Thanks Ten Bears. In the US profit is king and everything is designed to make profit for the wealthy and push the costs on to the public, the people. These corporate people and their shareholders see the public not as people but as livestock to milk and use until there is nothing left to take from them, then dispose of them and get new ones. We the people are chicken that lay their eggs of profit and when we can’t lay any more they sell what is left for what they can get. They have raided every sector of US life, it is all for profit now. We need to take it back, put public back into public service. Hugs. Scottie
Study confirms Altria, Philip Morris International, Danone, Nestlé, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola are worst offenders
Plastic pollution on a Welsh beach. Volunteers collected and surveyed plastic waste across 84 countries over five years. Photograph: Paul Quayle/Alamy
Fewer than 60 multinationals are responsible for more than half of the world’s plastic pollution, with six responsible for a quarter of that, based on the findings of a piece of research published on Wednesday.
The researchers concluded that for every percentage increase in plastic produced, there was an equivalent increase in plastic pollution in the environment.
“Production really is pollution,” says one of the study’s authors, Lisa Erdle, director of science at the non-profit The 5 Gyres Institute.
An international team of volunteers collected and surveyed more than 1,870,000 items of plastic waste across 84 countries over five years: the bulk of the rubbish collected was single-use packaging for food, beverage, and tobacco products.
Less than half of that plastic litter had discernible branding that could be traced back to the company that produced the packaging; the rest could not be accounted for or taken responsibility for.
“This shows very, very, very well the need for transparency and traceability,” says a study author, Patricia Villarrubia-Gómez, a plastic pollution researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. “[We need] to know who is producing what, so they can take responsibility, right?”
The branded half of the plastic was the responsibility of just 56 fast-moving consumer goods multinational companies, and a quarter of that was from just six companies.
The two tobacco companies Altria and Philip Morris International combined made up 2% of the branded plastic litter found, both Danone and Nestlé each produced 3% of it, PepsiCo was responsible for 5% of the discarded packaging, and 11% of branded plastic waste could be traced to the Coca-Cola company.
“The industry likes to put the responsibility on the individual,” says the study’s author, Marcus Eriksen, a plastic pollution expert from The 5 Gyres Institute.
“But we’d like to point out that it’s the brands, it’s their choice for the kinds of packaging [they use] and for embracing this throwaway model of delivering their goods. That’s what’s causing the greatest abundance of trash.”
The Guardian approached Altria, Philip Morris International, Danone, Nestlé, PepsiCo and The Coca-Cola Company.
The Coca-Cola Company said: “We care about the impact of every drink we sell and are committed to growing our business in the right way.” It has pledged to make 100% of its packaging recyclable globally by 2025, and to use at least 50% recycled material in packaging by 2030.
Nestlé said it has reduced its virgin plastic usage by 14.9% in the last five years, and supports schemes around the world to develop waste collection and recycling schemes.
“Since launching our voluntary commitments to address plastic waste five years ago, we have significantly outperformed the market at large in reducing virgin plastic and increasing recyclability, according to the most recent report from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation,” it said.
The company also supports the creation of a global legally binding regulation on plastic pollution which is being negotiated this week.
Danone said: “We continue to strive to reduce our own plastic footprint – between 2018-2023 we reduced our plastic use by 8% equivalent to 62 000 tons and increased the recyclability of our packaging (84% of our packaging is recyclable, reusable or compostable). We continue to support and push for improved collection and recycling infrastructures to help consumers recycle.” They also support “an ambitious and binding … UN Global Plastic Treaty which would represent a major opportunity to unlock and accelerate progress on plastics circularity.”
Both PMI and Altria contest the accuracy of the data collected.
Plastic in the Depths: how pollution took over our oceans
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However, while many of these companies have taken voluntary measures to improve their impact on plastic pollution, the experts behind the study argue they are not working. Plastic production has doubled since the beginning of 2000 and studies show only 9% of plastic is being recycled.
When the team collected data on self-reported yearly plastic packaging production for each of these multinational companies and compared it with the data from their 1,500-plus litter surveys, their statistical analysis showed that every 1% increase in plastic production was directly correlated with approximately a 1% increase in plastic pollution.
“Actually seeing this one-to-one increase, I was like, wow,” says a study author, Kathy Willis, a marine socio-ecologist from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia.
“Time and time again from our science we see that we really need to be capping how much plastic we are producing.”
However, Kartik Chandran, an environmental engineer at Columbia University, who was not involved in the research, said that while this new data was striking, the observation that 1% plastic production was equal to 1% plastic pollution was “a bit unrealistic” and “simplistic”.
He said the data did not consider plastic pollution in China, Korea and Japan, nor take into consideration recycling or clean-up initiatives under way.
A better analysis could be based on the net plastic flows into plastic production – also accounting for credits from the reuse of plastic materials – and the net plastic load ascribed as plastic pollution.
