S. California fishermen ‘skunked… haven’t seen a squid’, usually 10,000+ lbs/day — ‘Complete crashes’ at oyster hatcheries — Sardines, mackerel missing in areas — Pelican sites alarmingly deserted — Record # of sick sea lions — Ultra-rare whales appear after decades — Mammals, birds, fish in odd places

Published: June 17th, 2014 at 3:23 am ET
By ENENews

KPBS, June 11, 2014: Unusual Fish Catches Off San Diego Signal Large-Scale El Niño {...} “We’ve already started to see very unusual fish catches here,” {Tim Barnett, Scripps Institution of Oceanography said.} “Yellowfin tuna was caught in May — that has never happened before to anybody’s recollection {and} dorado Mahi Mahi — first of June {...} has never happened” {...}

Pete Thomas Outdoors, June 13, 2014: Unusual catches, whales in odd places, pelican woes could be signs that impending El Niño will be significant {...} mammals, birds and fish showing up where they don’t typically belong {...} Earlier this week two Bryde’s whales {were} off Huntington Beach {...} Sightings off California, however, are extremely rare. {...} between 1991 and 2005, there was only one {...} Less than a week earlier, a large pod of pilot whales showed off Dana Point {...} nearly 20 years since they were last spotted off Southern California. In late March, false killer whales, another ultra-rare visitor {were} off Orange County. {...} Sam Anderson, a UC Davis biologist {...} would typically encounter tens of thousands of breeding pairs of pelicans, there were only sparse numbers. Some nesting sites were alarmingly deserted. {…} Anderson, however, was reluctant to place all of the blame for the pelicans’ plight on the developing El Niño.

Wall St. Journal, June 7, 2014: Record numbers of distressed sea lions have washed ashore in California for a second straight year {...} a record 367 California sea lions have been admitted to the Marine Mammal Center here just north of San Francisco, nearly five times the average. {...} The problem may have implications for humans, researchers say. “Sea lions are living and feeding on the same resource as humans are.” {...} Evidence suggests a problem with one of the animal’s major food sources, sardines {...} Some researchers suggest rising toxicity {...}

Mark Rayor (Baja California’s East Cape region), April 13, 2014: The bait situation is still very grim {...} with sardines and mackerel nowhere to be found.

Marin Independent Journal, June 16, 2014:”We are seeing an issue of availability of (oyster) seed {...} There have been complete crashes at these hatcheries.”

Long Beach Press-Telegram, June 13, 2014: The squid boats that net the market squid commercially get an average of six tons nightly {...} This year the boats are getting “skunked” and haven’t seen a squid for the last three nights.

See also: “Weird things” seen on California coast: Previously unknown toxic algae proliferating; Unprecedented mass of oxygen-poor water nearshore — TV: Mystery strandings of large squid covered miles and experts baffled… “killing themselves, it’s just really weird” (VIDEO)

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Last Week Tonight with John Oliver • Published on Jun 15, 2014

How is that team still called The Washington Redskins? Oh, it's because their owner Dan Snyder doesn't want to change his way of life.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver • Published on Jun 15, 2014

FCC Chair Tom Wheeler watched Last Week Tonight's bit on net neutrality.
He thought it was funny and creative. He wants us to know he's not a dingo.

RT * Published on Jun 16, 2014

Dangerous, alienating, and sociopathic: the policy of arming police to
the teeth with military-grade gear shows a fundamental misunderstanding
of how crime is solved and what it means for a cop to walk the beat,
former Captain Ray Lewis told RT -

READ FULL SCRIPT http://on.rt.com/5rvxhq

''In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happened, you can bet it was planned that way.''

~President Franklin Delano Roosevelt

RT * Published on Jun 16, 2014

Several tornadoes tore through northeast Nebraska on Monday, leaving at
least one person dead and 16 others critically injured, along with
widespread property damage.

Read more http://on.rt.com/gnjsc2

TYT • Published on Jun 15, 2014

"Over the past two years, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) has repeatedly wrestled with factions of his own party as he tries to bring traditionally uncontroversial bills to the floor, only to see a legislative war break out between tea party hard-liners and old-guard conservatives. But Cantor is currently prepping a bill that will incite a different kind of floor fight -- this time among Democrats.

It's supposed to be the kind of procedural bill that wouldn't raise hackles, even during an election year. The House Agriculture Committee cleared it by a voice vote, not even bothering to record the yeas and nays. Many of its major provisions have already passed the House with dozens -- in some cases, hundreds -- of Democratic votes."* The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down.

"I think they are gravely mistaken, and I think they're all going to fail," says former House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) of the bipartisan effort to chip away at the financial reform law that bears his name. "I cannot believe that if these became big public issues, that it would benefit the people pushing them."

