Natural resources like seeds, plants, animals and even chemical compounds found in bioresource-rich countries have long been extracted by wealthy nations during periods of colonisation when empires would steal from the territories they occupied. Patented and exported, such resources have led to breakthrough discoveries in medicine, agriculture, even cosmetics. Many of these discoveries wouldn’t have been possible without drawing on traditional knowledge from local indigenous communities, who have often been unaccredited and uncompensated.

At the heart of the debate around biopiracy is the question of ownership and benefit sharing. Why should wealthy, technology-rich countries get the lion’s share of benefits when extracting from less affluent lands?

Indian environmental activist Vandana Shiva spoke at Arizona State University’s Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation, explaining the problematic practice of seed patenting in layman’s terms.

“A patent is a right of an inventor to exclude anyone else from making, using, selling, distributing what is invented. The problem is that, when it comes to seed, seed is not an invention,” she said, going on to explain that seeds had been exchanged long before the arrival of patents.

“But then you come to me and you take the seed. And then you patent it and say, ‘I created it and now you pay me royalties.’ That’s biopiracy.”  

Biopiracy: The fight for fairness in the scientific exploitation of natural resources (france24.com)

 The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is an influential group that helps shape US food policy and steers consumers toward nutritional products. The Academy says it as an independent voice and “trusted educational resource for consumers”. It lobbies Congress and represents and provides information to over 110,000 US dietitians who help people make decisions about which foods to eat. Newly released documents show it has financial ties to the world’s largest processed food companies and has been controlled by former industry employees who have worked for companies like Monsanto.

 A recently published peer-reviewed study that examined a trove of financial documents and internal communications reveal it has a record of quid pro quos with a range of food giants, owns stock in ultra-processed food companies and has received millions in contributions from producers of sugar-heavy soft drinks, candy, and processed foods linked to diabetes, heart disease, obesity and other health problems.

The study for the first time reveals the depth of its financial ties. The Academy accepted at least $15m from corporate and organizational contributors from 2011-2017, and over $4.5m in additional funding went to the Academy’s foundation. Among the highest contributions came from companies like Nestle, PepsiCo, Hershey, Kellogg’s, General Mills, Conagra, the National Dairy Council, and baby formula producer Abbott Nutrition. The Academy and its foundation also received food industry fundings via sponsorships, which are effectively quid pro quos.

“It’s incredibly influential so if the Academy is corrupt then nutritional policy in the US is going to be corrupt,” said Gary Ruskin, executive director of US Right to Know, and a co-author of the study. “If we’re ever going to solve the problems of obesity and diabetes in the US and elsewhere, then we’re going to have to tackle the corruption in our health institutions.”

An email reveals the Academy in 2015 was in a sponsorship deal with Abbott and was discussing how the Academy could use its dietitians’ influence in pediatricians’ offices to push Pediasure, one of the pharmaceutical giant’s infant nutritional products. Abbott at the time had in place a two year, $300,000 sponsorship deal. The Academy also owned Abbott stock at the time of the deal and plan, records show. It also owned stock in companies with which it had a sponsorship deal, PepsiCo, as well as financial contributors, like Nestle.

 A 2015 email was also in discussion with Subway about how the Academy could “endorse” the fast food chain’s “healthier products”, the email shows, and discussed a partnership with the Mars candy bar company.

“That is astounding,” Ruskin said. “That belongs in the conflict of interest hall of fame – it is off the charts.”

The study also highlights the revolving door between the Academy and industry. Among its staff and board members are current and former public relations staff for companies that represent big food, as well as consultants or employees for large food entities like Monsanto, Sodexo, the Sugar Association, Bayer and the International Food Information Council, and industry front group.

Marion Nestle, a nutritionist and public health advocate who wrote about the ties in her 2002 book, Food Politics said the financial ties raise “fundamental questions about credibility”.

“How can the Academy advise the public to avoid ultra-processed foods, for example, if it is funded by the makers of those foods?” she asked. “The issue of trust is critical to nutrition advising. The Academy looks like it represents the food industry, not the public interest.”

