“The natural gas boom has led to cleaner power and greater energy independence. That’s why my administration will keep cutting red tape and speeding up new oil and gas permits.”
– President Barack Obama, February 12, 2013.
Not so fast.
Fracking waste-water. Photo: SFAA News.
July 10, 2014, Concerned Health Professionals of New York released a report that sets the record straight on the hazards of fracking. Sandra Steingraber, PhD, co-founder of (CHPNY), explained to the press, “This compilation of findings brings together data from many fields of study, and reveals the diversity of the problems with fracking—from increased flood risks to increased crime risks, from earthquakes to methane leaks. What this multitude of threats all have in common is the ability to harm public health.” (From an EcoWatch report.)
In New York state, fracking – shattering the earth’s crust with a toxic mix of water and chemicals to extract gas and oil – has been held at bay so far by vigourous citizen opposition. But as the industry spreads rapidly across North America and around the globe, it generates huge profits for corporations, and a tidal wave of misinformation from their enablers in government and the media.
Every place where fracking invades, public opposition springs up, but until recently it’s been hampered by lack of access to scientific data on the hazards. Now professional organizations like Concerned Health Professionals of New York (CHPNY) and Physicians, Scientists and Engineers for Healthy Energy (PSE) are breaking through industry/government secrecy to liberate the necessary data.
An invaluable resource, the ground-breaking (in the best sense) new report from CHPNY can be read and downloaded here.
Dig deepinto the science vs fracking story inBold Scientists: dispatches from the battle for honest science, comingSeptember 2014 from Between the Lines.
Palestinians mourn victims of Israeli air strikes in Gaza City, 12 July.
Many of us feel enraged but helpless in the face of Israel’s war crimes, with the active complicity of elites and mainstream media in Europe and North America. Israeli historian Ilan Pappe calls the long siege of Gaza “an incremental genocide.”
The rage is understandable, but we are not helpless. There is something we can do.
“We Palestinians trapped inside the bloodied and besieged Gaza Strip call on conscientious people all over the world to act, protest and intensify boycotts, divestments and sanctions against Israel until it ends this murderous attack on our people and is held to account.
With the world turning their backs on us once again, we in Gaza have been left to face massacre after massacre. As you read these words, over 120 Palestinians are dead now [157 by July 14, with no end in sight], including 25 children. Over 1,000 have been injured including countless horrifying injuries that will limit lives forever –- more than two thirds of the injured are women and children.
We know for a fact that many more will not make it through the next day. Which of us will be next, as we lie awake from the sound of the carnage in our beds tonight? Will we be the next photo left in an unrecognizable state from Israel’s state-of-the-art flesh-tearing, limb-stripping machinery of destruction?
We call for a final end to the crimes and oppression against us. We call for:
Arms embargos on Israel, sanctions that would cut off the supply of weapons and military aid from Europe and the United States on which Israel depends to commit such war crimes;
Boycott, divestment and sanctions, as called for by the overwhelming majority of Palestinian civil society in 2005
Without pressure and isolation, the Israeli regime has proven time and time again that it will continue such massacres as we see around us now, and continue the decades of systematic ethnic cleansing, military occupation and apartheid policies.
We are writing this on Saturday night, again paralyzed in our homes as the bombs fall on us in Gaza. Who knows when the current attacks will end? For anyone over seven years old, permanently etched on our minds are the rivers of blood that ran through the Gaza streets when for over three weeks in 2009 over 1,400 Palestinians were killed, including over 330 children.
White phosphorous and other chemical weapons were used in civilian areas and contaminating our land with a rise in cancers as a result. More recently 180 more were killed in the week-long attacks in late November 2012.
This time what? 200, 500, 5,000? We ask: how many of our lives are dispensable enough until the world takes action? How much of our blood is sufficient? Before the Israeli bombings, a member of the Israeli Knesset Ayelet Shaked of the far-right Jewish Home party called for genocide of the Palestinian people.
“They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes,” she said. “Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.” Right now nothing is beyond the murderous nature of the Israeli State, for we, a population that is mostly children, are all mere snakes to them.
As said Omar Ghraib in Gaza, “It was heart shattering to see the pictures of little boys and girls viciously killed. Also how an elderly woman was killed while she was having her iftar at Maghreb prayer by bombing her house. She died holding the spoon in her hand, an image that will need a lot of time to leave my head.”
Entire houses are being targeted and entire families are being murdered. Early Thursday morning the entire al-Haj family was wiped out — the father Mahmoud, mother Bassema and five children. No warning, a family targeted and removed from life. Thursday night, the same again, no warning, five more dead including four from the Ghannam family, a woman and a seven year old child amongst them.
On Tuesday morning the Kaware family did get a phone call telling them their three-story house would be bombed. The family began to leave when a water tank was struck, but then returned with members of the community, who all came to the house to stand with them, people from all over the neighborhood.
The Israeli jets bombed the building with a roof full of people, knowing full well it was full of civilians. Seven people died immediately, including five children under 13 years old. Twenty-five more were injured, and eight-year-old Seraj Abd al-Aal succumbed to his injuries later that evening.
Perhaps the family was trying to appeal to the Israeli regime’s humanity, surely they wouldn’t bomb the roof full of people. But as we watch families being torn apart around us, it’s clear that Israel’s actions have nothing to do with humanity.
Other places hit include a clearly-marked media vehicle, killing the independent journalist Hamed Shehab, injuring eight others, a hit on a Red Crescent rescue vehicle and attacks on hospitals which caused evacuations and more injuries.
