Agriculture is thought to have begun around 8000 B.C., in the semi-arid mountains of Mesopotamia. Flint sickles and grinding stones discovered in the region suggest that the first farmers collected wild grains, which were developed over time into wheat and barley.Farmers learned to keep back a portion of the harvest for it's seeds, for the next years planting,think of it as a seed bank.You must take good care of your seed bank,keep it dry and protected and let nothing destroy the reproductive promise held in the seed.

When Columbus arrived in the New World in 1493, on his second voyage, he brought the seeds of plants known only in the Old World, among them wheat, onions, citrus, melons, radishes, olives, grapes, and sugarcane, and he took away seeds of plants known only in the New World, including corn, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, pumpkins, squash, pineapples, and sweet potatoes. During the colonial period, the world's ecological boundaries were redrawn, as domesticated plants were carried far afield.

Now misguided biotech giants desire to redraw the ecological boundries again,but this time in a frightening and devastating way, a way that could destroy the natural seed banks of the world.

          The TERMINATOR SEED

Gene splicing, first performed by Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer in 1973, allowed seed companies to offer a limitless range of products. Today's plant breeders can incorporate genes from plants that are not sexually compatible with each other. Indeed, because all living things share the same coded language of DNA, breeders can choose genes from outside the plant kingdom altogether--genes from bacteria, and even from fish, were used to create new kinds of genetically modified organisms, or G.M.O.s. This technology, in turn, led to a new type of seed company, the avatar of which is Monsanto, an agrichemical corporation headquartered in St. Louis, which is today the largest seed company in the world; other leading seed corporations include Bayer, Syngenta, and Dow, all of which have roots in the chemical or the pharmaceutical sector, rather than in the seed trade. Monsanto was not a seed company but a chemical company that saw seeds as a delivery vehicle for its product, which was genes.

In March 1998, US patent no. 5,723,765 was granted for a genetic engineering technology that the ETC  group soon dubbed the "Terminator". The Terminator seed is an elegantly designed product of misguided science that programs seeds which mature but are steril.If commercialized,it will have a profound impact on agriculture and food worldwide,and on farmers everywhere who save seed one year to plant the next.The technology was jointly  developed and patented by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and US seed company Delta and Pine Land. It's inventors have explicitly set their marketing sights on the millions of farmers who now save seeds from one season to the next. The Terminator seed has no redeeming agronomic value. It's sole purpose is to force farmers back to the commercial seed market every year.  For patent-holders, it is a biological guarantee that farmers who use it will be forced to buy seed every planting season.In short it will keep farmers from saving seed and having seed banks.

Delta and Pine Land was bought by Monsanto August 2006,but the negative publicity,outcry and lawsuits resulting from the Terminator seed forced Monsanto into evasive action,some we will try to follow here. In 2000 Monsanto merges with Pharmacia and Upjohn, and ceases to exist. Later in the year, Pharmacia forms a new subsidiary, also named Monsanto, for the agricultural divisions. In 2002 Pharmacia spins off its Monsanto subsidiary into a new company, the "new Monsanto. In 2005 Monsanto purchases Seminis, the largest seed company in the world not producing corn or soybeans. In 2008 Monsanto purchases the Dutch seed company De Ruiter Seeds for about 855 million dollars.This is only part of the trail of deals and  mergers, some fell through because of negative publicity, a lot of it coming from the group formerly known as RAFI (Rural Advancement Foundation International) which now has become the ETC group.Once again we see the desire to monopolize the worlds seed supply,the following is one example.

The Iraq Initiative

For generations, Iraq's indigenous farmers have saved seeds from a previous year's harvest to plant the next year. To facilitate new crops, they have also informally swapped seeds with one another. A new amendment to Iraq's patent law, enacted by former Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) administrator L. Paul Bremer III, provides for the 'protection of new varieties of plants(read genetically modified) .To qualify for protection under the law, and thus to be legal for agricultural use, plant varieties must be new, distinct, uniform, and stable. The seed supply that Iraqi farmers have used for years cannot meet these criteria. So U.S. corporations, who have the means to modify and 'stabilize' the seed varieties, now dominate the market and can sell to farmers without domestic competition.The intellectual property rights that the patent law grants last for 20 years for crop varieties and 25 years for trees and vines. So, while the U.S. military occupation may be over within in the next two decades, the corporate occupation could last for generations.Iraq Seeding

We will reap what they sow

The group, the Union of Concerned Scientists, said it had detected tiny quantities of genetically modified seeds in most of the bags of unmodified corn, soybean and canola seeds it tested.If seeds do contain the traits, the group said, it would be virtually impossible for farmers to grow crops that are completely free of genetic modification. That could mean disruption of crop exports to countries that do not allow genetically engineered foods. It also makes it harder for organic farmers to supply customers who will not accept even tiny degrees of genetic engineering.

''The door to seed contamination is wide open,'' said Margaret Mellon, director of the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, who added that her group's study was the first to systematically look at the issue. In a conference call with reporters, she said the genetically engineered seeds might have come from a mixing of seeds by farmers or seed companies or from pollination of seed crops by genetically engineered crops.

The Union of Concerned Scientists bought six varieties each of corn, soybean and canola seeds and sent samples to two commercial laboratories for testing. One laboratory detected genetically engineered seeds in three of six varieties of the corn and soy samples and some in all six canola varieties. The other laboratory found genetically engineered traits in five of the six varieties of each crop.

The genetically modified seeds were found in low levels, ranging from 0.05 percent to 1 percent. The traits detected were the ones used in widely grown genetically engineered crops -- herbicide tolerance and insect resistance.

Dr. Mellon said a bigger health risk would occur if genes now being tested to produce pharmaceuticals from crops were to get into seeds for food crops. Her group could not test for such genes because in general their identity is not known. ''If the door to the seed supply is open to contamination,'' she added, ''it is likely that drug genes will be able to pass through it, right to our breakfast tables.'' The Seed door is ajar

 
This is beyond the realm of sanity ,to be tinkering with the worlds seed bank, what traits can be crossed over to unintended seed? What if the sterilization trait lofted on the wind contaminates some other seed, and that seed goes on to contaminate other seed. Monsantos roundup ready seed has already brought about "Super weeds" and "Super pests" what will this "Terminator Seed" end up doing? These companies issue statements saying what they always have, "everything is ok, we have solutions". One of these so called solutions they themselves have named appropriately, " The Exorcist Seed" which we will cover in part 3.  It is hoped that  at this point we are beginning to see that the real terrorists that we of this living world should be fighting are the Pharmaceutical Giants whose greed and incompetence, may eventually cause us to die silently of starvation, not so much different than the dinosaurs before us.








 

We have all seen firsthand the effects of rampant greed,the lust for money and power that brought the world economy to it's knees. The greed of Wall Street that caused many to lose life savings,many to lose the homes,many to lose employment,that threatens to keep many sick and dying without health care. That greed reaches even deeper to the desire to grab the worlds food supply. We were dazzled by scientists who said that one day we would be able to feed the world with abundant food because of genetically altered crops. Through hundreds of thousands of years plants have evolved to survive and co-exist in an eco- system of balance, and yet we may be arrogantly saying, we can do it better.Are we like Dr Frankenstein going to awake to find we have tampered with life and to our dismay have created a monster, or several monsters?

The big players in this gambit are the chemical biological companies who have genetically altered seed  to create plants that have weed killer already in them, and creating new new poisons that are having unforeseen effects on insect life . These plants do more than protect themselves they are beginning to effect the ecosystem around them, creating a new breed of hybrids which some call "Super Weeds" resistant to weed killer.Trying to kill the new hybrid with additional weed killers only kills the non hybrid weeds making more room for the super weeds.They flourish and so farmers resort to more weed killer and the cycle continues and escalates.

                   SUPER WEEDS
The gospel of high-tech genetically modified (GM) crops is not sounding quite so sweet in the land of the converted. A new pest, the evil pigweed, is hitting headlines and chomping its way across Sun Belt states, threatening to transform cotton and soybean plots into weed battlefields. In late 2004, "superweeds" that resisted Monsanto's iconic "Roundup" herbicide, popped up in GM crops in the county of Macon, Georgia. Monsanto, the US multinational biotech corporation, is the world's leading producer of Roundup, as well as genetically engineered seeds. Company figures show that nine out of 10 US farmers produce Roundup Ready seeds for their soybean crops. Superweeds have since alarmingly appeared in other parts of Georgia, as well as South Carolina, North Carolina, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri, according to media reports. Roundup contains the active ingredient glyphosate, which is the most used herbicide in the USA.How has this happened? Farmers over-relied on Monsanto's revolutionary and controversial combination of a single "round up" herbicide and a high-tech seed with a built-in resistance to glyphosate, scientists say.

