Author Archives: BillieMcmichael

Here Are the 10 Best Songs for Scotland’s Historic Vote for Independence

by BillieMcmichael Posted on September 18, 2014

Mother Jones

Scotland is heading to the polls right now to decide on whether or not to become an independent country. A “Yes” vote would be the biggest constitutional change for the United Kingdom in over three centuries, splintering a long-held relationship that has seen the good times and the bad, and weathered plenty of mutual disagreements up until now. And like any pending break-up, we find that music helps soothe or heighten the experience, and connects us to the universal themes of love and loss. So, Scottish chums, whatever side you’re on, here’s a playlist for you, on this almighty day-of-days.

1. Queen: I Want to Break Free

Obviously. One for the “Yes” camp. (Worth it in my opinion just for Freddy with a mustache in drag vacuuming the carpet.) “I want to break free from your lies/You’re so self-satisfied I don’t need you/I’ve got to break free!” Sing it Freddy. Sing it Scotland.

2. Natalie Imbruglia: Torn

If Scotland votes “Yes” and leaves the union bereft and sobbing, this Aussie songtress might be blaring from a few stereos across the Isles tomorrow: “Nothing’s fine, I’m torn.” Sing it England! Sing it Wales!

3. ​​Björk: Declare Independence

This is a song that famously landed the Icelandic singer in hot water with the Chinese authorities after a 2008 concert in Shanghai in which she called for Tibetan independence. Brave. She faced a ban from future performances on the mainland after that. It’s easy to see why China’s famously censorial authorities were not impressed: “Start your own currency!/Make your own stamp/Protect your language/Declare independence/Don’t let them do that to you!”

4. Oasis: Don’t Look Back In Anger

No matter what happens, some good advice for both sides. “My soul slides away, but don’t look back in anger.”

5. Alicia Keys: Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart

Here’s one for an emotional Prime Minister David Cameron, potentially presiding over a messy, painful divorce. “I’m going to find a way to make it without you/Tonight, I’m going to find a way to make it, without you.” Ouch. Let it out.

​

6. ​Thelma Houston: Don’t Leave Me This Way

That beat speaks for itself.

7. Beyonce: Irreplaceable

“Don’t ever get to thinking you’re irreplaceable,” sings Queen Bey. This is the anthem for pretending everything will be fine post-breakup, that it’s not a big deal, that you can find another, just as easily, and that it wasn’t that good anyway, so don’t go thinking you meant anything to me… Get lost.

(I love you, come back).

8. Boyz II Men: End of the Road

“Although we’ve come to the end of the road/Still I can’t let you go/It’s unnatural, you belong to me, I belong to you.”

9. Mariah Carey: We Belong Together

Who could miss this song in any breakup playlist? It’s worth watching to the part of the video where Mariah is losing her shit in the apartment, writhing in the short tunic-shirt thing, near the end of this narratively nonsensical clip.

10. Alice Deejay: Better Off Alone

Mm. And lastly, any break-up is incomplete without some sweet late-90s Top 40.

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Here Are the 10 Best Songs for Scotland’s Historic Vote for Independence

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Rand Paul to Appear at Event Featuring Neo-Confederate Aide He Had to Fire

by BillieMcmichael Posted on September 16, 2014

Mother Jones

This week, the Ron Paul-led Campaign for Liberty hosts its fourth annual Liberty Political Action Conference, and the speaking list features a roster of well-known Republican politicians and libertarian activists. The biggest draw of this year’s LPAC will undoubtedly be Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who each day inches closer to a 2016 presidential run. Slated to speak at the same event, though, is Paul’s ex-aide Jack Hunter, who the senator fired after his past as a neo-Confederate advocate was revealed.

Hunter used to be the social media director in Paul’s Senate office, and he co-wrote Paul’s 2010 book, The Tea Party Goes to Washington. But in 2013, the Washington Free Beacon revealed that Hunter, under a different identity, had long been involved with the neo-Confederate and southern secessionist movements. For 13 years, Hunter was a South Carolina talk radio host who called himself the “Southern Avenger.” In public, he wore a luchador mask bearing a Confederate flag. As the Avenger, Hunter made many a provocative remark, including arguably racist comments. He said that John Wilkes Booth’s heart was “in the right place” and that he celebrated Booth’s birthday every year. He claimed that Abraham Lincoln would have been romantically drawn to Adolf Hitler. He called the NAACP a “malicious hate group” on par with the KKK. He contended that a “non-white majority America would simply cease to be America.”

