I've been waiting for ACS (New York City's Administration for Children's Services) to update their figures of child removlas, case loads per investigator, number of investigators on the job, since the end of the public Nixmary panic that was created by the Bloomberg friendly media for his political reasons that I have described before in this blog.
Finally after I prodded them, ACS got its contractor TMS Consulting to release some more recent figures. The figures are in through March 2006 and they are frightening and worse than even I had imagined they would be.
Mainly Bloomberg is involved in wage negotiations with Distric Council 37, the union federation that represents most employees of New York City besides the uniform services and teachers. By releasing and blowing up the kind of story that they could find at least twice a month they managed to debase even further the image of these workers and knock the union's bargaining strategy for a loop. The rest- the Marine Corps honorguard at the child's funeral, the shakeups, the firings, Administration for Children's Services has a beef with me.">my case, the announcements of changes, the new hirings, all of it has resulted in harm to the poor and working class children families of New York City, mostly African American and Hispanic people whose lives are being grinded up in the latest foster care panic.
The numbers show that even with the new caseworker hirings the actual number of caseworkers on the job actually declined from January (959) to March (925) and the numbers of cases per worker admitted to by the agency, which is notorious for twisting, perfuming and cooking statistics, (to this day they do not know how many foster children they turned over to the pharmaceutical companies for AIDS drug experiments between 1997 and 2004) has gone from 10.6 in April 2005 to 20.0 in March of 2006.
In November 2005 according to the statistics provided by this agency 407 children had been brought into foster care during April of 2005. The number skyrocketed to an estimated 1087 in February 2006 (estimated because their Queens Field Office was so disorganized it could not provide statistics during that month) and stated as a hard figure of 1,120 children for March of 2006.
The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform http://www.nccpr.org/reports/dontturnback.doc tells you >
The Price of Panic
Ever since New Yorkers learned about the horrifying death of Nixzmary Brown, people have made comparisons to other notorious cases. Some say it’s like the case of Elisa Izquierdo. Others remember Lisa Steinberg, killed by the man who illegally adopted her. But the case that most resembles the case of Nixzmary Brown is a case which got little attention at the time, and was soon forgotten. It is the case of a four-year-old girl named Caprice Reid.Like Nixzmary Brown – if police accounts are correct – Caprice Reid was tied to a chair. Like Nixzmary Brown, Caprice Reid was beaten – so severely that by the end she could not walk. Like Nixzmary Brown, Caprice Reid was starved. Indeed, police said Caprice was beaten and starved to death over four straight days. But there is one crucial difference between Caprice Reid and Nixzmary Brown. Caprice Reid did not die in her own home. On the contrary. Caprice Reid had been taken from her own home after her mother was accused of "lack of supervision." She was shunted from foster home to foster home, finally landing in a home that had been shut down by one private foster care agency, only to be reopened by another.And it was in that home where Caprice Reid died, at the hands of her foster mother and foster grandmother. They pled guilty to manslaughter.
About a week before she died, Caprice Reid’s mother saw her daughter for the last time. The little girl clung to her mother’s neck and said "Don’t go, Mommy. I love you."
To know how this could have happened, one need only know when it happened: 1997. (Giuliani Time/Nicholas Scopetta Time, ed.) The Administration for Children’s Services wasn’t the agency it is today.# The agency was in the midst of a frenzy of child removal – a foster-care panic – in the wake of the death of Elisa Izquierdo. The number of children torn from their homes was skyrocketing. ACS was begging for beds for all these children – and beggars can’t be choosers.Caprice Reid paid the price of panic.But it wasn’t just Caprice who suffered. The ultimate paradox of a foster-care panic is that it jeopardizes the very children it is meant to protect – children in dangerous homes who really should be taken away. In the Years of Panic following Elisa Izquierdo’s death, the total number of deaths of children previously known to ACS – not just deaths in foster homes but children dying in their own homes as well -- didn’t decline. On the contrary, those deaths soared by 50 percent. (For details and sources for all New York City data cited in this report, see page 20). And 1998, the year when the panic was at its worst, also was the year when more children "known to the system" died than in any year since 1993. Fortunately, ACS learned from its mistakes. The agency changed .
(Yeah, right, ed)
)))))))))))))))))))))))))))
The lessons cited here went swiftly out the window. Who threw them out the window? John Mattingly threw them out the window. Michael Bloomberg threw them out the window. Ruppert Murdoch threw them out the window. Mort Zuckerman threw them out the window. Arthur Sulzberger threw them out the window. Not only did they throw these lessons out the window, but time will be my witness, they caused deaths.Baby Snatching Fools- Giuliani time returns.
The community of organizations and individuals that calls itself the child advocacy community has a serious challenge to face. Are they up to it? I doubt it. It is time for the targeted families to get orgnaized and fight back. Your children's lives are at stake.
New Yorkers Are Going To Know About The Racist AIDS Drug Experiment Scandal ...
AIDS Drug Experiment Scandal UpdateAIDS foster child Drug Tests. A scandal - Pro and Con.
Excerpts from Liam Scheff's "The House That Aids Built"
ACS/Vera Institute begin third year of AIDS foster children ...AND FOR THOSE READY TO CREDIT THESE DRUG TRIALS FOR REDUCING AIDS IN CHILDREN READ THIS POST ESPECIALLY>
These are the figures of the US Department of Health and Human Services ...
Child Protective Workers "Trained on the Fast Track" - Not a Good Idea!!!!
ACS Stats show that Giuliani time did return to Children's Services after the Bloomberg/Media generated Nixzmary scare
I revoke my request to have my resignation accepted.Press Release-NYC Child Protective Veteran Urges Marijuana decriminalization...
Child had been driven to suicide by school. Where is the outrage?...No Easy Answers
Nixzmary Brown, 7 Is Dead, Known to Child Welfare Authorities
On Being a Cop for the Shelter System: Shove it!
What Israel Has Done to Palestinian Children With U.S. Taxpayers' Dollars
Friday, June 30, 2006
What Did Limbaugh Do In the Domincan Republic?
He had a bottle for 30 viagra pills and came back with 29 of them.
Maybe he met Mr. Jean - Philippe down there. Administration for Children's Services a Thuggish Subculture.
Maybe he met Mr. Jean - Philippe down there. Administration for Children's Services a Thuggish Subculture.
Israel (and our tax dollars) Turns Out The Lights.
Gilad Shalit is a baby faced skinny nineteen year old boy, who from what I read is a dove who wants to live in peace with his Arab neighbors, and a kid who always wore a smile, at least until a few days ago. Gilad also happens to be a soldier in an army that occupies another people's country. As such, nice guy that he probably is, he was fair game for resistance fighters and by no stretch of imagination or argument can he be seen as a victim of any sort of terrorism. Soldiers get killed. Soldiers get captured.
Supposedly in an effort to get his return from prrisoner of war status the Israeli/American war machine has bombed roads, bridges and most seriously, the only electric power plant in Gaza, a plant that makes sure water gets pumped and purified, hospitals have light and working equipment, what little food people have is kept in refrigerators, children can read books after dark or watch television. This is criminal, it is terrorist, it is targeting and punishing civilians for the deeds of individuals who might or might not be aligned with a popular political and religious movement.
On top of that Israel has kidnapped many of the members of the Parliament and executive leadership of the supposed "government" of the non-existent state of Palestine. The fact is that because of Israel and because the international community is gutless and stands by spectating, this government rules over nothing, has no authority of its own, cannot operate ports, has no airport, has no army, has no passports or customs service, has no control over a budget and is not allowed by Israel and the United States to even maintain rule of law in the territory it supposedly administers.
Now I am not the one who can tell Palestinians what they need to do but I do have an opinion. Being an American I have given a few moments of thought today to the fact that my country is about to celebrate its Declaration of Independence. Now I could be completely off the mark but it occurs to me that this might be the time either for Palestinians to declare their independence or to dismantle the non governing non government called the Palestinian Authority and force Israel to directly and with no mask administer the towns and villages and people who they have occupied and ruled over in fact since 1967.
My idea of an ideal solution, one shared by some other people as well, is for the whole territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea to be one country where all Palestinians may return to and be active citizens of and whoever else can live with this fact can stay as well.
At any rate I want my government to stop supporting Israel and its crimes and stop paying Israel off to do criminal acts of terrorism against the Palestinian people.
Contact the White House, State Department, and your Members of Congress to demand that Israel is held accountable for its violations of the US Arms Export Control Act and Foreign Assistance Act and urge that military aid to Israel be cut off as required by law. Click here to send an email.
Supposedly in an effort to get his return from prrisoner of war status the Israeli/American war machine has bombed roads, bridges and most seriously, the only electric power plant in Gaza, a plant that makes sure water gets pumped and purified, hospitals have light and working equipment, what little food people have is kept in refrigerators, children can read books after dark or watch television. This is criminal, it is terrorist, it is targeting and punishing civilians for the deeds of individuals who might or might not be aligned with a popular political and religious movement.
On top of that Israel has kidnapped many of the members of the Parliament and executive leadership of the supposed "government" of the non-existent state of Palestine. The fact is that because of Israel and because the international community is gutless and stands by spectating, this government rules over nothing, has no authority of its own, cannot operate ports, has no airport, has no army, has no passports or customs service, has no control over a budget and is not allowed by Israel and the United States to even maintain rule of law in the territory it supposedly administers.
Now I am not the one who can tell Palestinians what they need to do but I do have an opinion. Being an American I have given a few moments of thought today to the fact that my country is about to celebrate its Declaration of Independence. Now I could be completely off the mark but it occurs to me that this might be the time either for Palestinians to declare their independence or to dismantle the non governing non government called the Palestinian Authority and force Israel to directly and with no mask administer the towns and villages and people who they have occupied and ruled over in fact since 1967.
My idea of an ideal solution, one shared by some other people as well, is for the whole territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea to be one country where all Palestinians may return to and be active citizens of and whoever else can live with this fact can stay as well.
At any rate I want my government to stop supporting Israel and its crimes and stop paying Israel off to do criminal acts of terrorism against the Palestinian people.
Contact the White House, State Department, and your Members of Congress to demand that Israel is held accountable for its violations of the US Arms Export Control Act and Foreign Assistance Act and urge that military aid to Israel be cut off as required by law. Click here to send an email.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
My Taxi Blog
I've decided to put my blog "new york cabbie multimedia nightdriver blues and not so blues" to rest. It was a bad idea, one that would only waste time and distract me from earning a living. I had been inspired by a very successful blog that a young lady New York taxi has. She has lots of readers. She takes pictures while she works and posts pithy comments that get dozens of responses. I can't compete. I don't want to drive around taking pictures. I want to drive around picking up fares. From time to time I will make reference on this blog of interesting things that I see or learn while driving a taxi, night time, in New York.
THE DESAPIO BAG
http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/mep/displaydoc.cfm?docid=erpn-cardes
I read this story long ago and so the re telling is going to be fuzzy perhaps.
Back in the day when most of your New York Cabbies were Jewish, Irish or Italian a man named Carmine DeSapio was said to be a very powerful man. He was born and raised in and lived in a part of Manhattan that is now called "The West Village" but back in his day it was really part of "Little Italy" which was not all so little then as it is now.
Now they used to say that DeSapio was a bit corrupt. I don't know if that's true but he was a leader of the Democratic Party who was reaching out to Blacks and Latinos who lived further uptown. They say that DeSapio used to make or break mayors and governors and that nothing of any consequence happened construction wise or State or Municipal contract wise without his imprimatur. As I remember this story DeSapio was said to live in a modest or middle class apartment, and if he was rich they say he didn't put it on display.
Okay one day this cab driver is heading up Hudson Street and gets flagged by Carmine DeSapio. The driver recognized him from the papers and TV but kept quiet. DeSapio waqs in the cab for a few minutes, paid his fare plus a normal tip thanked the driver and got out. A few more blocks os of cruising and the driver got flagged again. The new passenger got in, reached down onto the cab floor and said "driver, what's this?" The passenger emerged with a bag in her hand. I don't remember if the story said a paper bag or a valise. I'll call it a bag.She handed the bag to the driver, went her mile or so, paid her fare with a little tip, thanked the driver and got out. The driver pulled over, opened the bag and saw currency, lots of currency, American Legal Tender.
He went to the precinct, as I recall the story the tenth precinct, one over near the Dover garage, and he and the cops counted the money. It came to ten thousand dollars. The driver is supposed to have told the cops that he thought that Carmine DeSapio had left the bag in his cab. The cops went with the driver to DeSapio's apartment. He denied, so the story says,having taken a taxi that day, and he denied owning the bag or the money.
Back at the precinct the bag and money were vouchered, and a year later the driver claimed it. In those days ten thousand dollars bought a taxi medallion. Today they're around $400,000 or so depending on the classification of medallion.
That's the story.
Now it was a coalition of do gooders or good government types led by the young upcoming leader of the Reform Democrats in Greenwich Village, Edward I Koch that eventually finished DeSapio's prominence. Needless to say Koch went on to become one of the first and only teflon Democrats, heading the most corrupt administration in the history of New York City and getting away not only clean, but rich and powerful and acclaimed throughout the land. In my humble opinion Koch is a bigger crook than DeSapio ever was if he ever was one at all.
THE DESAPIO BAG
http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/mep/displaydoc.cfm?docid=erpn-cardes
I read this story long ago and so the re telling is going to be fuzzy perhaps.
Back in the day when most of your New York Cabbies were Jewish, Irish or Italian a man named Carmine DeSapio was said to be a very powerful man. He was born and raised in and lived in a part of Manhattan that is now called "The West Village" but back in his day it was really part of "Little Italy" which was not all so little then as it is now.
Now they used to say that DeSapio was a bit corrupt. I don't know if that's true but he was a leader of the Democratic Party who was reaching out to Blacks and Latinos who lived further uptown. They say that DeSapio used to make or break mayors and governors and that nothing of any consequence happened construction wise or State or Municipal contract wise without his imprimatur. As I remember this story DeSapio was said to live in a modest or middle class apartment, and if he was rich they say he didn't put it on display.
Okay one day this cab driver is heading up Hudson Street and gets flagged by Carmine DeSapio. The driver recognized him from the papers and TV but kept quiet. DeSapio waqs in the cab for a few minutes, paid his fare plus a normal tip thanked the driver and got out. A few more blocks os of cruising and the driver got flagged again. The new passenger got in, reached down onto the cab floor and said "driver, what's this?" The passenger emerged with a bag in her hand. I don't remember if the story said a paper bag or a valise. I'll call it a bag.She handed the bag to the driver, went her mile or so, paid her fare with a little tip, thanked the driver and got out. The driver pulled over, opened the bag and saw currency, lots of currency, American Legal Tender.
He went to the precinct, as I recall the story the tenth precinct, one over near the Dover garage, and he and the cops counted the money. It came to ten thousand dollars. The driver is supposed to have told the cops that he thought that Carmine DeSapio had left the bag in his cab. The cops went with the driver to DeSapio's apartment. He denied, so the story says,having taken a taxi that day, and he denied owning the bag or the money.
Back at the precinct the bag and money were vouchered, and a year later the driver claimed it. In those days ten thousand dollars bought a taxi medallion. Today they're around $400,000 or so depending on the classification of medallion.
That's the story.
Now it was a coalition of do gooders or good government types led by the young upcoming leader of the Reform Democrats in Greenwich Village, Edward I Koch that eventually finished DeSapio's prominence. Needless to say Koch went on to become one of the first and only teflon Democrats, heading the most corrupt administration in the history of New York City and getting away not only clean, but rich and powerful and acclaimed throughout the land. In my humble opinion Koch is a bigger crook than DeSapio ever was if he ever was one at all.
Monday, June 26, 2006
My Gay Liberation Day
Yesterday was Gay Liberation Day and it also was the first day I went back to driving a taxi in around a decade. I'd been delaying the day of reckoning when I would have to be employed again but I knew I would go back to pushing a hack because minus the pressure of "not enough money" it was fun and adventuresome in the past.
Because I have a pension that more or less covers the rent and I am married to a responsible person who looks for bargains and is conscientious of the sweat and risk that goes into my income I could go back to driving and not feeling the day to day pressure of having to make X dollars that night.
So yesterday, as it turned out was my first night back and it was the night of Gay Liberation Day, a fact that had escaped my mind and did not figure into my decision as to what day I would go back to work. Of course there is no night like the night of Gay Liberation Day. I worked hard, stayed glued into my taxi for ten and a half hours, lost momentum and forgot strategy a couple of times but came out making a respectable sum of money. It felt good once I figured out how to run the new fangled taxi meter. I still don't know how to get it to light up my "Off Duty" light but last night I wasn't off duty 'till I got back to the garage.
Gay Liberation. I remember reading about and hearing about the Stonewall riot when it happened. Being a good little Marxist-Leninist wannabe of that time and being a product of that strange religion my parents raised me in I was not friendly to the whole notion. Not that I hated anyone or wanted harm to befall anyone, no. Just that to me homosexuals (that was the word back then) and their way of living were frivolous, petit bourgeoise escapist of the challenge of building anti sexist, non exploitative man-woman relationships and were just contrary to nature, nature of course being of the same mind as the God who had mandated we be fruitful and multiply. Note I had entertained and expressed not one word like "sin" or "wrong." What a twerp, but that was me in June of 1969.
I am not going to tell you that I understand what motivates varying expressions of sexuality or that I think there is one discourse that explains it all. I went along with the movement change of line on Gay Liberation half heartedly and not deeply and sincerely. Surely I was still the product not only of the religious and political indoctrination of the hard left pre June 1969 but also I was the product of the deep prejudices that ruled the street culture I grew up in.
Life was so much better when I was young Free Movies For You JUST LIKE A SATURDAY AT THE BUGGY BEACON. I knew Adolf Hitler
Since leaving the organized left back in 1980 (I still count myself on the left but not affiliated) I have come to consider the issue independently of any party line. My line comes down to "live and let live." Millions of people do not wake up one day and decide to shock their parents and alienate their childhood friends. There are reasons things happen, even if I don't understand them.
HOMAGE TO MY DAY DRIVER (WHY I HATE GAY BASHERS)
Because I have a pension that more or less covers the rent and I am married to a responsible person who looks for bargains and is conscientious of the sweat and risk that goes into my income I could go back to driving and not feeling the day to day pressure of having to make X dollars that night.
So yesterday, as it turned out was my first night back and it was the night of Gay Liberation Day, a fact that had escaped my mind and did not figure into my decision as to what day I would go back to work. Of course there is no night like the night of Gay Liberation Day. I worked hard, stayed glued into my taxi for ten and a half hours, lost momentum and forgot strategy a couple of times but came out making a respectable sum of money. It felt good once I figured out how to run the new fangled taxi meter. I still don't know how to get it to light up my "Off Duty" light but last night I wasn't off duty 'till I got back to the garage.
Gay Liberation. I remember reading about and hearing about the Stonewall riot when it happened. Being a good little Marxist-Leninist wannabe of that time and being a product of that strange religion my parents raised me in I was not friendly to the whole notion. Not that I hated anyone or wanted harm to befall anyone, no. Just that to me homosexuals (that was the word back then) and their way of living were frivolous, petit bourgeoise escapist of the challenge of building anti sexist, non exploitative man-woman relationships and were just contrary to nature, nature of course being of the same mind as the God who had mandated we be fruitful and multiply. Note I had entertained and expressed not one word like "sin" or "wrong." What a twerp, but that was me in June of 1969.
I am not going to tell you that I understand what motivates varying expressions of sexuality or that I think there is one discourse that explains it all. I went along with the movement change of line on Gay Liberation half heartedly and not deeply and sincerely. Surely I was still the product not only of the religious and political indoctrination of the hard left pre June 1969 but also I was the product of the deep prejudices that ruled the street culture I grew up in.
Life was so much better when I was young Free Movies For You JUST LIKE A SATURDAY AT THE BUGGY BEACON. I knew Adolf Hitler
Since leaving the organized left back in 1980 (I still count myself on the left but not affiliated) I have come to consider the issue independently of any party line. My line comes down to "live and let live." Millions of people do not wake up one day and decide to shock their parents and alienate their childhood friends. There are reasons things happen, even if I don't understand them.
HOMAGE TO MY DAY DRIVER (WHY I HATE GAY BASHERS)
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Recent Posts
Work Americans Won't Do
Summer Camp
Citgo is a U.S. refining and marketing firm that ...
ACS is Ugly and Must Not Be Allowed To Get Away With What They Are Trying to Get Away With.
The more things change the more they stay the same...
My Name is Rachel Corrie
His Master's Voice
From Counterpunch on line. "The War Against Aspirin"
Some Science.
More About My Biloxi Blues And Ours.(Hadji Grl)
The Duplessis Orphans
What a coincidence, I'm looking at Father's day and also looking to the 50,000th vistor to this blog.
My Biloxi Blues, And Ours.
An email from a former co worker and friend.
What's Up and Coming- Mainly the AIDS drug trial scandal.
Exodus redux
Israeli shells kill five children on Gaza beach
Oldies Like "My First Love Is In the Public Domain"
Administration For Children's Services is ugly.
First Army Officer to openly refuse to go to Iraq.
Free Movies For You JUST LIKE A SATURDAY AT THE BUGGY BEACON.
About "Illegal Aliens"
The HIV/AIDS Agnostic
To John Mattingly, The Vera Institute and Mayor Michael Bloomberg> What's Up With The Investigation?
How Many NYC Foster Kids were force fed these chemicals? Truth is they don't know.
New York Times Publishes attack on Dr. David Rasnick.
