Dans l'enfer de la fracturation. The New Farm Bill Shows What's Wrong With US Food. We need your help to sustain grassroots, groundbreaking journalism. Make a tax-deductible contribution to Truthout now by clicking here. (Photo: David Baron / Flickr)Thomas Jefferson believed that the U.S. ought to be a nation of small farmers, each owning his own land, independent and self-sufficient. But the new farm bill is all about what’s wrong with food production in the U.S. now. A quick review of the $1 trillion 2013 farm bill — it’s actually the Agriculture Reform, Food and Jobs Act of 2012; Congress didn’t get around to passing it last year — not only makes it clear how small farmers are second-class citizens, but also pushes for chemical sugar substitutes and GMO food and fails to take provisions to prepare American agriculture for climate change. If that’s not enough, the bill also cuts food stamps to the poor by about $20.5 billion.
Cuts to Food Stamp Program It is the case that food stamp usage is up by at least 70 percent since the financial crisis in 2008. Climate Change?
Néocolonialism/e. 5 Fatal Flaws in President Obama's New Fracking Regulations. The Huffington Post, May 21, 2013 5 Fatal Flaws in President Obama's New Fracking Regulations By Kassie Siegel They're popping up all over America's public lands, bringing toxic chemicals and dangerous pollution to beautiful wild areas and nearby farms and communities. Fracking rigs have spread like poisonous mushrooms across land managed by the federal government, which leases millions of acres a year to oil and gas companies. Most Americans don't know that 90 percent of wells drilled on our public lands are now fracked. There is, however, growing awareness of the dangers of fracking.
This process, also known as hydraulic fracturing, involves blasting millions of gallons of water, mixed with industrial chemicals (including carcinogens), into the earth to fracture rock formations. But anyone hoping the Obama Administration would protect our public lands and public health from fracking pollution got a sobering reality check late last week. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Kassie Siegel: 5 Fatal Flaws in President Obama's New Fracking Regulations. They're popping up all over America's public lands, bringing toxic chemicals and dangerous pollution to beautiful wild areas and nearby farms and communities. Fracking rigs have spread like poisonous mushrooms across land managed by the federal government, which leases millions of acres a year to oil and gas companies.
Most Americans don't know that 90 percent of wells drilled on our public lands are now fracked. There is, however, growing awareness of the dangers of fracking. This process, also known as hydraulic fracturing, involves blasting millions of gallons of water, mixed with industrial chemicals (including carcinogens), into the earth to fracture rock formations. But anyone hoping the Obama Administration would protect our public lands and public health from fracking pollution got a sobering reality check late last week. Proposed fracking regulations unveiled Friday by new Interior Secretary Sally Jewell would do little to safeguard our air, water or wildlife. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Les Pinocchio du développement durable. Death metal: tin mining in Indonesia | Environment. Suge doesn't have a mobile phone, so he uses a friend's to tell us the news: he doesn't want any visitors and he won't talk. His boss has told him not to say anything. They're neighbours and the mine's just up the road and he needs this job – the job he hopes to go back to when he gets better, inshallah – because mining is good money. Everything is OK. Just please don't come. We leave at dawn. At the bottom of the sandy dunes sit wide turquoise craters, looked over by gritty hills where haphazard tents made from tarpaulins and thatch serve as shelters for the men descending into the hollowed-out pools with pickaxes and buckets.
The tin that 44-year-old Suge has mined over the past 12 years on Bangka island – a granite outcrop just east of Sumatra in Indonesia – has been in heavy demand for the past few centuries. There is a chain here: Bangka and Belitung produce 90% of Indonesia's tin, and Indonesia is the world's second-largest exporter of the metal. His wife looks forlornly away. The Privatization of Water: Nestlé Denies that Water is a Fundamental Human Right. The current Chairman and former CEO of Nestlé, the largest producer of food products in the world, believes that the answer to global water issues is privatization. This statement is on record from the wonderful company that has peddled junk food in the Amazon, has invested money to thwart the labeling of GMO-filled products, has a disturbing health and ethics record for its infant formula, and has deployed a cyber army to monitor Internet criticism and shape discussions in social media.
