AN ILL WIND – The Secret Threat of Coal Ash

First, I would like to thank those who got our grid power back on here in Virginia after Hurricane Irene knocked it out about 24 hrs before Irene made landfall in the Outerbanks of NC.

One thing that being out of power for more than a couple days does do is make you realize how dependent we all have become on ‘the grid’ and how we really need to change that at some point, don’t you think? Between dangers of outages like this, and potential threats from terrorists on our infrastructure, it just seems to make sense that we figure out a way to get the power we need but by decentralizing from The Grid.

Over the last month, since August 4th, we have intermittently had to deal with the smoke and ill air quality of the wildfire in the dismal swamp. There were times when here in our little town there was smoke hanging in the air, and in our very homes when we woke up in the morning and were having trouble breathing. It was particularly bad for my Jim who is on an oxygen concentrator. Thankfully, Hurricane Irene, actually did one thing that was good, it almost (but not quite) put out that wildfire. I hope they can get the 30 or so hot spots put out before it dries out again.

Because I have a problem with the whole issue of dangerous coal ash, and huge coal plants close to people’s homes and spewing dangerous arsenic, and so much more into our air, does not mean I don’t appreciate The Grid or those who work to provide and maintain, and restore that power after natural disasters like this. My only complaint is the dangerous ways in which they often do that; meaning coal – from the cradle to the grave and the health and environmental dangers it poses.

Coal from Mountain Top Removal to this ILL WIND of coal ash that sends ‘sandstorms’ of coal ash directly over the reservation when the winds blow wrong, and other coal plant travesties around the country and around the world, to ODEC trying to get a 1500 MW coal fired power plant in Dendron, VA and Surry County rolling over to get the money they are promised and the empty purse of promised jobs (yeah, how many and for how long, and what of those who live here?) To the whole of a region like Hampton Roads that will be adversely affected by a 1500 MW coal plant with a prevailing wind that will draw that smoke/vapor over other areas in Hampton Roads.

From the text at Youtube:

See the whole project at http://www.earthjustice.org/illwind

The Moapa River Indian Reservation, tribal home of the Moapa Band of Paiutes, sits about 30 miles north of Las Vegas and about 300 yards from the coal ash ponds and landfills of the Reid Gardner Power Station. Coal ash is the toxic ash and sludge left at the end of the coal burning process. It’s laced with arsenic, mercury, lead and other heavy metals. It’s the second largest waste stream in America and it’s currently unregulated.

If the conditions are just wrong, coal ash picks up from Reid Gardner and moves across the desert like a toxic sandstorm sending the local residents running for their homes. The reservation has lung, heart and thyroid disease rates that are abnormally high and the power plant is currently seeking to expand its coal ash storage capability.

The film An Ill Wind tells the Paiute Indians’ story.

View and interactive presentation of the story at:

http://www.earthjustice.org/illwind

Watch the complete film at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL49Ibc0L88

And learn more about coal ash at:

http://www.earthjustice.org/coalash

Many thanks to the Moapa Band of Paiutes for allowing us to tell this story and to Vinny Spotleson of the Sierra Club and Dan Galpern of the Western Environmental Law Center for helping with the project.

I guess we as individuals and families really do need to start thinking about how we can get ourselves off the grid … if more homes are off the grid, these big coal plants wouldn’t even be considered necessary…

TSA Government Manipulation and Humiliation

There was a saying from an old movie, Network that bears repeating:

I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!

This is how many of us feel about the abuse by the TSA and ‘our’ government regarding full body scans and invasive pat downs that we apparently pay to have the privilege of going through since you can’t fly without the possibility of abusive TSA behavior.

And you have folks like Rush saying it’s intentional. No kidding it’s intentional … they want to humiliate and thereby manipulate people publicly so they won’t buck the system.

Well….

I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!

Actually, I haven’t flown since the 1990s and refuse to do so because of the way they are treating paying customers at the airports in this country (USA).

This is more like Gestapo behavior than American Civil Servants (paid by our tax dollars) respectfully trying to protect its Citizens.

Info on what has been going on:

TSA Pat-Down Leaves Mich. Man Covered in Urine (CBS):

A bladder cancer survivor from Michigan who wears a urostomy bag that collects his urine says a rough pat-down by a security agent at Detroit Metropolitan Airport caused the bag to spill its contents on his shirt and pants.
…
The Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network says bladder cancer survivors “deserve to be treated with dignity and respect by TSA agents.”

ALL United States Citizens deserve to be treated with dignity and respect by TSA agents!

No United States Citizen should be made to feel embarrassed, humiliated or manipulated by their taxpayer funded Civil Servants.

