RSN: Robert Reich | The American Oligarchy Purrs

It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News

WE WILL NOT SIT BACK PASSIVELY AND ALLOW RSN TO TANK - Right now everything we do is threatened on an immediate basis by lack of funding. That is amplified by this month’s lack of support. We are not just going to stand idly by as the organization is destabilized by we amounts to very minimal support. If that offends you, be aware that it offends us too. Please donate what you can. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

Sure, I'll make a donation!

---

Robert Reich | The American Oligarchy Purrs

Robert Reich, Guardian UK
Excerpt: "The president is the best thing that ever happened to the corporate elite, a distraction on the lines of the old Jim Crow."
READ MORE

Organizers Refocus Message at Seattle's Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone
Vanessa Misciagna, King5
Misciagna writes: "Thousands of protesters came to the so-called 'Capitol Hill Organized Protest,' or 'CHOP,' in Seattle on Sunday. The area was originally called the 'Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone,' or 'CHAZ,' by protesters."
READ MORE

Sanders Proposes 10% Cut to Pentagon Budget for Social Programs
teleSUR
Excerpt: "United States Senator Bernie Sanders announced Friday he will introduce an amendment in the coming days to cut the Department of Defense's US$740 billion budget by 10 percent and redirect that money toward healthcare, housing, and education in the poorest communities."
READ MORE

A man was shot during a protest in Albuquerque on June 15 while a crowd attempted to pull down a statue of conquistador Juan de Oñate. (photo: Adolphe Pierre-Louis/AP)

Police Detain Armed Militia Members After Man Is Shot at Albuquerque Protest
Katie Shepherd, The Washington Post
Shepherd writes: "Protesters in Albuquerque wrapped a chain around the neck of a bronze statue and began tugging, chanting 'Tear it down.'"

Their efforts to pull down a monument of Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate suddenly stopped as four shots rang out.

Most people instinctively turned toward the noise, videos from the scene show. A few screamed. Just yards away, a group of militia men sporting militarylike garb and carrying semiautomatic rifles formed a protective circle around the gunman.

The gunshots, which left one man in critical but stable condition, have set off a cascade of public outcry denouncing the unregulated militia’s presence and the shooting, although police have yet to announce an arrest or describe exactly what happened. The victim is also unidentified.

“The heavily armed individuals who flaunted themselves at the protest, calling themselves a ‘civil guard,’ were there for one reason: To menace protesters, to present an unsanctioned show of unregulated force,” New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) said in a statement. “To menace the people of New Mexico with weaponry — with an implicit threat of violence — is on its face unacceptable; that violence did indeed occur is unspeakable.”

Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller (D) said the statue would now be speedily removed as an “urgent matter of public safety” until authorities determine a next step.

“The shooting tonight was a tragic, outrageous and unacceptable act of violence and it has no place in our city,” Keller said in a statement. “Our diverse community will not be deterred by acts meant to divide or silence us. Our hearts go out [to] the victim, his family and witnesses whose lives were needlessly threatened tonight.”

Recent protests against Oñate statues in New Mexico mirror similar calls to tear down Confederate monuments amid a rise in Black Lives Matter demonstrations following the death of George Floyd, the man killed after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes.

In the hours leading up to the violence on Monday, protesters faced off with members of an armed militia that calls itself the New Mexico Civil Guard and counterprotesters toting “All lives matter” signs.

One group sought to tear down a monument to Oñate, a 16th-century despot who massacred indigenous people. The other set out as self-designated protectors of the statue, creating a heavily armed presence at the park in Albuquerque’s historic Old Town. Aside from a few small scuffles over signs near the monument, the protest had largely been peaceful, though tense at times.

Then, a white man in a blue T-shirt appeared to rile the crowd, according to video obtained by KOB4. People erupted in shouts, and the man took a few steps back. A masked protester swung a skateboard and struck him in the shoulder. The man back-pedaled out of the crowd but continued to exchange shouts with protesters.

Someone in the video encouraged people to follow the man and get his license plate number. Several people followed him, and one tackled him to the ground. As he tried to stand back up and three people tried to hit him again, the man in blue pulled a gun and fired four shots, striking one man and scattering the crowd.

In a second video that captured the moments following the shooting, the gunman sat in the middle of a road as the New Mexico Civil Guard militia members formed a circle around him. One man carrying a semiautomatic rifle, camouflage fatigues and a military-style helmet kicked the handgun away from the man and stood with his foot on top of the weapon.

Police responded to the scene with tear gas and stun grenades to force the crowd back. Officers detained several members of the militia group, according to reporters and witnesses at the scene. Video showed officers placing the apparent gunman into a cruiser.

Police have not released any information about the suspected shooter or said whether they believe he has any connection to the armed militia.

