“By eliminating insurance premiums and out-of-pocket expenses, and lowering overall healthcare costs, Medicare for All will result in enormous savings for almost all households, all except the richest households who will pay more in taxes.”

Jake Johnson, staff writer

Common Dreams

via ‘Unconscionable’: Senate Republicans Block Emergency Paid Sick Leave Bill as Experts Declare Coronavirus Outbreak a Pandemic

Margaret Kimberley
China Built Two Coronavirus Hospitals in Just Over a Week

The United States has none of the systems or infrastructure that would allow it to accomplish what China has done to fight mass infection.

“While Americans can’t find hand sanitizer at any price, the Chinese government built new hospitals in just one week’s time.”

The only thing more frightening than the COVID-19 virus spreading around the world is the knowledge that this country is woefully unprepared to protect people from it. The response to the epidemic would be funny if it were not so dangerous. First, the austerity regime cut the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) division responsible for fighting infectious disease outbreaks. But condemning Donald Trump’s decision making is the easy part. Analyzing bigger issues regarding health care and the inherent inefficiencies created by capitalism is much harder.

We are constantly told that socialism doesn’t work. But it is socialist China, where the virus began, that has made the most headway in slowing its spread. Conversely, the United States has none of the systems or infrastructure that would allow it to accomplish the same thing. It is capitalism that doesn’t work well when human needs must be met.

There is a constant demand to designate the United States as the best country in the world with the best health care system. In fact health care delivery here is nowhere near being best. The for-profit system certainly rakes in cash for insurance companies and big pharma. But health care outcomes are mediocre at best and other countries do a far better job for far less money. The most basic needs of patients and health care workers are often unmet. Health care workers complain they haven’t received proper training to protect themselves even as they treat COVID-19 patients.

“It is capitalism that doesn’t work well when human needs must be met.”

While Italy, another capitalist nation, has been placed off limits because of the high number of COVID-19 cases, China reports declines in new infections and improvements in treatment protocols. While Americans can’t find hand sanitizer at any price, the Chinese government built new hospitals in just one week’s time.

The profit motive which is constantly touted as the cure all in every situation is instead the cause of every problem. There are other nations which allow private health insurers to operate but they regulate how much money they can make and how they can operate.

The so-called greatest country passes up no opportunity to allow the predators to extract from their victims. The failed state doesn’t have enough of the tests needed to diagnose COVID-19 and those who manage to be tested and treated can be charged up to $3,000 for what ought to be a right and free of charge […]

via Freedom Rider: Corona Virus and the Failed American State

A top performing school ditches digital textbooks, claiming kids learn better the old fashioned way

By Sara Burrows

A prestigious school in Australia is doing away with iPads five years after purchasing them for its students. Kids comprehend and retain more, when they read from “good old-fashioned” paper textbooks, the private school’s principal says.

IPad students using  them to read their e-textbooks also served as windows to worlds of distraction, he claims.

“They had messages popping up and all sorts of other alerts,” Reddam House principal Dave Pitcairn told The Sydney Morning Herald.

“Also, kids being kids, they could jump between screens quite easily, so would look awfully busy and not be busy at all.”

It’s not only principals and parents applauding the move back to hard-copy textbooks – students prefer them too.

As part of a 5-year trial, the school had given 1st through 10th graders iPads, but reverted back to paper textbooks in 11th and 12th grade.

After have experienced both, most high school students preferred paper over electronic textbooks […]

via School Bans iPads, Brings Back Paper Textbooks — Return to Now

Former double agent Sergei has been completely off-grid, while Yulia Skripal was seen in a highly staged video in 2018, filmed in an anonymous but pleasant leafy glade shortly after recovering from her poisoning ordeal; but, apart from that, there have been no statements or updates about them at all.

OffGuardian | March 4, 2020

It’s been two years to the day since disgraced former military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia, were allegedly found on a park bench in Salisbury, near unconscious and apparently very unwell.

A lot has been said about the unanswered questions revolving around the incident. But perhaps the best of way of demonstrating the peculiarity of the alleged situation is to simply relate, in full, the “official version”.

