newspeak

For News Corporation, Troubles That Money Can\’t Dispel – NYTimes.com.

Rich and fertile ground in the the US….

Spoonful of Medicine: First drug company to dive into the HIV patent pool may help others take the plunge.

Important.

Noam Chomsky denounces old friend Hugo Chávez for \’assault\’ on democracy | World news | The Observer.

Kudos to Chomsky.

It’s easy to imagine justice is on your side to right wrongs longstanding, and then to forget that justice ought not to lean or bend to favour.

Act Up-Paris | Will Karel De Gucht be responsible for millions deaths ?.

US police smash camera for recording killing – Features – Al Jazeera English.

For every operation of authority, I am sure an argument can be erected to justify it. So we deal in economics, and look not simply to the immediate cause and effect but to the economics of the longterm: what anglophonic jurisprudence established. Precedence weighs down the present but even more the future.  And then we must keep in mind, to make it actually make sense, whether the reasonable man–not really society, but rather a tortable embodiment–would be affected, and if so, how badly.

Corporal punishment: Mothers self-recorded audio gives unique real-time view of spanking.

This is an extraordinary study.

Leaked cables show U.S. tried, failed to organize against Ecuador compulsory licensing.

Compulsory licensing:

“Compulsory licensing authorizes generic competition with patented, monopoly protected drugs.  Generic competition reduces costs and enables public agencies to scale-up treatment and other services.” 

The losers are the untold millions unable to pay for the drugs they need and, what’s more, shut out of any future that promises a better world. But it’s not a surprise. So much of the idea of the nation formed and reformed over the last 150 years is about presenting a theatre of war for private corporations, not for “the people.” Indeed, the people who count, who matter, are already, in this logic, part of the moneyed interests. Yet, I’m hopeful, for the very fact that Ecuador is doing this, and that Brazil has also intervened with a not too dissimilar option, and that sites such as infojustice.org exists, and that there could even be such dramatic revolutions in northern Africa and in the Arab Gulf states, all these things, recuperations of the enthusiasm we saw prior to 9/11 and the Iraq War, all give me hope. There is a sense of social justice.