Daily New 07/31

Daily New 07/31

Many of us are fortunate to live in safe, healthy neighborhoods, but others of us are downwind of factories, downstream of toxic dumping, or in areas without access to fresh and healthy foods,” says Alta Mauro, director of multicultural affairs. “Across the United States, racial minorities and the economically disenfranchised suffer disproportionally from the ill effects of assaults on the environment, and they often lack access to the power to protect their communities. — Is Your Neighborhood Killing You?

The EPA cited the compromised paper as evidence that the world’s most widely used herbicide glyphosate—the key ingredient in Roundup—is safe to use in its 2020 assessment, despite its own internal investigation that concluded the research paper hid Monsanto’s role as an author. Now, nearly ten years after the agency came to its conclusion, the paper’s publisher, Taylor & Francis, said it has opened its own investigation into whether the paper was ghostwritten following a formal request made by a Harvard professor and her research associate to retract the study, as first reported by Retraction Watch last week. — The EPA Relied on an Influential Glyphosate Study Even After Learning Monsanto Was a “Ghost Writer”

The “revolving door” – the interplay of personnel that assists the industrial alignment of public service and regulatory authorities – has led to key figures at both the US’s FDA and EPA having held important positions at Monsanto, or else doing so shortly after their biotech related regulatory work for the government agenc — The Amazing Revolving Door –Monsanto, FDA & EPA

Like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, world imperialism spreads War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death, throughout the world. Author Gore Vidal describes this era as “Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace’. One perpetual war which is not openly publicized is the war for profits. It takes place every single day at the point of production, and is killing increasing numbers of workers every year. Today, workers are used as “cannon fodder” both in the war in Iraq and in the war for profits at home. Workplaces have become perpetual “killing fields.” — Another U.S. Killing Field: The War at the Point of Production

Video: Why the U.S. Military is ‘Earth’s Greatest Enemy’ (w/ Abby Martin) | The Chris Hedges Report In Abby Martin’s new film, ‘Earth’s Greatest Enemy,’ she exposes how the US military has unleashed death, devastation and more pollution than any other institution in the world on the global populace.

The Incredible Shrinking Workforce To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln: Labor is prior to, independent of, and superior to capital. Without labor, capital would not exist. Labor drives the entire production process, from the extraction of energy and minerals to the manufacturing of component parts and finished products, and ultimately to the eventual transport and placement of consumer goods on store shelves. We owe the everyday conveniences we take for granted—as well as the stability of our economy—to a skilled, reliable, and readily available workforce. This makes recent labor market trends all the more troubling as a harbinger of broader economic challenges that may lie ahead. This month, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported yet another drop in the labor participation rate, which now comes in at 61.5%—0.6 percentage points lower than the first of the year and at its lowest level in 50 years outside the pandemic era. This loss of more than 1 million workers since January suggests that the labor market may, indeed, be much weaker than the BLS’ headline unemployment rate of 4.2% implies. Of course, the precarious nature of the labor market is nothing new to LISEP. For years, we’ve been highlighting the shortcomings of headline statistics—which was a key motivation behind the creation of the True Rate of Unemployment (TRU) metric, a measure of not just the jobless but those involuntarily part-time or those earning a poverty wage. In June, the TRU increased from 24.6% to 24.7%, the third consecutive monthly increase. In addition, the TRU Out of the Population (TRU OOP) metric—a measure of the percentage of the total U.S. population that is functionally unemployed—rose 0.4 percentage points to 53.6%, reflecting a larger decline in labor force participation. June marks the third consecutive month of TRU OOP increases.

PATRICK LAWRENCE: Only One Way Out for TrumpThe question ahead of Pthe latest summit with Netanyahu on Tuesday is what the U.S. president will lose — either a war, on the one hand, or on the other, the global economy and the American electorate.

Comey alleges Trump pushed prosecution over ‘8647’ seashell post Comey’s lawyers say Secret Service tracked him and investigators turned to AI and a mafia killer to bolster case Lawyers for former FBI director James Comey alleged on Tuesday that US Secret Service agents illegally surveilled Comey, Donald Trump requested regular updates into the investigation, and law enforcement turned to ChatGPT and a known mafia killer as they scrambled to find justification for criminally charging Comey for posting a picture of seashells that spelled out “8647”.

We are All Probably Exsposed to Glyphosate! A Carcinogen/Probable Varcinogen

Should I be concerned about potential exposure to glyphosate? National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health: NIOSHGlyphosate Factsheet

Glyphosate is on the Proposition 65 list because it has been identified as a carcinogen.
Proposition 65 requires businesses to determine if they must provide a warning about exposure to listed chemicals.

