Last year, our government said it had not used, and did not use, depleted uranium weaponry in Iraq and/or Syria. The Department of Defense has since walked that back, which isn't that impressive, since everyone knows our government did in fact fire depleted uranium weapons into populated areas during the Iraq war, and while doing so will apparently never have consequences for George W. Bush or his Mobb, it does have very real consequences for Iraqis and Syrians right now, since scientists have linked depleted uranium aerosols with increased birth defects in children. If you're tempted to say who cares, it's just people that have been killing each other for centuries, please do four things: 1) slap yourself, 2) contemplate the role Western nations' zeal to steal Middle Eastern natural resources in our troubles, 3) slap yourself again, and 4) ask yourself why the greatest military in the world must use weapons that harm innocents. And then, perhaps let Just Foreign Policy and MoveOn help you tell our government to look a little harder at what it's done and come clean about its use of depleted uranium weapons overseas.
Meanwhile, as you know, our government enacted a GMO-labeling bill that pre-empted state-level GMO-labeling laws but which might, in a few years, result in a national mandatory GMO-labeling standard that doesn't suck, but in the meantime, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is mulling whether to allow big ag corporations to exempt oils and sugars that use GMOs, which would pretty much take a bat to the kneecaps of any national GMO standard that might emerge. The USDA is, perhaps, the worst of the Obama Administration's alphabet agencies, having only one positive accomplishment for the American people to its credit (higher school lunch nutrition standards, which, naturally, Congress tries to gut every chance it gets), that accomplishment hidden like a nugget of gold in the river of hog manure that is the overall record of the USDA's otherwise slavish adherence to big ag desires. Still, it's not like we're powerless, as the USDA is taking public comments on this matter as we speak, and Just Label It helps you tell the USDA not to exempt certain foods from GMO labeling mandates.
Finally, staff and players on the Beaumont (TX) Bulls youth football team decided to take a knee during the national anthem during their September 10 game, as 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has famously done, and at the time, they did so with the support of their youth league and their team's executive board. Then the board got cold feet and told them not to take a knee during the anthem before their next week's game -- but the team did so anyway. Then the board suspended the head coach -- not for sticking with his players, of course, but for "removing a player and coach from the team and an improperly distributed text message," which, like, yeah sure -- and then the board threatened to arrest parents who tried to attend games or other team events, and when the players kept resisting, they ultimately cancelled the season. If the board is trying to teach these kids that actions have consequences, well, they should be learning it themselves. Toward that end, Color of Change helps you demand that the board stop acting like a bunch of whiny bullies and give these courageous kids back their season.
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