truthout--2020-05-24--Your Employers Are Behind the Rush to Reopen

The federal government squandered the time the states spent in lockdown .
We still face a national shortage of COVID-19 test kits and PPE and there is no nationwide testing or contact tracing program .
The United States has 4 percent of the world ’ s population , but about a third of the world ’ s coronavirus cases .
But some folks were not wasting their time .
True to form , the rich are doing everything they can to benefit financially from the crisis—and their work is paying off .
The richest 400 Americans were already worth a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more than the bottom 60 percent of Americans combined .
Now many of the super-rich are poised to make even more during the pandemic—like the behemoth Amazon , which is propelling CEO Jeff Bezos even closer to becoming the world ’ s first trillionaire .
The goal of these powerful actors is twofold : to reopen the economy on their own terms and to capitalize on the economic crisis to push for a long-held wish list of cuts to taxes and government services .
They will push for lower taxes and to gut @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by the pandemic , that we need more government , not less .
To do so they must get millions of workers to risk their health by returning to work .
If workers aren ’ t working , no profits are being generated .
And which is more important to the captains of industry ?
They are working hard to win the tug of war over reopening , hoping to overpower the dire warnings of the public health experts and the desires of the public , which polls consistently show are more worried @ @ @ @ @ @ @ flagging Wall Street .
A Washington Post poll and a Pew survey both show that laid-off workers are more likely to support continued lockdowns than those still employed .
Their campaign has several parts : • Congress ’ s economic relief packages focused more on bailing out big businesses than protecting workers .
Any strings attached about companies ’ keeping workers employed were flimsy , and those strings will be snapped completely on the $ 450 billion that the Treasury Department will oversee .
• The federal government abdicated its role in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ own ventilators , test kits , and personal protective equipment and develop their own contact tracing programs .
That drove up local government expenses at the same time that statewide lockdowns have tanked tax revenues .
Taking advantage of the resulting state budget deficits , the consortium of conservatives is pushing states to adopt its longstanding wish list , such as abandoning their pension obligations to public employees , laying off mass numbers of them , and making dramatic cuts to public services .
• Republican officials , right-wing media , and corporate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Coalition , the American Legislative Exchange Council , the State Policy Network , and FreedomWorks ) have been loudly banging the drums for the economy to reopen .
The U.S. Department of Labor and several state governments are helping that process along by threatening to prosecute workers for unemployment benefits fraud if they refuse to return to work out of fear for their health .
• Both Trump and Republican congressional leaders are clear : there will be no further economic stimulus for states or the unemployed without a guarantee that businesses will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ COVID-19 at work .
The door is open for negligence on a grand scale .
The so-called recovery from the 2008 Great Recession saw Wall Street profits hit all-time highs while workers ’ wages remained stagnant and union density hit an all-time low .
“ Recovery for me , poverty for thee ” is again the corporate goal for the post-corona economy .
Conservative operatives are trying to reignite a Tea Party-like “ movement ” to pressure states to reopen their economies .
A billionaire-backed network of corporate front groups with deep ties @ @ @ @ @ @ @ House helped mobilize a motley crew to protest stay-at-home orders at state legislatures and amplified their actions in the media .
“ It ’ s like strike-breaking , ” said Nancy MacLean , author of Democracy in Chains : The Deep History of the Radical Right ’ s Stealth Plan for America .
“ You can find people who will do it , but without the active role of the employer it would never happen .
“ The same is true for the anti-lockdown protests .
It ’ s only because there are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ supported and amplified by Fox News and the right-wing echo chamber that they can create the fiction of a mass movement and exploit the crisis to force through unpopular policies they know would never happen otherwise.
” At the heart of the push to reopen are organizations like Tea Party Patriots and FreedomWorks and prominent right-wing activists like Stephen Moore , a conservative economist who has worked for the Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal and once told filmmaker Michael Moore ( no relation ) that “ capitalism is a lot more important @ @ @ @ @ @ @ adviser to Trump and has been pushing the White House to follow the advice of business leaders and conservative economists rather than public health experts .
Moore is also a leader in the Save Our Country Coalition ( SOCC ) , which is coordinating the effort for reopening , tax cuts , and legislation to erase employer liability .
He is just one of the many White House connections to SOCC .
Another is the American Legislative Exchange Council ( ALEC ) , financed by large corporations and conservative billionaires .
ALEC ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ almost a quarter of all state legislators .
ALEC ’ s primary mission is to draft model legislation that benefits corporations and can be introduced in cookie-cutter fashion in legislatures across the country .
According to documents obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy , ALEC hosted a call on April 22 on the need to reopen the economy with Vice President Mike Pence and 300 state legislators and corporate lobbyists—with promises of future calls with Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos .
Many Republican state legislators have encouraged @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Also joining the fray is the State Policy Network ( SPN ) , a national web of corporate-funded think tanks that produce white papers and publicity for ALEC ’ s model legislation .
With the pandemic , SPN affiliates are following a playbook they perfected earlier when denying climate change and the link between smoking and cancer : they promote skepticism about the coronavirus death rate and the models used by public health experts to predict the number yet to die .
These claims have been echoed by Trump , who has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are being inflated to stop his re-election .
The pandemic response has fallen on the shoulders of state governments .
Those hit hardest by the virus now face enormous budget shortfalls and the corporate-backed network is leveraging the moment to push austerity everywhere .
Michigan , for example , is estimated to be $ 1 billion to $ 3 billion in the red .
The Mackinac Center , a corporate-financed SPN affiliate , has published an austerity wish list of items unrelated to the pandemic .
It includes laying off a quarter of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ public employees , shuttering local libraries , hiking state employees ’ health care premiums , and raising in-state tuition at public universities .
According to Politico , California faces a $ 54 billion budget deficit and is expected to make dramatic cuts if it doesn ’ t receive federal assistance , including $ 18 billion in cuts to schools and community colleges .
Of course , schools need more funding to make social distancing a reality on campuses if they want to reopen .
The California Policy Center , another SPN affiliate , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pension system from a defined-benefit plan , which guarantees retirees a monthly payment , to a defined-contribution plan , where the employer is only on the hook for a certain amount into each employee ’ s retirement account each month .
If the total runs out after the worker retires , too bad .
These policy proposals are reverberating throughout the SPN network , resulting in a growing chorus of conservative think tanks and politicians calling for states to abandon their commitments to their workers .
“ Just say no to a pension @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tennessee .
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has gone so far as to call for states to declare bankruptcy so they can walk away from their pension obligations .
Economic relief for state and local governments is at the center of talks for the next relief bill in Congress , but McConnell has declared shielding private employers from liability for reopening a mandatory condition of any further federal stimulus .
The call for employer indemnification and tax cuts for the rich as a condition of further relief has been echoed by Trump .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ program is deeply unpopular .
A majority of Americans believe our tax system is unfair and taxes should be substantially raised on corporations and the wealthy .
It ’ s not incidental that Stephen Moore values capitalism more than democracy .
Employers and politicians force their policies onto the public by forcing us to choose between two bad options while maintaining the illusion that there is no alternative : Either work unsafely or be kicked off unemployment .
States must either limit employers ’ liability or there will be no further stimulus .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , employers and politicians rely on the Godfather principle : making us an offer we can ’ t refuse .

The bosses and politicians are forcing us to choose between two bad options: Either work unsafely or lose unemployment.
This article was originally published at Labor Notes.
The federal government squandered the time the states spent in lockdown. We still face a national shortage of COVID-19 test kits and PPE and there is no nationwide testing or contact tracing program. The United States has 4 percent of the world’s population, but about a third of the world’s coronavirus cases.
But some folks were not wasting their time. True to form, the rich are doing everything they can to benefit financially from the crisis—and their work is paying off. The richest 400 Americans were already worth a collective $2.96 trillion last year, more than the bottom 60 percent of Americans combined.
Now many of the super-rich are poised to make even more during the pandemic—like the behemoth Amazon, which is propelling CEO Jeff Bezos even closer to becoming the world’s first trillionaire.
The goal of these powerful actors is twofold: to reopen the economy on their own terms and to capitalize on the economic crisis to push for a long-held wish list of cuts to taxes and government services. They will push for lower taxes and to gut services despite the glaring evidence, revealed by the pandemic, that we need more government, not less.
To do so they must get millions of workers to risk their health by returning to work. If workers aren’t working, no profits are being generated. And which is more important to the captains of industry?
They are working hard to win the tug of war over reopening, hoping to overpower the dire warnings of the public health experts and the desires of the public, which polls consistently show are more worried about a surging virus than about a flagging Wall Street.
A Washington Post poll and a Pew survey both show that laid-off workers are more likely to support continued lockdowns than those still employed.
Their campaign has several parts:
Congress’s economic relief packages focused more on bailing out big businesses than protecting workers. Any strings attached about companies’ keeping workers employed were flimsy, and those strings will be snapped completely on the $450 billion that the Treasury Department will oversee. The federal government abdicated its role in the pandemic, forcing states to buy their own ventilators, test kits, and personal protective equipment and develop their own contact tracing programs. That drove up local government expenses at the same time that statewide lockdowns have tanked tax revenues. Taking advantage of the resulting state budget deficits, the consortium of conservatives is pushing states to adopt its longstanding wish list, such as abandoning their pension obligations to public employees, laying off mass numbers of them, and making dramatic cuts to public services. Republican officials, right-wing media, and corporate front groups (especially Save Our Country Coalition, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the State Policy Network, and FreedomWorks) have been loudly banging the drums for the economy to reopen. The U.S. Department of Labor and several state governments are helping that process along by threatening to prosecute workers for unemployment benefits fraud if they refuse to return to work out of fear for their health. Both Trump and Republican congressional leaders are clear: there will be no further economic stimulus for states or the unemployed without a guarantee that businesses will be held harmless if their employees contract COVID-19 at work. The door is open for negligence on a grand scale.
