Wednesday, November 26, 2025

 

Pesticides and other common chemical pollutants are toxic to our ‘good’ gut bacteria



University of Cambridge
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Machine learning predicts pesticide impacts on human gut bacteria 

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Chemicals that have a toxic effect on human gut bacteria include pesticides, like herbicides and insecticides, that are sprayed onto food crops. These chemicals stifle the growth of gut bacteria thought to be vital for health.

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Credit: Ailen Fernandez-Lande/ University of Cambridge





A large-scale laboratory screening of human-made chemicals has identified 168 chemicals that are toxic to bacteria found in the healthy human gut. These chemicals stifle the growth of gut bacteria thought to be vital for health.

Most of these chemicals, likely to enter our bodies through food, water, and environmental exposure, were not previously thought to have any effect on bacteria.

As the bacteria alter their function to try and resist the chemical pollutants, some also become resistant to antibiotics such as ciprofloxacin. If this happens in the human gut, it could make infections harder to treat.

The new research, led by the University of Cambridge, tested the effect of 1076 chemical contaminants on 22 species of gut bacteria in the lab.

Chemicals that have a toxic effect on gut bacteria include pesticides like herbicides and insecticides that are sprayed onto food crops, and industrial chemicals used in flame retardants and plastics.

The human gut microbiome is composed of around 4,500 different types of bacteria, all working to keep our body running smoothly. When the microbiome is knocked out of balance there can be wide-ranging effects on our health including digestive problems, obesity, and effects on our immune system and mental health.

Standard chemical safety assessments do not consider the human gut microbiome because chemicals are formulated to act on specific targets, for example insecticides should target insects.

The researchers have used their data to create a machine learning model to predict if industrial chemicals - whether already in use, or in development - will be harmful to human gut bacteria.

The research, including the new machine learning model, is published today in the journal Nature Microbiology.

Dr Indra Roux, a researcher at the University of Cambridge’s MRC Toxicology Unit and first author of the study said: “We’ve found that many chemicals designed to act only on one type of target, say insects or fungi, also affect gut bacteria. We were surprised that some of these chemicals had such strong effects. For example, many industrial chemicals like flame retardants and plasticisers - that we are regularly in contact with - weren’t thought to affect living organisms at all, but they do.”

Professor Kiran Patil in the University of Cambridge’s MRC Toxicology Unit and senior author of the study said: “The real power of this large-scale study is that we now have the data to predict the effects of new chemicals, with the aim of moving to a future where new chemicals are safe by design.”

Dr Stephan Kamrad at the University of Cambridge’s MRC Toxicology Unit, who was also involved in the study, said: “Safety assessments of new chemicals for human use must ensure they are also safe for our gut bacteria, which could be exposed to the chemicals through our food and water.”

Very little information is available about the direct effects of environmental chemicals on our gut microbiome, and in turn our health. The researchers say it’s likely our gut bacteria are regularly being exposed to the chemicals they tested, but the exact concentrations reaching the gut are unknown. Future studies monitoring our whole-body exposure will be needed to assess the risk.

Patil said: “Now we’ve started discovering these interactions in a laboratory setting it’s important to start collecting more real-world chemical exposure data, to see if there are similar effects in our bodies.”

In the meantime, the researchers suggest the best way to try and avoid exposure to chemical pollutants is to wash our fruit and vegetables before we eat them, and not to use pesticides in the garden.

Patil says the study has provided the data to predict the effects of new chemicals, with the aim of moving to a future where new chemicals are safe by design.

Credit

Jonathan Settle/University of Cambridge



Roux was surprised to find that many industrial chemicals we're regularly in contact with affect human gut bacteria, even though they weren’t previously thought to affect living organisms at all.

Credit

Jonathan Settle/University of Cambridge

Journal

Nature Microbiology

DOI

10.1038/s41564-025-02182-6 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Article Title

Industrial and agricultural chemicals exhibit antimicrobial activity against human gut bacteria in vitro

Article Publication Date

26-Nov-2025


Libcom.orgfiles.libcom.org/files/Bookchin M. Our Synthetic Environment.pdf
Our Synthetic Environment - Libcom.org

Our Synthetic Environment. Murray Bookchin. 1962. Table of contents. Chapter 1: THE PROBLEM. Chapter 2: AGRICULTURE AND HEALTH. Chapter 3: URBAN LIFE AND HEALTH.

