Sunday, December 13, 2015

PNN - GREED, PEACE and LIGHT


PNN - GREED, PEACE and LIGHT
PNN brings Political Commentators Brook Hines and Brian Stettan, PDA Peace Activist Sandy Davies and Holographer Mark Diamond
PNN brings Political Commentators Brook Hines and Brian Stettan, PDA Peace Activist Sandy Davies and  Holographer Mark Diamond

Brook Hines
will bring us her Progressive Democratic insights from her wide experience in National and State Democratic affairs

Brian Stettan
is a long time blogger and progressive Webcaster and commentator will offer his critique of our current treaty-scape. 

Sandy Davies
long time peace activist will assess the non-expanding, non-war that requires more troops, more drones and more and more military bases in a bakers dozen countries. Sandy is a longtime PDA activist   


Mark Diamond,
is an internationally recognized holographic artist/scientist we'll learn a little about the art and science of holography.

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PNN 12/13/15
1. The number of bags of waste from decontamination efforts around the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant reached a little under 9.16 million as of the end of September according to Fukushima Prefecture and the Environment Ministry.


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The 1-cubic-meter bags are found at some 114,700 interim storage or decontamination sites across the prefecture. In the town of Tomioka -- covered by a nuclear disaster evacuation order -- mounds of bags have grown so tall that they obscure the power shovels used to move and stack the waste, the black balls covering every sliver of landscape.
The bags of waste are typically stacked four layer high, with a fifth layer of uncontaminated soil laid on top to block radiation. Waterproof sheets are also used to stop rainwater from getting into the bags and becoming contaminated.
Negotiations with the towns of Okuma and Futaba -- both under evacuation orders -- to establish mid-term waste storage facilities there have been hard-going, and the start of construction is nowhere in sight.

2. unseasonably high temperature severe wind, and rain hit japan
Heavy rain and powerful winds hit wide areas of Japan on Dec. 11 after a frontal depression destabilized atmospheric conditions, while temperatures topped an unseasonably high 25 degrees Celsius in some parts of the country.
In central Tokyo, the temperature reached 23.8 degrees around noon, the second highest for the month of December. In Mie and other prefectures, the temperature rose to 25 degrees or higher, after warm and moist air from the south blew in with the low-pressure system.

The rain and winds intensified from the evening of Dec. 10 through the following morning, pushing up the hourly rainfall to a record high in the month of December at over 130 locations. The maximum instantaneous wind speed surpassed 30 meters per second in the Shikoku, Kinki and other regions.
In Kochi Prefecture, a 73-year-old man went missing after going out to check the swollen Shimanto River on Dec. 11. The man had his boat moored on the riverbank and had told his family that he was going to see if the boat was safe when he left home at around 2 a.m.

In Wakayama Prefecture, a 499-ton container vessel ran aground on a tetrapod breakwater at the mouth of the Kinokawa River in the city of Wakayama in the predawn hours of Dec. 11, after strong winds wrested the boat off of its moorings. All five passengers aboard the ship were rescued unscathed by a Japan Coast Guard helicopter about 4 1/2 hours after the incident was initially reported.
In central Tokyo, the hourly rainfall climbed to 18 millimeters shortly past 9 a.m. on Dec. 11, while the maximum instantaneous wind velocity reached 22 meters per second at around 11:30 a.m.

The abnormal weather disrupted public transport systems in many parts of the Tokyo metropolitan area. Service on the JR Keiyo Line was suspended from shortly before 10 a.m., while service on the Tokyo Metro Tozai Line was temporarily halted between Nishi-funabashi and Toyocho stations. The Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line highway was also closed to traffic.
According to Tokyo Electric Power Co., power outages affected some 5,900 households in Yokohama, as well as 1,100 households in Ichihara and 600 households in Minamiboso, both in Chiba Prefecture.

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3. Nuclear evacuees surveyed about living in public housing later became non-eligible

Fukushima Prefecture included more people in surveys for 2013 estimates on demand for new public housing after the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant meltdowns than it ended up allowing into the housing, and the estimates based on those surveys were never publically released, it has been learned.

The estimates were reported in a document obtained by the Mainichi Shimbun. This document was created in May 2013 by a Tokyo consulting company paid around 30 million yen by the Fukushima Prefectural Government for the work. The estimates were based on fiscal 2012 surveys by the Reconstruction Agency and the Fukushima Prefectural Government of evacuees from 11 municipalities near the crippled plant.

