Sunday, August 30, 2009

The harsh truth? We nurses have just forgotten how to care

No occupation in Britain inspires greater public admiration than nursing.

And yet in recent years, the profession has gone desperately wrong. A report this week by the Patients Association reveals that since 2002, up to a million patients have experienced shockingly poor standards of nursing care in the NHS.

Some were not fed; others were left in soiled bedclothes.

Nurses and doctors before an operation: Rona suggests nurses need to start caring again

Nurses and doctors before an operation: Rona suggests nurses need to start caring again

As a former nurse, I believe the essential problem is an institutional failure of training and ethos.

When I embarked on my career in 1977, the vast majority of the training was based on practical experience. Instruction was carried out in a school of nursing, attached to the hospital.

Just a quarter of the course was academic study. Three-quarters was spent working with patients, whose care should be a nurse's primary concern.

Back then, when nurses qualified, they had already gained a thorough, hands-on understanding of medicine - and, most importantly, of their patients.

No longer. In the early Nineties, the government wrecked a perfectly good system by launching Project 2000 - an initiative that was meant to give nursing a stronger professional foundation by emphasising the academic over the practical.

Student nurses were removed from the hospitals and trained in lecture halls, rather than wards.

Many less glamorous, but vital elements of nursing care - such as cleaning, feeding or lifting patients - dropped off the syllabus and were replaced by empty, jargon-filled theorising about 'holistic care' and 'cultural sensitivities'.


By Rona Johnson

日失業率創新高 年輕人將以選票抵制自民黨

(中央社記者楊明珠東京特稿)「別把我們用完即丟、拒絕企業動不動就砍派遣員工,請投我一票」。

29歲的池田一慶穿著類似汽車工廠員工穿的連身服在宣傳車上高聲疾呼。他代表社民黨參選明天將舉行投開票的眾議院大選。

這次大選的焦點是景氣、年金問題、失業問題。自民黨政見主張要創出200萬人的就業機會,民主黨主張勞工保險也應擴及非正職員工,但對於如何降低失業率,兩大黨都未能提出具體方案。

曾在日野汽車公司當派遣員工的池田,現在串連日本各地的派遣員工及聘僱員工組織工會。這次出馬參選社民黨的比例選區。

他說,有些年輕人畢業後找不到像樣的工作,好不容易就業了,就遭公司裁員或者過勞死。他說,這一切都是執政的自民黨獨厚大財團所導致的結果,希望年輕人或非正職員工都能挺他,讓他代為爭取福利。

社民黨的黨魁福島瑞穗幫池田站台高喊:「都是前首相小泉純一郎進行的構造改革所帶來的弊端,造成社會貧富懸殊,也讓年輕人再怎麼辛苦工作仍一窮二白。

她強調,修改派遣員工法是該黨說服最大在野黨民主黨才促成的,有民調指民主黨在眾院480席當中可能囊括320席,她呼籲民眾票一定投給社民黨,避免讓民主黨一黨獨大的情況下,過於傲慢不照顧民生。

日本官方昨天公布勞動力調查快報指出,7月份的失業率(季節調整值)比6月份更惡化0.3個百分點,為5.7%,是以現行統計方式實施調查的1953年4月以來最壞紀錄。失業人口比去年同月增加103萬人,為359萬人。

25至34歲的年輕人是失業率最高的族群,高達7.1%。正值年輕力壯期的35到44歲者失業率達4.9% ,嚴重影響家庭收入,工作的不穩定也導致晚婚化、少子化情況加劇。日本首相麻生太郎還失言說出:「年輕人如果沒錢,最好別輕易結婚。」

另外,日本官方日前公布2008年度國民年金保險費實質繳納率是45.6%,連續3年低於5成。年齡層愈年輕,繳納率愈低,20至24歲的人士繳納率是24.2% ,每4人不到1人繳納,長此下去,強制加入的國民年金將加速空洞化。失業率增,滯納者也增。

