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  • Why Are So Many People Dying from Opiate Overdoses? It’s Our Broken Society | Alternet
    http://www.alternet.org/drugs/why-so-many-people-dying-opiate-overdoses-broken-society

    Most drug-related deaths result from the use of opioids, the molecules that are marketed as painkillers by pharmaceutical companies and heroin by drug lords. Opioids, whatever their source, bond with receptors all over our bodies. Opioid receptors evolved to protect us from panic, anxiety and pain – a considerate move by the oft-callous forces of evolution. But the gentle impact of natural opioids, produced by our own bodies, resembles a summer breeze compared to the hurricane of physiological disruption caused by drugs designed to mimic their function.

    Most street opiates (including heroin) are now laced or replaced with fentanyl – the drug that killed the singer Prince – and its analogues, far more powerful than heroin and so cheap that drug-dealing profits are skyrocketing at about the same rate as overdose deaths.

    But the peculiar appeal of opioids tells us more about ourselves as a society, as a culture, than the tumultuous ups and downs of addiction statistics. Today’s young people come of age and carve out their adult lives in an environment of astronomical uncertainty. Corporations that used to pride themselves on fairness to their employees now strive only for profit. The upper echelons of management are as risk-infected as the lowest clerks. Massive layoffs rationalised by the eddies of globalisation make long-term contracts prehistoric relics. I ask the guys who come to the house to deliver packages how they like their jobs. They can’t say. They get up to three six-month contracts in a row and then get laid off so the company won’t have to pay them benefits.

    People pour out of universities with all manner of degrees, yet with skills that are rapidly becoming irrelevant. But people without degrees are even worse off. They find themselves virtually unemployable, because there are so many others in the same pool, and employers will hire whoever comes cheapest. The absurdly low minimum wage figures in the US clearly exacerbate the situation. As hope for steady employment fizzles, so does the opportunity to connect with family, friends and society more broadly, and there is way too much time to kill. Opioids can help reduce the despair.

    #Opiod_crisis #santé_publique

  • CNN’s Man of the ’Resistance’ Is the Person Most Responsible for Trump Being President | Alternet
    http://www.alternet.org/media/same-media-who-assisted-rise-trump-now-rebrand-themselves-anti-trump-resis

    Les médias sont là pour le spectacle, pas pour une quelconque « résistance » politique... Un rappel important de ce que le spectacle veut dire pour la démocratie.

    It’s no secret that Trump received outsized media coverage early on in the 2016 race, nabbing in 2015 alone nearly 2 billion in free media (compared, for example, to Bernie Sanders’ $321m) –including much from Zucker’s CNN–on his way to securing the Republican nomination. While much of this coverage was negative in tone with a marketing product like Trump, there really is no negative coverage; so long as his name remained in the headlines, that’s all that mattered. CNN rushed to cover, for months, each and everyone of Trump’s manufactured controversy and did so to the tune of record-smashing ratings. CNN even hired Trump aide Corey Lewandowski while he was not only still under contractual agreement not to say anything bad about Trump, but was still collecting checks from the campaign.

    Aside from raking in record profits riding the Trump spectacle as President of CNN in 2015 and into 2016, Zucker’s role in the rise of Trump is far more direct. Before taking over CNN in 2012, Zucker hired Trump to be the face of the reality show juggernaught The Apprentice while serving as head of NBC Entertainment in 2004. The show not only boosted the Trump brand, it almost certainly saved Trump from the brink of financial and marketing extinction.

    #Médias #Politique #Spectacle

  • India Is on Its Way to Becoming a Hindu Nation, Suppressing Multiculturalism | Alternet
    http://www.alternet.org/world/india-its-way-becoming-hindu-nation-suppressing-multiculturalism

    Much has changed since 2013. Narendra Modi, who was then chief minister of a western Indian state, the first chief minister who was a direct recruit from the supremacist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), is now India’s prime minister, heading a majority government that has already implemented several changes in laws and statutes that arguably militate against India’s constitutional framework.

