Once again and infamously, Britannia waives the rules.
The U.K. government's letter to Quito threatening to storm Ecuador's embassy building in London to seize Julian Assange was radical cheek even by the uppity standards of the the British ruling class. It also spat spoiled bangers and sour mash on international law and diplomatic accords.
Now in the fallout everyone with a dog in the fight is pulling the predictable punches.
I have no doubt (without, I confess, any hard evidence -- yet) that Washington is pulling the strings of the Swedish and British governments in all of this.
Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, sought asylum in Ecuador to prevent his extradition to Sweden to face "questioning" over allegations of sexual improprieties with two women during a visit with supporters there. Specifically, he is alleged to have failed to accede to the women's request that he wear condoms during consensual sex. By some stretch of the imagination, a Swedish prosecutor decided that, if true, this would constitute rape.
Assange's lawyers -- rightly, I believe -- argued that if he were extradited to Sweden he'd be tossed in the clink until the United States of Police and Torture could grab him and bring him over here for treatment that would make Bradley Manning's year and a half of torture, and ensuing kangaroo court proceedings, look like love-making.
The government of Ecuador first proposed that the Swedes conduct their questioning in their London embassy, where presumably the interrogators could be relieved of rubber hoses, cattle prods and water boards before the the questioning began. No, said Sweden.
Well then, Ecuador countered, what about an iron-clad guarantee that you won't turn him over to the U.S. if we allow Britain to send him to Sweden to answer your questions? Neither the Brits nor the Swedes bought that one.
At last, President Rafael Correa and his advisers in the government of Ecuador rightly concluded that Assange's human rights would in all probability be violated if he were not granted sanctuary.
Sweden went bonkers. Who is this guy Correa, the Swedes are saying, to preach about rights when he oppresses the noble, free press in his very own country. He's a bloody dictator who orders his police to fire on hospitals! Similar charges are flying around the United Kingdom, as well.
Now, I urge you, ask any of the millions of Americans whose homes have been foreclosed just how free might be a press that is largely owned by bankers -- as are most of the private media in Ecuador?
Oscar Wilde -- or was it Martin Amis? or an ancient Arab philosopher? -- once noted that the character of a man can be judged by the character of his enemies. President Correa's enemies, in addition to the banker-owned media, include foreign oil investors, local banks, telecommunications companies, the U.S. government and the Catholic Church. This, in my book, makes him a candidate for sainthood.
Then there's the matter of Articles 71 through 74 of the Constitution of Ecuador, largely shaped by Correa and adopted in 2008, the first such document in the history of man to recognize as a matter of law the Rights of Nature. It mandates that ecosystems have an inalienable right to exist and flourish, that citizens have the right to petition on behalf of nature, and that government must intervene against violations of these rights. Powerful stuff on a planet whose other governments -- especially the United States -- give benign and tacit support to those who degrade our environment.
The constitution of Ecuador also takes pains to recognize the influence of indigenous people, who, in the puppetmaster U.S. or Assange's native Australia, still get short shrift from their governors. Now, with the brave humanitarian act of protecting Julian Assange from those who would persecute him, President Correa and the people of Ecuador are once again on the side of the angels. The better angels of human nature.
"Don't tell Momma I'm a journalist; say I play the piano in a whorehouse."
Friday, August 17, 2012
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Nature News and Other Misgivings
Even the animal kingdom reverberates with bad news these days.
Airplanes will spray Dallas with mosquito-killing chemicals tonight in the first wave of an emergency program to fight West Nile disease. Mayor Mike Rawlings declared the state of emergency and authorized the first aerial spraying of insecticide in the city in more than 45 years because more than 200 cases of West Nile and 10 deaths linked to the virus have been reported across Dallas County.
"The number of cases, the number of deaths are remarkable, and we need to sit up and take notice," Rawlings said. "We do have a serious problem right now."
Some Dallas City Council members worried that spraying might have bad health effects on humans and animals. But State health commissioner Dr. David Lakey supported the measure, saying half of all West Nile cases in the United States so far this year are in Texas.
In the Florida Everglades, wildlife officers captured a 17-foot, 7-inch Burmese python and discovered 87 eggs inside the beast. Researchers say this means the pythons are reproducing at an even more alarming rate than they had realized. Burmese pythons in the wild in Asia are known to reach 20 to 25 feet in length, so researchers fully expect that eventually someone will find a 20-foot Burmese python in Florida.
The great reptiles are not native to the state, which has the worst invasive species problems of any of the contiguous 48. No wonder Willard Romney recently canceled his scheduled campaign appearances there!
Unlike the Florida snakes, the wolves of Wyoming are in fact an indigenous species. But that makes no difference to the Department of the Interior, which plans to approve the mass slaughter of wolves in the state later this month.
Ken Salazar, the department secretary who wears goofy hats and an even goofier smile, is rushing the approval to ensure Wyoming's wolf kill plan will be carried out this fall even though the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rejected a similar plan by Wyoming last year.
Wyoming's shoot-on-sight plan will promote the killing of at least 170 wolves and likely many more before the carnage is over. Wolves play an important, positive role in the biodiversity of the state, according to signs placed at various sites by Wyoming's own wildlife officials. Will the signs be removed now?
They're still killing wolves in New Mexico, too. These are Mexican gray cousins of the Rocky Mountain wolves in Wyoming, reintroduced to the southwestern United States after once being extinguished by hunting.
Like Salazar, southern New Mexico's multimillionaire Congressman Stevan Pearce is all for wolf eradication.
Skeeters that cause fatal disease in humans, non-native snakes that have no predators, and wolves that were here before we were -- they're all the same to Ken and Steve.
Like the Shrub that grew in the White House for eight years, they don't do nuance.
Airplanes will spray Dallas with mosquito-killing chemicals tonight in the first wave of an emergency program to fight West Nile disease. Mayor Mike Rawlings declared the state of emergency and authorized the first aerial spraying of insecticide in the city in more than 45 years because more than 200 cases of West Nile and 10 deaths linked to the virus have been reported across Dallas County.
"The number of cases, the number of deaths are remarkable, and we need to sit up and take notice," Rawlings said. "We do have a serious problem right now."
Some Dallas City Council members worried that spraying might have bad health effects on humans and animals. But State health commissioner Dr. David Lakey supported the measure, saying half of all West Nile cases in the United States so far this year are in Texas.
In the Florida Everglades, wildlife officers captured a 17-foot, 7-inch Burmese python and discovered 87 eggs inside the beast. Researchers say this means the pythons are reproducing at an even more alarming rate than they had realized. Burmese pythons in the wild in Asia are known to reach 20 to 25 feet in length, so researchers fully expect that eventually someone will find a 20-foot Burmese python in Florida.
The great reptiles are not native to the state, which has the worst invasive species problems of any of the contiguous 48. No wonder Willard Romney recently canceled his scheduled campaign appearances there!
Unlike the Florida snakes, the wolves of Wyoming are in fact an indigenous species. But that makes no difference to the Department of the Interior, which plans to approve the mass slaughter of wolves in the state later this month.
Ken Salazar, the department secretary who wears goofy hats and an even goofier smile, is rushing the approval to ensure Wyoming's wolf kill plan will be carried out this fall even though the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rejected a similar plan by Wyoming last year.
