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Feds invade farm for 5 a.m. inspection
Federal agents invaded an Amish farm in Pennsylvania at 5 a.m. to inspect cow-milking facilities then followed up the next day with a written notice that the farmer was engaged in interstate sale of raw milk in violation of the Public Health Services Act.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=144557
Nuke D.C." sign stirs up controversy in McGregor
It's only about five feet tall and two feet wide, but it's become the biggest piece of controversy in the small town of McGregor.
The sign reads "Nuke D.C., and watch the White House glow in the dark.
http://www.kxxv.com/global/story.asp?s=12359533
Five Israelis charged with organ trafficking
The indictment says that the ring exploited the desperate condition of sick people and called it a "form of modern slavery." The traffickers allegedly offered up to $100,000 per kidney but in at least two cases did not pay the donors, who were sought through advertisements and then flown from Israel to Europe, South America or Southeast Asia, where the organs were extracted in illegal procedures.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Remember when that Swedish newspaper ran a story about Israeli organ traffickers and the screeches of "Anti-Semite" and "blood libel" hurled at the reporter? Well, in hindsight, guess who was telling the truth, and who the lies!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/22/israel-organ-trafficking-charges
Police, Lawyer/Bureaucrat Intimidate and Bully Student Journalists
A half dozen armed cops and a “commonwealth’s attorney” barged into the student newspaper office at James Madison University in Virginia recently and confiscated 600 pictures the newspaper had taken of a “melee” off campus where the cops used tear gas and other means of force and coercion to end what they call a “riot.”
The cops/bureaucrat say they only wanted the pictures to identify people in them who might be a danger to the community. They were only serving and protecting, they say. An alternative hypothesis would be that some of the pictures might have incriminated the police for the kind of police brutality that occurred not too long ago at the University of Maryland where a student celebrating a basketball victory by skipping down a sidewalk was beaten senseless by heavily armed cops on horseback.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/56163.html
Amazon fights demand for customer records
Amazon.com filed a lawsuit on Monday to fend off a sweeping demand from North Carolina's tax collectors: detailed records including names and addresses of customers and information about exactly what they purchased.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20002870-38.html
“The extremists are coming! The extremists are coming!”
It is interesting to watch the political establishment implode. Having slurred critics of the war system and the rapidly expanding growth of political power as “anti-Semites” and/or “racists,” the champions of a system of state-dominated society have kicked their sense of desperation into high gear.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/56119.html
High-Frequency Trading: High-tech highway robbery
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) knows that High-Frequency Trading (HFT) manipulates the market and bilks investors out of tens of billions of dollars every year. But SEC chairman Mary Schapiro refuses to step in and take action. Instead, she's concocted an elaborate "information gathering" scheme, that does nothing to address the main problem. Schapiro's plan--to track large blocks of trades by large institutional investors-- is an attempt to placate congress while the big Wall Street HFT traders to continue to rake in obscene profits. It achieves nothing, except provide the cover Schapiro needs to avoid doing her job.
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/mike_whitney/28074/high_frequency_trading_high_tech_highway_robbery
In Defense of Sedition
by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
Time magazine’s Joe Klein recently appeared on a Sunday news show where he accused Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin of "sedition" because of their criticisms of the Obama administration’s expenditure of trillions of dollars of corporate welfare in the form of bailouts; its Soviet-style nationalization of automobile, banking, student loan, and mortgage industries; its historically wild spending and borrowing binge; its forcing of socialized medicine down our throats in the face of overwhelming public opposition; and its plans to tax American capitalism into bankruptcy. Anyone who criticizes such things should be thrown into the Gulag, says Klein. Another talking head on the same television show as Klein screeched that Rush Limbaugh should also be indicted for "sedition" for the crime of criticizing King Obama.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo184.html
Rise Up and Say “Baaaa”
Max Keiser dude. I likes him :)
http://buelahman.wordpress.com/2010/04/22/rise-up-and-say-baaaa/
Eight Invented Diseases: If They Infect You, Big Pharma Is Eager To... Help
Since direct-to-consumer drug advertising debuted in 1997, pharma's credo has been When The Medication Is Ready, The Disease (and Patients) Will Appear. Who knew so many people suffered from restless legs?
http://www.alternet.org/story/146471/8_invented_diseases_big_pharma_is_banking_on/
Comercial break here
The drugs I need
http://femalefaust.blogspot.com/2010/04/progenitorivox-or-more-i-know-about.html
Erich Steidtmann Investigation Reopened: 95-Year-Old Alleged Nazi Under Fresh German Scrutiny
Webmaster's Commentary:
Israel must be getting ready to do something really nasty if they are waving 95-year old Nazis at us right now!
BTW, Germany's unquestioning obedience to Israel starts to make sense now that we know Israel is planning on buying warships from German manufacturers.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/22/erich-steidtmann-investig_n_547972.html
CLIMATEGATE - Peer-Research Finds Major Climate Model Failures Regarding Arctic: Warming Is Natural, Not CO2 Caused
It is well documented that climate models have been abject failures as global predictive tools, and should not be relied upon by policy makers for global decisions. The newest research confirms that the models are also incorrect regarding regional predictions, including the Arctic area climate.
http://www.c3headlines.com/2010/04/peer-research-finds-major-climate-model-failures-regarding-arctic-warming-is-natural-not-co2-caused.html
ADL Calls For “Major Law Enforcement Operation” To Deal With Obamacare Critics
Attack group mixes in completely non-violent Internet postings with death threats in new purge against Internet dissent
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, April 22, 2010
A major Anti-Defamation League report goes further than ever before in an effort to purge the Internet of all dissent, listing completely non-violent criticism of Obamacare posted on Internet forums as a reason to conduct a “major law enforcement operation” against opponents of big government and health care reform.
The ADL’s April 2010 report is entitled, “Violent Voices: Anti-Government Extremism Takes on New Intensity,” and consists largely of lists of comments culled from alternative news websites and forums, as well as Fox News.