Hunter also chaired an organization called the League of the South, which advocated “the secession and subsequent independence of the Southern States from this forced union and the formation of a Southern republic.” The Free Beacon reported,

“The League of the South is an implicitly racist group in that the idealized version of the South that they promote is one which, to use their ideology, is dominated by ‘Anglo-Celtic’ culture, which is their code word for ‘white,'” said Mark Pitcavage, the director of investigative research at the Anti-Defamation League. The ADL said it does not necessarily classify it as a hate group.

The League of the South maintains that it is not racist and does not discriminate in terms of membership.

“When I was part of it, they were very explicit that’s not what they were about,” Hunter told the Free Beacon. “I was a young person, it was a fairly radical group—the same way a person on the left might be attracted in college to some left-wing radical groups.”

After Hunter was unmasked, Paul said that his Southern Avenger commentaries were “stupid” and canned him. A few months later, Hunter wrote a story titled “Confessions of a Right-Wing Shock Jock” and distanced himself from his old comments. “I said many terrible things,” he wrote. “I disavow them.”

Now, Hunter is back in the fold and back on the speaker’s list in the liberty movement presided over by Ron and Rand Paul. The Campaign for Liberty bills him as “the one and only Jack Hunter.” Hard to argue with that.

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Rand Paul to Appear at Event Featuring Neo-Confederate Aide He Had to Fire

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Millions of dolphins could be hurt as oil industry blasts along East Coast

by BillieMcmichael Posted on February 28, 2014

Millions of dolphins could be hurt as oil industry blasts along East Coast

By

Simon du Vintage

The Obama administration tentatively gave its environmental blessing to oil industry plans to look for new deposits in the Atlantic Ocean off the East Coast. Recommendations outlined Thursday in a long-awaited environmental report by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management came as music to the ears of drilling companies.

But the air guns that the industry plans to use in its hunt for underwater oil fields won’t sound so sweet to the staggering numbers of dolphins and whales that could end up being maimed.

The oil industry wants to drill along the East Coast, but the last surveys of oil deposits in coastal Atlantic areas were conducted in the 1970s and 1980s using technology that’s now obsolete. So now industry wants to survey with more modern techniques, which McClatchy news service describes this way: “The seismic tests involve vessels towing an array of air guns that blast compressed air underwater, sending intense sound waves to the bottom of the ocean. The booms are repeated every 10 seconds or so for days or weeks.”

Thirty-four marine mammal species, which use sound to navigate, could be harmed by the seismic testing, and some of the animals could be killed. “By failing to consider relevant science, the Obama administration’s decision could be a death sentence for many marine mammals, needlessly turning the Atlantic Ocean into a blast zone,” said Jacqueline Savitz with the nonprofit Oceana. “In its rush to finalize this proposal, the Obama administration is failing to consider the cumulative impacts that these repeated dynamite-like blasts will have on vital behaviors like mating, feeding, breathing, communicating and navigating.”

The government’s new environmental assessment warns that more than a million bottlenose dolphins could be hurt every year by the acoustic blasts, which would extend from the shoreline to as far as 400 miles offshore, from Delaware down to Florida. More than 600,000 short-beaked common dolphins and more than 500,000 Atlantic spotted dolphins could also be affected, along with humpback whales, baleen whales, and other endangered species.

Estimating the damage that could be caused by the air guns is a difficult task, and the report states that its figures are “based on acoustic and impact models that are by their very nature conservative and complex.” The report also includes estimates that would see far fewer whales and dolphins harmed. And some outside experts say threats are not that dire: “There’s no argument that some of these sounds can harm animals, but it’s blown out of proportion,” Arthur N. Popper, head of the University of Maryland’s laboratory of aquatic bioacoustics, told The New York Times.

The report is part of a long administrative process required to move forward with surveys and the easing of a long ban on drilling the Atlantic seafloor. The New York Times explains what’s next:

Actual drilling of test wells could not begin until a White House ban on production in the Atlantic expires in 2017, and even then, only after the government agrees to lease ocean tracts to oil companies, an issue officials have barely begun to study.

The petroleum industry has sunk 51 wells off the East Coast — none of them successful enough to begin production — in decades past. But the Interior Department said in 2011 that 3.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 312 trillion cubic feet of natural gas could lie in the exploration area, and nine companies have already applied for permits to begin surveys.

Much of the controversy around Thursday’s report has focused on largely invisible impacts on charismatic sea life, but the report warns of another obvious risk associated with an exploration and drilling spree: oil spills.

Those can have bad impacts on sea life too. Just ask fishermen along the Gulf of Mexico.


Source
Feds Sentence East Coast to Dynamite-Like Blasts for Big Oil, Oceana
U.S. Moves Toward Atlantic Oil Exploration, Stirring Debate Over Sea Life, The New York Times
Feds support air gun blasts to find Atlantic oil, gas, McClatchy

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Millions of dolphins could be hurt as oil industry blasts along East Coast

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