Is the Museum of Nature and Science gathering health data for insurers?

Posted on July 26, 2009 by Eric Verlo

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?

You had a good home but You Left (You’re Right!)

Posted on July 9, 2009 by Brother Jonah

Your Recruiter LIED to you so you Left (You’re Right!) Classic Basic Training marching cadence chant.
You’re all supposed to be “in step” because if you have a single person planting his left foot forward while everybody else is planting the Right, a Column Left or a To the rear, March! command or any other won’t work out correctly.
If The Military is such a good career move, why would the Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo and others have to donate the proceeds to “Military Charities”?

Go on Craigslist and in Barter and Free classifications, and Rants & Raves you find military families, especially right before payday, begging for FOOD. Food which is subsidized at the Commissary, the Post Exchange and the Base Exchange.

And, these families, they’re not kidding. They actually ARE hurting.

But the Recruiters still Lie through their teeth. Daily.

They even have special programs TARGET-ing poorer kids, Minorities…

In Hispanic and Black neighborhoods the recruiter drives around in a “tricked-out” Hummer with a sound system blaring Hip-hop, the recruiter himself is going to be Ethnically Matched to the neighborhood or barrio, and a younger guy, and even with that will be TRAINED in Street Talk as though it were a foreign dialect.

Are they foolin’ the 18 year olds (17 and dropped out of school if yo’ Momma signs you in)? Apparently not. They give out their pamphlets to pre-teens.

Recruiting Children for a Later Date With Death.

For the 17 and 18 year olds, they break out the Economic Opportunity and the closely related Educational Opportunity bullshit.

But then, the U.S.O., Red Cross, Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo… they come right along and spoil the lie. Because those organizations have to scramble to raise funds, beg a little less obviously…

But the Recruiter Lies are spoiled only if the kids see or hear or read something like this.

All y’all young dudes who want to sign up, try this first… when you turn 16 and can legally do it, volunteer at the VA hospital.

Hang back a little, don’t crowd, let the Human Misery speak for itself. And the humans who are suffering that misery. Go around emptying the wastebaskets and dry-mopping the floor in the waiting rooms, listen to the guys and ladies talking to each other, listen to their stories about how the VA is screwing them.

Volunteer at the U.S.O. and there are others, fill out forms for the guys and Ladies.

See people and talk to them and try your best to help them when the VA screws them.

When a guy is dying from a service related cancer like you get with Agent Orange or from the Uranium Poisoning, that the VA officially denies even exists, try to help him get his basic medical needs tended to.

Volunteer to read or sing to the guys in a Persistent Vegetative Coma. Or the guys who can’t communicate, can’t see, but are conscious under the bandages.

Keep in mind when you’re doing it that some of these guys are laying there with half their body mass taken off by American fire.

Then when you see the Recruiter rolling through the ‘hood jamming some tunes…

See all the young kids flocking around eager to be part of the next Children’s Crusade…

Eager to be lied to, eager to be seduced into the Glorious War.

Listen to the commercials again, watch with fresh eyes as they Army/Navy/Air Force/Marines tell the parents of kids too young to legally join on their own to go ahead and sign the papers for their sons and daughters.

Telling young guys who are dropping out of High School that somehow the Army is going to pull off a magic trick that will get them into College and a highly paid profession.

Because you KNOW, don’t you, that if Yo Momma is signing you in, that means you’re not 18 and there’s very little chance that you completed High School.

And that those commercials are aimed at the guys who are having trouble in school and about to drop out anyway.

When the Recruiter rolls through the ‘hood blasting the jams, walk up to him and tell him, in front of his intended victims, that he’s a damned liar. Print this up and make your OWN pamphlets.

I’m not saying commit acts of violence against him, or vandalism.

That perpetuates the Hate cycle and nothing more.

Even though it would be entertaining to watch one get dragged out of his tricked out Liar-Mobile and having a case of Advanced Whoopage liberally applied, don’t do it.

Confront Hate with Hate and everybody loses. Confront the Hate and the Lies with truth.

It’s our only weapon, and it’s more effective than all their bombs, and guns, and Air-shows, and “see how many chinups you can do” demonstrations, all their pamphlets and commercials and their Tricked Out Humvee can ever be.

You know how I can tell? Because they’re having so much trouble trying to recruit people that they’re going after the young kids now.

The kids are getting smarter and asking more questions. The Army loses. Too bad, so sad. They shouldn’t be trying to convince Kids to go and kill for the “super-patriots” so the “super-patriots” can make money off their lives, and deaths, and the lives and deaths of those people whose countries are being stolen for their resources.

The “super-patriots” who like Bush and Cheney and Wolfowicz and Limbaugh and O’Reilly, aren’t going to enlist and when they had to do so, they had their parents buy their way out of the Draft.

They expect YOU to die for THEIR comfort and riches. And pay you so little for it that your families will literally have to Beg in order to survive.

Addict, pederast dies, much fanfare

Posted on June 29, 2009 by Eric Verlo

But let’s look past the innuendo and unproven transgressions, to celebrate the man’s contribution to the cannon of Western popular music product. Please!

I hear celebrities dismiss the allegations of Michael Jackson’s pedophilia like too much water under the bridge, which would be true I suppose, if Jackson’s victims were more like John Wayne Gacy’s, buried under Neverland, instead of tucked into San Fernando Valley homes, divvying multimillion-dollar payoffs with their enterprising panderer parents. Will the confidentiality clauses stand between the public ever knowing which pederast was the more prolific? That innuended, I do concur those bottoms were small fry compared to Jackson’s true sick imprint on America.

The Michael Jackson TM projected a perversion of role models. Not even a cynical anti-hero, the self-crowned King of Pop was the nul-idol. Jackson rejected his skin color, his sexuality, even his place of belonging among mortals. Other than pathos for the sick dance-cyborg who never had a childhood, what humanity did Jackson share to communicate? To be fair, it wasn’t Jackson who kept the spotlight trained on his black/white Icarus act, foisting the unnatural deception that man can soar with a single glove.

Now dead, Jocko is heralded as among the greatest. But MJ was an internationally recognized poster child for enfeebled humanity, a glorified counter-renaissance man, resembling a human being like a drag queen pretends femininity. He may have channeled vinyl High Fructose Corn Syrup like no other, walking backward while dancing and such, but worth what legacy exactly? Jackson shares the ignobless of the Big Mac, the Lucky Strike cigarette, and DDT. Iconic and good riddance.

Michael Jackson did nothing for black emancipation, or acceptance of homosexuals, or the plight of the children of poverty. The vast majority of the world’s children are “robbed of their childhoods,” you narcissistic rich dumb-ass, and that didn’t stop you from amassing your vast fortune at their expense.

Jackson probably did more to amplify the phobia against pedophiles, the single minority he did incarnate, by denying the preponderance of indicators, by vilifying his accusers, instead of taking his riches to Dubai right from the start, to show the world into what true debauchers wet their willies.

He might even have championed sympathy for plastic surgery binge-purgers, but he lied about that worm-hole until his nose literally fell off. I remember when Jackson made public appearances in surgery masks, feeding the fiction that he was a germophobe. Meanwhile everyone in Hollywood knew from their own rhinoplasties about the actual face-saving purpose of those masks.

Perversely, it was Jackson’s least aberrant eccentricity that killed him. Drugs. Even as TV viewers watch Jackson’s body pass from helicopter to ambulance, over a red carpet no less, Big Pharma makes sure that the talking heads refer to Jackson’s narcotics as “pain-killers.” Jocko was in constant pain, apparently, like Rush Limbaugh and all overachievers etc, hence their susceptibility to addiction. You’d think the alibi would eventually defy credulity.

Prescription drugs circulate among the well-to-do, with the same ease with which the rich have access to good lawyers. The difference between street and medical drugs is that no one cares about the heroin or crack addict’s “pain.”

All the celebrities speaking in tribute to Michael Jackson want to minimize the ugliness Jacko paraded, even, and especially his drug habit. Some who profess to have been close friends express their utter shock at Jackson’s passing, at his frail condition and the magnitude of his drug use. How close could they have been?! Or how culpable are they still on Big Pharma’s not-yet-upped jig?

Jackson was the King of Sick Culture. His collaborator eulogizers are its second tier whores. What contemptible shills, who’ve got theirs, behind their Beverly Hills gates and their own golden narcotics tickets. Even at the premature passing of a unique creative soul, due without question to drug abuse, his peers don’t want to aggravate the corporate forces which continue to pervert the human social animal to beyond self-recognition.

Kenneth Lewis’s Bank of America!

Posted on May 6, 2009 by Tony Logan

kenneth lewis panhandling You know until this week, I don’t think I had ever known about the US government’s ‘stress test’. You probably have never heard of such a thing either, and might have a picture in your head of Alan Greenspan, shirt off, walking rapidly on a treadmill at Dr. Sam’s office? Put the guy on Lopid for God’s Sake! Or is that Lowbid? These medicines have such cutesy names, don’t they!

However, it is Kenneth Lewis’s Bank of America that needs some medicine (and not Alan), and about $34 BILLION of it! That’s a lot of money and I just know the economy is doing great now! Bank of America to need $34 billion in capital: source

Gosh! That’s a lot of money and I wonder where they will get it? Kenneth for some reason is no longer with the firm, so he can’t help out. And Lord knows that I have helped out BOA enough already, though when I went over my account by 2 cents to the red they left me with a $120 bill and a bad credit report, so I guess my money is no longer welcome with these nice people?

So where will they at Bank of America get the money from for their medical bills after failing their stress test? We have a strange Medical System in America it seems… Wonder how my heart is doing? Got no insurance for one of those government stress tests. Maybe BOA’s rich uncle can help the company out?

Virus H1N1 Pig Pork Ham Hog Swine Flu

Posted on May 5, 2009 by Eric Verlo

MSNBC- Apparently “some importers don’t understand … you can’t catch Swine Flu from eating pork.” The perky MSNBC duo ridiculed China for banning pork from the US and Canada, but their guest expert interjected another priority: the correct term was “H1N1 virus,” not Swine Flu. Everyone agreed the distinction could quell international hysteria against the falsely accused.

