HIv horsecrap is deep

Found this recently: Genetically-Engineered Babies With HIV-Resistant Genes This kind of information is so completely vapid and devoid of information (or purposeful dis-information) it’s mind numbing. As long as WE, John and Jane Q. Public, don’t have a clue of what HIv really is, we’ll believe anything.

And… that viruses, like HPV and HVV and HSV etc… can and do cause cancer is another falsehood going around now. They can’t!! It’s impossible. Cancer and virus are two completely different entities and produce different symptoms and effects that are not related or compatible in any way!! Cancer is cell growth, Virus is cell destruction! Don’t get the HPV Gardasil vaccination! It’s bogus.

We are already resistant to virus and microbial infection! IT’S CALLED AN IMMUNE SYSTEM!!!!!!! If it’s healthy and not compromised by prolonged drug and alcohol use and malnutrition and unsanitary living conditions! OR, by taking the DNA chain terminating, bone marrow destroying antiretroviral AIDS drugs! New vaccinations and drugs and testing kits to detect or cure fake diseases that are being created, are huge money making opportunities for wall street and the pharmaceutical companies. HEALTHY IMMUNE SYSTEM IS KEY! (interferon response is immune system response.)

This new gene is a distraction. It is not needed regardless. And I wonder how these researchers were able to study HIv since it is so difficult to find in the body that it has to be co-cultured with growth stimulants in the lab. Luc Montagnier knew that and Robert Gallo knew that as well. Retroviruses as a class, are all weak and very difficult to isolate. And what is TRIM22? The lie that HIv keeps mutating is central to maintain the claim that it cannot be cured and must be fought with a never ending new line of drugs… that are worthless. Thus this articles calling for a new drug to mimic the action of this supposed gene.

HIv is a retrovirus, incapable of causing anything because it is non-cytocidal or non-cytotoxic. IT CANNOT DESTROY THE CELL IT INFECTS! It cannot spread to other cells. Abbot Labs grew HIv using T-cells to get the proteins to create the HIv Elisa test kits. They are also called “passenger” virus as the body destroys 1,000’s everyday and rids itself of them. If you test positive for the antibodies to HIv, (which has likely been a false positive as many diseases and even pregnancy react to the many proteins on the test strips, which are not all HIv proteins) you are PROTECTED!. That’s what antibodies represent. Protection and destruction of the virus/microbe.

Herpes is the exception as it has the ability to hide in the nervous system, but… it is a cytotoxic virus. It produces a specific sore always and within days or a week from infection. It is not a retrovirus. It can be isolated in the blood. HIv has never been isolated in blood or flesh by the required titer to prove causation of disease. Never! Why there isn’t a vaccination for Herpes is the question we should be asking.

AIDS research has failed to find cause

“AIDS research has not failed because it never found a cure … AIDS research has failed because it never found a cause”
 
Twenty four years and no cure, no cause, no answers. But billions of tax dollars to an established AID$ industry who refuse to look at the facts. More money has been spent on AIDS research than any other disease in the history of medicine, all with no results! Giving a weakened or compromised immune system a name, “AIDS”, is trickery. Telling us it is caused by an old and harmless retrovirus is dishonest. But treating immunodeficiency, whatever is causing it, with toxic chemo ARV drugs, that destroy DNA and bone marrow, is criminal! It’s time to get mad and get the word out and demand a reappraisal. Or accountability for the terror, stress, damage and destruction to many lives.

FACTS:
1. HIv has never been isolated as a pure virus, direct from human blood or tissue nor have control groups been used who are HIv “positive” and HIv “negative”. One must understand that HIv is a harmless passenger retrovirus, not a disease causing virus like HPV or HSV. (see 3 and 8.)

2. Isolation experiments, as recommended by the Perth Group and others, in the Presidential AIDS Advisory Panel Report of 2000, have never been done on control groups both with or without HIv. This is especially important since it is well known that thousands who test positive for antibodies for HIv remain healthy and thousands who have “AIDS” (by CDC definition) are not infected with HIv.

3. Kochs Postulates is and has been the widely accepted, time tested screen for determining whether an infectious germ or virus is causing disease. HIv fails all 4 (or 3 depending how you consider #4), of the postulates. A large effort must be undertaken to produce HIv in any quantities that are similar to disease causing virus. This is done by co-culturing HIv with leukemia cells in the lab (petri dish) or by adding growth stimulants. (See point 7 under “AIDS – Fact or Fraud”.)

4. HIv was first studied/discovered by Luc Montagnier as LAV around 1979. Montagnier admitted in 1990 that his LAV was probably benign. Robert Gallo stole Luc Montagniers work in approx. 1983 when Montagnier shared it with him. Gallo then claimed it as his own. He and the NIH were sued by the French government. Montagnier worked for the Pasteur Institute of Science. He also shared in the royalties. (see 13) Luc Montagniers LAV stood for Lymphademopathy Associated Virus. Part of the Pasteur Inst. charges in the initial lawsuit against Gallo were for Gallos claim that HIv was infectious. Regardless virus as causation of any kind of cancer, including lymphoma, is long proved false in the 70’s “Cancer Virus Program” through the Natl. Inst. of Cancer which is part of the NIH.

5. AIDS is nothing more than an acronym created by the CDC to create the categories of known diseases hypothesized as being “caused” by HIv. Suppression of the immune system however is not a disease and is caused by many things, which has led to much (purposeful?) confusion of the public. With a “positive” HIv antibodies test,(see 11,) or low T-cell count, or if in a risk group, and if showing symptoms of any one of 29 AIDS diseases as classified by CDC, any observation of those symptoms (see 19 for Africa) are now “AIDS-HIv” related and somehow deadly when most are not, all have other known causation and can be treated without antiretroviral drugs. All of this convoluted testing and categorizing adds to the numbers of HIv “positives” and then “AIDS” patient cases. Useful data for keeping the ARV drugs on the front line of treatment even though they are useless having been designed for cancer tumor therapy, and thus very harmful.

6. AZT, an ARV(antiretroviral), and other AIDS cocktails like HAART, are very toxic chemo CANCER drugs and destroy cells and terminate DNA chains. The initial trials of AZT based drugs showed wide evidence of harsh side affects, i.e. muscle wasting, organ failure, vomiting, diarrhea, destruction of bone marrow, yet FDA approved them on a fast track mandate in 1987. Many involved in the trials say these side effects were hidden. When AZT was created in 1964 it was deemed too toxic for use and was shelved. It is no “theory” that these drugs cause the very kinds of immune system destruction and breakdown that is deceitfully blamed on HIv. Admitted by the drug manufacturers themselves in their printed warnings. Why was this drug even thought to be useful for a “virus” when chemo therapy had never been used for virus treatment?

7. People who refuse AZT or the chemo drug cocktails after a “positive” HIv antibody test, remain healthy in most cases. (see risk groups #18) AIDS activists and counselors who are unaware of what HIv actually is, consistently fail to inform the “at risk” population that often call or visit them, that the HIv test is not a test for the virus. Or that the tests have disclaimers that say: “there is no recognized standard for establishing the presence or absence of antibodies to HIV-1 or HIV-2 in human blood”. And the viral load tests have the same disclaimers for what they are testing for. Besides, there is no proof of different specific HIv-1 or HIv-2 because HIv is a benign indistinguishable retrovirus.