Today, 100,000 acres in Georgia are severely infested with pigweed and 29 counties have now confirmed resistance to glyphosate, according to weed specialist Stanley Culpepper from the University of Georgia."Farmers are taking this threat very seriously. It took us two years to make them understand how serious it was. But once they understood, they started taking a very aggressive approach." super weed explosion

It is not only plants that are being changed but insects as well. Some insects considered pest are becoming resistant to the poisons used. The non threatening insects who are the pests natural competitors, and the predator insects which normally keep the pests under control are being eliminated by the poisons.This leaves the super pests free reign to thrive.

                             SUPER PESTS

Concern is mounting in the United States about the environmental impact of genetically modified [GM] corn.Farmers in the US have traditionally used a natural type of bacteria, known as BT, as an insecticide to keep down pests. Even organic farmers use the spray. But GM corn has the BT bacteria actually built into it. That might be more efficient - but there are some unfortunate consequences.New evidence suggests that the GM technique could cause super-pests to evolve.Rebecca Goldburg, a senior scientist at the New York-based Environmental Defence Fund, said she was concerned about GM corn. There is no mandatory review for food safety of genetically-engineered crops in the US although Monsanto, one of the major companies producing GM crops, says that all their crops have been properly tested by the American authorities.However, Ms Goldburg insisted the truth was not that simple. "When it comes to food safety in the United States, most genetically-engineered crops do not get a hard look by government agencies," she said.Most crops only receive a voluntary review by the US food and drug administration. There is no mandatory review for food safety of genetically-engineered crops.There are now movements in the US to have labelling of genetically-engineered foods.super pests

Here we see some of the problems that biotech is causing , what you didn,t see was how this ties into greed.There are a handful of companies, one being Monsato, who develop these GM seeds and then patent them as new life forms. They have sued and will sue farmers who after using their Frankenstein seeds,keep some stored from the harvest and sell them to other farmers.monsato sues farmer over seed piracy

Over the last decade, Monsanto aggressively bought up over 50 seed companies around the globe. Seeds are the source of all food. Whoever owns the seeds, owns the food. The process of genetic engineering allows companies, such as Monsanto, to claim patent rights over seeds.  Ninety percent of all GE seeds planted in the world are patented by Monsanto and hence controlled by them. These few seek a monopoly on the seed supply of the world, Monsato is provider of the seed technology for 90 percent of the world's genetically engineered (GE) crops. Monsatos world   Monsato is a story all it's own .To be continued .....

ref:
[1] Super weed explosion
[2] super pests
[3] Monsanto sues farmer pirate?
[4] mosantos world (new movie)




 

I wake up from the dream, a dream of America the way it was before.Before we finally did away with all socialism.The year we did away with governments tendrils in all facets of our lives.The year we cheered loudly that the Federal and State income taxes were finally eliminated and instead a National sales tax was established, at a 3% rate, with 2% to the Federal coffers and 1% to the State coffers.

That time When we wrote The New Constitution that limits the Federal and State governments to the sole purpose of protection.Protecting our borders from any and all foreign entities, whether armies or immigrants.When we limited the government to the sole purpose of protecting the millions of miles of high iron fences that were erected around the U.S. and around each individual state.When the former military was cut by half and renamed the UPF (The United Protection Force) and relegated to guarding the fences,gates and the 200,000 Patriot Missile batteries surrounding the countries edges. Waking from this dream reminds me how things have changed.

The days are much different now and cram packed with responsibilities on every hand.I don't have to go in to work today because I am  on Road Repair duty in my area,we have to maintain our own roads now,get our own materials,maintain our own equipment,patch our own pockmarked roads and rickety bridges.
Everyone has to dedicate 3 days of the week to the local needs that  the government used to take care of, and now we must do ourselves,but we are free of socialism.

My wife has bus duty today to pick up kids and drive them to school since there are no paid bus drivers anymore.For this she will get one child credit for a month of grade school tuition for one of our grandchildren.Education is an expensive proposition now limited to those who can afford all the tuition's from kindergarten to high school,to those with the money, or to those who's volunteer work can earn them enough tuition credits to allow a child to attend school.Many just rely on neighborhood home schools, with old shared books, from the time when government provided them.

We thought gasoline would be so much cheaper once Federal taxes were removed and it was for a little while,but the simultaneous removal of Federal regulations allowed oil companies to charge as they pleased and gasoline skyrocketed to $20 a gallon.Same with utilities,removal of all regulation caused prices to soar.Very few use air conditioning in their homes anymore,it is too expensive except for special occasions and homes are mostly dimly lit at night,and everyone has learned how to make candles now. Watching unbridled TV ,broadcast by those with the most powerful equipment to seize a channel and hold on to it.Irony, watching TV by candlelight.

The hardest days are the ones when you are assigned to Refugee Camp Duty, when you have to help out at the tent cities.Soon after our day of freedom the poor and sick began to move into tent camps for survival,some of these camps stretch for miles and miles.There we boil and dish out the rice, tend the sick as we can, and bury the dead after dark.There we look into the faces in stark awareness that what we see is our future selves.

When the subsidies stopped many farms went bust,food got scarce and expensive,how long has it been since I have had a glass of milk? I remember milk coming in gallon jugs, now it is sold in 12 oz bottles for $5. It's kind of hard to imagine that people once watered lawns and had swimming pools, bathed whenever they wanted, like water was free. Now we have to take care of our own water supplies locally and it strictly rationed and in most cases poorly treated for contamination. Wednesday our house gets to run 50 gallons of water instead of our normal 20 gallon daily ration.With  a bathtub full, we will all get a bath, which we will all share in turn.

Things are different now that we are free,man how things have changed once government and it's regulations were removed.Everybody screamed socialism back then, but really are we free? What is this we have now if not naked socialism? "No to  Public Health Care" was the slogan at the time, but now, that,s all we have , health care supplied by the public, for the public, to the public.But we say we are free and we are safe.

We are safe ,we are safe, but we are isolated in our self built prison of iron fences.Our rocket defenses surround us and bristle like thorns on a cactus,and no one touches us.No one touches us,no... one... touches.. us, not for evil ,not for good. We are in solitary confinement, the light is dim through the little hole in the door,our daily bread and water slid beneath the crack ,and no one TOUCHES us. Everything has changed now,changed because,
Socialism is dead,the government contained,and we are free at last
.

    

Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota is pushing the health insurance cooperative, so what is a co-op anyway and can it compete with for profit insurance and lower costs?

First we have to understand that there are two kinds of insurance co-ops, there is the health insurance purchasing co-op and there is the health insurance provider co-op.

The Insurance Purchasing Co-Op
The purchasing co- op is not an insurance provider, it is what it is, a bargaining group  who wrangles with  insurance companies to buy insurance from an exchange. The exchange being the already established insurance companies. The catch here is that the 1300 insurance companies that exist are regionally entrenched, some control huge shares of the market in their region. For example: The major insurance companies market share  by state if over 40%:

[1] Blue Cross Blue Shield  : Al  71%, AR 56%, DE 59%,DC/No.Va 69% ,ID  58%,IA 66%, IL 47%,LA 42%,MA 47%, MN 53%,MS 47%,MT 59%,NE 54%, NC 50%,ND 51%,OR 43%,PA 63%,RI 56%,SC 44%,SD 56%,TN 43%,VT 44%,WV 43%,WA 51%.

Now look at Blue Cross' share in these states,  CO 0%,CT 0%,GA 0%,IN 0%,KY 0%,ME 0%,,NV 0%,NH 0%, OH 0%,VA 0%,WI 0%.

Dont worry the states where  Blue Cross is small or 0% are picked up by others

[2] Wellpoint : CT 57%,GA 43%,IN 46%,KY 46%,ME 70%, NH 66%.MO 36%,VA 57%
[3] The other players: United Health Group,Aetna,and Cigna

It is easier to look at the chart Share chart   from this article  Health Affairs

What this shows is the problem facing an insurance purchasing co-op, there is going to be a the lack of choice and competition in their region which is dominated by a these large entities. Actually these figures are much higher now because this study was in 2003.Now add to that a  mandate which will most likely be added in the finished bill and you can see that the insurance purchasing co-op becomes a windfall of new customers and money for the entrenched insurance companies, with a large portion of the money for premiums coming from tax dollars.These co-ops have no chance of even getting a foothold on this turf. What about the other type co-op?

