fortruss--2019-03-22--Poverty in Russia falls to five-year low public sector wages set to rise

Poverty in Russia falls to five-year low, public sector wages set to rise

MOSCOW – The poverty level in Russia in 2018 decreased to 12.9% (18.9 million people), returning to the 2014 figures. This was reported to RBC on Thursday, March 21st, with reference to the statistical report of Rosstat .  In 2017, 13.2% of the country’s population (19.3 million people) were considered poor.  “Year by year, there has been a slight decrease in poverty – by 0.3% percentage points, to 12.9% of the population,” the agency’s experts quote quotes RBC .  On March 13th, it became known that Rosstat will consider the idea of changing the method of calculating the real incomes of the country’s residents, the reason for this was a statistical drop in the income of Russians for several years in a row – from 2014 to 2018.  In related news, public sector wages are set to increase by 4.3%. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev instructed federal government agencies to take measures to increase public sector wages by 4.3% from October 1st. The order was published on the official legal information portal on Tuesday, March 19th.  The document states that the indexation will affect the salaries of employees of federal, state, social services, and autonomous institutions, as well as the civilian personnel of military units, institutions and divisions of federal executive bodies.  As noted by TASS , the indexation of salaries was provided for in the budget for 2019 and for the planning period 2020 and 2021. It is expected that, in general, the increase will cover more than 2 million workers at the federal level – social and scientific institutions, Rospotrebnadzor hygiene centers, emergency rescue centers, veterinary laboratories and others.  A day earlier, on March 18th, Medvedev approved the indexation rate of social pensions from April 1, 2019. The decree signed by him says that payments will grow by 2% from the beginning of April .


foxnews--2019-09-10--GOP buys JonOssoffcom as Dem star announces another congressional bid

GOP buys JonOssoff.com as Dem star announces another congressional bid

Before they announce that they're running for Congress, most candidates ensure they've locked up the rights to relevant Internet domain names.  But after it emerged late Monday that former Democratic House candidate Jon Ossoff, 32, would challenge Republican Sen. David Perdue in 2020, it quickly became clear that his campaign hadn't taken that important step.  Indeed, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) has purchased www.JonOssoff.com. Now, visitors are redirected to an article in The Washington Examiner titled, "Jon Ossoff, top Democratic congressional candidate, raises questions with misleading resume."  The NRSC said it would continue to maintain the website throughout Ossoff's run.  “JonOssoff.com will have all the details about Jon Ossoff’s resume," National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesman Nathan Brand told Fox News. "Since Ossoff is a serial resume inflator, voters will need a good source for all the news about Ossoff’s misleading claims and left-wing views.”  Ossoff rose to prominence two years ago riding a wave of dissatisfaction with Washington, and his campaign for Georgia's 6th Congressional District was backed nationally by enthusiastic supporters, even though he lived outside the district.  Ossoff raised roughly $30 million in the 2017 special election for the seat but lost to Republican Karen Handel.  But he turned heads by claiming in an advertisement, among other boasts, that he had been a national security aide with a "top-secret clearance."  "I've got five years of experience as a national security staffer in the U.S. Congress," Ossoff said. "I held top-secret security clearance."  One of his campaign ads claimed that “as a national security aide with top-secret clearance, Jon Ossoff saw waste and abuse by military contractors and sought to stop it."  The Washington Post's fact-checker, Glenn Kessler, rated Ossoff's claims misleading, noting that Ossoff did not actually hold a top-secret clearance for the whole five years that he worked in Congress. Instead, he held the clearance for five months.  "Moreover, declaring himself a 'senior national security staffer' is also bit too much résumé puffery," Kessler observed. "Ossoff did not even work on the staff of a major committee, such as Armed Services or International Relations. Instead, he was an aide to a relatively low-ranking member of Congress."  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution also reported that the Ossoff campaign had claimed that the candidate received the security clearance after the 2006 election, only to reveal under pressure that he received the clearance in March 2012.  Cybersquatting laws, which prevent entities from buying up trademarked domain names in bad faith, do not generally apply to the purchase of domain names that include the non-trademarked names of popular figures.  Despite the past disappointments and bluster, Ossoff, the fourth Georgia Democrat to join the race that could help determine control of the Senate, confidently announced his bid Monday night during an appearance on "The Last Word" on MSNBC.  "I'm running because we face a crisis of political corruption in this country," Ossoff told host Lawrence O'Donnell, calling Perdue a "caricature of Washington corruption."  Ossoff cited Congress' failure to take up gun control legislation and political influence at scientific institutions as examples of corruption.  Perdue, a former Fortune 500 company chief executive, has emerged as a close ally of President Trump after being elected in 2014.  CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP  Perdue's isn't the only Georgia Senate seat that's up for grabs. Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson announced his retirement late last month due to health issues, and a special election to fill the remaining two years of his term will be on the November 2020 ballot.  The two open Senate seats have raised Georgia's status as a must-watch 2020 battleground. While Ossoff will face a primary contest in the race for Perdue's seat, the race for Isakson's seat won't have any primary and will instead be open to all qualified candidates.  Fox News' Danielle Wallace and The Associated Press contributed to this report.


globalresearch--2019-01-23--How the Corruption of Science Contributes to the Collapse of Modern Civilization