8. The PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test is a desperate misleading attempt to detect DNA-RNA fragments of HIv retrovirus, in order to prove it is causing disease. Its inventor, Kary Mullis, rejects HIv as the cause of AIDS or anything else and says his test only amplifies and copies these fragments for study. No real disease causing cytotoxic virus needs this kind of help in it’s detection and purification.

9. HIv is non-cytotoxic.Therefore HIv cannot destroy the cells it infects. Nor can any retrovirus. In fact HIv is well known to virologists to be compatible with T-cells. Or most cells for that matter. This and transcriptease (the ability of retrovirus to insert themselves into cells RNA first, the reverse of cytotoxic virus) is the reason for their specific classification as retroviruses.

10. Real disease causing viruses can be vaccinated against in 95% of cases. But viruses are not always the cause of disease. As often in the case of scurvy, pellagra and weak immune system, it is a dietary and lack of proper exercise or nutrient problem/issue. The case of SMON in Japan was a similar search for a “virus” causation when finally the culprit was found to be a toxin. A toxin in the very drug that doctors were prescribing to SMON patients. This is what happens when “virus hunters” get carried away and take over research for professional recognition and monetary reasons. Or just plain stubbornness. Legionairres disease was a prime example of how the CDC/NIH missed a toxin causation completely and birthed a vaccine that did more harm than good. (Duesbergs “Inventing the AIDS Virus”)

11. The Western Blot HIv test is well known to give many false positives as many antibodies already in the body or other medical conditions (up to 70) can set off the non-specific protein strips in the test. All HIv diagnostic tests carry a disclaimer that the test is NOT to be used to determine the presence or absence of HIv antibodies. Regardless, presence of antibodies to HIv would mean the immune system has done it’s work and the body is protected. In reality based science anyway. In other words, it is impossible to be positive for HIv with these tests because a positive test really means you’re positive for the antibodies and negative for HIv! Thus the PCR tests and viral load(T-cell counts) became the new hope to detect fragments of HIv DNA/RNA or low immune response. (see 8, 16)

12. There are different standards of HIv positive in different states and countries! Why? If it’s a virus it’s a virus! One standard needed. But there is no “gold” standard test. Other than Kochs Postulates for virus and microbes which the CDC and NIH refuse to acknowledge or talk about or if they do they claim that Kochs method is outdated! That’s like saying the 2nd law of thermodynamics is useless.

13. Gallo/NIH received the patent on the HIv tests in the exact same week he announced the “probable” cause of AIDS in 1984. It made the NIH-CDC, Montagnier and Gallo, millions. He had no peer review and had not isolated pure HIv directly from any “infected” persons blood or tissue, at the time of announcement. He could only claim 40% of his “AIDS” patients had detectable HIv. Not anywhere close to claim HIv was infectious or the cause of AIDS by recognized science standards. But how did he determine his “AIDS” patients had HIv? By co-culturing HIv in the lab or with a growth additive. Why? Because retrovirus are weak non-cytotoxic passenger virus that do not multiply or destroy cells.

14. Gallo was involved in the Nixon “War on Cancer” program in the 70’s and helped the Natl. Inst. of Cancer to pressure Congress to fund the program with great promises of success to find retrovirus or any virus as the cause of cancer. But it failed. Luckily, the emerging AIDS “epidemic” helped to find NIH/CDC and the virus hunters a new program to keep and increase their funding and a disease for Gallos HTLV-3. At a time when Reagan needed a political solution, and as gay men were demanding an answer, HIv was acceptable because it erased blame from the gay community for the disease being a “lifestyle” or behavioral disease. But early in it’s announcements, the CDC claimed it was behavioral and called it GRID. Gay Related Immune Deficiency. This was a correct diagnosis as the first 5 cases were all same extreme sexual behavior, heavy drug use related causation. For the CDC, there was no money in a program for only gays. Thus heterosexuals had to be at risk as well. (see 18)

15. Testing people for HIv because they show “AIDS” related disease symptoms, with or without immune suppression, has become the standard line of reasoning though it is preposterous due to the falsity of the tests and absurdity of using other diseases as markers. (11) But the AIDS hysteria has swept through every corner of our medical professions, without a widely publicized critical analysis of testing procedures or reassessment allowed.

16. Low T-cell counts are misleading. A variety of illness, drug abuse, poor health/diet, colds, flu, disease are also responsible. Many athletic people have low T-cell counts and they can vary almost hourly. In people with detectable HIv (by PCR test), it has only been found to infect 1 in approx. 1000 T-cells, hardly enough to destroy immune response. Regardless monitoring the immune response is no way to detect specific disease. Laying in the sun will lower your T-cell count to under 200.
http://www.aliveandwell.org/html/viral_load_tcell/viral_load.html

17. Gallo claims his electron micrograph pictures are of an HIv virus, but nothing can be found by other virologists that resembles a true concentrated virus titer. It is now known that Gallo forged these pictures and was investigated for it by the NIH.

18. “AIDS” has stayed within it’s risk groups, Gay and straight male intravenous drug users, heavy drug abusers, popper users (which causes Karposis Sarcoma), hemophiliacs, and the poor malnourished living in unsanitary conditions…. instead of spreading widely across the population as we’re led to believe. It is not sexually transmittable as claimed by the CDC and NIH, but this edict spread the risk to heterosexuals. With this false claim, and Americans ignorance of virology or HIv testing, funding for research and the following prescriptions for ARV’s was increased 1000 fold. HIv is an old retro-virus that has likely been with us for 100’s of years. Farrs law for dating virus proves this as HIv models exactly to Farrs test. The body’s DNA-RNA discards many cells and retro-virus everyday. Repeat: HIv is not sexually transmittable. It is a parinatally transmitted retrovirus.

19. AIDS related disease in South Africa was and still is occurring markedly in the overcrowded poor populations where malnutrition, common persistent parasitical diseases long vanquished from western populations, lack of health care, std’s infections and unsanitary environments persist. And this is true for the new countries AIDS is supposedly invading. To make matters worse, give them toxic chemo drugs on top of their persistent diseases and already compromised immune systems, and they will die. Many die of the common regional diseases regardless due to lack of health care services, known curative drugs, and of malnutrition. For instance, researchers who have examined the supposed massive deaths reported in Tanzania, find no such evidence. (Questioning AIDs in South Africa) And the CDC has now allowed themselves to categorize many common diseases in these areas as AIDS related, WITHOUT HIv testing, due largely to the expense of the HIv tests. (see Duesberg paper below) Of course they know the the testing is a hoax regardless. As a result, AIDS cases increase lending to the deception of a pandemic. All numbers the CDC and UNAIDS uses for HIv infection and AIDS cases are false and/or completely made up estimations and projections.

20. In fact now the NIH and CDC have admitted that they do not know how HIv causes destruction to the immune system (it doesn’t but the ARV drugs, immune suppressive behaviors, poverty, malnutrition do), and they are now factoring in a co-virus as a way out of their deception. A vaccine was promised in 2 years after the announcement of the “probable” cause HIv in 1984. No cure has ever been produced because no cure is needed or possible for a retro-virus (or passenger virus) that cannot cause disease. No vaccine because HIv isn’t a real disease causing virus.

