Why Is China Treating North Carolina Like the Developing World?

Stephan:  In North Carolina gerrymandering, and voter suppression have skewed voting to emphasize White voters, and racism is a chronic problem. As a result  Republican christofascist governance holds sway. The social outcome as this report lays out, has been to turn the rural parts of the state into a kind of third world plantation economy where a child born in a rural county has less chance of seeing their first birthday than a child born in Botswana, Africa, and industrial agriculture, due to lack of regulatory oversight, is literally poisoning  the population, Black, White and Hispanic, in those counties due to the runoff of animal feces, glyphosates, and hormones. China seeing the situation, as the report describes, is taking advantage of these Republican policies to outsource its pork production, and the problems attendant to industrial animal husbandry.  It is just another example of why Republicans cannot govern effectively, if by effectively one means that social policies are designed for the wellbeing of the population being governed.

Credit: Ggamies/Shutterstock

In July 2013, Larry Pope, the CEO of Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer in America, was called to testify before a U.S. Senate committee about the pending sale of his company to a Chinese conglomerate now known as WH Group. The $7.1 billion purchase, the largest-ever foreign takeover of its kind, had attracted concerns. The Chinese pork manufacturer had a checkered health record, allegedly feeding its hogs illegal chemicals, and Smithfield had a long history of environmental problems at its farms, including a $12 million fine for several thousand clean-water violations. But the worries did not stop there. The Chinese government had a track record of using nominally private entities as proxies for state power. “To have a Chinese food company controlling a major U.S. meat supplier, without shareholder accountability, is a bit concerning,” said Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley. “A safe and sustainable food supply is critical to national security. How might this deal impact our national security?”

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The $66 billion Bayer-Monsanto merger just got a major green light — but farmers are terrified

Stephan:  In yet another take over Bayer, a German corporation with a checkered past is merging with what is in my opinion one of the most evil corporations on earth, Monsanto. As a result of this trend, which is getting almost no media coverage,  counties in rural America in states controlled by Republicans are being turned into corporate plantations and the population into peasants subjected to all manner of poisons and toxins. It is the inevitable result of a christofascist society run only for profit
  • Credit: Jim Young/Reuters

    Bayer, a German pharmaceutical and chemical company, has won approval in the US to buy agricultural giant Monsanto.

  • But farmers are worried about what the consolidation might mean for prices and their future business.
  • Whereas Bayer and Monsanto claim the move will spur innovation, other analysts have expressed skepticism.

A blockbuster deal between Bayer and Monsanto appears to be moving ahead.

On Monday, the US Department of Justice approved the German pharmaceutical and chemical group’s bid to buy the US seed giant for more than $60 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported. Bayer agreed to sell off additional assets to alleviate anti-trust concerns.

The two companies first announced the potential deal in September 2016, saying the move would boost agriculture research and innovation.

“By the time 2050 rolls around, the world will have 10 billion people, and the demand for food will double,” Robb Fraley, Monsanto’s chief technology officer, told Business Insider last year. “The whole point here is that the business combination between Monsanto and Bayer […]

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“Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” Goldman Sachs analysts ask

Stephan:  When I say America's healthcare is an illness profit system, that is exactly what I mean. Exhibit A.

Credit: Daily Mirror

One-shot cures for diseases are not great for business—more specifically, they’re bad for longterm profits—Goldman Sachs analysts noted in an April 10 report for biotech clients, first reported by CNBC.

The investment banks’ report, titled “The Genome Revolution,” asks clients the touchy question: “Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” The answer may be “no,” according to follow-up information provided. (emphasis added)

Analyst Salveen Richter and colleagues laid it out:

The potential to deliver “one shot cures” is one of the most attractive aspects of gene therapy, genetically engineered cell therapy, and gene editing. However, such treatments offer a very different outlook with regard to recurring revenue versus chronic therapies… While this proposition carries tremendous value for patients and society, it could represent a challenge for genome medicine developers looking for sustained cash flow.

For a real-world example, they pointed to Gilead Sciences, which markets treatments for hepatitis C that have cure rates exceeding 90 percent. In 2015, the company’s hepatitis C treatment sales peaked at $12.5 billion. But as more people were […]

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How Often Do People Use Guns In Self-Defense?

Stephan:  The problem with guns in America is not just the guns. In lots of other countries people can own guns. It is my view that the gun problem in America is partly saturation, but mostly culture.Here is an example of what I mean. One of the main arguments for owning a gun is self-defense. How often do people actually do that. As this report says, "...people defended themselves with a gun in nearly 0.9 percent of crimes from 2007 to 2011. Which is to say rarely. Guns in this culture are owned because they have a highly charged totem quality." Something else is going on. Nations in times of stress tend to revert to their cultural meme. China has a new version of the Mandarin system, educated bureaucrats, engineers, scientists, scientists run China just as the Mandarins did for 1,300 years (605 to 1905). Russia has returned to its Tsarist roots, only this time the Tsar is surrounded by an aristocracy of wealth not one of blood and breeding. And the United States has reverted to its Frontier mythos. Then as now it is White Supremacist, violent, fearful, and hypocritically religious. It is the task, or ought to be, of every American to grow out of this, personally. If that happens society changes. Everything else is just argument.

The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

It’s a common refrain touted by gun rights advocates, who argue that using guns in self-defense can help save lives. But what is the actual number of defensive gun uses?

According to the Pew Research Center, 48 percent of gun owners say they own a gun mainly for protection. But for years, experts have been divided over how often people actually use guns in self-defense. The numbers range from the millions to hundreds of thousands, depending on whom you ask.

The latest data show that people use guns for self-defense only rarely. According to a Harvard University analysis of figures from the National Crime Victimization Survey, people defended themselves with a gun in nearly 0.9 percent of crimes from 2007 to 2011.

David Hemenway, who led the Harvard research, argues that the risks of owning […]

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Swedish government introduces new benchmarks for architecture and design

Stephan:  The Nordic countries, the Netherlands, Portugal, and a few other countries are taking climate change and the transition out of the carbon energy era seriously. Here is wonderful news from Sweden. It will be very interesting to follow this trend, and I predict it will end up being more productively, more efficient, nicer to live under, and much much cheaper.

Stockholm, Sweden from the air
Credit: Henryk Kotowski.

The Swedish government has introduced new architecture and design targets to make Sweden a more “sustainable, equal and less segregated society”.

The targets laid out in the Stamped Living Environment Bill aim to make sustainability and quality integral to the design process.

Architects and designers should share good practice and ensure the public environments they create are accessible to all, the bill states.

“Architecture, form and design will contribute to a sustainable, equal and less segregated society with carefully-styled living environments, all of which are given good conditions for influencing the development of the common environment,” it reads.

It has largely been welcomed by the Swedish architecture and design community, although some concerns have been raised about whether the policy would be enforced.

Swedish architecture and design museum welcomes bill

Kieran Long, the director of Sweden’s national museum and centre for architecture, ArkDes, praised the introduction of the bill.

“Sweden has become one of the most ambitious countries in the world in its belief that design can improve people’s lives,” Long […]

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