Wyoming's shoot-on-sight plan will promote the killing of at least 170 wolves and likely many more before the carnage is over. Wolves play an important, positive role in the biodiversity of the state, according to signs placed at various sites by Wyoming's own wildlife officials. Will the signs be removed now?
They're still killing wolves in New Mexico, too. These are Mexican gray cousins of the Rocky Mountain wolves in Wyoming, reintroduced to the southwestern United States after once being extinguished by hunting.
Like Salazar, southern New Mexico's multimillionaire Congressman Stevan Pearce is all for wolf eradication.
Skeeters that cause fatal disease in humans, non-native snakes that have no predators, and wolves that were here before we were -- they're all the same to Ken and Steve.
Like the Shrub that grew in the White House for eight years, they don't do nuance.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Will They or Won't They: Israel and Iran
Sifting through recent reports from Israel, I apprehend a foregone conclusion that the Israelis will attack Iran within the next 12 months. A flurry of recent visits to Israel by senior U.S. diplomatic and defense officials seems to have failed to dissuade the Netanyahu government from its determination to do this. One commentator even wrote that "the rest of the world" now accepts this as inevitable.
This pot was stirred by Israeli officials, primarily Defense Minister Ehud Barak, through a series of leaks suggesting that President Obama had received a new national security estimate on Iran. The Israeli leakers said the report disclosed "alarming" and "significant" progress by Iran toward the development of nuclear weapons. The American intelligence, the Israeli sources said, was now "closer" to Israel's long-held view that Iran is perilously close to becoming a nuclear military power.
An unnamed official (probably Barak) told the newspaper Haaretz: "If Israel forgoes the chance to act and it becomes clear that it no longer has the power to act, the likelihood of an American action will decrease. So we cannot wait a year to find out who was right: the one who said that the likelihood of an American action is high or the one who said the likelihood of an American action is low."
But after the attack-Iran stew had simmered a while, an unnamed official in the White House put the kibosh on it. He told Reuters news service that the United States still believes that Iran is not on the verge of having a nuclear weapon and that Tehran has not made a decision to pursue one. This official said the U.S. intelligence assessment of Iran's nuclear activities had not changed since intelligence officials delivered testimony to Congress on the issue earlier this year.
He was referring to the January testimony by James Clapper, U.S. director of national intelligence,that "we assess Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons,(but) we do not know if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons." Then as now, to be perfectly clear, there was absolutely no credible evidence that Iran was on the brink of becoming a nuclear threat to Israel or anyone else in the Middle East.
Whatever "the rest of the world" seems to believe at the moment, the reports out of Israel probably amount to saber-rattling, an effort to nudge both sides of the American presidential election debate closer to the Israeli government's hawkish position on Iran.
Even some Israeli cheerleaders in this country think that a unilateral series of air strikes on Iran by Israel would be a bad thing.
The Athlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, who in 2002 saw WMDs under every fold of Saddam Hussein's thawb, and who two years ago was "better than 50 percent" certain that there would be an Israeli attack in 2010 on Iran's "nuclear facilities," now says that the probability of such an attack this year is no better than 38 per cent, and offers seven reasons why Israel should not do the dire deed.
Even in arguing against a unilateral strike, however, Goldberg clings to the belief that Iran is pursuing nuclear weaponry. "What I worry about, at bottom," he writes, "is that an Israeli attack would inadvertently create conditions for an acceleration of the Iranian nuclear program."
But the most telling of his seven points is the very first one: "Innocent people will die. It is quite possible that even a limited Israeli strike could kill innocent Iranians, and it is an almost-sure thing that Iranian retaliation will kill innocent Israels."
Until governments renounce policies that will lead to the killing of "innocent people," there is no real hope for peace in the Middle East, or any other international trouble spot.
If the United States really wants to be "the leader of the free world," it can begin by more forcefully insisting that its ally in Jerusalem refrain from acts of war against neighboring nations. And then it can put its money where its mouth is and begin to reverse its own policy of endless war around the globe.
Fat chance.
This pot was stirred by Israeli officials, primarily Defense Minister Ehud Barak, through a series of leaks suggesting that President Obama had received a new national security estimate on Iran. The Israeli leakers said the report disclosed "alarming" and "significant" progress by Iran toward the development of nuclear weapons. The American intelligence, the Israeli sources said, was now "closer" to Israel's long-held view that Iran is perilously close to becoming a nuclear military power.
An unnamed official (probably Barak) told the newspaper Haaretz: "If Israel forgoes the chance to act and it becomes clear that it no longer has the power to act, the likelihood of an American action will decrease. So we cannot wait a year to find out who was right: the one who said that the likelihood of an American action is high or the one who said the likelihood of an American action is low."
But after the attack-Iran stew had simmered a while, an unnamed official in the White House put the kibosh on it. He told Reuters news service that the United States still believes that Iran is not on the verge of having a nuclear weapon and that Tehran has not made a decision to pursue one. This official said the U.S. intelligence assessment of Iran's nuclear activities had not changed since intelligence officials delivered testimony to Congress on the issue earlier this year.
He was referring to the January testimony by James Clapper, U.S. director of national intelligence,that "we assess Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons,(but) we do not know if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons." Then as now, to be perfectly clear, there was absolutely no credible evidence that Iran was on the brink of becoming a nuclear threat to Israel or anyone else in the Middle East.
Whatever "the rest of the world" seems to believe at the moment, the reports out of Israel probably amount to saber-rattling, an effort to nudge both sides of the American presidential election debate closer to the Israeli government's hawkish position on Iran.
Even some Israeli cheerleaders in this country think that a unilateral series of air strikes on Iran by Israel would be a bad thing.
The Athlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, who in 2002 saw WMDs under every fold of Saddam Hussein's thawb, and who two years ago was "better than 50 percent" certain that there would be an Israeli attack in 2010 on Iran's "nuclear facilities," now says that the probability of such an attack this year is no better than 38 per cent, and offers seven reasons why Israel should not do the dire deed.
Even in arguing against a unilateral strike, however, Goldberg clings to the belief that Iran is pursuing nuclear weaponry. "What I worry about, at bottom," he writes, "is that an Israeli attack would inadvertently create conditions for an acceleration of the Iranian nuclear program."
But the most telling of his seven points is the very first one: "Innocent people will die. It is quite possible that even a limited Israeli strike could kill innocent Iranians, and it is an almost-sure thing that Iranian retaliation will kill innocent Israels."
Until governments renounce policies that will lead to the killing of "innocent people," there is no real hope for peace in the Middle East, or any other international trouble spot.
If the United States really wants to be "the leader of the free world," it can begin by more forcefully insisting that its ally in Jerusalem refrain from acts of war against neighboring nations. And then it can put its money where its mouth is and begin to reverse its own policy of endless war around the globe.
Fat chance.
Monday, August 13, 2012
We, the Peeple of the United States. . . .
This is Amerika in 2012:
Portales, NM -- Median income in this windswept, woebegone, weatherbeaten town in eastern New Mexico's high plains is a scintilla above poverty level.
Lori Teel houses and feeds five children ages 1 to 10 in this economic climate.
She doesn't have a library card but someone sent a tort claim notice to the city clerk alleging that she owes $35.98 in unpaid library fees.