21. Scurvy (citric acid deficiency), Pellagra (niacin deficiency), Beriberi (thiamine deficiency) , SMON (toxin in drug treatment), Zantac,Tagamet-Ulcers (bacteria, Tagamet, Zantac useless), Clioquinol-Diarrhea (toxin in Clioquinol treatment), Influenza (virus) , DES – Synthetic hormone( caused cervical cancer and sterility)…………all cases that were misdiagnosed or causations ignored by the medical/scientific profession at their specific occurrences in history to the detriment of the public. And in the cases where a drug was given and was causation, it was always to the profit of the pharmaceutical industry. In some cases the misdiagnoses, sickness and death went on for years.

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From the website www.questionaids.com

Why isn’t an antibody test that’s verified by another antibody test good enough to say someone is infected with HIV?

The rationale for the use of antibody tests is that the immune system has the ability to detect foreign agents or viruses and to respond by producing antibodies that react with those agents or viruses. However, this rationale does not work in reverse. That is, the observation of an antibody reaction with a particular agent or virus does not prove that the antibody was produced in response to that particular agent or virus.

The problem with using antibodies alone to indicate infection with a particular agent or virus is twofold:

1. Antibodies can only be associated with a disease after it is shown that they are consistently generated after exposure to the pure virus. We are unaware that this has ever been accomplished with HIV.
2. Antibodies engage in indiscriminate relationships with a variety of agents or viruses. One could say that antibodies are “promiscuous,” that is, antibodies meant for one agent or virus may react with another agent or virus that is a perfect stranger. Or, to put it technically, there is ample evidence that antibody molecules, even the most pure (monoclonal antibodies) are not mono-specific, and that they cross-react with other, non-immunizing antigens.

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FROM THE DVD “AIDS – FACT OR FRAUD?” Ten reasons why HIv cannot be the cause of AIDS:

“Classifying suppression or deficiency of the immune system, that long has had causation in many things, as a specific “syndrome” caused by a harmless retrovirus, is beyond comprehension and an insult to good medicine and science…unless you’re up to no good. But then treating an immune deficiency with poison chemo antiretroviral drugs, that destroy same immune system (bone marrow) and terminate DNA chains is criminal and insane! AIDS is an immune issue and should be treated as such. In fact, the acronym AIDS should be thrown away and banished from our vocabulary.”

1. HIv, like other viruses is harmless after antibody immunity. There is no known disease or virus that has re-emerged after a mature, healthy immune system created antibodies to it.(1) Testing positive for HIv means you have the antibodies and don’t have HIv. Unfortunately many different antigens are documented to set off the protein strips in the HIv tests which makes it difficult to lend any credibility to the tests. Thus the PCR test was invented.

2. HIv does not kill the T-cells it infects. In fact T-cells are compatible with HIv. Virologists know this for a fact. Abbot Labs used T-cells to grow HIv to make the protein strips for the Western Blot test.

3. HIv does not infect enough T-cells to cause AIDS. T-cells reproduce at the rate of 5% a day. HIv, after being destroyed mostly by antibodies produced, can only infect 1 in every 500 to one thousand T-cells. There is no virus in AIDS patients, only antibodies against virus. Gallo could never find any cytotoxic virus in T-cells.

4. HIv has no AIDS causing gene. HIv is no different in gene make up than other retrovirus. There are many retroviruses in the body all the time. If HIv can cause destruction of the immune system ( thus AIDS) then why don’t the other retrovirus? Or if the other retroviruses don’t cause AIDS, why does HIv? There is no genetic reason to explain why HIv causes AIDS.

5. There is no such thing as a slow virus. Gallo and Gajdusek gave HIv magical properties. Real virus cause specific disease and do so within days or a few weeks at most. (1) Herpes is not the exception as viremially it reproduces exponentially when active and passes Kochs Postulates. HIv does not. (Page 74 Duesbergs book IAV) And Herpes when first transmitted almost immediately shows its trademark sores. Gajdusek (NIH) had a history of claiming slow and dormant virus, but never in humans. Always in the lab. Also in his early work he gave retroviruses the ability to create more than one disease. All by correlation but never through proof. In fact he and Gallo and a few other retrovirologists seemed to always discover a retrovirus in the lab, then went looking for a disease.

6. HIv is not a new virus so HIv would not suddenly cause a new epidemic. New epidemics explode across populations. HIv has remained constant in populations and has been infecting every generation likely for centuries without causing AIDS. Farrs law is used for dating virus or microbe age and HIv models exactly to Farrs law. HIv then, is not sexually transmittable nor an epidemic. It is parinatally passed.

7. HIv fails all 4 Kochs postulates. A real disease causing virus or microbe must pass every one. The postulates are:1.) A virus or bacteria must be found in all cases of the disease, actively growing in large amounts call virus titer. HIv FAILS. 2.) Virus or germ must be isolated from the host and grown in pure culture. HIv FAILS HIv has only been grown substantially in the lab using a co-culture of leukemia cells and stimulated with chemicals, never directly from an HIv infected person in large quantities. 3.) The virus or bacteria must cause the same disease when injected into a new healthy host. HIv FAILS. 4.) The virus or bacteria must be isolated and found growing again in large amounts in the newly diseased host. HIv FAILS (failing 3 it cannot pass 4.)

8. AIDS has remained in its original risk groups for over 23 years. 97% AIDS patients made up of same risk groups. 3% risk group isn’t growing.

9. The CDC, WHO international profile of AIDS is inconsistent. U.S. and Europe = 90% male. Africa = 50/50 male female. U.S. and Europe fall 97% into risk groups. Africa = no risk groups.(the official UNAIDS line) The truth is the poor, malnourished living in crowded slums and shanty towns with no sanitation or clean water, or access to health care and continually fighting old parasitical diseases, are the most susceptible to immune deficiency disease, not HIv. They are the risk groups in poor overcrowded areas of developing countries. And CDC and UNAIDS have categorized all the old African diseases now as AIDS, whether HIv infection is present of not.

10. AIDS related disease occurs without HIv infection, and, most people with HIv antibodies, never develop AIDS related disease. What we see in this statement is evidence of no retrovirus in the first case or of a harmless retrovirus in the second case, that does nothing and has been cleared by immune response. Of course what is evident is that no one has HIv who has the antibodies present. If we can even verify that these antibodies are or have reacted to HIv proteins!!! And if it takes a polymerase chain reaction test to confirm that we can only find fragments of the DNA/RNA of HIv, not the HIv itself, then why is anyone worried about HIv??? Because we’ve been terribly misled by, as Duesberg calls them, the “virus hunters”.

Conclusion: HIv is not infectious nor sexually transmittable. With this information and finding of fact we should question any and all claims of disease that are supposedly caused by virus. Immediately what comes to mind are HPV, Hep B and HepC. These may be as harmless as HIv and treatment has been hyped to push people toward vaccinations that are untested and whose efficacy is not totally known.

Barack Obama on Blackwater, the Democrats on Iraq

It is an insidious ruse to think that either of the 2 Democratic Party candidates are pledging to get the US out of Iraq. At least that is the conclusion reached by Jeremy Scahill, as he discusses why no presidential candidate plans on fully leaving Iraq Jeremy Scahill is the author of the bestselling Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

But even beyond Iraq, none of the 3 candidates plan to end the so-called ‘War on Global Terrorism’ or the ‘War on Drugs’. We have 3 war candidates to choose from if we decide to vote. Sure you can vote for Nader and/ or a Green Party candidate. But due to their late announcements, these are truly token candidacies and are not viable challenges to the Democratic and Republican parties. No democracy here, except for maybe Democracy Now being what we are kind of left with, along with a few non-Establishment blogs. etc. We are left with a voice on the margins but no vote.

