(2020-01-02). Belgium suspends extradition warrant on Catalan independence leader Puigdemont. rt.com 
A Belgian court has suspended the extradition of former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont, citing his immunity as a member of the European Parliament, the pro-independence politician has confirmed on his Twitter. | The court ruled in favor of Puigdemont and another pro-independence politician, Toni Comin, who served as health minister in the exiled leader's former government. Both politicians are now residing in Belgium, and are wanted in Spain on charges of sedition over their role in organizing a banned Catalonia independence referendum in 2017. | Belgian justice recognizes our immunity and decides to susp…
(2020-01-02). Argentina: Fernandez to Send Legal Abortion Bill to Congress. telesurenglish.net On the last day of 2019, Argentina's President Alberto Fernandez confirmed that he will send to Congress a new bill to legalize abortion in his country. | RELATED: | Guatemala: Legislator Proposes Bill to Protect Underaged Rape Survivors | "It's a public health problem that needs to be resolved," Fernandez said and added that he doesn't wa…
(2020-01-02). How to win a campaign for better mental health care. indybay.org Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco | 1187 Franklin St. @ Geary Blvd. | San Francisco…
(2020-01-02). Plastics Industry's Greenwashing Aggravates Environmental and Health Crises. truthout.org Janine Jackson: Those of a certain age will remember a TV spot in which a Native American man — the actor was Italian-American, it turns out, but never mind — surveys a roadside full of discarded bottles and bags, and a single tear rolls down his cheek. Memorable and impressive, the spot did a couple of things: It located the responsibility for pollution at the level of the individual — the litterbug — and it suggested that the big problem with these plastic bags and bottle…
(2020-01-02). Africa in Review 2019, From Internal Crises and Conflict to Internationalism. globalresearch.ca Since mid-2018, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been stricken with another Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak largely impacting the northeastern region of the vast mineral-rich nation in Central Africa. | EVD has its origins in the DRC during the …
(2020-01-01). Google System Could Improve Breast Cancer Detection. telesurenglish.net A series of research made by Alphabet Inc's DeepMind AI unit together with Google Health has shown the potential of artificial intelligence in the early detection of women breast cancer, according to an article published Wednesday in the journal Nature. | RELATED: | Brazil Fines Facebook US$1.6m in Cambridge Analytica Case | The study is the latest to prove the accuracy of screening for the pathology that affects one in eight females globally. Radiologists miss about 20 percent of th…
(2020-01-01). Year of the Nurse and the Midwife highlights 'backbone' of health systems. news.un.org The world will need an additional nine million nurses and midwives to achieve the commitment of providing all people with access to health care by 2030, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned.
(2020-01-01). 'Ideology Trumping Science': Independent Advisory Board Says Trump EPA Is Ignoring Scientific Evidence as It Shreds Regulations. commondreams.org A federal panel of independent scientific experts says the EPA has flouted its guidance in its push to roll back a number of Obama-era regulations, resulting in the country's regulators dictates rules that will affect public health for millions of Americans without considering environmental science. | www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files… …
(2019-12-31). Collapse of UK National Health Service threatened as Johnson government readies further onslaught. wsws.org Figures compiled by NHS England found that in November the health service missed all targets for Accident and Emergency (A&E) care, operations and cancer treatment.
(2019-12-31). 2019: The UN News year in photos. news.un.org From sustainable development to economic development, and human rights to humanitarian aid, UN News provides daily coverage across all of the Organization's key issues — health, migration, climate change and so much more.
(2019-12-29). NUHW workers strike for better mental health care for their patients. liberationnews.org 
On Dec. 16, the National Union for Healthcare Workers began a week-long strike at Kaiser Permanente's Clairemont Mesa Blvd facility in San Diego, California.
(2019-12-28). A culture of reconciliation with nature. mronline.org 
Christopher Caudwell, who died at age 29 fighting with the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War, wrote: "Either the devil has come amongst us having great power, or there is a causal explanation for a disease common to economics, science, and art." That disease, he recognized, was the self-alienation of humanity under capitalism | Source
(2019-12-27). "Bedlam": Film Shows How Decades of Healthcare Underfunding Made Jails "De Facto Mental Asylums" democracynow.org 
Are prisons and jails America's "new asylums"? A new documentary looks at how a disproportionate number of underserved people facing mental health challenges have been swept into the criminal justice system, where they lack adequate treatment. Nearly 15% of men and more than 30% of women in jails have a serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, major depression or bipolar disorder. For many of them, jail is their first point of entry into mental health treatment. The documentary "Bedlam" was filmed over five years in Los Angeles County's overwhelmed and vastly under-resourced Emergency Psychiatry Services, a…
(2019-12-27). Headlines for December 27, 2019. democracynow.org In Confidential Videos, Navy SEALs Say Gallagher Was "Toxic" & "Freaking Evil", Hospitals & Health Clinics Shuttered by Heavy Bombing in Idlib, Syria, Japan to Deploy Destroyer to Middle East Amid Rising Tensions in Gulf of Oman, Nigerian-American Journalist Omoyele Sowore Released from Prison, In India, Protests Rage Against "Anti-Muslim" Citizenship Law, Netanyahu Staves Off Party Leadership Challenge Ahead of General Election, Mexico to Bring Complaint Against Bolivia's Interim Government to ICJ, Congolese Asylum Seeker Died in Border Patrol Custody on Christmas Day, Los Angeles Prosecutors Consider Filing Cri…
(2019-12-27). 'No one is coming to save us, except us' — Sydney demands action on the environment. mronline.org In the face of climate crisis megafires and an air quality health crisis, 40,000 people rallied and marched in Sydney to demand action on Wednesday night. The city is choking, and New South Wales is on fire. In Randwick on Tuesday, the air pollution was 11 times higher than "hazardous". | Source
(2019-12-26). Michael Moore: Americans Pay More for Healthcare Than Others, But "We Don't Call It a Tax" democracynow.org 
We continue our interview with Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore about election 2020 and some of the major issues for voters. Long before Medicare for All became a rallying cry in the Democratic Party, Moore's 2007 film "Sicko" diagnosed the shortcomings of the for-profit American healthcare system and called for a system of universal healthcare. "The real question never gets asked. They always want to pin them on how much is it going to cost in taxes," Moore says of debate moderators who ask whether Democratic presidential candidates will raise taxes to pay for Medicare for All.