Interesting that Health Officials should “STRESS THAT YOU CAN’T GET SWINE FLU FROM EATING PORK.” We need Health Officials to STRESS how to avoid Swine Flu, not where to avoid avoiding it. Leave it to the pork industry which brewed the swill, up from which Swine Flu had wafted, to clear their pork by-product for public consumption.

The Contessa Brewer & Melissa Francis Sweet Valley Twins act lets MSNBC set up contrived incredulity which consultants can confirm within the context of otherwise false assumptions. “Swine Flu has nothing to do with pigs, right? I mean, pigs don’t catch it, right?”

Neither Brewer nor Francis can be as dumb as they pretend. One graduated Magna Cum Laud, the other is a Harvard alumni. You might welcome an everywoman chattiness on a daytime news presentation, but playing to a lower denominator means that corporate spokesmen can relay their talking points without scrutiny.

On this program, the twin debs were perplexed by the apparent overreaction of Hong Kong officials, who quarantined a hotel, a vestage, it was determined, from their difficult experience with SARS. The MSNBC guest expert offered a further helpful obfuscation: medical researchers still don’t understand how SARS spread between hotel guests.

Thus, international scrutiny of hog production was greeted with an incurious derision. This has nothing to do with the pigs, right?

And you don’t get malaria from pools of standing water. Mosquitoes spread malaria and dengue fever among many tropical diseases. We can probably guess that Brewer, Francis and guest know that malaria control efforts center on mosquito breeding grounds.

But the guest kept up the ridicule of swine-focused measures. Egypt was trying to slaughter pigs which it considered vulnerable to the pandemic, how unfair. The expert wasn’t addressing the probable unfairness of the farmers targeted by the Egyptian government, the expert was speaking up for the poor hogs who would be slaughtered in vain. I may have mistaken a lament for lost pork chops, sooner than empathy for the misjudged pigs, but the latter seemed illogical. The poor hogs otherwise what future exactly, beside imminent slaughter?

UCSB Hillel students Rebecca Joseph, Tova Hausman highlight poor education

Posted on May 1, 2009 by Eric Verlo

Today’s university campuses have to deal with College Republicans, ACTA and NeoMcCarthyists. The latest uneducable creeps shopped their leftist-professor- horror-story to the Anti-Defamation League, to brand their teacher’s criticism of Israel as “anti-Semitic.” UCSB senior Rebecca Joseph and junior Tova Hausman both took exception to Professor William Robinson’s Sociology Listserv email comparing Israel’s mop up operation in Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto. Below are the words they cut and pasted together to accuse Robinson.

The literacy level of these two students is probably on par for Twilight fans, but definitely unbecoming for the University of California system. The first letter is reputedly from a college senior. Rebecca Joseph‘s opening argument was plagiarized from the internet, but she continues to scold Professor Robinson for straying from her idea of what makes a university professor. The second complaint from UCSB junior Tova Hausman copies the first letter’s form, but adds the accusation of sexual misconduct for leaving her feeling raped.

Is it unfair to put simple college students under national scrutiny like this? From their own words they show themselves to be rather helpless. But what to do when students, or some unscrupulous backers, are taking aim at a respected tenured professor? It’s serious business. Organizations like ACTA and Hillel are out to enforce a veritable Right Wing PC rectitude. As if it’s politically incorrect to make fun of uneducated on campus!

Keeping educators silenced was easier during the Bush administration, but the dampers are still on Academic Freedom. Ward Churchill may have won his case in court against the University of Colorado, but opinionated faculty are still few and far between. The latest attack against William Robinson attempts to reinforce more of the same.

Probably by now Hillel is wishing they’d coaxed a better educated pair of students to face off against Robinson. The administrators who received the complaint letters should have earmarked the girls for a remedial English refresher in anticipation of their graduation. But let’s look beyond the cheap shots.

The accusations inarticulated here are scurrilous where they are not outright illogical. You be the judge.

First Student Complaint
Here’s the first complaint received by UCSB, from Rebecca Joseph, Vice-president of the Santa Barbara campus Orthodox Jewish Chabad. Interestingly, UCSB has a number of pro-Israel action groups: Hillel, Jewish Awareness Movement on Campus, American Students for Israel, Stand With Us, AIPAC and the Israeli Palestinian Film Festival (which judging by the lineup runs films only by un-self-critical Israelis and sympathetic Palestinians).

Here is Rebecca Joseph’s complaint, uncorrected.

To Whom It May Concern:

On Monday, january 19, at 1:02 pm, I received an email from Professor Robinson for the course Sociology of Globalization (Soc 130SG). The subject of the email was “Parallel images of Nazis and Israelis.” This email compared the aggression of the Nazis to the Jews in Germany, to that which is going on between Palestine and Israel today. Professor Robinson wrote the first three paragraphs including the following: “Gaza is Israel’s Warsaw…” In addition to his few words, he attached an email describing the comparison which goes on to another attachment showing pictures to prove his point.

This email shocked me; before I did anything I gave him the benefit of the doubt and emailed him back asking, “I just wanted to know what this information was for? Is it for some assignment or just information that you put out there for us?” His response was “Rebecca, just for your interest….. I should have clarified.”

At this point I felt nauseous that a professor could use his power to send this email with his views attached, to each student in his class. To me this overstepped the boundaries of a professor and his conduct in a system of higher education. Due to this horrific email I had to drop the course. being a senior and needing any classes I could get, this left me in need of more classes which added more stress.

Two weeks later I saw a friend that was in the course with me and I asked him if it was ever brought up in class or discussed even for a brief minute or two, he responded by telling me that he never even mentioned it in class and that he too would have dropped the course, but he needed it to graduate on time.

Anti Semitism is considered to be hatred toward Jews –individually and as a group– that can be attributed to the Jewish religion and/or ethnicity. An important issue is the distinction between legitimate criticism of policies and practices of the State of Israel, and commentary that assumes an anti-Semitic character. The demonization of Israel, or vilification of Israeli leaders, sometimes through comparisons with Nazi leaders, and through the use of Nazi symbols to caricature them, indicates an anti-Semitic bias rather than a valid criticism of policy.

I found these parallel images intimidating, disgusting, and beyond a teacher role as an educator in the university system. I feel that something must be done so other students don’t have to go through the same intimidating, disgust I went through. I was asked to speak to him and get him to apologize but I feel that it will not make a difference for future students of his.

Whatever the outcome may be, I am hoping for some apology from Robinson, for not only my self and but for my peers in the class as well. In addition I would like to see more happen then just an apology because he has breached the University’s Code of Conduct for Professors and that this issue must be dealt with immediately.

In the Faculty Code of Conduct in Part II, Professional Responsibilities, Ethical Principles, and Unacceptable Faculty conduct, in Section A, Teaching and Students, it states that “The integrity of the faculty-student relationship is the foundation of the University’s educational mission. This relationship vests considerable trust in the faculty member, who, in turn, bears authority and accountability as mentor, educator, and evaluator.”

However Professor Robinson has turned away from his professional responsibilities through his “significant intrusion of material unrelated to the course.” (Part II, Section A, Number 1, b). He has also violated the universities policy by “participating in or deliberately abetting disruption, interference, or intimidation in the classroom,” (Part II, Section A, Number 5). Robinson has done so through this intimidating email which had pushed me to withdraw from this course and take another one.

In the University System professors above all, are to be “effective teachers and scholars,” Robinson has gone against his rights as a professor at the university through his, “unauthorized use of University resources or facilities on a significant scale for personal, commercial, political, or religious purposes,” (Section II, Section C, Number 3). Robinson used his university resources, to email each student in this course to get his view across, in doing so; he became a representation of the faculty members of the University of California Santa Barbara. The code of conduct state that, “faculty members have the same rights and obligations as all citizens. They are as free as other citizens to express their views and to participate in the political process of the community. When they act or speak in their personal and private capacities, they should avoid deliberately creating the impression that they represent the University.” By Robinson using his university email account he attaches his thoughts with that of the university and they become a single entity sharing the same ideas.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration of this matter and I am hoping to here [sic] back in the near future.

Thank you,

Rebecca Joseph

Second student complaint
The second letter, which cribs from the first obviously, was sent by UCSB junior Tova Hausman. At least she credits the US State Dept as the source of her definition of “anti-Semitism.” But Hausman adds the accusation of sexual impropriety, taking a page it seems from David Mamet’s Oleanna.

February 19, 2009

To whom it may concern,

My name is Tova Hausman, and I was enrolled in Professor William Robinson’s Sociology 130 SG course this Winter 2009. The course was called Social Globalization. Our class received an email in the second week of class, from the professor, called “Parallel images of Nazis and Israelis.” It discussed the parallel acts and images between Nazi Germany during World War II and the present day Israelis. He claims that what the Nazis did to the Jews during the war is parallel to what Israel is doing to Palestine right now. Professor Robinson clearly stated his anti Semitic political views in this email that were unjust and unsolicited. The department of states 2004 definition of anti-Semitism: Anti Semitism is considered to be hatred toward Jews –individually and as a group– that can be attributed to the Jewish religion and/or ethnicity. An important issue is the distinction between legitimate criticism of policies and practices of the State of Israel, and commentary that assumes an anti-Semitic character. The demonization of Israel, or vilification of Israeli leaders, sometimes through comparisons with Nazi leaders, and through the use of Nazi symbols to caricature them, indicates an anti-Semitic bias rather than a valid criticism of policy……

In all the years of schooling and higher education I have never experienced an abuse of an educator position. Taking the opportunity to disseminate personal political views through obtaining email addresses of the class roster that are only for academic use, show betrayal and complete abuse of powers by the professor. To hide behind a computer and send this provocative email shows poor judgment and perhaps a warped personality. The classroom and the forum of which higher education is presented needs to be safe and guarded so the rights of individuals are respected. handle

To express one’s political views is not necessarily wrong but here it was not relevant to the subject matter. How could one continue to participate in this professor’s class? The fact that the professor attached his views to the depiction of what my great grandparents and family experienced shows lack of sensitivity and awareness. What he did was criminal because he took my trust and invaded something that is very personal. I felt as if I have been violated by this professor. Yes I am aware of Anti-Semites, but to abuse this position in an environment of higher education where I always thought it to be safe, until now, is intimidating.