The so-called recovery from the 2008 Great Recession saw Wall Street profits hit all-time highs while workers’ wages remained stagnant and union density hit an all-time low. “Recovery for me, poverty for thee” is again the corporate goal for the post-corona economy.
Tea Party 2.0
Conservative operatives are trying to reignite a Tea Party-like “movement” to pressure states to reopen their economies. A billionaire-backed network of corporate front groups with deep ties to conservative state lawmakers and the White House helped mobilize a motley crew to protest stay-at-home orders at state legislatures and amplified their actions in the media.
“It’s like strike-breaking,” said Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America. “You can find people who will do it, but without the active role of the employer it would never happen.
“The same is true for the anti-lockdown protests. It’s only because there are all these corporate-funded front groups that are supported and amplified by Fox News and the right-wing echo chamber that they can create the fiction of a mass movement and exploit the crisis to force through unpopular policies they know would never happen otherwise.”
At the heart of the push to reopen are organizations like Tea Party Patriots and FreedomWorks and prominent right-wing activists like Stephen Moore, a conservative economist who has worked for the Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal and once told filmmaker Michael Moore (no relation) that “capitalism is a lot more important than democracy.”
Moore is an economic adviser to Trump and has been pushing the White House to follow the advice of business leaders and conservative economists rather than public health experts.
Moore is also a leader in the Save Our Country Coalition (SOCC), which is coordinating the effort for reopening, tax cuts, and legislation to erase employer liability. He is just one of the many White House connections to SOCC. Another is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), financed by large corporations and conservative billionaires. ALEC’s membership includes both corporate lobbyists and almost a quarter of all state legislators.
ALEC’s primary mission is to draft model legislation that benefits corporations and can be introduced in cookie-cutter fashion in legislatures across the country.
According to documents obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy, ALEC hosted a call on April 22 on the need to reopen the economy with Vice President Mike Pence and 300 state legislators and corporate lobbyists—with promises of future calls with Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
Many Republican state legislators have encouraged the anti-lockdown protests in their home states.
Also joining the fray is the State Policy Network (SPN), a national web of corporate-funded think tanks that produce white papers and publicity for ALEC’s model legislation.
With the pandemic, SPN affiliates are following a playbook they perfected earlier when denying climate change and the link between smoking and cancer: they promote skepticism about the coronavirus death rate and the models used by public health experts to predict the number yet to die.
These claims have been echoed by Trump, who has promoted the conspiracy theory that death rates are being inflated to stop his re-election.
Rigging a Deficit
The pandemic response has fallen on the shoulders of state governments. Those hit hardest by the virus now face enormous budget shortfalls and the corporate-backed network is leveraging the moment to push austerity everywhere.
Michigan, for example, is estimated to be $1 billion to $3 billion in the red. The Mackinac Center, a corporate-financed SPN affiliate, has published an austerity wish list of items unrelated to the pandemic. It includes laying off a quarter of the state’s “non-essential” public employees, shuttering local libraries, hiking state employees’ health care premiums, and raising in-state tuition at public universities.
According to Politico, California faces a $54 billion budget deficit and is expected to make dramatic cuts if it doesn’t receive federal assistance, including $18 billion in cuts to schools and community colleges. Of course, schools need more funding to make social distancing a reality on campuses if they want to reopen.
The California Policy Center, another SPN affiliate, is advocating to transition the public employee pension system from a defined-benefit plan, which guarantees retirees a monthly payment, to a defined-contribution plan, where the employer is only on the hook for a certain amount into each employee’s retirement account each month. If the total runs out after the worker retires, too bad.
These policy proposals are reverberating throughout the SPN network, resulting in a growing chorus of conservative think tanks and politicians calling for states to abandon their commitments to their workers. “Just say no to a pension bailout” wrote the Beacon Center of Tennessee. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has gone so far as to call for states to declare bankruptcy so they can walk away from their pension obligations.
Economic relief for state and local governments is at the center of talks for the next relief bill in Congress, but McConnell has declared shielding private employers from liability for reopening a mandatory condition of any further federal stimulus.
The call for employer indemnification and tax cuts for the rich as a condition of further relief has been echoed by Trump.
The Godfather Principle
Reopening the economy absent a national testing program is deeply unpopular. A majority of Americans believe our tax system is unfair and taxes should be substantially raised on corporations and the wealthy.
It’s not incidental that Stephen Moore values capitalism more than democracy.
Employers and politicians force their policies onto the public by forcing us to choose between two bad options while maintaining the illusion that there is no alternative: Either work unsafely or be kicked off unemployment. States must either limit employers’ liability or there will be no further stimulus.
To keep the corporate protection racket going, employers and politicians rely on the Godfather principle: making us an offer we can’t refuse.
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
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This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.


truthout--2020-05-24--What New York City’s Cholera Epidemics Can Teach Us in the Age COVID-19

This isn ’ t the first time that New York City became the epicenter of a deadly disease .
Consequently , this also isn ’ t the first time a widespread disease has been racialized and linked to the “ other.
” When cholera arrived on the shores of New York City in 1832 , the disease had already ravaged parts of Asia and Europe .
New York City officials and scientists did not understand the cause of the disease .
Some saw cholera as divine retribution , only inflicted on the sinners of the city .
In the 1830s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ York City .
Many of them were craftsmen , canal-diggers , traders , merchants and bankers .
This diverse labor force carved out socioeconomic rifts which slowed down the city ’ s response to impending epidemics .
When cholera hit , it caused widespread panic .
Roughly 3,000 New Yorkers died , and an estimated one-third of the city ’ s inhabitants fled .
Seventeen years later , in 1849 , the second wave of cholera struck .
As immigration expanded , the city ’ s population had grown significantly between the first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ policy had failed to adapt to the city ’ s population growth .
As many as 5,000 died before the 1849 spate ran its course — and as many as 40 percent were Irish immigrants .
As the second outbreak ravaged New York City , John Snow , a prominent London anesthetist , contested the force of tradition when he published a pamphlet titled “ On the Mode of Communication of Cholera.
” Snow ’ s study argued that cholera was not miasmic ( not an airborne disease ) but instead spread through @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was controversial and faced severe skepticism from British and American medical communities , particularly those who subscribed to the commonly held miasma theory of contagion .
By 1865 , however , sanitary reform advocates justified improving the city ’ s sanitary and public health conditions by pointing to Snow ’ s theory .
In 1866 , cholera hit New York City for the third time .
With a population of over 1.1 million that year , one-fourth of whom were immigrants , New York City ’ s population was starkly divided between the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Park Avenue bankers and traders ) and predominantly Irish immigrants and African Americans living in the most neglected quarters that became the main sites for contagion .
Equipped with Snow ’ s theory on how cholera spread , the city was better prepared to meet the threat posed by the disease .
Still , as many as 1,000 died due to cholera .
The majority were Irish immigrants living in poverty .
Not all physicians agreed on cholera ’ s etiology or on a generally effective way to treat cholera .
Most , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people inhabiting ill-ventilated tenement apartments in working-class neighborhoods like the Five Points were particularly at risk of contamination .
In his seminal work , The Cholera Years , historian of medicine Charles E. Rosenburg writes , “ The poor who lived in such squalor were to be removed to clean , dry , and airy houses as soon as possible.
” This often proved impossible because of the city ’ s dense population and lack of resources .
Stigmas about poor immigrants carrying the disease were common in the press .
The New @ @ @ @ @ @ @ owed to “ the great mass of steerage passengers , or emigrants , composed of the poorest and worst European peasantry , and hapless worn down artisans of manufacturing districts , who , by some inexplicable problem , manage , from their daily earnings to save a portion to pay for their passage.
” Some news sources racialized the disease as an “ Asiatic ” infection .
On September 1 , 1865 , the National Republican ( a Washington , D.C. , newspaper ) prints , “ The latest intelligence from Europe confirms @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in its most malignant form , is on its march , and advancing steadily westward … It … came tither , as at former periods , from India , for so many centuries its home and first starting-place.
” The name “ Asiatic cholera ” derives from the disease ’ s assumed origin .
In 1817 , cholera spread rapidly from the Indian subcontinent to Russia via trade routes over land and sea .
Soon after , the disease reached the rest of Europe , North America and the rest of the world @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to have been the result of poor living conditions , which were considered ideal conditions for cholera .
News of cholera spreading throughout Europe and Asia generated panic among Americans on the basis of race and class .
The notion that cholera was a foreign disease brought to New York City by poor immigrants stuck throughout the 19th century .
Some newspapers labeled potentially sick passengers “ cholera immigrants , ” often conflating the problem of infection with poverty and citizenship status .
One newspaper writes , “ This class of immigrant is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not wanted here .
No one but the capitalist who want to cut down wages … has asked them to come.
” Other newspapers called for the protection of “ the humanity of the immigrant.
” In the summer of 1866 , The New York Herald writes , “ To save the lives of those afflicted and to prevent the disease from spreading among others and through the country , it is necessary to have a quarantine station at which the immigrants can be landed and where they can be properly treated.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ locations across New York City as quarantine stations .
But , out of fear and prejudice , property owners and residents in these areas rejected these plans .
Escaping famine and poverty in Europe and Asia , immigrants arrived in New York City in large numbers in the mid-19th century .
They faced harsh working conditions in the railroad companies , poor living environments in the Five Points neighborhood , and prejudice from members of the working class who complained that immigrants “ keep the wages of labor down to the lower notch.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to padronism , a contract labor system that provided immigrants with jobs but was often exploitative .
