*
I don't even know why this guy "friended" me. He's some sort of Democratic party apparatchik. But he sure got my juices flowing. Thanks, Jack!
(P.S. I assume this guy's going to "defriend" me before the night is over, as noted below, but I'm kind of sorry for it, since I was looking at his friends list and, wow!, he's linked to all kinds of big time poohbahs! But oh well, at least they will have seen my comments, if only fleetingly!! I wonder what ol' Bill Moyers thinks of me now!!! :-)
Jack's original link (to a video): While progressives are frustrated with Obama because of his willingness to modify bold initiatives in order to thread the needle of congressional passage, the resistance of those with vested interests in the existing system is a far greater drag on his agenda. So what do we do about it? George Lakey tells us...
Grimblebee: This is wishful thinking. Obama is no more "progressive" than my left foot. He has a "Democratic" majority in Congress, for pete's sake. If he wanted to lead, he could lead. But he doesn't. What makes you think he's any less in the pockets of the insurance companies than Congress is? In every issue of substance, Obama is no different from Bush. If "progressives" are "frustrated," it's because they are either fooled or fooling themselves.
Jack: I've been involved in politics since 1960, and if there's one thing I'm not, it's a wishful thinker. There is no progressive majority in Congress, so Obama has to pick his fights. Twenty craven Blue Dog Democrats in the House and a half-dozen in the Senate mean there is still a conservative majority in both those bodies. That's why industries like insurance still have clout on the Hill. Obama could no more have snapped his fingers and changed those realities than he could have jumped across the Grand Canyon. That he's succeeded in getting a half-a-loaf health care reform bill this far is half a miracle. What George Lakey is noting is that the system we have, grid-locked by special interests, has to be attacked with the same bottom-up organizing that marked the civil rights movement, without which Lyndon Johnson's civil rights legislation would have been still-borne. As for Obama, saying he's identical to Bush is absurd. He's talking with Iran (for which he is getting bashed by neo-cons on a daily basis); he's cooperating with advocates on climate change instead of pretending that the latter doesn't exist; his Justice Department has again started enforcing antitrust and anti-discrimination laws -- I could go on right across the sweep of the federal government and describe similar changes. And he's marginalized, inside the Beltway, foreign policy neo-cons. How do I know that? Because I hear their fury and squealing every day.
Grimblebee: And I could name Iraq and Afghanistan and torture and Guantanamo Bay and billions in giveaways to banks, insurance companies....What we have in the health care bill is not half a loaf, it's no loaf -- no, it's even worse than that, it's a poisoned loaf. Its main purpose is to funnel taxpayers' money to the insurance companies, and since the "public option" is a joke -- and states can take a pass on it if they want to anyway -- it will not bring costs down or even help insure the uninsured more than on the margins at best. www.powerofnarrative.blogspot.com strong medicine here if you dare read it, but I agree with everything he says.
And one additional point: Obama IS part of "the system" that George Leakey bemoans. Everything else is words.
Jack: We simply don't agree on the facts. I find your argument to be based mainly on beliefs and characterizations, rather than evidence.
Grimblebee: OK, Jack, Obama has said that he would close Guantanamo, but what has he done? Please provide EVIDENCE. I assume you think that he wants to do something "different" in Afghanistan, but he is contemplating placing 40,000 or thereabouts more troops there. Please show me EVIDENCE of some more progressive policy in that. He has not in any meaningful way changed the American presence in Iraq -- oh, right, I guess we "pulled back from the cities" or something like that, whatever that means. Please show me EVIDENCE that conditions in Iraq are any different than they were 12 months ago. Starting THREE DAYS into his term, Obama began slaughtering civilians in Pakistan with remote-controlled death machines, aka drones. Please explain to me, because Jack, I'm having a lot of trouble understanding it, how this is BETTER than anything GWB did -- and please, by all means, feel free to show me EVIDENCE. So far, despite his talk about "talking," Obama has continued to keep the rhetorical heat on Iran for its "nuclear weapons" program, which -- like the case for Iraq's, is based on nothing but hearsay -- but, hey, I'm sure you can show me EVIDENCE to the contrary. Warrantless surveillance? No problem, just show me the EVIDENCE that Obama has changed anything on that score. Or perhaps you have EVIDENCE up your sleeve that the Obama Administration did not just hand over a gazillion dollars to the banks and insurance companies -- so that they could turn around and pay their executives the most obscene bonuses ever! Sure, Jack, I must have been dreaming that. Or maybe Bernanke and Geithner don't answer to Obama?
