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7. According to a study this week, Earth has entered its sixth mass extinction. Making conservative assumptions, scientists believe that species are disappearing at a rate not seen since the disappearance of the dinosaurs: “…even using this background rate and the most conservative species loss estimates, the researchers found that animals are still being wiped out around 15 to 100 times faster than they should be – in fact, the rate of species loss hasn’t been this high since the dinosaurs disappeared 65 million years ago.” Moreover, the culprit responsible for such mass extinction is none other than humans. Human action, it seems, is leading the planet to its demise, but the media is content to talk about a flag from the 19th century.
8. It is no secret that the American media loves the “War on Drugs.” So when a news story about the value of cannabis oil in the treatment of autism comes around, it has to be ignored since it does not fit the narrative that marijuana is a gateway drug (that too is wrong). As Anti-Media reported “Through a fundraising program, they were able to receive a tiny bottle of the oil. Kalel was given oral doses twice a day. Within just two days, he was finally able to speak…Soon after, he began using consonants, too, speaking like his parents never thought possible.”
9. The mainstream media is usually fond of natural disasters, but this escaped its attention. After five days of hot weather and humidity in Karachi, Pakistan, more than 950 people have died. That is an average of 150 people per day. I do not mean to downplay the murder of the 9 people at the church in downtown Charleston, but 150 people dying per day should require more coverage when compared to the wall-to-wall coverage of the mass shooting in Charleston. To its credit, Mashable presented detailed photographic coverage of the humanitarian crisis.
Related: How the Entire Country Bought the Government’s Confederate Flag Ploy
10. While the country was talking about a red, white and blue cloth, the Senate approved fast track trade promotion authority (TPA) for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), also known as Obamatrade. The deal has been called “NAFTA on steroids” and has far reaching implications across every aspect of American life. Critics of the TPP say it will crush American jobs, exploit oppressed foreign labor, suppress internet freedom, make healthcare more costly, void national and local sovereignty, and hand total control of 40% of the world’s economy to corporate tribunals. The Senate handed Obama a clear defeat on the TPP recently, but Congress took advantage of the media frenzy over the Confederate flag to renew the push to give Obama full authority to negotiate the ever-secret deal on his own without public debate. There is now little time left for the public, which has passionately expressed its disapproval of the TPP, to try to convince lawmakers that it’s a bad deal for everyday Americans.