News about cholera breaking out among Asians on board ships from China and India en route to Europe and North America fueled stereotypes about infection , exacerbating anti-immigrant sentiment .
David H. Bennett , professor of history at Syracuse University , claims that immigrants “ drew hostility because of their poverty ; the diseases they brought with them after the perilous ocean voyage ; [ and ] the slum housing they were forced to live in.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ American-born Protestants who equated anti-immigrant sentiment with the protection of their “ way of life.
” In New York City , many immigrants were defenseless against the ramifications of prejudice and injustice .
They weren ’ t immune to inequity and bigotry , however .
Like immigrants today who face the threat of COVID-19 infection , many 19th-century immigrants protected themselves from the threat of contagion while maneuvering the challenges of learning a new language and culture far from their native homes .
The number of 19th-century cholera fatalities pales in comparison to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
With over 190,000 cases , including more than 16,000 deaths ( as of May 20 ) , the five boroughs have become a hot zone for the novel coronavirus .
While in the 19th century it was European immigrants who were hardest hit by cholera , today it is communities of color that face unprecedented risks .
COVID-19 has been designated an “ Asian virus ” by both the president of the United States and the press .
Scholar Joey S. Kim argues that the “ virus was racialized from the moment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lexicon of COVID-19 discourse .
It can no longer be moved or morphed into a different cultural or racial/ethnic signifier due to a longer history of Orientalism that pre-dates the current.
” COVID-19 has been commonly called “ the China virus , ” “ Kung-flu ” or the “ Wuhan virus.
” Such names , Kim points out , denote more than a reputed origin : “ They reinforce rhetoric that is overused to the point of both nonsense and normalization .
They place blame and hypervisibility on a type of body that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , worse yet , bodily plunder.
” To this point , anti-Asian assaults connected to coronavirus have become a regular occurrence .
Across the U.S. , Asian American health care workers have reported a rise in bigoted incidents .
For many who live in the city ’ s most underserved sectors , safety has become a privilege .
Reports of tenants dying in their Section 8 apartments in East New York and of people being turned away from hospitals showcase a stark socioeconomic divide that is as old as New York City itself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ being harassed and arrested for not social distancing , tactics that some argue resemble the racist stop-and-frisk policing practice .
The New York Times reports that “ some prominent elected officials … charge that the New York Police Department is engaging in a racist double standard as it struggles to shift to a public health role in the coronavirus crisis.
” For the more than half a million undocumented immigrants in the city , the pandemic exacerbates pre-existing structures of oppression , including concentrated poverty , legal inequality and unreliable health care .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ for COVID-19 to spread among this vulnerable community .
While many New Yorkers work from home and practice social distancing , undocumented immigrants — an already disenfranchised and marginalized demographic — face unprecedented legal , health and financial risks that will linger far longer than the duration of this pandemic .
COVID-19 is the first pandemic of this decade .
Yet the social structures that determine who gets sick and dies are the same as the 19th century .
The cholera epidemics of the past teach us that class and race have always @ @ @ @ @ @ @ City responds to outbreaks .
Those who suffer are the ones who always suffer : the marginalized and underserved .

Part of the Series Despair and Disparity: The Uneven Burdens of COVID-19
This isn’t the first time that New York City became the epicenter of a deadly disease. Consequently, this also isn’t the first time a widespread disease has been racialized and linked to the “other.” When cholera arrived on the shores of New York City in 1832, the disease had already ravaged parts of Asia and Europe. New York City officials and scientists did not understand the cause of the disease. Some saw cholera as divine retribution, only inflicted on the sinners of the city. In the 1830s, approximately 250,000 people lived in New York City. Many of them were craftsmen, canal-diggers, traders, merchants and bankers. This diverse labor force carved out socioeconomic rifts which slowed down the city’s response to impending epidemics.
When cholera hit, it caused widespread panic. Roughly 3,000 New Yorkers died, and an estimated one-third of the city’s inhabitants fled. Seventeen years later, in 1849, the second wave of cholera struck. As immigration expanded, the city’s population had grown significantly between the first and second outbreak. Yet public health policy had failed to adapt to the city’s population growth. As many as 5,000 died before the 1849 spate ran its course — and as many as 40 percent were Irish immigrants.
As the second outbreak ravaged New York City, John Snow, a prominent London anesthetist, contested the force of tradition when he published a pamphlet titled “On the Mode of Communication of Cholera.” Snow’s study argued that cholera was not miasmic (not an airborne disease) but instead spread through contaminated water. Snow’s theory was controversial and faced severe skepticism from British and American medical communities, particularly those who subscribed to the commonly held miasma theory of contagion. By 1865, however, sanitary reform advocates justified improving the city’s sanitary and public health conditions by pointing to Snow’s theory.
In 1866, cholera hit New York City for the third time. With a population of over 1.1 million that year, one-fourth of whom were immigrants, New York City’s population was starkly divided between the city’s traditional elite class (Park Avenue bankers and traders) and predominantly Irish immigrants and African Americans living in the most neglected quarters that became the main sites for contagion. Equipped with Snow’s theory on how cholera spread, the city was better prepared to meet the threat posed by the disease. Still, as many as 1,000 died due to cholera. The majority were Irish immigrants living in poverty.
Not all physicians agreed on cholera’s etiology or on a generally effective way to treat cholera. Most, however, subscribed to the notion that people inhabiting ill-ventilated tenement apartments in working-class neighborhoods like the Five Points were particularly at risk of contamination. In his seminal work, The Cholera Years, historian of medicine Charles E. Rosenburg writes, “The poor who lived in such squalor were to be removed to clean, dry, and airy houses as soon as possible.” This often proved impossible because of the city’s dense population and lack of resources. Stigmas about poor immigrants carrying the disease were common in the press. The New York Herald claims that the outbreak is owed to “the great mass of steerage passengers, or emigrants, composed of the poorest and worst European peasantry, and hapless worn down artisans of manufacturing districts, who, by some inexplicable problem, manage, from their daily earnings to save a portion to pay for their passage.”
Some news sources racialized the disease as an “Asiatic” infection. On September 1, 1865, the National Republican (a Washington, D.C., newspaper) prints, “The latest intelligence from Europe confirms the apprehension that the Asiatic cholera, in its most malignant form, is on its march, and advancing steadily westward … It … came tither, as at former periods, from India, for so many centuries its home and first starting-place.” The name “Asiatic cholera” derives from the disease’s assumed origin. In 1817, cholera spread rapidly from the Indian subcontinent to Russia via trade routes over land and sea. Soon after, the disease reached the rest of Europe, North America and the rest of the world. Early outbreaks in India are believed to have been the result of poor living conditions, which were considered ideal conditions for cholera.
News of cholera spreading throughout Europe and Asia generated panic among Americans on the basis of race and class. The notion that cholera was a foreign disease brought to New York City by poor immigrants stuck throughout the 19th century. Some newspapers labeled potentially sick passengers “cholera immigrants,” often conflating the problem of infection with poverty and citizenship status. One newspaper writes, “This class of immigrant is unwelcomed at any time. They are not wanted here. No one but the capitalist who want to cut down wages … has asked them to come.” Other newspapers called for the protection of “the humanity of the immigrant.” In the summer of 1866, The New York Herald writes, “To save the lives of those afflicted and to prevent the disease from spreading among others and through the country, it is necessary to have a quarantine station at which the immigrants can be landed and where they can be properly treated.” The Metropolitan Board of Health considered various locations across New York City as quarantine stations. But, out of fear and prejudice, property owners and residents in these areas rejected these plans.
Escaping famine and poverty in Europe and Asia, immigrants arrived in New York City in large numbers in the mid-19th century. They faced harsh working conditions in the railroad companies, poor living environments in the Five Points neighborhood, and prejudice from members of the working class who complained that immigrants “keep the wages of labor down to the lower notch.” Many newly arrived immigrants fell victim to padronism, a contract labor system that provided immigrants with jobs but was often exploitative.
News about cholera breaking out among Asians on board ships from China and India en route to Europe and North America fueled stereotypes about infection, exacerbating anti-immigrant sentiment. David H. Bennett, professor of history at Syracuse University, claims that immigrants “drew hostility because of their poverty; the diseases they brought with them after the perilous ocean voyage; [and] the slum housing they were forced to live in.” These hostilities were aggravated by nativist American-born Protestants who equated anti-immigrant sentiment with the protection of their “way of life.” In New York City, many immigrants were defenseless against the ramifications of prejudice and injustice. They weren’t immune to inequity and bigotry, however. Like immigrants today who face the threat of COVID-19 infection, many 19th-century immigrants protected themselves from the threat of contagion while maneuvering the challenges of learning a new language and culture far from their native homes.
The number of 19th-century cholera fatalities pales in comparison to New York City’s COVID-19 deaths. With over 190,000 cases, including more than 16,000 deaths (as of May 20), the five boroughs have become a hot zone for the novel coronavirus. While in the 19th century it was European immigrants who were hardest hit by cholera, today it is communities of color that face unprecedented risks. COVID-19 has been designated an “Asian virus” by both the president of the United States and the press. Scholar Joey S. Kim argues that the “virus was racialized from the moment ‘China’ appeared in the global lexicon of COVID-19 discourse. It can no longer be moved or morphed into a different cultural or racial/ethnic signifier due to a longer history of Orientalism that pre-dates the current.” COVID-19 has been commonly called “the China virus,” “Kung-flu” or the “Wuhan virus.” Such names, Kim points out, denote more than a reputed origin: “They reinforce rhetoric that is overused to the point of both nonsense and normalization. They place blame and hypervisibility on a type of body that cannot respond without bodily dispossession or, worse yet, bodily plunder.” To this point, anti-Asian assaults connected to coronavirus have become a regular occurrence. Across the U.S., Asian American health care workers have reported a rise in bigoted incidents.
