‘The biggest threat to America today is not terrorists or global warming, but the mass genocide of Americans who die every year at the hands of the corrupt U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In a recent report, investigative reporter Jon Rappoport uncovers the dirty truth that FDA-approved drugs kill at least 100,000 people every single year — the FDA actually lists this figure on its own website — and the agency is doing absolutely nothing about this disastrous trend.’

‘In an exclusive interview with Press TV on Monday, Shabazz commented on the murder of Black teenager Trayvon Martin, saying, “There are hundreds of Black Americans who are being murdered in the United States every year with impunity. And police officers serve no time. They always get off.”

Shabazz said this occurs because there is institutionalized racism in the United States. “The United States has more people incarcerated than anywhere else in the world. It has more people incarcerated than China, and China has the most people in the world,” he noted.’

‘The various anti-Iran sanctions and embargoes had any number of unforeseen consequences like the massive spike in the price of bratwurst for sausage-hungry Germans. The latest round, which effectively cut off Iran from all international banking, is having major consequences.

US companies doing business with Iran, no matter how mundane, are now finding it next to impossible to get paid for the products they already delivered. Redmond, Washington-based American Pulp & Paper, for instance, is owed $3.8 million for raw material for diaper manufacturing. The companies involved now have no way to pay them for those materials, or to buy future materials from them.

From small paper companies to major pharmaceutical companies, this is the common story. Iranians can no longer buy American or European products, and what they already bought they aren’t being allowed to pay for.

Iran’s state-run industries are less affected by the move, with many of them turning to barter deals and transactions in gold. It’s an inconvenience, but not the crippling calamity that it is for Iran’s private industry, which once again is being harmed by sanctions that were supposed to center on the nation’s government.’

‘There is nothing more sacred to the maintenance of democracy than a free press. Access to comprehensive, accurate and quality information is essential to the manifestation of Socratic citizenship - the society characterized by a civically engaged, well-informed and socially invested populace. Thus, to the degree that access to quality information is willfully or unintentionally obstructed, democracy itself is degraded.