Meth lab bust on undeveloped westside

Hazmat truck, fire truck and police cruisers surround meth lab on Colorado Springs west side
Westside traffic was impeded Wednesday by a methamphetamine lab cleanup on Colorado Avenue. Police and fire trucks surrounded the old house while firemen removed hazardous substances in cardboard boxes. Likely the only recourse for this clapboard house will be demolition. Meth labs are fast-tracks for slumlords to flip their properties to developers.

Wouldn’t it stand to reason that landlords should be penalized for taking in drug-dealing tenants? Otherwise, what better way to demo your property. It’s legal arson. You write off, or file a claim, and rebuild to gentrification standards.

The real meth lab epidemic is several years past, but don’t discount the easy tool the hazmat condemnation provides for property owners eager to shed themselves of low-rent digs. Below is a map of previous lab-domiciles that required destruction.

Meth Lab seizures in 2003

Oaksterdam University

Oaksterdam UniversityCalifornia is one of 12 states wherein the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes is legal. But what happens when a cannabis patient applies for a job that requires a drug test? Surely an employer must overlook the level of THC in the blood of a legal pot user? Not so. California courts have ruled that employers are allowed to discriminate against legal stoners — something about federal law trumping state law. Jefferson must be turning over in his grave.

Even the law-abiding growers face unrelenting hassles from overzealous and holier-than-thou law enforcement officers. In our own state, where cultivating medicinal marijuana is legal, cops recently raided the home of a couple of medical providers, arrested them, and confiscated their inventory. Of course, once they’d shown their permit, the offenders were released. The plants, when they were finally returned, were dead on arrival. The couple asked for remuneration for their inventory and lost wages which was, not surprisingly, denied. Apparently the cops have no duty to take due care of personal property seized from law-abiding individuals.

In Oakland, California, a new university has been founded to help cannabis providers understand their legal rights, grow and distribute marijuana responsibly, and even prescribe different pot strains for specific maladies. The school is called Oaksterdam University, which I think is funny as hell. The following is one of the University’s course descriptions:

Budtending/Cannabis Doctors 101
Bartending for the cannabis industry. Train how to effectively and responsibly dispense cannabis to patients and consumers. Separate yourself from the other applicants for jobs at dispensaries. Learn about the different medical strains and their differing effects, and which strains are best for various medical conditions. Hear from a cannabis doctor regarding ethical and emerging political issues. Get information and details about the latest clinical studies.

More information, as well as other course descriptions and an application for admission, can be found at Oaksterdam’s website.

Are anti-depressants really Doc ordered placebo drugs?

There is category of meds I call Doctor ordered placebos. You see, the doctors are, within the general population, the most fooled of them all by pill placebos. They often truly believe in drugs that don’t much work, simply because it makes them feel more powerful and strong to prescribe medication not generally thought of as placebo like, rather than just admitting that pharmaceuticals might not be of much effect for a condition. In short, doctors prescribe instead of admitting helplessness in confronting some condition.

‘Doctor, Mrs Hoot is acting up, what can we give her?’

Usually, instead of a swift kick in the ass, it will be a pill of some sort. Zombies are easier to manage for the doctor and his side kicks. It beats a wooden mallet, I guess? Besides, the police aren’t armed with them, but with elephant guns instead.

From the BBC… Anti-depressant prescription rates have soared. New generation anti-depressants have little clinical benefit for most patients, research suggests.

Maybe you need ‘counseling’ instead? But that’s probably way too much trouble.

Not your mother’s Peace Corps

Teaching abstinence to the AIDS afflicted.Did you hear in Ghana today President Bush is having lunch with US Peace Corps workers? Wherever did his handlers find even one Peace Corps volunteer who would feign tolerance to our callous mini-tyrant? In indifference-ravaged Africa no less! Is the Peace Corps not what it used to be, or not what we thought it was?

President Kennedy started the Peace Corps as a means for America to put a better face forward than the one the world saw in our exploitive capitalists. Though our politicians spoke of democracy and human rights, our soldiers usually demonstrated our industrial sense of entitlement to third world resources and labor. The Peace Corps was a deliberate counter to the suspicion that our usual diplomats, consultants and NGOs were riddled with CIA. In fact the Peace Corps was recruiting ground for the CIA.

Colorado College president Richard Celeste, himself a former Peace Corps director, likes to tell the story about volunteers working in Asia who knew the whereabouts of an insurgent, if only they’d known the CIA was after him. This is offered as proof of the firewall between US intelligence and the Corps. Of late, as we come to understand Black Ops and CIA ulterior motives, the anecdote comes to suggest the opposite. Revelations like Confessions of a Economic Hit Man indict the Peace Corps fully.

Since Celeste’s tenure, Colorado College boasts of being a leading contributor of students into the Peace Corps. With their advocacy of abstinence, are these civil NGOs distinguishable from missionaries?

Paul Theroux, 2007:

Poor Africa, the happy hunting ground of the mythomaniac, the rock star buffing up his or her image, the missionary with a faith to sell, the child buyer, the retailer of dirty drugs or toxic cigarettes, the editor in search of a scoop, the empire builder, the aid worker, the tycoon wishing to rid himself of his millions, the school builder with a bucket of patronage, the experimenting economist, the diamond merchant, the oil executive, the explorer, the slave trader, the eco-tourist, the adventure traveler, the bird watcher, the travel writer, the escapee, the colonial and his crapulosities, the banker, the busybody, the Mandela-sniffer, the political fantasist, the buccaneer and your cousin the Peace Corps Volunteer.

Britney -just what big pharma ordered

Star Magazine prognosisBritney Spears is not just the latest celebrity substance abuse train wreck, nor is she just the opportune diversion for our media eager to obscure private grand theft of the public sector. (Ignore war, warming and the economy, give me more Britney!) Ms. Spears is now also the poster child for corporate America’s biggest crime partners, the pharmaceutical industry.

Is there a medicinal remedy for alcoholism, for a methamphetamine habit, or any chemical addiction? Not really. But there certainly is a burgeoning market for psycho stabilizing, mood tempering meds. And Britney is their “it” girl.

Unlike Clara Bow, or for that matter Mary Pickford forward to Lindsey Lohan, Spears is being pegged for mental disorder normalization, not behavior correction. There’s a well paved road of drug and alcohol excess in Hollywood. Some stars overdose, some recover, just as you or I in anytown, anystate USA far off the tabloids. Frances Farmer was an unwelcome trend setter in the days before Lithium and Thorazine. Imagine if Ed McMahon had been able to pitch Paxil in the wings like Alpo.

Poor Brit. She’s got something the drug companies can cure and they can cure you too if you exhibit her symptoms. Lord knows it’s not uncommon, driving intoxicated, clinging to your children as they are taken from you because you are being judged unfit. Take heart, the diagnosis is not alcoholism which would require government intervention, education, diminished alcohol sales and advertising revenue; it’s not illegal drugs, which would mean more education and law enforcement; it’s not prescription drugs which would require more regulation, education, and a big hit to drug company profits. It’s… would you believe it? MORE PRESCRIPTION DRUGS!