“During the first few months of 2010, anti-government extremism has taken on a new level of intensity in the United States. The arrests of the Hutaree militia in Michigan illustrate this passion, which exists both within and outside the militia movement. Unfortunately, the Hutaree arrests may come to be seen not as the culmination, but rather as a first step in what may need to become a major national law enforcement operation,” states the introduction (emphasis mine).
Such words are chilling bearing in mind that the infamous MIAC report, which listed gun owners, Ron Paul supporters, libertarians and people who fly U.S. flags alongside neo-nazis and terrorists, was partly based on information provided to the Missouri Information Analysis Center by both the ADL and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
According to the ADL, a “major law enforcement operation” may be needed because Americans are upset that “health care reform effort is in fact key to evil efforts to implement a tyrannical government by any means necessary.”
While some of the comments listed by the ADL do hint at or call for violence, the organization underhandedly mixes them in with people who are merely expressing their displeasure at the passage of health care, amnesty, or new taxes. The vast majority of comments listed in the report relating to health care have no hint of racism or violence whatsoever.
One of the “extremist” comments worthy of a “law enforcement operation” listed by the ADL reads as follows.
“The bill that passed has NOTHING to do with healthcare,” wrote “TXplt” on the Gun and Game Forums on March 22. Rather, “…it is used solely as a vehicle to push an agenda—to destroy what is working in our insurance industries, to increase our government intrusion into citizens’ lives…and to eventually act as a vehicle for our power hungry miscreants to attempt to dictate every aspect of our lives.”
Another example is then listed.
A poster called “stainless,” writing to the Assault Web forums on the same day, thought the situation even more dire. “I don’t think you quite understand the scope of this bill,” he wrote. “From now on the gov. has absolute control of our lives…They can now declare a health ‘Emergency’ and shut down any portion of our society they want at any time. I suspect we will begin to see the practical affects [sic] of this control fairly quickly.”
Indeed, most of the comments listed in regard to health care contain no violent threats whatsoever. Consider the following example, which was posted by one of our own Prison Planet Forum moderators.
“Have you read the bill? It is a full police state bill. Your body is now owned by the state. Your children are owned by the state. Your blood, sperm, ovaries, all reproductive methods are owned by the state. Your organs are owned by the state. This is a Nazi Eugenics bill with full bailout financing to the federal reserve front companies (big insurance).” Post by “Sane” to the Prison Planet Forums, March 22, 2010.
This is shocking – the ADL lists relatively mild comments which criticize Obama, immigration, or the health care bill, statements that contain no threats and not even a hint of violence, and lumps them in with death threats against the President as well as lawmakers, immediately after stating that a “major law enforcement operation” needs to be undertaken to shut these people up.
(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)
A “major law enforcement operation” needs to be set up to take on people who don’t like Obamacare and express their dissatisfaction on the Internet? More than half the entire country opposes health care reform. The Feds are going to be kept very busy raiding every two-bit Joe Blogger who comments on a news story if the ADL has its way.
Curiously, since it emerged that white supremacist radio host Hal Turner was paid handsomely by the FBI to make death threats against federal officials, the ADL and the SPLC have stop including him on their list of domestic extremists. It seems that it’s only kosher to call for violence if you’re being ordered to do so by federal authorities.
Likewise, making death threats against people who the ADL or the SPLC disagrees with is also seemingly OK. We found comments on the Southern Poverty Law Center website from SPLC supporters calling for Alex Jones to be executed for his political beliefs. The ADL didn’t see fit to include these comments in any of their reports, and the SPLC left them up there for four months, only removing them after we wrote a story about the issue.
For organizations like the ADL and the Southern Poverty Law Center, hate is their business, and business is good. If there were no “domestic extremists” to dangle like bogeymen in front of the brainwashed public, the donations would dry up, and the lucrative government tie-ins would cease.
“The SPLC is in the money raising business for every known and unknown left-wing cause. It has gone from tracking the movements of violent racists, skinhead groups, and a brief resurgence of the KKK that number in the hundreds to creating hysteria over mainstream value voters,” writes Gary DeMar. “If you don’t agree with the SPLC leftist litmus test, then you are probably a member of a “hate group.” With its new definition of what constitutes a hate group, the SPLC has become a fund raising machine. It’s no wonder that the SPLC is flush with cash. Ultimately, the tactic is to strike fear in middle-America so the checks keep rolling in. Most communities don’t see skinheads or even KKKers, so the SPLC needs a tangible enemy.”
With so many Americans rightfully angered at the myriad of new taxes they face under Obamacare, not to mention new assaults in the pipeline – VAT taxes, carbon taxes, financial transaction taxes, the ADL has plenty of people at which to point who are upset and not afraid to show it.
But there’s a significant difference between being pissed off, angry at politicians, and wanting to protest or bitch about it, and being a domestic terrorist who wants to blow up federal buildings. Indeed, you probably need to be working for the FBI to have any interest in the latter. Also recall that the SPLC itself had operatives inside the Identity settlement in Elohim City, Oklahoma from where the OKC bombing plot had its origins.
“References to an informant working for the SPLC at Elohim City on the eve of the Oklahoma City bombing raises serious questions as to what the SPLC might know about McVeigh’s activities during the final hours before the fuse was lit in Oklahoma City – but which the SPLC has failed to disclose publicly,” the Daily Gazette reported, citing a declassified FBI memo.
The SPLC and the ADL have deliberately blurred the lines between the right to voice one’s grievances under the First Amendment, and inciting violence or planning terror (for those few individuals who are not paid to do so by federal authorities).
Up until now the ADL and the SPLC have concentrated on making lists of political activists, you know, like the Nazis did, who they disagreed with and then seamlessly tying them in with federal patsies like Hal Turner or Timothy McVeigh in an attempt to chill free speech and prevent people from actually researching the information these undesirables were putting out.
