from the page: "..With the help of the Haitian elite, the "international community" has imposed a series of neoliberal economic policies on the country since the 1970s. ..86 percent of the houses destroyed by the quake had been built since 1990... Chavannes Jean-Baptiste aptly summed up the foreign powers' view of post-earthquake Haiti. "Haiti is essentially roadkill.. Companies like Monsanto are devouring what is left of us at this point." Most Haitians are of course excluded from discussion... We want houses that respect our local architectural style and that use as much local materials as possible… We want beautiful houses that represent our culture, houses that give the community life, and that help us maintain dialogue between ourselves; houses that have yards and gardens where we can grow vegetables and medicinal plants…houses that provide space for us to live as families with neighbors in the lakou [traditional communal courtyard], where we can share food and daily activities.

from the page: ...In autumn 2011 when the last count took place, there were 2,181 recorded as sleeping rough at any one night in England. The previous year was 1,768, making an increase of 23 percent... Anyone sheltering in a hostel or space “used for recreational purposes” is excluded from the count... The number of young people registered as homeless has risen sharply... A study by the Sunday Mirror found that 13,000 young people presented themselves at local authorities as homeless and were seeking advice in October 2011... Ongoing deep cuts to the welfare benefits system and the rising costs of living are tearing families apart... “Homelessness: A silent killer”, found that homeless men are dying at an average age of 47 years old and women at 43 years. The average age of death in the general UK population stands at 77 years. The incidence of death because of infections and falls is increased and suicide is nine times more likely in someone who is homeless."

from the page: "..At the end of the summit's first day, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced that member countries had agreed to contribute 1% of their international reserves toward the bloc's main bank in order to create a reserve fund. The Bank of the Alba was established in 2008 with the intention of providing economic support to people-centred regional projects and to contribute to sustainable social and economic development across the region. The Bank is also cited as acting as a continental alternative to the International Monetary Fund... The heads of state also discussed the possibility of increasing the commercial use of the sucre, the bloc's virtual currency. The sucre is currently used for direct trading between the ALBA countries, allowing them to circumvent the U.S dollar and minimise the foreign-exchange risk.

from the page: "Why does an appendectomy in Germany cost roughly a quarter what it costs in the United States? ($3,285 compared to $13,123). Or an MRI scan cost less than a third as much, on average, in Canada? ($304 compared to $1,009)... For Britain, Canada, France, Germany and the U.S. respectively, the average cost in dollars for bypass surgery is $13,998, $22,212, $16,325, $27,237 and in the U.S. $59,770. For cataract surgery the bill is $1,299, $927, $3,352, N.A. and in the U.S. $14,764... These include higher administrative costs to deal with insurance paperwork, higher insurance company profits and executive compensation and less developed electronic health records leading to costly errors... in the U.S. seeing specialists is often prohibitively expensive, and if you cannot afford such services, that is the longest waiting time of all. ..fully ten percent of all health care expenditures are the result of computerized billing fraud and abuse. That will be $270 billion this year.

from the page:"..living in poverty for any significant length of time increases all sorts of risk factors for health and mental health problems... Throwing money at people doesn't seem to help much: Programs that primarily aimed at alleviating poverty had varied outcomes but generally were not markedly successful in decreasing the mental health problems of the target populations: "Unconditional cash transfer programs had no significant mental health effect and micro credit intervention had negative consequences increasing stress levels among recipients." The researchers saw more improvement when they looked at the impact of intervention programs aimed at improving the mental health of people living in poverty. The interventions they reviewed varied from administration of psychiatric drugs, to community-based rehabilitation programs, to individual or group psychotherapy, to residential drug treatment, to family education.

from the page: "Little attention has been given in the post-conflict reconstruction of Iraq to the health and well-being of refugees... It is estimated that some 4.5 million refugees have been uprooted from their homes since the Iraq conflict began in 2003 and escalated in 2006, almost half of whom sought asylum in countries such as Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt... The large-scale representative study of UNICEF's Child Friendly Spaces found that the majority of Iraqi children in Syria have suffered from a significantly high-level of distressing experiences such as witnessing the death of parents or siblings as well as being kidnapped or tortured themselves. These experiences continue to haunt them months and years after their families were displaced from Iraq to Syria. Children and adolescents are mentally exhausted and lack coping resources and other protective factors. Those experiences appear to significantly increase the vulnerability for mental health and social problems...