The estimates were made based on three types of evacuees seeking a place in the housing: people wanting to live there until evacuation orders for their home municipalities were lifted; people wanting to live there after evacuation orders for their home municipalities were lifted but until a livable environment had been established; and people wanting to live in the housing permanently.

The estimated numbers of residences required for the three types of evacuees were between 3,136 and 5,663 for the first group; between 2,743 and 4,172 for the second group; and between 3,366 and 4,837 for the third group. Only the first category, however, matches up with the standards for "long-term evacuees" -- the only type of evacuee allowed to apply for the residences. Additionally, two of the 11 municipalities covered by the estimates, the city of Tamura and the town of Naraha, had their evacuation orders lifted in April 2014 and September 2015, respectively, making their residents ineligible for the housing.

The units were first proposed during the Democratic Party of Japan administration, and in September 2012 the Fukushima Prefectural Government announced preparations to build the first 500 residences. At this point, the project was being funded from reconstruction funds, and which evacuees would be eligible for a place had not yet been decided. At the end of that year, however, the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito took over the government, and at a January 2013 meeting on disaster recovery, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordered the creation of a plan to allow evacuees to return home quickly, and to secure homes for long-term evacuees. The Act on Special Measures for the Reconstruction and Revitalization of Fukushima was revised in April 2013 to allow special government funding for the new housing, and to restrict eligibility to long-term evacuees.

The unreleased documents obtained by the Mainichi state explicitly that "under the current system to restrict entry into publically-managed housing to long-term evacuees," others hoping to keep living in the units after their evacuation orders have been lifted "may not be included."
A representative for the Fukushima Prefectural Government said, "It's not good to say that the national government 'toyed with us' by its policy shift, but the survey on evacuees' wishes and the establishment of the new fund (with its eligibility restrictions) happened in parallel." The official added that prefectural staff had to start applying the restrictions "in a hurry" to keep in line with national government policy.
The Fukushima Prefectural Government has announced 4,890 planned public housing units for nuclear disaster evacuees, but even when combined with around 2,800 such residences for tsunami survivors, the number of residences covers only 17 percent of the around 43,700 Fukushima households that remained without a permanent home as of the end of last year.

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4. Nuclear Watch: Engineers' dissatisfactionwith lax security (Pt. 42)

"I designed that window," says Muneo Morokuzu, former specially appointed professor at the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Public Policy. He refers to a window at the uranium enrichment plant of Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd. (JNFL) in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, through which a JNFL public relations official says visitors can see a centrifuge inside the facility.

The materials, size and performance of the centrifuge should be kept secret. When asked whether the size of the device could be measured if viewed from outside through the window, Morokuzu said, "I designed it so that only part of the centrifuge could be seen. Even professionals who view the device through the window wouldn't know its size."

Apart from JNFL, the Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corp. (PNC), which conducted research and development of enrichment technology with Toshiba Corp. and other manufacturers, strictly controlled sensitive technologies from the viewpoint of nuclear non-proliferation. Researchers in these entities had to gain permission from their bosses to file patent applications and release research papers.

"We were unable to get even a single centrifuge-related technology patented. I'm sad about that as an engineer," says Morokuzu.
Toshiba's enrichment division was disbanded in 2000 even though it made certain achievements. At the time, there was at least one engineer who was unable to return to the division he had originally belonged to even though he wished to because he had not got even a single technology patented.
Tsutomu Yanagisawa, 72, who was involved in the development of a fast-breeder nuclear reactor at PNC, says, "Researchers and engineers want to announce their achievements in technological development and want to have their achievements recognized. Those involved in nuclear technologies are doing so secretly. However, they do so for the country and the public. They do nothing wrong."

The number of research papers that engineers and researchers have published and technologies they gain patents for are important standards for personnel evaluation.

Companies that participate in research and development projects where controls on technological information are lax -- like those at the Laser Atomic Separation Engineering Research Association of Japan (LASER-J) that was founded mainly by electric power companies -- file patent applications for relevant technologies one after another.

At LASER-J, even important documents were put in unlocked drawers and management was so lax that even cleaners could have taken such materials out of the office. A total of 187 technologies developed at LASER-J were patented and part of the information leaked overseas. Morokuzu points out that Japan's personnel evaluation system is a factor that causes unintended nuclear proliferation.

