Democracy and WikiLeaks

Democracy and WikiLeaks

Before the idea of democracy became a practical experiment after the American Revolution, philosophers knew the purpose of government if nobody else did. The purpose of government was simple.  The purpose of Troy and Athens, the purpose of Carthage and Rome, the purpose of France and Spain and Britain, the purpose of the German Reich and of the Soviet Union was simply this.

The purpose was to maintain the power of the Supreme Ruler and of his court.

The slaves, the workers, the soldiers, the sweaters and the diers were cattle. They did what they were told or were driven to an earlier death.

Then came democracy, the stirring phrases of the Declaration of Independence, the revolutions in France and the collapse of European empires.  The people previously indentured to the land and to the government became the owners and the rulers. They seized power and took over their lives through a system of elected and selected bodies that focused their voices and their energy and satisfied their wishes while the old power brokers and the privileged regrouped.

They have taken nearly 300 years to reacquire their power and their privileges. But, with the National Security State, they have nearly eliminated the power of the people and returned them to their former position as servants to the throne. 

Three hundred years can seem like an eternity. In the long history of power and privilege, it is barely the blink of an eye. The three hundred years is an aberration from the norm in one of those neat bar charts generated by Windows.  It is barely a blip on the upward curve of the consolidation of the power that has made bigger empires and more slaves to serve the ambitions of powerful people.

Who are the heroes of American Democracy? A wonderfully well-spoken, modest young soldier, veteranof the Afghan War, was the latest model paraded out. A man who risked his life in a fire fight to save two downed comrades.  A symbol for the daily deeds of daring performed by an army of 150,000 men and women trying to repress the legitimate claims of a dispersed primitive people to their own freedom. According to a recent survey, more than 90% of Afghanis did not know why they were under attack. There is not recent survey to show how many American military, much less how many Americans, know why we are attacking and dying. We have once again become the thoughtless slaves, doing the bidding of the power brokers.

 Democracy is over.  And not  because of America’s enemies.

Who should be the heroes of a flourishing democracy?  Bradley Manning, the boy who pulled the curtain from behind the Wizard of Oz in the State Department. Julian Assange, the mastermind  behind controlling the technology to expose to the world what the people in our little corner are too brainwashed to believe, that we are more like the Wicked Witch of the West than the fairy princess.     

I hate what we have let the dream of democracy become, all the servants lined up like sheep to be sheared naked to prove they are no threat to the order of the State.

Getting things done behind closed doors in the State Department
The 2009 coup in Honduras
A key difference was that Honduras is in Central America, "our backyard," so different rules applied. Top officials in Washington supported the political aims of the coup. They did not nominally support the means of the coup, as far as we know, but they supported its political end: the removal of the ability of President Zelaya and his supporters to pursue a meaningful reform project in Honduras. On the other hand, they were politically constrained not to support the coup openly, since they knew it to be illegal and unconstitutional. Thus, they pursued a "diplomatic compromise" which would "restore constitutional order" while achieving the coup's central political aim: removal of the ability of President Zelaya and his supporters to pursue a meaningful reform project in Honduras. The effect of their efforts at "diplomatic compromise" was to allow the coup to stand, a result that these supporters of the coup's political aims were evidently content with.
AP's treatment of President Morales' remarks was instructive:
Morales also alleged US involvement in coup attempts or political upheaval in Venezuela in 2002, Honduras in 2009 and Ecuador in 2010.
"The empire of the United States won," in Honduras, Morales said, a reference to the allegations of former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya that the US was behind his ouster.
"The people of the Americas in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, we won," Morales continued. "We are three to one with the United States. Let's see what the future brings."

US officials have repeatedly denied involvement in all of those cases and critics of the United States have produced no clear evidence. [my emphasis]

(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: World's Saddest Man, Pierre J., ImageAbstraction)

Since 2007, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) - with the support of the United States, Israel and European allies UK, France and Germany - has been demanding that Iran explain a set of purported internal documents portraying a covert Iranian military program of research and development of nuclear weapons. The "laptop documents," supposedly obtained from a stolen Iranian computer by an unknown source and given to US intelligence in 2004, include a series of drawings of a missile re-entry vehicle that appears to be an effort to accommodate a nuclear weapon, as well as reports on high explosives testing for what appeared to be a detonator for a nuclear weapon. That position is based on the premise that the intelligence documents that Iran has been asked to explain are genuine. The evidence now available, however, indicates that they are fabrications.

