Keith speaks with Eugene Robinson.
I personally can not believe that Faux will let him get a way with racism on the air. Then again it is faux so I assume too much.
College Park, Md. (CNSNews.com) – Former Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) said her bid for the White House as a Green Party candidate won't hurt Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. Hillary Clinton's chances for being the first African-American or woman U.S. president, respectively, because U.S. elections have been corrupted.
"Basically, what you are suggesting is by participating in the Democratic process the Green Party is going to become, quote, 'the spoiler,' " McKinney told Cybercast News Service at a rally Tuesday at the University of Maryland. "It is impossible to become a spoiler based on past experience when one examines the past.
"In the 2000 election, 6 million votes were not counted," she said.
The practitioners of the art of medicine (it is truly not a science and can never be, because there is a magic and mystery in life that can never be completely explained through science) have become one of the leading causes of death, if not the largest.
This is a sad state of irony.
Most doctors and physicians have the best interests of their patients at heart. Physicians take and swear to uphold the Hippocratic Oath.
HIPPOCRATES, the celebrated Greek physician, was a contemporary of the historian Herodotus. He was born in the island of Cos between 470 and 460 B.C., and belonged to the family that claimed descent from the mythical AEsculapius, son of Apollo.
There was already a long medical tradition in Greece before his day, and this he is supposed to have inherited chiefly through his predecessor Herodicus; and he enlarged his education by extensive travel.
He is said, though the evidence is unsatisfactory, to have taken part in the efforts to check the great plague which devastated Athens at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. He died at Larissa between 380 and 360 B.C.
This interesting document shows that in his time physicians were already organized into a corporation or guild, with regulations for the training of disciples, and with an esprit de corps and a professional ideal which, with slight exceptions, can hardly yet be regarded as out of date.
I SWEAR by Apollo the physician and AEsculapius, and Health, and All-heal, and all the gods and goddesses, that, according to my ability and judgment, I will keep this Oath and this stipulation — to reckon him who taught me this Art equally dear to me as my parents, to share my substance with him, and relieve his necessities if required; to look upon his offspring in the same footing as my own brothers, and to teach them this art, if they shall wish to learn it, without fee or stipulation; and that by precept, lecture, and every other mode of instruction, I will impart a knowledge of the Art to my own sons, and those of my teachers, and to disciples bound by a stipulation and oath according to the law of medicine, but to none others. I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgement, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous.
I will not cut persons laboring under the stone, but will leave this to be done by men who are practitioners of this work. Into whatever houses I enter, I will go into them for the benefit of the sick, and will abstain from every voluntary act of mischief and corruption; and, further, from the seduction of females or males, of freemen and slaves. Whatever, in connection with my professional service, or not in connection with it, I see or hear, in the life of men, which ought not to be spoken of abroad, I will not divulge, as reckoning that all such should be kept secret.
While I continue to keep this Oath unviolated, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and the practice of the art, respected by all men, in all times. But should I trespass and violate this Oath, may the reverse be my lot.
1. Medicine is of all the arts the most noble; but, owing to the ignorance of those who practice it, and of those who, inconsiderately, form a judgment of them, it is at present far behind all the other arts. Their mistake appears to me to arise principally from this, that in the cities there is no punishment connected with the practice of medicine (and with it alone) except disgrace, and that does not hurt those who are familiar with it. Such persons are the figures which are introduced in tragedies, for as they have the shape, and dress, and personal appearance of an actor, but are not actors, so also physicians are many in title but very few in reality.
2. Whoever is to acquire a competent knowledge of medicine, ought to be possessed of the following advantages: a natural disposition; instruction; a favorable position for the study; early tuition; love of labor; leisure. First of all, a natural talent is required; for, when Nature leads the way to what is most excellent, instruction in the art takes place, which the student must try to appropriate to himself by reflection, becoming an early pupil in a place well adapted for instruction. He must also bring to the task a love of labor and perseverance, so that the instruction taking root may bring forth proper and abundant fruits.
3. Instruction in medicine is like the culture of the productions of the earth. For our natural disposition, is, as it were, the soil; the tenets of our teacher are, as it were, the seed; instruction in youth is like the planting of the seed in the ground at the proper season; the place where the instruction is communicated is like the food imparted to vegetables by the atmosphere; diligent study is like the cultivation of the fields; and it is time which imparts strength to all things and brings them to maturity.
4. Having brought all these requisites to the study of medicine, and having acquired a true knowledge of it, we shall thus, in traveling through the cities, be esteemed physicians not only in name but in reality. But inexperience is a bad treasure, and a bad fund to those who possess it, whether in opinion or reality, being devoid of self-reliance and contentedness, and the nurse both of timidity and audacity. For timidity betrays a want of powers, and audacity a lack of skill. They are, indeed, two things, knowledge and opinion, of which the one makes its possessor really to know, the other to be ignorant.
5. Those things which are sacred, are to be imparted only to sacred persons; and it is not lawful to impart them to the profane until they have been initiated into the mysteries of the science.
The above is the ancient oath. What follows is the modern Hippocratic Oath.
I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of over-treatment and therapeutic nihilism.
In light of the above, it is interesting to note no Medical School (be it for MDs or DO's) offers a specialty in Nutritional Medicine.
All but a small handful of physicians are intent of prescribing synthetic chemicals and offering surgery to mask symptoms of disease, and for the most part have no real interest in treating the root cause of a disease or actually curing a patient–-they are too buried in paperwork, and trying to treat more patients than they can reasonably see.
