant partner countries and a rebellious finance minister, Schröder finally got what he wanted: the Stability and Growth Pact, intended as the guarantor of a stable euro, had been weakened. Finance Minister Hans Eichel (SPD), ultimately deciding not to take a back seat to Schröder in his moment of hyperbole, interjected that the pact had become “more credible and reasonable.”
Seven years later, that which triggered the celebratory mood at the time is now seen as a lapse that made possible the current crisis faced by the European common currency. It permanently undermined confidence in a set of regulations that was intended to force countries to pursue responsible fiscal policy. Afterwards, several countries felt sufficiently emboldened to abandon their efforts to limit spending.
The pact originally obliged member states to maintain budget deficits at or below 3 percent of gross domestic product and a total sovereign load worth no more than 60 percent of GDP. Violators received a preliminary warning from the European Commission. If new borrowing remained excessive, financial penalties could result.
It is widely accepted that this corset was loosened at the insistence of Germany and France. In truth, however, the weakening of the Stability and Growth Pact was primarily the work of one man: Gerhard Schröder. He received support from his chief of staff, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and from Reinhard Silberberg, head of the European division in the Foreign Ministry. Documents from the Chancellery, released in response to a SPIEGEL request, show that Schröder and his government were the driving force behind the effort. They also show that attempts by Eichel and his ministry to resist were ultimately in vain as he was forced to give in to pressure from Schröder. What’s more, Schröder picked Eichel to convince the remaining holdouts among Germany’s euro-zone allies.
Secret Undertaking
The undertaking began in secret in the summer of 2003. The German economy had been stuck in a chronic slump since the beginning of the new century with growth stagnating near zero. Unemployment was on the rise and the budget deficit was consistently growing.
The previous year, Eichel had only narrowly managed to avoid a deficit warning from the European Commission. But it soon became apparent that the situation was not going to improve in the near future. Because Schröder and Eichel shied away from cleaning up the budget by way of austerity, further warnings from Brussels, or even monetary penalties, seemed merely a matter of time.
Schröder, though, found a solution. If it wasn’t possible to adjust the government’s finances to the Stability Pact, then the Stability Pact would simply have to be adjusted to the state of German finances.
Schröder tried to secure the support of French President Jacques Chirac and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. “The initiative will gain clout if the United Kingdom is also on board,” reads an internal Chancellery memo. “Therefore, please maintain absolute confidentiality until a final agreement is reached.”
The memo describes what Schröder had in mind: “Germany and France must be able to create necessary growth incentives, even when the 3 percent deficit threshold is exceeded.” For the sake of the economy, in other words, no country should be forced to save unless it absolutely wanted to.
In the ensuing months, the subject moved to the top of the European agenda. But not in the form that Schröder wished. Instead of weakening the pact, the European Commission was interested in strengthening it. In a June 23, 2004 memo to Chancellery Chief of Staff Steinmeier, an official warned that Commission proposals amounted to a “more restrictive application” of the rules. The changes envisioned more frequent warnings in addition to a requirement that countries with a sovereign debt level exceeding 60 percent of GDP be required to achieve budget surpluses.
Efforts to Water Down the Pact
“This would immensely increase the consolidation pressure on Germany,” the official warned. “We can only emerge from the defensive position if we submit our own concept by the end of the summer recess.”
But one person wasn’t playing along: the finance minister. Another memo from the end of August 2004 found fault with Eichel for being “critical of increasing the flexibility” of the pact. Eichel, the memo indicated, wanted to preserve the pact “as a disciplinary tool against individual ministries” — the idea being that he could force budgetary responsibility by claiming that his hands were tied by Brussels. Still, despite opposition from the Finance Ministry, the Chancellery decided “that we must actively expedite the debate over the reform.”
The timing of the debate seemed particularly promising because the Dutch — who were opposed to any efforts to water down the pact — held the rotating European Council presidency at the time. As such, Schröder administration officials noted with satisfaction, they were “neutralized by their role as a broker.”
On Oct. 25, Schröder took his stubborn finance minister to task. Eichel was behaving “even more restrictively than the Commission,” European division director Silberberg complained in a preparatory memo for Schröder and Steinmeier, and noted that Eichel was “not prepared to take any further steps at the moment.” In the memo, Silberberg urged the chancellor to “come to an understanding with Minister Eichel, that Germany backs a Stability Pact reform that truly benefits us.”
Real relief was “only possible by removing certain types of spending from the equation,” Silberberg wrote, suggesting that the German deficit could be artificially understated. He foresaw Berlin’s contribution to the EU budget being withheld from the books as well as economic stimulus expenditures. To prevent the Finance Ministry from thwarting the administration’s efforts in the future, Silberberg recommended that the Chancellery and the Finance Ministry collaborate more closely in the future.
Will Spanish spending cuts and cash injections be enough to keep the economy afloat?
Spain needs to make significant spending cuts and see a major boost in state revenues — but its most recent reforms apparently fall short by some nine billion euros. As tensions rise, the country still awaits the approval of 100 billion euros in emergency aid.
Spain is tinkering with a comprehensive reform package to help the deeply indebted country get itself out of a severe financial crisis. But its new belt-tightening measures will apparently only go so far — bringing in almost €9 billion ($11 billion) less than what had been announced.
The program presented last week envisions savings of €56.4 billion over the next two and a half years, according to a report published Saturday on the website of Spain’s leading daily, El Pais. Citing government sources, the paper said that roughly €29 billion of this would come from tax increases and some €27 billion from spending cutbacks.But on Wednesday, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy had held out the prospect that tax increases and cuts in spending could inject €65 billion into empty state coffers. The El Pais report states that the €8.6-billion difference in these figures could come from other savings measures, such as the new energy-sector taxes announced this month.
Spain’s Ministry of Finance initially declined to comment on the report. As of Friday, it still wasn’t willing to release a more detailed breakdown of the reform measures.
Spain must reduce its budget deficit by €65 billion if it hopes to get it under the European Union’s upper limit of 2.8 percent by the end of 2014. The country is already grappling with its ailing banks, unemployment of nearly 25 percent and the consequences of a real-estate bubble collapse. But now it must also struggle to push through these reforms and regain the confidence of the EU and the financial markets.
Four Cash Injections and a ‘Bad Bank’
Spain’s belt-tightening measures will soon be supplemented by money from EU coffers, though. On June 9, the finance ministers of the 17 euro-zone countries agreed to lend the Spanish government €100 billion to help its troubled banks. According to a confidential proposal of the leaders of the temporary euro rescue fund, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), obtained by SPIEGEL, the funds will come from the temporary euro rescue fund in four tranches. Plans call for the first of these, worth €30 billion, to be in Spain already by the end of July.
Two-thirds of the funds in this initial tranche will be made available to ailing credit institutions than might need short-term capital injections. The remaining €10 billion will serve as what the document describes as a longer-term safety buffer. The document states that plans call for the three other tranches, each worth €15 billion, to come in mid-November and late December 2012, as well as at the end of June 2013.
The document adds that plans also call for a “bad bank” to be set up in late November to handle problematic assets. Up to €25 billion will reportedly be made available to the new institution.
The aid program for Spain will reportedly run until 2028, at the latest. The EFSF document states that, in order to ensure that Spain continues to have access to the financial markets, the rescue funds will not be calculated as part of the country’s overall debt burden.
Illicit Tax-Cheat CDs May Endanger Swiss-German Treaty
By Martin Hesse and Barbara Schmid
dapd
Purchasing CDs with stolen data on German tax evaders with Swiss bank accounts has been good business for tax authorities.
A new tax treaty between Germany and Switzerland is scheduled to go into effect next year. But the deal could be torpedoed by Germany’s center-left opposition and zealous tax authorities purchasing stolen CDs with data on rich tax cheats.
Shortly before going on vacation, Norbert Walter-Borjans once again took care of a matter concerning no small sum of money — in this case, an additional €1 billion ($1.2 billion) for the cash-strapped bank WestLB, which is partly owned by the western German state of North-Rhine Westphalia. The money boosts the state’s total budget to €58.8 billion.
Though large, such sums are all in a day’s work for the finance minister of Germany’s most populous state. In comparison, a payment authorization recently submitted for his signature seems quite modest. In this case, the payment in question was €3.5 million in exchange for what the source promised would be something the minister had gladly purchased a number of times in the past: a CD containing data on German tax evaders.The minister signed the form. It wasn’t his first purchase of such a CD, nor is it likely to be the last, as state investigators are currently weighing whether to buy two more such data packets, both containing information on Swiss bank accounts. Indeed, when he returns from vacation, Walter-Borjans may well be signing his name on another payment authorization worth several million euros.