The Health Insurance Provider Co-Op

The basic idea of the health insurance provider co-op  is that you get a group of consumers together and start a company to provide everyone in the group with  insurance. In the 1930,s and 1940,s  we had a few of them subsidized  by the Farm Security Administration .There were 600,000 people in the Midwest who were insured through them. In 1947 the Farm Security Administration withdrew support and in short order the co-ops collapsed. Two have survived, Group Health Cooperative of Washington and Health Partners in Minnesota. They've basically become like other insurance companies.

The true health insurance provider co-op  is one that would  function as an insurer themselves. The dilemma is that it's really really difficult to start up an insurance company from scratch. You can't just get a bunch of people together and say, "We're going to start an insurance co-op."  You would have to develop your own network  by finding doctors and hospitals and then negotiate contracts. Most are already locked up by the dominant insurers. They're certainly not going to give  a tiny co-op  a better deal. That is assuming they'll deal with you at all. The alternative would be to rent a network, but you're basically buying your product from your competitor. There's no way you'll get a good deal there, either.

You need to establish a brand identity, figure out how to handle claims, develop actuarial expertise, establish reserves, meet state licensing requirements and solvency requirements. The thought that you'll have a few businessmen get together and set up a co-op that will compete with Aetna or Cigna is just dreaming. It's not going to happen.

Who knows? Maybe some consumers might put together a co-op that would survive. But the idea that co-ops will provide competition in the private market that would have effect on cost is an illusion. The insurance giants see co-ops as a minor inconvenience, like nats on an elephants behind.

The public option is the only thing with the strength to break the strangle hold big insurance holds on the American people. If you had a public plan that could use Medicare rates, the infrastructure would already be there, and the network would already be there. Providers could always opt out, as they do today.It could compete with for profit health insurance.

Why people believe the public option will destroy the private insurance market makes no sense.In Germany and Australia, they have competition of public plans and private plans. In fact, what has happened is that the market stabilizes, the public plan provides things some people want, and private plans provide things other people want. What you end up with eventually is a market in which people get what they want.

The Congressional Budget Office predicted in its analysis of the House bill that about two-thirds of people who had the option would go for private market and one-third for public. The vast majority -- about 160 million -- would stay in employer-covered plans, because the exchange wouldn't be available to them. Probably some people will go with the public option because it's cheaper. Others may think private insurance will offer more care or broader coverage.

The market will sort itself out, in Germany 50 percent of people go public, and 50 percent private. About the only thing the co-ops may have the strength to do is make it through the Senate so we can get  this thing moving again, after which the full Congress and not six Senators will decide what to keep and what to scrap.

Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the No. 2 Senate Republican, says if the Democratic health care overhaul is ultimately killed, its demise should not be blamed on the overheated talk of government "death panels" for the old and infirm.

While distancing the Republican establishment from the hype over the rather remote prospect of government-ordered euthanasia, Mr. Kyl said on Tuesday that public concerns about the health legislation go well beyond a minor provision concerning consultation on end-of-life issues.

"I really reject the notion that the American people oppose this because somebody on the Republican side has deliberately spread misinformation about the plan," he said on a conference call with the news media. "In this democracy, there is no way voters can be fooled to this extent."  NYT Sen Kyle [1]

Oh really Senator Kyle,you are drooling sir,a Freudian slip of the tongue is dripping from your chin, here take a napkin. Perhaps it is that premature victory grin over the death of the Democratic health reform whose eulogy you so prophetically preview. Your slip is showing and it is this, you are admitting in your glee that we ,the democracy, are  not stupid we are only fooled. Fooled like when you, the Republicans,  made the democracy think that an unregulated free market system with tax cuts for the rich would lead to prosperity, when in truth it has lead to near collapse of our economy and freeze dried the American middle class for the last eight years. Fooled when your Republican administration made the democracy think Saddam had WMD's and that invading Iraq was necessary to avoid the smoking mushroom cloud. Fooled when you said, "we do not torture, we do not spy upon the American people, we do not assassinate". Fooled again when you said you would stand with the new administration in a truly bipartisan effort, when your true intent was "NO NO NO and NO! Now you try to fool us about our own health situation.You admit that you know the democracy is not stupid but must be fooled to accept your foolish ideas. It is you and your party that are the fools, fools for money and power, holding on to ideas and attitudes long proven vain and foolish.

The plan simply costs too much and goes far beyond what is needed, Mr. Kyl said, given that most Americans are satisfied with their current health coverage.

This statement is another attempt to fool the democracy, "most Americans are satisfied with their current health plan" What health plan do you speak of Senator Kyle? There is no health plan, none, there is only the insurance companies plan. The Silver,Gold and Platinum plan. Do you speak of the insurance companies  plan to take all they can from us, force us to spend money out of pocket first and then fight us tooth and nail for return on our claims, yes that's the word, claims, listen, it is not a claim it is a fact testified to and signed by the health care provider that the insurance company  requested on forms upon forms upon forms that they required. That is no longer a claim it is an invoice. Is the plan you say we love the insurances plan to drop us like a hot potato when we really have serious expensive need? Because that is the only plan we have at the moment. The plan we want is the one you are trying to block and fool us out of.

Maybe Karen Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP)has fooled you? This leader of the insurance lobby has sent lawmakers a message:

Be careful what you change, because "77 percent of Americans are satisfied with their existing health insurance coverage." karen Ignagni Spins [2]

Here is the foolery, the same poll also states, 85 percent of respondents said the health care system needed to be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt. How can 77 percent be satisfied and yet 85 percent say it needs to be fundamentally changed? How can these numbers add up.?

Lets look at the 2 questions involved, question 51 and question 43




The trick is that  this poll which has over 100 questions, asks questions about both health care and health insurance, neither of these two questions above asks anything about health insurance. Karen Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans uses question 51 of the poll to make her claims about health insurance and 77 percent satisfaction, however question 51 on the poll  is about "health care you receive" satisfaction, not about health insurance and any satisfaction  with it. She does this knowingly to fool you and the press
.
I would consider health care to be exactly what it says, those who provide care for the health of the people of the democracy ,which in no way describes the private insurance companies.

Senator Kyle,  that fine President  of the Republican Party, Abraham  Lincoln had some advice for you, I quote  " It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt."

Interesting Numbers:  New York Times Poll complete [3]

Ref:
[1] NYT-Sen Kyle
[2] Karen Ignagni Spis
[3] NYT Poll



 

I dont know if this will help you feel better but this latest reporting about the abandonment of the public option is being pushed by none other than Matt Drudge.I will repeat the following:

Speaking to CBS News' Face the Nation on Sunday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs emphasized that President Barack Obama still supports having a "public option" for health care, which the White House believes will introduce additional competition and lower prices in the insurance market.The statement runs contrary to claims by other officials and reports circulating other media on Sunday.Heath and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, speaking to CNN's John King on Sunday, said the public option is not "essential" and that consumer choice, market competition and reform of private health insurance regulations should be the focus of the debate
.

Later Sunday, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) told Fox News anchor Chris Wallace that the U.S. Senate will not allow a public option, adding his belief that, "to continue to chase that rabbit is just a wasted effort."

The comments led the Associated Press and right-wing news aggregator Matt Drudge to report the White House has given up on supporting a public option.

But Sebelius, who as health secretary would presumably be in charge of a public health care system, also said that coverage for all Americans was still one of the administration's goals, regardless of whether or not that comes by way of a public health option.

"The president believes this option of a government plan is the best way to provide choice and competition," Gibbs told CBS.

He added: "I think most of what you are seeing on TV, no offense, is good TV, and that's about it."

Seen a lot of passion and heart tonight and maybe an eye opener to just how much the public option means to you, so remember what you feel and  get those hands busy to keep it alive.

the link to this article and a video  from CBS News' Face the Nation, broadcast Sunday, August 16, 2009

Gibbs Interview

.

2 min video (war of the worlds)  (1)


On the evening of October 30 1938, many homes were listening to their radios, some for entertainment and many looking for news from Europe about what Hitler and the Germans were threatening to do. On the NBC Network they were listening to the "Chase and Sanborn Hour", hosted by Don Ameche and featuring comic ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and singer Nelson Eddy, three of the most popular figures in broadcasting. About 15 minutes into the Chase and Sanborn program the first comic sketch ended and a musical number began, and many listeners began tuning around the dial at that point channel surfing for news.

Many of those surfers came across the CBS channel and what they heard startled them,there were  strange and scary things happening. The reporter they heard was out of breath and describing a strange object that had fallen from the sky in a farmers field called Grovers Mill. Strange noise was emanating from the inside the meteorite,the top begins to unscrew, revealing itself as a rocket machine, and onlookers catch a glimpse of a tentacled, pulsating, barely mobile Martian before it incinerates the crowd with "Heat-Rays." The reporters shouts about incoming flames are cut off in mid-sentence,the studio cuts in and says communication from the field has been lost.