For many who live in the city’s most underserved sectors, safety has become a privilege. Reports of tenants dying in their Section 8 apartments in East New York and of people being turned away from hospitals showcase a stark socioeconomic divide that is as old as New York City itself. Many Black and Latinx people are being harassed and arrested for not social distancing, tactics that some argue resemble the racist stop-and-frisk policing practice. The New York Times reports that “some prominent elected officials … charge that the New York Police Department is engaging in a racist double standard as it struggles to shift to a public health role in the coronavirus crisis.”
For the more than half a million undocumented immigrants in the city, the pandemic exacerbates pre-existing structures of oppression, including concentrated poverty, legal inequality and unreliable health care. These morally unjust realities provide fertile ground for COVID-19 to spread among this vulnerable community. While many New Yorkers work from home and practice social distancing, undocumented immigrants — an already disenfranchised and marginalized demographic — face unprecedented legal, health and financial risks that will linger far longer than the duration of this pandemic.
COVID-19 is the first pandemic of this decade. Yet the social structures that determine who gets sick and dies are the same as the 19th century. The cholera epidemics of the past teach us that class and race have always been central to the way New York City responds to outbreaks. Those who suffer are the ones who always suffer: the marginalized and underserved.
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truthout--2020-05-24--The US Has a Long History of Weaponizing Aid to Other Countries

The spread of the coronavirus will not save Iran from sanctions , the U.S. cried .
“ Our policy of maximum pressure on the regime continues , ” U.S. Special Representative for Iranian Affairs Brian Hook said , as the State Department added more sanctions on Iran , one of the countries worst hit by the pandemic .
Iran had pleaded for an easing of sanctions , since U.S. sanctions are “ severely hampering ” Iran ’ s fight against the coronavirus .
Intensifying the sanctions rather than easing them to allow Iran to fight the virus is a form @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Iran ’ s foreign minister Javad Zarif .
Medical terrorism that locks a country under pandemic out from humanitarian aid is one way of using humanitarian aid as a weapon of war or regime change .
Like Iran , Venezuela is on its back , struggling through the COVID-19 pandemic with the grip of U.S. sanctions on its throat .
As it gasps for breath , the U.S. will only release Venezuela ’ s throat if the democratically elected president , Nicolás Maduro , surrenders to regime change demands and abandons his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a coup that dates all the way back to Hugo Chávez in 2002 .
The U.S. is taking advantage of mass Venezuelan deaths during a pandemic to force Maduro and the party of Chávez out of office .
Though disguised as a compromise transition , it is neither a compromise nor a transition , as Maduro would be forced from office and not allowed to run again .
Meanwhile , the lives of Venezuelans held hostage , while the pretender , Juan Guaidó , would be allowed to compete in the next election @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out a coup is another way of using humanitarian aid as a weapon .
Both of these strategies were overt actions in which human lives were leveraged and humanitarian aid was withheld to accomplish foreign policy goals .
But there is a covert U.S. strategy in which humanitarian aid is weaponized not by withholding it , but by providing it .
In this act of betrayal of trust , humanitarian aid is sent into a suffering country as a Trojan Horse carrying weapons or other acts of war in its belly .
This @ @ @ @ @ @ @ post-World War II Marshall Plan .
The Marshall Plan was sold to the public as a humanitarian plan to rebuild Europe after World War II to insulate it against communism .
But , while aid money was flowing into Europe , some of it was being diverted for covert purposes .
CIA expert John Prados reveals in his book Safe for Democracy that the CIA used that humanitarian aid vehicle as a way of hiding the source of money being smuggled into Europe for propaganda and political actions .
According to Joel Whitney @ @ @ @ @ @ @ How the CIA Tricked the World ’ s Best Writers , those propaganda actions included using “ confidential funds ” from the Marshall Plan to finance magazines , like Der Monat , which were injected into nearly every foreign nation to advance the U.S. ’ s clandestine Cold War cultural and foreign policy propaganda war .
From 1951 to the closing of the Marshall Plan in 1952 , under the direction of Frank Wisner , the head of CIA covert operations , Marshall Plan funds were diverted for covert programs .
Prados says @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or set up , by the CIA to funnel funds and that the CIA ’ s role is often concealed by funneling money through legitimate foundations .
But the covert U.S. strategy extends beyond money ; humanitarian aid was used to camouflage the delivery of weapons .
Originally approved by Eisenhower in the 1960s , as well as attacking North Vietnam , the CIA ’ s clandestine guerilla forces in Laos targeted the Laotian Pathet Lao , whom the State Department considered communists .
The U.S. believed Laos was part of the key @ @ @ @ @ @ @ throughout Southeast Asia .
The covert force would play a major role in keeping Laos from falling to the communists .
As the wars in Vietnam and Laos merged into one , the CIA force would also act to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh Trail , the supply route to Vietnam .
But the Pathet Lao were not so simply defeated , and as the ground war began to fail , the U.S. took to the air , and the secret American bombing campaign — which would make Laos one of the most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In the 1960s , humanitarian aid to Laos took the form of food deliveries .
But those food deliveries hid the delivery of weapons .
In The Ghosts of Langley , John Prados describes the way weapons were flown into the country on humanitarian aid planes flown by Air America .
Air America pilots developed a cynical code word to distinguish legal food cargo from illegal weapons cargo : “ soft rice ” meant food and “ hard rice ” meant arms .
The humanitarian delivery of food was cynically used as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Two decades later , in 1986 , an operation that looked a lot like the “ hard rice ” operation in Laos was unfolding in the skies over Nicaragua .
Like Pegasus , the Trojan Horse had developed wings .
The Reagan administration used planes full of humanitarian aid to hide the weapons that were mixed in in the belly of the plane .
The current U.S. special envoy for Venezuela , Elliott Abrams , was part of a special group managed by then-White House aide Oliver North that delivered the decisions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ At the time , Abrams was assistant secretary of state .
On one known occasion , the special program ’ s decision was to fly humanitarian aid into Honduras .
From Honduras , the plane would then fly to El Salvador , where it picked up seven tons of weapons that were airdropped into Nicaragua .
At least twice , the U.S. flew such “ mixed cargoes ” on planes that were carrying weapons mixed in with the cargo of humanitarian aid .
Robert Duemling , the former head of the State Department @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has confessed that “ he had twice ordered planes to shuttle weapons for the contras on aid planes at Mr. Abrams ’ s direction in early 1986.
” In response , Abrams “ defended his role in authorizing the shipment of weapons on a humanitarian aid flight to Nicaraguan rebels , saying the operation was ‘ strictly by the book.
’ ” But the operation was not by the book : The U.S. government was , at the time , under a congressional prohibition against giving any military aid to Nicaragua ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ operation was violently revealed when , on October 5 , 1986 , a cargo plane flown by an American crew was shot down over Nicaragua .
The crashed plane was full of weapons .
Extensive reporting by Robert Parry at the time shows that records discovered since the crash reveal the “ magnitude and extent of the airwing resupply operation , in terms of the volume of cargo transported.
” The cargo plane was part of a secret five-plane smuggling air force .
According to Parry , The New York Times confirmed the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it reported that “ the same planes and crews that were used to carry non-lethal aid to the Contras were used at other times to supply the Contras with weapons.
” Parry reports that documents recovered from the downed cargo plane show “ scores of flights this year to deliver aid to Contra bases.
” The planes were flown by Miami-based Southern Air Transport .
Until 1973 , Parry reports , Southern Air was owned by the CIA .
Sometimes the Trojan Horse looked less like a cargo plane and more like an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , decorated U.S. Navy doctor in Vietnam ; he was the youngest officer at the time to have received the Legion of Merit .
Dooley had a background in propaganda and psychological warfare .
The Navy granted him leave to write a book .
That book would become part of Operation Passage to Freedom .
Officially , Operation Passage to Freedom ’ s objective was to relocate hundreds of thousands of refugees from Communist North Vietnam to President Ngô Đình Diệm ’ s South Vietnam .
Secretly , its objective was to strengthen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The two-pronged plan featured a psychological warfare campaign of disinformation to terrify North Vietnamese Catholics into fleeing to the South , which was headed by the Catholic Diệm .
The second prong would attempt to focus the world ’ s gaze on the plight and flight of the North Vietnamese , making the south look like a haven from northern persecution and atrocities .
Dooley ’ s book would make those atrocities world famous .
The problem was that it was a work of fiction : the atrocities he claimed to see @ @ @ @ @ @ @ imagination , not in North Vietnam — and his bosses in the Navy knew it .
Press officer William Lederer , whose idea it was that Dooley be given leave to write the book , confirms that “ those things never happened .
The atrocities he described in his books either never took place or were committed by the French.
” Dooley was sent to Vietnam as a Navy doctor , but his reporting created a fictional picture in the American imagination of a largely Catholic Vietnam repressed by the atrocities of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ need to come to the aid of the Vietnamese in the American psyche and helped pave the path to intervention and war .
Dooley ’ s psychological warfare was a Trojan Horse for military warfare .
Dooley ’ s next mission would see him being sent to Laos .
And , it is in Laos that Dooley would most clearly be recreated as a Trojan Horse who would weaponize humanitarian medical aid .
Foreign forces were banned from entering Laos by the Geneva Accords .
But doctors could cross the border ; medical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Dooley would open a medical clinic in Laos just miles from the Chinese border .
