Comin' soon...
Posted on 04/25/2010 10:19:00 AM PDT by greyfoxx39
Zizi
Saturday 24th April 2010
Dear Family and Friends,
Saying goodbye to an old man this week was really sad. Joe is one of the forgotten generation, one of hundreds of thousands quietly slipping away in front of our eyes. Not cared for by Mr Mugabe's government and ignored by Mr Tsvangirai's party, Joe is 4 years older than our country's President but there is no dignity in his old age. There is no free or subsidized medical care for Joe, no rent assistance or food stamps, not even a bus pass for the elderly men and women who have made it through Zimbabwe's collapse.
For the last seven or eight years everything in Joe's life had become a struggle for survival. He lost his pension, investments, savings and insurance policies as inflation reeled into hundreds, thousands and millions of percent. When he couldn't afford, and then couldn't find food to buy, he dug up his small back garden and planted maize, beans, pumpkins and sweet potatoes.
When Joe's wife passed away he couldn't afford to erect a headstone on her grave. This, he said with tears in his eyes, has been the hardest thing to bear in the last decade.
When I went to say goodbye to Joe and have one last cup of tea with him, we talked as we often did about growing fruit trees and about mulch and compost. Joe has got green fingers, greener than anyone I've ever known. Delaying the final farewell, Joe told me about fruit bats that spend their days in the funnels of banana leaves and then the talked turned to the new arrival in my garden. A Spotted Eagle Owl has moved in and seems to have taken up residence in a big old Msasa tree. Every morning he is there, sitting completely still in almost exactly the same place on the branch as the day before. His droppings are the only thing that give him away: filled with fur and fluff, brown beetle bodies and a mass of rats bones which litter the ground under the Msasa tree. Whenever I pass by this huge bird called Zizi in Shona, is watching me from behind big yellow eyes, following my every move. With his ear tufts standing high, Zizi presents an imposing figure, mobbed and scolded by little birds, feared and stoned by most people around here who say he is linked to witchcraft.
When I must say goodbye to Joe I know how much I'll miss him and our talks about bananas and figs, birds and trees and about the nightmare of everyday life in Zimbabwe. But much more than that, I'll miss our talks about his lifetime spent living, and loving, Africa.
Until next time, spare a thought for Zimbabwe's older generation who can't afford to live, or die in the land of their birth.
Thanks for reading, love Cathy
By Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, brother of Rahm.
Thus, it seems there is a growing agreement be-tween liberals, communitarians, and others that many political matters, including matters of jus-tice-and specifically, the just allocation of health care resources--can be addressed only by invoking a particular conception of the good. We may go even further. Without overstating it (and without fully defending it) not only is there a consensus about the need for a conception of the good, there may even be a consensus about the par-ticular conception of the good that should inform policies on these nonconstitutional political issues. Communitarians endorse civic republicanism and a growing number of liberals endorse some version of deliberative democracy. Both envision a need for citizens who are independent and responsibile and for public forums that present citizens with oppor-tunities to enter into public deliberations on social policies. This civic republican or deliberative democratic conception of the good provides both procedural and substantive insights for developing a just alloca-tion of health care resources.
Procedurally, it sug-gests the need for public forums to deliberate about which health services should be considered basic and should be socially guaranteed. Substantively, it suggests services that promote the continuation of the polity-those that ensure healthy future genera-tions, ensure development of practical reasoning skills, and ensure full and active participation by citi-zens in public deliberations-are to be socially guar-anteed as basic. Conversely, services provided to in-dividuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed.
Additional on Ezekiel Emanuel: A Hard-Charging Doctor on Obama’s Team
"Dr. Emanuel is a special adviser to the budget director, Peter R. Orszag."
Zimbabwe ping
“Conversely, services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed.”
Lebensunwertlebens. Right out of the Nazi playbook.
Some mistakes are permanent!
exactly.
-
And elections have consequences!
That admonition is not to you, Swampy, but to the millions of careless Americans who put this country into the clutches of the Obamamaster Nov. 4, 2008.
November is about to become a very interesting, and dangerous, time of year. The marxists are not about to give up because of another election.
They called that ‘going home’ in the movie Soylent Green.
Someone is going to be leftout someplace. My question to seniors, you going to let Obama give your health care to illegals?
Why was she in favor of the monster?
I don't see any salvation for the people of Zimbabwe now, the destruction is too great.
Call for DEMOCRACY, whip up a Lynch mob and turn it loose, when all goes to Hell move in with marxism. Ignorant and stupid people fall for it, every time!
I believe Joe is dying.
That is what I am afraid of if we ever had a Civil War II.
It is happening now, it has been happening for decades! Do you really believe that elections are going to settle anything? The Constitution was left undefended for too long!
Thank you for the article.
Thanks for following the Buckle letters.
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