But now the ADL has gone a step further in actually calling for law enforcement action against people who leave non-violent rants and comments on websites, the mask has now been removed and the openly fascist effort to purge the Internet of dissent by arresting Obamacare critics is now underway.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/adl-calls-for-major-law-enforcement-operation-to-deal-with-obamacare-critics.html
From the Corbett Report
http://cotocrew.wordpress.com/
Sheep Getting Restless
Bill Clinton's Warning on "Extremist" Mood In US
By Ewen MacAskill
Amid growing concern in the White House about the anti-government mood and a marked rise in radical fringe groups, Clinton said the internet made it easier to spread ideas to reach "the unhinged".
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25291.htm
Disposable Soldiers
By Joshua Kors
April 22, 2010 "The Nation" - - The mortar shell that wrecked Chuck Luther's life exploded at the base of the guard tower. Luther heard the brief whistling, followed by a flash of fire, a plume of smoke and a deafening bang that shook the tower and threw him to the floor. The Army sergeant's head slammed against the concrete, and he lay there in the Iraqi heat, his nose leaking clear fluid.
"I remember laying there in a daze, looking around, trying to figure out where I was at," he says. "I was nauseous. My teeth hurt. My shoulder hurt. And my right ear was killing me." Luther picked himself up and finished his shift, then took some ibuprofen to dull the pain. The sergeant was seven months into his deployment at Camp Taji, in the volatile Sunni Triangle, twenty miles north of Baghdad. He was determined, he says, to complete his mission. But the short, muscular frame that had guided him to twenty-two honors--including three Army Achievement Medals and a Combat Action Badge--was basically broken. The shoulder pain persisted, and the hearing in his right ear, which evaporated on impact, never returned, replaced by the maddening hum of tinnitus.
Then came the headaches. "They'd start with a speckling in the corner of my vision, then grow worse and worse until finally the right eye would just shut down and go blank," he says. "The left one felt like someone was stabbing me over and over in the eye."
Doctors at Camp Taji's aid station told Luther he was faking his symptoms. When he insisted he wasn't, they presented a new diagnosis for his blindness: personality disorder.
"To be told that I was lying, that was a real smack in the face," says Luther. "Then when they said 'personality disorder,' I was really confused. I didn't understand how a problem with my personality could cause deafness or blindness or shoulder pain."
For three years The Nation has been reporting on military doctors' fraudulent use of personality disorder to discharge wounded soldiers [see Kors, "How Specialist Town Lost His Benefits," April 9, 2007]. PD is a severe mental illness that emerges during childhood and is listed in military regulations as a pre-existing condition, not a result of combat. Thus those who are discharged with PD are denied a lifetime of disability benefits, which the military is required to provide to soldiers wounded during service. Soldiers discharged with PD are also denied long-term medical care. And they have to give back a slice of their re-enlistment bonus. That amount is often larger than the soldier's final paycheck. As a result, on the day of their discharge, many injured vets learn that they owe the Army several thousand dollars.
According to figures from the Pentagon and a Harvard University study, the military is saving billions by discharging soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan with personality disorder.
In July 2007 the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs called a hearing to investigate PD discharges. Barack Obama, then a senator, put forward a bill to halt all PD discharges.
President Bush signed a law requiring the defense secretary to conduct his own investigation of the PD discharge system. But Obama's bill did not pass, and the Defense Department concluded that no soldiers had been wrongly discharged. The PD dismissals have continued. Since 2001 more than 22,600 soldiers have been discharged with personality disorder. That number includes soldiers who have served two and three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"This should have been resolved during the Bush administration. And it should have been stopped now by the Obama administration," says Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense. "The fact that it hasn't is a national disgrace."
On Capitol Hill, the fight is not over. In October four senators wrote a letter to President Obama to underline their continuing concern over PD discharges. The president, almost three years after presenting his personality disorder bill, says he remains concerned as well.
Veterans' leaders say they're particularly disturbed by Luther's case because it highlights the severe consequences a soldier can face if he questions his diagnosis and opposes his PD discharge.
Luther insisted to doctors at Camp Taji that he did not have personality disorder, that the idea of developing a childhood mental illness at the age of 36, after passing eight psychological screenings, was ridiculous. The sergeant used a vivid expression to convey how much pain he was in. "I told them that some days, the pain was so bad, I felt like dying." Doctors declared him a suicide risk. They collected his shoelaces, his belt and his rifle and ordered him confined to an isolation chamber.
Extensive medical records written by Luther's doctors document his confinement in the aid station for more than a month. The sergeant was kept under twenty-four-hour guard. Most nights, he says, guards enforced sleep deprivation, keeping the lights on and blasting heavy metal music. When Luther rebelled, he was pinned down and injected with sleeping medication.
Eventually Luther was brought to his commander, who told him he had a choice: he could sign papers saying his medical problems stemmed from personality disorder or face more time in isolation.
'Every Night It Was Megadeth'
Luther entered the Army in 1988, following in the footsteps of his grandfathers, both decorated World War II veterans. In 2005, after Hurricane Katrina, he and his unit were deployed to New Orleans, where he helped evacuate residents and dispose of bodies left in the street. In 2006 he was deployed from Fort Hood in Texas to Camp Taji, where he performed reconnaissance with the First Squadron, Seventh Cavalry Regiment, led by Maj. Christopher Wehri. "Luther was older and more mature than most of the soldiers. He was forthcoming, very polite," says Wehri. "He seemed to have a good head on his shoulders."
Doctors at the aid station didn't see him that way. Following the May 2007 mortar attack, Luther entered the base's clinic and described his concussion symptoms to Capt. Aaron Dewees. Dewees, a pediatrician charged with caring for soldiers in the 1-7 Cavalry, grew suspicious of Luther's self-report. "It is my professional opinion," Dewees wrote in his medical records, "that Sgt. Charles F. Luther Jr. has been misrepresenting himself and his self-described medical conditions for secondary gain." The doctor suggested that Luther was faking his ailments to avoid reconnaissance duty. He called the sergeant "narcissistic" and said Luther's descriptions of his injuries were a mixture of "exaggeration and flat-out fabrication."
