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
In a new video from The Intercept, author and activist Naomi Klein explains how the Trump administration and other governments across the globe are "exploiting" the coronavirus outbreak "to push for no-strings-attached corporate bailouts and regulatory rollbacks," and urges working people worldwide to resist such efforts and demand real support from political leaders during the ongoing crisis.
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The issue of Cuba came up again Sunday in the context of the Democratic Presidential debate. Joe Biden attacked Bernie Sanders because Sanders had said publicly in a 60 Minutes interview February 24 that although he was critical of what he called Cuba’s “authoritarian” government, they had done positive things as far as literacy and health care.
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On Tuesday night, there was no mistaking the smug joy of studio pundits and Democratic Party operatives on networks like AT&T-owned CNN and Comcast-owned MSNBC. Meanwhile, the New York Times rushed into print yet another all-out attack piece masquerading as a “news” article about Sanders.
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The proposed ballot initiative, which would make certain psychedelic plants and fungi such as psilocybin mushrooms and ayahuasca among the lowest local law enforcement priorities in the nation’s capital, was given initial approval by the Board of Elections.
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As the Union of Concerned Scientists last week issued its new report Endangering Generations: How the Trump Administration’s Assault on Science Is Harming Children’s Health, the White House announced its desire to slash the EPA’s funding from $9 billion to $6.7 billion and cut staffing down to 12,600. There were 17,000 full-time staffers in 2012. That part is no surprise.
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This is the fastest-warming city in the country. Since 1970, the city's average temperature has risen 5.76 degrees Fahrenheit. Last summer, a study of coroner data by the Las Vegas–based Desert Research Institute identified a link between heatwaves and heat-related deaths, which experts say are on the rise.
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Something you might have missed amid all the horserace and app-failure coverage of the Iowa caucuses: a deep discussion took place over the past year about the climate crisis and agriculture that could change the way our food system operates. Every leading Democratic campaign now endorses an aggressive approach to conservation that could dramatically reduce greenhouse gases, improve water quality and enhance rural prosperity.
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Last year, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) introduced a resolution to Congress calling for an ambitious re-imagining of the U.S. economy―one that would tackle both climate change and inequality. Now with broad support among democratic presidential hopefuls, the Green New Deal resolution highlights the transformation of energy, transportation, health care and employment systems in our country, while briefly mentioning food and agriculture.
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As we hurtle into the 2020s, the future of our food economy (and food itself) remains a fiercely contested competition between diametrically opposed visions: a negative pole consisting of the concentrated forces of corporate agriBusiness, which view the dinner plate strictly in terms of their own profit margins, and a positive polarity of family farmers, consumers, food artisans, environmentalists and other grassroots advocates of agriCulture, who envision our food future from the ethical perspective of sustainability and democratic control.
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We’ve investigated each of the 2020 Presidential candidates to learn where they stand on GMOs by looking into who is funding their campaigns, what their records are as elected officials and what the candidates have said in their platforms and public statements.
We know where several of the Presidential candidates stand on GMOs because they were in the House or Senate in 2016. That was the year Congress
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