KATE MURPHY, - The New York Times
Stephan: As it becomes ever clearer that all electronic communications of whatever nature are subject to surveillance I have begun to think about how this can be minimized if not eliminated. Here is an approach you might consider yourself, if this is an matter of concern to you.
Legal and technology researchers estimate that it would take about a month for Internet users to read the privacy policies of all the Web sites they visit in a year. So in the interest of time, here is the deal: You know that dream where you suddenly realize you’re stark naked? You’re living it whenever you open your browser.
There are no secrets online. That emotional e-mail you sent to your ex, the illness you searched for in a fit of hypochondria, those hours spent watching kitten videos (you can take that as a euphemism if the kitten fits) – can all be gathered to create a defining profile of you.
Your information can then be stored, analyzed, indexed and sold as a commodity to data brokers who in turn might sell it to advertisers, employers, health insurers or credit rating agencies.
And while it’s probably impossible to cloak your online activities fully, you can take steps to do the technological equivalent of throwing on a pair of boxers and a T-shirt. Some of these measures are quite easy and many are free. Of course, the more effort and money you expend, the more concealed you are. The trick is to find the […]
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KATIE NGUYEN, - AlterNet (U.K.)
Stephan: If you have been reading SR for a while you know I have been very concerned about what I see as a rapidly oncoming major food crisis, and the potential that millions are going to starve to death in the coming years. You may remember my essay The Coming Food Crisis-The Social Tsunami Headed Our Way (See: http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307%2811%2900173-X/fulltext). Here is the latest in this trend, and it is just as predicted, but there is a twist. Rich individuals and corporations are positioning themselves to profit from starvation by gobbling up arable land all over the world.
LONDON — It was designed to increase production and exports of vegetable oil, a commodity in short supply after World War Two, and foster growth in post-war Britain and Tanganyika.
Instead, Britain’s scheme to carve out million-acre plantations for growing groundnuts in what is now Tanzania ended in disaster – scuppered by the thick bush that rendered machines to clear land for cultivation useless, and a lack of suitable soil and rainfall for the crop to grow.
Sixty years on, similarly controversial projects are back in fashion in Africa and other parts of the developing world as investors – from foreign governments to wealthy individuals – hunt for land to grow food.
Champions of the deals say they are good for agriculture and ultimately global food security. They say they provide a welcome injection of cash, new seeds, technology and knowledge into a sector that is often the neglected pillar of poor countries’ economies.
But critics describe them as secretive ‘land grabs’ snatched at knockdown prices, which threaten to push smallholder farmers off their land and deprive countries struggling with chronic hunger of fertile, arable land they need for themselves.
‘There’s a huge variety to these (deals). It’s not all bad,’ Rajiv Shah, head of […]
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Stephan: Over the past few days several of you have written me to tell me about horrible experiences you have had with the U.S. illness profit system, and how devastating it was on your life. I am long past being surprised by these accounts, having written many articles on this subject. (In addition to the SR archives, please see www.explorejournal.com/content/schwartz for my essays on this aspect of life in America.)
But still, things do change so, in spite of the several dire reports I have published recently, I went looking to get a clearer sense, based on data, of how most Americans are actually faring today. Once again I discovered it is an awful picture. Here are just a few of the reports I came across in my search. I have been following this trend for 15 years and the truth is, it is getting worse.
Maybe when Obama's programs really kick in it will get better but the truth is we won't really have true healthcare until wellness not profit is the main function of the system. The Ryan Plan is an abomination. If any of you vote Republican you will reap the consequences of your action, and I can guarantee you won't like it.
-- Stephan
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STEPHANIE MENCIMER, - Mother Jones
Stephan: Once you start looking into the tall weeds of the illness profit system stories like this are to be found everywhere. I am astonished at how really bad our healthcare system is.
Recently, my doctor gave me an ultimatum: Come in for a pelvic exam, or I won’t refill your birth control pills. The problem arose after I tried to get my prescription refilled before going on vacation in March, only to be told that the doctor’s office wouldn’t sign off on the refill because it had been a year and one month since I’d had an annual exam and a Pap smear. A nurse grudgingly gave me a monthlong reprieve if I promised to come in for an exam when I returned from my trip.
I really, really didn’t want to go in for an exam. I’ve had two kids, a false positive Pap test and all the ensuing misery that comes with it, and spent enough time in the stirrups to last a lifetime. All I really wanted were my pills; I was pretty sure the exam could wait another year or more.
The science was on my side.
Just a few weeks earlier, the US Preventative Services Task Force, an independent group of national experts that makes evidence-based health care recommendations, released new guidelines declaring definitively that women over 30 don’t need a Pap smear more than once every three years unless […]
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, - Agence France-Presse (France)
Stephan: Yet another aspect of the illness profit system. The truth is all of us have unknowingly become participants in mass clinic trials. It is so much more profitable. Hundreds of millions can be made before a drug has to be recalled. It has happened over and over.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Most clinical trials for cancer, heart disease and mental health are too small to offer adequate medical evidence, said a review of the US database of such studies released on Tuesday.
The analysis in the Journal of the American Medical Association was led by experts at Duke University in collaboration with the US Food and Drug Administration.
That partnership, known as the Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative (CTTI), examined more than 96,000 studies registered as of September 2010 with the website ClinicalTrials.gov, a US registry that was started in 1997.
In 2007, the registry became mandatory for most mid- to late phase interventional drug and device trials and study authors are now required by law to record key data elements, report basic results and adverse events.
The studies chosen for review were in ‘intervention medicine,
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