Revealed: group shaping US nutrition receives millions from big food industry | Nutrition | The Guardian

 The World Trade Organization (WTO) has found that tariffs on steel and aluminium imports that were imposed by the US under Trump violate global trade rules. The WTO said the US should bring its trade policy into compliance. If the country does not abide by the decision, the countries who brought the complaints are entitled, under WTO rules, to impose retaliatory tariffs on the US.

 While some people there are forced to huddle in shelters, the army incurs heavy losses on the frontlines, and tens of millions have been displaced in and outside of Ukraine, according to media reports, certain Ukrainian oligarchs and billionaires fled Ukraine with their families before the Russian invasion of February 24.

Some 1,800 kilometers away on the French Riviera, locals say that there are more luxury cars with Ukrainian license plates than before. 

One Ukrainian blogger has posted a picture of several suitcases full of cash — reportedly amounting to over $17 million (€16.1 million) and €1 million, which were found by Hungarian customs officials. 

Ihor Abramovych lives in the seaside resort of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, which is particularly popular with the super-rich. Russians and Ukrainians have long had luxury properties there. 

Corruption expert Zaliskhenko said that Abramovych and other lawmakers continued to try to exert influence from abroad. “Some of them are also involved with legislation from a distance,” he said, adding that they had even tried to introduce bills digitally. The fact that they were not physically present in Ukraine was not grounds for losing a mandate, however, deputies working remotely did not receive a salary, he said.

The French-Ukrainian Association of the Cote d’Azur president , Iryna Bourdelles, said, “These people were not only part of a corrupt elite, but these people — and we are sure of this — are also responsible for this war in Ukraine because they called on Russia to come to Ukraine.”

Ukraine: Pro-Russian oligarchs flee to French Riviera – DW – 12/08/2022

A US House of Representatives committee has found some of the world’s largest oil and gas companies have internally dismissed the need to swiftly move to renewable energy and cut planet-heating emissions, despite publicly portraying themselves as concerned about the climate crisis.

Documents obtained from companies including Exxon, Shell, BP and Chevron show that the fossil fuel industry “has no real plans to clean up its act and is barreling ahead with plans to pump more dirty fuels for decades to come”, said Carolyn Maloney, the chair of the House oversight committee. Documents obtained from companies including Exxon, Shell, BP and Chevron show that the fossil fuel industry “has no real plans to clean up its act and is barreling ahead with plans to pump more dirty fuels for decades to come”, said Carolyn Maloney, the chair of the House oversight committee.

In reality, executives, the documents show, were derisive of the need to cut emissions, disparaged climate activists and worked to secure US government tax credits for carbon capture projects that would allow them to continue business as usual. 

Maloney said that “these companies know their climate pledges are inadequate, but are prioritizing big oil’s record profits over the human costs of climate change.”

Ro Khanna, who sits on the committee, said that the industry’s approach was one of “intimidation” towards critics, as part of a “cynical strategy” to avoid acting on the climate emergency. He added that the committee will pass on the documents to “other entities”, raising the possibility of charges laid by the US Department of Justice.

Khanna rejected allegations that the committee had engaged in a sort of corporate witch-hunt. “The industry was the one out there continuing to make false statements about climate change and climate legislation,” he said. “Our goal is to get them to stop engaging in climate misinformation.”

Climate campaigners said the committee’s work showed that the fossil fuel industry was continuing to lie over global heating by pretending to act on the issue.

“The key revelation in this report is that big oil has no intention of actually following through on its climate commitments,” said Jamie Henn, director of Fossil Free Media. “It isn’t transitioning to clean energy, it’s doubling down on methane gas, and it’s actively lobbying against renewable energy solutions. This is the big tobacco playbook all over again: pretend you care about a problem, but continue your deadly business as usual.”

Oil firms have internally dismissed swift climate action, House panel says | Oil and gas companies | The Guardian

Pat Cullen the general secretary of Britain’s nurses’ union ,has accused the health secretary, Steve Barclay, of being a “bullyboy” who is unwilling to negotiate with her because she is a woman representing a largely female workforce. She said the government was displaying “particularly macho” behaviour towards the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) because she believes it sees nursing as “female work” that it does not value properly. She criticised ministers for portraying nurses as “greedy”.

