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Hermit
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Obama mandates something brightly shining
« on: 2009-08-25 07:59:47 » |
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Lockerbie Outrage Moves Obama to Extradite Long-Wanted Terrorist
[ Hermit : Of course, we now have to see if the mandate is implemented. ]
Source: Macondo News Service
Authors: Thomas Harrington
Dated: 2009-08-25
In a dramatic announcement made yesterday shortly after the president’s arrival on Martha’s Vineyard, the administration declared its intention to hand over Luis Posada Carriles, the widely acknowledged mastermind of the bombing of Cubana Airlines Flight 455 that killed 73 people in 1976, to the Venezuelan government for prosecution. According to White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, Obama’s change of heart on the long-requested extradition of Posada, who was a citizen of Venezuela when he allegedly planned the crime, came after watching Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the convicted planner of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing in 1988, return home to a hero’s welcome in Libya.
"The president was sickened to see this man who bears responsibility for ending the lives of hundreds of completely innocent people, and forever altering those of the many thousands that loved them, walk free. Feeling their pain made him acutely aware of just how unfair it was to continue to let Mr. Posada, who in addition to the Cubana bombing has been implicated in numerous assassinations and as many as 41 other terrorist bombings throughout the Caribbean and Central America, get up each day in Miami and sip his morning coffee in complete freedom."
Since the "declaration" of the "War on Terror" in late 2001, the avowed goal of the U.S. government has been to prosecute terrorists wherever they might be in the world. As former president George W. Bush put it in a speech before a joint session of Congress on Sept. 20 of that year, "It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated."
Apparently, however, there was a large loophole in this policy for Posada and the many others like him assigned to use terrorist tactics on behalf of the U.S. government or organizations backed by what is often termed the "U.S. intelligence community."
A brief examination of Posada’s career demonstrates just how large this loophole is. In addition to his role in planning the Cubana bombing in 1976, Posada worked for the Reagan White House supplying U.S.-backed irregulars in Nicaragua and the armies of the Salvadoran and Honduran dictatorships with the arms they used to kill thousands of innocent civilians in the late 1980s. In the late 1990s, Posada directed a series of terrorist bombings in Cuba designed to cripple the growth of that nation’s burgeoning tourist industry, attacks he took full credit for in a wide-ranging interview with the New York Times.
Yet, despite his public admission of guilt in this and numerous other cases of terrorism, Posada lived a relatively unfettered life in the U.S. He did so, moreover, despite having been caught entering the country illegally, under an assumed name, sometime prior to 2005. In recent years judges have regularly deported Muslim immigrants for the slightest procedural infractions, but Posada was freed on bail by an immigration judge in Texas and allowed to return to Florida under house arrest in April 2007. A month later, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone in Miami dismissed all seven immigration charges against Posada. Though a grand jury in El Paso, Texas, recently issued a new set of indictments against Posada in relationship to the Cuban bombings and his entry into the U.S. on a fraudulent passport, Posada remained a free man until President Obama’s stunning announcement yesterday.
Gibbs concluded his announcement with the following remarks. "In the wake of September 11th, it was frequently asked ‘Why do they hate us?’. Many concluded that it was because they are jealous of our freedoms. We now know, however, that it is really because of the way we selectively condemn in others the types of murderous activities that we regularly license ourselves and our close allies to carry out with impunity. We believe that the extradition of Mr. Posada will be seen as a valuable first step in closing our enormous credibility gap around the issue of terror."
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Hermit
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Re:Obama mandates something brightly shining
« Reply #1 on: 2009-11-08 03:02:55 » |
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Historic healthcare overhaul passes House
Source: LA Times
Authors: Noam N. Levey, Janet Hook
Dated: 2009-11-08
The 220-215 vote marks the first such victory in decades of efforts to expand insurance coverage. The bill wins a lone GOP vote and loses many Democrats, pointing to challenges awaiting in the Senate.
The House of Representatives on Saturday approved the most sweeping healthcare legislation since the creation of Medicare 44 years ago, giving a boost to President Obama's campaign to guarantee health coverage to almost all Americans.
The gargantuan Democratic measure passed 220 to 215, with a single Republican vote, capping a contentious daylong debate that underscored the ideological divide separating the two parties over healthcare.
The narrow Democratic victory underscored the difficult road ahead as the issue moves on to the Senate. But it also meant that the party had reached a historic landmark: It has been trying since the Depression to win a vote to extend the government's social safety net to include healthcare.
