January 2012

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Doctors Make Mistakes. Can We Talk about That?

Picture: www.indiancareerclub.com Video We work in a system where errors happen everyday, Every doctor makes mistakes. But, says physician Brian Goldman, medicine's culture of denial (and shame) keeps doctors from ever talking about those mistakes, or using them to learn and improve. Telling stories from his own long practice, he calls on doctors to start talking about being wrong. We work in a system where errors happen everyday, where one in ten medications given in hospitals are either the wrong medication or the wrong...

Grading Tourism: The Serial Failure of the Tourism Grading Council of South Africa

Picture: www.bed-breakfast-world.com Glenn Ashton - The South African tourism industry has grown tenfold over the past two decades. Tourists appreciate a benchmark to assist them in their choice of accommodation, for two reasons: First to indicate a consistent set of standards and second, to maintain these over time. However there are fundamental problems with the South African national tourism grading process, which require urgent attention. The body responsible for assessing the quality of tourist establishments in South Africa is the...

Israel to Become Biggest Jailer of Largely African Refugees

Picture: www.endtimestoday.com Video On January 11th the Israeli parliament passed an amendment to the so- called “Infiltrators Law”. This revision allows the authorities to automatically imprison asylum seekers for three years. The plan includes constructing a 10,000 person jail to house the refugees. According to Amnesty International, this puts Israel at the top of the Western World for length of imprisonment of refugees. Today Israel is home to nearly 50,000 asylum seekers from Africa, 85% of whom are from...

'The Help' Disregards Agency of Black Women

Picture: www.sofiaworld.com Liepollo Pheko - ‘The Help’ is a movie that tells the story of black domestic workers who quite literally hold up the economic and social sky of their employers in the early 1960s of Jackson, Mississippi in the United States of America (US). Their lives intersecting with those of the privileged white women whose homes they clean, meals they prepare and whose children they raise. The Oscar-nominated movie made waves at the recent Golden Globe Awards ceremony when Octavia Spencer, who plays...

Facebook and the Degradation of Personhood

Picture: owenwbrown/Flickr Christopher Ketcham - Behold homo sapiens lashed on the wheel of the digital social network: held frozen over a computer which is tied by a cord to a wall wherein the fiberglass cable carries the message; staring into the lit screen, the face pale in the unnatural light; or, with head bent in the street, the appearance sullen, running fingers across the blinking object of desire. The creature is secretly harried: Constant updates are necessary, the user must tend the machine whenever and wherever possible –...

It's All about Pumping Oil, Not Helping Libyans

Picture: Khalid Albaih Video Libya could be on the brink of civil war, according to the head of the National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, following a weekend of political turmoil. That's after his deputy stepped down when Jalil suspended six high-ranking council delegates from Benghazi. Adrian Salbuchi, international consultant talks to RT, suggesting it's Iraq all over again with the flag of democracy brought in to guard Western geopolitical interests and pump oil while the "invaded"...