By:Anthony Pahnke

The point is this – if we do not know how to put pressure on the right actors who have been connected to destroying the Amazon, then our efforts will be for naught. 

Most of the reporting on the fires raging in the Amazon try to identify the guilty parties.  Some of those that have been identified include ranchers and loggers, as well as the rightwing government of Jair Bolsonaro for its lack of enforcing environmental regulations.  Yet, what we need to consider is that no single actor is responsible for destroying the rainforest, but instead corporate supply chains that crisscross our planet.

To truly effect change, we need to target companies within these networks, which can occur if we restore Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) in agriculture and boycott firms that have been linked to deforestation. 

As the Amazon burns, with the number of fires increasing more than 80 percent this year when compared to the last, many have proposed solutions to the crisis.  Leonardo DiCaprio has advised us to stop eating meat, while others encourage consumers to recycle, become educated, and contact their representatives.  There are also calls to privatize the rainforest to save it, with individuals such as Jeff Bezos – who is already the owner of one Amazon – implored to invest.

These supposed solutions have serious shortcomings.  For instance, what specifically will you demand from your representative?  Is the ask that they just ‘do something?’  The problem with eliminating meat from your diet is that you do not know if you are affecting the large-scale Brazilian rancher or the struggling family farmer who lives down the road.  Moreover, studies have shown that some forms of ranching – on well-maintained pastures with rotational grazing and the limited of fertilizers – can sequester carbon and help us face climate change.  And if the Amazon were privatized, then what if it is later partitioned and sold, again to ranchers and loggers, or perhaps to the tourist industry?

The point is this – if we do not know how to put pressure on the right actors who have been connected to destroying the Amazon, then our efforts will be for naught.

So, what can be done?  First, we need to know which farmers and ranchers are involved in deforestation.  While identifying individuals is difficult, we can make a push for the U.S. government to bring back the Country of Origin Labelling (COOL) in agriculture.  This policy became law with the 2002 Farm Bill, which required that retailors provide information on the sources of their food.  The Obama administration later repealed COOL for beef and pork products, but not for lamb, chicken, and goat meat, perishable agricultural commodities, macadamia nuts, pecans, peanuts, and ginseng.

If COOL were brought back and consumers saw that Brazilian beef was in their stores, then they could choose not to purchase it. Some farmer and rancher groups have been pushing for this policy’s return, as others see this as a way to assist struggling farmers in the United States.

While promoting the return of COOL would take time, now, we know of actual cases of corporations that have been connected to deforestation.  For instance, many ranchers burning the rainforest sell to the Brazilian firm JBS, which is the largest meat processor in the world.  If you are not familiar with JBS, then you may know its U.S. subsidiary – Swift & Company.  Meats with the Swift label are regularly available in most grocery stores.

For public sector workers, namely, teachers and professors with pensions, the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America (or TIAA, formerly known as TIAA-CREFF) through its subsidiaries in Brazil has been involved in large-scale land deals that have been linked to deforestation and land grabbing.  Farmer and consumer rights groups have called out TIAA on this point for years.  Along with these organizations, TIAA beneficiaries could rethink how their retirement funds are invested.

Similarly, in a report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, Pizza Hut, Kroger, Subway, Wendy’s, Hormel, and Nestlé, were found to source beef in ways that contributed to rainforest destruction.  We also cannot ignore the mining industry, which is responsible for upwards of 10 percent of deforestation in the Amazon.  Vale SA is the world’s largest producer of iron ore, with operations in the Amazon.  Last year, the company entered into discussions with the Brazilian state to enlarge the world’s already largest open-pit mine, the Carajás mine, which is located in the Amazon […]

via Stop Blaming Cows and Start Targeting the Corporations that are Destroying the Amazon

By Helen Buyniski – Helen of Destroy – August 28, 2019

If you had the opportunity to interview a whistleblower from one of the world’s most powerful companies after he’d leaked nearly 1,000 pages of internal company documents revealing the company is not only manipulating US politics, but working hard to alter the very fabric of society and mold humanity in its preferred image, surely you would take it.

We all would. Unless that whistleblower is Zach Vorhies, whom the [CIA-linked] Daily Beast – which the media has apparently declared the arbiter of who can and cannot be taken seriously – smeared in a comprehensive hit-job, cobbling together out-of-context tweets to portray the eight-year Google vet as an unhinged conspiracy theorist talking to himself and smearing (rhetorical) feces on the walls.

Somehow, the media was convinced of the reality of this portrayal – even many of the outlets that had gleefully reported on Vorhies’ leaks when the first tranche was dumped anonymously via conservative muckraking outlet Project Veritas chose to pass on an interview. Perhaps there was a threat from Google behind their reluctance, and the Beast smear was only a cover.

