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Viewing all posts tagged "america"
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Healthcare around the world - How Singapore compares to other countries (click on the link to go to the BBC article)
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Excerpt from an email I wrote in 2007
I’m not so hyperbolic to suggest that racism, homophobia, and misogynism drive US foreign policy, but I still maintain that religious and cultural sensibilities are severely lacking in the people who execute said policy. From the interrogators at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib to the Blackwater mercenaries who kill indiscriminately, “bad apples” certainly exist among policy executors.
The most pressing problem, as I see it, is that our policy makers ignore the “bad apples.” More accurately, they ensure that “bad apples” are not prosecutable under US law. The 2006 Military Commission Act places those who serve our national interests by executing our foreign policy into “the legal equivalent of outer space,” as one Administration lawyer put it.
US foreign policy is driven by a set of political goals created and enforced by the head of state. The policy is designed to protect our national interests of security, prosperity, and ideology. We will fail to achieve this unless we change our current track.
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Sure, America cannot afford health care reform right now; but will it ever?
While this is certainly the most reasonable argument for delaying health care reform — we can’t afford it right now — it still misses the point. When in recent memory have we ever “been able to afford it”? The fact is for the past 30 years not one Republican administration has pledged the goal of ensuring that all Americans have good, affordable health care. Rather, the very idea has been associated with death, evil, backwardness, etc. by Reagan, Bush I and Bush II. It surely did not help that Bill Clinton and Obama entered office in the midst of major recessions caused largely by policy decisions made by their respective preceding Republican administrations.
But White House administrations cannot take all the blame. A quick reading of history shows evidence of a trend in public thinking that “we do not want Socialized medicine.” Indeed the American people have gone on record many times as not wanting compulsory health care coverage for all US citizens. Teddy Roosevelt lost the presidential election in 1912 after running on a platform advocating national health insurance. A national health insurance bill put up to the vote by the Truman administration after WWII was rejected by American voters. In the 1980s, in response to escalating heath care costs during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, there was a movement toward consolidating hospital systems and other health care related businesses under corporate control. Yet even into the 1990s as health care costs continued to rise (at double the rate of inflation!), health care reform legislation continued to fail.
It’s clear that the current employer-based system of health insurance cannot last. It’s just not sustainable. But like many things in a country of 300 million people, change cannot happen overnight. Just look how long it took society to accept basic facts that smoking is not healthy, CFCs destroy ozone, CO2 emissions are bad, recycling is good, and clean water is good, before laws were passed to help drive these facts home. There needs to be a shift in public thinking about health care in the US and I will not fault the Obama administration for trying to lead the way.
By the way, we sure would free up a lot of money by reducing military spending (currently around 30% of US tax collections!). In so doing, we could defend the dollar, reduce the projected deficit and finance health care reform simultaneously. -
Al Jazeera English has finally broken into the United States
Foreign bureaus have been among the hardest hit by cost-cutting measures in print and television media alike. According to the Pew Research Center’s annual State of the News Media report, coverage of international events by American media fell by about 40 percent in 2008. Thus has a bizarre situation arisen: at the most interconnected time in history, accurate and comprehensive news of the outside world is disappearing — and with it an informed public.
“The mainstream American networks have cut their bureaus to the bone,” says Burman. “They’re basically only in London now. Even CNN has pulled back. I remember in the ’80s when I covered these events, there would be a truckload of American journalists and crews and editors, and now Al Jazeera outnumbers them all.” The channel plans to open ten new bureaus in the coming year, including one in Canada. “At the risk of sounding incredibly self serving,” Burman says, “that’s where, in the absence of alternatives, Al Jazeera English can fill a vacuum, simply because we’re going in the opposite direction.”
(via azspot)
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Pentagon plan on 'don't ask, don't tell' ready for Congress
In the US, a member of the military may be dismissed for being openly gay or lesbian. The 1993 “don’t ask, don’t tell” law prohibits gay men and women in the military from revealing their sexual orientation, and prevents the military from asking about it. Since 1994 over 12,000 have been kicked out of the military for making their homosexuality apparent. The official reason for ban is to protect “unit cohesion,” or the need for soldiers to know that their buddies are there for them when the going gets tough. ”Don’t ask, don’t tell” essentially admits that prejudices against homosexuals exist, and, moreover, that it’s not the problem of the US military to dispel such feelings.
For example, there’s a firefight in Fallujah and an openly gay man is pinned down behind a small retaining wall. A second solider, who is well positioned to provide covering fire from a nearby rooftop, but who absolutely despises homosexuals, might hesitate or even refuse to assist his vulnerable comrade. The first soldiers is hit by enemy fire; the unit loses a man.
Although there has been much progress in civil rights movements, racial and sexual discrimination continue to exist in our society and in the military. And yet, the question of extending the logic of “don’t ask, don’t tell” to females and black people has not once entered public debate. And why should it? It’s preposterous!
Defense Secretary Robert Gates will reveal a plan to repeal the controversial ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy, at a hearing on Tuesday.