Are Air Travelers Criminal Suspects? (Congressman Ron Paul) who is proposing a Bill to address this an other issues:

I introduced legislation last week that is based on a very simple principle: federal agents should be subject to the same laws as ordinary citizens. If you would face criminal prosecution or a lawsuit for groping someone, exposing them to unwelcome radiation, causing them emotional distress, or violating indecency laws, then TSA agents should similarly face sanctions for their actions.

This principle goes beyond TSA agents, however. As commentator Lew Rockwell recently noted, the bill “enshrines the key lesson of the freedom philosophy: the government is not above the moral law. If it is wrong for you and me, it is wrong for people in government suits… That is true of TSA crimes too.” The revolt against TSA also serves as a refreshing reminder that we should not give in to government alarmism or be afraid to question government policies.

Airport body scanners ‘could give you cancer’, warns expert (Mail Online):

They say that the low level beam does deliver a small dose of radiation to the body but because the beam concentrates on the skin – one of the most radiation-sensitive organs of the human body – that dose may be up to 20 times higher than first estimated.

Christie joins critics of TSA’s airport screening procedures, calls them ‘too invasive’ (NJ.com)

At a town hall meeting today, Christie , a former federal prosecutor, called them “too invasive.”

“I support the TSA trying to keep us safe, but not the way they’re doing it,” Christie said.

And what about the Pilots and Flight Attendants who would have to go through it day in and day out, potentially multiple times a day?

TSA’s double standard – In the uproar about scanners and pat-downs, no one seems to have noticed that one group is exempt from inspection (Salon):

Late last week, the Transportation Security Administration, bowing to controversy and the threat of lawsuits, ruled that airline pilots will no longer be subject to the backscatter body scanners and invasive pat-downs at TSA airport checkpoints.
…
(Incidentally, the requirement that crews undergo checkpoint screening was imposed by the Federal Aviation Administration after the crash of a Pacific Southwest Airlines flight in 1987. A recently terminated flight attendant, David Burke, used his credentials, which the airline had failed to recover, to carry a concealed handgun onto Flight 1771 from Los Angeles to San Francisco. En route, he shot both pilots and nosed the airplane into the ground near Harmony, Calif., killing all 44 on board.)

Flight Attendants?

Delta: Let Flight Attendants Skip Scanners, Too (NPR):

The Transportation Security Administration has said it will let pilots skip the body scans and aggressive pat-downs that travelers get. Now, Delta CEO Richard Anderson has asked the TSA to let flight attendants get the same treatment. His request was included in a letter to employees over the weekend.

And what about other stuff…

TSA security is as futile as it is invasive (Baltimore Sun):

But what makes it all so disturbing is the fact that while we’re submitted to extensive yet inefficient procedures, we’re totally unprotected while we we’re all jam-packed waiting to pass security check; did anyone ever see any type of protection there? How many casualties would a single terrorist throwing grenades and spray-shooting be able to cause? Ask the Ben Gurion Airport security authorities what Kozo Okamoto, the converted to Islam Japanese Red Army member, was able to do on his own in 1972.

Furthermore, what kind of preventive and protection measures are in place regarding our luggage? Close to zero.

So while we’re harassed and frustrated by revealing screening machines that can’t “see” many explosive types, and exposed to unnecessary privacy invasion, tens of pounds of plastic explosives can be easily loaded on the plane with very low chances of being discovered.

John Tyner, who has obviously had enough of this!

Bloggings On Dysfunctional Government (ILW.com’s Angelo Paparelli)

John Tyner, a San Diego software engineer and newly minted American folk hero, faces an $11,000 civil-disobedience fine for refusing an intimate groping, dubbed by Orwellian bureaucrats as an “enhanced patdown,” that Hillary Clinton would herself refuse. The man who threatened a citizen’s arrest if his “junk” were touched epitomizes an aroused populace, even including flaccid Baby Boomers, who will no longer tolerate TSA inanity passing off as security at the nation’s airports.

TSA Responds to “Strip Search” Video of Boy (CBS):

News reports about what critics say are overzealous screening procedures are proliferating: Here’s one story entitled “TSA Makes Cancer Victim Remove Prosthetic Breast,” and here’s a post entitled “TSA Screening Soaks Bladder Cancer Survivor with His Own Urine.” A story about a person being arrested for refusing the security procedures is entitled “TSA airport screeners gone wild in San Diego- again;” here’s one called “TSA pats down a screaming toddler.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton probably didn’t help matters when she said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that she would not submit to a pat-down “if I could avoid it,” adding, “I mean, who would?”

Good question…good question.