The clerk's office sent dunning notices to a children's shelter where Teel hasn't lived for 20 years. When there was no response, a warrant was issued for her arrest. While her children wept in fear, Teel was handcuffed and jailed.
It cost her $610 for bail the next day after her terrified kids spent the night with utter strangers.
* * *
Easton, PA -- David C. Gorczynski, 22, joined an "Occupy" protest at the Wells Fargo bank in this town of 27,000 about 60 miles outside of Philadelphia. He carried signs that read, “You’re being robbed” and “Give a man a gun, he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank, and he can rob a country.”
Inside the bank, a nervous teller triggered an alarm when the protest started.
The police came.
They arrested Gorczynski on felony charges of attempted bank robbery and terroristic threatening, as well as one misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct.
Easton Police Chief Carl Scalzo said, "People have to understand if they want to protest, there's a line."
* * *
In New Mexico, a university graduate writes to the local paper -- apparently he's dead serious -- that Obama is at once a socialist and a fascist. He "proves" his case by misquoting both Marx and Hitler. The same publication regularly gives editorial page space to the county Republican chairman, enabling him to insist over and over again that only Christian believers have citizenship standing under the U.S. Constitution. Any government policy to the contrary violates his First Amendment rights!
* * *
Meddling by elected idiots, lack of funding and overt religiosity have so degraded American education -- public and private -- that the ignorant are leading the blind. Case in point: On BBC 4 in the U.K. the other day, an interviewer talked with a surviving member of a U.S. Air Force crew that bombed Japan in the waning days of the second World War, remarking upon how little today's generations remember about that terrible conflict.
It prompted the flier to recall the recent occasion when he was asked to speak to a junior high school class in Texas, and was introduced by the teacher as a "veteran of World War eleven."
* * *
In Iowa, a journalism student working the night news shift at the college radio station was making his routine last-minute calls to official sources in case there was late-breaking news. When he contacted the sheriff's office, the deputy on duty said, "We got a s'pected B an' E." The student asked, "Read me the report." The sheriff said, "It's a lot of pages." The student said, "Well, then, just tell me the gist of it."
"Jist what?" replied the officer of the law.
* * *
This is Amerika in 2012.
Portales, NM -- Median income in this windswept, woebegone, weatherbeaten town in eastern New Mexico's high plains is a scintilla above poverty level.
Lori Teel houses and feeds five children ages 1 to 10 in this economic climate.
She doesn't have a library card but someone sent a tort claim notice to the city clerk alleging that she owes $35.98 in unpaid library fees.
The clerk's office sent dunning notices to a children's shelter where Teel hasn't lived for 20 years. When there was no response, a warrant was issued for her arrest. While her children wept in fear, Teel was handcuffed and jailed.
It cost her $610 for bail the next day after her terrified kids spent the night with utter strangers.
* * *
Easton, PA -- David C. Gorczynski, 22, joined an "Occupy" protest at the Wells Fargo bank in this town of 27,000 about 60 miles outside of Philadelphia. He carried signs that read, “You’re being robbed” and “Give a man a gun, he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank, and he can rob a country.”
Inside the bank, a nervous teller triggered an alarm when the protest started.
The police came.
They arrested Gorczynski on felony charges of attempted bank robbery and terroristic threatening, as well as one misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct.
Easton Police Chief Carl Scalzo said, "People have to understand if they want to protest, there's a line."
* * *
In New Mexico, a university graduate writes to the local paper -- apparently he's dead serious -- that Obama is at once a socialist and a fascist. He "proves" his case by misquoting both Marx and Hitler. The same publication regularly gives editorial page space to the county Republican chairman, enabling him to insist over and over again that only Christian believers have citizenship standing under the U.S. Constitution. Any government policy to the contrary violates his First Amendment rights!
* * *
Meddling by elected idiots, lack of funding and overt religiosity have so degraded American education -- public and private -- that the ignorant are leading the blind. Case in point: On BBC 4 in the U.K. the other day, an interviewer talked with a surviving member of a U.S. Air Force crew that bombed Japan in the waning days of the second World War, remarking upon how little today's generations remember about that terrible conflict.
It prompted the flier to recall the recent occasion when he was asked to speak to a junior high school class in Texas, and was introduced by the teacher as a "veteran of World War eleven."
* * *
In Iowa, a journalism student working the night news shift at the college radio station was making his routine last-minute calls to official sources in case there was late-breaking news. When he contacted the sheriff's office, the deputy on duty said, "We got a s'pected B an' E." The student asked, "Read me the report." The sheriff said, "It's a lot of pages." The student said, "Well, then, just tell me the gist of it."
"Jist what?" replied the officer of the law.
* * *
This is Amerika in 2012.
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Are We Really 'Better Than This?'
How much will this cost?” he asks. It’s the question at the heart
of any business transaction: Is this new car, this plane ticket, this
iPad worth the asking price?
But the man sitting before me is not a customer in an automobile showroom or an electronics store. He is my patient in the emergency department, and he is weighing whether to undergo the chest CT scan I have just recommended.
“I’m uninsured,” he says. “I lost my health coverage when I got laid off from my job three years ago. This is all coming out of my pocket.”
An ex-smoker in his late 40s, he has been coughing up increasing amounts of bloody sputum over the past month. What began as occasional, tiny red flecks has progressed to thick crimson streaks he can no longer ignore.
“I can only give you an estimate,” I say, “but I’m guessing a chest CT scan plus the radiologist’s fee will run in the neighborhood of $2,000.”
“I was afraid you’d say something like that,” he says. “I figured CT scans don’t come cheap.” He sighs quietly. “I’m raising my 8-year-old daughter on a pretty lean budget.” He looks thin in his hospital gown and a shade pale, a few days of graying stubble on his chin.
“But I’ve been worried about this for too long,” he says. “I know I need to have it.”
An hour later, I am seated at my computer scrolling through digital CT images while the radiologist on the phone describes the findings.
“In the hilum of the left lung there is a 4.5 centimeter lesion very likely to represent malignancy,” she says. My gaze falls on the irregularly shaped white mass, its tiny tentacles invading the delicate latticework of the surrounding lung tissue.
“Unfortunately, it gets worse,” the radiologist says. “There are also multiple scattered smaller lesions throughout both lungs, highly suspicious for metastases.”
There was a time during medical school and residency when I regarded abnormal clinical and radiographic findings with intrigue. I remember the excitement of hearing my first heart murmur. Of palpating a thyroid nodule. Of visualizing an ovarian mass on pelvic ultrasound.
But after years of clinical practice and countless patient encounters, I now find it difficult to view abnormal findings separately from the human lives they affect. I see an elderly woman’s hip X-ray, knowing that the fracture line coursing through the femoral neck likely spells the end of her days of independent living. A peculiar bright patch lighting up in the brain’s left hemisphere on an MRI scan signifies that a man will no longer be able to grasp a pen or a coffee mug in his right hand, will never again be able to speak a meaningful word to his family.
I hang up the phone, my eyes lingering on the CT images, the sinister white lung mass and its small-but-ominous satellites. And I am aware of their significance—that a middle-aged man will not live to see his daughter’s wedding.