“The more I think about it … I’m a woman negotiating for a 90% female profession that is trying to operate with a government that’s particularly macho and tends to operate with a bullyboy tactic. Perhaps that’s the reason why we can’t get moving forward. By refusing to negotiate Steve Barclay is ignoring nurses and ignoring me. I think there’s an issue here with us being female. I ask myself, would that [refusal to negotiate] be different if it was a 90% male profession and I was a male? I truly believe it would be. I think we’d be treated differently,” said Cullen, whose union represents 500,000 nurses across the UK.

She added: “And that links back to the value of caring and it being female work. Nurses showed the importance of care during the pandemic, the importance of being with a patient at their real hour of need, the importance of being there to hold their hand and see them leave this world and say: ‘It’s OK, we’ll be here.’ That’s all perceived by those people, by those men, as female jobs, female work, and that they can treat us like that.”

Barclay was treating nurses “with contempt and disrespect”, she said.

Tens of thousands of nurses across England, Wales and Northern Ireland are due to stop work on 15 and 20 December in the profession’s first-ever NHS-wide strike action. Ambulance staff, teachers, university lecturers and Border Force officials are among the many groups of workers who intend to strike over the coming weeks.

Cullin warned nurses could keep staging stoppages at hospitals and other places of NHS care for the next six months in their pursuit of a “fair and decent” pay rise. However, she also suggested the RCN would ditch its demand for a 5% above-inflation increase if the health secretary abandoned his refusal to begin meaningful talks.

Unnamed senior NHS managers have told the Health Service Journal that they regard the health secretary as “a real nightmare, vindictive, arrogant, a bully and hostile to the NHS”.

More than 1.3 million workers intend to strike sometime in December. Royal Mail postal workers  have begun strikes as have the long on-going rail workers strikes.

Meanwhile, Rishi Sunak has been condemned for using “disingenuous” figures after he repeated a claim that meeting union demands for public sector pay awards would cost every household £1,000 extra a year. The £1,000 figure, used by several ministers in recent days, is based on a government estimate that meeting an 11% pay rise for all public sector staff would cost a total of £28bn, spread around 28 million UK households.

The calculation has been called into question, however, given that not every part of the public sector is striking, and that awards recommended by pay review bodies and accepted by ministers average about 5% anyway.

Nurses’ union leader accuses Steve Barclay of ‘bullyboy’ tactics | Steve Barclay | The Guardian

  It is a fact that close to 4 billion people –or about half of the world’s total population of 8 billion– still live without access to a safe toilet and other sanitation facilities.

Nearly a full decade ago, the international community, represented in the United Nations General Assembly, decided to declare 19 November every single year, as a world day to address such a staggering problem.

And year after year, the UN continues to behave ‘politically correct’ by saying that progress and achievements were anyway made, however much would still be to do.

Despite such ‘correctness,’ the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, stated on the Day that the world is “seriously off track to keep our promise of safe toilets for all by 2030 – a crucial indicator in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Investment in sanitation systems is too low and progress remains too slow.”

 Every day, over 800 children under age five years old die from diarrhoea linked to unsafe water, sanitation and poor hygiene.

Poor sanitation is linked to the transmission of diarrhoeal diseases such as cholera and dysentery, as well as typhoid, intestinal worm infections and polio. It exacerbates stunting and contributes to the spread of antimicrobial resistance.

Globally, 1 in 3 schools do not have adequate toilets, and 23% of schools have no toilets at all. Schools without toilets can cause girls to miss out on their education. Without proper sanitation facilities, many are forced to miss school when they are on their period.

Open defecation: about 900 million people worldwide practice open defecation, meaning they go outside – on the side of the road, in bushes or rubbish heaps. It’s often a matter of where they live: 90% of people who practice open defecation live in rural areas. Of these, 494 million still defecate in the open, for example in street gutters, behind bushes or into open bodies of water.

Moreover, the lack of sanitation services, just in the year 2020, stood behind the fact that 45% of the household wastewater generated globally was discharged without safe treatment. Consequently, at least 10% of the world’s population is thought to consume food irrigated by wastewater.

