In America punishment falls more heavily on the innocent, the young, and the poor than it does on the banksters who are living on the Federal Reserve's subsidy known as Quantitative Easing and who have escaped criminal liability for the fraudulent financial instruments that they sold to the world. Single mothers, depressed by the lack of commitment of the fathers of their children, are locked away for using drugs to block out their depression. Their children are seized by a Gestapo institution, Child Protective Services, and end up in foster care where many are abused.
NEW DELHI — Alka Kudesia needs an expensive drug to treat her breast cancer, but refuses to tell her children for fear they will take out loans to buy the medicine and spend the rest of their lives in debt.
. . . . . . .
The skirmishing over Herceptin and other cancer medicines is part of a new and critical phase in a long-running struggle to make drugs affordable to the world’s poorest people, one that began in earnest more than a decade ago when advocates campaigned successfully to make AIDS medicines accessible to millions of Africans.
“Cancer is the next H.I.V./AIDS issue, and the fight has only begun,” said Shamnad Basheer, a professor of law at West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences in Kolkata.
Several end-of-year lists for 2013 demonstrate that things are, indeed, getting better and better and worse and worse faster and faster. Personally, one post particularly encouraged me this year. It described WHY Congress can’t generate much policy wisdom and how we could change our political and governance STRUCTURES so that making wise policy was more routine. That would generate bigger and better end-of-year lists in the future, as well as a better world.
Dear friends,
There are so many negative developments, it is hard to track them all.
There are so many positive developments, it is hard to track them all.
Phi Beta Iota: US national level estimates and futures predictions have hit bottom. Now is the time to think deeply about the resurrection of intelligence (decision-support) with integrity (holistic analytic coherence).
Recent revelations published on the Press TV website, the New York Post and Veterans Today have changed history.
The story was simple, two American congressional representatives were allowed to read the Congressional 9/11 Investigation Report, this time including the areas President Bush had ordered removed. Both congressmen clearly state that the redacted pages of the report place full responsibility for the planning and execution of 9/11 on one or more foreign intelligence agencies, not “terrorists.”
What is also clear is that President Bush’s personal role in covering this up protected the real perpetrators of 9/11 and pushed the US into, not just two insane wars but draconian moves against America’s government.
Heather Linebaugh's personal account of her work on the US drone program gives one set of reasons for why that program should be stopped immediately. Another reason was given by the Prime Minister of Pakistan two days ago: the use of drones in Pakistan violates the national sovereignty of that country and is protested by almost everyone there who learn to hate Americans for doing this to their country. A third reason: unless drones are banned by an international treaty with the same seriousness that chemical warfare was banned, we may live to see the day when powers hostile to the U.S. launch drones that kill or main you, your neighbors, your children, your friends. It could happen here–and sophisticated drones could be much harder to head off than other forms of attack. And the source of drone attacks may be hard to identify as drones start to become an accepted weapon by many countries, including small dictatorships that will eventually be ovethrown (some by people who wish to strike back at the US for supporting their repressive governments, as for example Egyptian Muslims watching as the US refuses to call the recent coup a coup so that we can still fund the military dictatorship which is every day proclaiming some new assault on freedm and democracy of the Egyptian people).
Few of the politicians who so brazenly proclaim the benefits of drones have a real clue how it actually works (and doesn't)
Heather Linebaugh
Guardian, U.K. Dec. 29th
Whenever I read comments by politicians defending the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Predator and Reaper program – aka drones – I wish I could ask them some questions. I'd start with: “How many women and children have you seen incinerated by a Hellfire missile?” And: “How many men have you seen crawl across a field, trying to make it to the nearest compound for help while bleeding out from severed legs?” Or even more pointedly: “How many soldiers have you seen die on the side of a road in Afghanistan because our ever-so-accurate UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicle] were unable to detect an IED [improvised explosive device] that awaited their convoy?”