from the page :"February 26th, 2011 marks the eighth anniversary of the imprisonment of Dr. Rafil Dhafir as he continues to pay the price for feeding the children of Iraq during the U.S.- and U.K.-sponsored UN sanctions ... Dr. Dhafir was convicted on 59 counts of white-collar crime..and is currently serving 22 years – for a crime he was never convicted of in a court of law, money laundering... According to the United Nations’ own statistics every month throughout the 1990s 6,000 children under the age of five in Iraq were dying from lack of food and access to simple medicines... Using unfair tactics and innuendo, and aided by a compliant media, the government transformed Dr. Dhafir’s community image from a compassionate humanitarian into that of a crook and supporter of terrorism... conspiracy laws and money-laundering laws used "creatively" with the PATRIOT Act and International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) can be used to construct a vastly distorted picture.

from the page: "
FIRST: We demand to take our homeland back
We had been occupied by a great power without an international permission, this power had adopted excuses that its leaders’ them selves confessed that they had been deceived by them, so why are their forces still on our land then..? It has been eight years since our country became under occupation, during that time we have lost all that our ancestors had built, and we have become living in our homeland with no homeland!...

SECOND: We demand to overthrow the system
This system was imposed on us, we did not choose this system, and it was found on the basis of sectarianism and racism that serves an agenda of foreign powers and does not serve us...

THIRD: We demand services to be provided
We live in a wealthy country, but, we are poor! People of the land of the two rivers can not find drinkable water! ...

FOURTH: We demand Job opportunities

FIFTH: We demand to end the corruption and trial the corrupt individuals

from the page: "The number of war wounded civilians in southern Afghanistan has increased dramatically this year following the military troop surge, an exclusive Channel 4 News investigation has found...
- Mirwais Hospital, Kandahar – 163 per cent rise on number of war wounded civilians admitted in 10 months of 2010 to 3,056, compared to 1,159 in whole of 2009
- Emergency Hospital, Lashkar Gah – 89 war wounded civilians admitted in October 2009 – 158 admitted in October 2010, a rise of 77 per cent
- Military hospitals across Afghanistan – Minor rise in civilian casualties and "not surprising" to have more civilians than soldiers treated in its facilities on occasion
- Boost Hospital, Lashkar Gah – does not take in trauma patients for operations, although does take them in for post-operative care - but says civilians with other illnesses prevented from reaching them in time by war

from the page: " As students in the United States and Europe protest against soaring tuition and lack of funding for public higher education, the Venezuelan National Assembly has passed an unprecedented law to include professors, students, workers, and local community members in university decision-making and to eliminate barriers to higher education. The law is based on the principle that the government has the responsibility to provide free, high-quality, public education from childhood through the undergraduate university level. This principle is established in Article 103 of the nation’s constitution. The law says students will have the right to an equal vote in the election of university authorities, evaluate professors and participate in self-evaluation, freely express opinions, access university administrative records, and receive a range of services including housing, transportation, meals, health care, and monthly stipends, among other rights...

from the page: "Displaced Iraqi female-headed families who have returned home are still experiencing major livelihood challenges, says the International Organization for Migration (IOM). An IOM survey of 1,355 female-headed displaced families who have returned to their places of origin found that 74 percent are struggling to secure adequate nutrition for their families... The survey also found that health problems and social norms had prevented nearly 40 percent of them from finding jobs. Of those who are able to work, 71 percent are unemployed... "These women have to support their children and elderly family members. Without a steady income, they become reliant on support from whoever can give it but it is not systematic,"... The IOM survey also found that domestic violence against women had substantially increased in the past five years due to the country’s unprecedented displacement, with one in five Iraqi women subjected to physical violence and a third to psychological violence.

from the page: "...College and University education is being priced out of the reach of working class people. We are witnessing the death of the liberal arts. The war on public education is a front in the broader class war that pits workers against owners and the working class against the wealthy... The problem isn’t big government; it is the merging of corporations and big business with government and the philosophical system that engenders it: the market fundamentalism spawned by rapacious capitalism. When corporations, which are motivated by profit rather than regard for the public welfare, merge with government, people are removed from the equation and they are replaced by capital. Thus money is equated with free speech and corporations are given the rights of human beings without the social and moral responsibility of citizenship. This is what capitalism does. Free markets are not an expression of democracy; they are a manifestation of corporate fascism and belligerence...

