"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" -- MLK

This Blog Has Moved!

2009-02-22T14:05:00.004-05:00

Nick's Crusade has moved to nickscrusade.org!

To read the new blog's intro, click here. If you like my blog and would like to see every new post, a great web tool for following blogs is http://www.feedmyinbox.com/ You simply insert the URL of the blog ( in this case, http://www.nickscrusade.org/wordpress/ ) and it automatically emails you the new blog posts.

Thank you!

Nick

Obama Victory A Great Moment, Now The Hard Work Begins

2008-11-05T07:05:00.000-05:00

Wow! What an amazing night.

When NBC News abruptly announced that Barack Obama had become the 44th President of the United States, I was watching with my girlfriend. We were yelling with joy. I yelled "VIRGINIA IS BLUE!!! I CAN'T BELIEVE IT! VIRGINIA!! IS! BLUUUUE!!!!!!"

Outside the hospital room door, we could hear the staff shouting in happiness and surprise (one of the very Christian nurse's aides voted and fasted and prayed to Jesus for this win).

It was an incredible moment of spontaneous elation like I've never experienced. Me and my soulmate sharing the excitement of sudden new hope our lives and the lives of all Americans could actually improve was one of the happiest times of my life. I'll never forget it.

And wow, the tally is amazing...
349 electoral vote OBAMA LANDSLIDE! (and climbing)

This wasn't remotely close. This is an electoral blowout.

Obama became the first Democrat to win Virginia in 44 years. A black man won the Virginia of Loving v. Virginia infamy. Even my grandfather in Virginia Beach voted Obama.

also
RECORD-SHATTERING YOUTH TURNOUT!!

And, our first post-boomer, post-culture war president.

UNPRECEDENTED CLEAN SWEEP of the midwest.

Obama won Ohio and Indiana ...he won Florida and handily flipped (over 60%) several Bush counties in Central FL.
Obama won North Carolina, Virginia, the heart of the Confederacy.

This is a HISTORIC NATIONAL REALIGNMENT.

I'm so lucky and happy I witnessed this moment.

I'm so glad we finally have a president who isn't openly resented by minorities and the poor (e.g. me).

I'm so glad we have a city-oriented president (this is our first president basing himself directly from a big city since Kennedy in 1960). More and more people live in cities, and our public policy should shift accordingly (more light-rail funding pls, kthx).

And most of all, I'm so glad we finally have a president who is free of the unAmerican can't do attitude that has metastasized over the past eight years.

Improve health care? Sorry. Can't do.
Modernize our crumbling infrastructure? Sorry. Can't do.
Fund research breakthroughs? Sorry. Can't do.
Finish a war in a shorter time than WWII? Sorry. Can't do.
Encourage alternative energy sources? Can't do (unless it's inefficient corn ethanol, cynically subsidized to placate Iowa caucus interests).
Build an effective levee system? Sorry. Can't do.

We're the people who put a man on the moon; we can do anything. Surely we can nation-build in our own country.

Now it can be:
Make health care suck less - YES WE CAN.
End a costly Iraq occupation - YES WE CAN.
Overhaul our infrastructure - YES WE CAN.
Produce green technology and invest in alternative energy - YES WE CAN.
Create lots of good jobs rebuilding infrastructure and making green technology - YES WE CAN.
Shore up some levees - YES WE CAN.

"Anything is possible" - Barack Obama

In 77 days, the Obama Administration begins, and the hard work of making possibilities into realities begins anew.
It won't be easy to say the least. It will take a LOT of work to get anything good out of this corrupt Congress. But for the first time in my adult life I have hope some good changes can be accomplished.

Let's get started.

Nick

Why I Voted For Obama

2008-11-04T17:42:00.004-05:00

Today, November 4th is the big General Election in the United States.

Last week I mailed in my absentee ballot and voted for Barack Obama for president.

Why?

Here's why:

While it's always a bit difficult for me to vote for one of the two dominant parties (whose incompetence, lack of principle or outright corruption got us in this mess in the first place) I just can't support any of our current third-party options. All the third-party candidates I've seen so far are scumbags, crackpots or extremists on the Lunatic Fringe who I don't want near the White House, because most of their ideas are incredibly dangerous to the general welfare.

Instead of third-parties, I strongly support this concept: we sane, common sense people must HIJACK both parties and rebuild the system.

Rebuild the system!! Our infrastructure is shamefully decrepit. If you look at infrastructure and train stations in Germany and compare to ones here, you may mistakenly think the Germans won WWII. The people are willing to pay to modernize this country. Americans want to nation-build, but we don't want to nation-build in Iraq on the other side of the globe anymore, we want to nation-build IN AMERICA. How about giving all the poor people a job rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure? I've met very few Americans who want a handout. Most want a good job where they can actually contribute. Let's create jobs repairing it, and building the transportation network of the future (MagLev anyone?)

Rebuild the system!! For example, a good way to fix the health care crisis would be for a strong supporter of consumer choice and a dogged opponent of profiteering middle-men to take over at Department of HHS and spearhead a total redesign of the system with COMMON SENSE reforms.

Can Obama hijack the party and get stuff done? I'll be pressuring him as much as I can to start. Amputating both the Clinton and Bush platforms from our politics is a very important first step, and I will give no quarter until I see a full exorcism of those dangerous old ideas.

I'm afraid of old, failed policies hanging around and sapping our country's strength further. Pro-war "conservatives" do not support the amount of sacrifice required to make their foreign policy plans financially feasible (instead they fight tooth and nail against paying the tab they ran up) which will doom this country to insolvency. They want a grandiose foreign policy, but don't want to pay for it.

Wars are very expensive, always have been, and always will be. War debt has driven numerous nations to economic collapse (ask the Russians about the Soviet-Afghan war). Read David McCullough's books on early U.S. history, they make it clear how serious war debt can be. After the Revolutionary War, the United States government had to seize people's houses to pay off the war debt, which led to armed revolt in Massachusetts. I wish pro-war advocates realized just how financially untenable their "two land wars in Asia plus no paying the tab" policies are. This can ruin your child's quality of life, they'll be the ones forced to pay up. Eventually. you've got to pay the piper.

My biggest problem with John McCain the neo-cons isn't that their "Team America: World Police"-style foreign policy is immoral and doomed to failure (though this is close second).
My biggest problem is that they won't pay for it, and I'm very worried that in 5, 10, 15 years when we must choose either to gut Medicare and Medicaid or not make good on our interest payments to China and risk an international incident, America's (and my) quality of life will be ruined. It's WRONG, deeply unfair to put your fellow Americans in that position. I don't want to be punished for policies I hate and never supported (of course, upcoming administrations will be blamed because the Republicans wouldn't pay the piper, and that's unfair too).

Check out this great case study of the Missouri battleground in TIME Magazine. It seems the heartland is hurting, and hurting badly economically, and for pretty much everyone interviewed for this story, that's meant a tidal wave of emotion against the Republican brand, and support for Obama (even among former Bush voters). After reading articles like this one, you can almost feel a 1932-style landslide afoot.

But this election is just the beginning of the battle. It will take extraordinary pressure, people DEMANDING real change, for any meaningful reforms to get past Congress, and it will be especially difficult with the next president hemmed in by events, but it can happen. I believe.

But Americans can't just poke a voting booth, then go back to loafing on the couch and expect the government to fix itself. It won't work that way.

Nick

Hey Everyone, I Almost Died ... Again

2008-10-16T03:05:00.000-04:00

Wow. Last Thursday was my first CODE BLUE since February 1992.

Human error + clogged lung = over 10 min hypoxic and unconscious. And it led to a not-so-happy jaunt to Bellevue ER which was ultimately pointless aside from the observations gleaned, and my first sight of the Empire State Building from the back of the ambulance.

What triggered all this? My airway became totally occluded by mucous. Suctioning didn't fix it. The vent was unable to get air to me. At home, we know to BAG BAG BAG if the vent's normal operations are being blocked. I TYPED AMBU. The nurse said "ambu?"
then, DIDN'T AMBU!

Shortly after that, everything went black. Then I felt oddly disconnected from corporealNick; not like sleep--this was a near death experience. Then a split second later, I open my eyes, and the RT with the big Goliath beard is bagging me. As soon as someone AMBUed and oxygen started reaching my brain again, I woke up. It felt like a split second later, but the clock was indicating 10+ min later!

It was around 4:15am. Mohammad is bagging me, Tony the RT is also there, the on-call doctor is there, the nurse is there and also several people I've never met are there. I realize a code blue had been called (your patient is blue? CODE BLUE!!) though they canceled it once they realized my pulse had never stopped and I was pretty easy to revive (just bag me, dammit!)

Tony dumps a bullet of albuterol solution direct to my trach. The young on-call doctor is calling an ambulance and calling the number on the "next of kin" form (my mom) and telling her it could be a pulmonary embolism or heart attack or stroke. He didn't think someone could be that blue, and that unconscious for so long, from just a mucous plug, and wanted people in acute care to rule out serious problems, so off I went to the ER at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. The ambulance left Roosevelt Island and all types of tall buildings, complete and incomplete, blurred past.

Going to Bellevue ER was rather pointless. The ER doctor said "he's not hypoxic," which was true, and after that they pretty much ignored me (to focus on patients who are actual in crisis). . Bellevue is better than USA hospital in Creighton in Mobile, where gangsters with gunshot wounds bleed beside you in the waiting room or occasionally wander in and shoot their friends, but not by much. It is the same genre of place, a "last resort"-type hospital for the city's uninsured, though it seemed a lot better funded than USA (most everywhere is). But it's definitely not as bad as NYPD Blue depicted Bellevue on TV, putting violent people in cages, etc. (maybe that's upstairs). Some staff were friendly, others, as my girlfriend put it, had "a false veneer of helpfulness," and lots of others just ignored me because they were too busy dealing with the city's drunks, criminals and psychos. The dude across from me drank a brewery and ran afoul of the law and the NYPD brought him in and brought him out.

Aside from observing interesting things like that, spending my day in the Bellevue ER was a total waste of time. My girlfriend (thank G-d she was there to help me communicate) and I sat there for eight hours while they did nothing they couldn't have done here at Coler (an EKG and an x-ray). They can do this here, and did!

As I returned to Coler via ambulance, I got a great view of the Empire State Building from the back window, right before we turned into a tunnel. That was cool.

I was so glad to get back to my room and the nurses who are familiar with what I need, and very happy to be alive after all that.

But later that night, I did break down psychologically some. It was so scary, so close to death, so close to losing everything I want so much. It was too much.

But I am okay now, physically and mentally intact.

Monday, one of the Filipino RNs (insights often come from unexpected places) mentioned I almost died on The Day Of Atonement. "On that day, The Powerful One decides who goes," she said. "You stayed. This is a good omen for the New Year."

I hope that's true.

This is like my hundredth second chance. I feel the pressure. I can't waste this chance, not even for a day.

Nick

Providing A Soft, Pillowy Landing For Stupid CEOs?

2008-09-29T23:22:00.000-04:00

AP: Economists see financial bailout as necessary

O RLY??

It's hardly the soup kitchen for people at the very top.

The chairman of Lehman Brothers, Richard Fuld, still has his mansion in Greenwich, CT, his oceanfront estate on Jupiter Island in FL, and his Park Avenue co-op in Manhattan.

Many at Lehman blame Fuld for dallying while his investment bank went bust, taking risks with other people's money while he cleared over $40 million in salary and stock in the last year alone.

Fuld could not be reached for comment by 20/20, but outside the Lehman offices this week, employees took glee in telling him off in pen on a portrait of Fuld.

"He made a lot of money and he lost a lot of money," said Fox business news anchor Alexis Glick, "and he made dramatic mistakes, mistakes of the highest magnitude."

Glick has been highly critical of Fuld, feeling the pain in a direct way. She has many friends at Lehman and her mother worked there for years.

"It's just unbelievably shocking," said Glick, speaking about the devastation felt by her family and friends. "So they're crying, they're sick, I mean guys have been telling me they've been throwing up because they just can't stomach what has happened."

Fuld isn't the only top executive who remains well-off despite his firm's collapse. Former Bear Stearns CEO Alan Schwartz collected more than $38 million in salary and bonuses in the last three years for which figures are available, though he and Lehman executives also saw their net worths drastically plummet as stock values crashed. Bear Stearns was on the brink of financial ruin when JP Morgan Chase bought it in March.

Full article: The Fall of the Gilded Age

IS BAILING OUT LEHMAN REALLY NECESSARY?

Shouldn't we wait until their CEO had to sell one of his three luxury homes before bailing out Lehman?

It really seems like we're rewarding these guys instead of letting them naturally get picked clean and displaced by smarter competitors.

Obviously we do need to do something to restore confidence in our banking system. I recently overheard nurses talking about pulling their money out of banks and hiding it at home (1930s-style) for fear it'd disappear in a bank collapse. That's how serious the problem is getting. I'm not saying do nothing. I don't have an issue with helping out banks like IndyMac or Washington Mutual, but bailing out rich Wall Street investment firms seems a whole 'nother animal.

The $700 Billion financial "bail out" bill seems to be all about providing a soft, pillowy landing for stupid decision-makers at taxpayer expense. They keep their three luxury homes, and we pay the price for their idiocy.

And articles like this only highlight the unfairness:

7. Do the Wall Street executives get to keep their bonuses?
The Bush Administration says it needs to encourage executives to get their cooperation, and that clamping down on their pay would only hurt their willingness to get on board. Critics in both parties say the threat of the executives' firms going belly-up should ensure their cooperation regardless of what restrictions are placed on their once golden parachutes. Mounting pressure from constituents on Main Street is likely to mean there will be some cap on compensation associated with the bailout. But corporate America usually finds a way around such limitations, and there are even legal questions about what kind of restrictions can be placed on the firms' compensation structures.

Full article: 7 Questions About the $700 Billion Bailout

If this disaster really requires $700 BILLION worth of government intervention, who is paying for it? My first instinct when corporations harm us, is TRUST-BUSTING! And this meltdown is a screw up of unprecedented magnitude, with harm to the public of historic proportions.

Where are the CONSEQUENCES for bad, stupid leadership?

Can anyone tell me why, as part of this bill, the Treasury Department isn't seizing CEO yachts and mansions to pay for this debacle? Why is demanding real consequences worse than paying nearly one trillion ourselves? We'd rather foot the bill in their stead? WHY??

If these idiotic decisions by Wall Street have no real consequences, and the dumbasses responsible keep their three estates and golden parachutes, no real lessons have been learned, we're basically incentivizing even more stupidity down the line.

And now Congress has weighed in. They are saying:

I'm not saying do nothing. But clearly we have to do something different. The original Paulson plan isn't going to fly. We can't afford a cushy deal for the uber-rich.

Nick

Living In A City of Immigrants: Dismantling Anti-Immigrant Ideas

2008-09-18T07:13:00.000-04:00

I don't live in Alabama anymore. I live in New York City in a rehab hospital now. This song, "City of Immigrants" really captures the heart of this city (and I love folk music).

Hat tip to Mark for pointing out this video!

This is a great city, and probably the most diverse on Earth. As an avid observer of humans sent from another planet, I find this place fascinating. The song's line "all of us are immigrants" couldn't be more blatantly true as it is here in this hospital.
NY residents from earlier waves of immigration are evident; I see Irish people and Italians. and a lot of black Americans who left the South seeking jobs post-slavery. Moving among them are newer immigrants. I've met lots of Jamaicans and people from Trinidad, and some Haitians. The most competent respiratory therapist in this unit I think is Haitian. The doctor for this unit is a Russian woman. and the social worker for the unit is Russian also, the VR counselor is Russian, and the aides for the ENT and the dentist are Russians too. There was a Russian language newspaper lying around. There are people from Spanish-speaking areas and bilingualism is widespread (I did fairly well in Spanish in high school and college and it's coming back to me enough that I can usually get the gist of what's being said en espanol). There are lots of Hindus and Pakistanis here. I've met two Arabic respiratory therapists; one is a big guy with a Goliath beard. One nurse I think is Korean. And LOTS are Filipino. It's not uncommon to hear a nurse shouting something in Filipino in the distance. In this unit, the night nurses are almost always the same two Filipino women.

It's endlessly interesting for me to meet people from different parts of the world every day. It's also evolved how I think about immigration. I've heard a lot of anger back home that immigrants "won't learn our language." My time in New York City has already shown this complaint to be false. Everyone I've met who works in this hospital, despite being from all corners of the globe, has a good command of English. I've learned that, if necessary, any situation that requires English, will use a sort of "natural selection" to get English-speakers. The fact is, someone not fluent couldn't last in a fast-paced, demanding hospital environment like this (in patient care at least) and those who adapt are the ones you see able to work here. This proves to me that people will gain fluency in English when they need to, language barriers naturally self-correct when necessary, and that all the fear-mongering about English being displaced and demands to ram "English as an official national language" down everyone's throat are unjustified and look kind of dumb in light of what this hospital is actually like.

Yes, immigration can be problematic, especially when corporations use it as a weapon to shave wages to the bone, break unions, and displace locals economically (the practice in recent decades of laying off whole groups of local workers and bringing in Mexicans for below minimum wage to run entire factories has created acute resentment in the working class that may take generations to heal.) But that's a problem of corporate scumbag behavior, not the immigrants' fault.
Though it's sort of a stereotype, I've found that many of the immigrants working here really are less complacent, more adaptive and want to work harder than the Americans I went to high school with who often simply do not care. I think immigrants should be welcomed. And we need to reexamine our anti-immigration policies, because America is facing some serious demographic challenges. In short, we are on the precipice of a major collapse as waves of "baby boomers" retire and there are only a scant few from my own "millennial generation" able (or, frankly, willing) to replace their parents' skill sets, and we don't seem to want to let in more immigrants to fill those shoes.

I keep thinking, if you really hate immigrants, how would you hack it in a place as diverse as New York City? How would you even decide which group to oppose on a given day? Jamaicans? Mexicans? Are the Russians the real problem today? With so many ethnic groups, you'd need something akin to a medication day planner to efficiently manage your diet of hate.

On Sunday, hate Arabs, Monday and Tuesday hate Hispanics, Wednesday hate Indians, Thursday hate Haitians, Friday hate Jews and on Saturday hate Russians?? Is that how it would work? Heh!

"All of us are immigrants"

In New York City, I'm very aware I AM an immigrant too. And not just the fact that much of my family tree came from Europe to Ellis Island. I grew up in The Port City: Mobile, Alabama, and though it's quite diverse too, it is lightyears apart culturally, socially and technologically. Since I've visited NYC before, I'm not feeling "culture shock," per se, but it is like being in a whole new country (though a much needed change). I've often found myself starting sentences with "in my country, we don't..." because they do things so differently here.

But regardless of location, I'm used to feeling like an alien. My weird background and unusual way of seeing things makes me feel like an immigrant from another planet a lot of the time. And I feel this place is right up my alien alley, what with this often random, sometimes bizarre hospital environment, and with me speaking with a thick ventilator accent which only one here (my girlfriend) can consistantly understand.
Yet. I can't remember the last time I've felt so much happiness and hope as I do here.

I look forward to writing more observations from New York City soon!

All my best,

Nick

View From Coler Hospital

2008-09-17T00:37:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Aaron, who visited Sunday, we have this great photo of the view outside where I'm living at Coler hospital:

I Now Live at Coler hospital. My first twitter feed from NYC. Sept. 15

2008-09-16T02:47:00.000-04:00

Here's what I posted to Twitter today:

16:52 The doctors (rehab, pulmonologist, ENT) finally decided on a new trach. Thank G-d, this old trach simply won't work anymore. #
17:07 The new trach is being rush ordered and should arrive Wednesday. #
17:08 In Coler day room, in makeshift manual wheelchair. Aleja rigged pillows so I can use mouse in chair, because she is FTW. #
18:06 Aleja turned the TV off FOX News, thus saving future inhabitants of the Coler day room from political hackery. YAY! #
19:11 WABC local news has much more violence and depravity than WNBC news. WABC sounds more like Mobile, AL news. :-P #
19:11 Met with head of Wheelchair Charities in Coler day room. He agreed to purchase a powerchair for me for use while a patient here! WOW! #
19:14 Aleja translates my difficult speech into common tongue, sorta like how Aaron relays for Moses. :) #

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Today's Twitter Feed, Aug. 12, '08

2008-08-13T00:52:00.000-04:00

Here's what I posted to Twitter today:

04:09 I wonder how long i can sustain this level of busy-itude before I crash? A week? A month? #
04:14 Genesis 2:18 is important. #
04:20 Religion is like an ice pick, it can create (sculptures, cocktails, etc.) or destroy (murder weapon). Let's make it more of the former, pls. #
04:55 Will Obama Listen to the Disability Community? I hope so! ping.fm/qISAK #

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Will Obama Listen to the Disability Community?

2008-08-12T03:53:00.000-04:00

Good news...I managed to get my "Medicaid: Why It's Broken and How To Fix It" post in the hands of Obama's disability vote director. He sent me an email saying "Got it. Thanks."

I'm really glad my message got through to the Obama camp (I wish I could get an email to the McCain people too). I hope they listen. I have learned to be skeptical.

I hope Obama implements serious reform like the Community Choice Act. My concern is that, whoever wins the presidency, they will only get some watered-down incremental expansion past the corrupt Congress, and we'll end up only bloating the system instead of the difficult* structural overhaul that's so badly needed. Let's not keep spending to reupholster the Hindenberg. We need to do the hard work and get some real change.

Will Obama listen to the disability community?

Nick

* requires breaking the back of numerous corporate special interests, hurting people's feelings and would risk open revolt from legislators who are sponsored by the Medical Industrial Complex.

McCain Not Supporting The Community Choice Act

2008-08-06T00:03:00.000-04:00

In my last post, I mentioned various politicians who are co-sponsoring and supporting the Community Choice Act:

New England has already caught on--MA and NY passed similar legislation years ago. Congressmen from both parties have signed on to the bill, which was formerly named MiCASSA; how can you argue citizens shouldn't be able to choose where to live? Newt Gingrich even agreed to co-sponsor after ADAPT activists barricaded his nursing home fund raiser in 1996.

