Politics & Globalization
International trade agreements force the U.S. and other participting countries to "harmonize" food and envrironmental safety standards to the lowest common denominator. Often these agreements are negotiated behind closed doors, shutting out Congress and the public, while granting corporations and trade associations a seat at the table. It's no surprise that these agreements give transnational corporations "special rights", allowing companies to challenge individual countries' environmental, worker and food safety laws and regulations.
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Rose and Ronnie· Joe volunteer© 2008
On April 28, Trump signed an executive order declaring that the operation of meatpacking plants was a national security priority and directed his administration to "take all appropriate action" to "ensure that meat and poultry processors continue operations." Trump also ordered meatpackers to "continue their operations to the fullest extent possible." At the time, 6,500 meatpacking workers had been diagnosed with COVID-19, and 20 had died.
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Cory Booker says the massive challenges facing the US right now are all tied to a “savagely broken food system”. And last week, his most recent challenge to that system gained new momentum, when a coalition of 300 farm, food, and environmental advocacy organizations sent a letter to Congress urging legislators to pass a bill that would eventually eliminate the country’s largest concentrated animal feeding operations.
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A report commissioned by federal regulators overseeing the nation’s commodities markets has concluded that climate change threatens U.S. financial markets, as the costs of wildfires, storms, droughts and floods spread through insurance and mortgage markets, pension funds and other financial institutions.
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The same Gates Foundation which is behind every aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic from financing much of the WHO budget, to investing in favoured vaccine-makers like Moderna, is engaged in a major project in Africa which is destroying traditional small farmer production of essential food crops in favour of monoculture crops and introduction of expensive chemical fertilizers and GMO seeds that are bankrupting small farmers.
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Towering above Lake Michigan north of the Wisconsin border, the Oak Creek coal-fired power plant is one of the largest sources of toxic metals dumped into American waterways. Only six other power plants nationwide released more arsenic, lead, mercury and other metals into lakes and rivers last year, according to a Chicago Tribune analysis of federal records.
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Following news that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked states to prepare for potential distribution of a Covid-19 vaccine by November 1, medical experts and advocacy organizations are warning that politics should not be made a priority over public health.
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Vitamin C is not an effective treatment for SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for covid-19. How do we know this? The 'fact-checkers' that now police our online world tell us so. In this new world order, if the information being shared on social media doesn’t meet the mainstream narrative, it’s declared fake and must be debunked.
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The Trump administration on Monday relaxed strict Obama-era standards for how coal-fired power plants dispose of wastewater laced with dangerous pollutants like lead, selenium and arsenic, a move environmental groups said would leave rivers and streams vulnerable to toxic contamination.
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For decades of presidential cabinet appointments, the Secretary of Agriculture has often been one of the last, almost as an afterthought. I would say that August 2020 is not too soon to start thinking about who our next USDA Secretary will or should be—and not too soon to get some names out to the public, the media, and to the Biden-Harris team.
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Bill Gates has built a global empire around his technologies and "philanthropic" endeavors, the magnitude of which is now becoming increasingly clear. His sheer wealth has allowed him to become a veritable superpower in his own right. He's not only risen to become the largest funder of the World Health Organization and the unelected global COVID-19 health czar but he's also a secret powerbroker of the global food system.
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