Does this image look Photoshopped to you? US and Israeli advisers in Tehran are still trying to pull a page from the Rachel Corrie playbook, even though world outrage about the American activist crushed by an Israeli bulldozer didn’t ultimately bring them down either.
NOTMYTRIBE received this response from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science to our post: IS THE MUSEUM OF NATURE AND SCIENCE GATHERING PRIVATE DATA FOR HEALTH INSURERS? In the July 26 article I outlined concerns that medical data specialists could be harvesting checkup results conducted on visitors to the DMNS exhibit “Expedition Health.”
July 29, 2009
Dear Eric,
As the Curator of Human Health at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, and a member of the team that created the Expedition Health exhibition, I can say unequivocally that visitor information recorded in the exhibition is NEVER shared with insurers, and the “signs of subterfuge” you detail in your blog have no basis in fact.
Privacy issues were a top consideration in the development of Expedition Health because the exhibition was deliberately designed to be highly personalized. Based on research and best practices in informal science education, we know that people learn human biology better when they’re learning about their own bodies, not the human body in general. The data that visitors provide when they sign-in to get their Peak Pass serves no other purpose but to customize Expedition Health for each person with the goal of creating a relevant, empowering, educational and memorable experience.
While visiting Expedition Health, visitors can choose to participate in activities that record their resting heart rate, their target heart rate, their height and arm span, their stride length, speed and energy score. These activities are designed to provide data that is accurate, but this information is not intended to be used for any clinical or diagnostic purpose. The true reason for this data collection: through these measurements, visitors see that their bodies are constantly changing in ways they can see, measure and optimize though healthy lifestyle choices.
Contrary to the claims made in your blog, we do not collect biometric data such as fingerprints,, voice patterns, retinal scan, etc., nor do we gather information about diet preferences, weight, body fat ratio, “stress test” results, vital statistics or present/past tobacco or sunscreen use. Visitors are challenged to build a healthy meal and see hypothetically what they might look like based on lifestyle choices such as wearing sub block.
Information provided by visitors in Expedition Health—information that personalizes the experience and therefore enhances the educational experience—is stored in a secure database. This database does not interface with the Museum’s ticketing systems. A very limited number of staff members in the Museum have access to the visitor information that is gathered at the exhibit components. The data is kept so that visitors can look at their information and extend their learning experience at home by logging on to their own unique and secure web site.
Visitors have two weeks to access their information online. Every two weeks, 98 percent of our visitors have their data purged from the database because they have not accessed it online after their visit to Expedition Health. The remaining two percent of visitors who elected to see their data online and extend their learning experience have their data saved in the database for six months should they wish to access their data again. The Museum never shares this data with any outside entities.
Finally, the Museum maintains as strict policy with donors when it comes to the development of exhibition content and the sharing of information gathered in the exhibition. Kaiser Permanente Colorado is the presenting sponsor of Expedition Health, and the lead donors include Boettcher Foundation, The Colorado Health Foundation, and Gates Family Foundation, a Colorado-based foundation that is not connected with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. While these organizations did provide funding, they did not have any involvement in content development for Expedition Health, nor have they ever received any visitor information recorded on Peak Passes. This distinct separation between content and funding is critical to the Museum’s long-standing credibility.
As the region’s leading resource for informal science education, the Museum is committed to presenting objective scientific content, and retains control of and responsibility for all exhibits and programs. When the Museum developed Expedition Health, we worked to ensure that our new exhibit was firmly grounded in the most current biological science and was relevant to visitors. All content in Expedition Health was created or vetted by Museum staff members—scientists, educators and exhibition designers—with the help of a blue ribbon advisory board. Our overall aim with Expedition Health is to broaden visitors’ knowledge of human biology, disease, and wellness, and inspire the application of these discoveries to their lives.
I respectfully request you post this response online. If you would like to discuss this further, I invite you to contact me directly at the Museum.
Sincerely,
Bridget Coughlin, PhD
Thank you Dr. Coughlin, we are eager to take you up on your offer. Ultimately I would hope to see the museum provide its visitors a written assurance of what you’ve explained.
Ours is a surveillance society where military recruiters are granted access to high school records, where consumer profiles are traded among marketers, and health insurers are pushing to overcome national privacy safeguards by digitizing all medical records. You have explained that the “Expedition Health” exhibit is not collating its data with others. Because current technology makes clandestine data harvesting feasible, perhaps the museum could introduce firewalls to demonstrate how their visitors’ anonymity remains protected. This would offer more comfort than docents who assure patrons that the information is purged every night, or you, who explain it is purged after two weeks.
This is how Americans are going to get national health insurance, by demanding it. In Colorado Springs we’re still passing around petitions to support President Obama’s health insurance company stop-gaps. The Des Moines Catholic Workers find themselves charged with criminal trespass, for trying to confront Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield about their egregious profit-making at the expense of the public health.
INSURANCE PROFITS MAKE US SICK. HEALTHCARE IS A HUMAN RIGHT
Shouldn’t healthcare be considered a human right? Men are not sick of their own volition, nor by acts of capricious fate. Mankind is being sickened by industrial society, from which the poisoners are reaping their profits without regard to the true costs of their toxic schemes.
How delighted I was to receive an email from Common Dreams, showing signs of skepticism finally at President Obama’s growing betrayal of American progressives. After censoring CD participants who criticize the Democratic Party for its capitulation to corporate centrism, even banning the persistent voices from its online discussions, the blogosphere giant now purports to have examined it stats and rediscovered its radical base. I’m thrilled that CD has met its enemy, and it is not us, but I wish their epiphany wasn’t about who’s left to tap for money.
How can we but surmise that Common Dreams enjoyed financial support from Obama’s Dems, for toeing the party line? They paid the bills, the dream was blue.
Now that Obama is in office, and his progressive supporters don’t have the charm of his new globalist friends, Common Dreams has to go back to stickball with the rest of us with no access. I’d be a lot more inclined toward sympathy for Common Dreams if it showed some remorse for having cast aside so many while it co-opted the common dream to make it about Barack Obama.
Here’s the fund raising letter from Common Dreams, saying all the right things, just like President False Hope himself.
July 24, 2009
Dear Friend of CommonDreams.org,
When Americans voted overwhelmingly for ‘Change’ last November 4th, I, like so many of you, was hopeful.
Hopeful that we’d bring our troops home. Hopeful for a major commitment to safe, renewable energy.
Hopeful that Wall Street and corporate lobbyists would no longer be able to treat our elected representatives like puppets on a string.
Hopeful that Guantánamo would be closed and the torturers would be prosecuted. That the post-9/11 trampling of our civil liberties would be reversed.
Hopeful that President Obama would rally the people around a bold, progressive overhaul of our sickly healthcare ‘system.’
Hopeful that the neglected investments in our people, our future, would begin again.
But frankly, seven months into the new administration, my hope is fading.
I have days when I think we’ll never overcome this system.
But I never have a day when I think about giving up.
Four times a year we ask you to support our work. Will you help today by making a secure online donation today to our Summer Appeal?
Two of the most popular articles on CommonDreams.org these past months were writings by longtime activists, Paul Hawken and Derrick Jensen.
Two tireless fighters against the system.
It was clear from the stats on our site that the words of these two progressive thinkers resonated with you, and with all of our readers.
Paul Hawken has been warning against the accelerating decline of Planet Earth for decades. As he said in his May 3 speech to graduates of the University of Portland, Oregon, “If you look at the science about what’s happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data.”
But he also spoke of hope: “. . . if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse.”
Last I checked, I still had a pulse.
Jensen’s prognosis for civilisation is even more sober. Still, even he urges us to resist – by voting, running for office, boycotting, organizing, lobbying, protesting. And, he says, “when a government becomes destructive of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we have the right to alter or abolish it.”
Altering or abolishing a government is not for the faint of heart.
But sitting idly, silently by while our planet, our government, and our society self-destruct is not for people like you and me.
Common Dreamers were so inspired by the words of these two writers, they forwarded them to thousands of others to read.
Thousands of people like you, who will use the information to help fuel the fight for truth.
The fight for what’s right.
