Into the Void

This is priceless. A Hamas-sponsored children’s show on the Palestinian Authority’s new Al-Aqsa Mosque TV channel has a Mickey Mouse look-alike teaching the kids to be good Mousekahideen errrr Mujahideen.

I am picturing an army of Disney lawyers invading Palestine. This could get ugly.

In the interest of fairness, let me point out that the US has used cartoons to indoctrinate children for a long time. However, we only teach them rampant consumerism. They figure out Universal Hegemony on their own.

Palastinian Media Watch: Hamas steals Mickey Mouse image
to teach hate and Islamic supremacy

Israelinsider: Move over Mickey: Farfur the Mouse is aiming for world Islamic domination

Intelligence & Terrorism Information Center: Hamas launches “Al-Aqsa,” an experimental TV channel intended to improve its propaganda and indoctrination capabilities

Middle East Media Research Institute TV Monitor Project: MEMRI TV. Video hosted on Castup.net. IE may warn you about a pop-up. This is a video and should play without you having to download any software or ActiveX controls. Do not give this site any personal information.

Mujahideen Mickey Mouse Hamas Disney Palestine Mousekahideen Al-Aqsa Farfur Farfur the Mouse rampant consumerism

FOXNews.com – FBI Links Almanacs With Terror Planning – U.S. & World

The FBI said information typically found in almanacs that could be useful for terrorists includes profiles of cities and states and information about waterways, bridges, dams, reservoirs, tunnels, buildings and landmarks. It said this information is often accompanied by photographs and maps.

My sister sent me a bit of internet flotsam this morning saying, “Hey, SNoogie. This will crack you up.” Once I got over being called “SNoogie” I googled it and found that it is true – or at least all the news outlets picked it up off the API as if it were.

Good strategy, keeping geography out of the hands of ordinary citizens. I hear they’re going after math and science next. Oh wait, they already are.

I think it would be more to the point to look for home-grown terrorists by being alert for bibles and other right-wing strategy manuals. The bible does, after all, mandate that I be murdered.

Sign on the wall at the cashier’s station in a drive-through Taco Bell. The sign has since been moved, apparently because Taco Bell realized that customers can read. I doubt that it’s because Corporate noticed that there is an epidemic of obesity in the US.

ATTENTION CASHIERS

When ringing up a Value Meal your reply to the customer must be…

“That is a Large Value Meal. will there be anything else?”

Do not ask:
- Medium or Large?
- What size?
- Do you want Medium?

Super-size me tacos obesity Value Meal

There has been a lot of verbiage in the media lately about how marriage is a Sacred Institution. Atavistic politicians go on and on about how giving same-sex domestic partnerships the same benefits as marriage would be a financial burden on employers and social services, and possibly bring about not only an end to civilization but possibly to the entire space-time continuum.

There’s a problem with all that.

More heterosexual couples are setting up housekeeping and even having kids without ever getting married. It’s so prevalent that unmarried couples actually outnumber married couples for the first time in years. Many states recognize common-law marriages and give them the same status and benefits as any other marriage.

However, social policyin the U.S. is entirely based on the premise that women and children derive their social benefits through a man. Retirement, healthcare, housing, all of it. Most policy is based on a post-WWII “Leave it to Beaver” mentality that has very little validity now. I don’t think it ever did, actually. What is all this reminiscence and longing for a past that never was?

Why do we still filter benefits through a husband? Women don’t go directly from their father’s house to their husband’s house any more. Everyone works, both husband and wife, and they don’t start having the kids until they can actually afford them. People who marry young are just as likely to divorce as to stay together. And less than half of couples living together in the U.S. have traditional marriages.

The implications of the attack on domestic partnerships are very ugly. Why is a common-law marriage is somehow morally inferior to a marriage that started with a ceremony in a church? And what does the necessity for a license say about all the lip-service they give to family values? Marriage doesn’t have a monopoly on love or commitment or having children. I’m having a bit of trouble figuring out exactly what it *is* about at this point.

So what I’ve been thinking is that as long as we are discriminating against domestic partnerships, let’s extend it to heterosexual couples. Think about it. Big corporations would save billions if they weren’t forced to insure unmarried partners and their children. The cost of insuring same sex partners is negligible compared to that.

