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Your Favorite Artisanal Food Brand Is Probably Owned by a Huge Company

by ChandaEager6519 Posted on May 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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Big Food is in a pickle. Its core business—packaged, pre-cooked fare—remains profitable, but sales are shrinking. Consumer distrust is mounting. One response has been to maintain profits by slashing expenses. Conagra, the behemoth behind such one-time powerhouses as Chef Boyardee canned spaghetti and Pam spray oil, recently announced it would cut $300 million in annual costs and lay off 1,500 workers.

Another time-tested strategy is to snap up smaller, independent companies operating in niches of the industry that are actually growing, like organics, for example. That means that what started as your favorite local organic food brand—Naked Juice, Dagoba chocolate, LaraBar—now belongs to a much larger, much less local company.

Last week alone, three much-loved small players succumbed to the appetites of larger players:

• Spam king Hormel gobbles up an organic peanut butter player. It might seem bizarre that Hormel—the topic of Ted Genoways’ excellent 2011 exposé on working conditions on the slaughterhouse floor—would drop $286 million on nut-snack company Justin’s, which started as a stand in the Boulder Farmers Market in 2004. But Hormel has been diversifying away from canned pork for a while. It spent $700 million to take on supermarket peanut butter titan Jiffy in 2013. By broadening its portfolio to include Justin’s—probably most famous for its organic peanut butter cups—Hormel is adding rapid sales growth. Hormel had already displayed its taste for the sweeter growth prospects and profit margins offered by organic and “natural” foods when it spent $775 to buy niche meat player Applegate a year ago.

• A very European-like midsize cheese-maker gets snapped up by a European giant. Switzerland-based Emmi is a globe-spanning cheese titan with $3.3 billion in annual sales. Its offerings now include those of Cowgirl Creamery, which sells about $20 million per year of cheeses from cows raised on the lush rolling hills of Northern California’s Marin County. For US cheese lovers like me, the thought of Cowgirl falling into the maw of a large company is like seeing your favorite local coffeehouse get bought by Starbucks. Although, to be fair, Emmi isn’t exactly Kraft—it sells some pretty high-quality cheeses in the United States, like gruyere. And as the San Francisco Chronicle notes, Emmi has already demonstrated its fondness for Northern California cheese—it bought Redwood Hill Farm and Creamery last year and Cypress Grove Chevre in 2010. Another European behemoth, Heineken, also bought a bit of Northern California chic when it gulped up a 50 percent stake in craft-beer maker Lagunitas last year.

• A great Sonoma County niche winery gets swallowed by a California-based titan. Full disclosure: I can’t afford to drink them very often, but I love the lean, light, pretty wines of Sonoma County’s Copain, which makes about 20,000 cases per year. I don’t love the big, high-alcohol ones favored by Kendall Family Wines, which are cranked out at the rate of 5.6 million cases annually, from wineries that span the globe from California to Chile to South Africa. So I won’t be toasting this deal (the price of which has not been disclosed.) But I do hope it signals a shift away from the “jammy fruit bomb” style that has dominated the wine world for decades, a stubborn trend ably skewered by Jonathan Nossiter’s excellent 2014 documentary Mondovino.

In all three of these deals, the charismatic founder(s) of the smaller company has vowed to maintain full control of the brand’s quality and vision as it moves forward under the shadow of a conglomerate. Here’s hoping they do.

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Your Favorite Artisanal Food Brand Is Probably Owned by a Huge Company

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Rainbow satellite image shows Antarctica’s ice fleeing into the ocean

by SueStilwell9 Posted on May 11, 2016

Rainbow satellite image shows Antarctica’s ice fleeing into the ocean

By on May 11, 2016Share

Hello, Antarctica, you’re looking more colorful than ever! But wait — you’re ice, and colorful ice seems bad.

European Space Agency

It is. The colors on this satellite image from the European Space Agency (ESA) correspond to the speed at which Antarctica’s ice is shifting. The warmer the color, the faster that ice is breaking off and floating away. Red indicates movement of up to three feet per day, whereas blue indicates about an inch per day.