Luther's medical records document severe nosebleeds and "sharp and burning" pain. Still, the sergeant says he could sense that his doctors didn't believe him. It was at that point--frustrated, plagued by blinding migraines--that he spoke of pain so severe he wished he were dead. "I made clear that I was not going to kill myself, that it was just a colorful expression to explain how much pain I was in." Dewees agreed. In their records, Luther's doctors note a "suicide gesture" and "'off-handed' comments" that the sergeant was going to kill himself, but Dewees said those gestures were "unlikely to have been a serious attempt" at self-harm. Nonetheless, Dewees wrote, such statements "must be taken seriously and treated as such," that Luther "remains a threat to himself and others given his need for attention, narcissistic tendencies and impulsive behavior."
Luther was taken to an isolation chamber and told this was his new sleeping quarters. The room, which Luther captured on his digital camera, served as a walk-in closet. It was slightly larger than an Army cot and was crammed with cardboard boxes, a desk and a bedpan. Through a small, cracked window, he could look out onto the base. Through the open doorway, the sergeant was monitored by armed guards.
Both Dewees and Lt. Col. Larry Applewhite, an aid station social worker, declared Luther mentally ill, suffering from a personality disorder. The next step was to remove him from the military as fast as possible. "It is strongly recommended that Sgt. Luther be administratively separated via Chapter 5-13," wrote Applewhite, citing the official discharge code for personality disorder. In a separate statement, Dewees endorsed the 5-13 discharge and urged that it be handled rapidly. "I feel the safest course of action," he wrote, "is to expedite his departure from theater."
That didn't happen. For more than a month Luther remained in his six-by-eight-foot isolation chamber, weeks he describes as "the hardest of my life." He says the guards would ridicule him and most nights enforced sleep deprivation, keeping the lights on all night and using a nearby Xbox and TV speakers to blast heavy metal into his room. "Every night it was Megadeth, Saliva, Disturbed." The sergeant pulled a blanket over his head to block out the noise and the light, but it was no use.
"They told me I wasn't a real soldier, that I was a piece of crap. All I wanted was to be treated for my injuries. Now suddenly I'm not a soldier. I'm a prisoner, by my own people," says Luther, his voice tightening. "I felt like a caged animal in that room. That's when I started to lose it."
Isolated, exhausted, the sergeant who had been confined for being mentally ill says he began feeling exactly that. Finally Luther snapped. He stepped out of his room and was walking toward a senior official's office when an altercation broke out. In the ensuing scuffle, Luther bit one of his guards, then spit in the face of the aid station chaplain. The sergeant was pinned to the floor and injected with five milligrams of Haldol, an antipsychotic medication. Sedated, Luther was returned to isolation.
Staff Sgt. James Byington, who was serving at Camp Taji with the 1-7 Cavalry, walked the half-mile to the aid station to visit his fellow soldier. Byington says that off the battlefield, Sergeant Luther was "animated and peppy," the comedian of the chow hall. During combat, he says, Luther was focused and prepared, a key component in a farmland raid just outside Taji that discovered a cache of weapons and money. The man he found in the isolation chamber was neither the soldier nor the comedian, he says, but something altogether odd and decrepit. "He wasn't energetic like he used to be. He wasn't cutting jokes. Chuck's one of those guys that talks with his hands. You go into a room with twenty guys, and you're going to hear Chuck Luther," says Byington. "Now he seemed half-asleep. He looked worn out."
A few hours after Byington's visit, Luther was called to his commander's office. Major Wehri was frank. He held the personality disorder discharge papers in his hand. "And he said, 'Sign this paperwork, and we'll get you out.' I said, 'I don't have a personality disorder.' But it was like that didn't matter," says Luther. "He said, 'If you don't sign this, you're going to be here a lot longer.'"
The sergeant signed. "They had me broke down," he says. "At that point, I just wanted to get home." Luther's voice grows quiet as he recounts that final meeting. "I still remember Wehri's face," he says. "He was smiling."
Wehri confirms his statements to Luther. He says he pressed the sergeant to sign because he felt it was in Luther's best interest and in the best interest of the Army. The sergeant, he says, "had gotten so belligerent. If we had returned him to his unit, he would have been a danger to himself and to others. His behavior was not suitable to military service. And he wanted to get home. So I told him, 'If your goal is to get home, and we've diagnosed you with personality disorder, your fastest way is to sign the papers. If you don't sign, you're just subjecting yourself to further anguish and discomfort.'"
Wehri insists that his comments to Luther were not pivotal to the sergeant's discharge. Even without a soldier's signature, a PD dismissal can proceed. But the papers would then move to an Army lawyer, and the process would be delayed. "You can't force anyone to sign," he says. "But if you're going to be stubborn and not sign, try to play hardball, you run the risk of a dishonorable discharge. With Luther's biting and spitting, I could have court-martialed him out right there for failure to perform in a military manner."
The major says Luther's real story is that of a good soldier who came home for leave, saw his wife's new haircut and slimmed figure and was driven mad by fears of her infidelity. "When he came back to Iraq, something had changed. He had a negative attitude. He wouldn't respond to direct orders. His head wasn't in the game." Wehri says it became clear to him that Luther was intent on returning home right away, a realization that left him disappointed but not shocked. "Soldiers are conniving," he says. "They are manipulative. If they get in their minds they want to do something for personal gain, including going home, they'll go to any lengths to get it."
Wehri rejects the idea that the mortar attack and subsequent concussion could have triggered Luther's woes. "That mortar attack was nothing," he says. "Insignificant. Maybe he fell down. Sure. I've fallen down lots of times." The major wonders aloud whether Luther is using that injury to justify his instability. He says if he thought the attack was significant, he would have investigated it fully and gotten the ball rolling for a Purple Heart.
The major confirms that Luther was confined to the aid station for several weeks and that his room was minuscule. But he says those circumstances were unavoidable. "Discharging a soldier with personality disorder is a very long and drawn-out process," he says. "And Luther was a danger to himself and others. He needed to be watched. The aid station, that's where they had 24-7 supervision."
