Dr. Oz under fire for endorsing alternative views about health

Ethan A. Huff, NaturalNews.com  June 24, 2010

(NaturalNews) Dr. Oz, from the popular The Dr. Oz Show, is drawing attention from some in the mainstream media and medical establishment who are critical of his acceptance of certain alternative points of view pertaining to health. According to them, Dr. Oz is lending credence to ideas that are "unsupported by science".

More than three-and-a-half million people tune in to Dr. Oz's daily television show, and his columns are published in magazines like Esquire and Time. He has a large following that appreciate the time he gives to differing points of view about health, and the fact that he is actually a doctor himself.

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Why the BP Disaster Threatens to Expose Fox News' Insanity to Its Right-Wing Audience

By Eric Boehlert, Media Matters for America
Posted on June 24, 2010, Printed on June 24, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/147315/

Eight-two percent.

That's the number you need to keep in mind as you listen to the right-wing caterwauling about how poor, helpless BP has been tormented and demonized by the bullying, Constitution-hating Obama White House.

Eight-two percent.

According to the latest CNN poll, a huge, huge, huge majority of Americans supports the $20 billion escrow fund that BP agreed to create in order to help pay for the Gulf of Mexico cleanup.

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Ravitch Warns Obama on Education Policy: 'Change Course Before it is Too Late"

by Valerie Strauss

Education historian Diane Ravitch [1] has been talking with thousands of people as she crisscrosses the country talking about education reform and her New York Times best-selling book, "The Death and Life of the Great American School System [2]."

I have written a lot about Ravitch recently because I think she occupies a unique place in the world of education. For years, she was part of the conservative wing of the education world, serving as an assistant secretary in the administration of President George H.W. Bush, and becoming a vocal backer of the second President Bush's No Child Left Behind initiative.

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The Collapsing Western Way of Life

By John Kozy

Global Research, June 18, 2010

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=1978

The Age of Enlightenment was born sometime around the beginning of the eighteenth century. A mere three-quarters of a century later, industrialization ushered in the Age of Endarkenment, and human life has grown more and more perilous ever since. The Golden Age of capitalism cannot be recreated merely by applying the right mixture of spending, subsidies, re-regulation, and international agreements. Because the economic advantages of industrialization rely on overproduction and profit, balanced trade is impossible if the advantage is to be preserved; it entails no economic profit. Industrialism is a Hegelian synthesis which embodies the forces for its own destruction. The greatest threat to the Western Way of Life is the Western Way of Life itself.

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Whistleblowing website says it is still working to prepare the film of the bombing of the Afghan village of Garani in May 2009

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jun/16/wikileaks-us-military-afghanistan-garani

by Chris McGreal

The whistleblowing website WikiLeaks [1] says it plans to release a secret military video of one of the deadliest US air strikes in Afghanistan in which scores of children are believed to have been killed.

Wikileaks has said it plans to release a video of a US air strike in Afghanistan which allegedly killed many children.

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Coming to Terms With Equality and Diversity: America's Ongoing Culture Wars

Wednesday 16 June 2010

http://www.truth-out.org/coming-terms-with-equality-and-diversity-americas-ongoing-culture-wars60482

by: Cary Fraser, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

The recent decision by the Texas School Board of Education to revise the curriculum in the state to reflect a more "conservative" approach to social studies and history has highlighted the ongoing debate about the role of education in American society and culture. The explicit desire by the conservative majority on the Texas School Board to impose an ideological orientation in elementary and secondary education - including a shift of focus away from the civil rights movement and slavery, an emphasis upon ensuring that students be taught that the idea of the separation of church and state is not in the Constitution and promotion of the need to safeguard American sovereignty from threats posed by organizations such as the United Nations - is a barometer of the increasing uncertainty that has overtaken the conservative factions in American society.

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MEMORIES AND MISERY IN CNN LAND WHILE HOMEOWNERS SEEK MORTGAGE JUSTICE AND FORECLOSURES MOUNT

By Danny Schechter
Author of The Crime of Our Time

Atlanta: Somehow, I can’t escape CNN. Last Saturday I joined Ted Turner, Wolf Blitzer and more than 300 current and former CNN employees at a celebration of the network’s 30th anniversary at the National Press Club in Washington. I was there as one of the  “CNN Originals,” the many staffers who helped originate what was mocked as the Chicken Noodle Network in Atlanta back in June l980.

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IN WAR AS IN POLITICS AND FINANCE, THE REAL “ACTION” IS NOW COVERT, HIDDEN FROM THE PUBLIC -- DECEPTIVE AND DISHONEST

By Danny Schechter
Author of The Crime Of Our Time

Defending America covertly has become an ongoing theme for one more TV series. Salute the flag and praise NBC (GE) for its latest effort to persuade the population to accept the kind of secret operations that now drive the war in Afghanistan.  Their latest show is called “Covert Affairs” and airs on the patriotically named USA Network.