‘Loopholes as Big as a Barn Door’
A number of private individuals and politicians may find this prospect alarming, especially since the minister’s latest purchase has already caused them no small amount of trouble: Approximately 1,000 German clients of a small, high-end bank in Zurich may face prosecution for tax evasion. At the same time, the zealous minister’s fellow politicians worry that his actions might torpedo a planned tax agreement between Germany and Switzerland.
That treaty, scheduled to come into effect on Jan. 1, 2013, would require Swiss banks to automatically deduct taxes from the accounts of German clients. It would also provide those clients with an amnesty for their past tax evasion in return for a single lump-sum payment, thereby rendering CDs of customer data largely worthless. German Federal Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, of the ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and his Swiss counterpart, Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, signed the treaty in September 2011.
The only thing still required to ratify the treaty is the approval of Germany’s 16 federal states. Those states whose governments are led by the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) or Green Party, the two largest opposition parties, continue to put up stiff resistance. Walter-Borjans, an SPD member himself, stands at the forefront of this movement. He calls the German-Swiss tax treaty scandalous and unfair “because it includes loopholes as big as a barn door for tax evaders.”
The fact that Walter-Borjans recently purchased another CD of bank-customer data and is looking into buying other ones sends a clear signal. Either the minister has just made the highly unlikely move of wasting €3.5 million on a CD that will shortly be rendered practically worthless, or his signature on that payment authorization is meant to signal his determination to not let Schäuble change his mind — and that he plans to see the tax treaty fail.
Indeed, Germany’s Federal Finance Ministry appears to be preparing for the possibility that the treaty might not be ratified this November. To do so, it needs to secure a majority of support in the Bundesrat, Germany’s upper legislative chamber, which represents the interests of the federal states. The Finance Ministry is considering engaging the Mediation Committee, a body that acts as an intermediary between the Bundesrat and the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, and whose 16 members are appointed according to the relative strength of the parties’ parliamentary groups. But Schäuble won’t be able to secure a majority on the committee, either, as long as the SPD and Green Party maintain a unified stance on the issue.
A Leopard 2 tank made by German firm Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW).
The German government is planning to relax its tight restrictions on arms exports, according to plans drafted by the Economics Ministry, SPIEGEL has learned. The aim is to make it easier for companies to compete with European rivals. But amid a major debate about the country’s role in the global weapons trade, the decision will likely garner heavy criticism.
The German government plans to simplify approval procedures for the export of weapons and defense equipment, according to plans drafted by the Economics Ministry, SPIEGEL has learned.
The aim is to “lift special rules that put German exporters at a disadvantage against their European competitors,” according to the ministry plans. The new rules will focus on strictly regulating arms sales to countries outside the EU while approval procedues for exports within the EU are to be relaxed.
The changes will put German export law in line with less restrictive EU rules and will make it easier for German firms to export defense goods around the world.
The Economics Ministry, headed by Philipp Rösler, the head of the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP), has invited German export industry representatives to the ministry for talks on the matter on Wednesday.
According to the conventional account, the Great American Middle Class has been eroded by rising energy costs, globalization, and the declining purchasing power of the U.S. dollar in the four decades since 1973. While these trends have certainly undermined middle-class wealth and income, there are five other less politically acceptable dynamics at work:
The divergence of State/private vested interests and the interests of the middle class
The emergence of financialization as the key driver of profits and political power
The neofeudal “colonization” of the “home market” by ascendant financial Elites
The increasing burden of indirect “taxes” as productive enterprises and people involuntarily subsidize unproductive, parasitic, corrupt, but politically dominant vested interests
The emergence of crony capitalism as the lowest-risk, highest-profit business model in the U.S. economy
Higher Energy Costs = Lower GDP, Lower Incomes
Let’s start with the conventional forces of higher energy costs. The abundance or scarcity of energy is only one factor in its price. As the cost of extraction, transport, refining, and taxes rise, so does the final price. EROEI (energy returned on energy invested) helps illuminate this point. In the good old days, one barrel of oil invested might yield 100 barrels of oil extracted and refined for delivery. Now it takes one barrel of oil to extract and refine 5 barrels of oil, or perhaps as little as 3 barrels of unconventional oil.
