Health Problems Still Plague Arkansas Residents Near ExxonMobil Tar Sands Spill

From:  Switchbord 

by Rockey Kistner 

It’s been a warm, rain-soaked summer in the small lakeside community of Mayflower, a sleepy residential town north of Little Rock famous its bluegill and bass fishing in nearby Lake Conway.

But for some folks here, the rain has brought an unpleasant reminder that Mayflower is not the same picture-postcard community it once was. Instead, its residents say they are still suffering health effects from an estimated 5,000 barrels of tar sands crude that burst from an ExxonMobil pipeline on March 29th and poured through a residential neighborhood. The black viscous oil then flowed into culverts and a creek by the town shopping center, finally draining into a marshy area of the lake where much of it remains buried in sediment. Residents say heavy rains cause the oil to leak out into a cove that drains into the lake.

Cleanup operations in Mayflower, April, 2013            Photo: Rocky Kistner/NRDC

Although locals say cleanup work in the marshy cove has dropped off significantly, they say they can still smell the sickly sweet odor of crude after it rains. Some still complain of health problems like headaches, nausea and vomiting that have plagued families near the cove since the end of March.

“I’m still having problems breathing,” says Sherry Appleman, who lives near the oil-soaked cove on the lake and lost her husband to cancer in June, a condition she believes was made worse by the poisonous spill five months ago. She says she’s battled headaches and asthma like conditions since the tarry crude invaded her once-pristine Arkansas lakeside environment five months ago. “Our health conditions have gotten worse, people with cancer have gotten worse instead of getting better….the local health department says everything’s normal, but they’re just saying what Exxon wants them to say.”

Mayflower resident Sherry Appleman on Lake Conway   Photo: Rocky Kistner/NRDC

Although state authorities say the oil has not gotten into the main body of Lake Conway, Appleman—like many who live on the lake—believe it has. She says she’s seen oil-contaminated water in ditches that drain from the contaminated cove area and empty into the lake with her own eyes. “The oil has to be in the lake, everyone knows it is, there’s no way they can keep it from out of the lake with the flash floods we’ve had recently.”

Louisiana-based toxicologist and chemist Wilma Subra—who has studied health exposures in the BP oil spill—has been following health problems in Mayflower that continue to plague residents. She says rainfall can flush the oil out of the sediment, allowing volatile and toxic chemicals to off-gas into the air. “Rainfall events can cause the crude oil to float to the surface and cause health effects, it’s typical of what can occur at waste sites like these,” Subra says. “They should have evacuated more of the population to stop the exposure.”

For Genieve Long, a mother of four young children who lives near the oily cove, it’s been a recurring nightmare of health problems since the black goo settled in the marsh area nearby. This is what she posted on the Facebook site Mayflower Arkansas Oil spill recently:

I hear the air boats in the cove today. As they work in the cove it stirs up the tar sands from the bottom and then the chemicals rise into the air. I live very close to that cove and I can tell you since the last week when it rained a lot. I have been sick throwing up, abdominal pains, headaches, dizzy and tired. I slept for 14 hours yesterday due to not feeling well. My children were coughing, wheezing, and had headaches also. We closed up the house and turned on our air purifier. After a few house of it running you could actually see a oily residue over the top of the water.

Watch this video of my interview with Genieve Long, who says her family continues to experience health problems from tar sands oil that spilled near her home.

Long, who traveled to Washington last May to deliver a message to the State Department to stop the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, says conditions near the site have continued to make her family sick. “We’ve had vomiting, abdominal pain, migraines and respiratory problems. My five-year old has fevers and joint pain. The doctors have done blood tests but don’t know what’s going on….Exxon has refused to pay medical claims because they say the air quality is fine.”

State and federal agencies that monitor air and water contaminants around the spill say the environment  is safe, although more testing continues. But many locals don't believe it. Lake side resident Marianne Wyckoff also continues to experience headaches after it rains. “You can still smell it at times and you can see the oil coming up in the cove after it rains….the lily pads are all dead and wilted.”  She says she’s listed her property because she doesn’t want to be around it, but she’s not optimistic about attracting any buyers.