FOX NEWS' Bill O'Reilly Is a World Class Putz..
"On Close Examination" is wrong about AIDS drug experiments.
Recent visitors of Note
Summer Camp
Citgo is a U.S. refining and marketing firm that ...
ACS is Ugly and Must Not Be Allowed To Get Away With What They Are Trying to Get Away With.
The more things change the more they stay the same...
My Name is Rachel Corrie
His Master's Voice
From Counterpunch on line. "The War Against Aspirin"
Some Science.
More About My Biloxi Blues And Ours.(Hadji Grl)
The Duplessis Orphans
What a coincidence, I'm looking at Father's day and also looking to the 50,000th vistor to this blog.
My Biloxi Blues, And Ours.
An email from a former co worker and friend.
What's Up and Coming- Mainly the AIDS drug trial scandal.
Exodus redux
Israeli shells kill five children on Gaza beach
Oldies Like "My First Love Is In the Public Domain"
Administration For Children's Services is ugly.
First Army Officer to openly refuse to go to Iraq.
Free Movies For You JUST LIKE A SATURDAY AT THE BUGGY BEACON.
About "Illegal Aliens"
The HIV/AIDS Agnostic
To John Mattingly, The Vera Institute and Mayor Michael Bloomberg> What's Up With The Investigation?
How Many NYC Foster Kids were force fed these chemicals? Truth is they don't know.
New York Times Publishes attack on Dr. David Rasnick.
FOX NEWS' Bill O'Reilly Is a World Class Putz..
"On Close Examination" is wrong about AIDS drug experiments.
Recent visitors of Note
Summer Camp
Regular readers know that I have two new daughters as well as two biological daughters. My biological daughters are grown women and work as professionals. My two new daughters came into my life around three years ago when I met thir mother and when I married their mom last May they became part of my family.
My two new daughters have lived here in Harlem for nine years or so and have gone to school here and I beleive they feel that Harlem and General Grant Houses is their home town. These two girls excell in school and so the older one was picked for a special Junior High School down on the Upper West Side and attends a rigorous after school academic program that is desigend for kids who are bound for the top public High Schools. Bronx Science and Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech still are stellar schools and they send graduates on the Universities and Great Things. They are organizing other schools that they hope will rival these well known three and two of these new schools are walking distance from our home.
The younger daughter got a scholaship to an academic summer camp in upstate New York and I brought her there yesterday. Yesterday was foggy and somewhat rainy and the ride up the Hudson Valley was breath taking, with the mists and clouds hanging on the mountain tops, and the damp weather softening the colors of the Valley.
A few kids from Harlem all went up there by train together. I wish all of them lots of fun and success.
My two new daughters have lived here in Harlem for nine years or so and have gone to school here and I beleive they feel that Harlem and General Grant Houses is their home town. These two girls excell in school and so the older one was picked for a special Junior High School down on the Upper West Side and attends a rigorous after school academic program that is desigend for kids who are bound for the top public High Schools. Bronx Science and Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech still are stellar schools and they send graduates on the Universities and Great Things. They are organizing other schools that they hope will rival these well known three and two of these new schools are walking distance from our home.
The younger daughter got a scholaship to an academic summer camp in upstate New York and I brought her there yesterday. Yesterday was foggy and somewhat rainy and the ride up the Hudson Valley was breath taking, with the mists and clouds hanging on the mountain tops, and the damp weather softening the colors of the Valley.
A few kids from Harlem all went up there by train together. I wish all of them lots of fun and success.
Friday, June 23, 2006
Citgo is a U.S. refining and marketing firm that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company. Money you pay to Citgo goes primarily to Venezuela --. There are 14,000 Citgo gas stations in the US. (Click here http://www.citgo.com/CITGOLocator/StoreLocator.jsp to find one near you.) By buying your gasoline at Citgo, you are contributing to the billions of dollars that Venezuela's democratic government is using to provide health care, literacy and education, and subsidized food for the majority of Venezuelans.
In August 2005, during a visit to Venezuela by U.S. civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, President Chavez promised to use some of his country's oil profits to help impovished Americans that would obviously not be helped by either the American oil companies or the American administration, which is run by former oil executives. This was to be accomplished by providing cheap heating oil to America's poor through American non-profit organizations. In the United States, the anti-American right-wing, for whom the death of America's poor only provides greater profits, laughed off the offer and doubted anything would come of it. However, unlike most American politicians, President Chavez actually "puts his money where his mouth is" and is willing to sacrifice profit to help people.
The program began in October of 2005 and continued until April 2006. "Through this program, we distributed nearly 40 million gallons of heating oil to 181,000 households and hundreds of homeless shelters at discounted prices to help poor communities in areas of the country most affected by cold winters," said Félix Rodríguez, CITGO President and CEO. Through this program heating oil was sold through non-profits at an almost 40% discount while all American oil companies continued to hoard their profits, charging all Americans full market value for every drop and generating record-breaking profits. The beneficiaries were:
5,725 Americans families in New York
24,000 American families in Connecticut
5,000 American families in Delaware
50,735 American families in Maine, including members of the Aroostook Band of MicMacs, the Penobscot Indian Nation, the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians and the Passamaquoddy Tribe
50,000 American families in Massachusetts
9,000 American families in Rhode Island
25,000 American families in Pennsylvania
12,000 American families in Vermont
ACS is Ugly and Must Not Be Allowed To Get Away With What They Are Trying to Get Away With.
June 20, 2006- This Post will for the foreseeable future always be on top of this web log, no matter what else I might post and no matter what else might happen. The Administration for Children's Services is trying to get away with having forced orphans and foster children to take experimental medicines that were known to be highly toxic. It was exposed over a year ago and ACS finessed with the promise of an investigation and the press went to work confusing the public over the issue of the unethical drug tests versus "what is HIV/AIDS" which are two separate and distinct matter that might appear to be linked but in reality are not. This post carries items I've put on this weblog since last December regarding this scandal and some other outrageous practices at Administration for Children's Services.I am starting an effort to publicize this issue and this web log in New York city, which is central to the scandal and central to forcing a true accounting and reckoning for what was done to hundreds of helpless orphans and foster children, how many, still not know.Year Old News That Seems To Have Faded Away - The Ugliness that is ACS
The scandal is about one of the most egregious crimes committed against minority people in this country and the SOB's are so far getting away with covering it up, blurring it over and getting away possibly with murder.
New York City's Administration for Children's Services and its predecessor agencies subjected foster children, almost entirely minority orphans as young as two months old, to Phase I and Phase II drug experiments. An intrepid journalist named Liam Scheff broke the story open and it became big news. Among other things the cover uppers have managed to conflate the heart of the scandal with what is called "AIDS denialism," or the denial by many including doctors and scientists of several of the givens most people believe about AIDS, including ideas that>
1- There is no disease called AIDS, that it's a new name for old illnesses.
2- There is a disease called AIDS but it is not caused by HIV viruses.
3- There are no HIV viruses.
4- HIV virus has never been isolated. (A belief held by the inventor of the test used to "find" HIV).
5- There is no AIDS epidemic in Africa, it's a new name for old problems mainly of poverty and underdevelopment.
6- AIDS drugs are more deadly than any disease they puportedly treat.
These are all controversial opinions. They also conflict to some extent. Personally I am not in a position nor qualified to make judgements about these things. It is known though that many AIDS treatments are very toxic, and it is also known that AIDS or HIV among infants cannot be determined by any measure acceptable to anyone, before a child is eighteen months old. This drug trial is not the only one conducted mainly on African and Arrican descended people to be under a cloud.
The problem with these AIDS drug tests is that
1- They were done on involuntary child and infant subjects who had no parental or guardian oversight to protect their individual interests. Children old enough to know they were suffering and who refused to take the experimental drugs were force fed though surgically inserted feeding tubes.
2- They were done on many children under eighteen months of age. They were highly experimental at the least and not demonstrably done in the health interests of the subject children.
3- It was reported that at least two children died directly through the toxic effects of the experimental medicines. These reports were never satisfactorily investigated.
4- New York City's government has no certainty as of this day as to how many children or what children were subjected to the experiments. It is difficult then to imagine how the outcomes of the experiments could be known, accepted and deemed beneficial to the subject children.
5- New York City has assigned The Vera Institute for Justice to "investigate" the matter. This assignment was announced over a year ago. Vera is a major contractor to Administration for Children's Services, that is it receives money from the agency whose work it is purportedly investigating, not just expenses of the investigation but other money through other contracts as well.
6- Even if Vera Instutute were not so compromised, it is not an agency that conducts investigations of crimes or investigations that call for the use of forensic sciemce and forensic medicine. New York City has a Department of Investigations. The drug trials are admittedly flawed and were found to compromise acceptable standards of ethics. With records of subject children "popping up" in basements and uncounted all these months, it is certainly the purview of a more qualified investigatory body with powers to recommend punishments where appropriate and powers to subpeaona witnesses and force testimony from past and present City employees.
7- The "investigation" is dragging on with no "conclusion" in sight, and in fact with noises that there is not going to be a conclusion at all.
Now, whether or not the AIDS denialists are right or wrong about HIV and AIDS, several of them had come forward to make the scandal known. For that they deserve thanks. Guinea Pig Kids
A Letter to Amy Goodman of Democracy Now About The Unethical AIDS ...
I ask The New York Times How AIDS drug torture investigation is coming along...
To John Mattingly, The Vera Institute and Mayor Michael Bloomberg ...
New Yorkers Are Going To Know About The Racist AIDS Drug Experiments...
AIDS Drug Experiment Scandal Update
AIDS foster child Drug Tests. A scandal - Pro and Con.
Excerpts from Liam Scheff's "The House That Aids Built"
How Many NYC Foster Kids were force fed these chemicals? Truth is they don't know....
These are the figures of the US Department of Health and Human Services...
Put into question the common assertion that it's the AIDS drugs that account for the drop in the number of children diagnosed with AIDS. These figures show fewer and fewer "at risk" women giving birth.
Sex Offenders and Foster Children Do Mix...
They do in New York City.
ACS/Vera Institute begin third year of AIDS foster children scandal coverup ...
Dear Fellow ACS workers whoare members of local 371: I gave this out in front of ACS HQ. It got me into a jam.
Baby Snatching Fools- Giuliani time returns.
Me to Bloomberg and the media:Where were you for all the other Nixzmary Browns?
Special Victims, Nixzmary, Instant Responses, Emergency Children's Services- The New York Post is Lying When They Say Giuliani Fixed CPS in New York
ACS worker to The Commissioner - My Boss Says Some Things to The New York Daily News - And I React. John Mattingly talks off the top of his head to the press. Not smart.
The Nixzmary Brown Case - Daily News gets its hands on the case record, more.... I hope the workers who got blamed for Nixzmary sue everyone in sight. "Leaked" my Aunt Fannie!
Nixzmary Brown, 7 Is Dead, Known to Child Welfare Authorities
FACT SHEET ON ACS ABUSE OF BLACK & LATINO CHILDREN AS GUINEA PIGS FOR TESTING OF AIDS DRUGS
January 2004: Investigative Reporter Liam Scheff publishes The House that AIDS Built. The article documents ACSTs (NYC Administration for Childrens Services) use of Black and Latino children in foster care asguinea pigs for trials of toxic AIDS drugs. Drugs were given to children as young as 1 month old. The article cites deaths of at least four of thechildren at the Incarnation Childrenâ?Ts Center (ICC), the main site of the testing, which is run by the Catholic Archdiocese of New York. The trials went on from the mid-1980s through the beginning of this century.
March 2004: Vera Sharav of the Alliance for Human Research Protection contacts several Federal agencies to get them to investigate and put a halt to ACSs violations of Federal regulations for the protection of children as research subjects. March-June, 2004: ACS, in a series of private correspondences in response to inquiries from City Councilmen deBlasio and Perkins, assures them that ACS had done nothing wrong. No further inquiry was made or public hearingdemanded by the Councilmen.
December 2004: The December 12th Movement (D12) and Millions for Reparations (MFR) became aware of the issue through a newly-released BBC documentary, Guinea Pig Kids, which documented the abuses of ICC. The twoorganizations viewed health care in the Black and Latino communities in general and the human rights violations suffered by the children at ICC, in particular, as an important part of the demand for Reparations. They immediately launched a multi-faceted campaign to inform the community ofthis issue. It included: weekly demonstrations in front of ICC; presentationof a letter to the Commissioner of ACS requesting answers to specific questions on what had occurred at ICC; a letter writing campaign to local,state and federal elected officials demanding that they hold public hearingson these drug trials.
January 27, 2005: A representative of D12 met with Councilman deBlasio,Chair of the General Welfare Committee, in an unsuccessful attempt to have him hold a public hearing on the ICC. February 8, 2005: In response to D12's December 30th letter to ACS Commissioner Mattingly, ACS called for a meeting. It was held between representatives of D12, MFR, the Center for Law and Social Justice, Young, Gifted and Black and a high level delegation of ACS and the NYC Law Department.
The community representatives left dissatisfied. Many of their questions went unanswered, including: i) what were the causes of death of children in the clinical trials; and ii) what were the long-term side effects of the drugs used. ACS told them that 76 children had been involved in clinical trials and promised to get back to them after they had compiled the information which had been originally requested in December, 2004.April 22, 2005: ACS, which had still not gotten back to D12 and MFR,announced that it had hired an outside research facility to investigate them. It also announced that 465 children, not the 76 they told us in February, had been "guinea pigs." The actual number may grow.
April 24, 2005: D12 and MFR hold press conference on steps of City Hall,with Councilmen Barron and Perkins, as well as Vera Sharav. Councilman deBlasio, through Councilman Barron, announces that he has finally decided to hold a hearing. MFR, D12 and Parents in Action call for a city-wide demonstration at ICC on April 30th to Shut It Down May 5, 2005 - NYC Council holds Public Hearing on Administration for Children's Services and the testing of experimental AIDS drugs on allegedly HIV positive children in foster care.
MILLIONS FOR REPARATIONS: 456 Nostrand Avenue; Brooklyn, NY 11216; (718) 398-1766 (tel); (718) 623-1855 (fax);
See also: -
http://groups.msn.com/GlaxoWellcomeKleineexposed
TOPICS: Health/MedicineKEYWORDS: AIDS; AIDSHIV; AIDSMEDS; CHILDABUSE; CHILDREN; DRUGSCOMPANIES; GLAXCO; GLAXCOKLEINE; GLAXCOWELCOM; HIV; HIVAIDS; WELLCOM; ACS; Giuliani; John Mattingly;Nicholas Scopetta; Michael Bloomberg; Racism; Government Press; Prostitute Press; Zionist Press., Vera Institute For Justice.
This news is more than a year old. I have some questions. Do You? What has happened since May 5, 2005 when the City Council had its public hearing. Is anyone in jail for this attrocity? Mattingly told the community activists a year ago that the VERA Institute would be investigating this matter. Now, VERA has a wholesome sounding name and is known as good guys who help underdog ex cons get on their feet. Nice PR job Mattingly>http://aolsearch.aol.com/aol/search?invocationType=topsearchbox.search&query=Vera+ACS+contractweb results
enhanced by page 1 of 250
Vera Institute of Justice Support for Government Officials MOBI...
Soon thereafter, ACS signed a three-year $1.2 million contract with the Vera Institute to provide research, technical assistance, and evaluation services in ...http://www.vera.org/support/support_95.asp
Exploring the Intersections Between Child Welfare and Juvenile ...
Vera Institute of Justice. 15. ACS and the Juvenile Justice System. Lizzie, Jean, and Diana, all 15, were living in an ACS contract diagnostic center. ...http://www.vera.org/publication_pdf/pathways.pdf
MMRTFA
In the six months between July and December 2002, ACS contract preventive service ... by the Vera Institute and ACS to resolve issues in juvenile justice, ...
http://aolsearch.aol.com/aol/search?invocationType=topsearchbox.search&query=ACS+Vera+%22children%27s+center%22
Vera has operations right inside ACS offices.
So I have a few questions. Is VERA an objective outside agency or the ACS House Detective? Just where are we in this investigation?
HERE IS WHAT I PUBLISHED ON THIS WEBLOG REGARDING THIS SITUATION IN THE EARLY DAYS OF IT'S EXISTENCE>
Saturday, December 24, 2005
AHRP Testimony: Protections for Foster Children Enrolled in Clinical Trials
READ THE WHOLE REPORT ON THIS TESTIMONY!
Unethical Experimentation on Foster ChildrenTimeline and Links - Unethical Experimentation on Foster ChildrenLetters Challenge NY Times Report re: AIDS drug/ vaccine experiments on foster childrenOHRP preliminary findings fault Columbia University Medical CenterCongressional Hearings - Testimony by Roberta Harris, Deputy Secretary, Wisconsin Dept. of Health / Family ServicesCongressional Hearings - AHRP statement and recommendations for the recorA National Scandal: AIDS Drug Experiments on Foster Care Children - AHRP Letter of Complaint:
Keywords: Giuliani, Nicholas Scopetta, William Bell, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, ACS Commissioner John Mattingly, Child Abuse, AIDS, HIV, Tyranny, Government amuck, corporative media, government stenographers, zionist press,Administration for Children's Services,New York Times, BBC, Vera Institute for Justice, sham investigation, You can't fight city hall.
The more things change the more they stay the same...
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/09/1415210#transcript
Tuesday, May 9th, 2006 Chicago's Abu Ghraib: UN Committee Against Torture Hears Report on How Police Tortured Over 135 African-American Men Inside Chicago JailsListen to Segment Download Show mp3 Watch 128k stream Watch 256k stream Read Transcript Help Printer-friendly version Email to a friend Purchase Video/CD
For nearly two decades a part of the city’s jails known as Area 2 was the epicenter for what has been described as the systematic torture of dozens of African-American males by Chicago police officers. In total, more than 135 people say they were subjected to abuse including having guns forced into their mouths, bags places over their heads, and electric shocks inflicted to their genitals. Four men have been released from death row after government investigators concluded torture led to their wrongful convictions. [includes rush transcript]
Extraordinary rendition. Overseas prisons. Abu Ghraib. Guantanamo Bay. Practices and places that have become synonymous with the abuse of detainees in US custody are getting renewed attention at the United Nations this week, where the UN Committee Against Torture is holding hearings on U.S. compliance with its international obligations. But there is one name expected to arise this week that few people in this country will have heard about – and it’s the one that’s closest to home.
It’s called Area 2. And for nearly two decades beginning in 1971, it was the epicenter for what has been described as the systematic torture of dozens of African-American males by Chicago police officers. In total, more than 135 people say they were subjected to abuse including having guns forced into their mouths, bags places over their heads, and electric shocks inflicted to their genitals. Four men have been released from death row after government investigators concluded torture led to their wrongful convictions.
Yet the case around Area 2 is nowhere near a resolution -- to date, not one Chicago police officer has been charged with any crime. ...
Tuesday, May 9th, 2006 Chicago's Abu Ghraib: UN Committee Against Torture Hears Report on How Police Tortured Over 135 African-American Men Inside Chicago JailsListen to Segment Download Show mp3 Watch 128k stream Watch 256k stream Read Transcript Help Printer-friendly version Email to a friend Purchase Video/CD
For nearly two decades a part of the city’s jails known as Area 2 was the epicenter for what has been described as the systematic torture of dozens of African-American males by Chicago police officers. In total, more than 135 people say they were subjected to abuse including having guns forced into their mouths, bags places over their heads, and electric shocks inflicted to their genitals. Four men have been released from death row after government investigators concluded torture led to their wrongful convictions. [includes rush transcript]
Extraordinary rendition. Overseas prisons. Abu Ghraib. Guantanamo Bay. Practices and places that have become synonymous with the abuse of detainees in US custody are getting renewed attention at the United Nations this week, where the UN Committee Against Torture is holding hearings on U.S. compliance with its international obligations. But there is one name expected to arise this week that few people in this country will have heard about – and it’s the one that’s closest to home.
It’s called Area 2. And for nearly two decades beginning in 1971, it was the epicenter for what has been described as the systematic torture of dozens of African-American males by Chicago police officers. In total, more than 135 people say they were subjected to abuse including having guns forced into their mouths, bags places over their heads, and electric shocks inflicted to their genitals. Four men have been released from death row after government investigators concluded torture led to their wrongful convictions.
Yet the case around Area 2 is nowhere near a resolution -- to date, not one Chicago police officer has been charged with any crime. ...
My Name is Rachel Corrie
My Name is Rachel Corrie Dena Hammerstein and Pam Pariseau for James Hammerstein Productions present the American premiere of London's Royal Court Theatre production of My Name is Rachel Corrie, a new play taken from the writings of American activist Rachel Corrie, edited by Katharine Viner and Alan Rickman. The solo play is directed by Alan Rickman, who edited the piece with Katharine Viner, Features Editor with The Guardian newspaper in London.
Compiled from writings left behind in the diaries, letters, and e-mails of American activist Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old protester who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza, My Name is Rachel Corrie chronicles the human, social and political evolution in the life and controversial death of a young woman. The play traces the life of Rachel from her early days in Washington State through her experiences as an activist seeking to learn more about the community within Gaza.
Minetta Lane Theatre18 Minetta LaneNew York, NY 10014Tickets: 212-307-4100
My Name is Rachel Corrie Ticket Prices
$45.00-$65.00$150.00 Premium Seating > check for discounts
Buy tickets online
Schedule:Schedule varies.
