[Peace-discuss] Notes

[J.B. Nicholson]

Here are some items to consider discussing. Have a good show, guys.




"The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which 
representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them."
    -- Karl Marx


Health care/Economy: "Whole Foods to cut health-care benefits for 1,900 
part-time employees starting next year" -- CNBC

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/12/whole-foods-to-cut-healthcare-for-1900-part-time-employees-in-2020.html

> Amazon-owned Whole Foods will be withdrawing medical benefits for
> hundreds of its part-time workers starting Jan. 1, 2020, the company
> said Thursday.
> 
> In the past, employees needed to work at least 20 hours a week to buy
> into the health-care plan. Now they will need to work at least 30 hours.
> Less than 2% of its workforce, or 1,900 employees, will no longer be
> eligible for medical coverage, under the new policy, the company said.

[...]

> "In order to better meet the needs of our business and create a more
> equitable and efficient scheduling model, we are moving to a single-tier
> part-time structure," a company spokesperson said in an email. "We are
> providing Team Members with resources to find alternative healthcare
> coverage options, or to explore full-time, healthcare-eligible positions
> starting at 30 hours per week. All Whole Foods Market Team Members
> continue to receive employment benefits including a 20% in-store
> discount."

 From Wikipedia -- 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Foods#Criticism_and_controversies

> Whole Foods' health insurance plan is notable for its high
> deductibles–$2000 for general medical expenses, and $1000 for
> prescriptions. However, employees receive $300 to $1800 per year
> (depending on years of service) in personal wellness funds. Once an
> employee has met the deductibles, insurance covers 80% of general
> medical costs and prescriptions but not for any type of mental
> illness. CEO Mackey drew attention to the insurance program
> (offered through United Health Care in the US) for its employees in an
> op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. In the article he called his
> company's insurance plan a viable alternative to "Obamacare". Mackey
> summed up his antipathy toward universal coverage in his op-ed by
> stating:
> 
> "A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the
> Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or
> shelter. That's because there isn't any. This "right" has never existed
> in America."








Environment: In 2017 The Guardian reported that "Just 100 companies 
responsible for 71% of global emissions, study says"

https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change

> Just 100 companies have been the source of more than 70% of the world’s
> greenhouse gas emissions since 1988, according to a new report.
> 
> The Carbon Majors Report[1] “pinpoints how a relatively small set of
> fossil fuel producers may hold the key to systemic change on carbon
> emissions,” says Pedro Faria, technical director at environmental
> non-profit CDP, which published the report in collaboration with the
> Climate Accountability Institute.
> 
> Traditionally, large scale greenhouse gas emissions data is collected at
> a national level but this report focuses on fossil fuel producers.
> Compiled from a database of publicly available emissions figures, it is
> intended as the first in a series of publications to highlight the role
> companies and their investors could play in tackling climate change.
> 
> The report found that more than half of global industrial emissions
> since 1988 – the year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was
> established – can be traced to just 25 corporate and state-owned
> entities. The scale of historical emissions associated with these fossil
> fuel producers is large enough to have contributed significantly to
> climate change, according to the report.
> 
> ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron are identified as among the highest
> emitting investor-owned companies since 1988. If fossil fuels continue
> to be extracted at the same rate over the next 28 years as they were
> between 1988 and 2017, says the report, global average temperatures
> would be on course to rise by 4C by the end of the century. This is
> likely to have catastrophic consequences including substantial species
> extinction and global food scarcity risks.