London Times on WikiLeaks releases 11/28/10
The Times highlighted documents that indicated the U.S. and South Korea were "gaming out an eventual collapse of North Korea" and discussing the prospects for a unified country if the isolated, communist North's economic troubles and political transition lead it to implode.
(The interesting thing is the American spin, that China’s interest in supporting North Korea is to prevent China from being overwhelmed by North Koreans flooding into China’s delicate political situation and that North Korea feels threatened by America’s plan to get rid of the North Korean government by any means short of war. Well, DUH.)
______________________________

A respondent opines

Beyond the additional nearly $1 trillion two prominent economists estimate it will cost just to treat veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq for the next 40 years, the potential human cost is huge.

Since the war began in October 2001, there have been periodic reports about substance abuse, depression, domestic violence, suicide, homelessness and violent crime among traumatized veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq. High unemployment in a bad economy has merely compounded their troubles.

Cooking the books and keeping the faith on BP and the Deepwater Horizon

An Environmental Protection Agency memo, one of many showing uncertainty, said, "EPA agrees that the ultimate message to the public will likely be that the oil was successfully dispersed with chemical dispersants, but until we know with some degree of certainty ... we are hesitant to assign distinct percentages at this time."
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson was "concerned about the level of certainty implied in the pie and cylinder charts." Another e-mail noticed that a pie chart in a draft of the government's report wasn't actually round: "A pie chart pretty much has to round to 100," NOAA spokeswoman Jennifer Austin wrote.
U.S. officials clearly understood the possible economic consequences of their findings. Anticipating a question in August for an upcoming news conference, a NOAA spokeswoman asked scientists, "What impact, if any, will this report have in determining BP's financial liability for this spill?" The answer: The U.S. can fine BP up to $4,300 per barrel of oil that is counted as leaked.
The documents released Wednesday by the Commerce Department, NOAA's parent agency, were significant because they revealed conversations among scientists working on the forecasts of oil in the Gulf. The government released 5,817 pages of files late in the afternoon on the eve of Thanksgiving, traditionally a period when few people are paying attention to news reports because of holiday travel

____________________________________

Christmas

Christmas

All the magic.

All the mystery,

All the yearning

Is captured

In the sounds

Of We Three Kings,

The First Noel,

The Little Drummer Boy,

The Twelve Days of Christmas,

Chestnuts Roasting on and Open Fire,

The infinite variety of human desire

Resurrected in their strains

For a hoped-for world of peace and joy

And brotherhood/sisterhood,

For the long sought answer

To who we are and how we came to be

And what purpose we have under the heavens,

For all the soul searching

Of all the songs

That every Christmas

Remind me

Of the wonder of living

In search of the Fountain of Youth,

El Dorado,

Ali Baba’s Cave,

The Golden Rule,

The quest for the unreachable star!

JM

Finding a balance between the hopes of a terminal patient and their family and the unlikelihood of a miracle.

The hope for a miracle

Keeps us divided

Between accepting the inevitable

And wasting our energy

Worshipping false gods

And chasing expensive options.

I finally understand

With my spasomed heart

The cost of idolatry

And Abraham’s pain

Over sacrificing his son

To a jealous deity.

JM

Death destroys the romance firing my passion.

Death defies my hopes, my dreams, my desires.

Death denies  my soul.

Death displaces my life’s lust to savor its every artifice.

Death is the serial killer sought on our posters.

Death is the fear that chokes off our shrieks.

Death is the muscle memory that makes us tremor

For the promised heaven of our faithless deities.

JM

Ifeel the earth move under my feet on a sun day

I just lose control
Down to my very soul
I get hot and cold all over

I feel the earth move under my feet
I feel the sky tumbling down
tumbling down, tumbling down...

Suitable lyrics for these times even if the words are taken  out of the context of a love ballad by Carole King. That’s how upside down the world has become

I read the other day that 6,000,000 people are dying annually from a curable disease. Is there a plague upon us? Is the medical system in full alert trying to develop a cure before the disease spreads like HIV and takes us down? Are the governments of the world intervening to prevent this human disaster? Is anything being done to alert people of the danger?

Those would be some of the steps taken by the World Health Organization and any group that had skin in the game. But nothing is being done to burn the tobacco fields, imprison anyone who grows, produces of profits from tobacco. Plants are not shuttered. Corporations are not delisted.