During the past decade, scientific prejudice, bias and outright deceit has been endemic to peer-reviewed scientific literature, especially in the medical and psychiatric fields. Medical journals have been thoroughly hijacked by the pharmaceutical industry as have departments at universities and research institutions that are principally funded by private interests. It is no longer a secret that industry-funded studies inordinately convey positive results. Positive research is published; negative research is suppressed and buried. Consequently the reality of robust and honest medical research is skewed and distorted. Physicians and medical clinics thereby only get a small peek into the actual safety, efficacy and contraindications of the drugs later peddled to them by pharmaceutical sales reps.  In 2009, Harvard’s Dr. Marcia Angell, a former editor for the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine wrote,  Later, the editor of The Lancet, Dr. Richard Horton stated,  A large percentage of published studies and trials have either not been reproduced or failed to be reproduced. For example, in 2012, a scientist and his team at Amgen attempted to reproduce 53 published cancer studies and only succeeded in reproducing six. In another project published in Nature, only 39 of 100 psychology studies could be replicated.[2] Although Horton is optimistic that the proverbial cat is out of the bag and the medical community has been given warning, he despairs that “the bad news is that nobody is ready to take the first step to clean up the system.”[3]  Doctors at Children’s Hospital Boston undertook the task of reviewing 546 drug trials listed in the government’s Clinical Trials database. They found that industry funded trials showing a positive results were 70 percent more likely to be published than research funded by federal health agencies.[4]  In 2010, a multi-institutional review of studies for twelve antidepressant drugs that cumulatively enrolled over 12,500 patients was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The group, representing researchers from Oregon Health and Science University, Harvard, the University of California Riverside and others, identified a deeply biased and deceptive trend in publication of these drugs’ respective trials that was highly selective. Thirty-six of the 37 favorable studies were published. On the other hand, only 3 of 36 unfavorable trials found their way into print.[5]  The consequences are obvious. By portraying the image that over 90 percent of studies confirm the value of antidepressant drugs, while almost the same number of adverse trials are buried, the entire risk-benefit ratio of these drugs has been magically altered by sleight of hand.  Next is the deceptive intentions behind ghostwriting on private industries’ behalf. The habit of private corporations reaching out to public relations firms and independent technical writers to ghostwrite articles on behalf of their research and commercial products first came to light about a decade ago. Nevertheless the practice continues and in fact has become more common during the last several years. Ghostwriting has become a global cottage industry. Although ghostwriting is highly regarded as improper, it is not illegal.  Parallel to the alarm bells being rung that scientific journals were publishing increasingly amounts of junk science, there was also the growing problem of scientific authors’ personal biases due to their financial ties to private interests and hence the very research and products they were positively writing about. For many decades this was not considered a serious problem, but increasingly authors would hide their financial conflicts-of-interest.  Consequently, the most respected science journals require authors to reveal their associations and conflicts-of-interest with private companies and private for-profit institutions that may compromise the data’s objectivity in their articles. To get around this loophole, companies reach out to ghostwriters who can paint themselves as independent and conflict-free to submit favorable articles.  The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, stated, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” Unfortunately this millennium-old tenet was forgotten in modern civilization long ago.  Enter the agro-chemical giant Monsanto, which has its fingers in the majority of food products consumed in the US. Monsanto has become notorious for relying upon a wide network of ghostwriting resources to intentionally undermine governments’ regulatory agencies and deceive the public. The company has been caught numerous times for contracting public relations firms and wooing compromised writers for over a decade. Per a California court ruling in favor of a plaintiff farmer who came down with cancer, the company’s flagship weed-killing chemical glyphosate or Roundup is under growing international scrutiny as a carcinogen. Monsanto again is relying upon its army of goon ghostwriters to conduct damage control.  Journalist Carey Gillam has been a close investigator and watchdog over Monsanto’s shenanigans for many years. In 2016 the journal Critical Reviews in Toxicology published a “special series” of science articles reviewing glyphosate’s carcinogenic potential. The World Health Organization had already ruled the chemical might cause cancer, and European health officials were seriously deliberating on banning the herbicide from the continent.  “Four independent panels” from the journal declared, “Neither any Monsanto company employee nor any attorneys reviewed any of the Expert Panel’s manuscripts prior to submission to the journal.” However Gilliam’s investigation into manuscripts released during the litigation found this was a complete lie. One of Monsanto’s leading scientists not only reviewed the manuscripts but also edited them. In one internal email within the company, the Chief of Regulatory Science had admitted he reviewed an entire document with suggestions for omissions and a few edits of his own. Other internal documents identify ghostwriters and strategies for recruiting outside scientists to compose articles giving the weed-killer credibility. Attempts to have the papers retracted from the journal have yet to be heeded.[6]  Besides ghostwriters, corporations hide behind shadowy non-profit organizations, front groups and shill think tanks that project the public image of being legitimate and expert scientific institutions. This strategy has been a means to covertly get corporate messages out under the illusion of being generated by independent scientists.  For example, a flurry of studies have been appearing in recent years to prove that sugar-loaded sodas and beverages are substantially contributing to the nation’s obesity and Type 2 diabetes crises. This message is reaching the public. Soda consumption has dropped by 25 percent.  To counter the scientific assault on its revenues, Coca-Cola — the world’s largest manufacturer of junk sugary beverages — teamed up with a corporate sponsored non-profit, the Global Energy Balance Network (GEBN), to promulgate the message that “weight-conscious Americans are overly fixated on how much they eat and drink while not paying enough attention to exercise.” GEBN, which has recruited many prominent scientists and health professors, swears by its independence from Coke’s influence.  However, Coke started the non-profit initiative with a $1.5 million startup donation. Since its founding, the partnership has unleashed a media blitz across medical journals, professional conferences, mainstream media and social networks to get Coke’s message out. New York University professor of nutrition and food science Marion Nestle, has labeled the GEBN as “nothing but a front group for Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola’s agenda is very clear: Get these researchers to confuse the science and deflect attention from dietary intake.”[7]  While it is easy to blame private industry for producing the junk science appearing in peer-reviewed journals, we mustn’t lose sight of the corruption within the publications and among senior editors as well. The reason is simple: There is far too much financial incentive for professional journals to approve and publish corporate funded research. An article confirming the therapeutic value of a new drug, for example, can go a long way to bring enormous revenues to publishers. Pharmaceutical firms will order thousands of copies of the article to be disseminated throughout their sales force and sent randomly to physicians, medical schools, clinics and hospitals. The Lancet receives 41 percent of its income from reprints purchased by drug makers.  The American Medical Associations’ journal gets a whopping 53 percent.  Finally, Big Pharma engages in a form of bribery to get journal editors to assure their research gets into print. Jessica Liu at the University of Toronto’s Medical School conducted an analysis of payments US drug makers made to 713 editors employed by 52 high impact medical journals. Fifty percent of editors were identified playing this corporate game and received payments for services that included preferential treatment towards article submissions and appointing peer reviewers.  Liu and her colleagues estimated that the mean payment for general articles was $28,100; for research submissions, $37,900.[8]  The worst case is the Journal of the American College of Cardiology with all of its 35 editors on the take. Cumulatively, the journal’s editors received almost $15 million in “bribes” from Big Pharma.[9]  Private corporations have full and complete control over the proprietary research and trial data in their possession. This means they have the discretion to decide what data to release or not. In the case of the pharmaceutical industry the US government makes no demands for a company to release all its clinical trial data and results for any given drug or vaccine submitted to the FDA or CDC respectively for approval and licensure. This is also true for “selective publication” about studies in medical journals.  