The House plan would cover an additional 36 million people by 2019, leaving 4% of the nation without coverage, compared with the estimated 17% who do not have insurance now, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
"For generations, the American people have called for affordable, quality healthcare for their families. Today, the call will be answered," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), who rallied her members behind the legislation after weeks of cajoling and deal-making.
The Democratic side of the House cheered loudly when the vote count reached 218, a majority. Like a crowd waiting for the final gun at a football game, they counted down the final seconds of the voting period in unison, and roared their approval when Pelosi went to the speaker's chair, grabbed the gavel and declared, "The bill is passed."
President Obama hailed the vote in a statement from Camp David, saying: "Thanks to the hard work of the House, we are just two steps away from achieving health insurance reform in America. Now the United States Senate must follow suit and pass its version of the legislation. I am absolutely confident it will, and I look forward to signing comprehensive health insurance reform into law by the end of the year."
Republicans, who have fought Obama's healthcare campaign for most of the year, charged Democrats with pushing the nation toward government-run healthcare and threatening to bankrupt the treasury at a time when the deficit is skyrocketing.
"People have a grave concern about what Washington is doing to them, not for them," Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the No. 2 House Republican, said Saturday, citing last week's GOP electoral victories in Virginia and New Jersey.
Louisiana Rep. Anh "Joseph" Cao was the only Republican to cross the aisle and vote for the bill. Thirty-nine Democrats voted against it.
The legislation -- which includes more than $1 trillion in new healthcare spending over the next decade while also reducing the deficit by an estimated $106 billion -- will ultimately have to be reconciled with the Senate bill.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is working to unite his members in time to hold a vote on the Senate bill before Christmas.
With the unemployment rate continuing to rise and the public increasingly jittery about Obama's healthcare campaign, Democrats are racing to push through an overhaul before what many see as a historic opportunity slips away.
Pelosi had hoped to get a bill through the House sooner than November. But she and her lieutenants had to spend months hammering out a series of difficult compromises to satisfy the liberal and conservative wings of the party.
New requirements on businesses and insurance companies have alienated major industry groups, many of which actively fought the House bill, charging that it would actually make healthcare less affordable.
"The healthcare reform bill just passed by the House of Representatives fails the crucial test of reducing the soaring cost of health coverage for businesses or individuals," U.S. Chamber of Commerce Executive Vice President Bruce Josten said after the vote.
But even as opposition to the bill stiffened, Democratic leaders managed to defuse major disagreements over the shape of a new government insurance plan and the scope of new income taxes on wealthy Americans.
They picked up major endorsements from AARP and the American Medical Assn., which joined a collection of leading consumer and patient groups and labor unions that have backed the healthcare campaign all year.
And facing the possible collapse of the legislation late Friday night, Democratic leaders brokered a deal to settle a debate within party ranks over abortion.
Under pressure from a group of socially conservative Democrats and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Pelosi and other lawmakers who favor abortion rights were forced to accept a last-minute compromise that placed tight restrictions on federal funding for abortion services.
The amendment was added to the bill Saturday by a coalition of 240 Republicans and conservative Democrats; 194 Democrats voted against the amendment.
The move outraged many liberals. But in the end, just enough rallied behind the bill after a furious several days of lobbying by party leaders, including the president.
"There comes a time [when] men must act according to the dictates of their conscience and not according to political expediency," Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) said on the House floor. "We have a moral obligation to lead this nation into a new era where healthcare is a right and not a privilege."
Obama, too, called on lawmakers to seize the moment, reminding them during a midday visit to Capitol Hill of the party's successful fights to create Social Security and Medicare.
"If we do not get it done this year, we will not get it done any time soon," the president said at a closed-door meeting, according to a senior Democratic aide who was in the room.
The more than 2,000-page legislation is designed to largely preserve the employer-based healthcare system in which most Americans get insurance through work. But the bill would also dramatically expand federal regulation of healthcare and provide more than $1 trillion in new aid to poor and middle-class citizens.
Federal law would for the first time require insurance companies to cover all Americans, regardless of their health status, and would prohibit insurers from denying coverage to people who become sick.
Individuals would be required to buy insurance. And large employers would have to provide employees with health benefits or face a penalty.
The bill would open the nation's 44-year-old Medicaid insurance program for the poor to all Americans making less than 150% of the federal poverty line -- $16,245 for an individual or $33,075 for a family of four.
The government would also create new insurance marketplaces for millions of Americans who do not get coverage through work.
