Le Show; 2016-07-17

From deep inside your audio device of choice. Ladies and gentlemen, are you feeling safe enough because there's a missile defense system that we've kind of deployed, we're testing it, we're deploying it, we're testing, we're deploying it, and it's supposed to make you feel safer, you see. It's, quote, simply unable to protect the U.S. public, unquote, and will remain ineffective unless Congress exerts rigorous oversight according to a new report. This is a report released by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Guys, relax, don't be so concerned. It recommends that the Obama administration halt the expansion of the ground-based mid-course defense system, the GMD, until its technical problems have been solved. Well, by then, the story of this system is a cautionary tale about how lack of appropriate oversight of a politically charged missile defense program has led to a system in

tatters, so the report written by three physicists with expertise in missile defense. Tatters are good, right? Despite more than a decade of development and a bill of $40 billion, the author's right, the GMD system is simply unable to protect the U.S. public. Well, what do you expect for $40 billion? Spend some real money. The GMD system is intended to thwart a limited nuclear strike by North Korea or Iran. And not a superpower, just a power. The report notes that in heavily scripted flight tests that are set up for success, like you and me, GMD interceptors have often failed to hit mock enemy warheads. In the seven most recent tests, interceptors destroyed their targets three times, three out of sevens, not in bait.

This is a finding consistent with conclusions of the Pentagon's tests and evaluation office. Personnel conducting the tests know the speed, location, and trajectory of the target ahead of time. You wouldn't, no, you wouldn't. The report said members of Congress and Pentagon officials insisted on deploying and expanding the system at a rapid pace at the expense of sound procurement and engineering. Build now design later, it happened in New Orleans with the new flood, sorry, risk reduction system, quote repeatedly, according to the report, the Pentagon has sacrificed quality, shortened engineering cycles, and side stepped acquisitions best practices to meet a deadline imposed by political rationales, rather than technical realities. Unquote Pentagon officials have also made unsubstantiated claims about the system's effectiveness the report says, calling this boat cynical and a service to the public.

If it was just cynical, it might be a service. Ask for a comment on the report. Agency spokesman Chris Johnson said the National Missile Defense Act of 1990 Don called for deploying an effective system as soon as technologically possible. He adds, this rapid deployment was a driving factor in delivering a ground-based interceptor capability with reliability challenges. Unquote, that makes it sound almost okay. The agency is trying to make the system more reliable while staying on track to expand the fleet of interceptors. Nothing like trying to make it more reliable while you add more aircraft that can't find your targets. It's killing me on a beach in 1998, meaning it is a breeze from the willows and rhythm and

grace are reborn in this place I was short, the procedures painless. If anybody asks what you mean when you were picking a fight, you were only complimenting the waitress. Give us a room, we're promising you a tiny cabin by the water, yeah by the water night. The water front is a light with citronella flame, torrents flashing the night from the moment.

We're making Get all over the light and the trees and the sweet decay of the maritime breeze. Start hitching on a weather balloon and the heat of the storm act and burn a soul and a soul.

Get all over the light and the trees and the sweet decay of the maritime breeze. Start hitching on a weather balloon and the heat of the storm act and burn a soul. Start hitching on a weather balloon and the heat of the storm act and burn a soul. Get all over the light and the heat of the storm act and burn a soul. From, well, near the ocean, the home of the homeless, I'm Harry Scherer welcoming you to this edition of La Show

and now ladies and gentlemen, news of the godly, vickers in Britain who have been sanctioned for sexual abuse are apparently and allegedly hiring themselves out to officiate at funerals as freelance clergy making thousands of dollars or pounds, if you like, in the process. Apparently, they do like. The Church of England's general synod in York, that would be Old York, towns on areas so nice they named it once. They heard how funeral directors are using the services of vickers who are no longer allowed to minister families of the deceased are often not aware that the priest officiating at their funeral may have been suspended due to sexual misconduct. One case in Winchester, involved a funeral director ignoring police from the police by ignoring a vicar who was being investigated for sexual abuse abroad.