This is apparently the company we should trust to manage our water, despite the record of large bottling companies like Nestlé having a track record of creating shortages: Large multinational beverage companies are usually given water-well privileges (and even tax breaks) over citizens because they create jobs, which is apparently more important to the local governments than water rights to other taxpaying citizens.
Here is just one example, among many, of his company’s concern for the public thus far: WikiLeaks Cables Reveal State Department Promoting GMOs Abroad. Darcey O'Callaghan: US embassies are aggressively and systematically promoting biotechnology and GMO food abroad. PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore. On May 25 in 36 countries around the world there will be protests against Monsanto and the promotion of GMO in agriculture and animal food products. Now joining us to talk about Monsanto and the role of the U.S. State Department in promoting Monsanto and GMO around the world is Darcy O'Callaghan.
Thanks for joining us, Darcy. DARCY O'CALLAGHAN, INTERNATIONAL DIRECTOR, FOOD & WATER WATCH: Thanks for having me. JAY: So you issued a report where you went through--I guess it is thousands of State Department cables and looking at the role of the U.S. O'CALLAGHAN: Right. JAY: Now, I would suppose someone from the State Department might say, well, yeah, but that's what we do, we promote American business.
O'CALLAGHAN: Right. O'CALLAGHAN: That's right. O'CALLAGHAN: That's right. JAY: Okay. The DC Circuit Court Versus Workers' Rights. (Photo: transportworkers / Flickr)The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is facing the greatest crisis in its 78-year history. On Thursday, May 16, the full Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions held a hearing on the president's nominees - three Democrats, two Republicans - to the National Labor Relations Board. Without swift confirmation of these nominees, the NLRB will soon be reduced to zero members, and for the first time in board history, the president will be unable to appoint members by recess for at least a year.
By blocking the nominations, Republicans appear intent on incapacitating the NLRB for much of the president's second term. For the past two years, Republicans and anti-union groups have gone all-out to stymie the work of the labor board, and they have found a powerful ally in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. But this language cut no ice with the DC Circuit, which ruled that the notice-posting requirement violated employers' free speech. European Banks and Pension Funds Fuel Land Grabs in Uganda. Seven Companies Polluting the World Without Consequences. Truthout is able to confront the forces of greed and regression only because we don’t take corporate funding. Support us in this fight: make a tax-deductible donation today by clicking here. (Image: Polluting factory via Shutterstock) The only thing more horrifying than rampant industrial pollution is pollution without consequences.
Yet, companies across the globe freely dump toxic substances into the environment and get off with minimal punishments, sometimes even walking away from a pollution incident without being held accountable. That leaves residents, and governments, with the bill for cleaning up potentially life-threatening environmental pollution, a process that may take decades. Take a look at some of the worst offenders. 1. This company’s in the news this week thanks to a benzene spill near Parachute, Colorado. 2. The aerospace giant generates tremendous amounts of pollution in the course of its daily operations, including at a now abandoned facility in Calverton, New York. [23-Apr-13] Council of Canadians raises climate change and drought concerns in Nestlé case. MEDIA RELEASE For Immediate Release April 23, 2013 The Council of Canadians, represented by Ecojustice, submitted an affidavit to the Environmental Review Tribunal (ERT) for a case involving Nestlé’s water takings in Hillsburgh, Ontario.
The Council cited concerns about climate change and the lack of groundwater indicators for droughts in the Ontario Low Water Response Plan. Nestlé and Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment have asked the ERT to approve a settlement agreement which would effectively remove any drought-based restrictions on pumping at Nestlé’s well in Hillsburgh. This well takes up to 1.13 million litres of water per day from the best bedrock aquifer in Ontario to serve Nestlé’s bottled water operation in Aberfoyle. “We find it very troubling that the Ontario government has settled with Nestlé,” says Maude Barlow, National Chairperson for the Council of Canadians. “Ontario must prioritize communities’ right to water above a private company’s thirst for profit.