Ah, but when it comes to healthcare, oh yes, poor, poor Obama can't possibly get anything done even though he really and truly wants to, but those mean old Congresspeople won't let him.
I have no idea how come you "friended" me, and I have no doubt you will rapidly "defriend" me, but your stupid, pointless answer to my comment is EVIDENCE of a shallow, lazy mind.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Quote of the Day
*
That seems pretty clear, does it not, that there were "frightening complications"? It occurs to me that one of the difficulties (self- and other-inflicted) faced by current skeptics of the present swine flu scare is the attempt to shift focus on to the link between vaccines and childhood autism, whether or not such a link exists. The focus should remain on the specific fallout from the 1976 vaccine, specifically Guillian-Barre Syndrome.
More on this later as I've gone through the book.
"The country had just gone through a traumatic experience in which the expected
epidemic of swine flu had not occurred, but instead frightening complications of
the immunization had occurred in some people." -- David A. Hamburg,
then-president of the Carnegie Corporation, from the foreword to Neustadt's and
Fineberg's The Epidemic That Never Was: Policy-Making & the Swine Flu
Affair, about the 1976 swine flu incident.
That seems pretty clear, does it not, that there were "frightening complications"? It occurs to me that one of the difficulties (self- and other-inflicted) faced by current skeptics of the present swine flu scare is the attempt to shift focus on to the link between vaccines and childhood autism, whether or not such a link exists. The focus should remain on the specific fallout from the 1976 vaccine, specifically Guillian-Barre Syndrome.
More on this later as I've gone through the book.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
I Want to Believe: An Open Letter to Dr. Gary Null
*
Dear Dr. Null:
I am ready to believe that the U.S. government and associated health agencies -- including WHO as well as CDC -- are deceiving the people about the Swine Flu.
I find it more than plausible to think that they are spreading misinformation to create fear and anxiety about the flu in order to push vaccines on us -- to enrich Big Pharma that has big pockets for "lobbying."
I am lost and bewildered by the masses of conflicting information (or disinformation) about the spread of the flu, the numbers of deaths, the nature of the disease, or its severity.
And I have strong suspicions that they are trying to convince us of the vaccines' effectiveness and safety, even while strong doubts exist about both.
I believe there are a lot of people like me who are ready to believe these things, if we are shown them in a serious and measured way.
Although I am no expert, I am not one to shy away from exercising my right to express my opinion, and I take seriously my responsibility to educate myself. At the same time, the real-world demands of my everyday life make it difficult to adequately research or education myself about all these issues. I have to depend on people with credentials, such as you, to gather, analyze, and interpret much of the information that is out there and build a convincing case.
Dr. Null, clearly you are such a person. Moreover, you have been virtually a lone voice against a blizzard of what is almost certainly, as you say, propaganda -- whether it comes from the insidious "mainstream" press like the New York Times or the even more virulent strains such as several journalists who have accused anyone expressing skepticism as being fearmongers themselves, or as irrational and anti-scientific.
Unfortunately, what I see in articles such as your latest on Global Research is more like the mirror image of the "propagandists." Your writing is sloppy and disjointed. Charges are raised and dropped without backup. This is not just an English teacher's lament. This is essential. If we are going to get people to believe, and more people to listen, we need to answer the disinformation with information, not more disinformation -- or at least, with writing that to the ordinary reader may well come across as speculative, misinformed, or infused with bias. You write of an issue that should mostly be about science with, dare I say, a tin ear for science.
Let me cite a few examples from your article. You say:
Who are some of these "scientists and doctors"? In what way do they say the vaccine is "poorly tested"? What studies do they cite? What evidence is given for the vaccine's ineffectiveness? How can scientists and doctors substantiate ineffectiveness, if the vaccine has not been given out on a widespread basis yet -- or even tested adequately? Where are the statistics to support the assertion that the vaccine "could cripple and even kill many more people than it helps"?
You shift gears in your next paragraph:
Would it be possible to provide us with a link to a "scare" ad? Is it necessary to use terms like "snuffing out countless lives"? You make me skeptical that the ads are that extreme.