「日刊現代」大標題報導:「不去投一票的話,40幾歲的人將損失3000萬日圓(約新台幣1055萬元)。」

報導說,所謂的世代會計是指每一國民從生到死之間,被政府徵收的稅金、社會保險費等的負擔金以及政府發給國民的受益額,依照各年齡層做出估算。

65歲的世代會計在受益額減去負擔金後,可獲得1433萬日圓,算是賺到。30歲人士的世代會計比為2525萬日圓(受益額是2193萬日圓、負擔金是4719萬日圓)。

森川教授指出,年輕人的投票率低導致政治家以高齡人士的政策為優先考量,開始繳納稅金的年輕人,一定要提高對政治的關心度才行。

目前有多個團體都在呼籲年輕人要去投票。「我要投票(ivote)」的發起人東京大學法學系3年級學生原田謙介說,他和許多大學朋友談話時,覺得這次大選好似乎會有很多對就業感到不安的人去投票。」

另外,京都龍谷大學也製作名為「年輕人的主張與投票(THE YOUTH ADVOTE)」的電台節目催票。

日本眾議院大選除了1967年那一屆之外,20到29歲這年齡層的投票率都是最低的。另外,前年參議院選舉時,20到29歲人士的投票率約是37%,60到69歲的人是76%。(本文附照片)

紅衫軍示威延期 泰總理府部分軍隊留守

(中央社記者林憬屏曼谷30日專電)泰國反政府紅衫軍原定今天的示威將延期到9月5日,雖然軍警部隊撤離總理府周圍,不過並非全部撤離,軍方仍在總理府周圍與重要機構與道路駐守。

  陸軍第一軍區指揮官坎尼(Khanit Saphithak)指出,紅衫軍昨天宣佈把集會活動延期到9月5日,出動戒備的軍隊人數因而減少,但還是有軍人會在總理府周圍守衛。

  坎尼指出,他們最好有防範意外發生的措施,「就像掛了蚊帳防蚊咬,雖然沒被咬,但也沒有意外發生」。

  紅衫軍大示威改期,泰國總理艾比希(AbhisitVejjajiva)表示,屆時是否還需要實施內部安全法,內閣預定9月1日進一步決定。

  對紅衫軍指責政府利用公關工具把示威活動說成會讓曼谷成為一個戰場,艾比希昨天表示,他對示威活動延期的理由感到驚訝。

  艾比希表示,政府實施安全措施是為了維持秩序,防止可能的暴力發生,並非禁止集會或抗議活動,官方28日也與紅衫軍談過示威路線,以確保集會能和平進行。

紅衫軍領袖說,如果政府9月5日再實施內部安全法,他們會把活動延期到9 月12日,若內安法屆時還是實施,紅衫軍會把集會延到9 月19日,這一天也是前總理戴克辛(Thaksin Shinawatra) 被政變趕下台的三週年紀念日,到時候紅衫軍示威就不會再延期。

失業率創新高 日本選民以選票抵制執政黨

「別把我們用完即丟、拒絕企業動不動就砍派遣員工,請投我一票」。社民黨參選人的池田一慶(29歲)穿著類似汽車工廠員工穿的連身服在宣傳車上高聲疾呼。

這次大選的焦點是景氣、年金問題、失業問題。自民黨政見主張要創出200萬人的就業機會,民主黨主張勞工保險也應擴及非正職員工,但對於如何降低失業率,兩大黨都未能提出具體方案。

曾在日野汽車公司當派遣員工的池田,現在串連日本各地的派遣員工及聘僱員工組織工會。這次出馬參選社民黨的比例選區。他說,有些年輕人畢業後找不到像樣的 工作,好不容易就業了,就遭公司裁員或者過勞死。他說,這一切都是執政的自民黨獨厚大財團所導致的結果,希望年輕人或非正職員工都能挺他,讓他代為爭取福 利。

社民黨的黨魁福島瑞穗幫池田站台高喊:「都是前首相小泉純一郎進行的構造改革所帶來的弊端,造成社會貧富懸殊,也讓年輕人再怎麼辛苦工作仍一窮二白。」

她強調,修改派遣員工法是該黨說服最大在野黨民主黨才促成的,有民調指民主黨在眾院480席當中可能囊括320席,她呼籲民眾票一定投給社民黨,避免讓民主黨一黨獨大的情況下,過於傲慢不照顧民生。