Thanks to the pull of our old friend gravity, ice sheets are constantly in motion. But warmer ice is weaker, and weaker ice moves faster. Take a look at the peninsula’s coasts, where higher temperatures have increased melt and sped up glacial movement, causing ice to slip into the sea.

Looks like we’ve got an Antarctica on the rocks. (That sounds like a pretty good drink, actually.)

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Rainbow satellite image shows Antarctica’s ice fleeing into the ocean

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"Captain America: Civil War" Is a Big Dumb Movie You Will Enjoy

by JohnnieFreeland Posted on May 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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When last we saw our friends from Marvel, they were doing…something. What was the last film? Ant-Man? I don’t really remember much about Ant-Man, except that Paul Rudd fought the drug-addled congressman from the first season of House of Cards.

When last we memorably saw our friends from Marvel, they were…fighting James Spader…in a fictional European country. Tony Stark wanted to help people so he built a robot (James Spader) to protect people. But then the robot decided to kill people, like they do, and blah blah blah, eventually the Avengers beat James Spader but not without a lot of people in this fictional European country dying.

So here we are now in a bold new world, post-James Spader rampage.

Captain America: Civil War.

Thor and the Hulk and some other pals seem to be off somewhere, but the rest of the team is up to their old tricks. In the beginning of Captain America: Civil War, the eponymous main superhero leads what could be called “The Avengers: The New Class,” including Wanda Maximoff (the Olsen sister who has witch powers), The Vision (aka Paul Bettany’s sex robot), and Captain America’s buddy Falcon (Anthony Mackie), as they head to Africa to kill some Hydra member of no particular importance. One thing leads to another, and civilians die.

Dammit! Not again, Avengers!

The world will not stand for this. (Sad truth: The only time when the world won’t stand for civilian death is when it comes to superhero films.)

So leaders of the world get together and pass a treaty to combat climate change incorporate the Avengers into some sort of United Nations command structure.

Captain America is not thrilled with this idea because Captain America doesn’t need some bureaucrat in Brussels to tell him when to right a wrong. (Also, and coincidentally, his best friend—the Winter Soldier, aka Bucky Barnes, being played by Sebastian Stan—is a fugitive superassassin on the run.) Tony Stark, having been chastened by the events of the second Avengers film—it was him, after all, who built James Spader and was ultimately responsible for the deaths of all those fictional Europeans—sides with the pro-regulation (anti-Captain America) team. Voila, tension. Plus, not only does Tony Stark not wear his Iron Man suit very often, he doesn’t even tie up the tie on his normal suit all the way. It just sort of sits there, loosened.

Then when the powers of the world gather to sign the “Sit on it, Captain America” act, there is—surprise!—a terrorist attack. In superhero movies, world leaders are not allowed to gather without there being a terrorist attack. (Every superhero film is the way a young Dick Cheney imagined every prom night would be: Everyone’s very attractive and there’s a terror attack.) One of the world leaders who perishes is the King of Wakanda. Chadwick Boseman, as the slain king’s son vows to avenge his father.

Dun dun.

So who did the blowing up? Captain America’s buddy the Winter Soldier of course! Or was it? The law enforcement community seems to think so, but Captain America doesn’t care what the law enforcement community thinks. He catches up to Sebastian Stan and Sebastian Stan is like “no way did I do that” and Captain America is like “I believe you. You were in Gossip Girl.“

Imagine a lot more of this. For a pretty long time. Eventually the stage is set for the titular civil war wherein Tony Stark, War Machine (Don Cheadle), Black Panther, Vision, Black Widow (Scarlet Johansson), and Spiderman (Tom Hollander) try to stop the fugitives—Captain America, The Winter Soldier, Scarlet Witch, Falcon, Ant-Man, and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner)—from…trying to prove Sebastian Stan’s innocence, I think? It isn’t really clear.

Throughout this film, people often say to Captain America, “Should we tell Tony Stark about this new and revealing information?” And Captain America says, “That neo-liberal shill wouldn’t understand.” Everything could be sorted out if they just talked, and there’s a perfect place to do so in the second act. But of course, this is a Captain America movie, and Captain America is the star and he gets to be right despite obviously not being right. The film goes to great lengths to make Captain America accidentally correct about a lot of things. The choices Captain America makes when he is making choices are bad choices but the film flips over itself to justify him by sheer luck. In this film, Captain America fails upward.