In 2008, the French multinational pharmaceutical company Sanofi completed 92 studies on drugs in their pipeline. Only 14 were submitted and approved for publication. What should we think about the remaining 78 trials that were withheld?[10] Clearly it would be foolish for financial reasons alone that Sanofi would want its negative trial results to appear in peer-reviewed literature. The professional medical community and institutions rely heavily on the scientific publications to keep abreast of the latest studies and news. Nevertheless, federal authorities would not require Sanofi nor any pharmaceutical firm to submit research data that might jeopardize its approval on issues of safety, serious adverse effects and clinical efficacy. Consequently federal reviewers are only being provided with trials and data favorable to Big Pharma’s bottom line.  Dr. Steven Nissen is a highly respected cardiologist at the prestigious Cleveland Clinic who worries about the demise of independent research outside of pharmaceutical control. Among the targets he has investigated has been Glaxo’s blockbuster diabetes drug Avandia. Unable to acquire original patient information from the drug maker, Nissen turned to the internet and “stumbled upon a cache of data belonging to Glaxo,” which had been submitted during a lawsuit filed by former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.[11] In addition to discovering that only 15 of 42 clinical trials for Avantia had been published, the company had been suppressing the data that the drug increased risks of heart attack by 43 percent. Nissen published his findings in the New England Journal of Medicine; two days later the FDA slapped a “black box” warning on the drug.  Nissen also uncovered a story about Glaxo’s antidepressant drug Paxil that was equally disturbing. The company’s research had shown that children on Praxil were twice more likely to have suicidal thoughts than kids taking a placebo. Nevertheless Glaxo had withheld this information from health officials and the medical community.  However, Nissen’s challenges did not end there. Among the deplorable tactics corporations adopt to protect their commercial interests, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, is “scientific coercion.” This includes harassing scientists and institutions that bring to light corporate misconduct or raise obstacles to their revenue flow. Companies will go a long way to silence their opponents in the scientific community, including litigation threats and putting pressure upon institutions and universities to enact job demotion, loss of tenure or blatant censorship.  In retaliation Glaxo let lose its attack dogs to defame and discredit Nissen. The hitmen included Dr. Valentin Fuster (Chairman of Glaxo’s educational foundation), Peter Pitts (senior vice president at the Manning Selvage and Lee public relations firm that represents Glaxo), and Douglas Arbesfeld (and FDA communications consultant). Scathing articles against Nissen appeared in the Washington Times, Nature and Clinical Practice Cardiovascular Medicine. A caustic email was also sent out to the wider media deriding Nissen’s credibility.[12]  Others stories include direct covert bribing of countries’ health officials to get sympathetic support for a drug approval. This was the case of Eli Lilly allegedly bribing Swedish officials to get its antidepressant drug Prozac approved. Dr. John Virapen, a former Eli Lilly executive in sales, blew the whistle on his personally bribing Swedes.[13] In 2012 the US SEC slapped the company with a $29 million settlement for bribing government officials in Russia, Brazil, China and Poland through offshore accounts to push its schizophrenia drug Zyprexa and antidepressant drug Cymbalta.[14] The corporation later in 2013 repeated a similar crime by bribing Chinese physicians to start prescribing Prozac.[15]  These are only a few examples among a litany of others that have been reported upon extensively by sincere investigative journalists and alarmed scientists. We mustn’t take likely the extreme measures private corporations will descend in order to silence critics and remove barriers to their economic bottom line.  Turn to any major television network and we inevitably find advertisements for pharmaceutical drugs. Even the drugs themselves that are being promoted tell us something about the networks’ viewing audience: middle years and older who are aging and at a higher disease risk for the drugs broadcasted to their ears. There is nothing illegal that would prevent the mainstream media from receiving gratifying fees to advertise products from the pharmaceutical industry. What we are less clear about are any contractual conditions between the private advertisers and the networks over journalist reporting about health news or findings that are directly negative about the specific drugs being plugged for in the ads. Only the US and New Zealand governments actually permit drug advertisements on television networks. So again, this an example of a special relationship that exists between federal agencies and the drug companies. Big Pharma had to first succeed in seducing federal FCC officials to win access to America’s airwaves.  In 2016, the FDA had a major announcement and selected a small group of media firms, including National Public Radio, to release the news. But there were conditions, known as close-hold embargoes, that demanded journalists could only interview and ask questions to sources that were officially sanctioned by the federal agency. Seeking outside comments was forbidden. The FDA’s intention is clear: to control the flow of information and assure that press reports are stamped with the agency’s seal of approval. Upon hearing of the FDA’s repression of journalist integrity in the science media, the journal Scientific American filed a Freedom of Information Act request.  The publication uncovered a dark secret of the FDA’s deception to mislead the media and public by creating “a coterie of journalists” who would do the FDA’s bidding. These journalists are given the privilege of receiving advance notice about science news before everyone else. Reliable independent journalism relies on pursuing outside sources to receive comments and verification for accuracy. Although the FDA had claimed it ceased close-hold embargoes on reporters, the practice has continued unabated and is now embedded in the FDA’s media strategy. Many of the medical and health stories coming out of the FDA have followed this embargoed principle. The results are that all of the media outlets parrot the same FDA directive. Journalist watchdogs, according to the article’s author, become the FDA’s “lapdogs.” Reporters are then reduced to “stenographers.”[16]  Shortly after the release of the controversial documentary Vaxxed, co-directed by the discredited British physician and GI specialist Dr. Andrew Wakefield, we undertook and published our investigation into the shadows pulling mainstream media’s strings to demonize the film. The film was not intended be an anti-vaccine diatribe. Rather it told the true story about a senior vaccine scientist at the Centers for Disease Control, Dr. William Thompson, whose guilty conscience motivated him to turn whistleblower. Dr. Thompson released thousands of pages of classified documents to an independent professor and House Representative Bill Posey that contained unquestionable evidence that the CDC had intentionally covered-up its data showing a direct correspondence between the MMR vaccine and rising autism rates among African American boys by as much as a 240 percent increase. In fact, Rep. Pose spent years trying to get Thompson to testify under oath before a House subcommittee and was consistently blocked by CDC pressure on his colleagues. The CDC had committed an enormous crime against the African American community.  If Thompson were permitted to give testimony to the American people, the entire vaccine industry would have been jeopardized. The industry’s profits and survival is far more important than the lives of small Black children. And the media was equally criminal in whitewashing this story.  The question we asked ourselves was: how can a film that had not been released for public viewing become the target of such vicious attacks by numerous news outlets within a 72-hour period?  In addition, beneath all of the media’s criticisms, we identified a single suspicious written template that all the journalists had been relying upon to report from. What might account for this anomaly? Clearly, there was no independent journalism being permitted within ABC, CNN, MSNBC, the UK’s Guardian, Time Magazine, the Washington Post and LA Times, New York Times, Forbes, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone and many others. Nor did any of the journalists ever view the film. The entire case was noxious.  Many federal agencies have sophisticated public relations departments. In the case of the CDC, its media activities have more in common with an intelligence-gathering operation. To try to find the source for why so many mainstream journalists can recite the identical mantra to denigrate the film Vaxxed, as well as vaccine safety and vaccine-autism associations in general, we identified a joint program between the agency and the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ). Scores of health editors and reporters through the nation’s leading mainstream media corporations have passed through the CDC’s Atlanta campus through this alliance to be indoctrinated in national public health policies. Journalists who complete the program receive special privileges, including access and instructions to the CDC’s surveillance database and publications to assist in their investigative reporting.  