Gavin and Tara Hills are Canadian parents of seven children who had been frightened away from vaccinating all of their children ages ranging from 10 months to 10 years because of all the alarmist rhetoric they read on the internet.
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Our so-called objective media has been giving a lot of coverage to the framework of the deal agreed upon by the P5+1 nations and Iran. But as Glenn Greenwald points out, the people they get to explain and discuss the topics all share the same anti-Iran bias and seem to take their cues from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and they almost never have people who can provide a counterpoint.
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Edward Snowden explains to John Oliver why most passwords are useless against sophisticated hackers and how to create better ones that are actually easier to remember.
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The rise in incidence of preventable diseases like measles and whooping cough due to people not getting their children vaccinated has resulted in some states trying to tighten up the loose standard for getting exemptions. But that effort has stalled due to fierce opposition from the anti-vaxxers.
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We see that yet another Middle Eastern country that the US has been meddling in is slipping into anarchy and chaos. Yemen, where the US has been doing it drone bombing in pursuit of the al Qaeda affiliate group AQAP (al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) is now on the verge of becoming a failed state like Libya. In Yemen we see that what was a local power struggle turning into a major regional conflict.
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While black people get killed by the police for the slightest challenge to authority, rancher Cliven Bundy is celebrating his one year anniversary of defying the government and grazing his cattle on federal land without paying fees and threatening to shoot any law enforcement officers that might come to arrest him.
I wonder why he is allowed to get away with throwing a big party for openly defying the authorities while so many people are gunned down by the police for little or no reason. It is a real puzzler, no?
Riche Benaud died yesterday of skin cancer. His contributions to cricket were immense, starting with his superb leg spin bowling and aggressive lower batting but most importantly as one of the shrewdest captains in the game and the architect of many victories under whose leadership Australia did not lose a test series. Well-deserved tributes to him are pouring in from all over. Daniel Brettig gives us an overview of his life and here is video summary..
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Russell Berman describes yet another example of the old sleight of hand practiced by supply-side politicians, this time in the state of Kansas, where the governor Sam Brownback came into office promising that tax cuts would boost the economy of that state so much that it would more than compensate for the loss of revenue.
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Watching the Republicans in Congress and their leader Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu bad-mouth the negotiated framework for a deal between the P5+1 nations and Iran shows how insane politics has become in the US. These people don’t want negotiations being conducted by their own country’s president to succeed. Instead they take their cues from a foreign leader who wants nothing other than the complete capitulation of Iran, and who threaten war if that is not attained. Since Iran will never agree to such humiliating terms, they clearly want war.
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