Pharmaceuticals

Right-wingers have adopted the outrage-machine over the last several decades, with the unceasing intention of dominating the media and influencing public opinion with a right-wing bias. The highly-funded choral and print network they have built is impressive and relentless at the same time. Almost all are petty, embellished or fabricated, but many imagined.
The really outrageous – most causing or involving death or injury — seem to be presented perfunctorily, fitted with “corporate lenses,” or consigned to more obscure treatment, even by mainstream media. Here is a small sample:

Beer is loaded with carbohydrates that can make you fat – everyone knows this. We even have a name for the distended stomachs of heavy beer drinkers: “beer bellies.” It’s the sort of beverage that the weight-conscious person or diabetic individual either avoids entirely or enjoys only once in a great while.
But what if a brewsky could fight disease?
Actually, beer has numerous health benefits, but scientists are working to emphasize the healthful properties in the alcoholic beverage that offer those benefits.

Drug Prices are as bloated as post-binge politicians in America. But in China, it seems that drug prices are being slashed where it hurts – in Big Pharma’s collective wallet. A state-led campaign to slash drug prices has targeted some of the biggest drug manufacturers in the world.

Kenneth Frazier, a chief executive of Merck & Co. and chairman of the industry lobbying group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, wants you to know why drug prices have gotten so out of hand.
According to Frazier:

Congress, especially its GOP members, created the Martin monster.
Martin Shkreli is only one of the monsters the GOP Congress has created. Probably our best hope is that one or many, like Shkreli, will overreach in an outrageous greed that our government has condoned for decades. Like errant spoiled children, pharmaceuticals (Pharma) have run roughshod over an obliging Congress and a consuming public since politicians – in effect – gave them license to steal.

The ‘drug war’ has been raging in America for decades, costing taxpayers millions, with no real change in the number of people addicted to drugs. We have, in fact, an entire generation of ‘legal’ drug addicts. But there is hope for meaningful change in this world of drug addicts and incarcerations – in Gloucester, MA.

In this episode I offer a presentation of two of my most popular analyses over the years: Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko and The Box. From hidden references to the shadow government, to mystical notions of the body as a vessel for the soul in cyclical time, this is an episode you don’t want to miss.
Intro theme: “Dream Agent” by Ariel Electron, Holeg Spies and Thierry Gotti on the “Kore Kosmou” album.

The babies all got sick and when the doctor wanted money
He [John Henry] said, “I’ll pay you a quarter at a time
That’s the pay for a steel driver on the line.”
— “The Legend of John Henry’s Hammer“, written by Johnny Cash and first appeared on his 1963 album Blood Sweat and Tears

This week we look at the anti IMF-TPP-WORLD Banks protest in Peru, Kahnawake Mohawks warning to Montreal’s mayor. On the music break, Shadia Mansour and M1 with “Al Kufiyyeh 3arabeyyeh” Our featured interview is with Budour Hassan, a Palestinian anarchist based in Jerusalem, who breaks the current uprising in the occupied territories.

GM and biotech companies responsible for inflated pharmaceutical prices were already taking a beating on the stock market, but after the latest report from Citron Research classifying Valeant Pharmaceuticals Intl Inc as a “pharmaceutical Enron,” the whole sector has come tumbling down like the house of cards it truly is.