The fight for what the majority of Americans say, in poll after poll, they want – and yet are being denied by a government that is bought and paid for by corporations and a tiny percentage of people who hold the vast majority of wealth in this country.
Jensen ends his article with a call to action: “We can follow the example of those who remembered that the role of an activist is not to navigate systems of oppressive power with as much integrity as possible, but rather to confront and take down those systems.”
The time to get confrontational is now.
Because tomorrow might be too late.
Please help us continue to inform and inspire and ignite change by making a secure donation today. Or, you can use our print and mail form, which includes our mailing address, to send a check
Thank you so much.
Gratefully,
Craig Brown
Executive Director
for the whole CommonDreams.org teamP.S. Please consider signing up to make a monthly donation. And don’t forget to ask your employer about a matching gifts program. Please pitch in today!
“You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both.”
–John Ruskin, 1853, The Stones of Venice—
“Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must unhumanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be given to make cogs and compasses of themselves….On the other hand, if you will make a man of the working creature, you cannot make him a tool. Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth doing; and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out come all his roughness, all his dulness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, failure upon failure, pause after pause: but out comes the whole majesty of him also; and we know the height of it only when we see the clouds settling upon him.”
Full text of Alaska Ex-Governor Sarah Palin‘s poetic address, 
wherein she explains that her contract with the voters of Alaska has a “lame duck” escape clause, stuff about a God-given right to despoil, some veiled threats to shoot gun-control revenuers, and the protections of both First Amendments.
Sarah Palin, July 26, 2009, Fairbanks AK:
“What an absolutely beautiful day it is,
and it is my honor to speak to all Alaskans,
to our Alaskan family
this last time as your governor.
And it is always great to be in Fairbanks.
The rugged rugged hardy people that live up here
and some of the most patriotic people
whom you will ever know live here,
and one thing that you are known for
is your steadfast support
of our military community up here
and I thank you for that
and thank you United States military
for protecting the greatest nation on Earth.
Together we stand.And getting up here
I say it is the best road trip in America
soaring through nature’s finest show.
Denali, the great one, soaring
under the midnight sun.And then the extremes.
In the winter time
it’s the frozen road that is competing
with the view of ice fogged frigid beauty,
the cold though, doesn’t it
split the Cheechakos
from the Sourdoughs?And then in the summertime
such extreme summertime
about a hundred and fifty degrees hotter
than just some months ago,
than just some months from now,
with fireweed blooming
along the frost heaves
and merciless rivers that are rushing
and carving and reminding us
that here, Mother Nature wins.
It is as throughout all Alaska
that big wild good life
teeming along the road
that is north to the future.That is what we get to see every day.
Now what the rest of America
gets to see along with us
is in this last frontier
there is hope and opportunity
and there is country pride.And it is our men and women in uniform securing it,
and we are facing tough challenges in America
with some seeming to just be Hell bent
maybe on tearing down our nation,
perpetuating some pessimism, and suggesting
American apologetics, suggesting perhaps
that our best days were yesterdays.But as other people have asked,
“How can that pessimism be,
when proof of our greatness, our pride today
is that we produce the great proud volunteers
who sacrifice everything for country?”
Now this week alone, Sean Parnell and I
were on the, um, on Ft. Rich
the base there, the army chapel,
and we heard the last roll call,
and the sounding of Taps
for three very brave, very young Alaskan soldiers
who just gave their all for all of us.
Together we do stand with gratitude
for our troops who protect all of our cherished freedoms,
including our freedom of speech
which, par for the course, I’m going to exercise.And first, some straight talk
for some, just some in the media
because another right protected for all of us
is freedom of the press,
and you all have such important jobs
reporting facts and informing the electorate,
and exerting power to influence.
You represent what could and should be
a respected honest profession
that could and should be
the cornerstone of our democracy.Democracy depends on you,
and that is why, that’s why
our troops are willing to die for you.
So, how ’bout in honor of the American soldier,
ya quite makin’ things up?
And don’t underestimate the wisdom of the people,
and one other thing for the media,
our new governor has a very nice family too,
so leave his kids alone.OK, today is a beautiful day
and today as we swear in Sean Parnell,
no one will be happier than I
to witness by God’s grace
Alaskans with strength of character
advancing our beloved state.
Sean has that.
Craig Campbell has that.
I remember on that December day,
we took the oath to uphold our state constitution,
and it was written right here in Fairbanks
by very wise pioneers.We shared the vision for government
that they ground in that document.
Our founders wrote “all political power is inherent in the people.
All government originates with the people.
It’s founded upon their will only
and it’s instituted for the good of the people as a whole.”
Their remarkably succinct words
guided us in all of our efforts
in serving you and putting you first,
and we have done our best to fulfill promises
that I made on Alaska Day, 2005,
when I first asked for the honor of serving you.Remember then, our state so desired
and so deserved ethics reform.
We promised it, and now it is the law.
Ironically, it needs additional reform
to stop blatant abuse from partisan operatives,
and I hope the lawmakers will continue that reform.
We promised that you would finally see
a fair return on your Alaskan owned natural resources
so we build a new oil and gas appraisal system,
an is an equitable formula to usher in
a new era of competition and transparency
and protection for Alaskans and the producers.ACES incentivizes new exploration
and it’s the exploration that is our future.
It opens up oil basins and it ensures
that the people will never be taken advantage of again.
Don’t forget Alaskans
you are the resource owners per our constitution
and that’s why for instance last year
when oil prices soared and state coffers swelled,
but you were smacked with high energy prices,
we sent you the energy rebate. See,
it’s your money and I’ve always believed
that you know how to better spend it
than government can spend it.I promised that we would protect this beautiful environment
while safely and ethically developing resources, and we did.
We built the Petroleum Oversight Office
and a sub-cabinet to study climate conditions.
And I promised I’d govern with fiscal restraint,
so to not immorally burden futre generations.
And we did…we slowed the rate of government growth
and I vetoed hundreds of millions of dollars of excess
and wtih lawmakers we saved billions for the future.I promsed that we’d lead the charge
to forward funding education,
and hold schools accountable,
and improve opportunities for special needs students
and elevate vo-tech training
and we paid down pension debt.I promised that we would manage our fish and wildlife for abundance,
and that we would defend the constitution, and we have,
though outside special interest groups
they still just don’t get it on this one.
Let me tell you, Alaskans really need to stick together on this
with new leadership in this area especially,
encouraging new leadership…
got to stiffen your spine to do what’s right
for Alaska when the pressure mounts,
because you’re going to see anti-hunting,
anti-second amendment circuses from Hollywood
and here’s how they do it.They use these delicate, tiny, very talented celebrity starlets,
they use Alaska as a fundraising tool
for their anti-second amendment causes.
Stand strong, and remind them
patriots will protect our guaranteed,
individual right to bear arms,
and by the way, Hollywood needs to know,
we eat, therefore we hunt.I promised energy solutions and we have,
we have a plan calling for 50% of our electricity
generated by renewable resources
and we can now insist that those who hold the leases
to develop our resources
that they do so now on Alaska’s terms.
So now finally after decades of just talk,
finally we’re seeing oil and gas drilling
up there at Point Thompson.And I promised that we would get
a natural gas pipeline underway and we did.
Since I was a little kid growing up here,
I remember the discussions,
especially the political discussions
just talking about and hoping for
and dreaming of commercializing
our clean, abundant, needed natural gas.Our gas line inducement act, AGIA,
that was the game-changer
and this is thanks to our outstanding gas line team,
and the legislature adopting this law, 58-1.
They knew, they know AGIA is the vehicle
to drive this monumental energy project
and bring everyone to the table,
this bipartisan victory,
it came from Alaskans working together
with free market private sector principles,
and now we are on the road
to the largest private-sector energy project
in the history of America.
It is for Alaska’s future,
it is for America’s energy independence
and it will make us a more peaceful,
prosperous and secure nation.What I promised, we accomplished.
“We” meaning state staff,
amazing commissioners,
great staff assisting them,
and conscientious Alaskans
outside the bureaucracy –
Tom Van Flein, and Meg Stapleton
and Kristan Cole, so many others,
many volunteers who just stepped up
to the challenge as good Alaskans,
but nothing, nothing could have succeeded
without my right-hand man Kris Perry.
