Staff Sgt Robert Bales has been charged. He will no doubt be convicted if not of premeditated murder, of something. If his life is spared, he can no doubt count of spending the rest of his life in prison. We don’t yet have a full account of what happened, and some of it may never be known. No matter how it is presented, the evidence points to the fact he killed people, some children. Talking with a young man who fought near Kandahar I was told how insane such a war environment is. It happened in Viet Nam, now in Afghanistan. We didn’t understand it then. Are we doing better now? U.S. troops are dealing with villagers who have known war all their lives, with children who have known nothing but war, who take American medical and food aid and think nothing of detonating a bomb once their back is turned. Whatever pushed Staff Sgt Robert Bale to screw up as my young man referred to it, when we tally casualties, will those casualties include him—and his family?
March 2012
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Now That We Know…
It’s official, car ownership helps people get off public assistance, even in a down economy. A survey by Ways to Work, the nation’s largest low-income car ownership program confirms that. Car ownership is a means to better jobs, therefore better income, and with it, better access to educational opportunities and traditional financial services such as banking. It seems common sense or observation would have had the same result, but with some more solid numbers it will now be easier for Ways to Work, which has 55 offices in 23 states to expand. They get the majority of their funding from private sources and offer car loans at %8 interest to working families with bad credit scores. The alternative is the Buy Here Pay Here industry which charges %18 to %30 interest. While they have a %25 default rate, only %12 of Ways to Work loans are not repaid.
Now that we know, let’s hope we can use the knowledge. -
Providing Condoms
China has passed an action plan to combat the rising spread of HIV and AIDS. By 2015 condoms or condom vending machines should be available in 95% of hotels. Government figures indicate that the country has about 780,000 people living with HIV/AIDS including 154,000 AIDS patients. While this is rather small for such a large country, the government wants to stem the rise of the disease and prevent it from becoming an epidemic. While the overall numbers are low according the World Health Organization the numbers of reported cases in China are rising and heterosexual transmissions is surpassing injection drug use as the number one cause for the infection. The head of the UN AIDS prevention agency, Michel Sidibe, had lobbied China, South Africa, India and Russia to either energize or reverse their approach to the epidemic. Since China is responding, perhaps it will set an example for the other countries. Indeed for all countries, including our own.