various stuff from my thawt and life in a news-bedevilled world, word play and semiotic experiments, with Christian intent but in hopefully creative tension with culture of North America, both USA and Canada, both hither in Toronto and yon worldwide ...
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 10, 2010; 4:48 PM
The leaders of President Obama's deficit commission on Wednesday offered an ambitious plan to rebalance the federal budget by curbing increases in Social Security benefits, slashing spending on most federal operations and wiping out more than $100 billion a year in tax breaks for individuals and businesses. The proposal is aimed at cutting more than $3.8 trillion from deficits over the next decade.
I guess in the several nooz reports I read regarding the election results from Myanmar (former Burma) was the headline that the world's parliamentarians, governments, and pundits "dismiss" the elections and their results. A refugee Burmese noozpaper published in English provides the following report by Ko Htwe in The Irrawaddy (Nov8,2k10).
refWrite refBloggers Insert -- devoted to the freedom to use the Internet, to the freedom to blog, and to freedom of the press / media -- more generally carried an article with a marvellous pix, from Agence Press France, "Burma's Internet Slows to a Stop" in the original and "Burma: Internet: Net winds down to a halt" in rWrBI's coverage. The article is written by Wai Moe and Min Lwin (Feb2,2k10).
Earlier today I used Twitter or Facebook to let my friends and contacts know how annoying, discouraging to me is the fact that inevitably the G20 Summit in Seoul, South Korea, woud be the scene of dreadful angry protests laced with the allure of violence by the brand of Anarchists that have been showing up at all Summits for the last 30 or 40 years perhaps.
Well, it's happening now. Reuters has a report out already about tens of thousands (10,000s) of protestors hungry for action, "Thousands protest in Seoul before G20 summit" (Nov7,2k10). It's the haunt of "violent anti-capitalist protests," while the 10,000 actual participants are arriving in the city as well. Some 32 heads of government and leaders of international organizations will be assembling in readiness for the opening of the event on Thursday, Nov11. 50,000 police are also being assembled to protect and defend the leaders against the swelling mob. South Korea's Lee Myung-bak and Barack Obama have a "long-delayed free trade deal" they want to finalize "before the summit." For Lee, it seems "the trade deal key is key."
I wonder how many are holding their breath, waiting perhaps, to see whether North Korea will interlope with some dramatic new provocation.
The webs+t Mashable runs a noozpage devoted to video. It's page/s recently carried a story by Jolie O'Dell, "After UK stabbing, YouTube removes extremist videos from s+t," reporting on how UK Security Minister, Baroness Neville-Jones, read the riot act to the companies involved and apparently to the Obama Administration (the fountainhead of the American spirit of placatory halfway-measures until recently, let's thank Prez Obama for bringing his suic+d doves into the fierce reality of jihadist terrorism, a terrorism pursued also by means of video).
In response to critics around the world, YouTube has removed content from Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who many believe was responsible for inciting violent, terrorist acts.
Al-Awlaki was linked to the recent stabbing of British politician Stephen Timms; the 21-year-old student who committed the crime was influenced by the cleric’s online calls to jihad. Al-Awlaki [in Yemen and being hunted by Yemeni security forces] was also cited as an influence on those who committed last year’s shootings at Fort Hood, and he was linked to two bombs found on a Chicago-bound plane last Friday.
UK Security Minister Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones put pressure on the video-sharing site when she told Washington officials that these YouTube videos “incited murder and would be banned in the UK,” according to a BBC report.
The latest is a complete vindication of Malkin and her companions, but it took the actual stabbing of a parliamentarian to get the distracted attention of the companies and the American govt. Shame!
It was impossible to make use of quotation text from this blog. I won't be using anything from this source in the future. But you can click up the current entry, and make a note of the URL if it proves to be of further interest to you.
In any case, the one link preserved is an appropriate quote from a work of music by Jimmy Cliff, thanks to blog-entry author TomJoo. I wonder how the webs+t can quote this video, and yet make it impossible for quoters to quote their own texts. Everyone knows that quotation by other blogs increases the readership of the intitial meme-creating blog-entry.
