When The S*** Hits the Fan

#Anonymous Declares War on Mainstream Media: Attacks Fox, #CNN, NBC and More

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(ANONHQ) As of June 1st, Ghost Squad Hackers – the same group leading #OpIcarus – have launched a series of coordinated attacks against leading members of the corporate mainstream media. Giving credit where credit is due, Tec.mic and Softpedia were the first to report the operation. But their reports only tell a portion of the whole story, we will explain why in a moment.

Broadly speaking, the goal of the #OpSilence is to attack all the corrupt major news networks that mislead and censor information from the general public. More specifically, the news agencies who conceal the crimes of Israel, while misleading the population about the mistreatment of the Palestinian people. The operation is off to a quick start, Ghost Squad has successfully” carried out DDoS attacks on CNN and FOX News” already just this month. More attacks are promised, NBC and MSM appears to be their next target.

When Tech.mic and Softpedia presented their coverage of the hacks, they included images and references directly to Anonymous. But upon reading these articles, Ghost Squad had a message of their own that they want everyone to hear:

It is no secret Ghost Squad has a close affiliation with Anonymous; I am sure this is how the group got started in the first place. The group insists they speak for themselves, they are essentially trying to get their own reputation – credibility.

But there is a second layer to this discussion highlighting the recent divide within Anonymous. There has been a “Civil War” of sorts in recent months, and the reputation of the Anonymous collective as a whole has been damaged. Last winter, prominent hacktivist group Ghostsec also cut their ties with Anonymous. In a statement they said “Anonymous has a habit of shooting in every direction and asking questions later.” In other interviews they imply that Anonymous has developed a reputation for behaving immature – more concerned with silly DDoS’ing attacks than changing the world.

Since the quarreling of #OpWhiteRose many people have splintered off, or left Anonymous entirely – just another in the long list of strange effects Donald Trump has had on the entire world. Ghost Squad is one of the groups effected by this ‘Civil War.’ In the time since this happened last March, the group has exploded onto the scene, quickly becoming one of the most influential and talked about hacking groups in the entire world in 2016.

I have no doubt about the origins of this operation though, this goes back to#OpMediaControl which began last June. The operation called for the hacking of every major news network in the United States, testing their email systems, DDoS’ing web sites, attempting to hack in teleprompters or live feeds – anything you could think of. Last I heard back in December, they were still trying to recruit people to join them for an event this summer. Sound familiar to what Ghost Squad is doing right now?

The following video was from #OpMediaControl release last June:

For the purposes of accuracy, AnonHQ News reached out to our contacts in #OpMediaControl. We gave them a preview of the article and asked them what they thought. They showed us a press release dating May 28, 2016, a video proclaiming that#OpMediaControl has been re-engaged. Of course, #OpSilence proceeded to begin June 1st. In another interesting note, earlier last month Anonymous Resistance Movement, one of the groups behind #OpMediaControl,  conducted an interview with GhostSquad. So as you can see, the two groups are well acquainted with one another – these operations are no coincidence.

Ghost Squad may be stepping up from the pack here, but make no mistake, this operation has been in the making for over a year and Anonymous led the way.

This article (#Anonymous Declares War on Mainstream Media: Attacks Fox, CNN, NBC and More) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to AnonHQ.com. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Image credit: AntiMedia. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

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From theantimedia.org Team

What Hillary #Clinton Has in Common With #Communist #China

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(ANTIMEDIA) What do Hillary Clinton and the communist government of China have in common? Aside from their shared support for subverting freedom, lack of respect for human rights, and support of invasive surveillance, they both possess armies of trolls who manipulate online narratives.

According to a new report from researchers at Harvard’s Department of Government, the Chinese government employs millions of people to make posts praising government on their behalf. The internet mercenaries are deemed, collectively, “The 50 Cent Party,” because of rumors they are paid per post (the report concluded they do not appeared to be paid and most are government employees to begin with). They are believed to make 488 million posts per year.

After a blogger leaked hacked official email archives, the long-suspected program was confirmed to be real. Those leaks “reported activities of Internet commentators, including numerous 50c posts from workers claiming credit for completing their assignments, and many other communications.” The posts were often “cheerleading” for government, sometimes to “distract the public, although this activity can be also be used to distract from other events, general negativity, specific grievances, etc.” Posts that reflected positively on government made up the majority of so-called 50 centers’ activity, and the researchers theorized it “is a strategy designed to actively distract and redirect public attention from ongoing criticism, other grievances, or collective action.”

Perhaps such behavior is to be expected of an overarching communist regime, but Hillary Clinton’s internet army made headlines before China’s. As Anti-Media reported last month, the Clinton campaign has invested $1 million to fund an army of internet crusaders to challenge negative conversations about her online. That army, called “Barrier Breakers” and is a division of her organization, Correct the Record, which describes itself as “a strategic research and rapid response team designed to defend Hillary Clinton from baseless attacks.”

According to Correct the Record’s website, Barrier Breakers is intended to “serve as a resource for supporters looking for positive content and push-back to share with their online progressive communities, as well as thanking prominent supporters and committed superdelegates on social media.” (By “committed superdelegates,” perhaps they mean “paid lobbyists.”)

The project is extensive, “including the more than tripling of its digital operation to engage in online messaging both for Secretary Clinton and to push back against attackers on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and Instagram.”

It appears 50 centers and Barrier Breakers are performing the same function: creating potentially artificial perceptions that the Chinese government and Hillary Clinton, respectively, enjoy enthusiastic support (it’s likely some members of both the Chinese and Clinton social media teams do genuinely believe the things they post). But there are differences.

For one, the Chinese government has attempted to keep its operations secret. In contrast, the Clinton campaign has made its intentions public, seizing the opportunity to couch their attempts to control the conversation in proactive language that conflates itself with combating online harassment. “The task force currently combats online political harassment, having already addressed more than 5,000 individuals who have personally attacked Secretary Clinton on Twitter,” they boast. They do not disclose whether task force members’ individual identities are public or private.

Correct the Record claims Hillary supporters are “oftentimes are discouraged from engaging online and are ‘often afraid to voice their thoughts’ because of the fear of online harassment,” using this, evidently, as justification for paying people to post positive sentiments about the candidate, who currently suffers a likeability problem as severe as reviled presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump.

The biggest difference between Clinton and the Chinese government in their efforts to sway conversations online concerns the degree of defensive engagement they display: according to the researchers, the Chinese government’s posters “do not step up to defend the government, its leaders, and their policies from criticism, no matter how vitriolic; indeed, they seem to avoid controversial issues entirely,” preferring, rather, to use cheerleading efforts to distract and redirect. “Letting an argument die, or changing the subject, usually works much better than picking an argument and getting someone’s back up,” the researchers explained.

In contrast, Clinton’s Barrier Breakers project openly admits its active engagement in countering anti-Hillary narratives. Referencing “Bernie Bros,” Barrier Breakers vows to use what they’ve learned to “quickly and forcefully [respond] to negative attacks and false narratives.” This reaches beyond the Chinese government’s designs to distract with cheerleading; it’s an unabashed effort to change minds — even as Barrier Breakers fails to elaborate on the “false narratives” they plan to challenge.

Their goal conveniently ignores Clinton’s own proclivity for dishonesty and manipulating narratives. Indeed, her collective of paid public supporters extends to cable news, where many pundits praise her but fail to disclose they are on her payroll.

Hillary Clinton and the Chinese government are not the only entities who attempt to mold narratives and public perception to their benefit. Donald Trump was caught hiring real-life actors to drum up enthusiasm for his campaign. In the social media sphere, the Israeli government has a student program, called “Hasbara,” meant to counter online speech critical of Israel. British spy agency, GCHQ, which wokrks closely with the NSA, has a program to manipulate online political narratives and destroy the reputations of activist movements. And of course, the American government, namely — that we know of — the military, uses sock puppet accounts to spread pro-American propaganda.

While Barrier Breakers is, perhaps, more permissible than the Chinese government’s program, in that it is not officially sponsored by government, Clinton has given the populace no reason to believe her manipulative practices will cease should she make it to the White House.

This article (What Hillary Clinton Has in Common With Communist China) by Elizabeth Montag is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

#Bayer’s Acquisition Offer Could Literally Make #Monsanto Disappear

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(ANTIMEDIA) United States — Bayer has now confirmed a buyout bid for agrichemical giant, Monsanto — the maker of Agent Orange, RoundUp, and genetically-modified crops — otherwise known as one of the most hated companies on the planet.

In a statement, Monsanto said Morgan Stanley & Co. is advising the company financially in the “potential acquisition,” but didn’t comment beyond basic information about what the deal might entail. The merger would combine Bayer and Monsanto into the largest agricultural supplier in the world.

Monsanto has experienced declining sales, particularly of its genetically-modified corn and soybean seeds, arguably as a result of customer backlash over RoundUp being designated a “probable carcinogen” by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer last year. GM corn, soy, cotton, and other RoundUp Ready crops rely on heavy dousings of the glyphosate-based herbicide to control weeds — but farmers have also admitted to using RoundUp to assist in the drying process prior to harvest.

On Tuesday, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine declared genetically engineered crops ‘safe’ for human consumption after a multi-year study, but still noted the benefits of labeling foods containing them. However, one day prior to its declaration, a report cited by EcoWatch revealed extensive connections between the National Academies and biotech companies like Monsanto — which donated millions to the division responsible for the study on the safety of GM food.

Further contaminating Monsanto’s already severely tarnished record of unsafe products, RoundUp has been specifically named the cause of four Nebraska farm workers’ non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in a lawsuit announced this week. In that case and several others, inert ingredients — and not just glyphosate — appear to have contributed to the development of cancer.

According to lawsuit cited by The Intercept, John Sanders, a farm worker from California suing the company for damages after he developed cancer, Monsanto “knew or should have known that RoundUp is more toxic than glyphosate alone and that safety studies of RoundUp, RoundUp’s adjuvants and ‘inert’ ingredients” were necessary.

Monsanto’s notoriety doesn’t end with shady agrichemicals — not by far. In March, the Portland, Oregon, city council voted unanimously to allow the city’s attorney to proceed with a lawsuit against the behemoth company for the contamination of various bodies of water with toxic PCBs. Seattle, Spokane, Berkeley, Oakland, San Diego, and San Jose have similar litigation pending for PCB contamination.

Though the potential buyout of Monsanto by Bayer comes amidst a number of other mergers of chemical industry corporations, it appears to be a move to save the former from its poor performance in the marketplace.

“Monsanto has struggled in recent quarters to deal with slumping corn prices in the U.S., which have reduced demand for its best-selling product: genetically-enhanced corn seeds,” ABC News reported in January. “Farmers are shifting more acres to other crops after surpluses of corn and other crops, including wheat, have squashed commodity prices.”

People have moved away from food potentially chemically soaked with RoundUp, making the world’s bestselling chemical herbicide’s future more uncertain by the day — and the merger with Bayer, which has its own questionable history, a possible business-saving proposition.

It’s likely that if the acquisition is successful, Bayer will completely drop the Monsanto name from its products to get away from the stigma the company has accumulated over the years. This would render it invisible to concerned consumers while retaining its products under a new name.

An entire protest movement called the March Against Monsanto has been built up around the company, with the latest incarnation taking place tomorrow.

This article (Bayer’s Acquisition Offer Could Literally Make Monsanto Disappear) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

You Know Those Missing #Hillary #Emails? #Russia Might Leak 20,000 of Them

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(ANTIMEDIA) Hillary Clinton sits at the center of a raging firestorm concerning her arrangement of a private email account and server set up in her home — from which top secret information may have been deleted. But despite Bernie Sanders’ apparent annoyance with the “damn emails,” the scandal just exponentially intensified, when Judge Andrew Napolitano revealed on Monday that Russia has possession of around 20,000 of Clinton’s emails — leaving open the possibility her deletions might not have been permanent after all.