[1] 
https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1d.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/cms/reports/documents/000/002/327/original/Carbon-Majors-Report-2017.pdf?1499691240



Environment: In 2013 years ago The Guardian reported "Just 90 companies 
caused two-thirds of man-made global warming emissions"

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/20/90-companies-man-made-global-warming-emissions-climate-change

> The climate crisis of the 21st century has been caused largely by just
> 90 companies, which between them produced nearly two-thirds of the
> greenhouse gas emissions generated since the dawning of the industrial
> age, new research suggests.
> 
> The companies range from investor-owned firms – household names such as
> Chevron, Exxon and BP – to state-owned and government-run firms.
> 
> The analysis, which was welcomed by the former vice-president Al Gore as
> a "crucial step forward" found that the vast majority of the firms were
> in the business of producing oil, gas or coal, found the analysis, which
> has been published in the journal Climatic Change.
> 
> "There are thousands of oil, gas and coal producers in the world,"
> climate researcher and author Richard Heede at the Climate
> Accountability Institute in Colorado said. "But the decision makers, the
> CEOs, or the ministers of coal and oil if you narrow it down to just one
> person, they could all fit on a Greyhound bus or two."
> 
> Half of the estimated emissions were produced just in the past 25 years
> – well past the date when governments and corporations became aware that
> rising greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of coal and oil were
> causing dangerous climate change.
> 
> Many of the same companies are also sitting on substantial reserves of
> fossil fuel which – if they are burned – puts the world at even greater
> risk of dangerous climate change.




Democrats/Environment: "Saving the Planet Means Overthrowing the Ruling 
Elites" -- Chris Hedges

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/saving-the-planet-means-overthrowing-the-ruling-elites/

> Friday’s climate strike by students across the globe will have no more
> impact than the mass mobilizations by women following the election of
> Donald Trump or the hundreds of thousands of protesters who took to the
> streets to denounce the Iraq War. This does not mean these protests
> should not have taken place. They should have. But such demonstrations
> need to be grounded in the bitter reality that in the corridors of power
> we do not count. If we lived in a democracy, which we do not, our
> aspirations, rights and demands, especially the demand that we confront
> the climate emergency, would have an impact. We would be able to vote
> representatives into power in government to carry out change. We would
> be able to demand environmental justice from the courts. We would be
> able to divert resources to the elimination of carbon emissions.
> 
> Voting, lobbying, petitioning and protesting to induce the ruling elites
> to respond rationally to the climate catastrophe have proved no more
> effective than scrofula victims’ appeals to Henry VIII to cure them with
> a royal touch. The familiar tactics employed over the past few decades
> by environmentalists have been spectacular failures. In 1900 the burning
> of fossil fuel—mostly coal—produced about 2 billion tons of carbon
> dioxide a year. That number had risen threefold by 1950. Today the level
> is 20 times higher than the 1900 figure. During the last decade the
> increase in CO2 was 100 to 200 times faster than what the earth
> experienced during the transition from the last ice age. On May 11 the
> Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii recorded 415.26 parts per million of CO2
> in the air. It’s believed to be the highest concentration since humans
> evolved. We will embrace a new paradigm for resistance or die.
> 
> The ruling elites and the corporations they serve are the principal
> obstacles to change. They cannot be reformed. And this means revolution,
> which is what Extinction Rebellion seeks in calling for an
> “international rebellion” on Oct. 7, when it will attempt to shut down
> city centers around the globe in acts of sustained, mass civil
> disobedience. Power has to be transferred into our hands. And since the
> elites won’t give up power willingly, we will have to take it through
> nonviolent action.

[...]

