Stephan: Several decades ago a good friend of mine lost his adult physician daughter to a brain cancer that was caused by her constant use of her cellphone held close to her head. Those concerns are rarely heard today but, as this report describes the hard data suggests there are still issues. Personally, I answer calls on my mobile phone using the speaker so the phone is not close to my head. You might consider doing the same.
Collage by ProPublica. Credit: 10’000 Hours / Getty
To many people, the notion that cellphones or cell towers might present a health risk long ago receded into a realm somewhere between trivial concern and conspiracy theory. For decades, the wireless industry has dismissed such ideas as fearmongering, and federal regulators have maintained that cellphones pose no danger. But a growing body of scientific research is raising questions, with the stakes heightened by the ongoing deployment of hundreds of thousands of new transmitters in neighborhoods across America. ProPublica recently examined the issue in detail, finding that the chief government regulator, the Federal Communications Commission, relies on an exposure standard from 1996, when the Motorola StarTAC flip phone was cutting edge, and that the agency brushed aside a lengthy study by a different arm of the federal government that found that cellphone radiation caused rare cancers and DNA damage in lab animals. The newest generation of cellphone technology, known as 5G, remains largely untested.
Here’s what you need to know:
Do cellphones give off radiation?
Yes. Both cellphones and wireless transmitters (which […]
Stephan: We see endless articles and television news blocks on immigration but only rarely do we see anything about emigration. Yet emigration is becoming an important trend. On my island, two friends have moved to Mexico, and I know six others who have moved to other countries. A diaspora of people giving up on America because of the growing expense of living in the U.S., or because of the growing violence and conflict in the country.
We all know that America is a nation of immigrants (with the obvious exception of its long-marginalized Native population). But every so often, it feels like it’s on the verge of becoming a nation of emigrants.
After the 2004 reelection of George W. Bush, the 2020 election of Joe Biden and the 2016 election of Donald Trump, Google search interest in moving to Canada spiked. It happened again in June, after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark abortion rights ruling Roe v. Wade. According to recent Gallup polls, as many as 15 percent of Americans say they want to leave the country permanently, and even more say they would consider expatriating under the right circumstances.
But only a small fraction of Americans have actually taken the plunge, data shows. And an even tinier minority leave the United States for political reasons, according to migration scholar Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels.
In part, this wide distribution is probably a legacyof America’s immigrant roots. America is the top destination for migrants from about 40 countries, andmany Americans remain linked to […]
Walker Bragman, - truthout / The Center For Media and Democracy
Stephan: The weaponization of lies has become a major trend in the United States. You have the uber-rich using their wealth to spread misinformation. The nonsense disseminated by far-right oligarchs like Charles Koch has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands in the last two years, and none of them have been held accountable.
Credit: Shapecharge / E+ / Getty
A Koch-funded legal group is suing the state of California to protect the medical licenses of doctors who promote quack cures for Covid-19.
The New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), a right-wing litigation operation funded in large part by oil billionaire and industrialist Charles Koch, is behind the latest lawsuit. In 2021, the group received more than $1 million from Stand Together Fellowships, formerly the Charles Koch Institute — the same amount it received in 2020 — and $15,418 from the Charles Koch Foundation. In addition, DonorsTrust, the preferred spending conduit of Koch network donors, gave NCLA just over $1 million in 2021.
As the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) previously reported, NCLA has been representing prominent purveyors of Covid-related misinformation in a lawsuit against the Biden administration. The complaint in Missouri et al. v. Biden et al alleges that the federal government coerced and colluded with social media companies to censor misinformation on their platforms in violation of the First Amendment freedom of speech rights of social media users to post whatever they like, […]
Laura Jedeed, - Reader Supported News / The New Republic
Stephan: Here is the world of christofascists, students of fake history about the nation's founding, armed and preparing for violence. This is MAGAt world, and if you find these people, overwhelmingly White supremacists scary, I think you should. We have a large fraction of the country training for violence.
At a Constitutional Defense course hosted by Patriot Academy in New Braunfels, Texas, in early December 2022, participants practiced a drill training them to shoot from the hip in close combat stance, imagining they’re within a few feet of their possible target. Credit: Mark Peterson / The New Republic
“You’re at a gas station.” Firearms instructor Jamie LaBarbera’s voice crackles over the portable speaker system. “Out in the shadows, you see this guy walking up.”
We are standing at the firing line. The world is dust and sun and the kind of oversaturated deep blue sky possible only at high altitudes where the air is thin. Each of us stares down our own personal Bob, as the instructors have named him: a beige, featureless paper silhouette already pockmarked with holes.
LaBarbera, our handgun instructor, continues his story. “You can’t tell, but he’s got something in his hand. He’s getting a little close, you’re a little worried, you can’t tell what it is. Challenge!”
Our hands fly up, palms out in the universal signal for the thing we shout: “Stop […]
Stephan: Charges of witchcraft and casting spells by one MAGAt about another -- in this case Republican Representative-elect Anna Paulina -- is an actual headline in media today. Are we in the 14th century or the 21st? If you have been watching the sad chaotic clown show of incompetence of the House today, perhaps like me your main takeaway is that the Republican Party serving the interests of its corporate masters has put forward candidates who are like cartoon figures and are now facing the consequences of that strategy. These cartoons will vote as their corporate masters wish, but they really aren't interested in governance that fosters wellbeing, or governance at all. What Gaetz, Greene, Boebert, etc., etc., etc. really want is public celebrity, being a guest on Tucker Carlson's show, and the deference accorded members of Congress. And once we finally get a Speaker of the House, and the new Congress is sworn in, buckle your seat because the MAGAts are going to spend their time avoiding actual governance and, instead, engaging in endless vengeance attacks on Biden and his administration. It is going to be a very weird two years, I think. The good news is I believe it will be so off-putting that voters, particularly young voters who are an increasing percentage of the voting population, will be fed up with the Republicans and vote Democrats into control of both Houses of Congress, as well as the presidency.
Republican Representative-elect Anna Paulina Luna Credit: AP
You may not have heard of Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a recently elected Republican congresswoman from Florida, but within MAGA circles, she’s known for her alleged interest in the practice of witchcraft and even an accusation of having a tryst with Rep. Matt Gaetz.
The allegations were leveled at Luna by Matt Tito, a friend of Roger Stone’s and failed candidate who ran for the 68th District in Florida in 2020 but lost to Democratic incumbent Ben Diamond.
In October, Luna’s attorney, David J. Lisko, wrote a letter to Tito demanding a video apology retracting the “defamatory statements” he made on the show, adding that his comments were knowingly untrue or “said in gross negligence, knowing the statements were highly implausible and unlikely to be true.”
“You said that Ms. Luna (a devout Christian) practices witchcraft. … You are hereby demanded to publicly and immediately retract each and every defamatory statement you made about Ms. Luna on the show,” Lisko added. “Because you do not have the ability to distribute your retraction […]