It doesn’t matter how abundant oil might be; it’s the cost that impacts GDP and income. Here we see that GDP in relation to the price of gasoline hit bottom in the wake of the 1979 oil shock. GDP soared in the late 1990s when oil plummeted to $15/barrel. It spiked lower when oil hit $140/barrel in 2008, and popped back up when oil dropped (briefly) to $40/barrel. (FRED charts courtesy of B.C.)
Here we see the cost of oil’s impact on wages:
As oil costs rise, wages and GDP decline. If we read between the lines, this chart reflects an economy that has become less dependent on oil for its GDP growth than it was in the 1970s, but oil’s influence on growth and income is clearly still fundamental.
This fifty-year history of oil, GDP, wages, and household debt reveals that GDP and wages only rose smartly in brief eras of depressed oil prices. Households compensated for the stagnation of their wages by borrowing.
The Middle-Class Work-Around: Substituting Debt for Income
The key idea here is that real income can only rise if the productivity of labor and capital investment increases. If productivity of labor and capital is flat, any increase in income is a mirage; i.e., a rise in nominal income that is not an actual increase in purchasing power.
Here we see that labor productivity has risen steadily, more than doubling since 1970.
Wages also rose—but household debt rose at a much higher rate than wages.
I have been asked by readers to use only “adjusted” or “real” measures of GDP, wages, etc., but sources rarely compare apples to apples, and the high probability that “official” inflation has been understated leaves even “adjusted” data suspect.
In nominal terms, the ratio of these two lines is what’s important. From the point in time when they began diverging (1983), wages tripled but household debt rose sevenfold. (According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) inflation calculator, $1 in 1983 is equal to $2.31 in 2012 dollars.)
If we dead-reckon that “real” inflation is probably more like $1 in 1983 = $3 in 2012, this still suggests that wages doubled in the past 30 years.
The increase (however you calculate it) flowed entirely to the top 10% of households.
That the bottom 90% of wage earners lost ground has been well established. This summary from the New York Times encapsulates the stagnation:
In this episode, Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss how market participants are never more than a few milliseconds away from the next act of fraud and how a teaspoon of collateral leads to economic martial law. They also discuss German economists proposing that the wealthy be forced to buy bonds while in Spain the government and EU force bank losses on cooks and pensioners. In the second half of the show, oil analyst, Chris Cook, about how, despite sanctions, oil will always find a home; the Enron technique of pre-pay now being used by Enron’s former counterparties; and how stability is the death for the oil market middlemen.
Although Syria’s opposition is enjoying growing support, it is also being divided by internal rivalries.
Although the war in Syria is getting bloodier, the power and appeal of the resistance is growing. But Randa Kassis, a member of the opposition Syrian National Council, warns that Islamist fighters armed by the Gulf states are sowing discord among the opposition that will only prolong the war.
Suicide bombers, artillery strikes and massacres: The situation in Syria is getting worse every day. Dozens were killed on Thursday in an attack on the village of Tremseh. The Syrian opposition and the United Nations have blamed the assault on the regime of President Bashar Assad, but Damascus continues to deny involvement.
Although early reports said the attack had mainly targeted civilians, UN observers who visited the village on Saturday said the assault was apparently directed at specific homes of army defectors and opposition figures, according to the Associated Press.A political solution to the conflict in Syria is not likely to come anytime soon. While Assad continues to cling to power in any way he can, the opposition — though armed and mobilized — is deeply divided.
Randa Kassis, president of a secular opposition group, paints a gloomy picture of Syria’s future an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE. Although resistance to the regime is mounting, Assad has shown that he is willing to crush dissent through any means necessary. Meanwhile, Kassis claims, Islamist rebels supported by the Gulf states are driving a wedge in the opposition by labeling secular adversaries of Assad enemies.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Who is responsible for the massacre in Tremseh last Thursday, in which, according to the latest reports, more than 200 people were killed?
Kassis: Government troops and their backers are responsible. Whole city neighborhoods and villages are being targeted. Bashar Assad wants to intimidate each and every Syrians, without exception. He wants to force all of us to our knees and gag us. Literally every Syrian is supposed to experience first-hand what it means to put up resistance. There will be more massacres.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What is the relative strength of the regime vis-à-vis the rebels?