> It does not matter who is the public face of the corporate state. This
> is not about political personalities. It was Obama, after all, who
> oversaw a coordinated national effort to eradicate the Occupy
> encampments and place the water protectors at Standing Rock under siege.
> Obama’s environmental policies, despite his lip service to curbing
> global warming and his support of the nonbinding Paris climate
> accord—which the climate scientist James Hansen called a fraud—were
> appalling. U.S. oil production rose every year he was in office, an
> increase of 88%. It was the largest domestic increase in oil production
> in American history. Obama opened offshore drilling to American oil
> companies as if he were Sarah Palin. “American energy production, you
> wouldn’t always know it, but it went up every year I was president,”
> Obama told an audience at Rice University last year. “And you know that
> … suddenly America’s like the biggest oil producer … that was me,
> people.”
> 
> Democrats, like Republicans, serve corporate power. They will not end
> government subsidies for the fossil fuel industry and the extraction
> industries. They will not impose carbon taxes to keep fossil fuels in
> the ground. They will not limit overconsumption. The technologies they
> invest in—fracking, hybrid cars, genetically modified food—are designed
> to maintain or expand consumption levels, not reduce them. They will not
> redirect the trillions of dollars and scientific and technical expertise
> from the military and corporations toward saving us from environmental
> catastrophe. The rhetoric and gimmicks they use to placate the public,
> from carbon credits to wind turbines and solar panels, are, as the
> scientist James Lovelock says, the equivalent of 18th-century doctors
> attempting to cure serious diseases with leeches and mercury.
> 
> The creation of ever more complex bureaucratic and technocratic systems
> in an age of diminishing resources is a characteristic of dying
> civilizations. Civilizations in their final phase frantically search for
> new methods of exploitation rather than adapt to a changing environment.
> They repress and exploit the lower classes with greater and greater
> ruthlessness to maintain the insatiable appetites among the elites for
> power, luxury and hedonism. The worse things get, the more the elites
> retreat into their private enclaves. The more out of touch the elites
> become, the more catastrophe is assured. This self-defeating process
> degrades the ecosystem until catastrophic systems collapse.

jbn: I'm reminded of the foolish notion that the Democrats can be 'reformed 
from within' if we just keep playing along with that non-oppositional party 
(non-oppositional precisely because it draws its money from the same 
sources as the only other party Americans are allowed to hear from, the 
Republicans). Play along and we'll be rewarded with a substantially 
improved Democratic party. This will never happen. The progress that party 
makes is marginal at best; the corporate duopoly is not stupid. They know 
how to shut down serious opposition through media coverage blackouts, 
co-optation, and getting the public to fear the other corporate party (vote 
Democrat because the Republicans are so much worse, we're repeatedly told). 
Fortunately there is evidence that the public doesn't accept this: most 
registered US voters in 2016 did not vote for the Democrat or Republican 
candidate, in fact most registered US voters in 2016 did not vote for US 
President at all.



Economics: "US income inequality jumps to highest level ever recorded"

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/income-inequality-reached-highest-level-ever-recorded-in-2018-2019-9-1028559996

> * Income inequality in the US last year reached its highest level in
> more  than half a century.
>
> * While the economy has expanded steadily over the past decade, it has
> disproportionately benefited some of the wealthiest Americans.
>
> * In February, Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell said income
> inequality would be one of the biggest challenges for the US over the
> next decade.

[...]

> A key measure of wealth distribution jumped to 0.485 in 2018, the Census
> Bureau said Thursday, its highest reading since the so-called Gini index
> was started in 1967. The gauge, which uses a scale of 0 to 1, stood at
> 0.482 a year earlier.
> 
> Alabama, Arkansas, California, Kansas, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New
> Mexico, Texas, and Virginia saw income inequality rise significantly
> last year. Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico saw the highest Gini index
> readings, while Utah was among the lowest.
> 
> Real median household income rose by 0.8%, to $61,937, in 2018, a
> slightly smaller increase than in the three previous years, the Census
> Bureau said. The economy has expanded steadily over the past decade,
> which has helped to push the unemployment rate to historic lows.
> 
> But a majority of growth has gone to higher-income earners and the
> owners of financial instruments, said Timothy Smeeding, a professor at
> the University of Wisconsin at Madison who studies poverty and economic
> mobility.
> 
> "Wages remain low, there is a lack of childcare for single-parent
> families, and so on. Work alone won't solve poverty — unless wages and
> earnings pick up substantially," he said. "It still takes government aid
> for families with children and others who do not earn enough, despite
> working 40-plus hours a week."