I return to the patient’s room and sit down on the bedside stool. Before I speak, I feel his gaze upon me, anxiously searching my face for any subtle indication of the words to come.
“I’m sorry to have to give you this news,” I say, “but your CT scan shows findings concerning for lung cancer. It’s possibly spread to both lungs.”
He stares ahead, unblinking, his facial pallor seemingly more apparent. After a few moments, he speaks.
“On some level, I was expecting something really bad like this,” he says. “But, of course, you always hope that everything will turn out fine.”
My mouth, having grown dry, lacks the appropriate words to console him in this moment of utter sorrow. So I put a hand on his arm.
“I’ll talk to our on-call oncologist,” I tell him. “We’ll figure out a plan for you.”
He waits patiently until I return to his room once more, armed with an action plan. “The oncologist is going to admit you to the hospital and start the workup,” I explain. “He’ll order a PET scan to see if there’s been spread to other parts of the body. Then they’ll do a biopsy of that main lesion in your lung to determine the best treatment options—whether it be radiation, chemotherapy or some combination of the two.”
A long period of silence follows, time for my patient to process the information I have conveyed. I anticipate forthcoming questions.
“I suspected that you’d want to do all those things,” he says, finally. “But I’ve already been thinking this through, and I’ve decided that I’m going to have to pass on your recommendations.”
It is not a reply I was expecting. “Why is that?” I ask.
“As I said before, I’ve got no health insurance,” he says. “But there’s one thing I do have—my house. And it’s fully paid for. I guess I’m not willing to mortgage it—and ultimately lose it—to pay off endless medical bills. My house is the only thing…” His voice trails off. After a pause, he continues. “My house is the only thing I’ll have to leave my daughter when I’m gone.”
Tears have gathered in the corners of his eyes. I offer him a box of tissues, and he takes one.
We sit together in a room in a modern emergency department in a rich country, a land where highly trained specialists confidently wield the newest technologies and expensive pharmaceuticals. But these treasures are not accessible to all, for ours is also a land where private health insurance is bought and sold as a commodity. Ours is a system known to shake down sick people for money they don’t have. Ours is the only wealthy democracy that fails to guarantee health coverage to all of its citizens.
Just as it is failing now.
He looks down at his watch. “Thanks for all you’ve done. I really appreciate it. But I’ve gotta leave now,” he says. “I have to go pick her up from school.”
As I watch him reach behind his neck to untie his hospital gown, I can’t help but feel that we owe him so much more. I can’t help but feel that we—health care providers, hospital administrators, insurance company executives, politicians, all those who strenuously fight the changes that our system desperately needs—we all have failed him.
I can’t help but feel that we are better than this.
This article first appeared in the July 2012 issue of Minnesota Medicine.
But the man sitting before me is not a customer in an automobile showroom or an electronics store. He is my patient in the emergency department, and he is weighing whether to undergo the chest CT scan I have just recommended.
“I’m uninsured,” he says. “I lost my health coverage when I got laid off from my job three years ago. This is all coming out of my pocket.”
An ex-smoker in his late 40s, he has been coughing up increasing amounts of bloody sputum over the past month. What began as occasional, tiny red flecks has progressed to thick crimson streaks he can no longer ignore.
“I can only give you an estimate,” I say, “but I’m guessing a chest CT scan plus the radiologist’s fee will run in the neighborhood of $2,000.”
“I was afraid you’d say something like that,” he says. “I figured CT scans don’t come cheap.” He sighs quietly. “I’m raising my 8-year-old daughter on a pretty lean budget.” He looks thin in his hospital gown and a shade pale, a few days of graying stubble on his chin.
“But I’ve been worried about this for too long,” he says. “I know I need to have it.”
An hour later, I am seated at my computer scrolling through digital CT images while the radiologist on the phone describes the findings.
“In the hilum of the left lung there is a 4.5 centimeter lesion very likely to represent malignancy,” she says. My gaze falls on the irregularly shaped white mass, its tiny tentacles invading the delicate latticework of the surrounding lung tissue.
“Unfortunately, it gets worse,” the radiologist says. “There are also multiple scattered smaller lesions throughout both lungs, highly suspicious for metastases.”
There was a time during medical school and residency when I regarded abnormal clinical and radiographic findings with intrigue. I remember the excitement of hearing my first heart murmur. Of palpating a thyroid nodule. Of visualizing an ovarian mass on pelvic ultrasound.
But after years of clinical practice and countless patient encounters, I now find it difficult to view abnormal findings separately from the human lives they affect. I see an elderly woman’s hip X-ray, knowing that the fracture line coursing through the femoral neck likely spells the end of her days of independent living. A peculiar bright patch lighting up in the brain’s left hemisphere on an MRI scan signifies that a man will no longer be able to grasp a pen or a coffee mug in his right hand, will never again be able to speak a meaningful word to his family.
I hang up the phone, my eyes lingering on the CT images, the sinister white lung mass and its small-but-ominous satellites. And I am aware of their significance—that a middle-aged man will not live to see his daughter’s wedding.
I return to the patient’s room and sit down on the bedside stool. Before I speak, I feel his gaze upon me, anxiously searching my face for any subtle indication of the words to come.
“I’m sorry to have to give you this news,” I say, “but your CT scan shows findings concerning for lung cancer. It’s possibly spread to both lungs.”
He stares ahead, unblinking, his facial pallor seemingly more apparent. After a few moments, he speaks.
“On some level, I was expecting something really bad like this,” he says. “But, of course, you always hope that everything will turn out fine.”
My mouth, having grown dry, lacks the appropriate words to console him in this moment of utter sorrow. So I put a hand on his arm.
“I’ll talk to our on-call oncologist,” I tell him. “We’ll figure out a plan for you.”
He waits patiently until I return to his room once more, armed with an action plan. “The oncologist is going to admit you to the hospital and start the workup,” I explain. “He’ll order a PET scan to see if there’s been spread to other parts of the body. Then they’ll do a biopsy of that main lesion in your lung to determine the best treatment options—whether it be radiation, chemotherapy or some combination of the two.”
A long period of silence follows, time for my patient to process the information I have conveyed. I anticipate forthcoming questions.
“I suspected that you’d want to do all those things,” he says, finally. “But I’ve already been thinking this through, and I’ve decided that I’m going to have to pass on your recommendations.”
It is not a reply I was expecting. “Why is that?” I ask.
“As I said before, I’ve got no health insurance,” he says. “But there’s one thing I do have—my house. And it’s fully paid for. I guess I’m not willing to mortgage it—and ultimately lose it—to pay off endless medical bills. My house is the only thing…” His voice trails off. After a pause, he continues. “My house is the only thing I’ll have to leave my daughter when I’m gone.”
Tears have gathered in the corners of his eyes. I offer him a box of tissues, and he takes one.
We sit together in a room in a modern emergency department in a rich country, a land where highly trained specialists confidently wield the newest technologies and expensive pharmaceuticals. But these treasures are not accessible to all, for ours is also a land where private health insurance is bought and sold as a commodity. Ours is a system known to shake down sick people for money they don’t have. Ours is the only wealthy democracy that fails to guarantee health coverage to all of its citizens.
Just as it is failing now.