This professor should be stopped immediately from continuing to disseminate this information and be punished because his damage is irreversible. He abused his privilege to teach, to lead, and to mentor.

Bellow is a list of the faculty code of conduct in which I believe Professor Robinson violated:

Part I — Professional Rights of Faculty
2. the right to present controversial material relevant to a course of instruction.

Part II — Professional Responsibilities, Ethical Principles, and Unacceptable Faculty Conduct
A. Teaching and Student

The integrity of the faculty-student relationship is the foundation of the University’s educational mission. This relationship vests considerable trust in the faculty member, who, in turn, bears authority and accountability as mentor, educator, and evaluator. The unequal institutional power inherent in this relationship heighten the vulnerability of the student and the potential for coercion. The pedagogical relationship between faculty member and student must be protected from influences or activities that can interfere with learning consistent with the goals and ideals of the University. Whenever a faculty member is responsible for academic supervision of a student, a personal relationship between them of a romantic or sexual nature, even if consensual, is inappropriate. Any such relationship jeopardizes the integrity of the educational process.

1. Failure to meet the responsibilities of instruction, including:
(b) significant intrusion of material unrelated to the course;

2. Discrimination, including harassment, against a student on political grounds, or for reasons of race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, national origin, ancestry, marital status, medical condition, status as a covered veteran, or, within the limits imposed by law or University regulation, because of age or citizenship or for other arbitrary or personal reasons.

5. Participating in or deliberately abetting disruption, interference, or intimidation in the classroom.

Types of unacceptable conduct:

B. Scholarship
Violation of canons of intellectual honesty, such as research misconduct and/or intentional misappropriation of the writings, research, and findings of others.

C. University
3. Unauthorized use of University resources or facilities on a significant scale for personal, commercial, political, or religious purposes.

E. The Community Ethical Principles.
“Faculty members have the same rights and obligations as all citizens. They are as free as other citizens to express their views and to participate in the political processes of the community. When they act or speak in their personal and private capacities, they should avoid deliberately creating the impression that they represent the University.” (U.C. Academic Council Statement, 1971)

I expect this matter to be looked into and wish to be contacted soon.

Thank you,

Tova Hausman

Well let’s make a point to contact this McCarthy wannabe. These are crummy students fancying themselves campus sanitizers for Israel. What contemptible innuendo and vacuous indignation! The two students reportedly approached the Simon Wiesenthal Center, where they were advised to work through the Jewish Anti-Defamation League.

Letter sent from the ADL
Pressure then came from Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham Foxman who visited the campus in a covert meeting to recommend the immediate reprimand of Professor Robinson. (Foxman even had these words for the Gaza analysis offered by Bill Moyers.)

February 9, 2009

William I. Robinson
Professor of Sociology
Global and international Studies
Latin American and Iberian Studies
University of California – Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106

Dear Professor Robinson:

We have received complaints that on January 19, 2009, you sent an email to a number of your student entitled “parallel images of Nazis and Israelis.” If this allegation is true, ADL strongly condemns the views expressed in your email and urges you to unequivocally repudiate them.

While your writings are protected by the First Amendment and academic freedom, we rely upon our own rights to say that your comparisons of Nazis and Israelis were offensive, a historical and have crossed the line well beyond legitimate criticism of Israel.

In our view, no accurate comparison can be made between the complex Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the atrocities committed by the Nazis against the Jews. Nor can Israeli actions or policies be fairly characterized as acts of ethnic cleansing or genocide. Unlike the Holocaust (and to more recent examples of genocide and ethnic cleansing in Darfur, Rwanda and Kosovo), there is no Israeli ideology, policy or plan to persecute, exterminate or expel the Palestinian population — nor has there ever been. In direct contrast, the Nazis’ “final solution” to the “Jewish problem” was the deliberate, systematic and mechanized extermination of European Jewry. Hitler’s “final Solution” led to the calculated, premeditated murder of six million Jews and the destruction of thriving Jewish communities across Europe.

We also think it is important to note that the tone and extreme views presented in your email were intimidating to students and likely chilled thoughtful discussion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Clearly, that is antithetical to the very purpose of the academy. Finally, using your university email address to send out material that appears unrelated to your Globalization of Sociology course likely violates numerous parts of the University of Santa Barbara Faculty Code of Conduct (see, for example, Part I, 2; Part II, A, 1, b; Part II, C, 3; Part II, E, 1).

Again, ADL strongly condemns the views expressed in the January 19, 2009 email and we urge you to unequivocally repudiate them.

Sincerely,

Cynthia Silverman
Santa Barbara Regional Director
Anti-Defamation League

Cc:
Department Chair, Verta Dean
Chancellor, Henry T. Yang
President, Mark G. Yudof

$Martin Scharlemann, University of California at Santa Barbara$ Email from UCSB Charges Officer:
Instead of dismissing the dubious accusations, the school is convening an investigation. But not without impropriety on the part of the Charges Officer Martin Scharlemann. Prof. Scharlemann insisted that Robinson produce a written refutation BEFORE he would reveal the formal accusations leveled by the two students. Read the formidable exchanges at the website mounted by the UCSB students and faculty rallying to Robinson’s defense.

Charges Officer E-mail Re: Charges

Professor Robinson,

Responding to your memo of 3 April, here is a summary of the allegations:

* You, as professor of an academic course, sent to each student enrolled in that course a highly partisan email accompanied by lurid
photographs.

* The email was unexpected and without educational context.

* You offered no explanation of how the material related to the content of the course.

* You offered no avenue to discuss, nor encouraged any response, to the opinions and photographs included in the email.

* You directly told a student who inquired that the email was not connected to the course.

* As a result, two enrolled students were too distraught to continue with the course.

* The constellation of allegations listed above, if substantially true, may violate the Faculty Code of Conduct.

In the (”not exhaustive”) list of examples included with that Faculty Code of Conduct, the most proximate are part II, A. 1. b and A. 4.

On the other matters you raise, while my conversation with the students was confidential, I can tell you that I did not advise them to seek an “apology” from you. And yes, I did offer you an opportunity “if you wish” to provide a written response to the complaint before I met with the Charges Advisory Committee, which is solely vested with the authority to dismiss a complaint as frivolous and unfounded.

-Martin Scharlemann

And from the internets…
And let’s not overlook the attempts to initiate an email campaign to bring public pressure on UCSB to reprimand Professor Robinson. A commenter to this blog linked to a website advocating a form email to convey (our) universal indignation over the anti-Semitism at UCSB. The form letter is suggested by “anonymous” (possibly Alvin Black aka Dr. Mike) and he recommended signing it “Name withheld to protect privacy.” We reprint the opening and closing here:

Dear Chancellor Yang,

As I am sure you know, several months ago, Professor William I. Robinson, a self described “scholar -activist” and professor of Sociology and Global Studies at your university, forwarded an email to his students condemning Israel. The email contained images of Nazi atrocities along with images from Israel’s defensive campaign against Hamas’s terror. This comparison is considered by both the US State Dept and the European Union, in their working paper on anti-Semitism, to cross the line into anti-Semitism. This email was so disturbing to at least two students that they felt compelled to drop his class. Because of the nature of the emails, the Anti-Defamation League, as well as the UCSB Academic Senate’s Charges Committee have become involved.

[…etc…]

And thus the Arab world’s war against Israel becomes a nation-wide campus war against Jews.

Professor Robinson seems to have chosen to join the ranks of these “erstwhile defenders.”

I most sincerely urge you, therefore, to draw a line in the sand. The university should not be a promoter of Jew-hatred, nor an inciter of violence.

Sincerely yours,

Name withheld to protect privacy

Anonymity
Isn’t that what this post is about actually? We’ve aggregated the criticisms flying against Professor Robinson, but most notably this article seeks to expose the UCSB students who led the faceless attack against Professor Robinson.

Until the Los Angeles Times revealed their names today, the identities of both Joseph and Hausman had been concealed. Even the specific complaints they brought against Robinson were kept secret from the accused himself. Now, what kind of people insist on slandering others from the shadows?

At NMT, we make ourselves known, while many of our detractors do not. We could not care less, but if apologists for Israel’s crimes consider themselves in the right, why do they hide behind aliases?

If you support Israel’s “right to defend itself” by breaking international conventions and committing war crimes, stand up and say it. If you think Israel has every right to take the land of the Palestinians and keep it, Goddamn it come out from behind your creepy disguises and say it. If you’re going to impugn others for whatever false transgression, without the courage to reveal yourself, do you expect anyone to accord you credibility?

If you are going to condemn the Palestinians of Gaza for exercising their basic human right to resist an illegal foreign invasion and occupation of their land, you better have the nerve to say it publicly. Cowards.

Swine Flu alarm raised to nincompoop

Posted on April 29, 2009 by Eric Verlo

There it is, health crisis confirmed. Today the WHO raised the pandemic alert level to five. Confirmed cases of Swine Flu H1N1 have now spread to ten countries and our health is in the hands of idiots. Conniving idiots. This morning President Obama announced the dreaded first US fatality, but declined to reveal specifics out of a concern for patient confidentiality. Through the day we learned that the US death wasn’t exactly representative of an accelerated infection rate. In reality the Swine Flu victim was a Mexican 23-month-old who’d been brought to the US for treatment. However, when CDC director Dr. Richard Besser was interviewed for the evening news, the alarm theme turned once again on the virus’s escalation with the death of the American child in Texas.

Though so far the US victims have suffered only mild cases, the CDC concludes on 4/29/2009:

“The more recent illnesses and the reported death suggest that a pattern of more severe illness associated with this virus may be emerging in the U.S.”

I find it loathsome that Right Wing Nuts are pointing the finger at Mexican immigrants, and I’m in favor of our hospitals attempting to help whoever they can. But I don’t think it’s fair to pretend that someone afflicted in Mexico, who comes to the US, should be counted as an example of the Swine Flu having spread within the US.