War: "Modern soldiers can kill a target on computer, then head home for 
dinner — and it's giving them 'moral injury'"

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-29/unmanned-combat-drone-pilots-moral-injury-warfare-dissonance/11554058

> Dr. Adam Henschke is an applied ethicist, working on areas that cross
> over between ethics, technology and security. He is a senior lecturer at
> Australian National University's National Security College.

Dr. Adam Henschke wrote:
> The recent bombing of Saudi oil facilities by unmanned aerial vehicles 
> has raised a number of questions about drones.
> 
> But one area that has seen considerable interest already is the problem 
> of "moral injury" in drone pilots.
> 
> Instead of being shielded from the psychological and emotional impacts 
> of warfare, drone pilots instead face the risk of "moral injury".
> 
> When drones were first being used for military operations, there was a 
> sense that these technologies would protect pilots from the harms of 
> warfare.
> 
> As the vehicles could be remotely piloted, those pilots were no longer 
> at risk of being shot down.
> 
> The worry was that they would treat conflict like a computer game, and 
> so would be less likely to adhere to the ethics of conflict.
> 
> However, by the mid-to-late 2000s, drone pilots were showing some 
> concerning traits.
> 
> The rates of drone pilot burn out were in fact higher than that of 
> traditional pilots.
> 
> How could that be? Was there something special about being a drone
> pilot that caused particular emotional tension or trauma, despite them 
> conducting their actions remotely from the conflict zone?
> 
> An early idea was that these pilots were suffering some form of 
> post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
> 
> However, as more pilots suffered this, people altered their thinking 
> slightly.
> 
> In sniper's syndrome, a sniper would suffer emotionally from killing
> people at a long range from them.
> 
> Given that the target often posed no direct threat to the sniper, there
> was a moral dissonance about taking the life of someone who is no direct
> threat. This has obvious parallels to drone pilots.
> 
> As more research was conducted on drone pilots, two complementary causal
> factors were proposed.
> 
> First, even though the pilot is typically physically distant from the
> battle, sometimes in entirely different continents, they are
> "informationally close" to their targets.
> 
> A pilot might have a target under surveillance for days or weeks before
> they launch their attack. As such, they see their targets and get a
> sense of them as a person.
> 
> They will see their targets eating and spending time with family and
> friends. Then, after conducting their attack, the drone pilot is often
> expected to do a battle damage assessment, to see if the target has been
> killed.
> 
> Moreover, such events can produce very importance intelligence on the
> target — for example, who goes to the body? Who takes care of the
> burial? How do family members react?
> 
> Couple this with the familiarity that the drone pilot might have
> developed through long-term surveillance, and the target becomes an
> informationally rich human, rather than simply a blip on a screen.
> 
> Often a pilot is much closer to the target informationally than a
> traditional pilot.

[ABC.net.au concludes]

> Moral injury does not necessarily mean that we should stop using
> drones.
> 
> Instead, selection and training of pilots needs to take moral injury
> into account.
> 
> Further, there needs to be proper counselling and supports for pilots
> following use of lethal force.
> 
> While such pilots might be removed from physical risks, we have a moral
> responsibility to ensure not just that drones are used in ways that
> adhere to the ethics of warfare, but that the pilots are adequately
> supported in their roles.

jbn: So fans of drone warfare need not worry: ABC.net.au isn't going to 
call for an end to warring by drone or seemingly any other means of killing 
people. Instead we just need better "selection and training of pilots", 
"proper counselling and supports for pilots" because of our "moral 
responsibility" to pilots. Perhaps we could pick pilots without consciences 
and avoid all of the "moral injury" that results from seeing a human being 
(even remotely) and understanding that murder is wrong (isn't that what 
we're really talking about with the euphemism "informationally rich human 
rather than a blip on a screen"?). Despite that the western war powers 
largely create their own enemies with war actions such as sanctions, 
bombing, 'boots on the ground' invasions, occupations, and coup attempts, 
our moral responsibility need not extend to those people on the receiving 
end of any of these attacks.




