CJE Tuesday News Briefs

Richie Havens, Folk Icon, Dead at 72

WS – Sad day Indeed!

Brooklyn native opened Woodstock in 1969
Richie Havens, who brought an earthy soulfulness to the folk scene of the Sixties and was the first act to hit the stage at Woodstock, died of a heart attack on Monday, April 22. He was 72 and was living in Jersey City, New Jersey. Last month, Havens announced he would no longer be touring due to health issues.

From the beginning, when he played Village folk clubs in the mid-Sixties, Havens stood out due to more than just his imposing height (he was six-and-a-half feet tall) and his ethnicity (African-American in a largely white folk scene). He played his acoustic guitar with an open tuning and in a fervent, rhythmic style, and he sang in a sonorous, gravel-road voice that connected folk, blues and gospel.

Like many of his peers, Havens was a songwriter (he co-wrote one of his best-known songs, “Handsome Johnny,” with actor Lou Gossett Jr.). But Havens also knew a great contemporary song when he heard it, and made his name covering and rearranging songs by Bob Dylan (“Just Like a Woman,” “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”) and the Beatles (“With a Little Help from My Friends,” “Eleanor Rigby,” “Here Comes the Sun”). “Music is the major form of communication,” he told Rolling Stone in 1968. “It’s the commonest vibration, the people’s news broadcast, especially for kids.” More…

Today is “Change your toothbrush day” – I’m switching to a hair brush.

Fukushima nuclear cooling system offline for third time in 5 weeks

WS – Anyone else smell a rat with this story?

Tepco halted the cooling system for a spent fuel pool at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on Monday, the third time a cooling system has been offline there in the past five weeks, underlining the challenges the utility faces in trying to shut down the facility.

A pair of dead rats found in a box of a transformer for the cooling system of the unit 2 reactor’s spect pool at the crippled Tepco’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant at Okuma town in Fukushima prefecture, northern Japan on Monday, April 22, 2013. Tepco halted the cooling system for a spent fuel pool at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on Monday, the third time a cooling system has been offline there in the past five weeks, underlining the challenges the utility faces in trying to shut down the facility. More…

What BP Doesn’t Want You to Know About the 2010 Gulf Spill

WS – Under reported, Government lies, corrupt Judges… And it’s just BP that doesn’t want you to know?

The 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill was even worse than BP wanted us to know.
“It’s as safe as Dawn dishwashing liquid.” That’s what Jamie Griffin says the BP man told her about the smelly, rainbow-streaked gunk coating the floor of the “floating hotel” where Griffin was feeding hundreds of cleanup workers during the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Apparently, the workers were tracking the gunk inside on their boots. Griffin, as chief cook and maid, was trying to clean it. But even boiling water didn’t work.

“The BP representative said, ‘Jamie, just mop it like you’d mop any other dirty floor,’” Griffin recalls in her Louisiana drawl.

It was the opening weeks of what everyone, echoing President Barack Obama, was calling “the worst environmental disaster in American history.” At 9:45 p.m. local time on April 20, 2010, a fiery explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig had killed 11 workers and injured 17. One mile underwater, the Macondo well had blown apart, unleashing a gusher of oil into the gulf. At risk were fishing areas that supplied one third of the seafood consumed in the U.S., beaches from Texas to Florida that drew billions of dollars’ worth of tourism to local economies, and Obama’s chances of reelection. Republicans were blaming him for mishandling the disaster, his poll numbers were falling, even his 11-year-old daughter was demanding, “Daddy, did you plug the hole yet?”

Griffin did as she was told: “I tried Pine-Sol, bleach, I even tried Dawn on those floors.” As she scrubbed, the mix of cleanser and gunk occasionally splashed onto her arms and face.

Within days, the 32-year-old single mother was coughing up blood and suffering constant headaches. She lost her voice. “My throat felt like I’d swallowed razor blades,” she says. More…

Petraeus’ charity auction: Win a chance to work out with the general — just like his mistress!

WS – What a fuc$ing PR campaign we are subjected to with this guy and the media.

He belongs on the receiving end of some water-boarding. IMHO

Perhaps former CIA Director David Petraeus has extra time on his hands these days.

After resigning from his high-profile post amid a scandal over his affair with the woman writing his biography, the four-star general is now auctioning off the chance to work out with him.

Billed as a opportunity to win a “dream experience,” the money raised in the auction will benefit a charity called the Mission Continues, which offers paid fellowships to returning veterans.

