Why an MRI costs $1,080 in America and $280 in France

Why an MRI costs $1,080 in America and $280 in France: "There is a simple reason health care in the United States costs more than it does anywhere else: The prices are higher.

That may sound obvious. But it is, in fact, key to understanding one of the most pressing problems facing our economy. In 2009, Americans spent $7,960 per person on health care. Our neighbors in Canada spent $4,808. The Germans spent $4,218. The French, $3,978. If we had the per-person costs of any of those countries, America’s deficits would vanish. Workers would have much more money in their pockets. Our economy would grow more quickly, as our exports would be more competitive....."

ACTA in UK: 10 years in jail for a download?

Do You Know Where Your Medicine Came From? Over 40% of Pills Made Overseas -- Many in Unregulated Factories

Do You Know Where Your Medicine Came From? Over 40% of Pills Made Overseas -- Many in Unregulated Factories: "Here's a look a look at where the stuff in your medicine cabinet comes from.

Headaches. Insomnia. Anxiety. American medicine cabinets are packed with remedies for these common maladies. And up to 40 percent of them are manufactured overseas (along with 80 percent of active ingredients for pharmaceuticals). But a recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office estimated that in fiscal year 2009, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration visited just 11 percent of the 3,765 foreign factories it is responsible for inspecting — compared to 40 percent of domestic factories. In 2008, the GAO found that the FDA took two to five years to follow up with foreign plants it cited for safety issues — if it followed up at all.

In 2008, 30 products made by a single Indian company were banned by the FDA, and a tainted batch of the blood thinner heparin from one of many hundreds of Chinese pharmaceutical plants was linked to 81 U.S. deaths...."

Virginity Tests Banned

How Egypt Justifies Its Brutal Crackdown: Occupy Wall Street

How Egypt Justifies Its Brutal Crackdown: Occupy Wall Street: "Two people were killed in Cairo and Alexandria this weekend as Egyptian activists took the streets to protest the military's attempts to maintain its grip on power. And guess how the state is justifying its deadly crackdown.

"We saw the firm stance the US took against OWS people & the German govt against green protesters to secure the state," an Egyptian state television anchor said yesterday (as translated by the indispensable Sultan Sooud al Qassemi; bold ours)...."

Bye Bye Bush Doctrine: Obama Got Gadhafi Without A Single US Ground Troop

Bye Bye Bush Doctrine: Obama Got Gadhafi Without A Single US Ground Troop: "President Obama proved once and for all that the right wing belief in military might over all else is wrong by removing Qaddafi without deploying a single US ground troop...."

No'Amor Qaddafi

The Daily Show
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0.5% Own Almost 40% Of World’s $231Trillion Dollars Of Wealth

0.5% Own Almost 40% Of World’s $231Trillion Dollars Of Wealth: "This report by the Business Insider is absolutely fascinating. This shows massive income inequality, not only in the U.S., but around the world. According to this report the global wealth is now $231 TRILLION dollars, with .5% own almost 40% of it.

Now, we all know where wealth is created. It is NOT created on the trading floors of Wall Street. Wealth is created by production, Wall Street is just the investors. Wall Street invests in wealth creation, and when production becomes too expensive in a country, they push the corporation to increase their dividends by outsourcing our jobs.

The fact that half of one percent own almost 40% of all wealth means, the rest of us are not receiving the fruits of our labor. If the economy grows by one dollar, but 40 cents is kept by 0.5% of the population, how does that increase economic growth?..."

Someone will have to remind me again why these greedy crooks need more tax breaks.

One Month In, Occupy Wall Street Protesters Appear Poised to Change US Politics

One Month In, Occupy Wall Street Protesters Appear Poised to Change US Politics: "What a difference a month makes. Not only has OWS survived, it has captured the imagination of multitudes of embittered Americans.

Late last month, a ragtag group of several hundred liberal activists ventured to the centre of America's economic universe – Wall Street – to protest against what they saw as the country's growing income inequality and the stranglehold of corporate money over US democracy. The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement hoped to attract thousands of protesters, but the turnout ended up being disappointingly smaller. Coverage of the protests was largely restricted to liberal media outlets and a snarky piece in the New York Times captured the sentiments of many when it dismissed them as "carnival" and "street theatre". One could be forgiven for dismissing the demonstrations as simply another failure of progressive populist politics in an era where populist energy is generally restricted to the anti-government, conservative right.