Here it is:

• Sergei Skripal, a Russian military intelligence officer, was found guilty of spying for the UK in 2006, and sentenced to 13 years in prison.
• In 2010 he was released and traded to the United Kingdom as part of a spy swap. Having settled in the UK Sergei lived a quiet and comfortable life of retirement, so far as we know
• Eight years later, in early 2018, with a Presidential election looming and just weeks before Russia was due to host the FIFA World Cup, Vladimir Putin decided to assassinate him for as yet obscure reasons.
• The GU, Russia’s military intelligence unit, dispatched two of their elite officers, who proceeded to fly direct from Moscow under aliases they had allegedly already employed and using Russian passports.
• These alleged assassins carried with them two perfume bottles full of “Novichok”, allegedly one of the deadliest nerve agents ever devised. This would be enough to kill around 800,000 people.
• On arriving in the UK these highly-trained covert agents book a hotel with a CCTV camera on the front door, and the next day, March 3, they travel to Salisbury by train, allegedly to recon the area, then return to London. They are apparently observed by CCTV camera’s the entire time.
• The day following, March 4, they again travel to Salisbury, this time the master assassins walk to Skripal’s house and somehow “smear” the liquid Novichok on the handle of his front door.
• No eye-witness, photograph or piece of CCTV footage has ever been made publicly available to show either of these two men anywhere in the area of Sergei Skripal’s house.
• The whereabouts of the opened bottle of poison have never been established.
• Having applied the poison, the two highly trained assassins do two things before returning to London. 1) They drop their second, unopened, bottle of novichok (presumably enough to kill approx 400,000 people) in a charity donation bin, rather than destroying it or taking it back to Russia. 2) They stop by an antiques store to browse.
• The two assassins leave the country that afternoon, flying direct to Moscow, without knowing if their alleged target is dead, and again making no effort to conceal their origins.
• Despite both handling the poison, and somehow carrying enough of it back to contaminate their hotel room, neither of the men – nor any of the staff, train passengers or passersby who come into contact with them – ever become sick, even though only 0.2mg of Novichok is an allegedly lethal dose.
• Later that afternoon, Sergei and Yulia Skripal are found “almost unconscious”on a park bench in Salisbury town centre. It is claimed this was due to contact with the Novichok smeared on Sergei’s door handle, though reports originally stated neither he nor his daughter had returned to the house, and the timing seems to make it unlikely they did
• The person who found them was the most senior nurse in the British Army (likely in the area as part of Toxic Dagger, the British Military’s landmark chemical weapons training exercise which began Feb 20th and ran on until March 12th).
• The nurse and her family administer “emergency aid” to the two alleged poisoning victims. Neither she nor anyone else on the scene, nor any of the first responders, ever experience any symptoms of nerve agent poisoning. Neither do any of the other people the Skripal’s came into contact with that day […]

via The Skripal Case – Two Years On

By Tulsi Gabbard – The Hill – 02/27/20

Reckless claims by anonymous intelligence officials that Russia is “helping” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are deeply irresponsible. So was former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s calculated decision Tuesday to repeat this unsubstantiated accusation on the debate stage in South Carolina. Enough is enough. I am calling on all presidential candidates to stop playing these dangerous political games and immediately condemn any interference in our elections by out-of-control intelligence agencies.

A “news article” published last week in the Washington Post, which set off yet another manufactured media firestorm, alleges that the goal of Russia is to trick people into criticizing establishment Democrats. This is a laughably obvious ploy to stifle legitimate criticism and cast aspersions on Americans who are rightly skeptical of the powerful forces exerting control over the primary election process. We are told the aim of Russia is to “sow division,” but the aim of corporate media and self-serving politicians pushing this narrative is clearly to sow division of their own — by generating baseless suspicion against the Sanders campaign.

It’s extremely disingenuous for “journalists” and rival candidates to publicize a news article that merely asserts, without presenting any evidence, that Russia is “helping” Bernie Sanders — but provides no information as to what that “help” allegedly consists of.

The American people have the right to know this information, in order to put Russia’s alleged “interference” into proper perspective. It is a mystery why the Intelligence Community would want to hide these details from us. Instead they are relying on highly dubious and vague insinuations filtered through their preferred media outlets, which seem designed to create a panic rather than actually inform the public about a genuine threat.