There are engineers who laugh while others cry. Amid such a situation, Japan's nuclear technologies are proliferated through patents.
Hisamitsu Arai, 71, former commissioner of the Japan Patent Office, says, "Japan's atomic energy technology is for peaceful purposes. As such, we must think not only about Japanese people but also peace for the entire world. To that end, we need a drastic change like the Copernican Revolution" in astronomy, emphasizing that Japan's patent system needs to be fundamentally reformed. (By Haruyuki Aikawa, Senior Writer)


5. Radiation spikes in Fukushima underground ducts
The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says levels of radioactivity in underground tunnels have sharply risen.

Tokyo Electric Power Company has detected 482,000 becquerels per liter of radioactive cesium in water samples taken from the tunnels on December 3rd. That's 4000 times higher than data taken in December last year.

The samples also contained 500,000 becquerels of a beta-ray-emitting substance, up 4,100 times from the same period.

Around 400 to 500 tons of radioactive water, including seawater washed ashore in the March 2011 tsunami, is still pooled in the tunnels.

The tunnels lie next to a structure used to temporarily store highly radioactive water, which cooled melted nuclear fuel inside the damaged reactors.

TEPCO officials say it is unlikely the wastewater stored in the building has seeped into the tunnels.

They say the water level in the tunnels is higher than that in the building and measures are in place to stop the toxic water from leaking out.

They plan to investigate what caused the spike in radiation.

They say there has been no leakage out of the tunnels as radiation levels in underground water nearby have not risen.

International Monitoring Station
http://sccc.org.au/international-radiation-monitoring-stations


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6. Editorial: Fracking unbound

Published: December 12, 2015
We are not among those who view fracking as an unmitigated horror. The practice has produced an abundant supply of cheap energy, increased U.S. oil to near record highs and is helping make the nation energy self-sufficient. And because the natural gas it produces burns cleaner than oil, it even has helped reduced the United States’ carbon emissions.

Nevertheless, Floridians should be alarmed by fracking legislation that would rob local elected officials of any say over whether the practice could take place in their communities.

It is a typical Tallahassee ploy: seize control of such decisions at the urging of industry lobbyists, who know they are unlikely to get their way with the local elected officials who would have to live with the consequences.

In fracking, a mixture of water, sand and caustic chemicals is pumped deep into the ground to fracture shale rocks and release natural gas. On its face, such a process would seem unsuitable for most of Florida, with porous limestone below the surface and underground aquifers providing most of the state’s drinking water.

It’s true a comprehensive study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found no evidence the process had a widespread impact on drinking water, but the places where fracking is taking place now do not have Florida’s geology, nor its critical water needs.

As Dr. Lonnie Draper, a member of Physicians for Social Responsibility, told The Associated Press, the very process is designed to create leaks in the layers of earth that contain oil and gas, increasing the risk to Florida’s underground water supply.

The EPA study, after all, did document cases of damaging spills and leaks. Fracking also has been linked to minor earthquakes, hardly an insignificant concern to homeowners and builders.

For such reasons, as The Associated Press reports, about 20 Florida counties and 40 cities have banned fracking. Yet the legislation advancing in Tallahassee eliminates local control, not only over fracking but over any decisions concerning the processing, storage or transportation of oil and gas. A similar bill made it through the House last session but not the Senate.

The Florida League of Cities opposes the measure because it strips local governments of the ability to protect residents. As Tom Shelly, a Belleair commissioner, says, “We would lose our authority over land decisions. We couldn’t stop fracking even it was planned next to a school.”

If lawmakers do anything, they should adopt minimum safety standards. But local governments should retain the authority to adopt whatever regulations they deem necessary, or to prohibit the mining altogether.

Environmentalists are pushing for a statewide ban on fracking. That may be an overreaction, but is more responsible than stripping local governments of any say over such critical decisions and essentially encouraging companies to pursue fracking here.

Florida, already the nation’s third-largest state, cannot continue to grow and prosper if it does not rigorously protect its water sources and natural appeal. Lawmakers should bury the fracking push.


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7. Big Cypress under threat
Florida's Big Cypress National Preserve is facing an unprecedented threat, as Big Oil gears up to turn this iconic landscape into an industrial oil drilling zone.

Right now, the National Park Service is inviting comments on risky new plans to explore for oil and gas in preparation for fracking in the heart of this irreplaceable wild wetland.


