the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens

People are dying at record rates from opioid overdoses, and harm reduction advocates are asking the Biden administration to overhaul how it deals with the crisis.   by Michelle ChenTwitt  Part 4 - Decriminalization Only about 29 percent of people with opioid use disorders receive specialty drug treatment. Countless others who never make it to treatment end up behind bars.    Tom Smarch recalled how his family was priced out of treatment when his son was thrown into jail at 18. “ There was no other place to go, ” said Smarch, who has since become an advocate for drug policy reform with Shatterproof. “ It was either jail or we would help him with some rehab—but then we didn’t have the financial ability to pay for three months of treatment: $28,000. And so we were stuck between a rock and a hard place. ”  While the prevalence of opioid addiction across race and class lines has encouraged public-health-focused approaches to the crisis, drug-war policies have persisted. According to federal

The fact that the very department that trains high state officials and agents of secretive three letter agencies is also the place that produces many of the journalists we rely on to stand up to those officials and keep them in check is seriously problematic.   by Alan Macleod   Part 2 - American connections Although a British university, King’s College markets itself heavily to American students. There are currently 1,265 Americans enrolled, making up about 4% of the student body. Many graduates of the Department of War Studies go on to attain powerful positions in major American media outlets. Andrew Carey, CNN’s Bureau Chief in Jerusalem, for example, completed a master’s there in 2012.    Carey’s coverage of the latest Israeli attack on Gaza has presented the apartheid state as “responding” to Hamas rocket attacks, rather than being the instigator of violence. A leaked internal memo Carey sent to his staff last month at the height of the bombardment instructed them to always includ

The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax by Jesse Eisinger, Jeff Ernsthausen and Paul Kiel ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox . Series: The Secret IRS Files Inside the Tax Records of the .001% In 2007, Jeff Bezos, then a multibillionaire and now the world’s richest man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes. He achieved the feat again in 2011. In 2018, Tesla founder Elon Musk, the second-richest person in the world, also paid no federal income taxes. Michael Bloomberg managed to do the same in recent years. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn did it twice. George Soros paid no federal income tax three years in a row. ProPublica has obtained a vast trove of Internal Revenue Service data on the tax returns of thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, covering m

failed evolution   World's number one political prisoner, Julian Assange, still in high security prison for exposing horrendous war crimes carried out by the US imperialists and their allies.     

globinfo freexchange   Ήταν άδικο, το έκανε πράξη. Το άθλιο Μητσοτακοκαθεστώς προχωρεί ακάθεκτο και διαλύει στο πέρασμά του ότι απέμεινε  από αυτά που κατακτήθηκαν από τον κόσμο της εργασίας μετά από δεκαετίες σκληρών αγώνων.   Το είχε υποσχεθεί άλλωστε ο Κούλης στα "αφεντικά" πριν από τις εθνικές εκλογές: « Να σαρώσουμε ως οδοστρωτήρες τα εμπόδια που κρατούν δέσμια την επιχειρηματικότητα », « Δεν πρέπει να μπλέξουμε στα χωράφια των εργαζόμενων και των επιχειρηματιών οι οποίοι έχουν συμφωνήσει τι είναι καλό για τους ίδιους ».   Το'πε και το'κανε.   Είχαμε άλλωστε προειδοποιήσει από το Ιούνιο του 19 πως αυτό είναι ότι χρειάζεται να ξέρετε για το τι περιμένει τους εργαζόμενους με μια κυβέρνηση ΝΔ. Η απάντηση Μητσοτάκη αποδεικνύει για άλλη μια φορά το πόσο αυτός και η παρέα του πιστεύουν με τυφλό φανατισμό στις καταστροφικές νεοφιλελεύθερες πολιτικές. Αυτές που επιβλήθηκαν με την Τρόικα και τα μνημόνια. Οι συνταγές ΔΝΤ δηλαδή, οι οποίες όπου και αν εφαρμόστηκαν έσπει

act.tv   For years, the wealthy have been buying up all the available homes across the country and turning them into rental properties to create a permanent renter class reminiscent of feudalistic Europe during the Middle Ages. 

Newly leaked documents show that US officials in 1958 cavalierly planned a nuclear strike on China over a handful of disputed islands. As Washington once more stokes tensions with China, it’s a reminder of the callous recklessness at the heart of US foreign policy.   by Branko Marcetic  Part 3 - A Loaded Gun Onstage In short, the picture painted by the study is the very opposite of the sensible, responsible US leadership pined for by those who have spent the past five years feeding the public the image of an idealized pre-Donald-Trump past. It instead shows US officials rashly jumping to nuclear strikes as a first response to Cold War conflict and ruling out the less inflammatory course of conventional warfare, well aware of global opposition to this idea and of the potential for things to spiral out of control into all-out nuclear war that informed it — all for the sake of prestige and psychological one-upmanship. As Ellsberg told the Times , there’s no reason to believe the individua

Through his hallowed foundation, the world’s de facto public health czar has been a stalwart defender of monopoly medicine.  by Alexander Zaitchik Part 6 - Gates has been tacitly and explicitly defending the legitimacy of knowledge monopolies since his first Gerald Ford–era missives against open-source software hobbyists This winter, while Gates assured the world that intellectual property was a red herring, a bloc of developing countries at the WTO explained the need for a waiver on certain intellectual property provisions by pointing to the “ rather large gap [that] exists between what COVAX or ACT-A can deliver and what is required in developing and least developed countries. ” The forceful statement continued:     The model of donation and philanthropic expediency cannot solve the fundamental disconnect between the monopolistic model it underwrites and the very real desire of developing and least developed countries to produce for themselves.… The artificial shortage of vaccines

Under cover of the pandemic, Greece’s right-wing government has passed a slew of new measures to benefit the wealthy at the expense of workers, while massively expanding police powers. On the back of a decade of austerity, the latest laws are set to transform the country into a client state and playground for foreign tourists.   by Matthaios Tsimitakis/Mihalis Panayiotakis    Part 6 - A Government Mired in Corruption and Scandals As society is kept on edge, a flurry of scandals is only adding to the sense of discontent, of which we state but a few:     Imprisoned refugees are dying from preventable causes while others commit suicide in hellish camps that lack the basics for a bare minimum of decency. Others are being illegally pushed back in the middle of the Aegean in what looks to be now standard procedure for the Greek coast guard, according to humanitarian NGOs.     Mitsotakis’s hand-picked director of the National Theatre, Dimitris Lignadis, is in jail, accused of serial molestati

People are dying at record rates from opioid overdoses, and harm reduction advocates are asking the Biden administration to overhaul how it deals with the crisis.   by Michelle ChenTwitt  Part 3 - Settlements On top of federal and state funding for opioid treatment and overdose prevention, state lawmakers are anticipating an injection of funds from settlements in lawsuits filed against top pharmaceutical companies and distributors. Dozens of state attorneys general targeted these companies, including Purdue, AmerisourceBergen and Johnson and Johnson, for aggressively and recklessly marketing prescription opioids into communities.  But advocates are concerned that states might divert settlement funds away from their intended purposes, such as compensating the families of overdose victims or funding treatment and prevention. (They point to the state funds yielded from the tobacco industry settlements of the late 1990s, of which only a small percentage was invested in anti-smoking program