Next paragraph:
We're back to vaccines, but not Swine Flu vaccines -- now it's vaccines in general. Surely Dr. Morris is "distinguished," but what studies can he (or you) cite to show that flu vaccines have historically been inneffective? Surely there must be research. Then this distinguished scientist resorts to speculating about manufacturers' motives. What does that matter? Are there leaked memos, at least, that reveal the producers know the vaccines are "worthless"?
This is potentially good -- an insider-turned-critic. But again, didn't this "major scientist" cite any evidence to back up his claim that the vaccine was less effective than natural infection? What flu was he talking about? Doesn't that make a difference? Was he talking about one flu vaccine or all flu vaccines?
This is the most crux of the issue, by far the most important paragraph. And here again, you take what is actually a highly controversial set of figures (1,000 deaths, 20,000 hospitalizations) and boil it down to a single, sweeping claim -- that it is a "fiction."
Let me emphasize again -- I am ready to believe you. I have already questioned the figure of 1,000 deaths. But to simply call it a "fiction" virtually demands that you back that statement up. If the figure of 1,000 deaths is false, or an arbitrary number concocted by CDC (preumably what you mean by "fiction"), then it should almost certainly be easy to prove that it is false, or to demonstrate that no credible evidence supports it.
You further confuse matters by saying the fiction is "solely based upon the CDC's own contradictory statements and actions." This is a puzzling statement on your part. CDC's statements and actions (?) about mortality and hospitalization figures could be contradictory, but not necessarily "fiction." How is "fiction" "based on" contradictory statement and actions?
And from this pargraph, you immediately segue to a mish-mash paragraph the conflates Judith Miller and Iraq with the 1976 Swine Flu.
Do you see the problem here? A reader of your article who approaches it with an open mind is likely to see a pattern of skittishness and obfuscation, rather than a well-constructed argument. And even someone like myself who is predisposed to agree with you begins to become disillusioned and wonder whether you are pushing an agenda rather than building a coherent case. I will refrain from going through your entire article. It is more of the same.
Again: I am on your side. I want to believe you. We want to believe you. We need people like you to lead us with passion, yes, but with reason and clarity, too.
Thank you.
Dear Dr. Null:
I am ready to believe that the U.S. government and associated health agencies -- including WHO as well as CDC -- are deceiving the people about the Swine Flu.
I find it more than plausible to think that they are spreading misinformation to create fear and anxiety about the flu in order to push vaccines on us -- to enrich Big Pharma that has big pockets for "lobbying."
I am lost and bewildered by the masses of conflicting information (or disinformation) about the spread of the flu, the numbers of deaths, the nature of the disease, or its severity.
And I have strong suspicions that they are trying to convince us of the vaccines' effectiveness and safety, even while strong doubts exist about both.
I believe there are a lot of people like me who are ready to believe these things, if we are shown them in a serious and measured way.
Although I am no expert, I am not one to shy away from exercising my right to express my opinion, and I take seriously my responsibility to educate myself. At the same time, the real-world demands of my everyday life make it difficult to adequately research or education myself about all these issues. I have to depend on people with credentials, such as you, to gather, analyze, and interpret much of the information that is out there and build a convincing case.
Dr. Null, clearly you are such a person. Moreover, you have been virtually a lone voice against a blizzard of what is almost certainly, as you say, propaganda -- whether it comes from the insidious "mainstream" press like the New York Times or the even more virulent strains such as several journalists who have accused anyone expressing skepticism as being fearmongers themselves, or as irrational and anti-scientific.
Unfortunately, what I see in articles such as your latest on Global Research is more like the mirror image of the "propagandists." Your writing is sloppy and disjointed. Charges are raised and dropped without backup. This is not just an English teacher's lament. This is essential. If we are going to get people to believe, and more people to listen, we need to answer the disinformation with information, not more disinformation -- or at least, with writing that to the ordinary reader may well come across as speculative, misinformed, or infused with bias. You write of an issue that should mostly be about science with, dare I say, a tin ear for science.
Let me cite a few examples from your article. You say:
Increasing numbers of scientists and doctors are issuing harsh criticisms of the
Government’s plan to vaccinate (forcibly if necessary) virtually the entire U.S.
population with what they claim is a poorly tested vaccine that is not only
ineffective against swine flu, but could cripple and even kill many more people
than it helps.
Who are some of these "scientists and doctors"? In what way do they say the vaccine is "poorly tested"? What studies do they cite? What evidence is given for the vaccine's ineffectiveness? How can scientists and doctors substantiate ineffectiveness, if the vaccine has not been given out on a widespread basis yet -- or even tested adequately? Where are the statistics to support the assertion that the vaccine "could cripple and even kill many more people than it helps"?