My main problem with this movie: Captain America is sort of just a selfish hypocrite. Also, boring. And he isn’t even super. (He is strong, though.) And he could just be shot with a bullet. (There are a bunch of times in this movie when he loses his shield.) His whole team, in fact, save the Olsen twin who is a Witch, could just be shot to death by any old infantry unit.

Also, with so many superheroes in this movie, writers clearly had to find reasons to peel them off. Black Widow (Scarlet Johansson) just sort of shrugs and walks away after one fight. I have no idea where Vision went after the second act. As far as I can tell, no explanation is made for why he is gone. Falcon, War Machine, Spiderman, Ant-man, and Hawkeye are all given some nonsense diagnose to deliver about why they are crapping out, but Vision just sort of ghosts out. Of course, they have to peel off so we can have Tony Stark fight Captain America.

No surprise: They are all being tricked into fighting each other by some shady German character (the dude who played the other race car driver in the 2013 film Rush) with dubious motives, but that’s because it doesn’t matter. Here’s the most surprising thing: It isn’t a bad film! It’s enjoyable, even. When the Avengers actually fight, it’s fun! The movie’s themes of this and the infamously brooding Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Sadness seem somewhat interchangeable, but at least Captain America: Civil War rolls them out with Marvel’s trademark humor.

Best of all: Spiderman and Black Panther! I’m looking forward to seeing their movies!

In short: If you like fun dumb blockbusters, you will like this fun dumb blockbuster.

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"Captain America: Civil War" Is a Big Dumb Movie You Will Enjoy

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For Once, Something Genuinely Good for the Earth Is Happening on Earth Day

by WilliamsLockyer Posted on April 22, 2016

green4us

World leaders are in New York City to sign the first global agreement on climate change. This image from the 1968 Apollo 8 mission helped inspire the first Earth Day. NASA A lot of champagne was popped on the night of Saturday, December 12, when diplomats from almost every country on Earth finalized the text of the historic global agreement to combat climate change. In the Paris Agreement, countries committed to hold global temperature increases to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, an ambitious target considering that the world is already more than halfway to that limit. The deal also laid out a system for wealthier nations to help poorer ones pay for adapting to unavoidable climate impacts. But finalizing the agreement was only one step on the long road to actually achieving its aims. The next step is happening today, on Earth Day, as heads of state and other top officials from more than 150 countries will gather at the United Nations headquarters in New York City to put their signatures on the deal. Secretary of State John Kerry, who was a driving force in Paris, will sign the document on behalf of the United States. Signing the document is mostly a symbolic step, indicating a country’s intent to formally “join” the agreement at some later stage. In order to “join” the agreement, national governments have to show the UN the piece of domestic paperwork—a law, executive order, or some other legal document—in which the government consents to be bound by the terms of the agreement. Some small countries, including some island states that are among the most vulnerable to climate impacts, are expected to offer up those documents at the same time they sign. Other countries will take longer. The agreement doesn’t take legal effect until it is formally joined by both 55 individual countries and by enough countries to cover 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions (a threshold that essentially mandates the participation of the US and China). The World Resources Institute made a pretty cool widget for experimenting with various ways to reach those thresholds. You can play around with different options to see what it would take. Once countries start signing the agreement, the widget will automatically update accordingly: President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping have promised to join the agreement this year. Obama is expected to join using an executive agreement, which will allow him to avoid sending the deal to Congress. (Executive agreements account for the vast majority of US foreign commitments.) He’s able to do this because the US says it can fulfill its Paris promises without any changes to domestic laws; instead, the Obama administration is holding up its end of the bargain by imposing new EPA regulations on emissions from power plants. Unlike a treaty, an executive agreement does not require ratification by the Senate. It’s not bulletproof; a future president could unilaterally abandon from the deal. But for Obama, there’s a clear incentive for pushing to reach those 55 countries/55 percent thresholds as quickly as possible: Once the agreement goes into force, it requires a four-year waiting period before a country can withdraw. In other words, in the event that either Ted Cruz or Donald Trump—both vociferous climate change deniers—succeeds Obama in the White House, they wouldn’t be able to back out of the agreement until their (*shudder*) second term. The odds are against the agreement taking force before Obama leaves office, because adoption by the European Union—which in the Paris Agreement acts as a singular unit—requires domestic actions by all of its 28 member states, which could take some extra time. Still, if the next president bails, he or she will have to pay a heavy diplomatic price for it, cautioned Elliot Diringer, executive vice president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. “Walking away from the agreement would instantly turn the US from a leader to a defector,” he said, “and would almost certainly trigger a diplomatic backlash that would hamper our other priorities.” The upshot is that the US will likely join soon after today’s signing ceremony. A slew of other nations will follow, and the Paris Agreement will become binding international law sometime before 2018, when it calls for a global check-in on emission reductions. Of course, none of this puts the world any closer to averting devastating climate change than we were back in December. As they stand today, the country-level plans (nationally determined contributions, or NDCs, in UN jargon) enshrined in the agreement fall woefully short of the “well below” 2 degrees C target. The chart below, from a recent analysis by MIT and Climate Interactive, shows a variety of possible future scenarios. The blue line is what would happen without the Paris Agreement—a world where the impacts of climate change would be truly horrific and many major cities would become uninhabitable. The red line shows what will happen if countries stick to their current commitments. The green line is what a successful outcome of the Paris Agreement would look like (and, to be clear, even that level of warming will come with severe consequences): Climate Interactive/MIT Sloan As you can see, by 2025 or so countries need to be doing far more than they have committed to thus far. The Paris Agreement states that in 2020, at the next major international climate conference, countries must roll out new plans that go well beyond their current ones. So we’re very much not out of the woods yet. But we’re moving in the right direction, at least. Since the first Earth Day in 1970, the holiday has generally declined into little more than a “news” hook for corporate communications people to harass reporters about eco-friendly guns and cheeseburgers and other dumb stuff. So it’s kind of nice to see the day being used for something of actual historical significance.