Our solution: Reduce medicare benefits. That will certainly reduce the cost of medical care, won’t it?

I just lose control
Down to my very soul
I get hot and cold all over

I feel the earth move under my feet
I feel the sky tumbling down
tumbling down, tumbling down...

We are on a collision course with North Korea that might lead to a war that will embroil the whole world. For what? Because the South Koreans lobbed a couple of artillery rounds in the direction of the North to prove their willingness to fight over some disputed territory? And the North returned the fire to prove they won’t be intimidated. And the U.S. is sending over an aircraft carrier to show support for South Korea’s provocation, as a minimum, and its stupidity as a maximum. An Armageddon precipitated over nothing for nothing by a bunch of hawks intent on demonstrating they can because they think they can.

And the world is at at risk for such arrogance.

I just lose control
Down to my very soul
I get hot and cold all over

I feel the earth move under my feet
I feel the sky tumbling down
tumbling down, tumbling down...

Senator Kyl is demonstrating that one Senator can prevent the passage of one of the lynchpins for reducing the threat of nuclear materials getting further disseminated and of getting nuclear weapons further reduced. Senator Kyl is increasing the risk of nuclear destabilization—because it is his prerogative regardless of the risk to any of us anywhere. In the meantime the government ratchets up equipment and security personnel and invasions on privacy to the benefit of equipment manufacturers. The last count I saw, half a dozen planes have been brought down around the world since Kitty Hawk. Not many more buildings have been destroyed by some dissident over some grievance or other. Nothing compared to the destruction wreaked upon humanity by the franchised governments of the world who have proven to be more dangerous to mankind than any terrorists anyplace anytime.  Check the U.S government response to the Wikileaks releases. Is the U.S. government trying to protect the people allegedly threatened by the leaks? Or is it scrambling to protect its own security system, damn the people who are sacrificed? They are collateral damage, along with the rest of the war dead, to protect the National Security State. Grievances have existed since mankind began to recognize that the playing field was not level and no draconian regime has ever, will ever make us all safe from every threat. But there is profit in supporting that false public belief.

I just lose control
Down to my very soul
I get hot and cold all over

I feel the earth move under my feet
I feel the sky tumbling down
tumbling down, tumbling down...

American corporations are rumored to be sitting on trillions of dollars while they increase productivity and profit by laying off workers. The government dithers with giving them tax breaks to increase their cash position. In the meantime the remaining workers do not have enough money to buy all they are producing, Jobs go abroad to a cheaper labor force with fewer or no health, insurance, unemployment, retirement or other benefits. There are fewer workers here and less money to buy what they make. Before long the corporations will own everything and reclaim the jobs farmed out to their now indentured workers. Cycle complete. The experiment in self government undone.

I just lose control
Down to my very soul
I get hot and cold all over

I feel the earth move under my feet
I feel the sky tumbling down
tumbling down, tumbling down...

JM

String Theory

Unlimited variations of a string

The violin in the hands of genius

Surrenders sound to make you weep

But in the hands of a student

The strings squeak and squawk

In their full range of possibility,

Not the narrow range of awe

That inspires wonder.

Such is the miracle of you and me,

The full range of our potential

To be what others admire or abhor

Settles into the range of common sanity,

But move the fret a finger

Up or down the scale

And we are intolerable

Even to our mothers.

The fine tuning of our billions of selves

Makes the anthem of humanity so common

We daily mistake the genius in ourselves

For the pedestrian stuff of students,

The “we” we take for granted

A very thin veneer

Over the many layers lying in waiting

Beneath the calouses of the ages.

JM  

Black Friday Bell Ringers

The anomaly of these stories in the same set should make you wonder what has become of our sanity

In some ways, the darkest vision of an American future arrived in 1991 thanks to President George H. W. Bush. At that time, he launched a war in the Persian Gulf to protect local oil producers from an aggressive Iraq. That war was largely paid for by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, rendering the U.S. military for the first time a sort of global mercenary force. Just as the poor in any society often join the military as a way of moving up in the world, so in the century of Asia, the U.S. could find itself in danger of being reduced to the role of impoverished foot soldier fighting for others’ interests, or of being the glorified ironsmiths making arsenals of weaponry for the great powers of the future. (Juan Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History and the director of the Center for South Asian Studies at the University of Michigan. His latest book, Engaging the Muslim World, is just out in a revised paperback edition from Palgrave Macmillan. He runs the Informed Comment website)

