Monday, April 21, 2014

A FEW NOTES ON THE NEWS:A FEW NOTES ON THE NEWS:

4 French journalists were freed last week, ten months after they went to Syria to cover the civil war there, and were captured..though we still don’t know by whom...or how they got released. Dozens of journalists still remain captives of one group or another.

Syria is the most dangerous country in the world for reporters. 121 died covering the war in 2012, and between 2007 and 2012, 430 journalists died...so you could read a small paragraph in the Lexington paper, or a twenty second voice-over report on the local TV.


The U.S. keeps saying it is trying to limit injuries to civilians in our drone strikes, but in Yemen last week, a drone killed  nine suspected (not confirmed, just suspected) al-Qaeda militants…but also killed and wounded some civilians, including, reportedly, children.


50 years ago, April 24, 1964, LBJ sat on the front porch of a poverty couple in Inez, Ky., as he announced his war on poverty. The couple, as with the War on Poverty, did not fare well. After a brief boom, coal jobs decreased drastically in E. Ky., and the family suffered additional health problems. Both of them have since died…and recent statistics show the growing disparity between high and low income groups in the US..with CEOs being paid more and paid without any relationship to their firm’s stock or achievements..and more families entering poverty.


GM waited years to recall another group of its cars that had serious defects.  This time the Saturn defects were known to a government auto safety agency, which failed to issue a recall.

And a provision of the auto industry bail-out may exempt GM from liability, even for deaths caused by its defective cars. Congress wrote such a provision into the bail-out law...and now those chickens, and amputations, and life long health problems...and deaths...are coming home to roost.

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