High Fives: New York Legislature Approves Fracking Moratorium
By Tara Lohan
Posted at November 30, 2010, 10:26 am

I wrote last week about an incredible effort by the Working Families Party and other allies to help turn up the heat in New York State on the controversial practice of “fracking” by gas drilling companies. In a huge victory last night the New York Assembly voted 93 to 43 for a temporary moratorium on the practice (until May of next year) so that the environmental impacts can be better assessed. This comes after states like Pennsylvania, which allow fracking have reported numerous environmental violations, most especially, threats to ground and surface water.

New York’s senate passed a similar bill several months ago and now the fracking moratorium awaits the signature of Gov. Patterson — you can urge him to sign this legislation by calling his office at 518-474-8390.

Read more.

Here is an eye-opener on how bad we really have it in America–a situation that our press would be reporting (if it were ours).

MCM

Death of American dream, 60 million no sick leave, 132 million no dental, 59 million without medical

(Written by an American expat living in the European Union).

It wasn’t until I left America that I started to realize how badly the American plutocrat owned media lies to the American people through its disinformation campaign.

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New Outrage in the Gulf
by Rick Outzen

Could Congress have prevented the BP mess? A report reveals that a law enacted after the Exxon Valdez to avoid future oil spills was deprived of cash by lawmakers.

President Obama’s commission investigating the disastrous BP oil spill quietly issued a draft report on the response last week, and within that document, largely unnoticed, emerged a damning finger pointed directly at Congress for failing to heed the lessons of the Exxon Valdez.

Specifically, in 1990, shortly after Exxon’s 750,000-barrel Alaska catastrophe, Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act to funnel up to $28 million in research money annually to pre-empt and respond to possible disasters, as the oil industry “pushed the frontier of deepwater drilling.” This money wouldn’t come from the general coffers, but rather a trust fund, covered by a 5-cent per-barrel tax collected from the oil industry.

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From “Democracy Now!”–
U.S. Facing Global Diplomatic Crisis Following Massive WikiLeaks Release of Secret Diplomatic Cables
http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-news-section/368-wikileaks/4089-the-wikileaks-diplomatic-crisis

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From Norman Solomon: WikiLeaks: Demystifying “Diplomacy”
by Norman Solomon
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/11/29

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Secret US Embassy Cables
http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/

When Truth Is Scarier Than Fiction
Mark Ruffalo

It sounds like a crazy conspiracy — too extreme to be true. Flaming tap water, dead animals, secret chemical formulas, mysterious illnesses afflicting whole communities, and people afraid to speak up.

The November 11th episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation brought viewers to a small town taken over by — industrial gas drilling. The storyline in “Fracked” follows the investigators as they attempt to uncover the truth behind two murders, but end up discovering a much bigger crime: an industry destroying people’s lives with no accountability.

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If You Knew How Dangerous Green Cleaning Products Were, You’d Probably Go Back to Soap and Water
By Monona Rossol, AlterNet
Posted on November 23, 2010, Printed on November 27, 2010

They’re hiding under your sink, deep in the basement and out in your garage. They seem to be multiplying and most of them are green, for gosh sakes!

They are cleaning products. We have one for every conceivable job: floors, walls, dishes, laundry, windows, bathroom porcelain and ceramic tiles, wooden decks, cement surfaces, silverware, one for car paint and another for the chrome, and on and on.

Whatever happened to just plain soap? Well, it seems it wasn’t fast enough for our busy lives. And these new cleaners certainly are fast. Just spray and wipe or swish with a mop and the job is done.

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The job of the media is not to protect power from embarrassment
Simon Jenkins

It is for governments – not journalists – to guard public secrets, and there is no national jeopardy in WikiLeaks’ revelations

Is it justified? Should a newspaper disclose virtually all a nation’s secret diplomatic communication, illegally downloaded by one of its citizens? The reporting in the Guardian of the first of a selection of 250,000 US state department cables marks a recasting of modern diplomacy. Clearly, there is no longer such a thing as a safe electronic archive, whatever computing’s snake-oil salesmen claim. No organisation can treat digitised communication as confidential. An electronic secret is a contradiction in terms.