Food for thawt indeed. If they want a narrow secret-society readership, to 'ell with 'em!
A lot of insulting direct at the USA occurs in Canada; when Americans take to insulting Canadian, it also comes as little surprize. But when I find it coy and cute in a noozhorse that has little warrant to run pejoratives against the nearest neibor, the practice rankles, as does that going in the other direction. At the end of the blockquote that follows, you'll perhaps notice the source of m+ pique.
Oct. 19, 2010, 2:44 p.m. EDT·CORRECTED
Canada’s public health care at crossroads
Private medicine makes inroads as nation struggles with long waits
A previous version of this story gave an incorrect name for the Canadian Healthcare
Association. The story has been corrected.
GATINEAU, Quebec (MarketWatch) — Just across the Ottawa River from the Parliament building, the seat of Canada’s government, Linda Irving is defying her nation’s 45-year-old health-care system.
Irving is concerned about abdominal pains she’s had for a few months, and skittish about the four-month wait her sister-in-law endured before recently undergoing kidney cancer surgery.
So she isn’t taking any chances. Irving is “jumping the queue” and paying $750 for her own magnetic resonance imaging at a privately run clinic in Gatineau, just inside Quebec and not too far from her home in Ottawa.
“I’ve had an issue for the last few months with swollen glands. It’s something that’s been bothering me,” Irving said. “I know if I were to wait for one on the Ontario side with the public [system], it would take several months.”
Long wait in Canada for health care
If you're a Canadian seeking non-urgent medical treatment, the waits can be legendary. But most residents north of the border say they wouldn't trade their health-care system for anything. MarketWatch's Russ Britt reports.
Each Canadian province manages its own health care, and so Quebec allows its citizens to pay for some private procedures such as MRIs. Irving’s home province of Ontario forces residents to wait up to a year to get the imaging done under Canada’s government-run insurance program. So she’s engaging in what some call “medical tourism.”
Irving’s case is emblematic of the debate currently going on inside the U.S.’s neighbor to the north: whether to introduce more privatization into the Canadian health-care system that has been a source of national pride for nearly half a century.
Just as the U.S. is rethinking the way it handles health care, Canada is re-examining over the next four years how to maintain the system that provides medical treatment for all regardless of income.
A new accord
The country wants to reformulate the network in an effort to cut back on wait times and medical tourism. In 2014, the nation of 34 million people is set to write a new health “accord,” renewing the pact it signed in 2004, and is expected to further address Canadian health-care shortcomings. Read more on Canada's limited health care opportunities.
Privatization is inching its way into the system, as evidenced by treatment centers that are beginning to pop up in the nation’s eastern province of Quebec as well as British Columbia in the west. The heartland province of Alberta also is questioning the status quo.
Meanwhile, Canada’s provinces are struggling with their tax structures, hoping the funds they devote to health care can keep up with a rapidly aging population and skyrocketing medical costs. In Ontario, medical costs eat up close to 50% of all provincial revenue.
But the nation as a whole seems fiercely devoted to the concept of free health care for all. Just as President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats are under fire from Republicans in the 2010 election season for trying to remake the U.S. health-care system, a radical revamping of Canada’s system could draw fire for members of Parliament.
“It’s a lose-lose situation when you talk about health with the feds. They know it’s such an intrinsic value in this country. No one wants to give up universal care. We don’t want to be like the United States, frankly,” said Pamela Fralick, chief executive of the lobby group Canadian Healthcare Association.
Still, just as some in the U.S. are wondering whether a little more governmental influence might help to bring down costs, Canadians are contemplating whether help from the private sector could aid in the daunting battle to reduce wait times for MRI screenings, hip and knee surgeries and cataracts treatments, to name a few.
Pain management
Dr. Jeffrey Turnbull, president of the Canadian Medical Association, acknowledges that, yes, there have been isolated incidents in which patients waiting for treatment have died. And many others with waits imposed upon them endure months of significant pain.