Opening Date:
October 15, 2006
Previews Start:
October 5, 2006
Closing Date:
November 19, 2006 http://www.theatermania.com/content/show.cfm/show/122758
Compiled from writings left behind in the diaries, letters, and e-mails of American activist Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old protester who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza, My Name is Rachel Corrie chronicles the human, social and political evolution in the life and controversial death of a young woman. The play traces the life of Rachel from her early days in Washington State through her experiences as an activist seeking to learn more about the community within Gaza.
Minetta Lane Theatre18 Minetta LaneNew York, NY 10014Tickets: 212-307-4100
My Name is Rachel Corrie Ticket Prices
$45.00-$65.00$150.00 Premium Seating > check for discounts
Buy tickets online
Schedule:Schedule varies.
Opening Date:
October 15, 2006
Previews Start:
October 5, 2006
Closing Date:
November 19, 2006 http://www.theatermania.com/content/show.cfm/show/122758
His Master's Voice
This one is going to take a while to write. I bumped into Reverend Kooperkamp again this morning. (The Queen of Sheba and St. Mary.) on the same corner where I first made his acquaintance. Marbella and I had gone to the graduation ceremony of a kid who lives in the apartment building and had gone a bought a few items and got a few rolls of quarters, dimes and nickles at the bank to let me start my renewed taxi career on Sunday. He asked how I was doing and if I had started driving a taxi. He said he had had some parishoners at one time who were cabbies and that he knew they work very hard. I smiled, because I've done hard work in my life (though I have been on this extended vacation since April 21, what might be my whole retirement). I told him I prefer to deal with a moron who wants me to make a right turn from a left lane, that's simple I say "no" and offer alternatives including the right to exit my cab and my voice sort of trailed off before I spoke much of what it is I prefer that to. I prefer it to taking orders from low level people like Ramon Vargas and Maradesa "Sunday" Adegbola. I prefer it to listening to a Director regale the troops with his tales of transitory single manhood in Santo Domingo. I much prefer it to working for a Commissioner like Mattingly who, like Adegbola and attorney Michelle Weinstat, cannot read for comprehension. I prefer it to needlessly disrupting people's lives, especially doing it because some moron can't think clearly.
I believe I'll be just fine.
Thursday, June 22, 2006
From Counterpunch on line. "The War Against Aspirin"
http://www.counterpunch.org/gardner06202006.html
When I read things like this I get mad, and I start to wonder about anything a doctor might tell me...
Johnson & Johnson has paid out countless millions of dollars over the years to settle suits by Tylenol victims and minimize adverse publicity. Occasionally the wall of silence by the corporate media gets breached, but the message that Tylenol causes liver damage has yet to reach the masses. A 1998 article in Forbes by Thomas Easton and Stephen Herrera critiqued J&J's strategy: "J&J has made grudging concessions, strengthening the warning label a little at a time... Why not warn about people about possible liver failure? J&J says that 'organ specific' warnings would confuse people. Why not talk about the risk of death? That would promote suicides, says the company." The Forbes piece concluded, "[CEO James] Burke's successor has a painful choice. He can rewrite the label, putting on it the verbal equivalent of a skull and crossbones. Or he can go on paying off victims, and hope for the best." Richard Cowan posted the Forbes piece on Marijuananews.com, with a commentary contrasting the safety profiles of Tylenol and cannabis. That was about 2,500 deaths ago.
When I read things like this I get mad, and I start to wonder about anything a doctor might tell me...
Johnson & Johnson has paid out countless millions of dollars over the years to settle suits by Tylenol victims and minimize adverse publicity. Occasionally the wall of silence by the corporate media gets breached, but the message that Tylenol causes liver damage has yet to reach the masses. A 1998 article in Forbes by Thomas Easton and Stephen Herrera critiqued J&J's strategy: "J&J has made grudging concessions, strengthening the warning label a little at a time... Why not warn about people about possible liver failure? J&J says that 'organ specific' warnings would confuse people. Why not talk about the risk of death? That would promote suicides, says the company." The Forbes piece concluded, "[CEO James] Burke's successor has a painful choice. He can rewrite the label, putting on it the verbal equivalent of a skull and crossbones. Or he can go on paying off victims, and hope for the best." Richard Cowan posted the Forbes piece on Marijuananews.com, with a commentary contrasting the safety profiles of Tylenol and cannabis. That was about 2,500 deaths ago.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
I posted Hadji Girl Video Yesterday.(Well, the day before yesterday depending on your time zone)
I've been reading a lot of stuff trying to defend this Marine Corporal Joshua Belile. Here are his lyrics, since the audio part of the wmv I posted below is jumpy>
Hadji Girl
I was out in the sands of Iraq
And we were under attack
And I, well, I didn’t know where to go.
And the first thing that I could see was
Everybody’s favorite Burger King
So I threw open the door and I hit the floor.
Then suddenly to my surprise
I looked up and I saw her eyes
And I knew it was love at first sight.
And she said…
Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad
Sherpa Sherpa Bak Allah
Hadji girl, I can’t understand what you’re saying.
And she said…
Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad
Sherpa Sherpa Bak Allah
Hadji girl, I love you anyway.
Then she said that she wanted me to see.
She wanted me to go meet her family
But I, well, I couldn’t figure out how to say no.
Cause I don’t speak Arabic.
So, she took me down an old dirt trail.
And she pulled up to a side shanty
And she threw open the door and I hit the floor.
Cause her brother and her father shouted…
Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad
Sherpa Sherpa Bak Allah
They pulled out their AKs so I could see
And they said…
Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad
Sherpa Sherpa Bak Allah
(with humorous emphasis:)
So I grabbed her little sister, and pulled her in front of me.
As the bullets began to fly
The blood sprayed from between her eyes
And then I laughed maniacally
Then I hid behind the TV
And I locked and loaded my M-16
And I blew those little f*ckers to eternity.
And I said…
Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad
Sherpa Sherpa Bak Allah
They should have known they were f*ckin’ with a Marine.
The Corporal thought he was a pretty clever guy to post this video on YouTube where it was downloaded by 50,000 plus surfers,and Michelle Malkin and most of the wingnuts think he's a splendid fellow, and that his sentiments are understandable and I guess therefore, commendable.
Corporal, you are in someone else's country based upon a series of lies. Your beloved US military is caught up in a mess cooked up by neo con chickenhawks and nominally implemented by a moron whose keepers stole the White House. Although it is a mess and I pity you guys more than anything else, collectively you've killed around 250,000 Iraqis in their own country. 87% of them say they want you and your buddies gone. Even the Iraqi sock puppets who your keepers and handlers got elected complain about the way you guys do business. Corporal, would you come to here General Grant Houses and call everyone you see "Leroy" or "Tyrone" or "N...."? You and Malkin and the other wingnuts don't understand the harm you've done to the standing of your country in the Muslim world. I pity you but you will stew in your own juice. You need help and I hope you and your buddies do get out of there quickly.
Hadji Girl
I was out in the sands of Iraq
And we were under attack
And I, well, I didn’t know where to go.
And the first thing that I could see was
Everybody’s favorite Burger King
So I threw open the door and I hit the floor.
Then suddenly to my surprise
I looked up and I saw her eyes
And I knew it was love at first sight.
And she said…
Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad
Sherpa Sherpa Bak Allah
Hadji girl, I can’t understand what you’re saying.
And she said…
Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad
Sherpa Sherpa Bak Allah
Hadji girl, I love you anyway.
Then she said that she wanted me to see.
She wanted me to go meet her family
But I, well, I couldn’t figure out how to say no.
Cause I don’t speak Arabic.
So, she took me down an old dirt trail.
And she pulled up to a side shanty
And she threw open the door and I hit the floor.
Cause her brother and her father shouted…
Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad
Sherpa Sherpa Bak Allah
They pulled out their AKs so I could see
And they said…
Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad
Sherpa Sherpa Bak Allah
(with humorous emphasis:)
So I grabbed her little sister, and pulled her in front of me.
As the bullets began to fly
The blood sprayed from between her eyes
And then I laughed maniacally
Then I hid behind the TV
And I locked and loaded my M-16
And I blew those little f*ckers to eternity.
And I said…
Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad
Sherpa Sherpa Bak Allah
They should have known they were f*ckin’ with a Marine.
The Corporal thought he was a pretty clever guy to post this video on YouTube where it was downloaded by 50,000 plus surfers,and Michelle Malkin and most of the wingnuts think he's a splendid fellow, and that his sentiments are understandable and I guess therefore, commendable.
Corporal, you are in someone else's country based upon a series of lies. Your beloved US military is caught up in a mess cooked up by neo con chickenhawks and nominally implemented by a moron whose keepers stole the White House. Although it is a mess and I pity you guys more than anything else, collectively you've killed around 250,000 Iraqis in their own country. 87% of them say they want you and your buddies gone. Even the Iraqi sock puppets who your keepers and handlers got elected complain about the way you guys do business. Corporal, would you come to here General Grant Houses and call everyone you see "Leroy" or "Tyrone" or "N...."? You and Malkin and the other wingnuts don't understand the harm you've done to the standing of your country in the Muslim world. I pity you but you will stew in your own juice. You need help and I hope you and your buddies do get out of there quickly.
Sunday, June 18, 2006
More About My Biloxi Blues And Ours.(Hadji Grl)
Click here on this picture to see our Blues, our problem, our shame.
This post is a continuation of the Biloxi Blues post of yesterday, which is a couple of posts down from here.
My Biloxi Blues, and Ours.
Although I was a draftee into the US Army and I served July 1967 until Juy 1969, like Lt. Michini I was not sent overseas, though probably for quite different reasons. (I suspect Michini had some clout.) I don't want to get too far ahead of myself here, but I will give you this link to the story of how and why and what happened that prevented me from being sent to Vietnam.
Autobiographical: How I tripped (over a wrinkle in the Uniform Code of Military Justice...
I went through my eight weeks of Basic Combat Training at E-6-2 but unlike the rest of the guys I was not immediately shipped on to Advanced Individual Training because Military Intelliegence had not yet completed their investigation of me and they had yet to decide what to do with me based on their findings. Most of the draftees went straight to AIT (Infantry) and from there to Vietnam. Some draftees went to AIT for field cooks. A very tall Sephardic Jew whose name I don't recall who came from Ohio went to Military Police AIT. I stayed at E-6-2 pending disposition. I was a holdover. As a holdover I had a few privileges. I bunked in my own room. I was allowed to grow my hair moderately, and this hair was my insignia of slightly elevated rank. I was no longer a Basic Trainee and so I was kept at the barracks to do various details, mainly painting the barracks (there were five of them and the Company HQ too) for the upcoming visit of the base Inspector General.
But let me get back to my Basic Training story. I know it sounds dramatic and probably you'll say it's rhetoric but they tried to kill me, or someone did, twice. The first attempt took place during our poison gas training. Part of this training involved the soldiers holding their breaths going into a chamber filled with a lethal gas, shouting their names and serial numbers and perhaps some more, it was 39 years ago, and then putting on gas masks that were handed to each one by the non commissioned officers, breathing and staying in the chamber for some amount of time that I forget. When I put on my gas mask I could not breathe. I was gesturing wildly that I could not breathe and needed to exit promptly. At first one of the sergeants stopped me, held my hands down and didn't let me walk to the door. I struggled some more and he relented. I made it outside. My gas mask canisters were filled with water.
The second time I was set up was during our obstacle course training. There is a point at which each soldier scales a pretty high wall, his rifle with unsheathed bayonette in hand. I was at the end of the line (the traineees were all exhausted, for this was just part of a grueling day of forced march and trotting with rifles and field packs) and Greenwald told me how to hold the rifle. As I was coming over the wall the Field First Sergeant shouted to me to drop the rifle which I did. He then got into Greenwald's face and scolded him for giving me bad directions. "That soldier could have shish kebabed himself" is what the Field First told Greenwald.
In spite of all this I felt a comeraderie with the guys and was relieved to learn that contrary to my previous strongly held opionion and belief not every non Jewish white man from West of the Passaic River was a church going Klansman. I felt pride as my physical strength and appearance improved and proud of the hard tasks I could accomplish, and proud of how so many of the guys were my friends in spite of everything that was being said about me.
Just like the Jewish kid from Brooklyn named Eugene Jerome, I also looked down the barrel of a non military issue gun that was being wielded by a non commissioned officer. This happened when I was a holdover. Corporal Blevins had his quarters in one of the barracks that I was in charge of getting painted. I was given a handfull of trainees, different ones each day, paint and brushes and told what colotrs to paint what walls, trim, and so forth. This went on for a few weeks and all of my fatigues became paint splattered as I wasn't someone to supervise others and yet not do the work they were doing. One night as I slept dreaming of love I was shaken awake by Blevins, his face crimson and his voice at high decible. He was accusing me of stealing his portable radio or allowing one of the trainees to steal it. As I opened my eyes I saw his .22 calible pointed at my face, around six inches away. The drunken fool was looking for a radio that was right out on his windowsill as I remember now.
Unlike Sgt. Toomey Blevins did not apologize and Michini thought it "no big deal."
I loved to wake up and go running with the new trainees. They'd have me in the back of the company "encouraging" stragglers to catch up. I admit I was a bit drunk on this tiny power over others. It was fun.
One day Michini called me into his office and told me that I was going to escort prisoner Private Tenant (that was his name) one of the boys from Washington Courthouse, Ohio, around the base. Tenant had not come back from his first weekend pass. He was one of these guys from Ohio whose parents had been born in the poverty belt of West Virginia. Many of these guys had half their teeth yanked by the Army dentists the first couple of days at Fort Jackson. These boys could not read. One used to sleep in his fatigues on top of his blankets. This was summer time, South Carolina! This kid (not Tenant) avoided showers. His nickname was "Snake" which he got when he slept while we broke poppers under his nose, he not missing a snore.
My task was to bring Tenant to his various appointments to turn in his uniforms, go see the Chaplain, etc. on his way to the stockade. I don't remember if Tenant was wearing cuffs or not I think not . I was carrying a fully loaded M-14 rifle. (The M-16 became standard issue a bit later.) Michini told me that I was to shoot Tenant in the back if he ran. If this was to transpire I would be given summary Company Level Article 15 punishment, a fine of five dollars and Michini would buy me a carton of cigarettes out of the unit fund. As I understood it that was the standard instruction and lots of soldiers caught this duty. I delivered Tenant to the stockade without any incident.
Private Wheaton was a tall light skinned Black man who fainted the first hour we got to E-6-2. He was doused with a bucket of water and lightly prodded with a Lieutenant's boot till he got up. Wheaton turned out to be one of their best troops as I remember. A few weeks later they pitted me against him in Pugil Fighting, a training in which we used sticks around four foot long that had boxing glove type padding at each end used to bash each other in the head, torso and legs.
Wheaton jumped into the fighting circle shouting "Charlie Cong" at me and I guess he had been told that that was exactly who I was. (And I guess in a way I was). I don't know how I did it but I put Wheaton on his back and was decleared winner of the round.
Greenwald used to love showing up at the platoon barrack around three am, drunk as a skunk and in civvies, to run us through locker drills, (each soldier would fall out in front of the barracks holding his foot locker.) He'd also love to do do "boot drills." Each Private had two sets of combat boots, one of which had dabs of white paint on the backs of the boots, to allow identification for proper rotation. He'd bark "left no paint boot," we'd all come to the front of the barracks and line up each carrying it then he'd bark "Right paint boot" we'd fall out with it, and so forth.
I'm going to jump way ahead now. I traveled from Fort Ben Harrison, Indiana to Fort Lewish Washington with two buddies whose names I forgot and was assigned as a clerk to the Reception Station at Fort Lewis. I was there when troops back from Vietnam joked about the rapes they had done, the people whose arms they had shot off at the shoulder, the women and the marijuana. The jokes stopped with Tet.
This posting is the intellectual property of Eugene Weixel copyright 2006. All rights reserved.
My Biloxi Blues, and Ours.
Although I was a draftee into the US Army and I served July 1967 until Juy 1969, like Lt. Michini I was not sent overseas, though probably for quite different reasons. (I suspect Michini had some clout.) I don't want to get too far ahead of myself here, but I will give you this link to the story of how and why and what happened that prevented me from being sent to Vietnam.
Autobiographical: How I tripped (over a wrinkle in the Uniform Code of Military Justice...
I went through my eight weeks of Basic Combat Training at E-6-2 but unlike the rest of the guys I was not immediately shipped on to Advanced Individual Training because Military Intelliegence had not yet completed their investigation of me and they had yet to decide what to do with me based on their findings. Most of the draftees went straight to AIT (Infantry) and from there to Vietnam. Some draftees went to AIT for field cooks. A very tall Sephardic Jew whose name I don't recall who came from Ohio went to Military Police AIT. I stayed at E-6-2 pending disposition. I was a holdover. As a holdover I had a few privileges. I bunked in my own room. I was allowed to grow my hair moderately, and this hair was my insignia of slightly elevated rank. I was no longer a Basic Trainee and so I was kept at the barracks to do various details, mainly painting the barracks (there were five of them and the Company HQ too) for the upcoming visit of the base Inspector General.
But let me get back to my Basic Training story. I know it sounds dramatic and probably you'll say it's rhetoric but they tried to kill me, or someone did, twice. The first attempt took place during our poison gas training. Part of this training involved the soldiers holding their breaths going into a chamber filled with a lethal gas, shouting their names and serial numbers and perhaps some more, it was 39 years ago, and then putting on gas masks that were handed to each one by the non commissioned officers, breathing and staying in the chamber for some amount of time that I forget. When I put on my gas mask I could not breathe. I was gesturing wildly that I could not breathe and needed to exit promptly. At first one of the sergeants stopped me, held my hands down and didn't let me walk to the door. I struggled some more and he relented. I made it outside. My gas mask canisters were filled with water.
The second time I was set up was during our obstacle course training. There is a point at which each soldier scales a pretty high wall, his rifle with unsheathed bayonette in hand. I was at the end of the line (the traineees were all exhausted, for this was just part of a grueling day of forced march and trotting with rifles and field packs) and Greenwald told me how to hold the rifle. As I was coming over the wall the Field First Sergeant shouted to me to drop the rifle which I did. He then got into Greenwald's face and scolded him for giving me bad directions. "That soldier could have shish kebabed himself" is what the Field First told Greenwald.
In spite of all this I felt a comeraderie with the guys and was relieved to learn that contrary to my previous strongly held opionion and belief not every non Jewish white man from West of the Passaic River was a church going Klansman. I felt pride as my physical strength and appearance improved and proud of the hard tasks I could accomplish, and proud of how so many of the guys were my friends in spite of everything that was being said about me.
Just like the Jewish kid from Brooklyn named Eugene Jerome, I also looked down the barrel of a non military issue gun that was being wielded by a non commissioned officer. This happened when I was a holdover. Corporal Blevins had his quarters in one of the barracks that I was in charge of getting painted. I was given a handfull of trainees, different ones each day, paint and brushes and told what colotrs to paint what walls, trim, and so forth. This went on for a few weeks and all of my fatigues became paint splattered as I wasn't someone to supervise others and yet not do the work they were doing. One night as I slept dreaming of love I was shaken awake by Blevins, his face crimson and his voice at high decible. He was accusing me of stealing his portable radio or allowing one of the trainees to steal it. As I opened my eyes I saw his .22 calible pointed at my face, around six inches away. The drunken fool was looking for a radio that was right out on his windowsill as I remember now.
Unlike Sgt. Toomey Blevins did not apologize and Michini thought it "no big deal."
I loved to wake up and go running with the new trainees. They'd have me in the back of the company "encouraging" stragglers to catch up. I admit I was a bit drunk on this tiny power over others. It was fun.
One day Michini called me into his office and told me that I was going to escort prisoner Private Tenant (that was his name) one of the boys from Washington Courthouse, Ohio, around the base. Tenant had not come back from his first weekend pass. He was one of these guys from Ohio whose parents had been born in the poverty belt of West Virginia. Many of these guys had half their teeth yanked by the Army dentists the first couple of days at Fort Jackson. These boys could not read. One used to sleep in his fatigues on top of his blankets. This was summer time, South Carolina! This kid (not Tenant) avoided showers. His nickname was "Snake" which he got when he slept while we broke poppers under his nose, he not missing a snore.
My task was to bring Tenant to his various appointments to turn in his uniforms, go see the Chaplain, etc. on his way to the stockade. I don't remember if Tenant was wearing cuffs or not I think not . I was carrying a fully loaded M-14 rifle. (The M-16 became standard issue a bit later.) Michini told me that I was to shoot Tenant in the back if he ran. If this was to transpire I would be given summary Company Level Article 15 punishment, a fine of five dollars and Michini would buy me a carton of cigarettes out of the unit fund. As I understood it that was the standard instruction and lots of soldiers caught this duty. I delivered Tenant to the stockade without any incident.
Private Wheaton was a tall light skinned Black man who fainted the first hour we got to E-6-2. He was doused with a bucket of water and lightly prodded with a Lieutenant's boot till he got up. Wheaton turned out to be one of their best troops as I remember. A few weeks later they pitted me against him in Pugil Fighting, a training in which we used sticks around four foot long that had boxing glove type padding at each end used to bash each other in the head, torso and legs.
Wheaton jumped into the fighting circle shouting "Charlie Cong" at me and I guess he had been told that that was exactly who I was. (And I guess in a way I was). I don't know how I did it but I put Wheaton on his back and was decleared winner of the round.
Greenwald used to love showing up at the platoon barrack around three am, drunk as a skunk and in civvies, to run us through locker drills, (each soldier would fall out in front of the barracks holding his foot locker.) He'd also love to do do "boot drills." Each Private had two sets of combat boots, one of which had dabs of white paint on the backs of the boots, to allow identification for proper rotation. He'd bark "left no paint boot," we'd all come to the front of the barracks and line up each carrying it then he'd bark "Right paint boot" we'd fall out with it, and so forth.