The militia, which identified itself to a New York Times reporter covering the protest Monday, has a controversial history. The right-wing group has repeatedly shown up at Black Lives Matter protests in recent weeks with guns and militarylike garb.

On Facebook, the group has shared materials encouraging people to arm themselves, promoted military training on infantry tactics and “ambushing,” and shared multiple posts opposing the leveling of monuments to Confederate figures in the South and Oñate in New Mexico. Members of the group recently told the Eastern New Mexico News their aim was to protect businesses from damage during protests. They claimed they had been in contact with police and were following guidance given to them by officials.

Militias like the New Mexico Civil Guard and other armed, far-right counterprotesters have been a controversial presence at Black Lives Matter protests across the United States. At an Albuquerque protest earlier this month, video of police talking to an armed militia group spurred allegations that officers were coordinating with the group in an official capacity, although police denied the claim.

At least one New Mexico lawmaker viewed the militia’s consistent presence at protests as suspicious enough to warrant further inquiry. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) called on the Justice Department to investigate the shooting Monday night.

“This is not the first report of heavily armed civilian militias appearing at protests around New Mexico in recent weeks. These extremists cannot be allowed to silence peaceful protests or inflict violence,” Heinrich said on Twitter on Monday night

Some critics have drawn contrasts between police response to largely peaceful and unarmed Black Lives Matter protests and the heavily armed, militia-led demonstrations against coronavirus restrictions in April and May. Monday’s shooting also led some critics to note that the armed militia members and alleged shooter were taken into custody by police without incident, but the Black Lives Matter protests are responding to incidents where police have shot and killed unarmed black men.

“Notice how calmly they’re all being detained,” former housing secretary Julián Castro tweeted Monday night. “Don’t tell me George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks and Eric Garner — who did not harm anybody — couldn’t be treated differently.”

Meanwhile, the chief of police vowed to investigate any group that sought to stoke violence at the protest.

“We are receiving reports about vigilante groups possibly instigating this violence,” Albuquerque Police Chief Michael Geier said in a statement. “If this is true [we] will be holding them accountable to the fullest extent of the law, including federal hate group designation and prosecution.”

READ MORE

Two police stand at their vehicle. (photo: Guardian Liberty Voice)

Calling the Cops on Someone With Mental Illness Can Go Terribly Wrong. Here's a Better Idea.
Sigal Samuel, Vox
Samuel writes: "In the US, at least one in four people killed by the police has a serious mental health problem."
READ MORE

A local volunteer disinfects a home with a chlorine solution, in Zapotal, Ecuador. (photo: Santiago Arcos/Reuters)

Latin America Reels as Coronavirus Pandemic Gains Pace
Natalie Alcoba, Al Jazeera
Alcoba writes: "Hilda Benavides cooks for 100 people now in Puente Alto, one of the poorest areas around the Chilean capital of Santiago, and among the hardest hit by the novel coronavirus."
READ MORE

'As the world slowly returns to something resembling 'normal,' traffic is on the rise.' (photo: Al Seib/Getty Images)

What Lockdown? Traffic Returns, and so Do Carbon Emissions
Shannon Osaka, Grist
Osaka writes: "It turns out even a global pandemic can't keep humans from spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere." 

 The COVID-19 outbreak is far from over, but countries around the world are reopening anyway — and triggering a global surge in carbon emissions. The main reason? People are taking refuge from the coronavirus in their cars.

According to a recent update of a study originally published in Nature Climate Change, fossil fuel pollution has bounced back rapidly as lockdowns have started to lift around the world. In early April, when billions of people were sheltering in place, global daily carbon dioxide emissions were 17 percent lower than they were in 2019; now, it’s almost as if the lockdowns never happened.

“We’ve already come pretty close to where we would have been last year,” said Rob Jackson, chair of the Global Carbon Project and one of the co-authors of the study. He said daily global emissions are now just 5 percent less than the daily average in 2019 — and will likely continue to climb.

It’s all because of traffic, Jackson said. The dip in emissions during the lockdowns mostly came from transportation, as people stopped driving to work and taking flights. (Other emissions, like those from electricity, heat, and industry, continued apace.)

But as the world slowly returns to something resembling “normal,” traffic is on the rise. In the U.S., passenger vehicle travel dropped by almost 50 percent in early April; now it’s back to 90 percent of February levels.

Fear of the coronavirus is also pushing people to get in their cars, instead of taking public transit. Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released guidelines encouraging people to drive to work solo, instead of taking the bus or the subway. (They quietly revised those guidelines two weeks later to also encourage biking or walking.) Last Monday, 800,000 people rode the New York City subway, the highest number since March — but that’s still only 15 percent of normal.

The researchers still expect emissions for the whole of 2020 to be down 4 to 7 percent compared with last year, depending on the pace of reopening. But that’s not even close to enough to slow down climate change. Keeping global warming below dangerous levels would require a 7.5 percent drop in emissions every year.

Jackson said he hopes that there will be some lingering positive effects from the shutdown, like cities making streets more pedestrian-friendly or workplaces incorporating more telecommuting. But, he said, scientists always knew the drop in emissions wouldn’t last.

“People want to move on with their lives,” Jackson said. “We can’t reduce emissions just by locking people at home.”

READ MORE

---

Contribute to RSN

Update My Monthly Donation

RSN: Neil Young Takes on Donald Trump in New Concert

01 July 20

It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News

---

Neil Young Takes on Donald Trump in New Concert

Andy Greene, Rolling Stone
Greene writes: "It seems like Neil Young feels that Trump is a less sympathetic figure than even W., a man who inspired him to write 2006's 'Let's Impeach the President.'"
READ MORE

The Alamance County Confederate Monument, erected in 1914. (photo: Colleen Jenkins/Reuters)

A North Carolina City Bans Protests, Protecting Confederate Monument
Aída Chávez, The Intercept
Chávez writes: "A North Carolina city is using a restrictive ordinance to outlaw protest, threatening to arrest anyone who even attempts to peacefully protest without a permit, as part of an effort to protect a Confederate monument that sits outside its courthouse."

EXCERPT:

The Alamance County Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post on Friday that permits to protest in the city of Graham will not be granted for the foreseeable future, adding that anyone who attempts to protest without a permit will be in violation of the order and arrested. There has been a heavy police presence around the monument, which features a statue of a Confederate soldier with a rifle, located in downtown Graham, for several days now. Graham, whose population is around 15,000, also declared a state of emergency and set a 9 p.m. curfew over the weekend, which was then canceled on Monday night.

(In a follow-up post, the sheriff’s office clarified that it isn’t involved in the permitting process itself, which is up to the Graham Police Department, but is spreading word of the Graham ordinance. The Graham Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

READ MORE

Protesters hold hands in front o

Seattle Police Move in Capitol Hill Occupied Protest Zone at Daybreak, Clear Out Demonstrators
David K. Li and Ben Kesslen, NBC News
Excerpt: "Seattle police, under orders from Mayor Jenny Durkan, cleared demonstrators out of the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest Zone (CHOP) on Wednesday, after a series of shootings marred the ongoing protest movement."
READ MORE

Donald Trump is trying to sue to stop the publican of his niece, Mary Trump, from publishing a tell-all book about him. (photo: Getty)

Judge Temporarily Halts Publication of Trump Niece's Tell-All Book
Elliot Hannon, Slate
Hannon writes: "A New York judge halted the publication of a tell-all book by President Donald Trump's niece Mary Trump, granting a temporary injunction Tuesday after a court filing claimed the book violates a decades-old nondisclosure agreement signed by Mary Trump as part of an inheritance settlement."
READ MORE

Black Lives Matter protest. (photo: Chandan Khanna/AFP)

Rebecca Gordon | Can Making Black Lives Matter Rescue a Failing State?
Rebecca Gordon, TomDispatch
Gordon writes: "If the U.S. is to break its headlong rush into failed statehood, it must begin by addressing the legitimate demands of the people this country has failed from its very inception."
READ MORE

US military vehicles in northern Syria. (photo: AFP)

Trump's Record on Foreign Policy: Lost Wars, New Conflicts, and Broken Promises
Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, Jacobin
Excerpt: "Donald Trump claims he's ending the 'era of endless wars.' But over the course of his first term, he has come closer to starting new wars than ending the wars he inherited."

EXCERPTS:

President Barack Obama entered the White House with a pledge to bring home US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and to shrink the US military footprint, but his presidency was a triumph of symbolism over substance. He won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize based on a few speeches, a lot of wishful thinking, and the world’s desperate hopes for peace and progress. But by the time Obama stepped down in 2017, he had dropped more bombs and missiles on more countries than Bush did, and had spent even more than Bush on weapons and war.

The major shift in US war policy under Obama was to reduce politically sensitive US troop casualties by transitioning from large-scale military occupations to mass bombing, shelling, and covert and proxy wars. While Republicans derisively dubbed Obama’s doctrine “leading from behind,” this was a transition that was already underway in Bush’s second term, when he committed the United States to completely withdrawing its occupation troops from Iraq by the end of 2011.

Obama’s defenders, like Trump’s today, were always ready to absolve him of responsibility for war crimes, even as he killed thousands of civilians in air strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria and drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, including the gratuitous assassination of an American teenager in Yemen. Obama launched a new war to destroy Libya, and the United States’ covert role in the war in Syria was similar to its role in Nicaragua in the 1980s, for which, despite its covert nature, the International Court of Justice convicted the United States of aggression and ordered it to pay reparations.

Many senior US military and civilian officials deserve a share of the guilt for America’s systematic crimes of aggression and other war crimes since 2001, but the principle of command responsibility, recognized from the Nuremberg principles to the US Uniform Code of Military Justice, means that the commander in chief of the US armed forces, the president of the United States, bears the heaviest criminal responsibility for these crimes under US and international law.

Trump famously summed up his policy as “bomb the shit out of” the Islamic State. He appeared to give a green light to the military to murder women and children, saying, “When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families.” Iraqi troops described explicit orders to do exactly that in Mosul. Middle East Eye (MEE) reported that Iraqi forces massacred all the survivors in Mosul’s Old City.

“We killed them all,” an Iraqi soldier said. “Daesh (IS), men, women, children. We killed everyone.” An Iraqi major told MEE,

After liberation was announced, the order was given to kill anything or anyone that moved . . . It was not the right thing to do . . . They gave themselves up and we just killed them . . . There is no law here now. Every day, I see that we are doing the same thing as Daesh. People went down to the river to get water because they were dying of thirst and we killed them.

By October 2017, Raqqa in Syria was even more totally destroyed than Mosul in Iraq. Under Obama and Trump, the United States and its allies have dropped more than 118,000 bombs and missiles on Iraq and Syria in their campaign against the Islamic State, while US HIMARS rockets and US, French, and Iraqi heavy artillery killed even more indiscriminately.

The 49 percent increase to more than $100 billion for R&D on new weapons systems in 2020, part of the enormous $718 billion Pentagon budget, is a down payment on trillions of dollars in future revenue for the merchants of death unless these programs are stopped.

Before President Dwight D. Eisenhower left office in 1961, he remarked, “God help this country when someone sits in this chair who doesn’t know the military as well as I do.” Trump is obviously as dazzled by chests full of medals and whizz-bang technology as every other president since Eisenhower, so he will keep giving the Pentagon everything it wants to keep spreading violence and chaos around the world.

The US peace movement has always had huge passive public support, but it will take mass collective action, not just passive support, to secure a peaceful future for our children and grandchildren. Public outrage and activism are starting to take away the license to kill black and brown people with impunity from the militarized RoboCops on our streets. The same kind of collective political action can defund and disarm the US military and take away its license to kill black and brown people everywhere.

Building a new anti-war movement that is connected to the domestic anti-police struggle is the only thing that can rein in US militarism. Because reelecting a president with as much blood on his hands as Trump — or simply transferring the command of the war machine to Joe Biden — certainly won’t.

READ MORE

Protesters chant in front of the Oak Brook, Illinois, headquarters of Sterigenics in September 2018. (photo: Mark Black/Getty)

Activists Shut Down These Cancer-Causing Plants. COVID Is Bringing Them Back.
Susan Cosier, Grist
Cosier writes: "Jeanne Hochhalter has had health problems since she was a teenager. First came the respiratory issues, then the gastrointestinal and endocrine troubles. But the heaviest blow came in 2013 when a doctor diagnosed her with breast cancer. Since then she's endured 16 surgeries, as well as chemotherapy."

Hochhalter, a 52-year-old real estate agent who grew up in Burr Ridge, Illinois, 25 miles west of Chicago, is now in remission. She couldn’t chalk her cancer up to anything in particular until her mom returned from a town hall meeting in August 2018 with a pamphlet. It detailed the health problems associated with exposure to ethylene oxide, a chemical used to sterilize medical equipment. And a plant doing just that was located fewer than 5 miles away.

“My God, Jeanne, this could have your picture,” Hochhalter’s mom told her as she handed over the sheet. The plant, owned by the company Sterigenics and operating in Willowbrook, had been emitting huge amounts of the carcinogen, known as EtO, for three decades. “I was being continuously poisoned,” Hochhalter said.

An Environmental Protection Agency report published in 2016 listed the devastating health effects of exposure to ethylene oxide: a higher likelihood of developing cancers — including breast cancer, lymphoma, and leukemia — as well as a host of other health issues, like breathing problems and neurological effects. When the Chicago Tribune covered the latest update of the EPA’s National Air Toxics Assessment two years later, its story compared cancer rates in seven census tracts near the Willowbrook plant to areas in Louisiana’s notorious “Cancer Alley.” The article caused an uproar and prompted the town hall meeting Hochhalter’s mom attended. According to the assessment, the likelihood of getting cancer was 9 times higher than the national average in a census tract located close to the plant. Hochhalter had lived in that tract as a child.

“Epidemiologists did a very eloquent, clear study of this,” said Peter Orris, an expert on environmental exposures and chief of occupational and environmental medicine at the University of Illinois Hospital in Chicago, in reference to the EPA’s findings. “They came back saying the people living around there, their risk of breast cancer was off the wall.”

