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Alex Kotch – Inside Charles Koch’s Plot to Hijack Universities Across America and Spread His Radical ‘Free-Market’ Propaganda

The public is starting to catch up with the reality that Charles Koch is not only a major spender on building his own ideological institutions. Over the past decade, Koch has funded colleges and universities to bend them in his direction, often funding “free-market” academic centers. Mostly through his personal foundation, Koch gave $108 million [3] to 366 colleges and universities from 2005 …

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MISSY FLUEGGE – CDC Halts Use Of Nasal Spray Flu Vaccine

Just days ago, an advisory committee of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) voted against using the popular FluMist nasal spray vaccine for the upcoming flu season campaign due to its extreme ineffectiveness. The CDC’s vaccine task force, known as the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) announced that the live attenuated vaccine was only three percent …

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Robert Parry – Trading Places: Neocons and Cockroaches

If the human species extinguishes itself in a flash of thermonuclear craziness and the surviving cockroaches later develop the intellect to assess why humans committed this mass suicide, the cockroach historians may conclude that it was our failure to hold the neoconservatives accountable in the first two decades of the Twenty-first Century that led to our demise. After the disastrous …

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Sarah Lazare & Adam Johnson – The NY State Senate Just Passed a Bill That Reads Like a Parody of Reactionary Terror Laws

It has been two weeks since 49 people were murdered at the Orlando LGBTQ Pulse club’s Latin night, and lawmakers at the state and federal level have already seized on public fear of “terrorists” to advance a spate [4] of reactionary bills that expand police powers and erode civil rights. Perhaps the most draconian of them all is the proposed New York State Terrorist …

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7 Out of 10 Americans Agree That Economy is Rigged Against Them

A new Marketplace-Edison Research poll published Tuesday found that a full 71 percent of respondents agree that the economy is rigged, affirming the popular rhetoric of the current presidential campaign season. The majority opinion held firm across ethnicity, class, age, and gender differences. A whopping 83 percent of African Americans polled agreed that the economy is rigged, and 80 percent of people …

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First Mammal Goes Extinct Due to Human-Caused Climate Change

The Bramble Cay melomys—a rodent found only on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef—has been declared extinct, according to a new study from researchers at the Queensland’s Department of Environment and Heritage Protection and the University of Queensland. Alarmingly, this could be the first mammal species wiped out due to human-induced climate change. The researchers came to the conclusion after failing to find a single specimen …

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Evelyn Nieves – 10 Things You Should Know About What It’s Really Like to Be Homeless

Ed. note: The San Francisco Chronicle [3] has spearheaded an effort to cover the city’s most intractable humanitarian crisis, homelessness. More than 70 local and national media organizations are participating by examining the issue from all possible angles. As part of this effort, AlterNet has interviewed homeless people in San Francisco to get their take on how and why they have lost their shelter …

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Vijay Prashad – We Owe It to the Victims of the Latest Bombing Tragedy in Turkey to Ask Why These Attacks Happened

Tragedies are tragedies. Ordinary people stand at the Ataturk Airport in Istanbul, Turkey. Guns and bombs shatter their lives in an instant. There can be no justification for such violence. It is dangerously random and wicked. Whatever frustrations produce the assailants, nothing could possibly draw a straight line from those grievances and the misfortunes they produce. Each of these attacks …

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NORMAN POLLACK – Economic Nationalism vs. Globalization: Janus-Faced Monopoly Capital

This week the conflict surfaced of the presumed difference between Trump’s economic nationalism and Clinton’s globalization, the former thought in the liberal media a betrayal of enlightened internationalism (similar to the condemnation of Britain’s exit from the EU) and, on the side of constructive economic statesmanship, a world order of free trade and peaceful harmony. The Great Obfuscation: Both are …

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Gareth Porter – The Syria ‘dissent’ memo and US bureaucratic support for Kerry war strategy

The memorandum by 51 State Department officials calling for US military intervention in Syria last week has been treated in news media coverage as a case of dissent from existing Syria policy by individual officials involved in Syria policy. But the memo has all the earmarks of an initiative that had the blessing of the most senior officials in the department – …