Thousands of NRDC supporters like you sent messages of opposition to the National Park Service when we first learned of the plan last August. Now that NPS had decided to move forward with this ill-conceived scheme, we must take the next step and make our voices heard once again to block this assault on our natural heritage.


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8. The Environmental Protection Agency's draft national assessment on fracking's potential to pollute drinking water is still under review. If it is to reflect science over policy, some dramatic changes to the wording of the study's conclusions are needed, EPA's review panel was told during a public comment teleconference on Thursday.
Back in 2010, when Congress first tasked EPA with investigating the risks that hydraulic fracturing poses to American drinking water supplies, relatively little was known about the scale and significance of the onshore drilling rush's environmental impacts.

Over the past half decade, the pace of scientific research into fracking has accelerated dramatically. In 2009, only a handful of peer-reviewed studies (the gold standard for scientific research) on the environmental risks of shale and tight gas extraction were published; by contrast, over 150 studies were published in 2014, according to a review of the literature by Physicians, Scientists and Engineers for Health Energy. 
That scientific evidence has overwhelmingly found that shale and tight gas extraction has the potential to harm – and has harmed – air, water and people's health, that group wrote in an analysis released this year.
For politicians seeking to keep federal regulations for the industry at bay and for those backing an “all of the above” energy strategy, the growing evidence of a broad range of hazards related to fracking is bad news. In Pennsylvania alone, state regulators have documented hundreds of cases of water contamination, making it more challenging for supporters to argue that the industry is well-policed and operating safely.

But the final word on all of this research, as far as many federal policy-makers are concerned, will likely be the EPA's take on fracking's risks.
When the draft assessment was released, the door should have been closed on a favorite industry talking point – the (oft-debunked) claim that there has never been a documented case where fracking contaminated underground drinking water supplies. The EPA's draft assessment reported multiple documented instances where that precise problem occurred.

But a single phrase from the study's executive summary – saying that the EPA “did not find evidence that these mechanisms have led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States” – managed to leave a door open. That phrase continues to be quoted in headlines and media coverage about the report.




Sunday, December 06, 2015

PNN - Harvest Time


The Organic Consumers Association (OCA), IFOAM International Organics, Navdanya, Regeneration International (RI), and Millions Against Monsanto, joined by dozens of global food, farming and environmental justice groups announced today that they will put Monsanto MON (NYSE), a US-based transnational corporation, on trial for crimes against nature and humanity, and ecocide, in The Hague, Netherlands, next year on World Food Day, October 16, 2016. The announcement was made at a press conference held in conjunction with the COP21 United Nations Conference on Climate Change, November 30 – December 11, in Paris


 Falling oxygen levels caused by global warming could be a greater threat to the survival of life on planet Earth than flooding, according to researchers from the University of Leicester published in Bulletin of Mathematical Biology. A study led by Sergei Petrovskii, Professor in Applied Mathematics from the University of Leicester’s Department of Mathematics, has shown that an increase in the water temperature of the world’s oceans of around six degrees Celsius – which some scientists predict could occur as soon as 2100 – could stop oxygen production by phytoplankton by disrupting the process of photosynthesis. 


By Staff of Wikileaks - Today, Thursday, December 3, 10am EST, WikiLeaks releases new secret documents from the huge Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) which is being negotiated by the US, EU and 22 other countries that account for 2/3rds of global GDP. Coinciding with the ongoing climate talks in Paris, today's publication touches on issues of crucial relevance including the regulation of energy, industrial development, workers' rights and the natural environment. WikiLeaks is also publishing expert analyses of the documents. The Trade In Services Agreement is the largest trade treaty of its kind in history





Cruz on firing range he doesn't care if its not PC

By Margaret Flowers for Popular Resistance. Throughout the United States, but primarily in the Great Plains and the West, a silent polluter is responsible for cancers, birth defects and many diseases including kidney and autoimmune diseases. Yet, most people living in close proximity to these polluters are aware of the danger. I am talking about the 15,000 abandoned Uranium Mines. Most of them are open pits that continue to emit radiation and clouds of radon gas. When it rains, radioactive and toxic heavy metals are washed into the aquifers and rivers. When it is dry, dust carrying radioactive and heavy metals blows across the land. In the heart of the US' agricultural belt, these radioactive and heavy metals enter our food supply. Animals breathe in the toxic dust or drink contaminated water. Metals are taken up by plants that are harvested for animal feed or human consumption