_________________________________

By golly, we'll show them whose boss
YEONPYEONG ISLAND, South Korea – North Korea warned Friday that U.S.-South Korean plans for military maneuvers put the peninsula on the brink of war, and appeared to launch its own artillery drills within sight of an island it showered with a deadly barrage this week.
_________________________________

Pakistan police say bombing plot in capital foiled

__________________________________

6,000,000 a year die from smoking around the world. That is after years of governments efforts to reduce smoking around the globe.

http://news.yahoo.com/video/us-15749625/study-secondhand-smoke-kills-600-000-every-year-23207268

___________________________________

Cooking the books

An Environmental Protection Agency memo, one of many showing uncertainty, said, "EPA agrees that the ultimate message to the public will likely be that the oil was successfully dispersed with chemical dispersants, but until we know with some degree of certainty ... we are hesitant to assign distinct percentages at this time."
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson was "concerned about the level of certainty implied in the pie and cylinder charts." Another e-mail noticed that a pie chart in a draft of the government's report wasn't actually round: "A pie chart pretty much has to round to 100," NOAA spokeswoman Jennifer Austin wrote.
U.S. officials clearly understood the possible economic consequences of their findings. Anticipating a question in August for an upcoming news conference, a NOAA spokeswoman asked scientists, "What impact, if any, will this report have in determining BP's financial liability for this spill?" The answer: The U.S. can fine BP up to $4,300 per barrel of oil that is counted as leaked.
The documents released Wednesday by the Commerce Department, NOAA's parent agency, were significant because they revealed conversations among scientists working on the forecasts of oil in the Gulf. The government released 5,817 pages of files late in the afternoon on the eve of Thanksgiving, traditionally a period when few people are paying attention to news reports because of holiday travel
____________________________________

Washington Post--Perhaps it doesn't matter that we are being flattered into believing what any full-length mirror can tell us is untrue. But when our accountants, bankers and lawyers, our doctors and our politicians tell us only what we want to hear, despite hard evidence to the contrary, we are headed for disaster. We need only look at our housing industry, our credit card debt, the cost of two wars subsidized by borrowed money, and the rising deficit to understand the dangers of entitlement run rampant. We celebrate truth as a virtue, but only in the abstract. What we really need in our search for truth is a commodity that used to be at the heart of good journalism: facts - along with a willingness to present those facts without fear or favor.

______________________________________

Good has gotten murky after the Congressional Ethics Committee trail of Charles Rangel. Was he a House member who served his constituency well most of the time? Did some of his faults revolve around enhancing his legacy—trying to fund the educational institution in his name—or continue his service—the rent controlled apartments?  Did those failures merit forgiveness laid against his long record f service or did they deserve the public disgrace of the trial.
______________________________________
A similar question on the Wikileaks leader being investigated for sexual assault. If he was involved, does his service for exposing the egregious miscalculations and deliberate lies and continued manipulation of news about Iraq/Afghanistan mitigate his greater public service under great duress and threat of death from forces of evil opposed to the truth?
WikiLeaks argues the release of the documents, US-soldier authored incident reports from 2004 to 2009, has shed light on the wars, including allegations of torture by Iraqi forces and reports that suggested 15,000 additional civilian deaths in Iraq.
WikiLeaks' announcement comes just days after Sweden issued an international arrest warrant for the website's head, Australian Julian Assange, wanted for questioning related to rape and sexual molestation accusations.
___________________
 But in episode after episode since then, the TSA has demonstrated a knack for ignoring the basics of customer relations, while struggling with what experts say is an all but impossible task. It must stand as the last line against unknown terror, yet somehow do so without treating everyone from frequent business travelers to the family heading home to visit grandma as a potential terrorist.
_______________________________

For once the Israelis get it right.Nothing democratic about them.

Based on multiple factors, the least of which is origin, they pick out those who might be possible threats, not everybody

_________________________________

The things we remember

So it has come to this--

A few scrawled notes

In a deliberate black print

Requiring too much effort

Of pen and mind,

Onions for stuffing,

Lyrica for pain,

Return lites to Walmart,

Money from bank,

Cards for grand kids,

Ornaments for nieces

Passed from grandmother,

Chin waxed—again.

The endless list of reminders,

A lifetime full of them

With meticulous care,

Finally drawing to an end .

JM

Tunie's faith

Thousands of people are killing each other today.

My wife is sitting in the patio chair,

The morning dew dripping on her

From a frond above her head.