A quick fix for Britney. She’s not drunk, she’s not addicted, she’s certifiable! She’s psychotic, bipolar, manic, etc, it’s treatable! Have you been feeling angry, depressed, tired, driven mad yourself? The pharmaceutical peddlers have a remedy for you. Not less booze, less drugs, or less meds, but more meds. Everyone’s a winner!

The solution to gluttony isn’t fewer potato chips but more of the Olestra butt leakage variety. Consumer-temperance paradox averted. patient’s infirmity stabilized, IV firmly tapped into bank account. Have you seen the prices of the insanity-normalizing medications? Insane! You’re going to wish you had universal health insurance. Or that you could just stop drinking.

Starbucks simply wants the yuppy monied nerds, and not you

Let’s face it, coffee drinkers inside Starbucks reading The Independent instead of The New York Times or The Gazette are just not what Starbucks Management wants. It has nothing to do with a supposed single complaint about The Indy at all, but everything to do with having and keeping a yuppy monied image for their company, or not? Censorship for profit.

A free community paper? Well, that is not what overly caffeinated, yuppy monied nerds that spend too much for their fix want to hang their self image on. That would be a ‘commoner’ attitude to them, Instead, it is that Fraser, Seattle ambiance they are attracted to so magnetically.

Starbucks Management wants to keep it that way and not allow their gated yuppie centers to be turned into low-profit community cafes. I’m surprised that, like a few elite American hotels already do, they simply do not give all their caffeinated yuppy clients a free copy of the Wall Street Journal, and just up some more the price of their already ridiculously priced lattes?

How much nicer for caffeinated hot shots to enter into an area with more high class folk, than low life riff raff reading the back side ads of The Indy? Starbucks simply wants the yuppy monied nerds, and not nerdy old you and me. Well, OK. I don’t like their super hyped dope much anyway.

Getting high with Darwin and Keynes

stop the war on drugsThe war on drugs. Oh yes, it’s a nasty endless little war, one that’s filling our prisons with small-time users/entrepreneurs and costing the taxpayers billions. It’s a war that hasn’t helped our poor addicted countrymen one iota, and it’s a war for which win-happy Bush has not yet declared victory. But neither has he hung his head in defeat, which he certainly should.

The DEA bigwigs ought to be lamenting the indisputable fact that its decades-long fight against drugs is not working. In fact, it’s making things worse. After spending more than six billion dollars to cripple the Medellin and Cali cartels, the IBM and General Motors of the drug industry, cocaine production and trafficking in Colombia has actually increased. Hundreds of smaller and more efficient cartels have filled the void left by the blue chip cartels, kind of like the dot.com explosion, except the brilliant, creative, innovators happen to run drugs. And the DEA hasn’t a clue who they are or how to stop them.

The war on drugs has penalized and incarcerated thousands of small-time drug dealers/users, the weak and dumb, the poor souls who would never be counted among the fittest in a Darwinian assessment. Years of artificial selection have given rise to the super drug-dealer, the one who, like the virulent bacteria that have arisen from overuse of antibiotics, is more efficient, more cunning, more innovative and much more difficult to eradicate. How can politicians hope to win a war with a strategy that ensures that only the most efficient and creative drug traffickers survive?

The relentless persecution of small-time drug dealers has decreased the supply of drugs on our streets. I suppose this can be seen as a good thing. However, the demand remains. Thus, according to accepted economic theory, interdiction has supported higher prices for the super dealers and provided incentive for more traffickers to enter the drug economy.

Alas, the war on drugs has been a complete waste of time and money. It’s time for the DEA to huddle in the war room and come up with a new strategic plan. They should bring in some new generals, hopefully with public health backgrounds. They might even want to get off their moral steeds and decriminalize recreational drug use, thereby decreasing the demand for illegal drugs. They might decide to throw their allotted resources at dangerous criminals and our underlying social problems and let the small-time stoners be. That is if success is truly their goal.

After all, wouldn’t it make sense to address the underlying demand for drugs? Shouldn’t the DEA stop focusing on supply and address the unchanged demand for illicit drugs? Of course, this would mean funding public health initiatives and educational programs which are not nearly as fun as fighting a war against cagey dark-skinned enemies in exotic foreign locales. No, the men in suits aren’t really interested in giving up their fat federal budgets in order to win the struggle against drug abuse.
The war is too much fun.

So we will keep building expensive prisons and filling them disproportionately with people of color, too poor to make waves. We’ll keep propping up the super-drug dealers we’ve created. We’ll ask Congress for $1.4 billion to fight the drug-crazed Mexicans from Merida, the enemy du jour. And we’ll rejoice that, as is true for all of our wars, there is no end in sight.

The War in Iraq

the war no more
In my opinion, noted chronicler Ken Burns, whom I otherwise respect, does Americans a great disservice to title his multimedia WWII homage THE WAR.

I do resent the President and his enablers admonishing Americans for what may or may not be appropriate behavior “in a time of war.” We were not “at war” during the Cold War or the War on Drugs. And the War on Terror is equally an [existential, so-called] abstraction. Fighting terrorists, including the invasion of Afghanistan, is a police action. If we are talking about apprehension. Missile strikes are extra-judicial assassination. Undeclared military aggression.

But since our soldiers are being sent to war, and there is profound anti-war revulsion, and congress is being asked to collude by providing war funding, and we are detaining combatants which at a minimum should be awarded Prisoner of War status, we cannot escape discussing Iraq as a war, and most notably as an illegal war.

So when Ken Burns calls his WWII tome THE WAR, isn’t it more than slightly dismissive of veterans of all combat since? The Vietnam War lasted three times as long as WWII, to Baby Boomers it was the war. The Korean War, termed a “conflict” to avoid having Congress refuse a declaration of war, is now called the Korean War, even tragically the Forgotten War. World War One before it was The First World War, was known as The Great War, even the War to End All Wars. De facto it WAS THE WAR, but imagine anyone thinking to call it that in the midst of WWII.

Does Burns mean to deny [The] Iraq [War] its significance, even as he might suggest it lacks the legitimacy of WWII, the Just War? As Iraq casualties and atrocities slip from the headlines, it’s hard to see the diversion of WWII nostalgia as helpful.

Iraq may turn out to be simply the opening salvo of THE WAR declared by the corporate west on all of humanity. It deserves its due.

I’ve cured AIDS !!!

The Cure for AIDS
1. If you are gay/str8/lesbian/trans/bi and have tested for HIv and been told you are positive for the antibodies to HIv, (using Western Blot type test which register as much as 70% false positives) or been told due to a low T-cell count or high viral load count with PCR test, you are at risk for AIDS, and that HIv is the cause … you need to first thing, look your doctor or AIDS org. counselor in the eye and say: I’m not taking the AZT, HAART, Protease Inhibitors, chemo poison drugs that are the main regimen for treatment and that will destroy my immune system and internal organs (depending on dosage and length of time on the meds). Nor will I be a guinea pig for any new untested drugs or vaccines. Nor will I take any drugs for HIv because HIv is not cytotoxic nor can it destroy my T-cells. Over 60 known diseases cross react with the unreliable Elisa or Western Blot type HIv tests giving false positives. Don’t believe the HIv=AIDS “death sentence”. Sources: Help For HIV and Living Without HIV Drugs.