“That is common. I’m the chief of staff of [Ottawa] Hospital. That discomfort and pain, I see that daily,” Turnbull said. “Is there a health-related cost to wait times? Absolutely.”
For residents of Canada’s vast rural regions, the process is even more onerous. They often find themselves waiting months to see a specialist, then several more months if an MRI is needed. After that is another wait for diagnosis and treatment.
Each medical-related trip may involved hundreds of miles of travel for rural residents. Canada is the world’s second largest nation in square miles, but its population is roughly one-tenth that of the U.S. And 80% of its population lives within 100 miles of the U.S. border.
“It’s so sensitive, so hot. That’s why I say, it’s a lose-lose situation. No one wants to go there because it polarizes people. It’s so divisive,” said the health-care association’s Fralick. “The good news is, if you get sick, you’re going to be looked after. You might not get everything. But you’re not going to die on the street.”
Hospital crowding
Balancing free health care with the needs of its people, though, is becoming more difficult for Canada. The frigid nation is finding many of its hospitals overcrowded and there is a question of whether those who need to be admitted actually will.
I found m+self suddenly reading the word "frigid" in this context, and asked m+self Wh+? The word can mean "cold", "unable to enjoy sexual intercourse", or "a state of mind that is frozen" and that cannot change incrementally but must be repressively unchangeable until change of mind and perhaps of heart too, explodes and rev+zes itself in a total transformation, wordview shift, or (in the sc+ences) a paradigm shift (Thomas Kuhn). On a more mundane level, it's a learning style with its problems, as all learning styles have their problems -- since they're glued to the individual's basic psychocognitive patterns. Thanks for the article, author Russ Britt; but really, Russ, coudn't you specify or skip the cute and annoying deployment of nawty adjectives -- in this case, an adjective that coud be read as xenophobic. On the other hand, for all I know, Russ, you're a Canadian, and the Lord knows we have too much Canadian national self-hatred up here. That's bothersome too. And that's a source of the hatred of America that abounds among many, as a compensation technique of the psyche perhaps.
Click the headline to read more of Britt's article, if you're interested further.
World Council of Churches' Ecumenical News International email newsletter (Nov5,2k10):
China is making a contribution to human rights through its ability to feed its population of 1.3 billion people, says a Swiss ethicist while noting Beijing's violation of individual rights. "If China is able to promote peace to contribute to justice by helping developing its economy to feed 20 per cent of the world's population, then it's a major contribution to human rights," said Christoph Stückelberger, of the Geneva-based Globethics.net group, after delivering a lecture about global and contextual ethics on 28 October in Nairobi. "They [the Chinese] may violate individual rights, which is not justified. Of course they have to respect individual rights, but we should not forget they do something for fundamental rights," said Stückelberger, a part-time lecturer at the University of Basel. The ethicist Christoph Stückelberger outshines his own topic by introducing a novel way of moral accounting, as apparently China's OK, if not A-OK, becawz it tries to feed its people. Hmmm, are Tibetans (Buddhists), Uighurs (Moslems), and Mongols (concentrated in Korean-speaking Northwest of China) fed as equitably as are the dominant Han people often treated synonomously as "the Chinese"?
But that question may be marginal to the main one on which Stuckelberger perhaps runs stuck: what of the simultaneity of norm realization as a primary norm for the ent+rty of China's (and our countries's) moral-political goals? Dr Bernard Zylstra (Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto) posed this question to all the activities of govts, esp in dealing with human beings within a given country's territory.
Now, Dr Peter Singer, the Princeton ethicist, m+t want to wei in with the idea he proposes that animals (all sentient beings) shoud also be fed equally and obtain human r+ts equally (does this includes l+c, fleas, bedbugs, etc? Or is he more concerned with species that share more characteristis with humans, l+k gorillas, chimps, and apes?).
