By Kristina Chew - July 3, 2011

Three Harvard psychiatrists, including a leading proponent in the off-label use of anti-psychotics for bipolar disorder in children, have been disciplined by Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital for not fully disclosing the extent of their ties to drug companies...Drs. Joseph Biederman, Thomas Spencer and Timothy Wilens are said to have accepted more than $4.2 million from drug companies...for psychiatric research and other activities between 2000-2007, and not reporting the income to Harvard, MGH or the federal government.

By Martha Rosenberg - Dissident Voice

Adverse reactions to Neurontin have been greatly underestimated and unreported...harming unsuspecting families and their physicians. “We must have the full and accurate facts about a drug’s risks to make good decisions when family members consider treatment, especially with psychoactive drugs. We cannot do that if pharmaceutical companies are allowed to taint the outcome of clinical trials and bury the harmful evidence.”

By Ryan J. Reilly - Friday, June 24, 2011

"Since private prison companies are in the business to make money, policies that maintain or increase incarceration boost their revenues; from a business perspective, the economic and social costs of mass incarceration are 'externalities' that aren't figured into their corporate bottom line..."

Just over a week after a report was released...on how the Harper government has been using INAC to “manage potential First Nation unrest” since 2006, a native community named as a “hot spot” for “aboriginal unrest” was raided by no less than 500 members of the “Aboriginal Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit. The day before the raid, the Mohawks of Kanehsata:ke sent a warning letter to the municipality of Oka over a mining deal signed earlier in the month...Coincidence? Not in these times.

By MARTHA ROSENBERG - Counterpunch Weekend Edition

...[T]hree things dried up the depression gravy train for the drug industry. Blockbusters went off patent and generics took off, anti-depressants were linked with gory and unpredictable violence...and -- they didn't even work, according to medical articles...That's when the drug industry began debuting the concept of "treatment resistant depression." It wasn't that their drugs didn't work...Your first expensive and dangerous drug needed to be coupled with more expensive and dangerous drugs because...one drug alone wasn't doing the trick!

By Christopher Byron - June 1, 2011

...[W]hen it comes to prescription drugs that are not only able to kill you but can drag out the final reckoning for years on end, with worsening misery at every step of the way, it is hard to top the benzodiazepines. And no "benzo" has been more lethal to millions of Americans than a popular prescription drug called Klonopin.

By Dave Zirin - May 31, 2011

A plantation-economy nonprofit really has no place in a civil society. College football needs to be shut down and reopened under new management. Give players a stipend, guarantee scholarships for four years, cap salaries of head coaches, and start over because the current model has failed: morally, ethically and economically.

By Sarah Seltzer - May 25, 2011

Notorious racist Sherrif Joe Arpaio, who has spent time on the conservative circuit of late endearing himself to the Tea Party, maybe should have been supervising his own house instead..."The group mostly moved heroin...and officials suspect each of the arrested sheriff's employees played a crucial role in moving the drugs and hiding the illicit profits. Authorities say the ring moved about $56,000 worth of heroin a week through the Valley."

By Axel Caballero - Wednesday 18 May 2011

Georgia is the latest state to pass an anti-immigrant bill like SB1070...Georgia is also home to the largest private prison in the country. Coincidence? Not even close...It's hardly a secret that private prison corporations...have been at it -- deliberately promoting and designing laws aimed at incarcerating immigrants and turning the prison system into an incredibly lucrative business.

By Kris Hundley - Znet

A conservative billionaire who opposes government meddling in business has bought a rare commodity: the right to interfere in faculty hiring at a publicly funded university...A foundation bankrolled by...Charles G. Koch has pledged $1.5 million for positions in Florida State University's economics department. In return, his representatives get to screen and sign off on any hires for a new program promoting "political economy and free enterprise."

By Simon Walker - WSWS

If further proof was required to refute [British] Prime Minister David Cameron’s assertion that all in the UK are suffering his government’s austerity measures equally, one need look no further than the latest Sunday Times Rich List...“Britain’s super rich are making light of the age of austerity, achieving an 18% rise in their collective wealth over the past year”...The UK’s 1,000 richest people are now worth the grand sum total of £396 billion.

By Krishna Bera, Tara Lyons & Greg Macdougall - Common Cause

On 15 March 2011, about 75 people demonstrated against police violence in downtown Ottawa, marking the International Day Against Police Brutality. This was the first year an event was held in Ottawa, taking the lead from the annual march in Montreal that started in 1997...The march was connected to the Forum on Police Violence, Incarceration and Alternatives...Over 120 people attended the opening panel, which featured five speakers, and was followed by a day of workshops [see videos below].

By Allan M. Leventhal - May 4th, 2011

...[W]hile the biological revolution in psychiatry shows little evidence of being beneficial for patients, it has been very good business for psychiatrists and extraordinarily profitable for the pharmaceutical industry...[P]sychiatry and Big Pharma have perpetrated a utopian pharmaceutical mythology that serves their interests very well but has served the public very poorly. Drug treatment has not yet crashed, but there are ominous signs that we may be headed toward widespread mental disability as a consequence of this misguided treatment of mental disorder.

Corporations can now block class action lawsuits in the US.

By Chris Hedges - April 25, 2011

One in six American workers may be without a job. Some 40 million Americans may live in poverty, with tens of millions more living in a category called “near poverty.” Six million people may be forced from their homes because of foreclosures and bank repossessions. But while the masses suffer, Goldman Sachs...is giddily handing out $17.5 billion in compensation to its managers, including $12.6 million to its CEO, Lloyd Blankfein.