usa
My name is Wendell Potter and for 20 years, I worked as a senior executive at health insurance companies, and I saw how they confuse their customers and dump the sick –- all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors.
Source: Wall Street Journal
The U. S. health system spends a higher portion of its gross domestic product than any other country but ranks 37 out of 191 countries according to its performance, according to the World Health Organization‘s World Health Report 2000.
“The United States spends more than twice as much on health care as the average of other developed nations, all of which boast universal coverage. Yet over 39 million Americans have no health insurance whatsoever, and most others are underinsured, in the sense that they lack adequate coverage for all contingencies (e.g., long-term care and prescription drug costs). However, other systems that are completely or partially based on social risk-pooling principles are under threat from neoliberal policies worldwide[1].
Why is the U. S. so different? The short answer is that the U.S. is alone in treating health care as a commodity distributed according to the ability to pay, rather than as a social service to be distributed according to medical need.”
The leading advocate for a single-payer national health insurance system in the US has been Physicians for a National Health Program whose website has a basic primer on it.
Source: Sourcewatch
Wendell Potter: How Corporate PR Works to Kill Health Care Reform
When I testified before the Senate Commerce Committee in late June, I told the senators how the industry has conducted duplicitous and well-financed PR and lobbying campaigns every time Congress has tried to reform our health care system, and how its current behind-scenes-efforts may well shape reform in a way that benefits Wall Street far more than average Americans. I noted that, just as they did 15 years ago when the insurance industry led the effort to kill the Clinton reform plan, it is using shills and front groups to spread lies and disinformation to scare Americans away from the very reform that would benefit them most. The industry, despite its public assurances to be good-faith partners with the President and Congress, has been at work for years laying the groundwork for devious and often sinister campaigns to manipulate public opinion.
Source: PRWatch
Universal health care is health care coverage for all eligible residents of a political region and often covers medical, dental and mental health care. Typically, costs are borne in the majority by publicly-funded programs.
Universal health care is implemented in all industrialized countries, with the exception of the United States.[1] It is also provided in many developing countries.
Australia
Medicare’s logo
Main article: Medicare (Australia)In Australia, Medibank — as it was then known — was introduced, by the Whitlam Labor government on 1 July 1975, through the Health Insurance Act 1973. The Australian Senate rejected the changes multiple times and they were passed only after a joint sitting after the 1974 double dissolution election. However, Medibank was supported by the subsequent Fraser Coalition (Australia) government and became a key feature of Australia’s public policy landscape. The exact structure of Medibank/Medicare, in terms of the size of the rebate to doctors and hospitals and the way it has administered, has varied over the years. The original Medibank program proposed a 1.35% levy (with low income exemptions) but these bills were rejected by the Senate, and so Medibank was funded from general taxation. In 1976, the Fraser Government introduced a 2.5% levy and split Medibank in two: a universal scheme called Medibank Public and a government-owned private health insurance company, Medibank Private.
During the 1980s, Medibank Public was renamed Medicare by the Hawke Labor government, which also changed the funding model, to an income tax surcharge, known as the Medicare Levy, which was set at 1.5%, with exemptions for low income earners.[77] The Howard Coalition government introduced an additional levy of 1.0%, known as the Medicare Levy Surcharge, for those on high annual incomes ($70,000) and do not have adequate levels of private hospital coverage.[78] This was part of an effort by the Coalition to encourage take-up of private health insurance. According to WHO, government funding covered 67.5% of Australia’s health care expenditures in 2004; private sources covered the remaining 32.5% of expenditures.[44]
Cross-country comparisons
Direct comparisons of health statistics across nations are complex. The Commonwealth Fund, in its annual survey, “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall”, compares the performance of the health care systems in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada and the U.S. Its 2007 study found that, although the U.S. system is the most expensive, it consistently underperforms compared to the other countries.[11] A major difference between the U.S. and the other countries in the study is that the U.S. is the only country without universal health care
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_compared#Cross-country_comparisons
In the disturbingly near future, Venice is submerged, Canal Street in New York City has become a real canal again, and it’s 87 degrees in December in Boston. Catastrophic global warming has moved from theory to fact. At the Biosphere Climate Change Expo, undersecretary for the Department of Global Warming Mason Park (Tim Kang) informs the crowd of scientists and activists that the tipping point has passed, and that they are all at fault.
He tells them that the scientists of the world failed to create the necessary pressure, which would have allowed for the political changes needed to confront global warming. Now the Department of Global Warming has been defunded, drying up research money for climate initiatives.
That night at the hotel bar, Park runs into Dr. Gloria Holtzer (Betty Gilpin), a former graduate school classmate, and one of the scientists who will be losing her grant money. Park blames himself for failing to prevent the climate catastrophe in time, but finds comfort in Holtzer’s arms. However, she has an ulterior motive. Park awakens in the morning and soon realizes that everything has changed.