Facebook – An admirable start but not nearly enough

Facebook Adds Two Privacy Tools – InformationWorld:

Both tools have to do with stopping unknown devices from logging in to a user’s Facebook account.

Definitely a first step, and an important one to be sure, especially since many hacks apparently were coming from mobile devices — but this is not nearly enough.

This does not even begin to address the privacy related issues brought on by changing the default from privacy by default to public by default which is why Facebook won over from MySpace in the first place.

My account will remain deactivated for the time being.

Facebook account deactivated today

Well, today is the day.

As much as I love Facebook, and enjoy the ability to keep in contact with family and friends easily, I have deactivated my account today in protest of their stance on privacy and the apparent lack of concern for their users by changing to the opposite stance on user privacy. It has been one step, after another over the last year or so. Desensitizing users to the changes they have made by doing it slowly.

Facebook sees dollar signs where we users are concerned. They have deluded themselves into thinking that with all the family and/friends connectios, and simplicity of keeping in contact with our Facebook friends, that we won’t be able to stop, that we are now hooked…”we have you now” in Darth Vader’s voice.

Is it true?

Not in my case at least. I let my friends and family know what I was doing. They support and understand. Will any of them do the same thing? I hope so…

We need to stand together to disallow Facebook a pass on the changes from supposed concern for users and user’s security and privacy to what it is today … where they are saying we don’t care about privacy by default. That we only see the connections we can make to other sites?!?! Facebook is saying proudly that they are the next MySpace … “now we control all these users and connections, and you as users have no privacy. Privacy is dead.”

Can we prove them wrong?

===

Edit: added some links to help make your decision:

With Facebook’s security and privacy standards under fire from all sides, suffice it to say that this is not a good time for one of the company’s investors to fall for a Facebook phishing scam. (Facebook phishing scam snares company board member – CNET – May 10, 2010 8:42 AM PDT )

Comparing Facebook’s latest product modifications to deadly natural disasters is probably a little bit inappropriate, but the psychological reaction doesn’t seem all that different. The social network modified its policies for handling user data once again as part of its F8 conference and release of the Open Graph API, and ever since it became clear that more information is being set as public by default and more is being shared with third parties, concerned Facebook users have been on jittery alert, perhaps prone to overreaction, concerned that something even bigger may be about to change. (Understanding Facebook’s privacy aftershocks – CNET May 6, 2010 3:51 PM PDT)

Criticism of Facebook (Wikipedia.com)

Four senators are adding their voices to criticism that Facebook Inc. doesn’t do enough to give its 400 million users easier ways to protect their privacy online. (Senators turn up the heat on Facebook privacy issues – SFGATE.com – April 28, 2010)

More links on my blog post, Bye, Bye, Facebook, Bye, Bye… AND ALL OVER THE WEB! Just do a search on facebook privacy issues on any search engine and read it and weep.

Bye, Bye, Facebook, Bye, Bye…

***NOTICE***

BYE, BYE, FACEBOOK, BYE, BYE

This notice is to my friends and family on Facebook

After this weekend (waiting only to give friends and family a chance to know what happened), I will be deactivating my Facebook account, and may ultimately be deleting it in the very near future if A LOT OF THINGS don’t change in the way that Facebook is ‘doing business.’

Facebook has a lot of gall to say Facebook users are not unhappy with their recent changes to Facebook privacy policy changes. I know many who are VERY unhappy with these changes, IF they even realize the changes being made.

To help folks realize what changes are being made, here are some links to do your own research:

Six Things You Need to Know About Facebook Connections (EFF)

Facebook security flaw makes private chats public (Network World)

Consumer groups hammer Facebook privacy violations in federal complaint (Macworld UK) – Facebook privacy violations stemming from recent feature changes

More EFF links over the last week or two on Facebook:

Facebook’s Eroding Privacy Policy: A Timeline

A Handy Facebook-to-English Translator

How to Opt Out of Facebook’s Instant Personalization

If you plan on maintaining your Facebook Account, you also might like to read the following article at ZDNet Blogs:

Contemplating FaceBook Hara-Kiri

Protect net neutrality

Protect net neutrality

Rather than send this via email, since I hate receiving unsolicited emails, I figured I would just put it on my blog.

Our ability to have a free and open Internet is under attack.

The Federal Communications Commission has been attempting to enforce net neutrality safeguards that would keep big telecoms from inspecting and filtering the Internet content you access, blocking websites and applications they don’t like, and overcharging you for using the Internet. But a recent court decision prevents the FCC from regulating net neutrality in the way it tried.

The FCC now faces an important decision. Will it stand up for consumers and reclassify broadband Internet providers to ensure the Internet stays free?