In addition, these journalists join the CDC’s exclusive club to receive advanced notices about stories to report and prepared scripts to work off of. An example of a CDC script disseminated to these journalists instructs what and how to report collective fear during the influenza season in such a way that people will rush with their kids to their local pharmacies to get their flu shots.[17]  Fear-mongering is one of the more successful strategies to seduce the public to adhere to a specific message that benefits the fear monger. Monsanto succeed in this emotional scheme to persuade California’s electorate away from voting in favor of GMO labeling. By shifting the debate away from GMO’s health issues to an economic threat that would increase families’ food if bills if labeling were to be approved, people voted on their financial rather than health fears. Political candidates from both parties engage in this practice consistently. Yet perhaps the largest dose of propaganda to generate fear ritually takes place during every annual flu season. The media barrage warning the public of their pending death from a flu infection is completely orchestrated out of the CDC, its advisers and consultants, and its broad network healthcare affiliates.  Ironically, on its website, the CDC vows “to base all public health decisions on the highest quality of scientific data.” Yet as Dr. Peter Doshi at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine points out, when it concerns the flu vaccine, the CDC’s motto couldn’t be further from the truth. Among all public health policies, flu vaccination programs are not only the most aggressively forced upon the public, but also the most scientifically deceitful. Doshi notes that upon close examination of the CDC’s flu vaccine policies, “although proponents employ the rhetoric of science, the studies underlying the policy are often of low quality and do not substantiate official claims. The vaccine might be less beneficial and less safe than has been claimed, and the threat of influenza appears overstated.” In his evaluation published in the British Medical Journal, the flu vaccine is an example of government “disease mongering.”[18] During the 2016-2017 flu season, the government purchased as much as 168 million doses of the vaccine; that is a lot of doses of an ineffective drug to dispense.  In the early 1990s, there was a glimmer of hope that safe and effective drug development might get on the right track. The emergence of a movement within the medical establishment known as Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) has been touted as one of the great medical advances of the twentieth century. EBM has become a dominant paradigm in the modern medicine and all medical research institutions and medical schools adhere to it. It is most prevalent theory in use today to determine the accuracy of peer-reviewed journal articles, clinical trials and medical claims to improve healthcare decisions.[19]  One of EBM’s early and greatest achievements was the creation of the world renowned Cochrane Database Collaboration, a network of 37,000 professors, doctors and researchers from over 130 countries, that performs meta-analysis on existing scientific literature for pharmaceutical drugs, vaccines, medical devices and supplemental products to determine their health claims. As we have detailed, the journals increasingly fail to maintain high standards for the research published and are riddled with authorship violations with author conflict-of-interests and ghostwriting that have threatened the entire integrity of reliable medical literature reaching those who daily diagnose and treat patients.  Although many excellent Cochrane meta-analysis reports were released to show that many drugs and medical procedures were in fact ineffective, unnecessary and even dangerous, the citadels of medical bureaucracy and national health ministries paid little heed. This was the case for reports on human papillomavirus (HPV) and influenza vaccines, many antidepressant and anti-anxiety drugs, and statins, which fell on deaf ears.  However, today the Cochrane project, once an optimistic international and independent grassroots effort to bring sanity back to clinical medical practice and national health drug policies and regulatory processes, has fallen to the same level of corruption that now infects the entire Big Pharma-controlled medical establishment. A recent scandal indicating that the organization has been hijacked by private pharmaceutical interests is the removal of the internationally recognized co-founder of the Cochrane Collaboration, Dr. Peter Gotzsche at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Dr. Gotzsche is the author of Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma has Corrupted Healthcare, a devastating and documented condemnation about our broken healthcare system, which earned the British Medical Association’s first prize book award in 2014.  His ouster from Cochrane’s Governing Board this year, and the subsequent termination of his job at the Rigshospitalet medical facility is an indication that dissent based on sound medical science is no longer tolerated. Witnessing a trend that Cochrane was progressively becoming less independent, less transparent, and compromised by a growing faction of pro-Big Pharma and its allies in government health ministries, Dr. Gotzsche made efforts to restore the organization back to its founding principles. The “power struggle between two factions,” as he explains, were being waged between himself and “Cochrane’s CEO Mark Wilson [who] opposes open scientific debates on the quality and reliability of Cochrane reviews and emphasizes ‘brand’ and ‘business’ rather than getting the science right.”  Upon receipt of email correspondence acquired from the Freedom of Information Act, it was Wilson who orchestrated Gotzsche’s firing in retaliation.[20]  Thus comes to a likely end the single ray of hope within that has operated within the corporate and state-mandated medical regime.  When the Roman Catholic Church ruled over Europe, its mission was to grab and sustain absolute control over kings and queens and the masses. Dissent resulted in excommunication and even death under threats of eternal damnation in the infernos beneath the earth.  This kept the population in line until brave souls, Russell’s lovers of knowledge, staked their lives to publicly expose the delusional world the Church lived within.  Has that much really changed over the past thousand years now that science has replaced the Church?  Rachel Carson was labeled “hysterical” by the chemical industry for bringing forth her documented health risks of DDT in her 1962 book Silent Spring. An editorial campaign was launched to persuade the book was deceitful and filled with fallacies. Dr. Andrew Wakefield exposed an association of gastrointestinal inflammation found in autistic children with the MMR vaccine. He never stated the vaccine actually caused autism; nevertheless he was pilloried, tried in a kangaroo court, and banished by the Glaxo-controlled British health ministry. And now there is Dr. Peter Gotzsche, and there are hundreds more who the church of medical science have demonized and destroyed for speaking up about scientific errors and against power and corruption among medicine’s priesthood and its corporate lords.  The average person is hypnotized by the images science projects through newspapers, television news, serials and mainstream media health stories. Repeatedly science and medical news begins with “Experts say,” or “Scientists have confirmed,” or “All doctors agree…” Who are these experts, doctors and medical authorities?  And why should any of us believe them?  Wearing a white coat has become a sign of authority because these people are manufactured to create the impression that they possess an esoteric scientific knowledge beyond the mass’s comprehension. And with mainstream media incessantly bombarding us with this fallacious image, we become subservient to believing in the power of their message. This is the medical Matrix most Americans find themselves, and the only pill worth taking is the red one offered by Morpheus to free us from the medical fascism that is ruling our lives.  At the conclusion of his essay, Bertrand Russell writes, “Science is no substitute for virtue; the heart is as necessary for a good life as the head.” If Russell were to witness the rotten state of medicine today, he would undoubtedly conclude that medical science had surgically removed its heart years ago. This has led to the “collective passions” of our medical aristocracy being “mainly evil” giving rise to “hatred and rivalry directed towards other groups [eg., scientific and medical dissenters].” He would also acknowledge that our situation now threatens “the destruction of our civilization” as he predicted.  Russell might also opt for his second option to this regime of scientific power and control; that is, he writes, “the collapse of our civilization would in the end be preferable to this alternative.”[21]  Note to readers: please click the share buttons above. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.  Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries.  Dr. Gary Null is the host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on alternative and nutritional health and a multi-award-winning documentary film director, including Poverty Inc and Deadly Deception.  17  Gale R, Null G, “Why is the CDC Petrified of the Film Vaxxed?” Progressive Radio Network, April 3, 2016  19  Gale R, Null G. “Wikipedia: Our New Technological McCarthyism, Part Two,” Progressive Radio Network, May 10, 2018  21  Russell, Bertrand.  “Icarus or the Future of Science,”