You shift gears in your next paragraph:
The CDC’s public relations campaign has been running “scare” ads that portray
swine flu as a full-blown “pandemic” responsible for snuffing out countless
lives, and which, unless stopped by universal vaccination, could kill millions
of American citizens. But scientists and health officials throughout the world
have called the governments claims unjustified and deliberately misleading.
Would it be possible to provide us with a link to a "scare" ad? Is it necessary to use terms like "snuffing out countless lives"? You make me skeptical that the ads are that extreme.
Next paragraph:
For example, Dr. Anthony Morris, a distinguished virologist and former Chief
Vaccine Office at the U.S. Federal Drug Administration (FDA), states that “There
is no evidence that any influenza vaccine thus far developed is effective in
preventing or mitigating any attack of influenza” and that “The producers of
these vaccines know they are worthless, but they go on selling them anyway.”
We're back to vaccines, but not Swine Flu vaccines -- now it's vaccines in general. Surely Dr. Morris is "distinguished," but what studies can he (or you) cite to show that flu vaccines have historically been inneffective? Surely there must be research. Then this distinguished scientist resorts to speculating about manufacturers' motives. What does that matter? Are there leaked memos, at least, that reveal the producers know the vaccines are "worthless"?
And in November 2007, the UK newspaper The Scotsman, made public warnings by the inventor of the “flu jab,” Dr. Graeme Laver. Dr. Laver was a major Australian
scientist involved in the invention of a flu vaccine, in addition to playing a
leading scientific role in the discovery of anti-flu drugs. He went on record as
saying the vaccine he helped to create was ineffective and [that] natural
infection with the flu was safer. “I have never been impressed with its
efficacy,” said Dr. Laver.
This is potentially good -- an insider-turned-critic. But again, didn't this "major scientist" cite any evidence to back up his claim that the vaccine was less effective than natural infection? What flu was he talking about? Doesn't that make a difference? Was he talking about one flu vaccine or all flu vaccines?
We hear the assumption being made by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
that the number of deaths from the H1N1 virus is at pandemic levels and now a
“national emergency.” One would assume that with all of its resources, the New
York Times’ October 26 front page story on the CDC’s statistics would be
accurate: 20,000 hospitalizations and 1,000 deaths due to the swine flu.
However, this is all fiction. And it is a fiction solely based upon the CDC’s
own contradictory statements and actions.
This is the most crux of the issue, by far the most important paragraph. And here again, you take what is actually a highly controversial set of figures (1,000 deaths, 20,000 hospitalizations) and boil it down to a single, sweeping claim -- that it is a "fiction."
Let me emphasize again -- I am ready to believe you. I have already questioned the figure of 1,000 deaths. But to simply call it a "fiction" virtually demands that you back that statement up. If the figure of 1,000 deaths is false, or an arbitrary number concocted by CDC (preumably what you mean by "fiction"), then it should almost certainly be easy to prove that it is false, or to demonstrate that no credible evidence supports it.
You further confuse matters by saying the fiction is "solely based upon the CDC's own contradictory statements and actions." This is a puzzling statement on your part. CDC's statements and actions (?) about mortality and hospitalization figures could be contradictory, but not necessarily "fiction." How is "fiction" "based on" contradictory statement and actions?
And from this pargraph, you immediately segue to a mish-mash paragraph the conflates Judith Miller and Iraq with the 1976 Swine Flu.
Do you see the problem here? A reader of your article who approaches it with an open mind is likely to see a pattern of skittishness and obfuscation, rather than a well-constructed argument. And even someone like myself who is predisposed to agree with you begins to become disillusioned and wonder whether you are pushing an agenda rather than building a coherent case. I will refrain from going through your entire article. It is more of the same.
Again: I am on your side. I want to believe you. We want to believe you. We need people like you to lead us with passion, yes, but with reason and clarity, too.
Thank you.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
All Right, Now This Is Making Me Mad
*
Right. A day after I criticize the MSM for not doing its job when reporting on the Swine Flu, I hear a Wired magazine reporter being interviewed on NPR's All Things Considered who says -- and I'm paraphrasing here -- "Some people have taken it upon themselves to be experts instead of listening to the experts and have refused to take flu vaccines, thereby endangering all the rest of us." And she equates this with fearmongering.
