gimme culture

countries with universal healthcare

“Guns do not produce value. Guns cannot force people to produce wealth. Unaware of this fact, the government holds the threat of force against the greatest form of human interaction, the corporation. Few would heed to the government’s rules or regulations if it were not for the final card that can be played—holding a gun to the individual’s head and demanding compliance. Not many people desire to think of extreme cases, or the true source of power. It takes but a few “whys” to reach the answer.

Why do I pay my taxes? If I don’t, I will be audited. Why do I comply with an audit? If I don’t, the tax collectors will attempt to seize my estate. Why do I relinquish the estate? If I don’t a police officer will put handcuffs on me and escort me to prison. Why do I allow another man to shackle my hands with steel? If I don’t, a government agent will draw his gun and aim it at my chest. The power of the government is derived from the sanctioned use of force—the muzzle of a gun.”

more

Bad News

“The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has decided to abandon net neutrality and allow telecoms companies to charge websites for access.The FTC said in a report that, despite popular support for net neutrality, it was minded to let the market sort out the issue.This means that the organisation will not stand in the way of companies using differential pricing to make sure that some websites can be viewed more quickly than others. The report also counsels against net neutrality legislation”.

read more | digg story

Im always thinking that the reason the world is such a mess is not because of capitalism per se but rather that we spent so much out of every dollar on war when it should be invested in education, development, social justice and health.

The “National Priorities Project analyzes and clarifies federal data so that people can understand and influence how their tax dollars are spent” - they’ve got a website and you can put in any state. 40 cents in every dollar goes to the military

“Records obtained from the immigration courts under the Freedom of Information Act show that only 0.0015 percent of the total number of cases filed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security were terrorism related, despite the fact that the Bush administration has repeatedly asserted that it is the primary focus of the DHS.

A report issued Sunday by independent research group The Transactional Records Action Clearinghouse (TRAC) found that in the last three years there have only been 12 charges of terrorism out of 814,073 cases.

This once again highlights that the terrorist threat to America is vastly over hyped and is being used by a criminally controlled government as an excuse to police the world and foment a domestic police state to crush any dissent amongst the American people.”

more

“I know what you’re thinking, I know what you’re going to say. And so what? Yes, Michael Moore has an agenda. No, he isn’t among the giants of documentary film-making. No, he isn’t an ordinary journalist. He is, as he says, the op-ed variety, the kind who is constantly angry. He has issues with the way of the world and wants to set records straight. His goal is simply to put universal healthcare back at the centre of the American debate. And while Moore’s main objective is to reach his fellow Americans, his film should also make Europeans ponder on the system they too often take for granted. George Orwell would hate it. But forget about him for a minute. There may sometimes be such a thing as good propaganda.”

more

This fatal complacency

Climate change is already destroying millions of lives in the poor world. But it will not stop there

Desmond Tutu
Saturday May 5, 2007
The Guardian

What if dealing with climate change meant more than a flick of a switch? Would our friends in the industrialised world think differently if the effects of climate change were worse than extended summer months and the arrival of exotic species? Cushioned and cosseted, they have had the luxury of closing their minds to the real impact of what is happening in the fragile and precious atmosphere that surrounds the planet we live on. Where climate change has occurred in the industrialised world, the effects have so far been relatively benign. With the exception of events such as Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the inhabitants of North America and Europe have felt just a gentle caress from the winds of change.

I wonder how much more anxious they might be if they depended on the cycle of mother nature to feed their families. How much greater would their concerns be if they lived in slums and townships, in mud houses, or shelters made of plastic bags? In large parts of sub-Saharan Africa, this is a reality. The poor, the vulnerable and the hungry are exposed to the harsh edge of climate change every day of their lives.

The melting of the snows on the peak of Kilimanjaro is a warning of the changes taking place in Africa. Across this beautiful but vulnerable continent, people are already feeling the change in the weather. But rain or drought, the result is the same: more hunger and more misery for millions of people living on the margins of global society. Even in places such as Darfur, climate change has played a role. In the semi-arid zones of the world, there is fierce competition for access to grazing lands and watering holes. Where water is scarce and populations are growing, conflict will never be far behind.

In so many of the countries where the poorest live, governments are ill-equipped to cope. Katrina was a challenge for the US, so why should we be surprised that the annual cyclone season off the east coast of Africa continues to stretch the governments of Mozambique and Madagascar to their limits? Where governments are weak, the reliance on humanitarian agencies is greater.