I'm going to jump way ahead now. I traveled from Fort Ben Harrison, Indiana to Fort Lewish Washington with two buddies whose names I forgot and was assigned as a clerk to the Reception Station at Fort Lewis. I was there when troops back from Vietnam joked about the rapes they had done, the people whose arms they had shot off at the shoulder, the women and the marijuana. The jokes stopped with Tet.
This posting is the intellectual property of Eugene Weixel copyright 2006. All rights reserved.
The Duplessis Orphans
Wikipedia
Duplessis Orphans
The Duplessis Orphans (French: les Orphelins de Duplessis) refers to a scandal where several thousand orphaned children were falsely certified as mentally ill by the government of the province of Quebec, Canada and confined to psychiatric institutions. It is widely regarded as the largest case of institution-based child abuse in Canadian history.
Orphanages and schools were the financial responsibility of the provincial government but funding for mental institutions was also provided by the government of Canada. Beginning in the 1940s and continuing into the 1960s, Quebec Premier Maurice Duplessis in cooperation with the Roman Catholic Church who ran the orphanages, developed a scheme to obtain Federal funding for thousands of children, most of whom had been orphaned through their abandonment by an unwed mother. In some cases the Catholic orphanages were relabelled as health-care facilities and in other cases the children were shipped from orphanages to existing mental asylums. Years later, long after these institutions were closed, the adult children who had survived them began to speak out about the harsh treatment and sexual abuse they were forced to endure at the hands of the Roman Catholic Church priests, nuns, and administrators. Reminiscent of the abuses by the Catholic-run Magdalen Asylums, members of the Duplessis Orphans claim that they were used as slave labour and subjected to extreme physical abuse for misbehaviour.
By the 1990s, there remained about 3000 survivors and a large group formed to start a campaign for justice. They called themselves the Duplessis Orphans after Maurice Duplessis, the premier of the province during that time whose government was responsible for their plight. In addition to government and Church responsibility, the College of Physicians of Quebec came under fire after some of the orphans found copies of their medical records that had been falsified. Labelled as mentally deficient, many of these children were subjected to a variety of drug testing and used in other medical experiments. Released upon reaching the legal age of maturity, they were uneducated and ill-equipped to cope with life as an adult. Suicides were not uncommon and tormented as a result of their treatment, crime and other dysfunctional conduct permeated this disabled group of innocents.
At first, the government of Quebec stonewalled their request for justice but after they started gaining widespread publicity, in March of 1999, the Parti Québécois government made a token offer of approximately $1,000 as full compensation to each of the victims. The offer was rejected and the government was harshly criticized by the public and even the provincial Ombudsman, Daniel Jacoby, came out saying that the government's handling of the situation had trivialized the abuse the victims alleged. Nevertheless, the Quebec government of Lucien Bouchard still refused to hold an enquiry and get to the bottom of the scandal. In 2001, the claimants received an increased offer from the Quebec government for a flat payment of $10,000 per person, plus an additional $1,000 for each year of wrongful confinement to a mental institution. The offer amounted to approximately $25,000 per orphan, however it was limited to each of the surviving 1,100 orphans the government had labelled as mentally deficient, but did not include any compensation for victims of sexual or other abuse. Faced with few choices, the offer was accepted by those applicable while the remainder received nothing. Many believe that justice was not done and criminal wrongdoing was allowed to go unpunished.
In 1942, the Legislative Assembly of Quebec passed into law an Act that allowed the Roman Catholic Church to sell the unclaimed body of any orphan to medical schools. This practise of selling orphans' remains continued into the 1960s. In 2004, members of the "Duplessis Orphans" asked the Quebec government to unearth an abandoned cemetery in the east end of Montreal which they believe holds the remains of orphans who may have been the subject of medical experiments. According to testimony by individuals who were at the Cite de St. Jean de Dieu insane asylum, now named Louis-Hyppolite Lafontaine Hospital, the orphans were routinely experimented upon and many died. The group wants the government to exhume the bodies in order that autopsies can be done.
Saturday, June 17, 2006
What a coincidence, I'm looking at Father's day and also looking to the 50,000th vistor to this blog.
Friday, June 16, 2006
An email from a former co worker and friend.
I got this email from an ex ACS worker who used to work together with me in the Manhattan Field Office long ago. Because she is working in a field where ACS money doesn't talk, it swears, I have redacted some of the letter for privacy reasons.
Gene, Glad you found your voice and glad I found it also. I troll the web for insider comments on ACS and low and behold found your site.
I'm doing well enough. Am now a SW and am in training at the ^^^^^^^^^^^^. I figure Its not in my nature to fight the big fight no matter how much I am enraged but can do my bit one child, one family at a time. I really enjoy the training. Sadly theory does not usually translate into good practice as I know from my time at ACS. What is disconcerting is that I still miss it the evil ACS. I miss the intensity and the rage that I felt almost everyday. Yet because I left my life is so much better. I don't think there is anyone in the world but you who can understand this sentiment.
Currently I am working for )))))) in one of their many community programs, xxxxx is an after-school program in t(xxxxx) . Love the kids, even like my co-workers. Good intentioned and decent as far as I can tell. ... I'm in a relationship that is quite satisfying with xxxxx , who I have known for a long time and who is a semi-regular night taxi driver, among other things. Go figure. Good guy and good to me, which in my old age I am finally able to appreciate.
After she ruined countless lives and careers including mine, I hear that K.... N.... was "demoted" to Manager in foster care investigations from Deputy Director in the Bronx. The usual ACS action no guts for anything but taking babies. Its all about the money. Always.
I hope this posting finds you personally well and(your family) is making you happy and proud.
Love, (your old co worker and friend )
Gene, Glad you found your voice and glad I found it also. I troll the web for insider comments on ACS and low and behold found your site.
I'm doing well enough. Am now a SW and am in training at the ^^^^^^^^^^^^. I figure Its not in my nature to fight the big fight no matter how much I am enraged but can do my bit one child, one family at a time. I really enjoy the training. Sadly theory does not usually translate into good practice as I know from my time at ACS. What is disconcerting is that I still miss it the evil ACS. I miss the intensity and the rage that I felt almost everyday. Yet because I left my life is so much better. I don't think there is anyone in the world but you who can understand this sentiment.
Currently I am working for )))))) in one of their many community programs, xxxxx is an after-school program in t(xxxxx) . Love the kids, even like my co-workers. Good intentioned and decent as far as I can tell. ... I'm in a relationship that is quite satisfying with xxxxx , who I have known for a long time and who is a semi-regular night taxi driver, among other things. Go figure. Good guy and good to me, which in my old age I am finally able to appreciate.
After she ruined countless lives and careers including mine, I hear that K.... N.... was "demoted" to Manager in foster care investigations from Deputy Director in the Bronx. The usual ACS action no guts for anything but taking babies. Its all about the money. Always.
I hope this posting finds you personally well and(your family) is making you happy and proud.
Love, (your old co worker and friend )
Thursday, June 15, 2006
What's Up and Coming- Mainly the AIDS drug trial scandal.
I've made one change. No more use of the name Fat Old Jewish Guy who Lives In the Projects as a signature for my posts. I still like it as a name for my blog and it's in pretty good with google and the others so I'm not about to change that.
I'm reconsidering whether I should or shouldn't merge my taxi driver blog with this one. Also I'm thinking about a separate blog or web site dedicated specifically to organizing an opposition to the AIDS Foster Children Drug Experiment Scandal Coverup. I can't imagine I'm just going to watch ACS and Vera Institute get away with sweeping the whole matter under the rug. The scandal is about one of the most egregious crimes committed against minority people in this country and the SOB's are so far getting away with covering it up, blurring it over and getting away possibly with murder.
New York City's Administration for Children's Services and its predecessor agencies subjected foster children, almost entirely minority orphans as young as two months old, to Phase I and Phase II drug experiments. An intrepid journalist named Liam Scheff broke the story open and it became big news. Among other things the cover uppers have managed to conflate the heart of the scandal with what is called "AIDS denialism," or the denial by many including doctors and scientists of several of the givens most people believe about AIDS, including ideas that>
1- There is no disease called AIDS, that it's a new name for old illnesses.
2- There is a disease called AIDS but it is not caused by HIV viruses.
3- There are no HIV viruses.
4- HIV virus has never been isolated. (A belief held by the inventor of the test used to "find" HIV).
5- There is no AIDS epidemic in Africa, it's a new name for old problems mainly of poverty and underdevelopment.
6- AIDS drugs are more deadly than any disease they puportedly treat.
These are all controversial opinions. They also conflict to some extent. Personally I am not in a position nor qualified to make judgements about these things. It is known though that many AIDS treatments are very toxic, and it is also known that AIDS or HIV among infants cannot be determined by any measure acceptable to anyone, before a child is eighteen months old. This drug trial is not the only one conducted mainly on African and Arrican descended people to be under a cloud.
The problem with these AIDS drug tests is that
1- They were done on involuntary child and infant subjects who had no parental or guardian oversight to protect their individual interests. Children old enough to know they were suffering and who refused to take the experimental drugs were force fed though surgically inserted feeding tubes.
2- They were done on many children under eighteen months of age. They were highly experimental at the least and not demonstrably done in the health interests of the subject children.
3- It was reported that at least two children died directly through the toxic effects of the experimental medicines. These reports were never satisfactorily investigated.
4- New York City's government has no certainty as of this day as to how many children or what children were subjected to the experiments. It is difficult then to imagine how the outcomes of the experiments could be known, accepted and deemed beneficial to the subject children.
5- New York City has assigned The Vera Institute for Justice to "investigate" the matter. This assignment was announced over a year ago. Vera is a major contractor to Administration for Children's Services, that is it receives money from the agency whose work it is purportedly investigating, not just expenses of the investigation but other money through other contracts as well.
6- Even if Vera Instutute were not so compromised, it is not an agency that conducts investigations of crimes or investigations that call for the use of forensic sciemce and forensic medicine. New York City has a Department of Investigations. The drug trials are admittedly flawed and were found to compromise acceptable standards of ethics. With records of subject children "popping up" in basements and uncounted all these months, it is certainly the purview of a more qualified investigatory body with powers to recommend punishments where appropriate and powers to subpeaona witnesses and force testimony from past and present City employees.
7- The "investigation" is dragging on with no "conclusion" in sight, and in fact with noises that there is not going to be a conclusion at all.
Now, whether or not the AIDS denialists are right or wrong about HIV and AIDS, several of them had come forward to make the scandal known. For that they deserve thanks. Guinea Pig Kids
A Letter to Amy Goodman of Democracy Now About The Unethical AIDS ...
I ask The New York Times How AIDS drug torture investigation is coming along...
To John Mattingly, The Vera Institute and Mayor Michael Bloomberg ...
New Yorkers Are Going To Know About The Racist AIDS Drug Experiments...
AIDS Drug Experiment Scandal Update
AIDS foster child Drug Tests. A scandal - Pro and Con.
Excerpts from Liam Scheff's "The House That Aids Built"
How Many NYC Foster Kids were force fed these chemicals? Truth is they don't know....
These are the figures of the US Department of Health and Human Services...
Put into question the common assertion that it's the AIDS drugs that account for the drop in the number of children diagnosed with AIDS. These figures show fewer and fewer "at risk" women giving birth.
Sex Offenders and Foster Children Do Mix...
They do in New York City.
ACS/Vera Institute begin third year of AIDS foster children scandal coverup ...
I'm reconsidering whether I should or shouldn't merge my taxi driver blog with this one. Also I'm thinking about a separate blog or web site dedicated specifically to organizing an opposition to the AIDS Foster Children Drug Experiment Scandal Coverup. I can't imagine I'm just going to watch ACS and Vera Institute get away with sweeping the whole matter under the rug. The scandal is about one of the most egregious crimes committed against minority people in this country and the SOB's are so far getting away with covering it up, blurring it over and getting away possibly with murder.
New York City's Administration for Children's Services and its predecessor agencies subjected foster children, almost entirely minority orphans as young as two months old, to Phase I and Phase II drug experiments. An intrepid journalist named Liam Scheff broke the story open and it became big news. Among other things the cover uppers have managed to conflate the heart of the scandal with what is called "AIDS denialism," or the denial by many including doctors and scientists of several of the givens most people believe about AIDS, including ideas that>
1- There is no disease called AIDS, that it's a new name for old illnesses.
2- There is a disease called AIDS but it is not caused by HIV viruses.
3- There are no HIV viruses.
4- HIV virus has never been isolated. (A belief held by the inventor of the test used to "find" HIV).
5- There is no AIDS epidemic in Africa, it's a new name for old problems mainly of poverty and underdevelopment.
6- AIDS drugs are more deadly than any disease they puportedly treat.
These are all controversial opinions. They also conflict to some extent. Personally I am not in a position nor qualified to make judgements about these things. It is known though that many AIDS treatments are very toxic, and it is also known that AIDS or HIV among infants cannot be determined by any measure acceptable to anyone, before a child is eighteen months old. This drug trial is not the only one conducted mainly on African and Arrican descended people to be under a cloud.
The problem with these AIDS drug tests is that
1- They were done on involuntary child and infant subjects who had no parental or guardian oversight to protect their individual interests. Children old enough to know they were suffering and who refused to take the experimental drugs were force fed though surgically inserted feeding tubes.
2- They were done on many children under eighteen months of age. They were highly experimental at the least and not demonstrably done in the health interests of the subject children.
3- It was reported that at least two children died directly through the toxic effects of the experimental medicines. These reports were never satisfactorily investigated.
4- New York City's government has no certainty as of this day as to how many children or what children were subjected to the experiments. It is difficult then to imagine how the outcomes of the experiments could be known, accepted and deemed beneficial to the subject children.
5- New York City has assigned The Vera Institute for Justice to "investigate" the matter. This assignment was announced over a year ago. Vera is a major contractor to Administration for Children's Services, that is it receives money from the agency whose work it is purportedly investigating, not just expenses of the investigation but other money through other contracts as well.
6- Even if Vera Instutute were not so compromised, it is not an agency that conducts investigations of crimes or investigations that call for the use of forensic sciemce and forensic medicine. New York City has a Department of Investigations. The drug trials are admittedly flawed and were found to compromise acceptable standards of ethics. With records of subject children "popping up" in basements and uncounted all these months, it is certainly the purview of a more qualified investigatory body with powers to recommend punishments where appropriate and powers to subpeaona witnesses and force testimony from past and present City employees.
7- The "investigation" is dragging on with no "conclusion" in sight, and in fact with noises that there is not going to be a conclusion at all.
Now, whether or not the AIDS denialists are right or wrong about HIV and AIDS, several of them had come forward to make the scandal known. For that they deserve thanks. Guinea Pig Kids
A Letter to Amy Goodman of Democracy Now About The Unethical AIDS ...
I ask The New York Times How AIDS drug torture investigation is coming along...
To John Mattingly, The Vera Institute and Mayor Michael Bloomberg ...
New Yorkers Are Going To Know About The Racist AIDS Drug Experiments...
AIDS Drug Experiment Scandal Update
AIDS foster child Drug Tests. A scandal - Pro and Con.
Excerpts from Liam Scheff's "The House That Aids Built"
How Many NYC Foster Kids were force fed these chemicals? Truth is they don't know....
These are the figures of the US Department of Health and Human Services...
Put into question the common assertion that it's the AIDS drugs that account for the drop in the number of children diagnosed with AIDS. These figures show fewer and fewer "at risk" women giving birth.
Sex Offenders and Foster Children Do Mix...
They do in New York City.
ACS/Vera Institute begin third year of AIDS foster children scandal coverup ...
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Israeli shells kill five children on Gaza beach
Defence For Children Internatonal
Palestine Section - Jun3 10, 2006
DCI/PS @ dci-pal.org
Seven members of one family, including five children, were killed when
Israeli artillery shelled a beach packed with picnickers in northern
Gaza on 9 June. Dozens more civilians were injured in the incident
which occurred in broad daylight as families relaxed on the beach on
Friday.
The five children killed have been identified as:
Haytham Ghalia (5 months old)
Hanadi Ghalia (1 and a half years old)
Sabreen Ghalia (5 years old)
Ilham Ghalia (15 years old)
Aliya Ghalia (17 years old)
The children's father – Ali Ghalia – and his wife were also killed in
the attack.
Eyewitnesses described how a barrage of shells, fired from the
direction of an Israeli military gunship stationed just offshore,
rained down on the beach-goers, killing members of the Ghalia family
outright and wounding at least forty other people, including 12
children. Many of those taken to hospital sustained critical injuries
and medical sources say the death toll could rise further.
Israeli government sources however claimed that the shells which hit
Sudaniya beach east of Beit Lahiya did not come from the gunship, but
were more likely to have been fired by Israeli ground forces. The
Israeli military said it "regretted the harm done to innocent
civilians".
Since Israel pulled out from the Gaza Strip last summer, the Israeli
military has embarked on a systematic and sustained shelling campaign,
particularly of the northern Gaza Strip, ostensibly to prevent
Palestinian militants from firing homemade rockets towards southern
Israel. The Israeli artillery has fired thousands of shells each month
this year around the northern Gaza towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit
Lahiya, killing one Palestinian child and injuring at least a dozen
others. In addition, thousands of Gazan children have been left
traumatized by the sonic booms caused by Israeli military aircraft
deliberately breaking the sound barrier while flying at low altitude
over the Gaza Strip.
Defence for Children International/Palestine Section (DCI/PS) views
with extreme concern the growing list of child fatalities in Gaza
resulting from Israel's disproportionate use of force, which is not
justified by military necessity nor gives due concern to the safety of
protected persons, including children.
We call on the High Contracting Parties of the Fourth Geneva
Convention to hold Israel accountable to its international
humanitarian law obligations.
Palestine Section - Jun3 10, 2006
DCI/PS @ dci-pal.org
Seven members of one family, including five children, were killed when
Israeli artillery shelled a beach packed with picnickers in northern
Gaza on 9 June. Dozens more civilians were injured in the incident
which occurred in broad daylight as families relaxed on the beach on
Friday.
The five children killed have been identified as:
Haytham Ghalia (5 months old)
Hanadi Ghalia (1 and a half years old)
Sabreen Ghalia (5 years old)
Ilham Ghalia (15 years old)
Aliya Ghalia (17 years old)
The children's father – Ali Ghalia – and his wife were also killed in
the attack.
Eyewitnesses described how a barrage of shells, fired from the
direction of an Israeli military gunship stationed just offshore,
rained down on the beach-goers, killing members of the Ghalia family
outright and wounding at least forty other people, including 12
children. Many of those taken to hospital sustained critical injuries
and medical sources say the death toll could rise further.
Israeli government sources however claimed that the shells which hit
Sudaniya beach east of Beit Lahiya did not come from the gunship, but
were more likely to have been fired by Israeli ground forces. The
Israeli military said it "regretted the harm done to innocent
civilians".
Since Israel pulled out from the Gaza Strip last summer, the Israeli
military has embarked on a systematic and sustained shelling campaign,
particularly of the northern Gaza Strip, ostensibly to prevent
Palestinian militants from firing homemade rockets towards southern
Israel. The Israeli artillery has fired thousands of shells each month
this year around the northern Gaza towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit
Lahiya, killing one Palestinian child and injuring at least a dozen
others. In addition, thousands of Gazan children have been left
traumatized by the sonic booms caused by Israeli military aircraft
deliberately breaking the sound barrier while flying at low altitude
over the Gaza Strip.
Defence for Children International/Palestine Section (DCI/PS) views
with extreme concern the growing list of child fatalities in Gaza
resulting from Israel's disproportionate use of force, which is not
justified by military necessity nor gives due concern to the safety of
protected persons, including children.
We call on the High Contracting Parties of the Fourth Geneva
Convention to hold Israel accountable to its international
humanitarian law obligations.
Saturday, June 10, 2006
Oldies Like "My First Love Is In the Public Domain"
ABOUT MY RIGHT TO RETURN - Why I have no "Right to return" to The Jewish State.
WHERE IS THE REAL ANTI WAR MOVEMENT? Good Question. Considering that the majority is against the war in Iraq why can't we stop it?
DEBATE ABOUT WHAT THE HOLOCAUST IS OR WAS This actually didn't get people as mad as I had expected it would...
HUGO CHAVEZ, JEWISH KIDS AND LOCKING UP GOOD PARENTS IN NEW YORK I don't imagine the NYPD cops and ACS would really deal with Jewish families the way they do Black and Hispanic ones...
STARASIA'S NIGHTMARE A reality piece about a kid who meets her "protectors."
ENOUGH WITH THE BROKEN WINDOWS ALREADY Parents in NYC get locked up for stupid reasons that would not wash in the suburbs.
ON BEING A COP FOR THE SHELTER SYSTEM This is real, folks, and real stupid too.I say investigate schools of social work!
A COLD NIGHT IN HELL I spent a few nights like this working at Emergency Children's Services....
How Nicholas Scopetta and Giuliani reformed Administration for Children's Services First they told everyone that they were raising the standards for promoting supervisors, and then promoted a batch who don't meet the standards...
Navidad
Christmas Eve At Emergency Children's Services
Crown Heights, So - Called Anti - Semitism and the Ox Being Gored
Dennis King's Complaint (Originally posted October 10, 2005) Yeah Dennis has issues...
Merry Christmas, etc.
AHRP Testimony: Protections for Foster Children Enrolled in Clinical Trials Turns out that foster kids had no protections!
TWU Local 100 - Our Knights in Shining Armor
INTAKE REPORT FROM UPTOWN GENERAL HOSPITAL TO THE NEW YORK STATE OFFICE OF CHILDREN AND FAMILY SERVICES; CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES Stuff like this happens.
A chat with my zionist alter ego
Israel Shamir, David Duke and Me I don't like Duke but if he's against the Iraq war, good for him.
Ms., Ms, How Stupid Do We Look To You? Real life adventures of Emregency Children's Services workers.
The General Grant Projects Is No Hellhole. Not for nothing people are lined up from here to Canarsie waiting to get into Public Housing.
EUGENE WEIXEL TO JACK BOOT: WHAT'S UP WITH THIS SUPERMAN THING?
About Steven Spielberg
and "Munich" In Context It goes back to that old slogan, "no justice, no peace."
Dear Fellow ACS workers who
are members of local 371: I gave this out in front of ACS HQ. It got me into a jam.
Baby Snatching Fools- Giuliani time returns.
Me to Bloomberg and the media:
Where were you for all the other Nixzmary Browns?
Special Victims, Nixzmary, Instant Responses, Emergency Children's Services- The New York Post is Lying When They Say Giuliani Fixed CPS in New York
ACS worker to The Commissioner - My Boss Says Some Things to The New York Daily News - And I React. John Mattingly talks off the top of his head to the press. Not smart.
The Nixzmary Brown Case - Daily News gets its hands on the case record, more.... I hope the workers who got blamed for Nixzmary sue everyone in sight. "Leaked" my Aunt Fannie!
Nixzmary Brown, 7 Is Dead, Known to Child Welfare Authorities
Administration For Children's Services is ugly.
ACS- The Ugliness Inside --
AIDS HIV Foster child drug trial ...
ACS/Vera Institute begin third year
of AIDS foster children coverup ...
Betsy Gotbaum Is a Pretty High
Ranking Person In New York City
Progress report- my case with
ACS-when will I be driving a cab ...
How Many NYC Foster Kids were
force fed these chemicals? Truth is they don't know ...
Another visit from the ACS
Disciplinary Unit.
Children's Services Stats are
stale but they did not paint a pretty picture...
To John Mattingly, The Vera
Institute and Mayor Michael Bloomberg
what's up with the investigation? ...
ex Commissioner William Bell
and the bunchofmillion$ paperwork messup.
I got an email to my aol account that defended ex Commissioner Bell. It came from an entity calling itself/himself/herself/ Rainbow Org and mainly it was a copy and paste of the Annie P. Casey Seattle website showing Mr. Bell testifying and handing out awards. The writer asked me how I could imagine that Mr. Bell would have wanted anything else, and went on to really tear ACS down and say that Mr. Bell was glad and lucky to get out of that outfit. I don't know who this Coalition is or if Mr. Bell even appreciates their defending him. Facts are facts though. There definitely was a big paperwork messup at ACS while Bell was running it. I don't know if the mess preceded him and spanned Saint Scopetta's reign too. I don't know just how bad it was, there is no investigative journalist, City Council member, Public Advocate or member of the State Legislature in NYC who cares about whether or not the city lost hundereds of millions of dollars in aid that the Federal Governmnet had allocated for foster care, or for that matter whether any of the kids who were illegally forced into AIDS drug experiments at ICC and who knows where else were killed by the experiments, nor cares how many or who they were. Probably none of them is around or in condition to sue the city, so "case closed."
I had noted that Mr. Bell left ACS with no replacement selected, and that he went to one of the Annie P. Casey organizations. His eventual replacement came from another of the Casey family of funds and foundations, namely John Mattingly. Mattingly, interestingly enough had "worked closely with ACS, serving as one of five members of the New York City Special Child Welfare Advisory Panel." (Words of Michael Bloomberg, NYC Mayor July 6, 2004.)
WGBH Frontline News actually described this connection quite well>
John Mattingly, senior associate at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, designed and manages its "Family to Family: Reconstructing Foster Care" initiative and is the foundation's team leader for child welfare policy. He has also served as a member of the New York City Special Child Welfare Advisory Panel, whose work successfully closed out two landmark class-action lawsuits (Wilder and Marisol) in that city. He is currently engaged in mediating a similar lawsuit in Tennessee. Prior to joining the foundation, Mattingly served for more than six years as the executive director of Lucas County Children Services, the public child welfare agency serving the Toledo, Ohio, area. Mattingly has also served as executive director of the Institute for Child Advocacy in Cleveland and the West Side Community House in the same city. Prior to that, he directed the statewide effort in Pennsylvania, known as the Camp Hill Project, to remove juveniles from the state's adult correctional system. Mattingly received a Ph.D. in community systems planning from Pennsylvania State University and a Master's in Social Work from the University of Pittsburgh.
I find the expression "closed out" quite amusing.
Both Mattingly and Bell oversaw reduction on unnecessary removals of children from their families. It appears that the recent Nixzmary scare that was whipped up by Bloomberg and his media allies has wiped that accomplishment out.
Mattingly sold out his staff and let a few Black women workers take the heat for the style of casework work that he, Bell, Scopetta, Zeinab Chahine and Betsy Gotbaum among others had been very well aware of, and had suffered and protected for years, in fact making those workers who tried to be more thorough in their work suffer and work off the clock for free.
Mattingly gave up his workers even though a doctor at Woodhull Hospital (a municipal hospital) had given Nixzmary a clean bill of health and even though two Special Victims Squad Detectives had been at Nixzmary's school and not done anything regarding Nixzmary's mother and stepfather. These cops were later exonerated on the ridiculous notion that they were not at the school as Special Victims elite detectives but rather as caseworker bodyguards. Mattingly not only sat still for this nonsense, he went on to agree that ex cops were needed to teach ACS staff their jobs. From what I know this program has not got off the ground yet.
By telling the world that the doctor was right, the detectives were right but the caseworkers were culpable and that all caseworkers need to learn from ex cops Mattingly drove whatever respect CPS works still had in NYC into the dirt. The results of that can be low key, for example with police responding late or not at all to CPS calls for assistance to police openly contradicting and contramanding CPS decisions in front of and regarding CPS clients all the way to locking up a veteran Emergency Children's Services CPS worker while she was on her job.
Mattingly is a small town guy who came to the big city and folded at the first blast of big city politics. Because of that, children are being removed who don't need to be removed from their families and the "problem" if indeed it's seen as a problem of CPS worker turnover will go on, new hires or no new hires.
AIDS HIV Foster child drug trial ...
ACS/Vera Institute begin third year
of AIDS foster children coverup ...
Betsy Gotbaum Is a Pretty High
Ranking Person In New York City
Progress report- my case with
ACS-when will I be driving a cab ...
How Many NYC Foster Kids were
force fed these chemicals? Truth is they don't know ...
Another visit from the ACS
Disciplinary Unit.
Children's Services Stats are
stale but they did not paint a pretty picture...
To John Mattingly, The Vera
Institute and Mayor Michael Bloomberg
what's up with the investigation? ...
ex Commissioner William Bell
and the bunchofmillion$ paperwork messup.
I got an email to my aol account that defended ex Commissioner Bell. It came from an entity calling itself/himself/herself/ Rainbow Org and mainly it was a copy and paste of the Annie P. Casey Seattle website showing Mr. Bell testifying and handing out awards. The writer asked me how I could imagine that Mr. Bell would have wanted anything else, and went on to really tear ACS down and say that Mr. Bell was glad and lucky to get out of that outfit. I don't know who this Coalition is or if Mr. Bell even appreciates their defending him. Facts are facts though. There definitely was a big paperwork messup at ACS while Bell was running it. I don't know if the mess preceded him and spanned Saint Scopetta's reign too. I don't know just how bad it was, there is no investigative journalist, City Council member, Public Advocate or member of the State Legislature in NYC who cares about whether or not the city lost hundereds of millions of dollars in aid that the Federal Governmnet had allocated for foster care, or for that matter whether any of the kids who were illegally forced into AIDS drug experiments at ICC and who knows where else were killed by the experiments, nor cares how many or who they were. Probably none of them is around or in condition to sue the city, so "case closed."
I had noted that Mr. Bell left ACS with no replacement selected, and that he went to one of the Annie P. Casey organizations. His eventual replacement came from another of the Casey family of funds and foundations, namely John Mattingly. Mattingly, interestingly enough had "worked closely with ACS, serving as one of five members of the New York City Special Child Welfare Advisory Panel." (Words of Michael Bloomberg, NYC Mayor July 6, 2004.)
WGBH Frontline News actually described this connection quite well>
John Mattingly, senior associate at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, designed and manages its "Family to Family: Reconstructing Foster Care" initiative and is the foundation's team leader for child welfare policy. He has also served as a member of the New York City Special Child Welfare Advisory Panel, whose work successfully closed out two landmark class-action lawsuits (Wilder and Marisol) in that city. He is currently engaged in mediating a similar lawsuit in Tennessee. Prior to joining the foundation, Mattingly served for more than six years as the executive director of Lucas County Children Services, the public child welfare agency serving the Toledo, Ohio, area. Mattingly has also served as executive director of the Institute for Child Advocacy in Cleveland and the West Side Community House in the same city. Prior to that, he directed the statewide effort in Pennsylvania, known as the Camp Hill Project, to remove juveniles from the state's adult correctional system. Mattingly received a Ph.D. in community systems planning from Pennsylvania State University and a Master's in Social Work from the University of Pittsburgh.
I find the expression "closed out" quite amusing.
Both Mattingly and Bell oversaw reduction on unnecessary removals of children from their families. It appears that the recent Nixzmary scare that was whipped up by Bloomberg and his media allies has wiped that accomplishment out.
Mattingly sold out his staff and let a few Black women workers take the heat for the style of casework work that he, Bell, Scopetta, Zeinab Chahine and Betsy Gotbaum among others had been very well aware of, and had suffered and protected for years, in fact making those workers who tried to be more thorough in their work suffer and work off the clock for free.
Mattingly gave up his workers even though a doctor at Woodhull Hospital (a municipal hospital) had given Nixzmary a clean bill of health and even though two Special Victims Squad Detectives had been at Nixzmary's school and not done anything regarding Nixzmary's mother and stepfather. These cops were later exonerated on the ridiculous notion that they were not at the school as Special Victims elite detectives but rather as caseworker bodyguards. Mattingly not only sat still for this nonsense, he went on to agree that ex cops were needed to teach ACS staff their jobs. From what I know this program has not got off the ground yet.
By telling the world that the doctor was right, the detectives were right but the caseworkers were culpable and that all caseworkers need to learn from ex cops Mattingly drove whatever respect CPS works still had in NYC into the dirt. The results of that can be low key, for example with police responding late or not at all to CPS calls for assistance to police openly contradicting and contramanding CPS decisions in front of and regarding CPS clients all the way to locking up a veteran Emergency Children's Services CPS worker while she was on her job.
Mattingly is a small town guy who came to the big city and folded at the first blast of big city politics. Because of that, children are being removed who don't need to be removed from their families and the "problem" if indeed it's seen as a problem of CPS worker turnover will go on, new hires or no new hires.
First Army Officer to openly refuse to go to Iraq.
On Wednesday, June 7th U.S. Army First Lieutenant Ehren Watada became the first commissioned officer to refuse deployment to the unlawful Iraq war and occupation. He announced his duty to disobey the illegal order to deploy to Iraq in coordinated press conferences in Tacoma, Washington and Honolulu, Hawaii via a video taped messaged due to restrictions placed on him by the military. Later that evening, Lt. Watada appeared before the national press to answer questions directly.
PRESS ADVISORY (June 9, 2006) - On Thursday, June 8, 2006 U.S. Army First Lieutenant Ehren Watada's commanding officer moved to prosecute Lt. Watada for protected speech. An official investigation into his public speech in opposition to the illegal war in Iraq is underway. Lt. Watada was read his rights and declined to make a statement without a lawyer present.
In response, Lt. Watada confirmed, “I have a legal and ethical obligation to speak out against, and refuse to fight, this patently illegal war in Iraq. This has not changed.”
Eric Seitz, lead attorney for Lt. Watada's legal team, declared "It is obvious that the military is simply trying to keep him from speaking out in opposition to the unlawful war."On Wednesday, June 7th U.S. Army First Lieutenant Ehren Watada became the first U.S. commissioned officer to publicly refuse deployment to the unlawful Iraq war and occupation. Standing before the national media at a Tacoma, Washington press conference, Lt. Watada outlined his duty to refuse the illegal order to deploy in support of an illegal war. A showdown with the military is imminent as Lt. Watada's Stryker brigade is scheduled to deploy from Fort Lewis, Washington for Iraq within days.Steve Morse, director of the GI Rights Hotline, a non-governmental legal resource center for members of the military, explains "When soldiers join the military they swear to uphold our Constitution, they do not give up their basic right to freedom of speech." According Mr. Morse, "Members of the military clearly have the right to say what they think and feel about the military, and even participate in peaceful demonstrations, as long as they are off-duty, out of uniform, off-base, and within the United States. This is outlined in Department of Defense Directive 1325.6".It is expected that the military is moving to stage a Commanding Officer's Non-Judicial Punishment hearing (Article 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice) in order to impose even further restrictions on Lt. Watada. The military will likely focus their investigation on vague UCMJ articles that bar "any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President (or any senior members of government)" (Article 88), and "conduct unbecoming an officer and gentleman" (Article 133).
# # # END # # #
Note: We are aware that the Fort Lewis military public affairs office may not yet be aware of this new development.
PRESS ADVISORY (June 9, 2006) - On Thursday, June 8, 2006 U.S. Army First Lieutenant Ehren Watada's commanding officer moved to prosecute Lt. Watada for protected speech. An official investigation into his public speech in opposition to the illegal war in Iraq is underway. Lt. Watada was read his rights and declined to make a statement without a lawyer present.
In response, Lt. Watada confirmed, “I have a legal and ethical obligation to speak out against, and refuse to fight, this patently illegal war in Iraq. This has not changed.”
Eric Seitz, lead attorney for Lt. Watada's legal team, declared "It is obvious that the military is simply trying to keep him from speaking out in opposition to the unlawful war."On Wednesday, June 7th U.S. Army First Lieutenant Ehren Watada became the first U.S. commissioned officer to publicly refuse deployment to the unlawful Iraq war and occupation. Standing before the national media at a Tacoma, Washington press conference, Lt. Watada outlined his duty to refuse the illegal order to deploy in support of an illegal war. A showdown with the military is imminent as Lt. Watada's Stryker brigade is scheduled to deploy from Fort Lewis, Washington for Iraq within days.Steve Morse, director of the GI Rights Hotline, a non-governmental legal resource center for members of the military, explains "When soldiers join the military they swear to uphold our Constitution, they do not give up their basic right to freedom of speech." According Mr. Morse, "Members of the military clearly have the right to say what they think and feel about the military, and even participate in peaceful demonstrations, as long as they are off-duty, out of uniform, off-base, and within the United States. This is outlined in Department of Defense Directive 1325.6".It is expected that the military is moving to stage a Commanding Officer's Non-Judicial Punishment hearing (Article 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice) in order to impose even further restrictions on Lt. Watada. The military will likely focus their investigation on vague UCMJ articles that bar "any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President (or any senior members of government)" (Article 88), and "conduct unbecoming an officer and gentleman" (Article 133).
# # # END # # #
Note: We are aware that the Fort Lewis military public affairs office may not yet be aware of this new development.
Free Movies For You JUST LIKE A SATURDAY AT THE BUGGY BEACON.
Life was so much better when I was young
Back to The Projects (AND A FUNNY VIDEO)
I knew Adolf Hitler
A Cold Night In Hell
I've told all of you regular readers about the good old days back when I was a boy. One of the great things about being a kid in Queensbridge back then was the Buggy Beacon movie house. Saturdays were for the kids. I described earlier sneaking in to the place. Of course most days we paid. My mom could pack me off with a quarter or so and with that I had admission, popcorn and candy and was theoretically accounted for for most of the day.
Here is a typical playbill that ran for hours and was absolutely low culture and great fun, a double feature with lots of cartoons and no policy of emptying out the place from one run to the next. Click and view or right click on "save target as" and keep it for later.>
FLASH GORDON SPACE SOLDIERS CONQUER THE UNIVERSE EPISODE ONE
BETTY BOOP AND GRAMPY THROW A PARTY
BETTY BOOP AND THE LITTLE KING
BETTY BOOP AND THE BAMBOO ISLE
BETTY BOOP IN BE HUMAN
BETTY BOOP AND THE BIG BOSS
TARZAN'S REVENGE
GOLDILOCKS AND THE THREE BEARS
Back to The Projects (AND A FUNNY VIDEO)
I knew Adolf Hitler
A Cold Night In Hell
I've told all of you regular readers about the good old days back when I was a boy. One of the great things about being a kid in Queensbridge back then was the Buggy Beacon movie house. Saturdays were for the kids. I described earlier sneaking in to the place. Of course most days we paid. My mom could pack me off with a quarter or so and with that I had admission, popcorn and candy and was theoretically accounted for for most of the day.
Here is a typical playbill that ran for hours and was absolutely low culture and great fun, a double feature with lots of cartoons and no policy of emptying out the place from one run to the next. Click and view or right click on "save target as" and keep it for later.>
FLASH GORDON SPACE SOLDIERS CONQUER THE UNIVERSE EPISODE ONE
BETTY BOOP AND GRAMPY THROW A PARTY
BETTY BOOP AND THE LITTLE KING
BETTY BOOP AND THE BAMBOO ISLE
BETTY BOOP IN BE HUMAN
BETTY BOOP AND THE BIG BOSS
TARZAN'S REVENGE
GOLDILOCKS AND THE THREE BEARS
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
About "Illegal Aliens"
Lots of Americans are concerned and worried and angry too about the millions of people, most of them from Mexico and other Latin American countries, who are in the US without legal permission. They are very concerned about competition for jobs, not to mention housing and social services. Some activists are very quick to call these people racists, or xenophobic or jingos. To me that is a big mistake although these folks tend to be on what I consider the wrong side of the argument. Fisrt of all many of them are immigrants themselves, and from Mexico and Latim America to boot. Many of them are African Americans. Many of them are people who are good union members, and have marched against the Iraq war too. It's ridiculous and counterproductive and just plain not accurate to paint them all with the same brush as Klan/Nazi types and to paint them into the same corner as well.
There are facts and fugures on all sides of the argument as to whether or not these "illegal aliens" contribute or subtract from the tax base, from social service budgets and from the economy at large. Since I'm not qualified to say which side is right about all that (I'm not an economist or a statistician) I'm going to skip all that.
Just like money and goods and services cross the borders of the US, Canada and Mexico freely, people ought to be able to do the same. They do it in Europe and we should do it here. Every country that has free trade agreements with the US should also have free travel and work agreements similar to those within the European Union. Also there is a moral and ethical side to all this argument. One third of the Uninted States used to be one half of Mexico. On top of that the US has directly intervened and to a very great extent shaped the current ways of living in many countries of Latin America and the Philippines. Spanish is the defacto Second Language of the United States because the United States has been chin deep into the fabrics of Spanish speaking nations and peoples. It is not as if we have millions of newcomers, total strangers to our history, speaking Afrikaans or Yiddish and "not assimilating."
Here is a rundown of how the Europeans deal with the matters of internal labor market and rights of citizens of member nations within other member nations>
http://ec.europa.eu/justice_home/glossary/glossary_e_en.htm
elections
The process through which citizens elect representatives to democratic institutions. EU citizenship confers the right to participate and vote in elections for the European Parliament and local municipal elections, no matter which Member State the citizen resides in. (See EU citizenship: Political rights)
eligible
EU citizenship confers eligibility to stand and vote in elections for the European Parliament and local municipal elections, no matter in which Member State the citizens resides. . (See EU citizenship: Political rights)
employee
EU citizens are entitled to the same rights as an employee who is a national, no matter which Member State the citizen lives in. People from countries outside the EU are still subject to national immigration laws. (See EU citizenship, Immigration: Access to work)
employment
Under the Treaty of Amsterdam, employment is now enshrined as one of the European Communitys objectives. A new title on employment (Title VIII) in the EC Treaty states that employment is to be taken into consideration in other Community policies. (See Immigration: Access to work)
equality
EU citizenship confers the right to protection from discrimination on the grounds of, among other things, sex, race or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation. This is enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights. (See Fundamental rights: EU Charter, Equality)
equal opportunities
Two key elements of the general principle of equal opportunities are the ban on discrimination on grounds of nationality (EC Treaty: Article 12) and equal pay for men and women (EC Treaty: Article 141). It is intended to apply to all fields, particularly economic, social, cultural and family life.
equal treatment
An important right conferred by EU citizenship. The Treaty of Amsterdam added a new Article 13 to the Treaty, reinforcing the principle of non-discrimination. Under this new article, the Council has the power to take appropriate action to combat discrimination based on sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation. (See EU citizenship, Fundamental rights: Non-discrimination, Immigration: Integration of third-country nationals)
ethnic origin
EU citizenship confers the right to protection from discrimination on the grounds of, among other things, ethnic origin. This is enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights. . (See EU citizenship, Fundamental rights: Non-discrimination)
EU citizenship
The 1991 Maastricht Treaty established the concept of European citizenship. EU citizenship confers a range of rights, including freedom of movement and the right to vote and stand in local and European elections in every Member State.
There are facts and fugures on all sides of the argument as to whether or not these "illegal aliens" contribute or subtract from the tax base, from social service budgets and from the economy at large. Since I'm not qualified to say which side is right about all that (I'm not an economist or a statistician) I'm going to skip all that.
Just like money and goods and services cross the borders of the US, Canada and Mexico freely, people ought to be able to do the same. They do it in Europe and we should do it here. Every country that has free trade agreements with the US should also have free travel and work agreements similar to those within the European Union. Also there is a moral and ethical side to all this argument. One third of the Uninted States used to be one half of Mexico. On top of that the US has directly intervened and to a very great extent shaped the current ways of living in many countries of Latin America and the Philippines. Spanish is the defacto Second Language of the United States because the United States has been chin deep into the fabrics of Spanish speaking nations and peoples. It is not as if we have millions of newcomers, total strangers to our history, speaking Afrikaans or Yiddish and "not assimilating."
Here is a rundown of how the Europeans deal with the matters of internal labor market and rights of citizens of member nations within other member nations>
http://ec.europa.eu/justice_home/glossary/glossary_e_en.htm
elections
The process through which citizens elect representatives to democratic institutions. EU citizenship confers the right to participate and vote in elections for the European Parliament and local municipal elections, no matter which Member State the citizen resides in. (See EU citizenship: Political rights)
eligible
EU citizenship confers eligibility to stand and vote in elections for the European Parliament and local municipal elections, no matter in which Member State the citizens resides. . (See EU citizenship: Political rights)
employee
EU citizens are entitled to the same rights as an employee who is a national, no matter which Member State the citizen lives in. People from countries outside the EU are still subject to national immigration laws. (See EU citizenship, Immigration: Access to work)
employment
Under the Treaty of Amsterdam, employment is now enshrined as one of the European Communitys objectives. A new title on employment (Title VIII) in the EC Treaty states that employment is to be taken into consideration in other Community policies. (See Immigration: Access to work)
equality
EU citizenship confers the right to protection from discrimination on the grounds of, among other things, sex, race or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation. This is enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights. (See Fundamental rights: EU Charter, Equality)
equal opportunities
Two key elements of the general principle of equal opportunities are the ban on discrimination on grounds of nationality (EC Treaty: Article 12) and equal pay for men and women (EC Treaty: Article 141). It is intended to apply to all fields, particularly economic, social, cultural and family life.
equal treatment
An important right conferred by EU citizenship. The Treaty of Amsterdam added a new Article 13 to the Treaty, reinforcing the principle of non-discrimination. Under this new article, the Council has the power to take appropriate action to combat discrimination based on sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation. (See EU citizenship, Fundamental rights: Non-discrimination, Immigration: Integration of third-country nationals)
ethnic origin
EU citizenship confers the right to protection from discrimination on the grounds of, among other things, ethnic origin. This is enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights. . (See EU citizenship, Fundamental rights: Non-discrimination)
EU citizenship
The 1991 Maastricht Treaty established the concept of European citizenship. EU citizenship confers a range of rights, including freedom of movement and the right to vote and stand in local and European elections in every Member State.
Monday, June 05, 2006
The HIV/AIDS Agnostic
My interest in the Incarnation Children's Center/ACS AIDS Drug experiment scandal has led me to read quite a bit about the controversy over whether HIV causes AIDS, and just what AIDS is and is not.
I have a Bachelor of Science Degree in Political Science that dates back to before most of you were in knee pants,
and after that I took a three credit course in Education and two courses at the Hunter College School of Social
Work. I've worked for ten years as a child abuse/neglect investigator and also had some menial jobs, like
driving a taxi. I'm not a scientist or a doctor or a recognized intellectual. I am not going to tell anyone what
they ought to do if they are told that they are HIV Positive. I'm not qualified to do that. I'm surely not going
to tell anyone not to practice safe sex, or that it's okay to share hypodermic needles. I do believe that
recreational drugs are not good for people although I oppose imprisoning people simply for using them.
There is plenty of credible evidence that contests the accepted paradigm of HIV is AIDS is Death and it's
coming from credible sources. Without a doubt trials of HIV drugs like AZT and Nevarapine were flawed
and the labels of some drugs prescribed to AIDS patients tell you flat out that they have not been
scientifically tested. The trial of Nevarapine that took place in Uganda is fishy and so is the one that
took place in New York City at Incarnation Children's Center.
Karry Mullis, Nobel Prize winning chemist invented the Polymerase Chain Reaction which is used to determine presence of HIV in humans. He doesn't think it's been proven that HIV causes AIDS and he doesn't see a similarity between Simian Imunodeficiency Virus and HIV.
He says no one has ever proven that HIV causes any illness.
I have a Bachelor of Science Degree in Political Science that dates back to before most of you were in knee pants,
and after that I took a three credit course in Education and two courses at the Hunter College School of Social
Work. I've worked for ten years as a child abuse/neglect investigator and also had some menial jobs, like
driving a taxi. I'm not a scientist or a doctor or a recognized intellectual. I am not going to tell anyone what
they ought to do if they are told that they are HIV Positive. I'm not qualified to do that. I'm surely not going
to tell anyone not to practice safe sex, or that it's okay to share hypodermic needles. I do believe that
recreational drugs are not good for people although I oppose imprisoning people simply for using them.
There is plenty of credible evidence that contests the accepted paradigm of HIV is AIDS is Death and it's
coming from credible sources. Without a doubt trials of HIV drugs like AZT and Nevarapine were flawed
and the labels of some drugs prescribed to AIDS patients tell you flat out that they have not been
scientifically tested. The trial of Nevarapine that took place in Uganda is fishy and so is the one that
took place in New York City at Incarnation Children's Center.
Karry Mullis, Nobel Prize winning chemist invented the Polymerase Chain Reaction which is used to determine presence of HIV in humans. He doesn't think it's been proven that HIV causes AIDS and he doesn't see a similarity between Simian Imunodeficiency Virus and HIV.
He says no one has ever proven that HIV causes any illness.
Sunday, June 04, 2006
To John Mattingly, The Vera Institute and Mayor Michael Bloomberg> What's Up With The Investigation?
Truth will out!!!!!! Whether or not HIV causes AIDS ethical standards in testing must be
maintained. Look what happens when they are not>
As Celia Farber reports, my sister Joyce Ann Hafford
was diagnosed HIV positive in the early stages of
pregnancy and was offered the opportunity to prevent
transmission of the disease to her baby by enrolling
in the clinical trial PACTG 1022. Her therapy included
nevirapine and Combivir. Joyce experienced a severe
reaction almost immediately, but it was never
suggested that she stop taking the medicine. The
idiots did not take her off the drugs until it was too
late. My sister delivered a baby boy and died three
days later from the poison prescribed to her. She
never held her son.
To the scientists who underreported the deaths in the
Uganda study, the lives of people like my sister meant
nothing. She was just another black guinea pig, whose
life was reduced to nothing more than an "oops."
Meanwhile, I am left to raise her two children.
It is heartbreaking to have lost my sister at the
tender age of thirty-three. Just thinking of her
brings tears to my eyes almost three years later. She
was an incredible person, not a lab rat. Thank you,
Celia Farber and Harper's, for caring enough to tell
the truth. Thank you for the dignity and respect.
Rubble King
Memphis
//////
Dr. Robert Gallo replies to Celia Farber (not to Rubbie King)>
I was dismayed to read Celia Farber's article in
Harper's Magazine, a publication I have trusted for
its high standards. Her topic--namely, the
difficulties and dangers of doing a clinical trial
involving HIV/AIDS in a developing country--could have
led to an important analysis of why such trials are
needed. Unfortunately, Farber has chosen to include
her own misinformed view that HIV does not cause AIDS.
I will not dwell on the innumerable other problems of
fact and interpretation in Farber's article. I will
only say this: There is more evidence that HIV causes
AIDS than there is for the cause of any other single
human disease caused by an infectious agent, past or
present.
A few scientists claim that HIV/AIDS researchers have
not fulfilled the postulates laid down by the
nineteenth-century German bacteriologist Robert Koch,
who described what must be done to prove the cause of
a human disease. HIV has fulfilled not only Koch's
postulates but also additional criteria that have been
developed through the advent of new scientific
methods. That HIV is the single cause of AIDS has been
concluded by every single qualified group that has
studied the question, including the U.S. National
Academy of Sciences; the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control; the U.S. Institute of Medicine; the U.S.
National Institutes of Health; the American Medical
Association; the Canadian Centre for Infectious
Disease Prevention and Control; the Pasteur Institute;
and the World Health Organization:
In 1984, when my colleagues and I were first to
claim--and in my view demonstrate--the linkage of HIV
to AIDS, we showed that we could isolate HIV from
forty-eight individuals who had AIDS. Characteristics
of the virus told us that, like the disease, it was
new in the human population. We showed that the virus
primarily targeted immune-system cells (now known as
CD4+ T-cells), precisely the same cells that decline
in the presence of AIDS. Thirdly, we developed a blood
test based on finding specific antibodies against HIV
in infected persons. With an antibody test, we were
able to carry out much larger surveys, which showed
that within an otherwise healthy population HIV
antibodies were present at a rate approximating one
"healthy" American in every 1,000 to 2,000 people
surveyed, as well as in certain high-risk groups.
Clinical study of those "healthy" HIV-infected persons
showed they bore evidence of declining CD4 T-cells,
the harbinger of future AIDS risk. These results alone
were sufficient to convince that HIV causes AIDS.
At the time we published our first results, newer
results obtained in collaboration with the Centers for
Disease Control showed that we could pick out patients
with AIDS or pre-AIDS within blind coded samples from
patients whose only risk factor was having received a
unit of contaminated blood. From this we were also
able to identify their infected blood donor, who,
without fail, went on to develop AIDS. Later, we
showed that we could isolate HIV every time we found a
patient with antibodies. No test in medicine is
perfect, but done correctly and with a confirmatory
second test, the HIV blood test developed in our
laboratory comes close. Today, transfusion-associated
AIDS has all but disappeared where current generation
blood-screening approaches are employed.
More importantly and completely misrepresented by Ms.
Farber is the history of HIV therapy. She aligns
herself firmly with the strange logic of a few
dangerous people who say that these medications are
harming people or may be themselves causing AIDS. This
is sheer lunacy. The current antiretroviral treatments
have converted AIDS from a terminal illness to a
chronic treatable disease with which many people can
live to a reasonably normal age, and specific
therapies aimed at pregnant mothers have all but ended
pediatric AIDS in the developed world. Here again,
this evidence alone could prove that HIV is the single
cause of AIDS.
In the mid-1980s, my colleagues and I had the
experience of working near several laboratory
technicians who accidentally infected themselves with
HIV. In every case, these heroic individuals went on
to develop AIDS. This is more evidence than Robert
Koch ever had before he claimed a microbe caused a
disease.
I am sorry that, more than twenty-five years after the
discovery of HIV as the cause of AIDS, there are those
who still refuse to accept this overwhelming body of
evidence. Ms. Farber's article mirrors a disturbing
rise in anti-science opinion that has permeated
important public-health and public-policy debate. It
is surprising that Harper's Magazine has embraced this
point of view, especially given the tragic
consequences of the anti-HIV nihilist rhetoric in
lives lost. This is not about Harper's Magazine, or
about Celia Farber, Bob Gallo, or the rest of the AIDS
scientific and medical community. This is about
preserving human lives. In this, there is no room for
the propagation of shallow and sensationalist
thinking.
Robert C. Gallo, M.D.
Director, Institute of Human Virology
University of Maryland
Baltimore, Md.
///////////
Celia Farber responds:
Much of the critical response generated by my article
has focused on a very brief summary of Peter
Duesberg's critique of the medical consensus regarding
HIV and AIDS. Although one could certainly write a
long magazine article laying out the general outlines
of the various critiques of the HIV hypothesis (and
Peter Duesberg's is by no means the only such
critique), I did not write that article. I told the
stories of three individuals whose lives have been
forever altered, and in one case ended, by the war on
AIDS. I tried to show some of the ways in which AIDS
science has been corrupted by a combination of
quasi-religious zealotry and a powerful nexus of
interlocking financial interests. At the heart of the
piece was a whistle-blower story, the story of
Jonathan Fishbein. The wrongdoing that Fishbein
exposed was, among many other things, the cover-up by
the National Institutes of Health of HIVNET 012, a
disastrous clinical trial in Kampala, Uganda. The drug
under study was nevirapine, a highly toxic AIDS drug,
made by Boehringer Ingelheim, that also happened to
have killed a woman in Tennessee named Joyce Ann
Hafford.
For Jonathan Fishbein, the HIVNET affair was not about
AIDS or nevirapine per se; it was about scientific
standards and the systematic removal of the controls
that are supposed to protect research subjects and
validate scientific conclusions. But what is
remarkable about AIDS research is not so much the
corruption--science scandals are an all-too-common
feature of the daily headlines, as the Vioxx
catastrophe and the South Korean cloning fiasco
attest--but the missionary zeal with which the bad
science is defended.
As I demonstrated in the article, the idea that what
went wrong with HIVNET can be summarized in the phrase
"record-keeping problems," as Marlink and Wilfert
would have it, is obscene. Marlink and Wilfert are
embedded in a web of conflicts of interest that is
very neatly symbolized by the fact that the
organization for which they speak, the Elizabeth
Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, receives substantial
funding from Boehringer Ingelheim, the maker of
nevirapine. And, as I reported in the piece, the
"independent and irreproachable" panel that reviewed
HIVNET was entangled in the same web. Six of the nine
panelists investigating this NIH study were the
recipients of annual NIH grants ranging from $120,000
to almost $2 million. Some received funding from the
very division under investigation. Lord help us if
HIVNET is an example of what passes as acceptable
science for these distinguished AIDS researchers. We
can at least be grateful that the Food and Drug
Administration has refused to approve single-dose
nevirapine for mother-to-child transmission of HIV.
Marlink and Wilfert claim that I have confused
long-term nevirapine treatment with single-dose
treatment. That distinction was made very clearly in
the piece. Continuous treatment is what killed Joyce
Ann Hafford; her family was told that she died of
AIDS. Hafford's story not only demonstrates the
dangers of this drug but also illustrates the callous
disregard with which many patients are treated by the
medical establishment that speaks in their name.
Today, nevirapine, this "lifesaving" drug, is being
given in single doses to poor pregnant women all over
the world, yet it remains unapproved for that purpose
in the United States. If nevirapine is so safe and
effective, why has there been no FDA approval for
mother-to-child transmission? If HIVNET was such a
good study, why did the FDA tell Boehringer Ingelheim
to withdraw its application or face a public
rejection?
It is particularly fitting that an article about
scientific misconduct should engender a response from
Robert Gallo, whose research has been the subject of
several devastating investigations, one of which found
him guilty of misconduct. Gallo, like Marlink and
Wilfert, wishes to minimize the significance of the
HIVNET scandal, and he entirely ignores Joyce Ann
Hafford. This is typical. It seems that Hafford's
death, and those of at least five other women I have
subsequently discovered, can be safely filed away with
the other "lessons learned" in the long march against
HIV, in much the same way that thousands of people
whose lives were cut short by high-dose AZT are now
forgotten.
Gallo's letter is riddled with assertions of fact that
dissolve under careful scrutiny into highly debatable
interpretations of ambiguous data. But the letters
section of a magazine is hardly the place to debate
the fundamentals of AIDS science. And this goes right
to the heart of the issue: Ultimately, the claims and
counterclaims of Robert Gallo, Peter Duesberg, David
Ho, or the members of Australia's Perth Group (which
has advanced its own highly original critique of the
HIV paradigm) cannot be adjudicated in magazine
articles or on blogs. Mark Biernbaum gets it exactly
right. Only carefully designed studies that rigorously
test the various hypotheses about AIDS can advance our
understanding of this disease. But the suppression and
demonization of competing viewpoints, and the refusal
to acknowledge mistakes, especially when those
mistakes cost lives, will accomplish nothing.
Celia Farber
//////////////
And here is my constant refrain>
What's up with the investigation?
ACS/Vera Institute begin third year of AIDS foster children ...1
Year Old News That Seems To Have Faded Away - The Ugliness that is ACS
A Letter to Amy Goodman of Democracy Now About The Unethical AIDS ...
maintained. Look what happens when they are not>
As Celia Farber reports, my sister Joyce Ann Hafford
was diagnosed HIV positive in the early stages of
pregnancy and was offered the opportunity to prevent
transmission of the disease to her baby by enrolling
in the clinical trial PACTG 1022. Her therapy included
nevirapine and Combivir. Joyce experienced a severe
reaction almost immediately, but it was never
suggested that she stop taking the medicine. The
idiots did not take her off the drugs until it was too
late. My sister delivered a baby boy and died three
days later from the poison prescribed to her. She
never held her son.
To the scientists who underreported the deaths in the
Uganda study, the lives of people like my sister meant
nothing. She was just another black guinea pig, whose
life was reduced to nothing more than an "oops."
Meanwhile, I am left to raise her two children.
It is heartbreaking to have lost my sister at the
tender age of thirty-three. Just thinking of her
brings tears to my eyes almost three years later. She
was an incredible person, not a lab rat. Thank you,
Celia Farber and Harper's, for caring enough to tell
the truth. Thank you for the dignity and respect.
Rubble King
Memphis
//////
Dr. Robert Gallo replies to Celia Farber (not to Rubbie King)>
I was dismayed to read Celia Farber's article in
Harper's Magazine, a publication I have trusted for
its high standards. Her topic--namely, the
difficulties and dangers of doing a clinical trial
involving HIV/AIDS in a developing country--could have
led to an important analysis of why such trials are
needed. Unfortunately, Farber has chosen to include
her own misinformed view that HIV does not cause AIDS.
I will not dwell on the innumerable other problems of
fact and interpretation in Farber's article. I will
only say this: There is more evidence that HIV causes
AIDS than there is for the cause of any other single
human disease caused by an infectious agent, past or
present.
A few scientists claim that HIV/AIDS researchers have
not fulfilled the postulates laid down by the
nineteenth-century German bacteriologist Robert Koch,
who described what must be done to prove the cause of
a human disease. HIV has fulfilled not only Koch's
postulates but also additional criteria that have been
developed through the advent of new scientific
methods. That HIV is the single cause of AIDS has been
concluded by every single qualified group that has
studied the question, including the U.S. National
Academy of Sciences; the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control; the U.S. Institute of Medicine; the U.S.
National Institutes of Health; the American Medical
Association; the Canadian Centre for Infectious
Disease Prevention and Control; the Pasteur Institute;
and the World Health Organization:
In 1984, when my colleagues and I were first to
claim--and in my view demonstrate--the linkage of HIV
to AIDS, we showed that we could isolate HIV from
forty-eight individuals who had AIDS. Characteristics
of the virus told us that, like the disease, it was
new in the human population. We showed that the virus
primarily targeted immune-system cells (now known as
CD4+ T-cells), precisely the same cells that decline
in the presence of AIDS. Thirdly, we developed a blood
test based on finding specific antibodies against HIV
in infected persons. With an antibody test, we were
able to carry out much larger surveys, which showed
that within an otherwise healthy population HIV
antibodies were present at a rate approximating one
"healthy" American in every 1,000 to 2,000 people
surveyed, as well as in certain high-risk groups.
Clinical study of those "healthy" HIV-infected persons
showed they bore evidence of declining CD4 T-cells,
the harbinger of future AIDS risk. These results alone
were sufficient to convince that HIV causes AIDS.
At the time we published our first results, newer
results obtained in collaboration with the Centers for
Disease Control showed that we could pick out patients
with AIDS or pre-AIDS within blind coded samples from
patients whose only risk factor was having received a
unit of contaminated blood. From this we were also
able to identify their infected blood donor, who,
without fail, went on to develop AIDS. Later, we
showed that we could isolate HIV every time we found a
patient with antibodies. No test in medicine is
perfect, but done correctly and with a confirmatory
second test, the HIV blood test developed in our
laboratory comes close. Today, transfusion-associated
AIDS has all but disappeared where current generation
blood-screening approaches are employed.
More importantly and completely misrepresented by Ms.
Farber is the history of HIV therapy. She aligns
herself firmly with the strange logic of a few
dangerous people who say that these medications are
harming people or may be themselves causing AIDS. This
is sheer lunacy. The current antiretroviral treatments
have converted AIDS from a terminal illness to a
chronic treatable disease with which many people can
live to a reasonably normal age, and specific
therapies aimed at pregnant mothers have all but ended
pediatric AIDS in the developed world. Here again,
this evidence alone could prove that HIV is the single
cause of AIDS.
In the mid-1980s, my colleagues and I had the
experience of working near several laboratory
technicians who accidentally infected themselves with
HIV. In every case, these heroic individuals went on
to develop AIDS. This is more evidence than Robert
Koch ever had before he claimed a microbe caused a
disease.
I am sorry that, more than twenty-five years after the
discovery of HIV as the cause of AIDS, there are those
who still refuse to accept this overwhelming body of
evidence. Ms. Farber's article mirrors a disturbing
rise in anti-science opinion that has permeated
important public-health and public-policy debate. It
is surprising that Harper's Magazine has embraced this
point of view, especially given the tragic
consequences of the anti-HIV nihilist rhetoric in
lives lost. This is not about Harper's Magazine, or
about Celia Farber, Bob Gallo, or the rest of the AIDS
scientific and medical community. This is about
preserving human lives. In this, there is no room for
the propagation of shallow and sensationalist
thinking.
Robert C. Gallo, M.D.
Director, Institute of Human Virology
University of Maryland
Baltimore, Md.