She is the sharpest, boldest, hardest-working partner.
Kris is my right-hand man and much success is due to Kris.So much success, and Alaska
there is much good in store further down the road,
but to reach it we must value
and live the optimistic pioneering spirit
that made this state proud and free,
and we can resist enslavement to big central government
that crushes hope and opportunity.
Be wary of accepting government largess.
It doesn’t come free and often, accepting it
takes away everything that is free,
melting into Washington’s powerful “care-taking” arms
will just suck incentive to work hard
and chart our own course
right out of us,
and that not only contributes to an unstable economy
and dizzying national debt,
but it does make us less free.I resisted the stimulus package.
I resisted the stimulus package
and we have championed earmark reform,
slashing earmark requests by 85%
to break the cycle of dependency
on a stifling, unsustainable federal agenda,
and other states should follow this
for their and for America’s stability.
We don’t have to feel
that we must beg an allowance from Washington,
except to beg the allowance to be self-determined.
See, to be self-sufficient,
Alaska must be allowed to develop –
to drill and build and climb,
to fulfill statehood’s promise.
At statehood we knew this.At statehood we knew this,
that we are responsible for ourselves
and our families and our future,
and fifty years later,
please let’s not start believing
that government is the answer.
It can’t make you happy
or healthy or wealthy or wise.
What can? It is the wisdom of the people
and our families and our small businesses,
and industrious individuals,
and it is God’s grace,
helping those who help themselves,
and then this allows that very generous
voluntary hand up that we’re known for,
enthusiastically providing those who need it.Alaskans will remember that years ago,
remember we sported the old bumper sticker that said,
“Alaska. We Don’t Give a Darn How They Do It Outside?”
Do you remember that? I remember that,
and remember it was because we would be different.
We’d roll up our sleeves,
and we would diligently sow and reap,
and we can still do this
to carve wealth out of the wilderness
and make our living on the water,
with strong hands and innovative minds,
now with smarter technology.It is what our first people and our parents did.
It worked, because they worked.
We must be prudent and persistent
and press for the people’s right
to responsibly develop God-given resources
for the maximum benefit of the people.And we have come so far in just 50 years.
We’re no longer a frontier outpost
on the periphery of the world’s greatest nation.
Now, as a contributor and a securer of America,
we can attain our destiny
in the promise of our motto “North to the Future.”
See, the pressing issue of our time,
it’s energy independence,
because there is an inherent link
between energy and security,
and energy and prosperity.
Alaska will lead with energy,
we will prove you can be both
pro-development and pro-environment,
because no one loves their clean air
and their land and their wildlife
and their water more than an Alaskan.
We will protect it.Yes, America must look north to the future
for security, for energy independence,
for our strategic location on the globe.
Alaska is the gate-keeper of the continent.So, we are here today at a changing of the guard.
Now, people who know me,
and they know how much I love this state,
some still are choosing not to hear
why I made the decision
to chart a new course to advance the state.
And it should be so obvious to you. (indicating heckler)
It is because I love Alaska this much, sir (at heckler)
that I feel it is my duty to avoid
the unproductive, typical, politics as usual,
lame duck session in one’s last year in office.
How does that benefit you?
No, with this decision now,
I will be able to fight even harder for you,
for what is right, for truth.
And I have never felt
like you need a title to do that.So, as we all move forward together,
let’s vow to keep championing Alaska,
to advocate responsible development,
and smaller government, and freedom,
and when I took the oath to serve you,
I promised… remember I promised
to steadfastly and doggedly guard
the interests of this great state
like that grizzly guards her cubs,
as a mother naturally guards her own.And I will keep that vow
wherever the road may lead.
Todd and I, and Track, Bristol,
Tripp, Willow, Piper, Trig…I think I got ’em all.
We will forever be so grateful
for the honor of our lifetime to have served you.
Our whole big diverse full and fun family,
we all thank you and I am very very blessed
to have had their support all along,
for Todd’s support. I am thankful too.
I have been blessed
to have been raised in this last frontier.
Thank you for our home, Mom and Dad,
because in Alaska
it is not an easy living,
but it is a good living,
and here it is impossible to lose your way.
Wherever the road may lead you,
we have that steadying great north star to guide us home.So let’s all enjoy the ride, and I thank you Alaska,
and God bless Alaska and God bless America.”
Everyone wants to quote Edmund Burke: “All that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.” I just heard it evoked by NPR, raising the alarm about a rash of albino murders in Tanzania, ostensibly for body parts considered to have medicinal value. Albinism has carried a stigma for every one person among 100,000, more in some parts of Africa. I’m sure we’re agreed it must stop. And what of HIV deaths, post-colonial greed-bred strife, slavery, or the dire environmental consequences of our industrial myopia? I offer a revision: “All that is necessary for evil to prevail, is for bad men to harp on the specter of manageable evils so that you don’t face up to the prevalent one.”
DENVER- At the Denver Museum of Nature and Science the most popular exhibit this summer is called “Expedition Health” and features high-tech diagnostic kiosks where visitors can gauge the general state of their health. Judging by the long lines, you’d think these people haven’t visited a doctor lately. I suspect that unless the medical insurance underwriters of the exhibit can be trusted, many of the DMNS-goers won’t get to see a doctor again.
My hypothesis– that “Expedition Health” is surreptitiously collecting personal medical data on every visitor who comes through their doors, to add actionable factors to insurance customer files. If this is happening or not, it easily could. And the DMNS is not offering any assurance that it is not.
Basically, everybody who goes through the Expedition Health exhibit is surrendering personal health data, which in the hands of insurers could be critical in their decision about whether or not to offer them medical coverage. Museum staff insist that the personal information is purged every night, although with a simple internet link this explanation is disproved. Staff explain that attendee magnetic cards are erased, perhaps innocently ignorant of where the information actually accrues as the public circulate from one kiosk to the next.
At pharmacies you can measure your blood pressure without a personalized magnetic card. But at the DMNS health exhibit, sponsored by Met Life, Kaiser Permanente, et al, you have to tell the machines who you are before you can learn your heart rate, your vital statistics, results of a stress test, a measure of your “stride,” digital imagery of your body at rest and in motion, scans of your fingers and palm, and a 3-D imaging of your face.
A telling detail, to my mind, is that the DMNS offers no printed assurance that the health information of its attendees is not being harvested by data merchants. Is it? Do I have any proof? I will offer you the clues, and you can be the judge. I think there are enough signs of subterfuge to suspect that “Expedition Health” is not serving your health.
Here’s how it looks to the average exhibit visitor: the attendee is given a magnetic card to use at the electronic kiosks, at the culmination of which a “Peak Pass” card will be generated to reflect the user’s health results. In the process the attendee learns about positive and negative factors which govern human health. Attendee are free to initiate the card with whatever fictitious ID data they wish, depending on how helpfully relevant they want their results to be.
The impression of anonymity is bolstered by several insincerities. I will illuminate a few.
A. The ruse of an aliased identity
Part one, the ID. Before museum-goers can attend “Expedition Health,” they must obtain an admission ticket marked with the time they can be scheduled to enter. This is done ostensibly to ease congestion through the exhibit hall.
In purchasing their museum passes, or submitting their DMNS membership cards, the visitors are of course revealing their verifiable identities. If they are not already members in the museum’s database, their admission purchase via credit card or personal check and driver’s license confirms who they are. Under the pretense of museum security, driver’s IDs can be inspected all of their own. Who would begrudge the museum knowing who is visiting? And if you had the foresight to worry about your anonymity, what would it matter if the museum recorded too, when you would be presenting yourself at the start of the health exhibit?
Part two: the unclean slate. At the exhibit door attendees submit their tickets and are admitted entrance and given a blank magnetic card. The staffer who collects the tickets is not the same person who immediately hands out the magnetic cards, thus reinforcing the sensation of a severed paper trail. But in actuality, there is no discontinuity because the card-holder immediately queues for a kiosk to personalize the card.
Although the user can chose to conjure personal information entirel fictitious, the impression is given that the card’s data goes no further than the exhibit’s exit door. When I asked, a staff member earnestly assured me that all the cards are erased every night. Which could be true, but irrelevant. The cards serve like a patient wristband at the hospital. The wristband confirms the identity of the patient at the various checkup points, as the medial records accumulate in remote files.