Kassis: In contrast to the situation at the beginning of the revolution, today more than 80 percent of Syrians oppose the Assad clique. Over time, the opposition has also become well-armed thanks to Qatar and Saudi Arabia. But the army and other state security forces command the most sophisticated weaponry. If they use them with impunity, there will be no quick end to the atrocities in sight.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Are arms supplied by Russia and Iran to the Assad regime prolonging the conflict?
Kassis: This is, of course, an important factor, but the regime already had enough firepower in any case. The reason the opposition has not been able to achieve a military breakthrough is also partially due to the insurmountable differences arising between the Islamist jihadi fighters and the majority of the population. The Islamist groups, which are superbly financed and equipped by the Gulf states, are ruthlessly seizing decision-making power for themselves. Syrians who are taking up arms against the dictator but not putting themselves under the jihadists’ command are being branded as unpatriotic and as heretics. This is also affecting the many soldiers and officers who have defected to the opposition but who aren’t willing to replace the corrupt terrorism of the Assad regime with a religious tyranny.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: But aren’t the majority of Syrians pious Muslims?
Kassis: Yet at least half of Syrians are in favor of retaining a separation of church and state — and I don’t see any contradiction there. The conflict between the power-hungry, appallingly intolerant Islamists and the opposition fighters who are not motivated by religion — and who don’t have anyone lending them a hand — makes a rapid end to the war unlikely. And that’s not to mention the scorched earth that government troops are leaving behind them all over the country.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is there no way to stop the bloodbath?
Kassis: The Assad regime has to stop the murder and voluntarily step down from power. And the Islamist fighters among the opposition need to accept the non-religious opposition groups as partners with equal rights and no longer treat them like political adversaries. Then the members of the Baath party who haven’t done anything wrong but have opposed Assad and gone underground in Iraq will also report back.
A video of a young woman’s execution by the Taliban for alleged adultery has shocked the world. But local officials say that the brutal incident is just another sign that the Islamist militants have maintained their dominance in many parts of the country, despite over a decade of fighting US and NATO forces.
If Abdul Bashir Salangi had known the reaction it would trigger, he might well have kept the file with the macabre title “Gallows” locked safely away on his computer. It’s early morning last Thursday, and the shrill ringtones of Salangi’s mobile phones are irritating the governor of Afghanistan’s Parwan Province.
He answers the phone with an edge to his voice and replies, “No, we can’t do anything. Even if we had a hundred men looking for the perpetrators, the Taliban is stronger there than we are.” He goes on to complain briefly about the weakness of his own forces before bringing the conversation to a close.The calls are from the capital Kabul, which is about an hour’s drive from Salangi’s office, and the capital wants results. The president’s office, the Ministry of the Interior — everyone is up in arms because the whole world is talking about this particular file, or more accurately, about the video it contains, which Salangi shared with a reporter a week before. Within hours, the video from Parwan had spread to the furthest corners of the globe via Youtube. And everywhere it went, it caused shock — and feelings of helplessness.
Salangi plays the video on his iPad. The camera work is shaky, but a woman in a gray burqa can clearly be seen crouching on a gravel-strewn slope. In just a few sentences, a bearded man pronounces her death sentence on grounds of alleged adultery. From that point on, everything happens very quickly. A man in a white robe steps forward and fires nine shots, killing the woman. Once she’s lying lifeless on the ground, he steps even closer, kneels down, and fires another four shots.
Behind the camera, voices begin to cheer. The cameraman pans around, revealing perhaps 150 men squatting in front of their houses, which are clustered at the foot of a mountain. The residents of the village Qol-i-Heer, in the district of Shinwari, watched the execution, and it seems they liked what they saw. “God is great!” they cry. The few Taliban members in the foreground, slim men with black beards and ammunition belts strapped around their chests, smile briefly for the camera. Then the video breaks off.
Protest in Kabul
What the video doesn’t show, and what eyewitnesses later reported, is that the young woman did not actually receive a trial. The execution is better described simply as murder, performed to cover up the fact that Taliban members themselves are guilty of the same crime of which they accused their victim.
Salangi has watched this video many times, but with each repeat he still shakes his head to think “that things like this are still happening in Afghanistan.” And yet his words fail to convey any real sympathy. The way he says it, it sounds more as if the Taliban’s shooting of the 22-year-old woman, Najiba, were perhaps a traffic violation.
