Tag: corruption

FDA Lets Chemical Companies Decide if Recycled Plastics Are Safe for Food Containers

Recycled content in food packaging is increasing as sustainability advocates press manufacturers to cut their use of virgin plastic.

Since 1990, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the agency responsible for ensuring food contact materials are safe, has approved at least 347 voluntary manufacturer applications for food contact materials made with recycled plastic, according to a database on its website.

Approvals have tripled in recent years, from an average of 7 to 8 per year through 2019, to 23 per year since then, and they continue to climb. The FDA has already approved 27 proposals through June this year.

Other than Coca-Cola, most manufacturers seeking approval are petrochemical giants such as Eastman Chemicals, Dupont and Indorama; and lesser-known plastic packaging manufacturers, including many from China, India and other countries.

The end buyers of the recycled materials aren’t included in the FDA database, but many popular brands are using recycled content. Cadbury chocolate bars come in a wrapper marketed as 30% recycled “soft plastic packaging.”

The Coca-Cola Co. in North America reports it sells soft drinks in 100% recycled PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles, while General Mills says its Annie’s cereal boxes use a liner made from 35% recycled plastic film.

Increasing recycled content in packaging may be good news for the planet, but researchers say the FDA has a lax approval process for plastic food packaging that hasn’t kept pace with the science on chemical hazards in plastics.

The agency’s approval process for recycled plastics is voluntary and ignores the potential risk of chemical mixtures, researchers told Environmental Health News (EHN). Companies can seek guidance on their recycling process, but they are not required to.

In addition, the FDA relies on manufacturers’ test data when it approves materials, leaving companies essentially in charge of policing themselves. Meanwhile, some studies show that recycled plastic can harbor even more toxic chemicals — such as bisphenol-A (BPA), phthalates, benzene and others — than virgin plastic.

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WOAH: Far-Left Presidential Candidate Cornel West Says Kamala Bribed Him to Drop Out, Offered Him a Job and Debt Payoff

Leftist presidential candidate Cornel West has claimed that Kamala Harris attempted to bribe him to drop out of the race, even going as far as offering him a job in her administration and a promise of paying off his campaign debts.

In an interview with independent journalist Jordan Chariton on the Status Coup News podcast, West made a series of shocking accusations following the close of last week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

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What Is Secret Service Hiding About Trump Assassination Attempt?

It’s been six weeks since the attempt on former President Donald Trump’s life at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and the American public’s questions about the nature of the attack and the security failings that led to Trump’s brush with death largely remain unanswered.

Jason Chaffetz, a Fox News contributor and former Utah congressman who once chaired the House Oversight Committee, joined “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss the apparent security failures and ongoing investigations into what transpired in Butler on July 13.

“I thought the extraction was very slow. I thought it was fairly pathetic,” Chaffetz told The Daily Signal. “It’s been illuminated more now that even though he was the Republican nominee, even though he was the former president, he wasn’t getting the full protective detail that a sitting president would get. And I have a problem with that.”

Chaffetz thinks the failures are structural. Poor recruitment and training, as well as heavy workloads, create a perfect storm for the kinds of security lapses witnessed on July 13 in Butler, Chaffetz suggested. These problems have long plagued the Secret Service.

When Chaffetz chaired the House Oversight Committee, he conducted the largest investigation into the Secret Service’s operations in American history. The investigation resulted in a more than 400-page report, “United States Secret Service: An Agency in Crisis.”

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Mark Zuckerberg Confirms Biden Administration Pressured Facebook on Censorship, Admits to Throttling Hunter Biden Story

In a revealing letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg has addressed significant controversies surrounding the platform’s content censorship practices, especially concerning actions taken during the 2020 presidential election cycle and the COVID-19 pandemic.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

Zuckerberg confirmed that senior officials from the Biden Administration exerted “pressure” on Facebook to censor specific content related to COVID-19, criticizing the administration’s approach. Despite the external pressures, Zuckerberg emphasized that the final decisions on content moderation lay with Facebook, admitting regret over some of the decisions made under this pressure.

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Mark Zuckerberg ‘Regrets’ Censorship of COVID Info & Hunter Biden Laptop Story

Mark Zuckerberg sensationally admitted that the Biden White House pressured Facebook to censor content about COVID-19 and the Hunter Biden laptop story and that he now regrets it.

In a letter to the House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said the social media giant was “repeatedly pressured” by the government to blacklist information after Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021.

“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain Covid-19 content, including humour and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree,” wrote the Facebook founder.

Such information included claims that the virus emerged from a Chinese lab, something which subsequently became one of the most likely scenarios, as well as content that questioned the efficacy and safety of the COVID jab.

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NYT Uncritically Reported Israel’s Version of Golan Bombing

As the US-backed genocide in Gaza continues, US media assist in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to widen the war, parroting the words of the aggressor. A consequential example of US press support for escalation was Western media’s coverage of the July 27 strike that killed 12 Druze children on a soccer field near the town of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights.

Israel and the US immediately blamed the Iran-backed Lebanese organization Hezbollah for the strike—citing Israeli intelligence reports of an Iranian Falaq-1 missile being found at the soccer field (BBC, 7/28/24).