Part three, a false sense of anonymity. The museum patients are free to initiate their magnetic cards with whatever manner of fictitious name and birthday. Especially if it does not matter to them that the final printout will bear false facts. My companion felt he had to turn around to explain to me that he always lies about his birthday, by one day, to shake off the data spooks,. He volunteered this in case I thought he didn’t remember his own birth date. My sense is that most people give their true identity, if only so the kiosks will address them by their given names, the exchanges being in full view of friends and relatives waiting in line.
If the attendee hopes to glean some helpful health advice from the “Expedition Health” experience, they are inclined not to falsify the three remaining details: sex, age, and which “buddy,” among a statistical sampling of lifestyle types, they might identify themselves with.
Tell me that the last three profile items are not enough to provide a match to the hard data from the museum entrance receipts or membership database. Remember, the samples to compare are linked by the window of time the museum alloted to your ticket.
The choice of your “buddy” is the clincher. It might appear to be the most innocuous of indiscretions, but your surrogate patient type relays reliable biographical data about you, and doesn’t add anything to the health exhibit narrative except to use as a third person example, when the patient-specific explanation would reveal the alarming degree to which the diagnostics had taken your measure.
Which, to be fair, would create a liability risk for the museum, to complicate matters with pseudo diagnoses, easily misinterpreted by laymen.
The DMNS “Expedition Health” curators thus know quite definitively who you are, as you pass through their kiosks, putting yourself through a fairly extensive check up, the results of which are explained only generally to you, but to a medical administrator say enough to narrow many odds about your health prospects.
B. Diversionary misapplication of magnetic cards
Several of the Kiosks at “Expedition Health” are not interactive, and do not require the magnetic card. Of course, to assure that your “Peak Pass Personal Profile” data card will be filled print out with your EKG, Resting Heart Rate, Target Heart Rate, whether you reached your heart rate; your Arm Span, Height, Energy Score, Stride Length and Speed, a silhouette of your walking profile and another of your outreached Leonardo DaVinci pose; you’d have to have scanned your magnetic card at those machines.
By the way, the data summarized on the personal profile card was far more rudimentary in comparison to the information shown on the screens, and doubtless neither reflect the sophistication of the diagnostic electronics employed. The optics, for example, are capable of far better than inch-high cameos of your body. The lengths of time for which you have to pose for the scans betray the resolution the graphics engines are really processing.
Here’s the information being gathered at the various stops:
Taking your measure
The station which measures your arm span and height requires you to stand, arms outstretched, shoes off, for a full body digital picture, which records an uncommonly revealing photographic record of the subject’s body fat ratio.
Another station measures your stride length and speed, from which an “energy” score is awarded. To do this, a full motion video records you as you take over a half dozen steps, perhaps pushing yourself purposefully to boost your “energy score.” This video must be invaluable in what it reveals about a person’s vitality or physical challenges.
While the cardio-vascular stress tests might appear to offer mere stationary bicycling experiences, a subject’s entire session can be recorded, offering telltale clues to heart condition and lung stamina. Probably we’d all be more comfortable studying these results with the peace of mind that we have health insurance, as opposed to considering that our results might be grounds used to deny us health insurance coverage.
Diet
Several kiosks would seem to have no need for a card. For example, one featured an interactive script about nutrition. Mostly children sit at this station, to pick among menus of food, the mission being to fortify a climber for an ascent of a peak. Their choice of nutrients determines how far the animated climber will get, before tumbling after from hunger. You plug in your card to begin, and as a result the climbing figure features a Tanqueray-head-type of your chosen buddy. If this kiosk is gleaning a sense of your diet preferences, it’s not revealed on the exhibition debriefing printout.
Identification Marks
Another kiosk teaches you about wind chill. You stick your hand into a plexiglass chamber where lasers measure the change in your skin temperature over the course of several minutes. Curiously, you have to insert the magnetic card at this stop. Why? And you cannot proffer your elbow, your fist, or the back of your hand. Is it possible that the lasers reading your hand are actually scanning the prints of your palm and fingers? I know too little about medicine to conjecture what use the medical industry might have for such information, but the data is certainly marketable to security firms.
Confessions
While on this tangent, there’s another kiosk, the most popular in fact, which DOES NOT REQUIRE A CARD. At this station you get to see your face as it’s projected to age over the course of your life. The line is the longest at this station, while subjects pose, their face held immobile, framed in a stainless steel ring, for an interminable several seconds. I witnessed one person complain that the light into which he had to stare hurt his eyes. Eventually the scan yields only an oddly primitive, cellphone-quality facsimile of the subject’s face, projected on an adjacent flat screen. Next, the subject is asked which among three factors might influence how he’s expected to age. Please check which apply: UV damage, Obesity, and/or Smoker.
By law, none of these behaviors would have to be confessed to a doctor, or an insurance agent, in particular if such was a vice already put well behind. But the aging machine draws out the truth. Because the interrogator machina does not ask for your ID, it creates the semblance that you are being asked anonymously. Who doesn’t fully comprehend by now that sun exposure, obesity and smoking are very tragic predictors of our future health problems?
The pseudo age-disfigured face is disappointing. The transformation is just a transparency of age spots, wrinkles and discoloration overlaid on an initial low-rez photograph. If you are not recording the age-progression with your own camera, the ephemeral image passes, with no trace of what the long facial scan had actually recorded. You’d think since the lines of visitors here are always so long, that the aging image is what visitors might like to take with them as a memento. Alas, there’s no slot on this kiosk into which to insert your magnetic card to “record” it. But the sovereignty of this station is illusory.
Biometrics
If a webcam, a PC, and a common internet connection can transmit video in real-time video, why would this DMNS workstation be laboring for so long over your face? Can I hazard a guess? A 3-dimensional study of your face, and something just short perhaps of a retinal scan? If medical administrators are not looking at symptoms deep in your eyes, or in the translucence of your skin, perhaps this kiosk is for the security interests tabulating your biometrics.
If nothing else, the biometric configuration of your face can be matched to a digital image of your whole body from a previous kiosk, thus confirming your identity, BECAUSE AT THIS KIOSK YOU ENJOYED ANONYMITY. But now your smoker/obesity concession can be deftly noted alongside the other red flags being added to your health profile.
C. The Parting Shot
The last kiosk, in my opinion, gives the game away. If you insert your magnetic card, you can record a video message, a propo anything at all. I saw many takers offering calm Youtube soliloquies, as if composing a greeting to send into space. And AHA –instead of pretending that your video would be encoded on your card, instructions beside the screen offered the internet URL at which you can go see it.
First, this directive gives truth to the lie, the DMNS staffers’ incurious conclusion, that individual records are purged everyday. Your profile lives on on the internet, see it for yourself. Give your six-digit pass-code to a friend and they can see it too. And of course, you’re not the only one with the pass-code.
Second, you might well ask yourself, what does a videogram have to do with apprising me about my health? Unless it’s a time-capsule snapshot of you before you lost your insurance coverage. Because the video has everything to do with breached personal privacy. There you are, in your unguarded candor, sitting not upright like you would for a job interview, nor slouched like you might for Social Security, and you’re providing a recording for voice pattern recognition, for further data triangulation.
Third, you’ll have noticed, if you tried the Peak Pass link to the DMNS website, you get no further with your personal code than an invitation to “extend your experience” by installing Microsoft Silverlight. I hadn’t mentioned that the Gates Foundation was another big sponsor of “Expedition Health.” Beside the security vulnerabilities of client-side code, managing what is supposed to be confidential information, what usual back doors is Microsoft leaving in its pseudo-Flash, offering untold windows into our personal medical records?
The DMNS
I do not believe the museum staff have any idea what becomes of the data, nor the extent of the data, logged as museum visitors recreate through “Expedition Health.” The multiple employees, including a manager to whom I spoke, believed all data was erased daily. I’m not sure why they were untroubled by the internet database that obviously refutes their understanding of the process.
However the IT programmers who wired up the displays, and information managers handling the data, would most certainly know the full extent of this nefarious harvest.