Back in 2004, I met with my Congressman, Jo Bonner (R - AL 1st district), and convinced him to co-sponsor (he said he would not have co-sponsored had he not seen my fight).
Gore backed it in 2000, Kerry did in 2004, now Obama in 2008. McCain said he wouldn't support it, and ducked explaining why in any substantive way.

I wanted to flesh this out.

Here is this moment, immortalized on YouTube.

In this clip, the audience member, an activist in a wheelchair with cerebral palsy, asks Senator McCain if he will support the Community Choice Act. She mentions the institutional bias, and the Community Choice Act enabling people to choose where they live. She is also referencing the terrible disparity between states when she says this (apparently Colorado) is one of the best states and that she moved to Colorado from Mississippi and her friend had to move there from Tennessee to get community services. The question is pretty straightforward: "will you support our legislation?" His answer: "I will not."

In McCain's reply, he says simply that he will not support the Community Choice Act, and that it's "not the right kind of legislation." He doesn't say WHY, or what would be the right legislation instead. Then he quickly swerves off the topic and picks up on disability legislation he can think of that he supports (the Americans with Disabilities Act) even though this really has nothing to do with the question. This kind of artful dodging of the issue is classic politician tactics 101, and I've seen it first-hand countless times when I've interacted with legislators. They bob and weave away from the topic and ransack their mind for the the first non-related disability issue they can support. It is pretty lame.

But at least McCain answered the question. And it does takes guts to say "no" to someone on TV. And kudos to McCain for actually holding town hall meetings with free-flowing Q&A that isn't vetted beforehand. Obama should be doing similar Q&As.

But McCain's obvious lack of knowledge of the topic asked about is really sad. He only says "not the right kind of legislation" and nothing more. I'm assuming the nursing home industry told him this and he's not looked further. Sigh.

This is really an uphill battle. We are a handful of unpaid grassroots activists and, being disabled, it's hard for us to travel to Washington, DC. The industry has teams of highly-paid lobbyists leaning on politicians in DC and all 50 states and are very good at blocking any changes. The idea of home care competing on an even footing is anathema to them. They like the status quo as-is, and do not want anyone rocking the gravy boat. This would be like if, in the age of automobiles, government had a law that they will still only help people buy a horse and buggy and we can't get progress because the horse and buggy industry backs so many candidates. We just want people to be able to freely choose between a horse and buggy or car, but the industry will go to any length to protect itself from competition. It sucks.

This is the current status of the Community Choice Act.
Thanks for reading!

Nick

Medicaid: Why It's Broken and How To Fix It

2008-08-01T13:41:00.000-04:00

The point of this post is to explain what the Medicaid system is to the uninitiated, and describe the vast inequalities between states, and the gangrenous corruption that undergirds the system.

First off, before I begin, Medicaid is NOT the same as Medicare. And if you talk like you don't know the difference (o hai Mr. Bush) you should not be president. Medicare is a federal entitlement, the same everywhere, and everyone over 65 is eligible, but Medicaid is state-run (with federal matching funds and federal guidelines from CMS) and you're not eligible unless you're poor and/or disabled (eligibility varies depending on the state).
Because I am a Medicaid Wonk and long-term care reform activist, and Medicaid is the primary provider of long-term care in this country, Medicaid is my primary focus.

My battle with Medicaid was because the federal guidelines only say states have to cover disabled children, so in many of the poorer states, once you turn age 21, tough luck. In my friend Chris' case, they cut him off and he died.
This week, I'm reading that states are still arbitrarily cutting kids off at 21, with much suffering resulting, and this has prompted a flurry of posts and emails by me. In Texas, they dumped over 300 people off the cliff in the Houston area alone, even those, who, like me, are on life support! Just like my case, advocates are seeking injunctions in court to block these cases from being "terminated." Houston Press Article: What happens when chronically-ill kids grow up?

Also, the same story in Illinois, filing an injunction to keep a ventilator case covered.

Let me explain the root of these problems.

We don't have one health care system in America, we have 50. Medicaid is different in each state. They even have different names (in CA it's Medi-Cal, in OR it's the Oregon Health Plan, in MA it's MassHealth, in Alabama it's Alabama Medicaid Agency, etc). I cross a state line, and I start from scratch with different regulations, different eligibility and different services available.

The programs already exist to provide universal health care. Why do we fall so short of that and why do these tragedies keep occurring? Because of how it's designed. We don't force the 50 state Medicaid programs to cover everyone, due to "'states' rights." If you've read the 1965 Medicaid statute (I had to, due to this) you will see it is mostly head-spinning legal contortionism; the feds created a cluster of a system, where states are required to do things, yet simultaneously not required to, incentives given and matching funds provided, yet complicated loopholes allow states to opt-out of most provisions, or opt-out of Medicaid entirely. Where does this leave us? It leaves us with THIS: 50 different, separate health care systems, some near-universal coverage already in New England, and the South scraping every loophole and, in some cases, barely having the Medicaid program at all. It leaves us with the states blaming the feds and the feds blaming the states, while people die.

It is very apparent to me that we need strong federal solutions to overhaul this ad hoc patchwork system. Leaving states alone to manage Medicaid can lead to states' functioning as "laboratories," where new approaches are tested, but more often it just means horrific funding disparities and radically different quality of life for severely disabled people. In Minnesota, New York, and other states, I saw people in wheelchairs all over, integrated with the assistance needed to live in their own places and have their own lives, whereas here in Alabama, disabled people get stuck at home without help or shoved in back wards of nursing homes, and to see one of us moving about in society is a rare oddity (people do double-takes seeing me down here, while in NY, seeing mutants like me is the norm and people didn't gape).

Historically, we don't like the federal government telling the states what to do. Should we accept an inferior health care system that gives us less than our Canadian neighbors as "a necessary evil" just because we don't like strong government? No, that is not a good enough reason to keep the current system. We have to rebuild this thing. Here are my ideas, none of which the current candidates have talked about on the stump.

Solution: simplify, streamline, regularize and bring parity to funding for the health system, at least change the funding scheme to bring the poor states up into the 21st century. End the ad hoc patchwork system. The shocking disparity between states is inhumane. Let's fix it by mandating that a county with comparable population in the South gets the same percentage matching funds (FMAP) as a county up North.

Solution: Stop sucking away people's self-sufficiency. Alabama Medicaid has the most severe limits on income they can have and still keep federal matching funds. If I get a job making over (roughly) $1200 a month, they will "terminate services," they say. It is both immoral and harmful to taxpayers to actively discourage self-sufficiency. In NY, where I am attempting to move, their rules are much more liberal, and I will aggressively pursue employment. As I understand it, NY Medicaid has a much higher eligibility cap, and even if you make over the cap, they don't cut you off like here, you just have to pay a "buy-in" on a graduated scale depending on your income bracket. It should be a no-brainer to require all states to have the graduated scale buy-in, and encourage people with disabilities to enter the workforce and be, at least partially, self-sufficient.

Solution: Stop forcing people into expensive nursing homes.

This is my personal crusade since the state gave me no option but a nursing home or nothing after I fell off their eligibility at age 21 and I waged my campaign to fix it.

Improvements in technology mean that even people like me who depend on ventilators to breathe can better succeed in a home setting, instead of nursing homes, which study after study has proven cost WAY more. Why do they cost so much more? Because you're paying rent, utilities, food, and company overhead and profits, typically over $30,000 annually for a low-end place, whereas at home, family and friends often cover rent, utilities, food, etc. and Medicaid only has to pick up the care (on average, roughly $5000 a year, since many elderly people are still ambulatory and require little assistance.)

But, of course, the government mandates the more expensive, least desirable, and most dangerous option (statistics for infections and abuse in institutions vs. home care are staggering). The 1965 federal Medicaid law requires states cover nursing homes, but home care is a difficult-to-fund "optional" service (in disability rights circles, we call this the "institutional bias"). Why was it designed this way in 1965? Well, technology did not advance enough so that severely disabled people could thrive at home until the 1980s. If Nick, ventilator-dependent 24/7 and on oxygen and tube feedings, can live at home, nearly ANYONE could with proper supports, and live at less cost than the institutions, which are heading toward the fate of the horse and buggy.

Right now at age 21 we are actually forcing disabled people out of college and into nursing homes in order to get the care they need. Everyone should be outraged and the waste of tax dollars, wasted human potential and the crushing of personal liberty and self-sufficiency. Right now most have no choice, they're unnecessarily forced into these institutions, to become mere profit sources for corporate entities, sort of how humans are farmed for energy in The Matrix.

It doesn't have to be this way. Why hasn't Medicaid law adapted to changing conditions? Because the nursing home industry won't give up their gravy train. Special interests basically own the system lock-stock-and-barrel. They have billions spent to buy legislators and lobbyists in DC and all 50 state capitols. Their dominance in Ohio is such that they passed legislation giving nursing homes an automatic annual funding boost, by statute, not subject to an annual vote. In Alabama, they have rigged the laws so nursing home directors get an automatic ($300,000 a year I think) salary from Alabama Medicaid Agency. I managed to get this exposed on the front page of the Mobile Register down here, but the industry defended it by saying "we cannot continue to care for the elderly and disabled without this, etc." and the voting public didn't even waste a yawn on the subject.

We must stop forcing people into expensive nursing homes. How? The Community Choice Act.

The Community Choice Act would end the "institutional bias" in federal Medicaid law, and bring home care into parity, thus letting the consumer choose where to live. If America is about freedom, we should be able to choose where to live. Allowing more to chose to stay home would also save billions. New England has already caught on--MA and NY passed similar legislation years ago. Congressmen from both parties have signed on to the bill, which was formerly named MiCASSA; how can you argue citizens shouldn't be able to choose where to live? Newt Gingrich even agreed to co-sponsor after ADAPT activists barricaded his nursing home fund raiser in 1996.

Back in 2004, I met with my Congressman, Jo Bonner (R - AL 1st district), and convinced him to co-sponsor (he said he would not have co-sponsored had he not seen my fight).
Gore backed it in 2000, Kerry did in 2004, now Obama in 2008. McCain said he wouldn't support it, and ducked explaining why in any substantive way.

Read the latest on the Community Choice Act here.

More funding is definitely needed, especially in the poor states, but unless we cut out the gangrenous corruption that is wasting billions with laws propping up things like the outdated and costly nursing home model, then the extra funding will go into perpetuating the problem, or straight into the hands of Boss Hog-style nursing home owners. Obama should put the Community Choice Act front and center. We shouldn't just expand the system without really overhauling the underpinning corruption and brokenness of how Medicaid is designed. But a major change would require breaking the back of numerous corporate special interests, hurting people's feelings and would risk open revolt from legislators who are sponsored by the industry. Unless Obama puts the Community Choice Act into law, and attacks other special interest "leaks in the system," such as hospitals charging $70 for a band-aid and similar nonsense profiteering off the weak, then I fear we will simply bloat the existing system more instead of the monumental systems change that's so desperately needed.. Cobbling something together on top of the very corrupt, wobbly-legged and near-incoherent 50-state hodgepodge may make the system more prone to collapse.

Obama is trying for incremental change that could actually pass Congress. I really hope we somehow provide some relief, but to really get me rallying behind a health care plan a candidate would need to stump about the Community Choice Act, or say something along the lines of "I will completely replace the Medicaid program with something that doesn't suck."

Let's pass the Community Choice Act and honor our people's inalienable right of freedom of association.

And let's take the best of other nations' systems and make an American version better than anything the world has ever seen. If we can put a man on the moon in 10 years we can certainly craft a workable health care system that protects health while protecting our liberties.

Please forward this blog far and wide.

Lead on!

Nick Dupree

Happy 50th Birthday NASA!

2008-07-29T21:10:00.000-04:00

Wow.

NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, turned 50 today!

Happy Birthday, NASA!

Dear NASA: develop a working shuttle pls, and harvest Helium 3 from the Moon for nuclear fusion power to save humanity from the energy crisis, kthx.

I can haz moonwalk.

Weird SHC History: 45th Anniversary of Lee Harvey Oswald Speech

2008-07-27T10:12:00.000-04:00

Hey fellow history buffs:

Here is some very, very weird history for you all. On this day 45 years ago, July 27, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald spoke at Spring Hill College.

He gave a speech to Jesuit seminarians discussing what daily life was like in the USSR, which he defected to. He worked there from 1959-1962. After his speech, the Jesuits asked him questions about communism, and he answered them as a committed Marxist on the one hand, and an American disillusioned with the drudgery of Soviet life on the other hand.

When I was a student at SHC (1998-2005) I never once heard Oswald mentioned. It is very interesting and more than a little creepy than I studied in a building where a presidential assassin once stood. The most likely trigger man for the biggest assassination in our recent history, held a discussion at my college mere months before JFK was killed.

I found a summary of Oswald's speech at Spring Hill. Incredible! Here is a piece that really caught my eye:

The workers, he said, were not against him because he was an American. When the U-2 incident was announced over the factory radio system, the workers were very angry with the United States, but not with him, even though he was an American.

He made the point that he disliked capitalism because it's foundation was the exploitation of the poor. He implied, but did not state directly, that he was disappointed in Russia because the full principals of Marxism were not lived up to and the gap between Marxist theory and the Russian practice disillusioned him with Russian communism. He said, "Capitalism doesn't work, communism doesn't work. In the middle is socialism and that doesn't work either".

For the full summary of Oswald's remarks and the Q&A with the Jesuits click here.

I added this link to Facts About SHC on Wikipedia as well.

Reading this is also weird because it is like reviewing Exhibit Z in the criminal case against Lee Harvey Oswald.

I didn't realize how deeply involved in communism Oswald was. Bobby Kennedy never thought his brother's assassination was a communist plot, he suspected internal enemies (source) but reading this speech at SHC really makes me wonder.

Nick

New Blog Title

2008-07-25T10:09:00.000-04:00

My blog is changing and advancing as I evolve and grow as a person.

Its new title is based on this book.

And this song.

:)

Relocating Nick: The Current Game Plan

2008-07-04T05:45:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned in this past post, I'm working hard on changing my life and relocating to a new situation. I've begun searching harder and harder and we've put up a web page to explain my situation and ask for help: http://nickscrusade.org

I've got a lot of desire and ambition and am chomping at the bit to move out, get independence, see things, feel things, and finish college while I'm still physically able to do so. I have looked at other states' programs for years, but not many take ventilator cases and also there is the problem of how to survive during the gap before Medicaid services can kick in (a few weeks at best). That Gordion knot has seemed impossible to untie.

But thanks to my point person in NY (she also helped set up the nickscrusade.org site and friendsofnick@gmail.com email) I've come across a possible solution: go into a rehab center in NYC that specializes in ventilator care, one of the best in the country for vents, Coler-Goldwater Specialty Hospital & Nursing Facility. See more info here: http://www.nyc.gov/html/hhc/coler-goldwater/html/departments-medical-pulmonary.html

The plan would be to stay there in the short term and let all the NYS Medicaid and other services kick in, then work on independence, getting into college, etc.

I thought it would be good to let everyone know that this is the game plan at the moment. We're currently trying to get what is required for admission to Coler nailed down, figure out the next steps, then do them. I hope to be in NY as soon as possible--if not in July, in August.
Lots of support will be needed in the first week and thereafter. Visitors will be important.

Anyone who has ideas or wants to help, please write friendsofnick@gmail.com.

Thanks, and I'll keep the blog updated with the latest details on my progress.

Nick

Nick Dupree Published In National Textbook

2008-07-03T06:15:00.000-04:00

My latest accomplishment is that this article of mine was published by the Greenhaven Press imprint of Gale Publishing in their Opposing Viewpoints Series, which is heavily used both in libraries and high school and college courses, to introduce differing views of the issues. I'm in the 2008 edition of Opposing Viewpoints: Health Care, if anyone is interested.

New Poem: June 11, 2008

2008-07-03T06:07:00.000-04:00

Whirlwind

Tumbling on a troubled sea
and drifting down
the stream of consciousness
my mind circling, overwhelming me.

Rivers never stop running
over the spiked rocks,
neon fishes and warped clocks
never stop bringing me back to you,

a soul shimmering and wise,
even covered in someone else's dirt
can't escape penetrating eyes.

I look up at the
black rapids swirl
broken kaleidescope halo
all around one girl.

Nick's Crusade Part II

2008-06-08T11:22:00.000-04:00

I got back http://nickscrusade.org/
and it is focused on relocating me. Mom's health has declined, Alabama will not pony up for additional supports (other than a nursing home) and I really need to get to a better state or I'm gonna be screwed.

I'm looking hard at NYC, Minneapolis, Portland, and other areas for the best opportunities I can find. I've built up a huge list of contacts over the years of traveling to give seminars on advocacy, and am leaning on those contacts hard now, looking for people who can pull some strings.

Now is the time! I have goals I must accomplish (life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) and life is an hourglass glued to the table.

Can you spread http://nickscrusade.org/ to any of your contacts that could assist?

Thanks so much,

Nick

Follow me on Twitter

2008-06-08T10:25:00.000-04:00

For those of you who use Twitter, you can see my near-daily notes at http://twitter.com/nickdupree

For those of you who have no idea what Twitter is, it is a social networking site where you can
"micro-blog," i.e. send updates to your friends in 140 characters or less. For more, see the Twitter Frequently Asked Questions.

Nick

New Poem: May 28, 2008

2008-05-28T13:45:00.000-04:00

Psychedelic Angel

It's understandable
to doubt
in a world of pain! darkness! disappointment!
I can only pray the scales will level out

I try
to understand,
Psychedelic angel,
take my hand!
Nothing will stop
a phoenix,
rising from the sand.

Let us try to
go the other way
I sometimes try to pass as nothing
but my dreams give me away

Psychedelic angel,
come to me!
I'll work it out
love is not the enemy.
The sun is cresting over metallic dunes again
and I pray, one day
the scales will level out.

My First Poem / Song In Five Years

2008-05-19T14:31:00.000-04:00

Nothing's Gained Without Loss

Take me.
Take me to the indigo
Shut off
shut off the radio
endless in my brain
show me the light
that isn't an oncoming train

Nothing's gained without loss
I understand the rain
drop can't create without
losing its shape
on the grass-tips.

Strip it
all away soon
lose it
shed my cocoon
without a trace
Fall!
I have faith
and uncovered face

Change me!
Create again.

No "Personal Responsibility" For Corporations?

2008-02-24T13:08:00.000-05:00

Justices Shield Medical Devices From Lawsuits

Ok, basically, thanks to this Supreme Court ruling, corporations can make products that kill your mom, and can do this with total impunity and have no "Personal Responsibility" whatsoever. They are invincible. You have no recourse as long as the product was rubberstamped by the all-too-fallible, all-too-bribable FDA.

Of course, it would reduce costs tremendously if we banned all product liability lawsuits entirely, but we do not want to live in a society where no one is responsible for their actions.

If my faulty load-bearing wall collapses and kills your mom, you would sue me, right?

Why is it right to sue me over my faulty wall, but impossible to sue me for my faulty medical device?

Why do medical corporations get this level of favoritism? Is it because they bribe everyone like crazy?

Politicians love to scream "personal responsibility," but this does not apply to corporations, apparently. This is just more tyranny, more special rights for corporations that citizens do not have. I am not pleased.

Nick

After 26th birthday, getting back on track

2008-02-24T12:58:00.000-05:00

Last night, I turned 26.

I hope I can do something better with my 26th year than my 25th!

Here's to a new location and new opportunities in my life!

Nick

My Virtual Seminar

2008-02-22T05:34:00.000-05:00

Last Saturday I gave my advocacy seminar I've given all over the country, in Second Life (SL).

You can view the PowerPoint and read the full transcript of the event here:
Grassroots Advocacy in Second Life: Namav Abramovic (Nick Dupree)

Also check out Aldon's blog, where he juxtaposes my speech with a recent Obama speech. It is powerful stuff.

Nick

A Snapshot of Tonight's Stream of Conciousness

2008-02-07T10:37:00.000-05:00

This old song is really speaking to me right now.

Got no feel, I got no rhythm
I just keep losing my beat
I'm ok, I'm alright
Ain't gonna face no defeat
I JUST GOTTA GET OUT OF THIS PRISON CELL
SOMEDAY I'M GONNA BE FREE, LORD!

The State Of Our Union

2008-01-29T13:16:00.000-05:00

The whole State of the Union has grown way too "cult of personality" for me. Like the General Secretary's Annual Address to the Supreme Soviet, you see "spontaneous" 10-minute standing ovations after Comrade President introduces the next Five Year Plan (only in our case, it's "here's platitudes about stuff I want to do this year.") This isn't a Bush issue, it's been going on since I can remember; but still, it makes me uncomfortable. It's just another blatant sign of our inexorable slide into authoritarianism.

Thomas Jefferson wouldn't deliver the State of the Union in person; he thought it too monarchical, so he mailed in his address instead.

Now I understand why. The 20th (and now 21st) century Presidential Address looks like the Imperial Senate in Rome. The founding fathers would be appalled by this.

Also they'd be appalled by Bush's proposals tonight:

shattering the Fourth Amendment with warrantless wiretapping and retroactive immunity for illegal wiretappers
calls for further federal control over local schools
demanding we impose indefinite imperial rule over far-flung localities
saber-rattling against Persia and dictating they submit to our terms, when Iranians are unable to threaten U.S. soil.

...for starters.

Nick

Helping People in the Virtual World

2008-01-29T13:12:00.000-05:00

In Second Life, my "avatar" is Namav Abramovic.

I'm involved in several projects. Heron Sanctuary (and Namav) are already getting some ink in the Second Life blogosphere.