This broadcast continues for the next 45 minutes without commercial break,and tells of an alien attack, with heat beams and poison green gas,destruction and death. Serious stuff, except that this is all a play ,a dramatization of the H.G.Wells story, War of the Worlds (2) as it was being presented on Mercury Theater Hour, in news flash fashion. Despite advertisement of its broadcast in the previous days paper,and disclaimers at it,s beginning and end, many who joined in never heard these warnings and took it as real. Panic ensued in many places. While War of the Worlds was in progress, some residents in northeastern cities went to ask neighbors what was happening (many homes still did not have telephones). As the story was repeated, rumors began and caused some panic.

Several people reportedly rushed to the "scene" of the events in New Jersey to see the unfolding events, including a few geologists from Princeton University who went looking for the "meteorite" that had fallen near their school. Some people, who had brought firearms, reportedly mistook a farmer's water tower for a Martian Tripod and shot at it.

Initially Grover's Mill was deserted, but crowds developed. Eventually police were sent to control the crowds. To people arriving later in the evening, the scene really did look like the events being narrated, with panicked crowds and flashing police lights streaming across the masses.

 Some people called CBS, newspapers or the police in confusion over the realism of the news bulletins. There were instances of panic throughout the US as a result of the broadcast, especially in New York and New Jersey.

Seattle CBS affiliate stations KIRO and KVI broadcast Orson Welles' radio drama. While this broadcast was heard around the country, it made a deep impact in Concrete, Washington. At the point where the Martian invaders were invading towns and the countryside with flashes of light and poison gases, a power failure plunged almost the entire town of 1,000 into darkness. Some listeners fainted while others grabbed their families to head into the mountains. Others headed for the hills to guard their moonshine stills. One was said to have jumped up out of his chair and, in bare feet, run two miles to the center of town. Some men grabbed their guns, and one Catholic businessman got his wife into the car, drove to the nearest service station and demanded gasoline. Without paying the attendant, he rushed to Bellingham, Washington (50 miles away) to see his priest for a last-minute absolution of sins. He reportedly told the gas-station attendant that paying for the gas "[wouldn't] make any difference, everyone is going to die!"

Because phone lines as well as electricity were out, residents were unable to call neighbors, family or friends to calm their fears. Of course, the real story was not as fantastic as the radio drama: all that had occurred was that the Superior Portland cement company's sub-station suffered a short-circuit with a flash of brilliant light, and the town's lights went dark. The more conservative radio-listeners in Concrete (who had been listening to Charlie McCarthy on another station), calmed neighbors by assuring that they hadn't heard about any "disaster". Reporters heard soon after of the coincidental blackout of Concrete and sent the story over the newswire and soon the town of Concrete was known worldwide.

Edgar Bergen and Don Ameche, who were continuing their Chase & Sanborn Hour broadcast on NBC, are often credited with "saving the world". It is said many listeners were reassured by hearing their tones on a neighboring station.

That same year In a prophetic column in the New York Tribune, Dorothy Thompson foresaw that the broadcast revealed the way politicians could use the power of mass communications to create theatrical illusions, to manipulate the public.

"All unwittingly, Mr. Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater of the Air have made one of the most fascinating and important demonstrations of all time," she wrote. "They have proved that a few effective voices, accompanied by sound effects, can convince masses of people of a totally unreasonable, completely fantastic proposition as to create a nation-wide panic.

"They have demonstrated more potently than any argument, demonstrated beyond a question of a doubt, the appalling dangers and enormous effectiveness of popular and theatrical demagoguery...

"Hitler managed to scare all of Europe to its knees a month ago, but he at least had an army and an air force to back up his shrieking words.

"But Mr. Welles scared thousands into demoralization with nothing at all." WOW (3)

I know this was long and I hope it was interesting to you, but it was also to make a point, that  Dorothy  Thompson words  " "But Mr. Welles scared thousands into demoralization with nothing at all" could apply just as well if applied to Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck. Using nothing but fiction they are creating panic in the unaware and it is showing up as anger across the land, and in the town halls.Rush and Beck no more believe what they are saying than they believe in Martians, but it has sucked in an unwary audience and frightens them,that means cash and notoriety for these dramatists. It is immoral but it works,every interview that I have seen of the angry people at town halls they sooner or later repeat the words of these men,that is where they get their thoughts and information.

If this is true then much of the anger we see has been agitated by these men and the Fox broadcasting network in particular? Reciprocating with anger against the common citizens like ourselves will help to do nothing but  stoke the fires of rage. The anger should be reserved for the broadcast manipulators and networks, directed at exposing them as liars and fakes anyway we can.By writing their sponsors and calmly saying that what these men and their networks are saying is unappreciated. This works as we see in the case of sponsors pulling their ads on Glen Beck. I say again , "this works". We must beware the hate baiters who are itching for violence, just waiting for one finger to be laid upon them,any excuse will do. Be the calming voice.

Edgar Bergen and Don Ameche, who were continuing their Chase & Sanborn Hour broadcast on NBC, are often credited with "saving the world". It is said many listeners were reassured by hearing their tones on a neighboring station."

 Here is a link to many of the Mercury Theater great broadcasts Mercury Theater Online

Ref links :

(1) War of the Worlds clip

(2) Wiki (war of the worlds)

(3) Wow (about.com)

(4) Bonus ( test reel footage 1949)

 

In the first photo above,Craig Anthony Miller, 59, angrily confronted Mr. Specter over the way the meeting was being run. The senator's staff had limited the questioning by handing out cards to the first 30 people in line. Mr. Miller shouted at Mr. Specter that, "One day, God is going to stand before you and he's going to judge you!" Look at the face,I believe the face more than the words.

"And God said to Cain, why has your countenance (face) fallen, if you do well, will you not be accepted?" Look at the face,I believe the face more than the words.

In the bottom photo I dont see a tyrant, granny killer,I see a dad, a husband, a decent man.

Im trying to remember.........

In the brain a cloud of thought moves across the sky of the mind, electrochemical and biological components react like lightning and thunder in the neurosphere, a gentle rain of thought falls upon the hills and valleys of the soft gray matter, memories open their blossoms,and I remember....

 In my mind I see him, walking toward me in at a rapid clip,it is his intensity that catches my attention. He is walking fast and his arms are bent at the elbows like a runner, pumping like the pistons of a locomotive propelling him forward. Who is this and what is he up to? A weathered ball cap is pulled down tight on his head, a long untrimmed beard covers his face,his gray jogging pants are frumpy and lived in like his yellowed t-shirt. The canvas high top tennis shoes are dusty and worn from heavy use.We come closer and then pass each other and he doesn't look my way, his eyes keep looking straight ahead to his destination. In the rear view mirror I watch and he never turns to look , he continues down the asphalt road.

In town I ask about him and someone says,"oh that's Tommy something or other, we just call him Walker, cause that's all he does from sunup to sundown, is walk from one end of the city limits to the other and back." Walker? Only celebrities are known by a one name moniker and he doesn't seem like a celebrity to me. He seems instead like an eccentric who will soon burn himself out. Over the course of four more years I have to change my mind about Walker's commitment and dedication to his purpose, he doesn't let up or vary.In time  it is us the observers who change ,we still smile when we see him, only not in amusement but a sort of admiration. Admiration at his steadfast determination to day after day continue his journey. He has earned his celebrity the hard way,day by day,mile by mile. This memory is hard burned into my brain and I call upon it now, 30 years later.

An average  forty year old person has about 233,600 waking hours of life experience, how much of that time is recorded in memory? Is it all ? Is it all there stored at different levels of access? Some memories are so paramount that they remain like landmarks on the mindscape. Where were you when Armstrong walked on the moon, what you were doing. Do you remember the first time you saw a mountain? Have you seen the Grand Canyon, it is unforgettable. Do you remember your first kiss, or your first love, your first best friend, who and what was your first pet? The fission and heat of your first sexual encounter and the resulting nuclear explosion in your being?Landmarks, historical markers of the life that is you.

What a marvel that Dad who has been gone for 15 years now can still be found in my mind, I can see his face, his smile, his eyes, see his rough carpenter hands, hear his voice, it,s tenor and tone, yes his voice distinct, him. I find I can do this with anyone I have known at will, try it now yourself and see. Some are gone, some are not, but all remain in the flower garden of our memory. Mercifully, the horrible pain of loss of that one departed has eased ,the gales of grief have quieted, and calm covers the memory of them, a smile replaces the tear. Each memory is a living flower and is gently touched by my hand ,adored by my heart,sometimes watered by my tears. I must return here to this garden of memory more often for the flowers seem to lift their heads when I come and their fragrance follows with me when I go. You friend, are so fortunate to have your memories.

