rebelpleb

  Happy Indigenous People's Day! As an Italian-American who is closely tied to my ancestry and cultural heritage, I find it appalling that many Italian-Americans chose to exalt this tyrannical, genocidal psychopath. Not much has changed in over 500 years if we still excuse or condone the actions of Columbus and continue to whitewash the numerous genocidal events that encompass the history of the U.S. I hope that we may continue to supplant this horrid day (not to mention the upcoming Thanksgiving) with holidays that reflect those who should be honored and holidays that reflect the truth. For inspiration, here is a story from Seattle's decision to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous People's Day. It's LONG, LONG overdue: Native Americans cheer city’s new Indigenous Peoples’ Day

While $15/hr is barely a livable wage in any large city in the United States, it is a start. First, the recently-elected socialist city council member in Seattle, Kshama Sawant, helped enact legislation to raise the minimum wage in that city. Now, it seems that New York may follow suit. Granted, $15 is barely a minimum wage in NYC, let alone a livable wage, but let the fight begin. Perhaps we can move from $15/hr to the $21/hr that should be the minimum wage if it kept pace with overall growth of the U.S. economy since 1968. And by the time any new legislation is implemented, we will probably need at least a $25/hr minimum wage. Imagine that. 

Courtesy: Environmental Health News In a September 2014 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association , Dr. Mary-Claire King – the woman who first discovered the so-called breast cancer gene BRCA1 – and her colleagues suggested that all women should undergo routine medical screening for this gene as well as BRCA2 .   Of course, it seems reasonable that women should know if they carry these mutant allele forms of these genes, because the mutant genes confer a greater risk for breast cancer and ovarian cancer in women who have the mutants than in women who do not. There has been some discussion about Dr. King’s proposal in newspapers and on the radio , but the dialogue inevitably has two tremendous pieces of the cancer puzzle missing: cause and prevention. In fact, too much cancer information tends to be myopic, neglecting to mention essential elements of the global portrait of cancer etiology. Conventional wisdom about cancer tends to end up promulgating...

Corporate capitalism has plundered the earth, poisoned its beings, and created massive inequality. There is no more room for it on a sustainable planet.