By Chloe Fox for The Huffington Post - The Supreme Court has indefinitely stopped Native Hawaiians from moving forward with aunique and controversial election that they are hoping to use to form their own government. The high court on Wednesday extended a temporary stay issued by Justice Anthony Kennedy on Friday, granting an injunction requested by a group of Native Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians challenging the election. The election would select delegates for a constitutional convention, and is seen as a critical first step toward self-governance for Native Hawaiians -- the only indigenous community in the country without an independent political structure



By Steven Rosenfeld for AlterNet - Another explosive report of institutional racism by white police and prosecutors who willfully targeted black youths has emerged from one of the most remote regions of Alabama, the deep southeastern city of Dothan, where for years a handful of officers apparently planted drugs on hundreds of black youths and railroaded them into prison. The documentary trail of these arrests dating back to the late 1990s and a subsequent coverup by high-ranking county law enforcement officials was firstreported on HenryCountyReport.com. Reporter Jon B. Carroll describes how a handful of powerful officers and prosecutors targeted the youths for several years:


Jon Stone for Independent - David Cameron has refused to apologise after branding MPs who oppose air strikes in Syria “terrorist sympathisers”. The Prime Minister faced repeated interventions from MPs during a House of Commons debate on military action demanding that he retract the attack. Mr Cameron reportedly last night told rebel Conservative MPs that they might be set to “walk through the lobbies with Jeremy Corbyn and a bunch of terrorist sympathisers”. But today he did not acknowledge requests in parlaiment to withdraw the comments, even from pro-intervention MPs. 

Dozens of Florida cities and counties oppose a plan to give the state control over the oil and gas exploration process known as fracking.
The Tallahassee Democrat reported on Saturday that 20 counties and nearly 40 cities in Florida have passed regulations banning fracking. The cities and counties represent about 8 million people or 43 percent of the state's population.
Two Republican legislators, Rep. Ray Rodrigues of Estero and Sen. Garrett Richter of Naples, have proposed bills that would give the state authority to regulate oil and gas exploration, production, processing, storage and transportation.
Local leaders say the move wrongly takes away their right to regulate activities in their areas and that fracking could harm the environment and hurt Florida's tourism economy.
The Florida Association of Counties' general membership voted unanimously in November to oppose the legislation. The association also voted in favor of a moratorium on fracking until independent and comprehensive studies on fracking are completed.
"Whether you like fracking or don't like fracking, to have the county's powers usurped by the state is just the complete antithesis of local government," Wakulla County Commissioner Howard Kessler, who supported the Florida Association of Counties' proposals, told the newspaper.
Kessler said he's concerned about the impact hydraulic fracturing could have on the environment, public health and major industries like tourism and agriculture. The drilling technique involves the injection of mass amounts of water along with chemicals under great pressure to fracture underground rock formations and release oil and gas.
David Mica, executive director of the Florida Petroleum Council, said Florida law is fairly clear that oil and gas should be regulated by the state. And he said differences between the industry and cities and counties over fracking regulations can be resolved. But Mica said some fracking opponents want no oil or gas activity in Florida.
"I understand that point of view," he said. "It's an extremist point of view because Florida has a long history and a positive history of exploring for and producing oil and gas. We've done it since the '40s and we need to do it in the future. And we need to do it in ways that are protective of Florida's environment."
Fracking is already legal in Florida, though it's believed to have occurred only once, in Collier County. The proposed legislation would regulate the practice, establish fines for violations and pay for a study of any hazards or risks it might pose.
Last year, Rodrigues and Richter sponsored similar bills in the House and Senate. But they died when the regular session imploded over health-care differences between the chambers. The re-filed House bill passed its first committee stop earlier this month.


Home Depot to phase out bee-killing pesticides
Coalition presses for all retailers to make commitment to protect bees

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Home Depot (NYSE: HD), the world's largest home-improvement chain, has  announced that it has removed neonicotinoid pesticides, a leading driver of global bee declines, from 80 percent of its flowering plants and that it will complete its phase-out in plants by 2018. This announcement follows an ongoing campaign and  letter by Friends of the Earth and allies urging Home Depot to stop selling plants treated with neonicotinoids and remove neonic pesticides from store shelves. 