Right. And all the panic about the flu that people like her are spreading is not fearmongering. And she dismisses "fearmongering" about the connection of vaccines to childhood autism in this way (again paraphrasing): Childhood autism is bad, but not fatal, flu is.
Really. Lazy reporters distress and bewilder me, but people like this make me really angry.
Of course, from the interview, I got that that's what she wants, so she can prove that people who disagree with her are angry and irrational and not "civil."
Shit-fer-brains.
Right. A day after I criticize the MSM for not doing its job when reporting on the Swine Flu, I hear a Wired magazine reporter being interviewed on NPR's All Things Considered who says -- and I'm paraphrasing here -- "Some people have taken it upon themselves to be experts instead of listening to the experts and have refused to take flu vaccines, thereby endangering all the rest of us." And she equates this with fearmongering.
Right. And all the panic about the flu that people like her are spreading is not fearmongering. And she dismisses "fearmongering" about the connection of vaccines to childhood autism in this way (again paraphrasing): Childhood autism is bad, but not fatal, flu is.
Really. Lazy reporters distress and bewilder me, but people like this make me really angry.
Of course, from the interview, I got that that's what she wants, so she can prove that people who disagree with her are angry and irrational and not "civil."
Shit-fer-brains.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
How the Press Lets Us Down, and How It Could Change That, If Only It Would
*
This began as a very different piece about the Swine Flu, which is what it’s still about, but the slant has changed. You could say this is now the pleadings of a very confused person, albeit not the only such person, I’m sure.
What’s changed is that I have been witness to many people getting sick, and many more people with children or teenagers who have gotten sick. I may even have had the flu myself last month. And we know that people have died as a result of the flu. So now I am no longer entertaining any notions that there is no Swine Flu, or that it is some form of biowarfare, or that it was to be delivered in the form of the vaccine itself, as some of the more extreme websites and articles have posited. In rejecting these claims, however, I do not blame those who suggested them. In an atmosphere of confusion, and in a country that is capable of many things from torture and “drone” executions to depleted uranium weapons and perhaps 9/11 itself, anything is possible.
What is unacceptable is the cloud of uncertainty and fear that hangs over the Swine Flu and everything related to it, and for that I squarely blame the health agencies (WHO and CDC) and the press that uncritically passes along (“stovepipes”) every bit of fragmentary, fear-mongering piece of information given to it by the agencies, and now exacerbated by Obama’s declaration of a national emergency (now that’s frightening).
I can’t begin to fathom the motives of the health agencies, which seem hell-bent on terrifying us and pushing vaccine. OK, I can fathom their motives, if they’re every bit as bought-and-paid-for as politicians are by the pharmas, but I don’t think I want to go there today.
Because what burns me even more is the role of the Fourth Estate, which has lay down like so much roadkill. And it would be so easy for just one reporter, somewhere, to look just a fraction of a millimeter past the press releases and the sensational headlines to ask a few simple questions. Let me suggest a few:
When people cite a mortality figure from Swine Flu – 1,000 is the figure I’ve been hearing lately, variously reported as children or all victims – what does it mean? How does it compare with mortality from seasonal flu? How does it compare with mortality from other causes?
What have we learned about the deaths? Are they directly caused by the flu, or by pre-existing conditions aggravated by the flu? If 1,000 deaths is true, and if it significantly exceeds the number of deaths from seasonal flu for an equivalent period, is that because greater numbers of people are coming down with flu, or because it is more deadly, or both?
Is the Swine Flu “mild” as has been reported, or is it unusually virulent, as has also been reported? What is the probability it will mutate into something different or something more virulent, as has lately been heard?
How exactly do we know that the seeming “pandemic” is H1N1? Are biological tests still being conducted? What are scientists (as opposed to fear-mongerers) learning about this strain of flu?
What are the symptoms of pandemic flu? Is pandemic flu the same as Swine Flu? Are stomach illnesses a symptom of Swine Flu? (That was my major symptom of whatever I had.) At least one “fact sheet” I read said, no, stomach viruses are not the same as pandemic viruses.
Then there are all the questions about the vaccines. What’s in them? What is known about those substances? What testing has been conducted to determine the vaccines’ safety? On how many people? A statistically signficant sample?
What really happened in 1976? Did the vaccine really cause paralysis and mortality? Or did the press manufacture the vaccine panic, as the former CDC director claims – and the press itself parrots? Where are the data on how effective flu vaccines are in general?