    This government rose to power in May 2014, led by Modi’s charisma with the masses, backed by a high-voltage campaign funded by crony capital; yet no victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) within Indian politics has ever been possible without the organizational mettle of its parent body, the RSS. The RSS, since its birth in 1925, has openly advocated not just to create a Hindu nation, but also to continue propagating the “overthrow of the constitutional framework.”

    Despite these violent schisms, as this author tells students of history and law in her classes, the rich deliberations contained in India’s Constituent Assembly debates reveal a deep maturity in the political leadership of the day, from all political persuasions, that was clear and committed to an India that was inclusive and based on equality of citizenship, irrespective of color, class, gender or community.

    Despite the deep schisms, even bloodshed, caused during India’s vivesection, the vast section of India’s political leadership opted for India to remain democratic, inclusive and secular. This was a deeply principled and pragmatic decision, as only through this promise (as encapsulated in the Indian Consitution) of equality for all could India and Indians—with all their attendant diversities of language, faith and culture—remain as one. The Indian Constitution recognizes 22 languages, though we have more than 740 dialects, and through this abiding respect for our deep diversity has this nation been born. It is this basic assumption that is under direct threat from an ideological force that believes in the overthrow of India as was born in 1947 and established in 1950.

    It is not mere words but the actions of those in power and the mob on the streets after Modi assumed power, that give weight to these potential dangers. “The recent election of Adityanath, who is a strong proponent of Hindu rashtra, with a brute majority (to the post of chief minister of Uttar Pradesh) shows that people want a Hindu rashtra in India,” Uday Dhuri, spokesperson of the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, told the Hindustan Times ahead of the Goa conclave. The Samiti’s agenda, available on its website, is a good example of the priorities of a Hindu rashtra, should it emerge. Hatred and bile against India’s religious minorities and Dalits, authoritarian rule, the imposition of “one culture, one language” to create a strong “militarized, Hindu nation.”

    The ongoing convention in Goa represents a very real threat—and not just to India, known as it is as the largest democracy with well-negotiated principles of equality and non-discrimination. Another win for Modi and his lot in the next general election could make this threat into a chilling reality, where discrimination rules and violence, threat and intimidation become an easy norm.

    #Inde #fascisme #religions #politique_monde

  • Perverse Law in 9 States Enriches Donors to Private Schools: Trump Could Be on the Verge of Taking It National | Alternet
    http://www.alternet.org/education/perverse-law-9-states-enriches-donors-private-schools-trump-could-be-verge

    Education
    Perverse Law in 9 States Enriches Donors to Private Schools: Trump Could Be on the Verge of Taking It National
    A GOP-sponsored bill finds more ways to starve traditional public schools.
    By Steven Rosenfeld / AlterNet
    June 5, 2017, 1:39 PM GMT

    The Trump administration’s push to privatize public education not only seeks to deprive traditional K-12 schools of billions in federal aid, but may greatly expand existing tax loopholes that already allow wealthy people and firms to make money on donating to private schools.

    The proposed Education Opportunities Act would “put two new federal voucher tax shelters within reach for many more Americans and lead to an explosion in funding for private schools,” a joint release from the School Superintendents Association (ASSA) and Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) said. “It would also keep in place an existing federal loophole that permits savvy taxpayers to benefit from certain ‘double-dipping’ practices, where they receive a federal deduction and state tax credit on the same donation to a private school.”

    #Education #Impôts #Privatisation_école #Etats-Unis

  • We Know for Sure That Bread Is Unhealthy—for the Environment, at Least | Alternet
    http://www.alternet.org/environment/bread-really-unhealthy-least-environment?akid=15668.2663896.KgMr77&rd=1&sr

    The good news is there’s now a clear target to reduce the impact: Nearly half of the emissions (0.589kg, or 13.7oz) come from fertilizer used to grow the wheat. Writing in Nature Plants, Peter Horton and his colleagues from the University of Sheffield analyzed the whole manufacturing process, from planting the seed to putting the bread on the shelf. They found the bulk of the greenhouse gases come from the farm.