This latest session of Israeli barbarity is placed firmly in the context of Israel’s inhuman seven-year blockade that has cut off the main life-line of goods and people coming in and out of Gaza, resulting in the severe medical and food shortages being reported by all our hospitals and clinics right now.
Cement to rebuild the thousands of homes destroyed by Israeli attacks had been banned and many injured and ill people are still not being allowed to travel abroad to receive urgent medical treatment which has caused the deaths of over 600 sick patients.
As more news comes in, as Israeli leaders give promises of moving onto a next stage in brutality, we know there are more horrors yet to come. For this we call on you to not turn your backs on us. We call on you to stand up for justice and humanity and demonstrate and support the courageous men, women and children rooted in the Gaza Strip facing the darkest of times ahead. We insist on international action:
Severance of diplomatic ties with Israel
Trials for war crimes
Immediate international protection of the civilians of Gaza
We call on you to join the growing international boycott, divestment and sanction campaign to hold this rogue state to account that is proving once again to be so violent and yet so unchallenged.
Join the growing critical mass around the world with a commitment to the day when Palestinians do not have to grow up amidst this relentless murder and destruction by the Israeli regime. When we can move freely, when the siege is lifted, the occupation is over and the world’s Palestinian refugees are finally granted justice.
ACT NOW, before it is too late!”
Signed by:
Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions
University Teachers’ Association in Palestine
Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations Network (Umbrella for 133 orgs)
General Union of Palestinian Women
Medical Democratic Assembly
General Union of Palestine Workers
General Union for Health Services Workers
General Union for Public Services Workers
General Union for Petrochemical and Gas Workers
General Union for Agricultural Workers
Union of Women’s Work Committees
Pal-Cinema (Palestine Cinema Forum)
Youth Herak Movement
Union of Women’s Struggle Committees
Union of Synergies—Women Unit
Union of Palestinian Women Committees
Women’s Studies Society
Working Woman’s Society
Press House
Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel
Gaza BDS Working Group
One Democratic State Group
“The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control.” – William Binney, July 5, at a conference in London, England, organised by the Centre for Investigative Journalism.
Image: Reality Uncovered
Binney, one of the highest-level whistleblowers to escape the US National Security Agency, was a leading code-breaker against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Soon after September 11, 2001, he resigned in protest against Washington’s embrace of mass surveillance.
“At least 80% of fibre-optic cables globally go via the US”, Binney told the conference. “This is no accident and allows the US to view all communication coming in.”
All communication. That means you and me. Right now.
Details in The Guardian, UK, via Reader Supported News, here.
1984 + 30, and counting…
Surveil the surveillers inBold Scientists: dispatches from the battle for honest science, due September 2014 from Between the Lines.
“My name is Eran Efrati, I am Jewish, a veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces, and a 7th generation Jerusalemite. What I’ve seen in Israel over the last few weeks is beyond anything I have witnessed in my life.
Gaza under Israeli attack, July 2014. Photo: The Times, UK.
I’ve seen terrified Palestinian children in Hebron and Halhul, sitting on the ruins of their homes.
I’ve seen Israeli mobs in the street chanting “death to Arabs” and pulling out Palestinian men from their stores to beat them as other Israelis stood idly by. I’ve seen Israeli soldiers lined up at the Gaza border, ready at a moment’s notice to invade.
And now, like you, I’ve seen the climbing death toll in Gaza, over 100 dead and some 500 injured – all by Israeli missiles, with no end in sight.
As much as it pains me to say it, I don’t think I can do a lot about it. But I believe you can.
North American voices – especially Jewish North American voices – are probably the most critical voices right now. [MR: I would add that in the face of crimes on this scale, all voices of reason and compassion need to be heard wherever and however they can.]
We need you to tell Israeli politicians, the Israeli media, Israeli society, that you can’t support this attack. That you can’t support human rights violations. That you can’t support racism. That you won’t support the idea that Jewish lives matter more than Palestinian lives.
We know the roots of this are long and deep. But the truth behind this latest assault is finally coming out: as J.J. Goldberg wrote in The Forward, the Israeli government lied, and created this situation.
For weeks, the government knew that the three kidnapped teenagers were dead. But they instituted a gag order on the media, lied to Israelis and the world, and falsely claimed the mass arrests and collective punishment of Palestinians was all in the hopes of finding the teenagers alive.
In other words, their chosen response was to kidnap the mind of an entire country.
From the very beginning, this has been about punishing Palestinians. From the beginning, the government has been willing to manipulate and use its own people for that goal.
Overhead, I hear airplanes headed to Gaza all day long, and I know there’s nothing I can do to stop them. And now we all know the lengths they’ve gone to justify this attack, and how fully Israeli society has bought into it. And I don’t think we can stop it from within.
Where I live in eastern Ontario, Canada, an unusually cool, wet spring has generated sumptuous gardens, planting problems for farmers, hordes of hungry mosquitoes, and complaints from people bound for the beach.
But in the big picture, on the only planet we have, yesterday the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released its latest global climate report:
May 2014 was the warmest May on record.
Four of the five warmest Mays on record have occurred in the past five years.
May 2014 marked the 351st consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th-century average.
When will we ever learn?
Scientists wrestle with urgent conundrums in Bold Scientists: dispatches from the battle for honest science, due September 20, 2014 from Between the Lines.
Fracking waste-water. Photo: SFAA News.
Michael Riordon 