Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Birds Are Dying

The Great Avian Die-Off: 

Two Reports Point to 

Grim Future for US Birds

Monday, 15 September 2014 12:34By Patrick Glennon, Truthout | News Analysis
Eastern meadowlark.Eastern meadowlark. (Photo: keeva999 )Billions to None
Many Americans living today cannot conceive just how innumerable the passenger pigeon was. Until the late 19th century, the species' numbers were biblical in proportions. It flew in flocks up to a billion strong, stretching for hundreds of miles and blackening the sky with its immensity. For people living at the time, the prospect of such a creature becoming extinct would probably have been equally hard to conceive. 
But it happened.
In September 1914 - a hundred years ago this September - the last passenger pigeon died in captivity in Cincinnati. The last confirmed wild passenger pigeons were shot down over a decade earlier, in 1902. Over the course of several decades, a creature that once comprised up to 40 percent of the continental bird population ceased to be. 
Common bird species nowadays face a similar fate - over half of them, in fact, could end up like the passenger pigeon.
Two September reports tell a dark tale about the future of North American avian species. The State of the Birds 2014 report and the Audubon Society's Climate Reportenumerate the ongoing problems contributing to a precipitous decline in bird populations across the United States. From irresponsible management of private land to climate change, these reports draw a connection between the fate of birds and the overall well-being of the environment. Their findings - in conjunction with previous research connecting chemical contamination with declining bird populations - foretell a bleak, parallel future for humanity.
Industrial Agriculture and Development Up, Meadowlarks and Bobolinks Down 
Around half of US bird populations live on private land. This reality complicates the effective management and regulation of essential living spaces for habitat obligates (non-migratory birds that live exclusively in one environment). When Big Ag and private developers buy up and ravage large swaths of land, habitat obligates face a permanent loss of living space. Conservation is thus paramount for ensuring these birds' future. 
As the State of the Birds report discusses, however, destructive practices continue unabated. Common avian species, including the meadowlark and bobolink, are witnessing the destruction of their habitats as family farms give way to industrial agriculture and suburbs continue to stretch their tentacles into hitherto untouched grasslands. Similarly, birds of the western Great Plains - such as the Sprague's pipit and chestnut-collared longspur - are threatened by overgrazing and industrial farm expansion. Arid lands have seen a 46 percent population drop in 17 different species since 1968 due to unsustainable land use and energy development. The report lists 230 different birds facing endangerment due largely to these development and land use trends.
Climate Change: Birds Can Only Fly So Far North
As the oceans grow warmer, the ice caps melt and governments continue to kick the climate change can down the road, birds are gradually being pushed out of their climatic ranges. The Audubon Society's Climate Report explains that global warming poses an existential threat to the nation's birds. Using the annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count and the North American Breeding Bird Survey, the report outlines the "climatic suitability" (i.e., where a bird can survive in summer and winter) for individual species. The report compares this information to internationally recognized projections of climate change scenarios to detail how the climatic zone of each species will change with increasing temperatures. 
The report states that 76 birds face "severe declines" by 2050, and that more than half of US bird species will witness a 50 percent loss of their climatic range by 2080. The American bald eagle is expected to lose 73 percent of its breeding ground by 2080. Minnesota can expect the loon - an iconic presence in the state - to disappear in the same time period. There is only so much landmass for birds to thrive in, and as the number of habitable territories shrink and drift farther north, birds will have no place to go.
What Dying Birds Mean for the Environment - and Humanity
Birds are a meaningful barometer for the general health of an ecosystem. They are high up on the food chain, meaning that contamination at the bottom will travel its way up the ladder. In Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962), the author connected thetransference of the pesticide DDT between the insects it was meant to destroy and the animals that ate them. By the 1980s, academic research gave birth to the theory of the"endocrine disruptor": the idea that chemicals - including the pesticide DDT and industrial chemicals, such as PCBs - were spreading throughout ecosystems and interfering with the normal function of birds' endocrine systems, significantly limiting their hormone production and debilitating their reproduction cycles. 
Research has shown the negative effects of other chemicals on avian species: Mercury has not only stunted reproductive abilities in certain birds, but has actually altered birds' songs due to neurological damage; a single kernel of corn contaminated with neonicotinoids (insecticides that are widely used and minimally regulated) is enough to kill songbirds. The pervasiveness of human-made chemicals in the natural world manifests in these cases, and points to potential harm caused to other wildlife - including human beings. Studies have linked DDT and PCBs to neurological damage in humans, as well as to prostate and breast cancers. At the top of the food chain, people can expect chemical pollution to affect them adversely as it does predatory birds.
The consequences of irresponsible land use and climate change will also affect more creatures than birds. Overdevelopment will lead to the destruction of entire ecosystems, along with the biodiversity that makes them work. While global warming accelerates, island nations will battle the ocean level's rise and coastal cities will be battered by superstorms. Climate change is beginning to displace people, just as it has begun to displace birds by the gradual destruction of their environments. 
Humanity must see itself - and its fate - in the destruction of the natural world. While ensuring the future of humanity is a hugely important task, so too is the moral responsibility to cease the crimes committed against the natural world and to rectify the damages already wrought.
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.