We should redefine marriage. The current definition is too broad. I think we should narrow it further to exclude spouses who don’t have children yet. When they do their duty to produce future taxpayers, *then* they qualify for insurance, widow’s benefits, and an income tax deduction. Think of the money we’d save!

"A functioning police state needs no police."
– William S. Burroughs

"Shock Therapy" is that ugly dog collar and backpack combination that they use in some detention centers to control kids with behavior problems. Yes, read that to mean psychological problems. Don’t get me started on behaviorists. It is used as a behavior modification technique, often without the use of psych meds, to create an aversion to the undesirable behavior.

However, we are talking about ElectroConvulsive Therapy – ECT.

ECT is a pretty drastic measure. They put you under general anesthesia then give your head a big jolt electricity – so big that it would induce convulsions if they didn’t knock you out and paralyze you first. It is one of the last remaining vestiges of a truly brutal era in psychiatry.

There are less extreme modalities available these days. Transcranial Magnetic Therapy is one. See if you can find the IEEE Spectrum at your library. There was a really good article in the March 2006 IEEE Spectrum last month. High-tech devices have fewer side-effects and if used appropriately they are quite effective.

A well-meaning but completely ignorant individual recently tried to convince me that ECT works by activating the parts of the brain that aren’t working right when you’re depressed. If anything, ECT overloads and suppress areas that you *don’t* want to be active. Along with pretty much everything else between the electrodes.

But the fact of the matter is that the way they usually do ECT, they don’t target problem areas and they don’t target specific desirable pathways. They overload the entire brain and if you weren’t anesthetized and paralyzed you’d go into grand mal seizures. In the old days, people who had ECT often broke teeth and bones during the procedure. Many patients suffer permanent memory loss and severe cognitive deficits – not all, but many do. It remains to be seen whether the current (no pun intended) methods produce the kind of brain damage seen in in earlier days.

The point is, there are modern options that should be considered in many cases.

Before you go in for ECT, please ask yourself some questions. What non-medical options have you explored? You can’t settle down enough to do your usual stress-busting activities, you can’t still your mind enough to even begin meditating, you’re afraid to go outside and run around to let off steam? Biofeedback isn’t even working any more, maybe because you’re outside of the normal operating parameters of the equipment available to you?

There is a series on PBS called "Second Opinion." In the Depression episode, they made ECT sound like a miracle cure for depression. The reporting was unbelievably one-sided. They didn’t cover any of the magnetic therapies so anyone using PBS for their information doesn’t have the whole story. Furthermore, they trivialized the side-effects of ECT by saying, in effect, that it’s far preferable to have a permanent cognitive deficit than to be depressed. It was a fun show, but it was dumbed down way too much to be useful in making an informed decision.

I see that one of the sponsors provided the folks who did the show only limited access to information on MedLine. It appears that they prescreened the data made available – that is, they only provided articles that supported their agenda. Remember that PBS shows often have corporate sponsors who may want, say, to convince the public that an old-fashioned and therefore less expensive modality is better.

CLIC-on-Health provided Second Opinion wiith our pre-determined search access to MedlinePlus.

ECT is somewhat of a black art. The doctors have no idea how or why it works. From Wikipedia:

The exact mechanisms by which ECT exerts its effect are not known, but studies show that repeated applications have effects on several kinds of neurotransmitters in the central nervous system. ECT seems to sensitize two subtypes of serotonin receptor (5-HT receptor), thereby strengthening signaling. ECT also decreases the functioning of norepinephrine and dopamine inhibiting auto-receptors in the locus coeruleus and substantia nigra, respectively, causing more of each to be released.

The National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) also say that the doctors don’t know how or why ECT works. Furthermore, it isn’t totally clear which patients ECT is likely to help the most, nor is there any way of telling in advance if a particular patient is likely to have an adverse experience.

Much additional research is needed into the basic mechanisms by which ECT exerts its therapeutic effects. Studies are also needed to better identify subgroups for whom the treatment is particularly beneficial or toxic and to refine techniques to maximize efficacy and minimize side effects. A national survey should be conducted on the manner and extent of ECT use in the United States.

