The Corporate Government Merry-go-round.

        From time to time I look back at what I have written, just to see if anything has changed, or did I get it wrong. Quite often my little delve into the past just confirms my beliefs. This little blast from the past, something I wrote about 3 years ago, still rings true, and in my humble opinion is probably more relevant to day than then.

The Stench From That Thing Called Capitalism, Feb. 1st. 2016.

        Big business and government are so intertwined, that it is impossible to separate them. Corporations spend millions, if not billions, on lobbyists, politicians are offered lucrative positions, and little perks here and there, but of course, they'll tell you, that they are not influenced by these matters. They'll deal with each issue on its merits, with the welfare of the country and its people always to the fore, and the corporations will still continue to spend those millions or billions, just as a kindness to politicians, and get nothing in return. Isn't it a wonderful world? It is safe to bet that all politicians are relatively rich, most will have their filthy lucre, stashed away in shares in those very corporations that are pouring money into their little slush fund. We are expected to believe that none of these politicians would ever nudge legislation in the direction of helping their share portfolio, and might at times move to jeopardise their little stash.
         A world built on corruption, designed to further the wealth of big business and protect the wealth of those in power. It is not with little thought that I refer to our lords and masters place of business as the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption. Those who enter its marble halls by on large are very rich, when they leave, they are invariably, extremely more rich than when they entered. Big business makes sure of that. Out of generosity of course.
         If all this lead to was a group of parasites getting richer under false pretences, then it would be bad enough. However, their wheeling and dealing, their slicing and dicing, plays havoc with the health and well-being of the people they are supposed to represent. Decisions are made that drive people into poverty, ill-health, homelessness and of course heap the brutality of war on millions. History tells us the tales of hypocrisy and corruption are at the heart of governments, of the festering marriage between large companies and governments, but we never seem to learn.

       The following from the Politics in the Zeros site, is a case in America, but you are an idiot if you think this is unique to America, this is the way the game is played nowadays. Governments are not inanimate objects, nor are they fixed by the power of the holy tablets of stone. They are made up of people, usually very rich, very ambitious and very greed people, they play the game with the big boys, corporations, and in return for their obedience to the cause of profit, they are rewarded.

        Gosh there’s no conflict of interest here. Nearly a third of members of the federal Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee have financial ties to companies selling opoid drugs. In a shocking coincidence the panel has strongly opposed federal plans to recommend doctors scale back on prescribing legal heroin. Because that’s what these opoids are.
       Our government is essentially a drug pusher for highly addictive drugs. The FDA approved OxyContin for children without bothering to convene a panel of experts to make recommendations. Opiate addiction from legally prescribed pills is a major health problem nationwide among adults, to such an extent we have the obscenity of TV ads offering drugs to help with constipation caused by using opiates.
Any relation between this and a government that actually cares about the health of its citizens is of course strictly coincidental. And if this happened in a Third World country, we’d laugh at how corrupt they are.
The government advisory panel consists of federal scientists, outside academics and patient representatives. Of the 18 committee members at a recent meeting to discuss the government’s handling of pain issues, at least five had drug-industry connections.
One, a pain specialist from Duke University, has received thousands of dollars in payments from drugmakers, including OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma and Teva Pharmaceuticals, which sells generic painkillers. Another, a patient advocate, holds a nonprofit position created by a $1.5 million donation by Purdue.

        We should always remember, we are governed by consent, we can withdraw our consent at any time of our choosing, and start to take control of our own lives, how about now!    

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

DIY Medication!!

       Something anarchists should always remember, "great oak trees from little acorns grow". Your little project, could catch on and become a mighty oak tree. One such little acorn that I dearly hope will grow into a mighty oak tree is the project being built by a group called Four Thieves Vinegar Collective. This valiant little group are taking on the giant pharmaceutical companies, the large beast that prompts itself as the saviour of lives and curer of disease, but at a price. Big Pharma makes billions from your ill health, and other mental and physical problems, but first and foremost, makes sure that it keeps its shareholders fat at your expense. When a giant like our NHS can state that some drugs are too expensive, then you know that you are being ripped-off.

        Making medication cheap and easily accessible must be applauded and pursued, anything that can short circuit the pharmaceutical giants and their greed driven overriding desire for profits must be encouraged.   

       Please read the full article and share as widely as possible, let this little acorn grow into a mighty oak tree

This from Motherboard:

 

 Michael Laufer with the $30 DIY “epipencil”. Image: Four Thieves Vinegar Collective

     I met Laufer at a bar across the street from HOPE after he finished his talk on DIY medicine. He was meeting with his Four Thieves collaborators who had flown in from all over the country to attend the conference and unveil the new medical technologies under development by the collective. Laufer kicked off the celebration with a toast.