"Home Depot's progress in removing neonics shows it is listening to consumer concerns and to the growing body of science telling us we need to move away from bee-toxic pesticides," said Lisa Archer, Food and Technology program director at Friends of the Earth U.S. "However, we know that Home Depot and other retailers can do even more to address the bee crisis. Along with allies, we will continue to challenge retailers to engage in a race to the top to move bee-toxic pesticides off their shelves and out of garden plants as soon as possible. Bees are the canary in the coal mine for our food system and everyone, including the business community, must act quickly to protect them."

A study released by Friends of the Earth and Pesticide Research Institute, Gardeners Beware 2014, showed that 51 percent of garden plants purchased at Lowe's (NYSE: LOW), Home Depot (NYSE: HD) and Walmart (NYSE: WMT) in 18 cities in the United States and Canada contained neonicotinoid pesticides at levels that could harm or even kill bees. Following the release of this report, Home Depot announced it would require its suppliers to label all plants treated with neonicotinoid pesticides, which have been shown to harm and kill bees, by the fourth quarter of 2014. It also committed to "find alternative insecticides for protecting live goods and bees."


Friends of the Earth and allies have called on Home Depot to strengthen its existing commitments to protecting bees and other pollinators and nursery workers by immediately disclosing the progress it has made to date in phasing out neonicotinoid pesticides in all of its plants and off-the-shelf products. The coalition also called on the retailer to make a public commitment to complete its phase-out of neonicotinoids in all plants and off-the-shelf products, while transitioning to least-toxic alternatives that are benign to human health and the environment, by December 2016.

"Home Depot's public commitment will better position the company to meet the demands of an increasingly environmentally-conscious consumer base. And, it sends an important market signal that restricting the use of bee-harming pesticides is essential to stemming chronic bee declines," said Susan Baker, Vice President of Trillium Asset Management. Trillium and partners in the Investor Environmental Health Network, Domini Social Investments and the Sustainability Group of Loring, Wolcott and Coolidge, have been in active dialogue with management on this issue.

"Home Depot's progress in removing neonicotinoids from the majority of its flowering plants shows how fast a corporation can move when it needs to respond to consumer pressure and science," said Beatrice Olivastri, CEO,  Friends of the Earth Canada."We expect all garden retailers, big and small, to be specifying right now to their suppliers to stop use of neonics for 2016 flowering plants."

"We welcome Home Depot's announcement that it has removed 80% of bee-killing pesticides from its plants. Together, over 750,000 SumOfUs members told Home Depot to stand up for the bees, and together we will be watching closely to make sure that Home Depot phases out these bee-killing pesticides as quickly as possible," said Angus Wong, campaigner, SumOfUs.  

"It's important that retailers like Home Depot begin to make the switch towards safer products for bees, butterflies, and other beneficial insects.  By phasing out neonicotinoid products, Home Depot is helping consumers break away from a dependency on the use of toxic pesticides in their homes and gardens," said Jay Feldman, executive director,  Beyond Pesticides.

In the past year, more than thirty nurseries, landscaping companies and retailers have taken steps to eliminate bee-killing pesticides from their stores. A growing body of scientific evidence has continued to mount that neonicotinoids are a major contributor to both wild bee and honey bee declines and that they are contaminating the environment, harming a variety of other organisms essential to healthy ecosystems and sustainable food production.

"Even though Home Depot has taken these steps in the right direction, it's important for gardeners to be aware that many plants in stores today still contain neonicotinoids. We look forward to the day when we can all buy home garden plants without worrying about harming pollinators. In the meantime, gardeners should choose organic and neonic-free starts, seeds and soil," said Katherine Paul, associate director, Organic Consumers Association.

"It's time for other retailers, such as Ace and True Value, to take a stand against toxic, bee-killing neonicotinoids by making a full-fledged, public commitment to eliminate bee-killing pesticides from store shelves," said Laurel Hopwood, Sierra Club'spollinator protection program coordinator.

Earlier in 2015, Friends of the Earth and Pesticide Research Institute surveyed nurseries and released the report   Growing Bee Friendly Garden Plants: Profiles in Innovation, to find out how growers and retail stores were working to meet consumer demand for neonicotinoid-free plants.

"The survey showed that many growers are stepping up to the plate to ensure that their plants are safe for pollinators," said Dr. Susan Kegley, principal scientist atPesticide Research Institute. "These growers are using innovative approaches to control pests such as application of beneficial insects or fungi that eat or disable pest insects, as well as tried and true common-sense pest prevention methods like proper sanitation, frequent monitoring for pests, and selection of pest-resistant plants. Their success shows that harmful systemic insecticides are not necessary to grow bee-friendly plants."