Judging from the recent performance of the CEOs of the top medical insurers before Congress, expressing no remorse about their disreputable practice of rescinding coverage for customers upon their being diagnosed with expensive health problems, I do not think it is alarmist in the least to suspect that projects like “Expedition Health” and other similar museum “exhibits” around the country, are being used to further screen the prospectively less-than healthy.
DNA
Readers who’ve already visited “Expedition Health” will note that I ‘ve omitted mention of a significant corner of the experience, the hands-on, let’s play pathologist portion where visitors don lab-coats and, with the assistance of similarly lab-coated docent/lab-technicians, draw and observe their own DNA samples.
Where I inquired, I saw no magnetic-stripped cards changing hands, so I cannot say, on the hot topic of DNA, that the sky is falling. This holds with my inclination to believe that the museum volunteers are not party to the privacy improprieties of the sponsors running the machines. But what hands-on scientific observations are being conducted on digital equipment, as distinguished from analog microscopes, might be kept in the records, and it would only require just one lab-coated coordinator to monitor which sample came from whom. And wouldn’t that be the whole ball of wax?
CRYING WOLF?
If all this seems implausible, consider what is happening at Buckley AFB, by coincidence only a few miles away in Denver. Although US security agencies refuse to comment, respected intelligence experts have determined that at Buckley reside the data storage units upon which are the recordings of every single cellphone conversation that’s been transmitted via satellite. Every last one, for the past several years. Current technology does not afford agents the capability to monitor all those calls, but the processors are quickly catching up. The spooks can project that the eventual capacity to parse the information is inevitable. So why not begin logging the information now? The public has learned about Buckley from former employees, this is not mere idle speculation. Meanwhile the telecom companies who’ve been complicit in the data collection, have been very adamant about receiving immunity from prosecution for what constitute gross violations of American law.
AND NOW?
The information tracking mechanisms are there, the DMNS staff do not presume to vouch for machines, only for the harmless cards. Meanwhile the DMNS has no written pledge that their visitors’ confidentiality is being respected. Harvesting test data is not illegal after all, and with the pretense of anonymity, it’s even laudable, in the name of Science and Nature. I am awaiting a written response from the “Expedition Health” curator, and I intend to solicit an informed and verifiable refutation of these charges. I’ll keep you posted.
The “Expedition Health” installation went up in April, but it’s not coming down. It’s the most recent PERMANENT EXHIBIT to be added to the DMNS offerings. Add the trajectory of time to the information the diagnostics will be able to assemble about you.
And so, what do you think of a museum of Nature and Science, adding a whole wing about FREE HEALTH TESTING? Is that the dominion of museums, usually public repositories of the archives of knowledge? Or can you imagine a more appropriate setting for equipment and staff to perform medical checkups?
JULY 26 marks the start of Fidel Castro’s six year struggle to throw out the US dictatorship in Cuba. The JULY 26 MOVEMENT became the name of the Cuban forces, commemorating the martyrs of 1953. July 26 is the International Day of Solidarity with the Cuban People. CUBA SI, BLOCKADE NO. End the 50-year-old illegal US blockade.
I have for several weeks been submerged in the writings and poster art of the revolutionary sixties, and I’ll catch my breath to say this to the Antiwar Now from the Anti-Imperialists Then. We won no victory with the fall of Saigon, the Vietnam War wasn’t ended by protests, bombs, or the fragging of front line officers. The portend is good for those hoping to see the end of the War on Islam, but on the whole it is not.
The conflict in Vietnam ended when the ammunition ran out. The military industry spent its wad as it earned its wad. Lucrative mission accomplished. Gun nut thrillcraft ride over. American public opinion turned against the mass killing, the funding dried up, and the hawks receded with their loot.
Then public attention diverted to more selfish worries. The economy. An energy crisis. A surge of concern for a death spiral into environmental disaster. Does this sound familiar? FUCKING A!
Legitimate concerns all, then and now. The problems remain the same. Just as American imperialism will persist unabated. Scholars might say after Vietnam, American militarism had to be tempered, such that the US was compelled to conduct its counter-insurgency genocides by more discrete means.
Like the Red, White and Blue ordnance jamboree of Southeast Asia, the US-Islam War will expend itself. But the war of the capitalist white against indigenous brown will continue unless the Western populations step up to a serious rise in consciousness. Not a higher spiritual conscience, but an honest self-assessment of First-World selfishness.
IS THAT RICH? UK’s oldest living veteran of the Great War died this weekend at age 111. Machine-gunner Harry Patch who survived Ypres and nearly not Passchendaele, was eulogized by Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles who explained “The Great War is a chapter in our history we must never forget.” Prime Minister Gordon Brown added: “The noblest of all the generations has left us, but they will never be forgotten.” What did Soldier Patch think of the war for which he was held in patriotic regard? “It wasn’t worth it.”
Patch had been adamant that the senseless slaughter of WWI was not justified, for neither Queen nor Country. The joke is on us hopeful pacifists however, because the old soldier WAITED UNTIL HE WAS 100 TO SAY IT.
Do antiwar activists ask too much of our soldiers, to bear the brutalization of war, and return to be strong enough to speak against it? The state portrays their shell-shocked silence as stoic heroism, the veterans are far too broken to object. And the recruiting cycle repeats itself. The swiftboaters outnumber the conscientious objectors.
We will probably wait forever for the veteran to end all veterans.
While pundits pit Professor Gates against Police Sergeant Crowley, I recommend a white man’s refresher course in Black v. Cop. The above photograph depicts the officers of the law who came from all over Alabama in 1965 to prevent the SNCC civil rights marchers from leaving Selma. Most of the images we recognize from this day were taken seconds after this one, as the southern gentlemen eagerly bludgeoned the kneeling marchers. It took the interference of the President of the United States to send Federal troops to defend the peaceful protesters from the police. Have things changed?
Now they use tasers?
If you are not African-American, ask an African-American.
President Obama’s interference, tiptoeing with niceties for the boys in blue, couching his criticism as if his words carried no more authority than Uncle Tom, falls well short of representing the complaints about still overwhelming racism which black Americans face from law enforcement. Still Obama’s opinion has not been welcomed by the police department which arrested Professor Gates for being uncooperative in his own home.
Policeman Crowley and his superior and his buddies on the force and police unions across the country are telling the president he should not butt in? And they’re assuring us that they’re not racist? Let’s poll the LAPD on the matter, or any of the squads who’ve been caught on video tape beating their charges, (double-entendre intended) usually black.
We need to give equal time to the majority of our prison population. Or the people of New Orleans.
Sergeant Crowly et al are positive they are not racist. They’ve taken the courses, they’ve given the cross-racial CPR. They do not believe they are racist, and I believe them. I don’t believe I am racist either, although clearly I am. I am uncomfortable about being racist, and I’m not sure what to think about the degree of comfort I take as well.
And now the insolent bastards are second guessing the president for second guessing them.
This is that what comes of the post-9/11 theme of deifying First Responders. They’re big galoots –brave, no question– who rush up high-rise stairwells with no premonition the steel structure would be coming down, and next thing patriots are hawking chatchkes of firemen and policemen raising the Stars and Stripes over the rubble, as if they’re under fire in Iwo Jima. So now they’re qualified to tell the president he’s unqualified to make a judgment?
I can criticize the president because he’s not delivering what he promised. What basis do his employees have for grievance?
Crowley and ilk are none too bright, obviously, and they’re racist. They offer their own proof. What would a dutiful policeman’s reaction have been when a white president deigned to weigh in on a matter. I’m guessing deference. To the Commander in Chief.
I did my duty as I knew best, I am open to criticism, and welcome certainly anything the highest executive office holder might offer by way of suggestion, I am most humbled that he might have granted his attention to my personal case, which to guess from the offense people have taken was evidently a lapse in judgment on my part.
Deference. And that’s not what’s being shown their Boy in the White House.
HOW ABOUT, for a tribute to Walter Cronkite’s much lauded integrity, the media honor the news giant by EMULATING HIM? How cynical of corporate news peons, and of their audience nodding along, to revere Cronkite’s hindsight truth-telling, and lament alas, there will be no more like him. Big smiles and crocodile tears.
