What is This Stuff "Atrazine"

What is the status of Atrazine in Canada?

DOLE-ING OUT FAVORS
A lobbying success story, from the maker of atrazine

The manufacturer of atrazine, an herbicide connected by studies to frog deformities and increased risk of prostate cancer in humans, spent $260,000 lobbying the U.S. EPA and other government bodies on behalf of the chemical. Not only that, but Syngenta Crop Protection enlisted the formidable lobbying talents of Viagra emissary and ex-senator Bob Dole, who met at least once with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin to discuss the issue. After reports began emerging about atrazine's ill effects -- biologist Tyrone Hayes testified to Congress that low levels of atrazine "chemically castrate and feminize" male frogs, fish, and other wildlife, and other tests indicate that men who work around the chemical are at risk of prostate cancer -- Syngenta hired PR firm Alston & Bird to lobby the White House, the Justice Department, and Congress on its behalf. Before Dole's meeting, Alston & Bird prepared a memo saying that the EPA should reregister atrazine by Oct. 31, 2003; after Dole's meeting, the agency did just that.

straight to the source: Duluth News Tribune, Associated Press, Frederic J. Frommer, 27 Oct 2004

What is This Stuff "Atrazine"

What is the status of Atrazine in Canada?

DOLE-ING OUT FAVORS
A lobbying success story, from the maker of atrazine

The manufacturer of atrazine, an herbicide connected by studies to frog deformities and increased risk of prostate cancer in humans, spent $260,000 lobbying the U.S. EPA and other government bodies on behalf of the chemical. Not only that, but Syngenta Crop Protection enlisted the formidable lobbying talents of Viagra emissary and ex-senator Bob Dole, who met at least once with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin to discuss the issue. After reports began emerging about atrazine's ill effects -- biologist Tyrone Hayes testified to Congress that low levels of atrazine "chemically castrate and feminize" male frogs, fish, and other wildlife, and other tests indicate that men who work around the chemical are at risk of prostate cancer -- Syngenta hired PR firm Alston & Bird to lobby the White House, the Justice Department, and Congress on its behalf. Before Dole's meeting, Alston & Bird prepared a memo saying that the EPA should reregister atrazine by Oct. 31, 2003; after Dole's meeting, the agency did just that.

straight to the source: Duluth News Tribune, Associated Press, Frederic J. Frommer, 27 Oct 2004

Pumpkin Power?

Well I have a question about the following. Maybe I'm not understanding this right, but if the pumpkins can draw out the DDT from the soil that's good right? Now they way they must check that is to find out how much DDT ends up in the pumpkin or whatever else they are using and then checking to see how much less DDT is in the actual soil that the pumpkin was growing in. Ideally, I guess, the pumpkin is packed with DDT and the soil is clean, right? OK so far, but my question is what do you do with this pumpkin? You can't eat it, you can't put it into your compost pile or you put the DDT back as well. So what do you do. That's my question.
NOW THAT'S A GREAT PUMPKIN, CHARLIE BROWN
Pumpkins found to absorb pesticides from soil

Pumpkins are not only good for jack-o'-lanterns, pie, and carrying Cinderella home -- they are also extremely effective at drawing persistent organic pollutants like the toxic pesticide DDT out of soil, according to a new study by Canadian researchers. They tested rye grass, tall fescue, alfalfa, zucchini, and pumpkins, but the oddly Halloween-specific orange gourd won by a large margin. While the Canucks acknowledged that phytoremediation -- the use of plants to clean contaminated sites -- will never fully replace more high-tech methods, they suggest that it offers a "green solution" that may work well in communities and countries where such technology is not available. Obviously, DDT-ridden pumpkins would not be used for pies or jack-o'-lanterns (unless some sicko just wasn't satisfied with razors in apples). Rather, they would be buried or incinerated.

straight to the source: The Kitsap Sun, Lee Bowman, 22 Oct 2004

Here we go again. Not a surprise this report. There are simply to many of us, but there is hope. Japan's population has started to decline as of this year. They don't think it's a good thing but it really is. If we can decrease our world population we stand a chance of controling our own destiny. However we will probably not beable to do it fast enough and nature will interevene. They way she does that is by flipping us out- for example like in Iraq. Have you noticed that there are more and more countries getting nuclear weapons? Natures way of getting us smart guys and gals. The pressure is on! We fix it or we really fix it "boom". It is kind of like a "roundup" spray that get's a lot of us large mammals. You have always heard that a large nuclear war will destroy the earth. Give me a break - it will destroy us and like I say some of the rest of the large mammals but the planet will survive just fine and the biosphere will prosper, without us!
Overconsumption threatens ecological balance, WWF warns
Last Updated Thu, 21 Oct 2004 18:08:20 EDT

GENEVA - People are consuming the planet's resources at a rate that outstrips its capacity to support life, a global conservation group said Thursday.

The World Wildlife Fund report, called The Living Planet 2004, shows humans use 20 per cent more natural resources than Earth can produce.


Report's authors recommend switching away from fossil fuels.

Between 1970 and 2000, populations of land, freshwater and marine species fell about 40 per cent, according to the report.

The destruction of habitat is the greatest threat to wild species.

"Forests are being cleared to plant crops or to graze animals," said Jonathan Loh, one of the report's authors.

Other threats include:
• River dams.
• Pollution.
• Climate change.
• Overexploitation of species like fish.

Invasive species such as cats, birds and rats that are not native to a particular country can also threaten indigenous species, the report said.

Earth's ecological footprint – the amount of productive land needed on average worldwide to sustain one person – is now 2.2 hectares.