Glyphosate was classified as a probable human carcinogen (Group 2A) by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) partially due to strong mechanistic evidence in 2015. Since then, numerous studies of glyphosate and its formulations (GBF) have emerged. These studies can be evaluated for cancer hazard identification with the newly described ten key characteristics (KC) of carcinogens approach. Our objective was to assess all in vivo, ex vivo, and in vitro mechanistic studies of human and experimental animals (mammals) that compared exposure to glyphosate/GBF with low/no exposure counterparts for evidence of the ten KCs. — Mapping the key characteristics of carcinogens for glyphosate and its formulations: A systematic review

Trump and Supreme Court ‘Scientists’ Defend Glyphosate: Roundup’s Surprising Connection to Industrial Meat Like climate change, deforestation and bird flu, the proliferation of glyphosate is fueled by industrialized livestock production. For years, Bayer and the biotech giant it purchased, Monsanto, have faced allegations that glyphosate, the active ingredient in its popular herbicide Roundup, causes cancer. The saga has resulted in over 100,000 lawsuits, billions of dollars in settlement funds, a Supreme Court case and several actions by the Trump administration. But amidst the flurry of legal activity, few have stopped to ask a fundamental question: Why are we spraying so much glyphosate in the first place? The answer, in many cases, is animal agriculture. In the U.S., a significant amount of applied glyphosate is used to grow crops to feed farm animals, not humans. While President Donald Trump has defended glyphosate as crucial to maintaining food security, that’s an overly broad characterization. In truth, glyphosate has largely made meat production cheaper, as fewer weeds lower the cost of feed production for livestock. Some studies have found glyphosate also reduces greenhouse gas emissions from feed crops by enabling no-till agriculture.

Monsanto: “Playing God in the Garden”

A Monsanto official told thNew York Times that the corporation should not have to take responsibility for the safety of its food products. “Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food,” said Phil Angell, Monsanto’s director of corporate communications. “Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA’s job,” Angell said. — Playing God In the Garden New York Times 10/25/98. The 10/25/1998, New York Times, printed an article, Potato-Playing God in the Garden, by Michael Pollan. This article explains that Monsanto has genetically engineered a potato (Labeled “New Leaf”) that is immune to insects that attack potatoes. Monsanto has genetically engineered a naturally occurring pesticide into this new breed of potatoes. Thus the FDA, considers this potato a pesticide under present law, and this means that consumers do not have to be told that they are eating a pesticide. Monsanto sees genetic engineering as a way to get off “the pesticide treadmill” and to have environmentally safe agriculture. But this course has many pitfalls. In past articles I have explained that prior to the large scale introduction of pesticides one third of all crops were lost to insects, weeds and bacteria. Today, the loses are exactly the same because insects, bacteria, and weeds multiply quickly and develop immunity to the pesticides. This has led to more and more pesticides being used and continuously higher costs for agriculture. The great tragedy is that humans (unlike insects) do not reproduce fast enough to develop immunity to the chemicals used in farming. We now know that many pesticides cause cancer after long-term exposures. Unfortunately, there has been no extensive testing about the long-range effects of consumption of this pesticide. One of the Monsanto executives interviewed by Michael Pollan in response to questions about this issue said: “Trust Us.?!” Monsanto, it must be remembered, was one of the manufacturers of “Agent Orange” which Monsanto considered safe to spray on civilians and soldiers during the Vietnam War. Monsanto also produces other similar products: Roundup and rBGH. rBGH is used to increase milk production in cows. Monsanto wants us to “trust them” that this compound, too, is safe rBGH, when injected into cows, produces milk that contains rBGH. And when rBGH is consumed it becomes IGF-1 in the body. Recent scientific studies have shown that IGF-1 increases the risk of breast cancer and prostrate cancer.

‘Extraordinarily hot’: US heatwave stretches on with millions still under warnings Southern and central states from California to Mississippi face heat indexes above 100F amid another heat dome

Firefighters race to extinguish blazes across EU as fire weather breaks records Figures show hot, dry, windy conditions in EU are 43% more severe than the average over last 20 year

The Brockovich Report: The Data Center Water Secret Let’s talk about the water not accounted for when it comes to AI data center water use, and why local media have had to sue to find out real numbers. They say it many different ways. “We’re water-neutral.” “We recycle.” “We use closed-loop cooling.” Here is what’s not said: Most of the water a data center actually consumes never touches the building at all. When a tech company tells a county board that its new campus will use, say, 2 million gallons a year for cooling, that number is real. But it’s only the direct water. They are talking about the water that runs through the chillers on site.