       “A toast to the dead, for children with cancer and AIDS,” Laufer said, raising a glass of bourbon and quoting the hip hop artist Felipe Andres Coronel, better known as Immortal Technique. “A cure exists, and you probably could have been saved.”
       In the last decade, Four Thieves has run afoul of the Food and Drug Administration, billionaire pharma executives, doctors, and chemists at some of the United States’ most prestigious universities. Indeed, Laufer and his collaborators can’t stop pissing off powerful people because Four Thieves is living proof that effective medicines can be developed on a budget outside of institutional channels.
          At the pharmacy, a pair of single use Mylan epipens can cost over $600 and the company’s generic version costs $300 per pair, but an ongoing shortage means you probably can’t find them, even if you can afford them. In response, Four Thieves published the instructions for a DIY epipen online that can be made for $30 in off-the-shelf parts and reloaded for $3. Shkreli drove the price of the lifesaving HIV medicine Daraprim sells up to $750 per pill. So Four Thieves developed an open source portable chemistry lab that allows anyone to manufacture their own Daraprim for just 25 cents apiece.
         The pharmaceutical industry is valued at $446 billion in the US and its walls are tightly policed by regulatory agencies like the FDA and Drug Enforcement Administration. By freely distributing plans for medical devices and pharmaceuticals, a loose collective of anarchists and hackers is threatening to pull the rug out from under one of the most regulated and profitable industries in the world. And they’re just getting started. 

  FREE DRUGS
           Four Thieves claims to have successfully synthesized five different kinds of pharmaceuticals, all of which were made using MicroLab. The device attempts to mimic an expensive machine usually only found in chemistry laboratories for a fraction of the price using readily available off-the-shelf parts. In the case of the MicroLab, the reaction chambers consist of a small mason jar mounted inside a larger mason jar with a 3D-printed lid whose printing instructions are available online. A few small plastic hoses and a thermistor to measure temperature are then attached through the lid to circulate fluids through the contraption to induce the chemical reactions necessary to manufacture various medicines. The whole process is automated using a small computer that costs about $30.
          To date, Four Thieves has used the device to produce homemade Naloxone, a drug used to prevent opiate overdoses better known as Narcan; Daraprim, a drug that treats infections in people with HIV; Cabotegravir, a preventative HIV medicine that may only need to be taken four times per year; and mifepristone and misoprostol, two chemicals needed for pharmaceutical abortions.

Please read the full article HERE, and share widely

Visit ann arky's home at radicalglasgow.me.uk

 

For Your Health, Or For Profit?

 

       At the back of every thinking person's mind must be the thought that "Big Pharma" is poisoning us and slowly killing us with a cocktail of drugs, just for profit. Controversy rages about most of the drugs in regular use, recently the ongoing argument about statins has been reignited with continual disagreements between "experts" in that field. Who do we believe, how many "experts" are under the wing of "Big Pharma", how many are swayed by the same propaganda that we face? When "experts" in their field can't agree how do we form our decisions? It is not just statins that are under this cloud of, for profit, or for the health of people equation.

This from Tarcoteca: 

Recently Alzheimer’s support groups all around the nation have been marketing a documentary about country singer Glen Campbell who has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease (of unknown etiology) despite the obvious fact that Campbell was infamous for his chronic heavy use of brain-damaging, dementia-inducing, addictive, and very neurotoxic drugs like cocaine and alcohol. And, just like so many other hard-living celebrities like the (now cured) dementia victim Kris Kristofferson and the suicidal and early dementia victim Robin Williams. All three celebrities were known to have received prescriptions for legal neurotoxic brain-altering drugs, adding to the burdens that their failing brains, livers and psyches had to endure. It is highly likely that all three of them were also on statins and were up-to-date on their mercury and aluminum-containing vaccinations.

It is an established fact that Alzheimer’s disease can only be definitively diagnosed at a post-mortem examination of the cerebral cortex, something that dementia patients are almost never subjected to. Because of the rarity of coroners doing autopsies on dementia patients, we have to question the accuracy of the diagnoses of, for example, the still living Glen Campbell, Kris Kristofferson and our own memory-impaired spouses, aunts, uncles, grandmas and grandpas, especially since so many of them have been on neurotoxic substances such as those mentioned in this article.

And we also have to question the motivations of the Big Pharma corporations that financially underwrite patient support groups like the Alzheimer’s Association. AND, equally importantly, given the total lack of recognition of the reality of drug-induced dementia, we have to question to oft-cited assertion that 2/3 of all dementia cases are because of Alzheimer’s disease (of unknown cause).

Read the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk