Thursday, March 16th, 2017
March 14, 2017, - Bloomberg
Stephan: When profit is your only social value there is no level of moral depravity to which you will not sink, as long as money is to be made. This reality in American society is literally destroying the integrity of our science.
Credit: Sustainablepulse.com
Monsanto Co. was accused in court documents of ghostwriting scientific literature that led a U.S. regulator to conclude a key chemical in its Roundup weed killer shouldn’t be classified as carcinogenic.
Lawyers suing the company on behalf of farmers and others, who claim exposure to glyphosate caused their non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, alleged in a court filing which was partially blacked out until Tuesday that the Environmental Protection Agency “may be unaware of Monsanto’s deceptive authorship practice.”
The filing was made public by a federal judge in San Francisco handling the litigation. The judge said last month he’s inclined to require a retired EPA official to submit to questioning by plaintiffs’ lawyers who contend he had a “ highly suspicious ” relationship with Monsanto. The former official oversaw a committee that found insufficient evidence to conclude glyphosate causes cancer and left his job last year after his report was leaked to the press.
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Wednesday, March 15th, 2017
Stephan: In 2010 with the Citizens United decision the conservative majority of the Supreme Court of the United States by making bribery legal, sold the country to the uber-rich special interest community, and nothing has ever been the same since. With Donald Trump in power it is now possible that the damage will become so great it cannot be reversed. Here is one of the reasons I say this.
What amazes me, is how corruptible Americans are; it is one of the signs telling us we have lost our way.
The same arch-conservative foundations that finance climate science denial back key players in the agribusiness and chemical industry dispersing propaganda promoting GMOs and toxic chemicals while attacking opponents as “anti-science.”
Credit: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout)
British writer George Monbiot has a warning for those of us trying to grasp the new political realities in the US and the UK: “We have no hope of understanding what is coming until we understand how the dark money network operates,” he wrote in the Guardian.
Corporate America may have been slow to warm up to Donald Trump, but once Trump secured the nomination, “the big money began to recognize an unprecedented opportunity,” Monbiot wrote. “His incoherence was not a liability, but an opening: his agenda could be shaped. And the dark money network already developed by some American corporations was perfectly positioned to shape it.”
This network, or dark money ATM as Mother Jones described it, refers to the vast amount of hard-to-trace money flowing from arch-conservative billionaires, such as Charles and David Koch and allies, and corporations […]
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Wednesday, March 15th, 2017
Stephan: Almost without anyone outside of the institutions becoming aware it was happening fundamentalist "Christians" have taken over the much of the Chaplain Corps of the U.S. military, and are now doing the same with the American gulag, the world's largest prison system. The long term implications of this are profound. Here some insight into what it means.
Credit: Thomas Hawk / Flickr
The following is an excerpt from the new book God in Captivity: The Rise of Faith-Based Ministries in the Age of Mass Incarceration by Tanya Erzen (Beacon Press, 2017). Reprinted with permission from Beacon Press:
It’s hard to focus on anything, much less the Book of Jeremiah, when the air presses against your skin like steam, and it’s not even 9 a.m. In Louisiana, a May morning like this portends a truly oppressive day, and for prisoners, one without the reprieve of shade, air-conditioning, or privacy. For the three women missing from the college class, sent to disciplinary segregation for violating one rule or another, the small room each is confined to twenty-three of twenty-four hours a day is a sweltering prison within a prison. The chapel classroom is an alternative to the “hole,” even with the cinder-block monotony of its walls disrupted only by a map of Jerusalem in the time of Jesus. Monica renews her focus. She has a final exam next week, and this is the […]
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Wednesday, March 15th, 2017
Kimberly Kindy, Reporter - The Washington Post
Stephan: If I had more money and could afford to hire staff I would make SR bigger. There are so many stories, so many facets to the transformation of the United States into a corporate Fascist state I just can't get to all of them. As the corruption, lies, and deceits of the Trump administration suck up most of the media oxygen truly horrible things are going on in the Congress and the executive agencies.
Here's an example of what I mean. The Republican House, and their corporate masters hate tort law and class action suits. This is the part of the law that has made it possible for people who have been seriously harmed to seek redress. No hospital, or insurance company or chemical corporation wants that, so what to do? Why change the laws of course.
As this report lays out it may soon be much harder to sue for damages, or even to sue at all. As far as the Republicans are concerned your job as an American is to pay, and suffer the consequences without recourse, and that's it.
Republicans and business groups have long sought to retool the tort system, arguing that frivolous lawsuits are producing outrageous awards that bankrupt businesses and deny compensation to legitimate victims.
Credit: Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg
House Republicans are advancing a series of bills that would make changes to the civil justice system long sought by doctors and U.S. corporations, including a cap on some medical malpractice awards and new roadblocks for classes of people seeking to sue jointly to address harm.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups are promoting the measures, arguing that courts have grown overly tolerant of frivolous and fraudulent claims. Civil rights and consumer groups oppose the measures, saying they would severely limit the ability of average Americans to pursue legal remedies from powerful institutions.
One proposal would limit monetary awards in medical malpractice suits to $250,000 for noneconomic damages, which include pain and suffering. Currently, there is no federal limit on medical malpractice claims, and awards can run […]
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Wednesday, March 15th, 2017
Stephan: This is one of the saddest stories about what America has become that I have read. And it is in the British press.
In less than two months it has become problematic for little girls to come to the U.S.. My wife and I live just a few hours from the Canadian border and have many friends who normally come and go between the U.S. and BC. A number of Canadian friends, however, have recently written to say they won't be coming to the U.S. until Trump leaves or things change. Little girls, for God's sake America is this who we are now?
Girl Guides of Canada
Credit: Girl Guides of Canada
The Girl Guides of Canada are cancelling all travel to the United States because of fears that their members might have trouble at the border due to travel restrictions enacted by Donald Trump. (emphasis added)
A spokeswoman, Sarah Kiriliuks, said on Monday the organization’s membership was diverse and inclusive and leaders worried some girls could get left behind when a group tried to enter the US.
The decision comes after a string of reports that Canadians have been turned away at the border. In January – on the eve of Trump’s inauguration –several would-be demonstrators said they were denied entry to the US after telling border officials of their plans to attend the Women’s March on Washington.
Last month Canadian citizen Fadwa Alaoui said […]
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