LES LEOPOLD, - AlterNet (U.S.)
Stephan: Anyone who has friends in Europe knows this is the truth. We just keep lying to ourselves concealing the reality of our society. Click through to see the graphs comparing vacation time in other countries.
Les Leopold is the executive director of the Labor Institute and Public Health Institute in New York, and author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance Destroyed Our Jobs, Pensions, and Prosperity-and What We Can Do About It (Chelsea Green, 2009).
Imagine this: You work 25 hours a week at the McDonald’s in Cairo, New York, and have finally earned two weeks of paid vacation. You set out on a bike trip. On the first day in the saddle, you hit a pothole and crash, cracking your collar bone. You sit on your couch for the rest of your vacation watching the Tour de France. Tough luck.
Unless you worked for McDonald’s in Europe. If you did, you would be entitled to a fully paid do-over, according to a June 21 ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the highest court in Europe (whose rulings must be followed by all member states). This court ruled that all European workers are entitled to their full vacation after they have healed:
‘A worker who becomes unfit during his paid annual leave, is entitled at a later point to a period of leave of the same duration as that of his sick leave.
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Wednesday, July 4th, 2012
Stephan: I wish each of you the very best for a wonderful Fourth. Spend a few minutes today thinking about the kind of country you would like to see America become, then what you are prepared to do to make that happen. That is exactly what the Founders did, and what this day is really about.
-- Stephan
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Wednesday, July 4th, 2012
STEPHEN C. WEBSTER, Senior Editor - The Raw Story
Stephan: The continuance of marijuana prohibition and the harassment of the medical marijuana programs by Federal agencies is further revealed for what it is: Corruption in the government in the service of people and agency budgets that make billions from this bankrupt policy that has destroyed the lives of millions of Americans.
A government-sponsored study published recently in The Open Neurology Journal concludes that marijuana provides much-needed relief to some chronic pain sufferers and that more clinical trials are desperately needed, utterly destroying the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency’s (DEA) classification of the drug as having no medical uses.
While numerous prior studies have shown marijuana’s usefulness for a host of medical conditions, none have ever gone directly at the DEA’s placement of marijuana atop the schedule of controlled substances. This study, sponsored by the State of California and conducted at the University of California Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research, does precisely that, driving a stake into the heart of America’s continued war on marijuana users by calling the Schedule I placement simply ‘not accurate
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Wednesday, July 4th, 2012
ELIZABETH RENTER, - Reader Supported News
Stephan: Here is the latest on the corruption of our food system. It is increasingly urgent that you and your family take a proactive stance concerning the food you eat.
Breast-feeding mothers are often cautioned against eating and drinking certain things; it’s because some of these things can find their way into their breast milk and then their baby. Wouldn’t it make sense, then, that some of the hormones and antibiotics given to dairy cattle would make their way into your milk carton? One hormone, recombinant bovine somatotropin, or rBST, is given to about 20% of dairy cattle in the United States, having unknown effects on individuals who consume their milk.
Is rBST safe?
IS rBST safe? That depends on who you ask. Companies like Monsanto, the original producer of Posilac (an rBST) product had to reluctantly put safety warnings on the sides of their packages – admitting that it has about 20 ‘toxic effects’ on the cows.
It’s a hormone that forces cows to produce more milk. More milk = more money, but the hormone makes the cows sick. Among other things, it causes mastitis which is an infection of the udder. This infection causes pus to be released into the milk. Yes, pus is in your milk.
In turn, large scale dairy operations that use rBST must use more antibiotics in the cows to counter the infection causing effects of the hormones.
According […]
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Wednesday, July 4th, 2012
KATIE THOMAS and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT, - The New York Times
Stephan: Here you see the naked face of the Illness Profit System. I heard Kentucky Republican Senator and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell say, the day this story broke, that the U.S. has 'the best healthcare system in the world.' It is shameful that a public official would make such a statement, particularly just as this was announced. Note also that no one is actually going to jail. If you had tried some sort of scam for, say, $3000, and been caught like this, you'd be spending a few years in the gulag. And that says nothing about the misery caused by these bad medications.
The British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges and pay $3 billion in fines for illegally promoting the antidepressants Paxil and Wellbutrin and for failing to report safety data about the diabetes drug Avandia, federal prosecutors announced Monday.
The settlement marks the largest payment ever by a drug company, eclipsing the previous record of $2.3 billion set by Pfizer in 2009, the government said.
‘Today’s multibillion-dollar settlement is unprecedented in both size and scope,
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