Wehri says he marvels at the idea that Luther could be a poster child for false personality disorder discharges. He has seen seven personality disorder cases in his career, he says. "And Chuck Luther was by far the clearest one." The major says that when Luther's troubles began, the sergeant's behavior confounded him. Then, says Wehri, he heard from a commander who said Luther's family had spoken with him and revealed that Luther had suffered from psychiatric problems before entering the military and had been treated with medication. "Then suddenly it made sense to me," says Wehri. "This was not new. His symptoms were just popping up now, after he'd kept a lid on them for many years. It all clicked into place."
But Luther's wife and his mother say that story is flatly false. Both say they never had such a conversation with an Army commander and are emphatic that the sergeant never faced any psychiatric problems before entering the military. "Hearing that makes me really angry," says Luther's mother, Barbara Guignard. "Chuck was an all-American boy. He never took any medication, and he never had a problem."
How Dewees and Applewhite came to the conclusion that Luther was suffering from a pre-existing mental illness remains unclear. They declined to elaborate on their notes or discuss the diagnosis of personality disorder in general. What is clear is that neither Dewees nor Applewhite spoke with Luther's family before determining that his problems existed before his military service. The sergeant's wife and his mother say that had they been asked, both could have provided key information demonstrating Luther's stability and health before the mortar attack.
Spc. Angel Sandoval says he could have helped as well. Sandoval, who was stationed at Camp Taji and served under Luther in the 1-7 Cavalry, laughs at the idea that the sergeant was mentally ill. "Chuck was a lot more than 'not mentally ill,'" he says. "He saved my life." Sandoval describes heading into combat under Luther's command. The specialist was ready to dump his side-SAPIs, large ceramic plates that strap to the side of a bulletproof vest, protecting the kidneys from machine-gun fire. "They're bulky and kinda heavy, but he said, 'No way, you have to wear them,'" says Sandoval. "Two days later I got shot right there, under my arm. It could have killed me."
Luther, he says, was "one of the greatest leaders I had. He never steered me wrong. If they thought he was ill and needed medical help, they should have given it to him instead of kicking him out of the Army."
But it was Wehri and Applewhite's view that mattered. Soon after signing the personality disorder papers, Luther was placed in a DC-10 and whisked back to Fort Hood. There he would learn about Chapter 5-13's fine print: he was ineligible for disability benefits, since his condition was pre-existing. He would not be receiving the lifetime of medical care given to severely wounded soldiers. And because he did not complete his contract, he would have to return a slice of his signing bonus.
At the base, a Fort Hood discharge specialist laid out the details. "He said I now owed the Army $1,500. And if I did not pay, they'd garnish my wages and assess interest on my debt," Luther says.
Luther was then released into a pelting Texas rain. He called his wife, Nicki, to pick him up. "When I got to Fort Hood he was in the parking lot, alone, wet, sitting on his duffel bag," Nicki recalls. "He had lost a lot of weight. He looked like...a little boy. I remember thinking, My God, what have they done to my husband?"
The President 'Continues to Be Concerned'
Luther's case is not an isolated incident. In the past three years, The Nation has uncovered more than two dozen cases like his from bases across the country. All the soldiers were examined, deemed physically and psychologically fit, then welcomed into the military. All performed honorably before being wounded during service. None had a documented history of psychological problems. Yet after seeking treatment for their wounds, each soldier was diagnosed with a pre-existing personality disorder, then discharged and denied benefits.
That group includes Sgt. Jose Rivera, whose hands and legs were punctured by grenade shrapnel during his second tour in Iraq. Army doctors said his wounds were caused by personality disorder. Sailor Samantha Stitz fractured her pelvis and two bones in her ankle. Navy doctors cited personality disorder as the cause. Spc. Bonnie Moore developed an inflamed uterus during her service. Army doctors said her profuse vaginal bleeding was caused by personality disorder. Civilian doctors disagreed: they performed emergency surgery to remove her uterus and appendix. After being discharged and denied benefits, Moore and her teenage daughter became homeless.
"The military is exacerbating an already bad situation," says Sullivan of Veterans for Common Sense. "This is more than neglect. It's malice." Sullivan's organization has spent the past few years pressing officials in Washington to take action on the personality disorder issue. In July 2007 he testified before the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs. Sullivan told the committee that PD discharges needed to be halted immediately.
That month Obama put forward his bill to do just that. The bill was matched in the House by legislation from Representative Phil Hare, and it had passionate support on both sides of the aisle, from prominent Democrats like Senator Barbara Boxer to high-ranking Republicans like Senator Kit Bond. Sullivan and other veterans' leaders say they were hopeful that Obama would use the spotlight of the presidential campaign to generate further momentum for his bill.
That didn't happen. In the twenty-one months of his presidential run, the Illinois senator never spoke publicly about PD discharges or his bill to halt them. Eventually, without widespread public knowledge or support, and facing opposition from senators who had never heard of personality disorder and worried the bill would open a floodgate of expensive benefits, Obama and Bond, the bill's co-author, were forced to reshape it into an amendment and water down its contents. Their amendment did not halt PD discharges. Instead, it required the Pentagon to investigate PD dismissals and report back to Congress. The amendment, part of the Defense Authorization Act, was signed by President Bush in January 2008.
Five months later the report landed on Obama's and Bond's desks. The Pentagon's conclusion: no soldiers had been improperly diagnosed, and none had been wrongly discharged. The report praises the military's doctors as "competent professionals" and endorses continued use of pre-existing personality disorder to discharge soldiers whose "ability to function effectively" is impaired. The report's author, former Under Secretary of Defense David Chu, further notes that though the Navy's official label for the discharge is "Separation by Reason of Convenience of the Government," soldiers "are not wantonly discharged at the convenience of the Military."
It is unclear how Chu came to these conclusions. The report does not cite any interviews with soldiers discharged with personality disorder, or their families, doctors or commanders. That fact infuriated many military families, as it triggered memories of a 2007 study by former Army Surgeon General Gale Pollock. Pollock had been asked to examine a stack of PD cases. Five months later she released her report, saying her office had "thoughtfully and thoroughly" reviewed them. Like Chu, she commended the soldiers' doctors and determined that they all had been properly diagnosed. The Nation later revealed that Pollock's office did not interview anyone, not even the soldiers whose cases she was reviewing [see Kors, "Specialist Town Takes His Case to Washington," October 15, 2007].
