n2doc
n2doc's JournalGhosts of the Tsunami
by Richard Lloyd Parry
I met a priest in the north of Japan who exorcised the spirits of people who had drowned in the tsunami. The ghosts did not appear in large numbers until later in the year, but Reverend Kaneda’s first case of possession came to him after less than a fortnight. He was chief priest at a Zen temple in the inland town of Kurihara. The earthquake on 11 March 2011 was the most violent that he, or anyone he knew, had ever experienced. The great wooden beams of the temple’s halls had flexed and groaned with the strain. Power, water and telephone lines were fractured for days; deprived of electricity, people in Kurihara, thirty miles from the coast, had a dimmer idea of what was going on there than television viewers on the other side of the world. But it became clear enough, when first a handful of families, and then a mass of them, began arriving at Kaneda’s temple with corpses to bury.
Nearly twenty thousand people had died at a stroke. In the space of a month, Kaneda performed funeral services for two hundred of them. More appalling than the scale of death was the spectacle of the bereaved survivors. ‘They didn’t cry,’ Kaneda said to me a year later. ‘There was no emotion at all. The loss was so profound and death had come so suddenly. They understood the facts of their situation individually – that they had lost their homes, lost their livelihoods and lost their families. They understood each piece, but they couldn’t see it as a whole, and they couldn’t understand what they should do, or sometimes even where they were. I couldn’t really talk to them, to be honest. All I could do was stay with them, and read the sutras and conduct the ceremonies. That was the thing I could do.’
Amid this numbness and horror, Kaneda received a visit from a man he knew, a local builder whom I will call Takeshi Ono. Ono was ashamed of what had happened, and didn’t want his real name to be published. ‘He’s such an innocent person,’ Kaneda said to me. ‘He takes everything at face value. You’re from England, aren’t you? He’s like your Mr Bean.’ I wouldn’t have gone so far, because there was nothing ridiculous about Ono. He was a strong, stocky man in his late thirties, the kind of man most comfortable in blue overalls. But he had a dreamy ingenuousness that made the story he told all the more believable.
He had been at work on a house when the earthquake struck. He clung to the ground for as long as it lasted; even his lorry shook as if it was about to topple over. The drive home, along roads without traffic lights, was alarming, but the physical damage was remarkably slight: a few telegraph poles lolling at an angle, toppled garden walls. As the owner of a small building firm, no one was better equipped to deal with the practical inconveniences inflicted by an earthquake. Ono spent the next few days busying himself with camping stoves, generators and jerry cans, and paying little attention to the news.
more
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n03/richard-lloydparry/ghosts-of-the-tsunami
Archaeologists Unearth What May Be Oldest Roman Temple
Archaeologists excavating a site in central Rome say they've uncovered what may be oldest known temple from Roman antiquity.
Along the way, they've also discovered how much the early Romans intervened to shape their urban environment.
And the dig has been particularly challenging because the temple lies below the water table.
At the foot Capitoline Hill in the center of Rome, stands the Medieval Sant'Omobono church.
Today, the Tiber River is about a hundred yards away. But when the city was being created, around the 7th century B.C., it flowed close to where the church now stands, where a bend in the river provided a natural harbor for merchant ships.
"And here they decide to create a temple," says Nic Terrenato, who teaches classical archaeology at the University of Michigan and is co-director of the Sant'Omobono excavation project.
more
http://www.npr.org/2014/01/29/267819402/archaeologists-unearth-what-may-be-oldest-roman-temple
Pete Seeger: 'It's Hard for Me to Talk About the Media Without Getting Angry'
From an April 2001 interview with Pete Seeger conducted by David Guistina of Albany public radio station WAMC (listen here, registration required):
Q: Does the media do its job?
A: Of course not. It's hard for me to talk about the media without getting angry. Because if the United States or the world goes down in disaster, I would blame the media first of all, because the people running it are intelligent people. They know very well how evil they are. And when they say, "Oh, I'm just giving the people what they want." Sure–so do the drug pushers.