Inadequate sanitation systems spread human waste into rivers, lakes and soil, polluting underground water resources. However, this problem seems to be invisible. Invisible because it happens underground. Invisible because it happens in the poorest and most marginalised communities. Groundwater is the world’s most abundant source of freshwater. It supports drinking water supplies, sanitation systems, farming, industry and ecosystems. As climate change worsens and populations grow, groundwater is vital for human survival. Safe sanitation protects groundwater. Toilets that are properly located and connected to safely managed sanitation systems, collect, treat and dispose of human waste, and help prevent human waste from spreading into groundwater.

Sanitation must withstand climate change. Toilets and sanitation systems must be built or adapted to cope with extreme weather events, so that services always function and groundwater is protected.

World Toilet Day – In Praise of Toilets | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

Via RobertS

Racism, xenophobia and discrimination are “fundamental influences” on health globally but have been overlooked by health researchers, policymakers and practitioners, the Lancet suggests. Racism is a “profound” and “insidious” driver of health inequalities worldwide and poses a public health threat to millions of people.

Inaccurate and unfounded assumptions about genetic differences between races also continue to shape health outcomes through research, policy and practice, the review of evidence and studies found.

“Racism and xenophobia exist in every modern society and have profound effects on the health of disadvantaged people,” said the lead author, Prof Delan Devakumar of University College London. “Until racism and xenophobia are universally recognised as significant drivers of determinants of health, the root causes of discrimination will remain in the shadows and continue to cause and exacerbate health inequities.”

The reasons why ethnic minorities are at greater risk have received “inadequate scrutiny” from health professionals and researchers, and there is a tendency to assume these inequities are genetically determined and unchangeable, said the Lancet. Its review challenges this notion and the argument that disparities can be explained by patterns of socioeconomic deprivation among racial and ethnic groups.

“Racism is a health issue,” said Richard Horton, the editor-in-chief of the Lancet. “Our structurally racist societies are unsafe for too many communities, families and individuals.”

In August, it was revealed that black and Asian people in England have to wait longer for a cancer diagnosis than white people, with some forced to wait an extra six weeks. 

The analysis of NHS waiting times and the world’s largest primary care database by the University of Exeter and the Guardian discovered minority ethnic patients wait longer than white patients in six of seven cancers studied. The results were described as “deeply concerning” and “absolutely unacceptable”.

Racism poses public health threat to millions worldwide, finds report | Medical research | The Guardian

 As the Qatar world cup progresses to its climax, a new report warning that its huge expansion of gas extraction could push the planet into catastrophic global heating. Should Qatar exploit all of its oil and gas reserves it will eventually add an enormous 50bn metric tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere once burned, which is more than the entire annual emissions of the whole world.

Qatar’s vast oil and gas resources have greatly enriched the small Middle Eastern country, which this year became the world’s largest exporter of liquified natural gas (or LNG), superseding the US and Australia. It is now looking to further cement its position by ramping up production from a vast offshore gas deposit called the north field, which will account for 70% of the emissions growth according to the new report by BankTrack, an NGO that used data from BP to ascertain the extent of Qatar’s “carbon bomb” projects.

Henrieke Butijn, climate campaigner and researcher at BankTrack. “What’s happening in Qatar is awful in terms of these projects and also worker conditions, but there is a level of hypocrisy here because Qatar isn’t acting alone.”

QatarEnergy has signed recent partnership deals with western oil giants including Shell, Total, ConocoPhilips, Exxon and Eni in order to boost output of the north field by 60% over the next five years. Separate deals have been struck in the past month with Germany and China to provide the countries with gas amid concerns over supplies disrupted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

No new fossil fuel infrastructure can be built if the world is to avoid breaching the 1.5C limit, the International Energy Agency has warned, but despite this there has been plenty of financial support for Qatar’s gas expansion. JPMorgan Chase, Citi, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, MUFG, Credit Suisse and Bank of America have all backed planned projects in the north field, providing nearly $12bn in bond underwriting services to QatarEnergy.

