Sperm Whales Stranding in Europe

courtesy: Maritime & Coast Guard Agency

More:  Scientific investigation into the deaths of six sperm whales has begun by Cetacean Strandings Investigation Program (CSIP).  Under a royal law from the 13th century, all whales, sturgeon and porpoises are regarded as "royal fish" so that when stranded or caught by fisherman they become crown property.  They are no longer placed on the Queen's table but formal record keeping of stranding began in 1913.  Speculation is building concerning the cause of the recent rash of strandings in Europe.  The leading cause is the whales got lost.  Their echo-location navigation system does not work well in shallow water and the North Sea is one of the shallowest in the world. Whether climatic change which has brought tropical species north is responsible for the whales leaving deep water is unknown.  Disease from parasite infection has also been posited.  More worrisome is the potential for toxic overloads of PCBs and heavy metals.  Heavy metals are now so concentrated in fish that pregnant women and small children are warned not to eat more than two portions of affected fish in a week.  A pod of pilot whales that stranded in Scotland contained high levels of cadmium in their brains.  Mercury concentrations were also high enough to cause stress on the mammals' bodies.

{04.02.16}Six sperm whales have washed ashore in Britain in recent weeks, of twenty-nine total throughout Europe. Volunteers were unable to re-float the mammal due to its massive size between 25 and 30 tons. The male died on the Norfolk beach of kidney failure, most likely [photo, credit]. Whales' massive bulk is supported by water, but when they beach their weight damages internal organs and muscles. People tried to make the whale more comfortable in its last hours by pouring water over its body. The UK does not possess the methods to humanely euthanize such large mammals. The tide arrived while it was still alive, but it did not recover. Scientists said it is likely the male came in with a pod to feed in shallow water, but it is not known whether any human activity was responsible for the spike in strandings. All six whales were males and were probably members of the same bachelor pod. Sperm whales are deep-sea carnivores and easily become disoriented in shallow water.  Once a necropsy
is completed, the carcass will be cut up and taken to a land fill or incinerated.

Three New Monuments

Driving the length of California's Central Valley, US Person was able to observe just how radically man has altered the natural landscape to suit his economic needs. It is very difficult for wild things to live in these massive monocultures because the natural food chain has been replaced or destroyed. So as a good steward of Earth it is man's responsibility to preserve those increasingly small regions where nature still balances the land.

Mojave Cholla cactus; credit Kolby

President Obama is leaving a legacy of natural monuments to his enduring credit, in the absence of progress through a deadlocked Congress. On February 12th he designated by executive authority three more national monuments sheltering 1.8m acres of public land in the deserts of Southern California: Mohave Trails National Monument, Sand to Snow National Monument and Castle Mountains National Monument. He has made more monument designations than any other president in history of 265m acres. The designations are located in San Bernardino and Riverside Counties and protect unique wildlife habitat, historic resources and cultural sites. Most importantly they connect existing reserves: Mohave National Preserve, Joshua Tree National Park, San Bernardino National Forest and fifteen wildlife reserves previously designated by Congress. This is conservation on a landscape scale. Senator Dianne Finestein provided leadership in the decades long effort to protect special areas of the southern California desert. The land remains open to current uses such as grazing, military practice ranges, hunting, and outdoor recreations.

Route 66

Mojave Trails National Monument spans 1.6m acres of Mojave desert landscape including 400,000 acres of previously designated wilderness and one of the last remaining stretches of undeveloped Route 66. Sand to Snow Monument provides abundant opportunities for recreation along thirty miles of the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail while protecting important connective corridors for wildlife amid its 154,000 acres. Castle Mountains National Monument will serve as critical connection between two mountain ranges that are home to golden eagles, mountain lion, bighorn sheep and bobcats. The President is following a precedent set by Teddy Roosevelt in 1906 and exercised by 16 presidents since to preserve special natural areas under the federal Antiquities Act.