“There’s a debate going on in the Kremlin between the Foreign Ministry and the Intelligence Services about whether they should release the 20,000 of Mrs. Clinton’s emails that they have hacked into,” Napolitano told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly in an interview for The Kelly File.

With Clinton’s repeated claims she employed the personal email server only for mundane communications and non-sensitive State matters having been proven outright lies, the deletions of 31,830 emails — in the new context of Napolitano’s statement — have suddenly become remarkably relevant.

As the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s questionable email practices deepens, the question of who had access to what information previously located on the former secretary of state’s server is now more critical than ever.

One such individual, Romanian hacker Guccifer, who was abruptly extradited to the United States, revealed he had easily and repeatedly accessed Clinton’s personal server — and he wasn’t the only one.

“For me, it was easy,” the hacker, whose given name is Marcel Lehel Lazar, exclusively told Fox News; “easy for me, for everybody.”

If Guccifer and Napolitano are right, Russia may, indeed, have possession of highly-sensitive information courtesy of Clinton’s arrogant failure to adhere to the obligation to use a government email account during her tenure as secretary — a situation worsened by the now-mendacious claim no sensitive information had been sent through the personal account.

In fact, if Guccifer is to be believed — as his extradition by the U.S. indicates — news of the Kremlin having obtained potentially top-secret material may be the tip of a gargantuan iceberg. Using a readily available program, the Romanian hacker also claimed he observed “up to 10, like, IPs from other parts of the world” during sessions on Clinton’s personal server. If just one of those unknown parties was connected to Russia, who the other nine might be could be central to the FBI’s decision whether or not to charge Clinton for mishandling classified information.

Adding yet another nail in the coffin case against Hillary on Thursday, the Hill reported conservative watchdog Judicial Watch revealed, pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request, frustration with technical difficulties in obtaining a secure phone line led the secretary to direct a top aide to abandon the effort and call her without the necessary security in place.

“I give up. Call me on my home [number],” Clinton wrote in a February 2009 email from the newly-released batch — on the also notoriously unsecured server — to then-chief of staff, Cheryl Mills.

Though the email thread contains no confirmation such a call was ever made on the unsecured phone line, it evidences still more of the same flagrant disregard for national security apparently peppering Clinton’s practices during her time at the State Department.

“This drip, drip of new Clinton emails show Hillary Clinton could not care less about the security of her communications,” noted Judicial Watch president, Tom Fitton, in a statement cited by the Hill. “How many other smoking gun emails are Hillary Clinton and her co-conspirators in the Obama administration hiding from the American people?”

For a putative presidential hopeful, Hillary Clinton certainly doesn’t appear to appreciate the imperative for keeping matters of national security obscured from … anyone.

This article (You Know Those Missing Hillary Emails? Russia Might Leak 20,000 of Them) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

Are You Feeling #Depressed? #Facebook May Be to Blame

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(ANTIMEDIA) Few would deny the profound changes social networking has made to society and interpersonal relationships — for better or worse. By now, most people with a Facebook account know how overwhelming the platform can be, and even sarcastic memes have insinuated that people’s lives may not be quite as wonderful as they make them out to be on the social networking site.

As social media has become an increasingly important part of human interaction, research into the phenomenon has continued to develop, and much of it is uncovering a consistent theme. Time and time again, studies have shown heavy use of Facebook and other social networking sites might be responsible for more than just provoking minor irritation — and can be a contributing factor in more serious mental health issues.

The most recent study by the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine published in the Depression and Anxiety journal last month found the more time young adults spend on social media, the more likely they are to be depressed. To examine the effects of social media on the moods of users, 1,787 adults between 19 and 32 were given questionnaires relating to their use of the 11 most popular platforms: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, Vine, and LinkedIn.

On average, the study participants used social media for a total of 61 minutes per day and visited a number of social media accounts 30 times per week. Alarmingly, over a quarter of them were classified as having “high indicators” of depression. Significant associations were noted between their social media use and depression, whether it was measured in terms of total time spent or frequency of visits.

Those who most frequently checked social media throughout the week were 2.7 times more likely to be depressed than peers who spent less time using the platforms. Additionally, those who spent the most time on social media during the day had 1.7 times the risk of depression than those who spent less time.

Researcher Lui yi Lin, B.A., said it may be that people who are already depressed turn to social media to fill a void, but also acknowledged exposure to social media may cause depression, which could then fuel more use.

Facebook — dystopian not utopian

Lin’s analysis builds on the findings of a 2014 study by the University of Houston that specifically focused on Facebook and uncovered why heavy use can lead to depressive symptoms. The study entitled, “Seeing Everyone Else’s Highlight Reels: How Facebook Usage is Linked to Depression,” concluded excessive social comparison to peers negatively impacts the psychological health of users.

Facebook has over 1.65 billion monthly active users worldwide, and 1.09 billion users log on daily. In the U.S. alone, users devote a staggering 19% of their internet browsing to Facebook-related activities. After logging in to the site, they are bombarded with a barrage of information, including status updates, strong opinions, harrowing news, pictures of other people’s romances, babies, or travels.

“Prior research has tied Facebook use to positive effects such as fulfillment of ego needs, greater subjective well-being, and higher relationship quality for those in a romantic relationship. However, for some individuals the results of such cyber exchanges may be more dystopian than utopian,” the study reads.

Comparisons

The University of Houston used a 14-day diary method to examine the extent to which spending time on Facebook encouraged individuals to compare their lives to the lives of others. Individuals were questioned on their usage and how likely they were to make social comparisons. Interestingly, the link between the amount of time spent on Facebook and depressive symptoms was mediated by what researchers referred to as “upwards, nondirectional (neutral) and downwards social comparisons.”

The upwards comparisons, like looking up to someone perceived as more popular or attractive, tended to make people feel worse. In contrast, downward comparisons, like comparing oneself to someone with lower grades, for example, made people feel better about themselves.

Chicken or egg?

Consequently, it seems it is a chicken and egg argument as to whether exposure to social media causes depression or if depression fuels usage. Regardless of what came first, the link between social media usage and depressive symptoms is being proven time and time again, and there are a number of factors that create the connection.

The studies find that along with comparisons — which elicit feelings of envy and the distorted belief that others lead happier, more successful lives — engaging in activities of little meaning on social media may give users a feeling of “time wasted,” which can therefore negatively influence mood. Additionally, as the University of Pittsburgh researchers noted, excessive social media use can fuel “internet addiction and spending more time on social networking sites increases the risk of exposure to cyber-bullying or other similar negative interactions — which can also cause feelings of depression.”

This article (Are You Feeling Depressed? Facebook May Be to Blame) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Michaela Whitton and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

Hacker #Arrested and Jailed After Exposing Flaws in #Election Website

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(ANTIMEDIA) Lee County, FL — A hacker in Florida exposed security vulnerabilities in one county’s elections web domains so officials could fix the problem — but, instead, he ended up behind bars.

Hacker David Michael Levin, owner of Vanguard Cybersecurity, was arrested on Wednesday after the Florida Department of Law Enforcement received a referral from the Lee County Sheriff’s Office after his apparently misguided attempt to help prevent election fraud by pointing out online vulnerabilities.

After spending six hours in jail, where he was held on $15,000 bond, Levin now faces three counts of gaining unauthorized access to a computer, network, or electronic instrument — despite the fact he had not only been doing his job, but also alerted the county to a potentially serious security concern.

To hack the Lee County Elections Office and the Division of Elections in Tallahassee, Levin performed Structured Query Language (SQL) injection attacks — which he documented on video and later uploaded to YouTube. According to the somewhat redacted police report, Levin’s associate, Daniel Sinclair, sent a security report about the SQL vulnerability — including details of the security flaw and a screenshot — to “an employee within the Department of State, Division of Elections.”

That employee then forwarded all the information to Special Agent Christopher Tissot, and the investigation began.

Though superficially, the case appears to be one of an unwelcome security breach despite that it was attempted for otherwise laudable purposes. But some aspects of what led to Levin’s arrest deserve further consideration.

Levin’s associate, Sinclair, is currently running against incumbent Sharon Harrington, Lee County Supervisor of Elections — whose name and password were used in the SQL hack. In the YouTube video about the attack, Levin and Sinclair explain how they obtained data from the elections website, which wasn’t even encrypted.

The possibility Levin chose Harrington’s account to perform the SQL injection as a publicity stunt to make Harrington’s job performance appear untenable must be taken into consideration. That being said, Levin’s foray into the elections data had not been undertaken with the appropriate permission — and because he didn’t alert the authorities as soon as he discovered vulnerabilities, law enforcement is required to be blind to his good intent.

However, in Levin’s defense, the privacy concerns of millions of voters — and any other potential issues with unencrypted and unsecured information — on the official Elections website should perhaps trump the strictures of law. Levin cooperated fully during a raid of his property — during which electronics were confiscated — and has in no way been deceitful regarding the hack.

Considering the sheer volume of complaints so far during the 2016 election cycle, it would seem counterproductive for law enforcement to go after a credentialed individual who obviously has the voting public’s best interests in mind.

With rather overt fraud disenfranchising voters across the country, arresting the one hacker who attempted to help secure elections seems oddly ironic.

This article (Hacker Arrested and Jailed After Exposing Flaws in Election Website) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

Whistleblowers Confirm #Facebook #Censors Certain Types of News Stories

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(ANTIMEDIA) Former Facebook employees who managed the “Trending News” section of the site are accusing the behemoth social media platform of censoring news stories and “injecting” others to artificially inflate their popularity. Unsurprisingly, in light of these accusations, the developing story appears to have been censored from the site’s list of popular stories, underscoring deeply-rooted problems in the way information is presented online.

The fresh allegations follow a story published last week by Gizmodo, which detailed how some of the journalists tasked with populating the trending news list were overworked and mistreated. The reporters, “a small group of young journalists, primarily educated at Ivy League or private East Coast universities,” select stories for the feed, and also write the headlines and three-line descriptions that show up on the right-hand side of the Facebook home screen.

Gizmodo points out the influence of this seemingly small operation, noting the list of trending stories, “constitutes some of the most powerful real estate on the internet and helps dictate what news Facebook’s users—167 million in the US alone—are reading at any given moment.”

Since the publication of last week’s initial story, other former Facebook employees have come forward to describe the types of stories that were intentionally included in — and excluded from — the feed, which purports to be determined by the stories’ popularity among users.

Rather than reflecting users’ organic interests, however, one of the most glaring components of the Facebook trending stories tool — according to the effective whistleblowers — is the company’s policy of excluding stories about Facebook. According to Gizmodo, “When stories about Facebook itself would trend organically on the network, news curators used less discretion—they were told not to include these stories at all.”

As one former news curator said, “When it was a story about the company, we were told not to touch it. It had to be cleared through several channels, even if it was being shared quite a bit. We were told that we should not be putting it on the trending tool.”

This former employee’s experience was substantiated by at least one other. “We were always cautious about covering Facebook,” another former curator said. “We would always wait to get second level approval before trending something to Facebook. Usually we had the authority to trend anything on our own [but] if it was something involving Facebook, the copy editor would call their manager, and that manager might even call their manager before approving a topic involving Facebook.”

But limiting the exposure of Facebook-centered articles is only one tactic in the social media platform’s manipulation of news stories. As Gizmodo explained:

“When users weren’t reading stories that management viewed as important, several former workers said, curators were told to put them in the trending news feed anyway. Several former curators described using something called an ‘injection tool’ to push topics into the trending module that weren’t organically being shared or discussed enough to warrant inclusion—putting the headlines in front of thousands of readers rather than allowing stories to surface on their own.”