He looks down at his watch. “Thanks for all you’ve done. I really appreciate it. But I’ve gotta leave now,” he says. “I have to go pick her up from school.”
As I watch him reach behind his neck to untie his hospital gown, I can’t help but feel that we owe him so much more. I can’t help but feel that we—health care providers, hospital administrators, insurance company executives, politicians, all those who strenuously fight the changes that our system desperately needs—we all have failed him.
I can’t help but feel that we are better than this.
This article first appeared in the July 2012 issue of Minnesota Medicine.
Monday, August 6, 2012
Once Again: Why Not to Vote for Obama
Why is it so difficult for so many Democrats to understand why so many who eagerly supported him in 2008 will not vote for Barack Obama in 2012?
I'm told that if I "allow" Mitt Romney to become president because I "waste" my vote on a third party or independent candidate, or do not cast a presidential ballot at all, I will be to blame for a diminished, dysfunctional non-democratic America that will ensue.
Bovine excrement.
The fact is that by voting for Obama in 2008 I am complicit in a diminished, dysfunctional, non-democratic United States that has existed ever since Bush II took office.
Obama has continued to pursue some of the worst, actually criminal, policies of his predecessor. I cannot condone that by voting for him again. Why is that so difficult to understand?
But Obama is, some Democrats will say, the lesser of two evils.
Nonsense.
One cannot restore a sick nation to health by continually voting for the lesser of two evils. This country has been mis-governed so badly for so long that it probably can never be made into the democratic republic its founders envisioned. Many of those who crafted this infant nation shared Franklin's famous skepticism in handing us "a republic -- if you can keep it." We have made their worst fears come true.
Our pathetic propensity for hero worship, manufacturing heroes if none exist, has placed those very founders on far too high a pedestal. Although they shared many praiseworthy democratic ideals, these were far from perfect humans -- vainglorious, privileged, wealthy, many of them slaveholders. Enough of them recognized the faults of their original Constitution to hand down the ten amendments now called the Bill of Rights.
Presidents and Congresses have done their best over the ensuing two centuries to undo the wisdom of those amendments, crowning their hubris with the so-called USA Patriot Act, probably the most unpatriotic act of cowardice in the history of the wronged republic.
Barack Obama, as senator and as president, has been in the thick of this high treason, this betrayal of whatever noble ideals our founders left us.
As Commander in Chief, he is as guilty of crimes against humanity in Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and the United States of America as Adolph Hitler was in Poland, France, Russia and Germany. Killing innocent people is murder, whether the weapon is lethal gas or a CIA controlled drone.
I would not entrust the care of my dear companion, Brandi, to a man who shoots dogs.
I cannot consent to condemning my homeland to the continuing care of a man who kills innocent people.
Barack Obama is guilty of lying to the voters who elected him; of repeatedly selling out to corporate interests rather than protecting those of the common man; of toadying to the military-industrial profiteers rather than seeking peace; of political cowardice, ethical emptiness and moral blindness.
The Democratic party is telling me Mitt Romney would be worse.
If that is so, then neither candidate is worthy of my vote. And neither will get it.
I'm told that if I "allow" Mitt Romney to become president because I "waste" my vote on a third party or independent candidate, or do not cast a presidential ballot at all, I will be to blame for a diminished, dysfunctional non-democratic America that will ensue.
Bovine excrement.
The fact is that by voting for Obama in 2008 I am complicit in a diminished, dysfunctional, non-democratic United States that has existed ever since Bush II took office.
Obama has continued to pursue some of the worst, actually criminal, policies of his predecessor. I cannot condone that by voting for him again. Why is that so difficult to understand?
But Obama is, some Democrats will say, the lesser of two evils.
Nonsense.
One cannot restore a sick nation to health by continually voting for the lesser of two evils. This country has been mis-governed so badly for so long that it probably can never be made into the democratic republic its founders envisioned. Many of those who crafted this infant nation shared Franklin's famous skepticism in handing us "a republic -- if you can keep it." We have made their worst fears come true.
Our pathetic propensity for hero worship, manufacturing heroes if none exist, has placed those very founders on far too high a pedestal. Although they shared many praiseworthy democratic ideals, these were far from perfect humans -- vainglorious, privileged, wealthy, many of them slaveholders. Enough of them recognized the faults of their original Constitution to hand down the ten amendments now called the Bill of Rights.
Presidents and Congresses have done their best over the ensuing two centuries to undo the wisdom of those amendments, crowning their hubris with the so-called USA Patriot Act, probably the most unpatriotic act of cowardice in the history of the wronged republic.
Barack Obama, as senator and as president, has been in the thick of this high treason, this betrayal of whatever noble ideals our founders left us.
As Commander in Chief, he is as guilty of crimes against humanity in Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and the United States of America as Adolph Hitler was in Poland, France, Russia and Germany. Killing innocent people is murder, whether the weapon is lethal gas or a CIA controlled drone.
I would not entrust the care of my dear companion, Brandi, to a man who shoots dogs.
I cannot consent to condemning my homeland to the continuing care of a man who kills innocent people.
Barack Obama is guilty of lying to the voters who elected him; of repeatedly selling out to corporate interests rather than protecting those of the common man; of toadying to the military-industrial profiteers rather than seeking peace; of political cowardice, ethical emptiness and moral blindness.
The Democratic party is telling me Mitt Romney would be worse.
If that is so, then neither candidate is worthy of my vote. And neither will get it.
Monday, July 30, 2012
Desolation Beneath the Spacious Skies
On recent forays through 15 of the contiguous 48, rarely setting tire on an Interstate, we meandered through countless small towns and no big ones, discovering that if the business of America is small business, America is far from beautiful. Main Street is vacant and boarded up save for the thrift stores, flea markets and pawn-and-gun shops. Mom and Pop have gone bust, despite what the politicians tell you, and in Haysi, Hungry Horse, Guthrie and Cushing, you shop at the Dollar General or the Family Dollar. In a couple of towns they were right next door, on the outskirts across from the only operating gas station, just beyond the last falling down store where Mom once sold you back-to-school britches or Pop parceled out penny candy for a nickel a piece. Today, when you're flush you drive 20 miles to the nearest Walmart, whose huge supply trucks were the only big semi's we encountered on U.S. 81 or state Route 97 or whatever other road we happened to be following. Yes, traffic was light. Crossing the country east to west, or north to south, on these old roads was less stressful, and very little more time consuming, than battling the masses on the Interstates. Viewed up-close from the two-lane roads, small-town America is a grim picture, a parody of the bucolic one we used to see on Sunday drives in the family Studebaker. The best-kept buildings are churches and banks. Countless towns lacking a public library or decently-stocked food store had at least four or five of the former. The latter were branches of big-city banks where the One Per Cent park some of their cash, to be lent to Mom and Pop just before their little store is foreclosed with their homes soon to follow. Hundreds of fine frame houses that looked as if Bess and Harry Truman might once have lived there now sit vacant and rotting in the rain and sun. The rain storms we experienced seemed more violent than the ones we remembered from when we lived in places like these -- a product, science tells us, of man-made planetary climate change. But pious America regularly fills all those churches, pleading with God to gentle those storms, and to end the scythe of drought that turned most of the cornfields we passed into brown, sun-seared vales of tears. Between the fierce rain and hail storms, middle America is sweltering in a crop-killing heat wave. Mountain Home, Arkansas, where my Midwestern aunts and uncles used to head in bad summers for cool mountain air, was 106 degrees when we stopped by for catfish. We played fetch with Brandi in a shaded Oklahoma town park whose grass was dead and brown. It was 108, and an even hundred in the shade of the dying oak tree. The fruited plains are barren. The alabaster towns are gaunt and shuttered. From the occasional large lavish home high on a hillside overlooking one of these towns, a One Percenter looks down indulgently, and vows to put an extra Twenty in the church collection plate next Sunday. As for the rest of the congregants, Pray, Brother, pray! It's all the hope you've got. The politicians from Town Hall to Washington, DC, don't give a damn about your troubles. They've got their own mansions high on hills. So high and far away that they can't see your shuttered stores, your sun-scorched fields, your foreclosed homes, your crowded resale shops, your shoulders sloped in grief even as you choke back tears to sing of Amazing Grace from No. 57 in the hymnal. You put them in office and they know you'll keep putting them, or others of their ilk, there again and again. They call it democracy and they tell you it's what keeps America great.