The funeral directors are often pressured to organize a funeral quickly, why would that be? And finding a vicar can be time consuming while ordained vickers cannot accept payment for an independently conducted funeral. Those conducted two or three a day can earn up to $52,000 a year. It's pretty good if you've been fiddling about. They write Reverend Paul Butler, who deals with safeguarding issues around children and vulnerable adults for the Church of England. So the issue would be raised with the parliamentary group for funerals and bereavements. I would like to be a fly on the wall or maybe just a wall at that meeting, news of the godly, and now your brain on the war on drugs. There's a body of research showing that pain, killer abuse and overdose are lower in states with medical marijuana laws.

You know that the rate of deaths, maybe you don't know, white working class, middle aged people, has skyrocketed the rate of deaths mainly due to opioid abuse. But there's this research showing that pain killer abuse and overdose are lower in states with medical marijuana laws. These studies have generally assumed that when medical marijuana is available, pain patients are increasingly choosing pot over prescription narcotics. But that's just been an assumption according to the Washington Post. Now a new study released in the journal Health Affairs. I like all my affairs to be validates these findings by providing clear evidence of a missing link in the causal chain running from medical marijuana to failing overdoses. Ashley and David Bradford, a daughter, father pair of researchers at the University of Georgia, scoured the database of all prescription drugs paid for under Medicare Part D from 2010 to 2013.

In the 17 states with a medical marijuana law by 2013, prescription for pain killers and other classes of drugs fell sharply compared with states that did not have a medical marijuana law. The drops were quite significant. Med marijuana states, the average doctor prescribed 265 fewer doses of antidepressants each year, 486 fewer doses of seizure medication, 541 fewer anti nausea doses, and 562 fewer doses of anti-anxiety medication. What do you mean? But most strikingly, the typical physician in a medical marijuana state prescribed 1826 fewer doses of pain killers in a given year. These conditions are among those for which medical marijuana is most often approved under state law.

The Bradford's ran a similar analysis on drug categories that pot typically is not recommended for. Blood thinners and viral drugs and antibiotics on those drugs, they found no changes in prescribing patterns after the passage of medical marijuana laws. Quote, this provides strong evidence that the observed shifts in prescribing patterns were in fact due to the passage of the medical marijuana laws. One interesting wrinkle in the data is glaucoma. It's always an interesting wrinkle, especially if you've got eyes, for which there was a small increase in demand for traditional drugs in medical pot states. It's routinely listed as an approved condition under medical marijuana laws. Medical marijuana, according to studies, does provide some degree of temporary relief for symptoms of glaucoma. The Bradford's hypothesized that the short duration of the relief provided by marijuana about an hour may actually stimulate more demand in traditional glaucoma medications.

But the tanking numbers for pain killer prescriptions in medical pot states are likely to cause some concern among pharmaceutical companies. They have nutty coincidence here. They have long been at the forefront of opposition to marijuana reform, funding research by anti-pot academics and funding and funneling dollars to groups such as community anti drug coalitions of America that oppose legalization pharmaceutical companies have also lobbied federal agencies directly to prevent the liberalization of marijuana laws. But that's just because they're public spirited. On the other hand, they are also dabbling some pharmaceutical companies, at least, in genetic modifications of cannabis substances. Just in case it's legalized. You'd like to stand a thwart that market if you can. This is your brain on the war on drugs.

By the way, the incredible rise in violence in Mexico over the last decade and a half is usually ascribed to the war on drugs. So how many people has the war on drugs killed? Now, ladies and gentlemen, Canada's pipeline watchdog here, him bark is given two of North America's largest energy companies up to six months to fix with industry observers have described as a series of, quote, ticking time bombs. Those are good. At least taking good care of the national energy board of Canada, waited eight months after U.S. regulators raised the alarm about substandard materials, finally issuing a safety order and emergency order in February, at least one Canadian pipeline with, with effective materials blew up during that period. Newly released Canadian documents show the Texas-based kinder Morgan and Alberta-based end bridge are both looking into the use of defective parts purchased from a Thailand-based company that recently went bankrupt.