PATRICK GLENNON

Patrick Glennon is an independent writer based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His work has been featured in Truthout, In These Times and The Occupied Chicago Tribune.

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    CIA Agent - Great Depression is About to Strike America

    CIA Insider Warns: "25-Year Great Depression is About to Strike America"

    By MONEY MORNING STAFF REPORTS

    You will want to remember this date March 16, 2015.
    According to one of the top minds in the U.S. Intelligence Community, that is when the United States will enter the darkest economic period in our nation's history.
    A 25-year Great Depression.
    Does This Signal
    the End of the Dollar?
    An alarming pattern has caused many in the Intelligence Community to secretly prepare for a "worst-case scenario."
    Click here to see it....
    And alarmingly, he and his colleagues believe the evidence they've uncovered proves this outcome is impossible to avoid.
    In an exclusive interview with Money Morning, 
    Jim Rickards, the CIA's Financial Threat and Asymmetric Warfare Advisor, has stepped forward to warn the American people that time is running out to prepare for this $100 trillion meltdown.

    "Everybody knows we have a dangerous level of debt. Everybody knows the Fed has recklessly printed trillions of dollars. These are secrets to no one," he said.
    "But all signs are now flashing bright red that our chickens are about to come home to roost."
    During the discussion, Rickards shared a series of dangerous signals he fears reveals an economy that has reached a super critical state.

    One of the signals the CIA is most concerned with is the Misery Index.
    Decades back this unique warning sign was created for determining how close our country was to a social collapse. It simply adds the true inflation rate with the true unemployment rate.
    However, the Federal Reserve has repeatedly changed the way the Misery Index has been calculated over the years. Which Rickards believes is now being used to cover up the true scope of the problem.


    "Today you rarely hear the gGovernment talk about the Misery Index with the public," Rickards said. "The reason is they may not want you to know the truth. And the truth is, the Misery Index has reached more dangerous levels than we saw prior to the Great Depression. This is a signal of a complex system that's about to collapse."
    Frightening: Single chart reveals which banks could collapse (and how soon). If your life savings is in a major bank, please look at this now.

    During the shocking interview Rickards revealed the 5 dangerous "flashpoints" the Intelligence Community is closely monitoring that they believe will unleash this catastrophe.
    And he also described how it would all unfold.

    "I expect the first phase will appear as a nearly instantaneous 70% stock market crash. From the outside, nobody will see it coming." Rickards explained.

    "Once it becomes clear that it's not a flash crash - it's a systemic meltdown in the economy itself, that's when the gravity of the situation will sink in. And there will be no digging out from it.
    "$100 trillion is a conservative estimate for the damage. A lot can happen over 25-years as our country struggles to recover from this."

    Editor's Note: Money Morning has released their exclusive interview with Jim Rickards to the public. And it's a must-see for every American who is concerned about our country and their financial security. Click here to view it.

    Along with his CIA responsibilities, Jim Rickards has spent more than 3 decades on Wall Street 
    as a leading international investment banker, hedge fund manager, and as the Architect behind the technology nicknamed “the brains” of the NASDAQ.
    This unique skillset has placed him at the center of some of the most important events in recent history.
    For instance, Rickards helped negotiate an end to the Iranian Hostage Crisis in the early 1980s.
    Then, in the late 1990s, despite being one of its most outspoken critics, the Federal Reserve called on him to step in to prevent a $1.25 trillion Wall Street meltdown during the Long Term Capital Management crisis.
    And after 9-11, the CIA tasked him with tracking down potential terrorist insider trading that took place prior to the attacks.
    Over 2X More Dangerous
    Than The Great Depression
    Does this chart prove a 70% stock market crash is imminent? 
    Click here to continue...    .
    This led to him helping lead a sensitive operation called Project Prophecy.