Sunday, June 24, 2012
In Search of the Last Remaining Patches of Paradise
I came to visit Glacier National Park before the last of its glaciers vanishes, which some scientists seriously predict will happen by or before 2020. (Twenty-five rapidly-shrinking glaciers remain today; there were 150 in 1850.)
It is a trip well worth the taking, meandering, as we did, through wide open spaces of Wyoming and Montana without touching an inch of Interstate highway. We have been as far out of reach as possible of e-mail, wi-fi, cell, mobile, cable -- even carrier pigeon. Did the Supreme Court never yet decide who won the 2008 presidential election? Or did Bob, proprietor of the only gas station in Hungry Horse, simply forget to take down his "Ron Paul for President" sign? It's still right there beside his "God's Ten Commandments" sign. I forgive him for both because he sells the world's best huckleberry pie, made on premises by Ruth, his wife. Besides, all politics is local, and Bob remains good friends with Digger, whose sign reads, "Don't let the far right wing take over everything!" Digger's fur, Indian art and gift shop shows no sign of firebombing, but it is for sale, since Digger means to move up to Alberta to live with his daughter and her family.
Drive two miles from Bob's gas pumps and Ruth's pies and you're in another world -- the real world, I'd like to hope, but fear otherwise -- where bear, and elk, and moose, and other wild creatures from Robert Service rhymes can still be seen. Such creatures can be seen, too, in Glacier National Park, against a backdrop of incredibly beautiful lakes and waterfalls and mountains, but only rarely, because like its more accessible cousins, this national park is being loved to death. Some critters seem not to mind the slow death they are undergoing. On the way to Logan Pass the other day, a young white tail deer moseyed, oblivious to the gawking motorists and motorcyclists who stopped to photograph, ogle and otherwise subject it to indignities Mother Nature never intended for it. The baker's dozen mountain goats grazing and frolicking at Goat Lick Canyon seemed similarly unmindful of the herd of humans oohing, aahing and shooting cell-phone photos from the bridge over the gorge.
Even by our chosen route of the backest of roads, signs of the sins of man are too visible for comfort. The melting glaciers, of course. The patches of split-log vacation mansions where, ten years ago, only fir, oak and range grass occupied the piedmont slopes. Garish bait-and-convenience store ghettos on the shores of sylvan lakes. Acres of junk autos sprawled on the outskirts of pretty little cities trying to become Newark. Earth movers, drill rigs and monster trucks pooping pollution on Paradise.
Enough already. Magnificent vistas remain. Pockets of tranquil silence. Trails less tramped, roads less traveled, glens less trashed. I've lived to share them, left no trace but footprints. It's back to the back roads for us, meandering more or less homeward, experiencing less of the reality of the wilderness and more of the wildness of the real world, such as it is. Sooner or later we'll be on Interstates, inhaling carbon dioxide and eating Dorritos. I believe there's some sort of election coming up, is there not?
It is a trip well worth the taking, meandering, as we did, through wide open spaces of Wyoming and Montana without touching an inch of Interstate highway. We have been as far out of reach as possible of e-mail, wi-fi, cell, mobile, cable -- even carrier pigeon. Did the Supreme Court never yet decide who won the 2008 presidential election? Or did Bob, proprietor of the only gas station in Hungry Horse, simply forget to take down his "Ron Paul for President" sign? It's still right there beside his "God's Ten Commandments" sign. I forgive him for both because he sells the world's best huckleberry pie, made on premises by Ruth, his wife. Besides, all politics is local, and Bob remains good friends with Digger, whose sign reads, "Don't let the far right wing take over everything!" Digger's fur, Indian art and gift shop shows no sign of firebombing, but it is for sale, since Digger means to move up to Alberta to live with his daughter and her family.
Drive two miles from Bob's gas pumps and Ruth's pies and you're in another world -- the real world, I'd like to hope, but fear otherwise -- where bear, and elk, and moose, and other wild creatures from Robert Service rhymes can still be seen. Such creatures can be seen, too, in Glacier National Park, against a backdrop of incredibly beautiful lakes and waterfalls and mountains, but only rarely, because like its more accessible cousins, this national park is being loved to death. Some critters seem not to mind the slow death they are undergoing. On the way to Logan Pass the other day, a young white tail deer moseyed, oblivious to the gawking motorists and motorcyclists who stopped to photograph, ogle and otherwise subject it to indignities Mother Nature never intended for it. The baker's dozen mountain goats grazing and frolicking at Goat Lick Canyon seemed similarly unmindful of the herd of humans oohing, aahing and shooting cell-phone photos from the bridge over the gorge.
Even by our chosen route of the backest of roads, signs of the sins of man are too visible for comfort. The melting glaciers, of course. The patches of split-log vacation mansions where, ten years ago, only fir, oak and range grass occupied the piedmont slopes. Garish bait-and-convenience store ghettos on the shores of sylvan lakes. Acres of junk autos sprawled on the outskirts of pretty little cities trying to become Newark. Earth movers, drill rigs and monster trucks pooping pollution on Paradise.
Enough already. Magnificent vistas remain. Pockets of tranquil silence. Trails less tramped, roads less traveled, glens less trashed. I've lived to share them, left no trace but footprints. It's back to the back roads for us, meandering more or less homeward, experiencing less of the reality of the wilderness and more of the wildness of the real world, such as it is. Sooner or later we'll be on Interstates, inhaling carbon dioxide and eating Dorritos. I believe there's some sort of election coming up, is there not?
Reserving Special Places in Hell
As my geezerhood advances, and my vision darkens, and my hearing declines, and my arthritis worsens, and my muscles weaken, and my aches and pains proliferate, and my patience seeps away, and my needs increase and my self-sufficiency to meet them evaporates, and my memory doesn't remember and my plumbing leaks, and things that were easy aren't, and much of what I learned is no longer relevant, and the new things whose use I have finally mastered are already obsolete . . .
. .
When tying my shoes is an adventure and reaching the top shelf of the closet an acrobatic feat . . . . . when my gait is slow but makes my heartbeat fast . . . . . .when the wireless phone only rings if I've misplaced it, the car keys somehow wander off and come to rest in the refrigerator and the doorbell rings the moment I've stopped into the shower . . . . . .
