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67 percent of those who file for bankruptcy cite illness and medical bills as major contributors to financial ruin

Dr. Steffie Woolhandler
EurekaAlert!
Thu, 07 Feb 2019 00:00 UTC
bankruptcy medical bills
Researchers found no evidence that the ACA reduced the proportion of bankruptcies driven by medical problems; insurance offered little protection to middle-class Americans

Medical problems contributed to 66.5% of all bankruptcies, a figure that is virtually unchanged since before the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), according to a study published yesterday as an editorial in the American Journal of Public Health. The findings indicate that 530,000 families suffer bankruptcies each year that are linked to illness or medical bills.

The study, carried out by a team of two doctors, two lawyers, and a sociologist from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project (CBP), surveyed a random sample of 910 Americans who filed for personal bankruptcy between 2013 and 2016, and abstracted the court records of their bankruptcy filings. The study, which is one component of the CBP's ongoing bankruptcy research, provides the only national data on medical contributors to bankruptcy since the 2010 passage of the ACA. Bankruptcy debtors reported that medical bills contributed to 58.5% of bankruptcies, while illness-related income loss contributed to 44.3%; many debtors cited both of these medical issues.
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Heart - Black

SOTT Focus: 11 Deaths, Limbs Blown Off, And Lengthy Prison Sentences - Human Toll of The Yellow Vest Insurrection Mounts


The Local, France
Tue, 29 Jan 2019 20:52 UTC
rodriguez yellow vest
Violent clashes between the police and yellow vests since the start of the movement have caused many injuries including the loss of eyes and hands and led to claims of police violence.


Comment: Why does the media always frame things that way?

There are no "violent clashes between the police and yellow vests..."

There are state security forces violently brutalizing the yellow vest protesters - even after they've formally applied for, and been granted, permission to protest in certain places at certain times.

The only time the protesters hurt those state instigators is when they defend themselves.


Here are the latest statistics. Less than three months since it kicked off, the Yellow Vests movement has turned into one of the longest and most violent social protests in modern France. Hundreds of protestors and police alike have been injured since the start of the protests with claims of police violence over the controversial use of rubber-bullets and stun grenades by French security forces have been gaining ground. Here's a look at the numbers.

1,700 people

According to government figures, 1,700 people have been injured and 1,000 policemen or gendarmes have been hurt in the 11 weeks of conflict. Out of those injured, 100 have been seriously hurt and 11 people have now died.


Comment: That's "seriously hurt" as in they've had a hand or foot blown off by police grenades. Or, when shot in the face, an eye.


Most of those casualties resulted from road accidents at blockades in the early days of the protest. The government stress that no protester has dies as a result of police action. One protester died of a heart attack during Saturday's demo in Paris that turned violent. Out of those injured, 15 people are thought to have sustained serious eye injuries, including a police officer who lost an eye. One of the many who have lost the use of an eye include one of the leaders of the yellow vests, Jérôme Rodrigues, who was badly wounded in his right eye at the weekend.

Other sources claim different numbers however. The French left-wing newspaper Libération puts the numbers of yellow vests (and some journalists) hurt severely in the protests at 109, while the charity against state violence 'Désarmons-les' has estimated the number of badly to severely injured to be 124. According to the same charity, the total number of injured is also much higher than the government statistics, at between 2,000 to 3,000 people.

Comment: Christophe Dettinger, the boxer who landed a couple of punches against riot police attacking women, just today received two years' imprisonment. Many less high-profile cases than his have seen people sent down for up to a year for posting messages on social media about organizing rallies.

This is one revolution that certainly is not being televised.

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Propaganda

The media's Russia collusion hoax and Trump obsession has demolished public trust in journalists

John Nolte
Breitbart
Wed, 13 Feb 2019 20:14 UTC
Trump media
© Joyce N. Boghosian/White House Photo
Polling proves that public trust in the establishment media has collapsed in every imaginable way during Trump's presidency.