Regardless, society can’t pick and choose its whistleblowers. A software engineer who worked at Google for eight years is going to have a lot of interesting things to say about what goes on at that company, and we would be fools not to listen. Besides – as Vorhies himself said – his supposedly “fringe” views are held by many more people than the media would like us to believe, and we’d be wise to consult trends.google.com before dismissing them as unhinged tinfoil hattery.

I interviewed Vorhies for Progressive Radio Network, because Google already blacklists my site, so I haven’t got far to fall. Google is not a search company, not an email company, not even an ad sales company. It is a surveillance and social engineering project. No one knows that better than the people who work there.

Reading the internal documents a massive behavioral-control matrix starts to take shape, complete with “nudges” in the proper direction and Orwellian linguistic gymnastics (“machine learning fairness,” “badness vector”) to frame this social control scheme as a bloodless, AI-directed utopia. We must never forget that there are people who program the algorithms we’ve entrusted with our data, and those people do not work for us. Google’s origins are intertwined with the CIA and DARPA. Google is Big Brother […]

via Google Is Not a Search Engine, It Is a Social Engineering Program

via Saudis Panic Over Trump’s Talk of Discussions w/Iranian President Rouhani

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/nonprofit-drug-maker-produces-tb-antibiotic-after-private-companies-wouldnt?

PBS News Hour Aug 22, 2019

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of a new tuberculosis antibiotic this month could be a significant win not only for TB patients, but for a burgeoning nonprofit model for developing prescription drugs.

Please see link for entire article, but in essence this is important for a number of reasons:

• • The new drug, pretomanid, developed by the nonprofit TB Alliance, achieved a 90% success rate among patients with highly drug-resistant forms of TB who took the antibiotic as part of a three-drug, all-oral regimen over a six month period.
  • Some LLMD’s are using tuberculosis drugs successfully in refractory Lyme/MSIDS patients
  • Evidently there has been a pharmaceutical exodus from the antibiotic business due to lack of economic incentive
  • Pharmaceutical funding has shifted toward drugs that will yield more money such as cancer drugs, because drugs for chronic illnesses are immediately put to use and taken for long periods of time
  • According to some, the only sustainable model for antibiotics are nonprofits with endowments. Endowments cover basic operational costs and allow for a lengthy and tedious discovery process for antibiotics and drugs that are needed but aren’t profitable
  • Nonprofits; however, cut costs by having a reduced staff without laboratories, requiring them to partner with other labs, academic institutions, or research organizations as well as develop relationships with for-profit companies for toxicology, chemical combinations and dosages, and the actual manufacturing of the drugs […]

via Nonprofit Drug Maker Produces TB Antibiotic After Private Companies Wouldn’t — Madison Area Lyme Support Group

from Dean Baker

I know that reality often has little place in our political debates, but is there any way we can the New York Times and other news outlets to stop saying that the U.S. economy is the world’s largest? It happens not to be true.

According to the I.M.F., using purchasing power parity measures, which most economists view as the best measure, China passed the United States in 2015 and is now more than 25 percent larger. Maybe reporters and editors get a kick out of saying that the U.S. is the world’s largest economy, but since it happens not to be true, it would be good if they stopped saying it […]

via The U.S. economy is not the world’s largest — Real-World Economics Review Blog

Exclusive: CPEC master plan revealed

[SEE: India Takes Kashmir To Block China-Pak Ec. Corridor, While US Agitates Taiwan and Hong Kong ]

China Appears to Understand the Risks in Kashmir More Than India or Pakistan

Solar power has become cheaper than grid electricity across China, a development that could boost the prospects of industrial and commercial solar, according to a new study. The post Solar now ‘cheaper than grid electricity’ in every Chinese city, study finds appeared first on RenewEconomy. via Solar now ‘cheaper than grid electricity’ in every Chinese city, […]

via Solar now ‘cheaper than grid electricity’ in every Chinese city, study finds — RenewEconomy — Antinuclear

By Craig Murray | August 13, 2019

The highly dubious death of Jeffrey Epstein in a US maximum security prison is another strong reason not to extradite Julian Assange into one – particularly as many of the same people who are relieved by Epstein’s death would like to see Assange dead too.

But there is every reason to fear Assange is already in danger, in Belmarsh maximum security prison, where he is currently incarcerated. As the great journalist John Pilger tweeted six days ago:

Do not forget Julian #Assange. Or you will lose him.
I saw him in Belmarsh prison and his health has deteriorated. Treated worse than a murderer, he is isolated, medicated and denied the tools to fight the bogus charges of US extradition. I now fear for him. Do not forget him.

There is no official explanation as to why Julian’s health has continued to deteriorate so alarmingly in Belmarsh. Nobody genuinely believes him to be a violent danger, so there is absolutely no call for him to be imprisoned in the facility which houses the hardcore terrorist cases.

