News

Americans Who Tell the Truth

dolphins  Sort of like political parties: local, state, national

Alexandra Heal in the Financial Times 9-10-22. "The Ancient subarctic forests at risk from climate change and war".  she says these forests are going fast due to global warming and fires.  They store lots of carbon.  more than humans have released since 1870!    

Although much of the boreal is undeveloped, logging is rampant in parts of Canada and Siberia. More than 4,000 sq km of Canada’s ancient trees are cut down every year, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. This destroys wildlife habitats and can also release carbon from the soil. An environmental research paper found last year that fires in Siberia were more frequent near felling sites.

article It seems that they market the baby powder  to appear  baby- and family- friendly and to gain life-long customers for its other products.  They resisted attempts to ban it.  Finally,  in 2020 they stopped selling it in the US.  Until 2022 they  still sold baby powder with talc  that could contain asbestos like fibers in other countries.   

Johnson  and Johnson's tricky bankruptcy  is  delaying lawsuits  and limiting settlements by women with ovarian, cervical, and or lung cancer that the women  believe is caused by the baby powder.   THIS SORT OF FAKE BANKRUPTCY HAS BEEN TRIED BY THE SACKLER FAMILY WITH OXYCONTIN and  the Koch  Georgia Pacific company.  Bayer/Monsanto may use it with the carcinogenic herbicide Roundup.   Earlier similar schemes were used by the tobacco/cigarette companies, asbestos companies,   land others.  Johns-Manville asbestos company, "Outrageous Misconduct: the Asbestos Industry on Trial" – 1985, by Paul Brodeur.

Libby Montana: Asbestos and the Deadly silence of An American Corporation by Andrea Peacock

  It is like Nader said- big companies try stop laws from passing, then limit the administrative rules to enforce the laws, then limit the budget and staff of the administrative agencies (EPA, FDA, ....), sue over the rules of these agencies, get their allies appointed to the agencies, then sue over the enforcement of the rules, then appeal, all the while while stacking the courts with pro-corporate judges.  They  also give millions to PR firms and fake science studies to confuse the issues.            Judge Rakoff , in his book Why the Innocent Plead Guilty and Guilty Go Free , has said that the legal system is sort of a religious sham , where you act subservient  and rise to this robed judge who sometimes is a cog is a system that punishes the poor and citizens while enriching the elites.

Merchants of Doubt, by Oreskes and Conway, a book and a movie,  explains the history of corporate efforts to use PR  to confuse the public and the experts .

Excerpts from New Yorker article that list the consumer products of companies that are using bankruptcy to avoid lawsuits. 

" Johnson & Johnson products: baby shampoo, Band-Aids, Neosporin, Rogaine, and O.B. tampons; Tylenol, Imodium, Motrin, and Zyrtec; Listerine mouthwash and Nicorette gum; Aveeno lotion and Neutrogena cleanser; catheters and stents for the heart; balloons for dilating the ear, nose, and throat; hemostats and staples; ankle, hip, shoulder, and knee replacements; breast implants; Acuvue contact lenses. But what few of those consumers grasped until a series of baby-powder cases began to go to trial was that, for decades, the company had known that its powders could contain asbestos, among the world’s deadliest carcinogens."

"No corporation was daring enough to try the two-step until 2017, when Koch Industries used it to shield a subsidiary, Georgia-Pacific, from asbestos claims related to its paper and building products. The parent company formed a Texas corporation called, improbably, Bestwall, which declared bankruptcy in North Carolina three months later, spinning off all the asbestos-related liabilities while allowing Georgia-Pacific to continue making billions of dollars in profits through its other products, among them Brawny paper towels, Quilted Northern toilet paper, and Dixie cups."

 A recent  NYT article explains how Abbott is winning lawsuits about its powdered baby formula  causing severe brain injures in babies. Abbot's attorneys allegedly used a scorched earth policy,  interrupting alot to prevent witnesses from testifying during depositions.