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Palestinians fighting hunger in Gaza receive food aid

Palestinians in the al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis in southern Gaza receive hot meals from a charity on November 27, 2025.

 (Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images)

‘Genocide Is Not Over,’ Amnesty Leader Says as Israel Keeps Bombing Gaza

“So far, there is no indication that Israel is taking serious measures to reverse the deadly impact of its crimes and no evidence that its intent has changed.”

Underscoring the conclusion of a new Amnesty International briefing, Middle East Eye reported Thursday that “Israeli aircraft launched a series of raids on the al-Tuffah and al-Shuja’iyya neighborhoods, east of Gaza City,” and conducted strikes on Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, despite the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas that took effect on October 10.

Gaza medical sources said that as of Wednesday, at least 69,799 Palestinians had been killed and another 170,972 injured since Israel launched a genocidal assault after the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack—though global researchers have warned the actual toll is likely far higher. Since the ceasefire began last month, Israeli forces have killed at least 352 people and injured 896.

“The ceasefire risks creating a dangerous illusion that life in Gaza is returning to normal,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty’s secretary general, in a Thursday statement. “But while Israeli authorities and forces have reduced the scale of their attacks and allowed limited amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza, the world must not be fooled. Israel’s genocide is not over.”

“Israel has inflicted devastating harm on Palestinians in Gaza through its genocide, including two years of relentless bombardment and deliberate systematic starvation,” she continued. “So far, there is no indication that Israel is taking serious measures to reverse the deadly impact of its crimes and no evidence that its intent has changed. In fact, Israeli authorities are continuing their ruthless policies, restricting access to vital humanitarian aid and essential services, and deliberately imposing conditions calculated to physically destroy Palestinians in Gaza.”

“The ceasefire must not become a smokescreen for Israel’s ongoing genocide.”

Amnesty’s new briefing similarly states that “Israeli authorities are still committing genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, by continuing to deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.”

“Israel severely restricts the entry of supplies and the restoration of services essential for the survival of the civilian population—including nutritious food, medical supplies, and electricity—as well as stringently limiting medical evacuations,” said the human rights group, which first declared the assault a genocide in December 2024, joining scholars and observers around the world.

The briefing details:

Israeli authorities continue to prohibit the entry of equipment and material necessary to repair life-sustaining infrastructure and required to remove unexploded ordnance, contaminated rubble, and sewage, all of which pose serious and potentially irreversible public health and environmental damage.

The systemic expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and what was once the most arable land continues, with Israeli military deployed across 58% of the Gaza Strip. This expulsion risks becoming permanent.

As Common Dreams reported on Wednesday, a new Trump administration plan to temporarily house Palestinians living in the Israeli-occupied parts of Gaza in “residential compounds” that they may not be allowed to leave is being condemned as “concentration camps within a mass concentration camp.”

Callamard noted that “Palestinians remain held within less than half of the territory of Gaza, in the areas least capable of supporting life,” and pointed to decisions from the United Nations’ top tribunal, the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

“Still today, even after repeated warnings by international bodies, three sets of legally binding orders by the ICJ, and two ICJ advisory opinions, and despite Israel’s obligations under international humanitarian law and international human rights law, both as an occupying power and as a party to an armed conflict, Israel deliberately continues not to provide or allow necessary supplies to reach the civilian population in Gaza,” she said.

Although Israel faces a genocide case at the ICJ, there have been “no prosecutions or investigations of acts of genocide by the Israeli authorities, at least none that has been publicly disclosed or acknowledged,” the briefing highlights. “On the contrary, atrocity crimes committed against Palestinians, including rape and other forms of sexual violence, torture and other ill-treatment of Palestinian detainees, continue to receive high-level political support in Israel and within the military ranks.”

“Not only has the level of dehumanization of Palestinians seen no decline post-ceasefire and the return of the hostages, but new death penalty legislation has been proposed which in its current wording means that it would be primarily applied against Palestinians,” the publication states. Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, gave the bill its first green light earlier this month.