The reaction this video garnered abroad was quite different. Most shocking was the realization it brought, that 10 years after the war in Afghanistan began and with a year to go until the end of the NATO mission there, there are still regions of the country where the Taliban exerts its authority brutally and without fear of retribution. But viewers abroad are not the only ones protesting; women in Kabul have also protested this barbarism.
Even very recently, an increasing number of reports out of Afghanistan presented fairly convincing evidence that the Taliban was considerably worn down after 10 years of war. Some members of the organization even expressed a willingness to negotiate, admitting that they were losing the war and that the United States had succeeded in demoralizing their once-powerful forces. But then this video emerged with drastic proof of the Taliban’s unbroken dominance here, less than 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the capital.
This video from the mountains of Parwan couldn’t have come at a less convenient time for President Hamid Karzai’s government. Karzai had to appear at the Tokyo Conference on Afghanistan the very day after the first reports of the execution emerged. There he met with representatives of the international community, who pledged $16 billion (€13 billion) in additional reconstruction aid, to ensure that the withdrawal of international troops in 2014 doesn’t pave the way for a return to Taliban rule.
A turf war brewing in Asia’s South China Sea risks creating a geopolitical flashpoint as the U.S. and smaller countries seek to check China’s rising influence. (July 17, 2012)
Are You Prepared For The Coming Economic Collapse And The Next Great Depression?
Do you want to see where this country is headed? If so, don’t focus on the few areas that are still very prosperous. New York City has Wall Street, Washington D.C. has the federal government and Silicon Valley has Google and Facebook. Those are the exceptions. The reality is that most of the country has been experiencing a slow decline for a very long time and once thriving cities such as Gary, Indiana and Flint, Michigan have become absolute hellholes. They are examples of what the rest of America will look like soon. 60 years ago, most Americans were decent, hard working people and there were always good jobs available for anyone that was willing to roll up his or her sleeves and put in an honest day of work. But now all of that has changed. Over the past decade, tens of thousands of manufacturing facilities have shut down and millions of jobs have left the country. Cities such as Cleveland, Baltimore and Detroit were once shining examples of everything that was right about America, but now they stand out like festering sores. The “blue collar cities” have been hit the hardest by the gutting of our economic infrastructure. There are many communities in America today where it seems like all of the hope and all of the life have been sucked right out of them. You can see it in the eyes of the people. The good times are gone permanently and they know it. Unfortunately, the remainder of the country will soon be experiencing the despair that those communities are feeling.
The following are 12 hellholes that are examples of what the rest of America will look like soon….
#1 Gary, Indiana
Gary, Indiana was once a great industrial city.
Today, it is one of the ten most dangerous cities in America, and the population has fallen by about 50 percent.
Frequently rated one of the ten most dangerous cities in the United States, Gary once boomed with jobs and opportunities but now faces the acute difficulties of America’s growing rust belt, with 22 percent of families in the once-great city now lying below the poverty line.
This modern American ghost town began life as home for workers at the United States Steel Corporation plant until economic competition from abroad forced a 90 percent job cut.
It is hard to describe what is happening to Gary without using the word “depressing”. You can watch a great video that shows what Gary, Indiana looks like these days right here.
This is what happens when industry leaves and there are no jobs. Gary has become a wasteland and there is essentially no hope for a turnaround.
The following is how James Kunstler described what he experienced when he traveled through Gary, Indiana recently….
Between the ghostly remnants of factories stood a score of small cities and neighborhoods where the immigrants settled five generations ago. A lot of it was foreclosed and shuttered. They were places of such stunning, relentless dreariness that you felt depressed just imagining how depressed the remaining denizens of these endless blocks of run-down shoebox houses must feel. Judging from the frequency of taquerias in the 1950s-vintage strip-malls, one inferred that the old Eastern European population had been lately supplanted by a new wave of Mexicans. They had inherited an infrastructure for daily life that was utterly devoid of conscious artistry when it was new, and now had the special patina of supernatural rot over it that only comes from materials not found in nature disintegrating in surprising and unexpected ways, sometimes even sublimely, like the sheen of an oil slick on water at a certain angle to the sun. There was a Chernobyl-like grandeur to it, as of the longed-for end of something enormous that hadn’t worked out well.
Sadly, Gary is far from alone. There are a whole host of other formerly great U.S. cities that are degenerating into hellholes as well.