Justice Anthony Scalia Is Dead

Conservative firebrand Justice Anthony 'Nino' Scalia died today while hunting in Big Bend, Texas apparently of natural causes.  He was found dead in his quarters at age 79.  He will be remembered and perhaps vilified for his participation in two of the most controversial and disastrous opinions in Supreme Court history:  Bush v. Gore (2000) and Citizens United v. FEC (2010).  The first installed George W. Bush in the Office of President despite a popular vote in favor of Democrat Al Gore while the second allowed unlimited campaign financing from anonymous sources, thus insuring the predominance of the Money Power in our nation's politics.  Arguably these two decisions have done more to undermine democracy in the United States than Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) which upheld the fugitive slave law as constitutional.  The Current Occupant has declared his intention to nominate a successor.  However, Senate conservatives will block any approval of his nominee until the election in eleven months. The Court, facing some of the nation'smost contentious social issues on its docket will be evenly split until a successor can be approved.

Democratic Debate: Live Blog

Prologue:  The latest knock against 'feeling the Bern' is that he is way behind Clinton in support from minorities.   Is it too gauche for US Person to suggest some non-white bigotry is responsible for the polls showing less support among blacks for a candidate [chart] whose socialist economic policies are much more supportive of their plight than Hillary Clinton's will ever be?  Bernie Sanders is after all, the first Jewish candidate to win a presidential primary election.  Prejudice against Jews in  urban black communities is deep seated. In the ghettos Jews were often the local icon of 'the man'--owner of the corner store or the tenement landlord. Jesse Jackson's infamous referral to New York City as "Jew Town" touched a deep discord that still exists.  Senator Sanders will try and focus his remarks on social justice to win minority support that is critical to a general election victory in the Wisconsin debate without appearing to pander to yet another special interest within the confines of the Democratic Party label.

credit: Washington Post-ABC News

18:07PST Senator Sanders opening remarks succinctly sum up what this election cycle should be about: fundamentally changing the structures of government and politics to address the increasing unfairness and inequality of American society. How an establishment candidate like Hillary Clinton can achieve fundamental reform while leading change that would directly impact vested interests is not clear. 

6:15PST Conservatives and moderate liberals love to talk about the size of government, yet they never acknowledge the ever increasing size of the Pentagon and its budget.  It is the unspoken rule apparently that the Pentagon can never be reduced in size to pay for other forms of government service. The Pentagon has embarked on a program to spend $700billioin  modernizing nuclear weapons instead of providing free college education for anyone who want one.  America's competitiveness cannot be insured with guns but with a educated work force.

6:27 PST No one doubts Ms. Clinton's support for women's rights.  The women of New Hampshire understood that the problems facing American society go beyond gender.  Bernie Sanders is also a member of a minority.

632 PST  Answer: provide economic opportunities, reform laws that incarcerate people for minor drug offenses, focus on treatment for drug addiction not incarceration, and take big business out of the business of building prisons and staffing them. 

6:39PST  Obama disappointed a lot of Americans, black and white, with his incremental approach to governing. ("No He Can't")

6:52PST   How do you know a fascist?  Look at his immigration policies.  America is a nation of immigrants it should not really matter when you arrived.

6:56PST  Another reason US Person support Bernie Sanders: lifting the wage cap on social security tax so benefits can be increased to a realistic level.

7:05PST  Do we have Glass-Seagall back?  Is Blankfein doing time?  NO.  Is Morgan Stanley paying a minute fine for knowingly granting mortgages to borrowers without incomes? Seems like a quid pro quo to this commentator.

7:17PST  Here are three letters for you to begin with Senator Sanders:  F:35.  Weapons procurement continues to be the one sector of government where cost overruns are endemic.  The fighter is now so expensive even our allies cannot afford to buy it.

7:25PST  Nice reward for playing team ball, Ms. Secretary.  
Here's a complaint about teammate Henry Kissinger that the Senator was too polite to mention: he was instrumental in instigating the coup that assassinated Chile's democratically elected socialist President Salvador Allende.

7:45PST  Mahatma Ghandi. Caesar Chavez. Both leaders who gave the final measure in pursuit of their goal of a better life for their countrymen.

