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One Tenth of China's Farmland Polluted With Heavy Metals
eldavojohn writes "A report form China's Environmental Ministry reveals that one tenth of China's 1.22 million square kilometers of farmland are polluted with heavy metals and other toxins. The AFP lists 'lead, mercury and cancer-causing cadmium' and points to the rapid pace of China's industrialization as well as factories and their operators flouting regulations and laws. Cheap batteries and lead refineries are slowly turning China into a land where whole villages are poisoned (11 incidents so far this year). According to Human Rights Watch the government's response to this scourge is laughable. The poisoned are denied treatment and China's Environmental Ministry offers no possible help: 'The report documents how local authorities in contaminated areas have imposed arbitrary limits on access to blood lead testing, for example by permitting only people living within a small radius of a factory to be tested. When tests are conducted, results have often been contradictory or have been withheld from victims and their families. And children with elevated blood lead levels who require treatment according to national guidelines have been denied care or told simply to eat certain foods, including apples, garlic, milk, and eggs.'"
This sort of thing combined with Chinaâ(TM)s very questionable use of banned pesticides and other sketchy farming chemicals is why I do not by food products marked as being from China. I know that many of the other âoeready madeâ food that I eat probably has ingredients from China, but at least I can reduce the amount of poisons I intake. I try to buy local produce, organic when I can, but this tends to be a little spendy. And of course avoiding processed foods and actually making real food in the kitchen goes a long way to avoid the poisonous crap that China exports.
Of course, there are some of the same issues here, but far far fewer.
Without the kind of government regulation that the Republicans and Tea Baggers want to do away with, this is how the United States would be as well.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Look for Chinese labor movements. The Poles were able to do it in the face of oppression. Maybe the Chinese can also.
And to think some working men think unions are a bad thing.
China doesn't care what anybody else thinks, we can't realistically threaten to boycott them (what are you reading this on, and where was it made?) and they essentially control the dollar and are making big inroads into the Euro as well.
This is a domestic Chinese problem, and it will be solved when the people of China decide to deal with their government one way or another. Until then all we can do is wring our hands and cry "Oh, the seething hordes of yellow sort-of-humanity! Oooh, new iPads!"
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Meanwhile in the U.S. the EPA must be abolished if we want jobs again. Maybe so if we want more oncologists.
The simple solution would be instead of "all goods manufactured in US must obey blah blah blah regulation" we use "all goods sold in US must obey blah blah blah regulation".
Of course our corporate overlords will never allow this pass to in congress.
The view that we need NO government regulation (e.g., get rid entirely of EPA and replace it with nothing) is roughly as stupid as saying that the government can fix anything, we just need to give it the power to do so (which does seem to be a very real viewpoint).
So, keep your derogatory and misinformed slights about the Tea Party and Republicans out of this, what you are witnessing is the same thing that happened under the Soviets in the 50s through 80s. You are witnessing so much government that it is not answerable to anyone.
Exactly... when the people can't regulate what the government can do, you get into trouble (as in China, and in the USSR). The same is true of corporations though; when the people can't regulate corporations (through the government) you get into the same sort of trouble.
The truth is that regulations were put into place for a reason; to protect people and the environment. They were put in place because industry was poisoning the earth... in spite of the "protections" of a free market. Removing regulations may have a positive impact in the short term (may, I have yet to see proof of this), but whatever benefit is far outweighed by the long term negative impact.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
"Draining the pond to catch the fish." That's how the Chinese refer to the current political and business environment in China. There isn't any long term view in China, it's all get what you can while you can. I've often wondered it was a matter of faith or ethics, those people were removed from the population during the Cultural Revolution. How do people in a society develop a long term view on things in an environment defined by Communist rule since 1949 and the millions where removed who were simply inconvenient to the ruling class?
BTW, I don't believe that Sparta is a good model for a modern political or economic system. The tools that they used were relatively simple to manufacture and the gunmen are an inexpensive commodity in much of the world right now. China is short about 40 million girls due to the one child policy, so they have lots of expendable males.
the "corporations" _are_ the government and vice versa - and there's no real elections,
And this differs from the USA how, precisely? At best, we have a smaller minority of honest people left in government doing their best to enforce existing regulations and prevent abuses like - oh hey that big gulf oil spill thing - while being stepped on by the Tea Party "gubmint iz bad 4 bizness" crowd.
In the city I grew up in, the main waterway - which had a history of being used for travel and recreation and fishing and shipping - was so polluted that there WERE no fish left and you only went swimming if you wanted tetanus. These days it's looking much better, but only AFTER heavy duty intervention by the EPA that the Republicans hate so much.
I want my kids to grow up with a safe environment. I want them to grow up not having the air polluted to a degree that people have to walk outside with masks on, I want them to grow up in a world where asthma is declining instead of massively rising due to the concentration of urban airborne pollution.
Meanwhile, to the Tea Partiers/Republicans screaming "waah gubmint is bad regulations kill jobs"... fuck you. I refuse to go back to the 1920s when factories were allowed to dump raw sewage and waste directly into lakes and rivers, I refuse to go back to the 1930s when factories had no regulations forcing them to watch their particulate emissions, and I refuse to even go back to the 1980s when if you landed at JFK or La Guardia, your eyes started to burn as soon as you walked out of the airport.
I think it's hilarious that you believe that we've been bankrupted by Democrats.
Who exploded the deficit in the 1980s in an attempt to out-spend the Soviet Union?
Who inherited government surpluses at the turn of the century and then instead of paying down the debt, passed trillions of dollars in unpaid-for tax cuts?
Who led us into a controversial and optional multi-trillion dollar war in Iraq? (Some might ask the same thing about Afghanistan.)
Who passed and signed Medicare Part D (the prescription drug program) without even attempting to pay for it?
Protip: The things that you are told on talk / shortwave radio, in church, on Fox News, etc. are not always true. In some cases, these people are filling you full of complete fabrications. You are allowed to think for yourself, do your own objective research, and come to your own conclusions. Be warned, however, that these conclusions may represent a drastic departure from the insular dogma of your particular echo chamber.
I'm sorry, but this is just naive. The problem we have is that we do not punish politicians for doing evil. This is true both of the Republicans and the Democrats. I won't argue that the Democrats will save us from overspending, because unfortunately they waste nearly as much money as the Republicans. But if you want to see a change, stop painting this as Republican versus Democrat. It's not. It's competent governance versus graft. Show up at the primaries. Pay attention to what the candidate did in office last time. If they voted for graft, and against competence, fire them by voting for their opponent in the primary. If neither candidate is an incumbent, look at what they did in their previous job. Think about it critically. Don't listen to their ads: pay attention to what they did in the past. Try your best to figure out if they really want to govern, or if they just want a ride on the gravy train. Vote accordingly.
It's absolutely sickening how few voters show up for primary elections these days. And it's absolutely sickening how little thought and effort they seem to put into their votes (if what you said above is anything to judge by). Stop being a sheep. Be a citizen.