Monday, January 13th, 2014
DAVID FERGUSON, Editor - The Raw Story
Stephan: Here is the clearest example I have yet seen at the Theocratic Right's complete disdain for facts. Now the Supreme Court is going to decide whether deliberate lying is legal in public political statements about others.
The decision ought to be obvious but, given the nature of the Roberts Court the outcome is not clear.
The U.S. Supreme Court announced on Friday that it is preparing to hear a challenge to an Ohio law prohibiting candidates and political groups from making false statements in campaign advertising. According to Huffington Post, anti-choice group the Susan B. Anthony List maintains that Ohio’s False Statement Law stifles their right to free speech.
The case will be argued in April and a decision is expected during the last weeks of the Court’s term in the summer. The Susan B. Anthony List issued a press release Friday saying that it is jubilant that the Court will hear their case.
‘We are thrilled at the opportunity to have our arguments heard,” said the group’s Marjorie Dannenfelser. ‘The Ohio Election Commission statute demonstrates complete disregard for the Constitutional right of citizens to criticize their elected officials.”
The foundation made demonstrably false statements during its 2010 campaign to unseat Democratic then-Rep. Steven Driehaus. The organization erected billboards that said, ‘Shame on Steve Driehaus! Driehaus voted FOR taxpayer-funded abortion.”
The anti-choice group made the allegations based on Driehaus’ vote in favor of President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, also known as ‘Obamacare.” In fact, federal law specifies that no federal tax dollars will ever be used to provide […]
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Sunday, January 12th, 2014
ANGELA MONAGHAN, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: China is now the largest trading nation on Earth, and is on track to be the dominant economy, a trend that holds profound implications for the U.S. Here is a report. Clearly the vampire capitalism that has come to dominate the U.S. is not performing for anyone but the 1%.
China became the world’s largest trading nation in 2013, overtaking the US in what Beijing described as “a landmark milestone” for the country.
China’s annual trade in goods passed the $4tn (£2.4tn) mark for the first time last year according to official data, after exports from the world’s second largest economy rose 7.9% to $2.21tn and imports rose 7.3% to $1.95tn.
As a result total trade rose 7.6% over the year to $4.16tn. The US is yet to publish its 2013 trade figures, but with trade totalling $3.5tn in the first 11 months of the year, it is unlikely to beat China.
The shift in the trading pecking order reflected China’s rising global dominance, despite a slowdown in economic growth last year.
Zheng Yuesheng, a spokesman for China’s customs administration, said: “It is very likely that China overtook the US to become the world’s largest trading country in goods in 2013 for the first time. This is a landmark milestone for our nation’s foreign trade development.”
China had already become the world’s largest exporter of goods in 2009.
The country’s trade surplus rose 12.8% in 2013 to almost $260bn, but the December surplus of $25.6bn was down 17.4% and fell short of the $31.15bn predicted by […]
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Sunday, January 12th, 2014
, - Agence France-Presse (France)/The Raw Story
Stephan: Yet another story about the corruption in Big Pharma. It is getting difficult to keep up with all these developments. But one thing is certain: it is becoming harder to tell whether the drug your local doc prescribes is what it is reputed to be, and will do what it is supposed to do. Hard for him. Hard for you.
Japan’s health ministry said Friday it was probing claims falsified data was used in an Alzheimer’s disease study involving major pharmaceutical firms, a day after filing an unrelated criminal complaint against Swiss drugs giant Novartis.
Health officials said they were questioning researchers after being told false data was used in clinical testing for the $28 million government-backed Alzheimer’s study, aimed at improving diagnosis of the disease.
The research involved 11 drugs firms, including Pfizer and Bristol-Myers Squibb and Japanese giants Takeda Pharmaceutical and Astellas Pharma, medical imaging companies and nearly 40 hospitals and medical organisations. The public and privately-financed study, dubbed J-ADNI, began in 2007.
The allegations came to light just a day after Japanese officials slapped Novartis with a criminal complaint which alleged its local unit exaggerated advertising for popular blood-pressure drug Diovan.
A former Tokyo University professor and project researcher on the Alzheimer’s study reported the false data claims to health officials. Novartis was not involved in the study.
‘After verifying the facts about these allegations, we will deal with the issue appropriately, setting up an investigation team if necessary,” a health ministry official told AFP.
Health Minister Norihisa Tamura told reporters in Tokyo Friday that the probe would get to the bottom of […]
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Sunday, January 12th, 2014
TIM PHILLIPS, Co-founder of Beyond Conflict - Salon
Stephan: According to CNN "The number of households owning guns has declined from almost 50% in 1973 to just over 32% in 2010, according to a 2011 study produced by The University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center. The number of gun owners has gone down almost 10% over the same period, the report found." Yet the number of guns has dramatically increased.
Less than a third of the American population own firearms, yet there are in excess of 270 million guns in private hands. And they kill tens of thousands each year. Clearly the American gun psychosis arises from a deep seated sacred values issue. Something irrational untouched by the reality of facts. Now neuroscience is beginning to give us an understanding as to why a hobby that is practiced by a declining percentage of the population, and that is quite literally murderous, exercises such powerful influence over people's minds.
As we begin 2014, we still haven’t engaged in a conversation about gun control that brings both sides together.
Polls indicate a country more or less divided over how to prevent another school shooting. And while legislation has been proposed to reign in the gun lobby, sales of guns have soared.
This debate is not a new one in the United States, and while it intensifies with each tragic mass shooting, the conversation rarely advances. Frustration sets in as each new action causes the other side to dig in their heels even further.
We wonder: Is there another way to frame this issue?
For the last 20 years I have led an international organization that works in war torn countries to negotiate an end to conflict. In places like Northern Ireland, El Salvador, South Africa and the Balkans, groups once driven to violence to defend their beliefs have put down their weapons, sat down at a table, overcome their differences and negotiated. Moving beyond conflict is, indeed, possible.
One dynamic I have observed present in all successful negotiations – which is missing from our current debate over gun control – is a recognition of the role of sacred values.
Social scientists define sacred values as a […]
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Sunday, January 12th, 2014
JEFFREY KOPMAN, - The Weather Channel
Stephan: Another consequence of climate change. Increased illness due to mosquitoes and ticks will be occurring world wide. We really aren't thinking this through, and our failure to deal rationally with what is happening is going to make us sicker, on top of everything else.
The consequences of climate change stretch beyond deep freezes. In South Korea, warmer temperatures have already begun to lengthen tick and mosquito season, causing the number of infectious diseases to rise by more than 20,000 cases from 2012 to 2013, according to a report from the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in The Korea Herald.
This finding reinforces a belief long held by epidemiologists and climatologists – that climate change will dramatically increase the prevalence of vector-borne disease across the globe.
In 2013, 77,215 Koreans were diagnosed with an infectious disease, compared to 51,520 in 2012. The Korea CDC specifically cited a spike in the cases of scrub typhus, an illness that causes fever, headaches, rashes and scabbing, as one example for the increase.
‘The Korean Peninsula’s climate is turning subtropical and more people are coming in and out of the country,” Kim Woo-joo, professor of infectious disease at the Korea University Guro Hospital, told The Korea Herald. ‘We have to take steps to prevent new diseases from spreading in the country.”
In addition to warming temperatures, researchers said that many Koreans are traveling to rural areas where more insects might live. These areas could also be responsible for the spread of […]
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