What's striking are the continuities in American foreign and military policy, no matter who is in the White House. The first-term Obama foreign policy now looks increasingly like the second-term Bush foreign policy. Even where change can be spotted, it regularly seems to follow in the same vein.
Erasing Katrina
Four years on, media mostly neglect an ongoing disaster
There are plenty of ongoing stories to be told today. The Institute for Southern Studies report also highlighted some startling statistics: In addition to the estimated 1 million people still displaced by Katrina, rents in the New Orleans area have increased by 40 percent since the hurricane, and an estimated 11,000 people are currently homeless there. The report also reveals striking racial disparities in the impacts: Less than 49 percent of households in the largely African-American and working class Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans are actively receiving mail today (compared to 76 percent city-wide), for example, and black children's enrollment in public and private schools dropped from 49 percent of all students to 43 percent.
We stand toenail deep in water trouble: a future without a future
When we run out of oil, we walk! When we run out of electricity, we hit the sack early. When we run out of water, we don’t eat and we cannot survive.
Why would you talk about the U.S. water crisis, but you avoid talking its source? Why do educated minds in the halls of newspapers everywhere report on environmental problems, but they refuse to connect them to the core reasons? What collective denial runs through the minds of citizens and leaders alike that allows them to disregard, deny, sidestep and dance around America’s looming and multiple environmental dilemmas?
India leader's helicopter missing
A helicopter carrying a powerful Indian politician has disappeared during a flight over a Maoist rebel stronghold in the south, officials say.
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy's helicopter took off from Hyderabad on Wednesday morning.
Disease Mongering: Good for Big Pharma, Bad for You
Even worse is a growing trend to invert this process: to promote diseases to fit existing drugs. In a fascinating New York Review of Books piece, Marcia Angell, M.D., denounced the practice of "disease mongering." As she put it, "The strategy is to convince as many people as possible (along with their doctors, of course) that they have medical conditions that require long-term drug treatment."
A British Medical Journal article said it more succinctly, "A lot of money can be made from healthy people who believe they are sick."
Outcry over violence in Israel ignoring occupation
Even when there are no Palestinian casualties and fatalities at the hands of the Israel Defense Forces, there is no letup in the everyday bullying by the occupation regime. Many Israelis are complicit in every travel restriction and expropriation order, from the cabinet ministers responsible, to the jurists who legitimize and codify, to the officers who implement and the typists and translators. Every soldier who guards a Jewish settlement, every rabbi who serves it and every kindergarten teacher there is partner to the primal act of the established violence that built it on Palestinian land.
TVNL Comment: This article was written by an Israeli reporter in an Israeli newspaper.
CIA doctors face human experimentation claims
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), a non-profit group that has investigated the role of medical personnel in alleged incidents of torture at Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram and other US detention sites, accuses doctors of being far more involved than hitherto understood.
PHR says health professionals participated at every stage in the development, implementation and legal justification of what it calls the CIA's secret "torture programme".
Pfizer Settlement Includes Guilty Plea
Pfizer Inc. agreed to plead guilty under a $2.3 billion federal settlement over unlawful prescription-drug promotions.The company in January disclosed it would pay the $2.3 billion over allegations it had marketed the since-withdrawn anti-inflammatory drug Bextra and possibly other products for medical conditions different than their approved use. Details of the settlement weren't available in January, however.
The final agreement, announced Wednesday, also resolves Justice Department investigations involving alleged past off-label promotional practices concerning Zyvox, Geodon and Lyrica and allegations related to certain payments to health-care professionals Pfizer medicines.
Is it anti-semitic to defend Palestinian human rights?
All across Canada and in the United States, there is an organized campaign to suppress criticism of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians.
The campaign is especially strong on university campuses where many voices have been raised in support of human rights for the Palestinians.
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