Voices, The Peoples News
February 24, 2023
Published by Jedi Selman Since March 2000 to Inform and Educate
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This daily Voices, The Peoples News is posted through the blog function of www.MPEN-Ohio.net
# Indigenous / Global
Director Marcos Colón Takes an Intimate Look at Three Indigenous Leaders’ Fight to Preserve Their Ancestral Connection to Nature in the Amazon: His documentary, Stepping Softly on the Earth, which tells their stories as “a way to postpone the end of the world,” debuts in the U.S. next week.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24022023/director-marcos-colon-takes-an-intimate-look-at-three-indigenous-leaders-fight-to-preserve-their-ancestral-connection-to-nature-in-the-amazon/
# Chemicals / Drugs
Toxic wastewater from Ohio train derailment headed to Texas: Toxic wastewater used to extinguish a fire following a train derailment in Ohio is headed to a Houston suburb for disposal. Toxic wastewater used to extinguish a fire following a train derailment in Ohio has been transported to a Houston suburb for disposal, according to a county official in Texas who said there are outstanding questions about the transportation and disposal of the material.
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said at a press conference Thursday that 500,000 gallons (1.8 million liters) of the wastewater had been delivered to Deer Park, Texas.
https://apnews.com/article/ohio-texas-houston-climate-and-environment-53c8cd54e99d05b3ec7d07d1d6ef97a8
# Covid / Pandemics / Biologicals
Psychological tactics to change public behavior have concerning implications regardless of where you stand in this polarized vaccine information war fueled by the media. Government scientists deploying fear, shame and scapegoating to change minds is an ethically dubious practice that in some respects resembles the tactics used by totalitarian regimes such as China, where the state inflicts pain on a subset of its population in an attempt to eliminate beliefs and behaviour they perceive to be deviant.
Brief Summary: This study tests different messages about vaccinating against COVID-19 once the vaccine becomes available. Participants are randomized to 1 of 12 arms, with one control arm and one baseline arm. We will compare the reported willingness to get a COVID-19 vaccine at 3 and 6 months of it becoming available between the 10 intervention arms to the 2 control arms. Study participants are recruited online by Lucid, which matches census based sampling in online recruitment.
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04460703
# Economy / Finance / Trade / Banks
Corruption at the Fifth Estate: Lack of disclosure on de facto lobbying at think tanks has triggered a bipartisan reaction. Earlier this year, one of Washington’s preeminent think tanks, the Atlantic Council, was caught in a pay-for-play scheme promoting an authoritarian regime that happens to pay some of its bills. The incident could reignite a burgeoning bipartisan coalition of anti-kleptocracy lawmakers that has put foreign corruption in its crosshairs.
https://prospect.org/power/2023-02-24-based-corruption-fifth-estate-think-tanks/
‘Open season’: Washington couple push for Supreme Court unrealized gains ruling: With a petition that has the “potential to be the most important tax case of the twenty-first century,” two Washington State residents, Charles and Kathleen Moore, have taken their fight against one kind of taxation all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_0d5e2d2c-b3fc-11ed-b19e-c34edf4172e0.html
Biden should appoint a prominent dissenter to the post of Fed vice chair: Minutes of the Federal Reserve meeting show that all members of the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee agreed to keep strangling the economy with still more quarter-point rate hikes later this year, and some even wanted half-point hikes. Maybe they should read this study by the Fed’s own staff economists, which found that the Fed’s inflation target of 2 percent is impossible to reach without a deep recession.
https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2023-02-24-federal-reserve-interest-rate-folly/
Minutes of the Federal Reserve meeting: https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomcminutes20230201.htm
Post-COVID Inflation Dynamics; Higher for Longer: Our model projects that conditional on the SEP unemployment rate path and a rapid deceleration of core goods prices, core PCE inflation moderates to only 2.75 percent by the end of 2025: inflation will be higher for longer. A deep recession would be necessary to achieve the SEP’s projected inflation path. A simple reduced-form welfare analysis, which abstracts from any danger of inflation expectations becoming unanchored, suggests that such a recession would not be optimal.
