Stephan: Each day brings such a storm of stories of corruption, treason, lies, and the decline of American democracy that people just get overloaded and forget what happened a week earlier, sometimes it's just a day. But I don't want to lose focus on the child concentration camps that now dot America. The story is worse than you thought, as this interview describes, and only massive citizen pushback is going to end this evil.
An immigrant child in one of America’s immigrant concentration camps.
Credit: Maison du droit et des migrations
The Trump administration has less than a week to meet a court-ordered deadline to reunite children and parents separated at the US-Mexico border under its “zero tolerance” policy. This comes as advocates say some migrant children have been released from federally contracted shelters with scabies and lice. In Illinois, officials are investigating the Chicago nonprofit Heartland Alliance over allegations it housed children separated from their parents at the border, with many of the children reportedly suffering abuse and neglect. We speak with Reveal reporter Aura Bogado, who has exposed a second office used by military contractor MVM to hold migrant children. This time, the children had to bathe in bathroom sinks.
AMY GOODMAN: The Trump administration has less than a week to meet a court-ordered deadline to reunite thousands of children and parents separated at the US-Mexico border under its “zero tolerance” policy. Federal officials reported Thursday just 364 of more than 2,500 families with children age […]
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Saturday, July 21st, 2018
Stephan: Here is the latest on America's illness profit system. It goes on right under everyone's nose, they don't even bother to hide it, because when you own the government you don't break the law, you make the law, and construct it so you can milk ordinary people like cows. And we all stand around chewing our cuds.
In 2016 only 59.7 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots. And enough of that number cast votes for dead-end candidates like Jill Stein that Donald Trump was elected. We're going to get a last chance to preserve democracy in November. Be very clear that the christofascists will be voting in very high numbers, all for politicians who support Trump. Do you think Democrats can get clear in their own heads that it is a two party system?
Credit: Getty
To give you an idea of how much Americans are getting gouged on their purchases of medicine, consider this: Over the past three years, the cost of six commonly used drugs categories, including treatments for asthma, diabetes, cancer, and HIV, have risen by an eye-popping average of 30 percent, or more than five times the rate of inflation. With an average cost of nearly $1,200 per year per person, prescription drugs cost more in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world.
While modern medicine involves a lot of pill-taking, the main reason why Americans pay so much for prescription drugs is because — unlike every other capitalist democracy on the planet — the U.S. government will not intervene to reel prices back from the stratosphere. At the same time, the country’s largest drug manufacturers are often spending more money enriching their shareholders than they earn in profits.
And currently there seems to be no relief in on the horizon for Americans struggling with their healthcare budgets.
According […]
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Saturday, July 21st, 2018
Sheldon Krimsky, Lenore Stern Professor of Humanities & Social Sciences and Adjunct Professor of Public Policy & Community Medicine at Tufts University - Environmental Health News
Stephan: The greed of corporate America is so vast, so pervasive, so out of control that it is eating away at the integrity of science itself, and certain corporations, such as Monsanto are leading the way down this dark path. Here are the facts.
credit: flickr
While passing a placard of contemporary protest buttons in New York’s Greenwich Village, my attention was drawn to one that read “Science is Peer Reviewed, Not Politician Approved.”
This short aphorism brought into focus two unfortunate realities. First, there are growing segments of the population who have lost confidence in science and choose to act on un-scientific or pseudo-scientific truth claims. And second, other segments of the population view scientists as just another stakeholder group subject to the same market influences in the competition for producing credible knowledge.
As a generator of truth claims, science stands on its own footing. Unfortunately, many corporations view science not as a generator of truth, but as one of many inputs into production.
The most recent examples of the corporate capture of science can be found in the investigations of discovery documents, released under court mandate, arising from mass tort product liability litigation filed against Monsanto Co. Thousands of people have filed lawsuits claiming they developed cancer after exposure to the company’s Roundup herbicide, and that the […]
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Eric Levitz, - New York Magazine
Stephan: You may think that you observed an act of treason in Helsinki and an appalling series of lies subsequently. But if you are a Trumplican you thought it all went off very well. The Great Schism Trend that I have been writing about for two decades appears to be reaching a crescendo that will play out in November. I think it is very important to remember that both Hitler and Mussolini came to power through an election not a coup. And increasingly I see the November election as the event that will determine the future of America.
Trump and Putin
Credit: CNN
On Monday, the president of the United States blamed American law enforcement for souring U.S.-Russia relations; suggested that the Kremlin is more trustworthy than the CIA; and voiced approval for allowing FSB agents to interrogate Americans who’ve run afoul of Moscow — all while Vladimir Putin smirked from a podium a few feet to his left.
For many of Donald Trump’s normally sycophantic surrogates, this sorry spectacle was a gaffe too far. It was one thing for Trump to defend neo-Nazis, or psychologically torture masses of migrant children, or demand the FBI comport itself as his personal detective agency. But to stand beside an avowed opponent of U.S. hegemony — and apologize for America?
“Disgusting,” declared Fox Business anchor Neil Cavuto. “The most serious mistake of his presidency,” Newt Gingrich declared. The Senate’s nominally anti-Trump Republicans turned their empty rhetorical denunciations up to 11. Even die-hard Trumpists like Tom Cotton felt compelled to offer implicit criticism.
For once, conservative […]
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