globalresearch--2019-08-07--Future of Amazon Deforestation Data in Doubt as Research Head Sacked by Bolsonaro

After a month of intensifying criticism from far-right President Jair Bolsonaro concerning data revealing a spike in deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon over recent months, the Brazilian President has fired the head of the government agency in charge of tracking forest loss, raising concerns over the future of an institution recognized nationally and internationally for its cutting-edge satellite-imaging and monitoring program.  On August 2, Bolsonaro fired the head of the Brazilian National Institute of Space Research (INPE), Ricardo Magnus Osório Galvão. The was made by Galvão himself after a meeting with the Minister of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communication, Marcos Pontes.  Image on the right: Physicist Ricardo Magnus Osório Galvão, former head of the Brazilian National Institute of Space Research (INPE). Image courtesy of Giro720 CC BY-SA 4.0.  In July, INPE issued an identifying deforestation and degradation totaling some 2,072 square kilometers (800 square miles) in June for — a federal designation that includes all or parts of nine Brazilian states — as detected by DETER, the institute’s real-time detection system. INPE noted that DETER alerts should not be used as exacting measures of deforestation rates compared year-to-year; rather the figures aim to support surveillance and enforcement.  However, a 2018-2019 month-to-month comparison does show a drastic uptick in deforestation. According to DETER, Brazil’s Amazonian deforestation in June 2019 was 88 percent greater than for the same month in 2018, while deforestation in the first half of July was 68 percent above that for the entire month of July 2018.  INPE is not scheduled to post its detailed 2019 annual deforestation analysis (conducted between August and July by its PRODES satellite monitoring system) until later this year. PRODES determines annual deforestation using NASA Landsat satellite imaging. Data gathered from August 2017 to July 2018 detected an increase in deforestation of 7,536 square kilometers (2,910 square miles) in Legal Amazonia, which represented an increase of 8.5 percent compared to 2017, measured from August 2016 to July 2017, when an area of 6,947 square kilometers (2,682 square miles) was cleared.  Experts recently contacted by Mongabay endorsed INPE’s satellite-imaging used to track forest loss and dismissed the Bolsonaro administration’s accusations of . The government has offered no significant evidenceto back up its charges that INPE data is inaccurate.  Beyond challenging INPE data, Bolsonaro has also criticized the way INPE works, claiming that he should have been notified before monthly deforestation statistics were released. The day before Galvão’s firing, Bolsonaro accused him of working in conspiracy with “an NGO.” The administration has repeatedly accused international nonprofits working in the Brazilian Amazon of having undue influence over Brazil’s national environmental policies — including NGO participation in the implementation of the Amazon Fund, long seen as a fairly successful initiative for curbing Amazon deforestation.  “If all this devastation you accuse us of doing, and that has already been done in the past, [were true] the Amazon would have been extinct,” said Bolsonaro in a press conference on August 1 when he dismissed INPE’s figures. “I am convinced that INPE’s data is [a] liar.… In our feeling, this is not consistent with reality. It even looks like he’s [Galvão’s] on duty of an NGO,” he added.  Galvão’s removal triggered an outcry from scientists, NGOs, federal prosecutors and .  “Bolsonaro knows that his government is primarily responsible for the current scenario of destruction of the Amazon. The dismissal of INPE’s head is just an act of revenge against those who show the truth,” said Márcio Astrini, public policy coordinator at Greenpeace Brasil, in a statement. “The new government has been implementing in the country an anti-environmental project, which scrap[s] the State’s ability to combat deforestation and favor[s] those who commit environmental crime. And now, when it comes to facing the consequences of his decisions, he [the president] tries to hide the truth shamefully and blame others,” Astrini added.  Bolsonaro’s cabinet did not comment on Galvão’s removal. Instead, it forwarded a statement from the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communication that confirmed the dismissal, thanked Galvão for his work and stated that the choice of a new head will be made based on “the necessary merit [required for] the position.”  Two INPE officials who talked to Mongabay under condition of anonymity expressed “serious concerns” not only about who will next head the institution, but also about the future of INPE’s decades-long monitoring system.  “I’m very concerned about the future. I worry greatly about ensuring that the systems will keep working as they are, with transparency… I hope the government won’t stop our work,” the INPE official told Mongabay. “Galvão’s dismissal was shocking to us. It’s scary to have a president who discredits a scientific institution that has its work recognized worldwide, simply due to his political interests… It is a complete disrespect to people who are dedicated to science, education, culture. We are being scolded. The scientists are scared,” a second INPE official said.  According to this official, the government’s attacks against INPE seem a strategy to discredit the institution in order to pave the way to set up a private system to monitor the country’s deforestation. In March, the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper that Environment Minister Ricardo Salles was preparing an alternative private system to that employed by INPE, at a cost of at least $8.5 million, using satellite imagery to be provided by Planet, a U.S.-based company. According to the newspaper, INPE currently pays some $150,000 annually for NASA Landsat satellite imagery that it uses to assess PRODES annual deforestation rates, while DETER alerts use images from CBERS, Sino-Brazilian satellites, which are free.  Galvão’s removal and his replacement have yet to be published in the country’s official gazette, . In an with Radio Eldorado on August 5, Pontes said that INPE’s new head will be announced by August 6. According to the minister, an Air Force officer and a PhD researcher with deforestation expertise top the list.  Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.  Featured image: Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon in Rondônia state. This 2016 satellite image shows the smoke from fires which are typically set to clear rainforest in preparation for grazing and farming. Image courtesy of Planet Labs, Inc CC BY-SA 4.0.