In fact, one conclusion of that article is that ECT is in use only because it’s been in use for so long.

ECT has been underinvestigated in the past. Among the most important immediate research tasks are:

• Better understanding of negative, positive, and indifferent responses should result in improved treatment practices.
• Identification of the biological mechanisms underlying the therapeutic effects of ECT and the memory deficits resulting from the treatment.

Better delineation of the long-term effects of ECT on the course of affective illnesses and cognitive functions, including clarification of the duration of ECT’s therapeutic effectiveness.

• Precise determination of the mode of electrode placement (unilateral versus bilateral) and the stimulus parameters (form and intensity) that maximize efficacy and minimize cognitive impairment.
• Identification of patient subgroups or types for whom ECT is particularly beneficial or toxic.

The World Health Organization (WHO) reiterates the statement that little is known about how ECT works on depression and that little is known about the after-effects of the treatment. In fact, they suggest that the therapeutic effects of ECT may be a result of the anesthesia or even of the nursing care and not to the actual electric shock at all.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is sometimes used to treat severe depressives who do not respond to drug treatment. A recent review and meta-analysis concluded that ECT is probably more effective than drug therapy, though the underlying mechanism is not known. The authors state that "any differences between ECT and drug therapy might not be attributable to the stimulus or shock alone, but could be due to other components of the ECT procedures (including anaesthetic and nursing care)" (100). Only one trial included in the meta-analysis provided data on cognitive functioning: patients treated with ECT had more word recognition errors after treatment compared to patients treated with simulated ECT. At six months this difference was no longer observable. The authors require more evidence for the efficacy of ECT in the subgroups of patients who are presently most likely to receive it: those with treatment-resistant depression and older patients.

Now for adverse effects:

In one recent study of almost 25,000 treatments, a complication rate of 1 per 1,300 to 1,400 treatments was found. These included laryngospasm, circulatory insufficiency, tooth damage, vertebral compression fractures, status epilepticus, peripheral nerve palsy, skin burns, and prolonged apnea.

During the few minutes following the stimulus, profound and potentially dangerous systemic changes occur. First, there may be transient hypotension from bradycardia caused by central vagal stimulation. This may be followed by sinus tachycardia and also sympathetic hyperactivity that leads to a rise in blood pressure, a response that may be more severe in patients with essential hypertension. Intracranial pressure increases during the seizure. Additionally, cardiac arrhythmias during this time are not uncommon (but usually subside without sequelae).

Also, the NIMH makes it very clear that ECT is only effective for a very limited group of illnesses.

The consideration of ECT is most appropriate in those conditions for which efficacy has been established: Delusional and severe endogenous depressions, acute mania, and certain schizophrenic syndromes. ECT should rarely be considered for other psychiatric conditions.

The law requires that a patient give informed consent. In order to give informed consent, the patient should be told about the risk of cognitive deficits and memory loss, particularly since there is a tendency to misrepresent ECT as a "quick fix" to get the patient back to work sooner. Some patients can never go back to work after ECT.

The NIMH is recommending that doctors get patient consent before each treatment in the series, not just for the series as a whole. That way the patient can assess the damage being done and refuse further treatments if necessary. The NIMH assumes that there is a statistically significant risk that a patient who is cognitively impaired by the procedure, even if the damage is only temporary, will not be capable of initiating a request to stop.

This recommendation sounds chillingly like the advice being given to prevent non-consensual sex. I won’t go so far as to call ECT "brain rape," but only because that particular phrase has already been used by the writer William S. Burroughs in "Meeting of International Conference of Technological Psychiatry" to describe a prefrontal lobotomy. (ed2k link to William S. Burroughs – “Call Me Burroughs” – requires winrar to unarchive.)

That being said, if your doctor insists upon you having ECT, you don’t have much of a choice, do you?

UPDATE 4/15/2007:
Sylvia Caras of People Who accepted this post for inclusion on her own site. Stop over to People Who and check out the tremendous amount of excellent mental health advocacy information she offers.