Wasn’t Barack Obama supposed to herald the expunging of at least the facade of duplicity from our policy makers? We do not want to close the US-Mexico border, we say, because it’s already too late, implying concern for relations with Mexican nationals. But hasn’t the border permanently closed to them already? It’s fortified by Minutemen vigilantes in fact? No, leaving the border open has everything to do with the products which US corporations are now producing in Mexico, both agricultural and industrial.

I have to admit I’m not surprised at the lies, there are innumerable reasons to obfuscate the truth, from protecting the pork industry, to boosting shareholder investment in pharmaceutical stock. But I didn’t expect the charade to be so incompetent.

Dr. Besser went on to repeat the instructions with which we are meant to arm ourselves against the pandemic. Are you comforted any by the “duck and cover” advice they have to offer? What to do in the even of a pandemic: 1) wash your hands often, 2) cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze, 3) stay home if you feel sick –I’ll interrupt to point out the obvious, this is not advice for staying well, it’s advice for not contaminating others with what you have– and 4) stay away from sick people. Is that how the health experts make themselves useful?

And what sick people might those be?

The other farcical component to this Keystone Docs epidemic is what’s passing for a description of the “flu.” Black Plague victims didn’t know what they were up against, and apparently neither do we. To my mind it would help immeasurably to know what exactly is the ailment. Oh, you know, flu-like symptoms, basically like the common cold, or a headache or sore throat, or mono or strep or a nondescript uneasy feeling, with a fever. When it comes to defining the flu, it’s as if medical science is in the Dark Age.

I omitted the last instruction: 5) If you think you might be ill, see your doctor.

Now, how many of us have doctors we can see, or are prompted to visit a doctor about a headache or a sore throat? I’m convinced that if this epidemic sweeps through before we can even guard our sneezes, it will be because few have access to medical help. Infections will go largely unreported because there’s no one to make a record of your ailment before the issue is settled about what insurance coverage you have. In El Paso County, budget cutbacks have left only a skeleton crew at the county health department. No one’s left to do the work of surveying the public health in these parts.

That is to say, the only agencies with manpower left, and the only health care generally available to the American public, are the morgues. That’s where and when this pandemic will be charted, if it materializes.

Thanks to Tamiflu, we may just avert the phantom menace entirely.

DIME weaponry? Is this the Pentagon’s idea of a humanitarian weapon?

Posted on April 28, 2009 by Tony Logan

dime Dr. Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor who gave medical treatment to the wounded in Gaza when this Palestinian concentration camp was assaulted by the Israeli military, has an excellent interview recorded on Grit TV. Of great interest is where he discusses the Israeli-Pentagon use of DIME weaponry during that conflict, within the first few moments of this video report. He posits the idea that DIME is somehow seen as being a ‘humanitarian’ weapon of choice by the Pentagon? Check it out and see why he believes that is what they actually think? Dr. Mads Gilbert: A Physician in Gaza

Black Pirates meted Southern Justice

Posted on April 19, 2009 by Eric Verlo

Dutch NATO forces rescued 20 hostages off the coast of Africa last week without loss of life. They thwarted a pirate attack, confiscated the booty, but must release the captured pirates owing to International Maritime Law. Contrast this with American cowboy rules of engagement.

Several US Navy warships faced a solitary lifeboat on which three teenage Somali pirated held hostage Maersk Alabama captain Richard Phillips. The covered lifeboat remained tethered to the stern of one of the Navy ships while negotiations, we’re told, progressed.

Going into day three, before the American TV audience could lose interest, US Navy Seals rescued the captive Phillips at a cost of a 100% casualty rate to the pirates. Although the DoD did not initially want to reveal its anti-pirate tactics, spokesmen have admitted that the “daring rescue” was in effect three precisely-simultaneous sniper shots to the heads of the three captors. The fourth pirate already having been entrusted to the US ship’s custody for medical care. The captain freed, the wounded pirate’s collateral was thus gone, and his grant of safe-passage was rescinded.

The official story is that US infrared imagery revealed that the American captive’s life was in danger. One of the pirates was holding a gun to his head, and this act prompted the snipers to intervene. Negotiations, apparently, were not proving fruitful. I’m guessing that this account reflects the exact opposite of what happened. The navy snipers had been holding their fire until the moment Captain Phillip was NOT in a pirate’s crosshairs.

Although the Somali pirates were just teens, I bet they knew from brutal experience, what most of us know from violent television, that holding your gun to a hostage’s head is the only way to prevent your rivals from gunning you down. Trapped in a lifeboat, the pirates knew that high powered US weaponry would be trained upon each of their heat silhouettes. The moment their captive was not in the predicted trajectory of the crossfire, nor threatened by a collateral death-spasm squeeze of a trigger, the pirates would be toast.

The rescue operation began with a greater-than-three number of US snipers aiming weapons at the little boat. The more the better, to assure that at every instant, complicated by the rocking and turning of the lifeboat in the waves, at least one sniper could claim one pirate, without the hostage laying vulnerable to leeward bullets. The images in the sniper scopes were wired to a director’s console, where the determination could be made when all three targets were spoken for, and the order could be given to fire. The last hurdle remained for the pirate who held his gun on the hostage to drop his guard for just an instant, lest he squeeze off a round into the hostage. Wanna bet that’s what happened?

Great marksmanship, no question. Plenty of training no doubt. We can take nothing away from the heroism shown in braving responsibility for jeopardizing Captain Phillip’s life. It is probably also a common law enforcement strategy. Although that doesn’t make it legal.

Unless the US Navy releases the targeting footage, we are unlikely to confirm the true sequence of events. But where the pirate’s gun was pointing makes a difference. The Navy is explaining that it acted because Phillips’ life was at stake. Otherwise, shooting people who are not shooting at you is considered underhanded.

The Dutch navy forces bay have bellyached that they had to turn loose their captured pirates, instead of leaving them imprisoned somewhere, but the Dutch had seized them in Somali waters, where the pirates operate as their nation’s only Coast Guard. The Dutch NATO commandos prevented an attack, and liberated the detainees being held by the de-facto Somali border agents, and their directive ended there.

The US on the other hand, executed three “Somali Pirates,” regardless the varying degree of culpability the individuals might have had.

Without a day in court, that’s extra-judicial murder. If you consider these were three African youths, it looks like a lynching.

Let’s take note, by whose account to we know what happened out on the high seas? Do we know even that these were pirates? Says who? I am simply playing devil’s advocate. Do we know these four youth weren’t stowaways? Perhaps they had been Shanghaied and attempted an escape via the Maersk Alabama’s lifeboat. Do we know what happened really? That’s what courts are there to decide.

Everything the American TV audience knows is from the mouths of the US military. What do we know? These youths might have been human-trafficking cargo, en route to or from war zones. They might have broken free, running straight into the Maersk’s convenient cover story that all inconvenient incidences can be labeled pirate attacks. Have we anybody’s word who has not been lying to us about war crimes everywhere, about the use of torture, about the true magnitude of renditions and secret prisons?

These black youths might just as well have been the captive sex slaves of the porky white contractor mercenaries who were planning to kill them while in the act of buggering them, but the damn Negroes slipped free. So the Navy Seals had to come play cleaner to the embarrassing mess. I exaggerate to emphasize: what the fuck do YOU know?!

“This is how the USA handles pirates” was basically our statement. Americans stateside cheered and grabbed their dicks. But overseas, and on the seas, the sentiment is much more wary. The US Navy has escalated the war on piracy. Now the rules of engagement for both sides is going to be shoot first, ask questions later.

Are the Somalis quaking in their pirate boots? When the news hit about what the Navy Seals did, the self-styled privateers of the Somali Coast redoubled their attacks on foreign ship traffic.

Diabetic care in America is a total mess

Posted on April 17, 2009 by Tony Logan

insulin injection Diabetics skimp on lifesaving care in recession *Note, too, that how diabetes is treated in the US is a key indicator of how the Medical System as a whole is doing since diabetes is now such a common disease of aging. The system as is is actually a total failure as this Denver Post article underlines.

So how’s ‘National Security’ really going with all that money going for soldiers and hardly none of it going to help pay for the American people’s needed medical supplies and treatments?

The New England Journal of Bloodshed Analysis

Posted on April 17, 2009 by Tony Logan

teaching hospital American ‘medical science’ is something special! Can you imagine Attila the Hun or Napoleon Bonaparte or even Adolph Hitler with these scientific minded docs that The American Empire has?

‘Doctor, is it OK if I flood this man’s nose with water for 1.2 seconds more? How about 0.6 seconds more?’

And even the opposition to this scientifically directed violence seems compelled to respond with more ‘science’ of its own. See The Weapons That Kill Civilians — Deaths of Children and Noncombatants in Iraq, 2003–2008, a study done by The New England Journal of Bloodshed Analysis.

Hot Dog!

Posted on April 10, 2009 by Tony Logan

harry the dirty dog The swearing in of the White House Dog is upon us, as the ever vigilant American press reports that Obama’s dog may debut Tuesday! Unfortunately the President has decided to pick a Portuguese water dog simply because it has a cute and ‘IN’ brand name.

My entire family is certainly deeply depressed about this as we had expected that our very own Colorado Peace Dog, Dirty Harriet, would have made a much better pick, and WOULD HAVE BEEN PICKED, if Dennis Kucinich had only become President instead of the fake imitation liberal the DNC gave us on the sly. A peace dog was considered way too radical by Joe Biden to ever be allowed into the White House, so Dirty Harriet never got interviewed for the post.

At least, let us hope that the new dog is not executed like Hillary eventually did with Socks, the Cat. Though, before Socks died he did get much better medical care than Americans ever did out of the Clinton family. Unfortunately, Socks was no longer able to deliver the proper image for Hillary and so ‘had to be put to sleep’, as the expression goes. He was shedded, in other words.

We have no report yet about whether the Obama family will be getting any official aquarium fish, mice, gerbils, or hamsters? So we must sill wait with baited breath for any sign that other animals will be anointed by Barack, or not?