#2 Chicago, Illinois
There is something truly special about Chicago. Most of America loved the Bears of the Walter Payton era, the Bulls of the Michael Jordan era and the Cubs of the Ernie Banks era. Chicago is also known for great architecture and great pizza.
But these days “the windy city” is becoming known for other things.
The murder rate in Chicago is up 38 percent so far this year, and the recent spike in violence in the city has made national headlines.
As I noted the other day, there are only about 200 police officers in Chicago’s Gang Enforcement Unit to deal with an estimated 100,000 gang members.
That means that those officers are outnumbered 500 to 1, and more gang members pour into the city every single day.
The escalating violence in Chicago was detailed in a recent article in the Telegraph….
“This is a block-to-block war here, a different dynasty on every street,” said a dreadlocked young man heavily inked in gang tattoos who calls himself “Killer”.
“All the black brothers just want to get rich, but we got no jobs and no hope. We want the violence to stop but you ain’t safe if you ain’t got your pistol with you. Too many friends, too many men are being killed. We don’t even cry at funerals no -more. Nobody expects to live past 21 here.”
The victims and killers are mainly black males aged between 15 and 35, often with gang affiliations – but not exclusively. A seven-year-old girl, Heaven Sutton, was buried this month after being gunned down at her mother’s street sweet store. And last week, two girls aged 12 and 13 were shot and badly-wounded as they walked home from a newly-opened community centre.
If you are thinking of moving to Chicago, you might want to think again.
#3 Detroit, Michigan
I have written repeatedly about Detroit because it is a perfect example of what the rest of America is going to look like soon.
Once upon a time it was regarded as one of the top manufacturing cities the world had ever seen, but today it has become a total hellhole.
There are very few decent jobs available, poverty has exploded and crime is everywhere.
If you can believe it, 53.6% of all children in Detroit are living in poverty, and only 25 percent of all students in Detroit graduate from high school at this point.
And as I wrote about recently, justifiable homicide in Detroit increased by a whopping 79 percent during 2011, and the rate of self-defense killings in Detroit is now approximately 2200% above the national average.
Is it any wonder that you can still buy a house for $100 in some areas of Detroit?
The truth is that many areas of Detroit now resemble a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Perhaps that is why one team of investors actually wants to turn some of the worst areas of Detroit into a zombie theme park….
Derelict areas of Detroit face being taken over by hordes of ‘flesh and brain-eating zombies’ if an ambitious business plan takes off.
Entrepreneur Mark Siwak wants to create live-action terror theme park ‘Z World’ on Motor City’s run-down and abandoned streets.
Customers would pay to be chased by professional actors and try to seek shelter in ghostly homes, factories and businesses.
You can see some great video of the “ruins of Detroit” right here.
#4 Stockton, California
Stockton is one of the ten most dangerous cities in America and it recently made national headlines when it declared bankruptcy.
Unfortunately, as spending on law enforcement has declined it has given the criminals a lot more room to operate in Stockton. The following is from a recent Business Insider article….
The city has cut more than $90 million in spending over the past few years, specifically in its police department. The city has cut over one quarter of its police jobs, which has led to a “surge in murders,” and has created an “emboldened criminal element” in the city. According to police spokesman Joe Silva, the city has had 87 murders since the start of 2011, 29 of which have already occurred this year. In contrast, there were 35 murders in 2009 and 48 in 2010. With six months left in the year, there have already been more murders in the city since the start of 2011 than the two-year stretch of 2009-2010.
A while back in Stockton a billboard was put up with the following message: “Welcome to the 2nd most dangerous city in California. Stop laying off cops.”
#5 Flint, Michigan
Flint, Michigan is a city that Michael Moore has made famous. Flint once supported hordes of middle class workers thanks to a thriving auto industry, but today it is a just a rotting shell. It looks like a war went through it and nobody bothered to clean up the mess.
At this point, the murder rate in Flint, Michigan is worse than the murder rate in Baghdad. That is how nightmarish things have become in Flint.
It’s not that the cops here are scared; it’s just that they’re outmanned, outgunned and flat broke.
Flint is the birthplace of General Motors and the home of the U.A.W.’s first big strike. In case you didn’t know this, the words “Vehicle City” are spelled out on the archway spanning the Flint River.