日本官方昨天公布勞動力調查快報指出,7月份的失業率(季節調整值)比6月份更惡化0.3個百分點,為5.7%,是以現行統計方式實施調查的1953年4月以來最壞紀錄。失業人口比去年同月增加103萬人,為359萬人。

25至34歲的年輕人是失業率最高的族群,高達7.1%。正值年輕力壯期的35到44歲者失業率達4.9% ,嚴重影響家庭收入,工作的不穩定也導致晚婚化、少子化情況加劇。日本首相麻生太郎還失言說出:「年輕人如果沒錢,最好別輕易結婚。」

另外,日本官方日前公布2008年度國民年金保險費實質繳納率是45.6%,連續3年低於5成。年齡層愈年輕,繳納率愈低,20至24歲的人士繳納率是24.2% ,每4人不到1人繳納,長此下去,強制加入的國民年金將加速空洞化。失業率增,滯納者也增。

「日刊現代」大標題報導:「不去投一票的話,40幾歲的人將損失3000萬日圓(約新台幣1055萬元)。」 報導說,所謂的世代會計是指每一國民從生到死之間,被政府徵收的稅金、社會保險費等的負擔金以及政府發給國民的受益額,依照各年齡層做出估算。

65歲的世代會計在受益額減去負擔金後,可獲得1433萬日圓,算是賺到。30歲人士的世代會計比為2525萬日圓(受益額是2193萬日圓、負擔金是4719萬日圓)。

森川教授指出,年輕人的投票率低導致政治家以高齡人士的政策為優先考量,開始繳納稅金的年輕人,一定要提高對政治的關心度才行。

目前有多個團體都在呼籲年輕人要去投票。「我要投票(ivote)」的發起人東京大學法學系3年級學生原田謙介說,他和許多大學朋友談話時,覺得這次大選好似乎會有很多對就業感到不安的人去投票。」

另外,京都龍谷大學也製作名為「年輕人的主張與投票(THE YOUTH ADVOTE)」的電台節目催票。

日本眾議院大選除了1967年那一屆之外,20到29歲這年齡層的投票率都是最低的。另外,前年參議院選舉時,20到29歲人士的投票率約是37%,60到69歲的人是76%。

日本眾議院選舉今天投票,晚間才剛開票,日本主要媒體就根據投票所的出口民調,不約而同報導民主黨獲得大勝贏得政權已成定局,日本將實現政權輪替。

包括「日本放送協會」(NHK)和日本「共同社」等主要媒體都根據出口民調等資料指出,民主黨在總數480席當中勢必獲得超過300席,將贏得壓倒性勝利。

民主黨可望成為眾院第一大黨贏得政權,創下日本戰後繼1947年的第23屆和1993年的第40屆眾院選舉之後,第三度因眾院選舉而政權輪替,但也是在 1947年之後,62年來首次由於眾院第一大黨易手而造成政權輪替,自民黨則將是1955年建黨以來首次失去第一大黨地位。

民主黨在選前已表示,若贏得政權,快則31日就內定內閣官房長官和黨幹事長等黨政高層人事,並著手和社民黨及國民新黨協商合作。

根據法律規定,新國會必須在選後30天內召開特別國會選出新任首相,這個特別國會可能在9月中旬召開。由於自民、公明兩黨執政聯盟敗選,日本首相麻生太郎和他領導的內閣必須在參、眾兩院選舉新首相之前總辭。

如果參、眾兩院選出不同的首相,則以眾院選出的擔任。由於民主黨等在野黨已在參院占過半數席次,在野聯盟又在眾院占有優勢,應不致出現兩院選出不同首相的問題。

民主黨黨魁鳩山由紀夫可望經由國會推選為新任首相,9月下旬起將出席一連串國際會議。包括9月22日在紐約舉行的聯合國氣候變邊會議、聯合國大會,以及9月24 至25日在美國匹茲堡(Pittsburgh)舉行的G20領袖高峰會,展開忙碌的外交活動。