One of the men behind the recreation of Tom Dooley was Edward Lansdale , the head of CIA psychological warfare in Vietnam .
While Dooley continued his propaganda work and continued his reports and his “ Letters from Laos , ” the CIA asked him to do something more .
The CIA turned Dooley into a Trojan Horse .
Along with the surgical gear and pharmaceuticals that Dooley would bring into Laos would be the weapons that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Dooley would bury those arms , and agents would then excavate the arms and pass them on to local militias .
Dooley ’ s clinic looked like American humanitarian aid , but it was a Trojan Horse for bringing weapons into Laos .
Dooley ’ s clinic was a front : it barely functioned as a clinic at all .
Though patients weren ’ t frequent visitors , CIA officers were .
They came both to make sure that Dooley had hidden the weapons well and to squeeze him as a spy to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ troop movement .
Tom Dooley was not the last of the medical Trojan Horses .
Amir Aziz was a major and doctor in the Pakistani army .
He lived near Osama bin Laden ’ s compound because Pakistani intelligence , the Inter-Services Intelligence ( ISI ) , had asked him to move there to provide treatment to the ailing bin Laden , according to investigative journalist Seymour Hersh .
His true story is confusing .
Aziz was a CIA informant .
The operation to raid bin Laden ’ s compound in Abbottabad , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ go .
But President Obama was nervous : he wanted to know that U.S. forces were actually targeting the right man .
For proof , they turned to Amir Aziz .
Bin Laden ’ s doctor was given the job of obtaining a sample of bin Laden ’ s blood to provide proof via DNA .
In The Killing of Osama bin Laden , Hersh reports that Aziz ’ s “ DNA sample showed conclusively that it was bin Laden in Abbottabad.
” But the plan did not go as smoothly as intended @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for questioning in Pakistan .
His role as a CIA informant had been leaked .
According to Hersh , he was eventually released , but his role in the highly classified mission had been leaked , and U.S. intelligence was unable to locate and plug the leak .
The risk was now too great that Aziz ’ s role in sneaking out the DNA would also become known .
So , a cover story was created .
The star of the cover story was another Pakistani doctor named Shakil Afridi .
Afridi ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But Afridi was also a former CIA asset .
The cover story was put out that the CIA had run a fake vaccination program with Afridi that had failed to secure bin Laden ’ s DNA .
The story was meant to cover the true story of how a doctor was used to acquire the DNA that would greenlight the killing of Osama bin Laden .
Posters advertising Afridi ’ s vaccination program were plastered around the region .
According to Hersh , the truth was that Afridi had actually been recruited @ @ @ @ @ @ @ job “ was to use vaccinations as a way to get the blood of terrorism suspects in the villages.
” Those samples would provide the material for an earlier intelligence program to get information on suspected terrorists in the Abbottabad area .
The Afridi story covered the Aziz story .
And both stories painted the fuzzy picture of how medical treatment and humanitarian vaccination programs had secretly hidden intelligence operations .
Sometimes , ironically , the Trojan Horse took on the incarnation of the war makers sneaking into countries in the belly of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the UN Special Commission , or UNSCOM , was the international arms control team tasked with locating and monitoring Iraq ’ s missiles and nuclear , biological and chemical weapons programs .
UNSCOM ’ s job was to prevent weaponization and to prevent war .
But , as Barton Gellman revealed in his reporting for The Washington Post in 1999 , the United States used its membership in UNSCOM to infiltrate CIA agents and espionage equipment into the territory of its enemy .
For three years , the U.S. used UNSCOM as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into Iraq for intelligence gathering that served U.S. interests , and not the interests of the UNSCOM agency that provided it cover .
UNSCOM had installed in Iraq a remote monitoring system that allowed international inspectors to watch Iraqi facilities in “ near real time.
” Iraq didn ’ t know that UNSCOM was doing that ; UNSCOM didn ’ t know that the U.S. was doing more than that .
UNSCOM was a U.S. Trojan Horse .
Unbeknownst to UNSCOM , technicians who were employees of the CIA had given the remote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the system “ were antennas capable of intercepting microwave transmissions , and the U.S. agents placed some of them near important nodes of Iraqi military communications.
” The military information the CIA got by piggybacking on the UNSCOM remote monitoring system was “ of considerable value to U.S. military planners but generally unrelated to UNSCOM ’ s special weapons mandate.
” The CIA exploited UNSCOM as a Trojan Horse .
Scott Ritter , who was a lead inspector for UNSCOM until 1998 , reports that , “ On one occasion , I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ under the auspices of UNSCOM , that I viewed as being suspicious .
I felt that it was intelligence activity related to the collection of intelligence information and that it was being done on behalf of the United States.
” Ritter says that he did not believe UNSCOM had given its approval nor was it even aware of the covert American operation .
Ritter is describing a U.S. Trojan Horse when he says that , “ U.S .
intelligence [ was ] seeking to infiltrate the weapons inspectors program and use the unique @ @ @ @ @ @ @ purposes other than disarmament.
” It is no wonder that countries are reluctant to accept humanitarian aid offered by the U.S. From the Marshall Plan in 1951 to today , there is a long and cynical history of the U.S. using humanitarian aid as a Trojan Horse to smuggle aggression into the country they are pretending to help .

There is a covert U.S. strategy in which humanitarian aid is weaponized not by withholding it, but by providing it.
The spread of the coronavirus will not save Iran from sanctions, the U.S. cried. “Our policy of maximum pressure on the regime continues,” U.S. Special Representative for Iranian Affairs Brian Hook said, as the State Department added more sanctions on Iran, one of the countries worst hit by the pandemic.
Iran had pleaded for an easing of sanctions, since U.S. sanctions are “severely hampering” Iran’s fight against the coronavirus. Intensifying the sanctions rather than easing them to allow Iran to fight the virus is a form of “medical terrorism,” according to Iran’s foreign minister Javad Zarif. Medical terrorism that locks a country under pandemic out from humanitarian aid is one way of using humanitarian aid as a weapon of war or regime change.
Like Iran, Venezuela is on its back, struggling through the COVID-19 pandemic with the grip of U.S. sanctions on its throat. As it gasps for breath, the U.S. will only release Venezuela’s throat if the democratically elected president, Nicolás Maduro, surrenders to regime change demands and abandons his office, completing a decades-long attempt at a coup that dates all the way back to Hugo Chávez in 2002. The U.S. is taking advantage of mass Venezuelan deaths during a pandemic to force Maduro and the party of Chávez out of office. Though disguised as a compromise transition, it is neither a compromise nor a transition, as Maduro would be forced from office and not allowed to run again. Meanwhile, the lives of Venezuelans held hostage, while the pretender, Juan Guaidó, would be allowed to compete in the next election. Humanitarian aid as blackmail to carry out a coup is another way of using humanitarian aid as a weapon.
Both of these strategies were overt actions in which human lives were leveraged and humanitarian aid was withheld to accomplish foreign policy goals. But there is a covert U.S. strategy in which humanitarian aid is weaponized not by withholding it, but by providing it. In this act of betrayal of trust, humanitarian aid is sent into a suffering country as a Trojan Horse carrying weapons or other acts of war in its belly. This strategy makes an early appearance in the post-World War II Marshall Plan.
The Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan was sold to the public as a humanitarian plan to rebuild Europe after World War II to insulate it against communism. But, while aid money was flowing into Europe, some of it was being diverted for covert purposes. CIA expert John Prados reveals in his book Safe for Democracy that the CIA used that humanitarian aid vehicle as a way of hiding the source of money being smuggled into Europe for propaganda and political actions.
According to Joel Whitney, in his book, Finks: How the CIA Tricked the World’s Best Writers, those propaganda actions included using “confidential funds” from the Marshall Plan to finance magazines, like Der Monat, which were injected into nearly every foreign nation to advance the U.S.’s clandestine Cold War cultural and foreign policy propaganda war.
Humanitarian aid as blackmail to carry out a coup is another way of using humanitarian aid as a weapon.
From 1951 to the closing of the Marshall Plan in 1952, under the direction of Frank Wisner, the head of CIA covert operations, Marshall Plan funds were diverted for covert programs. Prados says that several organizations have been used, or set up, by the CIA to funnel funds and that the CIA’s role is often concealed by funneling money through legitimate foundations.
But the covert U.S. strategy extends beyond money; humanitarian aid was used to camouflage the delivery of weapons.
Laos: Hard Rice
Originally approved by Eisenhower in the 1960s, as well as attacking North Vietnam, the CIA’s clandestine guerilla forces in Laos targeted the Laotian Pathet Lao, whom the State Department considered communists. The U.S. believed Laos was part of the key to stopping the domino spread of communism throughout Southeast Asia. The covert force would play a major role in keeping Laos from falling to the communists. As the wars in Vietnam and Laos merged into one, the CIA force would also act to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the supply route to Vietnam.
But the Pathet Lao were not so simply defeated, and as the ground war began to fail, the U.S. took to the air, and the secret American bombing campaign — which would make Laos one of the most bombed countries in history — began.
In the 1960s, humanitarian aid to Laos took the form of food deliveries. But those food deliveries hid the delivery of weapons.
In the 1960s, humanitarian aid to Laos took the form of food deliveries. But those food deliveries hid the delivery of weapons. In The Ghosts of Langley, John Prados describes the way weapons were flown into the country on humanitarian aid planes flown by Air America. Air America pilots developed a cynical code word to distinguish legal food cargo from illegal weapons cargo: “soft rice” meant food and “hard rice” meant arms. The humanitarian delivery of food was cynically used as a Trojan Horse for getting weapons into Laos.
Two decades later, in 1986, an operation that looked a lot like the “hard rice” operation in Laos was unfolding in the skies over Nicaragua.
