Welcome to European Tribune. It's gone a bit quiet around here these days, but it's still going.
Display:
To someone who does not live in the US, this sort of thing is frankly astonishing. In fact, I meant to post my incredulity over at rdf's fine page on making do with less. It is ridiculous that people who are retired actually have to come up with an amount that is a substantial fraction of a rental of a low-value property every month just to fund health insurance. (I mean, at the time I did a quick calculation and worked out that rdf was paying half to two-thirds the value of a cheap flat in HK - where I live and thus my point of reference - for medical ... and flat rentals in HK are not cheap!)

I repeat, it is absurd, and quite literally unbelievable, even to people from other, comparatively harsh Anglo-Saxon societies like the UK, and especially to people from places like Australia or New Zealand (which themselves are not really that great compared to Europe. Having Anglo heritage sucks). How in the world have people in the US been conned into thinking they've got it made in the greatest society on Earth? I know modern propaganda was invented there and is applied mercilessly, but even so, it beggars the mind that people put up with this crap ...

by wing26 on Fri Nov 16th, 2007 at 07:54:09 AM EST
How can they overlook these things?
The same way that they have been trained to ignore a half million dead children from the Iraq sanctions before the war. No one who studies the event honestly denys the general range of the numbers or the reality of the event --but the 25%. And those who choose not to hear. Like- the rest of us.

Osama Bin Laden has not forgotten. Read his words. If you can find them.

How can they overlook this?
The same way that the Lancet study recording state-of-the-art casualty data suggesting that three quarters of a million  dead people were a part of the human price (to date)for our oil theft, can be disappeared.
How can we overlook a dead sparrow - on the killing fields of a million plus people?

Easy.

 

Capitalism searches out the darkest corners of human potential, and mainlines them.

by geezer in Paris (risico at wanadoo(flypoop)fr) on Fri Nov 16th, 2007 at 12:53:24 PM EST
[ Parent ]
"We Think the Price Is Worth It"

Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it.


Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Fri Nov 16th, 2007 at 01:10:58 PM EST
[ Parent ]
The flight path zig-zags over the world. Read your Weber. Take cover. Practice your primary school drills or live free. For the "American" value system, ego it "values voters," recognize naught but the market price of things, extrinsic or fungible terms of exchange that express the living and the dead. Every thing in "America" is inanimate and identified by numberable properties which necessarily reveal functional differences in between one thing and an other. If you try, I dare you to find any US wonk or wag aside from the religious who holds human being unique and infinite in their respect. "Americans" don't do intimacy. They don't demonstrate "amorous feelings" for their figures. Doing so would not be "professional." And not being "professional" guarantees certain death.



Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Sun Nov 18th, 2007 at 05:38:51 PM EST
[ Parent ]
but people have to make do in the context in which then live, no matter how awful it is. it is a broken country, in so many ways, but it's where our homes, family and friends are. it's a hard thing to up and leave all that, even if there are places elsewhere run much less cruelly. and even then, you've got to have the funds to be able to pull it off, which as this makes clear, aren't exactly easy to come by as you're being bled white by the system.
by wu ming on Sat Nov 17th, 2007 at 03:48:22 AM EST
[ Parent ]
We are paying over $2,000 a year for long term care insurance that we may never need but now can't afford to be without.  My aged parents have no such insurance so we may end up bankrupt despite our insurance.

I can swear there ain't no heaven but I pray there ain't no hell. _ Blood Sweat & Tears
by Gringo (stargazing camel at aoldotcom) on Sat Nov 17th, 2007 at 02:45:51 PM EST
[ Parent ]
it:  It is simply the way it is.  

Not likely to change, either.  No politician will go near the subject.  

The Fates are kind.

by Gaianne on Sat Nov 17th, 2007 at 11:58:41 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Display:

Occasional Series