July 15, 2004 | New York Review of Books by Marcia Angell 1. Every day Americans are subjected to a barrage of advertising by the pharmaceutical industry. Mixed in with the pitches for a particular drug—usually featuring beautiful people enjoying themselves in the great outdoors—is a more general message. Boiled down to its essentials, it is this: “Yes, prescription drugs are expensive, but that shows how valuable they are. Besides, our research and development costs are enormous, and we need to cover them somehow. As ‘research-based’ companies, we turn out a steady stream of innovative medicines that lengthen life, enhance […]
Daily Archives: July 3, 2004
5 posts
[ Although I doubt the UN will send election monitors, other international monitoring bodies, such as Pax Christi, are doing so. –BL ] 02 July 2004 | AFP WASHINGTON – Several members of the House of Representatives have requested the United Nations to send observers to monitor the November 2 US presidential election to avoid a contentious vote like in 2000, when the outcome was decided by Florida.
[ From the piece: Bye has a novel approach. He’s planning to reflect the media’s own words right back at them. Normally the evolution of electronic media coverage is too gradual and unwieldy for observation. That is until someone comes along and condenses hundreds of hours of news feeds that unwind to reveal the major broadcast news organizations as partners with the Bush administration Here’s a related report from the Columbia Journalism Review: THE LIST: How Chalabi Played the Press. –BL ] Caught on Tape Filmmaker Kent Bye Says the Media is Partially Responsible for the Iraq War–and He Has the […]
[ Following up an earlier story, Israel is appealing to the U.S. to support its plan to complete the illegal wall that gives Israel greater control over the West Bank. The Israeli foreign minister’s claim that “Israel can deal with this issue by itself” in effect asks the world to trust Israel itself to reach a just solution on the Palestinian issue. That’s about as crazy as trusting the Bush Administration not to violate international law, which is just what the Administration requested of the Supreme Court! –BL ] Jul 2, 2004 | Reuters WASHINGTON – Israel’s foreign minister said on […]
[ Underlining below is mine. –BL ] Saddam Could Call CIA in His Defence 2 July 2004 | InterPress Service by Sanjay Suri LONDON – Evidence offered by a top CIA man could confirm the testimony given by Saddam Hussein at the opening of his trial in Baghdad Thursday that he knew of the Halabja massacre only from the newspapers. Thousands were reported killed in the gassing of Iraqi Kurds in Halabja in the north of Iraq in March 1988 towards the end of Iraq’s eight-year war with Iran. The gassing of the Kurds has long been held to be the […]