A butterfly drifts aimlessly.

The  sun brightens the sun nailed

To an old rotted tree.

Strains of “Oh Jude” insinuate themselves

On the peace of our little fenced garden.

“Take a sad  song and make it better.”

She is dying from brain cancer

Still hoping for a miracle,

Her belief in a god long gone,

Her faith in the Beetles still surviving.

JM

Fable of the one-eyed king, Part One

The fable of the one-eyed king

In a kingdom so old most subjects can’t remember how it began, a one-eyed King, the son of a long dynasty of royalty, ruled.

His predecessors had been benevolent rulers during the middle years of their dynasty while the kingdom thrived and the subjects increased and multiplied and explored the unlimited blessings bestowed upon them .

As happens in most dynasties, benevolence is preceded by beastliness masked by mystical necessity.  In this early epoch, the kings used their special relationship with their benefactor, their deity, to create the rock foundation of the kingdom. They justified anything they did to enhance their kingdom with the all encompassing  myth of manifest destiny, the hand of their deity in guiding them to righteous triumph over anything that got in their way. So it was easy to justify driving out or destroying or subjecting or enslaving all the dark-skinned early natives.  The story of the destruction of the natives became part of the heroic myth of this early epoch and the foundation for future myths about the heroism of the conquerors given special powers of righteousness by the kings.

In the early kingdom, the kings kept their people so busy purifying the kingdom of those who would threaten it, of exploring its breadth,  the subjects had little time to envy or even pay attention to the riches beyond their already wealthy new home. This place was rich in anything a person wished for. Their cups overflowed with the wine of the vine, with the fresh, pure water of the rivers and the lakes and the seas.

The waters were plentiful with fish, the forests with game, the fields with natural fruits and berries and grains. So much so that, as their founding story grew, it defined them not only as the Chosen People but as the People Who Had Been Blessed by Their Own Labor.  They deserved this Land of Milk and Honey because, unlike the worthless natives they displaced, they had enriched the land and made it productive to the forward magnificence of the kingdom.   

(to be continued)

Taking back our freedom

Wouldn’t it be remarkable if the American public rose up in mass and finally took back responsibility for their lives instead of ceding it to the “terrorists” or the National Security State.

What greater opportunity than to boycott the airports and the airlines until the abusive/invasive/intolerable security measures were eliminated and we took back our airports.

So far the public has been submissive to the wars, to the invasions of their privacy through the Patriot Act. It has been submissive to all the attacks on their intelligence with the incessant campaigns, lies, and outrageous spending to perpetuate them.

Everything out of their hands. Can’t stop the wars. Can’t stop the invasion of privacy. Can’t stop the lies.

How liberating it would be to take back the airports and eliminate the TSA and all its manifestation. We can rise up and refuse to fly. Or is even that too much to imagine?

Scanners and pat-downs upset airline passengers

Top of Form

AP – Airline passengers put their personal belongings in trays as they check-in at Washington's Ronald Reagan …

By JOAN LOWY and ADAM GOLDMAN, Associated Press Joan Lowy And Adam Goldman, Associated Press – Mon Nov 15, 6:17 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Nearly a week before the Thanksgiving travel crush, federal air security officials were struggling to reassure rising numbers of fliers and airline workers outraged by new anti-terrorism screening procedures they consider invasive and harmful.

Across the country, passengers simmered over being forced to choose scans by full-body image detectors or probing pat-downs. Top federal security officials said Monday that the procedures were safe and necessary sacrifices to ward off terror attacks.

"It's all about security," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said. "It's all about everybody recognizing their role."

Despite officials' insistence that they had taken care to prepare the American flying public, the flurry of criticism from private citizens to airline pilots' groups suggested that Napolitano and other federal officials had been caught off guard.

At the San Diego airport, a software engineer posted an Internet blog item saying he had been ejected after being threatened with a fine and lawsuit for refusing a groin check after turning down a full-body scan. The passenger, John Tyner, said he told a federal Transportation Security Administration worker, "If you touch my junk, I'm gonna have you arrested."

Tyner's individual protest quickly became a web sensation, but questions also came from travel business groups, civil liberties activists and pilots, raising concerns both about the procedures themselves and about the possibility of delays caused by passengers reluctant to accept the new procedures.

"Almost to a person, travel managers are concerned that TSA is going too far and without proper procedures and sufficient oversight," said Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition, an advocacy group representing corporate travel departments. "Travel managers are hearing from their travelers about this virtually on a daily basis."