In the second installment of the interview, Seeger talked about an appearance on the Today show that turned out to be his last:
more
http://www.fair.org/blog/2014/01/29/pete-seeger-its-hard-for-me-to-talk-about-the-media-without-getting-angry/
A markup of 279,000% over production costs
AHF to Ask States to Block Gilead’s $1,000 per Pill Hepatitis Drug From Medicaid Formularies
Gilead is not the original developer of Sovaldi, its new Hepatitis C medication that will cost $84,000 for a 12-week course of treatment; instead, it bought the drug developer, rival company Pharmasett, for $11 billion cash in 2011. Gilead now seeks a bonanza on a financial investment by gouging cash-strapped government programs, treating states like Gilead’s own private—rigged—stock market.At $1,000 per pill, Sovaldi price is 1,100% more than Gilead’s AIDS drug combination Stribild ($80 per pill); pharmacy industry sources say Solvaldi’s price suggests a retail markup of 279,000% over production costs.
WASHINGTON, Jan 29, 2014 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- In a series of letters to be sent to state Medicaid directors starting today, AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) President Michael Weinstein will ask the state directors to block Gilead Sciences’ new $1,000-per-pill Hepatitis C drug Sovaldi (sofosbuvir) from inclusion on their respective state Medicaid and other drug formularies. The drug was approved by the F.D.A. on December 6, 2013 and Gilead immediately announced that it would price the drug at $84,000 for a twelve-week course of treatment—or $1,000 per tablet—making it one of the most expensive drugs ever marketed. Suggested treatment guidelines also require that Sovaldi be used with another drug, ribavirin (a nucleoside inhibitor), further adding to the cost of the prohibitively expensive course of treatment.
“When is enough, enough? At $1,000-per-pill, Sovaldi is priced 1,100% more than Gilead’s most expensive AIDS drug, Stribild, its four-in-one AIDS drug combination, which was priced at $80 per pill a year ago when it came to market,” said Michael Weinstein , President of AIDS Healthcare Foundation. “At that time, Stribild’s price was 35% more than Atripla, the company’s best selling combination HIV/AIDS treatment, and made Stribild the highest priced first-line combination AIDS therapy. Now, Gilead has set a new benchmark for unbridled greed with its outrageous price for Sovaldi—a price that some pharmacy industry sources suggest represents a retail markup of 279,000% over the cost of actually producing the drug.”
more
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ahf-to-ask-states-to-block-gileads-1000-per-pill-hepatitis-drug-from-medicaid-formularies-2014-01-29
Harry Reid slams Koch brothers
By BURGESS EVERETT | 1/30/14 11:39 AM EST
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid slammed the Koch brothers’ political activities Thursday, accusing the influential conservatives of trying to “buy the country.”
Reid was responding to comments from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who howled over President Barack Obama’s crackdown on politically active tax-exempt organizations as “declaring a war not just on its opponents, but on free speech itself.” McConnell compared the administration’s proposed rules on those groups to the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of outside groups and said Democrats are trying to stifle their election-year critics.
Reid hammered the networks backed by David and Charles Koch as political organizations masquerading as social welfare groups and criticizing McConnell’s efforts to help them.
“Because of a United States Supreme Court decisions called Citizens United, there’s been some really untoward stuff going on in the political world. We have two brothers who are actually trying to buy the country,” Reid said. “The Republican leader has long been an opponent of campaign finance reform. This has been part of his career. So it is no surprise he opposes the administration’s efforts for greater disclosure. The abuse here is not the administration’s enforcing the law, but folks like the Koch brothers pretending to be social welfare organizations.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/harry-reid-koch-brothers-102859.html
The Stealth Privatization of Pennsylvania's Bridges
At midnight of January 20, 2014, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette announced that the administration of Gov. Tom Corbett finally decided to take action on the state's crumbling bridges. The action it is taking is to sign a 40-year contract to privatize Pennsylvania bridges.
The word privatization does not appear in any of the announcements. Instead, PennDOT refers to the project as a public-private partnership. However, whether called a PPP, P3, public-private partnership, contracting out or privatization, the result is the same. Infrastructure privatization - that is privatization of roads, bridges, parking garages, parking meters, airports and the like - involves signing a contract, generally for a term of 30 to 99 years.
In the case of Pennsylvania's bridges, the private contractor takes on responsibility for designing, constructing, financing and operating bridges for up to 40 years. [PennDOT, McCalls] Experience with infrastructure privatization shows what we can expect as the bridge privatization proceeds.