Holtzer’s ecotech company has developed an entirely new way to confront the challenge of catastrophic global warming — by changing the very nature of the human race itself. And Park has become a very powerful test subject.
Mister Green is a parable about change — both personal and political.
Source: FutureStates.TV
Sepp Holzer, the Austrian permaculture leader, in the USA – talking about his earliest discoveries as a boy genius! He covers the use of rocks on steep slopes and thorns to protect from deer. He also initiates and income model at the age of six! Source: www.permies.com
More video: paulwheaton12
Farmers discuss how to choose what your farm produces. There may be an element of passion in your decision but it’s a good idea to consider your goals, land and facilities, and markets too.
Embedded video from Cornell University
In the Voices of Experience series from the Beginning Farmers Resource Center, you’ll find the kind of dirt-under-the-fingernails advice that can only come from someone who’s been there.
The NY Beginning Farmer Project is led by a team of Cornell Cooperative Extension Educators in partnership with the Cornell Small Farms Program. The project, launched in 2006 in response to increasing interest in farm start-ups, aims to enhance the likelihood of success of new ag enterprises by making the best resources and training available to new and diversifying farmers.
Source: Cornell
Climate change and energy are two key issues that will play a significant role in shaping the future security environment. Pentagon
For the first time, the Pentagon’s primary planning document addresses the threat of global warming, noting that it will accelerate instability and conflict around the globe. Former Senators John Warner (R-VA) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) added language requiring the department to consider the effects of climate change on its facilities, capabilities, and missions to the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act. The Department of Defense’s Quadrennial Defense Review (PDF), officially released today, discusses the department’s “strategic approach to climate and energy”:
Climate change and energy are two key issues that will play a significant role in shaping the future security environment.
Although they produce distinct types of challenges, climate change, energy security, and economic stability are inextricably linked.The actions that the Department takes now can prepare us to respond effectively to these challenges in the near term and in the future.
The QDR notes that climate change affects the Department of Defense “in two broad ways”: first, global warming impacts and disasters will “act as an accelerant of instability or conflict,” and second, military installations and forces around the globe will have to adapt to rising seas, increased extreme weather, and other effects of global warming:
Assessments conducted by the intelligence community indicate that climate change could have significant geopolitical impacts around the world, contributing to poverty, environmental degradation, and the further weakening of fragile governments. Climate change will contribute to food and water scarcity, will increase the spread of disease, and may spur or exacerbate mass migration. While climate change alone does not cause conflict, it may act as an accelerant of instability or conflict, placing a burden to respond on civilian institutions and militaries around the world.
Source: Climate Progress
Midwest Permaculture was created by Bill and Becky Wilson of Stelle, IL with the goal of promoting more sustainable ways of living and providing quality permaculture education and training.
This video is a part of Midwest Permaculture’s Free Internet Webinar Series. It is one of eighteen segments from the first webinar of the Foundations of Permaculture Webinar Series. This is how we begin our Permaculture Design Certification (PDC) Courses and our 4-Day Suburban/Urban Training Intensives.
Midwest Permaculture is the outgrowth of a Permaculture Design Certification Course held in the unique community of Stelle, Illinois, in October of 2006. The course was a great success and hosted by Center for Sustainable Community, a non-profit educational organization and coordinated by Bill Wilson,
Midwest Permaculture was launched immediately following this course by Bill and his wife Rebecca (30 year residents of Stelle) with the goal of promoting more sustainable ways of living and providing quality permaculture education and training throughout the Midwest and beyond.
Source: Midwest Permaculture
Our real enemy is not the ones living in a distant land whose names or policies we don’t understand; The real enemy is a system that wages war when it’s profitable, the CEOs who lay us off our jobs when it’s profitable, the Insurance Companies who deny us Health care when it’s profitable, the Banks who take away our homes when it’s profitable. Our enemies are not several hundred thousands away. They are right here in front of us
- Mike Prysner
The chain reaction of evil… wars producing more wars… must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy… The loss of Liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad…
- James Madison
Source: visionontv
Smedley Butler, War is a Racket and the Business Plot against FDR
“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
Source: War is a Racket, Smedley Butler
The Business Plot was a political conspiracy which involved wealthy businessmen plotting a coup d’état to overthrow United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1934, Butler came forward and testified to the McCormack-Dickstein Congressional committee that a group of wealthy pro-Fascist industrialists had been plotting to overthrow the government and had approached him to lead it
“Native Americans ran the continent as they saw fit. Modern nations must do the same. If they want to return as much of the landscape as possible to its state in 1491, they will have to create the world’s largest gardens.”