There is no integrity in news broadcast. I defy anyone to point to a single news story that is not framed and delivered by the interest group it serves. A single story.
Thankfully God sent broadcasters a mixed message this summer by striking down two disparate role models for television talking heads. He smote the last grand-paternal-voiced smooth-talker, together with the tin-pot-king of loud jabberers, teevee pitchman Billy Mays. The first voice was confidence giving, you couldn’t help but trust it, even as it cheer-led the Vietnam escalation, while the second’s amplified immodulation provoked an irritation satisfied only by buying the damn thing just to get the brush salesman out the door.
Reports are emerging from July’s National Assembly, the vital effort to unite antiwar forces into a common movement. Delegates from the major peace organizations hammered out a strategy to address Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Palestine. Missing from the consensus? Nonviolence, and good riddance. It goes without saying that humanitarian activists are peaceful. To legislate a dogma of non-confrontation plays right into the hands of the authoritarians. Here’s the official report:
AN ASSESSMENT OF THE FIRST YEAR OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY TO END THE IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN WARS AND OCCUPATIONS
Address given by Marilyn Levin, member, National Assembly Administrative Body, and Planning Committee, Greater Boston United for Justice with Peace Coalition, to the National Antiwar Conference held July 10-12, 2009 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
July 10-12, 2009, 255 people representing diverse organizations and constituencies from all over the country came together in Pittsburgh:
1) To look at where we are today,
2) To articulate our long range goals to rejuvenate the antiwar movement towards building a massive movement capable of forcing an end to their wars and occupations, to take our money back from the war machine to meet pressing social needs, and to save our planet for our children, and
3) To develop and vote for action plans as steps to realize these objectives.
All of our major objectives were accomplished and we leave today with a comprehensive action agenda to carry us through to next spring. Everyone had a chance to speak and differences were aired without rancor or splits to achieve unity in action.
Friday night’s speakers, along with many conference participants, grappled with how to unify and broaden the movement. Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, we presented a great roster of workshops covering the major issues we face today. Saturday night’s rally was dynamic and inspiring.
There were two highlights of the conference for me. First was the international component where activist comrades joined us from Canada and courageous labor leaders of powerful mass movements in Haiti and Guadaloupe reminded us that imperialism and the struggle against it are global. There was a statement by members of the Viva Palestina aid convoy detained in Egypt. We passed motions in solidarity with the struggles of the people of Haiti, Honduras, and Palestine.
The second highlight was the discussion on Iran, where, in spite of strong passions stirred up by the rapidly evolving events there, we were able to illuminate the issues and debate our differences. Finally, we were able to agree on a unity position that all could embrace, as well as meeting the foremost call of the Iranians – US Hands off! No Sanctions! No interventions! Self-determination for the Iranian people! A wonderful example of a united front –- as inclusive as possible and taking principled positions that most will accept and act on.
So what is the National Assembly? What you saw this weekend explains who we are and how we function.
Democracy. All were invited and all perspectives welcomed. There was acceptance of the will of the conference even when it diverged from the proposals put forward by the leadership body. We were especially gratified that representatives from all the major antiwar coalitions came and addressed our conference.
Our willingness to struggle for unity and compromise when needed in order to move forward, as evidenced by a leadership that did not impose personal political views on others in service to unity.
An organization that admits to and learns from its mistakes and accepts its limitations when the unity we seek can’t yet be achieved.
An organization that has built a growing cadre of leaders that has developed trust, a structure that works, and a strong working relationship.
And finally, confidence, vision, and optimism. Confidence that we can provide leadership in rebooting our movement. A vision regarding how to accomplish that and an understanding of the necessity for these kinds of conferences leading to action. Optimism that masses of people will move in opposition to these horrendous policies that bring death and destruction and that they will have the power to change the world.
I’ve been asked to give an assessment of the first year since our initiation as an ongoing network with a mission, from our first conference in June, 2008 until today. Last year, we weren’t sure anyone would come and lo and behold 400 people came together in Cleveland to inaugurate a year of activities and set up a structure to maintain our work. A lot has transpired in that year and the National Assembly is well on its way as an established organization recognized throughout the movement as providing leadership and promoting a direction towards growth.
I need to start a little earlier and go back to why the National Assembly was called into existence in the first place.
What we saw, in the spring of 2008, was a movement at a low ebb – one that was shrinking rather than growing in spite of the war dragging on — this while the antiwar sentiment couldn’t be higher, and the disapproval rating for the Bush Administration couldn’t have been lower. From the high point of the largest action against the Iraq War in September, 2005 which drew 700,000 people, there was a pulling away from mass action by significant sections of the movement which supported electoral politics as the central strategy, in spite of a recurring pattern of disappointment when Democratic “antiwar” candidates voted again and again for war and war funding, and a split between the two major national coalitions, UFPJ and ANSWER, one that continues to this day. For the first time in five years, there was not enough unity or mass action perspective for any national demonstrations to take place marking the 5th year of the occupation of Iraq. Fundamentally, there was a vacuum of leadership.
Some far-sighted people like Jerry Gordon and Jeff Mackler, with experience gained from leadership in the last powerful antiwar movement that ended the Vietnam War, felt impelled to act. They began to organize a base of diverse but like-minded activists committed to building and expanding an effective antiwar movement in this country. The vehicle to accomplish this was the first national assembly, a national conference to pull activists together, to analyze the present state of the movement, to discuss where we needed to go and the actions that were needed to get us there.
We developed a unity statement with five basic principles that we hold today as the basis for where we stand:
1) Unity – all sections of the movement working together for common goals and actions;
2) Political Independence – no affiliations or support to any political party;
3) Democracy – decision-making at conferences with one person, one vote;
4) Mass Action – as the central strategy for organizing while embracing other forms of
outreach and protest; and5) Out Now – the central demand to withdraw all military forces, contractors, and bases
from the countries where the U.S. was waging war on the people.It seems simple but no one else saw it that way. Our conference was unique in the history of the present movement.
The organizers didn’t know what the mood and composition or strength of the conference would be, so we were cautious and minimal in the program we posed to the conference. We focused on Out Now from Iraq and modest action proposals, not being strong enough to initiate national actions on our own. The conference participants were ahead of us and ready to tackle the larger issues. Proposals were passed to add “Out Now from Afghanistan”, “End U.S. Support for the Occupation of Palestine”, and “Hands off Iran” to our set of demands, and given what has transpired in these areas, we were well prepared to take on a major role.
October 10th actions held in 20 cities were endorsed as well as a call for December actions building towards what we hoped would be unified, nationally coordinated bicoastal mass actions in the spring of 2009, the 6th year of the Iraq occupation. When Gaza was brutally assaulted, we joined with ANSWER and others to march in Washington and to demonstrate in the streets all over the country, and we’re still working under Palestinian leadership to bring justice and relief to a beleaguered population.
We made a concerted effort to find a common date for spring bi-coastal mobilizations. As you know, ANSWER chose March 21st as a day of united protests which we endorsed, while UFPJ called for a national march on Wall St. on April 4th. A number of National Assembly supporters who were also delegates to the UFPJ conference in December formed a mass action unity caucus and went to the conference with a resolution to allow delegates to vote for one or both actions but this was rejected. We’ll keep trying for 2010. The National Assembly endorsed and built both actions and marched behind our signs with our demands. The demonstrations were small (but spirited) and still of major importance.
For us, it’s quality, not quantity, as we position ourselves to be in the forefront as the pendulum swings in our direction once again.
Some take the position that mass demonstrations are not effective, unless we can pull 100,000 protestors into the streets. This is short-sighted and does not address how we get from small to large. Any successful movement for change doesn’t start with 100,000 people, and there has never been significant social change without mass actions. I remember my first anti-Vietnam war demonstration was in 1963 in Detroit and we had 15 people. In 1965, SDS called the first national march against the war in Washington. 25,000 people turned out and we thought it was huge!
Everyone talks about reaching out to the thousands of young people who mobilized to elect Obama. We agree, but we say the way to do this is by offering education and action. Action beyond calling, and emailing, and faxing the politicians they placed in office.