Based on the amount of productive land and sea on Earth and the total population of 6.1 billion people, the planet has only 1.8 hectares available.

People in the developed world consume resources at an unsustainable level, the report concluded.

An average North American consumes twice as much as a European and seven times more than the average Asian or African, according to the report.

To stem the tide, Loh suggested governments, businesses and consumers switch to energy-efficient technology, such as solar power.

Break it, Pay for it

OPINION-from some jerk writting in the Japan Times
=========================

Prioritizing aid for Iraq
Last week's Iraqi donor conference in Tokyo provided an "opportunity to reaffirm solidarity between the international community and the Iraqi people," as the chairman declared in his concluding statement. In practical terms, however, the meeting produced few results. With violence still prevalent in Iraq, delegates from 57 countries and groups were concerned mainly about security risks. Progress was also hampered by differences over how to support reconstruction efforts.
[MORE] ->
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?ed20041019a1.htm............end of news item.
Well that's a general opinion no matter how short and silly and iresponsible it is. What is all this about and these governments and groups talking about spending money in Iraq? Whose money are they spending anyway? Theirs? No they are talking about and commiting spending ours. Who broke Iraq? The Americans did. So it is simple- they broke it they should fix it. Their war was illegal and the president should be impeached for war crimes and tried in an international court. And America who have him as President must bear the costs of reparing the damage he did. Not the rest of us. They should also be responsible for the potential loss of income that Iraq incurred because of the disruption of the war and the present inept occupation. Give us the citizens of other countries a break. We didn't break it- the English and the Americans and their suck along helpers should pay for the reconstruction in proportion to their representation.

Treat Me Different I'm a Princess

Public facilities cannot provide special facilities for religious or political groups. It's a joke to think that a school should have special rooms or larger areas ready to rent to groups who think they might need them. That would be a nightmare in the making. A group decides that they must all sleep over at the school because there god told them they will get better marks if they do. The school then has to have an apartment building ready and waiting for them. Give me a break. Here is the story:Muslim students in Montreal denied prayer rooms
Last Updated Fri, 15 Oct 2004 17:57:45 EDT

MONTREAL - As the holy month of Ramadan begins, Muslim students will have to pray in cramped stairwells at two Montreal engineering schools because the institutions won't rent space to let them practise their faith.

• INDEPTH: Ramadan


Muslims gather to pray at Toronto's Ryerson University.

The post-secondary schools say they are secular institutions and do not need to accommodate religious practices.

Farid Ghanem, a former student at l' Ecole de Technologie Superieure, and more than 100 other Muslim students have taken the Montreal engineering school to the Quebec Human Rights Commission for failing to provide the students with a place to pray.

Their faith requires Muslims to pray five times a day, facing in the direction of the holy city of Mecca.

An extra prayer is added during Ramadan, when believers concentrate more on their faith life and less on the concerns of the outside world, and are not allowed to eat or drink during daylight hours.

The human rights commission is expected to rule on the issue in the next few weeks.

Its decision is likely to attract a lot of attention, given that Islam is Canada's fastest-growing religion and the largest non-Christian faith in Quebec.

The dispute has been dragging on for two years.

Partly as a result of not being allowed to rent space for devotions, Ghanem became fed up with l'Ecole de Technologie and dropped out to do his PhD elsewhere.

"We felt that we were not accepted here and it was hostile," said Ghanem.

A second engineering school in Montreal has taken the same position as Ghanem's former school on Muslim religious practice. The Ecole Polytechnique is not offering its Muslim students a special prayer room.

"We are a secular institution and our mission doesn't include religion. It's education and research, " said Chantal Cantin, the school's communications director.

Cantin also said the Polytechnique is short on space.

Montreal human rights activist Fo Niemi doesn't buy the argument about secularism.

"Being secular doesn't mean one has to ban religion...it means our institution shall have no official religion," he said.

Niemi said other universities are providing prayer rooms, but he's still worried by what he sees as religious intolerance within Quebec's educational system.

Written by CBC News Online staff

Dumb & Dumber

This review is great although I don't know if it's any good or not. I haven't seen the movie but the reviewer here doesn't seem to know that the movie here, although about American, is not American but made by to Canadians-duh! So most of his coments mean nothing:



1. New Movie Reviews: Moral Guidance From Class Clowns
By A. O. SCOTT
======================================================

With an election drawing near, flush with a sense of civic
duty, I went to a screening of "Team America: World Police,"
the naughty new puppet action-musical from the resourceful
and confrontational minds of Trey Parker and Matt Stone. I
wanted a marionette version of what I get from "South Park":
a wholesale demolition of everything pious, hypocritical and
dumb in American culture and society, along with a few songs
to hum on the way home and a few new ways to appreciate the
inexhaustible comic possibilities of flatulence and
excrement.

Maybe I expected too much. It's a big country, after all,
busy inventing new forms of idiocy every day, and there's
only so much a 98-minute movie can cover, especially if the
filmmakers have to figure out how to make big-headed, loose-
bodied puppets walk, shoot, fight and simulate sex.

So perhaps Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone had to be selective in
their choice of targets. They expend most of their spoofy
energy sending up action-movie conventions and over-the-top
patriotic bluster, reserving their real satiric venom for
self-righteous Hollywood liberals. Considering that it's all
done with puppets, "Team America" is sometimes more
satisfying as a straight-ahead blow 'em up than as a satire.

Review:
http://movies2.nytimes.com/2004/10/15/movies/15TEAM.html?8mu

Movie Details:
http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=309182&8mu
there you go that's the New York Times for you. A very good shallow, meaningless interpretation on what's happening in the world.