Nicaragua: Mixed Cargoes
Like Pegasus, the Trojan Horse had developed wings. The Reagan administration used planes full of humanitarian aid to hide the weapons that were mixed in in the belly of the plane. The current U.S. special envoy for Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, was part of a special group managed by then-White House aide Oliver North that delivered the decisions on the Trojan Horse weapons operation. At the time, Abrams was assistant secretary of state. On one known occasion, the special program’s decision was to fly humanitarian aid into Honduras. From Honduras, the plane would then fly to El Salvador, where it picked up seven tons of weapons that were airdropped into Nicaragua. At least twice, the U.S. flew such “mixed cargoes” on planes that were carrying weapons mixed in with the cargo of humanitarian aid.
Robert Duemling, the former head of the State Department’s Nicaraguan humanitarian assistance office, has confessed that “he had twice ordered planes to shuttle weapons for the contras on aid planes at Mr. Abrams’s direction in early 1986.” In response, Abrams “defended his role in authorizing the shipment of weapons on a humanitarian aid flight to Nicaraguan rebels, saying the operation was ‘strictly by the book.’”
But the operation was not by the book: The U.S. government was, at the time, under a congressional prohibition against giving any military aid to Nicaragua’s Contra rebels.
“The same planes and crews that were used to carry non-lethal aid to the Contras were used at other times to supply the Contras with weapons.”
The secret Trojan Horse operation was violently revealed when, on October 5, 1986, a cargo plane flown by an American crew was shot down over Nicaragua. The crashed plane was full of weapons. Extensive reporting by Robert Parry at the time shows that records discovered since the crash reveal the “magnitude and extent of the airwing resupply operation, in terms of the volume of cargo transported.” The cargo plane was part of a secret five-plane smuggling air force.
According to Parry, The New York Times confirmed the Trojan Horse nature of the operation when it reported that “the same planes and crews that were used to carry non-lethal aid to the Contras were used at other times to supply the Contras with weapons.” Parry reports that documents recovered from the downed cargo plane show “scores of flights this year to deliver aid to Contra bases.” The planes were flown by Miami-based Southern Air Transport. Until 1973, Parry reports, Southern Air was owned by the CIA.
Vietnam and Laos: Tom Dooley
Sometimes the Trojan Horse looked less like a cargo plane and more like an ambulance. Tom Dooley was a young, decorated U.S. Navy doctor in Vietnam; he was the youngest officer at the time to have received the Legion of Merit.
Dooley had a background in propaganda and psychological warfare. The Navy granted him leave to write a book. That book would become part of Operation Passage to Freedom. Officially, Operation Passage to Freedom’s objective was to relocate hundreds of thousands of refugees from Communist North Vietnam to President Ngô Đình Diệm’s South Vietnam. Secretly, its objective was to strengthen Diệm’s grasp on the south. The two-pronged plan featured a psychological warfare campaign of disinformation to terrify North Vietnamese Catholics into fleeing to the South, which was headed by the Catholic Diệm. The second prong would attempt to focus the world’s gaze on the plight and flight of the North Vietnamese, making the south look like a haven from northern persecution and atrocities.
Dooley’s book would make those atrocities world famous. The problem was that it was a work of fiction: the atrocities he claimed to see as a doctor took place in his imagination, not in North Vietnam — and his bosses in the Navy knew it. Press officer William Lederer, whose idea it was that Dooley be given leave to write the book, confirms that “those things never happened. The atrocities he described in his books either never took place or were committed by the French.” Dooley was sent to Vietnam as a Navy doctor, but his reporting created a fictional picture in the American imagination of a largely Catholic Vietnam repressed by the atrocities of the north. That fictional picture fostered the need to come to the aid of the Vietnamese in the American psyche and helped pave the path to intervention and war. Dooley’s psychological warfare was a Trojan Horse for military warfare.
Dooley’s next mission would see him being sent to Laos. And, it is in Laos that Dooley would most clearly be recreated as a Trojan Horse who would weaponize humanitarian medical aid. Foreign forces were banned from entering Laos by the Geneva Accords. But doctors could cross the border; medical aid could enter the country. Tom Dooley would open a medical clinic in Laos just miles from the Chinese border.
Dooley’s clinic looked like American humanitarian aid, but it was a Trojan Horse for bringing weapons into Laos.
One of the men behind the recreation of Tom Dooley was Edward Lansdale, the head of CIA psychological warfare in Vietnam. While Dooley continued his propaganda work and continued his reports and his “Letters from Laos,” the CIA asked him to do something more. The CIA turned Dooley into a Trojan Horse. Along with the surgical gear and pharmaceuticals that Dooley would bring into Laos would be the weapons that the CIA used Dooley to smuggle in. Dooley would bury those arms, and agents would then excavate the arms and pass them on to local militias. Dooley’s clinic looked like American humanitarian aid, but it was a Trojan Horse for bringing weapons into Laos.
Dooley’s clinic was a front: it barely functioned as a clinic at all. Though patients weren’t frequent visitors, CIA officers were. They came both to make sure that Dooley had hidden the weapons well and to squeeze him as a spy to see if he learned anything about Chinese troop movement.
Tom Dooley was not the last of the medical Trojan Horses.
Afghanistan, Bin Laden and Vaccinations
Amir Aziz was a major and doctor in the Pakistani army. He lived near Osama bin Laden’s compound because Pakistani intelligence, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), had asked him to move there to provide treatment to the ailing bin Laden, according to investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.
His true story is confusing. Aziz was a CIA informant. The operation to raid bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in 2011 was ready to go. But President Obama was nervous: he wanted to know that U.S. forces were actually targeting the right man. For proof, they turned to Amir Aziz. Bin Laden’s doctor was given the job of obtaining a sample of bin Laden’s blood to provide proof via DNA. In The Killing of Osama bin Laden, Hersh reports that Aziz’s “DNA sample showed conclusively that it was bin Laden in Abbottabad.”
But the plan did not go as smoothly as intended. Aziz was picked up and held for questioning in Pakistan. His role as a CIA informant had been leaked. According to Hersh, he was eventually released, but his role in the highly classified mission had been leaked, and U.S. intelligence was unable to locate and plug the leak. The risk was now too great that Aziz’s role in sneaking out the DNA would also become known. So, a cover story was created.
The star of the cover story was another Pakistani doctor named Shakil Afridi. Afridi’s practice offered free hepatitis B vaccinations. But Afridi was also a former CIA asset. The cover story was put out that the CIA had run a fake vaccination program with Afridi that had failed to secure bin Laden’s DNA. The story was meant to cover the true story of how a doctor was used to acquire the DNA that would greenlight the killing of Osama bin Laden. Posters advertising Afridi’s vaccination program were plastered around the region.
According to Hersh, the truth was that Afridi had actually been recruited by the CIA much earlier. His job “was to use vaccinations as a way to get the blood of terrorism suspects in the villages.” Those samples would provide the material for an earlier intelligence program to get information on suspected terrorists in the Abbottabad area.
The Afridi story covered the Aziz story. And both stories painted the fuzzy picture of how medical treatment and humanitarian vaccination programs had secretly hidden intelligence operations.
Iraq: Infiltrating UNSCOM
Sometimes, ironically, the Trojan Horse took on the incarnation of the war makers sneaking into countries in the belly of the peacekeepers.
In the 1990s, the UN Special Commission, or UNSCOM, was the international arms control team tasked with locating and monitoring Iraq’s missiles and nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs. UNSCOM’s job was to prevent weaponization and to prevent war.
The U.S. used UNSCOM as a Trojan Horse to sneak its own agents into Iraq for intelligence gathering that served U.S. interests, and not the interests of the UNSCOM agency.
But, as Barton Gellman revealed in his reporting for The Washington Post in 1999, the United States used its membership in UNSCOM to infiltrate CIA agents and espionage equipment into the territory of its enemy.
For three years, the U.S. used UNSCOM as a Trojan Horse to sneak its own agents into Iraq for intelligence gathering that served U.S. interests, and not the interests of the UNSCOM agency that provided it cover.
UNSCOM had installed in Iraq a remote monitoring system that allowed international inspectors to watch Iraqi facilities in “near real time.” Iraq didn’t know that UNSCOM was doing that; UNSCOM didn’t know that the U.S. was doing more than that.
UNSCOM was a U.S. Trojan Horse. Unbeknownst to UNSCOM, technicians who were employees of the CIA had given the remote monitoring system “covert capability.” Hidden in the system “were antennas capable of intercepting microwave transmissions, and the U.S. agents placed some of them near important nodes of Iraqi military communications.” The military information the CIA got by piggybacking on the UNSCOM remote monitoring system was “of considerable value to U.S. military planners but generally unrelated to UNSCOM’s special weapons mandate.” The CIA exploited UNSCOM as a Trojan Horse.
Scott Ritter, who was a lead inspector for UNSCOM until 1998, reports that, “On one occasion, I uncovered activity taking place in Iraq, under the auspices of UNSCOM, that I viewed as being suspicious. I felt that it was intelligence activity related to the collection of intelligence information and that it was being done on behalf of the United States.” Ritter says that he did not believe UNSCOM had given its approval nor was it even aware of the covert American operation.
Ritter is describing a U.S. Trojan Horse when he says that, “U.S. intelligence [was] seeking to infiltrate the weapons inspectors program and use the unique access the inspectors enjoyed in Iraq for purposes other than disarmament.”
It is no wonder that countries are reluctant to accept humanitarian aid offered by the U.S. From the Marshall Plan in 1951 to today, there is a long and cynical history of the U.S. using humanitarian aid as a Trojan Horse to smuggle aggression into the country they are pretending to help.