Back to my memory of Walker........

One day I noticed I hadn't seen Walker in a while and was worried , so I asked about him around town. It seems Walker stopped at the package store for a bottle of water and while he was there he noticed some colorful new cards on the counter. For a rare moment he spoke and said,"what are those?" The clerk told him they were lotto cards and they were a dollar each, Walker had just a dollar. Sometimes the smallest things of life have such enormous effect, Tommy Hayward, a fellow once known only as "Walker" ended that particular journey he was on that day, the odd celebrity, became a legend in our town because of a winning lotto ticket. He won a prize of the twelve hundred dollars a week from the Texas Lotto Board for the rest of his life. Tommy marches to his on drummer and even though he didnt need the money he went to work for a while at McDonalds and then he disappeared. I never saw him again. I don't know if he still walks somewhere, he walks my city no more, but he still walks the paths of my memory. 

A wind gently blows across the mindscape carrying rustling leaves of experience newly fallen. Some like dandelions ride the wind bearing their seed to fertile ground where finding foothold  they will survive and become a flower of  memory.

Actual Full Map Link ***          Check it out.


What are the choices in 2009 for someone to needing healthcare or preparing for when they do? This map crudely shows the choices and paths.

1. You can take the "No Insurance Way" this road leads to 3 other choices:

      (a) The "E.R Road". This is when you rely upon the emergency room only
             type care. It  passes through the "Time Swamp" where time passes
             slowly while you wait for treatment .How slow depends upon how many
            others are also taking this way the day you arrive, how many Doctors are
            on duty, how bloody serious your condition is compared to the other
            waiters. It also involves playing Doctor Roulette since you never know
            which Dr is in the chamber that day. Once you are in the que, be
            thankful for all they do for you, they do what they can with the limited
            resources they have. 

      (b) The "Cash Road". This is when you have lots of money and say,"I will
            pay my own way if I need treatment."  What a nice attitude to take,
            however be sure that you have lot's and lot's of money that you dont
            need, ever again as you will soon part  from it. Example: Suppose
            healthy you are invited unexpectedly into an accident on the highway
            (since we are discussing roads and highways) and you are seriously
             hurt and need to be Care Flighted to the hospital by Helicopter. That
            little ride is going to cost you about $12,000, now this is just the
            transportation,the real cost  comes later with the actual treatment, the
            xrays,the tests,c-scans,the tests, surgeries,tests, re-hab, and tests.
             Well you get the general idea, be prepared to spend some cash.

       (c) The "Cobra Road: What is Cobra anyway?The Consolidated Omnibus
             Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 (COBRA) enables certain individuals
             with employer- sponsored coverage to extend their coverage if certain
             "qualifying events" would otherwise cause them to lose it. Employers
              may require COBRA-qualified individuals to pay the full cost of
              coverage and coverage cannot be extended indefinitely. COBRA only
              applies to firms with 20 or more employees. Translated:  Cobra allows
              you to keep  your present insurance if you get laid off, but you pay the
              full premium, your half and the half the employer was paying for you.
              Since you were already paying 2 times too much, under Cobra you
              will pay 4 times  too much.

The "No Insurance Way" is lovely and cheap as long as you never get sick or have an accident your whole life. If like all of the rest of us you do get sick or have an accident, then you will eventually go through the "Desperation Desert" where the days are long and hot, where vultures circle and sand fleas bite your ass on your way to recovery

  (2) Taking the "The Private Insurance Way" leads up the "Mountain of
        Premium" where you must climb higher and higher premiums all the time.
       According to the  United States Census Bureau, some 60% of Americans
       are covered through an  employer, while about 9% purchase health
       insurance directly.[2], but these numbers  are rapidly changing. Why?
       Costs for employer-paid health insurance are rising rapidly: since 2001,
       premiums for family coverage have increased 78%, while wages have
       risen 19% and inflation has risen 17%, according to a 2007 study by the
       Kaiser Family Foundation.The Insurance Companies have raised rates so
       high that the enrollments have dropped, so they raise them some more to   
       compensate. With this logic, when we have all dropped out of enrollment
       and only 5 people remain insured, the Insurance companies will have to
       charge the last 5 about a billion each month in premiums. These premiums
       are passed on to the employers too, who pass it on in the cost of their
       goods. So we all pay  for the high premiums at the grocery store, the
       clothing store, and for everything that is produced and we buy. It is
       ridiculously naive  to  say our insurance is fine as it is, no matter who you
       are.The fact is, the  Insurance Companies  can not regulate themselves,
       they must satisfy their Wall Street investors or be punished. Their position
       is precarious because  they will soon take a hit from one side or the other,
       from the public or from Wall Street.

             (a) Once through "Premium Mountain" you come to "Refusal Valley".
                   This is where an Insurance Troll guards the way. He will question
                   you to find out if you had a  pre-existing condition when you bought
                    insurance. Well,I dont know, my grandfather died of something at 85
                    and  his father died of something at 78  so it seems that I may
                    have  some  pre-existing condition that causes old men to die of
                    old age.Hey, back in the day, would man eating Velociraptors have
                    been considered a pre-existing condition?
                   If the Claim Adjuster at the Troll Booth decides you had a
                   pre-existing condition, then he sends you down the exit to the
                  "Pre-Existing Condition Road" which is a one way gravel lane
                   back  to the  "No Insurance Road."

            (b) If you pass, or I should say pass the pre -existing test, he sends    
                 you down a long  and round about way to your choice of either,
                  Mt PPO, or Mt Non PPO. PPO has nothing to do with natural
                  body functions but  stands  for Preferred Provider Organization.
                  It is hospitals, Clinics, and Doctors who have made deals with the
                  Insurance Companies promising not to cheat the Insurance
                  Companies like the Insurance Companies cheat them, let  us all
                  be fair to the Insurance Companies. I have been told that the
                  of people Mt PPO supposedly charge you less because the
                  Insurance troll's sister writes their reimbursment checks at her
                  own liesure pace. Finding out what appeases her is a full time
                  endeavor. If you choose Mt Non PPO,the trolls sister will not
                  be pleased and will not pay for many of the tests, procedures
                  and treatments these nonist's proscribe and provide.
         
            (c) You made it this far, now one more gauntlet and you are home free.
                 You now must pass between two more mountains , Mt. Co-Pay and
                 Mt. Deductible. The height of these two depends on the height of
                 your premium. The more precious the name of your plan (Platinum,
                Gold,or Silver ) the more it costs.Hence the formula: the more your
                premium costs the lower your copay and deductible. The deductible
                being how big a bag of money I must spend for treatment for myself,
                and then my family before troll sister will even pick up her
                reimbursement pen. What I spend out of pocket accumulates in my
                deductible bag  until such amount equals my deductible toll. Every
                year you are one year older so your deductible bag is emptied and
                you start over from  zero. Think of it as spring cleaning of your
                deductible bag.If it doesnt make sense to you then you are not
                thinking like a troll. The Copay is usually a small amount for
                psycological purposes to remind you that this flagrant use of your
                benefits is noticed and a small penalty must be paid, this stuff is
                not free you know. However if you go the Non PPO route the
                penalty will be very steep because you have like gone from shop
                lifting to bank robbery of the insurance coffers.
                             
                Next you go  through the "Hard Times Pass"  where sister troll
                finds some way to give you a hard time, it's her last line of defense
                against you asking for re-imbursement from the insurance company.
                Keep going and there you are your at the gate of hope.

            (d) The entrance to "The Healing Square" That  marvelous place of
                  medicine enclosed by the four walls of healing, the Doctors wall
                  the Medicine wall,the Treatment wall , and the Therapy wall .
                  Here work the angels of mercy who dedicate their lives to the
                  healing of others. Hope,comfort,relief,and recovery grow here.
                  May you and your family find this place when you need it.
                  Onward to the  "Land of Wellness".


(3)  There is the possibly of  "The Public Option Way" now under discussion. This way leads over the "Lower Mesa" of premium Mountain.  The premiums are lower here because all of the people insured and not, will be able to buy insurance as part of large pools with bargaining power. Allowances will enable  those who cannot afford insurance, to be covered. It will help those of us who already have insurance by forcing our current providers to lower their premiums to stay competitive or lose our business. We wont be hostages anymore. We need this road paved now!

(4) As you can see with the "Single Payer Way" it is a straight path to Healing Square and is therefore the most desirable route of all. This road will take all of us to build, a lot of obstacles stand in the way that must be cleared or blasted through. Single Payer will be one of the most important accomplishments America has ever achieved. May we have it?