2. If you are pregnant and test “positive” for the HIv antibodies (meaning your immune system has destroyed it and you’re actually HIv negative) or the PCR viral count/low T-cell farse, refuse the drugs vehemently. HIv in infants passes in 90% of cases. In the remaining cases it really doesn’t matter as HIv can do nothing being a non-cytotoxic retrovirus and will likely soon be passed by healthy immune system. AZT drugs cause many different birth/developmental defects! Retroviruses cannot destroy the cells they infect. Long known in virology. See African Treatment Information Group (a PDF)

3. If you are a gay male, stop having unprotected sex especially if promiscuous because multiple std’s and then resistance to antibiotics cause immune suppression. And possible immune destruction if in combination with this you are doing poppers, I.V. drugs, meth, heroin etc……heavily. And not getting sleep. Foreign proteins from sperm that may enter through torn anal lining are more serious as this may be a causation of autoimmunity where the immune system attacks itself.

4. If you are a hemophiliac getting blood transfusions, know that HIv is a retrovirus, cannot cause anything and that you are more at risk of foreign proteins or other real viruses in donor blood reacting in your body and overwhelming your immune system. You need to be extra ambitious in taking care of your immune system. Don’t buy into HIv.

5. For all; Stop all heavy drug use as in I.V.drugs like heroin, meth, cocaine. Limit marijuana and also alcohol, and take care of your immune system with regular exercise, laughter, lots of water, avoiding stress, avoiding refined sugars, flour, cut down or quit dairy, and get as close to vegetarian diet (i.e. raw foods, organic) as possible. Stop worrying about HIv. Personally I will never worry about HIv testing again. In 1st world nations supposed HIv infecteds live long healthy lives without AZT or any HIv drugs.

That’s it. I’ve just cured American, European and other 1st world nation “AIDS!” You’re welcome.

AIDS in Africa, Distinguishing Fact from Fiction (a PDF)
African and other similar circumstance countries with many poor living in squalid, unsanitary, overcrowded slum conditions with rampant malnutrition, unsanitary water, parasitical disease and lack of access to health care …well we all know their fate. Because no one cares about them. UNAIDS, WHO and CDC can however count their deaths and diseases as AIDS by their own permission and rules, without HIv.

No wonder we’re fooled into believing that they are dying of AIDS. It is indifference they are really dying of. And all the old diseases and conditions of developing poor countries, now categorized as AIDS cases or deaths. All of UNAIDS, CDC and WHO HIv/AIDS case numbers are projections that never develop into real numbers. Or outright lies. Death by HIv caused AIDS is a lie.

What Killed Makgatho Mandela?
Did Nelson Mandela’s son really die of AIDS?

AZT -Shouldn’t we ask, why give a drug that mimics the symptoms of a “probable” causation HIv, that you’re trying to cure with same drug? I know the answer:

Glaxo Wellcome puts the following warning in large, bold-faced, capital letters at the start of the section in the 1999 Physician’s Desk Reference that describes AZT (referred to under the name Retrovir or Zidovudine).

“RETROVIR (ZIDOVUDINE) MAY BE ASSOCIATED WITH SEVERE HEMATOLOGIC TOXICITY INCLUDING GRANULOCYTOPENIA AND SEVERE ANEMIA PARTICULARLY IN PATIENTS WITH ADVANCED HIV DISEASE (SEE WARNINGS). PROLONGED USE OF RETROVIR HAS ALSO BEEN ASSOCIATED WITH WITH SYMPTOMATIC MYOPATHY SIMILAR TO THAT PRODUCED BY HUMAN IMMUNODEFICIENCY VIRUS.”

An earlier version of the Physician’s Desk Reference, published in 1992 made the connection even clearer:

“It is often difficult to distinguish adverse events possibly associated with Zidovudine administration from underlying signs of HIV disease or intercurrent illness.”

Happy World AID$ Day !!

The Tao of Marie

Cousin It Derek
I read yesterday’s post and decided that I’d had too much turkey, too much tryptophan actually, to have sufficient mental clarity to properly opine on the divine. Today I possess mental acuity thanks, in part, to the fact I have yet to break my overnight fast. The turkey omelet must wait while I wax philosophic for a spell.

Scientists search, a bit like pigs after truffles, for cures to heal us. Doctors prescribe drugs to relieve us. Cosmetic manufacturers create creams and gels and shampoos to give us a healthy glow. Dieticians create programs to slim us down, bulk us up, bolster our energy, keep us young. Mostly they make us poor and depress us. The diet industry alone took in more than $50 billion last year but has, get this, a 95% failure rate! What the hell? Why aren’t these people in jail?

If the divine can be bothered to dwell within us, doesn’t it make sense that all we seek might possibly reside there too? Why do we allow lesser mortals to define our highest and best? If the path to enlightenment is one we walk alone, the road to self-actualization is simply the other lane. The time spent hunting for essential oils would be better spent looking for the essential self.

I cannot, for a minute, separate my physical, mental, emotional and spiritual selves and still feel a sense of well-being and balance. Perhaps I am particularly sensitive in this area. Perhaps the essential “I” is a tightly-woven braid that feels mussed at the slightest breeze. Actually, I think the popularity of Bo Derek’s terrible movie 10 was a collective recognition of our inner corn rows. Perhaps you are pig tails or a pony tail or a big tangled mane. Perhaps you can stand in the midst of a cyclone and feel unruffled and focused. Maybe you even enjoy the wind in your hair because, after all, it is still hair no matter the form. But a braid does not have this luxury.

I am not mentally healthy when I am not physically sound. My thoughts scatter, if I can be bothered to think at all. To me, a rational and precise thinker, this does not feel right, or safe. I am emotionally fragile when I don’t have the support of my other strands. When I can’t think clearly, or I don’t feel physically healthy, I am a mess. Once, only once, I had what, in retrospect, was a migraine headache. I laid face down on the couch and sobbed, aloud, until it went away.

I am a hairy wisp of a girl in every way. Only when I am integrated can I feel the power of my inner braid. As if this necessary tidiness wasn’t difficult enough to maintain, there seems to be a power struggle within my strands. The physical strand determines the hairstyle. This is not a rational choice that I have made. It seems to have little to do with my conscious self. But from experience I know that if the physical strand feels powerful and centered, I am free to play with the other strands.

Psychologists have affirmed that this is the case for many. The physical is the lowest rung on Maslow’s ladder. It is primitive. A beast that must be pacified. Woe to the other strands if the physical isn’t happy. Only when I am pregnant can I let my hair down, let the strands commingle, and still feel whole. Maybe it is because I am sharing my body with another human being in an vital way, maintaining health my highest purpose, that the physical knows its importance and loosens its grip on the other strands. Or maybe it’s hormones or other biochemicals manifesting their influence. They are, after all, the scrunchie of the essential I. Without their cooperation, there is no braid. And they know it.

Human beings are unique. We each have different power structures, styles, desires, needs. We’ve encountered different weather conditions and live in different climates. If we want to know what our particular hairstyle is, and how it’s faring these days, we don’t need to look at a magazine or a television or even at our friends and family. No, to ascertain the condition of the hairstyle, the true self, the essential I, we need only natural light and a hand-held mirror.

