Sunday, November 17th, 2013
ED PILKINGTON, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: It is getting to be almost impossible to get factually accurate news anymore. All of the Rightwing ersatz academic think tanks, that are basically disinformation lobbying operations, combined with a lazy corporate media that doesn't make the effort to find out who they are really quoting has left this country befuddled in a miasma of false information.
NEW YORK — Some of America’s largest technology and telecoms companies, including Facebook, Microsoft and AT&T, are backing a network of self-styled ‘free-market thinktanks
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Sunday, November 17th, 2013
TOM JACOBS, - AlterNet (U.S.)
Stephan: Here is the latest on the Schism Trend that is reshaping America.
Does your next-door neighbor vote the same way you do? How about the couple who live across the street, or your friends on the next block?[1]
The odds you answered ‘yes
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Sunday, November 17th, 2013
, - Ethics, Medicine, and Pharma
Stephan: This is a book review of the new volume by Peter C. Gøtzsche, Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare (New York: Radcliffe Publishing, 2013). It presents the evidence for an aspect of the pharmaceutical industry that almost never gets discussed, but that you should be aware of.
The book features Forewords by two heavy hitters, Richard Smith, former editor of BMJ, and Drummond Rennie, long-time deputy editor of JAMA. If you read between the lines, the two editors both convey more or less the same message-this guy comes across as a raving lunatic, but it would be a shame if you were put off by that tone, because he actually has something important to say.
By way of the lunacy quotient, I append a representative list of quotes:
‘In the United States and Europe, drugs are the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer.
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Saturday, November 16th, 2013
THOM HARTMANN, - AlterNet (U.S.)
Stephan: I have done several stories on this, this one being the latest. The truth is that a handful of non-geographical corporate states own most of the economy. Click through to the Charts section on the SR website and you will find a number of charts and maps illustrating this.
There isn’t much diversity in America’s economic web of life.
An image that was first posted on Reddit last year, and was recently grabbed by the folks over at PolicyMic [3], shows just how out-of-control corporate America has become in the years since Ronald Reagan stopped enforcing the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
Right now, there are 10 giant corporations that control, either directly or indirectly, virtually everything we buy.
These corporations are Kraft, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestle, Proctor and Gamble, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Mars, Unilever, and Johnson & Johnson.
These 10 corporations in turn own, market, or distribute what people think of as the products of hundreds of other companies.
For example, Proctor and Gamble is best known for its cleaning and personal hygiene products, like Tide detergent, Ivory hand soap and Joy dishwashing liquid.
But the company also owns or markets other products, from IAMS dog food and Pepto-Bismol to Duracell batteries and Metamucil.
Then there’s Mars, the giant candy conglomerate responsible for Snickers bars, M&M’s and other sweet treats.
But did you know that Mars also owns or markets Pedigree dog food, Whiskas cat food and Uncle Ben’s rice?
Finally, there’s Nestlé.
Many American consumers know Nestlé for its Nescafé espresso, Nestlé ice cream or Nesquick chocolate milk.
But this coffee […]
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Saturday, November 16th, 2013
TRAVIS GETTYS, - The Raw Story
Stephan: The truth no one in the mainstream media seems willing to talk about is that those states governed by racist Theocratic Rightists are deteriorating into third world countries.
Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama particularly, now have a quality of life for large portions of their populations that is quite similar to a Central American nation like Guatemala or Nicaragua. In North Carolina a baby both in that state has a poorer chance of surviving birth than a child in the small impoverished African nation of Botswana. And North Carolina is far from the worse case in the U.S. They are actually 36th. Louisiana and Mississippi, for instance, are much worse.
The image of a vibrant upwardly mobile middle class country is central to the American myth, and how we see and describe ourselves. Sadly, it is now a fiction, for all too many. I think we are too ashamed to tell ourselves the truth. But, God, I hope we get out and vote, always selecting the most compassionate life-affirming option.
Voters in one Louisiana parish will decide Saturday whether to devote funding for their library to a new jail.
Lafourche Parish Council Lindel Toups pushed the measure because he disapproves of some of the library’s programs.
‘They’re teaching Mexicans how to speak English,
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