globalresearch--2019-08-29--Lets Save the Amazon Lets Save the Planet

Let’s Save the Amazon! Let’s Save the Planet!

“Tomorrow will be too late to do what we should have done a long time ago.” Fidel Castro Ruz, United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro, June 12, 1992  The Network in Defense of Humanity joins the worldwide mobilization in protest against the ecological disaster caused by the fires in the Amazon and against the transnational corporations and politicians directly responsible for the catastrophe.  As Fidel said twenty-seven years ago, the human species, “is at risk of disappearing because of the rapid and progressive liquidation of its natural living conditions”. And he added an unequivocal denunciation;  “Enough of the selfishness. Enough of the schemes of domination. Enough of the insensitivity, irresponsibility and deceit.”  In the last few days the extensive clouds of smoke over the Amazon constitute a very serious alarm for humanity. However, it cannot be seen as an isolated event. Its main cause is the capitalist system and its conception of infinite economic growth that gives priority to the production and reproduction of capital instead of the production and reproduction of life. What is happening today in the Amazon is also happening in vast areas of Africa and other regions of the planet.  Businesspeople and neoliberal politicians, in their unbridled ambition for greater profits, do not listen to the growing and disturbing warnings of the scientific institutions and the defenders of the Amazon, and undertake and approve increasingly aggressive and destructive projects without taking into account the irreparable consequences of their action. The expansive interests of the mining, oil, aquifer, and agribusiness transnationals have found an unconditional ally in Brazil’s current neo-fascist government.  Bolsonaro has been promoting the deforestation of the Amazon, the weakening of all control and oversight over companies and the reduction of funds for the protection and conservation of the region. The persecution of indigenous and peasant leaders and communities who defend their rights and their territories has become a practice. These peoples, with their ancient cultures, worldviews and knowledge, are the ones who have best defended — and in many cases have guaranteed it at the price of their lives — the conservation of this great region as the planet’s greatest reservoir of biodiversity, whose loss or deterioration will cause irreversible damage to the already precarious health of ecosystems at the global level.  Due to these facts, the Network in Defense of Humanity expresses its solidarity with all the native peoples of our Amazon, victims of the policies of dispossession and the cruelest violence of transnational capital, and denounces the attitude of the government of Jair Bolsonaro, which in addition to promoting ecocide, turns its back on its people, and only after twenty days of fires does it announce, an order to confront it. He does this by the militarizing the region, which could constitute a dangerous step towards turning over the control of a strategic geopolitical zone, through international tutelage to the direct intervention of the transnationals, shielded in a supposed philanthropy.  It is necessary to remember that the “help” of other imperial nations in the face of similar disasters has historically been used as a pretext for intervention, destabilization and looting, in which the great powers have always had the most diverse tools for domination and, of course, the constant manipulation of public opinion. We must defend the principle that if there is a real will to help, it must be channeled through States and international bodies with full respect for the principle of sovereignty.  We denounce the false morals of the countries that have been the most responsible for the global ecological crisis, (among them the members of the G7) and that today express their concern for the Amazon, ignoring any kind of connection between fires and capitalist development. It is the transnationals of these same countries that are spreading throughout the natural strongholds of the world in search of resources of all kinds, lands and sources of energy. No apparent polemic affects the link between a neoliberal and sold out government like Bolsonaro’s to the transnationals and the great powers. In contrast we support the actions promoted by the government of the President of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Evo Morales Ayma, who has demonstrated a spirit of unity in adversity, and true concern to face the fire not only in his country, but in the region, and we also applaud the call made by his government and that of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela for regional actions to be carried out that allow the emergency to be tackled quickly and efficiently.  The Network in Defense of Humanity, echoing the expressions of concern and pain in the face of the tragedy of many sensitive people on the planet, demands of the Brazilian government that urgent measures be taken to safeguard the lives of the peoples and cultures that are in danger today in the Amazon. With the fires, they are also being deprived of the material and spiritual sustenance of their existence. When a tree burns, a house always burns.  We urge the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, to activate the resources established by international instruments to immediately guarantee the protection of the more than four hundred cultures affected and in turn the sovereignty of the eight Amazonian countries. We urge the promotion of denunciations before the International Criminal Court and other competent bodies against the attacks on the environment, which should be considered crimes against humanity.  We encourage to work in the urgent articulation of popular platforms in a common and coordinated front of action in the face of all ecological and social disasters that allows an alternative that is truthful, accurate and opportune communication. We also call to reveal and to spread with emphasis the existing causal connection between the capitalist system and the environmental debacle that we are witnessing. This makes it essential to link the anti-capitalist struggles with that of the environmental movements in defense of the Amazon and other areas of the planet.  We call for activities in all our countries, popular mobilizations, sit-ins, marches, rallies and denunciations through social networks, or to use every possible tribune to show this crime against nature. We must accuse those responsible and warn of the danger that the media impact is having on this tragedy. It will be used by the great imperialist powers to intervene in the Amazon and to consolidate and legitimize the dispossession in a concerted manner with corrupt authorities.  We also call for the transformation of our logics of consumption and against the pollution and environmental degradation they produce, linked to the capitalist mode of production and its unviable paradigm for healthy civilization.  Let’s save the Amazon! Let’s save the planet! As Fidel said in 1992:  Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.


globalresearch--2019-10-14--Bayer Shareholders: Put Health and Nature First and Stop Funding this Company!

