USA update

[the_future_modernes]

Vermont House passes Single Payer!!! Woootttttt!!!! Vt. House passes single-payer health care bill ( Read more... )

Eyewitness at the Triangle ( Read more... )

 

On a related theme, daily kos user dsteffen has an ongoing series called How regulation came to be. I keep hearing a whole lot of people talking utter nonsense about how regulations are bad for business because how dare the consumer be kept safe at the expense of the almighty dollar, and the free market will keep us safe, blah blah blah. Such people need to be hit over the head with historical cluebats. 

And you know what? Mr. Dsteffens has a GREAT selection: ( Read more... )

Black Kos' Week in Review features black scientists and artists. 


Makeshift Magazine's newest issue is now out 


General Electric, btw, paid no taxes this year None. Zip. nada. Despite make a grand worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, of which $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States. But they did get a tax credit! Guess how much? 


Have some news of radical childcare collectives in an article originally published in Make/shift mag ( Read more... )

 

This is from the rather pro-business and low taxes Wall Street Journal. Proceed with that in mind:Insolvency Looms as States Drain U.S. Disability Fund ( Read more... )

 

Unsurprisingly :Disability Claims in Puerto Rico Get New Scrutiny I want to see more about this situation, will keep you posted as to developments. 





In more happy-making news:Workers With Epilepsy, Diabetes Gain Under Obama Disability Rule ( Read more... )

 

U.S. Hispanic population tops 50 million ( Read more... )

Not all victims of Catholic priest pedophilia are equal: the followup...

[the_future_modernes]

Remember this? The 'Pedophile's Paradise'

Alaska Natives are accusing the Catholic Church of using their remote villages as a “dumping ground” for child-molesting priests—and blaming the president of Seattle University for letting it happen. ... The priests came to occupy the role of shamans by a weird confluence of history and microbiology.

In the early 1900s, a Spanish-influenza epidemic ripped through Northwest Alaska, sometimes killing entire villages. They called it "the Big Sickness" or "the Big Death." Winton Weyapuk was a child in Wales, Alaska, and was orphaned by the epidemic. In an interview from 1997, he recalled that the flu came on a dog sled. The mailman, on his monthly delivery, brought the corpse of a man who'd died on the way to Wales. Curious villagers crowded around the corpse. "The men, women, and children who came to see this body went home, and many got sick and most of them died before the next morning."

Weyapuk's father died that first night, so the family moved into an uncle's house. Most everyone in the uncle's house died, and Weyapuk and his brother Dwight lived in a one-room sod house with four corpses until someone found them. He recalls seeing white men building tripods over the sod houses, using block and tackle to pull frozen bodies up through the skylights, then blasting holes in the frozen ground with dynamite for mass graves. Family sled dogs, neglected and starving, roamed the streets and fought over human remains. The shamans, normally counted on as healers, were helpless.

The population was decimated, and the social structure had to be created from nothing: Another Wales resident remembers that, in the aftermath, so many families had been destroyed that an official from Nome came to the village with a stack of notarized wedding licenses. He lined up all the surviving men, all the surviving women, and all the surviving children, and built families at random. Catholic missionaries made major inroads into these communities in the aftermath of the Big Sickness. (Along with the Baptists and Orthodox churches. The major churches had a summit in Sitka years prior and divided up their geographical spheres of influence.) The missionaries brought flour and coffee, built orphanages and schools. "They looked at the shamans as evil and of the devil," Boudreau says. A new social order was created. In the villages of Northwest Alaska, the Jesuits stepped into a tailor-made power vacuum.MORE

And yes, it is REALLY just as disturbing as you think it is...


Well. This is the result: Huge payout over US priests sex-scandals

Decision to pay $166 million in damages is the largest ever by a Catholic religious order such as the Jesuits.... The Pacific Northwest chapter of the Roman Catholic Church's Jesuit order has agreed to pay $166 million to settle more than 500 child sexual abuse claims against priests in five states, attorneys have said. The decision on Friday compels a payout by the Society of Jesus in the Oregon Province, and is part of an agreement to resolve its two-year-old bankruptcy case. Lawyers for the victims said it is also the largest ever payout by a Catholic religious order such as the Jesuits. The Oregon Province is the Northwest chapter of the Rome-based Jesuit order and covers Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Idaho and Montana. The victims, most of them Native Americans from remote Alaska Native villages or Indian reservations in the Pacific Northwest, were sexually or psychologically abused as children by Jesuit missionaries in those states in the 1940s through the 1990s, the plaintiffs' attorneys said. ... "No amount of money can bring back a lost childhood, a destroyed culture or a shattered faith," Blaine Tamaki, a lawyer, who represents about 90 victims in the settlement, said in a statement. MORE

HUGE Protests across the UK

[the_future_modernes]

Via: ontd_political
Protesters Occupy Fortnum and Mason Posh UK store

UK Uncut secret occupation revealed as Fortnum & Mason 3.30pm – UK Uncut occupy Fortnum & Mason and aim to stay for as long as possible

UK Uncut groups from across the country transofrmed banks and shops on Oxford Street into hospitals, libraries and theatres with Sam West, Josie Long and Mark Thomas performing.

UK Uncut, the anti-cuts direct action group, are currently occupying Fortnum & Mason over the tax dodge of over 40 million by its owners Whittington Investments which have a 54% stake in Associated British Foods who produce Ryvita, Kingsmill and others and own Primark. ABF have dodged over £40 million in tax. Over 500 activists congregated on Oxford Circus from the march and from Oxford Street where they had been transforming tax dodging retailers such as Vodafone, Boots and BHS where actors Sam and Timothy West performed and Soho Square where comedians Josie Long and Mark Thomas performed stand up comedy gigs. The activists left Oxford Circus at 3:30 reaching Fortnum & Mason by 4 PM. They are vowing to stay for as long as possible in the shop where there will be music, speeches and games. MORE

Yesterday the Guardian profiled the different protester groups that planned to take part: Anti-Cut March, The Protesters

( Read more... )

Belfast March in Solidarity with The March for the Alternative

( Read more... )

Belfast marks 'March for Alternative'

Workers March in Spending Cuts Backlash

The Londonists Live Blog

The Socialist Worker Live Blog

In pictures: Spending Cuts March Through London

Penny Red: Why I am marching today

( Read more... )

Penny Red's Twitter

Coaches travelled in from Wales to join the March

Johann Hari This budget was about redistribution of wealth - from you, to the rich

( Read more... )

Any links I missed? Anyone went and have tales to share? Let me know!!!