https://www.clevelandfed.org/publications/working-paper/2023/wp-2306-post-covid-inflation-dynamics-higher-for-longer
# Education / Schools
Most US states failing to protect schools’ water from lead contaminants, study finds: More than half of all U.S. states are failing to protect schools’ drinking water from lead contamination. As part of their research, the organization graded every state on their current regulations. It shows a majority of states nationwide received a failing grade for its policies addressing lead in the water at schools. This report found as schools test their water, they’re discovering widespread lead contamination.
https://www.yahoo.com/now/national-report-grades-states-policies-233853417.html
School in Uproar Over Alleged ‘Master Class in Antisemitism’: Staff and students at Mount Eden High School are upset that the English teacher is only now on leave despite disturbing claims surfacing two months ago. Staff and students at Mount Eden High School are upset that the English teacher is only now on leave despite disturbing claims surfacing two months ago.
https://sfist.com/2023/02/23/hayward-teacher-placed-on-leave-over-for-allegedly-giving-a-master-class-in-antisemitism/
# Energy / Pipelines / Mining / Chemical
The Alarming Link Between the Ohio Train Derailment’s Vinyl Chloride Leak and Smart Meters: A Mercenary Scientist Dictating Public Policy: As concern grows for East Palestine, Ohio following the train derailment, news headlines are reporting adverse health effects on the liver associated with vinyl chloride. The liver may not be the only concern. “Vinyl chloride is a known human carcinogen. The colorless manmade gas is used to make polyvinyl chloride, commonly referred to as PVC, a type of hard plastic resin. The gas is linked to “an increased risk of a rare form of liver cancer” known as hepatic angiosarcoma. That type of cancer accounts for only 2% of liver tumors, and according to a 2018 journal publication, is ‘exceptionally deadly.’ The average life expectancy for those who are diagnosed is just 10 months.”
https://beforeitsnews.com/health/2023/02/the-alarming-link-between-the-ohio-train-derailments-vinyl-chloride-leak-and-smart-meters-a-mercenary-scientist-dictating-public-policy-3049308.html
The Lie Giuliani Told Victims of the Ohio Railroad Disaster: In 2001, “America’s Mayor” downplayed the threat of the toxins from 9/11.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-lie-giuliani-told-victims-of-the-ohio-railroad-disaster
Oversight Republicans are launching an investigation into the Department of Transportation’s handling of a toxic train derailment in Ohio. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has come under criticism for his response.
https://www.politico.com/minutes/congress/02-24-2023/oversight-letter-to-buttigieg-ohio/
# Energy / Pipelines / Mining / Global
Researchers find 26 Australian species recovered from the brink of extinction: In total, 15 mammals, eight birds, four frogs, one reptile and one fish were found to have made varying degrees of recovery, including the humpback whale, which was delisted by the government’s scientific panel last year.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-24/australian-animals-no-longer-meet-criteria-as-threatened-species/102020276
Despite Oil Company Ties, COP28 President-Designate Vows to Uphold 1.5°C Temperature Goal: Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, the controversial COP28 President-designate, has said the Paris agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is “non-negotiable.’
https://www.ecowatch.com/cop28-president-paris-agreement.html
# Environment / Climate / Interior
‘It’s like a crime scene’ what’s happened to the Rio Grande in far west Texas: Looking with a generations-long view at a colossal shift in river health. Retired from her work as a fraud prevention manager for the U.S. Department of State, Padilla said she’s had more time to reflect on the reshaping of the river in her own lifetime.
