Back to the Future with Tom “Mr. Monsanto” Vilsack
December 30th, 2020
Via: Organic Consumers Association:
President-Elect Joe Biden has nominated Tom Vilsack as Agriculture Secretary.
For anyone who is familiar with our Millions Against Monsanto campaign or who participated in March Against Monsanto during the Obama-Biden years, you know why this is bad news.
For everyone else, this is the first installment in our series of articles that will recount this history to explain why we opposed Vilsack’s nomination in 2009 and why we still do in 2021.
Tom Vilsack was “Mr. Monsanto” even before he started at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 2009. As Iowa’s governor (1999–2007), he had been named Governor of the Year by the Biotechnology Industry Organization. Today, he continues to serve agribusiness as the head of the US Dairy Export Council, which is deeply invested in perpetuating the system of CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations), the use of pesticide-drenched genetically modified feed, and the practice of keeping prices paid to farmers below the cost of production to drive the consolidation of ever-larger factory farms.
As USDA Secretary from 2009-2017, Vilsack approved more new genetically modified organisms (GMOs) than any Secretary before him or since.
Boston Dynamics: Dancing Robots
December 30th, 2020Via: Boston Dynamics:
New Factories in Chinese Internment Camps
December 28th, 2020Via: BuzzFeed News:
China has built more than 100 new facilities in Xinjiang where it can not only lock people up, but also force them to work in dedicated factory buildings right on site, BuzzFeed News can reveal based on government records, interviews, and hundreds of satellite images.
In August, BuzzFeed News uncovered hundreds of compounds in Xinjiang bearing the hallmarks of prisons or detention camps, many built during the last three years in a rapid escalation of China’s campaign against Muslim minorities including Uighurs, Kazakhs, and others. A new analysis shows that at least 135 of these compounds also hold factory buildings. Forced labor on a vast scale is almost certainly taking place inside facilities like these, according to researchers and interviews with former detainees.
Spain Plans A “Registry” For Those Who Refuse COVID Vaccine
December 28th, 2020Via: ZeroHedge:
And so, in Spain at least, government bureaucrats are fighting back, as Health Minister Salvador Illa warned the country would set up a “registry” for everybody who refuses the vaccine.
“What will be done is a registry, which will be shared with our European partners… of those people who have been offered it and have simply rejected it,” he said.
“It is not a document which will be made public and it will be done with the utmost respect for data protection.”
He added that the registry would not be made public, or delivered to employers, which begs the question: why else would the government keep a database of that information?
U.S. to Allow Small Drones to Fly Over People and at Night
December 28th, 2020Via: Reuters:
Small drones will be allowed to fly over people and at night in the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on Monday, a significant step toward their use for widespread commercial deliveries.
The FAA said its long-awaited rules for the drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles, will address security concerns by requiring remote identification technology in most cases to enable their identification from the ground.
Alexa, Hypnotize Me
December 28th, 2020You could just watch CNN.
Via: Wall Street Journal:
Reveri Health, which is free and can be accessed through Amazon Alexa, launched in August and has about 2,200 users, Dr. Spiegel says. Mindset Health, a hypnotherapy startup, received $1.1 million in venture funding a year ago, says Alex Naoumidis, its co-founder and CEO. The company’s two hypnosis apps, Mindset and Nerva, have a total of roughly 6,200 paying users, Mr. Naoumidis says.
“Last Man to Share Jail Cell with Jeffrey Epstein Died Last Month of COVID”
December 28th, 2020Via: New York Daily News:
The last man to share a cell with Jeffrey Epstein died last month in a Bronx apartment after catching coronavirus at a jail for cooperating witnesses.
Efrain “Stone” Reyes, 51, was found dead in bed on Nov. 27 at his mother’s apartment, the NYPD confirmed. In August 2019 he shared a cell with Epstein, only to be transferred to the privately-run Queens Detention Facility the day before the accused sex trafficker hanged himself, according to his family and Bureau of Prisons records.
Major Covid Vaccine Glitch Emerges: Most Europeans, Including Hospital Staff, Refuse To Take It
December 28th, 2020Via: ZeroHedge:
All is not going according to plan in the biggest global rollout of what is arguably the most important vaccine in a century, and it is not just growing US mistrust in the covid injection effort that was rolled out in record time: an unexpected spike in allergic reactions to the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine (and now, Moderna too) may prove catastrophic to widespread acceptance unless scientists can figure out what is causing it after the FDA’s rushed approval, and is also why as we reported yesterday, scientists are scrambling to identify the potential culprit causing the allergic reactions.
Making matters worse, Europe rolled out a huge COVID-19 vaccination drive on Sunday to try to rein in the coronavirus pandemic but even more Europeans than American are sceptical about the speed at which the vaccines have been tested and approved and reluctant to have the shot.
Can The U.S. Reduce Its Dependency On Chinese Rare Earths?
December 28th, 2020Via: OilPrice:
Since the days of President Jimmy Carter and the 1970s oil crisis, the United States has relentlessly pursued the utopia of energy independence. But persistent oil crises, severe oil price shocks, and the global shift to clean energy have made it glaringly obvious that Washington will never achieve true energy independence by relying solely on fossil fuels.
…
But as the shift to clean and renewable energy gains serious momentum, the United States is now facing another conundrum: It’s almost completely dependent on China for the minerals it uses to build clean energy systems.
China is a rare earth monopoly, supplying 80% of the rare earths elements (REE) used by the United States in the manufacture of solar panels, windmills, electric car batteries, cellphones, computers, national defense systems, medical equipment, and even in oil and gas technologies.
Trump Pardons Blackwater Mercenaries Who Killed 14 Iraqi Civilians in 2007
December 26th, 2020Via: Al Jazeera:
It took a drawn-out and complicated legal process for four employees of a private United States security firm to be convicted in the September 2007 killings of 14 Iraqi citizens in Baghdad’s Nisour Square.
US prosecutors said the heavily armed Blackwater contractors used sniper weapons, machine guns and grenade launchers to indiscriminately fire at civilians in the crowded traffic circle, causing massive carnage and the killing of two children.
All four men, who are US army veterans, were sentenced to lengthy prison terms.
But in an instant, US President Donald Trump undid those measures when he pardoned Nicholas Slatten, Paul Alvin Slough, Evan Shawn Liberty and Dustin Laurent Heard earlier this week, in a move described by lawyers and human rights defenders as a miscarriage of justice.