from the page: "The past several months have witnessed a shift in social policy by the international bourgeoisie even further to the right, marked by a turn from economic stimulus policies to brutal austerity measures. In the name of deficit reduction, the ruling classes of all the major capitalist countries are carrying out a frontal assault on the past social gains of the working class... That the living standards of the world’s people are to be equalized downward, rather than upward, is an indictment of the capitalist system... The 750 billion euro rescue package and the launching of austerity programs to make the working class pay for it have revived the European bourgeoisie’s self confidence—at least for the present... The international bourgeoisie is proceeding in a highly conscious manner to intensify its war against the working class. It is keenly aware of the crucial service provided by the trade unions in stifling the resistance of the working class..."

from the page: "...The European elite is now demanding further measures aimed at increasing the profits and privileges of this wealthy elite, insisting that Borisov implement the brutal type of cuts already introduced in Romania, Hungary, Latvia and other Eastern European states... At the start of this month the European Commission expressly called upon Bulgaria to maintain its budget deficit at around three percent. The government had shortly before adopted a budget based upon a 3.8 percent deficit and involving extensive cuts. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have also made their recognition of the initial measures agreed by the government dependent on further “difficult steps” towards budget consolidation..."

from the page: "...Tassos Anestis, a shipyard worker, told the Financial Times: “We are going to suffer because of measures imposed by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund … but it is those who ruined the economy that should pay.""

from the page: "Thanks to the policies of the Bolivarian Government poverty in Venezuela fell to 23% in 2009 from 70.3% in the second half of 1996 accompanied by 40% of extreme poverty and a record inflation rate of 103%... The contraction of 3.3 percent registered in the Venezuelan Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2009 has no direct relation with the social development of the nation, because it is a macroeconomic index referred to the production of the different economic sectors in the country. Jose Rafael Lopez, General Manager of Social Statistics and Environment of the National Statistics Institute (INE) made the explanation and added that the fall registered by the national economy was a consequence of the world's economic crisis produced by he capitalist depression; fall of oil prices; and the cut on oil production established by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)... "Social expenses increased from 12.46 billion dollars in 1999 to 330 billion in 2009," ...

from the page: "...In a place where women dutifully give birth in dingy huts, the men know of little outside their fields, and the world revolves around the local mosque; the sight of a "modern" woman visitor astride her bike is a spectacle. The more so as Akhter zaps around with gadgets like a netbook, GSM mobile, blood pressure monitor and pregnancy kit, all deftly packed in her shoulder bag... Akhter belongs to a motley band of "InfoLadies," who are piloting a revolutionary idea - giving millions of Bangladeshis, trapped in a cycle of poverty and natural disaster, access to information on their doorstep to improve their chances in life. "Ask me about the pest that's infecting your crop, common skin diseases, how to seek help if your husband beats you or even how to stop having children, and I may have a solution," says a confident Akhter... The success of the InfoLadies is making the failure of the state more noticeable..."

from the page: "At two major conferences that began last week, the Chinese ruling elite was preoccupied with the political dangers posed by the country’s acute social tensions: the widening gap between rich and poor, growing unemployment due to the crisis in the export sector and housing distress associated with sharply rising property prices... The income gap between the richest top 10 percent and the poorest 10 percent in China is now 23 times, compared to just 7.3 times in 1988. One study cited by Guangzhou Daily shows that workers’ wages as a proportion of GDP declined from 51.4 percent in 1995 to just 39.7 percent in 2007. The same study found that wages in China constitute less than 10 percent of corporate operating costs, compared to around 50 percent in developed countries... The CCP regime, however, is incapable of lifting the living standards of working people because that would undermine the cheap labour regime that is the source of China’s economic growth."

from the page: "The misnamed Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA) scheme, provides little in the way of a safety net and excludes many through a means test. There is no unemployment benefit and no state pension except for civil servants. Means tested assistance has never benefited more than 25 percent of those without work or other means of subsistence. Only 14 percent of the over 60s get social security. There is as yet still no statutory minimum wage. The level currently being proposed by employer associations, $HK24 an hour, is so low it would benefit only toilet cleaners. Trade unions are calling for at least $33 an hour. Britain’s legacy—colonial rule only ended in 1997—in creating these conditions has been nothing short of criminal. The British colonial authority supported business against any sort of social insurance, by promoting a cult of “free market”... Yet this is not because the Hong Kong government cannot afford it. The government is cash rich..."