Medicaid reform activist Namav Abramovic read about people with disabilities using Second Life in the Washington Post, and logged in for the first time on October 20, 2007. Because he has muscular dystrophy, he uses a ventilator to breathe. Namav can't use a keyboard, or lift his hands at all. As he told Gentle, "I type with my thumb on a trackball mouse and click out text by hitting letters on onscreen keyboard software. I had run a support group online in the past, and am interested in using virtual community to support people with disabilities. I joined The Heron Sanctuary in November, and now have founded Open Gates, a THS project to provide 24/7 peer support in Second Life."

Read the full article:

The Story of The Heron Sanctuary

This is the notecard I hand out about my Open Gates project in Second Life:

Open Gates Peer Support community is a group for Second Life residents with disabilities -ANY disability-- to turn for support.

Living with a disability can be difficult (understatement) and our goal is to be a desperately-needed 24/7 support channel. for people with disabilities in SL. The gates are always open.

People who need someone to talk to can simply IM the group and type in the Open Gates channel, and chat there, or use it to ask to IM or meet privately.
Your hosts are Namav Abramovic and Kat Klata; IM one of us to join the group or just for someone to lean on. Remember that once you join the group, you'll see calls on the Open Gates channel 24/7.

Though only for peer support (and not intended as a substitute for professional advice) we hope we can help people.

Open Gates Peer Support is a project of The Heron Sanctuary, a support community for people with disabilities.
To learn more, please click http://www.theheronsanctuary.info/wiki/

Where have I been?

2008-01-20T15:03:00.000-05:00

Well, I've been alive, just distracted from blogging.

In October, my computer died, and I spent nearly three weeks on mom's old PC unable to run applications heavier than Firefox. I made the best of the situation and did a lot of reading, especially about Second Life, a 3d virtual community. What especially caught my eye was this article in the Washington Post about people with disabilities using Second Life (SL):

Brown, Salvatierra and Dawley are just a few examples of an increasing number of sick, disabled and troubled people who say virtual worlds are helping them fight their diseases, live with their disabilities and sometimes even begin to recover. Researchers say they are only starting to appreciate the impact of this phenomenon.

"We're at a major technical and social transition with this technology. It has very recently started to become a very big deal, and we haven't by any means digested what the implications are," said William Sims Bainbridge, a social scientist at the National Science Foundation.

In addition to helping individual patients, virtual worlds are being used for a host of other health-related purposes. Medical schools are using them to train doctors. Health departments are using them to test first responders. Researchers are using them to gain insights into how epidemics spread. Health groups are using them to educate the public and raise money.

These increasingly sophisticated online worlds enable people to create rich virtual lives through "avatars" -- identities they can tailor to their desires: Old people become young. Infirm people become vibrant. Paralyzed people become agile.

Read the full article:
Real Hope in a Virtual World: Online Identities Leave Limitations Behind

As soon as I got my computer back, I jumped into SL with both feet. It can be a great thing for people who, due to disability and associated barriers, are unable to do much in real life, and people lonely and seeking interaction. It can do a lot of good. It's head and shoulders above past alternatives. And it's free.

This is the next frontier for disability culture, as well as a way to support others, socialize, and even a source of income (one woman makes $250,000 annually selling dresses in SL).

So far I am doing several things in SL:

1) I work with The Heron Sanctuary, a group to help disabled users arrive in and integrate into SL. I founded the Open Gates Peer Support Community, so that anyone with disabilities in SL who needs to talk has someone to talk to in group chat, 24/7.

2) I'm one of the members of Second Life Synagogue. Read about us here in the Jerusalem Post. We do symbolic lightings prior to Shabbas, and we have an SL yeshiva as well, where we meet to study the Torah portion on Tuesdays and study Rambam on Wednesdays.

3) I like hanging out in historical settings (like 1001 Arabian Nights, or Deadwood). With SL you can step into the past anywhere in the world.

In the future I plan to give my PowerPoint presentation I gave as a keynote speech in Chicago, Minneapolis, DC, etc., in SL.

I'm making a real effort to shake my past failures in 2008 and accomplish new stuff, learn new things.
For '08, I'm planning to get back to blogging, learn DJing in SL, and I have plans for a small business in SL selling camels.

Stay tuned!

Nick

Learning History Online

2007-09-23T07:06:00.000-04:00

I love learning. I had to stop college for a variety of reasons (and I'm still bitter about this) but I still love learning new things. Stuff like the wonderful new technology, podcasts, help me continue learning (I can't move my arms to turn the pages of books).

I cope with my situation by trying to learn as much as possible. And I love history. I'm obsessed with history lately. That's how I found history podcasts.

My favorite history podcasts are:

Hardcore History. Talk show host (and former military history major) Dan Carlin does a great job discussing both the famous and less known events in history. He is at his best when he gives weird new angles to things. Needs to do more podcasts.
History According to Bob. History professor Bob Packett gives some of the most in-depth, interesting, engaging historical narratives. And he podcasts every day.
Napoleon Podcast. A Napoleon geek in Australia teams up with Napoleon author, Prof. David Markham to bring you this ride through Napoleonic history (isn't this technology amazing?!) Each episode (released about monthly) examines part of Napoleon's life. They have a very pro-Bonaparte slant for the most part, and this is very debatable (as even they would acknowledge) but it is a fascinating examination of a pivotal era.
American History Before 1870. Dr. Gretchen Ann Reilly at Temple College in Temple, TX puts her lectures into podcasts (more professors should do this!) I love her enthusiasm for history and when she finds humor in it. And the overview is great.

Even though I'm relatively well-versed in U.S. history, I learned lots of things I didn't know before, like:

- Christopher Columbus came to the New World with letters for the Emperors of Japan and China saying Spain wanted to open trade negotiations! I knew Columbus wanted to find a trade route to Asia, but I didn't know Ferdinand and Isabella were so confident he'd find it that they sent letters specifically addressed to the Emperors of Japan and China.
It's also interesting that we were founded on the idea of trade with China, and today, trade with China defines so much of our daily lives.

- I had no idea that the origin of the word "slave" is "Slav." Fascinating.
Who was enslaving the Slavs? the Byzantines?

- Some of the original colonists were convicts. This feeds my image of America as forming from a raucous, diverse collection of pirates, prostitutes, convicts, debtors, exiles, political radicals and (perceived) religious extremists expelled from England, diamonds in the rough, fringers and innovators that Europe wasn't quite ready for. This gives Americans a unique (and arguably, problematic) character that has allowed us to be so influential in history.
I wonder: about what percentage of colonists were actually criminals?

- I also didn't know the details of the various American Indian tribe rebellions.
Did any of you see this in the New York Times? America’s Guardian Myths

It discusses how 9/11 wasn't the first time Americans were attacked on home soil, we were under siege with Indian revolts for years, and the experience (and our backlash in response) shaped our identity and culture. Today we are tapping into a similar backlash. Is fear part of our national character? Check it out.

Nick

A Thought For September 11

2007-09-11T12:54:00.000-04:00

"Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind." -- John F. Kennedy

Let's take this idea "viral."

An Inconvenient Blob

2007-08-30T02:43:00.000-04:00

Will The Blob Devour Us All?

From this charming piece in Slate, Dispatch from Blob Fest:

Though Phillips might not have intended The Blob to have a political message, she did accidentally insert an environmental warning, which was reflected in the Blob Fest's 2007 theme: "An Inconvenient Blob." I thought it was just an attempt to ride the green bandwagon until I finally caught one of the three weekend screenings of the movie. At the end of the film, the Blob is imprisoned in the Arctic, where, as the narrator menacingly intones, it would remain as long as the North Pole stayed cold. Green activists should add the return of the Blob to the long list of global-warming-related dangers.

That's right, folks.

In the bad 1958 sci-fi film The Blob, the monster was finally defeated by encasing it in the polar ice cap. The narrator says that this will stop the Blob as long as the arctic stays frozen.

With global warming melting the ice caps, the Blob may be unleashed, and start eating people again.

RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!!!!

:D

U.S. Prepares to Jettison Al-Maliki

2007-08-29T06:46:00.000-04:00

I saw this story the other day:

By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer
Wed Aug 22, 8:58 AM ET

DAMASCUS, Syria - Iraq's prime minister lashed out Wednesday at U.S. criticism, saying no one has the right to impose timetables on his elected government and that his country "can find friends elsewhere."

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki blamed the U.S. presidential campaign for the recent tough words about his government, from President Bush and from other U.S. politicians.

Bush on Tuesday said he was frustrated with Iraqi leaders' inability to bridge political divisions. But he added that only the Iraqi people can decide whether to sideline al-Maliki.

"Clearly, the Iraqi government's got to do more," Bush said. "I think there's a certain level of frustration with the leadership in general, inability to work — come together to get, for example, an oil revenue law passed or provincial elections."

Full article: AP: Iraqi PM lashes out at U.S. critics

Then the next day I saw this story:

CRAWFORD, Texas (CNN) -- A powerhouse Republican lobbying firm with close ties to the White House has begun a public campaign to undermine the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, CNN has confirmed.

This comes as President Bush is publicly taking great pains to reiterate his support for the embattled Iraqi leader.

Al-Maliki's government has come under sharp criticism and scrutiny from Washington lawmakers and officials, as reflected in Thursday's National Intelligence Estimate.

A senior Bush administration official told CNN the White House is aware of the lobbying campaign by Barbour Griffith & Rogers because the firm is "blasting e-mails all over town" criticizing al-Maliki and promoting the firm's client, former interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, as an alternative to al-Maliki.

But the senior administration official insisted that White House officials have "absolutely no involvement" in the campaign to remove al-Maliki, nor have they given it their blessing.

"There's just no connection whatsoever," the official said. "There's absolutely no involvement."

When asked whether the White House will ask the prominent Republican lobbying firm to stop lashing out at al-Maliki, the official said, "I don't rule it out."

Pressed on why allies of the White House would be contradicting the president publicly, the senior administration official said of the lobbyists, "They're making a lot of money."

Full article: CNN: Powerhouse GOP firm working to undermine Iraqi PM

So basically, al-Maliki got a little rebellious under all the withering criticism, and also he won't hand over the oil.

The next day, a major GOP firm is handed a fat contract to agitate against al-Maliki.

Coincidence? I think not.

And where would exiled former PM Allawi get that kind of money?
*cough* CIA *cough*

The lobbyists have even parked the domain name AllawiForIraq.com.

Hillary Clinton also said we should throw al-Maliki under the bus. As usual, she is on the same page with the neo-cons.

I would HATE to be al-Maliki. Worst job EVAR.
He's surrounded by a zillion impossible catch 22s and is simply stalling.
Poor bastard.

I hope he flees before a bullet makes the decision for him.

Nick

This Day In History, U.S. Overthrows Iran Gov't

2007-08-19T13:43:00.000-04:00

On this day, August 19, in 1953, the Americans and British overthrew the democratically-elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh. Mossadegh ended (BP) British Petroleum's monopoly over Iranian oil, and *gasp* nationalized their oil fields so that Iranians would benefit from their own resources.

The Western powers, angry at being cut out of the oil money, and fearing the wave of anti-corporate sentiment would allow Iran to fall under Soviet influence, imposed crippling sanctions on Iran, plunging their people into poverty and the country into chaos. Then the UK and U.S. decided to stage a coup d'etat.

Operation Ajax, led by the CIA, deposed and imprisoned Prime Minister Mossadegh, and installed sympathetic general Fazlollah Zahedi in his place. Not only did BP retain a hold over Iran's oil, but Shell oil and other corporations got a piece of the pie.

Imagine what could've happened if Mossadegh had succeeded? Democracy may have spread from Iran all over the Middle East.
We stopped democracy cold. We don't want democracy in the region.

In 2000, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright issued an official U.S. apology to the Iranian people for the overthrow. "We deposed your democracy. Sorry about that."

CIA documents about the coup were also released in 2000, and they contained the first use of the term "blowback."
And man, was there major blowback from Operation Ajax. It created deep and lasting rage that led directly to the Iranian Islamic Revolution, and continues to be reflected in the body counts of U.S. troops in the various wars in the region since then.

Happy un-democracy anniversary, Iran!

Nick

Simpsons Avatars

2007-08-12T10:58:00.000-04:00

Lots of people on MySpace (even presidential candidates) are making Simpsons avatars of themselves.

HAHAH!!!!! Hi-larious.

Here's the Simpsons avatar of me. I used www.simpsonsmovie.com/avatar to make it, then added the beard and ventilator with Paint Shop Pro.

You can also use SimpsonizeMe.com

Fun :)

Nick

Stunning Video: Cheney Against Invading Iraq

2007-08-12T06:19:00.000-04:00

Dick Cheney in 1994: Invading Iraq Would Create Quagmire

WOW.

He made the exact same arguments the Dems made. He couldn't have been more right.

I wonder what caused his 180 degree turn after he became CEO of Halliburton then VP....

George W. Bush's Health Care Plan

2007-08-10T04:35:00.000-04:00

"People have access to health care in America. After all, just go an emergency room." -- President Bush

That's what Bush said (as an aside) at a recent event where he discussed why he is going to veto a funding boost for the State Children's Health Insurance Plan (SCHIP).

Basically he said the "federalization of health care" is evil and that he'll man the ramparts to defend against any expansion of government health care.

His alternative? Tax deductions! then everyone can buy their own health care!

Brilliant! The average worker, the grocery-bagger who needs chemotherapy will be so glad to get back his $10 in taxes!

Giuliani also plugged this approach in the recent Iowa debate. Like most conservative proposals it may help rich donors, but not most of the population.

Video of Bush's remarks on health care (8 minutes, if you can stomach it).

New Civilizations Discovered

2007-08-09T22:31:00.000-04:00

Discovery of Middle Asia Cities Recasts Ancient History

LiveScience.com
Thu Aug 9, 11:05 AM ET

New discoveries at dig sites in Middle Asia are rocking the archaeological world and redefining the origins of modern civilization.

Numerous sites in modern-day Iran and the surrounding region suggest that a vast network of societies together constituted the first cities, whose residents traded goods across hundreds of miles and forged parallel but strikingly independent cultures.

Archaeologists have thought that modern civilization began in Mesopotamia, where the large Tigris and Euphrates rivers bounded a fertile valley that nurtured an increasingly complex society.

The social structures, wealth and technologies of this society slowly spread along the Nile and then the Indus rivers in the 3rd millennium B.C.

The findings at the new sites may have shaken conventional ancient history to its very foundations, reporter Andrew Lawler told LiveScience.

"People didn't think you could have large settlements this early without large rivers emptying into an ocean. No one knew of these sites," said Lawler, who reported in the Aug. 3 issue of Science magazine on the key findings, which were discussed at a recent archaeological conference in Ravenna, Italy.

Full article

The Purpose of This Blog

2007-08-09T06:49:00.000-04:00

Let's revisit the whole point I'm aiming for with this blog.

These quotes from Paul Wellstone sum it up well.

"Politics is not about power. Politics is not about money. Politics is not about winning for the sake of winning. Politics is about the improvement of people's lives. It's about advancing the cause of peace and justice in our country and the world. Politics is about doing well for the people."

"I think the prophetic tradition of our faith is that to love G-d is to love justice." (speaking of Judaism)

"We can remake the world daily."

Nick

"Are We Rome?" Part VI: The Final Chapter

2007-08-08T13:14:00.000-04:00

One always must be very careful with historical parallels; they are frequently used and abused to score political points.
I've heard anti-immigration people saying "Rome collapsed 'cause they let in too many illegal aliens who turned on them!" Please! The Roman Empire succeeded because it was so intensely multicultural, not in spite of it. Often the generals and emperors themselves were "aliens!"

I've also heard the anti-gay crowd insisting that "Rome fell because of all that sodomy. If they would've cracked down, Romans wouldn't have had a slumping birth rate that forced them to staff their armies with foreign mercenaries who turned on them! We have to ban homosexuality now, or we'll go the way of Rome!"
Preposterous.

It's impossible to know exactly why the Roman Empire disintegrated. German professor Alexander Demandt published a collection of 210 theories on why Rome fell. My personal guess is that it was centuries of an absurdly overextended military (they fought the Persians for Iraq for centuries) combined with several economic crises, combined with plagues, combined with barbarian hordes sacking Rome (never a good sign) plus general downward momentum (nothing lasts forever).

In Europe and Asia, empires usually collapsed when they were too weakened and rotted out to cope with other nations invading and displacing them. Due to America's unique geography (between two expansive oceans) an invasion is not possible. Bush's rhetoric aside, there's no realistic circumstance that would allow Iraqi insurgents to take Muncie, Indiana, and I doubt Canada or Mexico will ever be able to overpower us militarily. We could change governments drastically, and we're ripe for an economic collapse, but America will never "fall" like Rome did.

With this series, I myself may have overreached with the historical comparisons. Maybe I should've dubbed it "Do We Want to be Rome?" instead. We're not Rome, and Iraq ain't Parthia.
My point with this series wasn't to draw direct parallels; however clumsily I did it, I wanted to illuminate the fascinating history of the Roman Empire, discuss the severe challenges of America in the 21st century, and examine the concepts of violence and imperialism which seem ingrained in the human soul and have dominated history. Empires have to ask themselves: do we really want to be an empire? How much blood is it worth? What is our nation about?
Is the blogosphere a latter-day Cicero, doing its best to exhort our people back toward the values of the Republic instead of empire?

How will we finally reach our destiny?

..."they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift the sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore." -- Isaiah 2.4

"Are We Rome?" Series:

Part I: Cullen Murphy

Part II: Dubbia Bushius

Part III: Architecture

Part IV: The First Roman Invasions of Iraq

Part V: The Spoils of Ctesiphon

Nick

"Are We Rome?" Part V: The Spoils of Ctesiphon

2007-08-08T07:09:00.000-04:00

There were many wars between the Romans and the Iraqis / Persians, too many wars to adequately describe here, one time a Roman general even defected to the Parthians and invaded Syria, but suffice it to say, neither side ever gained much territory long-term. The wars continued into the era of the Byzantines vs. the Caliphate, and, arguably, the continuation of this West / East clash is ongoing as we speak.

When the Roman Empire was at its furthest territorial extent, Emperor Trajan was able to make the greatest gains against Parthia in Roman history.

Statue of Trajan

Internal divisions plagued Parthia, and Trajan crushed the Parthian army, took the key cities of Babylon, Seleucia and captured their capital at Ctesiphon in 116 AD. He deposed the Parthian king, annexed Mesopotamia and made the territory into two new Roman provinces. According to Edward Gibbon, Trajan was the first (and last) Roman Emperor to sail in the Persian Gulf.

Trajan's conquests were the closest the Romans would ever come to their dream of duplicating Alexander the Great's empire; they would never advance this far east again.

But the Roman hold on Mesopotamia was tenuous and short-lived. The population was still loyal to Parthia, and had no interest in being Romanized.

The Jews, who for centuries the majority of whom lived in Babylonia (thanks to the many expulsions from Judea by enemies) rose up in full insurrection against Rome. Little is known about the Kitos War (Second Jewish Rebellion) and its causes, but I suspect that Rome looting Jews' property to finance their wars against Parthia, the continued repression and attempts to impose idolatry on the Jews, the need for revenge for the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, and general sympathy for the Parthians (Jews had usually been partial to the Persians, one of the only uses of the word messiah in the Tanakh refers to Cyrus the Great) contributed to the worldwide uprising of what some would call a "fifth column" of Jews against Rome.
Around 115-117 AD, Jews revolted from Libya to Cyprus to Babylon, and according to Roman sources, it was horribly violent; Lukuas, a Jewish "king," basically declared Jewhad (word made up for Jewish jihad) and led the community on a rampage through Egypt, razing temples of idolatry and bathhouses, destroying roads and massacring hundreds of thousands of Hellenes, genocide so extensive that Rome had to repopulate North Africa (though they probably exaggerate all this to demonize the Jews). Unlike the First Jewish Rebellion and the Third (Bar Kokhba's Revolt) there is little direct evidence of the Second Jewish Revolt, aside from scant Roman accounts and a Latin inscription (below) referring to the city of Cyrene being rebuilt after the tumultu Iudaico, the Judaic tumult.

The Roman reaction to the revolt was just as violent and horrifying. Moorish general Lusius Quietus (the only black African to be Roman consul) led a campaign of rape and ethnic cleansing in Babylonia (and was rewarded with the governorship of Iudaea province) and rebellious Jews in N. Africa and Judea were executed en masse.

The Second Jewish Rebellion forced Trajan to divert legions to Judea, and this loosed his hold on Mesopotamia. The Jews were not yet fully crushed when Trajan died of edema August 9, 117 and Hadrian succeeded him as emperor. Hadrian gave up on controlling Iraq and stationed the Sixth Legion to permanently occupy Judea. They had lost the war to Parthia.

But it wasn't the last time Rome would attack Mesopotamia. Hardly. After Parthia reconquered Armenia, the Romans under Marcus Aurelius retaliated and annexed Northern Mesopotamia in 165 AD (they would've conquered even more but were crippled by a plague of measles). They held it for decades, but it was an enormous burden in manpower and money to keep such a resistant, unstable area secured.

Seeing an opening during the chaos of a new Roman civil war in 193 AD, the Parthians retook the region. But in 198, new Roman Emperor Septimius Severus counter-attacked and quickly reconquered it, and subjected the capital Ctesiphon to its worst looting yet, taking enough silver and gold back to Europe to postpone an economic crisis for decades. Without its treasury, Parthia was impoverished, went into rapid decline and faded into history, and by 226 AD had been replaced with a new Persian empire (the Sassanids) that retook Iraq and would prove far more formidable than their predecessors.

Despite Rome outliving the Parthian Empire, they remained deeply etched in the Roman memory, and were so respected and feared, Christians in the East later had a prophecy that emperor Nero would rise from the dead as the anti-Christ, and the zombie emperor would lead a horde of fearsome Parthian horsemen to sack Rome.