    The Mission was to use the financial markets to predict pending National Security threats from terrorists, rival nations, and from internal weaknesses lurking inside our economy.
    The System he built through Project Prophecy proved its accuracy on August 7, 2006, when it detected the warning signs of an impending terrorist attack.
    Three days later, in London, a plot to blow up 10 U.S. passenger jets was thwarted. And 24 Pakistani extremists were arrested.
    However, Rickards now warns that the next attack is going to come from within. And he is not alone in his fears.
    Recently, a sensitive report containing the consensus view of all 16 branches of the U.S. Intelligence Committee surfaced.
    It revealed that these agencies have already begun to jointly estimate the impact of "The fall of the dollar as the global reserve currency."

    Details of Government's
    "Day After Plan" Emerge
    Warning: Emergency measures have already been put "in play" for this 25-year Great Depression.
    Click here to continue....
    And our reign as the leading superpower being annihilated in a way "equivalent to the end of the British Empire in the post-World War II period."

    The nightmarish endgame presented in this report involved "a worldwide economic breakdown and an extended period of global anarchy."
    And Jim Rickards believes we can no longer stop this, we can only prepare for it.

    "Look at it this way. Americans are standing at the bottom of a very tall mountain - Mt. Everest, Mt. Kilimanjaro...they look up and see an avalanche barreling down.

    Determining the one snowflake that started this chaos shouldn't be our focus. Recognizing the severity of the situation and moving to safety should be," Rickards explained.
    The question we should all be asking ourselves now is "what if he's right?"

    Editor's Note: For a limited time, you can view Rickards' interview and claim a free copy of his New York Times best selling book, The Death of Money. Click here to continue...


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    Trigger Happy Pentagon's Free Syrian Army Dissolves

    The Demise of a US Group 

    Backing Moderate Syrian Rebels 

    Is a Bad Sign for Obama's 

    Anti-ISIS Campaign

    The Syrian Support Group disbanded partly because of poor funding and conflict between the opposition militias fighting the Assad regime.