How did this sorry state of affairs come about?
With the turn into the twentieth century doctors were still intent on curing their patients. It should also be noted that at that time when a doctor left medical school he or she was not approximately a million dollars in debt.
During the 1920s and 1930 corporations and insurance discovered medicine. They discovered they could make enormous profits in this gold mine of ill health. That's when the vast majority of pharmaceutical and insurance companies came into existence.
Medical or life and health insurance and pharmaceutical (read toxic drug) companies are not bound by the Hippocratic Oath. Their sole interest is to their bottom line, the profit or loss, the welfare of their stockholders.
The Food and Drug Administration was created to gain some sort of control over pharmaceutical companies and the toxic chemicals they were purveying. What has come to pass is that this federal agency has become a retirement home for pharmaceutical company employees.
Until the advent of the O. J. Simpson trial, attorneys could take pharmaceutical companies to court when they were purveying particularly noxious drugs or a surgeon badly butchered a patient and get large judgments from them and their insurance companies. For the most part, that is now a thing of the past. Attorney can still take companies and doctors to court, but the dollar amounts currently awarded barely cover the costs.
The pharmaceutical and Insurance companies have long since discovered Madison Avenue and are promoting their drugs and death insurance everywhere, and they've been hugely successful.
Insurance companies will pay for cholesterol drugs that are highly promoted by pharmaceutical companies. Both patients and doctors have bought into this in spite of the fact that the scientific evidence is that cholesterol has little if anything to do with heart disease, and it has many adverse side effects, up to and including death. The same can be said for other drugs, including many hypertension and "cardiovascular" drugs.
At the dawn of the 20th Century there was no real "Processed Food Industry" (IFI). Almost all food for eating was prepared at home or locally from organic whole foods that were not sprayed with herbicides, pesticides and inorganic fertilizers.
Now the vast majority of food eaten by the public is prepared in some way by the IFI.
The long term effects of herbicides, pesticides and inorganic fertilizers on living organisms, such as humans, is still basically unknown.
Furthermore, the IFI in its search for profits adds preservatives, dyes, bleaches, flavor "enhancers," and other chemicals to the public's food.
Most of what they add to food has never been properly studied, and it's long-term effects are unknown. However, it is becoming more and more evident that many things that the IFI has added to food for years is detrimental to health, chemicals such as MSG.
Given the classical Hippocratic rule: "I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice,"and the modern Hippocratic path: "I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure," doctors and physicians should be warning the people about the food they eat. The same can be said for the FDA which is supposedly protecting the health of the public. This is obviously not the case.
Most MDs and Dos receive little if any training in diet and nutrition or truly preventive medicine. They have been trained in chemical and surgical management of disease. This has nothing to do with getting to the root cause of a disease or cure.
It has been known since before Hippocrates that the food one eats is the cause and prevention of degenerative diseases.
The modern public has been brainwashed into believing processed foods are good to eat and good for the person eating them. These are foods oftentimes with little or any nutrition value and packed with an entire laboratory of toxic and dangerous chemicals. This includes Genetically Modified Organisms in plants, meats saturated with hormones, antibiotics, immunologicals and pharmaceuticals.
The Comptroller General of the United States of America, the Federal Governments Chief Accountant is warning the public that the national is facing a tsunami of debt because of its financial obligations in taking care of an increasingly older and sicker population that is somehow managing to live long and longer. He also notes that the cost of medical care is rising twice as fast as anything else and has been for a large number of years.
It should be noted that the USA has the most expensive healthcare in the world.
It should also be noted that the life expectancy of Mexico, a third world country, has now surpassed the life expectancy of the USA.
The cure is actually fundamentally simple: a change of diet, and changing how crops are grown and meat for consumption is raised.
John McCain who seems to have the Republican nomination for president sewn up is proposing no changes. A major backer of his is, of course, the pharmaceutical industry.
Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are advocating a health insurance plan for everyone. Their health insurance plans will, of course, be aligned with the existing insurance industry. The insurance industry that walks hand in hand with the pharmaceutical and processed food industry.
Is it any wonder that three of the largest donors to the Clinton and Obama campaigns are from the pharmaceutical, insurance and processed foods industries?
The USA is spending approximately $720 million a day on an illegal undeclared war in Iraq, yet it cannot put its medical students through med school without the students accumulating a million in debt each.
The USA cannot seem to afford to fully fund universities so that their medical schools are not controlled by pharmaceutical and insurance companies where doctors are trained to mask symptoms and manage disease.
The collective knowledge of the overwhelming vast majority of the medical establishment cannot seem to understand what was known before the time of Hippocrates, that eating the proper foods not only prevent disease, but also cure it.
The US Federal government does seem to be able to subsidize corporate farms which produce toxic and dangerous "foods, while being unable to help promote support sustainable organic farming and animal husbandry.
The disease in the medical establishment is one of not wanting to take responsibility for its actions and its abdication of the Hippocratic Oath and everything it stands for.
That is not to say that the public in turn is not responsible for taking measures to insure their own health.
McCain Your Time Is Over In Our Gov.
PETER CAVE: Indonesia's Health Minister has suggested that the United States may be involved in a conspiracy to use the bird flu virus to develop biological weapons.