Ruins of Ctesiphon Palace

Emperor Severus' plunder of Ctesiphon brings the motive of war into stark relief; it's money. Plato warned the Greeks that "all wars are fought for the sake of getting money" and Cicero told Rome "endless money forms the sinews of war" (he was later beheaded for trying to stop tyranny) but we evidently don't learn much from the words of wise men, or from history. Humans continue to put together vast empires in the hope of vast profits, even though large empires, whether it is Rome, Germany, Russia, Japan, Britain or the U.S., always require vast violence to maintain.

If we haven't learned yet, how will we learn?

Nick

Next: The Final Chapter

Mitt Romney Confronted by Reality on U.S. Health Care

2007-08-03T11:30:00.000-04:00

Wednesday, presidential candidate Mitt Romney was campaigning in a New Hampshire diner.

The waitress there has three sick children, and like most regular people, is struggling terribly to get the health care her family needs and is often not able to keep her head above the rising tide of costs.

Governor Romney was there telling people that to win the "war on terra" we need to win Muslim hearts and minds by giving Arab countries free American medicine and technology.

While I'm not opposed in all instances to foreign aid, it was positively SICK to put helping the other side of the world ahead of addressing the dire need mere feet away from him. He ignored his own countrymen!

And the waitress called him out on it! Here's the video.

"How 'bout the USA?" she shouted. This is not someone pushing an ideology. This is a very sympathetic woman who just wants to survive, just wants some justice (the theme of this blog).
For her to be suffering like this in the richest nation on Earth is not just.

Romney debated her. Romney ad-libs some noncommittal blather about his state's health plan, but gives no clear indication of what he would do as president to help (the issue isn't even addressed on his web site other than saying "individuals have responsibility for their own health care"). Then he retreats from the woman and talks to other diners.

I loved this video. I LOVE IT when candidates (of any affiliation) run head-first into real people and the reality of their plight. This is one of the best moments of the '08 primary season so far, which typically is inauthentic as hell, just canned sound-bites.

Mitt Romney got hit like a freight train. PWND.

WATCH THE VIDEO

I hope this spreads all over the 'net ("goes viral.")

Justice, justice you shall pursue!

Nick

"Are We Rome?" Part IV: The First Roman Invasions of Iraq

2007-08-02T11:02:00.000-04:00

Did you know that for nearly 150 years off and on, the Roman Empire fought to conquer Mesopotamia?

At the time, the area that is now Iraq, Iran (Persia) and more was ruled by the Parthian Empire.

What was the Parthian Empire like, and how did they collide with mighty Rome?

The Parthians formed from the steppe tribes of Central Asia (for details on these tribes and their impressive contributions, you can listen to this mp3 of the Hardcore History podcast).

The Parthians rose and wrestled Persia back from Alexander the Great's successors, and combined the martial prowess of the steppe tribes (they were unmatched horsemen) with the cultural, organizational and technological achievements inherited from the Persian empires of old. While the Parthian Empire was never as powerful, or expansive, as the Persian empires of Cyrus the Great and Darius that preceded them, or the Sassanids that followed them, they were nonetheless very formidable, and even their Roman enemies recognized they were not "barbarians," but an advanced urban civilization to be respected and feared. Their capital was near modern Baghdad.

Coin showing King of Parthia Mithridates I

Rome even sent ambassadors and tried diplomacy with the Parthians when they weren't attacking them. The first contact the Romans had with Parthia was around 96 BC, when they sent an envoy that negotiated the boundary between the two empires at the Euphrates. Plutarch reports that at the meeting, the Roman ambassador managed to arrogantly take the center seat at the table, and that the Parthian king quickly put his ambassador, Orobazus, to death for allowing such an affront to Parthian dignity.

The Romans did not view the Parthians, or anyone, as equals. Rome saw itself as the greatest nation ever, superior to any other empire in history, so they often viewed invading and annexing other peoples as helping them (i.e. "they will greet us as liberators!") But, to be fair, they usually DID benefit the lands they conquered. It's like in that Monty Python movie Life of Brian when the head of the "People's Front of Judea" says:

Reg: All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Attendee: Brought peace?
Reg: Oh, peace - shut up!
Reg: There is not one of us who would not gladly suffer death to rid this country of the Romans once and for all.
Dissenter: Uh, well, one.
Reg: Oh, yeah, yeah, there's one. But otherwise, we're solid.

On the other hand, for conquered peoples, the Roman experience (even in the best case scenario) included loss of autonomy, moderate to severe brutality and religious repression, and oppressive taxation (and what I'm talking about isn't like taxes today, it's more like "Roman legionaries show up unannounced and loot your $#!t.") Also, any resistance to Roman authority may be punished with you and your entire village being crucified, and full-scale revolts could end in mass deportation and genocide.

I don't want to glorify either the Romans or Parthians, as both were incredibly brutal, and from an era where horrific violence was fairly commonplace and men slaughtered large numbers of other men up-close with swords. But we should still examine history closely and glean all the lessons we can from it.

The Parthian border was supposed to be at the Euphrates, with Armenia as sort of a buffer state between the two empires, but with Rome feeling, as the Hellenic heirs of Alexander the Great, they were entitled to his Persian conquests, plus their lust for glory and loot, peace didn't last long.

The first major expedition directly against Parthia happened during the First Triumvirate (Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus).
Marcus Licinius Crassus was the rich consul and general who had brutally put down Spartacus' slave revolt by crucifying all six thousand rebels and leaving them lining the road as an example. However, Pompey stole the credit and told the Senate it was his victory. This made Crassus furious, and he despised Pompey for the rest of his life. Crassus, who had made himself ruler of Syria, was not content with his incredible wealth; he had to one-up Pompey and gain more prestige and power for himself.

What was his plan? Invade Iraq.

Many members of the Senate tried to dissuade him from invading Iraq, but Caesar and Pompey stood firmly behind him and the Senate relented.

Plutarch gives us the low-down. Crassus gathered around 35,000 infantry and 8,000 cavalry in Syria and crossed the Euphrates at attack Parthia. Did this work? Not so much. Despite being badly outnumbered, a Parthian force of 9,000 horse archers and 1,000 armored horsemen crushed the Romans at the Battle of Carrhae. The Parthians were one of the only foes in ancient times able to destroy an entire Roman legion at the height of its power.

How did they do this?
They were the best horsemen in the world, and they hopelessly outmaneuvered the Roman infantry. If the Romans ever chased them, they shot backwards while retreating, the famous Parthian shot. Crassus made his men assume the protective testudo (turtle) formation to block the onslaught of arrows.

But the arrows were so strong, some pierced the Roman armor. And they never ran out of ammo; they had a caravan of arrow camels there so they could reload endlessly.
But Crassus insisted on "staying the course" and not breaking formation. Then (while still bombarding them with arrows) the armored cavalry ("cataphracts") charged, and butchered the infantry. The Romans were routed. Crassus' son's head was put on a pike and paraded by the Parthians. Then Crassus asked to parley with the Parthians, but when he reached their camp to discuss terms, they executed him, and kept his head as a souvenir.

The loss of Crassus was devastating. The First Triumvirate no longer existed. The delicate balance of power between the three men was shot. Without the Crassus buffer, Pompey and Caesar soon clashed, leading to civil war and Caesar crossing the Rubicon to declare himself dictator perpetuus. Crassus' debacle in Mesopotamia was one of the final nails in the coffin of the Republic, and the birth pangs of the new Empire.

Here is a fun tidbit: the Romans lost their famous eagle flagpole standards in the battle, a grave defeat and evil omen, and it took roughly a half-century of diplomacy for them to get it back.

They finally secured it by offering a displaced Parthian king safe haven if he agreed to broker terms for the return of the standards. He did, and the Parthians exchanged the standards for a bunch of money and some concubines.
Here's where the plot twist comes in. According to Josephus, one of the concubines traded for the eagle married the King of Parthia. She had the other heirs sent away as hostages to Rome, poisoned the King, and took the throne as Queen Musa, and ostensibly co-ruled with her son. That's right: the only woman to ever rule Parthia was a Roman concubine! Ha!!!

Queen Musa

Josephus says she then married her son (ew!) and this was too much, so the Parthians deposed her.

Are we Rome? Not really. America is very different, more like the British interventions in Iraq which I discussed here.

But the Iraqis are even more different today. They are carved out into separate countries, divided, weakened, stripped of their former might. What struck me the most when researching Parthia is what proud, advanced civilizations Mesopotamians have crafted over the years. The centuries of imposing Western plans on them, the lack of freedom to decide their own borders or form larger, more powerful empires is the source of much of the animosity in the region. We should lift our jackboot from their throats and allow the Iraqis the actual freedom to create a new nation.

And we should really learn from history. Attacking the Mesopotamians never works. Ever. They are a people that have never tolerated foreign conquest for any length of time.

In the next edition: more invasions of Iraq, and the fall of Rome.

Hope you're enjoying the series!

Nick

GWB Will Be Briefly In Charge of the Presidency

2007-07-29T22:46:00.000-04:00

Bush is acting president; Cheney in hospital for battery recharge

By Nick Dupree

CAMP DAVID, Maryland (Satire) -- Vice President Cheney transferred the powers of the presidency to George W. Bush on Saturday just before having minor surgery to receive a new battery for an implanted device that monitors his heart rhythms, his spokeswoman said.

"The device was successfully replaced without complication," Megan McGinn, the vice president's deputy press secretary.

Cheney temporarily transferred his authority at 7:16 a.m. ET to Bush, who is at Camp David playing Game Boy

"The president is now serving as acting president," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said.

He said the temporary transfer of power will end when Cheney returns to Washington Monday.

An unnamed staffer, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of being pwnd, said "frankly, we are worried. The last time President Bush was briefly in control, he nominated his legal secretary to the Supreme Court."

Real story: Cheney leaves hospital after minor surgery

Nick's Analysis of the CNN / YouTube Debate

2007-07-26T01:28:00.000-04:00

Obama, Richardson, Biden and Kucinich, prior to the CNN / YouTube debate Monday night.

The Democratic party has become so rotted out and ineffectual that I watched the CNN / YouTube debate not from a position of sympathy but from the perspective of wanting to see them pinned down and held to account. I want debates to make them squirm, and I want to make them answer the f@#king question, and enforce with a baseball bat if necessary. :P

Why does the mainstream media always say Hillary "looked the most presidential?" What does that even mean? the most aloof? the most regal? are we electing a monarch?

I may never get past Hillary blaming the victim (Iraq) in previous debates, saying that the U.S. did everything right and the problem is that the Iraqis won't step up. You can't get much more cruel and unfair than that. WE preemptively invaded their country, killed tens or even hundreds-of-thousands of Iraqis, burned their infrastructure, and took the Sunni-Shia power pyramid that had been entrenched for like a millennium, and turned it upside-down; and we're surprised that the aftermath is messy? We are such assholes. It's like drop-kicking a dude in the balls and then talking smack about him because he can't finish the track marathon on our timer.
Hillary was more subtle in blaming the Iraqis in this debate but it was still there.

I can only hope and pray we avoid inflicting worse damage to the Iraqis in the future.

Senator Joe Biden was at the debate. He said his plan is to divide Iraq into three states, which, while I had suggested going with this idea initially, it would be a disaster if he forces it on them against their will, which he suggests we do immediately as the "ONLY solution." After browsing Iraqi bloggers, it's clear that most Iraqis are nationalists (not regionalists) and will not tolerate losing their land; they won't let the U.S. forcibly break apart their country. None of the biggest groups in Iraq, the ruling Dawa party, or, perhaps more importantly, the Sadrists, will stand idly by and allow this.

We've GOT to stop treating the Iraqis like children and trying to tell them how to run their country. This is the nation that pwnd the Roman Empire, these are the Babylonians who had gleaming cities, cuneiform and a code of law back in the 31st century BC, when Biden's ancestors were running around Ireland in loincloths with basic flint tools.
Rome couldn't subjugate the Mesopotamians, the British couldn't subjugate them, and they were much more skilled and devoted imperialists than we are.
You aren't going to bend Mesopotamians to your will, period.

As I've said from the start, we need to get the F out and let the Iraqi people decide their future. It won't be pretty, it will be horrific, there will be extremists purging other extremists even more than now, it will be partly cloudy with scattered genocide, but unlike our plan, it will have a beginning, middle and an end. Right now we are indefinitely delaying the inevitable in order to indefinitely loot and exploit Iraq. At least the bloody conclusion after we leave will be an Iraqi solution that the tribes will accept more readily than our newbie imperialist bullshit. Western powers drawing fake borders on Arab tribes? Brilliant! That's what caused this mess in the first place (thanks Great Britain!)

What struck me most about the CNN / YouTube debate was the candidates' continued talking about Iraqis as though they are children, and telling them how to run their country. "Iraq has to be this way or that way, we must do this or that or the other thing"---SHUT UP! We can't even run our own damn country, and now we have to run Iraq too? Please! I really resent the government wasting countless lives and countless billions of our money ruining Iraq when there are desperate unmet needs on the homefront (chiefly health care).

The context and subtext of many of the candidates' narratives is "how can we avoid admitting the bloggers and hippies were right all along about Iraq? I don't want to sound like a hippie. I don't want to be labeled weak or blamed for a defeat!"

They are hippie-phobic, and too often putting politics before principle.

They also need to stop treating us, the American people, like children. We can handle the truth. If someone would step up and say: "look, we can't force our will on the Iraqis. And since we can't accomplish anything further, the only responsible course is to stop wasting blood and treasure and leave" then I think Americans would accept it, and be grateful for some truth.

In the CNN / YouTube debate, Dennis Kucinich told the truth when he said "the Democrats have failed the American people." Kucinich is one of the few fringers who, like me, opposed this war from the very start and fought it in every way possible, every step of the way. In the debate Monday he represented our side ably, and I think made some big gains. His "strength through peace" line was excellent, and I wish more candidates were as hardcore about ending the war as he is.

But who "won" the debate? If you're looking for the most polished and poised candidate, the best style then Hillary was #1.

But I'm looking for substance.

On the things I care about most, here is how I rank the debate:

1) Barack Obama.
He hasn't done well in the previous debates because his style is to build momentum over a detailed 15-minute speech, something impossible with the debate format of "30-second answer and you're done." So in the past he has looked flat and unclear.
But not tonight. He improved dramatically, I thought. He made the case well that he can build a movement to bring real change. It seems he may be our best bet to make a difference.

And he seems strong without being mean-spirited.

Like this, the best jab at Hillary all night:

"But, you know, one thing I have to say about Senator Clinton's comments a couple of moments ago. I think it's terrific that she's asking for plans from the Pentagon, and I think the Pentagon response was ridiculous. But what I also know is that the time for us to ask how we were going to get out of Iraq was before we went in. (APPLAUSE) And that is something that too many of us failed to do. We failed to do it. And I do think that that is something that both Republicans and Democrats have to take responsibility for." Transcript

Hillary got BaROCKED

2) I rank Kucinich second. I really want to end this war, and he isn't afraid to stand up for his principles.

3) I rank John Edwards a strong third. He gained with me with his willingness to take on the entrenched plutocrats, and he scored the best line on health care of the night when he brought up the story of James Lowe, a man in Virginia who couldn't get his cleft palette repaired so he could talk for FIFTY YEARS. He was genuinely outraged, as he should be, and even though the debate spent scant time on health care, he was able to break through.

4) Bill Richardson. I've got to give him props for his "no residual troops in Iraq" pledge.

5) Hillary. She wins on style points, but I still can't forgive her for blaming the Iraqis, which is like burning someone's house, then criticizing the victims for not putting it out in time.

6) Joe Biden, He doesn't understand Iraq. Go away.

7) Mike Gravel. I love his passion, but at times he sounds like a crank, yelling "damn kids, get off my lawn!!!"

8) Chris Dodd. Senator Dodd would probably make a good president; he's got a Kennedyesque thing going on. I like it. But he can't move beyond lengthy, ponderous Senate speak, and he sounds like a legislator talking as though it is 1961 at a time of relative peace and prosperity , not 2007 during a Constitutional crisis. Dodd did particularly poorly Monday, and I don't think he will be able to compete in this sound bite culture.

But, as many have pointed out, the YouTube questioners stole the show.
They injected some heart and some REALITY into the process, and CNN picked good questions and really made the candidates squirm.

Every debate should be a YouTube debate.

By the way, you can watch it here.

Nick

Vice President Cheney Is A Supervillain

2007-07-24T11:31:00.000-04:00

Does it bother anyone else that the vice president is always rubbing his hands like a supervillain scheming your demise? Every time you see him he's clasping his hands like an evil genius, like a cartoon villain.

Why does no one notice?

Nick

P.S.
Part 4 and 5 of my five-part "Are We Rome?" series should be up later this week.

"Are We Rome?" Part III: Architecture

2007-07-23T10:15:00.000-04:00

American architecture isn't even subtle in saying that we're like Rome.

The White House

The Temple of Hercules Victor in Rome

The Washington Monument in DC (left) and Trajan's Column in Rome (right)

U.S. Supreme Court Building

Roman Temple of idolatry, built 19-16 BC. Still standing in Southern France.

The Colosseum in Rome

Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum

Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas

US Capitol building, prior to 1850s expansion

Jefferson Memorial

University of Virginia Rotunda, designed by Thomas Jefferson himself

Antoine Desgodetz' engraving of the Pantheon in Rome

Roman fasces, symbolizing many rods becoming strong through unity, is the root of the word fascist, and was used heavily by Mussolini.

The fasces on the U.S. mercury dime.

Roman eagle, was Rome's main symbol and sat atop Imperial flagpoles in battle (left)
U.S. mint silver coin (right)

In the newly renovated West Wing press room, notice the Roman column and eagle atop the flag.

I don't mean to demonize Rome, the Founding Fathers wanted to reference the ideal Republic, the good side of Rome; Cicero and Archimedes and all that.

But I wonder how much the Founders predicted we, like Rome, would become an Empire?

Me, victorious at new federal courthouse in Montgomery (notice the Roman eagle)

Nick

"Are We Rome?" Part II: Dubbia Bushius

2007-07-22T07:01:00.000-04:00

From David Horsey, the Pulitzer-winning cartoonist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Read the rest at Empire Rising: A Satirical History, Part V

"Are We Rome?" Part I: Cullen Murphy

2007-07-22T00:56:00.000-04:00

"Are We Rome?" the book, by Cullen Murphy

If you didn't catch it, this is the video of Stephen Colbert interviewing Cullen Murphy, author of the new book "Are We Rome?" Stephen comes out in full centurion armor, with an American flag cape, which is hilarious, and the interview is fascinating.

It is great someone has devoted a book to dissecting these parallels. "Are We Rome?" Cullen Murphy says yes and no.

We have some of the same strengths as Rome. We're the greatest, biggest, wealthiest Empire since Rome. Our military is unrivaled.

And we face some similar challenges.

Murphy mentions:

We're overextended and trying to hold a gigantic Empire which we don't have a large enough military to hold, while simultaneously we can't afford the huge military we have.
The government is for sale to the highest bidder, and everything is becoming increasingly privatized. Everything is the private sector, and controlled by a corrupt oligarchy.
We are increasingly relying on mercenaries who could turn against us.

What do you think?

Nick

When Zeppelins Attack

2007-07-20T14:18:00.000-04:00

Some Jews are offended by the Ride of the Valkyries, and any music by Wagner, because it was revered by Hitler, and used heavily in Nazi propaganda. I get that...

But it's still a musical masterpiece.

For some reason, whenever I hear the Ride of the Valkyries, and those famous (almost Darth Vader Imperial March-esque) bombastic horn lines, I don't think of Nazism. I think of World War I Germany, the Kaiser, and a fleet of imposing zeppelins flying over England.

While WWI-era German imperialism is sorta part of a continuity with Nazism, it's not the same thing.

It makes me think of German zeppelins attacking England in WWI.

Did you know Germany used zeppelins like this one to attack the British mainland during WWI? They flew very high (away from anti-air artillery) and dropped 5,806 bombs on England, killing 557 people and injuring 1,358. This was a minor toll compared to the mass devastation wrought by the Luftwaffe in WWII, but when random explosions could fall from the clouds without warning, it had a terrorizing, intimidating impact beyond any concrete damage.

This plaque marks a part of London obliterated by zeppelins

However, zeppelin raids became obsolete in the latter part of the war, with the advent of fighter planes that could easily shoot them down, and military zeppelins never appeared again.

Learn more here: Zeppelins during World War I.

So that's what I think of when I hear Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries: a fleet of the Kaiser's scary, imposing zeppelins on the march.

There's your historical oddity for the day....

:P

Nick

EDIT: No, I don't support the Kaiser. Germany was evil. Ride of the Valkyries and a fleet of zeppelins on the march are scary.
I'm just describing history. It fascinates me.

Politics: "Serious" Candidates?

2007-07-19T10:46:00.000-04:00

So Hillary Clinton and John Edwards were caught off-mic after the latest debate saying that they want smaller debates, with more "serious candidates" (read the details). "They're not serious. They're not serious," Edwards said.

This whole concept of "serious" and "not serious" candidates and ideas really sticks in my craw. The political elite, the media and the pundit caste are wielding totalitarian control over the national discussion by deciding for us what is and what isn't "serious."

Atrios summed it up well, in this post:

Still, the media industrial complex has a great amount of power to determine what "serious" and "unserious" people advocate, simply by labeling people as "serious" and "unserious." Right now the "serious" position is that some sort of open-ended occupation of Iraq is inevitable, and anyone who suggests otherwise is a very silly person. In fact, they're probably the kind of very silly person who thought that this whole Iraq thing was a bad idea to begin with. Ridiculous!

But, yes, I would like the people who advocate this 50,000 forever model to actually spend a few seconds thinking about just what they imagine those troops spending their days doing.

For real, the media is ignoring what they deem "unserious" ideas.
Bring every soldier home and abandon a "humanitarian mission" where the objects of our benevolence are waging tireless guerrilla war against us? Preposterous! We can't listen to hippies and defeatocrats like Nick! After all, leaving some small residual force in Vietnam worked out fine, right?
Oh....

Why is the media imposing a perpetual blackout on such ideas?