Often, some former employees said, the injected topics would eventually become the most popular trending stories. While on the surface, this practice may seem like a proactive effort to provide more news for users, the injected stories were firmly rooted in establishment pillars of information.

“We were told that if we saw something, a news story that was on the front page of these ten sites, like CNN, the New York Times, and BBC, then we could inject the topic,” said one former curator. Indeed, all three of these outlets epitomize “mainstream” journalism, and, unsurprisingly — or even synonymously — all three outlets have been thoroughly accused of censorship, deception, and bias.

Facebook’s policy to artificially inject stories, as long as they were validated by coverage from outlets like these, reflects the platform’s clear, albeit perhaps unwitting, connection to perpetuating establishment narratives. As the former curator said, “If it looked like it had enough news sites covering the story, we could inject it—even if it wasn’t naturally trending.”

Though boosting placement of relevant news stories seems like a noble cause, the practice clearly violates Facebook’s efforts to make the trending news feed appear as strictly “topics that have recently become popular” on the site.

Whereas censoring stories on Facebook and injecting others were a matter of policy, the subjective biases of the journalists curating stories also reportedly affected the neutrality of the stories presented to users. Though no former curator interviewed by Gizmodo said this was an official protocol, many said stories from conservative outlets were routinely excluded from the trending news list.

One former curator who, as a political conservative was a minority on the curating team, said, “Depending on who was on shift, things would be blacklisted or trending.” He added, “I’d come on shift and I’d discover that CPAC or Mitt Romney or Glenn Beck or popular conservative topics wouldn’t be trending because either the curator didn’t recognize the news topic or it was like they had a bias against Ted Cruz.”

For example, stories about Lois Lerner, the head of the IRS implicated in unfairly targeting conservative groups, were not included in trending stories. Stories from conservative aggregator, Drudge Report, were also censored, along with stories about conservatarian politician, Rand Paul. “It was absolutely bias[ed]. We were doing it subjectively. It just depends on who the curator is and what time of day it is,” a former curator said, revealing the lack of consistency in Facebook’s reporting practices.

Further highlighting Facebook’s establishment philosophies, Gizmodo noted “stories covered by conservative outlets (like Breitbart, Washington Examiner, and Newsmax) that were trending enough to be picked up by Facebook’s algorithm were excluded unless mainstream sites like the New York Times, the BBC, and CNN covered the same stories.”

While to some left-leaning Facebook users the omission of conservative stories seems like a fair — or even necessary — practice, these fundamentally exclusionary practices should be cause for concern to anyone obtaining news from the trending stories list.

Facebook declined to comment on these allegations, but the site is no stranger to accusations of censorship and manipulating information. The platform was recently caught censoring at least one story unfavorable to Hillary Clinton while multiple groups supporting presidential candidate Bernie Sanders have been suspended. On a different note, Facebook also works closely with the United States government to enable surveillance of the internet, a role that better illustrates the company’s establishment culture than the left-wing biases of individual employees.

Between the individual biases of employees and the broader, more controlling policies of injection and censoring stories about the site, Facebook has proven its incompetence in accurately informing users. Gizmodo reports some former curators said as algorithms were increasingly employed, biases became less pronounced, also noting that the employees worked for Facebook between 2014 and 2015, so if changes have been made, the whistleblowers would not be aware of them.

At the very least, however, the confessions of former curators should raise fundamental questions about journalistic integrity among users who trust the friendly social networking site to deliver information in a responsible, education-oriented manner. As Gizmodo noted, “the revelations undermine any presumption of Facebook as a neutral pipeline for news, or the trending news module as an algorithmically-driven list of what people are actually talking about.”

Perhaps most telling is the trending news section’s reaction to Gizmodo’s breaking story on Facebook news practices: it’s nowhere to be found.

This article (Whistleblowers Confirm Facebook Censors Certain Types of News Stories) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Elizabeth Montag and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

Scientists’ New Breakthrough May Have Just Solved the #Drought Problem-#water

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(ANTIMEDIA) Kalpakkam, India — Indian nuclear scientists have developed a new method to remove salt from seawater, spurring hope for regions around the world ravaged by drought. In India, 13 of 29 states are currently suffering from a lack of clean, fresh water — with conditions expected to worsen — but the scientists have devised a method to make otherwise heavily salinated water safe to drink. They have also developed tools to purify contaminated groundwater to make it safe to drink.

New Delhi Television (NDTV), a popular news organization in India, recently visited Kalpakkam, a small town in Tamil Nadu that houses a pilot plant built by nuclear scientists from the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), a division of the Indian government’s Department of Atomic Energy, located in Mumbai. The plant in Kalpakkam is one of the country’s main nuclear facilities.

As their video report shows, the scientists “have quietly been working on finding solutions to desalinate sea water and to purify water laced with chemicals.” Using waste steam from one of the nuclear reactors, the scientists say they are able to successfully remove salt from the water. As the reporter for NDTV noted, “this reporter tasted the purified water – it tasted like fresh water, not saline at all.” The freshwater is currently being used at the Kudankulam power plant. Though the India Times reports the water is safe to drink, it has not yet been distributed to communities.

Though they do not offer extensive details on how the process works, BARC’s website notes they have “developed and demonstrated several types of thermal and membrane-based desalination and water purification technologies.” Further, they say BARC boasts expertise in building both small and large-scale desalination plants.

Indeed, according to Dr. Shri Kamlesh Nilkanth Vyas, Director of BARC, the desalination process at Kalpakkam has the capacity to remove salt from 6.3 million liters (over 1.6 million gallons) of seawater every day single day. They have since launched similar plants in both Punjab and West Bengal, Rajasthan.

These developments are particularly important as millions of people in India struggle to obtain clean water. They are also far-reaching; historic droughts are sweeping the globe, from California to Brazil, and South Africa to North Korea.

These dire conditions have inspired efforts to make salt water safe to drink. In 2015, for example, MIT scientists won an award for developing a low-cost, efficient process to remove salt from water using solar power. While solar power may be ultimately preferable to nuclear power, this method is currently small-scale, expensive, and requires intricate technologies to implement — in contrast to the BARC scientists 6.3 million liters per day.

In addition to using steam to desalinate water, the Indian scientists have also developed strategies to purify groundwater.

“Besides, BARC has developed several membranes, by which, at a very small cost, groundwater contaminated by uranium or arsenic can be purified and make fit for drinking,” Dr. Vyas told NDTV.

Indeed, as the outlet reported, India’s prime minister recently visited the plant. “Prime Minister Narendra Modi had pedalled a bicycle that had a water purifier installed on it. It turns dirty contaminated water into potable water. Turning the pedals produces the energy the purifier needs.”

This is particularly vital for India, considering, for example, a 2011 report by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) found as much as 70 percent of water in Delhi, India’s densely populated capital territory, was contaminated.

As BARC’s website points out, they have been able to drastically reduce the levels of harmful toxins in water. “Uranium content in groundwater of some of the wells in Punjab was reported above permissible limit of 60 ppb,” they note. “The uranium content in product water was brought down to 6 ppb using BARC developed UF-RO technology giving clean water as per IS 10500/ WHO limit.” These filtration techniques may ultimately also be useful in cleansing desalinated sea water, though it is reportedly already safe to drink; water from the ocean is, unfortunately, filled with many manmade chemicals considered unsafe for humans to consume.

The scientists have also produced household water purifiers, which are currently being marketed to residents of drought-stricken Marathwada, one of five regions in the state of Maharashtra.

Though many may rightfully balk at nuclear power — BARC is better known for producing nuclear weapons — in this situation, the scientists might have found a redeeming quality with their ability to generate clean drinking water. To its credit, BARC stresses its “commitment to the focus on cutting edge research for the unique diverse requirements of our country including the rural adaptability of the technology.”

“The demand for water in the country is increasing rapidly,” they observe. “The existing water resources are diminishing,” and, consequently, “technological intervention has become a necessity for a reliable and sustainable availability of clean water.”

This article (Scientists’ New Breakthrough May Have Just Solved the Drought Problem) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Elizabeth Montag and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. Image credit: Peripitus. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

The Government Just Declared #War on #Vaping

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(ANTIMEDIA) As people have taken up vaping in droves, it was only a matter of time before the joy police pulled up and slapped rules on the electronic substitute. This week, the Food and Drug Administration did exactly that when it announced U.S. tobacco regulations will be extended to e-cigarettes.

The latest era of prohibition, aimed at the fast-growing vaping industry, not only signifies the end for thousands of small business, but is a slap in the face to e-cig users who are trying to reduce their risk of harm. Unsurprisingly, Thursday’s ruling has led to vaping advocates accusing the FDA of gifting the market to Big Tobacco.

The FDA states the historic rule helps implement the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009, which is intended to allow the agency to improve public health and protect future generations. Until now, the act gave the FDA the power to regulate the industry, but e-cigs and other tobacco related products were left out.

The new ruling now gives the agency jurisdiction over all tobacco products in the US — including the $3 billion e-cigarette industry, which wasn’t previously under its control.

In April 2014, when the first proposal to extend authority over the products was launched, it attracted over 100,000 comments, and the FDA was forced to include lengthy responses in the final rule. Consequently, the 499-page rule has been broadened to include hookah and pipe tobacco, as well as premium and small cigars (among other products); it also banned the sale of e-cigs to individuals under 18.

In a press statement, Health and Human Services secretary Sylvia Burwell said, “We have more to do to help protect Americans from the dangers of tobacco and nicotine, especially our youth.” She said that while cigarette smoking among those under 18 has fallen, the use of other nicotine products has taken a drastic leap.

The Vape Debate

No matter where you turn, the vape debate is conflicting. With hundreds of brands and thousands of flavours, the smoke-free, tobacco-free substitute is either hailed as a successful harm reduction tool or a looming public health threat. As with anything, the importance of establishing who is behind any research, statements, and articles can never be underestimated — but it’s safe to assume that the electronic devices are less damaging to smokers than conventional cigarettes.

“Some harm from sustained exposure to low levels of toxins over many years may yet emerge, but the magnitude of these risks relative to those of sustained tobacco smoking is likely to be small,” the Royal College of Physicians wrote.

The only thing for sure so far is that evidence is limited regarding the long-term effects of e-cigs. At the same time, it remains to be seen whether they help people to give up smoking altogether, or how they will affect the use of other tobacco products.

While anti-tobacco groups have welcomed the FDA ruling as a step forward, e-cig advocates warn it could lead to the end of small businesses. Within two years, companies must submit premarket tobacco application papers with the FDA at a whopping estimated cost of $1 million or more for each flavour, nicotine strength, and device. Once applications are submitted, there is no guarantee they will get the green light.

Unsurprisingly, the crackdown means the increasingly popular market is likely to undergo significant changes that will include price hikes, reduced choice, more research, and the potential of an emerging black market as prohibition drives vaping underground.

This article (The Government Just Declared War on Vaping) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Michaela Whitton and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Image credit: micadew. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

New #KFC Restaurant Run Entirely by #Robots

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(ANTIMEDIA) Colonel Sanders is raising a robot army to serve fried chicken at a restaurant near you. KFC’s first automated restaurant, called Original+, went live in Shanghai on April 25th, complete with an artificially intelligent robot manager named “Du Mi” who works at the front counter.

According to Chinese news outlet Sohu, “‘Du Mi’ marks the first commercial use of artificial intelligence in the fast food industry. The artificial intelligence robot was launched by China’s leading web services company Baidu during its World Conference in 2015.” 