PETA officials say it is way too early to tell still, and are encouraging the Royal Family to release all chickens, pigs, cows, and frogs as a gesture of goodwill as they consider the animal world and their position about wild and domestic life. If not, they are planning to throw a shoe full of animal blood at the President at the earliest possible opportunity, though the woman doing it will be extremely sexy.

This also will be used as a test to find out if the policy on torture use has been changed any at all, or whether it has all been merely cosmetic words, by the now, not so New, Administration? Good luck, PETA. And good luck, Thanksgiving turkeys.

(NO PETA member was used or harmed in the writing of this report) Please write and let us know how you feel about the selection of the Portuguese water dog for executive dog. A good pick? Or a bad one?

The Medical Clinic is closed; Obama’s Afghan War is ongoing

Posted on April 7, 2009 by Tony Logan

Sicko Bush

Nevada just closed down all access to oncology care for the uninsured in the state. Meanwhile the money keeps pouring into the Pentagon to occupy other countries, wage war without end, and to murder and maim whomever the President so desires. But where will Americans get the health care they need? See 60 Minutes- The Clinic is Closed

Driving Miss McIntosh

Posted on March 20, 2009 by Eric Verlo

DENVER- At first the testimony from a CU committee member who voted to dismiss Ward Churchill seemed utterly damning. Dr. Marjorie McIntosh, retired Distinguished Professor of history, gave her testimony by video because she would be lecturing in England at the time of the Churchill v CU trial. She came across like a wise elder, her scolding kind and maternal. She had me convinced that Ward should be sent to his room, but for an indelible pallor that began to infect her testimony as the retired professor grew tired under scrutiny. And like the history of 14th Century England which was her specialization, it became inescapably evident that Marjorie McIntosh was very, very white.

At face value, Dr. McIntosh’s quiet authoritative demeanor seemed beyond reproach, expressing as she did her support for Ward Churchill’s right to speak. McIntosh described how her father was a dean at U of M who reputedly stood up to Senator McCarthy. She explained her initial reluctance to be party to a Right Wing attempt to “get” Professor Churchill. At first Ms. McIntosh seemed as earnest as your own grandmother, if your grandmother was also a well spoken distinguished academic.

But the cracks in Ms. McIntosh’s maternal concern showed themselves even before the plaintiff’s cross-examination. When Professor McIntosh described herself as “fair and impartial,” it was in contrast, she offered, to Professor Churchill for example, who she understands may not be impartial or neutral.

Partiality
Under cross-examination McIntosh went further. To paraphrase: “Professor Curchill is not a trained historian, he has an MA, he is a scholar who writes on historical subjects. He presents himself as a specialist, but he does not have that training.”

By contrast we are meant to infer, McIntosh is a Distinguished Professor, rewarded for having had a “national impact” on scholarship, and having produced work which has “directed” consequential research.

Questioned about the significance of tenure, McIntosh described the rigorous qualifications which she met. But with a smile she would not vouch for a uniformity of high standards at CU, since, obviously… She held her tongue as if too polite to say it: Ward Churchill was a glaring example of the opposite.

A second indication of Dr. McIntosh’s personal bias might be suggested by how she characterized committee chairwoman Mimi Wesson’s perceived personal agenda: Did she detect any bias on the committee, in particular with Wesson? McIntosh saw no evidence of bias, and she thought Wesson treated Professor Churchill with great respect, both in his presence and after. McIntosh was impressed by Wesson’s professionalism.

Another of McIntosh’s responses hints at a further insincerity. She and her SCRUM colleagues were tasked with investigating one allegation each made against Churchill. McIntosh was “foot soldier” for the Madan Indian Ft Clark episode. Discrepancies in Churchill’s account had been brought to the university’s attention by Arizona professor Lavall, a rival of Churchill’s in the American Indian Movement. McIntosh was asked whether she knew that Lavall’s allegations had been raised six years before being addressed by her committee. Perhaps to dodge the accusation that the timing of their inquest was more related to Churchill’s 9/11 essay, McIntosh replied that she did not know. After of course, delivering the findings of what she presented as an exhaustive review of all available evidence.

Allegation A
Allegation A held that Churchill falsified an account of the 1837 small pox outbreak in North Dakota. McIntosh was charged with verifying Churchill’s claims (1) that small pox was deliberately spread by the US Army using blankets, (2) that said blankets were dispensed from a St Louis small pox infirmary, (3) that the infected Indians were ordered to scatter, (4) that a vaccination was deliberately kept from the indians, and (5) that the dead numbered upwards 400,000.

According to Lavall and the CU committee, Churchill was held to have been negligent in citing sources. While Churchill countered that his accounts came from oral tradition, much of it commonly known, McIntosh encountered none.

While McIntosh concedes that she does shares no heritage with Native Americans, to perhaps have grown up with oral accounts, but she argues that Churchill is similarly neither from the tribal lines from which he would have heard Mandan stories.

Did you give Professor Churchill the benefit of the doubt? Dr. McIntosh was asked?

“I would say we gave him a great big benefit of the doubt” McIntosh replied. Her research found no oral tradition of small pox evidence. “We could have stopped there and found him guilty of fabrication and falsification.” Instead the committee magnanimously contacted Churchill to ask for further evidence. They were surprised when he produced conflicting sources. Most surprising, McIntosh condescended, was not getting a straight-forward answer from Professor Churchill.

McIntosh summarized the generally accepted narrative of the 1837 epidemic: Every summer a fur trading company working along the Missouri River, sent a steamship north from St Louis, to the fortified trading posts lying along the river, at their furthest, 2000 miles north. Only once a year, the “Saint Peter” steamed upriver with trading goods to exchange for furs and hides, and with “annuities” which were gifts for Indian tribes who had signed a treaty with the government. A week into the 1837 voyage, one passenger was showing signs of an illness but the captain decided against forcing a disembarkation. By two weeks, everyone on the boat had contracted what was by then undeniably a small pox outbreak. As each of these travelers got off at the trading posts, small pox spread from every stop. The Mandan Indians lived 300 miles north of Ft Union, the furthest point of the steamboat. At least 90% of their number were killed. That much is undisputed.

About involvement of US soldiers, blankets, an infirmary, a vaccination withheld, and an order to scatter, Ms. McIntosh found absolutely no proof. She conceded that some accounts hint that the outbreak was intentional, a couple of accounts mention blankets. On this point the committee agreed the thesis could have been justified. But St Louis newspaper archives reveal no trace of an infirmary nor of a small pox outbreak. There were no medical records kept at the trading posts, nor even any medical staff. Etc.

And as to Churchill’s numbers… “Churchill cites 100,000, then 125,000, then 250,00 and now as many as 400,000.” Churchill attributes the figures to “as Professor Thornton suggests.” But according to McIntosh, Thornton never gave any numbers.

Disputing the numbers, the means, the details, reminds me of another pattern of denial.

Holocaust Denial
Is this not the very basis of Holocaust Denial? A perpetrator culture, commits a genocide, then quibbles with accusers by pointing to the paucity of evidence. It’s a mobster’s strategem. Leave no witnesses and there’s no one to tie you to a crime. A massacre thoroughly executed leaves no trace. History is written by the victors. The master narrative, in Western Heritage, has always had a white master.

Do I liken McIntosh to Jessica Tandy’s role in Driving Miss Daisy? If Tandy had quietly not transformed, but instead held tenaciously to her condescending racism. I would be loath to offend those courageous souls who labor to get to the truth about recorded history, but Holocaust Denial is about repudiating mankind’s evil deeds. Where evidence is sparse, because the perpetrators covered their tracks, others come along to cast doubt on the original crime. The details matter less than the crime. Here we have white man’s genocide against the Native Americans. All the details are in dispute. Held together, they deny the whole of what we can plainly see as the truth.

Asked if she was acquainted with Critical Race Theory, McIntosh replied she wasn’t. She professed uncertainty about even the tenure process for Ethnics Studies. She feels those kind of studies are emotional and partisan. Enlish history has debate too, but less resonance in people’s current lives.

Academic disciplines
Dr. McIntosh became combative when challenged about her proficiency with history from taken from oral tradition. In her later scholarship, Ms. McIntosh worked in contemporary Ugandan women’s studies. Oral sources build African history, but not in English history, where archival history preempts oral sources. We are left to question if McIntosh can reconcile how to incorporate oral accounts not from the present.

Was she coming at this subject with a bias? No, she’d never heard of the Mandan small pox epidemic.

Did anyone put pressure on her, to arrive at her findings? “In the first place, it didn’t occur to me that anyone would put pressure on me.” In discussing her apprehension about joining committee, Mcintosh “did not think the University would be critical of me.”

Service Connected Organic Brain Syndrome

Posted on March 19, 2009 by NMT

This email was sent to NMT, from a Rafael Diaz, recording an experience at the Lake City VA Medical Center. It’s an unusual chain email that doesn’t appear to ask anything from its recipient. We present it to our readers, unless directed to do something otherwise.

Rafael A. Díaz Nieves
Live Oak, Fl

SWORN STATEMENT
Friday, March 13, 2009

Wrongdoer:
Dr. James Kim, Psychiatrist
North Florida/South Georgia
Veterans Health System

Facility:
Lake City VA Medical Center

Dr James Kim has violated my HIPPA LAW rights and has endangered my life. While under his care in numerous occasions I have reminded him that I was his patient not my wife Edna Irizarry, I expressly said to him that I don’t want him talking anything about my treatment with her and anyone else. My privacy is my paramount, especially regarding my Mental Health care because of the stigma society gives to this matters. On the month of August 2005 I was prescribe Quetiapine Fumarte (generic name) of Seroquel. I tried this medication and informed Dr. Kim that I will not take this medication anymore because of the reaction I got from it. As soon I took it I went short of breath and felt like I was dying I was turning blue because I start breathing and had to force myself to breath. Thank god I just tried with a little peace like 1/8 of the pill and this reaction lasted about 2 hours. I remember this because in my entire life I have never reacted so violent to a medication. This turned out to be an allergic reaction to this medication.