Fretful Passenger, Turmoil on Jet and Fatal Shots – New York Times

Even non-bipolars sometimes act in an erratic manner. In this case, the patient’s prescription had run out while he was out of the country visiting relatives. Rigoberto Alpizar and his wife were on their way home from vacation. There he was, stuck in a small tin-can full of people elbow-to-elbow. All he wanted was to step out into the airport and get some air.

The air marshals obviously weren’t very well-trained to recognize and deal with mental illness. They are trained to quickly and brutally take charge if things don’t go smoothly. It’s called DFP – “Deadly Force Policy.” There are far more mentally ill people on planes than terrorists. The FBI was investigating fewer than 700 suspected terrorists as of November according to the Washington Post, but there are well over 3,000,000 Americans with bipolar type I. Have a clue.

Don’t even get me started on the newspeople who are suggesting that I wear some kind of bipolar judenfleck when I travel. That is just plain wrong.

If you want to get really creepy about this, people from different cultures – and even different subcultures in the U.S. – may have trouble understanding each others’ body language. Bear in mind that most people aren’t aware of non-verbal communication. They can’t just wander around wasting everyone who is “different.” If you are carrying a gun in an international airport you had best be able tell Hispanics from Arabs without stopping to consult a training manual.

I believe that this all boils down to the fact that the American people have surrendered to the terrorists, whoever they may be. We had years of time to prepare for 9-11. There was even a previous attack on one of the towers. Almost 3,000 innocent people, and not just Americans, died that day. In the following months another 300,000,000 threw themselves into the grave alongside them. I just don’t get it.

Think about how you act every day. Maybe you gesticulate and talk loudly, or maybe you avoid eye contact and don’t talk to anybody at all. These are suspicious behaviors. Maybe you have a hearing impairment so you won’t know that there is a man standing behind you waving a gun and shouting. Maybe your arthritis makes it difficult to get out of the way quickly. Are you quite sure that you won’t accidentally invite an air marshal to murder you?

Technorati: TSA air+marshal mental+illness Judenfleck Rigoberto+Alpizar 9-11 Deadly+Force+Policy FBI

I have to get this out before it rots my head.

Stuff happens.

“I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.”
– George W. Bush, to Diane Sawyer.

It didn’t take a Nostradamus to know this could happen. National Geographic predicted the New Orleans disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina in October, 2004.

Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.
When did this calamity happen? It hasn’t – yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers is too great. [Italics mine]

PBS NOW’s producers must have read Nostradamus too, according to this excellent interview from September 2002.

WALTER MAESTRI: It’s going to look like a massive shipwreck. There’s going to be – there’s going to be, you know – everything that that the water has carried in is going to be there. Alligators, moccasins, you know every kind of rodent that you could think of.
All of your sewage treatment plants are under water. And of course the material is flowing free in the community. Disease becomes a distinct possibility now. The petrochemicals that are produced all up and down the Mississippi River – much of that has floated into this bowl. I mean this has become, you know, the biggest toxic waste dump in the world now. Is the city of New Orleans because of what has happened.

Apparently Scientific American was gazing into the same crystal ball in October 2001. Scientific American: Drowning New Orleans [CIVIL ENGINEERING]

A major hurricane could swamp New Orleans under 20 feet of water, killing thousands. Human activities along the Mississippi River have dramatically increased the risk, and now only massive reengineering of southeastern Louisiana can save the city.

What is a shame is that they are laying the groundwork to blame Mayor Nagin of NO for the FEMA failure. I wouldn’t ask the head of FEMA, GOP activist and sycophant Mike Brown, to manage a horse show. Thanks to Memex1.1 for this one.

Today the New Orleans Times-Picayune published An open letter to the President. It says, in part:

State Rep. Karen Carter was right Friday when she said the city didn’t have but two urgent needs: “Buses! And gas! Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially.
In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, he said his agency hadn’t known until that day that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He gave another nationally televised interview the next morning and said, “We’ve provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they’ve gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day.”
Lies don’t get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President.
Yet, when you met with Mr. Brown Friday morning, you told him, “You’re doing a heck of a job.”

According to this article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, while the folks were dying in New Orleans “Homeland Security won’t let Red Cross deliver food.”