Why are the grassroots candidates (Ron Paul, Kucinich, Gravel, etc.) being essentially ignored by the media?

Why is this? Who decided Hillary was "top tier" when almost EVERY liberal I know (including me) is uneasy to outright hostile toward her?

And Giuliani, he is the frontrunner for the Republicans. How the hell did an abortion-funding, cross-dressing womanizer get to be the frontrunner for the "traditional values" party? A big site for GOP activists. FreeRepublic, has purged all Giuliani supporters and deleted all pro-Rudy sentiments. And yet the media continues to treat him as the head of top tier! wtf?

To decide who is "top tier" are we supposed to robotically follow the polls? National polling at this point in the '04 election cycle showed Joe Lieberman was the Democratic frontrunner.
I don't think the "scientific" polls showing Fred Thompson (who has yet to even enter the race) ahead of Mitt Romney have any more credibility than MySpace polls at this point.

Personally, I think polls should be ignored in both primaries and policymaking. We are entering an era where more and more people are using cell phones (which are unlisted) and are out of the reach of pollsters, rendering polls increasingly unreliable.

Besides, would Thomas Jefferson or John Adams dither over whether or not their proposals had a 44% or 58% approval rating?

What happened to courage? We are not descended from fearful men! I wish we could move past the era where politicians won't even change fashion styles without consulting pollsters (remember Al Gore's focus-grouped "earth tones" suits?)

But I don't think it's the polls leading the media to ignore "lower tier" candidates (though that is a big part of it) and I don't think the media has an inherent leftist or rightist bias (aside from some reports here and there, and glaring exceptions, like Fox News). I think it's money and power. Like in many things American, the answer is this: the bottom line is the bottom line.

CNN, NBC, etc. have a conflict of interest. They want that $23 million Mitt Romney is sitting on and the $17 million Giuliani has to go to their stations for ad buys. They won't spend much time on candidates that can't funnel huge amounts of advertising money to them.

Once Romney led the GOP field in fundraising, and his fundraising success became a top story, he became anointed a "top tier" candidate. And now he's embedded inside the media psychology as a top tier guy. If you wondered why a feature on Romney was above the fold on NYTimes.com recently, even though he's polling at 12% and lagging behind Fred Thompson, that's why.

Money buys ads which buys name recognition which gets you up in the polls ("hayyyyy, I've seen that name before, they must be competent!") Then the media covers you more. Then the rank and file want to see only the "top tier" and ban the "crackpots."

In order to be recognized, you must first have recognition, and in order to have recognition, you must first be recognized--which is shorthand for:
*robot voice* "only official party-approved candidates....*beep*...only candidates approved by the media elite....*beep*"

The media just cater to money and power. It's like that famous moment in The Simpsons, when news anchor Kent Brockman sees a magnified ant on the screen, wrongly assumes space ants are invading, and tries his best to ingratiate himself to his new alien masters, saying "...one thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I’d like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves."

The message: most of the media will bow to whoever is on the throne, no matter how evil they are.

But because money = power in our system, it all begins with money.

If Kucinich or Ron Paul raised $15 million in a quarter, they'd have media all over them. Paul's idea that gee, maybe bombing the Mideast throughout the Clinton years provoked 9/11 wouldn't be demonized as "crackpot" and Kucinich's bill for a non-profit health system would be viable. Having money behind it would give it clout.

To ever get serious change, we need more candidates with new ideas. Money is determining everything and stifling progress on nearly every issue. I don't think this de facto oligarchy is what the framers had in mind.

If we want serious ideas viewed as "serious" again, we need to break down the money = power formula. We have to support public financing of elections!

Nick

Political Map of World, 820 AD

2007-07-17T08:20:00.000-04:00

I love maps.

Here's a map of who controlled things in 820 AD: States and Empires in 820

The most powerful nations at this point were the Chinese, who controlled or vassalized everything from the Caspian to the Pacific, and the Abbasid Caliphate, who in 820 invented algebra. This was the Islamic Golden Age.

By comparison, Britain was a backwater. The English language hadn't been invented yet.

Nick

Family Photos: Then and Now

2007-07-15T08:05:00.000-04:00

From Mom's flickr:

Then

Jamie (left) and Nick (right). Jamie was approx. 4 and I was about 6.
around 1988.

Now

Jamie (left) and me (right). Nearly 20 years later.

Nick

Iraqi Jewish Woman Very Angry At War

2007-07-12T09:00:00.000-04:00

I found this on YouTube. It is testimony from Dahlia Wasfi, a physician with a Jewish mother (who fled the Nazis) and an Iraqi father, and she has done two long visits to Iraq recently to help during the war.

This testimony is riveting. She is very angry, screen-melting angry, about America invading her country. She is furious at the chaos, lack of water, and the WMD that the U.S. is using in Iraq (depleted uranium, napalm, white phosphorous). It's such an inflammatory speech, I was initially reticent to post it here, but it is so compelling I had to. I consider her viewpoint unassailable, since she saw what's happening in Iraq with her own eyes and we didn't.

She says the Jewish motto "NEVER AGAIN" (never again should a people be destroyed) must extend to Iraqis too. I think this is the only moral approach.

If we're in Iraq (supposedly for humanitarian purposes) without Iraq's consent, isn't that like rape, and doomed to fail?

Nick

My First Ever Victory at Civilization 4!

2007-07-12T07:10:00.000-04:00

This deserved a post.

I've been obsessively playing Civilization 4 for nearly two years. I've never won a game before; this (and my obsessive, stubborn nature) is why I keep playing.

Usually I fall behind in technology, or have an inferior military because I spend time building infrastructure, and get left in the dust on the scoreboard, or crushed by enemy civilizations.

But tonight, I WON!

I played as the Romans. I capitalized on my penchant for building cultural wonders, and managed to beat back the inevitable invaders just long enough to eke out a CULTURAL VICTORY! You achieve Cultural Victory when three of your cities reach a "Legendary" cultural score (over 20,000). It's hard enough to hit 20k with one city, but achieving 20k in three is very difficult. I piled wonders into Rome, Milan and, finally, Messina. Deploying a Great Artist to Messina finally put me over the top.

Screenshot of my game at the end

Pretty Cultural Victory graphic

WOOOOOHOOOO!!!!

:)

Nick

China's Age of Discovery: The Voyages of Zheng He

2007-07-09T17:32:00.000-04:00

Blogging History: China's Islamic Christopher Columbus

Decades before Christopher Columbus was even born, 18 years before Europeans began their "Age of Discovery," an Admiral from the Chinese Empire sailed west, explored unknown lands, visited with strange "barbarian" peoples, and projected Imperial might as far away as Africa, covering more than 50,000 kilometers in his 7 epic voyages. I saw the story of the legendary navigator Zheng He mentioned in passing on History Channel's Engineering an Empire and I was so fascinated, I had to research him so I could highlight him on my blog.

Zheng He was born Mǎ Sānbǎo in China's southwestern frontier Yunnan province, in 1371. He was of the Hui ethic group, which is similar to the predominant Han Chinese, except the Hui have been practicing Muslims since early on in Islam's spread. Mǎ Sānbǎo's father and grandfather had both been on the hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca (no small task).

Young Sānbǎo grew up during a time of great turmoil in the Chinese Empire. The majority Han Chinese got tired of being oppressed by the Mongolian-led Yuan Dynasty (dynasties never learn) and a mass peasant revolt overthrew the regime and forced the Mongols back into the steppe. In 1368, peasant leader Tai Zhū established the Ming Dynasty, ascended to the throne as the Hongwu Emperor, and enacted highly successful reforms, such as redistributing land to the peasants, which vastly increased China's stability and power.

The Emperor proclaimed his motto "Exiling the Mongols and Restoring China," and when Mǎ Sānbǎo was 11 years old, the Ming Imperial army overran his home province with 250,000 troops to take down a Mongol holdout. The army captured Sānbǎo in the process and castrated him. He was brought to the Imperial court as a gift to the Emperor, where being a eunuch was required to work in the royal household (to ensure that the Emperor's aides couldn't spawn a competing dynasty, and perhaps thinking eunuchs wouldn't touch his hottest courtesan women).

Mǎ Sānbǎo became a court servant, and after a dynastic struggle and civil war in the wake of Hongwu's death worked itself out and the Yong-le Emperor took the throne, Sānbǎo became the new emperor's closest adviser. In honor of his service in the civil war, Yong-le called him Zheng He, and this was his new Imperial name (alternately translated into English as Cheng Ho).

Yong-le directed a stunning expansion of China on a scale not seen again until the 20th century. He imposed a sort of Pax Sinica on the whole region (similar to Pax Mongolica). Yong-le's reign was one of secure dominance over all of China and no real threats to the Empire. Relative tranquility prevailed (though not if you were living in one of the several neighboring states that Yong-le violently subjugated). In addition, Yong-le forced virtually every kingdom in East Asia, even as far away as Thailand and the Philippines, to become tributaries (i.e. extorted tribute from them).

Ming Empire under Yong-le

The Yong-le Emperor marked a peak in Chinese confidence. He sought to advertise China's cultural superiority to the rest of the known world and to this end, he distributed 10,000 copies of the Biographies of Exemplary Women to various non-Chinese countries for their moral instruction, and he oversaw the compilation of the vast Yong-le Encyclopedia, documenting the Yong-le era and incorporating eight thousand texts from ancient times.

Yong-le Emperor

Yong-le also dominated maritime trade. This is where Zheng He comes in.

Zheng He captained seven naval expeditions to project Imperial power, protect and extend Chinese trade, and possibly vassalize far-away peoples. He assembled a huge naval fleet--317 ships holding almost 28,000 armed troops for his first voyage. By comparison, the U.S. Navy in 2007 has only 277 ships on active duty. .
Imagine if you were an early 14th century Indian or Arab, and saw 317 ships bearing down on your harbor! This was meant to impress (and intimidate) foreign peoples into paying China tribute.

Zheng He led his fleet with 62 mammoth, nine-masted "treasure ships." They are described as so massive (400 ft long and 170 ft wide) many experts dismiss them as impossibly large, because early modern ships of comparable size were unwieldy and usually sank. However, history is full of unexplained technology. We have no idea how the Romans accurately engineered something as large and complex as the Colosseum without Computer Aided Drafting, and we don't know how the Byzantine flamethrower ships that saved Constantinople worked (they are neigh-impossible to duplicate even with modern welding methods). So I wouldn't dismiss Zheng He's treasure ships as impossible.

If the reports are to be believed, Zheng He's ships would dwarf Columbus' 55 ft ships.

Treasure ships likely weren't this huge (aircraft carrier-big) but it is safe to assume they were the largest ships ever seen up to that point. Their enormity is described in Marco Polo's writings, and Moroccan explorer ibn Battuta visited China and saw the giant fleet being constructed. He wrote that a nine-masted ship "...has four decks and contains rooms, cabins, and saloons for merchants; each cabin has chambers and a lavatory, and can be locked by its occupants."

China hired a Swedish shipwright to build a replica of a Zheng He treasure ship to serve as a symbol for the 2008 Beijing Olympics (story). At almost 250 ft long, it will be the largest wooden ship ever recorded, and they hope to retrace Zheng He's voyages with it.

But where did Zheng He (pronounced "Zung Ha") go with his legendary fleet? And what did he do when he got there? Well, on his seven voyages he went up and down Indonesia, visited India, Persia, Arabia and Africa. The purpose was to make "first contact" with strange new peoples (like the Starship Enterprise) but also awe them with China's power, give gifts of their finest silk and porcelain (showing superiority) and in exchange, extract tribute. Zheng He brought back gifts of African zebras and giraffes for the Imperial zoo.

In this art from 1414, a giraffe from Zheng He is shown being led to the Imperial zoo.

In at least one instance, Zheng He's missions included military confrontation. On several occasions, he ruthlessly took down pirate networks that had been plaguing Chinese shipping. Each of the seven voyages included stops in Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka), an important gateway for Chinese trade routes. Evidently, the ruler of Ceylon, King Alagonakkara, had been threatening his neighbors, and pirating Chinese traders. Zheng He came to deliver a message from the Yong-le Emperor: "stop it. respect my authoritaah." King Alagonakkara refused, and sent troops to attack and loot the Chinese fleet. Zheng He ordered his soldiers to attack the city to draw the enemies away from the ships. He ended up capturing King Alagonakkara and brought him back to Nanjing to apologize to the Emperor.

Some speculate that tales of Zheng, a Muslim explorer from the East who made seven voyages, and his name Sānbǎo, inspired the tales of Sinbad the Sailor, but there's nothing concrete to back this up.

Zheng He made it all the way down to Kenya (they found ancient Chinese artifacts there) and there is some evidence he went beyond the tip of Africa and into the Atlantic Ocean. Zheng himself wrote of his travels:

We have traversed more than 100,000 li (50,000 kilometers) of immense water spaces and have beheld in the ocean huge waves like mountains rising in the sky, and we have set eyes on barbarian regions far away hidden in a blue transparency of light vapors, while our sails, loftily unfurled like clouds day and night, continued their course [as rapidly] as a star, traversing those savage waves as if we were treading a public thoroughfare…

— (Tablet erected by Zheng He, Changle, Fujian, 1432)

Zheng He left a monument on Sri Lanka too, honoring Islam as well as the local deities (Vishnu and Buddha). He also erected a monument in India. One quack author thinks Zheng's crew left structures in the Americas.

Did Zheng He "discover" America?

No, it's crap. There's no evidence to support that, but former British submarine captain Gavin Menzies (who has no historical training) has made a killing with his discredited 1421 hypothesis, and is selling books, maps and TV specials convincing people that Zheng He found the Americas before Columbus and circumnavigated the globe before Magellan. Menzies bases his theory on wild speculation, and an 18th century Chinese world map showing America that he (falsely) claims was made in the 1400s. He also alleges that old structures such as the Newport Tower were built by Zheng He (rubbish) and that Native Americans are actually children of Zheng's crew (laughable). This is the perfect example of historical hucksterism.

Still, it revived interest in Zheng He, so I guess that's good.
If you get the History International Channel, check out Zheng He: The True Discoverer of America? which airs tonight (Monday) at 8pm ET / 7pm CT.

Part of the reason so much speculation surrounds Zheng He's later voyages is the records of them were destroyed. After the Yong-le Emperor died in 1424, Zheng He lost his influence. Conservative Confucians assumed control of the Imperial court, and seeking "inner perfection" first, implemented very isolationist policies. Also, the new emperor needed to devote considerable resources to beating back Mongol hordes in the north and expanding the Great Wall of China to keep them out, and Zheng He's lavish missions, which were mostly for prestige (and unlike European explorations were not self-funding with loot) were no longer financially viable. The new emperor burned Zheng He's glorious ships, destroyed a lot of his documents, and banned maritime trade. Though the subsequent emperor lifted the ban and let Zheng He voyage again, a lot was lost.

Can you imagine how history may have been different if China had continued as a maritime superpower?

Zheng He statue

If China had continued on the path of Zheng He, much more of the world may be culturally like Indonesia now. Zheng He made a significant impact on Indonesia. His voyages there are well documented, and he left Ming-style architecture behind, as well as lots of Chinese people. He relocated a lot of Chinese Muslims to Indonesia and Malay. Indonesia is the most populous majority-Muslim state on Earth today, in no small part due to Zheng He and his crew promulgating the Islamic faith there. He was buried at sea when he died during a voyage in India in 1433, but has an Islamic tomb in Nanjing. "Allahu Akbar" is inscribed in Arabic above the door.

The People's Republic of China recently is using Zheng He as a role model to integrate its tens of millions of Muslims into Chinese culture.

They are also using him as a symbol of a peaceful rise as a superpower.

Expect to hear a lot more about Zheng He, and Pax Sinica, very soon, especially surrounding the Olympics.

Nick

The Griffin Was Based On A Real Creature!

2007-06-25T09:42:00.000-04:00

I saw this thing on the History Channel the other day about the origins of mythic creatures.

Scythians spread the legend of the Griffin, and Griffin stories quickly spread to Greece and throughout the ancient world, even to the Jews. The Torah says don't eat griffins (always good advice). The "New Testament" uses a griffin as a metaphor for Jesus or something.

More cool griffin images

Scythians would use the Griffin to scare off enemies, letting it be known that their treasure is guarded by a Griffin and if you invade, the Griffin will eat you, etc.

Scholars are now finding griffin-looking dinosaur skulls (pictured here) laying around in the heart of what was Scythian territory. Read more about this at the American Museum of Natural History: Griffin Bones. The Scythians would have seen these skulls and assumed giant beasts of this nature were nearby, or maybe just thought it was great propaganda material to scare enemies.

The griffin was based on a real creature!

Isn't that awesome?

I love history!

And new discoveries are happening every day.

Nick

New Newsweek Poll: Misinformed Population ALARMS Me!

2007-06-24T12:44:00.000-04:00

In a new Newsweek Poll first posted Saturday, 41% of Americans say Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq was directly involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks . Thanks Dick Cheney! Thanks Rush Limbaugh! You are successfully duping a huge swath of the population.

However this is down from 49%, a plurality, that believed this lie in Newsweek's polling in 2004.

Also in this poll, 20% of respondents said most 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis.

20% said the U.S. has found WMDs in Iraq (thanks Rush! thanks Rick Santorum, for repeating this lie!)

More were able to name the latest winner of "American Idol" than could identify the recently-appointed Chief Justice of the United States (not surprising).

What appalled me more was that half of Americans polled didn't know that Libya does not border Iraq (the question was: which of these countries is NOT Iraq's neighbor?)

You can read the raw numbers here: NEWSWEEK Poll June 23, 2007, Conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International.

We're in deep trouble, ladies and gentlemen!

Nick

Giving Your Money to Evil, Saddam-style Dictators

2007-06-24T10:37:00.000-04:00

I’ve been increasingly angry lately (nothing new) about how the Republicans want to slash aid to poor and disabled Americans because “we can’t afford it” but have no qualms whatsoever about funneling BILLIONS of our money to the worst evil dictators imaginable.

Did you know we prop up the evil dictator in Ethiopia to the tune of $500 million a year? The New York Times did some stunning boots-on-the ground reporting last week on what the Ethiopian regime is doing to repress a rebellion in its Somali province–torturing women with pliers, etc.
Ethiopian-Americans are writing Congress and saying please stop funding this tyrant, Meles Zenawi (here is a YouTube video about this, it is awesome that dissidents are using the web to get the truth out). Expatriate dissident bloggers say the foreign aid only benefits Meles' Cayman Island bankers. But Bush insists Ethiopia is an important ally in the "war on terra."

Did you know we’re sending $120 million of taxpayer dollars to the government of Uzbekistan, that is universally regarded as one of the most corrupt, repressive regimes on Earth? To call these regimes EVIL is no exaggeration. Uzbekistan’s Saddam-style tyrant, Islom Karimov, is infamous for boiling dissidents alive, but we prop him up because he is “tough on terror.”

This is Uzbekistan dictator Islom Karimov. He enjoys counting foreign aid money, long walks on the beach, and boiling opponents alive.

Bush has increased U.S. foreign aid by $5 billion, with the Democrats giving him standing ovations.
Don't get me wrong, the Dems are not exempt from my ire. Clinton was just as bad about funding tyrannical regimes, and there are some liberals right now begging for more aid to authoritarian dystopias like Zimbabwe, and those people need to check themselves.

There seems to be a strange unanimity on both sides of the aisle that propping up "pro-American regimes" is "in U.S. interests," no matter how brutally repressive their governments are. I would argue that letting one dime from the U.S. treasury assist despots who torture their own people is extremely damaging to American interests, and proves our rhetoric about "making the world safe for democracy" is crap.

Here's what sparked my interest in this topic: on Bill Moyers Journal Friday, they had an incredible exposé about how DC lobbyists are perfectly willing to aid and abet evil dictatorships. Harper's magazine investigative journalist, Ken Silverstein, posed as a representative of Turkmenistan, one of the most notorious Stalinist regimes ever, and talked to two major lobbying firms. These firms bent over backwards to get multi-million dollar contracts to do PR, damage control and lobbying for Turkmenistan. They said they work through fake front groups and set up phony events.

Watch and listen to this report

"Although there are distinct limits to what they can achieve, lobbyists are the crucial conduit through which pariah regimes advance their interests in Washington." -- Ken Silverstein

Advance their interests in Washington--i.e. legally bribe public officials to get huge aid packages of OUR MONEY for dictators.

Are American lobbying firms like the ones described in this story responsible for the millions in aid to these regimes? According to what Silverstein is reporting, yes.

We are a nation founded on the idea of destroying tyranny, not helping it.

Where the hell are the candidates running on a platform of "NO MONEY FOR TYRANTS!!" ???
I see no candidate stepping up to the plate.

This should make everyone FURIOUS!

And I don't want to hear another word from politicians talking about "cost-cutting" and "unsustainable" social programs (Dems too) unless every single despotic scumbag is cut off the dole FIRST! Yes Egypt, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, this means you.

What happened to our own people mattering most? what happened to "America First?"
what about priorities?

Services and infrastructure for Americans is being cut to the bone, while we buy new palaces for dozens of new Saddams.

I AM OUTRAGED!

Nick

The Serfs Are Getting Restive

2007-06-22T08:06:00.000-04:00

Here's a fun history tidbit I gleaned from the latest Hardcore History podcast:

The Black Plague and the drastic changes it wrought on society, on supply and demand, on everything, had an incalculably deep impact on history. One thing it spurred was the English Peasants' Revolt, aka the Great Rising of 1381, the 626th anniversary of which, coincidentally, is this month. I did some research on this important event.

On June 14, the serfs rose up and destroyed Savoy Palace and stormed the Tower of London, killing the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chancellor.

After the Black Plague hit and wiped out a significant portion of the labor pool, the remaining workers were suddenly more valuable, and started demanding their share. The nobility responded by repressing the serfs even more. The monarchy re-enforcing the per-man tax that the peasants thought they already paid, and the utter resentment of the entrenched aristocracy is what sparked the revolt. Renegade priest John Ball rallied the serfs with sermons about there being no feudal masters or bondage in Eden, all men created equal, etc.