KFC hopes that the hip new automated restaurant will attract young customers with its free wireless phone charging stations and human-less eating experience.

kfc

But it’s not just KFC, and it’s not just China where automation, robots, and artificial intelligence is taking the place of human workers. If and when these automated restaurants gain traction in places like China, they are sure to be implemented in the U.S., as well. In fact, they already are — though to a lesser extent, for now. McDonald’s and other food chains are experimenting with digital kiosks similar to the self-checkout machines already found in many grocery stores.

kfc

KFC’s Original+ kiosk.

In fact, as we covered recently at Anti-Media, automation is set to replace human jobs across broad sectors of the U.S. and world economies:

“[T]he Bank of England is preparing for automation to shed 80 million American jobs and 15 million British jobs within the next 10 to 20 years. This is approximately 50% of the U.S. and British workforce. Forbes has put the number at 45%.”

The ongoing debate surrounding robots, A.I., and automation displacing human workers is a delicate yet very important one. Many experts, including Stephen Hawking, have warned of the dangers of monopolistic artificial intelligence while others believe with the right direction from people, robots and technology can liberate humanity from manual labor.

The inevitable automation of the world’s economy will reshape society as we know it. Minimum wages will no longer protect workers as employers shift to using robots who will never ask for breaks, pay, raises, or healthcare. Worker unions may essentially be rendered useless. Militaries will eventually no longer need humans to fight wars. Additionally, Uber, Lyft, taxi and limousine drivers, and other driving jobs could soon be replaced by self-driving cars as automation also changes the way we think about transportation altogether.

Automation is loved, feared, and hated by many, but only time will tell how it will change our lives — for better or worse.

This article (New KFC Restaurant Run Entirely by Robots) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Nick Bernabe and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

US Government Green Lights Experiments to #Reanimate the #Brain Dead

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(ANTIMEDIA) — It sounds like the logline from the recent sci-fi horror movie, The Lazarus Effect. But the story coming out of Bioquark Inc. is real. The biotechnology company is moving ahead with a groundbreaking experiment to reanimate the nervous systems of 20 clinically brain-dead patients.

With approval from the Institutional Review Board at the United States National Institutes of Health in the U.S., the ReAnima Project will begin recruiting patients who are all but clinically dead due to traumatic brain injury. With cooperation from their families, these patients will be kept alive by machines and administered a series of procedures meant to kickstart cellular regeneration.

CEO, Dr. Ira Pastor, hopes to prove the cells of human brains are as adaptable as those of salamanders, which can regrow limbs.

“This represents the first trial of its kind and another step towards the eventual reversal of death in our lifetime,” Pastor said. “To undertake such a complex initiative, we are combining biologic regenerative medicine tools with other existing medical devices typically used for stimulation of the central nervous system, in patients with other severe disorders of consciousness.”

Phase 1 of the project is a proof-of-concept study called “First In Human Neuro-Regeneration & Neuro-Reanimation.” For a six-week period in Anupam Hospital in Rudrapur, Uttarakhand India, scientists will administer peptides into the patients’ spinal cords. The next treatment will involve injecting stem cells into the brain. Then Bioquark will use transcranial laser therapy and nerve stimulation.

Researchers hope this combination of treatments will trigger cell regeneration in brains that have otherwise shut down all functioning.

But not everyone is convinced the treatment will work — or that it is even possible to regenerate dead brains. Dr. Dean Burnett, a neuroscientist at Cardiff University’s Centre for Medical Education, made the following comment:

“While there have been numerous demonstrations in recent years that the human brain and nervous system may not be as fixed and irreparable as is typically assumed, the idea that brain death could be easily reversed seems very far-fetched, given our current abilities and understanding of neuroscience. Saving individual parts might be helpful but it’s a long way from resurrecting a whole working brain, in a functional, undamaged state.”

However, even if the treatment fails, researchers believe their findings will provide valuable knowledge. According to Dr. Sergei Paylian, founder, president, and Chief Science Officer of Bioquark Inc.:

“Through our study, we will gain unique insights into the state of human brain death, which will have important connections to future therapeutic development for other severe disorders of consciousness, such as coma, and the vegetative and minimally conscious states, as well as a range of degenerative CNS conditions, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.”

This article (US Government Green Lights Experiments to Reanimate the Brain Dead) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Jake Anderson and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

Video: #Hillary Confronted by #Coal Miner Whose Jobs She Vowed to Destroy

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Claire Bernish
May 4, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) United States — Hillary Clinton already has an issue with being truthful, but her latest waffling on coal — and, specifically, coal miners’ livelihoods — has most of the country crying foul.

“Instead of dividing people the way Donald Trump does, let’s reunite around policies that will bring jobs and opportunities to all these undeserved poor communities,” Clinton boasted at a town hall meeting in March — immediately, hypocritically, and even jovially following up with this zinger:

“So, for example, I’m the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean, renewable energy as the key into coal country. Because we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”

Granted, the chameleon presidential candidate elucidated, however vaguely, that “we don’t want to forget those people” — and she did ultimately apologize for the original remark. But the damage from such a powerful dismissal of the livelihoods of generations of Americans had already been indelibly marked in the hearts of coal mining families — as well as in the minds of members of West Virginia’s Republican Party.

Clinton has been touring West Virginia ahead of the state’s primary — and coal miners clearly can’t let her promise to put them out of work fall by the wayside.

Hillary sat down for a roundtable discussion with local residents on Monday as throngs of protesters could be heard outside, chanting “Go home!” One of the locals, Bo Copley, who recently lost his coal mining job, pleaded with Clinton to explain her statement from March.

“The reason you hear those people out there saying some of the things that they say,” Copley said, noting the loud protesters just outside the room, “is because when you make comments like ‘we’re going to put a lot of coal miners out of jobs,’ these are the kind of people that you’re affecting.”

Copley then thrust a picture of his family in front of an obviously uncomfortable — or possibly bored — Clinton, demanding to know if his family members would “have a future in this state” were she to be elected president.

“What I said was totally out of context from what I meant, because I have been talking about coal country for a very long time,” Clinton asserted during the conversation.

Hillary’s backtracking seems disingenuous at best considering her track record is more replete with mendacity than honesty. As you can see in the following footage, Clinton has more in common with a desperate chameleon than she does with the honest voters she actively attempts to court.

And, judging by the fully extended middle fingers greeting her in coal country, it seems more and more people realize they’re likely to hear Clinton say just about anything to win votes.

This article (Video: Hillary Confronted by Coal Miner Whose Jobs She Vowed to Destroy) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

How #Facebook, #Instagram, Google, and Twitter Use Censorship to Kill Free Speech

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Michaela Whitton
May 3, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) United Kingdom — Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter play an increasingly important role in our lives, but a brand new study into online censorship has revealed a number of developing trends regarding how social media platforms are attempting to regulate their users’ speech.

While most readers have likely been lucky enough to evade Facebook jail, others might have friends who have been kicked off the social networking site for designated periods of time for ‘violating community standards.’ Some may even have had their Facebook accounts closed permanently due to the site’s  ‘real names’ policy. Others have likely have had posts flagged or removed for containing nudity or other allegedly offensive content.

“UNFRIENDING CENSORSHIP: Insights from four months of crowdsourced data on social media censorship” is a brand new report that draws on data gathered from users of six social networking sites between November 2015 and March 2016. The inaugural study by Onlinecensorship.org — a collaborative effort between the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Visualizing Impact — asked users to submit reports when their content was reported or their accounts were removed from Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, and YouTube.

“Account suspensions, the most stringent form of moderation, were the most frequent type of content takedown in our dataset,” the report notes.

After analysing the collected data across geography, platform, content type and issue areas, the analysis revealed a number of trends in social media censorship. Here are some highlights of the information gathered from 161 submissions across 26 countries, with content in 11 languages:

censorship-3

– Facebook was the most frequently reported platform, with account suspensions the most reported content type.

– Nudity and false identity were the most frequent reasons given for the removal of  content on Facebook.

– Of 119 reports received from Facebook users, 13% had been asked to prove their identity to Facebook under its name policy.

– Instagram users tended to report “inappropriate content” as the reason their content was taken down.

– Twitter takedowns tended to be linked to targeted abuse, harassment, or fraud/spam.

– Nearly half of copyright-related takedown submissions came from YouTube.

– 53% of users did not appeal the takedown of their content, 50% said they didn’t know how, and 41.9% said they didn’t expect a response. In four cases content was restored, but in 50 cases the user didn’t receive a response.

– There were widespread reports that flagging is being used for censorship, and 61.6% of users believed that this was the cause for the removal of their content.

“The content was the Wikipedia photo of human anatomy showing a man and a woman in full frontal nudity. It is against Facebook’s guidelines about nudity,” reads one case study.

Although measures were used to help verify reports — and users were given the opportunity to send screenshots to support their claims — onlinecensorship.org did not work with the social media companies to obtain their data. Consequently, the study does not claim to be representative of all content takedowns or user experiences.

EFF explained the importance of tracking how social media companies are regulating the speech of their users:

“As self-ordained content moderators, these companies face thorny issues; deciding what constitutes hate speech, harassment, and terrorism is challenging, particularly across many different cultures, languages, and social circumstances.”

EFF added that while the U.S.-based companies don’t believe their policies constitute censorship, the purpose of onlinecensorship.org is to challenge this assertion by examining how their policies (and their enforcement) may be having a chilling effect on freedom of speech.

After examining how the policies of social media platforms are being enforced — and how this affects the lives of users — the report goes on to make a set of recommendations for how the social media sites can improve the experiences of users and boost their commitment to free expression.

READ NEXT: Wikileaks Drops Hillary Email Bomb That Could End Her Campaign but FB Censored It

Those who wish to report content blocking and online censorship can do so here.

This article (How Facebook, Instagram, Google, and Twitter Use Censorship to Kill Free Speech) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Michaela Whitton and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Image credit: Tyler Menezes. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

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From theantimedia.org Team

“Time Traveler”: Unearthed 1500 Year Old #Mummy Wearing… #Adidas?

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How can it be?

Scientists have put a rare find on display – a mummified woman found in Mongolia who appears to be wearing modern footwear.

RT reports:

The rare and ancient discovery of a mummified woman in Mongolia has been overshadowed by an obsession with her footwear, as people liken the 1,500-year-old boots to a pair of Adidas sneakers.

Archaeologists unearthed the female’s remains on the Mongolian side of the Altai Mountains.

Indeed, the striped boots worn by this woman, who lived around the year 500 A.D., look more like those on store shelves today – especially since the top of the boot is hard to see in the video:

mummyshoes

Did this Mongolian mummy travel back from our modern day to the time that archaeologists have pegged her too?

Maybe…

More likely is that earlier forms of civilization aren’t given enough credit for their ingenuity and inventiveness – and today’s shoes have been cheap knockoffs that wear out quickly ever since.

Screen shot 2016-04-27 at 4.36.45 PM

Whereas this ancient woman may well have made these boots herself, people today must rely upon Chinese slaves to make them, and stores to sell them.

SHTFplan and Mac Slavo www.shtfplan.com

On the 30th Anniversary of #Chernobyl, Here’s What We Are Still Not Being Told

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Claire Bernish
April 26, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) On the 30th anniversary of the world’s worst nuclear catastrophe yet, a new report shows radioactive contamination from the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl in Ukraine still lingers in startlingly large amounts across the border in neighboring Belarus.

In an exclusive report by the Associated Press, fresh milk from a Belarusian dairy farm contained a radioactive isotope, traceable to the Chernobyl disaster, at “levels 10 times higher than the nation’s food safety limits” — thirty years after the accident occurred.