The oil-contaminated cove on Lake Conway        Photo: Rocky Kistner/NRDC

That’s also a problem for people who live near the source of the spill less than a mile from the lake, where Exxon’s Pegasus pipeline ruptured and poured out of a 22-ft gash near the Northwoods subdivision, causing the gusher of Canadian tar sands oil that flowed through the suburban neighborhood.

Ann Jarrell lives about 350 yards from blowout site behind Northwoods. She complains of ongoing health problems, including headaches, nausea and respiratory ailments, and says her daughter suffered seizure-like conditions after cutting the grass, while her grandson has been put on an inhaler. Jarrell says her doctor has told her not to return to her house because of the health problems they continue to experience; when Jarrell spoke to a doctor with the Arkansas health department, she reports she was referred her back to her primary physician.

Ann Jarrell's grandson Logan      Photo: courtesy Ann Jarrell

“We need help and we’re being ignored,” Jarrell says. “They should have evacuated a larger area…I’ve never been so sick. When my doctor told me don’t go back to the house, my friends picked up my clothes and medicine and my dog.”

Jarrell says she’s not sure what to do now. Although she considers herself lucky to be able to stay with a friend, she says she can’t afford to buy another place. “I can’t sell my house when there’s a big pipeline sign right by my house.”

Amber Bartlett’s family lives in one of the 22 Northwoods subdivision homes that were evacuated after the stream of black tar sands oil poured down her street. She and most of the families that were evacuated have refused to return to their homes. Bartlett says they have been told they will stop receiving any money for temporary housing on September 15, even though cleanup work continues in the neighborhood. “It seems like they are trying to force us back into our homes…I told them if you were in my shoes , would you let your kids back in the neighborhood knowing it’s possible they could get sick at some point?”

Bartlett and her husband and four kids are now living in a rented trailer, and she says they not happy with their ongoing negotiations with Exxon about how they will be compensated for their inconvenience and damage to their home. “In the beginning, we were on Exxon’s side in terms of how we were being treated,” she says. “But now it feels like they are trying to get rid of us….we will stand our ground for what we feel we deserve.”

Amber Bartlett's family still has not moved back to their home. Above: Cleanup workers in Northwoods in April. Photos: Rocky Kistner/NRDC

Bartlett also understands the complaints by people who live by the lake and in other areas of Mayflower who have received far less attention and compensation from Exxon to date.  “I feel like people need to be taken care of here....It’s ridiculous to say the oil has not gotten into the lake.”

Recent reports of health complaints have been highlighted in a collaborative series of stories by the Arkansas Times and InsideClimate News, but the major media has largely ignored the health problems in Mayflower, including a recent New York Times report  about tar sands spills in Mayflower and along Michigan’s Kalamazoo River three years ago.

But locals like April Lane of the Faulkner County Citizens Advisory Group say they will keep pushing officials for greater health information and analysis, pressing political leaders and rallying members of the community for increased resources and support. “We need expert doctors to come here and study what are the actual effects in the community,” Lane says, who is advocating for a health survey of local complaints. “Remediation is not sufficient. They’re just burying the oil and leaving it in the cove. The compounds are evaporating into the atmosphere and we are seeing people with recurring exposures.”

Lane and others are helping organize another town hall meeting in nearby Maumelle on Saturday Aug. 31. It likely will be attended by many of the same residents who came together in the first community meeting four months ago, people still suffering from health symptoms and nagging questions about the torrent of toxic tar sands oil that poured out of the ground and embedded in their community, changing their lives in ways they never imagined.

Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad in his own words

From:  The News Doctors

TND Media Context Review / By Eric Dubin /


Western nations are laying a media campaign and military logistics for a potential attack against Syria.  As the drumbeat of war sounds, collective critical thinking is most vulnerable.
Images of chemical weapons victims are abhorrent.  But consider this:  Even if we are to believe the West’s claim that Bashar al-Assad’s government is behind the chemical weapons attack, there can be no denying that the insurgent al-Qaeda “rebel” forces that started a campaign of destabilization of Syria are backed by the United States, Saudi Arabia and other Western powers.  Never mind congestive dissonance.  Most Americans are completely oblivious to this fact.
In order to sift through the fog of war, it’s important to consider multiple perspectives.  Recently, the Russian newspaper Izvestia published an interview with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.  It was translated into multiple languages.  Given that use of chemical weapons is the purported “Casus belli” for Western intervention, it’s worthwhile examining al-Assad’s response to this specific accusation.
Izvestia:  On Wednesday, the rebels accused the Syrian government of using chemical weapons; some Western leaders adopted these accusations. What is your response to this? Will you allow the UN inspectors access to the site to investigate the incident

President al-Assad: The statements by the American administration, the West and other countries were made with disdain and blatant disrespect of their own public opinion; there isn’t a body in the world, let alone a superpower, that makes an accusation and then goes about collecting evidence to prove its point. The American administration made the accusation on Wednesday and two days later announced that they would start to collect the evidence – what evidence is it going to gather from afar?!

They claim that the area in question is under the control of the rebels and that the Syrian Army used chemical weapons. In fact, the area is in contiguity with the Syrian Army positions, so how is it possible that any country would use chemical weapons, or any weapons of mass destruction, in an area where its own forces are located; this is preposterous! These accusations are completely politicised and come on the back of the advances made by the Syrian Army against the terrorists.

As for the UN Commission, we were the first to request a UN investigation when terrorists launched rockets that carried toxic gas in the outskirts of Aleppo. Several months before the attack, American and Western statements were already preparing public opinion of the potential use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government.

This raised our suspicion that they were aware of the terrorists’ intentions to use these weapons in order to blame the Syrian government. After liaising with Russia, we decided to request a commission to investigate the incident. Whereas we requested an investigation based on the facts on the ground, not on rumors or allegations; the US, France and the UK have tried to exploit the incident to investigate allegations rather than happenings.

During the last few weeks, we have worked with the Commission and set the guidelines for cooperation. First of these, is that our national sovereignty is a red line and as such the Commission will directly liaise with us during the process. Second, the issue is not only how the investigation will be conducted but also how the results will be interpreted. We are all aware that instead of being interpreted in an objective manner, these results could easily be interpreted according to the requirements and agendas of certain major countries. Certainly, we expect Russia to block any interpretation that aims to serve American and western policies. What is most important is that we differentiate between western accusations that are based on allegations and hearsay and our request for an investigation based on concrete evidence and facts.

The full text of the translated interview can be read at the Centre for Research on Globalization by clicking here.

Mass Military Movement: New Orleans – Updated! Exclusive Beforeitsnews Picture With Additional Video Report

From:  Before Its News 

The picture below was just emailed to Beforeitsnews by a very concerned reader who asked that we publish this to get it out to the world. The picture shows a HUGE number of military vehicles being transported towards New Orleans and was just taken by our reader today, August 26th, 2013. What is this large military movement for? Is this in preparation of World War 3 igniting in Syria or is this more along the lines of martial law preparation here in America for when the economy collapses? Is this some kind of preparation for a massive butane explosion at the Louisiana Sinkhole setting off the New Madrid fault line? What do ‘the powers that be’ know that the rest of America DOESN’T know? They’re obviously preparing for something huge. The now viral video below the picture, “August 25 2013 Breaking News World War 3 Not If But When Last Days End Times News Prophecy Update” is absolutely chilling considering present day events that we’re now watching unfold across our planet.

Update! According to a comment on Facebook: This was on the Huey P Long Bridge over the Mississippi River in Jefferson Parish. The train was stopped for a long time.

