US right-winger: Gay bullying 'healthy peer pressure'
“Anti-gay bullying is not bullying at all; in fact, it is 'peer pressure and is healthy.' That’s according to Rich Swier, an activist with the Tea Party Nation.
“Swier was responding to a report from a Florida group that showed that '77% of all bullying victims are picked on due to sexual orientation, gender identity, or the perception of either.' The report also pointed out that 'LGBT youth are up to five times more likely to commit suicide than their straight counterparts.'
“But, according to Swier, the anti-bullying campaign is nothing more than a sham by 'radical gay activists.' He says that it’s all a part of the ever omnipotent 'gay agenda' and its plan to indoctrinate school children into the so-called 'homosexual lifestyle.'
“[Swier said:] 'This is not bullying. It is peer pressure and is healthy. There are many bad behaviors such as smoking, under age drinking and drug abuse that are behaviors that cannot be condoned. Homosexuality falls into this category.
“'Homosexuality is simply bad behavior that youth see as such and rightly pressure their peers to stop it.'”
— June 28 Lgbtqnation.com
Jellyfish explosion threatens catastrophe
“Huge amounts of jellyfish have forced the shutdown of nuclear power plants in Japan, already hit by the earthquake and tsunami, Scotland and a coal-powered plant in Israel in the past few weeks.
“And a sustained explosion in the population of jellyfish throughout the world's oceans has the potential to be 'quite catastrophic' if it is not checked, said jellyfish expert Dr Jamie Seymour from James Cook University in Queensland.
“[Experts said] global warming, the nitrification of oceans through fertiliser run-off and overfishing have also created the environment for a huge expansion of the animals nicknamed the cockroaches of the sea, studies showed.
"'Global warming increases the water temperature. These animals are cold-blooded so the warmer you make it the quicker they grow," Dr Seymour said.
"'An increase of nutrients in the ocean [from fertiliser run-off] increases the amount of algae, so that increases the amount of zoo plankton or little critters, and that's what the jellyfish are eating.
"'The third one is overfishing. So you remove all the fish and all the major predators in the ocean and there's nothing left to eat the jellyfish."
July 11 SMH.com.au
Oceans on brink of collapse
“The world's oceans are faced with an unprecedented loss of species comparable to the great mass extinctions of prehistory, a major report suggests today.
“The seas are degenerating far faster than anyone has predicted, the report says, because of the cumulative impact of a number of severe individual stresses, ranging from climate warming and sea-water acidification, to widespread chemical pollution and gross overfishing.
“The coming together of these factors is now threatening the marine environment with a catastrophe 'unprecedented in human history', according to the report, from a panel of leading marine scientists brought together in Oxford earlier this year by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
“The stark suggestion made by the panel is that the potential extinction of species, from large fish at one end of the scale to tiny corals at the other, is directly comparable to the five great mass extinctions in the geological record, during each of which much of the world's life died out.”
June 21 Independent.co.uk