Jeffrey Price, an aviation professor at Metropolitan State College of Denver, said two trends are converging: the regular holiday security increases and the addition of body scanners and new heightened measures stemming from the recent attempted cargo bombings. Also, several airports are short-staffed, which will add to delays, Price said.

Homeland Security and the TSA have moved forcefully to shift airport screening from familiar scanners to full-body detection machines. The new machines show the body's contours on a computer stationed in a private room removed from the security checkpoints. A person's face is never shown and the person's identity is supposedly not known to the screener reviewing the computer images.

Concerns about privacy and low-level radiation emitted by the machines have led some passengers to refuse screening. Under TSA rules, those who decline must submit to rigorous pat-down inspections that include checks of the inside of travelers' thighs and buttocks. The American Civil Liberties Union has denounced the machines as a "virtual strip search."

Concerns about both procedures are not limited to the U.S. In Germany over the weekend, organized protesters stripped off their clothes in airports to voice their opposition to full-body scans.

Douglas R. Laird, a former security director for Northwest Airlines, said it's the resistance to these measures that will cause the most delays. The new enhanced pat-downs, an alternative to body scanners, take more time — about 2 minutes compared with a 30-second scan. Delays could multiply if many travelers opt for a pat-down or contest certain new procedures.

Beyond the scanning process, passengers will also be subject to greater scrutiny of their luggage and personal identification and stricter enforcement of long-standing rules like the ban on carry-on liquids over 3 ounces.

On Monday, top security officials were out in force to defend the new policies. Napolitano wrote an op-ed piece in USA Today insisting that the body scanners used at many airports were safe and any images were viewed by federal airport workers in private settings.

Napolitano later said in a news conference at Ronald Reagan National Airport that she regretted the growing opposition to moves by the federal government to make flying safer. But she said the changes were necessary to deal with emerging terrorist threats such as a Nigerian man's alleged attempt to blow up a jetliner bound from Amsterdam to Detroit last Christmas Day using hard-to-detect explosives. Authorities allege that the explosives were hidden in the suspect's underwear.

There are some 300 full-body scanners now operational in 60 U.S. airports. TSA is on track to deploy approximately 500 units by the end of 2010.

Officials for the Airports Council International-North America, which represents U.S. and Canadian airports, said their members haven't complained about the scanner and pat-down policy or reported any special problems. But airports have been urging the government to engage in an aggressive public education campaign regarding the new screening, said Debby McElroy, the council's executive vice president.

"TSA is trying to address a real, credible threat, both through the advanced imaging technology and through the pat-downs," McElroy said. "We think it's important that they continue to address it with passengers and the media because there continues to be a significant misunderstanding about both the safety and the privacy concerns."

A spokeswoman for American Airlines issued a carefully worded statement that stopped short of welcoming the government's security moves. "We are working with the unions and the TSA and continue to evaluate and discuss screening options," American spokeswoman Missy Latham said.

Some airline pilots have pushed back against the new rules screening them. Many pilots are already part of the Federal Flight Deck Officer Program, which trains pilots in the use of firearms and defensive tactics. They are permitted to carry weapons on board.

Pilots enrolled in the program don't have to go through scanners and pat-downs. But only a small share of the total number of U.S. pilots are enrolled in the program.

Capt. John Prater, head of the Air Line Pilots Association, said based on discussions with TSA officials on Monday that he's optimistic the agency will soon approve a "crew pass" system that allows flight attendants and pilots to undergo less-stringent screenings.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, pilot unions were shown an off-the-shelf biometric identification system that was ready to go by government officials, said Sam Mayer, a Boeing 767 captain and a spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association, which represents pilots at American Airlines. The system would have made screening pilots unnecessary, he said.

Nine years later, pilots still don't have biometric identification cards because the government and airlines have been quarreling over who should pay for the machines that can read biometric information like fingerprints and iris scans, Mayer said.

"At the end of the day we're not the threat, and we want the TSA to concentrate on getting bads guys," he said.

Pilots are also concerned about the cumulative effects of radiation, Mayer said. Depending upon their schedules, pilots can go through a scanner several times a day and several days a week, he said.

"We're already at the top of the radiation (exposure) charts to begin with because we're flying at high altitudes for long distances," Mayer said. "The cumulative effects of this are more than most pilots are willing to subject themselves to. We're right up there with nuclear power plant workers in terms of exposure."