"He doesn't talk to soldiers, and he doesn't talk to their families?" says Nicki Luther, the sergeant's wife, her eyes welling with tears. "I heard the same thing from that surgeon general, and I thought, You haven't been in my house. You don't know what I've dealt with. How dare you sit there and say you've investigated thoroughly and found nothing. That's a crock."
The Chu report does recommend several changes to the PD discharge system, alterations, it says, that will protect soldiers from being wrongly discharged. Those protections include requiring that a doctor diagnose the soldier's personality disorder and a lawyer counsel him on the ramifications of the discharge. The report also recommends that the surgeon general review each soldier's case and endorse the PD discharge before releasing the soldier from the military.
Chu, a Bush appointee, left office in 2008 with the president. But his findings remain as the Defense Department's position on PD discharges. In early April the Pentagon released a statement saying that Clifford Stanley, the current under secretary, is implementing Chu's recommendations and fully embraces his findings.
That fact left many on Capitol Hill enraged. "This study, with the new requirement to have the upper-ups approve discharges--all it basically did was set up one more hurdle. As far as we can tell, the impact has been somewhere between zero and less," says Senator Bond. Bond says the Pentagon still hasn't explained the fundamental contradiction of a PD discharge: recruits who have a severe pre-existing mental illness could not pass the rigorous screening process and would not be accepted into the military in the first place. Yet he says his office is looking at several cases, like Luther's, in which the soldiers have been deemed physically and psychologically fit in several screenings before their personality disorder is diagnosed. "These men and women who have put their lives on the line, we owe them," says Bond. "We have a responsibility. Discharging them with personality disorder--it's just an easy way to duck that responsibility."
The Republican from Missouri says he's hopeful that Obama, his partner on the PD bill, will take action from the White House. "He has a unique chance now to change the whole operation, to alter the system from the inside." In October Bond gathered a small coalition of senators and wrote a letter to the president, asking him to confront the issue once again. "In 2007 we were partners in the fight against the military's misuse of personality disorder discharges," wrote the senators. "Today, we urge you to renew your commitment to address this critical issue."
The next week Senator Boxer, a co-sponsor of the original bill, submitted a statement of her own. "It is simply appalling that any combat veteran with a Traumatic Brain Injury [TBI] or Posttraumatic Stress Disorder would be denied medical care for injuries sustained during combat," Boxer wrote. Even with the reforms that followed the Chu report, "we must make sure that the new discharge process...is working."
The White House responded quickly, assuring the senators that the president still has his eye on personality disorder. President Obama "is determined to fulfill America's responsibility to our Armed Forces," says White House spokesman Nicholas Shapiro. "The president was concerned with personality disorder discharges as a senator, and he drafted a bill. He continues to be concerned as commander in chief."
Disposable Warriors
Luther hopes that concern will translate into action. The sergeant stands in his backyard, 1,500 miles from Washington, five miles from Fort Hood, talking about Obama's bill and watching his 7-year-old daughter floating high above the family's oversize trampoline, her face wild with joy. Luther looks on with sullen eyes. "Right now I can't worry about Washington, or even about fixing my discharge papers," he says. "First thing, I got to fix myself." He gestures to his daughter, a mop of blond hair leaping to and fro. "I used to be like that: a goofball, all this energy. Now... I don't know."
Some nights he doesn't sleep. Others he's back in Iraq, in the aid station, in endless isolation. The blinding headaches and piercing shoulder pain still plague him, he says, along with panic attacks and bursts of post-traumatic stress-fueled rage. Luther broke four bones in his hand punching a hole in his bedroom wall. His family's hallway is pocked with holes from similar incidents.
"He's not the man I married," says Nicki Luther. "And when I'm honest with myself, I don't think I'll ever have that man again. He wakes up screaming in the middle of the night, sweating, swearing." Nicki says he tries to be a good dad to their kids. "He used to wrestle around with them. But his body's like an old man's now. And he's so quick to anger. The kids say, 'We want our dad back.' I don't know what to tell them."
Three years after the mortar blast, Luther's life is still on shaky ground. Some days he's posting love notes on his wife's Facebook page and hand-delivering her favorite salad to her office at lunchtime. Another day, in the midst of an argument, he knocked down a family photo, then ripped the furniture out of the living room and dumped it in the garage, scaring his children. Soon after the birth of their fourth child, Marlee Grace, Luther and his wife separated. They reunited a few months later, in time for their eighteenth anniversary.
Luther knew he needed help. This time he sought it outside the military. He began seeing Troy Daniels, a psychologist, once a week. One fact was clear immediately, says Daniels. "He did not have personality disorder. The symptoms we were looking at looked more like traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder. To take a soldier having problems with vision, hearing and so forth--and to say he has personality disorder--that's a bogus kind of statement. I don't even think a master's student would make that kind of mistake."
While Daniels dismisses the Army doctors' diagnosis as a "gross error," he says he was not surprised by it. "I've treated hundreds of soldiers over the years, and I've seen a dozen personality disorder diagnoses. None of them," says the psychologist, "actually had personality disorder."
Yet all of those soldiers, he says, faced serious repercussions because of their discharge. "Many of the soldiers can't get hired anymore. Every time they go for a job, they'll have this paper that says they've been diagnosed with a personality disorder. Employers take one look at that and think, 'This guy's crazy. We can't hire him.' For most of the soldiers," says Daniels, "it becomes a lifetime label."
Luther luckily has secured a job, as a truck driver for Frito-Lay. Securing benefits has proved a bit tougher. Since being released from the Army, the sergeant has been locked in battle with the VA, fighting to prove that despite his PD discharge, his wounds are war related and thus worthy of disability and medical benefits.