The emissions from Qatar’s oil and gas resources will cause $20tn in damages and 11m deaths around the world, BankTrack said. Qatar’s 50bn tons of emissions will occur if it allows all of its deposits to be burned. While this may not happen if other countries move decisively away from fossil fuels as an energy source, there is currently no commitment from Qatar that it won’t completely exhaust its reserves. In previous years there have been claims Qatar’s gas reserves could last more than 130 years.

“Fossil fuels are weapons of mass destruction, carbon bombs ticking against the time we have left to avert the very worst of the climate crisis,” said Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at Climate Action Network International.

Qatar’s gas output increase could cause catastrophic global heating, report says | Qatar | The Guardian

 Wars – or even more – climate disaster represent a great business opportunity.

A couple of dozens of companies involved in manufacturing the most inhuman weapons of mass destruction– the nuclear warheads, have been supported by over 150 big banks by lending them money or underwriting bonds, according to the Nobel Peace Laureate International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).

Its Don’t Bank on the Bomb report also shows that another 186 institutions seek to profit from holding shares or bonds. And that altogether 338 financial institutions have made more than 685 billion US dollars available to the nuclear weapon industry since 2019.

In its report “Squandered: 2021 Global Nuclear Weapons Spending,” ICAN reveals that in 2021 –the year before the Russian invasion of Ukraine– nine nuclear-armed states spent 82.4 billion US dollars on these weapons of mass destruction, that’s more than 156,000 US dollars… per minute!

The prestigious Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) recently revealed that, right now, of the total inventory of an estimated 12.705 warheads at the start of 2022, about 9.440 were in military stockpiles for potential use.

Of those, an estimated 3.732 warheads were deployed with missiles and aircraft, and around 2.000 —nearly all of which belonged to Russia or the USA— were kept in a state of “high operational alert,” SIPRI adds in its Yearbook 2022.

 But there is another highly lucrative business: climate change.

“The world’s richest people emit huge and unsustainable amounts of carbon and, unlike ordinary people, 50% to 70% of their emissions result from their investments,” reveals a global movement of people who are fighting inequality to end poverty and injustice–OXFAM International.

“A billionaire emits a million times more greenhouse gases than the average person.”

Its recent major study: Carbon Billionaires: The investment emissions of the world’s richest people, reports that a new analysis of the “investments of 125 of the world’s richest billionaires shows that on average they are emitting 395 million tonnes of CO2 a year, more than a million times the average for someone in the bottom 90% of humanity.”

The study also finds billionaire investments in polluting industries such as fossil fuels and cement are double the average for the Standard & Poor 500 group of companies.

“Billionaires hold extensive stakes in many of the world’s largest and most powerful corporations, which gives them the power to influence the way these companies act.”

In either case, wars and climate catastrophes cause vast destruction, let alone unspeakable human suffering, and death.

Both of them further sharpen the world’s unprecedented food crisis. Also here, market lords continue to make high profits.

In fact, a ”small number of corporations exercise a high degree of influence over the global industrial food system, powered by mergers and acquisitions of one another to form giant mega-corporations, which enable further concentration horizontally and vertically, as well as influence over policy-making and governance nationally and globally,” as already reported by IPS.

On the current energy crisis, the UN chief António Guterres in mid-September 2022, stated that it is “absolutely unacceptable to see that, when people are suffering so much in different parts of the world and, namely, because of the high costs of energy and high costs of fuel, to see fossil fuel companies having the largest profits ever or at least in the recent past.”

Why not: in addition to speculating with the energy markets, these companies have been largely funded by governments. In fact, politicians have spent six trillion US dollars from taxpayers’ money to subsidise fossil fuels in just one year: 2020. And they are set to increase the figure to nearly seven trillion by 2025.

 Then comes the great business of reconstructing all that the money-making business has been greatly contributing. Buildings, highways, bridges, hospitals, schools, universities, etcetera, let alone in further synthetic food.. all of these are to be paid for by the victims.

But there are more business opportunities, like continue buying vast fertile lands for monoculture and intensive agriculture, a money-making practice that by the way further opens the door for high technology corporations.  A production that, also, by the way, is being greatly disrupted due to both wars and climate disaster.

Don’t Be Fooled: Climate Disasters Are Highly Lucrative | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

Via RobertS