But, of course, China doesn't even afford to all its human beings, Chinese but perhaps not even all the dominant Han ethnic majority, the full range of human r+ts, which must include in a premier place religious r+ts (I use the Oslo Forum18 definition here). Among those human r+ts are those of conscience when it comes to religion and faith-association. Read refWr+t's blog-entry yesterday on the Guong Yijun case. It shows not only the bigotry of the China's Communist-atheist state which denied him and 200 others visas to attend Lausanne III in Capetown, South Africa, but also the bigotry of even the co-workers of Guong Yijun in the Transporation Ministry who squeezed him out of his job (and, thus, out of his paycheck and the food it woud by for his family). Aspects of this have clearly to do with religion, the puppetry China practices regarding unofficial churches s+nd up to do the Communist-puppteers' bidding. Thus, aspects of both faith and religious r+ts are communal, and are transgressed becawz China doesn't want a multi-communal society multi-religions society where people may associate in groups differently, faith groups, and also labour unions, for example. China needs human r+ts, not just food. Are the prisoners and those prisoners in work camps in China receiving a decent set of decent meals everyday, especially when nutrition coud be considered in exchange for their hard labour, Dr Christoph, sir?
China m+t get more food onto tables of its ent+r populace if it gave societal and associational space to a w+d range of faith-communities, some of which may want to establish free-standing unions like a Christain Labour Association of China. I won't here rehearse the list of cr+mz of China's govt and the Party that runs it, cr+mz against numerous citizens of various faiths that exist, despite all of the govt-party's efforts to cage them and erase them.
ChinaAid is a webs+t devoted to reporting and hopefully otherw+z assisting persons persecuted for their Christian faith in China. In a press release (Nov4,2k10), ChinaAid gives notice of the persecution of Guo Yijun who has been squeezed out of his job becawz he had been inv+ted to attend the Lausanne III congress in Capetown, South Africa. If memory serves, there were over 200 Chinese delegates inv+ted to the recent evangeliztion and justice congress, and who planned to make the trip. Sadly, the Chinese sisters and brothers seem to have no broad-scope strategy for justice in the different societal spheres, concentrating only on their churches and house assemblies. What is needed in China is a Christian Labour Association of China, that will spearhead the justice-cawz for r+ts of workers like Guo Yijun, and of all workers whatever their religion or lack thereof, to work without prejudice. And to form free-standing independent labour unions to defend their r+ts at work, in this case, to be Christian at work. The vigilante approach of Guo Yijun's co-workers in the Ministry of Transportation or some more recent employment, is something reprehensible. It evokes disgust and loathing. Whether the Transport job is the last employment or not the press release from ChinaAid does not make clear in this regard.
Hansard is a daily publication of Britain's Parliament. Steve Bishop in his own daily presents Hansard's transcription from the House of Lords for Nov1,2k10 [Nov 2k10 (pt OOO3). I found a passage in which Baroness Gould of Potternewton gives her verbal analysis of how the budgetary cuts of the new Coalition govt (Tories and Lib Democrats) will affect the most vulnerable in British society.
My Lords, it gives me enormous pleasure to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Healy of Primrose Hill, on her very thoughtful and excellent maiden speech. I should also like to add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Nye, for it must be a unique occasion to be able to welcome two such good friends -- both of whom I have known for more than 30 years.
….
Fairness, we were told earlier today, runs through the heart of the Government's decision-making. I make no apology for repeating that there is certainly no fairness to poor families, pensioners, women or the disabled in either the emergency Budget in June or in the comprehensive spending review. It is difficult to comprehend how, using the Treasury's own figures, it can admit that the poorest 10 per cent of the population will bear the brunt of the cuts, and then have the audacity to say that that is fair.
Our New York Times Op-Ed: How the Banks Put the Economy Underwater
Several regular readers were kind enough to send congratulatory e-mails on our New York Times op-ed, which appears in the Sunday edition. I hope you enjoy it. The text follows:
In Congressional hearings last week, Obama administration officials acknowledged that uncertainty over foreclosures could delay the recovery of the housing market. The implications for the economy are serious. For instance, the International Monetary Fund found that the persistently high unemployment in the United States is largely the result of foreclosures and underwater mortgages, rather than widely cited causes like mismatches between job requirements and worker skills.
