They lied (again), Iran is not our Enemy…
By: James Burge
January 31st, 2012
NBC Florida Debate Ron Paul Highlights…
By: James Burge
January 25th, 2012
Thyroid cancer on the rise… Duh…
By: James Burge
January 20th, 2012
Just stumbled across an article which admits that there has been a recent increase in Thyroid cancers. Which seems like a no shit sort of thing to me and anyone following what is happening in Japan, but the article says that this has happened over the last decade we have seen this increase. Well I can see the increase at least in the last year since the Fukashima disaster following Japan’s recent quake and tsunami, but it would be interesting to look at the data to compare the rate of increase over the 10 years, because the 10 year number could be a distraction. (I mean if you have an increase of lets say 5% every year for 8 years and then a 20% increase for the last two, we could say there was an increase of 80% over 10 years (we assume this is averaged to 8% a year), but the increase of 40% over two years would be more statistically significant)
During this crisis, we have seen large releases of radioactive substances such as radioactive strontium, caesium, plutonium, and iodine to name a few of the more common substances.
And now for a quick health lesson. The thyroid gland is sometimes referred to as the pharmacy of the body which is the source of chemicals and enzymes used to regulate the body’s energy and metabolism. One of the key ingredients required to create some of these compounds is Iodine. So if your body finds any iodine in the food you eat it will go straight to the thyroid gland.
The issue here is the unknown ingestion of radioactive Iodine-131 which, since the body still thinks it is benign iodine, it will also begin to concentrate in the thyroid gland. Thyroid cancers increased in the areas surrounding Chernobyl after the incident there due to the releases of Iodine-131. Many survivors of Chernobyl required the removal of their thyroid gland, and of course spent the rest of their lives supplementing the chemicals usually produced in the gland. (the large scar left on an individuals throat after thyroid removal became known as a Chernobyl necklace).
An interesting side fact, plutonium is not found naturally on earth. All of the plutonium that exists is as nuclear waste since the beginning of nuclear experimentation in the 40′s. Plutonium is also considered the most toxic substance to life on earth (levels of 0.1 micrograms or 1×10^-7 grams is enought for an overdose, to put that in perspective a release of just 1 gram of plutonium would be enough to kill 10 million people if widely dispersed)). This is mostly because we have evolved for aeon’s without developing any defences from radioactive substances. The human body is amazing at overcoming issues such as this; although it will take many generations, people would have developed immunity to radioactive substances if they were more common during our early evolution. One could theorize that our future relatives may develop radioactive immunities as exposure to these substances increase.
Of course the article goes on to try and confuse the issue, blaming the increase on better screening techniques, obesity and diet, although radiation exposure is mentioned as well.
The strangest thing to me though is that the treatment for thyroid cancer involves introducing more radioactive iodine. This of course comes from the concept of chemotherapy where radioactive substances are used because they kill cells that divide rapidly. Although cancerous cells fall into this category there are a lot of cells that also apply. Things like skin cells, which leads to the loss of hair, cells in the stomach, which leads to nausea, or cells in bone marrow which I believe plays a role in immune health. So radioactive iodine collects in the thyroid, causing cell mutations, requiring more radioactive iodine, sounds logical to me, right??
I’ve said it before and I’m gonna say it again, in the future I feel that Chemotherapy will be looked upon as we look at electro shock therapy (EST) today. At the time that shock therapy was big, health practitioners actually felt the procedure had benefits and I’m not sure we can blame them as that it tended to be the only therapy available for some conditions. But you don’t hear of many people getting EST that much anymore, although horror stories still exist as some physicians hold on to the past.
Newer cancer therapies target abnormal proteins in cancer cells called targeted therapy which does not involve the use of radioactive substances.
Eugenics may be on its way back…
By: James Burge
January 20th, 2012
This is a crazy story, but unfortunately I am not surprised by the ‘system’’s inhumanity and the fact that bureaucrats tend to wash their hands of these sorts of practices.
I read a story yesterday and couldn’t get it out of my head because it seems to me to be a hint at how far our society has come since I was a kid, and not in a good way. I admit, chances are I had a naively romantic view of society but when I was younger it seemed that people in power making decisions tended to ask themselves “Is this the right thing to do?” Some call this morality, and of course Catholics and Christians tend to feel they have dibs on morality. Yet you see people that are devout or in some cases evangelical yet don’t seem to have the values I thought were taught by such religions, such as morality and acceptance. It amazes me when people say, you can’t be a moral person if you aren’t religious, yet you find those that are extremely religious who don’t seem to have a moral bone in their body, but I digress.
