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The U.S. Health Care System - Values and Priorities
by Brian McAfee
The current battles over the American health-care system are indicative of a wider philosophical and social divide. What is at stake and what is the desired outcome of each side? To answer such an enquiry, we must first look at the current health-care system as it exists in the United States.
The World Health Organization ranks U.S. healthcare well below most of Europe, Canada and Japan. France and Italy rank at number one and two while the U.S. is in the thirty-seventh slot. Most of the countries that rank above the U.S. have some form of socialized medicine. Japan, which ranks tenth on the WHO list, is at number one in life expectancy with 74.5 years being the average while the U.S. is twenty-fourth in life expectancy, again well below much of Europe, Canada and Australia as well.
Israel Steals Body Parts: Palestinians
Khalid Amayreh
I don't know for sure why they are refusing to hand him over to us to bury
him,” Fawzi (left) told IOL about the body of his slain son. “These people
have no morality, save the morality of murder and lies," Shahin, (right)
said about Israeli authorities still holding the body of his son."
RAMALLAH – The controversy triggered by a Swedish newspaper report about Israel’s harvesting of Palestinian organs has salted the wounds of many Palestinian families haunted by the memories of loved ones who suffered the same fate.
“They claimed they came to arrest him, but in truth they came to murder him, which they did,” Walid Masalmeh, a resident of the small West Bank town of Dura, 10 kilometer west of Al-Khalil (Hebron), said about his relative Bassam.
Why the U.S. is not a democracy
Mary Shaw
This nation was founded as a democratic republic, specifically a representative democracy. As voters, we like to believe that we play a significant role in our government's affairs by more-or-less directly choosing who will represent us in Washington.
But, with few exceptions, the men and women in Washington do not represent the voters. Instead, they represent the special interests which have the money to influence the voters at election time. And, while history class taught us that we have a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people," what we've really ended up with is a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich. Whether it's the big bank vs. the foreclosed homeowner or the insurance industry vs. the sick, the rich corporate interests win almost every time.
LaRouche: Crimes of the Fed Cannot Be Buried
(LPAC)—Lyndon LaRouche
September 3, 2009 (LPAC)—Lyndon LaRouche forcefully warned that any effort to cover up the crimes committed by the Federal Reserve Bank, during the Bush and Obama administrations, will be "tantamount to treason."
LaRouche was responding to reports from reliable sources close to the Obama White House, that the top leadership of the Democratic Party is "desperate" to block any disclosures of the Fed's role in the preferential bailout of certain key American banks, during the period since the August 2007 blowout of the financial system. As reported in the Washington Post on Aug. 28, 2009, as the result of the actions of the Fed and the U.S. Treasury Department, under the Bush and Obama presidencies, four big U.S. banks—JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America and Wells Fargo—along with Goldman Sachs, have consolidated almost total control over the entire U.S. banking system, managing one-third of all deposits, one-half of all mortgages, and two-thirds of all credit card debt.
World Health and International Economic Sharing
Written by Mohammed Mesbahi
Introduction
The World Health Organisation produces a report every year on the health of the world population, based on statistics compiled from the 193 member states that form the United Nations. The latest report shows that, in the developing world, life expectancy is shorter than in OECD countries, women are more prone to die in childbirth and babies are more likely to die before the age of five.
The report illustrates that global inequalities in healthcare are much greater than they were 30 years ago. While people in the West can expect to live until their late 70s, people living in poor countries, such as Burkina Faso or Chad, are unlikely to live beyond 46 or 47 years of age. In Africa, half the population lives on less than US$1.25 a day with little or no access to safe water. According to the UN, 12 million people die of preventable diseases every year, often caused by water-born parasitic diseases like dysentery, insect-born parasitic diseases such as malaria, or from other factors related to wider economic and social problems such as malnutrition and lack of medical care.
THAT DAY, This 9/11 and Bob Dylan Musical Prophets
eileen fleming
"His voice and lyrics haven't always been easy on the ear, but throughout his career Bob Dylan has never aimed to please. He's disturbed the peace and discomforted the powerful. President Kennedy could easily have been talking about Bob Dylan when he said that, "if sometimes great artists have been most critical of our society, it is because their concern for justice makes them aware that our nation falls short of its highest potential."-President Bill Clinton, 1997 [1]
On THAT DAY we call 9/11, after my initial shock and awe passed, in my inner ear I did hear America's Master Poet, Musician extraordinaire and caustic social critic with from his 1981 "Shot of Love" Album:
Lockerbie: Megrahi Was Framed
John Pilger
The hysteria over the release of the so-called Lockerbie bomber reveals much about the political and media class on both sides of the Atlantic, especially Britain. From Gordon Brown’s "repulsion" to Barack Obama’s "outrage," the theater of lies and hypocrisy is dutifully attended by those who call themselves journalists. "But what if Megrahi lives longer than three months?" whined a BBC reporter to the Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond. "What will you say to your constituents, then?"
Horror of horrors that a dying man should live longer than prescribed before he "pays" for his "heinous crime": the description of the Scottish justice minister, Kenny MacAskill, whose "compassion" allowed Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi to go home to Libya to "face justice from a higher power." Amen.
The American satirist Larry David once addressed a voluble crony as "a babbling brook of bullsh*t." --Such eloquence summarizes the circus of Megrahi’s release.
Prof Yehuda Hiss: the missing link in Palestinian organ theft?
Jonathan Cook
Jonathan Cook considers the role of Professor Yehuda Hiss, the chief Israeli state pathologist at the only institute in Israel that conducts autopsies, in the scandal over the theft of Palestinian body parts. He notes that Prof Hiss has never been jailed despite admitting to organ theft in the 1990s.
The hyperventilating by Israel’s leaders over a story published in a Swedish newspaper last month suggesting that the Israeli army assisted in organ theft from Palestinians has distracted attention from the disturbing allegations made by Palestinian families that were the basis of the article’s central claim.
The families’ fears that relatives, killed by the Israeli army, had body parts removed during unauthorized autopsies performed in Israel have been overshadowed by accusations of a “blood libel” directed against the reporter, Donald Bostrom, and the Aftonbladet newspaper, as well as the Swedish government and people.
Neoliberalism Needs Death Squads in Colombia
By Hans Bennett
In her new book Blood & Capital: The Paramilitarization of Colombia, author Jasmin Hristov writes: “For roughly forty years, the Colombian state has been playing a double game: prohibiting the formation of paramilitary groups with one law and facilitating their existence with another; condemning their barbarities and at the same time assisting their operations; promising to bring perpetrators of crime to justice, while opening the door to perpetual immunity; convicting them of narco-trafficking, yet profiting from their drug deals; announcing to the world the government’s persecution of paramilitary organizations, even though in reality these ‘illegal armed groups’ have been carrying out the dirty work unseemly for a state that claims to be democratic and worthy of billions of dollars in US military aid.”
Too few options for Barack Obama in Afghanistan
by Susenjit Guha
To win the war in Afghanistan, the United States will have to win the hearts and minds of the Afghans as well as the Pakistani people. And at the same time the Afghan leadership should tamp down on corruption and ensure that foreign aid goes to the right places while Pakistan has to take on the Taliban head-on.
But the ground reality is different and there is nothing to trigger optimism even after 8 years.
Top military officer Admiral Mike Mullen, in one of the most scathing criticisms of the war so far….in an article written for a US military publication, Joint Force Quarterly…. felt that instead of sending a positive message about US military action and development in Afghanistan and elsewhere, the efforts are hurting credibility as they do not coincide with what the populace sees on the ground.
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