Companies were not immediately able to say where they installed the problematic parts. It's a problem that also struck Alberta-based trans-Canada, home of the pipeline you've heard of, which had defective materials in its own pipelines, including one that blew up three years ago. They review emerged from an emergency safety order issued in February by Canada's National Energy Board, when it launched a crackdown on companies using shotty parts in their pipelines. Until then, no problem. Shot away. This crackdown followed a series of failures and warnings that date back to at least 2008 when U.S. regulators noticed that the industry was using substandard materials. Substandard materials and pipelines that were cracking apart during testing. Engineers who've worked for years on pipelines say that they've lost faith in the industry and its watchdogs as major energy companies continue to suffer significant ruptures,

spills, and other disasters. Both the industry and its regulators insist there are no immediate threats. They're keeping an eye on the situation. Critics say sloppy record-keeping in appropriate conversations, weak oversight and a race for cheap parts are leaving many dangerous pipelines in the ground. The ground can't hurt you. Now, ladies and gentlemen, let us try the model of the United States Army Corps of Engineers in response to many requests. I'm not playing their theme. Let us try. An unprecedented amount of toxic algae are blooming and infesting miles of southern Florida's coastline and waterways. Residents have been left wondering how the problems started in the first place, according to ABC News. Officials believe the root of the algae blooms, which have been described as vile smelling and guacamole thick.

Guacamole can't hurt you. Can be traced to Lake Okeechobee, nation's second largest freshwater lake, the largest in Florida. In recent decades, that lake has been loaded with excessive amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizing fertilization runoff from farms and urbanization, according to a spokesman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, John Campbell. Such nutrients, along with other environmental factors such as warmer temperatures, promote the growth of blue-green algae, cyanobacteria. Late last month, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers discharged a high volume of the lake's nutrient-polluted water into local canals to prevent flooding, according to the spokesman, John Campbell of the Corps. The nutrients from the released water likely contributed to the putrid algae blooms that have since been proliferating in canals, rivers and estuaries in four counties across southern Florida.

After seeing the algae firsthand, the Corps announced it would start reducing the amount of freshwater flowing from the lake. However, since a number of algae-infested canals and rivers flow into estuaries and inlets that empty into the ocean, several beaches have also begun experiencing the blooms. But don't blame the Corps because they're just trying. Let us try the model of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. And now, ladies and gentlemen, we've been talking about bees, honey bees, particularly on this broadcast for quite a while. But it's not just bees. And listen, please believe me. If any human on the planet hates insects more than me, I'd like to meet that person. I'm not an insect fan. I spent a portion of my youth that I'm not proud of killing as many ants as humanly possible, but now there's this from the Yale Environment Blog.

Every spring since 1989, entomologists have set up tents in the Meadows and Woodlands of a nature reserve and 87 areas in the Western German state of North Rhine Westphalia. The Tents act as insect traps, enabling the scientists to calculate how many bugs live in an area over a summer. Recently, researchers presented the results of their work to the Bundestag. The findings were, according to Yale, alarming the average biomass of insects caught between May and October, has steadily decreased from 3.5 pounds per trap back in 1989 to just 10.6 ounces in 2014. The decline is dramatic and depressing, and it affects all kinds of insects, including butterflies, wild bees, and hoverflies, says Martin Sorg, an entomologist involved in running the project.