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For Once, Something Genuinely Good for the Earth Is Happening on Earth Day

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For Once, Something Genuinely Good for the Earth Is Happening on Earth Day

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Could a Typo Help Save the Planet?

by HubertElzy2 Posted on April 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The United States and China are leading a push to bring the Paris climate accord into force much faster than even the most optimistic projections—aided by a typographical glitch in the text of the agreement.

More than 150 governments, including 40 heads of state, are expected at a symbolic signing ceremony for the agreement at the United Nations on April 22, which is Earth Day.

It’s the largest one-day signing of any international agreement, according to the UN.

But leaders will really be looking to see which countries go beyond mere ceremony and legally join the agreement, which would bind them to the promises made in Paris last December to keep warming below the agreed target of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

So far, the US, China, Canada and a host of other countries have promised to join this year—boosting the hopes of bringing the Paris deal into force before the initial target date of 2020—possibly as early as 2016 or 2017, according to officials and analysts.

That is well before the timeline originally envisaged at Paris. Environment ministers attending the World Bank spring meetings this week said the faster pace indicated serious commitment to dealing with the global challenge.

The accelerated timeline would have one obvious advantage for Barack Obama. The standard withdrawal clause on any such agreement would force a future Republican president to wait four years before quitting Paris, according to legal experts.

An earlier start date could also turbo-charge the agreement, providing momentum for deeper emissions cuts.

It could also help efforts to attain the more ambitious goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C (2 degrees F)—which would give a better chance of survival to small islands and other countries on the front lines of climate change.

Christiana Figueres, who heads the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, has said global emissions need to peak by 2020 to have any chance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C. There has already been about 1 degree C (1.8 degrees F) of warming above pre-industrial levels.

“Early entry into force—we are very committed to making that happen,” Catherine McKenna, Canada’s environment and climate change minister, told a panel at the World Bank last week. “We can’t just now rest on our laurels and have a nice signing on Earth Day, and then we all go home.”

She told the Guardian Canada was committed to signing the agreement this year.