___

Associated Press writers Samantha L. Bonkamp in New York, Sam Hananel in Washington, D.C., and Robert Jablon and Daisy Ngyuen in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

A sick system--two days in the life of a terminal cancer patient

MRI

CT

Oncologists at X Cancer Treatment Center –Dr A, Dr B, Dr C

Neuro surgeons from Y Hospital—Dr D, Dr, E

Radiologists from the X Center and Y Center—Dr F, X Center; Dr G, Y Center.

Sunday, 11/14/10, rounds with doctors at Y Hospital neurosurgery section

Dr E, the staff neurosurgeon with Y Hospital, changed prescriptions for anti seizure medication from Dilantin and Lyrica and a third drug to Lyrica only, increased dosage and changed over anti inflammation drug Decadron to pill form rather than intravenous insertion thru Tunie’s portal. The portal had been plugged at the beginning of the day but was finally cleaned out by the staff nurse by mid afternoon. E changed to oral administration on the next shot cycle in prep for her being discharged. He said, based on his visits Saturday and Sunday that Tunie had made progress, did not need her brain wave activity tested, and was ready to be discharged whenever the oncologist released her.

Tunie was disturbed by the changes in Lyrica although she was still recovering from the effects of her brain problems on Friday and largely unable to express herself. �Her concerns were over the impact Lyrica had on her ability to function. Lyrica tended to make her drowsy most of her waking hours and interacted with her metabolism to increase her weight. The medication had been prescribed by Dr H, a physical therapist, as a pain reliever when she was getting rehabilitation for a shoulder operation in 2008.

Tunie was washing in the restroom when E came in and she tried questioning him while standing in the doorway.� He tried to let her get through her issues but, when she was not able to verbalize her concerns quickly, after ten minutes he said he had to leave.

Dr A, the oncologist from the X Center, the center that treated Tunie with chemotherapy and chest radiation in conjunction with the chemotherapy as well as with full brain preventive radiation subsequent to the other treatments, visited later Sunday morning and said she would not be released until Monday at the earliest until they could see how she was tolerating the oral Decadron since she had indicated an allergy to steroids, among which Decadron is classified. He indicated Decadron had been being administered in combination with an over the counter antacid since steroids aggravate the stomach. He said he could not change E’s call for changes in the meds. He said it was the neurosurgeon’s call and not the oncologist’s to prescribe brain medications. �

When Tunie’s mother Pat came in Sunday afternoon, she was upset that the medications had been changed and wanted them re instated. I told her I would not bring Tunie’s medications from home, that she would have to see if the doctor would change them. Pat asked the day nurse to contact the doctor and call her back. Whatever contact was made with him, Dr E did not call back. �

On Sunday, Dr A had said he thought Dr D, the neurosurgeon who had been part of the Y team that had performed the stereotactic radiosurgery on Tunie �on Wednesday, 11/10/10, would see her Monday morning �

Monday morning rounds

Dr B, an oncologist practicing with the X Center, visited about 7:30 a.m. He sat and spoke with us for some time about how Tunie was progressing, about her concerns over Lyrica, and about being discharged. He said it would be upto Dr D to determine when Tunie should be discharged. He asked if the changes in meds had caused her any problems. Tunie said she had not noticed any. (All the information reported here from Tunie is gathered from her halting, difficult, stammering, hesitant recall and not a constant, bright, staccato response to questioning. A good deal of her replies had to be inferred and guessed based on prior experience with her.)

Dr B said the meds could be changed back if Tunie felt any adverse affect. She seemed relieved and satisfied about Dr B’s assurances.

When Dr E visited prior to 9 a.m., he sat for a few minutes, again checked how Tunie was doing from their exchanges, said she was making progress and that, as he wrote in her medical record on Sunday, she was ready to be released on authority of Dr A, the admitting doctor from the X Center. When I asked if Dr D would be visiting Tunie, he said that was out of Dr D’s territory, that he did not make hospital visits.

When I told Dr E about Tunie walking the halls with her intravenous tree and how quickly her energy and her speech dissipated and how she bumped into the wall with the tree regularly, he said that was to be expected with the operation and the disease, that her recovery curve was short duration and would go in spurts, not maintain a consistent level for any length of time.

When Dr E was explaining how Tunie’s problem developed on Friday, he said it was a result of brain inflammation either from the operation or from the nearness of the operation to the area in the brain that controlled speech. He said one of the lesions was very close to her speech center and the operation could have done damage or the lesion could have impacted her brain.