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
If you like what you’re reading, please consider making a tax-deductible donation today. We’re not asking for a handout, we’re asking for an investment: Invest in a nonprofit news site that’s not afraid to ruffle a few feathers, not afraid to stand up for what’s right, and not afraid to tell it like it is.
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truthout--2020-05-24--Trump’s EPA Wants to Weaken Science-Based Rules for Toxic Air Pollutants

Ethylene oxide is a particularly dangerous chemical that ’ s both extremely flammable and potentially highly toxic to humans .
Just a brief exposure to enough ethylene oxide gas can trigger vomiting and diarrhea , and respiratory problems that can damage the lungs .
Long-term exposures to the chemical have been linked to cancers , reproductive problems , irreversible and heritable genetic changes , and neurotoxicity .
Despite its volatility and toxicity , ethylene oxide is used ubiquitously in all sorts of industrial processes , from the manufacture of ethylene glycol — which is used to make antifreeze , among @ @ @ @ @ @ @ agricultural products and the sterilization of medical equipment .
Just how widely used is it ?
The National Air Toxics Assessment shows the cancer risk from air pollution broken down into individual U.S. census tracts .
Of the 109 census tracts in the latest assessment with a cancer risk from air pollution higher than the Environmental Protection Agency ’ s ( EPA ) upper limit , 91 percent of the risk comes from just three pollutants , one of which is ethylene oxide .
Because of its dangers , ethylene oxide has been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ battle between environmentalists , industrial workers impacted fence-line communities , and federal and state regulators .
This battle has recently swung into sharp focus once again .
The EPA is in the process of finalizing an important hazardous air emissions rule governing ethylene oxide releases at facilities like chemical manufacturing plants .
Environmental groups fear the agency will cave to pressure from influential state regulators and chemical industry groups , and sign off on a rule that fails to adequately protect public health .
All this is playing out against an administration that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ broadly dilute scientific standards across a swath of agencies , but also uses the cloak of distraction caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to weaken the existing federal regulatory framework .
“ This is a huge , bombshell issue — this is a more potent carcinogen than benzene , ” said Neil Carman , the Texas-based clean air director of the Sierra Club .
“ They ’ re trying to change the toxicology of this very dangerous chemical.
” “ Pull the Rug Out of Health-Based Science ” At the end of March , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Inspector General ( OIG ) issued a damning report that found the agency had failed to provide public meetings and other outreach efforts to educate residents living near 16 of the 25 highest-priority ethylene oxide-emitting facilities — including chemical manufacturing plants and commercial sterilization facilities — of the associated risks .
In response , EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler formally requested the OIG to rescind the report — a move the OIG rejected .
But in the near-term at least , these actions can be traced back to 2016 , when the EPA released @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) measure — a federal program to identify human health hazards — of the risks associated with ethylene oxide exposure .
The analysis found that the inhalation of the chemical is “ carcinogenic to humans.
” There are , however , attempts to weaken this federal risk estimate by undermining the science that underpins it , said Jennifer Sass , a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council , calling this approach “ systemic.
” The locus of these efforts can be found in Texas , an ethylene oxide heartland , housing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 355 ethylene-oxide-emitting plants included in the EPA ’ s 2014 air toxics assessment .
Officials from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality ( TCEQ ) have spent the past few years systematically critiquing the EPA ’ s 2016 risk estimate , and in the process , aligning itself with industry groups like the American Chemistry Council , an organization that has called this assessment “ significantly flawed ” and one that causes “ unnecessary alarm.
” Indeed , last year the TCEQ posted its own draft ethylene oxide risk assessment — one that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ over 3,000 times less than EPA ’ s , according to experts .
To reach this figure , the TCEQ used a model “ rejected ” by the EPA and its independent science advisory board which resulted in the TCEQ “ drastically underestimating the risks of ethylene oxide exposure , ” explained former EPA staff scientist Jennifer Jinot , who contributed to the agency ’ s 2016 cancer assessment , in an analysis for the University of California San Francisco .
The TCEQ ’ s final risk assessment was published this month .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the revised version responds to public comments from the first draft and has been peer reviewed by an “ independent expert peer review panel.
” Nevertheless , it still doesn ’ t adequately protect human health , said Carman , calling the assessment a “ huge gift ” to the Texas petrochemical industry .
What ’ s more , experts fear this assessment will have a direct impact on federal air emissions standards through the Miscellaneous Organic Chemical Manufacturing ( MON ) rule , which regulates releases for facilities that process organic chemicals @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rule is currently being revised , with a deadline for completion by May 29 .
Earlier this year , 20 senators signed a letter addressed to Wheeler which outlines a number of problems with the proposed rule , including how it takes the “ unprecedented approach ” of using a risk factor for cancer that is “ five times weaker ” than what the EPA ’ s own science recommends .
Environmentalists also point to a direct line between the TCEQ and the EPA that exists through Michael Honeycutt , a chief toxicologist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the need for tighter environmental regulations has led to questions over his professional credibility .
Former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt appointed Honeycutt as chair of EPA ’ s Science Advisory Board — a move that environmentalists say was designed to help facilitate the administration ’ s deregulatory efforts .
Indeed , last year , Honeycutt sent a letter to Wheeler calling the EPA ’ s 2016 ethylene oxide cancer risk assessment “ unreasonably conservative.
” In recent emails the Sierra Club uncovered through freedom of information act requests , Honeycutt urges a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rule-making process to review the TCEQ ’ s own ethylene oxide draft risk assessment .
In response to questions about Honeycutt ’ s influence on the federal rule-making process for ethylene oxide emissions , EPA spokesperson Corry Schiermeyer wrote that the agency is “ committed to using the best available science to guide our regulatory decisions.
” Truthout asked the TCEQ the same question .
In response , McGovern wrote that the agency performed its own ethylene oxide assessment for “ state regulatory purposes , ” but that “ other organizations are free @ @ @ @ @ @ @ These “ collateral attacks , ” however , are being waged because the law “ really does have strong protections , ” said Emma Cheuse , a staff attorney with Earthjustice , highlighting the federal Clean Air Act as a potential legal buffer .
“ They ’ re trying to pull the rug out from under health-based science.
” A central concern for environmentalists is how many ethylene oxide-emitting facilities sit near the fence-line of low-income , marginalized communities already struggling with disproportionately high levels of pollution .
Just take the proposed Formosa @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ cancer alley , ” a heavily industrialized corridor on the banks of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans .
The gleaming industrial fortresses of this infamous community are nestled in the heart of St. John the Baptist Parish — a poor , largely African American community where the cancer rate is 50 times the national average , and where the air pollution is already among the worst in the nation .
Formosa ’ s $ 9.4 billion facility — a behemoth of a complex comprising 14 separate plants — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In January , the state issued permits to Formosa allowing it to emit ethylene oxide at levels among the highest in the country , said Corinne Van Dalen , New Orleans-based staff attorney for Earthjustice , who added that the proposed plant will be situated just one mile from an elementary school .
“ They ’ re creating a new ethylene oxide monster , ” she said .
What makes the state especially attractive to companies like Formosa , said Van Dalen , is that the ethylene oxide ambient air quality standard @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stringent ” as the EPA ’ s acceptable risk threshold suggests it should be .
“ This allows companies to use lower state standards as a shield , ” said Van Dalen , explaining how the federal government has left it to the states to determine ambient air quality standards for toxic chemicals .
“ Why does the [ federal government ] allow this charade to go on at the expense of people ’ s lives ?
” she asked .
Certain medical sterilization plants are proving similarly problematic for fence-line communities .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ American census tracts surrounding the ethylene oxide-using Medline assembly plant in Chicago have an elevated cancer risk from air pollution , according to the EPA .
Just last year , a study funded ( but non-peer reviewed ) by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that residents who live a half-mile from the facility have 50 percent higher amounts of ethylene oxide in their bloodstream than residents who live farther away .
“ Facilities emitting dangerous chemicals like ethylene oxide should not be located near homes , schools , businesses , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the public , ” Susan Buchanan , director of the Great Lakes Center for Children ’ s Environmental Health at the University of Illinois Chicago and the lead researcher on the study , told the Chicago Tribune .
A former firefighter and paramedic named John Bardi , who is also a member of the local community group Stop EtO in Lake County , doesn ’ t want to see the Medline facility — a big employer in the area — closed down .
Rather , Bardi — who has lived within one mile @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — would like to see its ethylene oxide emissions curtailed , and he voices frustration with what he sees as a lack of political interest in Medline compared with the nearby Sterigenics medical sterilization facility , surrounded by more affluent communities .
Sterigenics was shuttered last year after sustained public outcry into its toxic air releases .
“ That is something that only our elected officials can answer , ” Bardi wrote , in a statement .
“ But regardless of where they may try to shift the blame for our ongoing pollution @ @ @ @ @ @ @ minority and low-income residents in Lake County , Illinois , and across the country suffer disproportionate harm from pollution while the corporations that are doing the polluting are enjoying record profits.
” Sterigenics has other plants around the country , like its facility in suburban Atlanta which was closed down due to high ethylene oxide emissions and a 2018 explosion at the plant .
In response to the increased demand for personal protective equipment as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic , however , a federal judge recently ruled that the company was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ developments , when combined with attempts to “ roll back ” the stricter proposed ethylene oxide emissions standards , raise “ serious public health concerns , ” said Carman .
“ And the public is being kept in the dark .
