In states that were already authoritarian, earning Not Free designations from Freedom House, governments have increasingly shed the thin façade of democratic practice that they established in previous decades, when international incentives and pressure for reform were stronger. More authoritarian powers are now banning opposition groups or jailing their leaders, dispensing with term limits, and tightening the screws on any independent media that remain. Meanwhile, many countries that democratized after the end of the Cold War have regressed in the face of rampant corruption, antiliberal populist movements, and breakdowns in the rule of law. Most troublingly, even long-standing democracies have been shaken […]
Sunday, February 10th, 2019
Stephan: I know from personal experience that anything that has to do with complementary medicine, consciousness research, continuity of consciousness, alternative forms of agriculture is not to be trusted on Wikipedia. It is a bastion of materialism, corporatism, and orthodoxy. It took me over a year of complaining, dozens of emails and, finally, threatening legal action to get them to take down a page Wikipedia had on me that was filled with slander and disinformation. And many other friends of mine in consciousness research, organic agriculture, and alternative integrative medicine have had similar experiences. I NEVER recommend Wikipedia.
Here are some comments from the academic literature: "Most Wikipedia articles representing the 10 most costly medical conditions in the United States contain many errors when checked against standard peer-reviewed sources. Caution should be used when using Wikipedia to answer questions regarding patient care."
Wikipedia vs peer-reviewed medical literature for information about the 10 most costly medical conditions.
J Am Osteopath Assoc. 2014 May;114(5):368-73. doi: 10.7556/jaoa.2014.035.
This report is another.
Ever venture into natural healing or alternative medicine on Wikipedia and find the answers become totally skewed in favor of corporate medicine?
Don’s Comment: For example, check out the disinformation on “Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_hypersensitivity At the end of the Wikipedia entry is a link to Pseudoscience.
Anyone who uses the Internet to search for information is very likely to be familiar with the Wikipedia site. Wikipedia is very often among the first results that pop up on queries like, “What is the population of Kazakhstan?” or “How many French speakers are there in the United States?” To questions like this, with little or no commercial impact, and no scientific or political controversy surrounding them, Wikipedia sometimes offers decent answers.
But venture into natural healing or alternative medicine and the answers become totally skewed in favor of corporate medicine. Naturally, Big Pharma is one of those entities willing to pay to control the flow of information. Those pages are not identified as being advertising or propaganda.
This phenomenon is not limited to health topics. Here is a link to one of the “Pay for Play” controversies: http://www.cnet.com/news/corruption-in-wikiland-paid-pr-scandal-erupts-at-wikipedia/
And another […]
2 Comments
Sunday, February 10th, 2019
BRADLEY JONES, Research Associate - Pew Research Center
Stephan: I have been writing about what I have called The Great Schism Trend for a decade, watching it become more and more obvious and the differences more irreconcilable. I think this trend has the power to change the fundamental structure of the country, producing a United States in which the federal forms remain, but real power moves to the states and blocs of states. Not that it will, but that the potential for that path is increasing.
Watch for moves to eliminate the Electoral College, with which I agree. Blue states complaining about underwriting the failure of Red states, which is a factual reality. Climate change is going to stress states in different ways, and with different intensities. They are going to choose their own paths. On top of that the damage the Trump administration is doing to the structure of governance, the country's social policies, and its infrastructure is going to take years to fix. At least two more until the Senate can be turned, and then years of repair, in a world under growing stress.
Republicans and Democrats have long held differing views about policy solutions, but throughout most of the recent past there was rough partisan agreement about the set of issues that were the top priorities for the nation.
However, that is less and less the case. Republicans and Democrats have been moving further apart not just in their political values and approaches to addressing the issues facing the country, but also on the issues they identify as top priorities for the president and Congress to address.
For more than two decades, Pew Research Center has tracked the public’s priorities, including in our most recent survey.
While many issues are considered high priorities by majorities in both parties today, there is virtually no common ground in the priorities that rise to the top of the lists for Democrats and Republicans.
Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, health care costs, education, the environment, Medicare and assistance for poor and needy people top the list of priorities (all are named as top priorities by seven-in-ten or more Democrats). None of these is among the five leading top priorities for Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (Medicare and health […]
1 Comment
Sunday, February 10th, 2019
, - Reader Supported News
Stephan: I do not understand why it was not clear from the beginning that tasers could be lethal. Not always but with some frequency. Now we have data. It is obvious that their casual use by police is the wrong policy and encourages bullying. Match that with about 15 percent of police being bullies and you can see why tasers need to be reconsidered.
Taser poses real risk to people’s lives and at least 49 died from it in 2018.
Credit: Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette/Canadian Press)
There have been a total of at least 1,081 deaths after the use of Tasers since the weapon began coming into widespread use in the early 2000s.
Taser death is a form of police violence that is claiming lives in the United States despite being called non-lethal, a recent Reuters report revealed.
Warren Ragudo died after two Taser shocks by police intervening in a family altercation. Ramzi Saad died after a Taser shock by police during a dispute between Saad and his mother. Chinedu Okobi died after police used a Taser to subdue him in a confrontation they blamed on his refusal to stop walking in traffic.
All three were unarmed. All three had histories of mental illness. And all three died last year in a single northern California county, San Mateo.
They were among at least 49 people who died in 2018 after being shocked by police with a Taser, a […]
3 Comments
Saturday, February 9th, 2019
Alexander Koch, Chris Brierly, Mark Maslin, Simon Lewis, PhD candidate in Physical Geography UCL/ Chris Brierley, Associate Professor of Geography, UCL/ Mark Maslin, Professor of Earth System Science, UCL/ and Simon Lewis, Professor of Global Change Science at University of Leeds and, UCL - AlterNet
Stephan: Here is a truth I'll bet they didn't teach you in history class.
While Europe was in the early days of the Renaissance, there were empires in the Americas sustaining more than 60m people. But the first European contact in 1492 brought diseases…
While Europe was in the early days of the Renaissance, there were empires in the Americas sustaining more than 60m people. But the first European contact in 1492 brought diseases to the Americas which devastated the native population and the resultant collapse of farming in the Americas was so significant that it may have even cooled the global climate.
The number of people living in North, Central and South America when Columbus arrived is a question that researchers have been trying to answer for decades. Unlike in Europe and China, no records on the size of indigenous societies in the Americas before 1492 are preserved. To reconstruct population numbers, researchers rely on the first accounts from European eyewitnesses and, in records from after colonial rule was established, tribute payments known as “encomiendas”. This taxation system was only established after European epidemics had ravaged […]
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