    “Our findings bring into focus a key part of the food security challenge—resolving the major conflicts embedded in the agri-food system, whose primary purpose is to make money not to provide sustainable global food security,” commented Horton, who is chief research advisor to the University of Sheffield’s Grantham Center for Sustainable Futures.

    We know plenty of ways to reduce the impact of using fertilizer, such as using it at key points during the season rather than continuously, and using different cropping systems—by planting vegetables between crop cycles (decreasing “fallow frequency"), farmers can keep the land in use and improve the ability of the soil to hold carbon.

    The biggest challenge will be implementing these changes in places where farmers rely on fertilizer to protect their income; after all, it’s a surefire way to make sure the crop grows, regardless of the impact it has on the environment.

    #agriculture #engrais #énergie

  • Study Finds Magic Mushrooms Are the Safest Recreational Drug | Alternet
    http://www.alternet.org/drugs/strudy-finds-magic-mushrooms-safest-recreational-drug

    Mushrooms are the safest of all the drugs people take recreationally, according to this year’s Global Drug Survey.

    Brad Burge from the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (Maps) urged caution on relying on people’s self reports for data as people often take multiple drugs at the same time, so you can’t be sure which one is causing the problem.

    He also highlighted that seeking emergency medical treatment means different things for different drugs. With a drug such as heroin, a trip to the emergency room is a life-or-death situation requiring resuscitation and medication. With LSD or mushrooms, there is no toxicity and the effects wear after a few hours.

    “There is no known lethal dose for LSD or pure psilocybin,” he said.

    Both Winstock and Burge said that the findings indicate a need for drug policy reform, with a focus on shifting psychedelics off the schedule one list of the most dangerous controlled substances.

    #psychédéliques

  • Big Pharma’s Pollution Is Creating Deadly Superbugs While the World Looks the Other Way | Alternet
    http://www.alternet.org/environment/pollution-creating-deadly-superbugs

    Voyage au bout de l’enfer : quand la pharmacie devient une industrie polluante, le danger finit par devenir plus grand à terme que les avantage maintenant.

    Industrial pollution from Indian pharmaceutical companies making medicines for nearly all the world’s major drug companies is fuelling the creation of deadly superbugs, suggests new research. Global health authorities have no regulations in place to stop this happening.

    A major study published today in the prestigious scientific journal Infection found “excessively high” levels of antibiotic and antifungal drug residue in water sources in and around a major drug production hub in the Indian city of Hyderabad, as well as high levels of bacteria and fungi resistant to those drugs. Scientists told the Bureau the quantities found meant they believe the drug residues must have originated from pharmaceutical factories.

    The presence of drug residues in the natural environment allows the microbes living there to build up resistance to the ingredients in the medicines that are supposed to kill them, turning them into what we call superbugs. The resistant microbes travel easily and have multiplied in huge numbers all over the world, creating a grave public health emergency that is already thought to kill hundreds of thousands of people a year.

    A group of scientists based at the University of Leipzig worked with German journalists to take an in-depth look at pharmaceutical pollution in Hyderabad, where 50% of India’s drug exports are produced. A fifth of the world’s generic drugs are produced in India, with factories based in Hyderabad supplying Big Pharma and public health authorities like World Health Organisation with millions of tons of antibiotics and antifungals each year.

    The researchers tested 28 water samples in and around the Patancheru-Bollaram Industrial zone on the outskirts of the city, where more than than 30 drug manufacturing companies supplying nearly all the world’s major drug companies are based. Thousands of tons of pharmaceutical waste are produced by the factories each day, the paper says.

    #pharmacie #pollution #résistance_aux_antibiotiques #antibiotiques #génériques

  • Here’s How Web Service Cloudflare Helps Serve up Hate on the Internet That Fuels Real-Life Killings | Alternet
    http://www.alternet.org/media/heres-how-web-service-cloudflare-helps-serve-hate-internet-fuels-real-life

    The operations of such extreme sites are made possible, in part, by an otherwise very mainstream internet company — Cloudflare. Based in San Francisco, Cloudflare operates more than 100 data centers spread across the world, serving as a sort of middleman for websites — speeding up delivery of a site’s content and protecting it from several kinds of attacks. Cloudflare says that some 10 percent of web requests flow through its network, and the company’s mainstream clients range from the FBI to the dating site OKCupid.