What a difference a month makes. Not only has OWS survived, it has captured the imagination of multitudes of embittered Americans. It has become a national force with the very real potential to roil American politics fundamentally. Other groups have sprung up in cities across the US and are now branching out internationally, including London....:"

#Occupytogether - Protest camps set up in Frankfurt and London

What the Media Won't Show You About the Iran Hikers

Sitting at the Same Table?

Palestine's losing battle for land

Palestine's losing battle for land: "The U.N. could soon recognize it as a state, but Israel is swallowing more and more of its territory.

It's the show that time and the world forgot. It's called the Occupation and it's now in its 45th year. Playing on a landscape about the size of Delaware, it remains largely hidden from view, while Middle Eastern headlines from elsewhere seize the day. Diplomats shuttle back and forth from Washington and Brussels to Middle Eastern capitals; the Israeli-Turkish alliance ruptures amid bold declarations from the Turkish prime minister; crowds storm the Israeli Embassy in Cairo, while Israeli ambassadors flee the Egyptian capital and Amman, the Jordanian one; and of course, there's the headliner, the show-stopper of the moment, the Palestinian Authority's campaign for statehood in the United Nations, which will prompt an Obama administration veto in the Security Council.

But whatever the Turks, Egyptians or Americans do, whatever symbolic satisfaction the Palestinian Authority may get at the U.N., there's always the Occupation and there -- take it from someone just back from a summer living in the West Bank -- Israel isn't losing. It's winning the battle, at least the one that means the most to Palestinians and Israelis, the one for control over every square foot of ground. Inch by inch, meter by meter, Israel's expansion project in the West Bank and Jerusalem is, in fact, gaining momentum, ensuring that the "nation" that the U.N. might grant membership will be each day a little smaller, a little less viable, a little less there...."

Shocking Facts on Israel & Palestine

Qaddafi on the Brink

Egypt Demands An Official Apology From Israel For Killing Of Border Guards

Something needs to be done about Israel. This shit is getting ridiculous.

Foreign Students in Work Visa Program Stage Walkout at Plant

Foreign Students in Work Visa Program Stage Walkout at Plant: "PALMYRA, Pa. — Hundreds of foreign students, waving their fists and shouting defiantly in many languages, walked off their jobs on Wednesday at a plant here that packs Hershey’s chocolates, saying a summer program that was supposed to be a cultural exchange had instead turned them into underpaid labor.

The students, from countries including China, Nigeria, Romania and Ukraine, came to the United States through a long-established State Department summer visa program that allows them to work for two months and then travel. They said they were expecting to practice their English, make some money and learn what life is like in the United States..."

JUSTICE at HERSHEY'S

A few years ago, I heard a shocking story on This American Life about Indian guest workers in Oklahoma. The John Pickle Company had recruited and hired 52 guest workers from India, many of whom were highly educated, to come to Oklahoma to work in an oil industry parts factory. They were essentially held captive, without passports, and made to work long hours for almost no money and housed in a decrepit “dormitory”, isolated by culture from the locals and by distance from support from family. Eventually, the guest workers made contact with members of a local church, who helped organize their escape and eventual financial restitution.

Shocking that this kind of thing would happen in our country, I thought, but I managed to put that sickening feeling out of mind with the comforting thought that this was a one-off thing, that one ignorant individual might have thought he was helping people from a developing country by essentially enslaving them, but it slid under the radar only because it was a small-time operator with relatively few employees. But then I came across the news today in the New York Times that hundreds of foreign students from countries like China, the Ukraine, and Nigeria had been recruited to come to the United States on a “cultural exchange” program but were steered into backbreaking work at a Hershey’s chocolate packing plant that didn’t even compensate them enough to cover their costs of coming to this country.

Here’s how the program worked. The US State Department offers a J-1 Visa that allows students wanting to experience American culture firsthand to work for two months in the United States and then to travel for a month. It’s actually a fairly good program when it’s not abused – friends of mine have participated and raved about their experiences.

In theory, students can travel to the US and make enough money during their two months to cover the expenses it took for them to come to the States and to see the sights for a month. Then they go back to their home countries and report on how wonderful life is in the United States and how welcoming and friendly the American people are.

