Sunday, November 07, 2010

Food for thought

The Futility of Reform
 French workers protested in Paris and around the country with the main focus being to stop government reform of pensions, increasing the retirement age from 60 to 62. French unions see retirement at 60 'as a firmly entrenched right in a country attached to generous state benefits'. (Toronto Star 3/10/10). France, like many countries is having to enforce cut backs to pay for its expenditures and avoid going deeper into debt. Guess who is going to win? Reforms take years to acquire and a second to take away.
The Toronto Star revealed (2/10/10) that the United States, with the full knowledge of the Guatemalan government, deliberately infected citizens of that country with syphilis by getting prison inmates to sleep with prostitutes who had been infected between 1946 and 1948. In addition, mentally ill patients were inoculated with the bacteria. None of those in
the experiments gave consent. This was revealed by medical historian, Susan Reverby, who had earlier blown the whistle on similar experiments in Alabama on poor African-American men. Forty such studies were identified.
Ask not what your country can do for you, but what your country can do TO you! John Ayers

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