達賴喇嘛搭機來台發表三點聲明

(中央社記者郭傳信新德里30日專電)西藏流亡精神領袖達賴喇嘛在新德里國際機場搭機飛往台灣之前,發表三點聲明指出,此行是應台灣人民邀請,非任何政治團體;此行目的是安撫災民和超度亡靈;此行純為台灣人民祈福消災,並無任何其他因素考量。

達賴喇嘛今天下午1點(當地時間)在新德里國際機場貴賓室候機時發表上述三點聲明。達賴預計台灣時間晚上9點多飛抵台北。

下一張



FILE-In this March 31, 2001, file photo, Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, clenches his fists during a press conference at his hotel in Taipei. Taiwan's president risked angering China with his surprise announcement Thursday, Aug. 27, 2009, that he has agreed to let the Dalai Lama visit the island to comfort survivors of a devastating typhoon. (AP Photo/Jerome Favre, File)

Facebook+Brand Name = Millions of Fans

Today is the time when social media is rapidly redefining the marketing landscape. Companies are eager to join the social media band wagon and are willing to spend money and time on social media marketing.

By doing social media marketing the right way, companies can successfully spur the web traffic to their website and establish themselves as a brand in their respective industries. Amongst the various sites that help in brand building, Facebook leads the league.

Facebook hit the 175,000,000 active user mark, just 5 weeks after it hit 150 million users in January. At this rate, Facebook has been growing by a whopping 600,000 users per day over the last several weeks,


Facebook has been instrumental in getting increased attention from fans, especially if the company is already a brand. Brands get more popularity from Facebook because:

1. Peoples already know about their products and services.
2. They are popular in their competition.
3. People regularly search for popular brand names.

Here’s a comparative study of Coca-Cola/Pepsi & Microsoft/Oracle to see how bigger brand get better results from Facebook:

Coca Cola(Facebook Fans Page)


Details

2008 Sales (mil.) $31,944.0
2008 Employees 92,400

Competition
PepsiCo

PepsiCo(Facebook Fans Page)


Details
2008 Sales (mil.) $13,796

Competition
Coca Cola

Pepsi is also popular but when they created a fans page on Facebook Coca Cola outnumbered them. The reason being people started showing more interest in Coca Cola as it is a bigger brand, thereby making it more popular!


Here’s another example that shows how more popular brands get better returns from Facebook.

Microsoft Vs. Oracle

Microsoft(Facebook Fans Page)


Details
2009 Sales (mil.) $58,437.0
2009 Employees 93,000

Competition
Oracle

Oracle


Details
2008 Sales (mil.) $22,430.0
2008 Employees 84,233

Competition
Microsoft

Here Microsoft & Oracle both are popular but when it comes to Facebook people started showing there interest in Microsoft & Microsoft became more popular then oracle on Facebook as well.

So Facebook helps companies to create there own brand but if you are already a brand then Facebook helps you to get attention from millions of fans.

Study Says World's Stocks Controlled by Select Few

Companies from US, UK and Australia have the most concentrated financial power.

WASHINGTON -- A recent analysis of the 2007 financial markets of 48 countries has revealed that the world's finances are in the hands of just a few mutual funds, banks, and corporations. This is the first clear picture of the global concentration of financial power, and point out the worldwide financial system's vulnerability as it stood on the brink of the current economic crisis.

A pair of physicists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich did a physics-based analysis of the world economy as it looked in early 2007. Stefano Battiston and James Glattfelder extracted the information from the tangled yarn that links 24,877 stocks and 106,141 shareholding entities in 48 countries, revealing what they called the "backbone" of each country's financial market. These backbones represented the owners of 80 percent of a country's market capital, yet consisted of remarkably few shareholders.

"You start off with these huge national networks that are really big, quite dense," Glattfelder said. “From that you're able to ... unveil the important structure in this original big network. You then realize most of the network isn't at all important."

The most pared-down backbones exist in Anglo-Saxon countries, including the U.S., Australia, and the U.K. Paradoxically; these same countries are considered by economists to have the most widely-held stocks in the world, with ownership of companies tending to be spread out among many investors. But while each American company may link to many owners, Glattfelder and Battiston's analysis found that the owners varied little from stock to stock, meaning that comparatively few hands are holding the reins of the entire market.