“Israel also continues to prevent access to the Gaza Strip to international forensic experts and investigators, including international justice and UN-mandated mechanisms, as well as international human rights organizations, and international media,” the document adds. “This effectively prevents the collection of time-sensitive evidence that would be essential to pursue accountability and provide redress to victims and survivors.”

Callamard called on the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—a fugitive of the International Criminal Court—to “lift its inhumane blockade and ensure unfettered access to food, medicine, fuel, reconstruction, and repair materials,” as well as “make concerted efforts to repair critical infrastructure, restore essential services, provide adequate shelter for the displaced, and ensure they can return to their homes.”

She also urged international pressure targeting the Netanyahu government, arguing that “world leaders must demonstrate that they truly are committed to upholding their duty to prevent genocide and to ending the impunity that has fuelled decades of Israeli crimes across the occupied Palestinian territory. They must halt all arms transfers to Israel until Israel’s crimes under international law cease. They must press Israeli authorities to grant human rights monitors and journalists access to Gaza to ensure transparent reporting on the impact of Israel’s actions on conditions in Gaza.”

“The ceasefire must not become a smokescreen for Israel’s ongoing genocide,” Callamard stressed, also calling on companies worldwide to “immediately suspend any operations that contribute or are directly linked to Israel’s genocide.”

“Israeli officials responsible for orchestrating, overseeing, and materially committing genocide remain in power,” she added. “Failing to demonstrate that they or their government will be held accountable effectively gives them free rein to continue the genocide and commit further human rights violations in Gaza and in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”

In addition to the airstrikes in Gaza on Thursday, Israel’s troops and police continued for a second day what they called “a broad counterterrorism operation” in Tubas, a governorate in the northern West Bank. Across the illegally occupied territory, Israeli forces and settler-colonists also destroyed Palestinians’ olive trees, and some settlers set fire to a mosque in Biddya.

Roland Friedrich, West Bank director for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East Affairs (UNWRA), said Thursday that “more than 10 months into operation ‘Iron Wall,’ destruction has been relentless. Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nur Shams camps have been completely emptied by Israeli forces, with some 32,000 residents remaining forcibly displaced.”

“And yet, even in these ghost towns that were once vibrant camps, Israeli forces still see the need to order demolitions for the sake of so-called ‘military purposes,’” Friedrich continued, pointing to demolitions in Jenin planned for Friday. “This systematic destruction goes against the basic principles of international law, and only serves to tighten the control of Israeli forces over the camps in the long term. The camps need to be rebuilt—not further destroyed—and their residents allowed to return and restore their lives. They must not be trapped in interminable displacement.”

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America’s 'radical cultish origins' began with the Pilgrims



The first Thanksgiving, 1621, Pilgrims and natives gather to share a meal, oil painting by Jean Louis Gerome Ferris, 1932/Shutterstock

November 26, 2025 
ALTERNET

The settlers who arrived in Plymouth were not escaping religious persecution, writes Jane Borden in The Nation. The Pilgrims and Puritans "left on the Mayflower to establish a theocracy in the Americas," she says, and effectively were part of what is today known as a doomsday cult.

"The Pilgrims and Puritans were high-control radical Protestant doomsday groups. If they were around today, most Americans would identify them as cults," Borden says.

Despite their differences, she says, they were all “Hot Protestants ... as such radicals were known in England. They believed the end of the world as prophesied in the New Testament book of Revelation was imminent."

Religious figures in the colonies were doomsday preppers who predicted different dates for the big day.

“The Day of Doom,” writes Borden, "a long-form poem published in 1662 about the return of a vengeful Jesus, was so popular in New England it’s known as America’s first bestseller."


"The radical Protestants believed, as apocalyptic thinkers always have, that the world contained good and evil forces, eradication was the only goal of both, and each supernatural side had pursued it since the beginning of time," she explains.

These early doomsdayers, she explains, "wanted to hasten the apocalypse by blotting out everything that didn’t fit their ever-shrinking view of righteousness."

UCLA historian Carla Gardina Pestana says that Pilgrim governor William Bradford “thought anyone hostile to Plymouth itself risked God’s anger.”

And contrary to what is taught in most American elementary schools, Borden refutes the fact that these groups came to the New World seeking religious freedom.

