Your Active Role in Life: Next Comes Genesis by Ariel Ky

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by Ariel Ky
Dandelion Salad
Peacevisionary’s Blog
June 18, 2010

So many wonderful writers at Dandelion Salad, so much truth revealed, such a great community forming! But it’s time to take it to another level and for every reader to start becoming more responsive to what’s posted. This is a challenge to readers – take the time and garner the courage to respond to the writing when it hits a chord in you. Trust your own unique voice and inner self and what you have to contribute to the community. If we just all start becoming more responsive, that will lead us to taking more responsibility for what’s happening, not just being an audience to major actors on the stage. “Life is not a dress rehearsal.” Who said that? We’re all actors in this play.

Washington: Theater of the Absurd by Ralph Nader

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https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/

by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
June 18, 2010

The festering corporate government in Washington, DC, is a theater of the absurd. Some of the acts of this tragedy follow:

1. Start with the often hapless Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the agency that administers Medicare. Medicare pays $1,593 per injection of Lucentis for wet age-related macular degeneration as well as $42 per dose for Avastin, a drug that has a similar molecular structure, used by ophthalmologists.

Both drugs are made by Genentech. Lucentis is FDA approved for the vision problem and the other, Avastin, is approved to treat cancer. Doctors can also use Avastin for vision treatment. A study by three officials of CMS and Dr. Philip Rosenfeld, a retina specialist at the University of Miami, reported that for Medicare patients 60% of eye injections were Avastin, while 40% used Lucentis. Note this: Medicare paid $537 million for Lucentis in 2008 and only $20 million for Avastin!

Michel Chossudovsky: Major currencies can simply collapse

https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/

RTAmerica

June 18, 2010 — Obama is urging China to review its currency policy despite Chinese officials made it clear that they are not going to tolerate any interference from abroad to this issue. Is this going to become a major topic of the G-20 meeting in Canada and what’s the mood their on the eve of the summit? Michel Chossudovsky says that the financial crisis is not over as President Barack Obama has hinted at.

Latest Ground Zero deal offers 9/11 workers $712.5 million By Jerry Mazza

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By Jerry Mazza
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.jerrymazza.com
June 18, 2010

Lawyers for the city and for 10,000 plus plaintiffs, i.e., the cleanup and rescue men and women who worked Ground zero, announced on June 10 that they had negotiated a new settlement, providing more compensation for health damages and to lower legal fees for services, down from 33.33 percent to a maximum of 25 percent, as per the New York Times, one quarter of the awards still a healthy handful, about $178.5 million.

United States District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, who had rejected payouts between $575 to $657.5 million as settlement in March as too little, is now accepting $712.5 million. Okay, if you have a calculator that comes to $37 million more. Divided by 10,000 workers, that yields $3,700 more per person. The average, per capita award comes to $71,250. Of course, each worker’s actual award would be determined by the extent of his or her illness, medical and prescription fees, and I would imagine family size. I don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but would each award be better “enough” for each worker? Well, each worker will have to decide that by September 30. Ninety-five percent agreement is required for benefits to begin.

Israeli nuclear whistleblower returned to solitary confinement

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http://www.amnesty.org
18 June 2010

Amnesty International has accused the Israeli authorities of subjecting jailed nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment by holding him in solitary confinement.

The 56-year-old, who spent 18 years in prison for revealing details of the country’s nuclear arsenal to a UK newspaper in 1986, was sent back to jail for three months on 23 May on charges of contact with a foreign national, and almost immediately placed in solitary confinement.

[…]

“Mordechai Vanunu should not be in prison at all, let alone be held in solitary confinement in a unit intended for violent criminals,” said Malcolm Smart, Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East Programme.

[…]

via Israeli nuclear whistleblower returned to solitary confinement | Amnesty International

h/t: Eileen Fleming

see

30 Minutes with Vanunu by Eileen Fleming

Vanunu-Mordechai