Why are mass demonstrations so important to building a powerful movement? It is because they accomplish so much in the process of building them. They provide:
Continuity. You can’t build anything by starting anew each time. Each action should lead to the next action or open national conference, with success building upon success. We need a continuity of leadership that builds trust and a reputation for integrity, and that learns lessons to improve. We need a continuity of organization and structure that can implement the tasks before us.
Visibility. Actions in the street give heart to the people the U.S. is attacking and occupying, letting them know that they are not alone. Mass actions create solidarity, offering support to anti-war soldiers, vets and their families, and a counter-force to the economic draft facing our youth, and they strengthen and deepen the antiwar sentiment of the people.
Inspiration. New people are brought into the movement, especially the youth, through activism. Have you ever talked to young people coming to a mass demonstration for the first time? They are inspired and thrilled to hear powerful speakers who are leaders of social justice movements and soldiers resisting the wars. They see they are not alone and get a taste of the power of large numbers of people marching together. They are energized to go home and join with others to continue to organize opposition to brutal U.S. wars and occupations. This is the way to reach out to the Obama supporters.
Explanation. An analysis of what is going on is offered along with tying together what seem at first to be disparate elements, i.e., war is tied to the economy, the war budget, bail-outs of the rich, the lack of basic needs being met, justice denied, and the impoverishment of the people.
Pressure on Government. People in this country are taught to be quiet. We’re told that our job is to elect officials whom we agree with periodically and then go home and wait while they fix things. This conveniently maintains the status quo but it sure doesn’t put pressure on them, or scare them, or force social change. Mass actions provide the most effective way to make significant change happen.
Let’s look at the present period. Obama’s election was based in large part on the hopes and aspirations of Americans for peace and a better life based on the promises and assumed promises that were made of peace, justice, and prosperity, which have not and will not be met.
Contrary to expectations, the previous administration’s policies are continued with a more handsome and articulate face. We all know that rather than winding down, wars and interventions are escalating and the rapacious greed of this immoral system knows no bounds.
Simultaneously, the economic crisis is causing terrible hardship for working people and for people who are no longer able to find work and their families. They are using this self-created financial disaster to further cut the standard of living and eliminate a secure future for older people and the young.
It was very moving and yet appalling to see this visually demonstrated when Robin Alexander of the United Electrical Workers Union asked people in the audience to stand who were unemployed, personally knew of soldier casualties, lived in communities where services were being cut, or who were otherwise negatively impacted by the wars and the failing economy. Nearly the entire room, a microcosm of the wider society, was standing by the end of that exercise.
It is inevitable that the present period of quiescence and hanging on to the hope that Obama and the new Congress will save us will come to a crashing end. People will not sit idly by forever while the world around them collapses. We are already seeing the beginnings of stirring. There is a greater willingness to go out in the streets to protest. There is more organizing taking place on campuses, more young people joining the movement. The many proposals for October actions are an indication that there is a widespread awareness of the need for actions this fall and the conviction that the movement must find common dates.
Brian Becker, National Coordinator of ANSWER, urged that we all work together to mount nationally coordinated actions next spring. Michael McPhearson, Co-Chair of UFPJ and Executive Director of Veterans for Peace, announced his support for October 17 and his willingness to do what he could to spur unified actions in the spring of 2010. We must have the faith and confidence that the people have the power to end the atrocities resulting from U.S. wars and occupations, and that they will recognize and utilize this power. As this happens, we must build a stronger antiwar movement that is able to provide leadership and the optimism to forge ahead no matter what the opposition throws at us.
The National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations is helping to provide that leadership and the vision that is needed. Although young and small, in one short year, we are now a force to be taken seriously and negotiated with, and by our persistent call for unity and mass action, our demonstrated ability to organize, and our coordinated strategy for revitalizing the movement, we are having an impact larger than our forces would indicate. In some ways, we too are a product of (and some say an antidote to) the 2008 election. To counter the malaise of the movement, we have quietly been building a solid core of activists and leaders around the country that understand the importance of a united front organized around principled demands and mass actions, not just calling Washington politicians when bills come up and crises happen.
At this conference, we have laid out an ambitious program of action that will take us through the spring of 2010. We are proud that we could provide the kick off for national organizing to bring a massive turnout to Pittsburgh for the G-20 protests September 25. Homeland Security is already making preparations to keep protesters hidden and stifle our right to speak out, but we won’t be silenced.
Following that, are a series of October building actions, culminating in large local and regional demonstrations on October 17 marking dates of significance related to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and occupations and remembering the legacy of the anti-Vietnam war movement. Throughout the year, we will organize educational programs, support various forms of protest and organize around the inevitable emergencies caused by our government’s unholy interventions and threats to other nations.
We have initiated a Free Palestine Working Committee to ensure this work, which includes the growing boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaigns and the efforts to break the siege of Gaza, continues to be in the forefront and fully integrated in our work until justice and self-determination and return is in the hands of the Palestinians.
And lastly, we will continue to advocate for unity of the movement and once again bring thousands to Washington and the West Coast in the spring, to let our government and the world know that the U.S. movement against wars and occupations is alive and will not be quiet.
We will march and continue to march until all U.S. forces come home, bases are dismantled, and the sovereign people of the world have the right to control their own resources and determine their own futures, and the war budget becomes the peace budget.
Don’t sit on the sidelines and watch history being made. We urge all organizations to join the National Assembly and to play your part in building and shaping the powerful movement that is coming.
All out for the September 25 G-20 march in Pittsburgh! All out for the actions in early October! All out October 17!
COLORADO SPRINGS- Intersection of Austin Bluffs and Academy Blvds, 4pm-6pm, all corners. Join Coloradans For Peace in their high-visibility every-other-Thursday rush-hour antiwar vigil, to END OBAMA’S WARS.
Actually that’s their staging date. The heavily funded by un-named Corporate Big-Pig sources, so-called “Grass-roots” movement against the Corporate Big-Pigs finally being forced to pay the bills they ran up over the past 2 centuries but ESPECIALLY the past 30 years, are once again going to be prancing around in their Capri pants, silk stockings and buckle shoes and try to look Macho while doing it. Good Luck on that. But it’s set for Sept 12 in Washing Tundy Sea. Not like I have much cause to sympathize with the Right Wing Dumbasses but…
WARNING, though, DANGER!
You Fascists disguised as “patriots” ought to remember something Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly and Rush and Michelle Malkin have been saying on their Crap Shows and websites.
That “America needs to have Another 9/11 in order to” and here I’ll paraphrase, Allow The Dictatorial Regime to once again spend Our Blood, (not those of the Tea-Baggers, you’re a bunch of ChickenHawks anyway) Our Money and Our Rights to use actual quote “as much violence as necessary” back to paraphrasing to subjugate all those naughty people in the world who don’t Obey The Mighty Lord Darth Cheney (or his Surrogates like Sarah Palin) and his commandments.
All in the name of “Freedom”.
That’s right, Right Winger Freaks, YOUR prophets have been calling for Americans to die in coordinated Terrorist Attacks to fulfill the political ambitions of their Masters.
What would be more appropriate to their desires than if they CREATE a couple thousand or so Martyrs from the slain bodies of you Modern Day Horst Wessels?
And even though YOU nor your leaders would give me the title of “American” I’ll be better and nobler than them.
not that it’s damnably difficult to do that…
Think your “leaders” give a Damn about you? They don’t even care about people who were brave enough to actually enlist in the Army, the coward punk ChickenHawk Regime has had more than 5000 American SOLDIERS murdered in order to achieve their goal of World Domination.
They still haven’t achieved their goals. So, do you REALLY think, after that, they would so much as blink at the thought of killing a few thousand of YOU worthless chickenshit bums?
No, no, Seriously, do you actually believe in the “good intentions” of (for want of a more apt description) “people” like Cheney and Rove and Wolfowicz and The Former Commander In CHIMP?
Maybe you stupid bastards ought to look at that Highly Symbolic Date again.
All those who sat and watched and cheered when the Colorado Springs Gestapo beat elderly and disabled persons for the non-crime of participation in a parade, and still say after two and a half years that you’re “fighting for Freedom”. Bullshit. You had a chance to stand for freedom right here in America and in all that time chose not to do so.