The Koch and Wall Street-backed deregulation items have all been folded into a bill formally reauthorizing the existence of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission -- the regulator that oversees the multi-trillion-dollar derivatives market. The agency has been functioning without authorization since October, and financial oversight advocates are confident that it can continue to do so unless the GOP passes legislation to defund it.

By lumping a host of bipartisan bills together, the CFTC bill is Wall Street's best chance yet to defang Dodd-Frank. The most consequential deregulation bill in the package was introduced in early 2013 as HR 1256. Critics on Capitol Hill blast it as the "London Whale Loophole Act," because it allows U.S. firms to skip Dodd-Frank's trading rules on derivatives, provided they conduct trades in other countries with supposedly similar regulatory regimes.

*Read more here from Zach Carter & Paul Blumenthal / The Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/10/democrats-help-koch-brothers_n_5439780.html

RT * Published on Jun 14, 2014

Anti-Kiev forces took down a Ukrainian military Il-76 transport jet as it was landing in Lugansk, the country's Defense Ministry confirmed. FULL STORY: http://on.rt.com/n6hpsm

ALSO WATCH: Moment Ukraine Il-76 military transport jet shot down in Lugansk

*Published on Jun 14, 2014*

"An Albuquerque woman was attacked in her home and her family's U.S. citizenship papers were torn up by a man who incorrectly believed that she was Muslim.

Albuquerque's KRQE Channel 13 reported that, ironically, the woman and her family are Catholic Iraqis who fled that country six years ago to escape religious persecution. They told KRQE that they never expected this to happen to them in their adopted homeland.

Around midday last week, Seham Jaber was home alone when the doorbell rang. Thinking it was her husband, she opened the door without looking, only to be attacked by a man wearing a mask and gloves. The man punched her face and body and shouted anti-Muslim epithets, she said."

Read more from Raw Story here: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/06/12/catholic-iraqi-refugee-attacked-beaten-in-nm-by-man-who-thought-she-was-muslim/

Cenk Uygur (http://www.twitter.com/cenkuygur) and Gina Grad (http://www.twitter.com/ginagrad) break down this disgusting example of bigotry. What do you think the attackers punishment should be? Tell us what you think in the comment section below.

TYT • Published on Jun 14, 2014

Videos of men going to the bathroom began spreading across the United
States until Fox Files investigator Chris Hayes traced them to a gas
station bathroom in Chesterfield. With the help of police, they found an
unexpected suspect.

Read more here: http://fox2now.com/2014/06/06/chesterfield-police-officer-accused-of-invasion-of-privacy

The Nexian
By Morris Crowley
Friday, 13 June 2014



It may surprise you to learn that common citrus trees like oranges and lemons are actually Schedule I substances, in the same legal category as heroin. I know it sounds absurd, but it is absolutely true. Recent analysis published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (Servillo et al. 2013) found that several citrus plants, including lemons and oranges, contain N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and 5-hydroxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine (bufotenine). Both of these compounds are powerful hallucinogens and are designated as Schedule I substances under the federal Controlled Substances Act in the United States. Under that same law, “any material” containing “any quantity” of a Schedule I drug is itself legally equivalent to that drug.

The upshot of this is that domestic citrus producers are in fact operating a massive drug manufacturing enterprise, legally speaking. And the scale of this manufacture is not trivial. Let's estimate 150 orange trees per acre, and conservatively suppose that each tree contains one kilogram of leaves. Then in the state of Florida alone, where approximately 550,000 acres are under cultivation, the crop would contain somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 kilograms of bufotenine -- roughly 5 million doses -- and 5 kilograms of DMT -- roughly 150,000 doses. But that's not all! Since the entire mass of any material containing these substances is legally equivalent to the pure substance, the entire biomass of the groves would be treated as pure DMT or pure bufotenine if the growers were charged with manufacturing a controlled substance.

You might wonder why I am characterizing an entire branch of agriculture as a massive drug manufacturing operation. That characterization, however, is not mine. Under federal law, they are a massive drug manufacturing operation. I am merely drawing attention to the issue.

Regardless of how you feel about the war on drugs, this issue should cause you serious concern. The Controlled Substances Act is written in a way that makes all sorts of mundane materials illegal. It’s not just orange trees; depending on where you live, there is a reasonable chance that the grass in your lawn contains Schedule I substances. In fact, so many materials contain detectable quantities of controlled substances that nearly everyone is breaking the law all the time.

See also: Citrus Genus Plants Contain N-Methylated Tryptamine Derivatives and Their 5-Hydroxylated Forms

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