But the name is a lie. Flint isn’t Vehicle City anymore. The Buick City complex is gone. The spark-plug plant is gone. Fisher Body is gone.
What Flint is now is one of America’s murder capitals. Last year in Flint, population 102,000, there were 66 documented murders. The murder rate here is worse than those in Newark and St. Louis and New Orleans. It’s even worse than Baghdad’s.
Politicians love to go to Flint and make speeches, but things never get any better. The following are comments that Joe Biden made about Flint, Michigan during a recent speech he gave to promote a jobs bill….
“In 2008, when Flint had 265 sworn officers on their police force, there were 35 murders and 91 rapes in this city. In 2010, when Flint had only 144 police officers, the murder rate climbed to 65 and rapes–just to pick two categories–climbed to 229. In 2011, you now only have 125 shields. God only knows what the numbers will be this year for Flint if we don’t rectify it.”
But don’t look down on Flint – these kinds of conditions are coming to where you live soon enough.
#6 West Philly
Did you know that 36.4% of all children that live in Philadelphia are living in poverty?
There are some sections of Philadelphia that are actually very nice, but there are others that look like society has forgotten about them for decades.
A recent article by Jim Quinn entitled “More Than 30 Blocks Of Grey And Decay” described the depressing conditions in West Philadelphia. Quinn refers to his drive through this area as “the 30 Blocks of Squalor”….
The real unemployment rate exceeds 50%, murder is the number one industry, with drugs a close second.
But it was not always this way. Once upon a time, West Philly was actually a thriving area and was full of middle class families.
So what happened?
That is a very good question.
According to Quinn, the physical decay in West Philly is matched by the social decay….
The once proud homes are in shambles. Bags of garbage dot the landscape. Most of the people who live here are parasites on society. Personal responsibility, work ethic, education and marriage are unknown concepts in this community. Even though more than 50% of the students in West Philly drop out of high school and the SAT scores of West Philly High students are lower than whale ****, the bankrupt school district spent $70 million to build a new high school/prison to babysit derelicts and future prison inmates. The windows do not have steel bars yet, as the architect was smart to put all windows at least eight feet above street level.
These days there is a lot of despair in “the city of brotherly love”. It is so sad to see what is happening to what once was such a proud city.
Raytheon video of flight tests of a prototype of its Small Tactical Munition (STM), a 25-lb. laser/GPS-guided unpowered weapon designed to arm small unmanned aircraft, principally the AAI RQ-7 Shadow tactical UAV. For the tests, the STM was dropped from Raytheon’s Cobra testbed UAV. The company vying for the contract to arm US Marine Corps Shadows, whcih are planned to be fielded with weapons within two years.
They’re called ‘Small Tactical Munitions’ and they are tiny laser
guided bombs that can be deployed by much smaller drones (or unmanned
aerial vehicles).
Raytheon has been experimenting with bombs less than two feet long
and barely 1/10th the weight of the Hellfire missiles that the
Predator and Reaper drones use.
The tiny drones used as ‘eyes in the sky’ were too small and
lightweight to be armed with bombs – until now.
‘Obama promised to be whistleblowers’ best friend, became enemy no.1′
Pre-trial hearings are underway for Bradley Manning – the jailed US soldier accused of releasing information to Wikileaks. His lawyer claims Manning was tortured and treated worse than a terrorist during nearly two years in solitary confinement. He faces 22 charges including ‘aiding the enemy’ – which carries a death sentence.
Chase Mader who wrote the book, “The Passion of Bradley Manning”, says Washington’s stance is hypocritical.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes 'FAIR USE' of any such copyrighted material.]
Since early June, the Midwest and parts of the northern and central Plains have faced a devastating drought. The lack of substantial rainfall has had severe effects on corn production and has resulted in desertlike conditions for some areas. Paired with the recent heat wave, the situation has become a disaster for corn growers and has significantly driven down yields in the United States for 2012. 
A surfer struggles to keep upright on a large, rough wave off the Southern California shore at El Segundo Beach in El Segundo, Calif., Friday, Dec. 15. 2006. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)
Stunning: Shelf clouds looming over central Virginia have provided quite a shock for local residents
Threatening: These remarkable pictures make the cloud look like an enormous wave
Amazing: But the shelf clouds are not dangerous, even though they are a sign of a nearby thunderstorm
