The World According to Monsanto: The Full Movie

If Accurate, This is Very Scary: "7,500,000 Bq/m3 of “Strontium-90″ detected from groundwater near [Fukushima] reactor 1"

7,500,000 Bq/m3 of “Strontium-90″ was measured from groundwater. The sampling date was 9/11/2013. They haven’t announced it for 3 months.

The location is in the seaside of reactor1. Tepco has been analyzing the groundwater around the reactor buildings.

This November, Tepco confirmed reactor1 directly leaking the coolant water out of the vessel.

(cf, Leaking part of reactor1 is made of “poly vinyl chloride” [URL])

Doug Fine's Too High to Fail

On Sunday, I'll be hosting author and journalist Doug Fine at the Firedoglake Book Salon, as he fields questions about the rapidly changing scene regarding cannabis legalization on the state level in the U.S.A.

Since publication last summer of the paperback edition of his look at organic, outdoor medicinal cannabis cultivation in California's Mendocino County, the political field on the legalization issue in various states is changing rapidly. Fine regards the passage of ballot initiatives calling for a legalization regime for recreational use in Washington state and Colorado as seminal. "It is no stretch to say that the Berlin Wall of the Drug War fell," wrote Fine in the augmented paperback edition.

I loved Too High to Fail: Cannabis and the New Green Economic Revolution so much, I soon read the author's two other books, Not Really an Alaskan Mountain Man and farewell, My Subaru:  An Epic Adventure in Local Living.

Because Fine's book is one of the most important yet published on failings and stupidities of the War on Drugs, he has been in demand for public speaking engagements on legalization issues and their ramifications.  He has taken a holistic approach toward how legalization, cultivation, marketing, product development and hemp-cannabis infrastructure might rationally work.  In that, he is in the forefront.

He recently returned from Europe, where he gave talks as part of his Drug Peace Tour.  Here he is, on November 13th, addressing the London, UK branch of NORML.  It is over 80 minutes long, but well worth watching:

 

  image:  Doug Fine, at his Funky Butte Ranch, with two of his goats

21 Ways the Canadian Health Care System is Better than Obamacare

--- by Ralph Nader

Dear America:

Costly complexity is baked into Obamacare. No health insurance system is without problems but Canadian style single-payer full Medicare for all is simple, affordable, comprehensive and universal.

In the early 1960s, President Lyndon Johnson enrolled 20 million elderly Americans into Medicare in six months. There were no websites. They did it with index cards!

Below please find 21 Ways the Canadian Health Care System is Better than Obamacare.

Repeal Obamacare and replace it with the much more efficient single-payer, everybody in, nobody out, free choice of doctor and hospital.

Love, Canada

Number 21:
In Canada, everyone is covered automatically at birth – everybody in, nobody out.

In the United States, under Obamacare, 31 million Americans will still be uninsured by 2023 and millions more will remain underinsured.

Number 20:
In Canada, the health system is designed to put people, not profits, first.

In the United States, Obamacare will do little to curb insurance industry profits and will actually enhance insurance industry profits.

Number 19:
In Canada, coverage is not tied to a job or dependent on your income – rich and poor are in the same system, the best guaranty of quality.

In the United States, under Obamacare, much still depends on your job or income. Lose your job or lose your income, and you might lose your existing health insurance or have to settle for lesser coverage.

Number 18:
In Canada, health care coverage stays with you for your entire life.

In the United States, under Obamacare, for tens of millions of Americans, health care coverage stays with you for as long as you can afford your share.

Number 17:
In Canada, you can freely choose your doctors and hospitals and keep them. There are no lists of “in-network” vendors and no extra hidden charges for going “out of network.”

In the United States, under Obamacare, the in-network list of places where you can get treated is shrinking – thus restricting freedom of choice – and if you want to go out of network, you pay for it.

Number 16:
In Canada, the health care system is funded by income, sales and corporate taxes that, combined, are much lower than what Americans pay in premiums.

In the United States, under Obamacare, for thousands of Americans, it’s pay or die – if you can’t pay, you die. That’s why many thousands will still die every year under Obamacare from lack of health insurance to get diagnosed and treated in time.

Number 15:
In Canada, there are no complex hospital or doctor bills. In fact, usually you don’t even see a bill.

In the United States, under Obamacare, hospital and doctor bills will still be terribly complex, making it impossible to discover the many costly overcharges.

Number 14:
In Canada, costs are controlled. Canada pays 10 percent of its GDP for its health care system, covering everyone.

In the United States, under Obamacare, costs continue to skyrocket. The U.S. currently pays 18 percent of its GDP and still doesn’t cover tens of millions of people.

Number 13:
In Canada, it is unheard of for anyone to go bankrupt due to health care costs.

In the United States, under Obamacare, health care driven bankruptcy will continue to plague Americans.

Number 12:
In Canada, simplicity leads to major savings in administrative costs and overhead.

In the United States, under Obamacare, complexity will lead to ratcheting up administrative costs and overhead.

Number 11:
In Canada, when you go to a doctor or hospital the first thing they ask you is: “What’s wrong?”

In the United States, the first thing they ask you is: “What kind of insurance do you have?”

Number 10:
In Canada, the government negotiates drug prices so they are more affordable.

In the United States, under Obamacare, Congress made it specifically illegal for the government to negotiate drug prices for volume purchases, so they remain unaffordable.

Number 9:
In Canada, the government health care funds are not profitably diverted to the top one percent.

In the United States, under Obamacare, health care funds will continue to flow to the top. In 2012, CEOs at six of the largest insurance companies in the U.S. received a total of $83.3 million in pay, plus benefits.

Number 8:
In Canada, there are no necessary co-pays or deductibles.

In the United States, under Obamacare, the deductibles and co-pays will continue to be unaffordable for many millions of Americans.

Number 7:
In Canada, the health care system contributes to social solidarity and national pride.

In the United States, Obamacare is divisive, with rich and poor in different systems and tens of millions left out or with sorely limited benefits.

Number 6:
In Canada, delays in health care are not due to the cost of insurance.

In the United States, under Obamacare, patients without health insurance or who are underinsured will continue to delay or forgo care and put their lives at risk.

Number 5:
In Canada, nobody dies due to lack of health insurance.

In the United States, under Obamacare, many thousands will continue to die every year due to lack of health insurance.

Number 4:
In Canada, an increasing majority supports their health care system, which costs half as much, per person, as in the United States. And in Canada, everyone is covered.

In the United States, a majority – many for different reasons – oppose Obamacare.

Number 3:
In Canada, the tax payments to fund the health care system are progressive – the lowest 20 percent pays 6 percent of income into the system while the highest 20 percent pays 8 percent.

In the United States, under Obamacare, the poor pay a larger share of their income for health care than the affluent.

Number 2:
In Canada, the administration of the system is simple. You get a health care card when you are born. And you swipe it when you go to a doctor or hospital. End of story.

In the United States, Obamacare’s 2,500 pages plus regulations (the Canadian Medicare Bill was 13 pages) is so complex that then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said before passage “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

Number 1:
In Canada, the majority of citizens love their health care system.

In the United States, the majority of citizens, physicians, and nurses prefer the Canadian type system – single-payer, free choice of doctor and hospital , everybody in, nobody out.

For more information see Single Payer Action at www.singlepayeraction.org.

Max Blumenthal at the National Press Club Tuesday

Video streaming by Ustream

Byron Mallott to Speak at the Bartlett Club This Thursday