The Corporate Duopoly/Democrats are a sham: Elizabeth Warren got it right 
before she got it wrong

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqDl6vRX4-E -- Jimmy Dore, Aaron Maté & co 
on a recent Elizabeth Warren Q&A regarding Joe Biden's son's corruption.

> Questioner: Could you say whether or not under a Warren administration 
> would your Vice President's child be allowed to serve on a board of a 
> foreign company?
> 
> Sen. Elizabeth Warren: No. I don't-- I don't know. I mean I'd have to go
> back and look at the details.
> 
> Questioner: Do you think that could be a problem--
> 
> Sen. Elizabeth Warren: I have to go back and look.

A response from a Twitter user in 
https://twitter.com/Karlmarxhd/status/1177210087347281922
> She [Sen. Warren] needs to "go back and look" if the party allows her to
> say that or if her answer would be damning for Obama and Biden. Her
> instinct was right... having your kid on that board stinks like
> corruption.

Aaron Maté's take on this:
> Aaron Maté: It reminds me of Russiagate where just like Russiagate sort
> of forced all Democrats into defending Hillary Clinton and her wing of
> the party to people that lost to Donald Trump and enrolled them in
> making excuses for them, and enrolled them in this blaming everything on
> Russia. Right? The same thing now where we're trying to make Trump's
> presidency all about Ukrainegate, and this is the thing that's gonna get
> him, it's forcing Democrats into this position where now they're gonna
> feel worried about helping Trump if they do something like point out
> that, yeah, it's not cool if a vice president's kid gets a lucrative
> board seat on a gas company in a country where the vice president also
> happens to be running US policy. So it's like these gifts that we keep
> providing to Trump's re-election campaign never stop. We're making this
> the issue now. And because of that it's forcing people like Warren into
> this box where now she has to worry about [that] she doesn't want to
> come across as helping Trump, so she has to sound so ridiculous like
> that where she can't answer the question, you know? And this is what you
> do when you center your resistance in the preferences of the people who
> lost to Trump. It underscores just what a disaster it was under
> Russiagate and what it could be under Ukrainegate.




Free speech: A Christian doctor in the UK lost his job due to his 
unwillingness to call transgendered people by their chosen pronoun. Now a 
Birmingham employment tribunal has confirmed that he should have lost his 
job citing his religious beliefs as being "incompatible with human dignity".

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/07/10/christian-doctor-lost-job-government-department-refusing-identify/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SI_08zLgXj8 -- Dr. David Mackerin is a 
Christian man who worked for the NHS for 26 years. He was fired after 
having a discussion with his boss about his unwillingness to address 
transgendered people by their chosen pronoun. His boss reportedly asked, 
"How would you address a 6-foot tall man who came into your office and 
wanted to be called Mrs. or 'she'?". Dr. Mackereth refused and said he 
wouldn't be able to conform to those requests.

Birmingham Employment Tribunal:
> A lack of belief in transgenderism and conscientious objection to 
> transgenderism in our judgment are incompatible with human dignity and 
> conflict with the fundamental rights of others. [...] in so far as those
> beliefs form part of his wider faith, his wider faith also does not 
> satisfy the requirement of being worthy of respect in a democratic 
> society.

 From 
https://www.foxnews.com/faith-values/christian-doctor-fired-gender-pronoun
> Dr. David Mackereth, 56, a National Health Service employee, was fired
> from his post at the Department for Work and Pensions in July because he
> would not use a transgender pronoun, saying he believes "gender is
> defined by biology and genetics" and the "Bible teaches us that God made
> humans male or female."

[...]