Another recent study has added to this concern, scientists from the Technical University of Munich and a museum in Frankfurt have determined that in a nature reserve near Regensburg, the number of recorded butterfly and moth species has declined. A by about 50% from 1840 to 2013. Even official protection status can't really prevent dramatic species lost. Loss, says Thomas Schmidt, one of the scientists involved in the study, declines and insect populations are hardly limited to Germany. A 2014 study in Science documented a steep drop in insect and invertebrate populations worldwide. That doesn't include agents. They actually are vertebrates. By combining data from the few comprehensive studies that exist, an ecologist at Stanford developed a global index for invertebrates, abundance that showed a 45% decline over the past four decades.

These are the least well-evaluated faunal groups, but the available information suggests a dire situation in many parts of the world, says the lead scientists. Scientists have described one million species of insects so far. They estimate at least four million are still unrecorded. Many insect populations worldwide are in severe decline, according to the Zoological Study of London, which did a study in 2012. That limits food supplies for birds and larger animals and affects ecosystem services like pollination. The insect custodian at the Berlin Natural History Museum says he's worried that decline in insect populations is gradual, and there's a risk we will only really take notice once it's too late. Many factors are cited for the reasons. Chief among them, the ubiquitous use of pesticides, the spread of monoculture crops such as corn and soybeans, urbanization, and habitat destruction.

A significant drop in insect populations could have far-reaching consequences for the natural world and for humans, excuse me, we're part of the natural world. Who depend on bees and other invertebrates to pollinate crops. So far, only the kind of honeybee populations has received widespread public attention because of their role in pollination. But scientists emphasize the ecological importance of diverse and abundant insect populations. Over three quarters of wild flowering plant species in temperate regions need pollination by insects to develop their fruits and seeds fully, according to the Alliance of British Environmental Research Institutions. They emphasize pollinating insects, improve or stabilize the yield of three quarters of all crop types around the world, one-third of global crops by volume.

Volume! All right, I'll talk louder. In parts of Europe, US and South America monocultures, that is to say growing one crop over and over and over and over again, cover vast areas of landscape creating biological deserts, devoid of hedges or ponds where insects could reproduce. Don't they have insect porn on the internet yet? A particular concern is the widespread use of pesticides and their impact on species which aren't the target of the insecticides. There are many indications that what we see is the result of a widespread poisoning of our landscapes as the director general of the German chapter of bird life international. Scientists are now urging increased monitoring efforts.

And on a related subject, Donald Trump, who, as you know, announced his running mate choice this weekend, although it took a while for him to get over himself to announce it. And he has been accused, perhaps accurately, of holding contradictory positions over time on a number of different policy areas that is to say saying he felt one way or any, at one point in time he felt another way about the same issue. But there's one issue, apparently, judging by a appearance last week in Cincinnati and a proposal of insects where Donald Trump stands firm. I don't like mosquitoes.

I don't like mosquitoes. I don't like those mosquitoes. I never did. I don't want mosquitoes around me. I don't like mosquitoes. Oh, there was a mosquito. I don't like mosquitoes. I don't like mosquitoes around me.

I don't like mosquitoes around me. I don't like mosquitoes around me. I don't like mosquitoes around me. I don't like mosquitoes around me.

I don't like mosquitoes around me. I don't like mosquitoes around me. I don't like mosquitoes around me. I don't like mosquitoes around me.

I don't like mosquitoes around me. From the home of the homeless, from the edge of America, this is Lesho and now ladies and gentlemen. News of the Olympic movement. Produced by Jim Eversall, Jr. Well, we know that it costs a lot of money to put on the Olympics.

According to the Chicago Tribune, mounting Chicago's bid was an expensive but privately funded endeavor. It was priced from donors, also kicked in $16 million worth of goods and services, but it left a pricey legacy for taxpayers. City of Chicago is on the hook for about $140 million in principal and interest on the purchase of property for an Olympic village to house athletes. It never built and it was saddled with costly ten-year union contracts that were hammered out to ensure labor peace during the games, which never happened. A report by the city's inspector general in the waiting days of the Richard Galey administration found 34 union agreements unduly hamstrung not only the current management of the city government, but the next six years, as well, deals were made in 2007, shortly before. The economy went and the public realized the depths of the city's own financial woes.