Read more.

US government: Nosey Parker of the planet – WikiLeaks cable dump alerts Compiled by Lori Price, www.legitgov.org 29 Nov 2010 *This page will be updated!* Check for updates as WikiLeaks dumps the cables!

legitgov.org/US-government-Nosey-Parker-planet-WikiLeaks-cable-dump-alerts

Her name is Stacey Armato.

MCM

I am the brunette in black getting my items ready for screening (you will see me about 45 seconds into the video). I travel every week and bring home breast milk with me through Phoenix Sky Harbor. TSA rules allow for alternate screening (no xray) for breast milk and I almost never had a problem…until the week before this screening. I was held for 30 minutes that week while the TSA manager called to find out the rules. I was told to “pump and dump,” asked why the milk wasn’t clear, and asked where my baby was if it was really milk (uh traveling, working mom pumping doesn’t usually have the baby with her). After begging him to figure it out, they finally let me through. I called and complained to TSA and was instructed to travel with the TSA breast
milk rules printed out and present them whenever there is a problem. As my items come through security this time, I notice immediately that I was dealing with the same people from the week before. The woman tells me right away that my milk might have to go through xray, and then I tell her I printed the rules. I go to grab the rules on top of my bag and she freaks out and pushes my arm away. Another guy comes over and calls for “back up” and they put in me back in the glass cage. Standing 50 ft away are the same manager and supervisor I had dealt with the previous week. They will stall for 20 minutes before coming over to me.

Meanwhile, one of the guys comes over to me and tells me “to be quiet if I know what’s good for me.” At the end of this portion I have been locked up for just under 10 minutes. The whole ordeal takes just under 1 hour.

my brother in law did me a favor by helping me put the videos together, speed them up, and narrate. He didn’t know all the details so there were a few errors but he tried to get it up as soon as possible knowing that the issue really needed to get out there. My son was 7 months old at the time and I was not pregnant during the video. I got pregnant 6 weeks later and am due any week now with our next little one. Travel and pumping will start again for me in February 2011…
staceyarmato 21 hours ago

@mommy2kdk: I get to the airport just over an hour before my flight. It is a weekly commuter flight b/t PHX and LAX and I don’t check luggage. Usually the screening takes 5 extra minutes and lines are short. Clearly I wasn’t planning on an hour long screening which is why I missed my flight. @kcornishscott: I am working on getting women and men together on a blog soon. TSA is a major power-house and we need to band together otherwise this abuse of power will continue. I will update soon.
staceyarmato 21 hours ago

@mommy2kdk, you bring up a very good point. TSA does a very poor job of communicating the rules for breast milk. However, they are as follows: medical liquids can have an alternate screening (which means no x-ray) but must be announced before the x-ray machine. Breast milk is classified as a medical liquid. Also, the 3.4 oz requirement does not apply to medical liquids and as such does not apply to breast milk.

Pennsylvania Gas Drillers Dumping Radioactive Waste in New York
by Peter Mantius

ELMIRA, N.Y. — Trucks hauling rock cuttings from drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale formation in Pennsylvania regularly cross the New York State border these days to dump in the Chemung County Landfill seven miles east of Elmira.

The Marcellus formation is characterized by unusually high readings of naturally occurring radioactive material, or NORM, so most of the cuttings are probably radioactive. The Chemung Landfill, a former gravel pit, has never been licensed to handle low-level radioactive waste.

So how can the landfill’s private operators get clearance from the county and state environmental regulators to become a regional dump for radioactive drilling wastes?

The short answer: Provide the revenue-hungry county a rich payout, exploit a legal loophole, and presto, it’s a done deal.

Read more.