The push to bring the climate agreement into force quickly is in sharp contrast to the earlier international efforts to fight climate change through the Kyoto Protocol, which did not take effect for four years.

Eliza Northrop, an analyst at the World Resources Institute, said there was growing momentum behind an early approval of the agreement.

“It’s likely it could come into effect in 2017. It could even happen this year,” she said.

Governments at the Paris climate meeting had initially set the start date of the agreement in 2020—with intense discussion over whether that start date should be at the start or end of the year, according to diplomats.

The 2020 date remained in the negotiating drafts almost until the very end, the diplomats said. But unaccountably the final draft prepared by France left out the entire clause. By that point, after a few late-night negotiating sessions, a number of countries did not notice the omission.

The agreement, the first time all countries agreed to emissions cuts and other actions to fight climate change, aims to limit warming to below 2 degrees C and move towards a zero-carbon economy by the end of the century.

But it’s a tall order. The agreement needs to be approved by 55 countries accounting for at least 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions to come into force.

The US and China committed to join the agreement this year—but that still leaves a gap of more than 15 percent of global emissions.

A number of countries, including India and Japan, require their parliaments to approve the Paris agreement—a process which could take time.

The European Union will need agreement from its 28 member states before it can join the agreement—which makes it highly unlikely to be in a position to join early on.

“The assumption is that you have to do this without the EU to get to that 55 percent hurdle, if you want to see that in the next year or so,” said Alden Meyer, strategy director for the Union of Concerned Scientists.

That will force governments to cobble together a coalition of smaller countries if they hope to reach the 55 percent emissions threshold.

Possible contenders include India, Mexico, the Philippines, and Australia.

So far, about 10 countries have said they would join the agreement this year.

On Wednesday, Román Macaya, Costa Rica’s ambassador to Washington, said his country would join the agreement in 2016. Palau, Switzerland, Fiji, and the Marshall Islands have also said they will approve the agreement this year.

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Could a Typo Help Save the Planet?

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Cops Raid the Former Offices of FIFA’s Brand-New President

by ErnestiRosenber Posted on April 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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Global soccer may be embroiled in yet another corruption crisis after Swiss police raided the offices of UEFA, the sport’s European governing body, on Wednesday. The raid came days after Gianni Infantino, UEFA’s former chief and the newly installed president of FIFA, appeared in the massive Panama Papers leak, which exposed the complex offshore banking arrangements of some of the world’s most powerful people.

According to the Guardian, those documents show that Infantino co-signed a UEFA broadcast rights deal in 2006 with two Argentinian businessmen, Hugo and Marino Jinkis, who are now under indictment as part of the United States’ global soccer corruption investigation. The men immediately resold the rights to Ecuador’s TV station Teleamazonas at a steep markup, and the documents potentially tie Infantino to both that deal and other illicit acts by the Jinkis’.

Infantino was UEFA’s director of legal services at the time, and he said in a statement yesterday that the contract was awarded properly and that he had no direct dealings with either of the two men or their company. “There is no indication whatsoever for any wrongdoings from neither UEFA nor myself in this matter,” he said.

Infantino was only elected FIFA president in February, following months of scandal during which the US and Swiss authorities arrested a string of FIFA officials and the organization banned its former president, Sepp Blatter, from any soccer-related activities for six years.

At the time, Infantino promised to turn the page on FIFA’s corruption problems and implement badly needed reforms. “We will restore the image of FIFA and the respect of FIFA, and everyone in the world will applaud us,” he said after his election.

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Cops Raid the Former Offices of FIFA’s Brand-New President

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Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson Resigns in the Wake of "Panama Papers" Scandal

by AnnetteLorenzo Posted on April 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Iceland’s Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson announced his resignation on Tuesday amid mounting public anger over evidence that he and his wife owned a secretive offshore company called Wintris that managed millions of dollars of investments in three Icelandic banks that collapsed during the 2008 financial crisis.

