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“I Know Of No One Who Predicted This”: Russian Oil Production Hits Record As Saudi Gambit Fails

In late October, we noted that for the second time this year, Russia overtook Saudi Arabia as the biggest exporter of crude to China. Russia also took the top spot in May, marking the first time in history that Moscow beat out Riyadh when it comes to crude exports to Beijing. “Moscow is wrestling with crippling Western economic sanctions and building closer ties with …

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DANIEL DENVIR – Bernie Sanders vs. the world: How the political & media elite are trying to set him up to fail

David Muir, setting up the first in an endless stream of questions about terrorism in Saturday evening’s Democratic primary debate, of which he was moderator, reminded Americans that it was “just six days before Christmas, as we all know in this country. It’s typically a joyful time, as it is this year, as well. But it’s also an anxious time.”  The …

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‘US drug industry, doctors contribute to overdose deaths’

“Many doctors overprescribe painkillers because they have relationships with pharmaceutical companies and they get pay offs,” said James Petras, a professor emeritus of sociology atBinghamton University in Binghamton, New York, and adjunct professor at Saint Mary’s Universityin Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada. The US pharmaceutical and health industry as well as economic distress are largely responsible for the surge in drug overdose deaths across the country, an …

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Sayer J – Research Reveals Plants Can Think, Choose & Remember

Modern science is only beginning to catch up to the wisdom of the ancients: plants possess sentience and a rudimentary form of intelligence.  Plants are far more intelligent and capable than we given them credit. In fact, provocative research from 2010 published in Plant Signaling & Behavior proposes that since they cannot escape environmental stresses in the manner of animals, they have …

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Andrew Cockburn – A Special Relationship

One morning early in 1988, Ed McWilliams, a foreign-service officer posted to the American Embassy in Kabul, heard the thump of a massive explosion from somewhere on the other side of the city. It was more than eight years after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and the embassy was a tiny enclave with only a handful of diplomats. McWilliams, a …

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Robert Reich – Of Rotten Apples and Rotten Systems

Martin Shkreli, the former hedge-fund manager turned pharmaceutical CEO who was arrested last week, has been described as a sociopath and worse. In reality, he’s a brasher and larger version of what others in finance and corporate suites do all the time. Federal prosecutors are charging him with conning wealthy investors. Lying to investors is illegal, of course, but it’s …

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PAUL STREET – An Idiot’s Guide to Why They Hate Us

In its endless, candidate-obsessed coverage and discussion of the already seemingly interminable U.S. presidential horse race (the actual presidential election is still more than ten months away), U.S. corporate media fact-checkers, reporters, and commentators have had a field day finding inaccuracies, offensiveness, and absurdities in the statements of the current Republican pack-leader Donald Trump. It’s not hard to do. “The …

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Vanessa Beeley – Boko Haram: Another Al Qaeda Terrorist Entity Used to Justify US Military Intervention in Nigeria

Reason with this: Who is carrying out senseless killings in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon? They are the same people carrying out attacks here, and we know them. We cannot be cowed” – Sheikh Ebrahim Zakzaky According to the Nigerian Government forces, a traffic infringement justifies the massacre of over 1000 Muslims who were performing the religious ceremony of …

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Kali Holloway – The Shocking, Unacceptable Levels of Hunger and Homelessness in American Cities

The U.S. Conference of Mayors today released its 2015 Hunger and Homelessness Survey, which gathered information on 22 cities around the country between Sept. 1, 2014, and Aug. 31, 2015. The cities reported on are led by mayors who serve on the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ Task Force on Hunger and Homelessness. A number of important findings emerged from the …

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Ben White – The University Where Israeli Soldiers Train on Campus and Shoot Palestinian Protesters

There can’t be many universities around the world where an occupying army has built a firing range on campus. But that is the reality for Palestine Technical University in the West Bank. Since October, the Tulkarm campus has been under repeated attack by Israeli forces, with student demonstrations suppressed by rubber-coated metal bullets, tear gas – and even live ammunition. …