///////////
Celia Farber responds:
Much of the critical response generated by my article
has focused on a very brief summary of Peter
Duesberg's critique of the medical consensus regarding
HIV and AIDS. Although one could certainly write a
long magazine article laying out the general outlines
of the various critiques of the HIV hypothesis (and
Peter Duesberg's is by no means the only such
critique), I did not write that article. I told the
stories of three individuals whose lives have been
forever altered, and in one case ended, by the war on
AIDS. I tried to show some of the ways in which AIDS
science has been corrupted by a combination of
quasi-religious zealotry and a powerful nexus of
interlocking financial interests. At the heart of the
piece was a whistle-blower story, the story of
Jonathan Fishbein. The wrongdoing that Fishbein
exposed was, among many other things, the cover-up by
the National Institutes of Health of HIVNET 012, a
disastrous clinical trial in Kampala, Uganda. The drug
under study was nevirapine, a highly toxic AIDS drug,
made by Boehringer Ingelheim, that also happened to
have killed a woman in Tennessee named Joyce Ann
Hafford.
For Jonathan Fishbein, the HIVNET affair was not about
AIDS or nevirapine per se; it was about scientific
standards and the systematic removal of the controls
that are supposed to protect research subjects and
validate scientific conclusions. But what is
remarkable about AIDS research is not so much the
corruption--science scandals are an all-too-common
feature of the daily headlines, as the Vioxx
catastrophe and the South Korean cloning fiasco
attest--but the missionary zeal with which the bad
science is defended.
As I demonstrated in the article, the idea that what
went wrong with HIVNET can be summarized in the phrase
"record-keeping problems," as Marlink and Wilfert
would have it, is obscene. Marlink and Wilfert are
embedded in a web of conflicts of interest that is
very neatly symbolized by the fact that the
organization for which they speak, the Elizabeth
Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, receives substantial
funding from Boehringer Ingelheim, the maker of
nevirapine. And, as I reported in the piece, the
"independent and irreproachable" panel that reviewed
HIVNET was entangled in the same web. Six of the nine
panelists investigating this NIH study were the
recipients of annual NIH grants ranging from $120,000
to almost $2 million. Some received funding from the
very division under investigation. Lord help us if
HIVNET is an example of what passes as acceptable
science for these distinguished AIDS researchers. We
can at least be grateful that the Food and Drug
Administration has refused to approve single-dose
nevirapine for mother-to-child transmission of HIV.
Marlink and Wilfert claim that I have confused
long-term nevirapine treatment with single-dose
treatment. That distinction was made very clearly in
the piece. Continuous treatment is what killed Joyce
Ann Hafford; her family was told that she died of
AIDS. Hafford's story not only demonstrates the
dangers of this drug but also illustrates the callous
disregard with which many patients are treated by the
medical establishment that speaks in their name.
Today, nevirapine, this "lifesaving" drug, is being
given in single doses to poor pregnant women all over
the world, yet it remains unapproved for that purpose
in the United States. If nevirapine is so safe and
effective, why has there been no FDA approval for
mother-to-child transmission? If HIVNET was such a
good study, why did the FDA tell Boehringer Ingelheim
to withdraw its application or face a public
rejection?
It is particularly fitting that an article about
scientific misconduct should engender a response from
Robert Gallo, whose research has been the subject of
several devastating investigations, one of which found
him guilty of misconduct. Gallo, like Marlink and
Wilfert, wishes to minimize the significance of the
HIVNET scandal, and he entirely ignores Joyce Ann
Hafford. This is typical. It seems that Hafford's
death, and those of at least five other women I have
subsequently discovered, can be safely filed away with
the other "lessons learned" in the long march against
HIV, in much the same way that thousands of people
whose lives were cut short by high-dose AZT are now
forgotten.
Gallo's letter is riddled with assertions of fact that
dissolve under careful scrutiny into highly debatable
interpretations of ambiguous data. But the letters
section of a magazine is hardly the place to debate
the fundamentals of AIDS science. And this goes right
to the heart of the issue: Ultimately, the claims and
counterclaims of Robert Gallo, Peter Duesberg, David
Ho, or the members of Australia's Perth Group (which
has advanced its own highly original critique of the
HIV paradigm) cannot be adjudicated in magazine
articles or on blogs. Mark Biernbaum gets it exactly
right. Only carefully designed studies that rigorously
test the various hypotheses about AIDS can advance our
understanding of this disease. But the suppression and
demonization of competing viewpoints, and the refusal
to acknowledge mistakes, especially when those
mistakes cost lives, will accomplish nothing.
Celia Farber
//////////////
And here is my constant refrain>
What's up with the investigation?
ACS/Vera Institute begin third year of AIDS foster children ...1
Year Old News That Seems To Have Faded Away - The Ugliness that is ACS
A Letter to Amy Goodman of Democracy Now About The Unethical AIDS ...
How Many NYC Foster Kids were force fed these chemicals? Truth is they don't know.
It's encouraging to see questioning going on about the drugs that have been given to people thought to have Acquired Imuno Deficiency Syndrome or who are thought to have the HIV virus (It's never actually been isolated in a human being). Harper's magazine and Celia Farber are under a lot of attack right now for opening the windows on the matter in March.
Lots of New York foster children were forced to ingest Nevaprine in phase I and phase II experiments and it was alleged that some of them died as a result. Numbers of these children never had any choice, never had parental consent or the consent of a guardian, some of them rebelled at the sickening effects and were force fed by intubation. ACS, which in its previous incarnations (Bureau of Child Welfare, Special Services for Children, Child Welfare Administration) had served up these kids for the experiments promised an investigation over a year ago. The task was given over to the Vera Institute, and they plod along, apparently hoping that everyone has forgotten about it or has been shut up...
* * *
AN EXCERPT THE FROM HARPER's STORY, By Celia Farber-
...For our purposes, the story of nevirapine begins in 1996, when the German pharmaceutical giant Boehringer Ingelheim applied for approval of the drug in Canada. The drug had been in development since the early 1990s, which was a boom time for new HIV drugs. Canada rejected nevirapine twice, once in 1996 and again in 1998, after the drug showed no effect on so-called surrogate markers (HIV viral load and CD4 counts) and was alarmingly toxic. In 1996, in the United States, the FDA nonetheless gave the drug conditional approval so that it could be used in combination with other HIV drugs.[5]
By this time, Johns Hopkins AIDS researcher Brooks Jackson had already generated major funding from the NIH to stage a large trial for nevirapine in Kampala, Uganda, where the benevolent dictator Yoweri Museveni had opened his country to the lucrative promise of AIDS drug research, as well as other kinds of pharmaceutically funded medical research. HIVNET 012, according to its original 1997 protocol, was intended to be a four-arm, Phase III, randomized, placebo- controlled trial.[6] Its sole sponsor was listed as the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), though one of the investigators was a Boehringer employee. The “sample size” was to be 1,500 HIV-1 infected Ugandan women more than thirty-two weeks pregnant. The four arms they would be divided into were 1) A single dose of 200mg nevirapine at onset of labor and a single 2mg dose to the infant forty-eight to seventy-two hours post-delivery, and 2) a corresponding placebo group; 3) 600mg of AZT at onset of labor and 300mg until delivery, with a 4mg AZT dose for the infant lasting seven days after birth, and 4) a corresponding placebo group. There were to be 500 women in each “active agent” arm and 250 in each placebo arm. The study was to last eighteen months, and its “primary endpoints” were to see how these two regimens would affect rates of HIV transmission from mother to child, and to examine the “proportion of infants who are alive and free of HIV at 18 months of age.” Another primary objective was to test the “safety/tolerance” of nevirapine and AZT. HIVNET’s architects estimated that more than 4,200 HIV-positive pregnant women would deliver at Mulago hospital each year, allowing them to enroll eighty to eighty-five women per month. Consent forms were to be signed by either the mother or a guardian, by signature or “mark.” One of the exclusion criteria was “participation during current pregnancy in any other therapeutic or vaccine perinatal trial.”
* * *
Although HIVNET was designed to be a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind, Phase III trial of 1,500 mother/infant pairs, it wound up being a no-placebo, neither double- nor even single-blind Phase II trial of 626 mother/infant pairs. Virtually all of the parameters outlined for HIVNET 012 were eventually shifted, amended, or done away with altogether, beginning with perhaps the most important—the placebo controls. By a “Letter of Amendment” dated March 9, 1998, the placebo-control arms of HIVNET were eliminated. The study as reconstituted thus amounted to a simple comparison of AZT and nevirapine.
On September 4, 1999, The Lancet published HIVNET’s preliminary results, reporting that “Nevirapine lowered the risk of HIV-I transmission during the first 14‒16 weeks of life by nearly 50 percent.” The report concluded that “the two regimens were well-tolerated and adverse events were similar in the two groups.” The article also reported that thirty-eight babies had died, sixteen in the nevirapine group and twenty-two in the AZT group. The rate of HIV transmission in the AZT arm was 25 percent, while in the nevirapine group it was only 13 percent. As Hopkins Medical News later reported, the study was received rapturously. “The data proved stunning. It showed that nevirapine was 47 percent more effective than AZT and had reduced the number of infected infants from 25 to 13 percent. Best of all, nevirapine was inexpensive—just $4 for both doses. If implemented widely, the drug could prevent HIV transmission in more than 300,000 newborns a year.”
With the results of the study now published in The Lancet, Boehringer, which previously had shown little interest in HIVNET, now pressed for FDA approval to have nevirapine licensed for use in preventing the transmission of HIV in pregnancy.
* * *
There were complications, however. On December 6, 2000, a research letter in The Journal of the American Medical Association warned against using nevirapine for post-exposure treatment after two cases of life-threatening liver toxicity were reported among health-care workers who’d taken the drug for only a few days. (One of them required a liver transplant.) The January 5, 2001, issue of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) contained an FDA review of MedWatch—an informal reporting system of drug reactions—that highlighted an additional twenty cases of “serious adverse events” resulting from fairly brief nevirapine post-exposure prophylaxis. “Serious adverse events” ...
...There were complications, however. On December 6, 2000, a research letter in The Journal of the American Medical Association warned against using nevirapine for post-exposure treatment after two cases of life-threatening liver toxicity were reported among health-care workers who’d taken the drug for only a few days. (One of them required a liver transplant.) The January 5, 2001, issue of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) contained an FDA review of MedWatch—an informal reporting system of drug reactions—that highlighted an additional twenty cases of “serious adverse events” resulting from fairly brief nevirapine post-exposure prophylaxis. “Serious adverse events”
were defined as anything “life-threatening, permanently disabling,” or requiring “prolonged hospitalization, or [. . . ]intervention to prevent permanent impairment or damage.” The MMWR stressed that there probably were more unreported cases, since the reporting by doctors to MedWatch is “voluntary” and “passive.”
But NIAID was on another track altogether, either oblivious of or undeterred by the toxicity controversy. In 2001, Boehringer Ingelheim submitted its supplemental licensing request to the FDA. The request was submitted based entirely on the results of HIVNET, as published in The Lancet. Around the same time, the South African Medicines Control Counsel (MCC) conditionally approved nevirapine for experimental use in mother-to-child transmission treatment. To its credit, however, the FDA decided to go to Kampala, inspect the site, and review the data itself.
Since Boehringer had not originally intended to use this study for licensing purposes, it decided to perform its own inspection before the FDA arrived. Boehringer’s team arrived in Kampala and did a sample audit. They were the first to discover what a shambles the study was. According to Boehringer’s preinspection report, “serious non-compliance with FDA Regulations was found” in the specific requirements of reporting serious adverse events. Problems also were found in the management of the trial drug and in informed-consent procedures. DAIDS then hired a private contractor, a company named Westat, to go to Uganda and do another preinspection. This time the findings were even more alarming. One of the main problems was a “loss of critical records.” One of two master logs that included follow-up data on adverse events, including deaths, was said to be missing as the result of a flood. The records failed to make clear which mothers had gotten which drug, when they’d gotten it, or even whether they were still alive at various follow-up points after the study. Drugs were given to the wrong babies, documents were altered, and there was infrequent follow-up, even though one third of the mothers were marked “abnormal” in their charts at discharge. The infants that did receive follow-up care were in many cases small and underweight for their age. “It was thought to be likely that some, perhaps many, of these infants had serious health problems.” The Westat auditors looked at a sample of forty-three such infants, and all forty-three had “adverse events” at twelve months. Of these, only eleven were said to be HIV positive. The HIVNET team had essentially downgraded all serious adverse events several notches on a scale it had created to adapt to “local” standards. That downgrade meant, among other things, that even seemingly “life-threatening”
events were logged as not serious. Deaths, unless they occurred within a certain time frame at the beginning of the study, were not reported or were listed as “serious adverse events” rather than deaths. In one case, “a still birth was reported as a Grade 3 adverse event for the mother...”
So, that's one experiement we know about. Come on ACS, Come on Vera, how goes the investigation?
Lots of New York foster children were forced to ingest Nevaprine in phase I and phase II experiments and it was alleged that some of them died as a result. Numbers of these children never had any choice, never had parental consent or the consent of a guardian, some of them rebelled at the sickening effects and were force fed by intubation. ACS, which in its previous incarnations (Bureau of Child Welfare, Special Services for Children, Child Welfare Administration) had served up these kids for the experiments promised an investigation over a year ago. The task was given over to the Vera Institute, and they plod along, apparently hoping that everyone has forgotten about it or has been shut up...
* * *
AN EXCERPT THE FROM HARPER's STORY, By Celia Farber-
...For our purposes, the story of nevirapine begins in 1996, when the German pharmaceutical giant Boehringer Ingelheim applied for approval of the drug in Canada. The drug had been in development since the early 1990s, which was a boom time for new HIV drugs. Canada rejected nevirapine twice, once in 1996 and again in 1998, after the drug showed no effect on so-called surrogate markers (HIV viral load and CD4 counts) and was alarmingly toxic. In 1996, in the United States, the FDA nonetheless gave the drug conditional approval so that it could be used in combination with other HIV drugs.[5]
By this time, Johns Hopkins AIDS researcher Brooks Jackson had already generated major funding from the NIH to stage a large trial for nevirapine in Kampala, Uganda, where the benevolent dictator Yoweri Museveni had opened his country to the lucrative promise of AIDS drug research, as well as other kinds of pharmaceutically funded medical research. HIVNET 012, according to its original 1997 protocol, was intended to be a four-arm, Phase III, randomized, placebo- controlled trial.[6] Its sole sponsor was listed as the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), though one of the investigators was a Boehringer employee. The “sample size” was to be 1,500 HIV-1 infected Ugandan women more than thirty-two weeks pregnant. The four arms they would be divided into were 1) A single dose of 200mg nevirapine at onset of labor and a single 2mg dose to the infant forty-eight to seventy-two hours post-delivery, and 2) a corresponding placebo group; 3) 600mg of AZT at onset of labor and 300mg until delivery, with a 4mg AZT dose for the infant lasting seven days after birth, and 4) a corresponding placebo group. There were to be 500 women in each “active agent” arm and 250 in each placebo arm. The study was to last eighteen months, and its “primary endpoints” were to see how these two regimens would affect rates of HIV transmission from mother to child, and to examine the “proportion of infants who are alive and free of HIV at 18 months of age.” Another primary objective was to test the “safety/tolerance” of nevirapine and AZT. HIVNET’s architects estimated that more than 4,200 HIV-positive pregnant women would deliver at Mulago hospital each year, allowing them to enroll eighty to eighty-five women per month. Consent forms were to be signed by either the mother or a guardian, by signature or “mark.” One of the exclusion criteria was “participation during current pregnancy in any other therapeutic or vaccine perinatal trial.”
* * *
Although HIVNET was designed to be a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind, Phase III trial of 1,500 mother/infant pairs, it wound up being a no-placebo, neither double- nor even single-blind Phase II trial of 626 mother/infant pairs. Virtually all of the parameters outlined for HIVNET 012 were eventually shifted, amended, or done away with altogether, beginning with perhaps the most important—the placebo controls. By a “Letter of Amendment” dated March 9, 1998, the placebo-control arms of HIVNET were eliminated. The study as reconstituted thus amounted to a simple comparison of AZT and nevirapine.
On September 4, 1999, The Lancet published HIVNET’s preliminary results, reporting that “Nevirapine lowered the risk of HIV-I transmission during the first 14‒16 weeks of life by nearly 50 percent.” The report concluded that “the two regimens were well-tolerated and adverse events were similar in the two groups.” The article also reported that thirty-eight babies had died, sixteen in the nevirapine group and twenty-two in the AZT group. The rate of HIV transmission in the AZT arm was 25 percent, while in the nevirapine group it was only 13 percent. As Hopkins Medical News later reported, the study was received rapturously. “The data proved stunning. It showed that nevirapine was 47 percent more effective than AZT and had reduced the number of infected infants from 25 to 13 percent. Best of all, nevirapine was inexpensive—just $4 for both doses. If implemented widely, the drug could prevent HIV transmission in more than 300,000 newborns a year.”
With the results of the study now published in The Lancet, Boehringer, which previously had shown little interest in HIVNET, now pressed for FDA approval to have nevirapine licensed for use in preventing the transmission of HIV in pregnancy.
* * *
There were complications, however. On December 6, 2000, a research letter in The Journal of the American Medical Association warned against using nevirapine for post-exposure treatment after two cases of life-threatening liver toxicity were reported among health-care workers who’d taken the drug for only a few days. (One of them required a liver transplant.) The January 5, 2001, issue of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) contained an FDA review of MedWatch—an informal reporting system of drug reactions—that highlighted an additional twenty cases of “serious adverse events” resulting from fairly brief nevirapine post-exposure prophylaxis. “Serious adverse events” ...
...There were complications, however. On December 6, 2000, a research letter in The Journal of the American Medical Association warned against using nevirapine for post-exposure treatment after two cases of life-threatening liver toxicity were reported among health-care workers who’d taken the drug for only a few days. (One of them required a liver transplant.) The January 5, 2001, issue of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) contained an FDA review of MedWatch—an informal reporting system of drug reactions—that highlighted an additional twenty cases of “serious adverse events” resulting from fairly brief nevirapine post-exposure prophylaxis. “Serious adverse events”
were defined as anything “life-threatening, permanently disabling,” or requiring “prolonged hospitalization, or [. . . ]intervention to prevent permanent impairment or damage.” The MMWR stressed that there probably were more unreported cases, since the reporting by doctors to MedWatch is “voluntary” and “passive.”
But NIAID was on another track altogether, either oblivious of or undeterred by the toxicity controversy. In 2001, Boehringer Ingelheim submitted its supplemental licensing request to the FDA. The request was submitted based entirely on the results of HIVNET, as published in The Lancet. Around the same time, the South African Medicines Control Counsel (MCC) conditionally approved nevirapine for experimental use in mother-to-child transmission treatment. To its credit, however, the FDA decided to go to Kampala, inspect the site, and review the data itself.
Since Boehringer had not originally intended to use this study for licensing purposes, it decided to perform its own inspection before the FDA arrived. Boehringer’s team arrived in Kampala and did a sample audit. They were the first to discover what a shambles the study was. According to Boehringer’s preinspection report, “serious non-compliance with FDA Regulations was found” in the specific requirements of reporting serious adverse events. Problems also were found in the management of the trial drug and in informed-consent procedures. DAIDS then hired a private contractor, a company named Westat, to go to Uganda and do another preinspection. This time the findings were even more alarming. One of the main problems was a “loss of critical records.” One of two master logs that included follow-up data on adverse events, including deaths, was said to be missing as the result of a flood. The records failed to make clear which mothers had gotten which drug, when they’d gotten it, or even whether they were still alive at various follow-up points after the study. Drugs were given to the wrong babies, documents were altered, and there was infrequent follow-up, even though one third of the mothers were marked “abnormal” in their charts at discharge. The infants that did receive follow-up care were in many cases small and underweight for their age. “It was thought to be likely that some, perhaps many, of these infants had serious health problems.” The Westat auditors looked at a sample of forty-three such infants, and all forty-three had “adverse events” at twelve months. Of these, only eleven were said to be HIV positive. The HIVNET team had essentially downgraded all serious adverse events several notches on a scale it had created to adapt to “local” standards. That downgrade meant, among other things, that even seemingly “life-threatening”
events were logged as not serious. Deaths, unless they occurred within a certain time frame at the beginning of the study, were not reported or were listed as “serious adverse events” rather than deaths. In one case, “a still birth was reported as a Grade 3 adverse event for the mother...”
So, that's one experiement we know about. Come on ACS, Come on Vera, how goes the investigation?
New York Times Publishes attack on Dr. David Rasnick.
I posted this article to the blog "Barnes - Ville" this morning. Why some scientists are more comfortable attacking individuals than in defending their "findings" is a mystery to me>
I became interested in the issue of AIDS drug experimenting on foster children as a child protective worker at ACS and have been following the supposed "investigation" that was announced over a year ago and whose purpose seems to be to run out the clock on the issue. I've been getting more and more interested in what AIDS actually is, or is not. While I am not a scientist and don't claim to be any sort of expert what I do note is the clarity and rational presentation by people like Dr. David Rasnick, as opposed to the kind of thing I read this early morning in the in line New York Times Op Ed page. John Moore and Nicolli Natrass were given the opportunity to attack Dr. Rasnick personally while presenting no evidence that HIV causes AIDS or even that this virus can be found in human beings.
Coupled with ACS's (New York City's child welfare agency)inability to even provide an accurate number of the children who were in its care who were given over for experimentation it looks bad for the HIV hypothesizers.If they don't know who they experimented on how do they know what the outcome of their experiments were?