In several occasions I communicated Dr. Kim that for some reasons the sleeping aid medication was not coming in to my home via mail and that I was buying over the counter sleeping aids. When I came to be under his care I was taking Dilanting to prevent the headaches that causes seizures on me and Fioricet without codeine because codeine gave me more headaches and Ambiance as needed to help me go to sleep when the pain is too hard. My compensation is for Service Connected Organic Brain Syndrome as secondary to Service Connected Posttraumatic Headaches.

I have told this to him in various occasions and in one time he answered me that after talking to my wife she explained him that my compensation was for bipolar disorders among other things. Immediately I told him that I was the patient and not she, and that I don’t want to have to prove myself to him. And we never talk about the subject again.

1- Dr. James Kim Violation of the HIPPA Law has been rampant, in my case. He had no right to discuss anything of my treatment with no one specially Mrs. Irizarry

2- Regarding the medication, once I said NO, he should have stopped prescribing it and using the US Postal Service to send that medication to my home. After requesting a copy of my treatment with him I discovered that as soon I informed Dr. Kim that the medication gave such violent reaction He appointed Mrs. Irizarry in charge of my medicate me without my knowledge and he had no right to do so. (Thank God Mrs. Irizarry have not decide to kill me at that time. I have found bottles full of this medication hiding all over the home.)

3- The fact that I was medicated against my will or knowledge cannot be denied. Do to the way Mrs. Irizarry used against me so many starts and withdrawals with this medication that had harmed my body. Now I have Diabetes Type 2 with Peripheral Neuropathy, Tardive Dyskenesia that makes me look like I have Parkinson’s disease. All of them well known side effects of Seroquel. Not even the state have the right to medicate a person without His/hers will without “Do Process”. But for some reason Dr. Kim and Mrs. Irizarry did.

4- After Mrs. Irizarry abandoned the home I have discovered various bottles of Quetiapine Fumarte or Seroquel, hidden in different parts of my house. My condition is that I have Traumatic Brain Syndrome or TBI that causes Migraine headaches, seizures and a Congestive problem that causes me to loose or forget things while in stress and that is the reason of my compensation. This medication kills people with TBI. One of the side effects of this medication is Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome and that is a fact. (Please find document with definitions and causes attached) especially people with TBI. It has come to light that Mrs. Irizarry has been trying to kill me in various occasions among other things. For this there are witnesses and one of the weapons Mrs. Irizarry has used is this medication. Because she knows the side effects and how dangerous are for me because her mother is a Pharmacist and the first time I took this medication she was one the persons I contacted and advise me and her daughter of the side effects and how dangerous it was specially for people with brain damage. Also at that time Mrs. Irizarry was going to College in order to become a nurse.

After reading my medical record I discover that Dr. Kim was adjusting the milligrams of this medication, without my knowledge. I don’t know with whom he was discussing this treatment. What I do know it was not with me because from the beginning I reject this treatment or medication. I have had episodes of MNS that are documented. This I discovered after requesting a copy of my medical records from Shands of Live Oak. One of the many occasions that I passed out since September 2007 an ambulance was called to my home and Mrs. Irizarry informed the paramedics that I was taking Quetiapine and that we were having problems and I did not know how to deal with them. (Nothing further from the truth for that you can ask Mr. William Nieves Social Worker at the Lake City VA medical Center) at the Hospital the ER DR ask me what medications I was taking and because in years I have not see any coming in via the US Mail in to my home, I said none. If I don’t know I am taking it.. How can I deny treatment?

5- On December 2008 I learn that Dr Kim was supposedly worried that I was delusional because one occasion he ask me about my family in Puerto Rico. And after I told him about them, things like my Uncle was the Comptroller of Puerto Rico that my Sister was a lawyer. He told me that my wife told him that that was the sort of thing I was inventing in my head. After I learn that I requested some family members I including my Uncle Manuel Diaz Saldaña Comptroller of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. (Please find copy of the letters attached as support of this complaint)

6- I have knowledge that recently Suwannee County Deputy Sheriff Robinson (386-362-2222) called Dr. Kim and that Dr Kim told him that I was schizophrenic and I was inventing all this. This was told to me by Robinson on the afternoon of March 12, 2009 at my residence. Now that Dr. Kim knows that he was deceived by Mrs. Irizarry he is trying to cover His crimes with this label. And that make him an accessory of Mrs. Irizarry crimes against me.

7- The first bottle of medication can be considered malpractice at best, but after the second bottle on and especially in conjunction with Mrs. Irizarry to give me the medication without my knowledge is irresponsible and criminal act of him and could had coasted me my life. I have found various bottles that should not have been sent to my address using the US POSTAL SERVICE specially knowing that Mrs. Irizarry will intercept them. These have been found by family and friends after Mrs. Irizarry abandon the home.

8- There is a matter of a letter that Mrs. Irizarry used in court to take custody of my children that appears to be a diagnostic and is sign by Dr. Kim. Mrs. Irizarry said that it was given to her by Dr. Kim but there is no record of such letter been requested by me that am his patient. I was granted custody of the children last year and with that letter that basically say that I am crazy they were taken from me. (Please find document attached)

9- I am alive by the Grace of God. But for the rest of my life I will have to deal with the Diabetes, Neuropathy and the Dyskinesia and that is not right. I don’t deserve this. Dr. James Kim has violated my privacy, HIPPA Law Rights, My trust and above of all put my life in grave danger of getting kill by Mrs. Irizarry using the medication that he provided her.

10- Without knowledge of the circumstances that are happening in my home. The domestic violence that I have endure, since September 2007, at the hands of Mrs. Irizarry. And the violence that my children were exposed at the hands of Mrs. Irizarry. He has stated that the children are in danger with me and talk to DCF about me. There are witness of the battery and abuse the children and me have endured trying to deal with her. First he should have not volunteer medical information without my knowledge and second he had no right to interfere in my personal life. I am the one that was taking care of the children since they were born and especially after Mrs. Irizarry start disappearing for days and weeks and not let anyone know where she were.

11- I am been force by this situation to abandon the house and lose everything I have including the home. Because he, validated the crimes of Mrs. Irizarry against me. I am been treated less than human and I have to endure the humiliation of been stigmatized by Mrs. Irizarry with the help of Dr. Kim. I am been deny entrance to public buildings and now because of the information he volunteer been humiliated by the law enforcement community in more than one occasion. (Please find sworn statement about one of those incidents)

On February 13 2009 at about 1:30 P.M. I, Rafael Angel Diaz Nieves of 9677 105 Dr Live Oak, Fl. 32060 went to the FDLE office located on 815 North Ohio Avenue Live Oak, FL 32064, as instructed by a Suwannee County Deputy Sherriff. The FDLE office has an intercom at the entrance. I proceeded to press the button and announce my name as instructed by the sign posted. The office has a glass door. The receptionist waved at me and walk to the door to grant me entrance to the building when all of the sudden she stopped about 2 feet from the door and then she turned around and rapidly disappear behind a wall behind the reception desk. Then I saw another woman (second person) that also waved at me and walked towards the door and she also turned around and hid in the same area. When I saw what happened got closer to the glass door. Then I saw an Special Agent Robert M. Shotwell whose office is in the front area of the building and with whom I have met before, trying to hide behind a diagonal wall. As he was trying to hide, I saw him making gestures to the other two women to not let me in.. It was very sunny and I stood there for more than ten minutes and pressed the button a few times more because I knew there were people inside the building and close to the reception. No one opened the door to let me in. No one came to explain why they would not open the door to me.

I stood underneath the hot Florida sun for more than 10 minutes and they would not open the door to me. I had to leave without being attended. My entrance was denied. I had no choice but to leave. As I was driving away I saw a white person enter the building trough the same entrance and to the same offices I was denied access. I am the only the only Puerto Rican who’s also a 100% disable US Veteran in Live Oak. These are facts known by the Special Agent I have talked to before and was making denigrating gestures about me. This is the first time in my life I have been denied access to a public building. That day I was humiliated, discriminated and abused by Special Agent Robert M. Shotwell and the employees of the FDLE. I have been mortified since that day; I still feel the humiliation and cannot believe what happened, but it did happened. The whole event made me feel less than human.

20% of returning GIs have brain injuries

Posted on March 11, 2009 by Brother Jonah

Notice that the Pentagon doctors are putting a Pentagon spin on it that, basically, it’s a GOOD THING… because it provides them with a whole army full of Guinea Pigs and Laboratory Rats, for researching better treatments.

(Brigadier General) Sutton said that, as in previous wars, the research and other work being done by the military will eventually benefit the civilian world. Whether the injuries occur while people ride bicycles, play football, skateboard or ski, “we know that this is an issue across the country,” she said.

Which is Bullshit.

The Army likes to trot out that about all the medical and technical advances during a war… Without Noting… that those same techniques and technologies could be attained WITHOUT a war, and would probably cost a lot less money and Especially Human Lives to accomplish it.

Promoting war by saying that it gives life, through new medical breakthroughs… My my my my my my….

March 05, 2009
Associated Press

WASHINGTON – The number of U.S. troops who have suffered wartime brain injuries may be as high as 360,000 and could cast more attention on such injuries among civilians, Defense Department doctors said Wednesday.

The estimate of the number injured – the vast majority of them suffering concussions – represents 20 percent of the roughly 1.8 million men and women who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, where blast injuries are common from roadside bombs and other explosives, the doctors said.

The estimate came in a Pentagon news conference on activities planned this month to bring attention to brain injuries. The doctors said the number could be as low as 180,000, based on estimates that between 10 percent and 20 percent of troops might have received such injuries.

The previous high estimate offered publicly was 320,000 in a study released a year ago by the private Rand Corp. It was based on about 1.6 million who had done tours of duty in the wars from late 2001.

Though so-called “traumatic” brain injury can range from a mild form such as concussions to severe forms with penetrating head wounds, officials said the majority of injuries among troops are the mild form.

The overwhelming majority heal – and heal without treatment – but an estimated 45,000 to 90,000 troops have suffered more severe and lasting symptoms, said Brig. Gen. Loree Sutton, the head of the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury.