    —By  and 
    | Tue Sep. 16, 2014 6:00 AM EDT
    Aleppo Media Center/AP
    Last week, President Barack Obama outlined his plan for expanding military action against ISIS, the murderous Islamic extremist group that controls territory in Iraq and Syria. His beefed-up campaign includes increased funding previously announced (up to $500 million) to train and arm supposedly moderate rebels in Syria who are fighting the dictatorial regime of Bashar al-Assad and also at times battling ISIS. For the past few years, Washington has assisted Syrian opposition forces deemed non-extremist—even though they might be fighting alongside Al Qaeda-affiliated rebels.
    But the effort has not been a great success, with hawks accusing the Obama administration of not doing enough, and administration officials skeptical about the Moderate Opposition's cohesion and Military effectiveness and wary of doling out weapons that could fall into the wrong hands. In February, the leader of the moderate Free Syrian Army—who was the conduit for US aid to the rebels—was removed by his own Council, partly because the FSA had been taking a beating from the regime and Islamist forces.   Now Obama intends to boost the US effort to support these Moderate fighters in Syria.   But this move comes just weeks after the collapse of the Syrian Support Group, a US-based nonprofit backed by the State Department that boasted it delivered Millions in dollars of Non-Lethal supplies to the FSA. According to former officials of the group, it shut down because of funding problems and divisions among Rebel forces.
    Working with the Rebels in Syria will be a daunting task for the Obama administration. There are hundreds of anti-Assad militias, each with its own agenda.   Some Moderate bands have no interest in taking on ISIS.    Some fighters shift allegiances between secular outfits and Islamic extremist groups.   Neither the FSA nor the Syrian National Coalition, a political group representing the opposition, control or even coordinate all the various non-extremist fighters.   And the dissolution of the Syrian Support Group in the United States—just at the time when Washington is ramping up its investment in the Syrian opposition—could be a troubling sign.
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    On August 19, the Syrian Support Group, which had previously arranged a few shipments of Non-Lethal aid to the Free Syrian Army, sent a letter to donors explaining why the group was shutting its doors. "Over the last year, the political winds have changed," the letter read. "The rise of ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra [an Al Qaeda-affiliated opposition force in Syria] and the internal divisions among Rebel forces on the ground have complicated our efforts to provide direct support." The letter noted that "more significant support" was heading to the FSA from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United States, and other governments.    But rivalries and rifts within the opposition had impeded the overall effort.   "It was difficult to keep things going with the changes in the FSA and its Supreme Military Council and the advent of ISIS," says Majd Abbar, who was a member of the Syrian Support Group's board of directors. "It made our operations extremely difficult."
    Abbar notes that the breakdown in leadership of the FSA—and the takeover of its Bases and a key supply Warehouse in December by the Islamic Front, an anti-Assad alliance with ties to Al Qaeda—made it impossible for the Syrian Support Group to continue operations to help the Moderate opposition. "The arrival of ISIS and the [Islamic Front] takeover in the north led us to suspend operations," he says. The Moderate Rebels the Syrian Support Group was attempting to aid, Abbar points out, were confronted by "major forces: the regime, ISIS, and Hezbollah."
    "The end of the Syrian Support Group is symbolic," says the group's former executive director. "It's analogous to the whole situation there."
    And then there was money. After its first year or so of operations, Abbar says, there was a "lack of funding." Brian Sayers, who was executive director of the group until June 2013, says the finances were always a problem: "It was impossible to get the right level of support."
    In August 2012, on the day the Obama administration announced it was sending $25 million in aid to the moderate opposition in Syria, the Treasury Department confirmed that it had issued the Syrian Support Group a license that allowed it to sidestep US sanctions aimed at Syria and deliver money and nonlethal aid to the Free Syrian Army. The group noted publicly it was the only US-based nongovernmental organization that possessed such a license. And it has claimed that it delivered over $15 million in nonlethal aid to the rebels. According to Sayers, the group organized a few shipments of MREs, first-aid kits, and other supplies through facilities on the Turkish-Syria border.
    On April 29, 2013, then-US ambassador to Syria Robert Ford wrote a letter to the Syrian Support Group, praising it for helping coordinate the release of captive journalists, escorting humanitarian convoys, and "transporting and distributing crucial food and medical supplies to FSA battalions." Ford also noted that the nonprofit "was a major factor in facilitating the State Department's relationship with…FSA leaders." But, Sayers says, a major and continuing effort on the part of the Syrian Support Group to supply the rebels never got off the ground. It could not attract the necessary funding from private individuals or governments.
    In July 2013, the Daily Telegraph reported that the Syrian Support Group had "spent months pursuing a fruitless dash to make millions of dollars from Syrian oil" to raise money for the nonprofit. The article quoted David Falt, the group's former European government affairs director, saying, "The idea they could raise hundreds of millions from the sale of the oil came to dominate the work of the SSG." After the article was published, Sayers, in a letter to the editor, responded, "We were not obsessed with petroleum. We were focused on delivering aid from multiple sources to forces fighting to overthrow of the Assad regime." And the Syrian Support Group issued a statement criticizing the story but noted that "SSG did in fact have preliminary discussions regarding the possibility of working with international partners to export Syrian oil for the direct financial benefit of the FSA. However, recognizing the sensitivities and legal complexities of such a project, the organization's Board of Directors unanimously decided to discontinue any further explorations."
    In December 2013, the US suspended aid to Syrian rebels after those FSA facilities were seized by the Islamic Front, which is Saudi-backed and positions itself "halfway" between the FSA and extremists factions like ISIS, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The Islamic Front also vacuumed upsome rebels that were previously part of the FSA. (Fighters in the Syrian civil war often switch alliances based on which groups can provide them with arms.) Mazen Asbahi, a former member of the Syrian Support Group's board of directors, says that in the fall, the Supreme Military Council of the FSA "was not getting the support it needed and was losing ground." He adds, "That made it more difficult to raise support for the work of SSG during that period."
    The State Department refuses to discuss its collaboration with the Syrian Support Group. A department spokeswoman says, "The Department of State has worked with many organizations in this effort, including the Syrian Support Group; however, we don't discuss specific relationships or partners for reasons related to their safety." The United States is providing nearly $287 million in nonlethal transition support to the Syrian opposition, according to the department. The spokeswoman would not comment on the impact of the group's closure on the department's efforts to aid the Syrian opposition. But Khalid Saleh, a spokesman for the Syrian National Coalition, asserts that the FSA is doing fine: "Donors continue to support FSA at a much larger scale compared to when SSG was around."
    Former Syrian Support Group officials insist that the Syrian opposition is still worth supporting.   Asbahi maintains that the threat of ISIS has unified moderate rebel forces. Abbar says it would not be "an impossible task" to supply weapons and other provisions to these moderate forces.   And Sayers remarks, "Moderates could be found today. Yeah, they're not all dead…But it would be like taking a kid not in school for two years and tutoring them in two months to get up to the game.   What you will need is so much robust support, intelligence, training, lethal and nonlethal assistance."   But, he adds, "the end of the Syrian Support Group is symbolic. It's analogous to the whole situation there."
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