Then it is that I take special satisfaction in contemplating particular tortures in Hell for those who add still more difficulties to my daily struggles with living.
Foremost among those for whom I contemplate such terrible infinities are the makers of packaging. We punish mass murderers, so why don 't we punish those fiendish monsters who cap bottles of essential medicines with caps that can only be opened by small, carefully placed explosive charges? We have laws against child abuse, but why do we have none prohibiting the capping of jars of vital human viands with lids that can be opened only by very strong and very intelligent orangutans? We require that road safety signs be readable, so why do we not require that those little tabs one is expected to grasp to peel back the film on the mustard cap be at least large enough to grasp with, say, needle-nose pliers? Why, when the little note says "Tear Here," are they allowed to render the fabric so resistant to tearing that even an unshorn Samson would tear his hair out in frustration? What about those containers -- made of seamless case-hardened steel -- that seem to say "Open Other Side" on all sides?
If you're over 60 or so, you'll know the things I'm talking about, things that break your fingernails, make you short of breath, slip out of your grip, can't be reached if you're not a contortionist, won't fit where they're supposed to fit, require that you "lift, press and tilt while turning" but still won't open, say "no tools required" but in fact require simultaneous use of a screwdriver (neither Phillips, nor slot, however, but some other exotic type), wrench (metric, of course), hammer (but not balpeen), coping saw and diamond-head glass cutter. And so forth ad nauseum.
If I were St. Peter, I would require every applicant for eternity in Paradise to submit documentation of his or her earthly occupation. For those who had any association whatsoever with the packaging industry, I would turn to Torquemada and say, "This one merits special attention. Put the CIA on the case."
When tying my shoes is an adventure and reaching the top shelf of the closet an acrobatic feat . . . . . when my gait is slow but makes my heartbeat fast . . . . . .when the wireless phone only rings if I've misplaced it, the car keys somehow wander off and come to rest in the refrigerator and the doorbell rings the moment I've stopped into the shower . . . . . .
Then it is that I take special satisfaction in contemplating particular tortures in Hell for those who add still more difficulties to my daily struggles with living.
Foremost among those for whom I contemplate such terrible infinities are the makers of packaging. We punish mass murderers, so why don 't we punish those fiendish monsters who cap bottles of essential medicines with caps that can only be opened by small, carefully placed explosive charges? We have laws against child abuse, but why do we have none prohibiting the capping of jars of vital human viands with lids that can be opened only by very strong and very intelligent orangutans? We require that road safety signs be readable, so why do we not require that those little tabs one is expected to grasp to peel back the film on the mustard cap be at least large enough to grasp with, say, needle-nose pliers? Why, when the little note says "Tear Here," are they allowed to render the fabric so resistant to tearing that even an unshorn Samson would tear his hair out in frustration? What about those containers -- made of seamless case-hardened steel -- that seem to say "Open Other Side" on all sides?
If you're over 60 or so, you'll know the things I'm talking about, things that break your fingernails, make you short of breath, slip out of your grip, can't be reached if you're not a contortionist, won't fit where they're supposed to fit, require that you "lift, press and tilt while turning" but still won't open, say "no tools required" but in fact require simultaneous use of a screwdriver (neither Phillips, nor slot, however, but some other exotic type), wrench (metric, of course), hammer (but not balpeen), coping saw and diamond-head glass cutter. And so forth ad nauseum.
If I were St. Peter, I would require every applicant for eternity in Paradise to submit documentation of his or her earthly occupation. For those who had any association whatsoever with the packaging industry, I would turn to Torquemada and say, "This one merits special attention. Put the CIA on the case."
Thursday, June 7, 2012
This Was Her Second Saddest Hour
By Brittany M. Brooks
Social Services Professional
For the past year I was on the ground. I fought hard. I protested. I educated many on the importance of this election. Last night, that idiot still won. Last night was the second saddest night of my life.
I am not sure what direction my state or national politics will take, but I know it is scary. For me, this was not about the unions, although they are surely important. For me, the Wisconsin recall was about the effect that Scott Walker's wrongful policies have had on people who live in poverty and on women. All women, every benighted one of us.
Since Scott Walker has been in office, there are twice as many pregnant teens in Dane County. They are half my caseload. I am at the Sun Prairie high school every day meeting with them. Why are all these teens pregnant? Because in December of this year, Scott Walker passed legislation that abstinence only education must be taught at high schools. This limits what information teachers and guidance counselors can give to their students.
Forget abortion services because planned parenthood funding was cut. Now only two planned parenthood sites provide abortions services. Many of my clients have to find a way to Milwaukee if they want to terminate their unwanted or unhealthy pregnancies. Even the atmosphere around something as common as birth control has changed into some outlandish conservative v. liberal battle.
A doctor refused to prescribe birth control for one of the young girls I work with because he does not believe in it! This cowed little 16 year old ended up pregnant, scared and alone because her mom kicked her out. She couldn't get an abortion because planned parenthood was too backed up with other appointments and now she is too far along.
Scott sure does seem to love little babies -- until they are born. Then he tells their mothers that they can only get a welfare check for six weeks. Then they have to go back to work. This is really laughable because he cut daycare subsidies for poor families and now they struggle to find safe, affordable daycare.
But perhaps the worst of his crimes is his cuts to Badger Care. Badger Care is WIsconsin's state medical assistance program. With his cuts about half of my client families will have to pay a premium for their health care. I am talking about single moms who work at McDonald's or Taco Bell for minimum wage. Under Scotty's Badger Care, if you don't pay your obscenely inflated premium by the due date, they cut your children off for six months and any adult in the family for a year.
One of my clients said to me today that she voted for Scott Walker because she would rather not have insurance then have her partner out of a job. She had been told that voting for Tom Barrett would somehow create an atmosphere in which a carpenter who works for a private contractor could lose his job. This is just one turd of falsehood in the torrent of bullshit talking points the Citizens United billionaires dropped on Wisconsin to save their boy Scotty's political hide.
It is so pathetic that I live in such a rich country, yet the people who have to pay the deficit caused by greedy bankers and blundering politicians are the poorest and least fortunate among us. This is sick. This is criminal. This is insane.
----
Blogger's Note
Brittany M. Brooks, who was first on the barricades in Madison and last to leave, is my granddaughter. Her saddest day was the one on which her elder brother, Logan D. Brooks, historian, polemecist and friend to the oppressed, was killed in an auto accident while delivering food to the homeless. The torch has passed to a new generation. May it somehow succeed where ours has failed.
Monday, May 14, 2012
A Journalistic Scandal (NOT Murdoch)
A good spy fiction writer would dismiss such ploys as too transparent to fool his readers. But AP took the bait:
VIENNA —AP) -- An image said to come from inside an Iranian military site shows an explosives containment chamber of the type needed for nuclear arms-related tests that U.N. inspectors suspect Tehran has conducted at the site. . .
The image was provided to The Associated Press by an official of a country tracking Iran’s nuclear program who said the drawing proves the structure exists, despite Tehran’s refusal to acknowledge it.