The Army alone spent $242 million last year for staff, facilities and programs to serve troops with brain injuries, said Lt. Col. Lynne M. Lowe of the Army surgeon general’s office.

Sutton said that, as in previous wars, the research and other work being done by the military will eventually benefit the civilian world. Whether the injuries occur while people ride bicycles, play football, skateboard or ski, “we know that this is an issue across the country,” she said.

“In the past … it was difficult to get this on the radar screen,” said Dr. James Kelly, director of the National Intrepid Center for brain injuries and psychological health. “Brain injury was not recognized as a problem … of any consequence and was, especially in the sports community, often dismissed or trivialized.”

“I think that now you’re seeing it being taken very seriously,” Kelly said. “The wartime experience has been a big part of that.”

Posted in Perspective | Tagged Afghanistan, Army, Bicycles, BOA, bombs, Borat, CIA, Civilians, Community, Conference, Cult, Defense, Department, doctor, doctors, EPA, Explosives, Football, GIs, Headlines, Health, IRA, Iraq, March, Medical, Military, Money, Pentagon, pigs, PLO, Psycho, Research, spin, Sport, study, Surge, TB, The Nation, Traumatic Brain Injury, troops, U.S., US war, Washington, Wednesday | 2 Replies

Quality DysControl Syndrome

Posted on March 7, 2009 by Tony Logan

Reply

Quality DysControl Syndrome is what dominates our economic activity though it wasn’t supposed to be this way according to Big Business. They said self regulation was best but we can easily define Quality DysControl Syndrome as being the exact polar opposite of Quality Control, which is only produced from external regulations being enforced.

Regulations like meat examinations to make sure that there is no trichinosis in the pork, e-coli in the beef and so on. Regulations that routinely put chlorine and fluoride in the tap water, and make sure that raw sewage or mercury is not just dumped off into the lakes, or that brakes don’t routinely fail on cars due to poor quality of raw materials or poor design of the product, etc. If you don’t have regulations in place you most often get Quality DysControl Syndrome. That’ what we got in most cases.

Why is there so much Quality DysControl Syndrome and so little Quality Control in our economic life? The answer is easy to see and is simple. Quality Control costs much more upfront than lack of Quality Control ever does. However, Quality DysControl Syndrome eventually costs so very much more over the long run, but unfortunately for society, those additional costs can be hidden and then later passed on far away from the original point of production.

See dyscontrol syndrome, the medical definition. Our society suffers from business dyscontrol syndrome.

Posted in Perspective | Tagged Beef, Big Business, Business, Cars, Chino, E-coli, Meat, Medical, Mercury, Origin, Quality control, Quality DysControl Syndrome, RAW, regulations, Rome, Sewage, tap water, Water | Leave a reply

I found this looking for something else. (About Mayor Rivera)

Posted on March 7, 2009 by Brother Jonah

2

I couldn’t embed it but here’s the link to the video.

I was looking for something that came up in the inevitable angry political discussion on the City Bus yesterday.

Actually, nobody was angry with or against each other.

We’re all just a little teensy tiny itty bitty small bit P.O.’d about the “Lower Class” being bought and sold like so many hummm… what’s that Minor Piece in a chess game, you know, the ones that always get sacrificed to save or capture a Chessman of higher rank, oh yeah… Pawns…

But it seems Our Illustrious Mayor has once again applied his own foot to his own mouth…

On the subject of cutting bus routes.

The bus in question is to one of the medical districts.

Which is getting a large percentage of Budgetary axe.

The other parties to the conversation were a retired lady and a lady who makes her living as a Teacher.

The Mayor, allegedly (but, for some strange reason, I believe every syllable of it) His Dis-Honor has made what he thought was an unrecorded remark that he doesn’t really care what bus passengers think because “The only people who ride the bus are bums and alcoholics”

This was supposed to be posted to YouTube after having been caught on a cell-phone camera.

I haven’t found it, YET.

Strangely, I have a lot of confidence that I will, and I don’t doubt for a moment that His Dis-Honor said that, simply because he has a long and rich history of making disparaging remarks about the Lower Classes, who, unlike himself, actually do the Labor that provides the wealth of Our Nation and more directly, his own Portfolio.

AND, about the soldiers who came back with pieces missing, both of body and mind, from the War of Conquest which benefits, directly, His Stock Portfolio.

One of the ladies, the schoolteacher, is blind. I had located the information she wanted on the Bus Route and schedule changes she had tried to ask the bus driver about.

The bus is the one she and the other lady use to go between their homes and, well, Everywhere Else.

I, as usual, was going to a doctor’s appointment.

One of the other bus Route Cancellation, 3 of them in fact, involve getting within a half-mile of Peak Vista Health Care, the El Paso County Health Department, and a Memorial Health Systems facility across Parkside Drive from Peak Vista.

In other words, facilities that serve the Disabled and Poor.

It’s not really a coincidence that those two groups merge at several points.

Also, in an entry into Jonah’s Museum of Spectacularly Bad Ideas, it seems the budget crunch was made an order of magnitude Worse by the reversal of the usual order of the Financial Universe,

Instead of issuing Municipal Bonds and having OTHER PEOPLE invest in the City, the City has been using Our Tax Money to ~~GAMBLE~~ errr… “invest” in the Stock Market, under the tutelage of Our Own Resident Pre-Chimpanzee Douglas Bruce.

The one who makes Les Freres Bush et menages look like Intellectual Giants by comparison.

I wonders, yes I does, if these Parasite Class Heroes bought, with our money, a whole bunch of those Mortgage Notes?

They could sue me for “Definition of Character” and if they win they would get everything I own.

At a net loss of the vast majority of the costs of hauling it away.

I guess they’re used to losing investments anyway.

There is much grumbling among the Working Class to the tune of a Recall Election to unseat these vermin.

As usual, Jonah speaks only for Jonah, but I think we should take that idea and run with it.

Posted in Perspective | Tagged Alcohol, ALF, Alleged, arks, Axe, Benefits, Bling, Bonds, Budget, Bush, character, CIA, Conquest, Department, Disabled, doctor, Douglas Bruce, El Paso, El Paso County, Election, EPA, Health, health care, heroes, History, Intel, Investment, mayor, Mayor Rivera, Medical, memorial, Money, Mortgage, Parasite Class, Paris, parks, reason, Recall, Rivera, Sacrifice, School, soldier, Soldiers, Stock market, Tax, Teens, Video, War of Conquest, Wealth, Working, working class, youtube | 2 Replies

Once again, the sick Catholic Church is in the news

Posted on February 27, 2009 by Tony Logan

3

The sick Catholic Church just never ceases to amaze! Italy is now embroiled in its very own Terry Schiavo case, and the Catholic Church is trying to bring murder charges against a father for allowing his brain dead daughter to finally die after 17 years passed in a vegetative state. Can you imagine people any more cruel than this? Despite the change in the Pope’s views about evolution, this Pope and this church seem to have less brains than a herd of spider monkeys does! Death probe for coma case father and see also…

‘At an emotional press conference on live TV, Premier Silvio Berlusconi vowed to save Englaro`s life. A law on living wills sparked by the Englaro case has started its way through parliament and the government hopes it will be passed by the summer. There is currently no legislation governing living wills in Italy. A living-will law passed by a conservative-dominated parliament would be extremely restrictive, observers say, although it could be open to charges of breaching the Italian Constitution. Berlusconi has said the law will “forbid any sort of euthanasia“. It would also prevent doctors from removing feeding tubes from people “unable to take care of themselves“, he said.’ from ELUANA FATHER PROBED FOR MURDER

It’s the Italian Catholic Church behind this semi-fascist Italian version of Dubya the chimp, Silvio Berlusconi, but this case is not the only one in the news this week that demonstrates the sick Catholic Church’s lunacy! Travel to Brazil and we see where the one half way sane priest in the Church get’s canned by his pedophile hiding archbishop this week! Do you think that the creepy Pope Rat will reverse this? Not a chance! He’s going to side with the pedophile hiding archbishop, that’s what! See Brazil priest suspended for views

…The BBC report doesn’t let you in on that this archbishop was in the news in 2002 for covering up for his pedophile priest under investigation who later got convicted despite his active opposition to the police’s investigation! Sick! And in contrast, the punished priest’s supposed crimes? He advocated that condoms be used during sex! And he had the nerve to say that homosexuals shouldn’t be discriminated against.

Here is the Archbishop now back when he was a mere bishop relatively unrewarded for his service to the Catholic Church hierarchy….

‘Brazil Fr. Sebastiao Luiz Tomaz 13 – Nineteen girls between the ages of 10 and 16 reported some type of sexual contact with the priest in exchange for clothes and money. Later the same year, Bishop Aldo Pagotto was denounced by the Public Ministry of Ceara for attempting to coerce this priest’s victims to change their testimony. By July 2002 21 victims had come forward, and nine claims had been proven with medical evidence.14’

from SEXUAL ABUSE & MISCONDUCT IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH Note though… This archbishop is a biggie in the movement to criminalize all abortions in Brazil, so Pope Rat certainly will be helping the archbishop out in his dispute with the liberal priest. Immoral people preaching morality to others… That’s the church! They make one want to vomit up Holy Wafers big time!

Posted in Perspective | Tagged Abortion, abortions, Abuse, ALF, Art, Asia, BBC, Berlusconi, Brazil, BSE, Catholic, Catholic Church, Catholic pedophiles, Condoms, Conference, Constitution, Contras, Crime, criminal, Death, doctor, doctors, euthanasia, Evidence, Evolution, Fascist, Forward, Gays, GIs, Government, Headlines, Holy Wafers, IAM, Italy, legislation, liberal, Medical, Money, Monkeys, Morality, Murder, police, Pope, Pope Rat, Pope Ratzinger, Rove, Schiavo, sex, Silvio Berlusconi, The Pope, Travel, War | 3 Replies

Costs rise with America’s ongoing ‘Health Care’ boondoggle

Posted on February 24, 2009 by Tony Logan

5

Costs up almost 10% in 2 years? Poor delivery of care, many uncovered at all, and yet the price is almost 2 1/2 trillion per year now? This is America, Land of White Collar Run-Away Crime. This simply is not the best health care system in the world and far from that. See U.S. health care spending reaches $2.4 trillion in ’08

All this profiteering off human suffering caused not just by disease and old aging, but a human economic system that rewards greed, callousness, and sheer theft! Public health has been dismantled, and the role of poverty in making disease proliferate everywhere totally ignored. And we have a tiered system of delivery where some get superior care, and others get next to none. America is a sick country with a sick system of delivery of Medical Care. And it is not getting any better. We’ve been lying down and playing dead. We’ve been dying… PERIOD… because we have accepted this atrocity without fighting enough against it. In fact, most have gone along with it without giving it even a single thought.