Those efforts stumbled at first. In May 2008 the VA declared Luther "incompetent" and demanded that a fiduciary collect any disability benefits he may receive. Eventually, following a slew of paperwork and medical exams, the sergeant re-established his full standing. This past December--after VA doctors found Luther to be suffering from migraine headaches, vision problems, dizziness, nausea, difficulty hearing, numbness, anxiety and irritability--the VA cited traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder and declared Luther 80 percent disabled. "PTSD, a consequence of the TBI," wrote one VA doctor, "is a clear diagnosis."
The VA rating cleared the way for the sergeant to receive disability benefits and a lifetime of medical care. But it hasn't changed the Army's view--or altered Luther's discharge papers, which still list the sergeant as suffering from personality disorder. The sergeant, in return, has refused to pay back the $1,500 of his signing bonus that the Army says he owes, despite threats to garnish his wages. "I told them, Let me put it this way: as long as I'm breathing of my own free will, I'm not paying you a dime."
Luther says what really boils his blood is having to accept that his military career is over while the careers of those who devised his discharge are flourishing. After Luther's dismissal, Wehri, a captain at the time, was promoted to major and selected to be an executive officer with NATO. Dr. Dewees returned to Kentucky, where he continues to serve with the National Guard. Social worker Applewhite is now an instructor at Fort Sam Houston, where he teaches a class on how to identify mental disorders.
With or without the Army, Luther says he will continue to serve. With his health gradually improving and the bulk of his battle over, the sergeant is taking on a new mission: fighting the military on behalf of other soldiers like himself. Luther is now the founder and executive director of Disposable Warriors, a one-man operation that assists soldiers who are fighting their discharge and veterans who are appealing their disability rating.
Luther's organization did not receive a hero's welcome. Soon after founding the group, he discovered a threatening note on his windshield. "Back off or you and your family will pay!!" it read, in careful, black ink cursive. Weeks later, thieves broke into the home of a veterans' organizer who worked closely with Luther, taking nothing but the files of the soldiers they were assisting.
The sergeant, characteristically, is undaunted. "This is the right path for me," he says, his voice resolute. "I got to be there for these other soldiers. I'm not the only one who needs help."
Joshua Kors covers veterans' issues for The Nation. He is the winner of the National Magazine Award, George Polk Award, and Military Reporters and Editors Award. He was also a finalist for Harvard's Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting and the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award. His work is featured in the American Society of Magazine Editors' recent anthology "The Best American Magazine Writing 2008."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25293.htm
Gotta get me one.
Been a manipulated rally since March of 20009. And the inverse relationship between the market and the economy hasn't been this obvious since the Great Depression.
It's why I have a couple GS calls.
Thank you Trinity, I got a shortcut to it on my desktop. :)
Loved that hide the decline video. LOL
Actually not kindof. Really creepy.
:) yes, I did notice the armchair but I think of an old worn leather chair as comfy. But you are correct...it doesn't go with the shiny suit. LOL
I saw it on FOX.
His tie looks rather strange, but what do I know about high fashion. LOL
American Kleptocracy
How Fears of Socialism and Fascism Hide Naked Theft
By William J. Astore
April 21, 2010 "Tom Dispatch" -- Kleptocracy -- now, there’s a word I was taught to associate with corrupt and exploitative governments that steal ruthlessly and relentlessly from the people. It’s a word, in fact, that’s usually applied to flawed or failed governments in Africa, Latin America, or the nether regions of Asia. Such governments are typically led by autocratic strong men who shower themselves and their cronies with all the fruits of extracted wealth, whether stolen from the people or squeezed from their country’s natural resources. It’s not a word you’re likely to see associated with a mature republic like the United States led by disinterested public servants and regulated by more-or-less transparent principles and processes.
In fact, when Americans today wish to critique or condemn their government, the typical epithets used are “socialism” or “fascism.” When my conservative friends are upset, they send me emails with links to material about “ObamaCare” and the like. These generally warn of a future socialist takeover of the private realm by an intrusive, power-hungry government. When my progressive friends are upset, they send me emails with links pointing to an incipient fascist takeover of our public and private realms, led by that same intrusive, power-hungry government (and, I admit it, I’m hardly innocent when it comes to such “what if” scenarios).
What if, however, instead of looking at where our government might be headed, we took a closer look at where we are -- at the power-brokers who run or influence our government, at those who are profiting and prospering from it? These are, after all, the “winners” in our American world in terms of the power they wield and the wealth they acquire. And shouldn’t we be looking as well at those Americans who are losing -- their jobs, their money, their homes, their healthcare, their access to a better way of life -- and asking why?
If we were to take an honest look at America’s blasted landscape of “losers” and the far shinier, spiffier world of “winners,” we’d have to admit that it wasn’t signs of onrushing socialism or fascism that stood out, but of staggeringly self-aggrandizing greed and theft right in the here and now. We’d notice our public coffers being emptied to benefit major corporations and financial institutions working in close alliance with, and passing on remarkable sums of money to, the representatives of “the people.” We’d see, in a word, kleptocracy on a scale to dazzle. We would suddenly see an almost magical disappearing act being performed, largely without comment, right before our eyes.
Of Red Herrings and Missing Pallets of Money
Think of socialism and fascism as the red herrings of this moment or, if you’re an old time movie fan, as Hitchcockian MacGuffins -- in other words, riveting distractions. Conservatives and tea partiers fear invasive government regulation and excessive taxation, while railing against government takeovers -- even as corporate lobbyists write our public healthcare bills to favor private interests. Similarly, progressives rail against an emergent proto-fascist corps of private guns-for-hire, warrantless wiretapping, and the potential government-approved assassination of U.S. citizens, all sanctioned by a perpetual, and apparently open-ended, state of war.
more....http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25280.htm
American Kleptocracy
How Fears of Socialism and Fascism Hide Naked Theft
By William J. Astore
April 21, 2010 "Tom Dispatch" -- Kleptocracy -- now, there’s a word I was taught to associate with corrupt and exploitative governments that steal ruthlessly and relentlessly from the people. It’s a word, in fact, that’s usually applied to flawed or failed governments in Africa, Latin America, or the nether regions of Asia. Such governments are typically led by autocratic strong men who shower themselves and their cronies with all the fruits of extracted wealth, whether stolen from the people or squeezed from their country’s natural resources. It’s not a word you’re likely to see associated with a mature republic like the United States led by disinterested public servants and regulated by more-or-less transparent principles and processes.