The rising was so powerful that the King initially agreed to stunning concessions like the effective end of unpaid serf labor, but then all the rebel leaders were killed (John Ball was hanged, drawn and quartered in front of the King, a death so gruesome you have to read it to believe it) and all the tentative agreements were rescinded. "Just kidding! there will still be brutal feudalism!"

In this 14th century art, London's mayor kills rebel leader Wat Tyler in front of the King.

Unpaid serf labor continued well into the 15th century and after in England, though serfdom was permanently undermined by the plague-related depopulation.

Too bad the revolt failed.

The monarchy continued to impose arbitrary, heavy taxes on the plebes to fund their bulls#!t foreign wars. Sound familiar? I'm not opposed to taxes, but if we weren't positioning troops on every freaking continent to fulfill some insane vision of American Empire, imagine how much more we could afford!

European monarchs repressed their people with wars for millenia, often on pretenses as absurd as the Iraq war.

America's founders knew what's up. This is why they put the power to declare war in the hands of the Congress alone (a cornerstone of the Constitution that both parties have consistently ignored since the Korean war). Thomas Jefferson even wanted a standing army banned. It's easy to see why

I'm obsessed with the founding fathers lately. They foresaw all that's happening now, the creeping monarchism, the stripping of our liberties in the name of security, they predicted it all.

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Ben Franklin

"Yes, we did produce a near-perfect republic. But will they keep it? Or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the path of destruction." -- Thomas Jefferson

I fear we ARE losing the Republic. Are we all that different from a monarchy with serfs right now? According to this commentary by Anwar Hussain: "...it is now plain for all to see that misrepresentative government and corporatism has oppressed American citizenry to the extent that their democracy has become nothing more than a corporate theocracy, a fascist feudal state in which 'the serfs' serve the corporate state as voiceless workers, voracious consumers, submissive citizens and pliant subjects."

Author Cullen Murphy says We Are Rome. Check out Murphy being interviewed by Stephen Colbert; it is fascinating.

It's past time we rediscover the core American values of our founders, which are so strongly libertarian they make most '08 presidential candidates look like monarchists.

Don't be servile to any politician! Remember the 1776 rebel spirit!

Nick

Why The Global Shortage of Good Leaders?

2007-06-07T10:49:00.000-04:00

There is a very disturbing worldwide trend going on.

In 1957 our president was Eisenhower and Israel's PM was David Ben-Gurion. Say what you will about them, but they were competent. They weren't bumblers or fools.

In 2007 Israel is headed by the failed mayor of Jerusalem and the U.S. is run by the Clown Car Administration. The Bushies could hardly govern their way out of a paper bag, much less effectively manage the myriad of complex crises we're facing.

And this isn't just an issue for the U.S. and its allies. There is a worldwide crisis of leadership now.

Europe has largely been led by various ineffective center-left or center-right coalitions that haven't led their countries to greatness (i.e. where's your cure for cancer, bitches? where's your extraterrestrial colonization?)

Asia and Africa are largely ruled by regimes similar to that Uzbekistan dictator who boils dissidents alive. Russia is going fascist. Where is Iraq's Thomas Jefferson? Al-Maliki was the best they could do?

This is a real down stroke, a moment of malaise (or outright malevolence) in history.

There have been countless periods like this throughout human history, but rarely in my lifetime has it been so noticeable. I'm feeling that Jack Johnson song "Where'd All The Good People Go?"

Where is our Gandhi? Where is our Martin Luther King? Where is our John Adams? Where is our Abraham Lincoln? Where is our FDR? Hell, I'd settle for a solid President Taft at this point.

What is causing this global shortage of competent leaders?

Is it solar flares?

Worldwide conspiracy to erode government and allow more lawlessness and corporate looting?

Global warming? The lack of pirates?

A historical law of diminishing returns? (Jamie's suggestion)

Is it covert sabotage by time traveling zombies?

What do you think is causing the global shortage of good leaders?

On the horizon I don't see a lot of hope either. I've been following the presidential primaries very closely (I'm fascinated by the issues and the debates) and the reaction the candidates elicit from me range from "ok" to "meh" to "NOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

But I can still be sold.

Nick

I don't know what the narrative is anymore

2007-06-04T14:44:00.000-04:00

I'm back.

I haven't blogged in awhile because I didn't know what to say. I don't know what the narrative is anymore.

People define themselves and grasp their goals and aspirations by relating to others. We explain our past story and bounce ideas and plans off each other, and in this way we cobble together an internal narrative, an identity. Talking to other people gives us the compass we need to plot a course for our lives.

When isolated, a person loses part of their sense of self. It is like trying to make an echo with nothing to bounce sound off of.

That's where I am right now. Lost.

Everything's been stripped away and all that's left is the spiritual.

I love the online world and blogging and message boards. It allows me to have a voice, to try and wrangle control of the story, to form some kind of internal narrative. Last year I posted an explanation of my past few years in an attempt to get a handle on the internal narrative.

Now I don't even know what the narrative is anymore.

Medicaid was making noises about terminating us, but when they visited May 17th, said they have no plans to end our services. A relief.

But what now? I have no idea.

I am trapped. I want out. I know what I want. But I don't know how to get there.

One of the most frustrating aspects is that my destiny is not totally in my hands. I am so dependent.

Ugh. I am sick of hearing my own whining. So I just shut up, curled in the fetal position, and didn't blog for a long time. If you can't say something nice, don't say anything, eh?

I'm back now.

Nick

Spanish-American War Coming Up on History Channel

2007-05-06T23:06:00.000-04:00

In my last post, I talked about the Spanish-American War.

I think the best parallel to the current Bush wars is not Vietnam, but the Spanish-American War, which was also fought with an all-volunteer military, and justified by an incident (Remember the Maine!) that the target of the war (Spain) may not have actually been responsible for. We then annexed Cuba, Puerto Rico and Guam and also removed Spanish despotic rule in the Philippines, which left us bogged down against an indigenous guerrilla insurgency there, a whole new war (the Philippine-American War) that, at its peak, involved a surge of 126,000 U.S. troops, led to atrocities on both sides and didn't really completely end until we promised Philippine independence in 1913.

Of course, precise parallels are impossible; each situation is unique--but I still think looking at history is instructive.

Tuesday night at 9 ET / 8 Central, a special on the Spanish-American War is airing on the History Channel. I've set my DVR to record it. I hope ya'll check it out.
The Spanish-American War: First Intervention

Nick

Inexorable Cycle of History?

2007-05-04T12:04:00.000-04:00

"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun" -- Ecclesiastes 1:9-14

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Are the events shaping the U.S. just a part of an inexorable repeating cycle of history?

In the 1920s the wealth inequality grew to the point where only a select few were comfortable, and then with the drought and widespread agricultural failures (and a myriad of very debatable factors), the American economy collapsed, and there was a certain natural resetting of wealth, and then the boom years following WWII created the modern middle class.

Now since the 1990s we're experiencing a mini-Gilded Age. The Golden 300,000 control our politics lock, stock and barrel. Robber barons seem to be back, and according to all the studies wealth inequality is worse than at any time since the 1920s, and resentment of the rich and demand for change is higher than at any time since then as well (check out this new Gallup poll).

Inequality is very bad; the prophets rail against it. Inequality caused a mob of hungry French women to storm Versailles and put two Royal bodyguards' heads on pikes. Inequality caused the bloody railroad strikes of 1877, when state troops broke the strike with bayonets and Gatling guns.

My question is: is the consolidation of wealth until the poor can no longer afford to buy products from the tycoons (though I know it's more complex), then economic collapse results, then we restart the cycle--is this just the unstoppable track history is on?

Given this cycle of a major economic depression every 100 yeahs or so, should we expect a collapse around the 2020s? Because of the staggering level of personal debt in this country, combined with our insane trade deficits, it doesn't exactly take Nostradamus to predict that we're one more straw on the camel's back (drought, terrorism, global downturn) away from falling off the economic cliff into a major collapse.

Can we ever stop this cycle?

Other things are also so similar and seem stuck on the 100 year cycle as well. The polarization, the razor-thin (possibly stolen) elections, the money dominating politics, the imperialism defining the dawn of the 20th century is eerily similar to Bush's that defined the beginning of the 21st.

Back then they waved the bloody shirt and shouted "Remember the Maine!" to justify the Spanish-American War (which was also expansionist and directly or indirectly to benefit corporate America).
Now politicians wave the bloody shirt and yell "Remember 9/11!" and "you haven't learned the lessons of 9/11!" to justify our current wars.

It's so similar. We racked up just under 3,300 KIA in the Spanish-American War too. And President McKinley may've been motivated by religious fervor as well. And Karl Rove cited McKinley as a model to follow.

Is this just an unstoppable cycle? Can we ever jump the tracks?

Nick

A Philadelphia Press political cartoon "Ten Thousand Miles From Tip to Tip" meaning the extension of U.S. domination (symbolized by a bald eagle) from Puerto Rico to the Philippines. The cartoon contrasts this with a map of the smaller United States of 100 years earlier in 1798.

Horde of Medicaid Zombies Banging On Your Door

2007-05-03T05:29:00.000-04:00

This is an update to the Medicaid Trying To Cut Us Off post.

Last Friday our case worker for the Medicaid waiver, who works for Alabama Medicaid, called up to relay the message that the administrators are crunching the numbers on the program and it is too expensive.

In order to continue the program, they have to show that home care is less costly than their regular plan: warehousing me in an institution. They say that they are unable to make the numbers work and are "investigating."

I have two counters to this:

1) Why were you able to make the numbers work when a federal judge was pressuring you, but now, four years later, it's suddenly a problem?

2) I'm ventilator-dependent. It's easy for me to die if I'm (even momentarily) abandoned. It would of course be a lot cheaper to dump me in some backwoods nursing home with inadequate care where I wouldn't survive long (dead people don't accrue medical costs) but to meet my needs adequately in a facility, you would need to provide an ICU-level of care, which would indeed cost way more than my current care. Why isn't my survival part of the equation? If they're more than number-zombies, then my survival should be the main variable.

Alabama Medicaid has a long, infamous history of cutting people off and leaving them to die, of eliminating entire programs--they tried to end the EPSDT waiver in 1997, cut our services in 1999 and it took a national campaign to force them to create a new program to continue my care past age 21 in 2003.

So when Medicaid tells me they can't make the numbers work to justify the continued existence of the program, I take that as a threat to the program. My nursing agency sees it as a threat. It is a threat; no exaggeration.

Here's an amusing snippet of IM chat with me and my brother Jamie:

Jamie says:
not inaccurate, no, but u came off as panicky
Nick says:
I come off as panicky BECAUSE I'M PANICKY!!
rightfully so!
Jamie says:
u sound like the zombie horde is bashing on the door
Nick says:
I feel like the zombie horde is bashing on the door
Nick says:
I've been fighting the zombie horde all my life and it's time to move
Jamie says:
but they aren't bashing on the door. we got a message that the zombie horde may or may not be in negotiations to fly in from Zombistan
Nick says:
May 17. negotiations with the zombie horde.
mark your calendar.
Jamie says:
and u know how long zombie negotiations take...
Nick says:
yep
Jamie says:
Ambassador: We're prepared to offer $5 million and New Jersey. What are your concessions?
Zombassador: BRAAAAAAAAAAINS!!!!
Nick says:
ROFL!!!
Nick says:
Zombassador!!!
Nick says:
HAHHHAHAH!!!!!
I have to blog this. "Zombassador!" lol!!!

Stay tuned.

Nick

How bad is your state's Medicaid program?

2007-04-30T09:25:00.000-04:00

Public Citizen ranks state Medicaid programs

Get the full run-down here
Unsettling Scores: A Ranking of State Medicaid Programs (2007)

Lots of excellent info here. ALL states in the U.S. have serious problems in their health care systems; the "best 10" would be more-aptly labeled "the least terrible 10."

We cannot let the status quo continue to devolve. The trajectory we're on is BAD.

This is why I'm so angry and political all the time. I have to lose care so we can afford more bombs and wars? I have to lose care for the sake of tax cuts, so some tycoon can do the backstroke in his swimming pool-full of $100 bills?! HELL NO.

It's immoral; it cannot stand!

Nick

Update: Medicaid Trying To Cut Us Off...Again

2007-04-29T12:06:00.000-04:00

To the guys who want to slash Medicaid funding even more, take this story and eat it.

Alabama Medicaid called Friday, they want to terminate our waiver.... Basically, we're too expensive to keep alive.

They will discuss this more in May. They say the program is just too expensive.

Scary.

But then again they claimed the same thing in 2003 right before I "won."

Who knows what will happen.... We begged them to just ship us to another state, but nothing is certain now except that my level of frustration and outright fear is at an all-time high (and that's saying a lot).

My family is in danger.

Alabama doesn't want us.

I'm so sick of fighting.

I'm so tired.

Nick

Latest From The Iraqi Front, April 2007

2007-04-29T10:44:00.000-04:00

I wanted to post a quick note of my thoughts on the developing (and rapidly changing) situation on the Iraqi front.

Check out this story from the AP wire, Iraqi Insurgents Now Fighting Each Other. It describes how some of the Sunni insurgents are turning against al-Qaida:

MUQDADIYAH, Iraq -- At least two major insurgent groups are battling al-Qaida in provinces outside Baghdad, American military commanders said Friday, an indication of a deepening rift between Sunni guerrilla groups in Iraq.

U.S. officers say a growing number of Sunni tribes are turning against al-Qaida, repelled by the terror group's sheer brutality and austere religious extremism. The tribes are competing with al-Qaida for influence and control over diminishing territory in the face of U.S. assaults, the officers say. The influx of Sunni fighters to areas outside the capital in advance of the security crackdown in Baghdad may have further unsettled the region.

The Iraqis are going to work it out. They will crush al-Qaida and inevitably find some stability. We can best accelerate this process if we stop kicking the hornet's nest and get out of the way.

As this Staff Sgt. put it, "this is our generation's Vietnam," and they are caught in a civil war they can't win.

Is it "supporting the troops" to keep them in such an untenable situation?

American commanders cite al-Qaida's severe brand of Islam, which is so extreme that in Baqouba, al-Qaida has warned street vendors not to place tomatoes beside cucumbers because the vegetables are different genders, Col. David Sutherland said.

Such radicalism has fueled sectarian violence in Iraq and redrawn the demographics of many mixed Sunni-Shiite towns in Diyala, where tens of thousands of Shiites have been forced to flee large population centers.

These guys are CRAZAAAAY!! Fruit segregation is nowhere in the Koran, but evidently this is something extremist groups are pushing. Check out this video:

Hometown Baghdad - "Forbidden Salad"
Uploaded by chattheplanet

The Iraqi people aren't buying what the al-Qaida types are selling; they have nothing to offer but neurotic religious stringency and authoritarianism, and almost no one wants to live under that. Al-Qaida is already being marginalized and would have no meaningful support at all if there were no Western "Crusaders" in the region to attack (antipathy toward Europeans from Medieval times runs so deep that some Arabs paint houses blue to ward off "the blue-eyed devils").

"Iraqis are sick of foreign people coming in their country and trying to destabilize their country." —George W. Bush
The president was jabbing at the Iranians here; he has no ability to detect the irony of saying this while commanding 160,000+.foreign people in Iraq.

We toppled Saddam, our military was victorious. Now it's a political clash between competing factions and, unfortunately, there's little more we can achieve other than exacerbating the violence.

It's past time to leave Iraq! No more wasted blood and treasure, please!

But of course, guys like Congressman Don Young say you should be executed for treason if you want to pull out. How do we find solutions in that climate?

Sadly, we will likely be bogged down in Iraq for years to come.

Nick

Jewish Funeral For Liviu Librescu

2007-04-18T20:27:00.000-04:00

In my last post, I covered the death of Professor Liviu Librescu in the VT Massacre. Librescu, who survived a Nazi slavery camp during the Holocaust, was given a Jewish funeral today in Brooklyn. Full story

He'll be buried in Israel.

I was moved by these photos.

The casket of Liviu Librescu is carried through the street in Brooklyn, New York, Wednesday, April 18, 2007.

Praying and crying

75-year-old Holocaust Survivor Killed In VT Massacre

2007-04-17T05:07:00.000-04:00

This life is full of sick ironies.

Nick

Israeli professor killed in US shooting

As Jews worldwide honored on Monday the memory of those who were murdered in the Holocaust, a 75-year-old survivor sacrificed his life to save his students in Monday's shooting at Virginia Tech college that left 32 dead and over two dozen wounded.

Professor Liviu Librescu threw himself in front of the shooter, who had attempted to enter his classroom. The Israeli mechanics and engineering lecturer was shot to death, "but all the students lived - because of him," Virginia Tech student Asael Arad - also an Israeli - told Army Radio.

Librescu's wife, Marlena, told the NRG Web site that her husband had loved his job with "all his heart and his soul."

The couple immigrated to Israel from Romania in 1978 and then moved to Virginia in 1986 for his sabbatical, but had stayed since then, their son, Joe, told Army Radio.

In the deadliest shooting rampage in modern US history, the attacker, who had yet to be positively identified, cut down his victims in two attacks two hours apart before the university could grasp what was happening and warn students.

The bloodbath ended Monday with the gunman committing suicide, bringing the death toll to 33 and stamping the campus in the picturesque Blue Ridge Mountains with unspeakable tragedy, perhaps forever.

Full story at the Jerusalem Post

Camel Crossing

2007-04-16T05:50:00.000-04:00

I thought this was a great photo.

A camel crossing in Dubai.

In the Mideast, the new world is colliding with the ancient.

Nick

What The U.S. Can Learn From "Lawrence of Arabia"

2007-04-11T11:10:00.000-04:00

In my post, Why did they create the new nation of Iraq? I discussed T.E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia") and his vision of the Middle East's borders after WWI, which would've amounted to the Shias getting their own state in the Mesopotamian Basin, a single state for most of the Sunnis of what are now the fake nations of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, and the whole region transitioning to Arab self-rule. The British shot down Lawrence's proposal, because they were imperialists in the purest sense, and wanted an Empire of "civilized" and orderly Western governments sending them resources and profits.

The real T.E. Lawrence

It should almost go without saying that America is failing in Iraq today mainly due to our woeful ignorance of history and the nature of the region and its people.

We can learn a lot from the British Empire's mistakes in their Mandate of Mesopotamia.

1) There is a natural tissue rejection of any foreign body. The Iraqis in 1919 and 1920 revolted against British rule. The Ayatollahs in Karbala and Najaf declared jihad against the English. The Kurds resisted as well. The area was only controlled with heavy bombing from the Royal Air Force and use of poison gas.

2) Subjugating people who don't want to be subjugated is ugly. It was ugly when Saddam did it, it was ugly when the British did it, and it is ugly with our new version Subjugation 2.0 that we're attempting today. It is immoral, and lends itself to atrocities. Facing the 1920 rebellion in Iraq, Winston Churchill wrote, "I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes." And use gas on tribes they did. "gas was used against the Iraqi rebels with excellent morale effect," Churchill said. Phosphorus bombs were also employed. The West today acts outraged that Saddam gassed the Kurds, but had no problem selling Saddam said gas, nor with gassing rebellious tribes themselves decades earlier.

3) Iraq, and Arabs, are not what people think. Iraq is a fake construct, and though Iraqis are now attached to the current territory, the borders were drawn by the British in such a way to engender instability and dependence on foreigners.

Everyone should watch Lawrence of Arabia. While it is flawed, it did win seven Oscars (including Best Picture) and it gives real insight into the turbulent birth of modern "Arabism" and the struggles with it today.

What struck me most in Lawrence of Arabia was that the concept of "Arab" is also a new construct, and an identity, to an extent, also imposed by outsiders. The line in the movie when the Bedouin chieftain Auda abu Tayi says "what's an Arab? I am Howitat!" says it all. Not only did he not have a unified Arab national identity, he did not know what an Arab was!!! He knew only a tribal identity.

Then after Lawrence and the chieftains seized Damascus from the Ottoman Turks, the Howitat and the Harith tribes can't agree who will control what city services. Water is offline because the Howitat who control electricity won't coordinate with the Harith who control water and need power to run the pumps (or visa versa). "Being an Arab will be thornier than you suppose, Harith!" Auda abu Tayi says. They blame each other and despise each other. I don't know what happens, I think they end up giving the British the water duties and eventually the Imperialists play the tribes off each other as further pretext for foreign rule, but Lawrence says "There may be honor among thieves, but there's none in politicians" and leaves Damascus.

The Damascus situation and the failure of the independent Arab state post-WWI seems like an eerily similar forerunner of the disturbing reports coming out of Baghdad lately, with tribes in gridlock and some areas devoid of basic government services like water and trash collection because sectarians will attack anyone working for the government as a "collaborator." One of the most powerful quotes in the movie that hits home today is when Lawrence says, "So long as the Arabs fight tribe against tribe, so long will they be a little people, a silly people - greedy, barbarous, and cruel..." and while this statement had plenty of imperialism behind it, it's hard not to see insight in it given the current tribal bloodbath in Iraq.

Though decades of nationalist rule created a strong Iraqi identity (check out Hometown Baghdad for a great vlog by ordinary Iraqis) and many Iraqis demand the old borders and stability be maintained, much of the population seems to have reverted to the same kind of pre-national tribalism and sectarian infighting seen in Lawrence of Arabia. Once tyranny is removed, whether it be Saddam or the Ottomans toppled, Arab society seems to inexorably revert to the more basic tribal forms. When in crisis, you go with what you know.

WWI created the outlines for all the disasters that we have in the Mideast today. The British stacked up the House of Cards that was Iraq. Now the U.S. has toppled it, but doesn't know what the cards and identities even mean as they try to stack something back up, and are probably just making it worse.