Though the AP turned to a laboratory to test the milk, dairy farmer Nikolai Chubenok called the results “impossible.”

“There is no danger,” Chubenok asserted to AP journalists at his farm, just 28 miles from the site of the 1986 explosion and meltdown. “How can you be afraid of radiation?”

Though Chubenok and the Belarusian government — itself notoriously authoritarian and intent on denying the dangers still present — might insist on the area’s safety, other reports from doctors and scientists paint the landscape in a vastly different light.

Belarusian milk, though indicative, is inadequate in illustrating the astronomical devastation of the Chernobyl legacy.

In 1996, ten years after the explosions, meltdown, and raging nuclear fires at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) estimated the disaster had spewed “400 times more radioactive material into the Earth’s atmosphere than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.”

Lichens and mushrooms so thoroughly absorbed this radioactivity, in particular radioactive cesium, that reindeer over 1,000 miles away in Norway — where the meat is eaten — remain unfit for human consumption. Wormwood Forest, near the accident site, stands as an eerie monument of contamination with dead trees turned ginger-colored. Mass evacuations of humans from the areas surrounding Chernobyl naturally led to an explosion in wildlife numbers in species such as boars and wolves. And, as scientists discovered in 2011, birds displayed 5 percent smaller brains than average due to radioactivity lingering in the atmosphere.

Estimating the total number of human casualties resulting from the spectacularly failed foray into nuclear energy has largely been an exercise in futility. Greenpeace estimated ten years ago the total number of cancer cases resulting from Chernobyl would top 250,000 — with around 93,000 of those being fatal. Based on a Belarusian study, Greenpeace surmised 60,000 people had perished in Russia and potentially an additional 140,000 in the Ukraine and Belarus would die directly as a result of Chernobyl radioactive contamination. That study challenged the lowball estimate of 4,000 total deaths proffered by the United Nations in 2005 — a figure eventually abandoned once it realized “unacceptable uncertainties” made quantifying fatalities too tricky.

As Timothy A. Mousseau wrote for U.S. News & World Report, “in the past decade population biologists have made considerable progress in documenting how radioactivity affects plants, animals, and microbes […]

“Our studies provide new fundamental insights about consequences of chronic, multigenerational exposure to low-dose ionizing radiation … The cumulative effects of these injuries result in lower population sizes and reduced biodiversity in high-radiation areas.

“Radiation exposure has caused genetic damage and increased mutation rates in many organisms in the Chernobyl region. So far, we have found little convincing evidence that many organisms there are evolving to become more resistant to radiation.”

In myriad ways, the Chernobyl catastrophe earned the distinction of being a darkly pivotal moment in history — not only did world perception of nuclear power drastically change, but an unsuccessful attempt by government to downplay the extent of the accident is widely believed to have cemented the downfall of the Soviet regime.

Though the devastation at Fukushima often earns comparisons to Chernobyl, the latter still stands dubiously as the worst civic nuclear calamity in history. Thirty years after Chernobyl became a household name, its impacts are still experienced on an eye-opening scale.

Perhaps, when considering both Chernobyl and Fukushima, it’s imperative we ask whether risks of potentially devastating consequences resultant of human error or technical failure could possibly be worth our continued attempts to harness nuclear energy — particularly when advances in solar and wind could make the long-term ‘experiment’ technologically and critically obsolete.

This article (On the 30th Anniversary of Chernobyl, Here’s What We Are Still Not Being Told) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

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From theantimedia.org Team

Residents and Experts Baffled After Mysterious #Foam Blankets City After #Earthquakes

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Vandita
April 22, 2015

(ANONHQ) After disastrous tremors from a 7.3-magnitude earthquake shook the city of Fukuoka on April 15 – just a day after a 6.5-magnitude earthquake rattled the same area – the streets of downtown Tenjin and Imaizumi were covered with a thick layer of mysterious foam, sending shivers down the spines of its residents.

While people posted photos and a video of the unexplained froth on Twitter, which led many to wonder what may be behind the snow-like layer engulfing Fukuoka, there are speculations that one of the many tremors may have caused an underground water pipe to burst. Others have suggested that the foam was caused by a spillage of fire-fighting foam; however, no fire trucks were spotted in the area, and no one has come up with an official confirmation as of yet.

The two powerful earthquakes killed 48, injured over 1,100, left 410,000 homes without water and 200,000 with no power, and destroyed as many as 9,900 homes, leaving more than 100,000 residents in shelters. 765 aftershocks have hit the Kyushu Island since the 6.5-magnitude earthquake on April 14. The tremors also triggered an eruption in Mount Aso, Japan’s largest active volcano.

This Article (Residents and Experts Baffled After Mysterious Foam Blankets City After Earthquakes) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author Vandita and AnonHQ.com. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Image credit: TAKAFUMI/Twitter. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

#Women Being Prescribed Surgical Implants to Combat #Alcohol Issues

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Michaela Whitton
April 19, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) United Kingdom — Women who have become a little too fond of their night caps are being treated with implants to help them curb their drinking. According to Irish media, women between the ages of 30 and 50 have replaced afternoon chats over tea and cake with a glass of wine — and they are increasingly seeking help for addiction. Naltrexone, the implant prescribed, is traditionally associated with heroin users, but the opiate-blocker also reduces the pleasures and highs associated with alcohol consumption.

At first glance, the report in the Irish Independent reads somewhat sexist. It warns against the wine drinking culture of “ladies who lunch” and “middle-class women” who have become accustomed to a bottle of wine every night to shake off the day. Doctors claim the increased consumption is partly caused by the feminist revolution and “newly defined gender roles” that place pressure and expectations on women.

Archaic as their logic sounds, the concerns about the troublesome culture shift are echoed by hepatologists at Cork University hospital. Dr. Orla Crosbie said in the last decade there has been a huge increase in the number of women in need of treatment for alcohol-related liver disease. In her own practice, almost 40% of the patients being treated for cirrhosis of the liver are female.

Naltrexone implants are inserted under women’s skin during a fifteen-minute procedure. Prescribed to both alcohol- and opiate-dependent patients, they help combat cravings and assist in reducing or controlling the patient’s substance misuse. Lasting for three months and costing a whopping €1,150, the implant requires patients to abstain from their drug of choice during treatment. However, the implant is not a cure-all, and as with anything, the individual must be motivated to change. Proof of this is evidenced in rumours of desperate users contemplating the extreme measure of cutting out their own implants.

Since One Step — an Irish clinic for addiction treatment — began the programme 18 months ago, hundreds of patients have attended the part-time rehab programme, which allows them to access treatment and still attend work. Many are receiving counselling in conjunction with the implant.

Describing the troublesome new trend in alcohol use, Dr. Crosbie said it certainly isn’t something Ireland would have seen ten or twenty years ago. She said it is tragic to see so many young females with very significant health issues due to alcohol, and added that some are dying and leaving behind young children.

truth-cancer-ad

“We do need to change our attitude towards alcohol to try and reverse the situation, and have a healthier relationship with alcohol in Ireland,” she said.

This article (Women Being Prescribed Surgical Implants to Combat Alcohol Issues) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Michaela Whitton and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Image credit: Multimotyl. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

#Costco Begins Helping Farmers Buy Land to Supply Exploding Demand for #Organic Food

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AnonHQ Staff
April 19, 2016

(ANONHQ) It seems that Costco can’t get enough organic fruit and vegetables to supply its customers; and is now bypassing its competitor Whole Foods with a whopping $4 billion in its annual organic sales. In a bid to assist the supply to their warehouses, Costco is lending money to farmers to help them purchase land and equipment to grow more organic produce.

Costco CEO Craig Jelinek told investors in Washington earlier this year “We cannot get enough organics to stay in business day in and day out.”

The financial assistance for organic farmers is only a pilot program and still in its infancy, reports the Seattle Times. At this stage, they’re working with one partner, a San-Diego based Andrew and Williamson Fresh Produce purchase a further 1,200 acres of land.

But Costco is hopeful that the project will be expanded for future farmers if successful. Long-term contracts and advance payments to organic farmers may soon be an initiative of the future as Costco struggles to keep up with customer demand in an era plagued by uncertain GMO production.

Costco has also led the way in similar schemes. Two years ago it worked with a Mexican vendor who initially relied on shrimp caught in Thailand, to diversify. Now, the vendor gets their shrimp from the Sea of Cortez, rather than the Thai fishing industry where slave labor is prevalent.

In 2015, Costco started the contracting process with Nebraskan owners of organic fields. After purchasing cattle, they’re now encouraging ranchers to raise the livestock, ensuring a supply for its organic ground-beef program, Seattle Times reports.

Costco’s initiative is a step in the right direction, but Organic Trade Association spokeswoman Angela Jagiello said “demand is increasing. But we’re not seeing the same level of farmland.” Something that may have to do with the ever increasing stronghold Monsanto and the like have over agriculture.

It’s forcing food chains to buy their own land to produce what they need for their consumers, including Nature’s Path Foods Inc. and Pacific Foods, Wall Street Journal reports.

Ultimately, this move has been driven by consumers demanding a healthier choice. Establishing a sustainably grown organic agriculture again, is speaking volumes against Big Ag companies.

Ronnie Cummins, the international director of the Organic Consumers Association stated its “a transition we have to make if we’re going to address the multiple crises of declining health, declining local economies, [and] declining biodiversity.”

This Article (Costco Begins Helping Farmers Buy Land to Supply Exploding Demand for Organic Food) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and AnonHQ.com. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

#UCDavis Spent $175,000 Trying to Hide This from You. Don’t Let Them

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Jake Anderson
April 18, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) One of the most widely used forms of information suppression is legal and online. It’s known as negative SEO (search engine optimization), and companies use it to bury negative publicity. The most recent and glaring example of this technique can be seen in efforts by UC Davis to conceal search results related to the infamous brutal pepper spraying of protesting students at the University of California campus in 2011.

Evidently, UC Davis is upset the truth went viral — and spent $175,000 burying the thousands of negative stories that resulted from the incident. They hired a PR firm with the stated objective to “expedite the eradication of references to the pepper spraying incident in search results on Google for the university and the Chancellor.”

According to AJ+, the the firm “ran deep analytics on search term patterns.” They then saturated the web with positive stories, optimizing them to bury the negative stories.

As nefarious and outlandish as this sounds, it is actually standard practice. Search engine optimization is a multi-billion dollar industry that involves strategically using online content, social media, and website architecture to manipulate Google’s search algorithm. Companies hire ORM (online reputation management) agencies that use SEO tactics to boost the ranking of desired links on SERPs (search engine page results).

Link placement has been used to bury controversial or negative stories across a range of commercial enterprises. It is an entire industry of subterfuge —  a legal and ubiquitous form of information suppression that remains largely unseen by the public eye.

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With examples like UC Davis’ information suppression, it is important to understand that while the Internet can be a democratizing tool for social enlightenment and grassroots activism, it is also prone to the same forms of oppression as the offline world. The same companies, organizations, and agencies who use money, cronyism and corruption to suppress the truth in real life use their vast wealth and corporatist connections to manipulate the flow of information online, as well.

The full complicity of Google in this widespread practice remains unclear. The search engine giant can claim this form of SEO is legal, which is true (even black-hat SEO is usually legal). They can also claim they are not the ones engaging in the suppression — that it’s independent firms who are gaming Google’s search algorithm. However, we already know of the collusion between Google and the federal government. Is it, perhaps, a bit naive to think there is not rampant collusion between billion dollar brands and the company that controls the vast majority of what we see online?

Now that news of UC Davis’ attempted suppression has gotten out, the pepper spray incident is receiving renewed interest from the internet thanks to the “Streisand effect.” Do free speech a favor: help win the censorship battle with UC Davis by spreading this information around the internet.

