This video is called The Ghosts of War - Canada wages peace in Afghanistan.
From the Canadian Press:
Peace group plans protests in 20 cities over extended mission in Afghanistan
at 19:04 on March 14, 2008, EST.
TORONTO - Canadians must stand up and make their voices heard if politicians are to be convinced to end the military mission in Afghanistan, protesters said Friday as they drummed up support for rallies in 20 communities across the country this weekend.
Protesters in big cities and small towns plan to speak out against the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan and Thursday’s vote in the House of Commons to extend Canada’s presence in the country until at least 2011.
“We want to make sure that voices we have not been hearing in the debate that has occurred over the last few days around the extension of the mission in Afghanistan are heard,” said Sid Lacombe, national co-ordinator for the Canadian Peace Alliance.
And Britney Spears? Just to refresh everyone’s memory…oh…never mind. But she’s also been treated at UCLA Medical Center on various occasions. Britney gave birth there, and has also had a few encounters with staff in the psychiatric wing of the hospital.
The reason I bring up Nataline is that right after she died, I asked a simple question: why in the hell didn’t the hospital just do the transplant, and figure out the financials at a later time? I don’t believe that anyone at UCLA Medical Center was ever held to account for this lack of decision making that led, directly or indirectly, to the young woman’s death.
However, apparently some staff members at UCLA Medical Center were caught peeping in Britney Spears’ medical files - and have been fired for the offense:
“UCLA Medical Center is taking steps to fire at least 13 employees and has suspended at least six others for snooping in the confidential medical records of pop star Britney Spears during her recent hospitalization in its psychiatric unit, a person familiar with the matter said Friday.
In addition, six physicians face discipline for peeking at her computerized records, the person said…”
Listen, I’m the last person in the world who would make excuses for any medical personnel violating the privacy of any patient, celebrity or not, by snooping in patient records for prurient information. Anyone at UCLA Medical Center who wasn’t directly involved in treating Britney had no business prying into her personal records, and should have been fired when the discovery was made. That was the correct call. (Interestingly enough, it appears as if staff were fired, but not doctors. Go figure.)
Without even researching the topic, though, I’m absolutely certain that no one at UCLA Medical Center was disciplined for poor decision making in Nataline’s case. But then, she wasn’t a pop star going off the edge of sanity. She was simply a sick young woman caught up in the healthcare bureaucracy in America. No one was fired; in fact someone, somewhere, probably received a bonus for saving either the insurance company or the hospital money.
Wonderful priorities that we have here in this country, huh?
Nataline Sarkisyan’s case, of course, is far from unique in her country. Michael Moore’s film Sicko shows some more (of course, far from all) cases where money comes before health, even before lives, of sick people in the USA.
By Ben Stocking
Associated Press Writer / March 14, 2008
MY LAI, Vietnam—To the villagers who survived the My Lai massacre and many of the Americans who fought in the Vietnam War, all the anniversaries of the atrocity are important.
But Sunday’s anniversary — the 40th — seems especially urgent to some of the Americans who have come to commemorate it.
In My Lai, members of the Charlie Company slaughtered as many as 504 villagers, including unarmed women, children and elderly.
Frustrated U.S. troops came to My Lai on a “search and destroy” mission, looking for elusive Vietcong guerrillas. Although there were no reports of enemy fire, the U.S. troops began mowing down villagers and setting fire to their homes.
The massacre reminds Lawrence Colburn and war veteran Mike Boehm of the 2005 images of torture that emerged from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
“We’re supposed to learn from the mistakes of history, but we keep making the same mistakes,” said Colburn, whose helicopter landed in My Lai in the midst of the massacre. “That’s what makes My Lai more important today than ever before.”
Boehm runs various humanitarian programs in Quang Ngai province, the central Vietnamese province where My Lai is located. He returned for the 30th anniversary and is helping organize this year’s event.
The formal memorial events will be held Sunday next to a museum paying homage to the massacre victims.
On Saturday morning, Buddhists monks led a group prayer at the massacre site, burning incense and praying for the souls of those who died there.
Among the crowd of several hundred people was Do Thi Buong, 67, who fled from the marauding U.S. troops forty years ago and whose mother was shot to death during the massacre.
“We just want peace,” she said. “We don’t want this sort of thing to happen again anywhere else in the world. Every year when this day arrives, I always feel terrible sadness, and I always remember my mother.”
The Federal Reserve Board on Friday took emergency action to prevent the collapse of Bear Stearns, the fifth largest US investment bank and one of the world’s largest finance and brokerage houses.
Invoking a little-used provision added to the Federal Reserve Act in 1932, at the height of the Great Depression, the US central bank agreed to allow the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to insure an infusion of credit to Bear Stearns by JP Morgan Chase. Under the terms of the “secured loan facility,” to extend for up to 28 days, the risk of a default by Bear Stearns will be borne by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, not JP Morgan Chase. The latter will serve essentially as a conduit for the cash provided by the US central bank.