“If you would look at this locally, it's always distributed,” Glattfelder said. “If you then look at who is at the end of these links, you find that it's the same guys, [which] is not something you'd expect from the local view.”

Matthew Jackson, an economist from Stanford University in Calif. who studies social and economic networks, said that Glattfelder and Battiston's approach could be used to answer more pointed questions about corporate control and how companies interact.

"It's clear, looking at financial contagion and recent crises, that understanding interrelations between companies and holdings is very important in the future,” he said. "Certainly people have some understanding of how large some of these financial institutions in the world are, there's some feeling of how intertwined they are, but there's a big difference between having an impression and actually having ... more explicit numbers to put behind it."

Based on their analysis, Glattfelder and Battiston identified the ten investment entities who are “big fish” in the most countries. The biggest fish was the Capital Group Companies, with major stakes in 36 of the 48 countries studied. In identifying these major players, the physicists accounted for secondary ownership -- owning stock in companies who then owned stock in another company -- in an attempt to quantify the potential control a given agent might have in a market.

The results raise questions of where and when a company could choose to exert this influence, but Glattfelder and Battiston are reluctant to speculate.

"In this kind of science, complex systems, you're not aiming at making predictions [like] ... where the tennis ball will be at given place in given time," Battiston said. “What you're trying to estimate is … the potential influence that [an investor] has."

Glattfelder added that the internationalism of these powerful companies makes it difficult to gauge their economic influence. "[With] new company structures which are so big and spanning the globe, it's hard to see what they're up to and what they're doing,” he said. Large, sparse networks dominated by a few major companies could also be more vulnerable, he said. "In network speak, if those nodes fail, that has a big effect on the network."

The results will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Physical Review E.

By Lauren Schenkman

3rd District Congressman Mark Souder's Townhall meeting Fort Wayne

Check this link ....... http://bit.ly/q6wC9

Bank failure tally tops 84

The number of bank closures this year continues to grow as the fallout from the housing crisis and unemployment take a toll on local financial institutions.


NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Regional banks in Maryland, Minnesota and California were closed by regulators Friday, bringing the total number of failed banks this year to 84, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said.

Baltimore, Md.-based Bradford Bank, which operated nine branches, will reopen Monday as part of Manufacturers and Traders Trust Company.

M&T, which is based in Albany, N.Y., agreed to assume all of Bradford Bank's $383 million in deposits and will purchase "essentially all" of its $452 million in assets, the FDIC said.

In Minnesota, the eight branches of Mainstreet Bank of Forest Lake will be taken over by Stillwater-based Central Bank.

Central will pay a premium of 0.1% to the FDIC for the failed bank's $434 million in deposits and will purchase its $459 million in assets, the FDIC said.

Affinity Bank of Ventura, California, operated 10 branches which will be taken over by Pacific Western Bank.

Pacific Western will assume all of Affinity's deposits of approximately $922 million and purchase its $1 billion in assets, according to the FDIC.

The combined cost of Friday's closures to the FDIC is an estimated $446 million.

Access to funds. Customers of the failed banks will be able to access their money over the weekend by writing checks or using ATM or debit cards. Checks will continue to be processed, and borrowers should make their payments as usual, the FDIC said.

The FDIC, the federal agency that has protected bank deposits since the Great Depression, will guarantee account balances up to $250,000. Qualified depositors of the failed banks will retain their FDIC coverage.

A bad year. With Friday's closures, the number of banks shut this year is more than three times the number of banks that failed in 2008, and it's the highest tally since 1992, when 181 banks failed.

The majority of this year's failures have been small, regional banks that fell victim to losses on real estate and consumer loans as unemployment surged to a 25-year high. But there have also been a number of large institutions closed in 2009.

Last week, regulators in Texas closed Guaranty Bank, which had about $13 billion in assets and was the third-largest bank to fail this year. That came one week after Alabama-based Colonial BancGroup became the sixth-largest bank failure in U.S. history on Aug. 15.