Calls to step down were sparked by this weekend’s so-called “Panama Papers” leak, a massive trove of documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonesca that exposed a number of international leaders and their closest confidantes as participating in complex offshore banking arrangements. High-profile leaders linked to the leak include Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

But Gunnlaugsson is the first leader ousted in the international fallout. The public outcry in Iceland is particularly intense due to lasting memories of the 2008 financial crisis, which paralyzed the country’s economy, and sent shock waves around the world. And as our own Kevin Drum noted, Iceland was “ground zero for the European banking crisis.”

Gunnlaugsson had initially insisted on staying in office. When questioned about his ties to Wintris on Monday, the visibly shaken prime minister was unable to properly respond and ended the interview. “You are asking me nonsense,” he is heard telling the reporters conducting the interview.

In the days following the leak, mass demonstrations calling for Gunnlaugsson to step down were held outside Parliament. Some people were seen hurling yogurt at the building in protest:

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Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson Resigns in the Wake of "Panama Papers" Scandal

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3 Laws Congress Needs to Pass to Reduce Toxic Chemicals

by ChristeEAW Posted on March 28, 2016

Toxic chemicals are abound in many of the most common products we use every day. From breast cancer and reproductive failure to attention deficit disorder and various birth defects, we know that toxic chemicals can harm our health and impact future generations.

Though some laws are already on the books to reduce our exposure to these dangerous compounds, much more is needed to keep us safe and healthy. Here are three laws Congress can and should pass that would reduce our toxic exposures.

Overhaul the Toxic Substances Control Act – “TSCA” (pronounced toss-ka) was passed in 1976 to regulate the chemicals used in everyday products. However, when TSCA was passed, we knew far less about the impact chemicals have on our bodies, and there were fewer chemicals in circulation. Today, there are over 80,000 chemicals on the market. Only 200 have been tested for safety, reports Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families. And current law allows chemical manufacturers to keep the ingredients in some compounds secret, so it’s hard for consumers to know what they’re actually exposed to. A broad coalition of health, environmental and consumer organizations is urging Congress to reform TSCA by:

* Clearly requiring the law to protect the public and the environment from unsafe chemicals

* Require the Environmental Protection Agency to assess various chemicals and empower EPA to order companies to test the toxicity of their chemicals.

* Expedite the regulation of particularly toxic chemicals which bioaccumulate in our bodies, with a particular focus on PFOA, the chemical in Teflon-type products and asbestos

* Give consumers the right to know what they’re exposed to.

You can read a complete description of the demands the public is making to strengthen TSCA here.

Pass a strong Personal Care Products Safety Act – Currently, the personal products we use, like shampoo, soap and cosmetics, are regulated by provisions of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, which was passed over 75 years ago in 1938. The law was engineered by the cosmetics and personal care products industry so thatthe US Food and Drug Administration was NOT given the authority to require ingredients used in these products to be tested for safety. “As a result,” says Jamie McConnell, Director of Programs & Policy at the non-profit research organization Women’s Voice for the Earth, “today it is perfectly legal for cosmetics to contain harmful ingredients like formaldehyde (a known carcinogen), toluene (linked to birth defects), phthalates (also linked to birth defects and reproductive harm), styrene (a carcinogen), and even lead (a potent neurotoxin).”

Women’s Voices and many other health advocacy groups are urging Congress to pass a strong Act that:

* Gives the FDA the authority to get unsafe products off the shelves

* Directs the FDA to assess the safety of a minimum of 5 cosmetic chemicals a year, including those that contain formaldehyde

* Requires full ingredient disclosure, as well as a domestic telephone number or email on product labels to make it easy for consumers to find out what’s in the products they buy.

You can see a complete rundown of the recommended strong provisions for the Act here.

Require GMO Labeling – Right now, companies are not required to let consumers know when the food they produce is made with ingredients tainted by genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Earlier this year, industry attempted to pass legislation dubbed the “DARK” act, because it would have explicitly “Denied Americans the Right-to-Know.” That legislation was defeated, but companies still don’t have to disclose the presence of GMOs in their products. Several states, including Vermont, Connecticut and Maine, and 65 countries around the world, including all of the European Union, Russia and even China, require labeling. Polls show that nearly 90 percent of Americans support labeling to indicate the presence of GMOs.

