Obama in India

[Terry]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-love/obama-in-india_b_776857.html

"The Obama Administration participates with large international pharmaceutical companies in an extensive public relations campaign to present such policies as necessary to promote India's development as an innovation powerhouse. But when subject to analysis, it is evident that the changes sought by the Obama Administration are designed to benefit European, Japanese and U.S. Pharmaceutical companies, the most, while presenting a growing threat to the efforts to promote more equal access to medicines, not only in India, but throughout the developing world."
James Love

I though Ian would like this.
Much of the world cant' afford health care, and India is one source of affordable medication. There is pressure on India to quit providing affordable care for much of the world.
While people like Bill Gates are trying to help those people in need, it seems Obama is on the other side of the issue right now.
I don't normally like getting involved in politics, but whether the opponent to health care for those with little means is a republican or a democrat, It no longer matters. There are just some things that are right, and some that are obviously wrong.
Terry

 

[Terry]

More cell phones then toilets

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2013301393_apasfeaindiatoiletsandcellphones.html

MUMBAI, India —
The Mumbai slum of Rafiq Nagar has no clean water for its shacks made of ripped tarp and bamboo. No garbage pickup along the rocky, pocked earth that serves as a road. No power except from haphazard cables strung overhead illegally.
And not a single toilet or latrine for its 10,000 people.
Yet nearly every destitute family in the slum has a cell phone. Some have three.
When President Barack Obama visits India Nov. 6, he will find a country of startlingly uneven development and perplexing disparities, where more people have cell phones than access to a toilet, according to the United Nations.

It offers cheap, world-class medical care to Western tourists at private hospitals, yet has some of the worst child mortality and maternal death rates outside sub-Saharan Africa.

More of the story

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Ian Gills]

The drugs one is tricky. People need access to cheap medicines but drug firms also have to recoup their R&D expenses else no new drugs get developed.

What can be done? Well, I think we need to get tougher with the patents and the drug firms and that means BIGGER Government. You know I think the Government here is too small and America needs to man up. The rules should be, you recover your costs and then the drug goes generic. So, for example, a firm should be able to produce the drug for three years, then anyone can.

And we need bigger Government funding for drug research.

Yet nearly every destitute family in the slum has a cell phone. Some have three.
When President Barack Obama visits India Nov. 6, he will find a country of startlingly uneven development and perplexing disparities, where more people have cell phones than access to a toilet, according to the United Nations.

It offers cheap, world-class medical care to Western tourists at private hospitals, yet has some of the worst child mortality and maternal death rates outside sub-Saharan Africa.

The cell phone bit is because competition is working in these countries. You can by a sim card in these countries for a dollar and calls are cheap too. On hospitals, again better regulation is needed and that means bigger Government. These hospitals should be mandated to serve a quota of poor people for free so the rich aren't benefiting from all the doctors who were trained with taxpayer money.

Government is sometimes good. America needs to wise up to that, strike the balance and accept that the market can, and does, fail without a little bit of help from the Feds along the way.

Reject the Tea Party. They're just a bunch of witches.

 

[Terry]

Ian,
If you send me a mailing address, I can send a documentary on Drugs and Big Pharma that was made in England.
There are four stories on the DVD, one of the stories has my brother James discussing the patent issue.

 

[Redwood]

Ian wants big government?
He would probably like to know its in the works...

You can read about the plan at this link... http://www.foia.cia.gov/2025/2025_Global_Governance.pdf

I didn't see the Queen mentioned...

Terry what does your brother think of this document?
I don't like the sound of it!

 

[Ian Gills]

There's no harm with having a little bit of Government in your life Redwood.

DC is full of nice folks doing great jobs for the Fed. There's room for a few more.

Invite them into your Life and into your State.

On a more serious note, the one thing I just don't get about America is you all love rules. I have never been to a country where people, my neighbors and my friends love rules so much. People in my very street know the City code cover to cover and God help anyone that puts their trash out before 8pm.

And yet y'all hate Government interfering in your lives. I just don't get it. It's like you're all a bunch of Communists afraid to come out of the closet. Getting all excited about a bunch of rules but getting all embarassed about admitting you need a Government to make them and enforce them.