The restrictive deal prompted the inspector general to recommend the city pass-nordance limiting labor deals to no more than four years, the city council has ignored that suggestion. But eager to lock in property for an athlete's village, the administration agreed in 2008 to pay nearly two million per acre for a former hospital site, even as the economy and housing market were tanking. The city planned to resell the parcel to a developer who would build apartments for Olympians, then convert the housing into a mixed, re-encup residential community after the games, that would be this year. The city had five years from the time the deal closed in 2009 to resell the land before any payments came due. Today, the tract remains vacant and in city hands. This inherited deal was a bad one for taxpayers, says Peter Stratzebosko, the deputy commissioner of planning and development. On a $91 million purchase, this is analogous to using credit cards to pay off a credit card, said a bond expert.

No workable redevelopment plan has surfaced. Olympic chiefs will look at the number of top golfers not playing at Rio this summer when deciding if the sport should be a future games. Sorry, it's golf. The world's top four among the more than 20 to have withdrawn. IOC president Thomas Box said this would be considered when the lineup for Tokyo 2020 is decided next year. One of the main categories is the question of participation by the best players, he said. Golf beat out squash. The sport, not the vegetable, and deadline Rio many top foreign leaders have been slow to commit to attending the opening ceremony of the Rio Olympics amid Brazil's political turmoil. And the Zika thing, top politicians who do show up could face a diplomatic quandary because the president has been suspended and faces an impeachment trial. If you're a top world leader whose hand would you shake in the middle of such uncertainty as the professor of international law at the University of Sao Paulo, it's a bizarre situation.

The best of foreign leaders can do is send a letter and stay home to avoid any embarrassment anyway. It won't be a party in Brazil anyway. Look at the mess, she says. The Olympics, it's a movement and we all need one. Every day! And now ladies and gentlemen, what's going on with the new Iraq? You know the one that we kind of... Help, we midwifed it really. You probably know, I mentioned it on last week's broadcast. There was a suicide bombing at Baghdad last weekend that left 250 people dead. It was IS's deadliest ever attack against civilians. It raised questions about the Iraqi government's security measures, according to the Atlantic. Particularly, it's widespread use of bomb detectors that don't work.

We shared this story with you about the fake bomb detectors. On this broadcast, only years ago, they are actually repurposed golf ball detectors that were found to be fake. In a previous decade, the troops who used them know they're useless, but as one officer put it to the Atlantic, quote, I don't have any other choice. Well, now you do. In the wake of the terrorist attack, Iraq's Prime Minister Al-Abadi has instructed all the country's security forces to stop using the fake bomb detectors. The Independent and London reports Al-Abadi also ordered an investigation at the Ministry of the Interior into corrupt deals to buy the fake detectors. According to Homeland Defense Newswire, a British businessman, James McCormick purchased thousands of novelty golf ball finders for 1995 each, repackaged them and then sold them to Iraq and other nations as advanced, handheld bomb detectors at $40,000 apiece. Three years ago, he was sentenced to 10 years in jail for endangering lives for obscene profits. It is Britain. And ordered to pay millions in restitution.

McCormick, a former policeman, made $75 million from the Iraqi government alone, which bought nearly 2,000 of the golf ball finders. Despite vociferous U.S. objections, the Iraqi government of Nureal Maliki used millions of dollars in U.S. military aid to purchase thousands of the fake bomb detectors. The Iraqi government and Iraqi security services refused to be persuaded by scientific analysis and demonstrations which proved the detectors to be a hoax. Al-Abadi has now ordered the replacement of the fake detectors with X-ray systems. The Iraqi government has also asked the U.S. for surveillance drones. Are they fake yet? The Chilcot report, which came out in Britain last week and was quickly forgotten because there were disputes among British politicians and egos, always trump anything else. And over here, you know, it's the past. Anyway, it reveals the U.K. has disclaimed any duty to decontaminate the toxic radioactive ash left behind by its depleted uranium munitions or even to monitor the impact on human health.

