politics; books; musings on Canada and the World
This is just a footnote to the previous post.
I read this New York Times article after looking at the clip from the O’Reilly lie~fest and it confirms my feeling that Jesse Lange’s generation has its head screwed on right.
Have a great day.
To all my dear friends and especially those in The United States
It has taken a faux journalist 
to show people that there is indeed hope for America.
(<…..Bill O’Reilly)
It has taken the blogosphere to recognize that.
So I just want to add my small bit.
Boulder High School recently sponsored an assembly/ forum, at which four well known speakers, including playwright Joel Becker, pointed out to students- the hazards associated with hard drug use and indiscriminate sex.
Bill O’Reilly of Fox News misrepresented the forum to generate controversey and bump up his ratings.
In the clip below, 2 students are featured. One, Jesse Lange attended the forum and comments on its positive nature. The other student, Andrew Wishner, who agreed with O’Reilly’s diatribe against the forum, did not attend it…although that fact is not mentioned in the clip.
The clip illustrates perfectly, the practice of gutter journalism in today’s America. It also illustrates perfectly that there is a generation growing up in the United States with poise, intelligence and character.
After you see the clip, it’s worth looking at the blog , which has focussed attention on this deplorable approach to journalism. The comments section is especially revealing about what I think is a hopeful sign for America’s future.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6cT-JSfdzM
Cheers
Regardless of how you might feel about documentary filmaker Michael Moore, his new film SICKO, is touching a nerve in the United States. What he’s saying is nothing new; it’s just that he is saying it at a time when a growing number of Americans are begging to have a single-payer healthcare system, similar to the ones in Canada, France, Britain and Cuba.
Conservatives do not like Moore and ridicule him at every opportunity. Insurance companies hate him. Private health care providers loathe him. George Bush despises him. These are all excellent reasons to go see the film….it’s right on target.
The film’s thesis is that healthcare in America is in danger of collapse.
Costs are out of control; more than 40 million citizens have no health insurance at all; healthcare for the elderly is a mess; and insurance companies are ripping off hospitals, employers, patients and their families.
Business writer Paul Krugman refers to the U.S. healthcare system as a "racket".
For all those Conservatives and former Alliance Party members out there who want Canada to privatize our healthcare system, this film is must viewing.
Our system is not perfect by any means, but it’s light years ahead of what a great many Americans are suffering through right now.
To quote this morning’s New York Times, Moore knows that SICKO isn’t saying much that’s new…and that his film is "just setting a match to fuel that has been welling for years".
In that same Times article the Speaker of the California House of Assembly had this to say, “The conclusion you come to after watching that documentary is that you have a health care system on the verge of collapse,…it’s either going to fall of its own weight, or people are going to rise up against it.”
The full Times story can be read here.
IT ALL DEPENDS ON WHAT IS IN YOUR HEART
Comtroversey over yellow ribbons and decals on publicly owned vehicles and buildings is unseemly and unecessary.
When I first saw the symbols begin to appear I was conflicted; but there are always three ways of looking at almost everything. There’s the perceived truth and there’s the untruth; and then there’s the real truth.
For those who mourn the deaths of young Canadian women and men in the the Afghan "war", the ribbons and decals can express sorrow and grief. And that’s appropriate.
For those who support our participation in the conflict, they can be viewed as a gung-ho endorsement of the war fighting.
For those of us who oppose this and all wars, they can be viewed as a constant reminder of the horrors and futility of war itself.
We can look at those symbols and be reminded not just of the needless deaths of our soldiers; we can be reminded too, of the suffering and anguish that is being inflicted on Afghan families, who are losing their own loved ones in military operations over which they have no control.
The remaining issue might be with the colour.
Black might be more appropriate.
THE U.S. AND EUROPE WEAR BLINKERS
A dear friend sent me a story this morning that simply confirms the ongoing idiocy of western policy. It confirms that George Bush has learned nothing about the Middle East in almost 8 years as President and it confirms that U.S./WESTERN policy continues to be utterly out of touch with reality.
The U.S. and Europe have cooked up a strategy in concert with Israel. The result is to be two smaller Palestinian States, one supported by large amounts of western cash…the other isolated and cut off from all aid.
The strategy- in a nutshell- represents the final confirmation that the western nations, which created this mess in the first place, have no interest in promoting democracy in the Middle East.
The irony is that those Palestinians who will be getting the aid, are the ones who followed Yasser Arafat, the man who was reviled and destroyed by these same western governments.