The story I am talking about is one of the first instances I have heard of Death panels in the US. According to Wikipedia, this was ‘proven’ a myth after Sarah Palin mentioned it in a 2009 debate referring to her daughter with Downs Syndrome possibly being denied healthcare. However, as little as I like this woman as a world leader, she was right. Especially with the newly passed ObamaCare bill which forces citizens to buy private health insurance, or face consequences. But I guess the one thing they don’t mention is that even if you do buy insurance as your government now requires, you may require medical attention that some panel decides is either too expensive, or wont have an effect on your quality of life so the procedure is denied.
This story is about a 3 year old girl named Amelia. She was denied a kidney transplant (at 3?? It’s not like she has her whole life ahead of her or anything) because she is considered to be “mentally retarded”. Her doctor used the fact that he felt that Amelia wouldn’t have a good enough “quality of life” after surgery to justify the cost of the procedure in order to deny it.
There are so many things wrong with this. First being that a Dr. who is supposed to take an oath to practice medicine ethically feels it best to just let this girl slowly die of renal failure.
The second issue comes from the fact that Medicare is slowly putting American Doctors out of work. What happens is that since most Dr’s do whatever necessary to help patients, but Medicare doesn’t tend to fully cover costs, the doctors are taking losses on treating patients, which is not a good business model. Therefore doctors are forced to choose between Medicare patients, or going out of business. If you think ObamaCare will be different, you haven’t been paying attention, if there is one thing governments know how to do it’s mismanage federal programs until they break the system. (Social security anyone??)
So what may be happening is that the doctor can’t afford to loose money on the kidney transplant so he tried to justify no doing the surgery by calling the girl retarded (sorry) so that he can sleep at night.
There is also rumour I heard from a Neurosurgeon the other day which has not yet been made public that ObamaCare will introduce panels of bureaucrats not doctors, to decide what procedures are justified for patients because a federal system like this can’t provide everything for everyone. Think about that for a moment, you aren’t feeling well, you go to a doctor, he finds out you require an expensive procedure which he has to get approved before he can do it. Now your health is in the hands of bureaucrats who want nothing more than to reduce the costs to healthcare.
Instead of putting a limit on profits from essential medications cutting into the big drug companies profits (which considering how much they spend on lobbying wont happen, maybe if Dr. Paul becomes president but I doubt that will be allowed to happen either) or trying to cut costs in other more innovative ways, it is cheaper (and easier) to just let people die. And they wonder why they have such a bad healthcare system (I just found something where they are 37th worldwide, which for a country like the US is not only unacceptable, its borderline criminal IMO, although Canada is 30th)
What we are seeing here is called Eugenics. It is an old philosophy that advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population. It was started (in California I believe) in the early 1900s by (to name a few) Leonard Darwin (Charles Darwin’s son), Winston Churchill, and Alexander Graham Bell. The problem is that the views of Eugenics seems to have been used to justify atrocities ever since. Hitler and his ideas of the purification of the Arian Race he borrowed directly from eugenics. One of the first challenges to eugenics was a study which found a family of fruit flies, all with red eyes for many generations can still have offspring with white eyes, considered a mild genetic mutation that occurs outside of the inherited traits of the parents. What this showed was that even the most “pure” of parents can still have offspring with traits seen as detrimental, weather something like a predisposition to a heart condition, or even something like reduced mental capacity. Meaning the idea that you can bread the negative traits out of humans is a bit of a fallacy. Especially in an age where Mothers are bombarded with chemicals which studies have found actually concentrates in breast milk.
On an interesting side note, since I am an Albertan I found this interesting. In 1928 Alberta enacted the Sexual Sterilization Act focusing the movement of eugenics on the sterilization of the mentally deficient as determined by the Alberta Eugenics Board. Individuals were assessed using IQ tests which of course caused a big problem for new immigrants arriving in Canada. So many of those sterilized by the government were immigrants unfairly categorized as having impaired intellectual functions. BC apparently enacted its own version of the law in 1933 around the start of the great depression.