    The widespread use of Cloudflare’s services by racist groups is not an accident. Cloudflare has said it is not in the business of censoring websites and will not deny its services to even the most offensive purveyors of hate.

    “A website is speech. It is not a bomb,” Cloudflare’s CEO Matthew Prince wrote in a 2013 blog post defending his company’s stance. “There is no imminent danger it creates and no provider has an affirmative obligation to monitor and make determinations about the theoretically harmful nature of speech a site may contain.”

    In testimony Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chief Will D. Johnson, chair of the International Association of Chiefs of Police Human and Civil Rights Committee, highlighted the reach and threat of hate on the Internet.

    “The internet provides extremists with an unprecedented ability to spread hate and recruit followers,” he said. “Individual racists and organized hate groups now have the power to reach a global audience of millions and to communicate among like-minded individuals easily, inexpensively, and anonymously.

    “Although hate speech is offensive and hurtful, the First Amendment usually protects such expression,” Johnson said. “However, there is a growing trend to use the Internet to intimidate and harass individuals on the basis of their race, religion, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, disability, or national origin.”

    Anglin appears quite comfortable with his arrangement with Cloudflare. It doesn’t cost him much either — just $200 a month, according to public posts on the site.

    “[A]ny complaints filed against the site go to Cloudflare, and Cloudflare then sends me an email telling me someone said I was doing something bad and that it is my responsibility to figure out if I am doing that,” he wrote in a 2015 post on his site. “Cloudflare does not regulate content, so it is meaningless.”

    Representatives from Rackspace and GoDaddy, two popular web hosts, said they try to regulate the kinds of sites on their services. For Rackspace, that means drawing the line at hosting white supremacist content or hate speech. For GoDaddy, that means not hosting the sort of abusive publication of personal information that Anglin frequently engages in.

    A former Cloudflare employee, Ryan Lackey, said in an interview that while he doesn’t condone a lot of what Auernheimer does, he did on occasion give technical advice as a friend and helped some of the Stormer’s issues get resolved.

    “I am hardcore libertarian/classical liberal about free speech — something like Daily Stormer has every right to publish, and it is better for everyone if all ideas are out on the internet to do battle in that sphere,” he said.

    Vick at the ADL agrees that Anglin has a right to publish, but said people have the right to hold to task the Internet companies that enable him.

    #idéologie_californienne #cyberlibertarianisme

  • The Public Does Not Really Have a Clue About Fake News | Alternet
    http://www.alternet.org/media/whos-faking-trump-or-news

    Since 1997, Gallup has asked the question this way: “How much trust and confidence do you have in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly?” Perhaps they changed the wording in 1997 because that was the year after Fox News was launched and they meant to include CNN but not Fox. In any event, in 1997, the total of “great deal” and “fair amount” stood at 53 percent, where it remained, give or take a point or two, through 2003, when, within a single year, that total plunged to 44 percent. Likely, George W. Bush propaganda about weapons of mass destruction, and media hype about the nonexistent weapons, took their toll. But even then, in 2005 the total who trusted media “a great deal” or “a fair amount” recovered to 50 percent.

    But since 2005, “trust and confidence” have been drifting slowly downward. (What Gallup means by “trust and confidence,” as opposed to “trust,” I don’t know, but for brevity’s sake, I’ll collapse the two into “trust.”) By 2008, the total of “a great deal” and “fair amount” of trust had slipped to 43 percent. In 2014, it was down to 40 percent. In 2016, it was down to 32 percent — a new low, reflecting a decline, within six years, of almost one-third.

    Par Todd Gitlin

    #fake-news #médias #post-truth

  • The Republican Party Is Ready to Sell Off Your Internet Privacy at a Level That Boggles the Mind | Alternet
    http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/republican-party-ready-sell-your-internet-privacy-level-boggles-mind

    Trump’s new Chairman of the FCC, Ajit Pai, recently co-authored what is either an intentionally or naively deceptive op-ed in The Washington Post.