This article (UC Davis Spent $175,000 Trying to Hide This from You. Don’t Let Them) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Jake Anderson and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

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#NASA’s #Propaganda Campaign Wants You to Embrace the Militarization of Space

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Jake Anderson
April 11, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) We’ve seen quite a bit of NASA in the news recently. The latest photos of Pluto rattled up considerable excitement — and why not? The celestial body was dead not too long ago, heartlessly stripped of its 9th planet status. Now it’s back with a vengeance.

NASA made headlines again on Friday, when it announced a watershed mission to Europa, the icy moon of Jupiter that many scientists believe could harbor life in the oceans under its glacial surface.

Last year, coinciding with the cinematically poignant, if not propagandistic film, The Martian, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) unveiled its “Visions of the Future” project, a set of 14 posters meant to instill a new generation of Americans with a renewed interest in traveling to other planets and moons in the solar system and beyond.

The posters, made by the design company Invisible Creature, are fascinating. They depict a future in which advanced space travel has allowed humans to freely hop around the solar system; it is intrasolar space tourism of the highest order.

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The project saw NASA officials, scientists, engineers, public relations experts, and artists collaborating to imagine what the future of humanity could entail.

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One particularly beautiful poster features humans in advanced hot air balloons touring Jupiter. The description reads:

“The Jovian cloudscape boasts the most spectacular light show in the solar system, with northern and southern lights to dazzle even the most jaded space traveler. Jupiter’s auroras are hundreds of times more powerful than Earth’s, and they form a glowing ring around each pole that’s bigger than our home planet.”

Other posters include an illustrative future history of Mars exploration; a journey through the clouds of Venus; a boat ride on Titan’s rivers and lakes of liquid ethane and methane; an undersea exhibit of the life forms under the ice of Europa; exoplanets with red vegetation; a dark orphan planet flying through the galaxy without a sun (“where the nightlife never ends”), and many more.

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The posters are undeniably inspired and sure to delight space buffs, science fiction fans, and children alike. More than a few people have noticed the strangely propagandistic feel of the posters. One writer even compared them aesthetically to the Atomic Age posters from the 20th century.

One of the artists responsible for creating the posters admitted the influence. “We were inspired by vintage travel posters, WPA-type posters from the 1930s and then all the way up to mid-century modern— 1940s, 1950s, 1960s,” he said.

There is certainly no denying that while these posters have an altruistic goal of getting a new generation interested in space travel, they are also greasing the wheels for new NASA budget proposals and the new age of the space-industrial complex. The agency, which many mistakenly believe has been on essential furlough since the moon landings, has actually been prolific in recent years, with unmanned missions to Jupiter, Pluto, and Mars. Currently, NASA is running very exciting, groundbreaking projects, including JUNO, DAWN, and the New Horizons mission to Pluto, which garnered over 10 million visits to the NASA government homepage.

That said, there have been considerable budget cuts in the last decades, with more to come. Since 1966, NASA’s budget has fallen from 4.41 percent of the federal budget to just 0.5 percent.

Despite the recent fantastic recent discoveries and NASA’s robust social media presence, there has been the perception that the agency’s missions have become “boring.” Rocket launches barely even make the news these days, and, until this decade, the only space endeavors that truly got people talking were images from Mars and speculation about life there. Many believed space travel was dead.

That is the perception NASA wants to overcome. Movies like The Martian — which NASA influenced heavily — and the “Visions of the Future” space tourism posters can be seen as ambitious moves to get the public excited about space exploration again. An excited public is a powerful leveraging tool for requesting more funds.

Some have noted that efforts by NASA to infiltrate popular culture are nothing new. The agency launched an entire series of novels called “NASA-Inspired Works of Fiction,” for which they conscripted science fiction authors to produce novels amenable to the new eclectic age of federally sponsored space travel. One of these novels, William Forstchen’s 2014 science fiction novel, “Pillar to the Sky,” for example, argues that bureaucratic slashes to the NASA budget are one of the biggest threats to humanity.

For the record, this is a textbook example of a psychological operation (psyop) — or a planned operation by the government meant to manipulate public opinion. Specifically, this would be classified as a “white psyop,” which is an official statement or act associated with a government source. To put it bluntly, it’s the nicest form of propaganda, as contrasted with grey and black psyops, which use varying gradations of subterfuge and covert operations. There are thousands of psyops being conducted around the world, some acknowledged, some top secret with classified government budgets.

The release of both the “Visions of the Future” series and The Martian coincided with NASA’s request of $19 billion to fund a manned mission to Mars. The request comes at a time when NASA is increasingly partnering with private companies to bolster the United States space apparatus. Earlier this year, the agency issued massive contracts to three companies — SpaceX, Orbital ATK, and Sierra Nevada Corporation — that will complete six cargo resupply missions for International Space Station (ISS) by 2024.

SpaceX, of course, is run by Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk, who has openly said he wants the company to help enable the colonization of Mars. Last year, the company released its own Mars propaganda posters. Over the weekend, the company made headlines by successfully launching and delivering the first inflatable room for astronauts.

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Orbital ATK is an American aerospace manufacturer and defense industry company that produces tactical missiles, defense electronics, and medium and large-caliber ammunition.

Sierra Nevada Corporation is an electronic systems provider and systems integrator specializing in microsatellites, telemedicine, and commercial orbital transportation services. In addition to the NASA contract, the United States Army contracted them to manufacture Mobile Tower Systems (MOTS) and help fund Gorgon Stare, a remotely controlled, aircraft-based Wide-Area Persistent Surveillance (WAPS) system. Since 2006, the United States military has awarded the company 65 contracts, totaling nearly $3 trillion.

That NASA’s functions are interwoven with the military-industrial complex should come as no surprise. Since its inception, the Pentagon has controlled the agency through an oversight committee, with the open goal of utilizing the space between Earth and the moon for strategic military operations. Space is widely considered to be the next frontier of warfare. The militarization of space in the coming decades will see tactical satellites capable of launching nukes, disarming weapons, and collecting vast amounts of surveillance data. Noam Chomsky calls it one of the biggest threats facing humanity.

How does this connect back to the “Visions of the Future” posters? To be fair, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with getting excited about space. We live in an incomprehensibly large universe with billions of galaxies, each one containing billions, and even trillions of stars. Our species has finally stepped off its front porch and is looking to venture out into the cosmos. While some might question whether the human species is safe — both to ourselves and others — leaving its home, we must colonize other planets in order to ensure the long-term survival of the species. We’re set to render our home planet uninhabitable, but that doesn’t mean splinter groups of humans might not someday live sustainably on a colony world (think big, folks!).

Though we are likely centuries away from traveling to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, there is a very real chance we will explore other planets in the solar system in the coming decades. As we rekindle our excitement about space, let’s keep in mind that NASA’s space technology will also allow us to wage wars and engage in planetary surveillance. With great promise comes great peril. As with artificial intelligence, biotechnology and countless other burgeoning fields with revolutionary potential, we must proceed with great caution. With space, especially, we must carefully consider the people to whom we’ve entrusted our explorations — or the human race could end up like George Clooney’s character in Gravity, metaphorically speaking.

This article (NASA’s Propaganda Campaign Wants You to Embrace the Militarization of Space) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Jake Anderson and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Image credit: NASA/SpaceX. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

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The #TSA Spent $1.4 Million on an #App That Only Cost This Guy $10 to Reproduce

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Clarice Palmer
April 5, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) The International Business Machines Corporation, commonly known as IBM, has been named in a series of reports tied to the TSA’s “randomizer” app. Though many news sources have focused on the cost of the app, few have looked deeper into the relationship between Washington D.C. and IBM’s powerful lobbyists.

Geek.com reported the Department of Homeland Security’s TSA awarded IBM with a $336,413.59 contract for the production of an app that randomly chooses a left or a right arrow. The function is used in U.S. airports, and its goal is to make lines more efficient by randomly choosing which travelers get to skip the extensive security checks.

The information was made available promptly after web developer Kevin Burke filed a Freedom of Information Act request. As a result of the query, Burke received a copy of the contract between IBM and the TSA, which shows the app cost taxpayers at least $336,000 (in a Twitter reply to Burke, Time Magazine’s Partheek Rebala advised that a summary of the total cost tied to the app could be also found online.)

That summary shows that between September of 2014 and August of 2015, IBM was awarded at least seven contracts, all of which were tied to software development. All services and products add up to $1,444,315. According to Geek.com, “It could be IBM supplied all the iPads and training as well as the app itself.” But even then, “the cost of the project is crazy.” After all, the product is just “an app that is [sic] just randomly selects left or right.”

To Chris Pacia, a Bitcoin expert and lead backend developer for OpenBazaar, the cost the TSA paid for the app made no sense. After all, how expensive could an app that acts like a digital a coin flip actually be?

To demonstrate how easy — and cheap — it is for anybody to come up with an app just like TSA’s randomizer, Pacia posted a video on YouTube demonstrating the entire process. Pacia’s app took him less than 10 minutes to develop, according to his video’s description. It cost about $10 worth of labor to build.

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Though Pacia demonstrated the TSA’s inefficient budgeting, the underlying cause of these indulgent expenditures can be understood through the agency’s relationship with IBM.

While important details regarding the contracts between the Department of Homeland Security and the company are not listed on the government’s accounting website, the tech giant is no stranger to the establishment’s favoritism game.

According to the Center for Responsible Politics, IBM Corp. spent over $9 million on lobbying efforts between 2014 and 2015 alone. Defense and information technology, the group claims, are some of IBM’s top issues. In many cases, IBM also lobbied for anti-privacy measures.

One of the bills IBM lobbied to pass was H.R. 1731, also known as the National Cybersecurity Protection Advancement Act of 2015. The law places the information gathered via both the federal government and the private sector in the hands of the Department of Homeland Security. IBM also lobbied for the Cybersecurity Disclosure Act of 2015, a bill turned into law that “trump[s] possibly forthcoming federal regulatory efforts and state privacy laws” and that broadens “powers of network operators to monitor and disclose” online information.

Considering IBM’s apparent lack of respect for privacy — and its efforts to influence government policy, it is unsurprising the multinational corporation is working so closely with the Department of Homeland Security.

This article (The TSA Spent $1.4 Million on an App That Only Cost This Guy $10 to Reproduce) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Clarice Palmer and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

How Robert #DeNiro Got Himself into the #Vaccine-#Autism Debate Cross-Fire

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Jake Anderson
March 28, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) Last Friday, Robert De Niro, actor and cosponsor of the Tribeca Film Festival, announced a documentary about vaccinations made by controversial anti-vax doctor Andrew Wakefield would be screened at the festival. One day later, DeNiro changed course, announcing the film had been pulled from the lineup.

Wakefield’s documentary, Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Conspiracy, argues there is a conspiracy by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to conceal the medical links between vaccines and autism. The gastroenterologist has been vocal on the issue for over a decade, despite harsh condemnation from critics who believe Wakefield has been completely disgraced and his theories debunked.

The highly divisive issue pits a large contingent of vaccine ‘truthers’ —recently buoyed by none other than Donald Trump — against an even larger community of scientists who say there is no evidence that vaccines used to immunize infants cause autism.

Left in between are confused parents, who are increasingly anxious about the issue and the competing campaigns of information (or, what the respective sides would declare disinformation). DeNiro, whose son is autistic, took to Facebook on Friday to defend the screening of the film:

“Grace and I have a child with autism and we believe it is critical that all of the issues surrounding the causes of autism be openly discussed and examined. In the 15 years since the Tribeca Film Festival was founded, I have never asked for a film to be screened or gotten involved in the programming. However this is very personal to me and my family and I want there to be a discussion, which is why we will be screening ‘Vaxxed.’ I am not personally endorsing the film, nor am I anti-vaccination; I am only providing the opportunity for a conversation around the issue.”