from the page: "THE U.S. policy of bypassing the Haitian state to fund NGOs is nothing new--this has been U.S. practice in the Third World since the turn to neoliberalism... the U.S. and corporate donors started funding NGOs to address the social crisis created by neoliberal policies... In some instances, this has helped accelerate further state withdrawal from social provision... They are not accountable to the local populations they supposedly serve, but instead to the international donors that fund them--most often, corporate-backed formations like George Soros's Open Society Institute and capitalist governments. Moreover, given that NGOs can pay local leaders more than either the government or social movements, they often recruit people who would traditionally lead leftist movements... as Hallward argues, "the bulk of USAID money that goes to Haiti and to other countries in the region is explicitly designed to pursue interests--the promotion of a secure investment climate..."

from the page: "...American Autogenocide is the deliberate, systematic and legal murder of American citizens by socially-engineering the die-off of populations that are "problematic" for the interests of wealth and power. Most victims prematurely die from social forces targeted at them to cause them to wear out by stress. This process is called "Weathering Away" or "Attrition By Stress." Although it has to be "legal," autogenocide is always committed under the radar so the media won't be compelled to report it and so the people won't see it or understand it. More, the genocide is blamed on the victims and their deaths are hidden-attributed-to other causes rather than the primary one of autogenocide. What is different between this genocide and other genocides is that this unique genocide doesn't produce mass graves. Instead, the victims are spread over a large geographic area and buried singly, thereby hiding the body count. This keeps the deaths sanitized and homogenized..."

from the page: "During medical school he [Dr Bassem Allah] had to search Iraq for case studies of an infant with a birth defect. "It was almost impossible during the 80s," he says. "Now, every day in my clinic or elsewhere in the hospital, there are large numbers of congenital abnormalities or cases of chronic tumours."He pauses, his thoughts seemingly interrupted by the gravity of his words, then slowly continues. "Now, believe me, it's like we are treating patients immediately after Hiroshima." ... In homes across the city, the care needs of children with debilitating injuries are faced by families with no access to social welfare and little support outside their inner-sanctum... "...No one has come here to take soil samples, or make examinations. I think the Iraqi government does not want it proven that the Americans used forbidden weapons here. If there is scientific proof that the war was responsible for so many deformities, there will likely be problems for officials here."

from the page: "The UN Inter-Agency Gender Task Force (IAGTF)...on 23 April published the results of a household survey on the needs and perceptions of men and women in the aftermath of Israel’s recent 23-day military offensive in Gaza... Psychological trauma was consistently rated as a main concern by respondents regardless of gender, region, or social group, and psychosocial services were deemed to be a critical need, like food and water, according to the survey. “We have to help ourselves recover from the images and memories of the war,” said Iptihal, (she declined to giver her family name), aged 24, a public relations officer for a heritage organisation in Gaza City... Iptihal said she was most affected by her inability to help others near her who had suffered and died. With increased stress and limited access to psycho-social services, one emerging problem is self-medication with unsupervised pharmaceutical therapies, the survey said."

from the page: "The report, issued by the advocacy group Every Child Matters (ECM), found that 1,760 children died of maltreatment in 2007, a 35 percent increase over 2001. It cautioned that the actual number of abuse and neglect-related deaths is estimated to be as much as 50 percent higher... Since 2000, agencies have fielded more than 20 million maltreatment reports. In 2007 alone, there were 721,646 confirmed cases of abuse and neglect. In 60 percent of these cases, the ECM report found, children did not receive proper food, clothing, shelter, sanitary conditions, education, medical care or protection; 11 percent were subject to physical abuse and 8 percent to sexual abuse... Calling poverty “the single best predictor of child abuse and neglect,” the report cites the intense stress that accompanies unemployment, poor housing, low education, imprisonment, mental illness, teen parenthood, and a multitude of other social ills plaguing the poorest layers of the American population... "

from the page: "One in 35 Americans are caught up in the corrections system and incarceration is on the rise. Why is this when the US crime rate has dropped so remarkably? The United States incarcerates more of its own citizens than any other nation. It has only 5% of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s prisoners... “Incarceration is a rich country’s hobby,” says Scott Henson, a Texan journalist and political consultant who has monitored America’s addiction to imprisonment for years and thinks it a pastime of impractical and frivolous consequences. Crime and punishment are disconnected. As funding has increased, more prisons have been built, more of the usual suspects – drug users, dealers, and petty gangsters – have been wrangled into newly constructed penitentiaries, and more warders hired to man the guard towers. Crime seems to have fluctuated of its own free will, unaffected by the billions of dollars thrown at it and the policies written to combat it..."