    Pai suggested that when Republicans in the House and Senate – without a single Democratic vote in either body – voted to legalize your Internet Service Provider – your ISP – to sell your personal (and you-thought-private) browsing information and the content of your emails and video-viewing to anybody they choose, they were actually working to “protect” your privacy. He knew this, he wrote, because critics of the GOP policy “don’t understand how advertising works.”

    Pai’s argument is basically that if Google can sell or use your information, then Comcast, AT&T, Time-Warner, etc., should be able to, too.

    But there’s a fundamental difference. If you don’t want Google to sell or use your information, you can use a search engine (like www.duckduckgo.com) or an online store that promises not to.

    But your internet service provider sees everything you do on the internet, right down to the keystroke level. They can monitor every VOIP conversation, make note of every search or purchase, and transcribe every email or IM. Just like your phone company, before Title II, could listen in on every one of your phone calls.

    #neutralité_internet

  • Can the Science of Lying Explain Trump’s Support ? | Alternet
    http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/science-lying-explains-trump

    But Trump’s political path presents a paradox. Far from slowing his momentum, his deceit seemed only to strengthen his support through the primary and national election. Now, every time a new lie is exposed, his approval rating doesn’t seem to waver very much. How does the former reality-TV star get away with it? How can he tell so many lies and still win support from millions of Americans?

    Journalists and researchers have suggested many answers, from simple ignorance to an aging electorate addicted to fear-mongering cable news. But there is another explanation that no one seems to have entertained: It is that Trump is telling “blue” lies—a psychologist’s term for falsehoods, told on behalf of a group, that can actually strengthen the bonds among the members of that group.

    This research—and those stories—highlight a difficult truth about our species: We are intensely social creatures, but we’re prone to divide ourselves into competitive groups, largely for the purpose of allocating resources. People can be “prosocial”—compassionate, empathic, generous, honest—in their groups, and aggressively antisocial toward outside groups. When we divide people into groups, we open the door to competition, dehumanization, violence—and socially sanctioned deceit.

    Most scholars point to political and cultural polarization as the biggest cause. Research by Alexander George Theodoridis, a political scientist at the University of California, Merced, shows that “partisanship for many Americans today takes the form of a visceral, even subconscious, attachment to a party group.” According to his studies, Democrats and Republicans have become not merely political parties but tribes, whose affiliations shape the language, dress, hairstyles, purchasing decisions, friendships, and even love lives of their members.

    Scientists call this kind of reasoning “directionally motivated,” meaning that conclusions are driven by feelings, not facts—and studies find that this is our default mode. As right-wing radio talk host Rush Limbaugh implied in the wake of a lie-riddled presidential press conference, facts don’t matter. What matters is what’s “in your heart.”

    That’s why, when the truth threatens our identity, that truth gets dismissed. For millions and millions of Americans, climate change is a hoax, Hillary Clinton ran a sex ring out of a pizza parlor, and immigrants cause crime. Whether they truly believe those falsehoods or not is debatable—and possibly irrelevant. The research to date suggests that they see those lies as useful weapons in a tribal us-against-them competition that pits the “real America” against those who would destroy it.

    It’s important to note that Democrats have shown themselves to be susceptible to the effects of polarization and anger as well. During the antagonistic Democratic primary, lies proliferated within the party about Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and their supporters. Many Democrats fell for those lies for the same reason people fall for all blue lies: because they helped their cause, providing ammunition for their battle against the other side.

    Who tells the story matters. Study after study suggests that people are much more likely to be convinced of a fact when it “originates from ideologically sympathetic sources,” as the paper says—and it helps a lot if those sources look and sound like them.

    #post-truth #mensonge #psychologie

  • New Footage Michael Brown on the Day He Was Killed Shows How Easy It Is for Cops to Paint Victims as ’Bad Guys’ | Alternet
    http://www.alternet.org/human-rights/new-footage-michael-brown-day-he-was-killed-shows-how-easy-it-cops-paint-v

    Last weekend, a new development emerged in the story of the 2014 killing of unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, whose death sparked unrest across the nation. Previously unreleased footage of Brown inside the convenience store that the police claimed he had robbed before he was confronted by Darren Wilson, the former officer, contradicts the story the police department pushed about Brown’s actions that day.