Even on this forum, people complain about work not being done to code one minute, and want no Government the next.

Would Americans please then make their bed and lie in it!

I like rules and I like having a big Government. It stops people's gas water heaters from blowing up for a start.

And the odd Queen or two never did anyone any harm. Get to know a Queen before you pass judgement on them.

 

[Gary Slusser]

Speaking of the odd queen.

The only Queen I've ever known is Queen Lizzy of England (and half the countries of the world). I watched her inauguration on TV in the early 1950s was it? And recently saw her on tv.

She was queen when I was in England maintaining US nuclear weapons and loading them on English bombers in 1961-'62. I have always thought she was odd. Nasty too after seeing how she mistreated the lovely Princess Di, her first DIL.

I hear the English government is cutting programs, services and reducing the size of government to save money, and here you are wishing we were more like England. Since the recent election here, I'm thinking fairly soon you will be disliking things here much more. Those Tea Party witches you mentioned, they are very much like the current members of the modern English government. Maybe France would be more appealing to you, but they seem to be going conservative with smaller government and reducing freebies too. Now Zimbabwe (yesterday was their 45 yr anniversary of throwing that odd queen out) or, the evolving situation in South Africa, they remind me a lot of MD and you could feel right at home.

 

[Ian Gills]

Those Tea Party witches you mentioned, they are very much like the current members of the modern English government. Maybe France would be more appealing to you, but they seem to be going conservative with smaller government and reducing freebies too. Now Zimbabwe (yesterday was their 45 yr anniversary of throwing that odd queen out) or, the evolving situation in South Africa, they remind me a lot of MD and you could feel right at home.

Jeeees Louise. England will never be like America. Even our most Conservative parties aren't a pinch on your Democrats! The reasons why? Well, universal healthcare and education won't be touched. And church never interferes with State. Even the liberals in the US disagree over those things. The cuts there are a consequence of the financial crisis. Not that we don't want to spend, just that we can't any more. So we are targeting waste.

America probably won't have to make those choices. Because its Government doesn't do anything. But yet you all still pay taxes. That's called being a sucker, by the way.

Funny you should mention South Africa. I was there last week. It's a lot like America in the 60s. Tense. Getting the vote doesn't get you the bread. Throw illegal immigration into the mix and it gets worse.

But then America still is tense. England is not. All faiths and races mix much more easily there.

Because we have a history and a society that cares for one another, without the prerequisite of faith. In other words, if you fall on hard times my taxes will support you which means the poor are not forced to sign up against their will to a church, mosque or synagogue just to survive.

Why are churches and charities doing Government's work? Think of all the inefficiencies that go with that. The church buys an alter just to buy a poor man a meal.

 

[Redwood]

But then America still is tense. England is not. All faiths and races mix much more easily there.

Take off the rose colored glasses Ian...

 

[Gary Slusser]

Well, universal healthcare and education won't be touched. The cuts there are a consequence of the financial crisis. Not that we don't want to spend, just that we can't any more. So we are targeting waste.

I hear the odd queen's parliament is cutting 163 socialist agencies. The muslims are taking over control of English history and school books while rioting in the streets for sharia law and other preferential type treatment and their numbers are approaching something like 10-15% of the population is it? I also hear the odd queen's parliament is limiting immigration. I heard the parliament is cutting her allowance. That all sounds like some of what we are about to start attempting to do come Jan. Well, not including socialist democrat controlled MD.

 

[Ian Gills]

Look, I have no problem whatsoever with people burning my flag or even yours. It's a celebration of Freedom of Speech, which we invented and you copied in the First Amendment. So let's welcome that.

The only time I have a problem is when Christian Fundamentalists (mostly American) start demonstrating outside funerals for fallen veterans blaming the whole thing on war, abortion, alcohol and all the other rubbish that all religions believe is a sin. All religion should be banned. Period. Which comes neatly back to a point I have made time and time again as to why I should be not able to buy liqour on a Sunday morning at a gas station in most States in the US? And let's start taxing the churches. They are an eyesore and a burden on society.