I must say, the far-left anarchist blogs I favor have not been entirely helpful here either. Many of the authors on these blogs do seem to have an axe to grind, just as do the reporters for the New York Times et al., and resort to scare tactics rather than evidence-based arguments.
Frankly, I’m tired of being in the dark, I’m tired of being the one having to ask the questions. Scientists, do your job. Journalists, do your job. All it would take would be one mainstream journalist to push back. We might not have all the answers, but answer should be out there.
This began as a very different piece about the Swine Flu, which is what it’s still about, but the slant has changed. You could say this is now the pleadings of a very confused person, albeit not the only such person, I’m sure.
What’s changed is that I have been witness to many people getting sick, and many more people with children or teenagers who have gotten sick. I may even have had the flu myself last month. And we know that people have died as a result of the flu. So now I am no longer entertaining any notions that there is no Swine Flu, or that it is some form of biowarfare, or that it was to be delivered in the form of the vaccine itself, as some of the more extreme websites and articles have posited. In rejecting these claims, however, I do not blame those who suggested them. In an atmosphere of confusion, and in a country that is capable of many things from torture and “drone” executions to depleted uranium weapons and perhaps 9/11 itself, anything is possible.
What is unacceptable is the cloud of uncertainty and fear that hangs over the Swine Flu and everything related to it, and for that I squarely blame the health agencies (WHO and CDC) and the press that uncritically passes along (“stovepipes”) every bit of fragmentary, fear-mongering piece of information given to it by the agencies, and now exacerbated by Obama’s declaration of a national emergency (now that’s frightening).
I can’t begin to fathom the motives of the health agencies, which seem hell-bent on terrifying us and pushing vaccine. OK, I can fathom their motives, if they’re every bit as bought-and-paid-for as politicians are by the pharmas, but I don’t think I want to go there today.
Because what burns me even more is the role of the Fourth Estate, which has lay down like so much roadkill. And it would be so easy for just one reporter, somewhere, to look just a fraction of a millimeter past the press releases and the sensational headlines to ask a few simple questions. Let me suggest a few:
When people cite a mortality figure from Swine Flu – 1,000 is the figure I’ve been hearing lately, variously reported as children or all victims – what does it mean? How does it compare with mortality from seasonal flu? How does it compare with mortality from other causes?
What have we learned about the deaths? Are they directly caused by the flu, or by pre-existing conditions aggravated by the flu? If 1,000 deaths is true, and if it significantly exceeds the number of deaths from seasonal flu for an equivalent period, is that because greater numbers of people are coming down with flu, or because it is more deadly, or both?
Is the Swine Flu “mild” as has been reported, or is it unusually virulent, as has also been reported? What is the probability it will mutate into something different or something more virulent, as has lately been heard?
How exactly do we know that the seeming “pandemic” is H1N1? Are biological tests still being conducted? What are scientists (as opposed to fear-mongerers) learning about this strain of flu?
What are the symptoms of pandemic flu? Is pandemic flu the same as Swine Flu? Are stomach illnesses a symptom of Swine Flu? (That was my major symptom of whatever I had.) At least one “fact sheet” I read said, no, stomach viruses are not the same as pandemic viruses.
Then there are all the questions about the vaccines. What’s in them? What is known about those substances? What testing has been conducted to determine the vaccines’ safety? On how many people? A statistically signficant sample?
What really happened in 1976? Did the vaccine really cause paralysis and mortality? Or did the press manufacture the vaccine panic, as the former CDC director claims – and the press itself parrots? Where are the data on how effective flu vaccines are in general?
I must say, the far-left anarchist blogs I favor have not been entirely helpful here either. Many of the authors on these blogs do seem to have an axe to grind, just as do the reporters for the New York Times et al., and resort to scare tactics rather than evidence-based arguments.
Frankly, I’m tired of being in the dark, I’m tired of being the one having to ask the questions. Scientists, do your job. Journalists, do your job. All it would take would be one mainstream journalist to push back. We might not have all the answers, but answer should be out there.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Amerika 2009
*
Welcome to our homeland, where the people are guilty before proven innocent, and publicly executed by electrocution. The facts speak for themselves:
This is it. This is your country. My country.