I think it is worth mentioning that the great depression played a big role in the acceptance of eugenics in Canada as it was widely seen as a way of relieving society of the financial burdens imposed by defective individuals. These laws were finally repealed in 1972, amazing right. But since some are predicting another depression, the question of weather eugenics will see another upswing in popularity remains to be seen.
Charlie Chaplin’s words are still very relevant…
By: James Burge
January 19th, 2012
Today’s video is a great example showing how the more things change, the more they stay the same. This is an old video of Charlie Chaplin, obviously imitating Hitler. It is amazing to me how his words still speak to us so many years later.
It is amazing to watch America’s recent slip into tyranny similar to pre WW-II Germany. I think the most amazing thing is I have heard a lot of people ask, when learning about the rise of the National Socialist Party in Germany, why didn’t more Germans speak out against the government and I guess the simple answer is, would you?
First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak out because I was Protestant.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out.-Martin Niemöller
You have a government that has given itself the authority to capture and imprison anyone, even its own citizens, indefinitely, without trial, or even the ability to hear charges against you (isn’t this the kind of shit that lead to the independence movement in Amrica?). And now America, which had once considered itself a pillar of morality, can now use various methods of torture on those it suspects of ‘terrorism’ at a time when catching terrorists has become so important to those in the bowels of power in Washington, used as proof that fear is justified and encouraged. Does this seem overly convenient to anyone else? The US needed a war, they seemed willing to take any war with anyone (as long as it is in the middle east of course, those Arab bastards have a lot of oil), so they try to radicalize those who will eventually become their enemy to goad them into organizing hostilities (any hostilities) against the very nation that radicalized them through their egregious actions in the middle east over the course of the last century. And as Americans forget about the actions of their own government, they then use these hostilities to justify their heavy handed actions saying “how many people could have died had we not tortured those terrorists?” Are Americans so bad at history (thanks department of propaganda, I mean education) that they don’t know that the US (with help from the British) overthrew the last democracy in Iran because they were worried they would nationalize the oil industry thereby transferring profits from British Oil companies and to the Iranians, which of course started another middle east theocracy, and they have the gall to ask why Iranians aren’t demanding democracy, they did but you took it away from them, do you understand why Iranians might not be all that fond of the US? The US has been aided by Israel since it’s theft from the Palestinians, which some say are the true ancestors of Jesus (but these religious nuts don’t seem to care about Jesus anymore, take the booing of Dr. Ron Paul when he tried to use the golden rule to explain his stance on foreign policy during the South Carolina debate, wait isn’t that part of the Bible belt, I cant remember). It is amazing that in people’s apparent attempt to spread and strengthen their religion they seem to loose sight of its origin and what it claims to teach. Things like morality and acceptance and are replaced by judgments and dehumanization. Painting an entire culture in a false light to vilify them which somehow seems to justify their heinous treatment at the hands of their ‘liberators’ seems to be the true face of terrorism. I’ve heard it said, by those Jews involved in the Bombing at the King David hotel, that Israel is the founding father of modern day terrorism, and that the Israelis dressed up as Arabs, in order to confuse the issue and vilify their neighbors to help justify draconian policies that would never pass through a democratic government had the general public not been deceived into hating and fearing radical Muslims.
Anyway, enough rant for one day, here is the video…
Humanitarian Warfare…
By: James Burge
January 10th, 2012
This video is for those who claimed theUSwould be greeted as liberators.
This is what war looks like, we have no idea of this because in our lifetime, we have yet to see war and the pain it causes those who are left behind after these types of attacks.
To claim that these people welcome this type of intervention is a sadistic lie. We are not making our world safer by bombing the hell out of the Middle East; we are creating a generation who will come to loath and revile the United States and the ‘freedom’ they brought at the end of a bomb drastically affecting their livelihood, their family, and their collective history. It amazes me that people attack Ron Paul for saying that actions such as theses are what lead to 9/11. Yeah it seems much more likely they attack us because of our ‘freedoms’.
The problem is that more and more I realize that our ‘freedoms’ are pseudo-freedoms, they look good, and in some cases it makes us feel good and feel like a free people; but to put this in perspective, I’m sure you’ve heard that ‘the land of the free’ has the largest prison population in the world; mostly because rich men have found a way to make a lot of money protecting us from those we are taught to irrationally fear (like those suffering from substance abuse and various chemical dependencies) while stripping those same individuals of their rights and in some cases their dignity. Yet they let rapists and child molesters out only after a few years of incarceration, and those involved in petty drug crimes get 30+, (and of course bankers and politicians guilty of fraud, get zero) it seems obvious to me that this is completely bas-ackwards.