People who work for bodies such as the UN World Food Programme are finding their work is a humanitarian “growth industry”. Indeed, the numbers of people who know what it’s like to go hungry stands at more than 850 million, and they are still growing by almost 4 million a year. The increasing frequency of natural disasters makes the fight against hunger even more challenging. The World Bank estimates that the number of natural disasters has quadrupled from 100 a year in 1975 to 400 in 2005.

In the past 10 years, 2.6 billion people have suffered from natural disasters. That is more than a third of the global population - most of them in the developing world. The human impact is obvious, but what is not so apparent is the extent to which climatic events can undo the developmental gains put in place over decades. Droughts and floods destroy lives, but they also destroy schools, economies and opportunity.

Every child will remember the story of the three little pigs and the big bad wolf. In the world we live in, the bad wolf of climate change has already ransacked the straw house and the house made of sticks, and the inhabitants of both are knocking on the door of the brick house where the people of the developed world live. Our friends there should think about this the next time they reach for the thermostat switch. They should realize that while the problems of the Mozambican farmer might seem far away, it may not be long before their troubles wash up on their shores.

· Desmond Tutu is a former archbishop of Cape Town and a Nobel peace laureate

“Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree - domestically - as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government - the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens’ ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors - we scarcely recognise the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled. Because we don’t learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of “homeland” security - remember who else was keen on the word “homeland” - didn’t raise the alarm bells it might have.”

more

A WHO staff member’s parting salvo to the international health agency and its neoliberal approach to health:

Social scientist, Alison Katz has left the World Health Organisation
(WHO) after 17 years of devoted service, condemning its “Let us live and let them die” attitude, which sums up the neglect of millions of people over the past three decades, suffering and dying from diseases of poverty, including notably HIV/AIDS [1]. She is the second AIDS researcher to leave within the past 12 months.

“For over twenty years now, the international AIDS community has
persisted in a reductionist obsession with individual behaviour and an implicit acceptance of a deeply flawed and essentially racist theory.” Katz writes. She believes that the narrow and totalitarian approach to AIDS by the WHO not only has had negligible effect, but also has betrayed public health principles and perversely forbidden exploration of any alternative perspectives. Like many others, Katz questions the exclusion of a plethora of co-factors known to increase biological susceptibility to infection by all disease agents, including HIV, among which are under-nutrition, poverty, powerlessness, and the basic necessities for a healthy and dignified life.

She believes that the WHO has fallen victim to neoliberal globalisation, and by default, to the economic interests of powerful nations and the transnational corporations. In an open letter dated January 2007 addressed to Dr. Margaret Chan, the incoming Director-General of WHO, Katz set out seven key points to steer her focus back to serving the public, including the critical importance of addressing the commercialisation of science, and the close relationship between industry and academia as highlighted in ISIS’ Discussion Paper Towards a Convention on Knowledge.

The neoliberal approach to health

There is a strong tendency in the neoliberal approach to health - and particularly in relation to HIV/AIDS, to blame victims, Katz says, for their faulty or irresponsible behaviour. Demeaning stereotypes, coupled with flawed analysis, and ineffectual policies do not appear to have contributed to any significant decrease in infection rates in the worst affected regions such as the continent of Africa. Furthermore, the world’s first global sex survey published in The Lancet in 2006 found that multiple sex partners were more common in industrialized countries where disease incidence is relatively low. According to Katz, the dominant neoliberal perspective reinforces the structures of hegemony that create poverty and powerlessness which are themselves the root causes of avoidable disease and death. (Poverty eradication must be central to change and the narrow focus to the problem is being challenged by women in Africa.

Eileen Stillwaggon, an associate Professor of Economics at Gettysburg College USA, says that the ecology of poverty must be understood, as populations that lack access to medical care and are already coping with parasitic and multiple other infections, are more vulnerable to other diseases, regardless of how they are transmitted. In this respect, HIV/AIDS is no exception. The public health principle, neatly summarized by Pasteur as “the bacteria is nothing; the terrain is all”, applies to all the diseases of poverty. The focus on individual sexual behaviour is itself highly stigmatising - in addition to being unscientific. On an optimistic note, Stillwaggon observes that solutions to the problems caused by almost all the co-factors exist, and institutions, like the WHO are well placed to advocate for them among vulnerable populations. ISIS has proposed many affordable and patent-free alternative treatments
to the disease and its’ co-factors in Unraveling AIDS.