The extraordinary allegation is included in a new book, endorsed by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, which describes Indonesia's fight to assert its ownership of its virulent strains of avian influenza.
A new report on Iran by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is about to be released and US "pre-emptive" diplomacy, aimed at preventing an IAEA "clean bill of health" that could derail Washington's effort for a new round of UN sanctions on Iran, is at full throttle – with the timely help of disinformation.
Setting the bar unusually high, the US envoy at the IAEA, Gregory Schulte, has warned that unless Iran "confesses" about its "past work on weapons designs and weaponization and the role of the Iranian military", international efforts to resolve the nuclear standoff will be "doomed".
The IAEA must insulate itself from the disinformation campaign against Iran that has by all indications gone into a higher gear as we draw closer to the upcoming meeting of the IAEA's board of governors, and it must ignore the intensifying American lobbying efforts and those of its junior partners such as France (at a recent meeting of France's President Nicolas Sarkozy and the IAEA chief, Mohammad ElBaradei, the IAEA was urged to "stay firm" on Iran).
More important, the IAEA must stay firm on the rules of game and consider the fact that any overstepping of its bounds – eg, by pressuring Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment program in spite of Iran's legal rights and its nuclear transparency – will definitely backfire against the agency and, indeed, the entire non-proliferation regime.
After all, Iran has the solid backing of a bulk of international community, namely the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which covers some 118 member states. Recently, Iran's ambassador to the UN, Mohammad Khazaee, met NAM representatives and urged them to continue with their crucial support for Iran's right to nuclear technology. Ambassador Khazaee has also written a letter to the UN Secretary General about the recent US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran, reiterating Iran's peaceful nuclear intentions and urging the UN not to yield to US pressure that could harm the UN's legitimacy.
South Africa, a key NAM member, has already played a pivotal role in making sure that the UN Security Council does not take any action against Iran before the new IAEA report on Iran.
From Iran's vantage point, the resolution of so-called "outstanding questions" as a result of a "work plan" with the IAEA, which has full scope to monitor Iran's nuclear facilities and which has stressed on numerous occasions the absence of any evidence of military diversion, means that there is no justification for any UN sanctions or continued UN Security Council involvement with Iran's nuclear dossier.
This week, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, the head of Iran's nuclear energy organization, traveled to Vienna to provide further explanation about Iran's nuclear activities and to dispel the new suspicions about past activities raised by the US.
Undoubtedly, Washington's new intransigent strategy has its own limitations. There is only so much emphasis that can be placed on alleged past activities, when the real concern is and should be Iran's present and future nuclear activities.
By placing the bar artificially high, on the other hand, the US may spoil the steady progress in Iran-IAEA cooperation and, indeed, set the process back if the IAEA heeds the present US pressure tactics and refuses to issue a clean bill of health (or something approximating it) for Iran.
The existence of merely minor or technical questions cannot possibly be the basis for declaring Iran in breach of its Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations, which is what the UN Security Council has done, going well beyond the IAEA's own findings.
But with Schulte sending the wrong signal, the Iran nuclear crisis will likely become more aggravated in the coming months if (1) the US and its allies succeed in forcing a more circumspect IAEA report that does injustice to Iran, and (2) Iran fulfills its threat to scale back its work with the IAEA if the agency permits the powers that be to manipulate its findings on Iran. Such a negative leap backward is not in anyone's interest.
 David Sanger and Elaine Sciolino, U.S. to Produce Data on Iran's Nuclear Program, New York Times.
 George Jahn, US Intel Links Iran With Nuclear Bomb Bid, Associated Press.
This propaganda by omission, this "out of sight, out of mind" machination has virtually erased from American reality the disasters unfolding in Iraq and Afghanistan, thus guaranteeing in the public mind a complete ignorance in or understanding of a barbaric continuation to occupations stuck in the quicksand of fierce resistance and never-ending guerrilla warfare. Thus, America's aggressive wars, its imperial occupations, its crusade of surge and siege that has done so much harm to millions of people, not to mention to the moral standing of the nation, have become non-existent memories under cover of fog and haze.
Thus, through our transcendental customs, our American "way of life," of methodically following the exploits of celebrities dead or dying, of aimlessly producing and consuming, as always becoming hypnotized by modern day court jesters, jousters, gladiators and chariot races, as well as exhibiting idol-worshiping, messianic-like followings and tendencies over the Corporatist Party's current crop of presidential contenders, we have chosen to ignore the plight of the innocent – for most prisoners are – in Guantanamo and Bagram and Abu Ghraib and other places of ill-repute. We have thus chosen to be good Americans, seeing no evil, hearing no evil, mistaking ashes for snow, and pretending the evil done in our name does not exist.
American gulags and its system of extraordinary renditions, green lighted at the very top of the food chain, proves to anyone not blinded by delusions and propaganda that America is not now and has never been morally superior to the rest of the world. From the very beginning of the republic, morality has given way to imperialism. Whether done through proxy, by puppets or by America's own hands, control over the peoples of the world has usually involved some form of tyranny, as always dependent on the vast funding, financing, political support and training of the Empire. However, where once hidden under the veneer of democracy and freedom, under the ruthlessness of puppet dictators, America's sordid, though clandestine, past has come to the surface thanks to the exposure of its methods and techniques, becoming an open acknowledgment of past indiscretions and present malfeasance.
Manuel Valenzuela is a social critic, commentator, Internet essayist and author of Echoes in the Wind, a novel now published by Authorhouse.com . His essays appear regularly at various alternative news websites from around the globe. Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at manuel@valenzuelas.net.
When Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke says the economic situation is worsening, you'd better believe him. In fact, the U.S. credit markets are collapsing under our very eyes, and there is no end in sight as to when this will stop, let alone reverse itself. 1- Leading economic indicators for the U.S. economy are falling; 2- Consumer confidence sentiment is falling as mortgage equity withdrawals are drying up; 3-employment numbers are falling; 4- the January 2008 report on the U.S. service economy indicates that it contracted early in the year for the first time in 58 months; 5- the number of new jobless claims is still dangerously high; 6- The housing crisis is getting up steam; banks have to place larger and larger subprime losses on their balance sheets, thus undermining their capital bases and bringing many of them to the brink of insolvency; 7- the credit-ratings agencies are under siege; 8- bond guarantee insurance companies are in the process of loosing their triple-A ratings and some are on the brink of bankruptcy; 9- the $2.6 trillion municipal bond market is about to take a nose dive, if and when the bond insurers do not pull it through; 10- the leveraged corporate loan market is in disarray; 11- the more than a trillion dollar market for mortgage- and debt-backed securities could collapse completely if the largest American mortgage insurers continue to suffer crippling losses; 12- large hedge funds are losing money on a high scale and they are suffering from a run on their assets; 13- in the U.S., total debt as a percentage of GDP is at more than 300 percent, a record level (N.B.: in 1980, it was 125 percent!); 14- and, finally, the worldwide hundreds-of- trillion dollar derivatives market could implode anytime, if too many financial institutions go under during the coming months, as most of these transactions are inter-institution trades.
There are a few positive straws in the wind, such as the fact that manufacturing output seems to be holding up pretty well, as the devalued dollar stimulates exports, but the overall economic picture remains bleak. This is a tribute to the U.S. economy's resiliency.
This mess all begun in the early 2000s, and even as far back as the early 1980s, when the Fed and the SEC adopted a hands-off approach to financial markets, guided by the new economic religion that "markets can do no wrong." What we are witnessing is the failure of nearly thirty years of so-called conservative debt-ridden and deregulation-ridden economic policies.
It must be understood that the most recent subprime problem really began in 2000, when the credit-rating agency of Standard & Poors issued a pronouncement saying that "piggyback" mortgage financing of houses, when a second mortgage is taken to pay the down-payment on a first mortgage, was no more likely to lead to default than more standard mortgages. This encouraged mortgage lending institutions to relax their lending practices, going as far as lending on mortgages with no down-payment whatsoever, and even postponing capital and interest payments for some time. And, with the Fed and the SEC looking the other way, a fatal next step was taken. Banks and their subsidiaries decided to follow new toxic and risky rules of banking.
Indeed, while traditionally banks would borrow short and lend long, they went one giant step further: they began transforming long term loans, such as mortgages, car loans, student loans, etc., into short term loans. Indeed, they got into the alchemist business of bundling together relatively long term loans into packages that they sliced into smaller credit instruments that had all the characteristics of short-term commercial paper, but were carrying higher yields. They then sold these new "structured investment vehicles" (SIVs), for a fee, to all kinds of investors who were looking for higher yields than the meager rates that alternatives were paying. And, since banks were behind these new artificial financial assets, the credit-agencies gave them an AAA-rating, which allowed regulated pension funds and insurance companies to invest in them, believing they were both safe and liquid. —They were in for a shock. When the housing bubble burst, the value of real assets behind the new financial instruments began declining, pulling the rug out from underneath the asset-backed paper market, (ABCP) which became illiquid and toxic. With hardly any trading on the new instruments, nobody knew the true value of the paper, and thus nobody was willing to buy it. This crisis of confidence has now permeated to other credit markets and is threatening the entire financial system as the contagion spreads.
As late as 2003-04, then Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan was not the least worried by the subprime-financed-housing-mortgage bubble but was instead encouraging people to take out adjustable-rate mortgages, even though interest rates were at a thirty-year low and were bound to increase. Even in late 2006, newly appointed Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke professed not to be preoccupied by the housing bubble, saying that high prices were only a reflection of a strong economy. Mind you, this was more than one year after the housing market peaked in the spring of 2005. History will record that the Fed and the SEC did nothing to prevent the debt pyramid from reaching the dangerous levels it attained and which is now crushing the economy.
On a longer span of time, when one looks at a graph provided by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) and which shows the relative importance of total outstanding debt (corporate, financial, government, plus personal) in relation to the economy, one is struck by the fact that this ratio stayed around 1.2 times GDP for decades. Then, something big happened in the early 1980s, and the ratio started to rise, with only a slight pause in the mid-1990s, to reach the air-rarefied level of 3.1 times GDP presently, nearly 200 percent more than it used to be.
The adoption of massive tax cuts coupled with government deficit spending policies, and deregulation policies, by the Reagan and subsequent GOP administrations, all culminating in a grotesque way under the current administration, contributed massively to this unprecedented debt bubble. It took many years to build up the debt pyramid, and it will take many years to unwind it and to reduce this cumulative mountain of debt to a more manageable size.
That is the big picture behind this crisis. It is much bigger than the S&L crisis of the 1980s, which looks puny in comparison with the current one. That is why I think this crisis will linger on for at least a few more years, possibly until 2010-11.
Former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney delivered the following remarks to a banquet for the Dallas Muslim Legal Fund of America.
What I want to talk to you about tonight, is why you must support the Muslim Legal Fund of America even more now than ever before. I know there are some big donors in here, but everyone must donate until you feel it. Then you will know that you did something with your money. You will remember this contribution. And soon enough, you will be glad you did.
That's because we haven't reached a point where human rights are respected in this country. We haven't reached a point where justice rolls down like a might stream in this country. And so, we must be prepared for times of injustice, times of abuse, times of great pain and hurt.
To illustrate my point, I would like you to consider the case of a powerful and famous organization. It had friends that lavished it with money and it learned to use its resources to achieve its goals. Pretty soon, this organization had a multimillion dollar budget. It became very powerful, some said the largest of its kind in the country. Soon, the organization became so effective that people began to take notice. People began to wonder if the organization was really American, advancing American values, or was in service to non-American or even anti-American goals? Eventually, the organization became ensnared in our country's legal system and its supporters were accused of criminal activity. In some cases even treason! People were maligned, had their lives ruined, and some were even jailed.
Retiring former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, retiring Member of Congress Tom Lantos, and Pentagon and State Department officials.
To learn more about Cynthia McKinney's record, visit www.allthingscynthiamckinney.com. To make a donation to her campaign fund, visit www.runcynthiarun.org. You can also send a check or money order to Power to the People Committee, P.O. Box 311759, Atlanta, GA 31153.
Daniel Ellsberg spent three years in the U.S. Marine Corps, serving as rifle platoon leader, operations officer, and rifle company commander.
He worked as a strategic analyst at the RAND Corporation and consultant to the Defense Department and the White House.


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"There is no wealth higher than knowledge and imparting knowlegde to the needy is the noblest of all deeds in the world"
In abiding faith to these words of the learned vedic scholar, his illustrious son Shri. V.K. Sundaram founded Sudharsan Group of Institutions comprising temples of knowledge in various disciplines.
"To offer the highest quality engineering and management education in a backward area and bring out engineers with state of the art professional skills, to protect the safety, health and welfare of the society through Sudharsan."


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OK readers, you win. Yes, something is wrong with the Las Vegas shooting story. It is not only Tyler Durden on Zero Hedge today http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-26/mysterious-missing-vegas-security-guard-left-country-days-after-vegas-massacre, but Tucker Carlson on Fox News yesterday http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/10/25/tucker-carlson-las-vegas-massacre-questions-jesus-campos-security-guard-and-police-hung. Carlson raises many pointed questions that do not have obvious answers. The investigation does not seem to have been handled in the normal way that such investigations are handled. I don't know what it means. I don't expect any official explanation. And I agree with you that it stinks.
Las Vegas is like all the other cases. We are given a story that is full of disbelief, but we are supposed to believe it. The print and TV media, except for Tucker Carlson, doesn't depart from the scripted story. Remember the truck attack in Nice, France? Remember that there were security cameras every block of the street along which the truck travelled? Remember the orders from Paris to the Nice authorities not to show or release anything from the recordings on the cameras and to destroy the video evidence? Remember the Nice authorities accusing Paris of an obstruction of justice? The official story handed to us by the presstitutes never explained, or adjusted for, the extraordinary order from the French central government to the Nice local government to destroy the evidence. Why would such an order be given? Why did the order not raise a jillion red flags? What was being covered up by the order?
Remember, except for the case of alleged Boston Marathon bombing surviving brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/10/26/case-judicial-murder/, no alleged perpetrator of any of these terrorist attacks is alive to tell his tale, and Dzhokhar has been kept from the public and the media. Dzhokhar's survival is itself a miracle as he was on two occasions in two different locations shot by police. Clearly, he wasn't wanted alive to tell his tale.


text:
Post-ICU syndrome signals need for better transition between life-saving care and return to life
Author: Karen Palmer, Christopher Doig & Mike Tierney
Nadine Foster remembers only two things from the five weeks she spent in the intensive care unit: a woman's voice telling her she was in hospital in Edmonton, and hallucinating that her brother-in-law was playing a practical joke by dressing up like a doctor.
"They had to do a lot of pretty awful things to me, especially in the early days, so in some ways I'm quite glad I couldn't remember," Foster says, whose ICU stay was caused by a medication error. She'd had a central line catheter put in. Doctors drilled a hole in her head to relieve brain swelling. They cut open her belly to give swelling organs room, an incision that remained open for 11 days.
She came close to death so often, her survival was viewed as a miracle.
"Not having any memory of it is sometimes a little troubling. It's like it was the most significant thing that happened to me, but I didn't feel it. I've got the scars from the surgeries. I've got the long-term health complications. But it's like it happened to my family, to everyone else."
Amnesia wasn't the only thing Foster took home from the hospital. She had a surgically-created opening to help expel bodily waste. Muscle loss had robbed her of the ability to walk. She couldn't concentrate long enough to read. She would sleep up to 16 hours a day, yet still feel exhausted.
"I was shocked," says Foster, a forensic health nurse who worked with troubled youth. "I had no idea, even as a nurse, that I would suffer so much afterward and that it's such a long, slow climb back to normal life."
Worse, because of the way many ICU survivors are discharged from hospital – spending time in a medical ward before moving on to a rehab hospital, long-term care facility or home – many feel abandoned and unsupported in their recovery.
"For some patients who come to the ICU, they never get back to where they were before the ICU," says Orla Smith, a critical care nurse at St. Michael's hospital who has experience managing the unit and its research portfolio.
'Hidden consequences' of an ICU stay
ICUs were first designed and developed in Denmark in the 1950s to manage polio patients. Over time, they've evolved to include more complex care and remain the place for the sickest, most complicated patients.
The unit's focus is on saving a life – not necessarily about the quality of life once that life is saved. That's slowly changing, says Christopher Grant, a rehabilitation physician who runs a post-ICU clinic at the Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary.
"Now there's a movement – I hope – to look at not only can we save you, but can we give you your physical and mental function back?"
Studies show that there are a range of reactions to a stay in the ICU, from the physical wasting that patients experience when they're prone and immobilized to the emotional problems that can come with surviving a near-death experience to a kind of mental fogginess that seems to be associated with the sedation used in the ICU. Collectively, these physical, cognitive and psychiatric symptoms are known as post-ICU syndrome.
"The consequences are hidden from us, partly because ICUs are generally in a large hospital and patients usually don't discharge home from the ICU," Grant says. "The way our siloed health system has sort of evolved is that intensivists don't really have visibility into how people do once they go home."
Poor quality of life
In the late 1990s, Margaret Herridge, a respirologist and scientist at the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute, set up a study looking at the recovery of people who survived severe lung dysfunction. She asked the expected questions about their lung capacity, looking at how much air they could blow and whether they still used oxygen tanks. But she also asked about rehab measures: whether patients had gone back to work, how far they could walk in six minutes, how they would describe their quality of life.
"The patients were just ravaged, actually. They were incredibly weak, they had mood disorders, issues with cognition, a whole host of medical problems," Herridge says. Half had not been able to return to work. Many still got breathless walking for a mere six minutes. The study's subjects self-reported that their quality of life – factoring in pain, mental health and social functioning, among others – was low.
"I was shocked by it. Patients and families were telling me: 'There's no help for us.'" Their family doctors didn't understand what they'd been through; community care couldn't handle the complexity of their wound care.
"I could just see that this was a very vulnerable group of people with massive unmet needs and the system was failing them, having invested so much in their initial care."
Transitions in care are particularly difficult. Teddy Zittell spent seven weeks in the ICU with failing lungs, then a week on a regular medical ward, followed by six weeks in a rehabilitation hospital.
"Being transferred to the medical floor was a big transition," his wife, Bari, says. "It was really, really challenging."
To manage the complexity of interventions in the ICU, there is often one nurse for every patient, or one nurse for two patients. Nurses on a medical ward, by contrast, might care for five or six patients.
"We always had someone from the family there quite early in the morning. When he went onto the floor, he couldn't even feed himself but they would just put a tray down and walk out," Bari says. "It sort of went from 100 to zero in 20 minutes. There's no in between. There's no step down."
Little research on effective interventions
What might be just as bad or worse is the transition from hospital to home.
"My discharge plan was a one-liner," Foster says. "Keeping in mind that I'd had multi-organ failure, sepsis, failing liver, failing kidneys, a bowel perforation. It basically said follow up with your family doctor and go to the emergency department for anything else. People go home with a more complicated care plan after giving birth, which is completely routine."
Foster was assured that her blood levels – indicators of the recovery of her vital organs – would stabilize within a few months of her discharge from hospital. Her blood levels rebalanced within two months. But it took a year to feel physically normal again, two years for her cognitive state to return to normal.
"In my head, I'm thinking, so I should be feeling good right about now and I wasn't. It was a real disconnect between what my blood levels were telling me and what my body was actually doing," she says.
Evidence is only beginning to emerge on the predictors of post-ICU syndrome, but there does seem to be a link to the length of ICU stay, the severity of the illness, older age and any pre-existing conditions or cognitive impairment.
To prevent some of the symptoms of post-ICU syndrome, more focus is being placed on helping ICU patients move, either by moving their limbs for them or by using a sling to get them upright in a chair or by hooking them up to machines and getting them up and walking. (Incredibly, some patients with minimal lung function can be put on portable ventilator machines and helped to walk the ICU floor.)
"As the science evolves, we can keep sicker and sicker people alive, but what we can also do now is keep you alive and move your joints. We can keep you alive and give you crosswords to keep your brain engaged," Grant says.
"The fixes usually aren't fancy," he adds. "They're usually education, exercise, informing the family doc of what happened."
Research is still emerging on how best to support ICU survivors. One UK study found no difference in outcomes with a post-ICU rehab program, findings confirmed by a similar Scottish study. However, experts point out that the one-size-fits all approach to the study's interventions – sometimes no more than a check-in from a critical care nurse – likely led to those findings.
"The challenge really is to figure out how to match the patient or family needs with the right pathway," Smith says. "There are lots of people looking at this, but unfortunately, no one has given us the holy grail of what rehab should look like."
Long-term impacts of ICU-related delirium
Delirium, a disturbed state of consciousness and awareness, is common in the ICU, affecting up to 80 percent of ventilated patients. The cause, or causes, of delirium are unknown. It may be due to the underlying illness, the body's inflammatory response to the illness, lack of sleep, pain, anxiety, or medications used in the ICU.
It can be a tough problem to resolve, as some of the medications used in the ICU can cause or worsen delirium. It is also very distressing for family members as some patients are agitated and aggressive, and actions usually associated with comfort, such as talking or touching, can make symptoms worse.
Worryingly, while it used to be thought of as a transient or sporadic condition, longitudinal studies are showing it can have long-term consequences.
Recent studies have shown that patients over 65 years old with delirium in the ICU have long-term impairment in their cognition. But it's not just older patients. Many patients followed in the recovery clinics show signs of anxiety, depression, memory loss, fatigue (brain fog), and other non-physical effects. There are also consequences for the family of survivors. Families also often don't realize the hidden consequences, such as delirium, and are frustrated that recovery isn't quicker.
The increasing attention to long-term recovery is important.
Many studies from neonatal intensive care units have shown that babies born and requiring ICU care have long-term health consequences that require careful follow-up. Given the expense of caring for adult ICU patients in the hospital, investment in their long-term follow-up would seem to make sense too. But there is currently little coordination of care post ICU in most hospitals and health regions in Canada.
Recent work in Canada, led by Herridge and others, will introduce a coordinated strategy for follow-up of ICU patients. Such an approach will not only be novel in Canada, but across North America.
The program, known as RECOVER, is awaiting funding to scale up in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta. It's designed to assign a navigator to any patient mechanically ventilated in the ICU for four days or more. The navigator would help assure continuity of care, but also help educate and support patients and families and connect them with mental health resources. Once a patient is stabilized and ready to leave the ICU, they would be placed into an accelerated and comprehensive care, rehabilitation and nutrition program, then go into a community-based recovery clinic and followed for one year.
"It's really kind of a combination of education and comprehensive medical and psychiatric assistance. It can't be just a check-in," Herridge says."People really need active management. I've learned so much just from listening to people. That's why our intervention looks the way it does – it's totally patient- and family-driven."
Foster, who now acts as a patient advisor, recommends that health systems also build resources like ICUsteps, a patient-led online support group. Foster found it beneficial."You hear other people saying this is what I went through, this is what helped, you're not crazy. There is validation that you're not alone, that this happened to a lot of us and that you can get through it."
Related Faces of Health Care
"It's hard to go up to families of patients in the ICU who are going to die soon and say, 'What can we do for you and your loved one?'"
Learn more about Melissa.
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Jill McLauchlin	 October 6th, 2017 at 2:05 am
Fabulous article and so very true, having spent over 30 years as an ICU RN I have seen it all. I would so love to be involved in the RECOVER program!
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Bodil	 October 7th, 2017 at 3:27 am
Fantastic article. I work in ICU and would love be involved in RECOVER program.
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Elaine Rose	 October 6th, 2017 at 1:15 pm
I recall this being talked about, as something to investigate, over 30 years ago. I am so glad it is moving ahead. Having worked ICU for almost my entire nursing career I understand the importance. However, it wasn't until a recent hospital stay (not in ICU, but receiving a lot of pain medication), that I have an even better understanding of what ICU patients might go through following their discharge from the ICU, & then home.
I'd have loved to have had the opportunity to participate in such a program as an ICU nurse. So much to learn, & so much help to be provided.
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Doreen Rockliff	 October 8th, 2017 at 6:05 am
As a former ICU sepsis patient, now almost six years out, I would welcome a chance to have access to a support group. Being fortunate in my family and family doctor support I have managed to recover some quality of life but I still feel the need to talk to fellow survivors. They are the only people who can really understand.
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Laurie Proulx	 October 8th, 2017 at 1:11 pm
As someone who has also suffered a life-threatening illness, this article really hits the nail on the head. As you note in the experience of Nadine Foster, I too was utterly exhausted for 6-8 weeks post-ICU discharge and it was hard to get back into real life. I also had a newborn baby to care for. If you're ever looking for a patient to communicate their experience, I would be more than happy to speak with all of you!
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Drew Cumpson	 October 13th, 2017 at 9:25 pm
As I read this article tonight, I am currently laying in ICU at Kingston General Hospital. I have spent almost 2 full years in and out of the ICU here at KGH. I have lived through some crazy things over the past 6 ½ years and am thankful that I always have to return to the ICU unit at KGH. A lot of the ICU attendings have been taking care of me since my accident on May 10, 2011 in Lima Peru. The teams are great at listening to what I have to say as they know, I know my body well. If you would like to know more about my story, you can check out my Faces of Healthcare articles here at Healthy Debate.
http://healthydebate.ca/faces-health-care/drew
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Alies Maybee	 October 14th, 2017 at 8:46 am
Astounding changes since my time in ICU in 1972 after a near fatal car accident! I was discharged home after a month with zero supports beyond weekly rehab visits I could barely attend. I couldn't get in and out of a chair or bed without help, hardly feed myself and was alone all day while my husband worked. No one told me about brain fog so I thought I had brain damage because I couldn't make sense of what I read for around 3 years. It was impossible for me to finish Bleak House (apt name!) and resume my university course. And yet I was lucky long term. I have informally shared with people going through similar experiences so they don't feel alone or crazy.
These changes can dramatically alter people's lives by removing the feeling of isolation and fear of being crazy as well as providing practical supports. Such a great step.
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Doreen Rockliff	 November 8th, 2017 at 10:17 am
Is this the right type of space to seek ICU/Sepsis survivors in Calgary who may be interested in establishing a support group? It has been 6 years since my sepsis event but recovery was delayed due to further surgery over the following 2 years. The AHS Living Well program assisted physical recovery to a certain point but the extended effects of post ICU have left me feeling the need of mutual support from those who have also experienced this monumental change to one's life.
Pete Oxland	 November 10th, 2017 at 11:34 am
Doreen, you have asked a really good question. I sense that exchanging ideas through this website may be somewhat helpful – yet, am wondering if there would be value in asking those leading our Alberta Health Services Critical Care Strategic Clinical Network about this. What do you think?
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Anahera has an extensive background in teaching te reo Māori. She has worked in both curriculum development and advisory roles in diverse education settings over a period of 20 years.
In her role as a te reo Māori PLD facilitator, Anahera has supported schools to ensure that they are providing education that enables the capacity for Māori to achieve as Māori. Her experience in working with diverse groups means that she is able to effectively engage others and tailor programmes to suit. Her sensitivity and respect creates environments that are conducive to growth, productivity and confidence building.
Anahera supports educators to become culturally responsive practitioners, helping teachers and leaders to understand the critical importance of Māori language, identity and culture for Māori student success.
Developing language proficiency, confidence and capacity to successfully use te reo Māori in their classrooms.
Supporting diverse groups of kaiako to collaborate and share understandings.
Increasing understanding of language teaching and learning strategies.
Supported kaiako to understand and convey deeper language learning to deliver curriculum.
Supported kaiako to use self-review tools to critique and improve practice.
Ensuring Māori language is progressed and sustained throughout the school.
Sensitive and respectful encouragement of others to enhance understanding and awareness of the importance of learning te reo Māori.
Assisting educators with the correct pronunciation of Te Reo Māori enabling them to confidently incorporate language into their classrooms and schools.
2014: Friends of Puke Ariki prize for top undergraduate of 19th Century New Zealand History.


The terms eczema and dermatitis are the cause of much confusion. In keeping with the broad guidelines given in The Merck Manual, we shall use these terms synonymously to indicate superficial inflammation of the skin. The dermatologist subdivides dermatitis and eczema into a range of different disease entities distinguished by location and appearance. For the phytotherapist, however, the most important distinction is between cases with an internal or endogenous cause and those with a contact or exogenous cause.
In such cases, eczema is the final result of a complex series of internal reactions to allergens and irritants. It is often associated with other allergic diseases, such as hay fever and asthma, but may also occur alone. The rash of eczema is very itchy, peeling, thickened, and sometimes weepy, and is typically seen in the creases of joints and around the trunk. The rash may fluctuate seasonally and can even change over the course of the day. Scratching may lead to bleeding and infection. Blood tests in individuals with eczema reveal increased levels of cells and chemicals associated with general allergic reactions.
One variation of eczema occurs on the palms of the hands and sometimes on the soles of the feet. This type may be quite frustrating to treat, because the common exposure to moisture, irritants, and injury of these areas leads to self-perpetuation of the disease. Furthermore, the thickness of the skin in these regions makes topical therapy more difficult.
Eczema requires the practitioner to be at his or her most insightful. Ideally, the nature of the underlying cause will identify what systems call for toning. However, with the exception of obvious allergies or contact irritants, this can be problematic for a skin problem like eczema.
The skin obviously needs support, but in addition the nervous system, digestive system and liver, immune system, and others may need attention. In many ways, the therapeutic conclusion will depend upon the herbalist's theoretical interpretation of eczema, rather than the patient's case history.
Alteratives are the classic remedies for the treatment of eczema. How they work is unclear, but they can often be dramatically effective.
Antipruritics, remedies that reduce the sensation of itching, are indicated, not simply to make the patient feel better, but also to reduce physical trauma caused by scratching.
Anti-inflammatories applied topically and taken internally speed the curative work of the alteratives, but do not replace them.
Lymphatic, tonics, which may be considered a type of alterative, are especially helpful for eczema in children.
Nervine relaxants help with the commonly associated problem of anxiety. They also often ease itching and even inflammation in the skin because of their relaxing effect on the peripheral nerves of the autonomic nervous system.
Diuretics ensure adequate elimination through the kidneys. Diuretic alteratives are most relevant.
Hepatks will contribute support for liver function and the digestive process. Hepatic alteratives are best here.
Vulneraries support the healing of skin lesions when applied topically, but do not replace appropriate internal treatment.
Astringents, used topically, reduce any weeping or oozing of fluids.
Emollient herbs are suitable for topical applications where soothing is needed. The demarcation among emollient, anti-inflammatory, and antipruritic herbs is rather meaningless here.
Dosage: up to 5 ml of tincture three times a day. In addition, the patient should drink an infusion of fresh Urtica dioica or Galium aparine two or three times a day.
Dosage: 2.5 ml of tincture three times a day. Build up the dosage to 5 ml three times a day. In addition, the patient should drink an infusion of fresh or dried Urtica dioica two or three times a day.
Care should be taken initially with Scrophularia nodosa, as it can produce the opposite of the desired result in some patients. If there is a flare-up of the skin eruption, cut down on the Scrophularia and try again. This is not a healing crisis!
Dosage: up to 5 ml of tincture three times a day The relative proportion of alterative herbs to Dyspnea Formula will depend upon the patient's specific needs. In addition, the patient should drink an infusion of fresh Urtica dioica or Galium aparine two or three times a day.
Other authorities have recommended supplementation with vitamin C and vitamin B complex in addition to the other supplements listed.