(2019-12-23). "The First Cell": Dr. Azra Raza on Why the "Slash-Poison-Burn Approach" to Cancer Has Failed. democracynow.org 
Slash, poison, burn. That's what a leading cancer doctor calls the protocol of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. We spend $150 billion each year treating cancer, yet a patient with cancer is as likely to die of it today — with a few exceptions — as one was 50 years ago. Today we spend the hour with renowned cancer doctor, Dr. Azra Raza, author of the new book, "The First Cell: And the Human Costs of Pursuing Cancer to the Last." She argues that experiments and the funding for eradicating cancer look at the disease when it is in its later stages, when the cancer has grown and spread. Instead, she sa…
(2019-12-20). Sanders, Warren keep class central to debate; raise opponents' reliance on billionaires. peoplesworld.org 
LOS ANGELES—It took an hour and a half for them to warm up and stop being too polite, but seven Democratic presidential hopefuls spent the last half of their Dec. 19 debate in Los Angeles mixing it up over campaign financing and health care, while one—Tom Steyer, the richest—made an unexpected (and unconvincing) bid for …
(2019-12-18). A Tennessee City Banned Surgical Abortion Within the City Limits. We're Taking Them to Court. aclu.org For 30 years, I have | worked in reproductive health care. In my current role as Chief Operating | Officer of carafem, a nonprofit with a national network of health centers, I | know the difference compassionate and comprehensive reproductive health care | makes in the lives of our clients. I have witnessed the personal impact when | people who have the legal right to have a child or to have an abortion are denied | those rights due to outrageous societal barriers. Abortion providers are used | to opposition, but we've never experienced the kind of explicit targeting we | received from politicians in the city…
(2019-12-12). Teaching assistants in Decatur, Il. struggle for better healthcare. liberationnews.org 
"DFTA all the way!"
(2019-11-17). Warren's Head Tax Is Not More Popular Than A Payroll Tax. peoplespolicyproject.org As we know by now, Elizabeth Warren's Medicare head tax proposal is a regressive mess ( I, II, III, IV). Warren's team knows this. The goal of the proposal i…
(2019-11-17). CAP's Topher Spiro Is Trying to Deceive Journalists By Lying. peoplespolicyproject.org 
It's been fun to see how the Center for American Progress (CAP) navigates this year's presidential election. For insider political reasons, they can't support Biden or Sanders. But for a long time, it was unclear who the alternative candidate they could support would be. | When Kamala Harris was rising, CAP's staff was doing overtime boosting her on Twitter and in the press, including boosting Harris's absurd health care proposal. But Harris's collapse put an end to that strategy. Recently Warren has risen as the alternative and so CAP has been working to promote her campaign, which puts CAP in the comical positi…
(2019-11-03). Warren's Medicare Head Tax Would Be About $9,500. peoplespolicyproject.org On Friday, I wrote a piece arguing that Elizabeth Warren's use of an employer head tax was not a good way to fund Medicare for All and that instead the more conventional choices of income and payroll taxes would be better. The reason they are better is because income and payroll taxes are based on how much income you receive while a head tax charges the same dollar amount for every worker regardless of their income, making it much more onerous on the lower and middle classes. | This point holds…
(2019-11-02). What Is a Middle Class Tax Hike? Am I Losing My Mind? peoplespolicyproject.org I have been swimming in the Medicare for All waters for over a decade now, going back to when I worked on the Ralph Nader presidential campaign that made Medicare for All its number one issue. And during this time, I developed a specific understanding of what we might call the M4A Financing Problem. | The Problem: | The M4A Financing Problem, in simple terms, is that even if you bring in existing federal spending on health care, existing state spending on health care, and a bunch of new rich-people taxes, you still fall short of financing the program. Thus to actually complete the financing, you have to u…
(2019-11-01). Warren's Perpetual Medicare Head Tax Is Unworkable and Bad. peoplespolicyproject.org 
Elizabeth Warren released her Medicare for All financing plan today. The main purpose of the proposal appears to be to find a plan that you can message as "not increasing middle class taxes," which is of course a nonsensical goal insofar, as Warren herself has said, what matters is middle class health care costs, not whether you categorize those costs as premiums, taxes, or out-of-pocket expenses. | Nonetheless, bowing to the stupid media discourse on this, Warren put forward a financing pro…
(2019-10-24). Julian Assange's Extradition Case is a Show Trial. zcomm.org Interview on the lack of mainstream media coverage of Julian's persecution, his health and conditions in Belmarsh prison, CIA spying on Julian Assange and more…
(2019-06-19). House Casts Historic Vote to Repeal Authorization for Endless War. peaceaction.org Washington, D.C. — June 19, 2019 — In response to the House of Representatives passing H.R. 2740 (Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, Legislative Branch, Defense, State, Foreign Operations, and Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act, 2020), which includes language to repeal the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) eight months after …