Subsequent analysis by the Illinois Department of Public Health would reveal a cancer cluster near Willowbrook, showing that its 19 cases of Hodgkin’s lymphoma in women occurring between 1995 and 2015 was nearly double what the county and state would have predicted. The census tract closest to the Sterigenics plant, where Hochhalter lived and worked for decades, also had nearly 10 percent more breast cancer cases than would have been expected. Hochhalter believed she had found the cause of her breast cancer.

Hochhalter and her neighbors would channel their outrage into a positive outcome for their community. They researched, organized, and protested, demanding the Sterigenics plant be shut down. They formed community groups like Stop Sterigenics and EtO Sleuths and pressured their elected officials. Illinois lawmakers passed legislation in June that requires each facility to limit its ethylene oxide emissions by 99.9 percent. Just over a year after the town hall, in September of 2019, the Willowbrook Sterigenics plant shuttered for good. Residents were elated.

“It just made us all feel very justified,” Hochhalter said. “No, we weren’t making this up, no this wasn’t political.”

But the fight against ethylene oxide-emitting facilities would soon become political, thanks to the coronavirus’s arrival in a country whose government was ill-prepared to fight off a global pandemic. With COVID cases on the rise and hospitals concerned about being deluged with patients, the sterilization plants were suddenly in demand to help bolster the supply of personal protective equipment — like N95 masks, which are needed to protect health care workers from COVID-positive patients. That’s despite warnings from scientists and government agencies about the facilities’ hazards to their surrounding communities — and health care workers.

The Willowbrook community’s success rippled through the state and then spread south. Members of a group in Waukegan, an hour north of Chicago, took aim at a Medline Industries sterilization facility they hoped to see shut down. Another Stop Sterigenics chapter in Cobb County, Georgia, just outside Atlanta, followed in Willowbrook’s footsteps and successfully pushed a plant to stop work.

Yet just as momentum was building to further curb ethylene oxide emissions throughout the U.S. — including legislation passed in the Georgia Assembly and changes to EPA pollution standards — coronavirus infections began to rise. And medical sterilization companies like Medline and Sterigenics are citing the pandemic as a reason to ramp up operations.

Though the Willowbrook Sterigenics plant remains closed, the plant in Georgia is up and running. And companies like Sterigenics and Medline are also advocating to either sterilize more equipment or operate without government intervention. In the case of the Georgia plant, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration urged state officials to allow it to reopen, much to the frustration of those concerned about its emissions.

“We got them closed down,” said Janet Rau of Stop Sterigenics in Georgia. “Then they were allowed to reopen under the emergency orders of the pandemic. It’s ridiculous.”

EtO is used to sterilize 50 percent of all medical equipment from plastic tubing to gowns, efficiently killing nearly every germ in sight without hurting the materials. (EtO is also used in industrial manufacturing facilities that make ethylene glycol, a product used in antifreeze and polyester.) Companies blast the gas into chambers where gear sits on palates. Before heading to hospitals, the newly sterilized supplies off-gas. Of course, the plants themselves emit EtO into the atmosphere, and potential leaks are also a concern. In the EPA’s 2018 report, the agency stated that people living in more than 100 locations in the U.S. are at risk from EtO emissions originating at medical supply sterilizing plants.

The closer you live to a facility, the greater the threat of EtO exposure. Last year, researchers looked into the health risks around the Medline facility in Waukegan, a majority-minority enclave identified by the Illinois EPA as an area of concern for environmental justice, a designation that a community is predominantly made up of people of color, significantly impoverished, or both. Blood samples taken from 93 people showed that EtO concentrations were 50 percent higher in those who lived within a half-mile of the plant compared to those who lived farther away, according to the University of Illinois Chicago’s Susan Buchanan, who directs the Great Lakes Center for Children’s Environmental Health and oversaw the study. Though preliminary, she said, her conclusions offer a clear warning: “I think it’s a pretty easy statement to make that industry should not be emitting carcinogen out into our air.”

Some facilities, including the Medline and the Georgia Sterigenics plants, recently installed emissions controls. In the case of Medline, the facility is now allowed to emit 150 pounds of EtO each year compared to the 3,058 pounds released in 2014. Negative pressure systems keep fugitive gases from escaping from the buildings and scrubbers reduce the amount of EtO that billows from the plants’ stacks. (A Sterigenics spokesman says that the Georgia plant is safe and complies with local emissions regulations.)

But community members are skeptical the controls are making a meaningful difference. The Lake County Health Department tested the air around the Waukegan Medline plant this spring, but the agency has yet to publicly release its findings. And Rau of Stop Sterigenics in Georgia said that her group still doesn’t know if there are dangerous levels of EtO in the air around the plant.

