Thursday, Nov 06th
Last update02:24:02 AM GMT
As lawmakers in Washington debate how to overhaul America's health care system, Americans are becoming poorer and more of them lack any health insurance at all.
The states with the highest average rate of uninsured people from 2006 to 2008 are Texas (24.9 percent), New Mexico (23.0 percent) and Florida (20.5 percent). The states with the lowest uninsured rates are Massachusetts (7.1 percent), Hawaii (8.1 percent) and Minnesota (8.7 percent).
J Street does not accept the “public harmony” rule any more than Obama does. In a conversation a month before the White House session, Ben-Ami explained to me: “We’re trying to redefine what it means to be pro-Israel. You don’t have to be noncritical. You don’t have to adopt the party line. It’s not, ‘Israel, right or wrong.’ ”
There appears to be an appetite for J Street’s approach. Over the last year, J Street’s budget has doubled, to $3 million; its lobbying staff is doubling as well, to six. That still makes it tiny compared with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or Aipac.
In a last minute decision, lawyers for the City of New York have conceded that the New York City Coalition for Accountability Now (NYC CAN), a group comprising 9/11 family members, first responders and survivors, indeed did submit over 30,000 valid signatures to put the referendum for a new 9/11 investigation before the voters of New York City this November.
The United States is close to a new peak in government-to-government arms sales, poised to top last year's record $36.4 billion, Pentagon figures showed.
With one month left in fiscal 2009, the value of such deals stood at $35.3 billion, not including any that may be wrapped up by the September 30 close of the fiscal year, the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency said Thursday.
TVNL Comment: The US military industrial complex thrives on the wars it starts and encourages around the globe. We were warned by Dwight Eisenhower. We didn't listen.
As the world hails Iraq's supposed return to normality, the country's militias -- the same ones that spent years waging a sectarian civil war -- have found a new, less apparent target: men suspected of being gay. The systematic killings, which began earlier this year, reveal the cracks behind Iraq's fragile calm. Iraq's leaders may talk of security and democracy from behind barbed wire in the Green Zone, but the surge of murders against gay men is a stark sign of how far Iraqi society still has to go.
Seven months after his release from Guantanamo Bay, Mustafa Ait Idr cautiously sips coffee in a Sarajevo cafe. His face is still partially paralyzed and numb from when guards pinned him onto gravel and jumped on him. He is nursing a broken finger — punishment for refusing to strip naked in his cell. On another occasion, his head was held in a toilet for prolonged periods of time.
Now a free man, Ait Idr proudly displays his Bosnian ID Card, which was only recently reinstated. He is still unable to find employment or access his bank account.
Earlier this week, Hermanson returned home on a flight to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. His body was in a coffin. Hermanson was not killed by enemy fire or an improvised explosive device or even by "friendly fire." In fact, he died in what is considered to be the safest place in Iraq for Americans--the heavily fortified Green Zone. His body, according to his family, was discovered on the floor of a shower near his quarters at Camp Olympia. It appears that Hermanson was electrocuted.
Israel is using the country's legal system to segregate and penalise its Palestinian citizens and prohibit Arab dissent
Two cases brought before Israeli courts last week revealed the attitude of the establishment towards Palestinian Arab citizens of the state. One shows how Palestinian citizens are treated as victims of police brutality, and the second shows how they are regularly victimised because of their opposition to injustice.
Next Monday, when the journalist walks out of prison, his 10 raging seconds, which came to define his country's last six miserable years, are set to take on a new life even more dramatic than the opening act.Page 885 of 1153