While they tell us the incidence of AIDS among children in New York has plumetted and try to take credit for this they do not tell us that the number of false positives has plumetted and that women who have what is called "risk factors" are increasingly less and less likely to have children.
http://fatoldjewishguywholivesintheprojects.blogspot.com/2006/05/these-are-figures-of-us-department-of.html
The Vera Institute, an ACS contract agency is dragging out the investigation that ACS Commissioner Mattingly promised over a year ago.
One would have hoped that the raw data about the tests and the subject children, and the outcomes for each, would be readily available and that Administration for Children's Services, the Government of the City of New York and Vera all would be anxious to rapidly and loudly let everyone know what good the AIDS drug experiments did for the foster children subjected to them.This is not the case. Now, why?
I became interested in the issue of AIDS drug experimenting on foster children as a child protective worker at ACS and have been following the supposed "investigation" that was announced over a year ago and whose purpose seems to be to run out the clock on the issue. I've been getting more and more interested in what AIDS actually is, or is not. While I am not a scientist and don't claim to be any sort of expert what I do note is the clarity and rational presentation by people like Dr. David Rasnick, as opposed to the kind of thing I read this early morning in the in line New York Times Op Ed page. John Moore and Nicolli Natrass were given the opportunity to attack Dr. Rasnick personally while presenting no evidence that HIV causes AIDS or even that this virus can be found in human beings.
Coupled with ACS's (New York City's child welfare agency)inability to even provide an accurate number of the children who were in its care who were given over for experimentation it looks bad for the HIV hypothesizers.If they don't know who they experimented on how do they know what the outcome of their experiments were?
While they tell us the incidence of AIDS among children in New York has plumetted and try to take credit for this they do not tell us that the number of false positives has plumetted and that women who have what is called "risk factors" are increasingly less and less likely to have children.
http://fatoldjewishguywholivesintheprojects.blogspot.com/2006/05/these-are-figures-of-us-department-of.html
The Vera Institute, an ACS contract agency is dragging out the investigation that ACS Commissioner Mattingly promised over a year ago.
One would have hoped that the raw data about the tests and the subject children, and the outcomes for each, would be readily available and that Administration for Children's Services, the Government of the City of New York and Vera all would be anxious to rapidly and loudly let everyone know what good the AIDS drug experiments did for the foster children subjected to them.This is not the case. Now, why?
Friday, June 02, 2006
FOX NEWS' Bill O'Reilly Is a World Class Putz..
From the June 1 edition of MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann:
OLBERMANN: Abraham Lincoln did not shoot John Wilkes Booth. Titanic did not sink a North Atlantic iceberg. And Fox News is neither fair nor balanced. These are simple historical facts intelligible to all adults, most children, and some of your more discerning domesticated animals. But not, as the third story on the Countdown proves yet again, not to Bill O.
STEWIE GRIFFIN (character on TV show Family Guy) [video clip]: Countdown presents "Factor Fiction," wherein we catch that bastard Bill O'Reilly lying again. Oh, wait, Bill, hold still. Allow me to soil myself on you. Victory is mine!
OLBERMANN: The guilty pleasure offered by the existence of Bill O'Reilly is simple and understandable. Ninety-nine times out of 100, when we belly up to the Bill O bar of bluster, nearly every time we partake of the movable falafel feast, he serves us nothing but comedy: farce, slapstick, unconscious self-mutilation, the Sideshow Bob of commentators forever stepping on the same rake, forever muttering the same grunted, inarticulate surrender, forever resuming the circle that will take him back to the same rake. The Sisyphus of morons, if you will. But this is the 100th time out of 100. It is not funny at all. Bill O'Reilly has, for the second time in just under eight months, slandered at least 84 dead American servicemen. He has turned them again from victims of the kind of atrocity our country has always fought against into perpetrators of that kind of atrocity. He has made these Americans into war criminals. They are dead and have been dead for 61 years. They cannot defend themselves against O'Reilly. We will have to do it for them.
Last October, Bill O'Reilly railed against a ruling that more photos from the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq might be released. His guest on his program was Wesley Clark. Clark is a retired four-star general, was for four years supreme allied commander of NATO in Europe. First in his class at West Point, wounded in Vietnam, earned the Bronze Star, the Silver Star, and has streets named for him in Alabama and in Kosovo. Therefore, naturally, O'Reilly knows much more about the military than General Clark does. Clark defended the release of the additional Abu Ghraib prison -- photos, saying we needed to know what happened and to correct it. O'Reilly lectured him and concluded that there had always been atrocities even by Americans in war.
O'REILLY [video clip]: General, you need to look at the Malmédy Massacre in World War II in the 82nd Airborne.
OLBERMANN: It was a remarkable mistake. The Belgian town of Malmédy did lend its name to one of the most appalling battlefield war crimes of the 20th century. But O'Reilly's implication that the Americans committed it was entirely backwards. Americans, most of them members of Battery B of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion, surrendered to German Panzer troops and were then shot by their captors from the SS. Yet, O'Reilly had implied that the Americans had massacred these Germans in this one stark moment of the Battle of the Bulge. And he used this Alice-through-the-looking-glass view of history to somehow rationalize Abu Ghraib while trying to dress down a four-star American general.
Still, it could have been a mistake; we make them. Even historians do. O'Reilly had not explicitly called the Americans the war criminals of Malmédy. Our troops, too, were accused of crimes against prisoners in the Second World War. It was assumed last year he had simply made a foolish error, and though he got beaten up appropriately in some places, it was all largely dismissed as merely that -- a mistake.
Then came this Tuesday night. Again, O'Reilly's guest was General Wes Clark. This time, the topic was the apparent murder of Iraqi civilians at Haditha. That O'Reilly was dismissive of that event should be no surprise, that he should have described as the real crime of Iraq the events of Abu Ghraib should be no surprise to those who know of his willingness to jettison his most important beliefs of yesterday for the expediencies and the ratings of today. But that he should have brought up Malmédy again -- that was a surprise.
O'REILLY [video clip]: In Malmédy, as you know, U.S. forces captured SS forces who had their hands in the air and they were unarmed, and they shot them down. You know that. That's on the record. Been documented.
OLBERMANN: Thus was the full depth of Bill O'Reilly's insult to the American dead of World War II made clear. The mistake of last October was not some innocent slip nor misremembered history. This was the way O'Reilly understood it, and thus, this way it had to be. No errors corrected, no apologies offered, no stopping the relentless tide of bull, even briefly enough to check one fact.
The facts of Malmédy are terrifying, as described by Michael Reynolds in his painstakingly detailed article from a 2003 issue of World War II magazine. One week before Christmas 1944, 139 U.S. soldiers, most of them from the 285th Field Artillery, encountered the German Kampfgruppe Peiper, the leading formation of the German 1st SS Panzer Division -- one of only two German units in the entire war which actually carried Adolf Hitler's name. The Americans were overrun. Eleven of the 139 soldiers were killed in the very short battle of Malmédy; two more were killed as they tried to flee. Seven escaped, six became prisoners of war. The other 113 Americans, nearly all of whom had surrendered outright, were ordered to assemble in an open field next to a restaurant, the Cafe Bodarwé. What happened next has been attributed to many things -- a cold-blooded decision by that Panzer unit commander, Colonel Joachim Peiper, that he could not handle the prisoners, or an unjustifiable overreaction to some kind of escape attempt, or simply horrible mass murder.
Within 15 minutes, the SS colonel or someone directly under him had ordered his men to shoot the unarmed American POWs. The bodies at Malmédy were not found until a month later. There were 84 of them, all American soldiers. More than half showed shotgun wounds to their heads. Six had received fatal blows to the head. Nine were found with their arms still raised above their heads. The fact that O'Reilly got these horrible facts completely backwards twice offended even his usually compliant viewers. From his program Wednesday night:
O'REILLY [video clip]: Don Caldwell, Fort Worth, Texas: "Bill, you mentioned that Malmédy as the site of an American massacre during World War II. It was the other way around, the SS shot down U.S. prisoners." In the heat of the debate with General Clark, my statement wasn't clear enough, Mr. Caldwell. After Malmédy, some German captives were executed by American troops.
OLBERMANN: Wrong answer. When you are that wrong, when you are defending Nazi war criminals and pinning their crimes on Americans and you get caught doing so twice, you're supposed to say, "I'm sorry, I was wrong," and then you're supposed to shut up for a long time. Instead, Fox washed its transcript of O'Reilly's remarks Tuesday. Its website claims O'Reilly said "in Normandy" when, as you heard, in fact, he said "in Malmédy."
The rewriting of past reporting worthy of George Orwell has now carried over into such online transcription services as Burrelle's and Factiva. Whatever did or did not happen later in supposed or actual retribution, the victims at Malmédy were Americans, gunned down while surrendering by Nazis in 1944 and again Tuesday night and Wednesday night by a false patriot who would rather be loud than right.
"In Malmédy, as you know," Bill O'Reilly said on the air Tuesday night in some indecipherable attempt to defend the events of Haditha, "U.S. forces captured SS forces who had their hands in the air and were unarmed, and they shot them dead. You know that, that's on the record and documented [sic]." The victims at Malmédy in December 1944 were Americans, Americans with their hands in the air, Americans who were unarmed. That's on the record and documented, and their memory deserves better than Bill O'Reilly. We all do.
OLBERMANN: Abraham Lincoln did not shoot John Wilkes Booth. Titanic did not sink a North Atlantic iceberg. And Fox News is neither fair nor balanced. These are simple historical facts intelligible to all adults, most children, and some of your more discerning domesticated animals. But not, as the third story on the Countdown proves yet again, not to Bill O.
STEWIE GRIFFIN (character on TV show Family Guy) [video clip]: Countdown presents "Factor Fiction," wherein we catch that bastard Bill O'Reilly lying again. Oh, wait, Bill, hold still. Allow me to soil myself on you. Victory is mine!
OLBERMANN: The guilty pleasure offered by the existence of Bill O'Reilly is simple and understandable. Ninety-nine times out of 100, when we belly up to the Bill O bar of bluster, nearly every time we partake of the movable falafel feast, he serves us nothing but comedy: farce, slapstick, unconscious self-mutilation, the Sideshow Bob of commentators forever stepping on the same rake, forever muttering the same grunted, inarticulate surrender, forever resuming the circle that will take him back to the same rake. The Sisyphus of morons, if you will. But this is the 100th time out of 100. It is not funny at all. Bill O'Reilly has, for the second time in just under eight months, slandered at least 84 dead American servicemen. He has turned them again from victims of the kind of atrocity our country has always fought against into perpetrators of that kind of atrocity. He has made these Americans into war criminals. They are dead and have been dead for 61 years. They cannot defend themselves against O'Reilly. We will have to do it for them.
Last October, Bill O'Reilly railed against a ruling that more photos from the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq might be released. His guest on his program was Wesley Clark. Clark is a retired four-star general, was for four years supreme allied commander of NATO in Europe. First in his class at West Point, wounded in Vietnam, earned the Bronze Star, the Silver Star, and has streets named for him in Alabama and in Kosovo. Therefore, naturally, O'Reilly knows much more about the military than General Clark does. Clark defended the release of the additional Abu Ghraib prison -- photos, saying we needed to know what happened and to correct it. O'Reilly lectured him and concluded that there had always been atrocities even by Americans in war.
O'REILLY [video clip]: General, you need to look at the Malmédy Massacre in World War II in the 82nd Airborne.
OLBERMANN: It was a remarkable mistake. The Belgian town of Malmédy did lend its name to one of the most appalling battlefield war crimes of the 20th century. But O'Reilly's implication that the Americans committed it was entirely backwards. Americans, most of them members of Battery B of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion, surrendered to German Panzer troops and were then shot by their captors from the SS. Yet, O'Reilly had implied that the Americans had massacred these Germans in this one stark moment of the Battle of the Bulge. And he used this Alice-through-the-looking-glass view of history to somehow rationalize Abu Ghraib while trying to dress down a four-star American general.
Still, it could have been a mistake; we make them. Even historians do. O'Reilly had not explicitly called the Americans the war criminals of Malmédy. Our troops, too, were accused of crimes against prisoners in the Second World War. It was assumed last year he had simply made a foolish error, and though he got beaten up appropriately in some places, it was all largely dismissed as merely that -- a mistake.
Then came this Tuesday night. Again, O'Reilly's guest was General Wes Clark. This time, the topic was the apparent murder of Iraqi civilians at Haditha. That O'Reilly was dismissive of that event should be no surprise, that he should have described as the real crime of Iraq the events of Abu Ghraib should be no surprise to those who know of his willingness to jettison his most important beliefs of yesterday for the expediencies and the ratings of today. But that he should have brought up Malmédy again -- that was a surprise.
O'REILLY [video clip]: In Malmédy, as you know, U.S. forces captured SS forces who had their hands in the air and they were unarmed, and they shot them down. You know that. That's on the record. Been documented.
OLBERMANN: Thus was the full depth of Bill O'Reilly's insult to the American dead of World War II made clear. The mistake of last October was not some innocent slip nor misremembered history. This was the way O'Reilly understood it, and thus, this way it had to be. No errors corrected, no apologies offered, no stopping the relentless tide of bull, even briefly enough to check one fact.
The facts of Malmédy are terrifying, as described by Michael Reynolds in his painstakingly detailed article from a 2003 issue of World War II magazine. One week before Christmas 1944, 139 U.S. soldiers, most of them from the 285th Field Artillery, encountered the German Kampfgruppe Peiper, the leading formation of the German 1st SS Panzer Division -- one of only two German units in the entire war which actually carried Adolf Hitler's name. The Americans were overrun. Eleven of the 139 soldiers were killed in the very short battle of Malmédy; two more were killed as they tried to flee. Seven escaped, six became prisoners of war. The other 113 Americans, nearly all of whom had surrendered outright, were ordered to assemble in an open field next to a restaurant, the Cafe Bodarwé. What happened next has been attributed to many things -- a cold-blooded decision by that Panzer unit commander, Colonel Joachim Peiper, that he could not handle the prisoners, or an unjustifiable overreaction to some kind of escape attempt, or simply horrible mass murder.
Within 15 minutes, the SS colonel or someone directly under him had ordered his men to shoot the unarmed American POWs. The bodies at Malmédy were not found until a month later. There were 84 of them, all American soldiers. More than half showed shotgun wounds to their heads. Six had received fatal blows to the head. Nine were found with their arms still raised above their heads. The fact that O'Reilly got these horrible facts completely backwards twice offended even his usually compliant viewers. From his program Wednesday night:
O'REILLY [video clip]: Don Caldwell, Fort Worth, Texas: "Bill, you mentioned that Malmédy as the site of an American massacre during World War II. It was the other way around, the SS shot down U.S. prisoners." In the heat of the debate with General Clark, my statement wasn't clear enough, Mr. Caldwell. After Malmédy, some German captives were executed by American troops.
OLBERMANN: Wrong answer. When you are that wrong, when you are defending Nazi war criminals and pinning their crimes on Americans and you get caught doing so twice, you're supposed to say, "I'm sorry, I was wrong," and then you're supposed to shut up for a long time. Instead, Fox washed its transcript of O'Reilly's remarks Tuesday. Its website claims O'Reilly said "in Normandy" when, as you heard, in fact, he said "in Malmédy."
The rewriting of past reporting worthy of George Orwell has now carried over into such online transcription services as Burrelle's and Factiva. Whatever did or did not happen later in supposed or actual retribution, the victims at Malmédy were Americans, gunned down while surrendering by Nazis in 1944 and again Tuesday night and Wednesday night by a false patriot who would rather be loud than right.
"In Malmédy, as you know," Bill O'Reilly said on the air Tuesday night in some indecipherable attempt to defend the events of Haditha, "U.S. forces captured SS forces who had their hands in the air and were unarmed, and they shot them dead. You know that, that's on the record and documented [sic]." The victims at Malmédy in December 1944 were Americans, Americans with their hands in the air, Americans who were unarmed. That's on the record and documented, and their memory deserves better than Bill O'Reilly. We all do.
"On Close Examination" is wrong about AIDS drug experiments.
"JerseyEric" who publishes the progressive blog "On Closer Examination" is wrong in his article about the AIDS drug trials that were the subject of the BBC report "Guinea Pig Kids " which is a year old and he is very wrong to continue his line of ad hominem attack on people like Liam Scheff, Dr. Jonathan Fishbein and Vera Sherav in the pages of "Media Matters".
"JerseyEric," whose actual name I do not know (mine is up top of this page, it's "Eugene Weixel") attacks Dr. Jonathan Fishbein, for example as a "disgruntled employee" who was seeking to protect his job and so "manufactured a crisis" to wrangle "whislteblower protection." Fishbein is a whistleblower, "JerseyEric".
It looks like the main target of "Eric"'s wrath, John Solomon of the Associated Press is a pretty low down scoundrel who among other things seems to have botched this story. Surely if he didn't talk with Liam Scheff and if he didn't get Scheff's sources for the bombshell that kids were killed by these experiments Solomon botched the story big time. I haven't researched Solomon's story but I'm almost ready to spot Eric this one just on the basis of Solomon being part of Associated Press alone.
Anyhow Eric and all his readers at "On Closer Examination" and "Media Matters" is invited to read these links and learn about this case>
New Yorkers Are Going To Know About The Racist AIDS Drug ...
AIDS Drug Experiment Scandal Update
I ask The New York Times How AIDS drug torture investigation is ...
AIDS foster child Drug Tests. A scandal - Pro and Con.
Excerpts from Liam Scheff's "The House That Aids Built"
ACS/Vera Institute begin third year of AIDS foster children ...
AND FOR THOSE READY TO CREDIT THESE DRUG TRIALS FOR REDUCING AIDS IN CHILDREN READ THIS POST ESPECIALLY>
These are the figures of the US Department of Health and Human Services ...
"JerseyEric," whose actual name I do not know (mine is up top of this page, it's "Eugene Weixel") attacks Dr. Jonathan Fishbein, for example as a "disgruntled employee" who was seeking to protect his job and so "manufactured a crisis" to wrangle "whislteblower protection." Fishbein is a whistleblower, "JerseyEric".
It looks like the main target of "Eric"'s wrath, John Solomon of the Associated Press is a pretty low down scoundrel who among other things seems to have botched this story. Surely if he didn't talk with Liam Scheff and if he didn't get Scheff's sources for the bombshell that kids were killed by these experiments Solomon botched the story big time. I haven't researched Solomon's story but I'm almost ready to spot Eric this one just on the basis of Solomon being part of Associated Press alone.
Anyhow Eric and all his readers at "On Closer Examination" and "Media Matters" is invited to read these links and learn about this case>
New Yorkers Are Going To Know About The Racist AIDS Drug ...
AIDS Drug Experiment Scandal Update
I ask The New York Times How AIDS drug torture investigation is ...
AIDS foster child Drug Tests. A scandal - Pro and Con.
Excerpts from Liam Scheff's "The House That Aids Built"
ACS/Vera Institute begin third year of AIDS foster children ...
AND FOR THOSE READY TO CREDIT THESE DRUG TRIALS FOR REDUCING AIDS IN CHILDREN READ THIS POST ESPECIALLY>
These are the figures of the US Department of Health and Human Services ...
Recent visitors of Note
Yesterday the New York City Public Advocate Office paid me a visit. they were curious about "fast track" training of caseworkers and also about those missing foster care stats. For the past few days I've been getting visited by someone in Queens, NY who spends hours clicking page to page and either reading, printing or both. Anyhow after a few hours of that Betsy Gotbaum's shop revisited me.
Visit DetailVisit 47,924[<<] [>>]Domain Namecovad.net ? (Network)IP Address68.166.196.51 ? (New York City Public Advocate)ISPCovad CommunicationsLocationContinent:North AmericaCountry:United States (Facts)State:New YorkCity:New YorkLat/Long:40.7619, -73.9763 (Map)Distance:0 miles (local visitor)LanguageEnglish (United States)en-usOperating SystemMicrosoft WinXPBrowserInternet Explorer 6.0Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.0.3705)Javascriptversion 1.3MonitorResolution:1024 x 768Color Depth:32 bitsTime of VisitJun 1 2006 2:32:39 pmLast Page ViewJun 1 2006 2:38:04 pmVisit Length5 minutes 25 secondsPage Views5Referring URLhttp://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&q=administration+for+children%27s+servicesSearch Engineblogsearch.google.comSearch Wordsadministration for children's services
Then lo and behold! I get a visit from those who supposedly watchdog and supervise ACS, The Office of Children and Family Services in Renssalear, New York.
Visit DetailVisit 48,011
[<<] [>>]
Domain Name
state.ny.us ? (United States)
IP Address
198.22.236.230 ? (New York State Division for Youth)
ISP
New York State Division for Youth
Location
Continent
:
North America
Country
:
United States (Facts)
State
:
New York
City
:
Rensselaer
Lat/Long
:
42.6189, -73.7065 (Map)
Distance
:
129 miles
Language
English (United States)en-us
Operating System
Microsoft Win2000
Browser
Internet Explorer 6.0Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)
Javascript
version 1.3
Monitor
Resolution
:
1024 x 768
Color Depth
:
24 bits
Time of Visit
Jun 2 2006 2:12:20 pm
)))))))))))
Maybe the folks up in Renssalaer, where John Johnson is the Commissioner ar4e curious about how things are run down here in NYC. It still is part of NY State and gets quite abit of State tax money.
NEW YORK STATEOFFICE OF CHILDREN AND FAMILY SERVICES
52 Washington StreetRensselaer, New York 12144Telephone: (518) 473-7793 Fax: (518) 486-7550Website: www.ocfs.state.ny.us
Thursday, June 01, 2006
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)