No need to call EMS for this sick system. It is already dead!

Posted in Perspective | Tagged America, Atrocity, Crime, Disease, FERA, Greed, Health, health care, Health Care System, Medical, medical care, Poverty, Profiteering, public health, Theft, U.S., US Health Care, War, White | 5 Replies

America’s biggest entitlement program is the Pentagon and Obama will cut Social Security before he will ever cut the military budget down to size

Posted on February 21, 2009 by Tony Logan

Reply

Obama is primed to carry his con game forward. Obama turns to budget, health care, entitlements …Notice how the military is missing? Why is that? The Pentagon simply is America’s biggest entitlement program and the biggest welfare program in the history of the Universe.

Obama has shown no desire other than to initiate a few cosmetic changes of the For Profit Medical System, while giving hundreds of billions to the banks and financial ponzi operators. With Social Security, he cannot keep it even as it currently is which is a program shot full of holes, if he is going to send more troops off to war and allow the bloated Pentagon Welfare Scam to continue as always. Watch out Social Security which there is little of to begin with. Do you feel socially secure now? If not, then join hundreds of millions of other Americans.

Posted in Perspective | Tagged America, American, Americans, Banks, Barack Obama, Budget, CIA, entitlement programs, entitlements, Forward, Health, health care, History, Medical, medical system, Military, Military budget, Obama, Opera, Pentagon, Reds, scam, Security, Social Security, troops, War, welfare | Leave a reply

The Democrats ‘stimulus’ package aggravates the economic disaster instead of fixing it

Posted on February 10, 2009 by Tony Logan

Reply

……. It really is too much to see all those liberals getting on the Republicans’ case for their opposition to the Democratic Party’s economic ‘bailout’ plans. Barack’s giveaways to the rich corporate sectors do not alleviate the economic collapse but just pile on to it. So do liberals really want to be left holding the bag and later get blamed by the Republicans for helping pass these government give outs to all the wrong folk built on increasing the Federal debt?

Donkeys have never been so dumb as these American ones seem intent on being! True, Liberals have never been much more than just marginally smarter than the Conservatives are in the US and we’re seeing that in how they have been suckered into supporting an entirely conservative response to the unfolding worldwide disaster now being advocated by their supposed modern day Abraham Lincoln liberal liberator, Barack Obama. However….a real economic rescue plan for Americans would have to be built on several key ingredients, and Barack Obama has used and dealt with none of them.

1) Startup of a new single payer medical system that takes the insurance companies, the hospital and nursing home chains, and the medical equipment/ pharmaceutical companies right out of the control box they presently enjoy, and sets the patient and community into the driving seat where they have always belonged.

2) Nationalizing bankrupt financial institutions and companies in key areas of production (banks, automobile industries, energy companies that pollute, steel, vital medical institutions, major retail outlets that are going under like Circuit City, etc.) and encouraging workers control (unionization).

3) Increasing funding of Social Security programs of all kinds with an emphasis on doing away entirely with privatized retirement schemes that privilege some workers at the expense of others.

4) Instituting national equalization of funding and national Federal funding of the Educational System, and doing away with unequal privatized educational schemes and unequal local funding of education.

5) An immediate defunding of the bloated military-industrial welfare scheme centered on government contracts for the Pentagon’s toys.

When none of these key ingredients for a real economic restart of this country are approached by the Democratic Party-sunk American liberal community, you have a pure recipe for eventual political disaster, as the Republican Far Right will eventually move themselves back into position to retake political power in the White House once again. The Democratic Party truly is a gigantic sink hole that destroys all hope for real change ever being on the agenda, as long as liberals defend the package that is not defensible as being any sort of progress. Why be such gluttons for punishment, Liberals? You need to dump the entire idea of giving support to the Obama package, and sooner is much better than later when the damage will already be set in concrete and done.

Posted in Perspective | Tagged Abraham, Abraham Lincoln, America, American, Americans, Art, Bailout, bankrupt, Banks, Barack Obama, CIA, Circuit City, Collapse, Community, Conservatives, Corporate, Debt, Democratic Party, Democrats, DIA, Disaster, donkey, donkeys, Driving, Economic Bailout Plan, economic stimulus, Education, Energy, Far Right, Fun, Government, Hospital, Insurance, Left, liberal, Liberalism, liberals, Lincoln, Media, Medical, medical system, Military, nursing, Obama, Pentagon, poll, POW, power, Republic, Republican, Republicans, restart, Retirement, Security, single payer, Social Security, The Fed, Toys, trial, Troy, Union, welfare, White, White House, Workers | Leave a reply

Freezing the elderly to death in America

Posted on February 6, 2009 by Tony Logan

3

Most of us have heard about the 93-year-old man in Bay City, Michigan who had the utility company freeze him to death when they turned the power off. He had not paid his utility bill of $1,000 outstanding, but he had a will donating $600,000 to another corporation, the McLaren Health Care Corporation which controls the administration of the local hospital (Bay Regional Medical Center) near by.

Poor man. And here is the news that the national media did not report, and that is that this corporation that this poor gentleman donated his money to pays its CEO around $2,500,000 salary per year! That’s his picture up there.

Around 600 people per year freeze to death each Winter in the US, which is not too bad for a capitalist country when you consider that much smaller Hungary (another country with a capitalist government) loses almost the same number of poor each Winter, too. The info about that number is in this article about the man who just froze to death Michigan Investigates Freezing Death of 93-Year-Old The salary report of the hospital chain’s chief where his donation will go can be found here… Philip Incarnati, McLaren Health Care Corp., $2,391,269

Philip Incarnati may actually make much more than the figure quoted though? See Philip A. Incarnati Appointed to Theragenics Board of Directors

Notice the connections of CEO Incarnati to a whole bunch of locales other than just the simple looking hospital where poor frozen to death Marvin Schur donated that chunk of money, too? Philip Incarnati is just as much part of this story as the Utility Company is.

Do not be misled by these hospital chains that try to hide their real data, and try to make themselves look so saintly that one might want to actually trust them in to Biog money in your will perhaps? They are just not what they seem at all, and the way they treat the elderly in this country is obscene! Not even having $600,000 dollars was enough to save Marvin Schur.

That’s a picture of Philip Incarnati, CEO of McLaren Health Care Corporation… YES… He’s making a killing, but I’m sure he’s hoping that nobody will see this info about him and connect the lines together again for poor Marvin Schur! He did not donate to ‘a charity’ as was mistakenly reported by much of the press, but instead donated to a hospital run by McLaren Health Care Corporation! Marvin Schur leaves ‘everything’ to Bay Regional Corporate World posing as charity downs WW2 vet…

Posted in Perspective | Tagged America, ARN, Art, BOA, Capital, Charity, Corporate, Corporation, Death, DIA, Elderly, Gates, Government, Headlines, Health, health care, Hospital, Hungary, Killing, Marvin Schur, McLaren Heath Care Corporation, Media, Medical, Michigan, Money, Philip Incarnati, POW, power, The Nation, utilities, Winter | 3 Replies

Halls: a pep talk in every cough drop

Posted on February 5, 2009 by Eric Verlo

28

It’s a TV commercial to define our time! The new HALLS ad pictures an obese multiracial menial worker restocking a Wal-mart frozen food aisle. And she’s in ill health, and her only recourse for medical care is a piece of hard candy. But forget soothing medicinal relief, these days the “Halls of Medicine” promises a “pep talk in every drop.” In this TV spot, the encouragement comes from a drill sergeant with the bedside manner of a Post-911 blimp-neck who addresses her as “Shorty.” He yells into his squat patient/plebe’s face, who by her welcome response must also be a military reservist, urging, and I’ll paraphrase, to repress her symptoms and put on her “war face.” It may as well be a health insurance company pep talk repartee: suck it up.

Posted in Perspective | Tagged Advertizing, Art, candy, CIA, courage, EPA, Food, Full Metal Jacket, Halls, Health, health care, Health Insurance, Insurance, IRA, Media, Medical, medical care, Medicine, Military, Pot, Rap, relief, War | 28 Replies

Colorado’s collapsing Medical Care

Posted on February 1, 2009 by Tony Logan

Reply

The Denver Post ran an article this Sunday that paints a pretty sad picture of what’s going on in Health Care as the Obama Regime stands by. Health services in distress- Newly jobless seek aid in “astronomical” numbers

Health services being shut down even as demand goes up, as the economy is just not getting the job down for what people actually need! Meanwhile, Big Business run local, state, and federal government sits idly by watching the on rush of disaster without responding to it in any meaningful manner. This is Hurricane Katrina unfolding once again, but on a national scale and a scale of national corruption that dwarfs the mess that Bush made out of Southern Louisiana and Southern Mississippi. The levees have burst wide open, because the money was spent elsewhere rather than in reinforcement of these vital services. Where’s the CHANGE?

Posted in Perspective | Tagged Art, Big Business, Bush, Business, Colorado, Corruption, Denver, Denver Post, Disaster, distress, Doctor Kildare, Economy, Federal Government, Government, Health, health care, Katrina, Levees, Louisiana, Medical, medical care, medical crisis, Mississippi, Money, Obama, War | Leave a reply

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Tag Archives: Medical

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Freezing the elderly to death in America

Halls: a pep talk in every cough drop

Colorado’s collapsing Medical Care