All this does is undermine voters’ trust in our elections, which is what we are constantly told is the goal of Russia.

If the CIA, FBI or any other intelligence agency is going to tell voters that “Russians” are interfering in this election to help certain candidates — or simply “sow discord” — then they need to immediately provide us with the details of what exactly they’re alleging. Otherwise, all they are doing is fomenting a sense of powerlessness and paranoia in the voting public, which could suppress engagement in the electoral process. And, at least according to the anonymous officials speaking menacingly to the media, that is precisely what Russia wants.

If our political leaders and those in the media were really concerned with protecting the integrity of our elections from outside manipulation — instead of just making money from manufactured hysteria — they would presumably devote more coverage to proposals to institute backup paper ballots, which would ensure that no malicious actors can ever alter our votes or hack into our election infrastructure. The bill I reintroduced last year, the Securing America’s Elections Act, does exactly that — but the media has never shown much interest because it would not generate the so-called “bombshell” headlines they so desperately crave […]

via Tulsi Gabbard: Presidential candidates must also condemn election interference by US intelligence agencies

Soon, we’ll be able to order 3D-printed hemp houses! A Dutch town will host the world’s first five livable 3D-printed homes, with residents set to move in next year. Credit: Project Milestone

An Australian company is 3D-printing hemp bioplastic walls, floors and roofs to be used in the construction of eco-friendly prefabricated homes.

The carbon-neutral homes will take only weeks to construct and will store massive amounts of CO2 in their walls.

The company, Mirreco, hopes their 3D-printed hemp polymer panels will become the material of choice for residential and commercial builders around the world.

Not only is hemp bioplastic easier to work with than concrete, it’s way more environmentally friendly.

The hemp biomass used to make it sequesters carbon dioxide when its growing and stores it “forever” when its turned into plastic.

And unlike concrete, hemp is a renewable resource. There is simply not enough sand in the world to sustain the growing demand for conventional concrete, Business Insider explains.

“The specific type of sand needed for concrete is often harvested from riverbeds, which destroys ecosystems and threatens the biodiversity of plants, fish, and animals,” The Mind Unleashed notes.

Mirreco says their hemp plastic panels are “structurally sound, easy to produce, and provide superior thermal performance” […]

via Hemp Houses are Being 3D-Printed in Australia — Return to Now

By Patrick Henningsen | 21st Century Wire | February 21, 2020

“It’s like a nightmare, isn’t it? It just keeps getting worse and worse.”
– Grady Seasons in The Color of Money

Just when you thought America would eventually get over its addiction to scapegoating The Russians!™ for helping any anti-establishment or political outsider to get elected, there they go again.

As I predicted earlier this morning, it was only a question of time before the US establishment would blame those dastardly Russians for Bernie Sanders double-digit lead in national polls.

It was only yesterday, when we learned how the “IC” aka the vaunted Intelligence Community (a verified oxymoron at this point) has finally decided that the Russians are already active behind the scenes trying to swing the 2020 US Presidential Election in favor of President Trump.

Then 24 hours later the great paragon of honest journalism, the Washington Post, then tells us that intelligence officials have briefed Senator Bernie Sanders about how Russia is attempting to elevate his presidential campaign (no actual specifics were given, only a gut feeling we’re told) as part of a grand plot to “interfere with the Democratic contest.”

Of course, the Post’s source for this ‘bombshell’ was no one specific, just “according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence” […]

via U.S. Intel Briefs Bernie Sanders That Russia is Trying to Boost His Presidential Run

Leave it to Portlandia to figure out how to create hydro-power without building a dam! Portlandians are now generating free electricity every time they turn on the tap! If you live in Portland, Oregon, your lights are now powered in part by the water flowing through your pipes.

The city recently installed new municipal water pipes equipped with four 42-inch turbines that create electricity from the water passing through them.

Historically, hydropower has been created by damming rivers and installing turbines inside the dams, which can be damaging to fish and the river itself.

Tap-water hydropower creates virtually no effect on wildlife, as it is simply harnessing the energy of water that’s already flowing through the pipes […]

via Portland Installs Turbines in City Water Pipes To Create Free Electricity — Return to Now