Commercial insurers, as well as the government, would offer plans in these marketplaces, or exchanges, and be required to provide a minimum set of benefits, including mental health services, maternity care and preventive care.
The most expensive feature is a commitment by the federal government to provide nearly $600 billion in subsidies over the next decade to help millions of low- and moderate-income Americans buy insurance in an exchange.
The bill is also designed to give relief to small businesses, providing about $25 billion in tax subsidies to help them offset the cost of offering their employees health benefits.
And the legislation would make prescriptions more affordable by closing the Medicare drug coverage gap, known as the "doughnut hole."
The major expansion in federal assistance to tens of millions of Americans is not without a cost.
To pay for their legislation, Democrats approved a 5.4% surtax on individuals who make more than $500,000 a year and couples that make more than $1 million.
The bill would also cut more than $400 billion from Medicare payments to hospitals, nursing homes and insurance companies that provide Medicare Advantage plans, a provision that proponents hope will ultimately help make the system more efficient.
Republicans contend that many seniors will lose benefits, and they more broadly attacked the bill as a costly government invasion of the medical system.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Fritz
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Re:Obama mandates something brightly shining
« Reply #2 on: 2009-11-09 09:05:46 » |
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But this will be the real test of Americans get one of these for free to use.
Cheers
Fritz
First-ever heavy-ion radiation therapy center opens in Germany
Source: Deutche Welle
Date: 2009.11.02
Author:sms/dpa/AFP Editor: Sam Edmonds
A new cancer research center the size of a football field opened in Heidelberg on Monday. The center uses heavy-ion radiation to improve treatment success rates with fewer side effects.
The accelerator can treat previously untreatable tumors
he Heidelberg Ion Radiation Therapy Center (HIT), Europe's first heavy-ion accelerator, opened Monday.
The 119-million-euro ($2.8-million) accelerator is designed to destroy cancer tumors and consumes as much electricity as a town of 10,000 people, according to the doctor in charge of the facility. The German government and Heidelberg University split the accelerator's costs, while health insurers have agreed to pay bills of 20,000 euros for each session.
HIT is set to treat 1,300 patients suffering from brain tumors and other difficult carcinomas each year. The treatment offers a new option to about 15 percent of all cancer patients, according to Juergen Debus, HIT's medical director.
All people treated at the center will be enrolled in studies to determine the most effective uses of the heavy-ion accelerator. A more accurate device prevents damage to healthy brain tissue and reduces the unpleasant side effects of cancer therapy, the medical team said.
 The treatment rooms don't look much different from those at other facilities
More precise than conventional treatment
In the center of the new building is the 670-ton heavy-ion gantry, a ring 13 meters in diameter that accelerates heavy ions and protons up to three quarters of the speed of light before they slam into tumors.
The device, which has a power uptake of 3 megawatts, will be staffed 24 hours a day to ensure it is kept spotlessly clean, since dust could cripple it.
A HIT prototype created in Darmstadt was used to treat 440 patients with uncommon forms of brain and pancreatic cancer with success rates that doubled those of the conventional X-ray treatment.
Marc Muenter, the head doctor, said the Darmstadt system brought at least five years of extra life for 80-90 percent of the patients it treated.
Technical advances made to the accelerator in Heidelberg could see success rates increase to as much as 80 percent, according to Debus.
The radiation beam can be directed more accurately than the X-rays conventionally used against cancer. Tests are continuing so see which ions are most effective: those of carbon, oxygen or helium.
Physics professor Thomas Haberer, who headed the design team, said the machine was comparable in its complexity with the world's biggest passenger aircraft, the Airbus A380.
Patients, however, do not notice the machine's massive size during the 20 minutes of preparation and average five minutes of therapy in the center's treatment rooms.
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Hermit
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Re:Obama mandates something brightly shining
« Reply #3 on: 2009-11-09 11:11:17 » |
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As of this morning, 119 million Euros = 178.3096 million U.S. dollars.
Which suggests that the reporter and editor are seriously numerically challenged.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Fritz
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Re:Obama mandates something brightly shining
« Reply #4 on: 2009-11-09 16:24:10 » |
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Quote:[Hermit] As of this morning, 119 million Euros = 178.3096 million U.S. dollars.
Which suggests that the reporter and editor are seriously numerically challenged. |
My ... my ... Teutonic correctness isn't what it used to be. Must be the beer, bratwurst and free medicare are taking their toll on the fatherland.
Agast
Fritz 
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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