There is no doubt anymore that corporate media's ongoing assault against President Trump has backfired in a way that journalists will never recover from.

An IBD/TIPP poll asked about "the public's perception of the mainstream news media" and found that "fully half the country says its trust in the media decreased over the past two years," while only eight percent say they have more trust in the media.
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Quenelle - Golden

Flashback Serial complainer about anti-Semitic graffiti left on and near his home in Paris... caught daubing cars with anti-Semitic graffiti

Aurélie Sarrot
MetroNews
Tue, 10 Feb 2015 22:09 UTC
Image
'Jew' was painted on some 20 vehicles before the man was apprehended
A 73 year old man was caught Monday trying to tag the word "Jew" on vehicles in the upmarket 16th district of Paris. The man and his wife, who is Jewish, had previously filed complaints in July and August when anti-semitic graffiti was "discovered in their building."

On Monday around 4pm, a man was caught writing the word "Jew" on vehicles parked on Avenue du General-Clavery and Avenue Dode de la Brunerie in the 16th district. Some twenty cars were tagged. "The police handcuffed him, then arrested him. He's completely crazy to be doing something like this. An official at the scene told me that the guy acknowledged what he was doing," said one witness to MetroNews.

The suspect was immediately taken into custody. The man was born in April 1941 and is named 'Pierre B.' He was already known to police - not as a suspect but as a victim. Last summer, he twice visited the police station in the 16th district to denounce anti-Semitic remarks left near his property.
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Quenelle - Golden

Best of the Web: More fake anti-Semitism? 'Spike' in neo-Nazi graffiti on streets of Paris blamed by French government on Yellow Vest protesters


RT
Tue, 12 Feb 2019 16:49 UTC
RabbiSwastika
© Reuters/Vincent KesslerStrasbourg's Grand Rabbi inspects graves desecrated with anti-Semitic graffiti in 2018.
France's interior minister has vowed to take a tougher stance on hatred, after multiple incidents of anti-semitic vandalism, and a spike in anti-Jewish hate crimes last year.

Parisians were greeted with crudely daubed anti-Semitic slogans on shop fronts last weekend, including swastikas sprayed over images of late politician and Holocaust survivor Simone Veil, and the German word for Jews ("Juden") sprayed on a bagel shop in the city center.



Comment: Interestingly, this happened in England last weekend: One naturally wonders if the fact that Jews have been caught committing 'acts of anti-Semitism' in the past might have anything to do with these recent 'spikes' in 'anti-Semitism':

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Cloud Precipitation

New Jersey: Voters furious as Governor Murphy prepares to sign 'Rain Tax' into law

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Mon, 11 Feb 2019 13:11 UTC
guy in rain
© medium.com/KJN
Just when frustrated residents of New Jersey, one of the most heavily taxed states in the US, thought Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy had already brought the state into the ninth circle of taxation hell with new taxes to save the state's ailing pension system, middle class voters in one of the least affordable states in the country have now been given one more thing to complain about: A tax on the rain.

After a bill authorizing the new local taxes was passed by the state late last month, Murphy is preparing to sign it into law, over the objections of the state's Republicans, according to the New York Post.

As one state lawmaker told the post, just when NJ residents thought the state had already laid claim to every revenue stream imaginable, Democrats have found one more thing to tax.

"Every time you think there's nothing left to tax, we come up with something else," Assemblyman Hal Wirths (R-Morris-Sussex) exploded during a debate on the measure. "It's just never-ending down here." And voters are understandably furious.


Comment: Pouring on the taxes is not 'water under the bridge' for New Jersey! Voters will rain on this governor's parade!

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Binoculars

Hebron: International observer mission, a restraint on Israeli settler's worst excesses, has come to an end

Jonathan Cook
The National
Sun, 10 Feb 2019 01:00 UTC
Hebron observers
© Abed Al Hashlamoun/EPAIsraeli settler argues with Palestinians wearing blue vests of 'observers' during a protest against the end of the mandate for the Temporary International Presence in Hebron.
You might imagine that a report by a multinational observer force documenting a 20-year reign of terror by Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers against Palestinians, in a city under occupation, would provoke condemnation from European and US politicians. But you would be wrong. The leaking in December of the report on conditions in the city of Hebron, home to 200,000 Palestinians, barely caused a ripple.

