To what extent do elements of Islamaphobia reside in new atheism? Fascinating and intense exchange between Glenn Greenwald and Sam Harris. I'm tempted to sum it up, but I'll hold off, given that these two highly articulate writers have expressed themselves with precision. Here's the Al Jazeera article that ignited this debate.
Why is it that fossil fuel industries are getting such massive subsidies? The IMF wants to know too:
Developing and industrialized countries should rein in energy subsidies that totaled $1.9 trillion in 2011 to ease budgetary pressures and free resources for public spending in areas like education and health care, International Monetary Fund economists said in a research paper published Wednesday. In the paper, “Energy Subsidy Reform — Lessons and Implications,” the economists reviewed a database of 176 countries and analyzed ways to change energy subsidies by examining case studies of 22 countries. In 2011, energy subsidies intended to contain energy prices for consumers accounted for 2.5 percent of global gross domestic product, or 8 percent of all government revenue, the fund said.It occurs to me that without these subsidies, energy prices would be shooting upwards due to peak oil, possibly causing a nationwide panic. Then maybe the federal government would have a very difficult time justifying these subsidies, which would panic the 1% who control the fossil fuel industries.
Noah Bonn has written a succinct summary of the five "most corrupt" industries: Banking, Energy, Agriculture/Biotech, Media and Healthcare. Fair enough. These are five deserving nominations. Rather than focus on his nominations, though, I focused on Bonn's "solutions." Though they aren't complete solutions, they are mostly good ideas: Credit unions, renewable energy, local food, independent media, and "naturopaths and homeopaths." What? I've written before on the huge problems with homeopaths. But that still leaves a vaccuum. What is the solution to our out of control health care system? I'd look long and hard at the solutions proposed by the recent Time article titled "Bitter Pill." I agree with many of Bonn's proposals, but I do think that the problem with this slippage into homeopathy is typical with many proposed "solutions" that fall short: they are caused by the lack of even-handed skepticism. America is a huge collection of overlapping tribes, and we need to put the magnifying glass onto those people we want to like as well as those we've written off. In fact, I believe this need for equal opportunity skepticism, is America's biggest need. In short, many of our problems arise from the confirmation bias.
Glenn Greenwald writes the following as part of his article on an upcoming film titled "Dirty Wars."
The most propagandistic aspect of the US War on Terror has been, and remains, that its victims are rendered invisible and voiceless. They are almost never named by newspapers. They and their surviving family members are virtually never heard from on television. The Bush and Obama DOJs have collaborated with federal judges to ensure that even those who everyone admits are completely innocent have no access to American courts and thus no means of having their stories heard or their rights vindicated. Radical secrecy theories and escalating attacks on whistleblowers push these victims further into the dark. It is the ultimate tactic of Othering: concealing their humanity, enabling their dehumanization, by simply relegating them to nonexistence.The following excerpt is from the website of "Dirty Wars."
As [Investigative Reporter] Scahill digs deeper into the activities of JSOC, he is pulled into a world of covert operations unknown to the public and carried out across the globe by men who do not exist on paper and will never appear before Congress. In military jargon, JSOC teams “find, fix, and finish” their targets, who are selected through a secret process. No target is off limits for the “kill list,” including U.S. citizens. Drawn into the stories and lives of the people he meets along the way, Scahill is forced to confront the painful consequences of a war spinning out of control, as well as his own role as a journalist.
Why is it that generic drug makers sometimes delay entering the market, sometimes long after the drug patent expires? This is another tale in corporatocracy, told by Alternet:
[I]magine you’re a big-time drug company. You want to keep competitors off the market as long as possible. Your move is to basically sue the pants off the generic drugmaker for copyright infringement, setting in motion a long and tortuous legal process. And these usually end with “pay-for-delay” deals. The brand-name drug company pays the generic manufacturer a cash settlement, and the generic manufacturer agrees to delay entry into the market for a number of years. In the case before the Supreme Court, the drug company paid $30 million a year to protect its $125 million annual profit in AndroGel, a testosterone supplement. It’s hard to see this as anything but bribery, designed to preserve a lucrative monopoly for the brand-name drug maker. In fact, this is what the Federal Trade Commission has argued for over a decade. They consider it a violation of antitrust law, arguing that the exchange of cash gives the generic manufacturer a share of future profits in the drug, specifically to prolong the monopoly. As SCOTUSBlog summarizes from the FTC’s court brief, in the regulator’s view, “Nothing in patent law … validates a system in which brand-name companies could buy off their would-be competitors.” Indeed, everyone wins with pay-for-delay but the consumer: the FTC estimates that the two dozen deals inked in 2012 alone cost drug patients $3.5 billion annually, with the brand-name and generic manufacturers splitting the ill-gotten profits.