The FCC has asked for public comment on their net neutrality plans. Join me in submitting a comment in support of the FCC doing everything it can to protect a free and open Internet. Just click the link below to submit your comment.

http://www.credoaction.com/campaign/fccnn_replycomments/?rc=homepage

I have already submitted my comments. Maybe you could too…

Mac OS X 10.4.11 Tiger Java Security Update Missing

What the heck is going on?

Is the Java Update that was put out last month for Windows and this past week for Leopard and Snow Leopard not a security issue for Tiger users, or did Apple decide to not bother making sure those who still are stuck using Tiger wouldn’t be safe??!??

This is one of two reasons why I hate that Apple does the Java updates for Mac OS X instead of letting Java do it like it does for Windows.

First reason is they are always late. Second reason, when Apple doesn’t want to update Java for Tiger, like they did for Panther, etc., they just stop updating it.

If it were left up to SUN Java to update it we would have gotten it when they released the Windows versions instead of getting this when you go to Apple site with Mac OS:

Apple and Java

Or is Tiger (and earlier versions) the only OSes on the planet that don’t need this security update?! Tiger hasn’t had a security update for Java since June 2009: Java for Mac OS X 10.4, Release 9

Keith Olbermann on Obama and Wiretapping

Keith Olbermann on Obama and Wiretapping (at EFF.org with videos from MSNBC.com):

Olbermann’s second guest, GWU Law Professor Jonathan Turley, aptly summarizes why the new ruling is so disappointing:

“I think right now, the Bush people are bringing out their mission-accomplished sign, because they’ve not only gotten Obama to protect Bush and Cheney and others from any criminal investigation on torture, but he’s now gone even further than they did in the protection of unlawful surveillance. This is the ultimate victory for the Bush officials. They have Barack Obama adopting the same extremist arguments, and in fact exceeding the extremist arguments made by President Bush…

“You cannot any longer suggest that President Obama is advancing the civil liberties and the privacy interests that he promised to advance. This is a terrible roll-back. It’s a terrible decision.

These are must watch videos on this topic.

The Martial Law Mind-Set

The Martial Law Mind-Set by William Norman Grigg (LewRockwell.com)

While Archimedes is rightly revered for his many imperishable contributions to science, he could also be considered the first recorded victim of lethal police brutality.

A native of Syracuse, Archimedes did his considerable best in the doomed but worthy effort to repel Roman invaders. Following the conquest, Roman soldiers were dispatched to “pacify” the restive streets of the newly conquered city.

One afternoon, so the story goes, Archimedes was sitting inoffensively at the side of a street drawing geometric equations in the sand when some mouth-breather in Roman military garb trod heedlessly on the improvised tablet, ruining the elderly scientist’s calculations.

By this time, the venerable physicist was in his ninth decade, and he saw no point in enduring this act of thoughtless vandalism by an armored imbecile to pass without protest.

“Please don’t disturb my circles,” Archimedes insisted in what was probably a direct but polite tone of voice.

Like law enforcement officers who would follow in his footsteps – albeit in jackboots rather than sandals – the Roman soldier took offense that a mere civilian, and an elderly one at that, would demand deference from someone wearing the uniform and insignia of authority.

If the technology had been available, the Roman quite likely would have given Archimedes a “ride on the Taser.” Instead, the thug withdrew his sword and summarily killed him.

Much more in the must read article.

I have talked about my experiences with the Security at the Ferry system here in Virginia on this blog previously. I am sure some might have thought I was being silly for my concerns about this, until they read this article that is. Thanks Will Grigg for sharing in a great article the same real concerns I have had about all of this and couldn’t put it into words properly. You sure did!

Malevolent voices that despise our freedoms

Malevolent voices that despise our freedoms – Phillip Pullman (TimesOnline)

Are such things done on Albion’s shore?

The image of this nation that haunts me most powerfully is that of the sleeping giant Albion in William Blake’s prophetic books. Sleep, profound and inveterate slumber: that is the condition of Britain today.

We do not know what is happening to us. In the world outside, great events take place, great figures move and act, great matters unfold, and this nation of Albion murmurs and stirs while malevolent voices whisper in the darkness – the voices of the new laws that are silently strangling the old freedoms the nation still dreams it enjoys.

Phillip Pullman, the childrens’ author, continues in the article to talk about reality that are echos of the Orwellian 1984.

I would suggest that you read first Phillip Pullman’s article and then read my 1984 posting from 2005. There is a sad and striking similarity.

And what of us (here in the USA)? And what of us?

Must read.

More great discussion at: http://www.modernliberty.net/