About 40,000 separate cases of abuse had been quietly recorded since 1997 by dozens of monitors from Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Italy and Turkey. Some incidents constituted war crimes.

Exposure of the confidential report has now provided the pretext for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to expel the international observers. He shuttered their mission in Hebron this month, in apparent violation of Israel's obligations under the 25-year-old Oslo peace accords.

Israel hopes once again to draw a veil over its violent colonisation of the heart of the West Bank's largest Palestinian city. The process of clearing tens of thousands of inhabitants from central Hebron is already well advanced.

Any chance of rousing the international community into even minimal protest was stamped out by the US last week. It blocked a draft resolution at the United Nations Security Council expressing "regret" at Israel's decision and on Friday, added that ending the mandate of the Temporary International Presence in Hebron was an "internal matter" for Israel.

Comment: See also:

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Zambia's planned hippo cull - Conservationists lashed scheme as a ploy to make money from trophy hunters


Digital Journal
Wed, 13 Feb 2019 18:12 UTC
Hippo
© Creative Commons
Zambia plans to slaughter 2,000 hippopotamuses to control overpopulation, officials said Wednesday, as conservationists lashed the scheme as a ploy to make money from trophy hunters.

An official at the tourism ministry, who did not want to be named, said a five-year cull of hippos in a park in eastern Zambia would start in May.

"Currently the hippo population in the South Luangwa National Park stands at over 13,000, but Luangwa can only cater for 5,000 hippos," he said.

"The population is higher and poses a danger to the ecosystem."

The Born Free conservation group called on the government to call off the cull, which it said was being staged to lure money from hunters.

"The justifications for this cull -- which is being openly marketed to paying trophy hunters -- are like a sea of shifting sand," said Born Free's president, Will Travers.
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Sheriff

Facebook using bots to detect suicidal thoughts and report cases to police

Elizabeth Nolan Brown
Reason
Wed, 13 Feb 2019 19:55 UTC
facebook police
Facebook protects itself from risk by putting users in danger. Facebook moderators can't handle determinations like whether a King Cake baby counts as obscenity. Yet the social media giant has nonetheless appointed itself arbiter of your mental health. And if its bots don't like what they see, Facebook may report you to police.

As part of "suicide prevention efforts," Facebook "says it has helped first responders conduct thousands of wellness checks globally, based on reports received through its efforts," reports CNN. Antigone Davis, Facebook's global head of safety, told the station: "We are using technology to proactively detect content where someone might be expressing thoughts of suicide."
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Russian Flag

Russians favor peaceful democratic means of change over street protests, other forms of political activism


RT
Wed, 13 Feb 2019 18:39 UTC
Russia’s Central Election Commission
© Sputnik / Kirill Kallinikov
Russians, who want life in their country to change for the better, favor voting in elections and signing petitions and dislike taking part in street protests and donating money for causes, a new opinion poll shows.

The poll, conducted by the Levada Center, offered people various venues for pursuing changes in public life and asked whether or not they personally were prepared to take them. Finding a party with a program aligned with personal preferences and voting for it was the most popular option, with over 70 percent supporting this path. Signing petitions and open letters was chosen by 53 percent while lodging complaints with the authorities was favored by 49 percent.

While Russians are prepared to express their opinion, they don't seem eager to put more significant effort into their political activities. The least popular way to seek change in the country is donating money to political or public organizations - 91 percent responded they are not willing to do it. Almost equally unattractive is the option to personally run for office and enact change, which was seen as undesirable by 90 percent of the people polled.

Other options rejected by over a half of Russians were taking part in street protest (77 percent against), volunteering for a political cause (76 percent against) and becoming a paid employee of a public organization (69 percent against).
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