We would do well to heed the lessons of history, and abandon our fruitless quest to pacify and remake the Middle East. It's 2007, and we should know better than to retrace British blunders.

Leave Iraq to Iraqis; it's the only way.

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." -- George Santayana.

Nick

Candidate Giuliani Visits My City

2007-04-11T01:16:00.000-04:00

Guess who showed up in my city today ?

Rudy Giuliani.

I live in Mobile, AL, Alabama's second largest city. The Port City.

Today Candidate Giuliani showed up here. As far as I know he didn't meet with any real people, any disability or elderly groups, nor did he visit the parts of the county that were devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

What he did do was speak at a $1,000 per plate fundraising dinner in Theodore, a nearby wealthy exurb. He also spoke at the State Capitol.

Not that other candidates are much better. Most of the candidates, both Republicans and Democrats, are only talking to the uber rich who are contributing to them (*cough* bribing). It's no wonder most young people feel apathetic and disengaged from politics. It really IS depressing, and the current legalized bribery makes everyday (read: poor) people feel they can't possibly be heard. I don't blame people for being cynical.

The system is huuuuuuuuuuurting us.

It's past time for democracy funding, to publicly-fund our elections so that corporations don't own the system lock-stock-and-barrel. It is way cheaper than the current system of corruption.

Nick

Why did they create the new nation of Iraq? UPDATED

2007-04-09T23:15:00.000-04:00

After World War I destroyed the Ottoman Empire, why did the British decide to create the new nation of Iraq out of the 3 different Ottoman provinces?

The British divvied up the Ottoman Empire's holdings and created Iraq out of the three Ottoman "vilayets" (regions) of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra. Why would they do this? If we understood why Iraq was formed, we might could answer why Iraq should remain united or break apart into three states.

Iraq today

Clearly the Brits created a lot of rage by drawing colonial borders all over West Asia, but what I'm asking is, "why did they draw Iraq's borders the way they did?" Was it just, "hey, this is a good shape!" ????

These are the borders proposed by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) of new states from the parceling-out of the Ottoman Empire, based on sensibilities Lawrence observed talking to the local populations. This is fascinating to me.

Lawrence has most of Syria and all of Jordan and Saudi Arabia as one state under King Faisal. This makes a lot of sense given tribal patterns.

He has "Irak" defined as the Shi'ite regions of the Mesopotamian Basin, and the Sunni West as a separate state.

It's entertaining that he puts "?" over central Iraq and a "?" over Kurdistan, lol. He didn't know what to do with them. The only outright oddity here is a state for Armenians in Southern Turkey. wtf?

But overall Lawrence's map would make way more sense than the current divisions. Jordan, Syria and Arabia aren't separated unnecessarily like they are today, Shias in Iraq have their own state, etc.

Lawrence's proposal was shot down.

My question for historians is this: why were the borders of Iraq we have today chosen vs. Lawrence's or others? The current boundaries make no sense.

UPDATE: I got a great response from a history professor. This is what she wrote:

Nick -- I'm an American historian, but I study empire, so I have some expertise to answer your excellent question. The answer is (and this may strike you as cynical) that the current borders were drawn to create instability that would require sustained British involvement in Iraq. They'd had interests in the area for a long time (Suez Canal was hugely important to the British economy), but had been held in check by the Ottoman Empire. At the end of WWI, with the Ottoman Empire in eclipse, they had the chance to expand influence in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, etc and control both the geopolitics and the economy. (Hey, they were very successful imperialists. This is what imperialists do!)

Lawrence's plan was envisioning self-rule, which is something that the British government did not want to bestow. Their plan (see "imposition of empire game plan, version 53.0") was to "civilize" and "modernize" the Middle East, slowly apprenticing them to the demands of life in the free capitalist Christian global marketplace and constitutional monarchy rather than sheikdoms. During so-called British Mandate period, the Brits imposed a puppet Haashemite monarchy, gave most of the land to the Sunnis, then proceeded to look for oil). Because few Arabs had the money to invest, the prime investments were purchased by the British and the money directed out of Iraq and back to Bristol, Manchester, and London.

There were also other reasons to keep all the three groups together. The plan was a regional one that would keep the warring groups of Iraq weak and focused on their internal divisions rather than going to war with Saudis, etc.

Did it work? No. Both the Shia and the Kurds fought for independence under the Brits and the Brits bombed them with phosphorous bombs (a chemical weapon -- only wrong, apparently, when European or American trops are targeted). In 1941, when Iraqi Petroleum (a British corporation and subsidiary to British Petroleum, I think) interests were threatened, the Brits again shot up Iraq with troops from British India and Jordanian mercenaries. (Their own army was somewhat engaged in WWII.) The monarchy was finally overthrown in 1958 (after the British were forced to give up the Suez Canal in 1956...the post WWII empire fell apart pretty quickly.)

So...that's the long and short of it. I'm so glad you asked something that I knew something about, as I've been reading you lately and really learning a lot. Nice to have something to give in return.

She is right that the British used WMD against Iraq. Winston Churchill wrote about Iraq: "I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes."

What we are coping with today in Iraq are the scars of the British Empire. They set up a fractured amalgam of a country that would, since then, be forced to rely on strongmen to achieve stability. Yet most of the Iraqi bloggers I read want the old (British) borders maintained, they don't want Iraq redrawn and they don't want to lose what status they had.

Iraq is changing, and unfortunately, neither the Iraqis nor the new American "managers" can predict how it will turn out.

Nick

I Feel Messed Up

2007-04-06T05:40:00.000-04:00

Beware the Ides of March

We recently passed the third anniversary of the death of my friend Chris. It's so awful, I don't write or speak about this much (too painful) but I thought you should all know about it.

My family had known Chris since we moved to Mobile, Alabama in 1983, I was 1 years old then. Chris had Duchenne's Muscular Dystrophy. His mom and my mom started a sort of two-person parent support group.

He went on a trach and ventilator not long after I did, in the mid-90s.

Because neither of us had much support to get out of the house I rarely saw Chris in person, though he lived 10 minutes from my house. I last saw him at his 24th birthday party, but we kept in touch by chatting on-line. We were friends.

Chris was a cool person. He was a very different personality than me. He was hardcore, and rarely complained. Whining was beneath him. He thought displays of emotion uncool whereas I tend to be seething with emotion, often silently, but emotional. He would probably hate this blog. He thought me talking politics was sorta "gay" and pretty pointless, though he had a great kind of warrior respect for me and my tenacity, especially after my two-year "Crusade" actually succeeded.

He loved heavy metal music like Metallica and Kittie. He had a dyed mohawk or shaved head, and often wore that flaming skull and rebel flag T-Shirt. He loved sci-fi, X-men, comic books, writing action stories, his friends, and women (this ended up being the primary topic of our conversations).

What he valued most was guts, balls. Bravery. Action. One of his short stories was about a Viking warrior. Maybe Chris was a gilgul (reincarnation) of a Viking warrior or something. While he often found my political rants annoying, and thought politics pointless, he admired my unrelenting gall.

Chris was in love with a girl and finally told her everything in 2003. He bore his heart out, then waited. He said if she didn't answer by the Ides of March he knew to give up. Beware the Ides of March! March 15 came and went, and no answer.

Chris used to have at the end of his emails, as his signature, "If you have a dream, or something you need to say, or to let out, don't hesitate, don't let go of that opportunity, it may never come again."

March 9, 2004, the next year, Chris died.

Alabama Medicaid provides nursing care through the EPSDT program, they are mandated to. But after age 21, people are no longer eligible for EPSDT, and Alabama does not provide any sort of full-time care through other programs (except for the handful like me on the new AT waiver we got from my "victory" in 2003 or people with MR allowed on the MR/DD waiver).

Around 1999 I think, Chris turned 21, and of course lost his care.

Chris' parents were trying to do his care 24/7, alone. They had not fully slept in 4 years or something. Chris wrote up something about his problem and I put it on my Crusade web site. In his message, he wrote of his fear that unless he could get some sort of care back, his ventilator tube could come disconnected and no one would be there or wake up to hear his ventilator alarms in time to save his life. He said this on local TV as well. As you know I had been warning about the dangers of providing no support to people after age 21, for years.

March 4, 2004 Chris' ventilator tube came off, and no one woke up. Once found, Chris was taken to the hospital, where he was in a coma and brain dead from the prolonged lack of air to the brain. March 9, Chris died.

He was 26.

I went to the wake, and the funeral.

This was a devastating, life-changing thing for me. The impact on his parents can't even be put into words.

His death was preventable, and the fault of the awful situation of near-total lack of services in Alabama. Parents can't maintain care alone indefinitely. We know that when care is not provided to people who need care to survive, they don't survive. We know that if Chris had full-time care, if Chris did not live in Alabama, and lived in a state that provided such care, this wouldn't have happened.

Chris' mom told me she wants to make sure this never happens to another family again. As the leader of the anti-21 cut-off campaign, I went on local news and explained that the system is still broken. This is the last report of it still online: "Alabama Medicaid Policy Blamed For Friend's Death" By Dave Reynolds, Inclusion Daily Express, March 29, 2004.

Lots of people think politics don't really matter, but if you're one of the poor and disabled people who have to rely on the government, politics can kill you.

I lobbied hard for Chris, he himself wrote many letters, and for years his case was refused because Alabama Medicaid says they can't afford to expand.

This country has been slashing programs for the poor and disabled for over a decade like it has no consequences, or worse, as I detailed in Fighting Cuts, Demanding Universal Health Care, they think that cutting off services benefits them--that it is a great thing. It isn't. It doesn't benefit you. It is evil. I believe this is the fifth 21 cut-off death in the city of Mobile alone, that I know of. The disability community in the South feels under siege. Know that there's still a developing, worsening situation with home care policy in America as more and more people turn 21 and find the supports they need just aren't there.

Politics is not a game. The disregard (or outright cruelty) of politicians can kill.

What do I do with all the rage, despair and cynicism I still feel inside? I feel messed up. I feel grief, mourning, disappointment, frustration, rage, motivation, fatigue, passion, love, fear, and ponderings about media, society, people, girls, disability, life, my life, my future, all under layers of slimy cynical build-up...and right now I am paralyzed. I just feel broken. I just feel messed up.

Nick

March 28 photos

2007-04-01T05:11:00.001-04:00

Me and my brother Jamie (on left).

Me

Saving Emilio

2007-03-22T01:26:00.000-04:00

Should the state be allowed to pull the plug on your family without your consent?

This is a scary question that's getting more and more attention lately, as states and hospital corporations are increasingly looking to cut costs and unplug people they deem "futile."

It's downright Nazi-istic, and we are called to fight this every step of the way.

Texas is a state that has been particularly loathsome in this area. They have a law (signed by allegedly "pro-life" governor of Texas, George W. Bush) called the "Futile Care Law," which takes the individual liberty away from the family, and allows hospital corporations to unplug you (against the wishes of the family) if they deem you "futile." This is way too much power in the hands of corporations, and it strips life-and-death decisions from the family in order to kill people and free up hospital resources.

In an unprecedented perversion of American tradition, Texas is saying "Take my liberty, and give me death!"

Monday I signed an affidavit affirming the dignity of those on life support and had it notarized and faxed. That's where I've been....

Here is the press release on this case:

IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
March 20, 2007

Contacts: Diane Coleman & Stephen Drake
(708)209-1500, exts. 11 & 29; 708-420-0539 (cell)
Bob Kafka
512-431-4085 (cell)

National Disability Group Supports Efforts to Save Emilio Gonzalez
Activist Nick Dupree provides affidavit about the dignity of life as a ventilator user

Not Dead Yet, a national disability rights group, is strongly supporting efforts to save the life of Emilio Gonzales, a seriously ill infant whose life may end on Friday, March 20 under the infamous Texas “futility law.”

The Texas chapter of Not Dead Yet has been part of the effort to overturn the current draconian "futility" statute in Texas - an effort that has been effectively stonewalled by the special interests of medical facilities, medical professionals and bioethicists.

Unfortunately, reversing the latest implementation of this statute can't wait for a change in the law. Emilio Gonzales, who is 16 months old, will die next week when the Children's Hospital of Austin removes him from a ventilator.

Attorney Jerri Ward, representing Emilio’s mother Catarina Gonzales, is moving on multiple legal fronts to prevent the implementation of the impending death sentence. Today, she filed for a Temporary Restraining Order against the hospital to prevent the planned removal of Emilio’s
ventilator. She has also filed a complaint with the U.S. Office of Civil Rights and has claimed that the hospital’s actions represent unlawful discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

According to news reports, Emilio's use of a ventilator lacks "dignity" and merely "prolongs death," according to the ethics committee at Children's Hospital.

A powerful affidavit submitted by disability activist Nick Dupree contests those characterizations of life on a ventilator. 26-year-old Dupree has been on a ventilator since he was 13 years old.

“I do not consider living with a ventilator a burden that makes my life unworthy of being lived. I do not, and have never, considered it an assault on my human dignity and person,” says Dupree in his affidavit. Dupree also writes about his brother Jamie. Doctors wanted to “give up” on
Jamie when he was 12 months old and intubated. Due to his mother’s insistence, Jamie was given a tracheostomy and sent home on a ventilator. Jamie is 22 years old now.

It’s a good thing there were no “futility laws” enabling doctors to overrule Jamie’s mother when he was 12 months old.

Not Dead Yet opposes futility laws as an unconstitutional denial of due process, purportedly authorizing state sponsored medical killing. “We need to get rid of the futility law threatening the life of Emilio Gonzales and others like him in Texas,” said Diane Coleman, president of the
group. “Any theory that the ethics committee procedure satisfies due process requirements is ludicrous.”

===============================

UPDATE: the hospital has granted a stay of execution until April 10.
Read more here.

That we fight for those on the margins is incredibly important, more important than I can adequately put into words.

Nick

U.S. Attorneys Scandal: The Media Is Missing The Point

2007-03-21T21:03:00.000-04:00

The media, the pundits, the blogosphere is abuzz about the firings of the eight U.S. attorneys.

As usual, most everyone is missing the point.

The Senate Democrats are saying "were the firings politically motivated?" Of course they were, the documents even admit this. Move on to the crucial questions, you fools.

The Republicans are saying "Clinton fired U.S. attorneys too!" As always, blaming Clinton is the balm that cures all ills. Of course, this isn't true. All new U.S. attorneys come in (and old ones resign) whenever a new president comes in, like any presidential appointments, and this has always been true. Never has a purge of U.S. attorneys happened in the middle of a term, or new ones appointed without Senate approval.

The media is giving copious coverage to what "both sides" are saying, but, when, as usual, both sides miss the point, the media isn't following up and pointing out the obvious problems and asking the real questions.

The real questions are:

1) Did ya'll fire the San Diego lady because she was about to expose your corporate pals for bribing Duke Cunningham?

and perhaps more importantly,
2) You guys snuck a clause into the Patriot Act that allowed you to bypass Senate confirmation for installing U.S. attorneys. This is totally unprecedented. Why do you think it's kosher to discard the separation of powers? Why is the consolidation of this power in the hands of the executive appropriate here? What other gems did ya'll sneak into the laws that give you extra powers?

The media, as usual, is totally missing the relevant points, and it is excruciating to watch.

While their coverage is typically shallow, the news networks are hyping this as a "Constitutional Crisis," with all sorts of flashy "Constitutional Crisis" graphics. It is all so lame, all so fake. What, do they think Senator Schumer (pictured at left) is going to wage an insurrection or something? lol.... The worst that will happen is a strongly-worded letter and a lot of wrangling in court.

The branches of government are supposed to challenge and block each other. Checks and balances. The Founding Founders gave us a Constitution for this exact reason! They hoped the government would be too tied up fighting amongst themselves to pass anything too loathsome (like the Patriot Act) and subjugate us. It may be a bad sign for how far we've drifted from our founding when we view something as minor as subpoenas of the President's lackeys as a "Constitutional Crisis," but this label is probably just a ploy for ratings that no one really believes.

Again, the media is missing the point, and letting the government cover for corruption and consolidate more power in the hands of the executive right under their nose.

And it's SO frustrating.

Nick

Hospitals Are Very Dangerous Places

2007-03-15T19:22:00.000-04:00

As I wrote in my last post, hospitals are dangerous. Doctors often don't believe the patient, don't listen and screw up. There are nearly unlimited ways hospitals can make mistakes; I even can't count how many times I've been harmed. You can't just sit back, relax and say "oh, I'm sure they know what they're doing, they'll take care of everything." Even with the best staff (unlikely) there are many opportunities to go wrong. To ensure your survival, you have to be very alert, aggressively on top of everything they're doing and advocate until you get what you need. You should always have a loved one with you to help advocate and, if necessary, throw themselves in front of you to stop the most egregious errors. For each medical condition you have, your risk is multiplied. In very complex cases (like me) you have to assume they'll mess up and adjust for that and insist they get it right. A study found that the ornery, demanding patients that the nurses hate live longer than nice, "compliant" patients; remember this.

Check out this story on CBS News about reducing medical errors. Dr. Donald Berwick runs the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and for two years he's headed a new campaign to stop 100,000 unnecessary deaths by getting hospitals to adopt standard operating procedures. It wouldn't let me embed the video, but there is a stunning interview video here wherein he says:

"Hospitals are very dangerous places. I don't know how to explain this to the public in a way that doesn't create too much fear. But they need to be realistic and the technologies that help you can also hurt you — and they do it every single day."
Dr. Donald Berwick

Stay aggressive. Advocate. Survive.

Nick

This Is The Digital Soul of Nick Dupree

2007-03-14T11:27:00.000-04:00

Fear, Esophagastroduodenoscopy and The Ultimate Quarterlife Crisis

What's my world like lately? I hesitate to even go there, because it inevitably veers into the dark side, where I (and most people) don't want to go. But I think occasionally I should throw back the curtain and disinfect the area with some sunlight, let people know what I'm up to, and also try to forge some semblance of an internal narrative that would give me some illusion of control, and maybe it'll be something I can build on. Recent events (turning 25, a hospital trip) also make now a good place to stop and take stock.

Few people really understand themselves, much less other people. Even fewer people understand people on ventilators; most people largely avoid what they've never dealt with first-hand, gravitating toward the familiar at the expense of the unfamiliar. A ventilator shouldn't be as mystified as it is; as I pointed out earlier, it is just a glorified electric bellows. But perhaps there is also a natural aversion to being around someone who lacks what is essential to being alive: breathing. In a sense, as poet Mark O'Brien pointed out, we are the undead. I am much like William Wordsworth wrote when he witnessed the first form of mechanical ventilation, the iron lung; I'm "a traveler betwixt life and death."

And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A being breathing thoughtful breath;
A traveler betwixt life and death.
-William Wordsworth

This status can open up whole new layers of vision, a new way of life, unique experiences, but such a thin foothold in life is also very challenging. I rely on a ventilator for each breath 24/7. With each breath, the tubes move up and down, up and down. That means an inherent danger of a tube popping off, you have no air whatsoever, and you helplessly watch yourself suffocate to death. Tubes pop off every week, but I'm always saved by someone being in the house. I can hear people typing now "omg you take on such risk, you're a hero." No. Please. This doesn't mean I'm some hero engaged in some grand, daily struggle just because I'm incredibly vulnerable. Given the options, 1) death or 2) rely on a vent, I naturally chose to survive, and I'm very grateful I have the vent and survive. But relying on a ventilator also means that even on a good day, life is tenuous, like this:

A lot of the time I forget the tubes are there, just like someone who wears glasses or big earrings can forget they are there, but the knowledge that I can pop off and asphyxiate, that my friend died that way, that I need someone who can help within earshot at all times, this is with me all the time, just as a diabetic person always has the knowledge they'll need insulin in the back of their mind.

There's a certain fear inherent.in my life. I have the visceral, animal desire of a weaker animal who wants to be protected from predators, and there are real dangers lurking: from accidents and incompetence to the cold indifference of a system run by spreadsheets and bean-counters. On the night of the 6th, I got some chicken lodged in my esophagus. This is simply a hazard of having a neck bent by scoliosis, but it had never been this bad before. No matter what we tried we couldn't get it un-stuck. Friday we had to break down and take me to the ER; by ambulance, because our van hasn't worked lately.

So we get there, and the attending physician is your stereotypical, arrogant, uncaring bastard (to put it mildly) and he doesn't believe us that there's chicken lodged in my esophagus. Not big news here, I've dealt with situations far worse; this crap is almost boring and mundane at this point. He says I'm breathing fine, so there's no problem. This guy barely wanted to listen to Mom, much less ever stop long enough to strain to hear my increasingly weak speech.... He X-Rays me, but chicken doesn't show up on an X-Ray, there's no contrast, Einstein. He says it could just be an abrasion. Yeah, I've had that before, and this ain't that. We say, "hey, we've got the disgusting stench of decaying chicken over here." "That doesn't mean anything to me," he says. I guess he was just going to send us home. I wonder how many people this doofus has killed? I protested. Mom insisted. Finally we got a GI consult and the GI doctor was great. He put me to sleep, did what they said is called an Esophagastroduodenoscopy (he put a scope down my throat)

What a video endoscope looks like

and he pulled the chicken out. It was so wedged, pulling it made it stick worse. But victory was finally achieved. I spent the weekend recovering. Now I'm back to the status quo----YAY....

This incident is one of countless times that having Mom there has ensured my survival. It would indeed be hard to stay alive as a severely disabled person without someone there who is inextricably bonded to you, ready to stick up for you when the inevitable challenges occur.

Yet since I was 19, the visceral, inarguable longing to be protected, has clashed with the visceral, inarguable, evolutionary desire to break away from the family and establish an independent, vibrant life, where maybe I can begin my own. This urge can never be extinguished in me, no matter how severely humbled and crushed physically I am. But going off on one's own is, by definition, fraught with danger and inevitable errors, when I have no margin for error--if I'm not protected, I die, and die fast.

