OurNewReality
The Pasticene's LIARS
Any economists out there? Seems you folks have been far ahead of those of us in other fields, since you’ve known about this corporate capture stuff for over 80 years. Like the very successful efforts in a relevant area of activity : in universities and scientific research centers.
There’ve been lots of efforts, like pushing our universities to divest, which have succeeded, but no understanding of the extent of industry manipulations in less obvious ways.
So when one of us went a little crazy about the real situation, we all paid attention. Her work has been defunded. She’s been screwed over and tried to find out why and discovered that the newish chairman of her university’s Board of Trustees was Senior Vice President of ExxonMobil.
Coincidence?
Her experience has started a lot of us digging around behind the scenes at our own research centres.
Are we being paranoid?
Seems not.
She passed this around yesterday:
• Research institution and ‘think tank’ capture. Research consortia or “think-tanks” that give the appearance of “neutrality” but are funded by corporate vested interests that use the organization to promote their agenda.
• NGO capture can occur when NGOs gain more funding through corporate sponsorships and partnerships than through memberships. Controversial examples include conservation charities accepting funding from the petrochemical industry and other large corporate sponsors.
• University capture occurs when funding-strapped universities are worried about jeopardizing corporate funding and might suppress negative research discoveries or critical researchers.
• School capture occurs when private or public schools accept funding or make use of educational materials from industry. Examples exist from the alcohol and food industries where experts claim the educational materials have been misleading or play down the health effects of products. Past tactics employed by the tobacco industry have also included placing tobacco shops close to schools. More recently, tobacco shops have been replaced by vape shops.
I had just read an article that struck me as rather off. Articulate, well written, in a good publication...but something rankled. Then I realized the author was using terms for different things (“ microplatics, nanoplastics and PPs,( plastic particulates)” interchangeably. It was subtle, and not overtly untrue, but clearly left the impression that this material is not the threat to humans that has been demonstrated in many research papers....
His paper, “Examining Misconceptions about Plastic-Particle Exposure from Ingestion of Seafood and Risk to Human Health” was conceptualized during the “Microplastic and Seafood: Human Health Symposium” held at Heriot-Watt University September 13–14, 2022. Funding for the symposium was provided by a consortium of seafood industries from the U.K., USA, and Australia.
He delicately dismisses the actual science this way:
“Current evidence on the uptake and depuration/elimination kinetics of PPs after exposure via ingestion indicates very low levels of absorption and accumulation of particles within internal tissues. The techniques for analysis of small PPs in tissues from environmental exposures are developing and will eventually enable detection at lower levels and validate or refute the results of recent reports of PPs in internal tissues (e.g., human brain) based on methods that appear to be especially vulnerable to false positives (e.g., pyrolysis gas chromatography).”
And in direct contradiction to the leading expert in Nanotoxicology, Dr. Phillip Demokritou, he states
Overall, the evidence suggests that dietary exposure to MPs from the contamination of food represents only a small fraction of the total human exposure to MPs
And this whopper
“Yes, microplastics have become ubiquitous in all settings—but there is no evidence that ingesting them is harmful to humans”
He had good credentials, but I had to look up his UK university: lo and behold, they have a campus in Dubai, and are opening another in Saudi Arabia. So checked funding.
You guessed it: Exxon, BP, the Oil and Gas Authority (a quarter million £ grant), the food industry, Equinor, Mobil, Shell, and Total. Other companies provide “in-kind” support like data sets, software, and staff time.
The paper is being touted (just look at Google) by the food industry, and the university.
It’s not just educational institutions: corporate capture is what’s ubiquitous :
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/08/trump-administration-fossil-fuels-climate 11 Oct5 More than 40 Trump administration picks tied directly to oil, gas and coal, analysis shows
They are everywhere, like the microplastics they’ve lied about for years...slipping into society and us, then slowly, slowly, releasing their toxins.
This is worth pursuing.
"Plasticene" in title.
https://kathleenmccroskey.substack.com/p/another-attempt-at-a-plastics-treaty
Much, if not most, of Canada’s mainstream and heavily corporatized news-media are in bed with the fossil fuel industry's interests here. Notably, Postmedia — which, among many other publications, owns both of Canada's two national newspapers, The National Post and The Globe and Mail — is on record allying itself with not only the planet’s second most polluting forms of carbon-based “energy” but also THE MOST polluting/dirtiest crude oil, bitumen.
During a presentation, it was stated: “Postmedia and [Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers] will bring energy to the forefront of our national conversation. Together, we will engage executives, the business community and the Canadian public to underscore the ways in which the energy sector powers Canada.”
Also, Postmedia acquired a lobbying firm in 2019 with close ties to Alberta Premier Jason Kenney in order to participate in his government’s $30 million PR “war room” in promoting the industry's interests. And in May of 2021, the newspaper giant refused to run paid ads by Leadnow, a social and environmental justice organization, that exposed the Royal Bank of Canada as the largest financer of the nation's fossil fuel extraction.
Still, other concerned citizens would word it more intensely than I have.
“I would argue that what little ethical and moral foundation the country has is deeply threatened by the crumbling discipline of a fossil-fuel-based economy and the politics it spawns. Nothing requires government supervision in so many areas (and nothing has anything like the influence on government) as this industry.
"It follows that no other industry remotely requires the amount and kind of honest, wary media surveillance this one does,” Rafe Mair aptly wrote in his book Politically Incorrect: How Canada Lost Its Way and the Simple Path Home [published in October 2017, the same month he died]. Mr. Mair also had been an elected representative, journalist and talk-show host. His book largely forensically dissects democracy’s decline in Canada and suggests how it may be helped:
“What has the media, especially but hardly exclusively the print media, done in response to this immense challenge? It’s joined fortunes with the petroleum industry. And a very large part of it has done so in print and in public. The facts are that the rest of the media have not raised a peep of protest at this unholiest of alliances and that governments contentedly and smugly pretend all that favourable coverage they get proves their efficiency — not that the fix is in and they’re part of that fix. Let me just comment that the difference from 1972 to 2017 in the media’s dealing with governments and politics takes the breath away!”
Source: https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2017/11/14/mair-media-unholiest-alliances