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From the Ground: BP Censoring Media, Destroying Evidence

Orange Beach, Alabama -- While President Obama insists that the federal government is firmly in control of the response to BP's spill in the Gulf, people in coastal communities where I visited last week in Louisiana and Alabama know an inconvenient truth: BP -- not our president -- controls the response. In fact, people on the ground say things are out of control in the gulf.

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A ‘Prophecy’ Worth Watching

Posted on Jun 13, 2010

By Chris Hedges

Orson Welles and John Houseman were preparing to mount a production in June 1937 in New York City called “The Cradle Will Rock,” a musical written by Marc Blitzstein and set in “Steeltown USA.” The musical followed the efforts of a worker, Larry Foreman, as he attempted to unionize steelworkers. His nemesis was the heartless industrialist Mister Mister, who owned the steel mill and controlled the press, the church, local civic groups, politicians, the arts and the local university, where, as a trustee, Mister Mister made sure the pliant college president fired professors who did not laud the manly arts of war and capitalism.

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Woman Sees Her Home Confiscated Over a Water Bill

The Huffington Post Investigative Fund / ByFred Schulte and Ben Protess and Lagan Sebert

Vicki Valentine lost the two-story brick row home after the city sold her debt to investors through a contentious and byzantine legal process called a "tax sale."

One raw day in early February, Vicki Valentine stood by helplessly as real estate investors snatched her West Baltimore home over what began with an unpaid city water bill of $362.

As snow threatened to fall, she watched a work crew hired by the new owners punch out the lock on her front door. A sheriff’s deputy was on the scene while Valentine and her teenage son piled whatever they could into a borrowed car.

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Like Glenn Beck, Ayn Rand Peddled Garbage As Truth -- Why Did America Buy It?

Rand was mediocre. But she had a preternatural ability to translate her sense of self into reality.

She described the show as a "triumph of concept and casting." Ayn said that while Angels was uniquely American, it was also the exception to American television in that it was the only show to capture true "romanticism"—it intentionally depicted the world not as it was, but as it should be. Aaron Spelling was probably the only other person to see Angels that way, although he referred to it as "comfort television."

So taken was Rand with Fawcett that she hoped the actress (or if not her, Raquel Welch) would play the part of Dagny Taggart in a TV version of Atlas Shrugged on NBC. Unfortunately, network head Fred Silverman killed the project in 1978. "I'll always think of 'Dagny Taggart' as the best role I was supposed to play but never did," Fawcett said.

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Are Fox Ratings Dropping As Tea Party Election Fails Stack Up?

The Nation / By Leslie Savan

The Fox message appears to have been ringing less true to the general public just as the Tea Party has begun to fail at the ballot box.

Could it be that the nation’s infatuation with Fox News is slowly, slowly coming to an end? Looking at long-term cable ratings, you might surmise that on its way to the Tea Party, Fox has indeed jumped a shark or two.

Nothing is simple when it comes to stats or cable news, but consider: Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Greta Van Susteren have each hit their lowest point in a year or more with the key 25- to 54-year-old demo, according to the latest Nielsens. This 12- to 16-month measurement is more detailed than a “year to year” comparison, which can make a show look strong or weak depending on what particular month you start from. But as a CNN press release happily notes: “May represents The O’Reilly Factor’s worst performance since January 2009, Hannity’s lowest delivery to date since taking over the time period in January2009, and [Van Susteren’s] On the Record’s lowest since May 2009. Fox Report with Shep Smith had its lowest demo delivery since December 2008.”

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The Gaza Blockade Is Illegal and the Flotilla Attack Was an Illegal Act of War

AlterNet / By Joshua Holland

Because the blockade of Gaza itself violates international law, Israel committed an illegal act of war attacking the convoy, regardless of who attacked whom first.

June 5, 2010  |  

 

 

 

 

 

 

     

Israeli officials claimed that the IDF commandos who killed and wounded dozens of activists on a humanitarian aid convoy bound for Gaza this week faced a potentially lethal attack, and opened fire in self-defense. Eyewitnesses on board tell a different story, saying the special forces troops fired on the ships before boarding, weren't in fact attacked and were unrestrained in their hostility. The question of who attacked whom is irrelevant, however, according to experts in international law. The blockade itself is illegal, and therefore Israel had no right to board those ships in the first place. It renders the argument over culpability moot. Israel committed an illegal act of war attacking the convoy, regardless of who tried to draw "first blood."

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If There Was Ever a Moment to Seize Will Obama Stand Up to Big Energy in Deeds as Well as Words?