Disasters in Mexico

Mexico was hit by the worst natural disaster in its history this last Halloween when rains flooded 80% of Tabasco state. Villahermosa, the second most populous Mexican city after Merida in Southern Mexico went under water, when its poorly maintained levee system failed much like what happened in New Orleans. See video of aftermath, and video of flooded Villahermosa from air.

A few dollars ‘saved’, and billions lost, all through government corruption. But there is another disaster due to hit Mexico soon, and it is called ‘Plan Merida’. This is a deal negotiated in secret between the US controlled Mexican puppet government of Felipe Calderon, and the Bush White House. Their plan is to further militarize Mexican society in copy cat form with what is occurring in the US.

The further militarization of Mexico is to be done under the guise of fighting drugs and drug cartels. What we can expect in the years ahead, is a Mexico with more Swat Teams, more army control over civilian society, more crime and danger to the average Mexican citizen, more drug traffic, and less rights for all. This is a mirror of what the US public can expect under ‘Homeland Security’.

Mexicans and Anglos have a common struggle together. It is a struggle against an encroaching police state of international dimension. It may well be that the ongoing militarization of Mexico by the US, may dwarf any natural disasters such as occured with the flooding of Tabasco.

Militarizing society everywhere

America’s ‘War on Drugs’ is creating disaster across the planet. This week it came home to my neighborhood, as the Colorado Springs police closed down a whole block on Madison Street, of all places, to do its Swat Team training. Helped in this endeavor by the local Jewish Synagogue, who loaned them a house to use, about 20 cops, 5 dog terrorists, and 12 pig mobiles wasted the afternoon away playing with their toys.

Switch now to a new Brazilian film, Tropa de Elite, that shows how this nonsense plays out in the poor neighborhoods of that great South American country, as the very same militarized policing units act as death squads, all in the name of ‘fighting drugs’.

Switch to Afghanistan where a US occupation army pretends to be fighting the spread of opium.

Switch to Colombia, where the US death squads pretend to be fighting cocaine.

It’s time to get the police out of all our neighborhoods, cut the Pentagon down to size, and fight the expansion of Fort Carson into yet more of SE Colorado. Aren’t you tired of them militarizing society everywhere?

Killing poorer immigrants the US way

Here’s how it works. The US pays the Mexican government to wall off Mexico’s southern borders to keep immigrants out. It helps militarize Mexico, too, and it can be called the ‘War on Drugs’.

But in reality it’s a war on immigrants even more. Let them die! That’s official US immigration policy. The latest poor folk murdered by US immigration policy

The Berlin Wall of the Americas

Security fence barrier wall intended to keep people from crossing
Is this the Berlin Wall? Is it the Israel-Palestine Apartheid Barrier? Is it the Security Fence being erected along the southern US border? Are we looking at it from the outside or the inside? Does this wall block entry or exit?
 
Consider the news that activists ne-plus-ultra Medea Benjamin and Ann Wright were just denied entry/exit to Canada, where there’s not even a wall.

Security walls imprison people, no matter which side. Walls separate us from higher paying jobs on the other side, or lower cost drugs [on the other side]. Walls divide to conquer. Walls/fences frustrate us that our grass is insufficiently green. No one, especially US Americans, should be applauding walls. This one twice the height of the wall in Berlin. We are building our prison nation. Welcome to East Germany. I believe you have already met the Stasi.

Sub-Contracting the War on Terror

Not enough looting from the idiotically labeled ‘War on Terror’? Lockheed, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon are 3 out of 5 companies to be getting $15,000,000,000 of our taxpayer money to ‘fight drugs’.

Hey, we were just protesting at Academy Blvd.and Fountain these 3 outfits last week on 9/11! See US DOD to outsource $15B War…

Blackwater will be part of that, too! Amazing! and lookout! They just may shoot you down, drugs or no drugs.

Tasers in the hands of human nature


I happened upon videos of cops tasering arrestees. Gruesome scenes of obvious sadistic indulgence. Sometimes prolonged and repeated.

While the taser has become a popular tool for the police to deal with uncooperative subjects, it’s hard not to see pure sadism in the guise of standard operating procedure. The police bark their orders (usually, “put your hands behind your back”) and give a warning about using the taser. If still no compliance, zap.

Rather, ZAAAAAAAAAAP. Then the officer repeats his instruction. If the subject is still dealing with the pain, or is disoriented by having fallen, or cannot register the policeman’s command, no matter, ZAAAP again. More howls, more uncomprehending, ZAAAP, ZAAAP, until the officer deems it safe enough to sit on the subject and pull the subject’s hands behind the back himself to apply the handcuffs.

Try laying stomach down on your bed and raising your arms to clasp your hands behind your back. Of course you can do it, but it’s very easy to feel like you cannot. Imagine if you are recovering from the pain of the electroshock, or you’re bruised from hitting the ground, or perhaps you are disoriented from alcohol, as in many of the cases.

While tasers do appear to be reducing our peace officers’ exposure to physical contact with suspected criminals, did we mean to remove the human, humane element of their task? We didn’t hire robots for the job, for example. We probably intended, and we pay police accordingly, to exercise some elbow grease.

The job description for a police officer must include apprehending suspected lawbreakers humanely. We don’t authorize them to shoot suspects or drive Mack trucks into them, even if some law-enforcement researcher was to discover a non-lethal way that could be done.

With tasers, aren’t we touching on the abrogation of the right to due process under law? A person is innocent until proven guilty, we all know that, but it applies here because a person suspected of a crime must not be punished before their day in court. Police maintain that the taser is not a means of punishment, but instead is a non-lethal method to induce compliance with recalcitrant subjects. Putting aside the already numerous taser fatalities, the taser would have to be non-painful as well to comply with the 14th Amendment. Viewing the videos, it’s plain to see that tasers are excruciatingly painful and are being used by policemen as torture devices. Even to threaten to use the device is torture. Torture and the threat of torture is banned by international convention.

I must admit a cynical enjoyment of some of these taser videos. The large majority of subjects not cooperating with the police are drunk. In these videos, they were pulled over for drunk driving or for a domestic disturbance influenced by alcohol. I sympathize with the officers who cannot get through to those people, especially when they are derisive and combative.

The drunks try to avoid the commands they’re given using tactics of delay or distract or abuse. Of course, how much responsibility should they bear for behavior not entirely under their own control? When tasered a drunk writhes in pain like everyone else, but you wonder if he will have any memory of it later. Perhaps this plays a part in an officer’s thinking. The drunk, lost in a chemical state, is suspected of jeopardizing the safety of others, but can be judged on the spot for trying the officer’s patience, the taser becomes a means of instant payback. Traditionally, excessive force would have served this function, but at least the policeman would have had to weigh his interest in exerting the effort. The taser makes it too easy to make the wrong decision.

I wouldn’t trust myself with a taser, I’m too jaded. I already lament the social plague that is alcoholism. There are of course many root problems which our society needs to address. But so also, the alcoholic’s behavior is sometimes vehemently proclaimed to be voluntary. Our having to deal with the adversity and endangerment which alcoholics bring is too often not voluntary. In these videos, I take a vicarious pleasure in stopping that drunk. As long as drunks want to subject the rest of us to their drunkenness, and won’t show contrition until morning, we’ll want to indulge our equal and opposite discomfort and Zap ’em.