Due to overwhelming outside pressure, DeNiro reversed course almost immediately and on Saturday posted an update to his previous statement:

“My intent in screening this film was to provide an opportunity for conversation around an issue that is deeply personal to me and my family,” he wrote on the festival’s Facebook page. “But after reviewing it over the past few days with the Tribeca Film Festival team and others from the scientific community, we do not believe it contributes to or furthers the discussion I had hoped for.”

The vast majority of scientists and doctors maintain that extensive research by the World Health Organization, the Institute of Medicine and the CDC soundly discredits anti-vaxxer claims. However, there is still a large and passionate movement of activists who continue to believe vaccines for measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) put infants at greater risk of autism. In 1998, Wakefield published a study purporting to prove this link, but it was almost unanimously rejected by the scientific community. Critics claimed Wakefield used fraudulent data and his medical license was revoked. The very journal that published the study eventually redacted it.

The Tribeca Film Festival originally described Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Conspiracy on its website as containing “revealing and emotional interviews with pharmaceutical insiders, doctors, politicians, parents, and one whistleblower to understand what’s behind the skyrocketing increase of autism diagnoses today.”

DeNiro defended the decision, saying, “The Festival doesn’t seek to avoid or shy away from controversy.”

The trailer for the documentary opens with the question: “Are our children safe?” It proceeds to feature the voice of a whistleblower who claims it’s actually the CDC that has committed fraud, not Wakefield.

Though she praised the festival for yanking the film, Lane says the damage has already been done as Wakefield and his anti-vaxxer supporters can use the ban as a symbol of censorship “and that will add to his conspiracy theory aura.”

This article (How Robert De Niro Got Himself into the Vaccine-Autism Debate Cross-Fire) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Jake Anderson and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Image credit: David Shankbone. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

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This Is What’s Happening to People Who Live near the Worst Gas Leak in US History

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Carey Wedler
March 25, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) Porter Ranch, CA — On February 18, SoCalGas and the national media declared the “worst methane gas leak in U.S. history” permanently sealed, but just over a month later, hundreds of Porter Ranch residents who evacuated — and are now returning home — are suffering the same symptoms they suffered when the gas leak was active. They are experiencing nausea, dizziness, fatigue, headaches, nosebleeds, and many, including children, are also experiencing a new ailment: irritated skin rashes across their bodies.

Neither SoCalGas, which owns the Aliso Canyon facility, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, nor any other government agency has provided a concrete explanation for these continued symptoms. In fact, one of Los Angeles County’s top medical officials recently told local physicians to refrain from performing tests to determine what is causing the symptoms. Late last week, preliminary lab tests from an independent UCLA study found evidence of benzene, a carcinogen, in at least two Porter Ranch homes. Benzene was reported to have been released in the 100 metric tons of methane that spewed into the Los Angeles basin for four months — a fact SoCalGas previously attempted to downplay and withhold.

Reemergence of Symptoms

On March 4, Los Angeles City Councilmember Mitchell Englander issued a press release reporting the Department of Public Health had received at least 150 complaints of reemerging symptoms, including nosebleeds, dizziness headaches, nausea, and skin rashes. Now, the Health Department says it has received 300 complaints since residents began moving home after SoCalGas told them it was safe to do so.

Many residents have said the rashes, which can be extensive, are new and did not occur during the initial, months-long gas leak from October to February. During that time, thousands of families were evacuated and the Department of Public Health received 700 health complaints. Others reported experiencing skin irritation before they relocated, though it appears to be more widespread now.

Residents who left Porter Ranch for temporary housing accommodations and recently moved home told Anti-Media about their symptoms (many still have not moved home, fearful it is still unsafe). Helen Ritenour, a Porter Ranch resident who left the area in December, said that within two days of returning to their home, she and her family began feeling sick.

“The main symptoms are headaches, difficulty breathing, watery eyes, coughing and general fatigue. It feels like I’m in a thick fog of sorts that’s oppressive,” she said. She and her husband were not eager to return home, still concerned about toxins in the area and the health of their newborn baby. But amid long delays receiving reimbursements from SoCalGas — and unable to charge more expenses on their credit card — they moved back to Porter Ranch. Ritenour told Anti-Media that like many other families, she and her husband have had to pay out-of-pocket for relocation services — and have experienced long delays receiving reimbursement checks.

Gabriel Khanlian, a resident who serves as the Chief Technology Officer for Save Porter Ranch, a group formed in 2014 to fight the massive, aging, and leaking facility before the blowout even happened, also said he and his family have suffered symptoms since moving home.

“My daughter Tatiana keeps getting large rashes, red welts and bumps all over her body. Her skin is dry and her behavior has changed significantly and she is very cranky. She has a loss of appetite and is sleeping a lot more,” he said. “My sons, Jayden and Mason, have been getting bloody noses, headaches, upset stomachs, burning eyes, runny nose, dry skin.”

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He described other troubles they’ve had, noting his sons are experiencing “anxiety, fear, frustration, anger, and stress from not having the ability to play. Their personalities have changed majorly.”

He said his wife, who experienced symptoms during the initial methane gas leak, is now experiencing them more severely than before.

Kyoko Habino, a Porter Ranch resident and co-founder of Save Porter Ranch, said:

“When I go home to pick up stuff or do a few things, within a few minutes, I start having a dull headache and coughing and having palpitations. Nosebleeds follow later on often. My partner has had headaches, fatigue, and a burning sensation in his chest at the same time I have. Our cat has had a nosebleed and vomited. When I am away from home, the headache goes away instantly. The cough and nosebleed stay for a while, and are gone after.”

Walter Arwood, a Porter Ranch resident, experienced nausea, among other symptoms:

“I am rolling over sick right now. My stomach has been so upset, I have gotten all the headaches back, my husband has had three nose bleeds in two days, and now a visiting relative was out of breath just walking up the stairs at my home. How is it safe?”

Arwood was evacuated during the methane gas leak and recently returned home. “Since we have moved back the symptoms have immediately returned,” he said. “Itchy skin is the only new thing.  We have all of our air purifiers on and the scrubber running and still it is happening.”

Residents in surrounding areas, including Chatsworth and Granada Hills, have also reported a reemergence of symptoms.

Sandy Crawford, a resident of Granada Hills, told CBS News in February — after the methane gas leak was sealed — that within a few hours of returning home, her youngest son had trouble breathing and suffered a nosebleed. Crawford moved her sons back to their hotel, and after trying again to move home and experiencing the same results, she returned to the hotel for a second time. She told Anti-Media they recently tried sleeping at home for a few nights and did not feel symptoms, but she remains afraid they could return. As a result, she is staying at the hotel.

“Avoid performing any toxicological tests”

Though these symptoms are pronounced, neither SoCalGas nor the Department of Public Health has offered a definitive explanation of what is causing them. In fact, Dr. Cyrus Rangan, Director of the Bureau of Toxicology and Environmental Assessment at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, recently issued a “Health Update” to “primary care, urgent care, internal medicine, and emergency medicine providers” in the area cautioning them against conducting tests on patients with symptoms.

The advisory, dated Tuesday, March 8, requested that healthcare professionals “look for alternate etiologies other than air contamination,” and “avoid performing any toxicological tests,” claiming “these are not recommended and are unlikely to provide useful data for clinical evaluation of patients.”

Rangan said in the notice that if no “alternative etiology” is found, doctors should consult with him. While it is an indisputable act of due diligence to recommend doctors check for other potential causes of symptoms, it is unclear why a top public health official would discourage doctors from performing tests to better understand illnesses among their patients.

“It’s not to steer the community away from thinking it’s not an environmental issue,” Rangan insisted to the Los Angeles Daily News, adding that, as the local paper summarized, “even when the gas was leaking he did not recommend that doctors perform toxicological tests because there is no test that can determine if a person was exposed to natural gas.”

However, residents are concerned not just with methane, but with other contaminants found in it, from mercaptans to benzene to other toxic emissions (mercaptans are odorants added to natural gas to make it detectable, and are believed to have caused symptoms when the gas leak was active). Many found Rangan’s explanation to be insufficient and an attempt to ask doctors to “look the other way.”

Further, his request that doctors refrain from conducting tests appears to contradict his own supplementary declaration provided for a hearing held last Friday to extend relocation benefits to residents, many of whom feel they were rushed out of temporary housing, evidently, before it was safe to return home.

In that statement, Rangan referred to the continued illnesses as “perplexing,” proceeding to offer potential explanations not previously disclosed to Anti-Media when he spoke with us:

“It could be that there are persistent levels of contaminants still present in the community, or there could be other exposures in areas of the community that were missed in the external environmental monitoring, or perhaps gases may have saturated the soil at the Aliso Canyon facility or other substrates and are being released now that the source has been sealed.”

In spite of Rangan’s multiple hypotheses, however, he has offered no definitive explanation, nor does it appear the Department of Public Health has seriously looked for one (meaning it could be helpful for physicians to run tests on their patients). Asked to investigate a persistent oily residue coating the outside of residents’ homes and the playground of at least one park, representatives sent from Public Health reported they found “no evidence of any oily residue and no health concern for residents or visitors.”

When residents complained to Councilman Englander, representatives from his office confirmed the playsets were coated in oil and SoCalGas agreed clean the park. Three other parks were also shut down amid concerns about the residue, which Rangan insists is safe, aside from causing skin irritation. Mandi Bane, a lab assistant in Rangan’s office, told Anti-Media they have no intentions to test the soil in the community.

Because of incidents like this — such as Dr. Rangan downplaying concerns about long-term side effects from mercaptans, though there is little research to support his assurances — some residents increasingly doubt Public Health’s commitment to helping the community. Many have complained they reported symptoms and received little more than packaged statements in response. Some received no response.

Rangan’s office did conduct door-to-door surveys of residents two weeks ago to gather information on what could be causing the symptoms, an effort reported to be joined by state officials. Bane told Anti-Media they recorded over 200 reports and it would take time to process them before they could comment.

Rangan’s office also requested outside assistance to conduct indoor air sampling, after it was  “determined that such a protocol is beyond the expertise of the Department of Public Health.”

Rangan first solicited the help of the EPA to conduct indoor air testing for contaminants, but it was expected to take until May to develop a protocol. Last week, however, Dr. Michael Jerrett, a professor and chairman of UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health, shared preliminary test results from a small sample of homes with Public Health. The independent study raised concerns about the presence of benzene, a known carcinogen, as well as hexane, in two homes. As a result of these findings, UCLA has partnered with Public Health and Dr. Jerrett and his team will begin sampling 120 homes in the coming days to conduct further analysis. According to a press release from the Department of Public Health posted Saturday:

“As a continuation of Professor Jerrett’s independent study, an indoor dust swab sampling was completed in seven homes. Benzene and hexane were found in two of the homes. Benzene and hexane, at certain levels, have known toxic effects on humans, but it is unknown whether the levels found are high enough to be of health concern. Professor Jerrett is sharing these findings with the community and will continue to conduct independent scientific analyses.”

As the Daily News explained, Jerrett’s results showed “higher and more variable concentrations of particulate matter in the outdoor air at locations close to the leak site compared to those farther away, according to the Health Department. Particulate matter is described as tiny pieces of solids or liquids in the air, such as dust, dirt, soot, or drops which can irritate the skin, eyes, nose, throat, respiratory, and cardiovascular systems.”