The wave of failures is expected to continue, raising concerns about the size of the FDIC's insurance fund.

The FDIC said Thursday that the number of institutions on its so-called "problem bank" list reached 416 in the most recent quarter -- the highest level in 15 years.

The agency also reported that its trust fund decreased by $2.6 billion, or 20%, during the quarter to $10.4 billion.

Over the next five years, the FDIC expects roughly $70 billion in losses due to the failure of insured institutions. To top of page

By Ben Rooney, CNNMoney.com staff reporter

UAE 'seizes N Korea arms cargo'

The United Arab Emirates has seized a ship illegally carrying embargoed North Korean weapons bound for Iran, diplomatic sources at the UN have said.

A diplomat told the AFP news agency that the UAE had informed UN officials responsible for implementing sanctions on Pyongyang.

The UK-based Financial Times reported earlier on Friday that the ship was seized "some weeks ago".

It said the armaments included rocket-propelled grenades.

The arms had been falsely labelled as "machine parts," the Financial Times reported, adding that the vessel was still being held in the UAE.

The diplomatic source told AFP that the issue was being dealt with by the UN Security Council's sanctions committee, and declined to comment further.

A new round of UN sanctions on North Korea was approved unanimously on 12 June, following a nuclear weapons test by Pyongyang and subsequent missile launches.

The UN resolution, which aimed to cut arms exports as a source of revenue for North Korea, also called for tougher inspections of air, sea and land shipments to and from the hard-line communist state.

From dust to bust, America's poor take on a new type of monster

Seventy years after The Grapes of Wrath, Chris McGreal recreates John Steinbeck's famous fictional journey to reveal life in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression

In the first video from our series retracing the path of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, we visit a church-sponsored free health clinic in Tulsa, Oklahoma to meet the Americans that are living without health insurance Link to this video

Looking back on the past few weeks, Johnnie Levy can see how she was driven to the brink of death and didn't care.

The sharpest economic downturn of her 63 years stripped Levy of her beloved job as a seamstress and unravelled her world until she found herself sitting in a church hall in the black end of Tulsa waiting to see a nurse with a syringe in one hand and a Bible in the other.

Tulsa has seen its share of poverty and desperation over the years. In the 1930s, it saw a tide of hundreds of thousands struggling west along Route 66 to escape economic collapse in the north and the notorious dustbowl of drought and wind across the Midwest. Whether they had lost their land or their jobs, that flow of desperate humanity – chronicled so devastatingly through the fictional Joad family in John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath – struggled hard to find enough to feed and clothe their children as they trekked towards an illusory dream of prosperity in distant California.

To travel the old road today – stumbling across crumbling ghost towns and half-abandoned communities, across the sprawling Native American desert reservations, through cities where people work all the hours they aren't sleeping and still cannot afford to go to the doctor - is to encounter new despair, some of it still recognisable to the Joads.

The banks are once again evicting. Foreclosures plague the parts of northern Arizona and New Mexico traversed by the evicted 70 years ago.

But the monster – as Steinbeck described the financial system – has spawned modern beasts unknown to the Joads, such as the vast multinationals discarding American workers in favour of cheaper labour in Mexico and the health insurance companies that cut off the medical lifelines to the gravely ill.

For those who fall off the juggernaut of American capitalism, or who fail to find space on it in the first place, there are considerable challenges in a land with an inherent suspicion of people in need.

There were a dozen or more at Tulsa's Friendship Baptist Church – a young blonde mother grappling with two small children, an old Mexican immigrant with a gammy leg and a walking stick, elderly African American women – staring at a television with an animated preacher beseeching them to follow the word of God. Occasionally someone stood and made their way out the rear of the hall to a room where they were encouraged to pray for divine intervention.

But it was the other door, at the front of the church, that everyone had half an eye on. Periodically a name was called to a large van in the car park painted with an orange cross that formed the "T" in the logo Good Samaritan. Inside doctors and nurses – all required to be good Christians – offered free consultations and medicines to those who Oklahoma's hospitals don't want to see because they can't pay.