“The Homeland Security Department has requested and continues to request that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans,” said Renita Hosler, spokeswoman for the Red Cross.
“Right now access is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities. We have been at the table every single day [asking for access]. We cannot get into New Orleans against their orders.”

Racial bias in reporting the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: African-Americans “loot”, Whites “find” food and water.

Was Homeland Security doing God’s Work? In case you want to look for a hidden agenda in the poor response by the government, this press release from Repent America explains why Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans.

“Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city,” stated Repent America director Michael Marcavage. “From Girls Gone Wild to Southern Decadence, New Orleans was a city that had its doors wide open to the public celebration of sin. From the devastation may a city full of righteousness emerge,” he continued.

Perhaps this suspiciously homophobic “In-your-face evangelist” doth protest too much.

Relevant cartoon on RedMeat.com – Lord, I pray that you will grant me…. I think it pretty well sums it up.

Thinking about The American Dream.
You wouldn’t look at me and think Money. I can’t afford the trappings that would take me up a level.
Did that make sense… you have to act like you belong to the club before they’ll let you in?
The American Dream requires that you spend spend spend the future and hope that future earnings pay the debt. To even get in the game requires access to credit, doesn’t it?
Megadeth did a song about this called “Foreclosure of a Dream.”
Did anyone notice that they just brought back the 30-year T-bill? That’s right, your grandchildren will still be paying this administration’s debt 30 years from now.
It’s also enlightening to look into who exactly owns the U.S. Public Debt. What would happen if our foreign investors demanded repayment? What would we give them?

The National Socialist party didn’t spring full-grown from the head of Zeus. The groundwork for the Night of the Long Knives was laid years before it happened.
There are a lot of parallels between the increasing curtailment of freedom in the US and the laws in post-WWI Germany. We have not yet been punished by the international community for our aggression the way Germany was after WWI. That action destroyed Germany’s economy and seriously damaged its national pride.
It remains to be seen whether measures will be taken against the United States, and whether how we will respond. It remains to be seen whether international censure will inspire the party to scapegoat somebody in order to save face.
It remains to be seen whether calls to
patriotism will become something ugly.
Didn’t someone say, “Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it?”
Oh, yes, there are parallels. We haven’t plumbed the depths yet.

Well, the news is full of fun stuff today. The press could do so much good if they directed their energy into improving the world.
Man faints, dies after seeing epidural. Ok, I can almost see this. The needle is three inches long and marked in stripes to indicate depth of penetration. It looks kind of like a skeeter’s tweeter.
US reporter jailed in CIA trial. This one is tricky. Background: Joseph Wilson was confronting Dubya over the questionable evidence he had presented to justify the rape of Iraq. To retaliate, someone told a NY Times reporter that his wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA agent. Nobody knows how many people have died because she was outed – she was in a sensitive overseas post. Furthermore, the reporter who is being jailed, Judith Miller, doesn’t even know who the leak was! The issue here is whether the press has the right to keep sources confidential.
G8 calls for new climate dialogue. There are only 5 people left in the world who don’t accept the awful fact of global warming. All of them are in the White House.
The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Christian Doc Speculates Why Americans Rank #1 in Mental Illness. Have you talked to God today, Ma’am? He can save your sanity.
Drug Kingpin investigated for “doctor shopping”.
Ah, here we go… Mars picture of the day.
Soccer moms on dope. “We don’t see families torn apart. We don’t see the violence. We don’t see the robberies and the burglaries,” he said. “Meth is definitely worse on society than ( marijuana ).” Huh?
Ever wonder why we went after Iraq when so many of the 9-11 highjackers were Saudis? Here’s a profile of the gentleman that Dubya knows as Uncle Bandar.
Armor Plate your iPod. Clever devils, those Japanese.
This one’s from MemeMachineGo! It’s about the recent eminent domain decision by the Supreme Court. The one that allows your town to bulldoze your home if they can increase their tax revenue by giving the land to someone else.

Technorati: Joseph+Wilson Dubya Iraq Valerie+Plame Judith+Miller Mental+Illness Uncle+Bandar eminent+domain