The team behind the study, some of whom are participating in the talks being held in Ottawa this week to discuss a UN Treaty for Plastic Pollution, said their findings emphasised the urgent need for a globally binding treaty focusing on production measures.
The talks will run to Monday, and Luis Vayas Valdivieso, the Ecuadorian ambassador to the UK, told the Guardian earlier this week he was hopeful that countries would come together to secure an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution.
“It is very important we are negotiating this treaty now. The world is in a triple crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. But while there are agreements in place for the first two, we have no legislation, no global agreement on plastic pollution.”
Aileen Cannon, the judge overseeing Donald Trump‘s classified documents case, has said she declared two “luxury” resort trips to Montana that were mentioned in a National Public Radio investigation.
“Cannon, herself a Trump appointee, attended two seminars at a luxury resort in Montana, but the privately funded seminar disclosures for both events were not posted online until NPR began making inquiries,” NPR’s online investigation states.
“Clerk of court Angela Noble told NPR in an email that the absence of the disclosures was due to technical issues and that ‘Any omissions to the website are completely inadvertent,” it adds.
Cannon is overseeing the case, in which former president Donald Trump is accused of illegally retaining classified documents, hoarding them at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and obstructing attempts by federal officials to retrieve them.
Trump, the presumptive Republican candidate in the 2024 presidential election, has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him. He has denied any wrongdoing in the case and has said the documents he retained were personal.
Cannon’s office told Newsweek that the two trips are likely listed on the U.S government’s federal judge disclosure website. The court clerk stated in an email to Newsweek that “there are two trips listed for Judge Cannon. These are likely the trips you are referring to. You can find them here” with a link to the U.S government’s website.
Related video: Aileen Cannon Makes Unusual Move in Tump’s Classified Docs Case (Daily Reel)
charges against former President Trump in the classified documents case.
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Daily Reel
Aileen Cannon Makes Unusual Move in Tump’s Classified Docs Case
The links show that the seminars were funded by the George Mason University Foundation.
Cannon attended the seminars, known as the Sage Lodge Colloquium, from September 26, 2021 to October 2, 2021 and from September 25, 2022 to October 1, 2022, according to the federal judge disclosure website. In August, 2023 Newsweek reported on her disclosure of both of these Montana trips.
Newsweek sought email comment from NPR on Thursday.
Federal judges must declare any free trips on their disclosure documents.
NPR’s allegations about Cannon are part of a larger investigation into undeclared free trips taken by federal judges.
The investigation, released on NPR’s website on Wednesday, claims that “dozens of federal judges failed to fully disclose free luxury travel to judicial conferences around the world, as required by internal judiciary rules and federal ethics law.”
“As a result, the public remained in the dark about potential conflicts of interest for some of the United States’ top legal officials,” it adds.
NPR alleges that “federal judges — occasionally with family members or even their dog in tow — traveled to luxury resorts in locations as far-flung as London; Palm Beach, Fla.; Bar Harbor, Maine; and the outskirts of Yellowstone National Park for week-long seminars. The judges received free rooms, free meals and free money toward travel expenses, together worth a few thousand dollars.”
It claims that some federal judges heard from a group that uses “lawsuits in federal court to change environmental policy, as well as from corporate CEOs in the oil and pharmaceutical industries.”
It comes after intense criticism of some Supreme Court judges for undeclared foreign trips.
In December 2023, the Senate Judiciary Committee announced that it issued subpoenas to Leonard Leo, a conservative activist, and the billionaire Harlan Crow, compelling them to appear before the committee to answer questions about their relationship with Justice Clarence Thomas.
The subpoenas were the latest steps in the committee’s inquiry into the Supreme Court justices. The committee’s Republican minority, which supports Thomas, walked out of the committee hearing in protest.
Thomas is facing an investigation for allegedly accepting lavish vacations from Crow—including a $500,000 trip to Indonesia in 2019—getting money from another donor to buy a recreational vehicle and other ethics violations.
In December, Crow’s spokesman said in a statement to Newsweek that Crow had done all he could to cooperate with the committee, despite concerns about his constitutional rights. The statement also said that issuing Crow a subpoena was a headline-grabbing exercise.
It looks like Eileen Cannon is following in the footsteps of Clarence Thomas by taking lavish vacations on Republican donors dimes and not reporting them.
NPR has uncovered multiple trips she took to Montana that she failed to disclose on her mandatory Federal disclosure forms. Apparently donors to the George Mason School of law paid for these trips so judge Cannon could meditate under the beautiful Montana sky. Right as if…
Of course, as soon as NPR asked her for a comment, the trips magically showed up on her disclosure form. She says this was just a mistake by the website. Again as if.…
I am not sure how this will play into Trump’s Mar-A-Lago document case. I am not a lawyer but it seems to me that it is time for Jack Smith to take this and other examples to the 11th circuit court of appeals and ask for her to be removed from the case. But again I’m not a lawyer so I don’t know what effect this has in that case other than it sure seems like a conflict of interest to have a conservative political group funding trips for a judge who is overseeing a case against a leading conservative politician.