In fact, when Americans today wish to critique or condemn their government, the typical epithets used are “socialism” or “fascism.” When my conservative friends are upset, they send me emails with links to material about “ObamaCare” and the like. These generally warn of a future socialist takeover of the private realm by an intrusive, power-hungry government. When my progressive friends are upset, they send me emails with links pointing to an incipient fascist takeover of our public and private realms, led by that same intrusive, power-hungry government (and, I admit it, I’m hardly innocent when it comes to such “what if” scenarios).
What if, however, instead of looking at where our government might be headed, we took a closer look at where we are -- at the power-brokers who run or influence our government, at those who are profiting and prospering from it? These are, after all, the “winners” in our American world in terms of the power they wield and the wealth they acquire. And shouldn’t we be looking as well at those Americans who are losing -- their jobs, their money, their homes, their healthcare, their access to a better way of life -- and asking why?
If we were to take an honest look at America’s blasted landscape of “losers” and the far shinier, spiffier world of “winners,” we’d have to admit that it wasn’t signs of onrushing socialism or fascism that stood out, but of staggeringly self-aggrandizing greed and theft right in the here and now. We’d notice our public coffers being emptied to benefit major corporations and financial institutions working in close alliance with, and passing on remarkable sums of money to, the representatives of “the people.” We’d see, in a word, kleptocracy on a scale to dazzle. We would suddenly see an almost magical disappearing act being performed, largely without comment, right before our eyes.
Of Red Herrings and Missing Pallets of Money
Think of socialism and fascism as the red herrings of this moment or, if you’re an old time movie fan, as Hitchcockian MacGuffins -- in other words, riveting distractions. Conservatives and tea partiers fear invasive government regulation and excessive taxation, while railing against government takeovers -- even as corporate lobbyists write our public healthcare bills to favor private interests. Similarly, progressives rail against an emergent proto-fascist corps of private guns-for-hire, warrantless wiretapping, and the potential government-approved assassination of U.S. citizens, all sanctioned by a perpetual, and apparently open-ended, state of war.
more....http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25280.htm
The Road to Total War
Must Watch Video
From Napoleon to Nagasaki, The Road to Total War charts how the social, economic and technological developments of the last two hundred years have made warfare so efficient that it can now destroy us all.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25289.htm
Tea Party Racism??
An American Phenomenon:
The Widespread Psychiatric Drugging of Infants and Toddlers
By Evelyn Pringle
Federally funded research published online in December, 2009, revealed that children covered by Medicaid were prescribed antipsychotics at a rate four time higher than children with private insurance.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25287.htm
The Financial Terrorists Who Destroyed Our Economy Will Pay Zero in Taxes -- and Get $33 Billion in Refunds
By David DeGraw
You and I are working our asses off, paying 30% of our limited income in taxes. Not the banks that triggered the financial crisis.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25253.htm
:) Have a great evening. :)
Oh yeah. I got some cheaper too. There is no way this was anything other than manipulation.
Unless we are going into another well needed correction finally.
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April 20, 2010 The Absolute Worst Stock to Buy Right Now
Lots of folks on Wall Street want to know which stock to buy. Today, I want to look at the absolute worst one to buy. My friends, that stock is Netflix (NFLX).
Now before anyone says that I’m being mean to the company, please bear in mind that I’m not offering a judgment on the managers or the employees. There’s a very big difference between a good company and a good stock. Netflix has a business record that anyone should be proud of. The stock, however, is terribly, terribly overpriced.
Let’s look at some numbers. Last year, Netflix made $115.9 million of sales of $1.67 billion. That works out to earnings of $1.98 a share. The stock, however, is currently around $86 or 43 times trailing earnings. The shares were overpriced at the start of the year and they’re up another 55% since then.
When the fourth-quarter earnings came out in January, Netflix said that it expects full-year earnings-per-share for 2010 to range between $2.28 and $2.50. So even going by the top end of forward earnings, NFLX is still trading with a P/E ratio of around 35 which is more than twice the S&P 500. That’s just crazy.
Netflix also said that it expects revenues between $2.05 and $2.11 billion. That’s a growth rate of 23% to 26% which is slightly better than last year’s 22%. The problem with the valuation is that a lot of NFLX’s earnings growth has come from profit-margin expansion. That’s a very good thing to have, but I’m skeptical of how much more that can improve without the company exposing itself to potential rivals like Redbox. On top of that, business could be hurt by higher postal rates and the elimination of Saturday delivery. Also, companies like Walmart (WMT), Amazon (AMZN) and Best Buy (BBY) loom in the background.
Netflix’s net margins improved from 5.6% in 2007 to 6.1% in 2008 to 6.9% last year. Earnings are coming out tomorrow and it could be bad news. I have little doubt that the company will top the Street’s expectations of 54 cents pet share. In January, Netflix said to expect Q1 earnings between 47 and 58 cents per share. With the stock so high, NFLX has zero room for error. The stock is simply far too high to expect a reasonable return.
If you own Netflix, you ought to sell it as soon as possible. The next 12 months won’t be pretty.
In this age of protection for criminals and no morality our government is the biggest criminal of them all.
Good one. If it wasn't reality it would be funny. The thought of homeless pets depresses me even more. Add that to what is pissing me off.
Yes...but....you are dealing with a crooked system here. LOL
Gotta figure out whether O wants it to go up or down here.
LOL Man O Man am I pissed off today. LOL. Crooked ass politicians and the system.
Scammy people everywhere pretending to be Christians.
Celebs conning old people into reverse mortgages.
Welfare leaches sitting back and whining they don't get more.
Middle class getting thrown out on the street.
Stock market rigged.
And no morals or integrity in sight anywhere.