The interesting sidelight to his comment was his partner Dr D did not like the process at Y Center and had at first recommended a different procedure at a facility in Coral Gables, FL.. He said he preferred Gamma Knife surgery because it was faster, more accurate, and more reliable. Both Drs F and G said they had worked with both procedures at M D Anderson in Houston and they were equally well regarded, that it was a matter of choice—although Y Center had only one choice available. �

After E left, I talked with the nurse about getting with the doctors so someone would decide who would release Tunie. She said she would make a note in the records for the doctors to let us know.

Tunie’s mother, Pat, called later in the morning to report a conversation she’d had while on a visit with her family doctor.� Dr I told her he had never heard that Lyrica was an anti seizure drug. �One of them went to Pfizer, the drug manufacturer’s website and it did not indicate Lyrica was an anti-seizure medication. Pat asked me to contact Dr C, Tunie’s primary oncologist, to make him aware of the changes by Dr E and to get his opinion.

By the time I left Tunie in her hospital room about 2 p.m., she had been making wonderful progress in capturing long term memory recollections and reporting them quite fluidly. She recalled a model train board in an apartment in a Munich kaserne where her father was stationed in the 60s. Her brothers Kevin and David used to have train battles that she remembered fondly.

Ditto some water balloon fights when she was in ninth grade in Williamsburg, VA and hanging around on the William and Mary campus with freshmen. She thought those fights were a blast.

That’s where I left it with Pat, asking her to get Tunie to recall other fun experiences from her past that would improve her brain/speech re tracking.

I called Dr C’s office to cancel the appointment on Nov 16 and asked his appointments’ manager to see him. She said she would ask him to call me and he would determine if face time was required on Tuesday.

While I was eating lunch, Pat called to say Dr D had visited. He had increased Tunie's Decadron and delayed her release. Pat has the information on her conversation with Dr D and his reasons for the changes. He did reiterate that he could not change Dr E’s prescribed regimen for meds.

If one were a conspiracy theorist, one could imagine all kinds of theories for why E commented on the possibility that damage had been done by the stereotactic procedure, why the X Center oncologists seem to be taking a hands off response to changing the regimen prescribed by the Y team that performed a possibly damaging procedure, why Drs D and G performed the recent procedure when Dr C, the primary oncologist, said Tunie was too far along and leaving her alone would be as effective as further medical intervention, why Dr E appears to have written a mistaken prescription to for anti seizure protection, whether procedures are determined by who has what equipment where, whether turf battles between prima donnas are appropriate in the treatment of a cancer patient, �and whose experience and judgment to trust in the treatment of patients with small cell lung cancer metastasized to the brain. I certainly do not have the training or the experience or the discriminatory tools to decide who did the right thing. I am not sure any layman does.

It appears that every judgment could be questionable and every expert could have different opinions, leaving the layman to throw up their hands and quit or to rely on the horse that brought them and hope they will do their best. In the case of Tunie’s treatment there are a lot of hands in the choices that got her from X Center to Y Center to the condition she is in now. Maybe most of them have to do with the cigarette industry lacing tobacco with addictive drugs, with Tunie not being able to stop smoking when I nagged her to quit, starting after we were married five years ago, with the urgency of her mother and doctors recommended by her mother’s social network to do something immediately without a second opinion, with her mother’s intervention to accelerate the recent procedure before her primary oncologist had examined her to see if the cancer had developed a critical mass, to a medical system driven to profit from expensive treatment and equipment and drugs, from our need to stave off the inevitable and take risks with people part of the fabric of our lives, that damagex the remaining quasi quality time they have.

Somebody else is going to have to figure out how all those threads have created the mess we are now flyspecking for a better solution. It just brings tears of frustration and anger and despair to me.

I remember when my mother was dying from congestive heart failure at age 86. She had been saved half a dozen times over a couple of years by the docs adjusting her electrolytes and making it possible for her to breathe again. But in the end that was not good enough for my older brother who was racing around the hospital trying to find a doctor who would do a heart transplant for her. Such are the human bonds that make it difficult for us to release those who have done their mightiest to be what we want—and still we want more.�

Did I mention the medical system that functions on the drowning man principle? It offers solutions to often dying people anxious to defeat a deadly disease and willing to grasp at any bit of flotsam to stay afloat.

JM