That's Capitalism

international | miscellaneous | news Wednesday July 01, 2009 09:53 by Workers Solidarity 110

Local DUP councillor, Adrian McQuillan seemed less than outraged at the sectarian murder of Kevin McDaid in Coleraine. He wrote it off as “tit for tat” and went on to excuse the killers: “What reason can you see for there being tricolours up yesterday afternoon, a Sunday afternoon? None other than for to get a reaction from the loyalist community…”

The BBC reported, on June 8th, that ‘Global military spending by governments rose 4% in 2008 to a record €1,059bn – up 45% since 1999’. Meanwhile the OECD reported that the global spend by governments on aid is just €87bn.

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The US government had no problem laying its hands on US$8.4 trillion to prop up banks that had gambled badly on the markets. At US $173 billion, the American Insurance Group (AIG) alone has received $50 billion more than total global aid levels.

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HSE boss Professor Brendan Drumm and Health Minister Mary Harney claim that the recession has ‘forced’ them to close hospital wards, stop recruiting staff, restrict the over-70s medical card, and left them unable to fund the cervical cancer vaccine. So what ‘forced’ them to pay Drumm €512,000 last year?

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In 1999, four years after multinational drug giant Eli Lilly sent study results to the US Food and Drug Administration showing Zyprexa didn’t alleviate dementia symptoms in older patients, it began marketing the drug to those very people. This was confirmed by documents uncoved during a court case against the company. Lilly admitted that results from seven studies showed Zyprexa didn’t alleviate symptoms of Alzheimer’s or other dementia. The opposite was the case, with the studies finding death rates among older dementia patients taking Zyprexa were “significantly greater” than those who didn’t get the medicine.