A speaker at an event I recently attended asked why U.S. food companies put butylated hydroxyltoluene, a food preservative and endocrine disruptor, in cereal sold stateside, while in Europe the same companies formulate the same product without BHT. There are three answers to that question: The European Union prohibits numerous harmful ingredients U.S. regulatory agencies allow. Well-informed European citizens have organized …
Spitting In The Face of Obama
WINSTON CHURCHILL famously said that democracy is the worst political system, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. Anyone involved with political life knows that that is British understatement. Churchill also said that the best argument against democracy is a five minute talk with an average voter. How true. I have witnessed 20 …
Roundup: TEPCO blasted for concealing latest radioactive leak for nearly a year
Local fisherman in Fukushima Prefecture, home to Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s stricken Daichi nuclear power station, blamed the plant’s operator on Wednesday for knowingly allowing radioactive substances from a rainwater drainage ditch linked to one of its buildings to flow freely into the sea since April last year. The leader of a local fishing corporative, Masakazu Yabuki, lambasted the embattled …
Women Over 65 Own Nearly a Third of Iowa’s Farmland—Can They Prevent the Next Dust Bowl?
In her late 50s, Alice Ramsay returned to the Iowa farm where she’d grown up. She had graduated college in Missouri and spent most of her adulthood in Colorado employed as a teacher. But after her parents passed away, she bought up the inherited land from her brother and sister, and, in 2000, she moved back. “I’d been gone for …
Clinton Foundation raked in cash from right-wing regimes, corporations
Several press reports last week highlight details of the major donors to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, including right-wing Persian Gulf monarchies, big defense contractors, and an array of corporations and governments seeking influence with the US political establishment—and potentially in the next White House. Founded in 2001 after the end of Bill Clinton’s second term as president, …
Everything You Wanted to Know About the Bee Die-Off
For years, honeybees were dying, and no one knew why. There have been some glimmers of hope recently. The number of bee deaths wasn’t as dramatic last winter. Studies began pointing the finger at pesticides. But a simple fact remains: Bees still are on the decline, and no one’s sure why. They’re dying in large numbers, and scientists are scrambling …
Monsanto Wants to Know Why People Doubt Science
On Twitter recently, someone asked the question “Why do people doubt science?” Accompanying the tweet was a link to an article in National Geographic that implied people who are suspicious of vaccines, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), climate change, fluoridated water and various other phenomena are confused, adhere to conspiracy theories, are motivated by ideology or are misinformed as a result of …
American Sniper vs. Baghdad Sniper
Chris Kyle’s story is now enshrined in celluloid, taking over $300 million at the box office, but the Islamic Army in Iraq also had its legend, “Juba” — the Baghdad Sniper. A Texas jury found former Marine Eddie Ray Routh guilty of capital murder; in 2013 he shot to death former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, the man behind American Sniper …
How Psychedelics Might Transform the Human Mind and Lead Humanity Towards Intellectual and Artistic Heights
The idea of a Psychedelic Renaissance — as captured in the title of Ben Sessa’s book The Psychedelic Renaissance — is growing in the health professions, and as a Feb. 9, 2015, article in The New Yorker phrased it, current clinical research is “part of a renaissance of psychedelic research,” so we see the phrase is catching on in the general culture too. To …
Fascism is Coming Alive Again
The wildly exaggerated threat of so-called Islamic terrorism is being shamelessly used by some western governments to boost their flagging fortunes at a time of economic malaise. Marketing fear is a sure-fire political ploy, as the Bush administration showed. But if you think promotion of “terrorism” hysteria in order to curtail democratic freedoms is something new, have a look at …