You can hear more about this incident on the Midas Touch Network video below.
This interview points out some of the flaws in the Cass Report, and how Cass herself was a known anti-trans person who had worked with DeathSantis and his administration. Talk about asking the fox about the hen house security. The people who wanted a badly done report on trans care / trans kids choose a known anti-trans person to do it. Erin Reed is a trans person who is very well versed in trans issues. The video is not long, about 14.19 minutes long but very informative if you know someone who is an anti-trans hater who often says well look at the UK and those places they are stopping care, or someone who likes to refer to the Cass report. Hugs. Scottie
Journalist Erin Reed, author of the Erin In The Morning newsletter on SubStack, discusses the recent gender identity review by the National Health Services (NHS) in the United Kingdom.
Erin Reed and Emma then jump right into the background for the UK’s recent Cass Report on transgender care, stepping back to briefly cover the rise of transphobic activism in the UK at the end of the 2010s, and the major policy impacts it had despite fringe following, including the NHS-sponsored ‘independent’ and ‘unbiased’ review by Hillary Cass. After giving some background on the evidently not-so-unbiased Cass herself, Reed parses through the clear failure of the report itself to live up to these supposed standards, actively excluding both trans voices and experts on trans care from the report, relying on outdated and fraudulent statistics (compiled by notorious homophobes nonetheless), and repeatedly requiring absurdly high standards for trans care – standards not met by the vast majority of both adult and pediatric care – while rarely substantiating any of the claims about the supposed dangers.
Owen Jones then joins, as he and Emma reflect on the last seven months of constant scenes of devastation and genocide coming out of Gaza, and the mainstream media’s heart-wrenching insistence on downplaying the horror, denying the deaths, and running cover for Israel’s project of ethnic cleansing under the guise of victimhood.
Jones and Emma explore how the severe repression and propaganda from mainstream Western political institutions is seeing an en-masse public awakening to the genocide of Gaza, and the Western elites’ violent commitment to controlling the discourse, with supposed “liberal democracies” from the US to the EU and UK defaming anti-zionist Jews and anti-semites and uplifting actual racists and Jew-haters as legitimate actors.
This is a great short less than 4 minute video of the fearmongering of social security. The republicans keep claiming it will run out of money in the future years we must cut benefits. The fund will be insolvent. Out of money. Guess what that means. Congress will have to vote to fund it. Look did you know the US government was unfunded in 2025? Yes totally insolvent. Unless congress votes to fund it. Oh like they are doing right now in 2024. YES. Did you know the military is totally unfunded in 2025? They will not have enough money to keep running. What to do. Oh yes, pass bills funding the military and their programs. There is no reason for the total fear campaign the republicans have cooked up to try to kill social security and disability funding. Please watch the short video. Hugs. Scottie
Republicans are convinced there is massive voter fraud. Yes there is a small amount, they are correct. But that is because they are the ones doing it. I want you to note this republican guy voted fraudulently 9 times knowing he couldn’t do that. A black woman in Texas got five years for voting as a person on parole after being told she could vote by poll workers and her parole officer never told her she couldn’t vote. Plus her vote was a provisional one that was not counted, his were counted. An appeals court overturned her sentence but of course asshole AG Paxton himself a criminal, bigot, and racist has appealed that to have her sentence reinstated. DeathSantis in Florida sent police to arrest black former felons on charges of voter fraud that were later all dismissed after the election. It is all about republican racists suppressing the black vote. Republicans have no platform, they have no interest in helping the country, no interest in serving the public. They are interested in helping their bank accounts and serving their business big money donors so to do those things they need to be rulers not representatives. Hugs. Scottie
Filed under "ironic outcomes." Georgia Republican Party vice chairman and election denier guilty of voting fraud Reporting by @ajc's @markniessehttps://t.co/wDcvsKcwFz
Every accusation is a confession when it comes from the far right.
Voting nine times should have given him another felony conviction, and jail. There was a woman who was given a jail sentence of several years for voting at all.
A public reprimand is less than nothing. A $5000 fine for 9 votes is $555/vote. Campaigns can easily afford to buy their way to victory in swing states.
Crimes committed while on probation never please the court. Crystal Mason was on probation when she cast a provisional ballot. Our justice system has three tiers and the only way we will fix it is for everyone to vote blue no matter who and fuck your firmly held principles.
I’m just laughing at the fact that you can have a FELONY conviction and still get elected to these GOP boards. These are the same people who will give you a 45 minute floor speech about personal responsibility and law & order.
He’s back in his happy place, fighting culture wars against invisible enemies conjured up in the paranoid fever dreams of right-wingers. pic.twitter.com/XxXk8sCdRi
Plastic pollution on a Welsh beach. Volunteers collected and surveyed plastic waste across 84 countries over five years. Photograph: Paul Quayle/Alamy
Scottie's Playtime 