Military both Active Duty and Paramilitary Youth groups like the Scouts and Devilpups and Young Marines… burn your uniforms. You’ve soiled them with the blood of Americans, repeatedly.
Your fascist attitudes and actions have earned you shame, yet you have not enough pride or dignity to even be embarrassed by your hypocrisy and Lies.
“Freedom” for only those who agree with you is slavery to everybody else. To say otherwise you shame the very name of Liberty.
And, when you do so you destroy your OWN liberty as well. You willingly put on the collar and the leash and the muzzle.
On YOURSELVES.
Some on the right are howling for “justice” meaning their silly-ass demand that Dr Churchill and Dr Gates apologize for stepping out of line, they (and by extension everybody else) are supposed to say “Yassuh, Boss, we-uns is so sorry we told a different story than what y’all White Gentlemens were tellin’. We’ll be good Boss. Jes’ point us to the right cotton fields an’ we’ll get our colored asses back to work for you Boss.”
By “Cops” I’m gratuitously including Prosecutors and Judges like “Uncle” Larry Naves who routinely take sides with their fellow pigs.
There it is. The Afghans have captured a POW, we’ve been sent his image in RGB with a personal message to the American public. US military spokesmen are calling the video a violation of the laws of war. Secretary of State Clinton is calling it “just outrageous and a real sign of desperation and inappropriate criminal behavior.” She’s probably right about the desperation. But showing no signs of nudity, degradation, brutalization or rigor mortis, Army Private Bergdahl is faring better than any US detainee.
And think of the example we’ve set for the Taliban. Bagram AFB, and other unlisted US detention centers in Afghanistan, are purportedly even worse than Club Guantanamo. What happened in 2001 to Taliban forces who surrendered to the Northern Alliance is still trying to come to light, despite a desperate US cover-up. You’ve heard it by now, although the graves have been moved, the shell casings disappeared, and the witnesses killed. Over two thousand Afghan POWs were suffocated in shipping containers, those who survived were finished off by US special forces as they hastily emptied the containers at Dasht-e Leili.
I have to do more research, but I’m pretty sure October 7, 2009 should mark the HALFWAY POINT of the US-ISLAM WAR. I realize the Pentagon brass are calling for fifty years more of insurgency suppression in Afghanistan and Iraq, but if we grant them no more time than for America’s longest military intervention, we’ve got another eight years before beating our humiliating retreat.
Those who insist we could have won the Vietnam War, would have our murderous troops there still. No foreign occupation has succeeded in modern times, with the ongoing exception of Israel, which by its swallowing of Palestine has been skewing the definition of occupation to the Old Testament model of mass extermination. The treacherous method worked against the Native Americans, it may still doom the (Palestinian) Native Israelis.
Afghanistan and Iraq remain occupations, where Vichy puppet governments prosecute genocide against the native resistance. How long before Americans lose their stomach for continuous bloody repression? I cannot account for the Russians in Chechnya, but on the US-Islam front, we are halfway there.
In Afghanistan and Iraq, we may already have surpassed half the civilian death tolls in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. It’s hard to say, the US “doesn’t do body counts” now, and we didn’t then either. Our own military casualties grew exponentially in Vietnam. If such statistics bear comparison, today’s numbers cannot be but comparable.
It’s being whispered that American casualties are approaching a multiple of a thousand mark. Official soldier deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq are conjectured to be reaching a round number.
I’m not told how many US mercenaries are being killed. We have as many hired-guns contracted as government soldiers. Want to lay odds on how many body bags they’ve required?
Nor are we told how many US soldiers are being wounded, many of them with injuries which would not have sustained their lives in Vietnam. Surely there is a sad gray area of injury which we could round up as it approximates death.
Word is out, confirming Seymore Hersh’s alarming report of last year, about the Cheney/Bush special forces tasked with assassinating terrorism suspects. Where others do it, such paramilitary raids are called “death squads.” While their existence is being admitted, Congress is upset they weren’t told sooner about the extra-judicial homicide plans. But didn’t President Bush put us all on notice in his 2006 State of the Union Address? What did you think he was snickering about when he said:
“All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. And many others have met a different fate. Let’s put it this way: They are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies.”
George Bush received an ovation from both sides of the aisle with that punch line. From the same politicians who are insisting they didn’t know the US was killing whoever they couldn’t imprison. The same Democrats and Republicans who are eager to report that the nefarious Bushco devices –being pinned on Dick Cheney– thankfully never went operational.
And we don’t have secret prisons. And we don’t torture.
President Obama is closing Guantanamo Prison. As soon as we figure out where to incarcerate its every last detainee.
Al Franken has no sooner reached Washington, that he’s fulfilling his comedic promise, no small thing. At the Judge Sotomayor confirmation hearing, Franken framed his parting question thus: he too was a Perry Mason fan, could Judge Sotomayor name the lone case which the television barrister famously lost? Giggles all around.
Surprising no one, Ms. Sotomayor was stumped. She could not name the case or the episode, though she’d claimed Perry Mason as an early inspiration for her practice of law.
Probably to step on Senator Franken’s cheap stunt, Chairman Patrick Leahy threw the question back at Franken: he’ll bite, what was the famous lost case?
“I don’t know either” said Franken, “that’s why I asked.” Bada Boom.
If Franken had looked it up on Wikipedia already, he wasn’t about to pretend to know more than a Supreme Court candidate. And if the joke got a laugh, there’s nothing gained by explaining it.
What Franken really drew out of his adversary was a concession to the shallowness of the hearing’s veneer. First, because a teevee legal case was as relevant as the other scattershot issues into which Sonia Sotomayor’s detractors were trying to mire her. And second, because all the pretense of getting-to-know-you curiosity masked nothing more than trick questions. Al Franken’s colleague expected him to know the answer because legislators only asked questions to which they knew what they wanted Sotomayor to say.
Franken played Mr. Smith Goes to Washington brilliantly, he’d asked an honest question.
And he wasn’t through. When the chairman’s microphone lost its power, Franken proclaimed that his still worked, and did Senator Leahy want to switch places?
Not from the People, that part would be a “gimme”, but from the People’s Representation. Now the Right Wing is trying to spin it that the operations in question were “The (miserably FAILED) Hunt for Osama bin Hidin’ ” and thus it’s not Patriotic to call it into question.
HOWEVER, the investigation that uncovered it was one probing the Spying on Americans programs. That they would feel the need to LIE about even that much shows a distinct pattern of Domestic State-sponsored Terrorism in action.
Add in that the Bu’ush Regime hired people specifically for their ability to Lie effectively.
Then there’s the revelation that some top CIA officials threatened to quit over the scope and nature of the operation.
These guys aren’t exactly Freedom Mongers of any stripe, don’t give three shits about the Constitution or Rights or anything like that.
If it was bad enough to make THOSE pigs rebel it must be something truly horrendous.
The heavily funded campaign for Right Wing Simpletons to call their Congressmen and tell them how afraid they are of Health Care Reform is ramping up, I just heard their Hate Speech commercial from the other room.
It’s like the Tea-Baggers and the “mass protest” outside the Letterman show, Camera Angle is everything.
The “massive protest” outside the Letterman Show on behalf of Simple Sarah was actually FIFTEEN
and they were outnumbered two-to-one by the cameras. You wouldn’t know it from the way it was portrayed, though.
Same with the highly contrived “Tea Parties”.
With the right camera work, it makes the Stupid Parade look like a massive Grass-roots uprising.
It wouldn’t take more than a couple hundred thousand to jam the switchboards at the Congressional Office Building.
The Right Wing “leaders” know that, and they hope their Demented Disciples will call in, and that it’ll look so much like a Massive Uprising even with only a fraction of a percent of 1% of the population actually taking part.
Levin was on the radio a few weeks ago bitching and whining about the Energy and environmental legislation passing in spite of the Rigged Call-in Campaign.
Here’s a thought, Right Wing Losers….
Maybe the Congressmen have caught on to it.
Maybe people who are smart enough to get elected to Congress are also smart enough to get a “heads up” when such a contrived “Grass roots” campaign is about to be launched.