Legislation has been introduced in the Senate that would ensure that consumers can find GMO ingredient labeling on food packaging. The “Biotechnology Food Labeling Uniformity Act” would specifically:

* Enable Americans to see whether a food has been prepared with GMO ingredients

* Require manufacturers to disclose the presence of GMOs

You can learn more about the benefits of GMO labeling, and keep abreast of the status of legislative action, on the Just Label It website.

Related
5 Shocking Facts about Your Cosmetics
4 Potential Health Risks of Eating GMO Foods

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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3 Laws Congress Needs to Pass to Reduce Toxic Chemicals

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No One Knows Just How Big Europe’s Jihadi Problem Really Is

by RetaEdengjymusl Posted on March 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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In the wake of the terrorist attacks in Belgium on Tuesday, security services across Europe and elsewhere are on alert for more potential attacks. But even as Belgian police identify suspects and more information comes to light, no one can say just how big Europe’s jihadi threat actually is.

For one thing, there’s no generally accepted estimate of the number of terrorist operatives lurking in European cities. The most dangerous potential attackers are the men—about 5,000 from Western Europe alone—who have traveled to Syria and Iraq to fight with ISIS and other jihadi groups. The Tony Blair Faith Foundation, a think tank set up by the former British prime minister, estimated in January that about 1,300 of those fighters have returned to Europe. Ed Husain, a senior adviser to the group, told Newsweek that the fighters are “a potent force and a significant threat.”

But it’s also unclear how many of them return home with the intent to kill. A report issued last April by the Congressional Research Service noted that “only a small proportion of foreign fighters have actually committed acts of violence upon returning to their home countries” and that “some European fighters may return traumatized and disillusioned by the brutality of the conflict and have no intention of committing violence at home.”

Colin Clarke, a political scientist at the RAND Corporation, agrees that many of the fighters return home and “wash their hands” of the jihadi experience. “I’d say the lion’s share probably do, or they just know that they’re being watched by the security services,” he says. “I’d say it’s only a small minority of guys that come back with the intent to attack.” Unfortunately, those that do are “usually highly skilled” and able to coordinate attacks like the ones in Paris and Brussels.

And for every man who straps on an explosive vest or picks up a rifle, there’s a long chain of people who have helped him plan, get weapons, forge documents, and carry out other logistical tasks. “You’re going to have a facilitation network that is two or three people to every one that’s an actual terrorist that wants to mobilize to violence,” says terrorism researcher Clint Watts of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. That means the 1,300 returned fighters could represent only a baseline number of jihadis, not a pool from which only a handful of attackers have emerged. “I would say it’s bigger,” Watts says.

No matter the exact size of the problem, some countries simply appear unequipped to handle the number of potential targets and the intense surveillance needed to track them. The problem is particularly bad in Belgium, which has a weak government and security services divided by language barriers. “Some guys are speaking Flemish, some are speaking French, some are speaking German,” says Clarke. “Very few are speaking Arabic.”

Other countries are facing similar crunches in manpower and resources. “The countries that I’m worried about the most are these smaller countries that lack both the capacity and the sort of competency in counterterrorism but have had a lot of foreign fighters go to Iraq and Syria,” Watts says. “Denmark, the Netherlands, and Belgium all need to be concerned.”

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No One Knows Just How Big Europe’s Jihadi Problem Really Is

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Photos From Around The World Capture the Outpouring of Support After the Brussels Attack

by ArturoHanran Posted on March 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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Early Tuesday morning, a series of terrorist attacks ripped across Brussels, the Belgian capitol, leaving at least 31 dead. We’re following live updates to the story here. Similar to the December massacre in Paris, the attacks were quickly followed by a public outpouring grief, sympathy and solidarity, taking the form of makeshift memorials and specially lit landmarks.

Here is a selection of reactions from Europe and around the world:

People light candles at a memorial set up outside the stock exchange in Brussels. Geert Vanden Wijngaert/AP

The pencils in the cartoon below are a reference to the terrorist attacks on the offices of French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo, last January:

Pakistanis chant slogans during a rally to condemn the Brussels attack, in Multan, Pakistan. Asim Tanveer/AP

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Photos From Around The World Capture the Outpouring of Support After the Brussels Attack

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