SoCalGas, however, has failed to provide a conclusive explanation for residents’ illnesses. At a protest on Friday, March 4, which culminated outside the company’s Community Resource Center located in Porter Ranch’s main shopping center, SoCalGas spokeswoman Lisa Alexander spoke to Anti-Media about the reemergence of symptoms. She left the onus of responsibility on the Department of Public Health.

“You know, we recognize that people are saying that they have symptoms, and we hear that, we see the news stories, we’ve been in touch with Department of Public Health to inquire about that,” she said, adding that Public Health expected symptoms to decrease as the blowout’s emissions dissipated — and with them, the mercaptans.

gas leak

“Is there one house that has been tested that shows a harmful level at this time?”

SoCalGas, at the request of County Supervisor Michael Antonovich, agreed to conduct indoor air testing on a ‘random’ sample of 70 homes in Porter Ranch last week. Residents’ increasing distrust of the utility was further intensified when some residents reported they had received calls from the gas company to perform indoor testing on their homes, but were asked if they had legal counsel. If they said yes, multiple residents reported, they were told they were not eligible for the ‘random’ testing.

Nevertheless, SoCalGas shared these test results at a relocation hearing last Friday to assert air quality had returned to normal. SoCalGas’ attorney James Dragna also reportedly cited the Department of Public Health as an authority on the matter.

Matt Pakucko, president of Save Porter Ranch, spoke to local CBS radio station KNX shortly after the hearing:

“This is such propaganda by SoCalGas,” he said. “They used their indoor testing that they just performed over the last week as their main facts on the ground. But they have said themselves weeks ago, months ago, that the mercaptan and the methane — the only things they test for — would be long gone. So they went and tested what they knew would be long gone… I can’t believe the judge bought it.”

Judge Emilie H. Elias reportedly asked, “Is there one house that has been tested that shows a harmful level at this time?” However, Dr. Jerrett’s results, which showed two homes with potentially hazardous levels of benzene, were not presented.

Jerrett’s preliminary findings were shared with the county just before the hearing, and county attorney Deborah Fox expressed a desire to submit them to the court for an appeal this week.

Though the media reported the judge’s ruling as a tepid victory for residents, who will receive one more week of paid relocation services, county attorney Deborah Fox had originally sought two months. She then sought a 30-day injunction, ultimately settling for a single week extension.

Pakucko said of the ruling:

“Any sane person would say [the testing should be complete before a decision is made] … there are people reporting health issues, the cause of which has not yet been discovered.”

Save Porter Ranch and much of the community are campaigning to have the entire, 3,600-acre Aliso Canyon facility shut down.

SoCalGas had previously been ordered to extend relocation services as residents began reporting symptoms again after the gas leak, a decision the company fought. Residents have also complained they have not yet been reimbursed for the months they were relocated, citing long waits, convoluted customer service, and financial strain caused by SoCalGas’ reimbursement process.

On Tuesday, County Supervisor Michael Antonovich announced the court had suspended its Friday ruling, presumably in light of the county’s submission of Jerrett’s results. Los Angeles Times reporter Abby Sewell tweeted an update that residents now have until March 29 — an extra four days — pending further legal proceedings.

As the legal battle continues, the difficulties of obtaining comprehensive, reliable air tests remain complicated by the fact that humans can smell mercaptans at lower levels than equipment can detect them. Pakucko told Anti-Media residents have consistently been reporting the smell of mercaptans, though SoCalGas spokeswoman Melissa Bailey assured Anti-Media via email there were no current leaks.

Neither SoCalGas nor the regulatory South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCQAMD) offered an explanation to Anti-Media regarding elevations in methane emissions since the gas leak was sealed. They are not consistently high, but nevertheless contradict assurances from the gas company that air quality has returned to “normal.” For example, from March 17 to March 22, methane levels in the community exceeded 3 ppm (parts per million); SCAQMD, itself, says “Results greater than 3 ppm suggest some additional sources of methane.” A March 13 sampling of air at the site of the repaired well, SS-25, found methane levels at 46 ppm; according to SCAQMD, “results greater than 10 ppm suggest a considerable additional amount of methane is present.” Though SCAQMD cautions the levels of methane have been dropping since the methane gas leak was sealed in February, 46 ppm is still 43 ppm above ‘normal.’

Further, a recently published government survey, initiated after the Aliso Canyon blowout, found 229 leaks in natural gas storage fields across California. Though the leaks were deemed minor, 66 were found at Aliso Canyon.

As Porter Ranch residents continue to deal with the fallout from the months-long environmental disaster, communities around the country face similar battles. From the increasing number of communities plagued with unsafe levels of lead (among other chemicals) in their water and soil, to the radioactive leaks in New York, Florida, and elsewhere across the country, Americans face an increasingly apparent, non-partisan struggle against aging, dangerous infrastructure — and the apathetic, often negligent authorities and corporate hegemons responsible for maintaining it.

In Porter Ranch, SoCalGas and public officials have, at least, begun to acknowledge something is still amiss in the community. As Pakucko told Anti-Media:

“They’ve stopped saying everything’s fine. I’ve got two words for ‘everything’s fine’: Flint, Michigan.”

Editor’s Note: Carey Wedler is from Granada Hills and has two family members whose health was affected by the leak, one severely (his symptoms have intermittently returned in the last several weeks). She has experienced symptoms herself and felt them recently while reporting in Porter Ranch.

This article (This Is What’s Happening to People Who Live near Worst Gas Leak in US History) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org.  Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

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We Throw so Much #Plastic into the #Ocean That Now We’re Literally Eating It

by

Claire Bernish
March 21, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) Recent reports of a phenomenal quantity of plastic inundating the world’s oceans are alarming enough — but another aspect of the problem should snap everyone to attention: humans ultimately consume that plastic.

According to Plastic Oceans, this pollution and its effects are “an environmental catastrophe of our own making.” Indeed, humans produce in excess of 300 million tons of plastic each year — “equivalent to the combined weight of all adult humans on earth” — and nearly “half of this we use just once [and] then throw it away.”

Further, the perceived conveniences of tossing items into the garbage is pure illusion.

“There is no ‘away’ because plastic is so permanent and so indestructible,” said Sir David Attenborough, according to Plastic Oceans. “When you cast it into the ocean … it does not go away.”

For the benefits plastic originally appeared to offer, the untold number of products now made of or contained in plastic has created an environmental and health nightmare arguably unlike any other.

In 2015, the BBC reported eight million tons of plastic — enough to cover “an area 34 times the size of New York’s Manhattan Island to ankle depth” — finds its way to the planet’s oceans every year. Such a quantification of our plastic waste was finally possible thanks to a study published in Science Magazine and presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

“The quantity entering the ocean is equal to about five plastic grocery bags full of plastic for every foot of coastline in the world,” Dr. Jenna Jambeck, study lead author from the University of Georgia, told the BBC. Study researchers caution the findings and quantifications are a middle ground, as plastic — despite its indestructible traits — can still break down into smaller pieces and particles.

A more recent study by the World Economic Forum estimated the world’s oceans will contain more plastic than fish by 2050 — in part because a “staggering” 32 percent of plastic packaging “escapes collections systems.” Even so, only 5 percent of plastics are effectively recycled — making the WEF’s prediction for the use of plastic to double in the next 20 years even more dire.

Truthout noted recent “estimates indicate that upwards of 8 million tons of plastic are added to the planet’s oceans every year, the equivalent of a dumptruck full of plastic every minute. That is enough plastic to have led one scientist to estimate that people who consume average amounts of seafood are ingesting approximately 11,000 particles of plastic every year.”

Unless we turn to alternative and less toxic means for producing plastics — such as hemp — our failures in recycling will, indeed, come back to haunt us. As phytoplankton populations drop and overfishing remains an issue, marine plastic pollution simply compounds a massive catastrophe.

This article (We Throw so Much Plastic into the Ocean That Now We’re Literally Eating It) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

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Leaking Beachfront Nuclear Reactor Near Miami Threatening Florida Everglades

by

Claire Bernish
March 9, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) Biscayne Bay, FL — According to a study released by Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez on Monday, the waters of Biscayne Bay measured 215 times the level of radioactive tritium as is found in normal ocean water.

Tritium is a radioactive isotope traceable to nuclear plant cooling tower operations. In this case, the leak appears to be emanating from the aging canals in the Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station located nearby.

“This is one of several things we were very worried about,” said South Miami Mayor and biological sciences professor, Philip Stoddard, as the Miami New Times reported. “You would have to work hard to find a worse place to put a nuclear plant, right between two national parks and subject to hurricanes and storm surge.”

Biscayne Bay harbors one of the largest coral reefs on the planet and is situated near the Everglades. Hot, salty water from the canals appears to be flowing back into both national parks, which has caused concern among environmentalists and others from the time Turkey Point planned to expand its reactors in 2013.

“They argued the canals were a closed system, but that’s not how water works in South Florida,” Stoddard remarked.

“How much damage is that cooling canal system causing the bay is a question to be answered,” Everglades Law Center Attorney Julie Dick told the Miami Herald prior to reviewing the report. “There are a lot more unknowns than knowns and it just shows how much more attention we need to be paying to that cooling canal system.”

Tritium, a hydrogen isotope, is considered a precursor indication of leaks from nuclear plants, as it ‘travels’ or spreads faster than, and often precedes, other radioactive agents.

“While the tritium levels far fall below levels experts consider dangerous, the telltale tracer provided the critical link that high levels of ammonia and phosphorus in sections of bay bottom — pollution that is more damaging to marine life — likely came from the canals,” the Herald explained. Samples for the county monitoring study were gathered during December and January — and the tritium levels seem to show Florida Power & Light in violation of both local water laws and federal operating permits.

 FPL, which operates Turkey Point, will likely receive another violation due to the leak — the county issued a citation in October for tainted groundwater — to force FPL to bring the plant into compliance, the Herald reported Tuesday.

After news of the report made headlines, critics, including environmentalists, nearby rock miners, and Rep. Jose Javier Rodriguez, came forward in full force calling for the Environmental Protection Agency to intervene in the matter.

“For years our state regulators have failed to take seriously the threat to our public safety, to our drinking water, and to our environment posed by FP&L’s actions at Turkey Point,” Rodriguez asserted, according to the New Times.“Evidence revealed this week of radioactive material in Biscayne Bay is the last straw and I join those calling on the U.S. EPA to step in and do what our state regulators have so far refused to do — protect the public.”

The leak also serves as possible confirmation for environmentalists who have suspected radioactive leaks from Turkey Point as the cause of algae blooms appearing in the bay for years.

“Biscayne Bay has not traditionally had algae blooms,” explained executive director for Miami Waterkeeper Rachel Silverstein, reported the Herald. “That’s from pollution. From sewers, septic tanks and now we know, cooling canals.”

Indeed, though FPL claims it continues to protect the health of the bay, as the Herald noted, Turkey Point has created issues for the waterways since the facility began producing more energy three years ago. “When you look at the big picture,” FPL environmental director, Matt Raffenberg, insisted, the canals “are not impacting Biscayne Bay.”

At a meeting on Tuesday, county commissioners discussed the imperative need to bring FPL and Turkey point into compliance with the law.

“We’ve had stop gap measures we’ve approved,” Gimenez said. “So far they’ve not proved to be the solution.”

Referencing the last time FPL was forced to implement changes following a lawsuit in the 1970s, he added, “It’s time we enter the 21st century.”

FPL’s continued problems with Turkey Point might have finally crossed the legal line by violating the federal Clean Water Act.

“There’s a certain validation to critics in seeing this result in the study,” Stoddard said. “But more important, it’s now crossed the threshold of federal law here.”

This article (Leaking Beachfront Nuclear Reactor Near Miami Threatening Florida Everglades) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Image credit: Mr. Usaji. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

From theantimedia.org Team