But in reality, the student workers in Palmyra, PA paid up to $6,000 in application and processing fees and traveled to a small town in Pennsylvania to work in a Hershey packing plant operated by Exel, a local contractor, where they were forced to perform back-breaking physical labor for low wages. Many of the students are training for highly-skilled careers in fields like medicine in their home countries, but working in the factory left them with strained backs and numb hands. The workers were videotaped and told that if they slowed from a constant rapid pace, they would be fired. If they complained, they would be fired. And if they took their complaints to other authorities, they would be fired. (Sensing a pattern?) They couldn’t leave the job to work somewhere else, because this was the position listed on their visa. And they couldn’t just go home, because they didn’t have any money to change their ticket.

One student, a medical student from Nigeria, complained that his hands are so stiff from work that he can hardly hold a pen nowadays. It’s going to be awfully difficult to progress very far in his studies or career if he can’t hold a pen to write, much less wield a scalpel.

On top of it all, they were forced to live in company housing and charged exorbitant rent by the terms of their contract, paying far more for housing than their neighbors. This last bit was the last straw. Along with utility costs, the high rent was deducted directly from their $8.35 an hour pay, leaving them with almost no money to save up for traveling, much less pay them back for application fees and plane fare. When they compared their rent with neighbors, it became apparent that Exel was doing everything they could to extract as much as possible from a group of people who as guests in our country had very little power to defend themselves.

Obviously, my heart first goes out to the students who went through hell at the packing plant. Instead of participating in a cultural exchange, they’ve been exploited because of their cultural isolation. Their spirits were broken down with their bodies. They’ll go back to their home countries to tell everyone who will listen what horrible and cruel people Americans are, and from their own experiences, they’ll definitely have justification for doing so.

But the other side of it is that we’ve had a jobs crisis in this country for several years now. Instead of giving local Pennsylvanians jobs, Exel went after a steady rotation of exploitable foreign students, who were much easier to cow into submission as virtual indentured servants. I’m sure that at least some of the 7.6% of Pennsylvanians who are currently unemployed would love a job, any job, but then Exel wouldn’t be able to charge them outrageous rents or work them to the bone without pushback from union organizers.

In the end, pushback is what Exel and Hershey got. 200 students who were scheduled to start an afternoon shift yesterday walked out of the plant at 3pm, and other students finishing their early morning shift joined in. Enough workers walked off the job to stop or slow production at the plant. The students marched off the plant grounds chanting “We are the students, the mighty, mighty students!” in English and their own languages, joining local representatives of labor unions at the entrance to the plant. Several were arrested at a sit-in blocking the entrance, including Rick Bloomingdale, president of the Pennsylvania State Federation of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., and Neal Bisno, president of a Pennsylvania branch of the Service Employees International Union.

It’s not clear what’s going to happen with the students, Exel, or Hershey now. In the case of the John Pickle Company, which I mentioned at the beginning of the post, the guest workers were allowed to return home, and the company ended up having to pay them almost $1.5 million in back wages and damages.

But in this case, Hershey claims that it’s an Exel managed plant, and Exel claims that the students were hired by a staffing agency, although I’m not sure what that has to do with their exploitative management practices. And the foundation responsible for managing the J-1 Visa program, the Council for Educational Travel, claims that it’s trying to investigate the allegations, but that while they “would go out of [their] way to help [the students], it seems like someone is stirring them up out there.” That’s a strange way to blame the victim.

As for the students themselves, it’s unclear whether they will be fired, fined, or whether they will receive some sort of restitution for what they’ve been through.

Rebuild the Dream

Big Brother isn't watching you

Big Brother isn't watching you: "Dismissing rioters as mindless is futile rhetoric. However unacceptable the UK riots, we need to ask why they are happening.

I no longer live in London. I've been transplanted to Los Angeles by a combination of love and money; such good fortune and opportunity, in both cases, you might think disqualify me from commenting on matters in my homeland. Even the results of Britain's Got Ice-Factor may lay prettily glistening beyond my remit now that I am self-banished.

To be honest when I lived in England I didn't really care too much for the fabricated theatrics of reality TV. Except when I worked for Big Brother, then it was my job to slosh about in the amplified trivia of the housemates/inmates. Sometimes it was actually quite bloody interesting. Particularly the year that Nadia won. She was the Portuguese transsexual. Remember? No? Well, that's the nature of the medium; as it whizzes past the eyes it seems very relevant but the malady of reality TV stars is that their shelf life expires, like dog years, by the power of seven. To me it seems as if Nadia's triumph took place during the silver jubilee, we had a street party..."

Russell Brand Nails UK Riots In Guardian