September 3, 2009 archive

The Scam that is Big Pharma, Swine Flu, and You

Gee, it’s kind of funny how this has been somewhat under the radar as far as the U.S. corporate media goes:

Pfizer Agrees to Pay Largest Healthcare Fraud Penalty in History

Yup, you read that right.  Big Pharma, which is personified by the Bigger-Than-Big Pharma company known as Pfizer, is guilty as sin of defrauding Americans in regards to their health.   This isn’t just stealing money, this is fucking with people’s HEALTH.


US drugmaker Pfizer has agreed to pay $2.3bn (£1.4bn) in the largest healthcare fraud settlement in the history of the Department of Justice.

It comes after the firm was found to have illegally promoted four drugs for uses which had not been approved by medical regulators.

A subsidiary of the firm pleaded guilty to misbranding drugs “with the intent to defraud or mislead”.

US officials said Pfizer would have to enter a corporate integrity agreement.

That last bit just about made me spit my coffee across the screen.  A “corporate integrity agreement”?   WTF is THAT?   I know, it’s a training program that teaches you how not to get caught.  You buy the workbooks from Neil Bush’s company, you know it’s sort of a “No Corporation Left Behind” type of thing.  

These are the people Obama met with behind closed doors.   These are the people promising us “health care”.  

More importantly, these are the people who want to mass-vaccinate us this fall for this “swine flu” swindle.

Now check this out.   Are you sitting down?  

WHO Admits to Releasing Pandemic Virus into Population via ‘Mock-Up’ Vaccines

Yes, the World Health Organization is admitting to allowing European researchers to releasing “mock up” vaccines which contain viruses which people haven’t been exposed to people in a while, in order to “speed up” the regulatory process for the vaccines.

“Speed up the regulatory process” = “making money, lots of it, quicker”.

Four at Four

  1. The Guardian reports Global warming has made Arctic summers hottest for 2,000 years. “Warming as a result of increased levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has overwhelmed a millennia-long cycle of natural cooling in the Arctic, raising temperatures in the region to their highest for at least 2,000 years, according” to a study in the journal Science.

    “The accumulation of greenhouse gases is interrupting the natural cycle towards overall cooling,” said Professor Darrell Kaufman, a climate scientist at Northern Arizona University and lead author of the study.

    “There’s no doubt it will lead to melting glacier ice, which will impact on coastal regions around the world. Warming in the region will also cause more permafrost thawing, which will release methane gas into the atmosphere,” he added.

    Scientists fear that warming could release billions of tonnes of methane from frozen soils in the Arctic, driving global temperatures even higher.

    The AP adds the Arctic reverses trend, is warmest in two millennia. “If it hadn’t been for the increase in human-produced greenhouse gases, summer temperatures in the Arctic should have cooled gradually over the last century,” said Bette Otto-Bliesner, a National Center for Atmospheric Research scientist and co-author of the study.

  2. Elsewhere in the arctic, the CS Monitor reports Research finds higher acidity in Alaska waters. “The same things that make Alaska’s marine waters among the most productive in the world – cold, shallow depths and abundant marine life – make them the most vulnerable to acidification, says Jeremy Mathis, a chemical oceanographer at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.”

    “Ocean acidification, the lowering of basicity and the increase in acidity of marine waters, is tied to increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.” The cool Alaskan waters are absorbing CO2 faster than tropical waters.

Four at Four continues with an update on Afghanistan and some steam locomotive news.

Words on Healthcare Reform Effort: Machinery vs Humanity Somehow Made Me Think of Slavery

The Health Care reform issue, which is more about Health insurance reform, because no one really seems too upset with the quality of healthcare, because it is offered and a structure and hospitals and doctors and nurses are in place.  We may need more of each but the structure and service are in place.

Most peoples’ argument is insurance coverage and costs to insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies.  I can say at least pharmaceutical companies have a product, but the health insurance industry?  What the fuck is their product?  They are the middle men and gatekeepers that do in fact come between the doctor and patient.  This industry of organized men and theories, buys buildings and equipment and hire people, all to make the top of its pyramid rich.  Their product is organizing physiological data on the human body, determining what care is necessary to fix any disturbances in the physiology, based on statistical data of similar cases of previous symptoms and cures to a bodily malfunction witnessed in the medical history of other human beings  .  They often discard the learned, trained doctor’s recommendations if need be, to make what they think is right and proper for a body ‘fix’, the norm, and at minimal cost.  This whole business model makes me think of a Steven Covey quote, “You can be efficient with things, but you have to be effective with people.”  To these Insurance honchos, people have become things.

Anyway, when I started writing this, I was going to say how this whole public insurance reform is playing out for our eyes to see, makes me think of slavery.  Slaveholders, were upset and in an uproar, at the very idea that this form of very cheap labor would be taken away from them.  Who would do the work, at minimal cost?  They were entrenched in this slavery idea.  They would fight a civil war if you took this away from them, and they did.  