Welcome to our homeland, where the people are guilty before proven innocent, and publicly executed by electrocution. The facts speak for themselves:
Man dies after police in Calif. use Taser on him
Officers were investigating a fight involving three people when Taser used
SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. - Police say a 19-year-old man has died in Southern
California after officers used a Taser to subdue him at a board-and-care
facility. A San Bernardino police department statement says the man died at a
hospital early Saturday. The department says officers had been summoned to
the facility to investigate a fight involving three people late Friday night.
Police say officers separated the trio but "one of the subjects became combative and a Taser was deployed to control him."The man was having trouble breathing, and police called paramedics. He was pronounced dead at a hospital about an hour later.
The man's name and cause of death haven't been released.
This is it. This is your country. My country.
Monday, October 12, 2009
By the Truckload
*
Remember that scene in "Back to the Future" when the bullies in the car are chasing Marty on his skateboard and end up running into the back of a manure truck, getting the contents dumped all over them?
That sums up how I'm feeling tonight after seeing and hearing a Very Special Guest Lecture on Afghanistan at the lofty institution where I work. I don't even know where to begin with the lies, the omissions, the distortions, the crafty propaganda.
I could start with the lecturer's opening gambit, a tear-jerking (knee-jerking) appeal to 9/11 and the implicit connection to Afghanistan (lies), his explicit linking of bin Laden to the Taliban (more lies), his reference to the Afghanis having "invited us in" (still more lies), his capsule history of the country which omitted any reference to the U.S. role -- except to provide the colorful detail about Charlie Wilson that he really was as nutty as depicted in the movie -- until "Operation Enduring Freedom," that is, complete with nauseating logo depicting flags of all the "coalition of the willing" (remember that?), his cavalier comment that the citizens of the country "might not like us when we bomb wedding parties" (ya think?!), but mostly they want us, they really want us. And so on -- an hour and a half of torture (excuse me: harsh lecturing techniques). All wrapped up in the package of a Very Special Guest Lecture at my Very Prestigious Institution.
And I, whose livelihood and family depend on keeping job at said institution, kept my pact with the devil and kept my mouth shut. And the faculty who saw through the manure pile asked a few very polite, minimally probing questions; and the students who were too young, too cowed, and too naive, said very little, or incoherently tried to form a sentence about what was wrong with what he said. And everyone else said nothing, or agreed, or not, and all clapped politely.
It's one thing to read Chris Floyd or Arthur Silber or other brilliant truth-tellers deconstructing the lies and propaganda we are told. It's another thing to experience it in the "real" world of real people in the place you work or live -- a theme I hope to return to soon with a posting (in progress) titled "Among Friends."
For now, I am nearly speechless and feel ten feet deep in shit.
Remember that scene in "Back to the Future" when the bullies in the car are chasing Marty on his skateboard and end up running into the back of a manure truck, getting the contents dumped all over them?
That sums up how I'm feeling tonight after seeing and hearing a Very Special Guest Lecture on Afghanistan at the lofty institution where I work. I don't even know where to begin with the lies, the omissions, the distortions, the crafty propaganda.
I could start with the lecturer's opening gambit, a tear-jerking (knee-jerking) appeal to 9/11 and the implicit connection to Afghanistan (lies), his explicit linking of bin Laden to the Taliban (more lies), his reference to the Afghanis having "invited us in" (still more lies), his capsule history of the country which omitted any reference to the U.S. role -- except to provide the colorful detail about Charlie Wilson that he really was as nutty as depicted in the movie -- until "Operation Enduring Freedom," that is, complete with nauseating logo depicting flags of all the "coalition of the willing" (remember that?), his cavalier comment that the citizens of the country "might not like us when we bomb wedding parties" (ya think?!), but mostly they want us, they really want us. And so on -- an hour and a half of torture (excuse me: harsh lecturing techniques). All wrapped up in the package of a Very Special Guest Lecture at my Very Prestigious Institution.
And I, whose livelihood and family depend on keeping job at said institution, kept my pact with the devil and kept my mouth shut. And the faculty who saw through the manure pile asked a few very polite, minimally probing questions; and the students who were too young, too cowed, and too naive, said very little, or incoherently tried to form a sentence about what was wrong with what he said. And everyone else said nothing, or agreed, or not, and all clapped politely.
It's one thing to read Chris Floyd or Arthur Silber or other brilliant truth-tellers deconstructing the lies and propaganda we are told. It's another thing to experience it in the "real" world of real people in the place you work or live -- a theme I hope to return to soon with a posting (in progress) titled "Among Friends."
For now, I am nearly speechless and feel ten feet deep in shit.
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