Campaigner and environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason has just written an open letter to Bayer Crop Science shareholders and Chairman of the Board Werner Wenning. She has also sent them a 13,000-word report. Mason is appealing to shareholders to put human health and nature ahead of profit and to stop funding Bayer. In her report, she sets out why shareholders should take this course of action.  Mason outlines how the gradual onset of the global extinction of many species is largely the result of chemical-intensive industrial agriculture. For instance, she argues that Monsanto’s (now Bayer) glyphosate-based Roundup herbicide and Bayer’s clothianidin are largely responsible for the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef and that the use of glyphosate and neonicotinoid insecticides are wiping out wildlife species across the globe. Mason also argues that the science behind (chemical-dependent) GMOs is fraudulent and that the devastating effects of pesticides on human health can no longer be ignored.  She begins by addressing some of her concerns directly to Werner Wenning and Bayer shareholders. The following is a slightly edited (for clarity) version Mason’s letter to Wenning (and shareholders) and sets the scene for what is in her report.  I have taken the liberty of writing an Open Letter to Bayer Crop Science Shareholders for your next meeting. I apologise because I can’t find the email address of Paul Singer, Founder of Elliott Management Corporation but could you please pass it on. I understand that Elliott disclosed in June that it has a $1.3 billion stake in Bayer and Paul Singer was anxious for a settlement (glyphosate litigation cases in the US).  US District Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco suggested a high-profile mediator, Ken Feinberg to lead settlement talks over the herbicide litigation. Has he resolved anything?  I understand that the Monsanto lobbyist organisation Genetic Literacy Project (Founding Director Jon Entine) has suggested that you might take the European Union to Court if they ban glyphosate in 2022. Liam Condon for Bayer Crop Science said: If we feel a scientific process, an established regulatory pathway, is being completely ignored, then of course we’ve got to look at all our options.  As you must be aware, Cancer Research UK protects the agrochemical industry: the CRUK website claims “there is little evidence that pesticides cause cancer”  Michael Pragnell former Chairman of Cancer Research UK (2010-2017), founder of Syngenta and former Chairman of CropLife International, was awarded a CBE in 2017 for services to cancer research. CropLife International was founded in 2001. As of 2015, CropLife International´s member list included the following eight companies: BASF, Bayer CropScience, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont, FMC Corp, Monsanto, Sumitomo and Syngenta. Many of these corporations make their own formulated glyphosate. CRUK said that there was little evidence that pesticides caused cancer. CRUK, the CMO England and PHE, linked cancer to alcohol, obesity and smoking. They blamed the people for ‘lifestyle choices’.  But I have warned Lord Gardiner of Kimble, Under-Secretary of State for Defra, that when the British people wake up to the fact that pesticides are responsible for their reduced life expectancy (and the fact that they spend the last 16-20 years or so in poor health), Defra may be taken to court for re-registering Roundup when they knew it not only caused cancer but a host of other problems that have been outlined in my document.  The 2019 UK State of Nature revealed shocking declines in the natural world 04/10/2019  Jon Snow, in the Channel 4 Report ‘Extinction Britain: Wildlife survey shows shocking declines in animals’, noted that 14% of UK wildlife faces extinction. Jon Snow has finally told the truth: “We all thought it was climate change. Now we are told we are actually poisoning the land with our agriculture.”  Most UK farmers who manage ‘75% of UK land’ are drowning their crops in pesticides and lobbied to continue this  The National Farmers’ Union, the Crop Protection Association and the Agricultural Industries Confederation combined to lobby the EU not to restrict the 320+ pesticides available to them.  Global Chemicals Outlook II – From Legacies to Innovative Solutions: Implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development March 2019  Mandated by the UN Environment Assembly in 2016, this agenda seeks to alert policymakers and other stakeholders to the critical role of the sound management of chemicals and waste in sustainable development. It takes stock of global trends as well as progress made and gaps in achieving the global goal to minimize the adverse impacts from chemicals and waste by 2020.  However, there is Continued growth in the pesticide/crop protection industry  “Pesticides include herbicides, insecticides, termiticides, nematicides, rodenticides and fungicides. These products are largely used for crop protection in agriculture. Today the industry is valued at over US dollars 50 billion and there are around 600 active ingredients. Herbicides account for approximately 80 per cent of all pesticide use (Phillips McDougal 2018).”  Top 10 products used on major crops in the United States by volume, 1968 – 2016 (Phillips McDougal 2018, p. 4) • No 1 Glyphosate (an herbicide, an antibiotic, a fungicide, an antiprotozoal, an organic phosphonate, a growth regulator, a toxicant, a virulence enhancer and is persistent in the soil. It chelates (captures) and washes out the following minerals: boron, calcium, cobalt, copper, iron, potassium, magnesium, manganese, nickel and zinc. (Monsanto/Bayer), • No 8 atrazine, an herbicide and endocrine-disrupting chemical (Syngenta) • No 9 abamectin, an insecticide, an acaricide  Do you really want to put your money into two corporations that lied about the safety of their products for more than 40 years and continue to produce BIOCIDES for agriculture; chemicals that are weapons of war and kill all life?  Bayer Crop Science, the former IG Farben, a private chemical company allied with the Nazis in WW2, built a factory and a concentration camp at Auschwitz. IG Farben was probably the most well-known corporate participant in the Holocaust, and the company’s history sheds a chilling light on how genocide became tied in with economics and business.  Key points for Bayer shareholders to consider  The following lists just some of the key bullet points from Mason’s report. A wide range of peer-reviewed studies are listed in support of the claims made. Readers are strongly urged to access it in full via the acadameia.edu site. • Monsanto and pesticide regulators claim that Roundup only affects plants, fungi and bacteria because they have the shikimate pathway which is absent in humans and animals. Their assertion displays considerable ignorance of human physiology. Alternatively, it is deliberately fraudulent. Humans and animals have trillions of bacteria in their gut: the gut microbiome. • The gut microbiome is the collective genome of organisms inhabiting our body. Obesity is associated with low bacterial richness in the gut. Glyphosate, the controversial main ingredient in Monsanto‘s Roundup and other herbicides, disrupts the shikimate pathway within these gut bacteria, without which we cannot survive. Glyphosate is a strong chelator of essential minerals. In addition, it kills off beneficial gut bacteria and allows toxic bacteria such as Clostridium difficile to flourish. Two key problems caused by glyphosate residues in our diet are nutritional deficiencies, especially minerals and essential amino-acids, and systemic toxicity. • The richness of the human gut microbiome correlates with metabolic markers: we are facing a global metabolic health crisis provoked by an obesity epidemic. Britain and the US are in the midst of a barely reported public health crisis. They are experiencing not merely a slowdown in life expectancy, which in many other rich countries is continuing to lengthen, but the start of an alarming increase in death rates across all our populations, men and women alike. We are needlessly allowing our people to die early. • There is a gradual onset of the global extinction of trees and crops. Moreover, the fungicidal action of Roundup is destroying the means by which trees communicate. It would be irresponsible to release genetically engineered trees into the environment. • Glyphosate is being connected to Lake Erie’s troubling algae blooms, which has fouled drinking water and suffocated and killed marine life in recent years. Roundup and clothianidin are largely responsible for the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef because the APVMA did not read the instructions. • Massive kills of wildlife during flooding now make sense with glyphosate and clothianidin having been found to be toxic to aquatic invertebrates, biocides and immune suppressants. • Emerging pathogens are wiping out wildlife species across the globe partly due to immune suppression by glyphosate and neonicotinoid insecticides. • None The science behind GMOs is fraudulent. US Attorney Steven Druker says that governments and leading scientific institutions have systematically misrepresented the facts about GMOs. • None In the UK, each year there are steady increases in the numbers of new cancers and increases in deaths from the same cancers, with no treatments making any difference to the numbers. • Neurotransmitter changes in the brain derive from exposure to glyphosate-based herbicides. • The global legacy of aspartame, Monsanto’s neurotoxic sweetener: Erik Millstone has just analysed EFSA Panel decisions on Aspartame and finds they are biased towards industry (2019 paper).  All of Rosemary Mason’s reports and open letters to officials can be accessed here