But, in a move that Hezbollah expert Amal Saad called “uncharacteristic” (Drop Site, 7/30/24), the group adamantly denied responsibility for the attack. Saad, a lecturer in politics at Cardiff University, noted that targeting the Syrian Golan Heights—where many inhabitants are hostile towards Israel—would be “illogical” and “provocative” for Hezbollah. Further, if the organization had accidentally committed an attack, Saad pointed to a precedent of the group issuing a public apology in a case of misfire, with the organization’s leader, Hassan Nasrullah, visiting families of victims.

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Biden Pentagon spokesman insisted Afghan withdrawal wasn’t chaotic but his emails say otherwise

The Pentagon’s chief spokesman has long insisted there was no “chaos” during the bungled U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, but his own email correspondence shows senior officials were acutely aware that conditions in the country were chaotic and spiraling into deadly violence, according to newly obtained government documents.

These memos and emails chronicle political efforts by the Biden/Harris administration to soft-pedal the truth to the American people about its first major foreign crisis. The documents were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request from the nonprofit watchdog Functional Government Initiative.

The memos show, for instance, that while then-DOD Undersecretary of Communications John Kirby tried to jaw-bone reporters to portray the Afghan withdrawal as orderly like President Joe Biden had promised, he was receiving briefings from diplomats and military officials in theater who were frantic to stabilize a crisis, particularly at the Kabul airport were evacuations of Americans were taking place.

One State Department situation report emailed to Kirby on Aug. 16, 2021 — 10 days before a suicide bomber killed 13 U.S. Marines — referred to “breaches” and “flightline insecurity” at the airport that resulted in the exchange of gunfire that killed five Afghans and may have wounded an American soldier. “The crowd was out of control, the firing was only done to defuse the chaos,” the email reported, citing an official U.S. statement released inside the country.

“Hundreds have flooded the flight line and in at least one case, have forced themselves onto at least one US mil (and other civilian) aircraft. Crowds continue to run alongside planes, including mil aircraft,” the report added. Several Afghans clinging to U.S. aircraft fell to their deaths.

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Report: Like Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy Likely Knew About the Steele Dossier Much Earlier than Previously Known — And Said Nothing

What did Kevin McCarthy know? And when did he know it? Rumblings in Washington, DC, put Kevin McCarthy on the hot seat.

In June 2024, former Trump official Kash Patel dropped a bombshell on Steve Bannon’s War Room, exposing the rotten core of the Republican establishment.

Patel’s blockbuster report on Paul Ryan, which first surfaced on The Gateway Pundit, revealed that Ryan—then Speaker of the House—was the first to receive the fraudulent Steele Dossier in 2016.

This dossier, now widely acknowledged as a fabrication used to justify unlawful surveillance against Donald Trump, was apparently hidden by Ryan from his colleagues, investigators, and even officials within the Trump administration.

This only came out this year – eight years after the Deep State used this document in their first attempt to impeach President Trump in the Russia collusion hoax.

The question now is glaringly clear: Where was Kevin McCarthy during all this? As a leading figure in the Republican Party and a close ally of Paul Ryan, McCarthy’s silence or potential complicity in this cover-up raises serious concerns about his leadership and integrity.

Did McCarthy know of Ryan’s possession and subsequent concealment of the Steele dossier? If so, why did he not act or inform his party members who were blindsided by these revelations?

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The NYPD Is Illegally Leaking Sealed Records About Children to Tabloids

Last spring, New York City police officers stopped a 19-year-old on the subway during her commute. She was eligible for a free transfer from the bus to the subway, but the transfer failed to register at the turnstile, so she and a friend entered through the platform emergency exit door.

Police stopped them, took their names, and let her friend go. Officers told the 19-year-old she had a prior arrest — from 2018, when she was in her early teens — and began to question her.

The cops should not have known about that past arrest. A New York state law protects juvenile records in cases without any finding of guilt from access by anyone, including law enforcement, without a court order.

The arrest had occurred after an incident involving the girl’s mother that resulted in child services filing a petition against her mother for abuse and neglect, and removal of the girl from her mother’s custody. At the time of the subway encounter, she was still in foster care.

The arrest was never prosecuted and was later dismissed and sealed. Yet officers had managed to access the sealed record from their phones and question her about it.

The young woman is one of three plaintiffs who filed a class-action suit in July against the city and NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban for what they said was a practice of illegally accessing, using, and leaking sealed youth records. The suit, which was unsealed Thursday, alleges that officials routinely share those sealed records with prosecutors and the media — specifically with pro-cop tabloids that regularly publish juvenile arrest information sourced from police.

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RFK Jr. Exposes Democrats’ SUBVERSION OF DEMOCRACY Under Guise of “Saving” It

Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy took a flamethrower to the Democrat Party establishment Friday while announcing he’s suspending his campaign for president and throwing his support for Donald Trump.

Check out highlights from RFK’s historic speech below.

During his address to the nation Friday, RFK condemned Democrats for becoming a shadow of their former selves, saying they’d “become the party of war, censorship, corruption, big pharma, big tech, big ag, and big money.”

The nephew of former President John F. Kennedy went on to describe how Democrats subverted democracy by blocking his campaign from appearing in ballots in several states while claiming to save it.

Kennedy also bashed the military industrial complex for its complicity in Ukraine’s war against Russia.

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