15 Dirty Big Pharma Tricks That Rip You Off and Risk Your Health for Profit

Even during a two-year recession with people losing their homes and jobs, pharma is still the nation's third most profitable sector. How does it do that? In part by cheating the government, misrepresenting science, bribing doctors, patients and pharmacies, and squeezing the FDA. Other than that, the industry plays completely fair. Pharma has often been criticized for lack of creativity in developing new drugs. But these dirty tricks show its creativity is alive and well when it comes to putting the public at risk just to turn a profit.

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Robert Scheer: Speaking Ill of ‘the Best and the Brightest’

One of “the best and the brightest” died last week, and in Richard Holbrooke we had a perfect example of the dark mischief to which David Halberstam referred when he authored that ironic label. Holbrooke’s life marks the propensity of our elite institutions to turn out alpha leaders with simplistic world-ordering ambitions unrestrained by moral conscience or intellectual humility.

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Dean Baker: Obama's tax deal -- read the small print

The enthusiasm of the US business press for the compromise tax package worked out by President Obama and Republicans in Congress led to a mini-euphoria of upbeat economic projections for 2011. While the economy will do better with this tax package than if no deal were forthcoming, much of the discussion has exaggerated the potential stimulus to the economy.

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Congress sticks it to U.S. farmers with passage of food safety bill that will actually cause fresh produce to be more dangerous

(NaturalNews) The U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 2751 yesterday with a 216 to 144 vote (yes, many members of the House did not even vote). The so-called Food Safety Modernization Act now heads to the President to be signed into law.

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Biting Winters Driven by Global Warming: Scientists

PARIS - Counter-intuitive but true, say scientists: a string of freezing European winters scattered over the last decade has been driven in large part by global warming. The culprit, according to a new study, is the Arctic's receding surface ice, which at current rates of decline could to disappear entirely during summer months by century's end.

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The Politics of Obesity

There is a lot of focus in the mainstream media on the growing epidemic of obesity in western countries. The media pretty universally places the blame on individuals. Overweight adults are guilty of "poor lifestyle choices." While obesity in children is blamed on the failure of the parents to control their kids' unhealthy lifestyle choices. This emphasis on "poor lifestyle choices" has led many pundits to call for a "fat tax" to penalize Americans for buying fast food and junk food. In my view, this flies in the face of all medical and epidemiological research regarding the causes of obesity.

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A DEMOCRATIC MANIFESTO: Launching a Democratic Primary Challenge to Barack Obama

Perhaps Barack Obama has indeed tried his best in the Presidency -" but his best is just not good enough for us Democrats, or indeed for the Nation as a whole. After eight years of Bush the Second, including two very costly and unwinnable wars; major financial and economic disasters; the Hurricanes Katrina and Rita debacles; tax breaks for the rich and super-rich while many millions more fall below the poverty line; the sanctioning of torture and endless violations of our civil and constitutional rights; and the further degradation of our natural environment to benefit mega-corporations, in 2008 America clearly said: Enough -"more than enough! It's time to elect a Democratic President and Congress, and start over. How well has that worked for us, over the past two years?

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Palast Arrested- Busted by BP in Azerbaijan

The enforcers here come in three colors: the military police still wearing their old Russian puke-green uniforms, the MSN (the dictator's secret police) in windbreakers without ID, and BP's own corporate police force in black tunics, sashes and full hats who look like toy soldiers from the Nutcracker ballet. They weren't dancing.

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War and Planet Earth: Toward a Sustainable Peace

Toward the end of Homer's Iliad, a formative work for the military ethic of the West that was to extend its influence for nearly three thousand years to the present day, the gods hold council to respond to a shocking event taking place on the plains of Troy: the hero Achilles has tied the body of Hector, his most recent victim, to the back of his chariot and is dragging him around the walls of the city. In the course of this debate the god Apollo delivers a famous line: "For he [Achilles] is torturing the mute Earth in his fury." (Il. 24:54)

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Food prices rise sharply - and there's more to come

For the first time since 2008, inflation is hitting consumers in the stomach.

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