This chapter of the financial crisis is a self-inflicted wound. The major banks and their agents have for years taken shortcuts with their mortgage securitization documents — and not due to a momentary lack of attention, but as part of a systematic approach to save money and increase profits. The result can be seen in the stream of reports of colossal foreclosure mistakes: multiple banks foreclosing on the same borrower; banks trying to seize the homes of people who never had a mortgage or who had already entered into a refinancing program.
I'm not going to talk legalese here, except as necessary. I'm wr+ting to defend the defenders of the Comfort Women, ladies who were subjected to severe mental and physical immiseration by the Japanese army of occupation during Word War II, and then further exploited by the neglect of the re-established Philippines government over these several decades.
In 2004 the process of defence of the long-suffering women began at the University of Philippines, Law Faculty in Manila the country's capital. The legal defence began with the formulation of the comfort women petition. In 2006, Diane Desierto and Harry Roque published their analysis and theory of Comfort Women's Defence in the Journal of International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict the initial defence was well placed in this scholarly journal's pages becawz the contestation was pointed at the responsibility of the Philippines govt (Executive Branch) to address the Japan govt in regard to wart+m transgressions of the latter country. You can read this very long file for its most relevant pages (91-98). On April 28,2k10 the Philippines Supreme Court created a terrible day of infamy for itself by issuing its decision in response to the petition and the notification regarding the petition in the scholarly journal where international human r+ts is among its chief concerns, a notification resulting in a level of publicity and scrutiny that the Court coudn't bear.
In a careful law strategy the UP Law Faculty advocates had petitioned on behalf of the "surviving World War II 'comfort women' who were seeking an apology and remuneration from Japan, by asking the Supreme Court of the Philippines to compel the Executive Branch to ensure them their r+ts to redress" from Japan. [Owlbirdbet Crossover spellings will sometimes intrude, even into quotes and titles.]
I will refer to the Supreme Court of the Philippines as SCP. The April 2k10 decision of SCP was written for the Court by its Justice Mariano del Castillo, and that horrible refusal of the petition protected the Executive Branch of the Philippines government in its inaction and mercilessness. It didn't have to bother diplomatically, or in an International Court of Justice, the Japanese government to redress the pain and suffering of the Comfort Women during Japan's WWII occupation of the Philippines. We must not lose attention to and care for the women who were victims, as much as any combat soldier f+ting under the Philippines military or General MacArthur when he landed in the Islands to dr+v out the occupiers. But, you know, women don't count, especially when stained by the nature of their exploitation.
Hong Kong plans for "colossal West Kowloon Cultural District," the building of which will cost $2.8 Billion, for which work will start in 2k15 and continue for at least 5 years. The plan is to create a world-class tourist city with capacity to accomodate all sorts of artists, as well as amenities for a sophisticated and wealthy international clientele. Architect's Foster + Partners: "Three key ideas distilled from Hong Kong underpin the master plan -- the village, agriculatural field patterns, and urban streetscapes. Read more: refWrite backpage ....
Wall Street Journal reporters Enda Curran and Geoffrey Rogow note the sudden t+tning of Australia's currency, "Australian dollar soars on rate decision" (Nov2,2k10).
The Reserve Bank of Australia surprised financial markets Tuesday when it tightened policy for the first time in six months in a pre-emptive strike to stave off looming inflation pressures being fuelled by a once-in-a-century mining boom.
The Australian dollar soared close to parity against the US dollar after the decision, which pushes Australian monetary policy closer to restrictive terrain for the first time since 2007. The move comes in stark contrast to the US and Europe, where central banks continue to keep rates at historic lows and are discussing possible further easing. The US Federal Reserve is widely expected ...
Yep, you can't get in to read further unless you buy your way in via a short-term subscription. Ta' 'ell wid dat!