Even if emissions do decrease thanks to the new control equipment, using EtO to sterilize certain personal protective equipment could introduce a new risk to health care professionals who later wear them. Medline Industries officials now say the company can sterilize N95 masks, which were in short supply early in the pandemic, at the Waukegan plant. In fact, CEO Charlie Mills met with President Trump in March and is pushing for emergency authority from the FDA to disinfect the masks. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and one of the world’s largest N95 mask manufacturers, 3M, advise against using EtO to disinfect them — because of the risk of off-gassing to those wearing the sterilized masks. Many consider treating the masks with hydrogen peroxide a safer alternative.

Doctors and nurses inhaling EtO from recently sterilized protective masks is akin to first responders inhaling toxins in the wake of the attacks on 9/11, said Syed Karim, an ER doctor who testified against the Illinois Sterigenics facility last year. We don’t know the risks associated with using N95 masks treated with EtO. Exposing health care workers, he said, “is extremely premature and irresponsible.”

Meanwhile companies like Sterigenics and Medline are likely to face lawsuits from people who have either already gotten sick or may develop cancer in the future likely as a result of chronic inhalation of EtO. A jury will hear Hochhalter’s case against Sterigenics next spring; it’s one of more than 70 filed against the company’s Willowbrook facility.

Shawn Collins, an environmental lawyer in Naperville, a western suburb of Chicago, represents more than a third of those cases. For the companies, he said, “polluting was the plan, not the mistake.”

Even though government officials say that sterilizing medical equipment with ethylene oxide is necessary — at least while the country grapples with a pandemic now responsible for close to 130,000 deaths in the U.S. alone — community groups say plants should either stop operations or relocate away from residential areas to avoid poisoning the surrounding communities.

“I don’t think all of these agencies are good actors,” Jeanne Hochhalter told Grist. “I think the FDA is either unaware or complicit.”

And there’s reason to be concerned that communities living near these facilities aren’t aware of the risks. As recently as March, the EPA inspector general stated that the agency wasn’t adequately warning people who lived near EtO plants of the health issues posed by exposure to the chemical. Ultimately, said Orris of the University of Illinois Hospital, “from a public health policy point of view, we ought to be moving away from using it for sterilization.”

For organizers like Rau, who appeared to have won a crucial battle against a medical equipment sterilization plant that threatened her community, the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic has suddenly made these facilities viable again is an insult to injury. But as the activists did once before, she’s trying to channel her outrage toward a positive outcome.

“We’re hoping that the silver lining of this cloud of COVID is that the manufacturing industries and hospitals realize that there are better ways of sterilizing materials, rather than using something that’s as toxic as ethylene oxide,” Rau said.

READ MORE

---

Contribute to RSN

Update My Monthly Donation

RSN: Juan Cole | The Final Defeat of Bolton Hawks? How Russia and China Could Humiliate Trump Election Eve

24 June 20 It's Live on the HomePage Now: Reader Supported News YES WE “DESERVE” A LITTLE BIT OF SUPPORT - Why? Because we show up every day, we never back down, we never forget who sustains us, we never forget who oppresses us. Get behind this organization. We need you and we are proud of it. This is where we make our stand, make it with us. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News Sure, I'll make a donation! Juan Cole | The Final Defeat of Bolton Hawks? How Russia and China Could Humiliate Trump Election Eve

