Category Archives: Profiteering

Isabel Allende and Margaret Atwood are Just Some of the Writers Supporting a New Movement to Tackle Exile and Racism – The Ladies Finger

Our world is in crisis. People have always been forced to move against their will: they’ve fled wars and natural disasters, persecution and violence. But never before has the forced movement of people occurred at such a rate. 1 in 113 people in the world today have been driven from their homes. Simultaneously, a rising climate of nationalistic xenophobia among host nations has made resettlement for those who’ve experienced forced displacement increasingly dangerous and uncertain.

Source: Isabel Allende and Margaret Atwood are Just Some of the Writers Supporting a New Movement to Tackle Exile and Racism – The Ladies FingerThe Ladies Finger

Senator calls for investigation into Chinese company that’s helping Kushner family attract investors: Shanghaiist

Republican senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa has demanded that an investigation be carried out into the Chinese company Qiaowai, which has been working on behalf of Kushner Companies to entice wealthy Chinese to invest in the well-connected real estate company’s latest project with promises of US visas.In January, Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump’s husband, sold his shares of Kushner Co. to take on a new — and controversial — position as senior White House advisor to his father-in-law, though that has done little to prevent the family company from getting wrapped up in charges of government corruption and profiteering.

Source: Senator calls for investigation into Chinese company that’s helping Kushner family attract investors: Shanghaiist

Trump slams Germany′s trade surplus with the US, threatens to stop car sales | Europe | DW | 26.05.2017

During meetings with EU leaders, US President Donald Trump threatened to halt the sale of millions of German cars in the US. In comments leaked to German press he said Germany was acting in a “bad” or “nasty” way.

Source: Trump slams Germany′s trade surplus with the US, threatens to stop car sales | Europe | DW | 26.05.2017

SPLC suit: Mississippi violates binding obligation to provide ‘uniform’ system of public education | Southern Poverty Law Center

Mississippi enshrined this requirement in the education clause of its Constitution, which the state ratified in 1869. The following year, Congress passed a law, commonly called the “Readmission Act,” allowing Mississippi to regain full statehood. The Readmission Act requires that the education rights then granted in the state constitution never be diminished.Over more than a century, however, state lawmakers have diluted the education clause multiple times. The violations began in 1890, at the start of the Jim Crow era, when delegates to the state’s Constitutional Convention crafted new governing documents with the explicit intention of disenfranchising African Americans by withholding education. Each subsequent change has further watered down the education clause. Today, because of this historical malfeasance, the state’s public schools are anything but “uniform.”

Source: SPLC suit: Mississippi violates binding obligation to provide ‘uniform’ system of public education | Southern Poverty Law Center

Dozens of Middlebury Students Are Disciplined for Charles Murray Protest – The New York Times Someone – Dickinson – really does not understand free speech rights are broader than just being polite and not reacting strongly to speech you find offensive and hateful

“They don’t understand the value of free speech at a college and what free speech really means,” Mr. Dickinson said. “I think some people are going to say we should be looking more broadly at the institution and whether we taught these students properly.”In a separate news release Tuesday, the Middlebury Police Department said it would not bring charges in connection with the protest.The department’s chief, Thomas Hanley, said in an interview that it was impossible to identify the protesters who hurt Ms. Stanger or damaged the car.“This was a number of individuals in the dark, wearing masks and black clothing, along with a bunch of college students,” he said. “It was more of a scrum. There wasn’t any assault per se.”

Trump’s pick for top USDA scientist isn’t one | Pesticide Action Network

Just who is Trump’s latest nominee then? Clovis is a conservative radio talk show host who was unsuccessful in a 2014 run for Senate in his native Iowa. He has no professional experience in food or agriculture, and is openly skeptical of climate change. He was co-chair of Trump’s campaign and has since been serving as the Department of Agriculture’s senior White House adviser.

Source: Trump’s pick for top USDA scientist isn’t one | Pesticide Action Network

A Shocking Diagnosis: Breast Implants ‘Gave Me Cancer’ – The New York Times

Late last year, an alliance of cancer centers, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, issued treatment guidelines. Experts agree that the essential first step is to remove the implant and the entire capsule of scar tissue around it. Otherwise, the disease is likely to recur, and the prognosis to worsen.Not all women have been able to get the recommended treatment. Kimra Rogers, 50, a nursing assistant in Caldwell, Idaho, learned last May that she had lymphoma, from textured implants she had for more than 10 years. But instead of removing the implants and capsules immediately, her doctor prescribed six rounds of chemotherapy and 25 rounds of radiation. A year later, she still has the implants.“Unfortunately, my doctor didn’t know the first line of defense,” Ms. Rogers said.She learned about the importance of having the implants removed only from other women in a Facebook group for those with the disease.Her health insurer, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Montana, covered the chemotherapy and radiation but has refused to pay for removal of the implants, and told her that her appeal rights were “exhausted.” (Translation: health insurance companies don’t care if you die!)

Combat Photographer’s Last Photo a Resounding Media Failure – Reading The Pictures – “Fake news from greater need for profit than doing the job correctly!”

I would qualify these photos as war porn. I say that because too many publishers couldn’t bother with the larger context or even the basic facts when they had the news cycle to contend with and these macabre and sensational photos to display. Instead, these suddenly employable four-year-old photos and their hasty circulation serve as an indictment of spectacle — just like the news and the pictures of the near nuclear-scale “mother of all bombs” did a few weeks back — when the corrosive war in Afghanistan remains otherwise invisible.

Source: Combat Photographer’s Last Photo a Resounding Media Failure – Reading The Pictures

TV Titan Requires Its Stations to Air Segments That Roil Its Staff – The New York Times

During the election campaign last year, it sent out a package that suggested in part that voters should not support Hillary Clinton because the Democratic Party was historically pro-slavery. More recently, Sinclair asked stations to run a short segment in which Scott Livingston, the company’s vice president for news, accused the national news media of publishing “fake news stories.”