hitandrun--2019-09-19--The Supreme Courts Next Big School Choice Case

The Supreme Court's Next Big School Choice Case

In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Cleveland, Ohio's school choice program against the charge that it was unconstitutional for that city to provide tuition aid to parents who opted to send their children to religiously affiliated magnet schools. So long as "a government aid program is neutral with respect to religion, and provides assistance directly to a broad class of citizens who, in turn, direct government aid to religious schools wholly as a result of their own genuine and independent private choice," the Court said in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, the program passes constitutional muster.  The Supreme Court is now preparing to weigh the constitutional merits of another school choice initiative. At issue in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue is a 2015 scholarship program created by the Montana legislature "to provide parental and student choice in education." The program operates by creating a tax credit for individuals and businesses that donate to private, nonprofit scholarship organizations, which then use such donations to fund educational scholarships. Families who qualify for the scholarships may use the money to help send their children to a "qualified education provider," a statutory category which includes religiously affiliated private schools, grades K through 12.  In 2018, however, the Montana Supreme Court declared religious schools entirely off-limits for the program, pointing to a provision of the Montana Constitution which prohibits the use of public funds "for any sectarian purpose or to aid any church, school, academy, seminary, college, university, or other literary or scientific institution, controlled in whole or in party by any church, sect, or denomination."  In other words, the Montana Supreme Court said that the state Constitution prohibits the very sort of school choice programs that the U.S. Supreme Court has previously upheld under the federal Constitution. The Montana Court resolved this conflict by putting its own interpretation first. "We conclude that Montana's Constitution more broadly prohibits 'any' state aid to sectarian schools and draws a 'more stringent line than that drawn' by its [federal] counterpart," the state court declared.  That judgment will now be reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court.  It is difficult to imagine a majority of the justices allowing the Montana decision to stand. For one thing, the Montana scholarship program seems to easily satisfy the test of constitutionality set out in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris and related cases. For another, the Supreme Court is unlikely to let a state court chart its own path in opposition to the federal jurisprudence that is in place for the rest of the country. It is one thing, after all, to let the states operate as "laboratories of democracy," but it is something else to let the Constitution effectively mean two different things in two different states, to say that the Constitution protects the rights of parents and children to access school choice programs in Ohio but does not protect the rights of parents and children to access similar programs in Montana.  Assuming the Supreme Court follows its own precedents, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue looks to be a winner for the school choice side.  Oral arguments in the case are likely to be held sometime in early 2020.


mediamattersforamerica--2019-04-12--Candidates who care about climate change should be wary of partnering with Fox News

Fox News is trying to entice Democratic presidential candidates to participate in town halls on the network, as Sen. Bernie Sanders (VT) is scheduled to do on April 15. Though Sanders has explained his reasoning for wanting to do a town hall on Fox, there are plenty of good reasons why other candidates should think carefully about whether they want to partner with the network.  Fox is a pernicious propaganda machine for the Trump White House, and it has a long history of both denying and downplaying climate change and helping to block climate action. Fox is currently at the peak of its political influence, but it's also at a precarious point both financially and in the court of public opinion. Many advertisers have fled and others are considering following suit, not wanting to be associated with the network's bigoted and toxic commentary. Fox is now desperately courting advertisers by trying to paint itself as a legitimate news outlet ahead of May 13, when it will host an "upfront" event at which it aims to sell about 60 to 70 percent of its advertising space for 2020. Democratic candidates might want to keep their distance and not enable Fox's attempt at whitewashing its toxicity.  The New Yorker recently exposed how Fox News has developed a symbiotic relationship with the Trump administration and has become a nexus of the right-wing disinformation network. And earlier in April, The New York Times Magazine detailed how Fox founder Rupert Murdoch’s media empire “helped elevate marginal demagogues, mainstream ethnonationalism and politicize the very notion of truth” in the U.S. and beyond, “destabiliz[ing] democracies around the world.”  After the New Yorker published its piece in March, the Democratic National Committee barred Fox News from hosting any of its upcoming presidential primary debates.  Fox News has been especially destructive on the climate change narrative, serving as an echo and amplification chamber for climate denial and environmental deregulation efforts. For years, Fox has played a critical role in undermining the public consensus around climate change by eroding trust in climate scientists and scientific institutions, according to a 2013 study. A separate study by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that 72 percent of Fox News segments about climate science in 2013 "contained misleading statements." In the years since, the network has continued to parade a coterie of network personalities, fringe cranks, and conspiracy theorists to push misinformation about climate change and attack those working to confront the climate crisis.  During the Trump administration, Fox News has also provided a safe haven for disgraced officials like former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. Not only did Pruitt and Zinke prefer Fox News over other news networks, they both used their appearances on Fox to question climate science and to advocate for harmful environmental rollbacks, often with little to no pushback from fawning hosts.  Fox News claims that Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier, the Fox hosts who will anchor the town hall with Sanders, are straightforward newscasters. But a closer look at their past comments and reporting reveals that they cannot be trusted to foster good-faith discussions about key issues, including climate change.  MacCallum has denied basic climate science and made ridiculous claims about global warming. In 2014, on Fox News Radio's Kilmeade & Friends, she said:  That same year, MacCallum downplayed the importance of climate change and argued that Democrats in Congress should be concentrating on other issues instead. And in March 2015, after the Obama administration announced a voluntary emission-reduction pledge ahead of the U.N. climate talks in Paris, MacCallum was critical of the move and falsely said that the U.S. was going to the "upper end of the range" with its commitment and "nobody else has to do it." In fact, dozens of other countries had by that point announced targets to cut or curb their greenhouse gas emissions, including the European Union, whose target was more ambitious than the one the U.S. put forth.  Baier has a reputation for not being as bad as some of the more explicit climate deniers on his network, but according to a 2014 analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists, he has still aired "a number of segments containing inaccurate statements about climate science." He has given climate skeptics a platform to attack climate science and climate action, often with very little pushback.  In March, Fox News executives held an unprecedented meeting with its advertisers to persuade them not to abandon the network after more than 30 companies had dropped their ads since the initial push began in December of last year. Recent calls for companies to pull their ads from Tucker Carlson Tonight and Justice with Judge Jeanine came in response to Media Matters releasing audio of Fox host Tucker Carlson's racist and misogynistic rants on the Bubba the Love Sponge Show from 2006 to 2011, and to Fox personality Jeanine Pirro’s anti-Muslim tirade against Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN).  For years, Fox News has let its prime-time hosts spew bigotry, propaganda, and dangerous conspiracy theories on a nightly basis, while using its so-called "news" programming to give the network a veneer of respectability. But the "news" side and the "opinion" side of Fox News are two sides of the same coin. Fox is dangerous and corrupt from top to bottom.  Bill Sammon, Fox's senior vice president and Washington managing editor, is courting Democratic candidates for town halls and trying to get the DNC to reconsider its decision not to let Fox host a debate.  Sammon has a notoriously terrible record on climate change. In 2009, he sent a memo to Fox journalists ordering them to curtail honest reporting on climate change:  He sent the memo out less than 15 minutes after a Fox correspondent accurately reported that U.N. scientists said the 2000-2009 period was "expected to turn out to be the warmest decade on record." When the correspondent returned to the air a few hours later, he added views from climate "skeptics" into his reporting. Sammon has also tilted Fox's coverage of other issues further to the right.  Four years ago, Sammon played a key role in crafting questions for a Republican presidential primary debate. Do Democratic candidates want to invite Sammon to craft questions for them now?  With Fox on the ropes with advertisers, Democratic candidates should consider if they want to throw Fox News a lifeline this spring.