Video and info below published by u2bheavenbound on Aug12, 2013

 VIDEO

August 25 2013 Breaking News World War 3 not if but when Last days end times news prophecy update 8-25-13 The Human race as we know it is at the end stages leading up to the soon world war 3 bible prophecy the Nuclear exchange will be devastating to mankind as we know it. Not much is talked about on a day to day basis as if there is no threat seems mankind is in denial of the nuclear threat. The reality is our world is in chaos and all it takes is a command and push of a finger and a nuclear exchange has begun that cant be stopped…..USA, Israel, Iran at doorstep….China, Russia, Korea, India…and other nations….have the potential to start world war 3….the threat is real……everything is in place for this final hour…the question is not if rather when….today? Tomorrow? ???? are you ready/prepared for eternity….or to live through a nuclear exchange if you survive? Do you want to go to heaven? 
 

 

Now Egypt looks to ‘expose’ Obama

From:   InfoWars 

Strategy may include embarrassing White House

Jerome Corsi

  World Net Daily
August 26, 2013

The evidence is mounting that the military government currently ruling Egypt has decided to embarrass the Obama administration as part of a strategy to suppress Muslim Brotherhood activity in Egypt.

Last week, WND reported that Tehani al-Gebali, the vice president of the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt, gave a speech and participated in an interview broadcast on Egyptian television that identified Malik Obama, the Kenyan half-brother of President Obama, as “a major architect” managing investments for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

In the speech, Gebali said she would like “open files” to expose nations like the United States that are resisting the current military-controlled government of Egypt by continuing to support “terrorist” groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood.

“The Egyptian people are astounded,” wrote Coptic Egyptian author Michael Armanious in an article titled “Egyptians Bewildered Over Support for the Muslim Brotherhood,” published by the Gatestone Institute International Policy Council. “They simply do not understand the Obama Administration’s efforts to bring the Muslim Brotherhood back to power.”

Armanious puzzled over why the Obama administration supported the Muslim Brotherhood when the result of the “Arab Spring” was to oust Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and elect Muslim Brotherhood-backed Mohamed Morsi as president June 30, 2012.

Read full article

The Leveraged Buyout of America

From:  Truth Dig

By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt

This piece first appeared on Web of Debt. Its author, Ellen Brown, was named Truthdig’s “Truthdigger of the Week” over the weekend.

Giant bank holding companies now own airports, toll roads, and ports; control power plants; and store and hoard vast quantities of commodities of all sorts. They are systematically buying up or gaining control of the essential lifelines of the economy. How have they pulled this off, and where have they gotten the money?

In a letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke dated June 27, 2013, US Representative Alan Grayson and three co-signers expressed concern about the expansion of large banks into what have traditionally been non-financial commercial spheres. Specifically:

[W]e are concerned about how large banks have recently expanded their businesses into such fields as electric power production, oil refining and distribution, owning and operating of public assets such as ports and airports, and even uranium mining.

After listing some disturbing examples, they observed: 

 According to legal scholar Saule Omarova, over the past five years, there has been a “quiet transformation of U.S. financial holding companies.” These financial services companies have become global merchants that seek to extract rent from any commercial or financial business activity within their reach.  They have used legal authority in Graham-Leach-Bliley to subvert the “foundational principle of separation of banking from commerce”. . . .

It seems like there is a significant macro-economic risk in having a massive entity like, say JP Morgan, both issuing credit cards and mortgages, managing municipal bond offerings, selling gasoline and electric power, running large oil tankers, trading derivatives, and owning and operating airports, in multiple countries.

A “macro” risk indeed – not just to our economy but to our democracy and our individual and national sovereignty. Giant banks are buying up our country’s infrastructure – the power and supply chains that are vital to the economy. Aren’t there rules against that? And where are the banks getting the money?  MORE

Hungary Sheds Bankers’ Shackles

From:  American Free Press

• International Monetary Fund told to vacate the country; nation now issuing debt-free money

By Ronald L. Ray

Hungary is making history of the first order.

Not since the 1930s in Germany has a major European country dared to escape from the clutches of the Rothschild-controlled international banking cartels. This is stupendous news that should encourage nationalist patriots worldwide to increase the fight for freedom from financial tyranny.