> "No doctor, or researcher, or philosopher, can demonstrate or prove
> that a person can change sex," Mackereth told Fox News. "Without
> intellectual and moral integrity, medicine cannot function and my 30
> years as a doctor are now considered irrelevant compared to the risk
> that someone else might be offended."
> 
> Andrea Williams, CEO of the Christian Legal Centre, which represents
> Mackereth, said the judge put transgender rights ahead of all others,
> ruling a belief in the Bible is on par with Holocaust deniers and
> neo-Nazi ideologies.
> 
> “It is deeply disturbing that this is the first time in the history of 
> English law that a judge has ruled that free citizens must engage in 
> compelled speech," Williams said, adding the judge "ruled that 
> Christianity is not protected by the Equality Act or the ECHR, unless
> it is a version of Christianity which recognizes transgenderism and
> rejects a belief in Genesis 1:27."

Related: 
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/01/stack_exchange_controversy/ -- 
Stack Exchange (a popular tech-oriented Q&A website) has removed a 
moderator, Monica Cellio, who (according to Cellio) "will in the future 
violate a thoughtcrime-style provision of a Code of Conduct change that 
hasn't been made yet.". At the time Cellio was removed from being a 
moderator Stack Exchange's code of conduct hadn't changed to require that 
Stack Exchange users use other people's preferred pronoun. According to Cellio:

> In January a mod[erator] asked a discussion question on the mod[erator] 
> team: should we require that people use preferred pronouns? My answer
> said we must not call people what they don't want to be called, but
> there are multiple ways to avoid misgendering and we should not require
> a specific one. Under some pressure I said I don't use singular they or
> words like chairwoman but solve the problem other ways (with examples).
Another moderator linked to her response, called her a bigot, and Cellio 
lost her moderator status on Stack Exchange.





Corporate power: Court lets Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) CEOs off 
the hook for predicted Fukushima failures

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfc3T5n4wWQ -- RT report from "Redacted 
Tonight VIP" (showing again why Redacted Tonight is the best of the news 
comedy shows)

In 2011 the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami started a nuclear disaster at the 
Fukushima Daiichi power plant. As Wikipedia explains, "The loss-of-coolant 
accidents led to three nuclear meltdowns, three hydrogen explosions, and 
the release of radioactive contamination in Units 1, 2 and 3 between 12 and 
15 March."

Now three former TEPCO executives -- Katsumata, Takekuro, and Muto -- 
avoided 5-year prison sentences despite that the harm to the plant was 
foreseen and countermeasures to avoid problems at the plant were not taken 
because of the "social impact" the public would have experienced while the 
plant was temporarily shut down in order to set up the protection measures.

https://gizmodo.com/former-fukushima-bosses-cleared-of-criminal-negligence-1838293556
> The Tokyo District Court has acquitted three former Tokyo Electric Power
> Company executives charged with criminal negligence leading to the 2011
> Fukushima nuclear disaster.

[...]

> The Associated Press reports that prosecuting attorneys were asking that
> each of the three TEPCO executives receive five-year prison sentences,
> saying they failed to predict the scale of the tsunami and for failing
> to implement the required countermeasures to protect the plant, such as
> building a seawall of sufficient height. By failing to do so,
> prosecutors argued, the executives were professionally negligent,
> leading to the disaster and the required evacuations. Katsumata,
> Takekuro, and Muto were also accused of being criminally responsible for
> the deaths of 44 elderly patients who had to be evacuated from a nearby
> hospital.
> 
> All three men plead not guilty to the charges, contending that the
> unusually large size of the tsunami was unforeseeable and that any
> protective measures, had they been implemented, would’ve been futile
> anyway, according to the Japan Times. The trial, which started in June
> 2017, finally ended yesterday with the not guilty verdict.
> 
> In its closing statements, the court said it wasn’t reasonable for the
> executives to predict the severity of tsunamis, in stark contradiction
> to what the prosecuting attorneys had argued. The Japan Times reports
> that the prosecutors presented upsetting evidence suggesting the TEPCO
> executives were given the heads-up by scientists three years before the
> disaster:
> 
> "A Tepco internal study, based on a 2002 report by a government panel,
> concluded that a wave of up to 15.7 meters could hit after a magnitude
> 8.3 quake and thus would surpass the 10-meter elevation of the site
> where major facilities were located. The findings were reported to Tepco
> executives including Muto in June 2008, according to a written statement
> from a former Tepco executive. That executive claimed that his boss
> abruptly postponed tsunami prevention measures at the Fukushima No. 1
> plant in 2008. The statement was read during a court hearing."