The van perpetually makes the rounds of Tulsa's churches in run-down neighbourhoods, providing for the city's working poor, struggling pensioners and, increasingly, newly unemployed Americans when their health becomes one more burden on top of the daily trial to pay the rent and put food on the table.

"It affected me very emotionally when I lost my job," said Levy, who shares a first name with her father. "I'm a seamstress and I love to sew and I love to talk to people about sewing. That's one of the reasons I stopped taking the medications. I got to the point where I didn't care, and that's not right."

Levy was cut adrift when the recession first reduced her hours and then wiped out her job in June. With the job went the medical insurance that paid the cost of the daily dose of insulin she needs to counter diabetes and for other treatments that come with age.

Although Levy has a pension, most of it is eaten up by rent on a one-bedroom flat and food and utilities. She shakes her head at her confused priorities but said there simply wasn't enough money left to meet the high cost of medicines and so, as she is still too young to qualify for the government's free medical care for the elderly, Levy stopped taking her insulin and other drugs.

"I didn't realise how badly it hit me and affected my health until I came here for treatment a couple of weeks ago. My blood sugar level was more than four times what it should be," she said. "I really have nothing else to lean back on."

Like so many in Oklahoma and across the south, Levy has a visceral distrust of government – not just President Barack Obama's administration but any of them.

In the heart of the Bible Belt it is often religious organisations that step in to the breach. Evangelising courses through Oklahoma and charity healthcare comes with God thrown in.

The Good Samaritan clinic sits in the car park of a church in a mostly black, with some Hispanics, district of Tulsa. The city, like so many in America, remains racially divided with much of its African American population, poor or affluent, gathered in northern neighbourhoods separated from the shiny, soulless heart of Tulsa and its pristine riverside walks by an industrial area and railway tracks.

"You see a lot of children in need here," said Veronica Banks, the minister at Friendship church. "You see a lot of elderly in need, a lot of single mothers and a lot of the working poor. Even though they're working they cannot afford medical care, the cost of healthcare the way it is. They're on minimum wage jobs or only working part time. We know the faces, we know the names."

Friendship church has a mostly black congregation. But the clinic draws white faces across boundaries that many in the city would not normally cross.

Among them is Harmony Banes, raised in poverty in what she describes as an abusive family without love by a mother who was eventually certified as clinically insane because of drug addiction.

"When I was in high school my family only had 60 bucks a month for groceries for five people. We lived in a trailer. I'm much happier here. I live in an apartment, around a lot of love," she said.

Banes is 27 and a mother herself now. Her husband pulls in about £15,000 a year as a bartender. From that there's the rent, two young mouths to feed and clothe, and the interest on college loans to study at Oral Roberts university in Tulsa, led by a prominent Christian evangelist and described as one of the "buckles on the Bible Belt".

She cannot even begin to think about paying back the principal on the loans. That leaves nothing for medical insurance for Baines or her husband, although the children get free cover from the state of Oklahoma. So she's at the free clinic to get blood tests.

"I pretty much hold back from going to the doctor," she said. "I was raised in a very poor family and never had insurance all the way through high school so for me it's normal. Thank God I've never been really super sick. If ever I needed something somehow it was provided.

God willing, whatever way it came, it came. It was just one of those faith, trust in God kind of things. If the needs not met there's a reason, I guess."

But Banes does worry and her lip quivers as she thinks about what would happen to her children if she ever did get really sick.

Banks says that as the financial crisis has deepened the free clinics are seeing more people like Banes.

"Everybody feels that economic crunch now. Generally in the past it was very rare we had to turn people away. But within the last eight months we've had to send them down the pipe to the next clinic because of the overflow. I walked in today and there was probably one of the largest lines I've seen at this clinic, and our clinic is a small clinic."

The patients are encouraged to pray while awaiting treatment. The medical staff introduce God as part of what the organisation describes as holistic care.

"We find a lot of people who come to us with a medical need but wouldn't set foot in the door of a church," said the mobile clinic's nurse, Lynn Hersey. "They want to check and see if someone who is a Christian can be trusted with one little thing, if they're going to shove Jesus down their throat because they ate the bait and came in through the door."