Source: 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
From an oversea’s show, spliced to view the message from one elder (Floyd Red Crow Westerman)…how america has come and is destined to go. .. added the Elders Speak to the title, only because more clips will follow….
Source: MadRazorRay
Thanking Indigenous People for the Food We Eat
Seventy-five percent of the food and fiber we grow today was discovered and cultivated by the native farmers and hunter-gatherers of North, Central and South America.
These indigenous varieties include corn, beans, peanuts, cotton, potatoes, tomatoes, chili peppers, avocados, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, squashes, black walnuts, pecans, chocolate, tobacco, rubber, sunflowers, and medicinal herbs and plants.
Today, every one of these varieties is threatened by Monsanto, Big Pharma, and industrial agriculture, among others, who are privatizing and patenting seeds and the gene pool, eroding biodiversity, degrading the soil and water, contaminating the food chain, and destabilizing the climate.
A CULTIVATED EDEN DESCRIBED AS A WILDERNESS
In “Pristine Nature: The Founding Falsehood,” Steven H. Rich explains that what European colonists mistakenly described as wilderness was actually a human-created and nurtured landscape, providing food, medicinal herbs, bountiful wildlife, healthy, living soil, and clean water.
Native Americans “managed” the environment “organically,” producing and/or maintaining for themselves and the future generations native animals, birds, fish, berries, nuts, greens, fruits, bulbs, corns, mushrooms, roots, basketry and cordage materials, firewood, hunting and building materials, herbal medicines, and plants for ceremonial use.
Many “wild” or commercial plants or varieties that exist today are in fact derived from ancient Native American seed saving and cross-breeding that produced better-tasting, climate adapted, and nutritional varieties.
Source: Thanking Indigenous People for the Food We Eat, Organic Consumers Association
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus is a 2005 non-fiction book by American author Charles C. Mann about the pre-Columbian Americas. The book argues that there is evidence accumulated over the last several decades suggesting that human populations in the Western Hemisphere — that is, the indigenous peoples of the Americas — were larger in number, had arrived earlier, were more sophisticated culturally, and controlled and shaped the natural landscape to a greater extent than had been previously thought.
Mann concludes that Indians were a “keystone species,” one that “affects the survival and abundance of many other species.” By the time the Europeans arrived and settled in the Americas, the “boss” (Indians) had been almost completely eliminated. Disease ran rampant and killed off the Indians, disrupting their control of the environment. When Indians died, animal populations, such as that of the buffalo grew immensely. “Because they (Europeans) did not burn the land with the same skill and frequency as its previous occupants, the forests grew thicker.” The world discovered by Christopher Columbus was to begin to change from that point on so Columbus “was also one of the last to see it in pure form.”
Mann concludes with the idea that we must look to the past to right the future. “Native Americans ran the continent as they saw fit. Modern nations must do the same. If they want to return as much of the landscape as possible to its state in 1491, they will have to create the world’s largest gardens.”
Source: 1491, Wikipedia
The Indigenous Environmental Network Canadian Indigenous Tar Sands Campaign and the Aboriginal Round Table came together to do an action camp in the area of Fort McMurray First Nation/Anzac, we were joined by the Athabasca Keepers of the Water on the final days.
IEN Alberta based organizer Heather Milton-Lightning and Ottawa based Clayton Thomas-Muller provided facilitation support at the gathering with back up from Rainforest Action Network and Greenpeace Organizers Ereil Deranger and Melina Lubicon-Massimo.
Over the 6 day camp participants learned about dry fish, dry meat, tipi building, sweatlodge, community organizing, medicines in the bush, how to set fish net, bannock making/bannock on a stick, wild game preparation, Tar Sands 101, Banner Making/Arts and Crafts, Beading, traditional story telling and non-violent direct action strategy. We will be working with this group on a ground water conference in Fort McMurray this fall.
Source: ienearth
Indigineous Permaculture
Indigenous Permaculture’s (IP) mission is to revitalize rural and urban communities through sustainable development, traditional farming, and appropriate technology.
Our goals are to:
- Re-establish wellness to Mother Earth and her people.
- Create community food security and self-sufficiency
- We conduct this work in an affordable way that builds capacity within the community.
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THE PHILOSOPHY
Indigenous Permaculture, or Cosmovision, is a way of thinking and living by following the original instructions we were given to live in balance with the world.
These teachings assist people in achieving a symbiotic sustainable life within their environment by utilizing indigenous agricultural practices.
Permaculture reconnects human beings and the natural world in an effort to restore balance and natural law that will heal the earth and its people. Indigenous Permaculture is not new, it is wisdom from the past that tells us how to follow our original instructions from the Creator. By doing this we ensure our existence and a future for generations.
Source: Indigineous Permaculture
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