So, year after year, this hole in my soul has festered. What happens when the goal you had for 2003 is stifled over and over, and then you realize it is 2005? Now it is 2007. Layers of despair and cynicism settle in. I am so tired. I turned 25 last month. This is the ultimate "quarterlife crisis."

I feel like a caged animal a lot of the time. I'm stuck, with nurses who are strictly medical, so there's not much I can do. I spend 99% of my life silent. Sleep, get online, eat, sleep. Lather, rinse, repeat. How am I doing? Same old, same old.

In the ER, once my nurse stepped out, I told Mom, "please, put me in a place where I can share my soul with more people."

I'm a person who has so much to share, so much insight on so many things on so many levels, and that all those thoughts and feelings are trapped within for lack of an outlet is excruciating. If death is the soul leaving the body, then maybe I've felt a form of it, my soul migrating to the online world where it (thank G-d) can find expression. This is the digital soul of Nick Dupree.

That I'm able to blog and express myself and my ideas is so immensely important to me. To all my readers, thank you so much. My supporters keep me going.

I hope for redemption, resurrection. It is still possible. I hope and pray 2007 is the year we finally relocate to a better city, better situation. I want so much. I am a hooked fish, and most misunderstand.

       When a trout rising to a fly gets hooked and finds
 himself unable to swim about freely, he begins a fight
   which results in struggles and splashes and sometimes 
   an escape.... In the same way, the human struggles ... 
   with the hooks that catch him.  Sometime he masters his
   difficulties; sometimes they are too much for him.  The
   struggles are all that the world sees, and it usually 
   misunderstands them.  It is hard for a free fish to 
   understand what is happening to a hooked one.

         Karl A. Menninger (b.1893)
                            "The Human Mind"

-- quoted at the beginning of Chaim Potok's The Chosen

Keep tuning in to see what is happening.

Nick

"A traveler betwixt life and death"

Libby: The First White House Felon Since Agnew

2007-03-08T05:17:00.000-05:00

I can't help but blog about this. It's just so history-making.

The vice president's chief of staff, Scooter Libby was convicted of four felonies Tuesday, becoming the first White House employee convicted of a felony since Spiro Agnew, who was the highest official working in the White House ever convicted of a felony. Thus, it is accurate to say that Scooter Libby was the first White House felon in American history since Agnew.

Scooter was also a muppet.

Libby was also the first White House official to be indicted while in office in 130 years (the last was Orville E. Babcock, who served as the private secretary for President Ulysses S. Grant and was charged in a conspiracy to pocket whiskey taxes, then pardoned by Grant.)

Many speculate President Bush will follow the lead of Grant, as well as George Sr., and pardon criminals in his administration right before leaving office. I hope Libby doesn't get off that easy.

But let's take a broader view most blogs aren't taking. Let's look at all Republican administrations for the past 50 years. (Despite lots of noise, there were no felony convictions among top Clinton officials).

This is so much bigger, and much more serious, than some "Scooter" guy. This is a deep spiritual and cultural undercurrent in America.

The last Republican White House that didn't have serious felony convictions was...when? Hoover? Eisenhower?

When will people wake up and realize there is something inherently corrupt in the core of the Republican party and they should be abandoned?
Why don't they see that the core philosophy that government is bad and should not regulate anything leads to a climate of disregard for the law? If you think government is illegitimate and part of the problem, you will tend to step over any rules.

People in the Nixon Administration were jailed for Watergate. People in the Reagan and Bush I Administrations were jailed for illegal gun-running to Iran to illegally fund Contra guerrillas in Nicaragua. People in the George W. Bush Administration will be jailed for overstepping the CIA rules to smear a political opponent (Plame Affair) and maybe they'll also get in trouble for the far more serious allegations that they're illegally funding Jihadists in Lebanon. What these administrations have in common is a "no-holds barred" approach.

What's it take to get these crooks banned?

I'm already hearing stuff like "yeah, Bush was bad but the next Republican administration will be GREAT" and it MAKES ME WANT TO SCREAM!! History shows the next Republican administration will be just as enthusiastically devoted to advancing authoritarian powers, the rules (or people in the way) be damned, as this Republican administration, and the Reagan / Bush Sr. administrations (Iran/Contra) and the Nixon administration (Watergate).

Even on a non-ideological, purely practical "I don't want corrupt government" level, the GOP should be sidelined by voters until they've proven they can stay ethically clean.

Nick

Is the "war on terra" the only issue that matters?

2007-03-04T11:08:00.000-05:00

Is the war on terra the only issue that matters in politics now?

That's the argument Ron Silver famously made at the '04 Republican National Convention (old video).

It's the argument I hear over and over from Bush apologists.

Prediction: it's the argument that rightist politicians will be pitching throughout the '08 election cycle, which (lamentably) is rolling ahead full-bore already in spring '07.

And it isn't true.

Here's how a friend framed it. He actually makes a respectable case here, and I give him props for the cogent argument.

But Nick, my whole point is...what does it matter what our Health Care system is if we're facing the same type of suicide bombing campaign IN AMERICA that they've had in Israel, or God forbid in Iraq?

You don't understand me...I'm a liberal. I'm not a right-wing asshole. But what good is liberalism if we don't have a world to practice it in??

I'm also very pro-the world existing, always have been.

I don't want us to throw up our hands and let terrorist cells metastasize all over the world, no president would allow that. Don't believe the straw men that right-wingers keep building to scare you; it's false.

I took a class in American foreign policy in college (which by no means makes me an expert, but does mean I know slightly more than the other bloggers) and in reading the books what struck me most was that American foreign policy has changed remarkably little in the last 100 years (I'm fascinated by this stuff). Don't believe the hype; whoever has accepted the weighty mantle of commander-in-chief has acted very consistently to intervene overseas for U.S. interests (in the study of foreign policy, this school of thought, that the role determines things more than its occupant, is called Role Theory) . President McKinley annexed Guam, the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. Theodore Roosevelt built the Panama Canal, decided the U.S. could unilaterally intervene in Latin America, and sent The Great White Fleet circumnavigating the globe to show off American military might. William Howard Taft toppled a regime he didn't like in Nicaragua and installed a puppet. Woodrow Wilson threw U.S. troops into World War I. Franklin D. Roosevelt brought us into WW2. Truman nuked Japan and invaded Korea. Eisenhower intervened in Vietnam and LBJ surged over 550,000 troops into the war. Reagan intervened in Lebanon, Grenada and Central America. Bush Sr. invaded Kuwait, Clinton continued bombing Saddam and launched Operation Desert Fox, as well as toppling Serbia.

My point (aside from thinking we really need to reevaluate whether we want to continue the 100 years of near-perpetual warfare) is that U.S. presidents have been consistently interventionist for a century (mostly for good motives) and you should not expect that to stop on a dime in another Democratic administration.

Why have American presidents, no matter what the person is like, or what he has promised, implemented consistently similar foreign policy? Because they have the same foreign policy equipment (the same Joint Chiefs of Staff, the same Armed Forces, the same CIA, the same intelligence data) that doesn't change from the previous administration. So ...

1) Whoever is president will respond similarly and do whatever it takes to protect us. No president wants to be remembered as allowing catastrophic consequences, and (from what history has shown) will likely err on the side of over-intervening, not isolationism.

2) What is the greatest threat to the lives of our citizenry, really? We lost over 3,000 Americans to terrorism on 9/11, which is horrible, but we lose 600,000 Americans every year to cancer alone (source). Lance Armstrong is involved in the National Commission on Cancer Survivorship, and they have found that at least 200,000 of those deaths are totally preventable with existing treatments, but are not treated (given basic chemotherapy) because our health care system is so lame (Armstrong discusses this near the end of this interview). Our wasteful, greedy culture is devastating our population in this area. It's not hard to see health care is a huge threat, arguably the most important.

Also, I follow Jewish theology in saying that doing mitzvos, doing good, the spiritual quest for righteousness is the most important overriding goal of life, and if we do good, we can never truly be destroyed, where conversely, doing bad, bad motives, bad faith, will ultimately cancel out perceived gains. We can bomb every Iraqi village (or, as one poster suggested to me, nuke the Sunni triangle and nuke Iran) and satisfy our fear momentarily, but if we've sold our soul by tossing our moral code to commit such acts, what good will it do long-term? It would come back on us. We are only a great country because we are good. If we are not scrupulously good, we will never be great; karma won't allow it.

3) What kind of society are we protecting from terrorism? This gets right back to the heart of my earlier post about the social contract. What if we wake up and realize the society we're defending is a society that says "screw you if you're sick! if you can't pay, you die!"? The Army Times is reporting that soldiers coming home wounded are being deliberately shortchanged on their disability classifications to save money. The big picture is that right now our government, our society is fundamentally unrighteous, spiritually sick, and needs to be transformed. We agree to form a government and allow it to rule so we can ensure life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, and when a people fail at this and injustice is rampant, change is the top priority.

The Hebrew prophets always stressed this point, and were far harsher than I am in putting a return to righteousness ahead of national defense (in fact I can't find a single prophet who didn't do this). The Nevi'im (prophets) make people really uncomfortable (sometimes even me). They are in your face and get in your business. I want to be more moderate than Jeremiah here, who insisted that forsaking idolatry was the only overriding concern and wrote that we had to check ourselves, even if it took invasion by Babylonians (which he believed we deserved) to make us see we're not keeping our end of the covenant and need to check ourselves. Of course Jeremiah was tortured and imprisoned several times by the ruling elite for saying this (the true prophets, from Abraham to Moses to Jeremiah are always against the ruling elite, and you should be too).

Rembrandt. The Prophet Jeremiah Mourning over the Destruction of Jerusalem. 1630. Oil on panel. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

As predicted, Jeremiah saw Babylon conquer Israel in his lifetime. I don't think we deserved 9/11, and Babylon isn't going to militarily defeat us, but repentance is always a good idea, and it can't be insignificant that now America has invaded Babylon, a spiritual Babylon (idolatry, moral anarchy, survival of the fittest) has invaded America at the same time. This is the premise of another great social justice blog by my friend Y-Love, ThisIsBabylon.net.

Anyway, I don't think it's at all radical or off-base to suggest that the means of defense is less crucial than what it is we're defending. It's just common sense. The type of society we are, correcting injustice, eschewing idolatry, these are the chief goals in my worldview. And given the growing inequity in health care harming more and more Americans, and killing more than terrorism, it's no surprise that voters now list universal health care as their top domestic priority (Health Care Top Domestic Concern: Poll).

Expect to hear a lot on TV that war is all that matters, a lot of scare tactics. But it's not true.

To recap:

1) Whoever is president will respond similarly and do whatever it takes to protect us.
2) Inequity in health care is killing more Americans than terrorism.
3) The overall social contract is the most important, and it is broken.

Isn't building the riches in our vault just as important (if not moreso) than the Army guarding it?

Rebuild. Renew. Fulfill.

Nick

Nick Produces Podcast Tackling Bush's Health Care Plan

2007-03-04T07:22:00.000-05:00

A few weeks back I produced an episode of the Best of the Left podcast tackling (well, shredding) Bush's health care plan.

The Best of the Left podcast is a podcast I found on iTunes, produced by a user named Jay. It's a (usually weekly) compilation of left-wing radio. Like a highlight reel.

Sometimes another user guest produces an episode of the show.

I guest produced an episode on Bush's health care plan.

I hijacked another man's podcast :D

Jay just does the intro and a really gracious thanks in the outro. Thanks man.

You can listen to my episode here:
The Whole Health Care Debacle

The segments are as follows:
1) Al Franken plays Bush's explanation of the plan from his State of the Union and puzzles over it.
2) Steven Colbert gives you the plan in a nutshell. lol...
3) On NPR's On Point, a great author on health care breaks down what the problem is with health care historically (Bush doesn't address the issue). This is a great analysis with rare clarity and credibility.
4) SEIU Chair Andy Stern gives the worker's take on The Rachel Maddow Show.
5) Columnist Paul Krugman analyzes the plan on The Sam Seder Show.
6) Nick Dupree on NPR's All Things Considered. February 2003. You can also listen to this independent of the podcast here.
7) The Martin Luther King Speech discussed as a response to Bush in this past blog. The crux of the matter: making war robs resources from the needy.

This was a fun episode to produce, and if you need to get a detailed, multi-faceted analysis of Bush's health care proposal, you'll appreciate this 45-minute program.

Check it out.

We live in a fantastic new age of information sharing and collaboration. Podcasts are a great new format for shows (and you don't need an iPod to play them).

Nick

More About Culling of the Sick in TN. Also, Bush Weighs In

2007-03-01T08:36:00.000-05:00

Two weeks ago I detailed the government's offensive, destructive policy of slashing Medicaid in my post, Vigorously Insisting On A More Perfect Union: Fighting Cuts, Demanding Universal Health Care.

But last year and the year before that, I was blogging in posts like this, about the cuts to Tennessee Medicaid, the largest cuts in Medicaid history.

Their governor pursued the wholesale dis-enrollment of over 300,000 Tennesseans. Termination letters went out, and then the state stopped providing needed medications and home care people could not get elsewhere. Not surprisingly, when you remove life-sustaining aid, people begin to die. Visionary journalist Sharon Cobb documented the real stories behind these cuts, including the funerals, in the hard-hitting documentary 323,000. Everyone should watch it.

Also, a new documentary on the culling of the sick and poor in Tennessee has just been brought to my attention. It's called Collateral Damage: Bad Medicine in Tennessee. Here is the trailer:

This is one of the most egregious betrayals of basic morality I've ever seen, and it's provoked barely a yawn from the public, and the profit-driven news media is all "OMG Britney shaved her head!" and "LOOK! a stripper who had no impact on anyone ODed! we must cover what will happen to the corpse 24/7! it's a slow news week, not like we have a war going on...oh wait...."

There is a deep spiritual sickness in this country. The media, the attacks on the weak, all of it is an outgrowth of this spiritual sickness among the population. It is a spiritual issue because none of this injustice would be possible if people weren't so severely sick spiritually that injustice is a-ok to them (if they were spiritually repaired they would never allow injustice, they'd break the doors down to stop it.)

The TennCare crisis has gotten little response from the politicians. Letters from dying citizens went unanswered. But last week, buried in this story in The Washington Post, I found a comment on the situation from President Bush, who, if he were a responsible leader, would be running a TennCare war room 24/7 until he'd ensured all those devastated by the cuts were okay.

You'll be shocked by his take on the issue:

Bush hailed the governor, Phil Bredesen, for his "innovative policies," as he talked up his new plan to increase coverage of the uninsured by tinkering with the tax code and giving states more flexibility to design low-cost benefit plans for those who lack coverage.

That's right, the president "hailed" hundreds of thousands losing their coverage and many losing life-sustaining care as a good "innovation." Ugh.

Bush goes on to detail what he sees as the problem and the solution:

"Right now there's a limited market for the individual; it makes it hard to find a product that either suits your needs or you can afford," Bush told his Chattanooga audience....he bantered with several hundred audience members, arguing for greater transparency in health-care pricing. "I don't know about you, but I don't remember ever asking how much something was going to cost when it came to health care. I do when it comes to a car -- or I used to," Bush said...

The president honestly believes the problem is that health care is not free market enough, that if we only shopped around for health care like we shop for a car, costs would be lower.

It ignores totally the reality that most sick and disabled people needing medical assistance don't have money or income to shop in the first place. He ignores the immorality of demanding protection money from dying people.

This belief in free market theology which I discussed earlier, the idea that we should cut back Medicaid as much as possible so the free market can create innovative solutions, has proven incredibly destructive to human life, but the idea seems more important to conservatives that the "collateral damage."

Health care is life and death, it's not something to be ceded to market forces. Public health is even more crucial for government to provide than roads, libraries and schools.

Given the mountains of evidence out there that Medicaid cuts devastate the community, given all the books that have been written and all the documentaries that have been made, our government should have moved beyond this by now.

We must demand we move forward in '08.

Nick

Of Continents and Subcontinents (animation by Nick)

2007-02-26T10:57:00.000-05:00

I whipped up this simple, amateur animation to make a point.

India and Europe are roughly the same land area, but India is considered a subcontinent. Why is Arabia dubbed a "peninsula" and not a subcontinent? These are all pretty arbitrary designations based on little but cultural history.

We forget that about 40% of humanity are either Chinese or Indian. That's 2 out of 5 humans on Earth.

We don't get much information on the bulk of our brethren.

We barely know anything about them.

We don't hear that millions of Muslims have lived in relative peace for centuries in India and China, we just hear what a "threat" Islam is, how they are all "savages."

We don't understand China, even as they emerge as a hegemon.

I myself don't know about the dozens of languages in India and how they communicate.

You can begin to scratch the surface here:

Wikipedia - India

Wikipedia - China

We gotta remember we are all ONE. From above there are no borders, no nations, no anthems. From above there is only a beautiful green planet, and what the dominant species on her chooses to be.

Nick

American Idol(atry)

2007-02-26T08:41:00.000-05:00

Serving the good, not false idols, is incredibly important

Idolatry. In Hebrew, avodah zora (strange service). The concept of idolatry is central in the Torah (Five books of Moses). Throughout the narrative, the Israelites often revert to idolatrous practices, the most famous of which is the sin of the Golden Calf. In that episode, Moses is gone a day longer than they expected, so some of the men declare him dead and "it's party time!" They rip the earrings off the women and make a giant molten calf, then have an orgiastic festival in honor of the calf. When Moses comes back he is so disgusted he breaks the Tablets and starts smiting people. Throughout the Torah, idolatry is the greatest sin, the greatest challenge faced. In Deuteronomy, even though the generation of the Golden Calf had already died out, Moses tears into the congregation about their evil idolatry, just in case. It was that important to emphasize. Then throughout the prophets, it is page after page exhorting us to fight idolatry.

Some would say the notions of idolatry are obsolete, or are monuments to ancient intolerance. I'm arguing the opposite. I say idolatry is as prevalent as ever and the Torah prohibitions as relevant as ever.

It's hard for me to tell you what idolatry is, to pin down exactly what is and what isn't idolatry; it is a kind of nebulous spiritual issue. But like the Supreme Court famously ruled on pornography, you know it when you see it.

The biggest idol today is money, Mammon; and the biggest false religion is consumerism. Look no further than your TV to see this one.

In this insightful blog, Eastern Orthodox writer Terry Mattingly points out that people now take a sort of perverse communion at the mall:

About half the ads on television today make no sense whatsoever in a linear fashion in terms of having anything remotely to do with the product. They’re getting across an attitude, a mood. They’re asking, “Do you want to be the kind of person who uses this product?” One ad theorist has said that “they presume the product has a soul.” If you think as a sacramental Christian, people are taking communion at the mall. They are consuming the product, the soul of the product, to become the essence of the product. It’s a liturgical experience. They’re taking communion at the mall. They are what they eat, which is the essence of the ancient church’s definition of communion.

(photoshopped by me)

In a recent discussion of government programs for the poor and disabled on one of the disability Yahoo groups I'm in, I threw out "Do you serve G-d or serve Mammon?"

Someone shot back, "I don't serve any god."

My challenge was misunderstood. I didn't mean "do you believe a specific theology?" I'm not concerned with that, I don't think you're wrong if you have different theological assumptions than me; that's not the point. My question was, "do you serve the greater good, something larger, or are you only out for yourself?"

It is incredibly important we serve something greater. There is an epidemic of selfishness rotting our national soul. We've now reached such a low that our government is proposing $32.7 billion dollars in rebates to the Walton family (Wal-Mart) while removing $28 billion from hospitals for the poor, and the media doesn't even mention it anymore (obscene rant from another blogger about this here). We are sacrificing the sick and the weak on the altar of greed, and few even notice anymore. It is all corrupt. It is spiritual blackness.

Money is the central motivation to too many people; it's the main object people idolize. Before they act, they put "what's in it for me?" ahead of decency. To save a little money or little convenience, we will do horrible things, overlook great wrongs. I've seen too much of it.

We naturally have this urge to be idolaters, putting ourself and our petty nonsense ahead of the good (also known as G-d).

Judaism recognizes this, that idolatry is a part of our nature, and it seeks to put a strong yoke on Jews to do the right thing. We need it badly.

I think in these dark times, it is more important than ever to pursue righteousness, to pursue justice. Deut. 16:20 is important now more than ever before.

We aren't just monkeys in flesh suits. Humans can rise to be far greater than the animals, or far worse than the animals.

Now is the time to elevate.

Don't just plug into the iCalf and tune out all the service and justice we're supposed to be accomplishing. Stay involved.

If it ain't helping bring about the total spiritual and physical perfection of the world, I'm not into it.

G-d, the planet, the Torah and humanity are ONE.

Nick

Pharaoh's Army Got Drownded! The Inevitability of Justice

2007-02-23T08:20:00.000-05:00

"Oh Mary Don't You Weep"

I caught the wonderful old Negro spiritual "Oh Mary Don't You Weep" on this episode of The Steve Earle Show. His show is great because his diverse guests unearth little gems you'd never find elsewhere.

"Oh Mary Don't You Weep," from the new record Get On Board! Underground Railroad & Civil Rights Freedom Songs - Volume 2 by Kim and Reggie Harris.

Hearing this I was very moved. It's an inspiring anthem about the inevitability of justice.

I assume since the theme is "Pharoah's army got drownded" they're singing about Miriam / Mary, sister of Moses, who was smited with Tzaarat (supernatural leprosy) after leaving Egypt. But regardless, the message is: don't cry, because Pharoah's army drowned. The oppressor was defeated. Injustice is an inherently illegitimate, unstable status, and it will be removed. Karma.

Be comforted. G-d's justice will eventually even everything out.

It's easy to see why the anti-slavemaster narrative and G-d's promise of freedom would be incredibly relevent to black people, and how this spawned a uniquely-American brand of "Old Testament Christianity" (I could do an entire essay on this alone.)

"Pharoah's army got drownded." All oppressors are on the wrong side of history and will fall. No tyranny will be allowed to stand indefinitely.

Be sure and get on the riqht side of the Reed Sea....

Nick