However, in the meantime, welcoming all faiths in society is a good second best. What we really need to do is to start sleeping with each other and getting some inter-faith marriages going. That would start to change things. Especially if big men are involved (over 6 feet tall and over 250 pounds). Trust me when I say how amazed you would be at how quickly people stop bad mouthing one another if big, American, Christian men started to date Islamic or immigrant women, for example. Or if big Islamic or immigrant men started dating American, Christian women. It would be a sea change, starting in the bars.

I welcome the multi-cultural society we have developed in England, but that you actively resist in the US. Yes, we've had the bombings on the Metro there but you've had 9/11 here, so on balance neither approach seems to work better than the other. Which is not surprising. Since a few nutters are found in all societies. But most people from all faiths and all races are decent, honest people that just want to be left alone to earn a living and look after their families. Deep down, all anyone wants to do is be at home with their loved ones. If that's not you, you're mad.

 

[Cookie]

Until people start to accept one another for who they are and what they are their will never be any peace in this world. Everyone wants to be right. When, clearly, I am. ( people need to laugh more)

I work with the most humorless people in the world and it nearly, kills me. I make these great jokes and no one laughs. They are funny. Yet, these are the same people who cannot accept their children's faults, or accept their decisions in life, and want to discard them. I tell them, wrong... I ask, " why you push away your children because they are different than you?"

Being different is okay I tell them. I tell them to get to know the kids, and be a constant in their lives.

If it is so hard for some of us to do that with our own flesh & blood, imagine how difficult it must be for them to accept a stranger's difference.

I am interested in others who are not like me, I wonder how I can change them, lol. Like Ian...

 

[Cookie]

Life is just too amazing Ian, for it to be random, their has to be a God, you just got to feel it.

 

[Ian Gills]

I agree that God does not roll dice.

Each day is much like the last.

 

[Cookie]

That's too bad.

Each day is much like the last.

 

[Terry]

They say that everything is held in place by some form of intelligence. That patterns occur in nature, including the entire universe.
The big question is, whose intelligence.

 

[Cookie]

This is extremely interesting.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A hot, gaseous and fast-spinning planet has been found orbiting a dying star on the edge of the Milky Way, in the first such discovery of a planet from outside our galaxy, scientists said Thursday.

Slightly larger than the size of Jupiter, the largest in our solar system, the newly discovered exoplanet is orbiting a star 2,000 light years from Earth that has found its way into the Milky Way.

The pair are believed to be part of the Helmi stream, a group of stars that remains after its mini-galaxy was devoured by the Milky Way some six to nine billion years ago, said the study in Science Express.

"This discovery is very exciting," said Rainer Klement of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy.

"Because of the great distances involved, there are no confirmed detections of planets in other galaxies. But this cosmic merger has brought an extragalactic planet within our reach."


Astronomers were able to locate the planet, coined HIP 13044 b, by focusing on the "tiny telltale wobbles of the star caused by the gravitational tug of an orbiting companion," the study said.

They used a powerful telescope owned by the European Southern Laboratory at La Silla Observatory in Chile, located at an altitude of 2,400 meters (7,800 feet) some 600 kilometers (375 miles) north of the capital, Santiago.

The planet is quite close to the star it is orbiting, and survived a phase in which its host star went through a massive growth after it depleted its core hydrogen fuel supply, a phase known as the "red giant" stage of stellar evolution.

"This discovery is particularly intriguing when we consider the distant future of our own planetary system, as the Sun is also expected to become a red giant in about five billion years," said lead researcher Johny Setiawan of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy.

The exoplanet is likely to be quite hot because it is orbiting so close to its star, completing each orbit in just over 16 days, and is probably near the end of its life, astronomers said.


The star may have already swallowed other planets in its orbit, making the star spin more quickly and meaning that time is running out for the surviving exoplanet.

Astronomers were mystified as to how the planet might have formed, since the star contained few elements heavier than hydrogen and helium and planets typically form out of a complex cloud of spinning space rubble.

"It is a puzzle for the widely accepted model of planet formation to explain how such a star, which contains hardly any heavy elements at all, could have formed a planet," said Setiawan.

"Planets around stars like this must probably form in a different way."
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