"The Pilgrims, in particular, already had religious freedom in Holland, where they lived for 12 years after fleeing England," she explains.

"Along with economic motivations, they came to America because they didn’t want to raise their children in a liberal society. They wanted theocracy. They wanted to be able to expel nonconformists and exert total control over culture," she adds.

The Puritans, she explains, wanted much of the same and executed it — quite literally — in a more violent fashion.

"The Puritans wanted the same — this is why they hanged Quakers, banished dissidents, and, eventually, ended the practice of questions and comments following sermons, because, as Cotton Mather wrote, it was “an occasion of much contention, vexation and folly.” Church attendance was mandatory. They made it illegal to disagree with ministers," she says.

Punishment was a source of humiliation and entertainment for The Puritans, she says.

"Punishment for transgressions was extreme and designed to humiliate, just as it is in cults. Punishment was also a source of entertainment," Borden explains, noting how taverns opened early on trial days so the crowd could pregame the brutality.

Much was taboo, however, including "gossiping, flirting, swearing, smoking, playing ball sports and doing almost anything on the Sabbath were crimes," Borden says.

"Skipping church or criticizing the pastor were also punishable. Residents were encouraged to inform on one another. It was even a crime to interrupt the preacher. Blasphemy called for the death sentence," she notes.

Freedom in the New World seemed a foreign concept, in fact, she explains.

"In Pilgrim and Puritan communities, there was not just a culture of punishment; there was a culture of conformity. These were high-control groups, meaning the groups’ leaders used community pressure and threats of punishment, ostracism, and damnation to regulate residents’ behavior, thoughts, and information intake," she writes.

Children had it particularly bad, Borden says.

"Cults and high-control groups are typically most destructive to the children raised in them. In addition to uncertainty of their status among the saved, New England children were subject to fear-based indoctrination and extreme discipline," she writes, adding that parents eschewed affection out of fear it would "spoil them into wickedness."

"Scholars who’ve pored over diaries kept by the Puritans found that the second and third generations exhibited during adolescence significant increases in melancholy, pathological abnormalities, nervous breakdowns, suicide and insanity," she notes.

Despite all of this, Pilgrims and The Puritans became the poster-children for America's founding, she explains.

"Nevertheless, in the mid-to-late 1800s, the Pilgrims and Puritans became the avatars of America’s founding — in part because of associations with the new Thanksgiving holiday, and in part, as some scholars have argued, because the nation was struggling to define its identity and to separate its origins from the slave trade," she says.

Their radical ideology never went away, Borden writes. In fact, it has become the foundation of American culture.

"From these remarkably successful colonies, we inherited our knee-jerk anti-intellectualism, obsession with self-investigation, tendency to worship the wealthy and desire for a strong man to rescue us from crisis," she writes.

"Americans today often wonder “how we got here” as a nation. My answer: the Mayflower and Arabella," Borden says.

"This Thanksgiving is as good a time as any to begin coming to terms with the country’s radical cultish origins. The consequences are ongoing, and we’re all in this together. There’s no going back. The Mayflower and Arabella aren’t offering return tickets."

Thanksgiving? No, thanks.


Robert Jensen ,
AlterNet  
November 26, 2025

One indication of moral progress in the United States would be the replacement of Thanksgiving Day and its self-indulgent family feasting with a National Day of Atonement accompanied by a self-reflective collective fasting.

In fact, indigenous people have offered such a model; since 1970 they have marked the fourth Thursday of November as a Day of Mourning in a spiritual/political ceremony on Coles Hill overlooking Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, one of the early sites of the European invasion of the Americas.

Not only is the thought of such a change in this white-supremacist holiday impossible to imagine, but the very mention of the idea sends most Americans into apoplectic fits -- which speaks volumes about our historical hypocrisy and its relation to the contemporary politics of empire in the United States.

That the world's great powers achieved "greatness" through criminal brutality on a grand scale is not news, of course. That those same societies are reluctant to highlight this history of barbarism also is predictable.

But in the United States, this reluctance to acknowledge our original sin -- the genocide of indigenous people -- is of special importance today. It's now routine -- even among conservative commentators -- to describe the United States as an empire, so long as everyone understands we are an inherently benevolent one. Because all our history contradicts that claim, history must be twisted and tortured to serve the purposes of the powerful.