7:52PST  A government for the people, by the people and of the people so that it may not perish from the face of Earth. 

Epilogue:  Citizens United has made a mockery of our political system; even the case name is a obvious rebuke to citizens who have given up on the system.  Bernie Sanders is offering to help us get rid of the heavy yoke of corporatism.  At least he is willing to try. It is a testament to the resiliency of our system that there is a Bernie Sanders to stand up and say what needs to be done. Hillary Clinton seems satisfied with tweaking the status quo.  Yes, America is not Europe and Henry Kissinger may be a war criminal, but there is nothing in our laws that would prevent us from adopting a more efficient means of healthcare, one that is not driven solely by profit.  A simple start could be made by passing a single payer option for the current system that got lost in the onslaught of insurance lobbyists.  Ms. Clinton implausibly wants to work with reactionaries in Congress that are still trying to undo the limited progress made under the Affordable Health Care Act. Governors that are unwilling to open their public colleges and universities to free higher education can be replaced.  The Supreme Court when properly staffed can overturn bad case law.  Only fear and trepidation holds us back. Never mind, on to Flint, MI where people are dying of lead poisoning and bad government.

More US Sabre Rattling in Europe

When the establishment candidate, Hillary Clinton, says Russia is "moving borders" in Europe she has to conveniently ignore developments like this: NATO announced yesterday that it will move more troops and infrastructure to Russia's western frontier. The announcement means more NATO bases, pre-positioned military supplies such as tanks, artillery, trucks and fuel and more 'boots on the ground'. The Russian military establishment will view these measures with alarm since a key concept of their defense strategy is to prevent Russian encirclement. NATO typically takes the disingenuous view that is it is merely responded defensively to Russia's use of force against neighbors. During the past year US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has announced deployments of US hardware and forces to Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria, Romania and Poland. It conducted five simultaneous war drills with Lithuania troops in November. All of the enhanced activity is being conducted under the rubric of protecting "Eastern allies" against events like the seizure of Crimea and the crisis provoked by the US-backed coup in Ukraine.

The United States is not only preparing for conventional warfare in Europe, but also a nuclear confrontation. The Pentagon's 2017 budget allocates $3.2 billion for a modernization program of nuclear weapons. The Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration which is responsible for nuclear warhead development is slated to received another $12.9 billion. These increased expenditures on warfare puts the country on track to spending more than $700 billion over the next 25 years on its already swollen nuclear arsenal. Want to know why we don't have social medicine or free college education like Germany? Because its war business as usual in Merika.

Conservationists Find 'Lost' Lion Population

Conservationists working in Alatash National Par in remote northwest Ethiopia have found a population of lions not previously known to science living in the park. Alatash is a huge region on the Sudanese border not visited often by outsiders. Lions are thought to have lived there for centuries and locals knew of their existence in the area. But the IUCN only considered Alatash a possible range for lions without any confirmed sightings. Renowned lion expert Dr. Hans Bauer and his team obtained camera images and lion tracks during an expedition supported by Born Free, the lion conservation society. The researchers also concluded that lions are living across the border in Sudan's Dinder National Park, adjacent to Alatash. Bauer concludes that densities are low due to low prey levels in an arid environment of about two lions per 100km².

IUCN lists lions as vulnerable and their numbers are estimated to have declined 50 to 70% since 1980. The species occupies only 8% of its historic range; they were thought to be extinct in Sudan. So the new information is encouraging and provides reasons for both Sudan and Ethiopia to protect the region as a lion stronghold.

Creature Feature: America's Only Known Jaguar

The video captures America's only known living jaguar as it stalks its Santa Rita Mountain home about twenty-five miles south of Tucson. "El Jefe" has been living there for over three years, only one of three or four jaguars spotted north of the border in twenty years. Few people know that the southwest US was once jaguar country, but there has been little concerted effort to reintroduce the predator to its rightful home. The last verified female jaguar was shot and killed in 1963 in Arizona. El Jefe's habitat is now threaten by a copper mining project that will span eight miles of the Santa Rita's 215 square miles. Currently the Rosemont Mine is in the permitting process.