The tsunami prevention measures were shelved because they would have had to 
shut down the plant to set up those prevention measures.

https://time.com/5680959/tepco-fukushima-executives-not-guilty-negligence/
> The prosecutors had argued TEPCO could have prevented the disaster had
> it stopped the plant to install safety measures ahead of the tsunami.
> But the court said the company’s responsibility for supplying
> electricity to the public meant that idling the plant would have caused
> a “social impact.”

There were around 10,000 evacuees, forced to leave because of the damaged 
power plant.

According to 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties

> As of 27 February 2017, the Fukushima prefecture government counted
> 2,129 "disaster-related deaths" in the prefecture.[18][16][19][20] This
> value exceeds the number that have died in Fukushima prefecture directly
> from the earthquake and tsunami.[21] "Disaster-related deaths" are
> deaths attributed to disasters and are not caused by direct physical
> trauma, but does not distinguish between people displaced by the nuclear
> disaster compared to the earthquake / tsunami. As of year 2016, among
> those deaths, 1368 have been listed as "related to the nuclear power
> plant" according to media analysis.[22] Reports have pointed out that
> many of these deaths may have been caused by the evacuation period being
> too long, and that residents could have been allowed to return to their
> homes earlier in order to reduce the total related death toll.

The Financial Times:

> There were 2,202 disaster-related deaths in Fukushima, according to the
> [Japanese] government's Reconstruction Agency, from evacuation stress,
> interruption to medical care and suicide.






Education/Who Benefits: "Colleges got millions from opioid maker owners" 
--ABC News (Disney)

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/ap-exclusive-colleges-60m-oxycontin-family-66026889

> Prestigious universities around the world have accepted at least $60
> million over the past five years from the family that owns the maker of
> OxyContin, even as the company became embroiled in lawsuits related to
> the opioid epidemic, financial records show.
> 
> Some of the donations arrived before recent lawsuits blaming Purdue
> Pharma for its role in the opioid crisis. But at least nine schools
> accepted gifts in 2018 or later, when states and counties across the
> country began efforts to hold members of the family accountable for
> Purdue’s actions. The largest gifts in that span went to Imperial
> College London, the University of Sussex and Yale University.
> 
> Major beneficiaries of Sackler family foundations also included the
> University of Oxford in England and Rockefeller, Cornell and Columbia
> universities in New York, according to tax and charity records reviewed
> by The Associated Press.
> 
> In total, at least two dozen universities have received gifts from the
> family since 2013, ranging from $25,000 to more than $10 million, the
> records show.

[...]

> As opioid deaths have mounted, some schools joined with businesses and
> museums cutting ties with the family, but none plans to return the
> money. One school is redirecting unspent donations. Most schools refused
> to say whether they would accept donations in the future.
> 
> Kolodny, who is also director of the group Physicians for Responsible
> Opioid Prescribing, said the money, if returned, could be used to help
> cities and states harmed by the opioid crisis, which has killed more
> than 400,000 people in the U.S. in the past two decades.
> 
> The family’s ties with colleges have come under fire recently from some
> students, alumni and politicians.
> 
> Petitions at New York University and Tel Aviv University called on the
> schools to strip the Sackler name from research institutes. A 2018
> lawsuit from the Massachusetts attorney general argued that Purdue
> Pharma used its influence at Tufts University and other schools to
> promote the company’s opioids.
> 
> Tufts, near Boston, said it is reviewing its relationship with Purdue
> and declined to answer questions until the review is finished. The
> university’s school of graduate biomedical studies was founded with a
> Sackler gift in 1980 and carries the family’s name.

-J