    The original narrative that emerged from many eyewitnesses in the immediate aftermath of Brown’s death, which was later contradicted by others, was that Brown, who was slated to attend college in a few weeks, put up his hands and then Wilson blew holes through him anyway. But Ferguson law enforcement officials quickly pushed back with the “Mike Brown was no angel” narrative, releasing a video that appears to show Mike Brown robbing a local convenient store before Wilson stops him. This shows Brown snatching what appears to be store property and exiting the store; however, the newly released video clearly shows an earlier exchange, not a robbery.

    These people control the narrative, and they use that power to demonize victims of police force in a constant effort to deflect negative attention away from themselves. Six Baltimore police officers were charged for their involvement in Freddie Gray’s spinal cord injury death in 2015, and therefore we knew everything about Freddie Gray’s criminal record before the first officer even took the stand. As if a few petty arrests in a man’s past justify the police chasing him down with no signs of criminal wrongdoing and arresting him. Many members of the public quickly accepted that narrative of “Freddie the Bad Guy” over the fact that he should not have been in the back of the police van in the first place. He shouldn’t have been bothered, and he shouldn’t be dead now.

    #ferguson #fake_news #post-truth #police #racisme

  • Why Leading Beatnik Poet Allen Ginsberg Was a Crusader for Legalizing LSD | Alternet
    http://www.alternet.org/books/why-leading-beatnik-poet-allen-ginsberg-was-crusader-legalizing-lsd

    Quand Alan Ginsberg va devant le Sénat pour défendre le LSD

    Ginsberg finally told of an LSD experience at Big Sur last fall. It was his first in several years, he said, and was shortly before the Berkeley Vietnam demonstrations. “We were all confused . . . many angry marchers blamed the President for the situation we were in. I did, too. The day I took LSD was the same day that President Johnson went into the operating room for his gall bladder illness. As I walked through the forest wondering what my feelings toward him were . . . the awesome place I was in impressed me with its old tree and ocean cliff majesty. Many tiny jeweled violet flowers along the path of a living brook that looked like Blake’s Illustration of a canal in grassy Eden: huge Pacific watery shore. I saw a friend dancing long haired before giant green waves, under cliffs of titanic nature that Wordsworth described in his poetry, and a great yellow sun veiled with mist hanging over the planet’s ocean horizon. Armies at war on the other side of the planet . . . and the President in the valley of the shadow—himself experiences what fear or grief? I realized that more vile words from me would send out negative vibrations into the atmosphere—more hatred against his poor flesh and soul on trial—so I knelt on the sand surrounded by masses of green kelp washed up by a storm, and prayed for President Johnson’s tranquil health.”

    #psychédéliques #santé_publique

  • The Rehabilitation of George W. #Bush, War Criminal | Alternet
    http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/rehabilitation-george-w-bush

    So, he’s back. George W. Bush leaves his Dallas attic and his paintbrushes to visit the television studios. He has a book to flog—Portraits of Courage: A Commander in Chief’s Tribute to America’s Warriors.

    #tragi_comédie #criminel #guerre

  • The Christian Right’s Origins of Fake News and ’Alternative Facts’ | Alternet
    http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/christian-rights-origins-fake-news-and-alternative-facts

    As we’ve moved from an election dominated by fake news to a new Trump administration run on the principle of “alternative facts,” it’s worth taking some time to ponder what seems to be contemporary conservative credulity. We should certainly be reminded of the term “truthiness” that Stephen Colbert invented in October 2005 to capture some of the pronouncements of the George W. Bush administration. As he explained then, truthiness was the truth that “comes from the gut,” not from actual facts—“the truth we want to exist,” that feels right.

    And the way fake news tends to get better reception among conservatives than liberals, even by a two-to-one margin, has also been recognized. (When one fake news creator was interviewed, he explained, “We’ve tried to do similar things to liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You’ll get debunked within the first two comments, and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out.”)