Assange is fighting major legal cases in the UK, Sweden and the United States, yet is permitted visitors for only two hours per fortnight, inclusive of time spent with his three sets of lawyers. All of his visitors have been alarmed by his state of physical health and many have been alarmed by his apparent disorientation and confusion […]

via Assange Must Not Also Die in Jail

By Linda Pentz Gunter | Beyond Nuclear | August 11, 2019

The headline — Police probe opened into rumours of unsafe tap water in Paris — raised hopes that nuclear operators might finally be held accountable for what appears to be routine radioactive contamination of drinking water in France.

News stories had circulated after a French radiological testing laboratory published findings on June 17, 2019, that more than six million French residents were drinking water contaminated with tritium released by the country’s nuclear power plants and other nuclear installations.

The laboratory — L’association pour le contrôle de la radioactivité dans l’Ouest or ACRO — raised the alarm because, it said, the presence of tritium implied there could be other radioactive isotopes in the water as well. None of the tritium levels they measured on this occasion, exceeded those French health authorities have established as “safe”, but research in the past has found higher levels, especially in groundwater, rivers and streams.

The Tricastin nuclear site — source of multiple leaks and radioactive releases over decades. (Creative Commons/xklima)

That “acceptable” level is 100 Becquerels per liter, not quite as arbitrary as the shocking 10,000 Bq/L level set by the World Health Organization, in thrall to the nuclear power-promoting International Atomic Energy Agency through a 1959 agreement.

The cities affected included Paris and its suburbs, and other large population areas in the Loire and Vienne regions of France such Orléans, Tours and Nantes.

Unsurprisingly, the story spread like wildfire, especially across social media, causing alarm among residents in the communities cited — 268 in all.

But the police investigation in Paris was not of EDF, the country’s chief nuclear facility operator. It was to root out fear-mongering purveyors of “fake news” among the citizenry who, according to the French state, were unnecessarily spreading panic among the populace by claiming drinking water containing tritium is unsafe.

It is.

The independent radiological testing lab CRIIRAD (Commission for Independent Research and Information on Radioactivity) denounced what it called the “trivialization of tritium contamination” and warned French citizens not to be lulled by the 100 Bq/L levels set by the authorities and especially not by the WHO’s 10,000 Bq/L standard. CRIIRAD said the level for tritium in drinking water should be set between 10 and 30 Bq/L.

For context, in our report, Leak First, Fix Later, we noted that the “naturally occurring” levels of tritium found in surface and groundwater is, at its highest, 1 Bq/l. Therefore, tritium is almost non-existent in water in nature.

To CRIIRAD, it is therefore all the more outrageous that that the levels for radiological contamination in France are set at “more than 100 times higher than the maximum allowed for chemical carcinogens.”

Tritium is radioactive hydrogen and is therefore assimilated by all living things as water. It has a half life of 12.3 years. It is produced in huge quantities in nuclear reactor cores, then released into the environment as a gas or in liquid discharges. Tritium cannot be filtered out of water and tritium released into the air can return in rainfall. All nuclear power plants release tritium, and nuclear reprocessing facilities — such as the one at La Hague on the French north coast — release even larger amounts.

These releases, including into rivers, streams and the sea, are regulated by authorities but, as CRIIRAD points out, at levels that are not so much safe as unavoidable, effectively granting nuclear installations “permission to pollute.”

“The liquid and atmospheric releases of tritium cause contamination of the air, water, the aquatic and terrestrial environment and the food chain,” wrote CRIIRAD in a statement put out after the tritiated drinking water news broke.

When rumors began to fly that drinking tap water had been banned, authorities quickly stepped in to “reassure” people that the levels of tritium in the water — already not actually safe according to CRIIRAD — were of no concern.

The criminality of nuclear plants across France releasing huge amounts of tritium into the environment was quickly turned on its head. Instead, in a sinister but not entirely unpredictable turn of events, given that France is a nuclear state, it would be ordinary citizens who would be committing a “crime” if they were found to be “publicizing, spreading and reproducing false information intended to cause public disorder,” according to an AFP article.

In reality, there was genuine cause for concern. ACRO had found levels of tritium in drinking water at 30 Bq/L on five occasions, then at 55 Bq/L and finally at 310 Bq/L in the Loire river.

Picture entitled “Water makes milk.” In France, is that milk radioactively contaminated? (Photo: Graham Knott/Creative Commons)

But drinking tritiated water is not the end of the story — or the danger.  Even though tritiated water may pass through the human body in about 10 days, about 10% of it binds organically inside the body. Organically bound tritium remains in the body for far longer than free tritium. According to CRIIRAD, this means that beta radiation from tritium can endure inside the body for years, causing chromosomal mutations, cancers and genetic mutations.

Tritium also binds organically to organisms in the environment such as aquatic plants present in rivers and streams into which nuclear facilities release tritiated water, or crops irrigated using water contaminated with tritium. These are in turn ingested by animals and humans — setting in motion tritium’s journey up the food chain […]

via When your beverage of choice is tritium