Dondi the amatuer cartographer


 

  
 

Your Money or Your Life: The robber barons of Pharma

In 1997 the people of South Africa facing the growing epidemic of HIV and needing anti-HIV drugs for treatment faced a daunting obstacle, the price and availability of such drugs, Pharmaceutical Companies held the patents to most of the drugs. In South Africa, which has nearly 5 million people living with HIV/AIDS and represents half of the pharmaceutical market in Africa, 13 out of 15 antiretroviral treatments are patent protected so the country passed legislation allowing it to obtain generic (equivalent nonbrand) versions of patented drugs under two international trade provisions known as compulsory licensing and parallel importing. In 1998 a group of pharmaceutical companies sued to overturn the law. After three years--and a great deal of negative publicity--the companies withdrew the lawsuit in April 2001. In June 2001 the U.S. withdrew a complaint it had filed with the World Trade Organization (WTO) concerning a Brazilian law allowing generic drug production. (1) Affordable Drug Access

Generic versions of anti-HIV drugs produced in developing countries typically cost 5-25% of the market price of the brand-name equivalent. MSF estimates that the cost of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) in the U.S. is $10,000-$15,000 per person per year. Treatment using generic equivalents costs about $500-$1,000 per person per year, which may be pushed lower with the use of new, simpler regimens using combination pills. Indian generic drug manufacturer Cipla has offered a triple combination regimen (d4T/3TC/nevirapine) to certain nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and LDC governments for $350 per person per year.( 2) Doctors Without Borders                

But Research Costs So Much!

The drug companies say, "We need high prices to cover our staggering research and development costs, and if you do anything to squeeze our prices, it will stifle innovation." A group of economists - mainly funded by the drug companies - came up with the widely quoted figure on this. They said that it cost $802 million to bring a drug out. They, however, were looking at the most expensive drugs to develop: new chemical compounds developed entirely in house. Most new drugs aren't that at all. Most are what people call "me too" drugs, which are slight variations of older drugs already being sold.

According to these economists, the real cost of bringing out those rare original drugs is actually around $403 million. But they doubled it by factoring in how much money the companies might have earned if they'd invested that $403 million. Moreover, the economists did not figure into their total the many generous tax breaks these companies receive for doing research and development. This is a highly inflated figure.

In the past, drug discoveries made through government research by our tax dollars remained in the public domain. Laws passed in 1980 allowed those breakthroughs to be patented, even if their research was sponsored by our National Institutes of Health. As a consequence, patent shenanigans have reshaped the drug business, as have the recent government regulations that expedite direct-to-consumer drug advertising. " The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 basically turned academic labs into farm teams for industry research, allowing publicly funded researchers in academic institutions (where much of the real enterprise and innovation occur) to patent their discoveries and license them to the private sector; the law has created a thicket of licensing and royalty relationships, wink-and-nod consultancies and conflicts of interest.

The Case Of Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia,

Several decades of dogged research by academic scientists -- much of it paid for by American taxpayers through the National Institutes of Health -- had teased out the molecular details of chronic myelogenous leukemia, a rare and fatal hematological cancer. Researchers at Novartis (then Ciba-Geigy) created several compounds that in theory might throw a monkey wrench into the process by which blood cells become cancerous. But these potential miracle drugs sat on the shelf untested, until

Brian Druker, a researcher at the Oregon Health and Science University, asked for the compounds and became the first to discern their anticancer properties in the lab dish. Even that wasn't enough. As Avorn tells it, ''Novartis had so little interest in committing resources to the drug's development that cancer researchers had to resort to the bizarre tactic of sending a petition to the company's C.E.O., signed by scientists in the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of America, imploring him to make more drug available for clinical studies.''

Novartis has overcome its lack of enthusiasm -- it now charges $27,000 for a year's supply of Gleevec. But those heart-warming ads, now the centerpiece of the Novartis corporate identity, say more than intended about how today's pharmaceutical industry takes credit where little is due. As both Angell and Avorn lay out in painstaking, often enraging, detail, a self-serving mythology -- promulgated on a scale possible only in a business with annual worldwide revenues of $400 billion -- has enveloped the pharmaceutical industry. Angell and Avorn cut through the haze, arguing persuasively that Americans are paying an enormous amount of money for some very mediocre medicines  NYT "The Drug Lords"

On Our Dime

The few drugs that are truly innovative have usually been based on taxpayer-supported research done in nonprofit academic medical centers or at the National Institutes of Health. In fact, many drugs now sold by drug companies were licensed to them by academic medical centers or small biotechnology companies." The pharmaceutical industry estimates that each new drug costs them $800 million to develop and bring to market, but Angell (4) and Relman estimate the cost to them is actually closer to $100 million. Examples are imatinib (Gleevec), zidovudine (AZT) and erythropoietin (Epogen). An unpublished internal NIH study in February 2000 of the 5 top-selling drugs in 1995 (Zantac, Zovirax, Capoten, Vasotec, and Prozac) found that 16 of the 17 key scientific papers leading to the discovery and development came from outside industry[6]. In 2004, she published (5) The Truth About Drug Companies

Me Too Clones

Schering-Plough's Clarinex is a "me too" variant of the same company's popular allergy drug Claritin. But Claritin's patent expired in 2002, so the new version had to be made and heavily marketed. What is different about the two, nothing but the name and the claim. Dr. Angell maintains that while Claritin was approved as a hay fever remedy, Clarinex is an improvement only because it has been approved for the treatment of both indoor and outdoor allergies. "It was approved for the additional use only  because the company decided to test it for that use," she says. And why all the advertising? "If prescription drugs are so good, why do they need to be pushed so hard?" she asks, citing Nexium, Lipitor and Paxil as other me-too products with whopping ad campaigns. As for Nexium, the new purple heartburn pill meant to replace Prilosec (which went off patent in 2001.

"The big drug companies are competing not so much to find new drugs but for the limited number of drugs to license," she argues. The enormous research-and-development budgets that are invoked to justify high drug prices, she claims, also pay for questionable forms of education for doctors and all manner of barely concealed incentives for them to prescribe certain drugs

Is the new pink and lavender pill called Sarafem really just Prozac in a different casing? Has the Eli Lilly company really tested it on children (one way of extending an exclusive patent) yet sold it as a remedy for premenstrual problems?

The Truth : A Fistfull of Dollars $$

The fact is that for the last two decades the drug companies have been hugely profitable. Last year there was a little wiggle downward, but in 2002, the 10 biggest American drug companies had a median profit of 17 percent of sales compared to a median of 3 percent for the other Fortune 500 companies. In the 1990's, profits ran between 19 and 25 percent. Prices are high to keep profits high. They are not interested in the most needed drugs worldwide but only the most profitable, that means the poorer countries with diseases mostly isolated to that region are going to be ignored.

Pharma says "Hell No" to "Lets Negotiate? "

The main Medicare drug benefit that went into effect in 2006 was designed to funnel billions of dollars to the pharmaceutical industry. It's an absolute bonanza for it. The pharmaceutical industry's lobbyists made certain that the legislation contained a provision barring Medicare from negotiating drug prices. They are still fighting to keep negotiated prices out of the new health bill. Look at the record of how good negotiation works, the federal government negotiates drug prices for the Veterans Affairs system and gets very low prices because it is a bulk purchaser. Medicare would have been the biggest bulk purchaser of all - so it could have negotiated very low prices, this is also true of a public insurance option with negotiating power for cheaper drugs. Without this bargaining power the drug companies will continue raising their prices faster than the inflation rate, and the drug benefits will soon become unaffordable.

Why would we keep this system, if it is so bad? The drug companies have spent more than $3 billion on lobbyists and political "contributions" over the past decade in the US alone. They have paid politicians to make the system work in their interests. If you doubt how deeply this influence goes, listen to a Republican congressman, Walter Burton, who admitted of the last big health care legislation passed in the US in 2003: "The pharmaceutical lobbyists wrote the bill."

A Better Way

There is a far better way to develop medicines, if only we will take it. It was first proposed by Joseph Stiglitz, the recent Nobel Prize winner for economics(6) . He says: "Research needs money, but the current system results in limited funds being spent in the wrong way."

Stiglitz's plan is simple. The governments of the Western world should establish a multi-billion dollar prize fund that will give payments to scientists who develop cures or vaccines for diseases. The highest prizes would go to cures for diseases that kill millions of people, like malaria. Once the pay-out is made, the rights to use the treatment will be in the public domain. Anybody anywhere in the world could manufacture the drug and use it to save lives.

The financial incentive in this system for scientists remains exactly the same -- but all humanity reaps the benefits, not a tiny private monopoly and those lucky few who can afford to pay their bloated prices. The irrationalities of the current system -- spending a fortune on me-too drugs, and preventing sick people from making the medicines that would save them -- would end.