    To see this connection, it bears recalling what it meant to be a Christian “fundamentalist” in the early 20th century. Christian fundamentalism was characterized in particular by its rejection of two theologically disturbing bodies of knowledge that emerged from the 19th century: the theory of evolution, and the historical-critical method of Bible scholarship. While mainstream Protestant and Catholic churches have had considerable success in coming to terms with these expert knowledge consensuses, Christian fundamentalism is defined primarily by its rejection of them.

    The historical-critical method of Bible scholarship meanwhile threatened the idea of scripture as the inerrant, uniform word of God. [...]Fundamentalist Christians rejected these accounts. But more importantly, fundamentalists critiqued the methods, assumptions, and institutions of the expert elites. Fundamentalists questioned the biologists’ and Bible scholars’ suspension of the question of God’s supernatural intervention.

    This alternative knowledge—the forerunner of today’s alternative facts— took the form of creationism and an alternative Bible scholarship demonstrating the Bible’s inerrancy and traditional authorship.

    This alternative educational and media ecosystem of knowledge was galvanized and mobilized when the Christian Right emerged in the late 1970s to influence the Republican Party. There were two long-term consequences for our fake news world. First, theologically and politically conservative Christians learned to distrust the proclamations of the supposedly neutral media establishment, just as they had grown to suspect the methods and conclusions of elite experts like scientists or historians. And second, they learned to seek the truth from alternative sources—whether a church sermon, Christian media (newspapers, books, radio or television shows), or a classroom in a Christian college.

    In the following years, the areas of rejected expert knowledge has grown to include climate change, the efficacy of abstinence-only sex education, and even the supposed link between vaccinations and autism. One could make the argument that even issues that don’t appear to have any religious resonance at all—such as the efficacy of supply-side economic policies, or the idea that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction and ties to Al Qaeda—are likewise successful partly because of this conservative cognitive training in the rejection of mainstream media and the cultivation of other sources of information, like Fox News at first, but also now websites like Breitbart, 4chan, Infowars, and others.

    The goal of “fake news” and “alternative facts” goes beyond providing different data. Their purpose is actually to destroy the notion that there could be impartial news and objective facts. Maria Bustillos calls this endgame “dismediation,” “a form of propaganda that seeks to undermine the medium by which it travels.”

  • Distorted Science: Does CBD Change to THC in the Stomach, and Who Benefits By Claiming It Does? | Alternet
    http://www.alternet.org/drugs/gut-check-does-cbd-change-thc-stomach

    In 2016, a new journal Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research published a paper suggesting that non-psychoactive cannabidiol (CBD) converts to psychoactive tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in the stomach. The controversial paper was coauthored by several scientists employed by Zynerba Pharmaceuticals in Devin, Pennsylvania. It was not the first time that researchers addressed this issue.

    But the authors may have succeeded in advancing the agenda of Zynerba Pharmaceuticals, the company that funded their research. Zynerba disclosed in a press release (April 12, 2016) that it was developing a transdermal delivery system that “avoids the gastrointestinal tract and potential stomach acid degradation of CBD into THC (associated with psychoactive effects).” In other words, Zynerba has a financial interest in depicting oral CBD, which is well tolerated in clinical research, as potentially harmful.

    #recherche_médicale #pharmacie #conflit_interêt

  • Law Enforcement Using Facebook and Apple to Data-Mine Accounts of Trump Protest Arrestees | Alternet
    http://www.alternet.org/activism/law-enforcement-using-facebook-and-apple-data-mine-accounts-trump-protest-

    Law enforcement is compelling Apple and Facebook to hand over the personal information of users who were mass arrested at protests against the inauguration of Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., AlterNet has confirmed. The tech giants appear to be complying with the data-mining requests, amid mounting concerns over the heavy-handed crackdown against the more than 200 people detained on January 20, among them journalists, legal observers and medics.

    “This is part of an increasing trend of law enforcement attempting to turn the internet, instead of technology for freedom, into technology for control,” Evan Greer, the campaign director for Fight for the Future, told AlterNet. “This trend started long before Trump and seems to be escalating and growing in scale now."