Juan Cole, Informed Comment Cole writes: "Trump is about to go up against China and Russia at the United Nations Security Council over the looming end to the UNSC arms embargo on Iran, and is facing a humiliating defeat that will further harm the US standing in global affairs." The 2015 Joint Plan for Collective Action (JCPOA), or “Iran Deal,” specified an immediate end to the UN and US economic sanctions on Iran. The UNSC sanctions were lifted in January of 2016. The US Republican-controlled Congress refused to lift US sanctions, however, and went around the world threatening everyone else with sanctions if they did not continue to boycott Iran. Since the US is the world’s largest economy, French, German, Italian and other firms that might have done business with Iran declined to. So in essence, the US Republican Party overruled a treaty that the US executive signed, and overruled the entire UN Security Council, keeping Iran under sanctions.  In return for the end of economic sanctions, Iran mothballed 80 percent of its civilian nuclear energy program. Iran does not appear ever to have had a significant nuclear weapons program, and certainly has not had one since early 2003 So Iran gave up everything and got bupkes in return. Then in May 2018 Trump, under the influence of Bolton and other Iran War hawks like Mike Pompeo, breached the 2015 treaty that the US had signed along with the other permanent members of the UN Security Council, and slapped the most extreme economic and financial blockade on Iran that has ever been applied by one country to another in peacetime. Trump forbade anyone to so much as buy Iranian petroleum on pain of third-party US sanctions, for which there is no warrant in international or even US domestic law. One of the provisions of the 2015 treaty was that the arms embargo on Iran would be lifted on October 15, 2020. That deadline is now coming up, and the Pompeo faction around Trump, as well as the Israelis, are desperate to prevent Iran from buying new weapons. So the UN Security Council has just taken up a Trump administration motion to keep the arms embargo on Iran despite the language of the 2015 treaty that was issued as a UNSC resolution. Permanent UNSC members France and Britain initially were hostile to Trump’s proposal, since they hoped to sell arms to Iran themselves. They do, however, want to keep Iran in the JCPOA and to keep pressure on Tehran to adhere to its provisions. Iran has been protesting against being economically and financially strangled by breaking some of the provisions of the 2015 treaty in small ways, which has angered Europe. Iran is doing this not to make a bomb (it has no nuclear weapons program) but to pressure Europe to break the US blockade, which Europe says it is committed to doing but without practical follow-through. But London and Paris ultimately found a compromise that allowed them to avoid worsening relations with Trump. They pointed out that there is an existing European Union decision that the arms embargo on Iran should last until 2023, and so they are favoring that position rather than adhering to the 2015 JCPOA that they signed. This is a way of pressuring Iran to come back into compliance. The biggest danger to the Trump push to keep the international embargo on weapons sales to Iran in place is that Russia and China, also permanent members of the UNSC, may veto the US proposal. Indeed, they have indicated that they will do so. Both of them want to sell weapons to Iran, and China wants to be able to import oil from Iran. Trump’s counter-position is that if the proposal to extend the arms embargo does not go through, the US will invoke the snap back clause in the JCPOA and attempt to reimpose the UNSC sanctions in place before 2015. The argument is that Iran is somewhat out of compliance with its JCPOA obligations. But the US left the treaty and no longer has standing to invoke snap back, and the US is the one that pushed Iran to act out because it is being strangled. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called this Trump threat “ridiculous and irresponsible.” Michelle Nichols at Reuters writes, “Lavrov cited a 1971 International Court of Justice opinion, which found that a fundamental principle governing international relationships was that “a party which disowns or does not fulfill its own obligations cannot be recognized as retaining the rights which it claims to derive from the relationship.” So it seems to me most likely that Russia and China will veto the extension of the Iran arms embargo, such that the JCPOA provision that the UNSC permanent members signed off on will come into effect. And it seems likely that China and Russia will also refuse to countenance a US invocation of the snap back provision, on the grounds that the US no longer has standing to invoke it. At the moment, unless the US can offer Russia and China things they really want in return for throwing Iran under the bus, it seems likely that Iran will be permitted to enter the world arms market again on October 18, just before Trump is up for reelection, and it seems likely that the Biden campaign will take advantage of this failure, which will hurt Trump with pro-Israel groups like the evangelicals and organizations under the umbrella of AIPAC, the Israel lobbies. At the same time, Iran may succeed in using Iraqi militias to pressure the US to leave Iraq. The issue here, I should underline, is Iranian access to conventional weapons. Because of the US sanctions, they would have to be bought in currencies other than the dollar and using exchange mechanisms other than the SWIFT and other US-dominated bank exchanges. But Iran probably still sells some oil to China under the table, and could essentially barter those sales for Chinese weapons, and there is likely nothing the US could do about it. Incidentally, one of the most dishonest things in John Bolton’s new book, In the Room, is that he continually speaks of the need to stop Iran’s “nuclear weapons program,” which does not exist and never really did. Bolton just wanted to overthrow the Iranian government, and was using nuclear enrichment as a bogeyman. Bolton even stopped Trump from meeting with Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, afraid that he would pull off a Singapore-North Korea “just for show” agreement that would reduce tensions. Bolton has shadowy ties to the People’s Jihadis (MEK) terrorist cult, which has allegedly at one time or another received funding from Israeli intelligence and Saudi Arabia, and which wants to overthrow the current Iranian government in favor of a mixture of Islam and Marxism. Nuclear things are so dangerous in the public mind that it is easy to pull the wool over our eyes by just bringing it up. One reason most Americans supported Bush’s war of aggression on Iraq in 2003 was that George W., Condi Rice, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld misled the public and the Congress by telling or heavily implying to them that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was on the verge of having a nuclear bomb. Condi Rice replied to those who pointed out that there was not actually any evidence for such allegations by saying “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” This is intellectually and ethically dishonest.  