But there's another kind of evangelising at work too, involving a web of interests more focussed on Mammon than the Almighty. Much of Good Samaritan's work is funded by hospitals trying to keep patients who cannot pay out of emergency rooms, where they must be treated for any immediate health crisis by law whether they can pay or not. Those same hospitals have an interest in promoting charity as an alternative to President Obama's plans for government to take the lead in getting healthcare to the poor and the middle classes likely to be bankrupted by catastrophic illness.

Good Samaritan makes no secret of where it stands on the issue; the government has no business involving itself in healthcare.

"Governments treat you like a number," said the organisation's director, Dr John Crouch. "I really believe that there has to be a way to cover the folks who can't get care at all, and I think one of the ways is what we're doing. Maybe there's a different way of funding us, besides just funding us through our donations. We're emphasising that the more all the time."

Hersey concedes that the present system can be a tragedy for the poor.

What happens to someone with a chronic disease and no insurance? A woman with cancer, say, who might get the surgery she needs thanks to Good Samaritan but not the medicines afterwards. Hersey hesitates.

"They go without," she said.

You mean they die?

"Yes."

But Hersey quickly added that where there is no chemotherapy there is still God.

"I can say that even with the spiritual help they may die but for those of us who are Christians and believe in God intervening directly in peoples lives, we've seen many answers to prayer where medicine falls short. We have seen cancer turn around," she said.

It's a message Banes and Levy are only to open to. There is no anger or bitterness on their part at their situation, only a sense of helplessness and suspicion of authority.

Banes might have been expected to support Obama as the president most likely to act to help the poor.

"I voted for the other guy. McCain," she said. "Something grated against me [about Obama]. I really don't know what it was. I'm not racist. It's just one of those things where he's a good speaker, he talks very very well, even better than Bill Clinton I would say. But I wasn't about to go there. I went the other way."

Banes said she doesn't have confidence in the government to look after her interests even if the state of Oklahoma is providing free healthcare to her children.

"If for some reason Oklahoma state's healthcare failed then I would have something to worry about because of my children, I know. But I'm really not going to worry about it because that's one more thing to put on the plate. I don't really trust the government," she said. "The Lord has a plan and if anything happens, then it's meant to be".

Levy, too, voted for McCain.

"There's a lot of people with health problems who really need help and they have no place to turn," she said. "But the government? People who run government don't care about people like us. And there's a lot of people need to know that there's someone who cares about them."

by Chris McGreal in Tulsa, Oklahoma

The Science of 9/11

Totally collapsed but where is the concrete?

Totally collapsed, but where is all the concrete? (Right click for a larger, clearer image)

On the 11th of September, 2001 two passenger aircraft were taken over and flown into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center (WTC). Two other aircraft were also taken over that day. One apparently flew into the Pentagon and the other was brought down in Pensylvania. After about an hour the towers collapsed with much loss of life. Several hours later a third skyscraper fell, though it had not been hit by a plane. The tragic events of that day have become known as 9/11.

Is the concrete here, travelling north?

Is the concrete here, traveling north?

There is much controversy over what happened that day, not only between those who support and those who dispute the official explanation but also among various groups within the “9/11 truth movement”. The basic purpose of this website is to examine and present soundly based scientific evidence that the buildings were brought down by “controlled demolition” using explosives. It is hoped that this will provide a clear picture by collecting together the most compelling evidence for demolition, while avoiding those aspects of 9/11 which are still in dispute.

or here, travelling south?

and here, traveling south?

The US administration does not admit the possibility that the towers were brought down with explosives. The government has authorized three investigations, all of which attempt to explain the collapses of the towers as due solely to the combined effects of the plane impacts and the resultant fires. None of the investigations properly examines the question of whether controlled demolition might better fit the observations.

This site sets out a series of arguments that explosives were used in controlled demolition. These are backed up by a substantial number of papers, most of which are peer reviewed. Find these in the menu above.

Beside scientific articles there are clues to be found in photographs. Right click the images here to obtain a larger, clearer view. There is also a page devoted to images, to be found in the menu.