It isn't cheap -- it would cost 0.6 percent of GDP -- but in the medium-term, it would save us all a fortune, because our health care systems would no longer have to pay huge premiums to drug companies. Meanwhile, the cost of medicine would come crashing down for the poor -- and tens of millions would be able to afford it for the first time.

So you can see the battle for health care is not just with Big Insurance but big Pharma as well. Their weakness lies in the fact that they live in a secluded world that can not see real  people as anything other than copper  pennies which have no value or power to stop them.They can not grasp that if they were to win this battle they  would still lose. Like a man on a island who eats from the only coconut tree growing there, and having greedily shaken down and eaten every single coconut foolishly begins to eat the tree.

References :
(1) Affordable Drug Access
(2) Doctors Without Border
(3) NYT "The Drug Lords"
(4) marcia angell (wiki)
(5) Angells Book on Amazon
(6) Stiglitz PriZe Idea

Oh the value of Mr Limbaugh, what think ye?

One year from today Mr Limbaugh  will have produced for society the sum total of zero, absolutely nothing, nada. He will not have fed, clothed or sheltered one family, not have protected one citizen,  not have saved one life,bandaged one wound, extinguished one fire,or taught one child any useful life knowledge. For this great lack of service to his fellow man ,he will receive the reward of $54,000,000  dollars. John Doe making $54,000 a year will make the same amount if he can manage to keep working for the same pay for the next 100 years.  What Mr Limbaugh will make in 10 years will take John only 1000 years.

In that ten years Mr Limbaugh will have added to society no more than a rotten cabbage patch doll, an abundance of sour gas and mounds of malodorous rubbish. In the same ten years a elementary school teacher for a pittance of what Mr Limbaugh  will be paid, will have influenced over 1000 children with useful lifetime knowledge and skills. What will the policeman, the firefighter,the soldier, the nurse, the doctor, the dentist, the carpenter, the plumber, or the garbage collector  have contributed to society in that same amount of time? Whatever they accomplish it will certainly be more valuable than what Mr Limbaugh projects to contribute judging by his past performance.

America! This is wrong!  When curmudgeonly cranks are more valuable than caretakers, when egotistical equivocators are more valuable than eloquent educators, and lewd lechers rewarded more than life savers, it is uncomely for  NATION and  unhealthy for a people.

America! Wake up! We have to find a way to return to a society that values what is valuable and  tosses the fly bitten garbage in the dumpster . Boycott the owners and sponsors of the engorged ass-teroids ,like Mr Limbaugh, cut off the demand, and tell others we find listening to them they are dumpster diving and contributing to the sham value of a valueless man. Point out the value of those who enhance society and promote it's better future.This makes me sick but I'm going to say it anyway, Mr Limbaugh  is like a stopped up toilet, every time you pull his handle he overflows and crap goes everywhere, it aint pretty. Wake up and get  the plunger?

Top paid talking heads 

In the discussion about health care the question has come up " is it a right or a privelege?" In the preamble to the Declaration of Indepence certain inalienable rights are mentioned such as liberty and the pursuit of happiness . Notice that it was decided by our founding fathers that these are rights and not priveleges,they are not granted by the powers that be but are rights,  natural and not alien. I would argue that when an ill person  is denied treatment which exists, but has been  made alien because of monetary considerations, that then liberty itself  is being withheld and the pursuit of happiness impeded.

 

 Some have argued that they shouldn't have to pay for someone elses insurance, that this imposes upon their own rights. They estimate that by law, those without insurance can not be denied "emergency" treatment , and that this should be enough. My response to that argument is this, emergency treatment incurs the same costs whether the person has insurance or not, so who pays that cost ? The answer is that the insured pay it as  inflated prices on their premiums, prescriptions, and procedures. So the insured are presently paying for the uninsured in hidden price surcharges and this by law. The insured should be the first and loudest calling for public health policy because right now they  pay the lions share of the cost of the uninsured .Public health insurance would spread the cost over a much larger pool and actually take the burden off their shoulders. Congress should have to take the same insurance as they win or lose, for the rest of us.

 

 Public health insurance "insures" that Liberty and the pursuit of happiness are not alien to any person. It is a horror that life and health ever became slaves to profit, and to argue for the present for profit system, now in the hands of merchants, is to argue against right and decency. Medical treatment belongs in the hands of physicians not in the hands accountants.

 

Furthermore, emergency treatment only addresses dire need and not longevity or quality of life, two seperate issues. Longevity of life is fulfilling the liberty to live while quality of life is fulfilling the pursuit of happiness during that life. Health Care addresses both.

 

Let me show you how longevity of life has changed over the centuries.

 

• During the Paleolithic era stone age mans life span averaged 33 years. Times were tough and predators were large.

 

•  During the Bronze Age the life span dropped to 18 years. One factor that could have assisted in that   drop was that  the ore used to make bronze naturally contained arsenic which would have been present in cooking, drinking and eating vessels. It could also be argued that the lighter,faster,sharper weapons made from metal helped men kill one another better,in fact this may be more of a factor than poisoning as seen in the fact that in Bronze Age Sweden the life span averaged about 40 to 60 years, much longer than comtemporaries, yes the Swedes always the peacenics forged their metal unto plowshares and not swords. 

 

• Surprisingly in Classical Greece and Classical Rome, high points in civilization,the average lifespan was only 20 to 30 years, amazing in the fact that it is lower than that of the stoneage man with all his difficulties? Historians present, can you expand on the reasons for this drop?

 

•  Here is an interesting fact, in the Medieval Islamic Califate the average lifespan was 35 years with a caveat, and that is if you were of the elite class the lifespan jumped up to  59 to 84.3 years in the Middle East and 69 to 75 in Islamic Spain.

 

• Early 20th century lifespan averaged from 30 to 40 years , present world average in 2008 is 70. A shocking fact that was found is that due to poverty, overcrowding, open sewage, lead in the water supply and the primative medical treatment ( unsanitary conditions, blood letting, and leeches to name a few) the life span in Europe dropped to 20 to 30 years, that is if you survived the critical first five years. The percentage of the children born in London during the pre industrial years who died before the age of five was 74.5%.  This was a period from about 1730 to 1749. Later, from 1810 to 1829 this death figure dropped to 31.8%

 

• So in this debate can it be argued that public health can contribute to lifespan? Consider the following, during the 20th century the average lifespan in the United States has increased by more than 30 years, and 25 of those years can be attributed to advances in public health.

 

 Public health contributes to longer life but I would argue that it is also capable of adding to quality. To give a person a longer life filled with chronic pain is to offer them  half life.  Life  lived and seen through the prism of pain  is a fractured vision of life. If by treatment that pain can be stopped or by medicine made less and bearable, then the quality of  that life is blessedly increased. To withhold this basic right to life and liberty in the quest for profit is inhumane, and denying our fellow man the minimum kindness we afford our pets.

 

Who then would argue against themselves and humanity by opposing public health insurance, who would campaign against the basic rights of liberty and the pursuit of happeness for all. For those who oppose for profit consider this while you scoff, nothing is free and  the money that will fill your treasure chest so adored, has the unbearable stench of death on it.

 

 All reference is from Wikipedia (lifespan)

The Cyber Attack started on July 4 and continued for several days,you may have noticed a slowdown on the web depending on whether or not your traffic had to share the same trunk line as the attack squads, the zombies.

Jul 9, 12:40 am ET  WASHINGTON - U.S. authorities on Wednesday eyed North Korea as the origin of the widespread cyber attack that overwhelmed government Web sites in the United States and South Korea, although they warned it would be difficult to definitively identify the attackers quickly.The powerful attack that targeted dozens of government and private sites underscored how unevenly prepared the U.S. government is to block such multipronged assaults.While Treasury Department and Federal Trade Commission Web sites were shut down by the software attack, which lasted for days over the holiday weekend, others such as the Pentagon and the White House were able to fend it off with little disruption.The North Korea link, described by three officials, more firmly connected the U.S. attacks to another wave of cyber assaults that hit government agencies Tuesday in South Korea. The officials said that while Internet addresses have been traced to North Korea, that does not necessarily mean the attack involved the Pyongyang government.

The wave of cyber assaults are known as "denial of service" attacks. Such attacks against Web sites are not uncommon and are caused when sites are so deluged with Internet traffic that they are effectively taken off-line. Mounting such an attack can be relatively easy and inexpensive, using widely available hacking programs, and they become far more serious if hackers infect and tie thousands of computers together into "botnets."