“When you cut the water off, everything changes. Not only nature, but you change people’s way of living, the economy, the biodiversity,” she said. “It is so colossal. It’s like a crime scene.”
https://sourcenm.com/2023/02/22/its-like-a-crime-scene-whats-happened-to-the-rio-grande-in-far-west-texas/
Inside EPA’s close relationship with a Montana mining company: When faced with new research on health risks in Butte, the agency turned to industry for guidance. Butte is home to a massive Superfund site overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency. Past mining has polluted the soil and water in and around Butte, and when Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) abandoned the mine in 1982, it left a pit that’s filled with water so toxic that it kills flocks of birds that land on it.
https://www.hcn.org/articles/mining-inside-the-epas-close-relationship-with-a-montana-mining-company
# Environment / Climate / Global
Guilbeault recommends emergency order to save Canada’s last spotted owls: If approved, it will be the third time in the 20-year history of the federal Species at Risk Act that an emergency order has been issued. An emergency order would give Ottawa the power to step in and make decisions that normally fall to the province, such as whether to allow logging in the owl’s vanishing old-growth forest habitat in southwest B.C.
https://thenarwhal.ca/bc-emergency-order-spotted-owl/
# Gov / Politics / US
An ode to Jimmy Carter, the outdoors president: President Carter added protections to more than 157 million acres of public land and created 39 total national park units. Altogether making up one-third more acreage than the state of California. He protected more than almost any president, bested only by the 230 million acres under Theodore Roosevelt.
https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/environment/jimmy-carter-outdoors-president/
# Law Enforcement
Texas governor says most gun crimes involve illegally owned weapons. That’s not true for mass shootings.
According to an investigation by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, the majority of the state’s 19 mass shootings over the past six decades were carried out by men who legally possessed firearms.
https://www.propublica.org/article/texas-greg-abbott-guns-crime-mass-shootings
# Legal / DOJ
Defendants in corruption case don’t want expert to testify about politics: Attorneys representing four people indicted in a federal bribery and conspiracy case involving Illinois’ largest utility company are worried about a political science professor
https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_0d5e2d2c-b3fc-11ed-b19e-c34edf4172e0.html
# Media
Ukraine first, America later – The Grayzone live: Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate cover Biden’s decision to visit Zelensky in Ukraine rather than meet Americans suffering from the impact of a chemical spill in East Palestine, Ohio. They will also discuss the collapse of landmark anti-missile treaties in the face of US escalation in Ukraine, and more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOlvY_SN678
# Medical
One Texas Judge Will Decide Fate of Abortion Pill Used by Millions of American Women: Mifepristone, also known as RU-486, is one component of a two-drug regimen used for medication abortion and has been on the US market for more than 20 years. Anti-abortion groups, galvanized by the Supreme Court’s ruling in June overturning the constitutional right to an abortion, have now set their sights on obtaining a ban on the abortion pill.
https://news.yahoo.com/texas-judge-decide-fate-abortion-181047914.html
Mental Health Care Must Promote Wellness, Not Just Treat Illness: In their efforts to prevent and treat illness, mental health professionals have often relegated wellness, those attributes we associate with things like finding happiness and meaning in life, to an afterthought. That shortsighted approach is weakening an already struggling mental health system.
https://undark.org/2023/02/23/mental-health-care-must-promote-wellness-not-just-treat-illness/
# Medical Science
Science Falls Behind as Syphilis Stages Another Comeback: Despite being one of the oldest known sexually transmitted infections, with possible origins in the 14th century, as well as intense public health initiatives over many decades, syphilis receives little attention from researchers. But new lab techniques are allowing scientists to take a closer look. Especially concerning, doctors say, are cases of congenital syphilis, where the infection is passed from a pregnant person to their fetus during pregnancy, which have nearly tripled in the same time period.
https://www.realclearscience.com/2023/02/21/science_falls_behind_as_syphilis_stages_a_comeback_882926.html
# Medical Technology
Researchers injected a leech with gel that transforms into a soft electrode, letting them control its muscle contractions, this gel could eventually be used in the brain to treat neurological conditions without surgery. A new technique harnesses the body’s chemistry to create the conducting material
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/gel-body-sugar-grow-electrodes-fish
# Military / Global
Experts react: What’s behind the drone strike on an Iranian military facility? Drones are the new weapons of war, causing military tactics and force structure to be reimagined. They bring a particularly deadly reality to guerrilla warfare, posing an existential threat in many theaters, especially in the Middle East. Now, Iranian drones are being deployed in North Africa, posing a direct threat to Morocco.
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/experts-react-whats-behind-the-drone-strike-on-an-iranian-military-facility/
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