    Lacambra said the investigation raises disturbing questions. “Why is the Department of Justice trying to intrude into the digital lives of people exercising their rights to protest?” she asked. “Is this to intimidate, silence or threaten people for exercising their constitutional rights? When you arrest 230 people, some of whom are medics and legal observers, and try to systematically get to the content of their digital life, that is troubling."

    In recent weeks, Republican lawmakers across the country have introduced state-level bills aimed at criminalizing protests. One piece of proposed legislation in Washington state calls for certain acts of civil disobedience to be classified as “economic terrorism.” North Dakota lawmakers introduced a bill that would make it lawful for motorists to hit and kill protesters staging acts of civil disobedience obstructing highways, as long as the cause is “negligence.” The legislation is clearly aimed at the Black Lives Matter movement, which has staged acts of civil disobedience across the country.

    "Tech companies are building business models based on collecting large amounts of personal information and then failing to protect that information from the government and others who attempt to access it,” said Greer, who attended the January 20 protests in Washington, D.C. “People should be paying close attention and be concerned.”

    Que peut signifier le besoin de disposer d’accès aux informations déposées sur les médias sociaux ou par mail ? On va demander le compte Facebook pour entrer aux État-Unis. Les juges décident « en masse » de fouiller les comptes internet d’activistes (eh oui, il y a bien demande d’un juge...car la collaboration justice/police est aussi une réalité). Espèrent-ils trouver quelque chose ? Je ne crois pas. Mais que cette intimidation soient une manière de montrer qu’on peut entrer dans votre vie privée est une menace. C’est comme si on demandait de se mettre tout nu pour un interrogatoire... la nudité numérique.

    Outre que cela vise à mettre mal la personne concernée, cela impacte aussi le réseau des amis... c’était la logique de la police de l’URSS des années 60 contre le Samizdat : plus que l’auteur (irrécupérable), ce sont ses contact qui sont la réelle cible.

    #surveillance #médias_sociaux #vie_privée

  • 11 Disturbing Parallels Between Hate Politics in India and the United States | Alternet
    http://www.alternet.org/world/11-disturbing-parallels-between-hate-politics-india-and-united-states?

    Both situations, in a sense, happened due to the easy and available play of the politically ambiguous, where even sharp critics of Modi and Trump came across as confusing and rattled. Both leaders emerged in reaction to decades of a certain kind of politics, and while none in programmatic vision or policy really signal change, strongmen appeared to give large numbers of people succor.

    The real problem with this paradigm, however, is and was the hate politics that the rise of Modi and Trump effectively mean. I argued then, as I feel more certain now, that it was not just the development plank that won Modi his clinching victory with a bare 31 percent of the vote in May 2014, but the fact that here was a man who had “successfully overseen the pogrom of 2002” that won him chunks of the vote.

    #Inde #Trump #Modi

  • Trump Adviser Stephen Miller Championed Big Tobacco’s Alarming Lies | Alternet
    http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/stephen-miller-tobacco-truther-lies

    Two op-eds address the health effects of smoking tobacco and the “unrelenting health fascists” who regulate where one can smoke. In one piece that drastically minimizes the health risks of smoking, Miller, then a self-identified smoker, advances ideas that are patently false. Claiming “it is safer for college kids to smoke than to drive,” he overlooks a few key facts: Today, smoking kills 480,000 people in the United States each year, “more than AIDS, alcohol, car accidents, illegal drugs, murders and suicides combined.” While some college smokers may be able to quit long-term, most regular smokers who try to quit are not successful. In contrast, car crashes killed about 31,000 people in the U.S. in 2007, the year Miller wrote his opinion piece.

    Miller relies on several articles published by the "renowned Cato Institute,” a libertarian think tank funded by corporations and wealthy conservatives. And guess what? The Cato Institute has received funding from major tobacco companies RJ Reynolds and Philip Morris. Miller cites a Cato article that even the conservative American Council on Science and Health called “unscientific and inflammatory.”

    #tabac #post-truth