The same number is now being done on Iran. Here’s the difference. If you want nuclear fuel to make electricity in a reactor, you enrich to at most 5%. If you want a nuclear bomb, you enrich uranium to like 95%. Iran has never exceeded 20%, the threshold for moving from Low Enriched Uranium to High Enriched Uranium. Medical reactors for making isotopes to treat cancer use uranium enriched to 19.5%. If you want a bomb, you have to experiment with making a hard box and the ability to set off the fission explosion. The CIA intelligence estimates for the past 20 years have consistently assessed that Iran does not have a military nuclear weapons program, and Israeli figures like former prime minister Ehud Barak have confirmed that this is also what Israeli intelligence believes. READ MORE US attorney general William Barr. (photo: Mandel Ngan/Getty) In Scathing Letter, More Than 80-Percent of Faculty at Bill Barr's Law School Call for His Censure and Resignation Jerry Lambe, Law and Crime Lambe writes: "Professors and deans at George Washington University Law School renounced one of their most prominent alumni on Tuesday, releasing a statement vilifying Attorney General William Barr's conduct since taking up residence in the 45th president's cabinet." READ MORE Welcome to Seattle's 'cop-free zone.' (photo: David Ryder/Getty) Seattle Will Move to Dismantle Protest Zone, Mayor Says Gene Johnson, Associated Press Johnson writes: "Faced with growing pressure to crack down on an 'occupied' protest zone following two weekend shootings, Seattle's mayor said Monday that officials will move to wind down the blocks-long span of city streets taken over two weeks ago that President Donald Trump asserted is run by 'anarchists.'" The 17-year-old victim was shot in the arm and declined to speak with detectives, police said. Gunfire early Saturday left a 19-year-old man dead and another person critically wounded. The victims were taken to a hospital by volunteer medics in private cars, and police said they were met by a hostile crowd that prevented them from immediately getting to the scene. It was not apparent if the shootings had anything to do with the protest — gunfire sometimes occurs in the neighborhood, especially on warm summer nights. Protesters cordoned off the several-block area near the police's East Precinct after Seattle riot squads unleashed tear gas, pepper spray and flash-bangs on large crowds of mostly peaceful protesters, drawing condemnation from many city leaders and a federal court order temporarily banning the use of the weapons on demonstrators. READ MORE Military veterans have held leadership roles in white supremacist groups that took part in the deadly rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. (photo: Hubert Delaney III/Getty) How the US Military Has Failed to Address White Supremacy in Its Ranks Lois Beckett, Guardian UK Excerpt: "A recently uncovered extremist plot has put fresh scrutiny on the relationship between US service members and white supremacist groups." READ MORE New Yorkers wait in line wearing masks. (photo: Stephanie Keith/Getty) ALSO SEE: How Do Bats Live With So Many Viruses? To Fight Coronavirus, You Have to Understand How Weird It Is David Axe, The Daily Beast Axe writes: "The novel coronavirus is unusual. That much was obvious early in the pandemic, as the pathogen seemed to spread much faster than other coronaviruses, and kill at a higher rate than influenza viruses." READ MORE International Criminal Court. (photo: AFP) Scores of Countries Back ICC in Face of US Sanctions Mike Corder, Associated Press Corder writes: "More than half of the member states of the International Criminal Court voiced their support for the institution in a strongly worded statement issued Tuesday in response to the Trump administration's decision to authorize sanctions against court staff." READ MORE Two entrepreneurs from Mexico have created sustainable cactus leather. (photo: Desserto) Creating Leather From Cactus to Save Animals and the Environment Derya Ozdemir, Interesting Engineering Excerpt: "Anything animal leather can do, this sustainable and cruelty-free leather can do better." This new leather could be a game-changer Widespread use of their cruelty-free leather could be a game-changer since use of animal skin has dire consequences for our environment. For example, tanners treat animal-based leather with 250 different substances, including formaldehyde, cyanide, arsenic, and chromium. Once these substances enter waterways, they pollute oceans, endanger marine life, and raise the risk of disease for people. Also, raising livestock for food and for their skins generates large amounts of emissions, making up 14.5 percent of all anthropologic greenhouse gas emissions.  Water usage is a huge problem too, so the fact that companies that incorporate cruelty-free leather into their products could lower water consumption by 20 percent is of high importance. "Currently, the volume used by the fashion industry alone is huge, almost 79 billion cubic meters, which is enough to fill almost 32 million Olympic-size swimming pools," López Velarde says. More and more companies are joining the cruelty-free fronts These two genius entrepreneurs aside, we are happy to report that more and more companies are on the way to craft cruelty-free leather. Some examples include footwear brand No Saints, which turns food waste into vegan leather sneakers by using a plant-based leather made from pineapple leaf fibers. The automotive industry is changing too, with Porsche's new Taycan electric car having the option to be ordered with a vegan leather interior and Elon Musk saying they are working on eliminating the use of animal leather in the cars. Hopefully, we will start to see such things become available worldwide soon and animals won't have to endure the horrors of the leather industry. READ MORE Contribute to RSN Update My Monthly Donation