”

Ethylene oxide is a particularly dangerous chemical that’s both extremely flammable and potentially highly toxic to humans. Just a brief exposure to enough ethylene oxide gas can trigger vomiting and diarrhea, and respiratory problems that can damage the lungs. Long-term exposures to the chemical have been linked to cancers, reproductive problems, irreversible and heritable genetic changes, and neurotoxicity.
Despite its volatility and toxicity, ethylene oxide is used ubiquitously in all sorts of industrial processes, from the manufacture of ethylene glycol — which is used to make antifreeze, among other products — to the fumigation of agricultural products and the sterilization of medical equipment.
Just how widely used is it? The National Air Toxics Assessment shows the cancer risk from air pollution broken down into individual U.S. census tracts. Of the 109 census tracts in the latest assessment with a cancer risk from air pollution higher than the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) upper limit, 91 percent of the risk comes from just three pollutants, one of which is ethylene oxide.
Because of its dangers, ethylene oxide has been at the center of a protracted years-long battle between environmentalists, industrial workers impacted fence-line communities, and federal and state regulators. This battle has recently swung into sharp focus once again. The EPA is in the process of finalizing an important hazardous air emissions rule governing ethylene oxide releases at facilities like chemical manufacturing plants. Environmental groups fear the agency will cave to pressure from influential state regulators and chemical industry groups, and sign off on a rule that fails to adequately protect public health.
All this is playing out against an administration that environmentalists say has not only sought to broadly dilute scientific standards across a swath of agencies, but also uses the cloak of distraction caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to weaken the existing federal regulatory framework.
“This is a huge, bombshell issue — this is a more potent carcinogen than benzene,” said Neil Carman, the Texas-based clean air director of the Sierra Club. “They’re trying to change the toxicology of this very dangerous chemical.”
“Pull the Rug Out of Health-Based Science”
At the end of March, the EPA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) issued a damning report that found the agency had failed to provide public meetings and other outreach efforts to educate residents living near 16 of the 25 highest-priority ethylene oxide-emitting facilities — including chemical manufacturing plants and commercial sterilization facilities — of the associated risks.
The EPA is in the process of finalizing an important hazardous air emissions rule governing ethylene oxide.
In response, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler formally requested the OIG to rescind the report — a move the OIG rejected. But in the near-term at least, these actions can be traced back to 2016, when the EPA released its Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) measure — a federal program to identify human health hazards — of the risks associated with ethylene oxide exposure. The analysis found that the inhalation of the chemical is “carcinogenic to humans.”
There are, however, attempts to weaken this federal risk estimate by undermining the science that underpins it, said Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, calling this approach “systemic.” The locus of these efforts can be found in Texas, an ethylene oxide heartland, housing within its state borders 60 of the 355 ethylene-oxide-emitting plants included in the EPA’s 2014 air toxics assessment.
Officials from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) have spent the past few years systematically critiquing the EPA’s 2016 risk estimate, and in the process, aligning itself with industry groups like the American Chemistry Council, an organization that has called this assessment “significantly flawed” and one that causes “unnecessary alarm.”
Indeed, last year the TCEQ posted its own draft ethylene oxide risk assessment — one that finds a risk estimate for lymphoid cancer over 3,000 times less than EPA’s, according to experts. To reach this figure, the TCEQ used a model “rejected” by the EPA and its independent science advisory board which resulted in the TCEQ “drastically underestimating the risks of ethylene oxide exposure,” explained former EPA staff scientist Jennifer Jinot, who contributed to the agency’s 2016 cancer assessment, in an analysis for the University of California San Francisco.
The TCEQ’s final risk assessment was published this month. According to agency spokesperson Brian McGovern, the revised version responds to public comments from the first draft and has been peer reviewed by an “independent expert peer review panel.”
Nevertheless, it still doesn’t adequately protect human health, said Carman, calling the assessment a “huge gift” to the Texas petrochemical industry. What’s more, experts fear this assessment will have a direct impact on federal air emissions standards through the Miscellaneous Organic Chemical Manufacturing (MON) rule, which regulates releases for facilities that process organic chemicals like ethylene oxide.
The proposed federal rule is currently being revised, with a deadline for completion by May 29. Earlier this year, 20 senators signed a letter addressed to Wheeler which outlines a number of problems with the proposed rule, including how it takes the “unprecedented approach” of using a risk factor for cancer that is “five times weaker” than what the EPA’s own science recommends.
Environmental groups fear the agency will sign off on a rule that fails to adequately protect public health.
Environmentalists also point to a direct line between the TCEQ and the EPA that exists through Michael Honeycutt, a chief toxicologist for the TCEQ whose prior public criticism of the need for tighter environmental regulations has led to questions over his professional credibility.
Former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt appointed Honeycutt as chair of EPA’s Science Advisory Board — a move that environmentalists say was designed to help facilitate the administration’s deregulatory efforts. Indeed, last year, Honeycutt sent a letter to Wheeler calling the EPA’s 2016 ethylene oxide cancer risk assessment “unreasonably conservative.” In recent emails the Sierra Club uncovered through freedom of information act requests, Honeycutt urges a senior EPA official involved in the MON rule-making process to review the TCEQ’s own ethylene oxide draft risk assessment.
In response to questions about Honeycutt’s influence on the federal rule-making process for ethylene oxide emissions, EPA spokesperson Corry Schiermeyer wrote that the agency is “committed to using the best available science to guide our regulatory decisions.”
Truthout asked the TCEQ the same question. In response, McGovern wrote that the agency performed its own ethylene oxide assessment for “state regulatory purposes,” but that “other organizations are free to use it if they wish.”
These “collateral attacks,” however, are being waged because the law “really does have strong protections,” said Emma Cheuse, a staff attorney with Earthjustice, highlighting the federal Clean Air Act as a potential legal buffer. “They’re trying to pull the rug out from under health-based science.”
“Ethylene Oxide Monster”
A central concern for environmentalists is how many ethylene oxide-emitting facilities sit near the fence-line of low-income, marginalized communities already struggling with disproportionately high levels of pollution. Just take the proposed Formosa petrochemical plant in what is known as “cancer alley,” a heavily industrialized corridor on the banks of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.
The gleaming industrial fortresses of this infamous community are nestled in the heart of St. John the Baptist Parish — a poor, largely African American community where the cancer rate is 50 times the national average, and where the air pollution is already among the worst in the nation. Formosa’s $9.4 billion facility — a behemoth of a complex comprising 14 separate plants — is a stark embodiment of this dynamic.
In January, the state issued permits to Formosa allowing it to emit ethylene oxide at levels among the highest in the country, said Corinne Van Dalen, New Orleans-based staff attorney for Earthjustice, who added that the proposed plant will be situated just one mile from an elementary school. “They’re creating a new ethylene oxide monster,” she said.
What makes the state especially attractive to companies like Formosa, said Van Dalen, is that the ethylene oxide ambient air quality standard in Louisiana is “nowhere near as stringent” as the EPA’s acceptable risk threshold suggests it should be. “This allows companies to use lower state standards as a shield,” said Van Dalen, explaining how the federal government has left it to the states to determine ambient air quality standards for toxic chemicals. “Why does the [federal government] allow this charade to go on at the expense of people’s lives?” she asked.
Certain medical sterilization plants are proving similarly problematic for fence-line communities. Indeed, four largely Latinx and African American census tracts surrounding the ethylene oxide-using Medline assembly plant in Chicago have an elevated cancer risk from air pollution, according to the EPA. Just last year, a study funded (but non-peer reviewed) by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that residents who live a half-mile from the facility have 50 percent higher amounts of ethylene oxide in their bloodstream than residents who live farther away.
“Facilities emitting dangerous chemicals like ethylene oxide should not be located near homes, schools, businesses, parks or other areas frequently used by the public,” Susan Buchanan, director of the Great Lakes Center for Children’s Environmental Health at the University of Illinois Chicago and the lead researcher on the study, told the Chicago Tribune.
Four largely Latinx and African American census tracts surrounding the ethylene oxide-using Medline assembly plant in Chicago have an elevated cancer risk from air pollution.
A former firefighter and paramedic named John Bardi, who is also a member of the local community group Stop EtO in Lake County, doesn’t want to see the Medline facility — a big employer in the area — closed down.
Rather, Bardi — who has lived within one mile of the plant for nearly 25 years — would like to see its ethylene oxide emissions curtailed, and he voices frustration with what he sees as a lack of political interest in Medline compared with the nearby Sterigenics medical sterilization facility, surrounded by more affluent communities. Sterigenics was shuttered last year after sustained public outcry into its toxic air releases.
“That is something that only our elected officials can answer,” Bardi wrote, in a statement. “But regardless of where they may try to shift the blame for our ongoing pollution problem, it is undeniable that the minority and low-income residents in Lake County, Illinois, and across the country suffer disproportionate harm from pollution while the corporations that are doing the polluting are enjoying record profits.”
Sterigenics has other plants around the country, like its facility in suburban Atlanta. In response to mounting public concern surrounding ethylene oxide emissions from the plant, Sterigenics suspended operations to install new emissions control technologies. A 2018 explosion at the plant had also heightened residents’ concerns. In ongoing litigation against the local county, Sterigenics has taken successful legal steps to temporarily resume operations until a final judgement is rendered in the case.
These developments, when combined with attempts to “roll back” the stricter proposed ethylene oxide emissions standards, raise “serious public health concerns,” said Carman. “And the public is being kept in the dark.”
Correction: This article has been updated to reflect that Sterigenics suspended its operations at its Atlanta facility.
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
If you like what you’re reading, please consider making a tax-deductible donation today. We’re not asking for a handout, we’re asking for an investment: Invest in a nonprofit news site that’s not afraid to ruffle a few feathers, not afraid to stand up for what’s right, and not afraid to tell it like it is.
Copyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.