Greenhouse Grower magazine surveyed the one hundred largest greenhouse growers in the industry, and found 31 percent of the growers surveyed are not using neonicotinoids at all, and 38 percent have eliminated neonicotinoid use for some of their plant products.

Last April, the EPA placed a moratorium on new and expanded uses of neonicotinoids. In September, the 9th Circuit Court suspended the EPA's approval of sulfoxaflor, a neonicotinoid.

In November, the U.S. Geological Survey released a reconnaissance study demonstrating native bees collected in an agricultural landscape are exposed to multiple pesticides and of the bees tested, 70percent contained pesticides, including neonicotinoids.

*Organizations partnering with Friends of the Earth U.S. in the campaign to urge garden retailers including Home Depot to phase out the use and sale of neonicotinoids include: American Bird Conservancy, Atlanta Audubon Society, Beyond Pesticides, Beyond Toxics, Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Environmental Health, Center for Food Safety, CREDO Action,  Ecology Center, Endangered Species Coalition, Environment New York, Environment Texas, Environmental Youth Council, Farmworker Association of Florida, Friends of the Earth Canada, Georgia Organics, GMO Inside, Green America, Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, Maryland Pesticide Network, Mercola.com, Natural Resources Defense Council, Northwest Center for Alternatives to Pesticides, Olympia Beekeepers Association, Organic Consumers Association, Pesticide Action Network North America, Planet Rehab, Save our Environment, Sierra Club, Smart on Pesticides Maryland, SumOfUs, Toxics Action Center, Toxic Free North Carolina,  Turner Environmental Law Clinic and The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. 


Last month, US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard went on CNN and laid bare Washington’s Syria strategy.
In a remarkably candid interview with Wolf Blitzer, Gabbard calls Washington’s effort to oust Assad “counterproductive” and “illegal” before taking it a step further and accusing the CIA of arming the very same terrorists who The White House insists are “sworn enemies.” 
In short, Gabbard all but tells the American public that the government is lying to them and may end up inadvertently starting “World War III.”

Gabbard, who fought in Iraq – twice – has partnered with Republican Austin Scott on the bill. Here’s AP:
In an unusual alliance, a House Democrat and Republican have teamed up to urge the Obama administration to stop trying to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad and focus all its efforts on destroying Islamic State militants.
Reps. Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat, and Austin Scott, a Republican, introduced legislation on Friday to end what they called an “illegal war” to overthrow Assad, the leader of Syria accused of killing tens of thousands of Syrian citizens in a more than four-year-old civil war entangled in a battle against IS extremists, also known as ISIS.
“The U.S. is waging two wars in Syria,” Gabbard said. “The first is the war against ISIS and other Islamic extremists, which Congress authorized after the terrorist attack on 9/11. The second war is the illegal war to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad.”
Scott said, “Working to remove Assad at this stage is counter-productive to what I believe our primary mission should be.”
Since 2013, the CIA has trained an estimated 10,000 fighters, although the number still fighting with so-called moderate forces is unclear. CIA-backed rebels in Syria, who had begun to put serious pressure on Assad’s forces, are now under Russian bombardment with little prospect of rescue by their American patrons, U.S. officials say.
For years, the CIA effort had foundered — so much so that over the summer, some in Congress proposed cutting its budget. Some CIA-supported rebels had been captured; others had defected to extremist groups.
Gabbard complained that Congress has never authorized the CIA effort, though covert programs do not require congressional approval, and the program has been briefed to the intelligence committees as required by law, according to congressional aides who are not authorized to be quoted discussing the matter.
Gabbard contends the effort to overthrow Assad is counter-productive because it is helping IS topple the Syrian leader and take control of all of Syria. If IS were able to seize the Syrian military’s weaponry, infrastructure and hardware, the group would become even more dangerous than it is now and exacerbate the refugee crisis.
And make no mistake, Tulsi’s understanding of Washington’s absurd Mid-East policy goes far beyond Syria. That is, Gabbard fully grasps the big picture as well. Here’s what she has to say about the idea that the US should everywhere and always attempt to overthrow regimes when human rights groups claim there’s evidence of oppression:

“People said the very same thing about Saddam (Hussein), the very same thing about (Moammar) Gadhafi, the results of those two failed efforts of regime change and the following nation-building have been absolute, not only have they been failures, but they’ve actually worked to strengthen our enemy.”