Published on Sunday, June 6, 2010 by TomDispatch.com

by Bill McKibben

Here's the president on March 31st, announcing his plan to lift a longstanding moratorium on offshore drilling: "Given our energy needs, in order to sustain economic growth and produce jobs, and keep our businesses competitive, we are going to need to harness traditional sources of fuel even as we ramp up production of new sources of renewable, homegrown energy."

Here he is on May 26th, as political pressure starts to really build over the hole in the bottom of the sea that BP somehow seems unable to plug: "We're not going to be able to sustain this kind of fossil fuel use. The planet can't sustain it." Still, he added quickly, there's no need for any dramatics: "We're not going to transition out of oil next year or 10 years from now."

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Fury over raid isolates Israel

Relations between Jewish state and longtime ally Turkey may never recover after foolish flotilla attack

By ERIC MARGOLIS, QMI Agency

Last Updated: June 6, 2010 2:00am

ISTANBUL — Turkey is seething with fury at its closest allies — Israel and the United States — after Israel’s killing of at least nine peace activists, four of them Turks, on a Turkish-flagged vessel seeking to break Israel’s years-long blockade of Gaza.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel of a “massacre,” warning, “Israel risks losing its closest ally in the Mideast if it does not change its mentality.” By “mentality,” Erdogan meant Israel’s right-wing Likud coalition.

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Robert Fisk: The truth behind the Israeli propaganda

Saturday, 5 June 2010

I have, of course, been outraged at armed men boarding ships in international waters, killing passengers on board who attempt to resist and then forcing their ship to the hijackers' home port. I am, of course, talking about the Somali pirates who are preying on Western ships in the Indian Ocean. How dare those terrorists dare to touch our unarmed vessels on the high seas? And how right we are to have our warships there to prevent such terrorist acts.

But whoops! At least the Israelis have not demanded ransom. They just want to get journalists to win the propaganda war for them. Scarcely had the week begun when Israel's warrior "commandos" stormed a Turkish boat bringing aid to Gaza and shot nine of the passengers dead. Yet by week's end, the protesters had become "armed peace activists", vicious anti-Semites "professing pacifism, seething with hate, pounding away at another human being with a metal pole". I liked the last bit. The fact that the person being beaten was apparently shooting another human being with a rifle didn't quite get into this weird version of reality.

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Real People v. Corporate “People”: The Fight Is On

The Supreme Court says corporations can spend as much money as they want on political advertising. Millions of Americans say they've had it.

by Doug Pibe

l

In 2009, Riki Ott was on the road for 252 days educating people about the dangers of “corporate personhood.” That’s the legal doctrine that says corporations have constitutional rights, just like human beings. She mostly spoke in academic settings, and there was some interest in the idea, says Ott, but not much.

All that changed on January 21, 2010, when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Now interest has skyrocketed, and Ott finds people eager to volunteer, to organize, to meet, to do anything to reverse the Court’s decision.

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Liberals and Progressives Never Miss an Opportunity to Miss an Opportunity... Are We Ready to Change Directions?

Tikkun / By Michael Lerner

Are we ready to change directions on the economy, the environment, democratizing politics, corporate social responsibility and Middle East peace?

June 5, 2010  |  

 

 

 

 

 

 

      Progressives have had four enormous opportunities in the past two years to change the fundamentals of American society and our relationship to the world. We’ve already blown the first and are missing the second, third, and fourth.

The first, of course, was the economic meltdown.

What a moment that could have been for progressives in Congress or the White House to challenge the ideology of “leave it to the marketplace” or “leave it to the states” to work things out. Imagine if President Obama had told Wall Street and the Republicans, “OK, let’s test your theories right now -- let’s just let the marketplace work its wonders as the banks fail.” And had they pleaded for relief, it should have been given on the condition that they enthusiastically and simultaneously back and help implement a single-payer health care plan; the creation of a national bank to fund no-interest loans to people on the verge of losing their homes from deceptive mortgage loan offers and to fund socially useful and environmentally sound new projects to offset unemployment; the funding of a massive new WPA-style full employment program to encourage small businesses and to make sure that everyone who wants to work can use their talents in ways that are societally useful; and the creation of a whole new set of laws restricting banking and investment company operations to make them respond to the needs of the society and not just to the profit motivations of their investors. Well, that chance was blown.

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Why Celebrity Ads Make You Want to Buy Stuff

Miller-McCune.com / By Tom Jacobs

For some of us, the increasingly popular practice of celebrity product endorsements is puzzling. What difference does it make if Brad Pitt recommends a particular pen, or Sally Field a certain cereal? Unless the famous spokesperson has a specific area of expertise — say, Tiger Woods endorsing a set of golf clubs — why would anyone care?

A new study suggests the answer involves superstar-specific happy memories stored in our cerebral cortex. Using brain-scan technology, researchers found those positive emotions get transferred from the personality to the product, producing a more positive impression of the item in question and, presumably, a greater probability of purchasing it.

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