All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

Justice Department tells Supreme Court it thinks Obamacare is constitutional, reversing Trump-era position

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The Department of Justice notified the Supreme Court on Wednesday that it no longer considers Obamacare to be unconstitutional.

China Donation of COVID-19 Supplies Distributed across all five fields of UNRWA operations

East Jerusalem/PNN

The timely provision of COVID-19 supplies by the Government of the People’s Republic of China are being distributed across 141 UNRWA health centres in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. This donation serves some 5.7 million Palestine refugees across all five fields of UNRWA operations.

Distribution across the five fields began in October and November of 2020 and the generous donation came at a critical time for Palestine refugees, as they faced the global COVID-19 and confirmed cases began to rose sharply across the region. This donation from China also ensured that UNRWA had a reserve of personal protective equipment, buffering against the immediate consequences of the dire financial conditions the Agency faced.

China donated items are being used to equip frontline UNRWA health and non-health staff who are in constant contact with the public. Doctors, nurses, distribution workers and sanitation workers, who serve the Palestine refugees on a daily basis are provided with the supplies to ensure that services can be delivered in a safe manner and that COVID prevention measures are integrated into the humanitarian interventions to protect UNRWA beneficiaries as well as its frontline staff, thus contributing to preventing the further transmission of COVID-19 in the refugee community. Refugee patients visiting UNRWA health centres with pre-existing health conditions or displaying respiratory symptoms who are identified at a higher risk of contracting COVID-19 will also benefit from this contribution.

UNRWA acting Director of External Relations Department Ms. Tamara Alrifai, on behalf of the Agency, expressed her sincere appreciation to the Government of China: “This support for Palestine refugees is greatly appreciated, coming at a time when they needed generosity most. We look forward to continuing our valued partnership with China to further mitigate the hardship of the Palestine refugees as the pandemic persists in 2021.”

Reiterating China’s continued support to UNRWA, His Excellency, Head of the Office of the People’s Republic of China to the State of Palestine, Ambassador Guo Wei, said, “As a good friend of Palestine, China has always valued the cooperation with UNRWA, and will continue to support UNRWA’s work, providing assistance to Palestine in its fight against the epidemic, improving people’s livelihood and promoting development to make positive contributions to peace, stability and development in the Middle East.”

The People’s Republic of China is a valued partner who provides enduring support for UNRWA. Here is the link to photos capturing the distribution moments of the donation in the Agency’s five fields.

التدوينة China Donation of COVID-19 Supplies Distributed across all five fields of UNRWA operations ظهرت أولاً على PNN.

My daily Life in the Winter with hardships & beauty | Ep. 50

The winter is so beautiful, and yet it can be so hard sometimes that it makes me cry happy-tears thinking about the summer. This winter has been extra hard. Crazy amounts of snow and extreme cold weather for over 3 weeks. It takes a lot of energy to keep up the normal life. But it also gives a lot of energy with all the beauty that the winter brings. It’s a love-hate relationship.

In this video I share glimpses of what I’ve been up to for the past month. Both the struggles, but also all the beautiful moments. I also share some behind the scenes of my previous video, when I went on a road trip to the very North of Sweden to record some footage.

I really hope you will enjoy the video! And thank you for all your comments!!

Much love to all of you ♥

► If you have not seen my previous video, you can find it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zTR4ayDG38

► MY SOCIAL MEDIA AND LINKS!

• My Art & Jewelry Webshop: https://jonnajintonsweden.com

• Instagram: @jonnajinton http://www.instagram.com/jonnajinton

• Wallpaper collection: https://www.photowall.com/designers/jonna-jinton

• Facebook Page – http://www.facebook.com/jonnajinton

• Blog: https://jonnajintonsweden.com/blog/

► MUSIC

You can find most of the songs here:

http://share.epidemicsound.com/pR9G6​ (affiliate link)

Greatest Love – Generdyn (Musicbed)

Meadows in Smaland – Franz Gordon

Eternal Slumber – Yonder Dale

Morning Fields – Adam Bokesch (Musicbed)

Bangerter Way – Cody Francis

We Carry On – Yonder Dale

Clouds brush the prairie – Trevor Kowalski

Secrets of the Earth – Lama House

Passing Souls – Amaranth Cove

Gray – Ever so Blue

Time without end – Spectacles wallet and watch

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Monsanto/Bayer’s self-inflicted problems with the dicamba herbicide

Week killers do their job but also cause problems: illness among people exposed to them (especially farm workers), induction of resistance, and killing weeds in places they are not supposed to be.

Illnesses: The most well known is the non-Hodgkins lymphoma associated with use of glyphosate (Roundup).

Weed resistance: This chart from the University of Minnesota shows the number of species resistant to various kinds of herbicides from 1955 to 2020.  GMO crops resistant to glyphosate were first approved in 1994.

Herbicide drift:  This has been a  particular problem with the weed killer dicamba used with GMO corn and soybeans.  It has a particular problem: it drifts, and does so inconveniently over organically produced crops that are not weed resistant, thereby killing them and making organic farmers extremely unhappy but without recourse, apparently.

Now an investigative report from In These Times demonstrates how Monsanto and BASF, the makers of dicamba, knew perfectly well that it drifted and would cause extensive damage, but sold it anyway.

Exec­u­tives from Mon­san­to and BASF, a Ger­man chem­i­cal com­pa­ny that worked with Mon­san­to to launch the sys­tem, knew their dicam­ba weed killers would cause large-scale dam­age to fields across the Unit­ed States but decid­ed to push them on unsus­pect­ing farm­ers any­way, in a bid to cor­ner the soy­bean and cot­ton markets.

The investigation found:

  • [Mon­san­to’s] own research showed dicam­ba mixed with oth­er her­bi­cides was more like­ly to cause dam­age. The com­pa­ny also pre­vent­ed inde­pen­dent sci­en­tists from con­duct­ing their own tests and declined to pay for stud­ies that would poten­tial­ly give them more infor­ma­tion about dicamba’s real-world impact.
  • Although adver­tised as help­ing out cus­tomers, the com­pa­nies’ inves­ti­ga­tions of drift inci­dents were designed to lim­it their lia­bil­i­ty, find oth­er rea­sons for the dam­age and nev­er end with pay­outs to farm­ers. For exam­ple, BASF told pes­ti­cide appli­ca­tors that some­times it is not safe to spray even if fol­low­ing the label to the let­ter, plac­ing lia­bil­i­ty square­ly on the applicators.

As for recourse:

A fed­er­al court banned the her­bi­cide ear­li­er this year, but the EPA rein­stat­ed dicam­ba for five more years in October.

Ear­li­er this year, a fed­er­al jury sided with a Mis­souri peach farmer who sued the com­pa­nies for dri­ving his orchard out of busi­ness. The jury award­ed Bill Bad­er $15 mil­lion for his loss­es and $250 mil­lion in puni­tive dam­ages designed to pun­ish Bay­er. Bay­er and BASF are appeal­ing the ver­dict. The puni­tive dam­ages were lat­er reduced to $60 mil­lion.

This report is well worth reading for its detailed review of documents.  These demonstrate that Monsanto and BASF could not have cared less about the damage their herbicide might cause.  Monsanto has been purchased by Bayer, which defends its purchase to the hilt.

Bayer’s stock prices declined dramatically after the Monsanto purchase.  It’s hard to feel sorry for either company.