Pennsylvania will hire a privatization industry insider as a consultant to advise the state. International firms such as Mayer Brown, Morgan Stanley and Macquarie frequently are hired to act as the consultant and, in other cases, will sit on the other side of the table as the private contractor. Consultants often are paid a "success fee" if a privatization agreement is reached. The success fee will motivate the adviser to recommend privatizing.
more
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/21513-the-stealth-privatization-of-pennsylvanias-bridges
Man somehow survives going through wood chipper
VANCOUVER, Wash. — Frank Arce truly must have a guardian angel looking after him. That's how he explains surviving the unthinkable; being caught inside a high-powered wood chipper when it was mistakenly turned on.
Arce had gone in to the machine to dislodge an object that had clogged up the machine. Before going in, he says he made sure the machinery was turned off in accordance with his company's safety protocol. But once inside he heard a sickening noise; the engine powering on.
The Washington state man says the worst part was being conscious during the entire ordeal and wondering how he was going to survive, ""There was a thought (that I was going to die) but it was more like something was telling me I wasn't going to die that day," he said. "I felt I had a lot of angels out there with me that day – a lot of people looking out for me."
KATU-TV reports Arce suffered a broken pelvis, shattered ankle, bruised liver, broken leg and knee, and a cut that runs the length of his body. But he credits the quick thinking of his coworkers who helped him with his injuries until help arrived.
http://www.kirotv.com/news/news/national/man-somehow-survives-going-through-wood-chipper/nc7Bh/
Anti-Choice Groups Launch National Boycott Of Girl Scout Cookies For Endorsing Wendy Davis
Toward the end of December, Girl Scout USA’s official Twitter account tweeted out a Huffington Post story about the inspiring individuals who should be considered to be 2013?s “women of the year.” The article included figures like Beyonce, Malala Yousafzai, and Wendy Davis — and the organization asked its followers who else should be added to the list of “incredible ladies.” That was enough for anti-choice activists to call for a national boycott of the organization’s popular cookies, claiming the Girl Scouts have endorsed “pro-abortion politician Wendy Davis.”
“We’re asking you to boycott Girl Scout cookies in 2014,” reads a new site dedicated to the boycott, explaining that Davis should not be lifted up as a “worthy role model for our children.” The same accusation is being leveled against the group in regards to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who was included in a different news article about influential U.S. women that the Girl Scouts shared on its Facebook page.
The controversy has been building for several weeks. At the beginning of this month, Fox News’ Megyn Kelly hosted a panel discussion about the organization’s tweet. Panelists suggested that sharing any material related to Davis violates the Girl Scouts’ policy to remain uninvolved in politics.
Davis, who is currently running for governor in Texas, rose to prominence over the summer when she filibustered a package of stringent abortion restrictions. That move transformed the state senator into the public face of a large grassroots movement in Texas fighting back against attacks on reproductive rights. Since then, Davis has become somewhat of a symbol for the anti-choice community, which sometimes refers to her as an “Abortion Barbie” and suggests that she stands with illegal abortion provider and convicted murderer Kermit Gosnell.
more
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/01/30/3225571/anti-choice-boycott-girl-scouts/
Some thin mints would be tasty about now...
The Deepening Extremism in the GOP Lieutenant Governor Primary
One of the afflictions of the politics beat is that conflict is coveted and covered, even when the story is about consensus. Reporters naturally gravitate (and try to create) disagreements among candidates and parties. “Fight! Fight! Fight” is the mantra. That’s not a bad instinct, but what happens when all the candidates agree on something—and that something is extreme?
We have a lieutenant governor’s race on the GOP side in which the four candidates agree on certain things that not so long ago were confined to the political fringe. They are even now not mainstream beliefs (defined roughly as beliefs held by a majority or large plurality of the public) but have become rapidly de rigueur in Republican primaries. To wit:
At a televised debate this week, all four candidates (David Dewhurst, Dan Patrick, Jerry Patterson and Todd Staples) agreed that abortions should be banned even in cases of rape or incest. It was not clear if any of them would make exceptions even for the life of the mother.
...
In other words, the likely next lieutenant governor of Texas has staked out the most extreme position possible on abortion. And notably, it’s not one shared by very many people, including Republicans. As Jim Henson and Joshua Blank with the Texas Tribune noted yesterday, “only 16 percent of Republicans (compared to 12 percent of Texans overall) said that abortion should never be permitted.”
more
http://www.texasobserver.org/deepening-extremism-lt-governor-primary/
Profile Information
Gender: Do not displayMember since: Tue Feb 10, 2004, 01:08 PM
Number of posts: 47,953