“Gates will discuss options for more ‘humanely’ implementing the current ban, for example, according to a senior Pentagon official. The secretary asked his general counsel’s office for options six months ago including how to possibly not expel personnel whose homosexuality is revealed by third parties, the source said.”
Click through to read full article.
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Democrats dropping like pidgeons that are fed rat poison-laced bread
10 Feb 2010 - Hiram Monserrate, state senator from New York, expelled after being found guilty of misdemeanor assault of his girlfriend in OCtober
8 Feb 2010 - John Murtha, congressman from Pennsylvania, dies
19 Jan 2010 - Martha Coakley defeated by Republican opponent in a special Massachusetts election to fill the senate seat left open by the late Ted Kennedy
6 Jan 2010 - Christopher Dodd, senator from Connecticut, announces he will not seek re-election
4 Nov 2009 - Creigh Deeds, senator from Virginia, defeated by Republican opponent in election for Virginia governnor
25 Aug 2009 - Ted Kennedy, senator from Massachusetts, dies
etc.
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Right-wing terrorist crashes plane into IRS building in Texas
A man crashed a small plane Thursday morning into a seven-story office building in Austin, Tex., that houses offices of the Internal Revenue Service, the authorities said. The pilot was killed. Two people were hospitalized, and one person was still unaccounted for Thursday afternoon.
President Obama was briefed on the situation by his counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, at 12:35 p.m., according to Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary. But while the Department of Homeland Security was investigating the crash, federal officials emphasized that they did not consider the case to be a terrorist attack.
Stopping briefly for commentary: what about this isn’t a terrorist attack? The guy clearly had political objectives in mind and wanted to kill people to achieve them. So it’s terrorism when a non-American guy fails to light his crotch on fire in an airplane, but when an American crashes his plane into the side of a U.S. government building with the objective to kill, it’s somehow not terrorism?
The seven-story building, at 9430 Research Boulevard in northwest Austin, about seven miles northwest of the State Capitol, was consumed by flames after the crash. It continued to burn for hours, and by early afternoon firefighters had only been able to search the three lowest floors.
Officials said the crash was being investigated as a crime. The authorities identified the pilot as Joseph A. Stack III, 53.
A long, angry note posted on the Internet, on a web site registered to Mr. Stack and signed “Joe Stack,” appeared to have been written by the pilot, though authorities had not confirmed the connection. By midafternoon, the company that hosted the site had taken the note down, saying it was acting at the request of the F.B.I.
The note related a long history of financial difficulties and frustrations with the nation’s tax and health-care systems and with setbacks like the sharp decline of defense-related employment in Southern California in the 1990’s and the disruption of air travel after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. It ended with passages strongly suggesting that its author expected to die on Thursday, including a reference to Feb. 18, 2010, as his date of death.
“I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different,” the note concluded. “I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.”This was a criminal suicide attack, and he was white, so it’s not terrorism.
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Why so Syria? A new start to relations with America
Rafiq Hariri was the Prime Minister of Lebanon from 1992 to 1998 and again from 2000 to 2004. As politician and business tycoon, Hariri was responsible for reconstructing Beirut after the 15-year civil war, but in so doing he created a climate of corruption that crippled the Lebanese economy, with public debt rising 16 times as growth slowed to a halt. He resigned his post as Prime Minister in October 2004.
On 14 February 2005, Hariri was blown up, along with 21 others, when a bomb struck his motorcade as it traveled through Beirut. Fact-finding missions carried out that year implicated both Lebanese and Syrian officials, and while the Syrian government repeatedly claimed it had no knowledge of the bombing, President George W. Bush, as a result of the bombing, called home the American Ambassador from Damascus. The position has been left vacant ever since.
So it was a welcome surprise last week when President Barack Obama announced the nomination of William Ford to fill the job of Ambassador to Damascus, and arranged a meeting between William Burns, a senior US diplomat, and Syrian President al-Assad. Affairs in the Middle East, much like US foreign policy in general, are not always what they seem. So why the (seemingly) sudden change of strategy? Simple Intelligence offers a simple explanation:
A Damascus wooed away from Tehran, party to peace talks with Israel, and supportive of counter-terrorism and anti-Islamist campaigns throughout the Middle East would be a boon to American foreign policy. It could also, provided enough economic results for Syrian citizens, be a welcome infusion of economic and political rewards to Syria as a whole and Assad’s government in particular.
Add to this the fact that a Syria properly allied with the United States would be a Syria much less vulnerable to an Israeli military strike, threats of which have been spewing from Netanyahu government officials in recent weeks. Granted, there are cases where Israel has gone ahead and done whatever it wants without explicit or tacit approval from the United States. But to bomb Damascus at a time when President Obama is trying to normalize relations with the Syrian government would be strategically next to impossible. Much more difficult than, say, strikes against Gaza, which do not seem to bother Washington.
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”We’re a long way from universal health care. Over 15 million Americans will still be uncovered — and that means about 15,000 will still lose their lives each year because they won’t be able to afford to see a doctor or get an operation. But another 30,000 will live.
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