All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

Israel PM blames Palestinian ‘extremists’ for Jerusalem clashes | News , World | THE DAILY STAR

Bibi drinking again and he drunkenly blames victims for conflict! OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday blamed “Palestinian extremists” for clashes at Jerusalem’s flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound, denying that Israel was behind mounting tensions at the site.

“Israel is committed to maintaining the status quo exactly as it’s been for many decades. What we’re seeing is Palestinian extremists who are instigating violence through incitement,” he said in the presence of U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

via Israel PM blames Palestinian ‘extremists’ for Jerusalem clashes | News , World | THE DAILY STAR.

Kobani: A Victim Of Our Sins

Nervana

Kobane1_2

(Photo via Mother Jones)

The city of Kobani is falling in front of our eyes. The black flags of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have been slowly spreading above the buildings of this unfortunate Kurdish town in northern Syria. Sooner or later the resistance of the Kurdish fighters that are currently heroically trying to defend Kobani will crumble against an avalanche of medieval barbarism from ISIS, which is doubly fortified with modern weaponry. The tragedy of Kobani may seem irrelevant in the wider context of the turbulent Middle East, however, it highlights clearly the flawed thinking process of many in the Arab world, and alarmingly also in Turkey.

 Selective outrage

 Compare the muted response to the beheading of female Kurdish fighters, or the rape and forced marriages of Yazidi women by ISIS fighters to the loud, angry responses that have ___ rightly___ erupted following the…

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Got Insurance? Companies still say: “Screw you for being ill!” You Still May Pay A Steep Price For Prescriptions – Kaiser Health News

Sandra Grooms recently got a call from her oncologist’s office. The chemotherapy drugs he wanted to use on her metastatic breast cancer were covered by her health plan, with one catch: Her share of the cost would be $976 for each 14-day supply of the two pills. {14+ years of exclusive sales and gouging all the way for people trying to stay alive}

“I said, ‘I can’t afford it,’” said Grooms, 52, who is insured through her job as a general manager at a janitorial supply company in Augusta, Ga. “I was very upset.”

Even with insurance, some patients are struggling to pay for prescription drugs for conditions such as cancer, arthritis, multiple sclerosis or HIV/AIDS, as insurers and employers shift more of the cost of high-priced pharmaceuticals to the patients who take them.

via Got Insurance? You Still May Pay A Steep Price For Prescriptions – Kaiser Health News.

VDU’s blog: Ebola double vision….

Complain about and hide behind who didn’t react fast enough if you must, but do be very, very clear in your own mind that now, right this minute, if you are not acting, calling someone, pleading a humanitarian case, then it is you and those like you who are to blame for some of our global villages burning out of control.

I don’t care a damn if the currency for today’s political action is “security” – you find a way to bring it back to being about humanity.

We live in an interconnected world and some of those country’s citizens are your constituents.

The global calls have gone out, the Resolution has been passed, the pleas have been made, the situation is clear to all. And you are failing.

Get up and do something. Now.

via VDU’s blog: Ebola double vision…..

Throwback Thursday: My first 5K in 2007

Need a side by side shot for comparison – grin. Good on you continuously!

Fit and Feminist

moffittTomorrow is my 35th birthday, and as it’s a bit of a milestone – no longer able to make those “35 under 35” lists, definitely no longer a wunderkind – I’ve been doing a lot of the kind of thinking that I guess you could describe as contemplative.  I think it’s always good to periodically take stock of where you’ve been and what that’s meant and how you might proceed going forward, don’t you?

Anyway, I’ve been wanting to write about this photo for a while, and I figured today would be a good day for that.  The photo shows me just before I’m about to cross the finish line of my very first 5K, in Tampa back in May 2007.  Prior to this race, I hadn’t managed to run more than two miles nonstop, and yet somehow on this particular morning – most likely due to Brian’s encouragement – …

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Thousands ‘will most likely be massacred’ if Kobani falls to jihadists, U.N. warns | Reuters

Thousands of people “will most likely be massacred” if Kobani falls to Islamic State fighters, a U.N. envoy said on Friday, as militants fought deeper into the besieged Syrian Kurdish town in full view of Turkish tanks that have done nothing to intervene.

U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura said Kobani could suffer the same fate as the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, where 8,000 Muslims were killed by Serbs in 1995, Europe’s worst atrocity since World War Two, while U.N. peacekeepers failed to protect them.

“If this falls, the 700, plus perhaps the 12,000 people, apart from the fighters, will be most likely massacred,” de Mistura said. The United Nations believes 700 mainly elderly civilians are trapped in the town itself and 12,000 have left the centre but not made it across the border into Turkey.

via Thousands ‘will most likely be massacred’ if Kobani falls to jihadists, U.N. warns | Reuters.

News – Epidemiological update: outbreak of Ebola…

Situation in West Africa

Since December 2013 and as of 5 October 2014, 8 032 cases of EVD, including 3 865 deaths, have been reported by WHO (Figure 1) [10].

The distribution of EVD cases by affected countries is as follows and is presented in figure 1:

Guinea: 1 298 cases and 768 deaths as of 5 October 2014;

Liberia: 3 924 cases and 2 210 deaths as of 4 October 2014;

Sierra Leone: 2 789 cases and 879 deaths as of 5 October 2014;

Nigeria: 20 cases and 8 deaths, with last confirmed case in Lagos on 5 September 2014 (30 days as of 5 October 2014) and in Rivers State on first September 2014 (34 days as of 5 October);

Senegal: 1 case, no deaths, confirmed on 28 August 2014 (38 days as of 5 October). All contacts have completed 21 days of follow-up.

via News – Epidemiological update: outbreak of Ebola….