One vehicle for taming history is various patriotic holidays, with Thanksgiving at the heart of U.S. myth-building. From an early age, we Americans hear a story about the hearty Pilgrims, whose search for freedom took them from England to Massachusetts. There, aided by the friendly Wampanoag Indians, they survived in a new and harsh environment, leading to a harvest feast in 1621 following the Pilgrims first winter.

Some aspects of the conventional story are true enough. But it's also true that by 1637 Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop was proclaiming a thanksgiving for the successful massacre of hundreds of Pequot Indian men, women and children, part of the long and bloody process of opening up additional land to the English invaders. The pattern would repeat itself across the continent until between 95 and 99 percent of American Indians had been exterminated and the rest were left to assimilate into white society or die off on reservations, out of the view of polite society.

Simply put: Thanksgiving is the day when the dominant white culture (and, sadly, most of the rest of the non-white but non-indigenous population) celebrates the beginning of a genocide that was, in fact, blessed by the men we hold up as our heroic founding fathers.

The first president, George Washington, in 1783 said he preferred buying Indians' land rather than driving them off it because that was like driving "wild beasts" from the forest. He compared Indians to wolves, "both being beasts of prey, tho' they differ in shape."

Thomas Jefferson -- president #3 and author of the Declaration of Independence, which refers to Indians as the "merciless Indian Savages" -- was known to romanticize Indians and their culture, but that didn't stop him in 1807 from writing to his secretary of war that in a coming conflict with certain tribes, "[W]e shall destroy all of them."

As the genocide was winding down in the early 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt (president #26) defended the expansion of whites across the continent as an inevitable process "due solely to the power of the mighty civilized races which have not lost the fighting instinct, and which by their expansion are gradually bringing peace into the red wastes where the barbarian peoples of the world hold sway."

Roosevelt also once said, "I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth."

How does a country deal with the fact that some of its most revered historical figures had certain moral values and political views virtually identical to Nazis? Here's how "respectable" politicians, pundits, and professors play the game: When invoking a grand and glorious aspect of our past, then history is all-important. We are told how crucial it is for people to know history, and there is much hand wringing about the younger generations' lack of knowledge about, and respect for, that history.

In the United States, we hear constantly about the deep wisdom of the founding fathers, the adventurous spirit of the early explorers, the gritty determination of those who "settled" the country -- and about how crucial it is for children to learn these things.

But when one brings into historical discussions any facts and interpretations that contest the celebratory story and make people uncomfortable -- such as the genocide of indigenous people as the foundational act in the creation of the United States -- suddenly the value of history drops precipitously and one is asked, "Why do you insist on dwelling on the past?"

This is the mark of a well-disciplined intellectual class -- one that can extol the importance of knowing history for contemporary citizenship and, at the same time, argue that we shouldn't spend too much time thinking about history.

This off-and-on engagement with history isn't of mere academic interest; as the dominant imperial power of the moment, U.S. elites have a clear stake in the contemporary propaganda value of that history. Obscuring bitter truths about historical crimes helps perpetuate the fantasy of American benevolence, which makes it easier to sell contemporary imperial adventures -- such as the invasion and occupation of Iraq -- as another benevolent action.

Any attempt to complicate this story guarantees hostility from mainstream culture. After raising the barbarism of America's much-revered founding fathers in a lecture, I was once accused of trying to "humble our proud nation" and "undermine young people's faith in our country."

Yes, of course -- that is exactly what I would hope to achieve. We should practice the virtue of humility and avoid the excessive pride that can, when combined with great power, lead to great abuses of power.

History does matter, which is why people in power put so much energy into controlling it. The United States is hardly the only society that has created such mythology. While some historians in Great Britain continue to talk about the benefits that the empire brought to India, political movements in India want to make the mythology of Hindutva into historical fact.

Abuses of history go on in the former empire and the former colony. History can be one of the many ways we create and impose hierarchy, or it can be part of a process of liberation. The truth won't set us free, but the telling of truth at least opens the possibility of freedom.

As Americans sit down on Thanksgiving Day to gorge themselves on the bounty of empire, many will worry about the expansive effects of overeating on their waistlines. We would be better to think about the constricting effects of the day's mythology on our minds.




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