In an Associated Press interview, Philip Reitinger, deputy under secretary at the Homeland Security Department, said the far-reaching attacks demonstrate the importance of cybersecurity as a critical national security issue.The fact that a series of computers were involved in an attack, Reitinger said, "doesn't say anything about the ultimate source of the attack.""What it says is that those computers were as much a target of the attack as the eventual Web sites that are targets," said Reitinger, who heads DHS cybersecurity operations. "They're just zombies that are being used by some unseen third party to launch attacks against government and non government Web sites." [ 1 ] 

Zombies and Botnets what are they? Zombies are computers that have been infected with codes from a hacker that allows them to manipulate the computer. Several zombies are called a herd, and herds joined together make up a botnet.

The most potent weapon for Web gangsters is the botnet. A bot, broadly speaking, is a remote-controlled software program that is installed on a computer without the owner's knowledge. Hackers use viruses, worms, or automated programs to scan the Internet in search of potential zombies. One recent study found that a new P.C., attached to the Internet without protective software, will on average be infected in about twenty minutes.
                                                                           ***
In the most common scenario, the bots surreptitiously connect hundreds, or thousands, of zombies to a channel in a chat room. The process is called "herding," and a herd of zombies is called a botnet. The herder then issues orders to the zombies, telling them to send unsolicited e-mail, steal personal information, or launch attacks. Herders also trade, rent, and sell their zombies. "The botnet is the little engine that makes the evil of the Internet work," Chris Morrow, a senior network-security engineer at M.C.I., said. "It makes spam work. It makes identity fraud work. (and it makes the cyber warfare now under discussion  work) [ 2 ]
                                                                    ***
Less than five years ago, experts considered a several-thousand-zombie botnet extraordinary. Lyon now regularly faces botnets of fifty thousand zombies or more [ 2 ].
Read the above link [ 2 ] for a fascinating inside look at Zombie hunters.

The attackers set forth an army of zombies, their job was to all try to sign on to these sites at once,this overloads the server and paralyzes it, the site goes down in overload, and sometimes the ISP. At this point they have estimated 30,000 zombies were used, I suspect more. One botnet in Canada was found to have 1.5 million zombies before it was broken up by law enforcenment. Good net security apparatus has spike warnings that alert watch operators to sudden rushes of traffic so they can respond quickly to attacks.Some of the government sites responded well and some went down.

 James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that the fact that both the White House and Defense Department were attacked but didn't go down points to the need for coordinated government network defenses.
"It says that they were ready and the other guys weren't ready," he said. "We are disorganized. In the event of an attack, some places aren't going to be able to defend themselves. [ 1 ]

Was it the North Korean Army Lab 110?  

The state-run Korea Communications Commission said Friday that it had identified and blocked five Internet Protocol, or IP, addresses in five countries used to distribute computer viruses that caused the wave of Web site outages, which began in the U.S. on July 4.The addresses point to the computers that distributed the virus that triggered so-called denial of service attacks in which floods of computers try to connect to a single site at the same time, overwhelming the server.They were in Austria, Georgia, Germany, South Korea and the U.S., a commission official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media on the record.

Speculation over who was responsible for the attacks that targeted high-profile Web sites, including those of the White House and South Korea's presidential Blue House, has centered on North Korea.And though such finger-pointing has been trickling out since the attacks began, the identity of the IP addresses themselves provides little in the way of clarity.That's because it is likely the hackers, whoever they are, used the addresses to disguise themselves _ for instance, by accessing the computers from a remote location. IP addresses can also be faked or masked, hiding their true location.

South Korean media reported in May that North Korea was running an Internet warfare unit that tries to hack into American and South Korean military networks to gather confidential information and disrupt service. The Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported Friday that the North has between 500-1,000 hacking specialists. [ 3 ]

So it cant be proven that North Korea was the attacker at this time, but that is expected, they would have been poor hackers indeed if they had left traces back to them with computer addresses. Regardless of the source, there may be a positive gleaned from this attack, it may show the U.S. its weaknesses and vulnerabilities in its networks, and provided a free real time vigorous attack training episode. It may also reveal some of the attackers own weaknesses, methods and even strong points. The data may show us new strategies that we can use to defend from future attacks.

June 24,2009 WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates created a new military command dedicated to cyber security on Tuesday, reflecting the Obama administration's plans to centralize and elevate computer security as a major national-security issue.

The decision follows President Barack Obama's announcement last month that he will establish a new cyber-security office at the White House, whose chief will coordinate all government efforts to protect computer networks. The Pentagon initiative will reshape the military's efforts to protect networks from attacks by hackers, especially those from China and Russia. It also consolidates the largest concentration of cyber warriors and investigators in the government under one military command, exacerbating concerns of some experts who worry about military control of civilian computer systems.[ 4 ]

However this new command unit is only concerned with military networks, not the electrical grid ,communications grid ,or airtraffic control grid, or many other vital networks which seem pretty important to me. An attack that shuts down part of the power grid for weeks would be an economic disaster of the epic proportions. So what about those systems?

Ms. Leed, a Pentagon special assistant on cyber operations from 2005 to 2008, said the narrow focus could leave vital national networks still vulnerable to outside attacks and intrusions. "The question is whether the DoD protecting its own networks is sufficient to protect our national-security imperatives, and I would say no," she said. "The overwhelming majority of cyber traffic isn't on government networks." [ 4 ]

The protection of these networks then is solely  the responsibility of Dept of Homeland Security
 

Rod Beckstrom, former chief of the National Cyber Security Center, which is charged with coordinating cyber-security activities across the U.S. government, quit in March, warning in his resignation letter that the growing reliance on the NSA was a "bad strategy" that poses "threats to our democratic processes." Homeland Security officials said they are still responsible for protecting all civilian networks, though a department spokeswoman declined to speak specifically about the Cyber Command."It is the view in the White House that the Department of Homeland Security will continue to play an absolutely essential role in the protection of America's cyber infrastructure," said Rand Beers, who was nominated to be Homeland Security's undersecretary overseeing cybersecurity, at his confirmation hearing this month.[ 4 ]

By comparison, the Department of Homeland Security has 100 employees dedicated to civilian cyber security, with plans to reach 260 next year.

This is the gang of 100....they need more help and soon, for as of today they are the only ones who watch over our vital civilian networks. As for us, there are some things each one of us can do to keep our computers from becoming zombies. Having a firewall is critical for protection, along with a virus checker with up to date definitions.Dont leave your computer on 24/7 unattended, shut it down or unplug the net cable when not in use, if it isnt on the web it cant be attacked.Open no email from anyone you dont know, download no programs from unsecure sites.Dont let your computer become a zombie recruit.

                 Sources :
[ 1 ] Yahoo news on cyber attacks
[ 2 ] The Zombie Hunters
[ 3 ] huffington post on cyber attack
[ 4 ] wsj on new cyber command










 

We may be about to see the lid blow off of another  Dick Cheney black operation from his star chamber. Back in March ,New York Times  Seymour Hersh  stated that Dick Cheney may have set up and orchestrated an "Executive Assassination Ring" . Here is part of that  statement

Hersh:  "Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command -- JSOC it's called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. ...

"Congress has no oversight of it. It's an executive assassination ring essentially, and it's been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.

"Under President Bush's authority, they've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That's been going on, in the name of all of us.

Complete statement and audio here Great Conversation Event (University of Minnesota)

Today Sam Stein over at Huffington Post reported some further developments

The revelation from seven Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee that they were misled about a critical CIA program has sparked a debate that touches on the most sensitive areas of national security policy. What program, exactly, was being kept secret?
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And in a conversation with the Huffington Post, Rep. Anna Eshoo,(D-Calif.), one of the letter's signatories, said that Panetta "stopped the program the day after he was informed." Waterboarding was ended as a practice during the Bush years

She is indicating that waterboarding had been stopped back during the Bush administration and that whatever this program was, it was stopped recently , after Panetta became CIA director and found out about it.He stopped it the next day , or in effect immediately after the shock wore off.

So what are the "significant actions" that these seven lawmakers insist were kept from Congress? Another theory being bandied about concerns an "executive assassination ring" that was allegedly set up and answered to former Vice President Dick Cheney      Huffpo Sam Stein

 
Whatever Panetta told them about stunned them.Shocking to even these lawmakers who have seen and heard just about everything, that indicates something extraordinary

Eshoo said she could not discuss what was a "highly classified . program." She did, however, note that when Panetta told House Intelligence Committee members what it was that had been kept secret, "the whole committee was stunned, even Republicans." A Republican committee member told Who Runs Gov's Greg Sargent it was something they hadn't heard before.

This is something they had not heard before, so this also indicates it was something other than Water boarding  and torture. If we take what Seymour Hearst has stated  ,who has always been reliable investigative reporter, and the statements that Stein has reported it looks like Cheney may have actually had a hit squad and used it .