The official said he could not discuss the drawing’s origins beyond that it was based on information from a person who had seen the chamber at the Parchin military site, adding that going into detail would endanger the life of that informant. . .
A former senior IAEA official said he believes the drawing is accurate. Olli Heinonen, until last year the U.N. nuclear agency’s deputy director general in charge of the Iran file, said it was “very similar” to a photo he recently saw that he believes to be the pressure chamber the IAEA suspects is at Parchin. . .
It didn't take long for sharp noses to smell the rat.
Gerald Meyer is an old school journalist, a Nieman Fellow and Woodrow Wilson Scholar who was always suspicious of information from people who didn't want to be identified. Now a distinguished author ( A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, Executive Blues, The Memphis Murders, et al), Meyer needed to read only a few paragraphs of the AP story before observing:
"'...a country tracking iran's nuclear program' . . .a country that doesn't want to be identified... surely that couldn't be our old friend Israel!"
William O. Beeman, chairman of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota and a distinguished Middle East scholar, called the AP report "a scurrilous piece of dangerous trash."
He said: "This is not a photograph, but a computer generated 'image.' (TEW: Indeed, data necessary to generate such an image can be found in less than ten minutes of internet surfing.) It is unattributed--even to the point of hiding the country of origin of the person supplying it. Then the "authority" who sort of verifies the image as seeming to resemble a photograph he once may have seen is Olli Heinonen, former IAEA official who has made a career of promulgating the unproven idea that Iran has a nuclear weapons program.
"It is unclear what the room in this image is supposed to have been used for--only these rather wild and unsubstantiated assertions. Something as ephemeral as this with no attribution, no proof of existence and no proven purpose is simply a red herring.
"The fact that this silly piece of nonsense has appeared just before the next round of talks between Iran and the West is no accident. Every time it appears that some progress will be made toward improving relations with Iran, someone comes up with something like this to try and torpedo the proceedings. "
Blatant it may be, but the tactic seems to work.
Gareth Porter, investigative historian and journalist, reporting today on the talks:
Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Yukiya Amano has signaled that there will be no agreement with Iran in meetings in Vienna on the terms for Iranian cooperation in clarifying the issue of alleged nuclear weapons work. . . .
Amano indicated ihat he intended to hold up an agreement on Iranian cooperation in responding to allegations of military involvement in its nuclear program until the IAEA was allowed to visit to Parchin, the military complex about 30 kilometers southeast of Tehran. . . . (He) insists that a visit to Parchin must come first before any agreement.
But the actual draft negotiating text of the agreement on "Clarification of Unresolved Issues" with Iran's proposed changes from the original IAEA proposal shows that the major conflict over their cooperation was whether the process had a definite endpoint, not access to Parchin.
Porter, whose detailed reporting revealed the holes in the official version of the intelligence leading to the killing of Osama bin Laden, believes that major news outlets like the AP have "an implicit rule" that "they can run with just about anything sourced to a US national security official or one of our allies -- especially, of course, Israel -- and that you can cover up the nationality of the source, too."
He added: "It's the journalistic scandal of the century, in my opinion."
Mine too.
* * *
SEE related post, "Fear Stalks, as It Always Does," on or blog cousin, An Ironist's Toolbox.
http://ironitool.blogspot.com/Thursday, May 10, 2012
Shall We Now Praise This Infamous Man?
Some outfit e-mailed me yesterday urging me to thank President Obama for his courageous act, endorsing the right of gay people to marry.
I declined. I have thought for quite some time that one thing Dr. Kidglove would never be accused of was courage. I still think that.
I also think that people whose sexual orientation is different from mine have all of the same rights that I have, including the right to marry the person of their choice. Just because the President finally came around to acknowledging what seems like a pretty clear-cut constitutional position -- the guy used to teach law, for Pete's sake! -- I refuse to turn cartwheels or jump with joy.
Next issue, please.
What about our prolonged, agonizing, illegal, immoral and fruitless wars, Mr. Nobel Peace Laureate?
What about the hundred million, more or less, Americans still without jobs and increasingly without hope of ever finding employment, Mr. Social Justice Guy?
What about the greedy, unregulated bankers and financiers who caused the worst recession in three-quarters of a century and have rewarded themselves with billions in bloated salaries and bonuses, Mr. Kiss the Republican Asses in Congress?
What about the millions of Americans still without adequate health care, Mr. Cave In to Insurers and Pharmaceutical Manufacturers?
What about the ongoing failures of our educational system, Mr. Vouchers Are OK?
What about the old fashioned Jeffersonian notion of the separation of church and state, Mr. Faith-Based Scams?
What about the First Amendment -- free speech, peaceable assembly -- Mr. Police Crackdown on Occupy?
What about the Fourth Amendment -- probable cause -- Mr. Arrest Without Warrant and Detain Forever? And unreasonable search and seizure, Mr. Build a Spy Castle in Utah ?
What about the Fifth Amendment -- due process -- Mr. Kill by Executive Order?
What about the Sixth Amendment, Mr. Detain Forever and Stage Military Kangaroo Trials?
What about the Eighth Amendment, Mr. Rendition and Torture?
What about campaign promises of open government, Mr. Secrecy and Official Lies?
What about fear-mongering, Mr. Inheritor of the Cloak of FDR, who said "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"?
Thank him?
Thanks for nothing, Dr. Kidglove, our very own Cowardly Lion.
I declined. I have thought for quite some time that one thing Dr. Kidglove would never be accused of was courage. I still think that.
I also think that people whose sexual orientation is different from mine have all of the same rights that I have, including the right to marry the person of their choice. Just because the President finally came around to acknowledging what seems like a pretty clear-cut constitutional position -- the guy used to teach law, for Pete's sake! -- I refuse to turn cartwheels or jump with joy.
Next issue, please.
What about our prolonged, agonizing, illegal, immoral and fruitless wars, Mr. Nobel Peace Laureate?
What about the hundred million, more or less, Americans still without jobs and increasingly without hope of ever finding employment, Mr. Social Justice Guy?
What about the greedy, unregulated bankers and financiers who caused the worst recession in three-quarters of a century and have rewarded themselves with billions in bloated salaries and bonuses, Mr. Kiss the Republican Asses in Congress?
What about the millions of Americans still without adequate health care, Mr. Cave In to Insurers and Pharmaceutical Manufacturers?
What about the ongoing failures of our educational system, Mr. Vouchers Are OK?
What about the old fashioned Jeffersonian notion of the separation of church and state, Mr. Faith-Based Scams?
What about the First Amendment -- free speech, peaceable assembly -- Mr. Police Crackdown on Occupy?
What about the Fourth Amendment -- probable cause -- Mr. Arrest Without Warrant and Detain Forever? And unreasonable search and seizure, Mr. Build a Spy Castle in Utah ?
What about the Fifth Amendment -- due process -- Mr. Kill by Executive Order?
What about the Sixth Amendment, Mr. Detain Forever and Stage Military Kangaroo Trials?
What about the Eighth Amendment, Mr. Rendition and Torture?
What about campaign promises of open government, Mr. Secrecy and Official Lies?
What about fear-mongering, Mr. Inheritor of the Cloak of FDR, who said "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"?
Thank him?
Thanks for nothing, Dr. Kidglove, our very own Cowardly Lion.
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