Over the years the US has had problems with multiple un-investigated allegations of voter fraud and stolen elections, high crime rates that are only increasing, high rates of mental illness and a population placated by mind-altering drugs with little to no admittance of any long term side effects all while ‘professionals’ prescribe them to younger and younger children. There has been an increase in rate of suicide (especially among those returning veterans) as people feel a sense of helplessness, feel isolated and see no light at the end of their tunnel. They have a health care system that is bloated and dieing forcing doctors to quit their practice or seek work elsewhere. A generation of mildly educated* individuals chasing the highly touted bachelor’s degree only to be stuck as an economic slave spending your first few years of decent pay to cover student loans used to pay for highly inflated costs of learning, and that’s if they are lucky. With no jobs in sight, since they have all been off shored to India and elsewhere because of the tax breaks congress has been providing corporations since the Clinton administration, new grads should count themselves lucky to have a job at all right now. Oh and did I forget to mention their crumbling infrastructure, once admired the world over, now a ticking time bomb, especially for those areas with high probability of earthquakes and other forces of nature. And, although it nearly never makes news, the nuclear reactors throughout theUSare not only old, they also routinely vent highly radioactive gases without any indication of risks to the public. Oh and since it’s inception in the early 1900s the Federal Reserve, a private (for profit) bank, which is allowed to legally counterfeit the dollar, has devalued the US dollar by over 95%. Oh and don’t forget the biggest threat to American Hegemony, Global Warming, or at least according to Al ‘Glutton’ Gore.
Is this the type of democracy we want to bring to theMiddle East?? A parasitic government more worried about maintaining world supremacy through debt money and endless wars, than those citizens who give them their mandate to lead.
I’m not sure if those in the bowels of power inWashingtonunderstand that without manufacturing jobs, how theUSwill support itself once it attacksIranforIsraelunleashing world war III on us all. Oh but it will beIran’s fault, and we will just have to buy our bombs fromChinaor something. (Oh what, they will be onIran’s side along withRussia, crap) okay we’ll have to get it fromIndiaorPakistan, (what, Obama has unleashed a silent UAV war inPakistan, crap). And what happens when Iran blocks the strait of hormuz causing the price of Oil to skyrocket (we can just use the strategic oil reserves, that is what they are for, assuming the war only lasts 30 days that is)
I just want to warn you this video has parts that can be disturbing.
(* sorry to those adequately educated Americans, you are a dying breed in my opinion)
America is Humanitarian, Iran is evil, Black is White, Down is Up…
By: James Burge
January 10th, 2012
Most Americans are currently looking down their nose at Iranians calling them a threat. First off a threat to whom exactly?Iranhas not attacked another nation in over 200 years. Oh Iran is a threat to Israel, but doesn’t Israel have nuclear weapons, if they feel so threatened why is it that they expect American Soldiers to die in wars to exert Israeli supremacy in the region?
They also look atIran’s current theocracy and say look we are tying to bring democracy? But what most people are unaware is that theUnited StatesandBritainactually put an end to Iranian democracy back in the 50s because they were worried it would affect their bottom line. Britain’s were much to use to getting rich off Iranian oil while the Iranians lived in near squallier to allow a new democracy to limit their control over the natural resource.
So as those in power try to convince us to deliver democracy toIranwith the bomb, ask them why we didn’t just allow democracy to grow from withinIranwhen it began.
This is a great story of unintended consequences.
Romney campaigner defects to Ron Paul…
By: James Burge
January 10th, 2012
Awesome US Debt Ceiling Video a Must see!!!
By: James Burge
January 9th, 2012
Love it!
Here are the real US Federal Government numbers:
Total Federal Debt: $14,000,000,000,000 (14 Trillion)
Federal Income: $2,170,000,000,000 (2.17 Trilion)
Federal Spending: $3,820,000,000,000 (3.82 Trilion)
New Debt: $1,650,000,000,000 (1.65 Trilion)
Amount Cut: $38,500,000,000 (38.5 Bilion) (less than 1% (0.75%) of the total budget)
I love how they have the guy bring in his young daughter to approve the debt limit increase, well done.
And now for a bit of levity…
By: James Burge
January 9th, 2012