In order to neutralise the entrenched neoliberal bias within
international agencies Katz believes that the WHO must return to its
founding principles and advocate for attention to root causes - the
social and economic determinants of health and disease. In today’s
world, this implies denouncing unfair rules of trade and commerce, the exploitation of national resources, and ruthless liberalization foisted on developing countries, all of which have been shown to have devastating effects on the health of populations. Furthermore, the WHO must take the lead in providing scientific research with independent scientists free of vested interests. To achieve its mandate of “Health For All”, the WHO must support serious science based on sound evidence. Millions of people’s lives are at stake.

Political prejudice within the WHO

Katz worked for 12 years in the division of WHO dealing with family,
community, sexual and reproductive health, and 8 years in the HIV/AIDS department. In 1999 she responded to an Internet discussion posting from the perspective of biological vulnerability to HIV infection and racist assumptions underlying current policies and strategies. Her supervisor, on instructions from the executive director, immediately censored her by sending an email instructing that she must not debate this issue. At the same time she received a request from the editor of the African Journal of Aids Research to write up her ideas in an article. Shortly after that, she was isolated from all technical work within her department for 18 months.

Following her isolation, Katz’s contract was not renewed, so she
submitted an internal legal appeal against the WHO for reinstatement and for a proper contract after serving 11 years on 37 temporary contracts. She won the appeal on condition that she leave the HIV/AIDS department. As a working mum supporting three children, she had no choice but to accept the Director General’s offer.

Efforts on Katz’s part to discuss alternative approaches with the WHO HIV/AIDS programme director and the UNAIDS executive director have consistently been declined, even after the publication of the Lancet series, mentioned above, which supports the perspective she is advocating.

Independence of international civil servants to fulfil WHO’s mandate

Katz’s concerns expanded to the question of independence of international civil servants, which is seriously undermined by neoliberal influence exerted through powerful member states, private
sources and extra-budgetary funding. Pressures at this level have
resulted in a repressive, authoritarian and hierarchical management
style, which discourages free debate. Katz joined the staff association to fight for proper contracts for all long term “temporary staff” - some 55 percent of the workforce. The success of this action was limited. A very small proportion of “false temps” were regularized into proper contracts and then through a major, costly “restructuring” exercise, many of these long serving staff then lost their jobs, often to inappropriately qualified appointees with better connections.

These struggles took place against what she describes as a background of nepotism, cronyism, corruption, harassment, financial mismanagement and chaotic, highly discretionary, human resources management. Furthermore there is an under representation of Africans, Asians, Latin Americans, or Eastern Europeans within staff departments. The predominant influence of the UK, USA and Canada, as well as Australia, and New Zealand; whose representatives are invariably white, male, Anglo-Saxon Protestants linked by powerful networks prevails.

WHO’s first strike and out

Together with a small group in the staff association, Katz organized a one hour work stoppage, the first industrial action in WHO’s history, in which 700 staff participated. Her post was abolished three weeks after the work stoppage and three weeks before the normal renewal of her 2-year contract. Swiss unions and staff association lawyers qualify this as interference in the right of association; the WHO administration qualifies it as a “coincidence”.

Katz believes that the WHO must respect international labour standards, including negotiation status for the staff association, in line with ILO (International Labour Organisation) covenants; to provide workers with formal power, adequate funding, and strong links to a bona fide UN umbrella union. WHO staff should be held accountable to WHO’s 1978 constitutional mandate, to the Alma Ata principles underlying Health for All, and to the UN Charter and should fully understand the duties and responsibilities of public service.

WHO’s challenge to achieve Health for All

Katz calls for a return to a basic needs and rights-based approach to health in order to provide a sustainable and meaningful response to AIDS that is simultaneously a response to all the diseases of poverty. An alternative political strategy for AIDS and its co-factors would embrace macroeconomic reforms for a fair, rational and sustainable international economic order so that democratically elected governments may reasonably meet people’s basic needs, including health, without external interference.

In her open letter, Katz urges WHO’s newly elected Director General,
Dr Chan, to address the following major issues in order to fulfil her vision. A focus on inequality rather than poverty; holding meetings and consulting with the poor rather then the rich; a solid, equitable tax base, nationally and internationally, rather than public-private partnerships; knowledge for the public good rather than corporate “science”; respect for ethical values and an appropriate balance between loyalty to WHO’s constitutional mandate and loyalty to current governments of powerful member states and current office holders.

“You have a person you can identify as someone who is creating racial harm and that’s a legitimate reaction,” Hutchinson said. “But I do believe that over time if that’s the only thing that gets this intense reaction, then we’re reinforcing this notion that that’s all that racism is.”

“We never get at … broader inequality like poverty. Why is poverty racialized? Why are people of color in schools that are underfunded? We never tackle those bigger issues.”

more