“Test your physical limits during an intense workout with the man that was once in charge of all U.S. armed forces’ foreign operations before discussing military strategy over a well-deserved coffee,” touts the auction Web site. The lucky winner will learn “whether General Petraeus can kick your butt in a 5K.”

Yes, Petraeus is a known fitness buff. But let’s recall, for a moment, that it was a brisk run with a new acquaintance that started Petraeus’ downfall. More…

Arrests end Keystone XL protest in Oklahoma

WS – Arrests almost daily of protesters and you seldom hear about it from Main Stream Media.

This is a done deal. Bought in Washington DC.

An Iowa man was one of four people arrested in the latest Oklahoma protest against the Keystone XL pipeline.

TUSHKA — An Iowa man locked himself to a piece of heavy machinery Monday in an Earth Day protest against the Keystone XL pipeline.

Alec Johnson, 61, was one of four people arrested during Monday’s protest in Atoka County, organizers said.
Johnson took action to defend the Red River, according to the Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance. Organizers described Johnson as a climate justice organizer from Ames, Iowa.
It is the fifth protest launched by the environmental group in an attempt to block the Keystone XL pipeline.
The protest also fell on the final day to the State Department’s public comment period for the transcontinental pipeline.
“This is our environmental impact statement,” said Richard Ray Whitman, spokesman for the Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance. “We are taking a stand to protect our access to clean water.” More…

Grim rise in suicides by baby boomers

WS – Maybe, just maybe, the thought of eating dog food , choosing between heat and medicine , Obama wanting to cut Social Security, the robbing of pensions and government sanctioned banking scams isn’t uplifting enough to wait for death. Just maybe.
As Dec. 24 ticked to a close in 2011, 65-year-old Michael Kelley walked into the dark of his backyard near Sacramento High School and hanged himself from a beam on the deck.

The Vietnam veteran, who struggled with bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress and heart disease, died in the hospital on Christmas afternoon.

“I just relive it in my head,” said his widow, Cathy Kelley, now 63, who was separated from her husband when he died. “I know the dark hole of being really low. How sad he must have felt walking out there in the dark.

“That’s what I think of the most.”

Although experts have long thought of midlife as a time of stability and emotional contentment, baby boomers are proving to be an unfortunate exception. Reversing a longtime demographic trend, midlife suicides are on the rise for the generation born between 1946 and 1964. More…

Airport Delays Raise Questions About Controller Furloughs

WS – The government is risking safety while playing politics. Why are air traffic controllers paid with tax dollars in the first place? What a fucking racket… The airlines and the government, both!
Some air travelers faced delays Monday as furloughs of air traffic controllers began taking effect.

The Federal Aviation Administration said that with fewer eyes on the skies, it was forced to delay some flights. Travelers checking the FAA website saw alerts such as: “Due to STAFFING, there is a Traffic Management Program in effect for traffic arriving Charlotte Douglas International Airport, Charlotte, NC (CLT). This is causing some arriving flights to be delayed an average of 22 minutes.”

The delays left many travelers fuming, and wondering: What the heck is going on? More…

Measles Outbreak Kills over 100 Dolphins in Italy

WS – Pollutants released by humans into these animals’ natural habitats had nothing to do with these deaths?  OK. And Hillary Cllinton has no desire to be president, you can’t get pregnant the first time, the economy is booming and you can always go home by clicking your heels.
Since the beginning of 2013 and until present day, the carcasses of over 100 dolphins have showed up on the Italian western coastline.

Most of these carcasses were discovered by the local population and by wildlife experts on beaches from Tuscany to Sicily.

Following their investigating these carcasses, wildlife researchers concluded that the dolphins most likely passed away because of a measles outbreak.

Their theory is backed up by the fact that, up until now, just one species of such marine mammals seems to have been affected, Daily Mail explains.

Should specimens belonging to other dolphin species also show up dead on Italy’s coastline, local authorities might be forced to reconsider the idea that pollutants released by humans into these animals’ natural habitats had nothing to do with these deaths.

“At the moment the suspected cause of the mass cetacean deaths is measles (morbillivirus delphini) and the bacterium Photobacterium damselae,” reads a statement issued by Italy’s Ministry for the Environment.

Said virus is the one that causes cases of measles in humans. By the looks of it, the virus has now also found a way to affect animals. More...