This from the Ecologist magazine, Iraq and other countries are working towards a UN resolution that would hold contaminated governments like the U.K. and the U.S. legally accountable for depleted uranium pollution. In the Chilcot report was a previously classified Ministry of Defense paper setting out the U.K. government's thinking on the munitions. In it, the clearance of unexploded ordinance, that's the danger of DU, is considered and the Ministry of Defense argues that it has no long-term legal responsibility to clean up DU from Iraq. It proposes that surface-lying fragments of DU only be removed on an opportunity basis, that is to say, if they come across them in the course of doing something else like getting a burger. In other words, the U.K. stands that chemically toxic and radioactive DU ash from spent munitions is strictly the problem of the country in which the munitions were used, Iraq and the U.K., which fired the shells, has no formal responsibility for cleaning up the mess. Unlike land mines and cluster munitions, there is no treaty to ensure that affected countries receive international assistance or themselves obligated to protect their own people, nor is anyone required to record the impact of the weapons on individuals and communities.

Vehicles contaminated by depleted uranium, tanks, armored personnel carriers, post a particular risk to civilians, both to workers in the scrapped metal industry and to children who play on them. Attention is increasingly being focused on the lack of obligation on nations that use DU weapons to clean up the mess, they contaminate these same governments are often extremely conscious of the financial and technical burden of clearance as they have domestic firing ranges that are contaminated earlier this year, the U.S. Army lost a long-running battle with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over legacy DU contamination at 15 sites in the U.S. Also clarified by the Chokot report, this official independent kind of report on the causes and aftermath of the decision to invade Iraq, something clarified which may be of interest to people on both sides of the pond,

the government, the Blair government, the Bush government, when it was discovered there weren't weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, blamed faulty intelligence. And yet, in the United States, Britain and Australia, high-ranking intelligence officials in the non-proliferation area said before the war publicly that what was being told to the public did not reflect the intelligence they were seeing. So a glimmer of information has to, how to put these two facts together. According to the Financial Times, the Chokot report criticized the way the British version of the CIA, MI6, headed by Sir Richard Dearlove, handled its responsibilities, the Secret Intelligence Service, which is its other name, had a responsibility to ensure that ministers were informed in a timely way when doubts arose about key sources

and when subsequently intelligence was withdrawn, unquote, and they didn't do that. In the United States, as you may remember, there was a separate vector for raw intelligence, the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon run by Douglas Feith, it was a faith-based operation, whose sole purpose was to gather raw information outside the analytical eyes of the CIA and pass it straight upstairs to where the guys wanted to know that there was intelligence that supported their policies. The new Iraq ladies and gentlemen, a trillion-dollar bargain.

On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size, 4 million refugees, internal and death. Some happy contract is cashing up the chance. The zone's international, no longer blue, and every person got the place real clean. It's a trillion-dollar, trillion-dollar bargain.

On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size, 5 million refugees. On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size, 5 million refugees. It's a trillion-dollar, trillion-dollar bargain. It's a trillion-dollar, trillion-dollar bargain.

On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size, 5 million refugees. On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size. It's a trillion-dollar, trillion-dollar bargain. It's a trillion-dollar, trillion-dollar bargain.

On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size. On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size. On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size. It's a trillion-dollar, trillion-dollar bargain.

On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size. On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size. On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size. On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size.

On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size. On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size. On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size. On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size.

On the part it gets raw, or maybe the half-a-link of size. On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size. On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size. On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size.

On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size. On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size. On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size. On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size.

On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size. On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size. On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size. On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size.

On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size. On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size. On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size. On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size.

On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size. On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size. On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size. On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size.

On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size. On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size. On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size. On the part it gets raw, or maybe it's just the half-a-link of size.

Of the homeless.