Slaves who rebelled would be whipped publicly for all the other slaves and free people to see, so they would be afraid to mess with the status quo themselves.  These public beatings were to show that this is what happens when you mess with the power structure.  Some of the overseers of these public beatings, whether they agreed in heart or not, oversaw them anyway.  Often the overseers had other slaves perform the beatings, though their hearts may have cried out against it.  But, at the end of the day, it was their job, for which they got paid, or were forced to do for fear of the same happening to them, and why should they have to suffer, when the sufferer was already chosen?  They would just do their job, because that is just how it is in the world they live in.

Most Republicans just do their jobs.   Most politicians, for that matter.  Whether they have hearts or not that tell them they should do otherwise, they instead do their jobs, for fear of the power structure.  Why should their livelihood and lifestyle be taken away from them when the sufferer has already been chosen?  The Power does not want the health insurance industry messed with.  What would replace this easy money?  Bodies are machines dammit, and if they can’t afford to be serviced as the industry has decided they should be, then, so be it.  More are being born every day, it won’t hurt our bottom line one bit.  Who is a doctor to use his knowledge, to decide against what the power mandates?  This has nothing to do with humanity.  A body is machinery.

So, now health insurance reform is on display for all to see and learn what will happen if you try to fight against the power structure.  Health reform is the bad guy.  The slave who needs to be punished publicly, with all the accoutrements of my thoughts on slavery in the 2nd to the last paragraph above.

Disclaimer:  I am assuming that people have hearts.  If I have made this assumption incorrectly, the reader may not understand what I am talking about.

Political Naivete

Simulposted at Daily Kos

I can’t pretend to know how the people who got involved in, or only got more deeply involved in politics because of Obama think, so I wont try.

All I can really honestly tell you about is me and the people like me. The people who have been involved or at least have closely observed American politics for decades now.

But I can tell you this, anyone who thinks that Obama is going to charm the Powers That Be in DC the way they themselves have been (legitimately I might add) charmed enough to put all of their hope in him to “change the way Washington works”…is naive.

Water Barons, Hoarders & Hunters

The World Economic Forum (WEF) issued a report warning that the world may face in less than 20 years a huge and pervasive water bankruptcy of fresh water shortages. The problem is that water is a finite resource, yet management and policies are based on the erroneous assumption that a renewable resource is inexhaustible. We generally have the same quantity of water that was available for dinosaurs. However, water sustainability is not possible unless we address issues of population growth, increased irrigation for food, energy water needs, waste, mismanagement and pollution of water supplies.  Another factor is water barons, hoarders and hunters who work to control and seize our diminishing water supplies for their own financial benefit. If we don’t wake up to our water crisis, we could end up just like the bird, looking for water.

Mr. President, It Is Time For You To Lead.

Below is the letter the Dog sent to the President today.

Dear President Obama;

Mr. President, you are in a trick bag. You have a speech to make to the Joint Session of Congress and there are no easy options for you. Health Care Reform is a signature issue for you; this is why you put it in the agenda for the first year of your first term. You have made the quite case for this being the place where your administration will have to spend the most political capital of all so all other issues from DADT to accountability to the rule of law must take a back seat so this issue can be resolved.

Originally posted at Squarestate.net

Inhofe: Torture never happened at GITMO. Right, and monkey’s might fly out of my butt

And sphincter says what?

   

Inhofe said: “There has never been a case of torture there. The people there are treated better than in the federal prisons.”

    He continued, “I don’t know why President Obama is obsessed with turning terrorists loose in America.”

    As the Center for Constitutional Rights has documented, there have been countless cases of detainees being abused and tortured at the prison camp. Detainees have been beaten, deprived of sleep for weeks, sexually harrassed, and shackled to the floor for days at a time. Inhofe’s statement at the town hall is only the latest in his political broadsides. He has in the past suggested that Obama is “un-American,” that the mentality of Middle Easterners is “worse than Nazism,” and that the conditions at Guantanamo Bay are humane.

thinkprogress.org

     You might remember Senator James Inhofe (Coal Industry-OK) for such classic hits as “Global Warming is a Hoax” and his visits to foreign tyrants on behalf of the C – Street Family, but this whopper takes the cake.

    Despite massive evidence and facts that say “Yes, James Inhofe, there was torture at Gitmo”, the ceaseless attempts to re-write histroy to make it look GOP/Bush-Cheney friendly are not working, and since 9 GOP Senators have tried to persuade AG Eric Holder to play nice with the Bushies the simple fact is that the Bush/Cheney Administration DID torture and DID commit war crimes and crimes against US law, otherwise they would have nothing to fear.

    I guess we can just file this one away as another moment in a long line of moments where Republican politicians try to rewrite history while the rest of the world just shrugs it’s shoulders and says, “Yeah, right, and monkey’s might fly out of our butts!”

    If FDR was a Republican he undoubtably would have said “We have nothing to fear but OMG WTF IS THAT RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!!!”

    Of course, anything a Senate Republican says should be taken with a brick of salt. The stimulus is having no effect, Health Care reform will kill your grandma, Obama is pro terrorist, etc, etc . . .

    So, it should be no surprise when America demands accountability for war crimes and the GOP gives us a gun rack instead.

Yes, they are mental.

Crossposted at Antemedius.com and The Progressive Electorate.com

Reefer Sadness: “The future is horrific”

 

We are killing the world’s coral reefs and their situation is virtually hopeless.

The future is horrific,” says Charlie Veron, an Australian marine biologist who is widely regarded as the world’s foremost expert on coral reefs.

“There is no hope of reefs surviving to even mid-century in any form that we now recognise. If, and when, they go, they will take with them about one-third of the world’s marine biodiversity. Then there is a domino effect, as reefs fail so will other ecosystems. This is the path of a mass extinction event, when most life, especially tropical marine life, goes extinct.”

Or, as David Adam explains in his Guardian article about Why coral reefs face a catastrophic future:

Within just a few decades, experts are warning, the tropical reefs strung around the middle of our planet like a jewelled corset will reduce to rubble. Giant piles of slime-covered rubbish will litter the sea bed and spell in large distressing letters for the rest of foreseeable time: Humans Were Here.

They are not alone in their bleak outlook for the future of the world’s coral reefs.

The Rising: Part Two



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The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few, booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately by the grace of God.

Thomas Jefferson

America is a failed state. We mean by that, the Republican form of government has failed. Representative Democracy has failed. The People do not have the power of self-governance, by proxy, over their own affairs. People vote for representatives, but the representative represents the money power; the corporate monolith and aristocratic entrenchment. Politicians show how the system works, that they do represent their constituents, by bringing home some pork from the bacon trough, but nothing more.

So what do we do?

Public Option Open Thread

When “Public Options” Serve the Public – and When They Don’t

by: Lawrence S. Wittner, t r u t h o u t | Perspective, Thursday 03 September 2009

   Currently, there is nothing more controversial in President Barack Obama’s health care reform proposal than the “public option.” Much of the controversy, of course, has been generated by private insurance companies, determined to safeguard their hefty profits, and by Republican politicians, eager to destroy anything that might redound to the benefit of the Democrats. Even so, a little clear thinking on the subject of public programs might illuminate their advantages and disadvantages.

Throw Jesus in the Volcano

an evolutionary look at the questionable usefulness of deity

(crossposted from my blog, The Wild, Wild Left)

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History is not proof positive of the Future.

Philosophers and thinkers often default to the models of the past, trying to counter that no society has had moral structure in the absence of deity, in fact, counter that all societies have had deities of sorts.

Religion is, in and of itself, an attempt by beings to explain the inexplicable. We no longer have to do rights and rituals to bring back the sun from the winter solstice, science has taught us that will happen in spite of our futile actions. We even know where the sun goes at night.

Crop failure or drought no longer are “assuaged” by beheadings on pyramids, altars of sacrificed sheep, nor throwing Joe in the volcano.

Evidently, religion itself has evolved to some extent in that way. So why, now the plateau? Why now, in some cases the regression? People to whom the God spake used to be institutionalized. Now they get a seat in Congress, if not the Presidency.

What fresh hell is this?  

Purple. Like A Bruise.

Yesterday, I noted that the L.A. Times was reporting that the president was going to follow the advice of General Stanley McChrystal, and escalate the escalation in Afghanistan. Today, the New York Times offers this:

As President Obama prepares to decide whether to send additional troops to Afghanistan, the political climate appears increasingly challenging for him, leaving him in the awkward position of relying on the Republican Party, and not his own, for support.

The simple political narrative of the Afghanistan war – that this was the good war, in which the United States would hunt down the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks – has faded over time, with popular support ebbing, American casualties rising and confidence in the Afghan government declining. In addition, Afghanistan’s disputed election, and the attendant fraud charges that have been lodged against President Hamid Karzai, are contributing further to the erosion of public support.

A CBS News poll released on Tuesday reports that 41 percent of those polled wanted troop levels in Afghanistan decreased, compared with 33 percent in April. Far fewer people – 25 percent – wanted troop levels increased, compared with 39 percent in April. And Mr. Obama’s approval rating for his handling of Afghanistan has dropped eight points since April, to 48 percent.

Congressional Democrats, particularly those on the left, report increasing disenchantment among constituents with the idea of a long and possibly escalating conflict in Afghanistan, especially as the American strategy comes to resemble a long-term nation-building approach rather than a counterterrorism operation.

“I and the American people cannot tolerate more troops without some commitment about when this perceived occupation will end,” Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, said Wednesday in an interview.

Does the president ever listen to his liberal base? Does he ever listen to the public? Who, exactly, is he trying to appease? Why?

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