Already in 2011, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán promised to serve justice on his socialist predecessors, who sold the nation’s people into unending debt slavery under the lash of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the terrorist state of Israel. Those earlier administrations were riddled with Israelis in high places, to the fury of the masses, who finally elected Orbán’s Fidesz party in response.

According to a report on the German-language website “National Journal,” Orbán has now moved to unseat the usurers from their throne. The popular, nationalistic prime minister told the IMF that Hungary neither wants nor needs further “assistance” from that proxy of the Rothschild-owned Federal Reserve Bank. No longer will Hungarians be forced to pay usurious interest to private, unaccountable central bankers.  MORE

• International Monetary Fund told to vacate the country; nation now issuing debt-free money

By Ronald L. Ray

Hungary is making history of the first order.

Not since the 1930s in Germany has a major European country dared to escape from the clutches of the Rothschild-controlled international banking cartels. This is stupendous news that should encourage nationalist patriots worldwide to increase the fight for freedom from financial tyranny.

Already in 2011, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán promised to serve justice on his socialist predecessors, who sold the nation’s people into unending debt slavery under the lash of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the terrorist state of Israel. Those earlier administrations were riddled with Israelis in high places, to the fury of the masses, who finally elected Orbán’s Fidesz party in response.

According to a report on the German-language website “National Journal,” Orbán has now moved to unseat the usurers from their throne. The popular, nationalistic prime minister told the IMF that Hungary neither wants nor needs further “assistance” from that proxy of the Rothschild-owned Federal Reserve Bank. No longer will Hungarians be forced to pay usurious interest to private, unaccountable central bankers.

- See more at: http://americanfreepress.net/?p=12418#sthash.z4Jh1yQf.dpuf

Now is the time for action

The Present Crisis

  by James Russell Lowell 

When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast

Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west,

And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb

To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime 

Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of Time.

Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instantaneous throe,

When the travail of the Ages wrings earth's systems to and fro;

At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start, 

Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute lips apart,

And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the Future's heart.

So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill,

Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill, 

And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels his sympathies with God

In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up by the sod,

Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving in the nobler clod.

For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along, 

Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flash of right or wrong;

Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity's vast frame

Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy or shame;—

In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim. 

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,

In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;

Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,

Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right, 

And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.

Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shalt stand,

Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against our land?

Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 'tis Truth alone is strong, 

And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng

Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all wrong.

Backward look across the ages and the beacon-moments see,

That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through Oblivion's sea; 

Not an ear in court or market for the low, foreboding cry

Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet earth's chaff must fly;

Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath passed by.

Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record 

One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word;

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,—

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own. 

We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great,

Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate,

But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din,

List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,— 

"They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin."

Slavery, the earth-born Cyclops, fellest of the giant brood,

Sons of brutish Force and Darkness, who have drenched the earth with blood,

Famished in his self-made desert, blinded by our purer day, 

Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his miserable prey;—

Shall we guide his gory fingers where our helpless children play?

Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust,

Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just; 

Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside,

Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified,

And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.

Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes,—they were souls that stood alone, 

While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious stone,

Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam incline

To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine,

By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's supreme design. 

By the light of burning heretics Christ's bleeding feet I track,

Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not back,

And these mounts of anguish number how each generation learned

One new word of that grand Credo which in prophet-hearts hath burned 

Since the first man stood God-conquered with his face to heaven upturned.

For Humanity sweeps onward: where to-day the martyr stands,

On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands;

Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots burn, 

While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return

To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn.

'Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves

Of a legendary virtue carved upon our fathers' graves, 

Worshippers of light ancestral make the present light a crime;—

Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, steered by men behind their time?

Turn those tracks toward Past or Future, that made Plymouth Rock sublime?

They were men of present valor, stalwart old iconoclasts, 

Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue was the Past's;

But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that hath made us free,

Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our tender spirits flee

The rude grasp of that great Impulse which drove them across the sea. 

They have rights who dare maintain them; we are traitors to our sires,

Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom's new-lit altar-fires;

Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall we, in our haste to slay,

From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps away 

To light up the martyr-fagots round the prophets of to-day?

New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth;

They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth;

Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be, 

Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea,

Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key.