Addiction

Food, drink, drugs, sex, love. The hedonist’s playthings. But when does pleasure become addiction? When does not-quite-enough become too much? I’ll tell you. When you become double-minded about the pursuit. When you know that what you seek is not what you really want. When you’d rather be free, but you find yourself enslaved. When you act against your better judgment, for whatever reason.
 
Time to change. Reclaim power and peace of mind. Move on.

Stealing daddy’s spotlight…and mommy’s pills

Ready to be happy?
This morning, catching up on the goings-on after a week in blazing hot and muggy Mexico, I read on CNN.com that Al Gore III was arrested recently on charges of possessing — in addition to marijuana — Vicodin, Xanax, Valium and Adderall. Oh my! The article pointed out that prescription drug use is becoming more prevalent among the young than even good ol’ pot.

Prescription drug abuse is particularly common among upper middle class students, according to Lisa Jack, a clinical psychologist at Augsburg College in Minneapolis, Minnesota. “It just goes to show that where you’re from doesn’t matter,” Jack said. (I hope she isn’t speaking geographically).

The article goes on to admonish parents to lock our medicine chests so that vulnerable offspring will be adequately protected from evil.

Okay, done. But it seems to me that a better question would be, “Why are upper middle class bathrooms filled with an array of pretty-colored mood-altering pills in the first place?”

Welcome to the world of the upper middle class housewife. We take Adderall (basically speed) to get through the morning rush and the long list of daily chores. Valium (a tranquilizer) around 3 p.m. to take off the remaining Adderall edge and get through the afternoon kid activities with a smile. Xanax before stressed-out husband walks through the door assessing performance and demanding moral support and a lovely dinner.

After the kids are safely tucked in, Vicodin (an opioid) gives the same buzz as the 2 or 3 glasses of wine that we used to be able to handle easily, but which now lead to belly fat which, face it, is not only unsightly but downright unhealthy.

What the young ones apparently haven’t discovered yet is that Ambien at bedtime puts one into a nice dreamless coma that lasts until the alarm bell goes off and the cycle begins again.

I bet that you wish you could be-e-e half as lucky as me-e-e.

Posted by Marie Walden on July 08, 2007 at 01:44 PM

Comfortably Numb

lights on
Sitting in a puffy leather Barca-lounger, jacked full of Valium and Demerol, God Doctor enters the room. He squats down so that we are at eye level, introduces himself (as if I don’t know who he is..I’ve driven to Denver three times so far to see him), stares into my nearly blind eyes and says, “Did you take something or are your pupils always this huge?” Even in my half-drugged state I had the presence of mind to say, “I took a handful of ‘ludes before the surgery; I hope that was okay.” He stands up without a word and walks out of the room.

Shit. Here it comes. We are so sorry, Ms. Walden, but we can’t do your surgery. You are destined to stumble around, squinting, creating giant furrows in your brow that even Botox can’t touch, ignoring friends and family waving at you, generating hurt feelings and animosity everywhere you go. People! I am not unfriendly (okay, sometimes I am, but only to stupid and/or boring people and for that I won’t apologize). I am blind! I don’t see you. If I did….I might wave back. I really really might.

Fortunately, within moments, in comes a cute Asian scrub nurse in a blue surgical hair thing (I am wearing one too…which, I must say, totally proves my point that sexiness is very very very related to hair…more on this later). She takes me into a room, puts me under a huge frightening contraption which is going to make a completely computerized laser cut on my oh-so-thin cornea. THIS is the new technology. In the past, the corneal flap has been created by a blade and has been the source of nearly every resultant complication of laser surgery. The actual corneal correction has been done by laser. The cut…by a BLADE….like skinning a squirrel. This new technology is so precise….they are talking microns….MICRONS. Three MOTHER FUCKING MICRONS. Me likey the precision.

After this first step, I am nearly blind. Kind over-sized women gently guide me to another dark room, put me on yet another comfortable chaise, pillow under my knees so there is no pressure on my lower back. Let the correction begin! Here’s where it gets a bit sci-fi. A soothing voice narrates as I am experiencing Laserium…on drugs…like at CU-Boulder back in the day.

You will see a green light within a white circle ….. Is there anybody out there? ..Try to focus on the green light even when it disappears… There is no pain you are receiving ……Then you will see flashing red lights…..A distant ship floats on the horizon……..Try to focus on the red light. It will appear to move, but that is an illusion…..You are only coming through in waves……Very very good, Marie…halfway there……Your lips move, but I can’t hear what you say…..Now you will see a series of dots…keep looking straight ahead…very good, Marie….When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse….Almost there, Marie. Keep looking straight ahead….Out of the corner of my eye.…Very very good. Now we will move to the next eye…I tried to look but it was gone…Marie, shift your shoulders a little to the left….I cannot put my finger on.…Very good, Marie…now focus on the green light again… a child is born, the dream is gone….We are done…you can relax now, Marie….I have become comfortably numb.

Within minutes of beginning, I am back in my Barca-lounger, drinking Gatorade, feeling no pain. Cute Asian nurse comes in…sees me with my wild blond hair everywhere and says, “Oh! I didn’t think you would look like that!” I have no idea what any of this means…maybe she thought my features were so average that I should have a June Cleaver haircut…..can’t really contemplate the comment but I still think it proves that hair is an important part of a woman’s appearance.

Okay…so I am 2 days out. 20/20…..I got glasses in second grade…have struggled with vision my whole life. Have been told by countless opthamologists that I’m not a candidate……Thin corneas, large pupils, astigmatism, poor vision.

If anyone out there is similarly afflicted, Dr. Jon Dishler in Denver….he brought this technology to Colorado…he holds patents on many treatments…..He is internationally known for Intra-Lasik. Usually $4600 for both eyes…through August…because of his 25th anniversity….$3000 for both.

I am not his marketing gal…he doesn’t even know my name…I just know the struggles that I’ve had…and if you have complicated vision, or you know someone who does….let me share this gift with you. I am COMPLETELY AMAZED. And happy as heck.

The OAS under Bush

‘Orgies on the negotiating table’ by Colombian death squad leaders is in the news in Latin America.

A pretty picture of what the Organization of American States (OAS) located in Washington DC has actually deteriorated to, since they sponsored and secured the area where these criminals partied. And think that the US and its allies have a tough-on-crime attitude? How about a monthly $200 pension for death squad members who lay down their knives and stop dismembering peasants and other poor folk with?

Isn’t that nice? All part of the so-called War on Drugs, otherwise know as the daddy of the so-called ‘War Against Terrorism’.

See also, Colombia’s Civil War and the US

Clinton’s Colombian death squads are now seen as the American-fed bad boys they are

While Monica was sucking on Slick’s dick, all seemed to be going well for Clinton’s war against the Colombian people. Americans were lapping up the official US governmental rhetoric that the US was engaged in a war against drugs and not a counter insurgency operation against the poorest of the poor. Lies, lies, lies, and these lies helped set the stage for yet more lies about other countries and US terror operations there. Drugs and WOMD. Death Squad Scandal Circles Closer to Colombia’s President

Let’s hope it also circles closer to the US presidency, too, since it certainly should. And further, too, that the scandal eventually circles to the House and Senate that authorized these US crimes still largely hidden away from the American public.