The Ft. Hood Shock: Incredible Coincidence or Orchestrated Obama Photo Op?

It's November 10th, 2009, the day before Veterans Day. President Obama visits Ft. Hood to mourn with those military families who lost friends and loved ones at the hands of a domestic "terrorist," who just happens to be a Muslim and who committed this crime so close to Veterans Day and while Obama is on the brink of making a decision to send tens of thousands more troops to the war in Afghanistan (against Muslims) amidst very strong public opinion to get out of that war. Well it was strong, until this shocking "terrorist" act took place.

This is absolutely amazing. We have the most well equipped military and intelligence agencies in the world and yet they can't stop known terror suspects with simple box cutters who even trained in U.S. flight schools - they can't stop those guys from hijacking five planes and crashing into the Pentagon and the twin towers; and they can't stop this guy Hasan, who they have known evidence on as well with his relations with a known terrorist sympathizer and they even employ him on a military base.

Someone clue me in here. Are these people in our intelligence agencies complete idiots?

OR

There are those who question the whole legitimacy of 9/11 as a purely terrorist act. There were no aircraft engine parts found at the Pentagon on 9/11. Instead they found what appeared to be a hole in the building made by a missile. Some demolition experts believe the twin towers were destroyed with explosives by demolition experts - like our highly trained military who specialize in such things perhaps? There are questions about flight 93 that crashed in a farm field in Pennsylvania, supposedly headed for Washington D.C. piloted by U.S. military trained "Muslim terrorists" (Was it shot down by the military as is standard military policy when a hijacked aircraft becomes a threat, especially a threat to national security?). Why was there so much media analysis of what happened on that flight, which we couldn't possibly know of for certain, to the point where a Hollywood movie was made depicting such nebulous speculation and conjecture in vivid high definition detail?

Now we have this highly suspicious terrorist act by Hasan, where we know he was thwarted and harassed to the breaking point, and we know he had an internal conflict between his ethnicity and people versus his military service, while working for a military that slaughters innocent Muslims with extreme ethnic prejudice (if you were a white guy working for an Arab army that did this to Americans, do you think you'd have a few internal conflicts too? How about a few dead collaterally damaged Texan babies? Want to work for those guys?).

Left: Obama narrows down his decision to send tens of thousands more American lives into a nebulous war.

Yet our military with its vast resources can't figure this stuff out until after a great American tragedy happens, coinciding with Veterans day and on our American soil - all the talking points of making a case for war against a foreign enemy. What a great photo op for Obama at Ft. Hood the day before Veterans Day. Can you think of a better commercial for going to all out war?

Naomi Kline's book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, points out ever so clearly the history of the United states government in using disasters to make a case for war, not only in our country but first in South American countries which were the proving ground for this policy. And we see this happening over and over again. Here we are with Obama on the brink of sending ten's of thousands more troops off to fight and die in vain for a war without end, without purpose, without strategy. A war that targets innocent civilians because our crack cutting edge military can't figure out the difference between civilians and terrorists, and in the process of killing the innocent, proliferates more terrorism.

It is very highly likely, in light of this historical fact, that our intelligence agencies employed persons from the Muslim connections that Hasan had, to his neighbors that harassed him to his wit's end, with the sole purpose of perpetuating and coercing him to commit these crimes, so that they would have an awesome ongoing news story (one that will now last for months since they went to extreme measures to keep him alive) to make a case for perpetual war in Afghanistan and to sway public opinion away from it's current sentiment against staying in Afghanistan.

Ft. Hood Shooter was Cruely Mistreated and Harassed for his Ethnicity

"Everyone else just sat down there and drunk their beer and looked at him and giggled at him," the woman said, starting to cry. "They just would laugh at him when he walked down with his Muslim clothes. . . . He was mistreated. He didn't have nobody. He was all alone. He went to his apartment there and was all alone." - Washington Post

Right: Authorities knock on doors of Hasan's neighbors.

The pervasive racism toward Muslims in the military is obviously at the heart of why Nidal Malik Hasan went to the breaking point. This is all too familiar as we have seen with the kids at Columbine.

"In mid-August, just a few weeks after moving to Killeen, Hasan had a run-in with a soldier living in apartment No. 12. One night after he had been drinking, John Van de Walker scraped a key along the full length of the passenger's side of Hasan's car. Then he removed and destroyed a bumper sticker that read, 'Allah is Love,' according to several residents, including live-in managers John and Alice Thompson."

The U.S. military has a long standing policy of racism toward the peoples of countries we are "at war with.". It is standard procedure to dehumanize these foreign populations so that soldiers can more easily deal with the rampant death of innocent people that they see in war. I use the term racism loosely here as it actually applies to the Muslim religion. But few make the distinction between the Muslim religion and Arab ethnicity.

Hasan was known to his comrades in his apartment complex as "number 9", a reference to his apartment number. Many are calling him a terrorist because he is a Muslim, and in the context of the wars against Muslim nations that we are engaged in. Has Tim McVeigh ever been called a terrorist? Perhaps. But that hasn't given white middle-state Americans the stigma of terrorism.

I think Hasan has a lot more in common with Timothy McVeigh than he does with Muslim terrorists in Afghanistan. They are (or were) both U.S. military members who were disgruntled enough with the military to retaliate and kill innocent victims.

Every religion has the concept that people should not kill. We don't know for sure and probably never will, but in addition to be driven to the brink by the incessant tormenting he suffered, I believe it was this devotion to his religion that may have lead him to open fire upon deploying troops to an unjust war that dehumanizes and kills the innocent as a matter of policy. But that is purely my conjecture in trying to explain the unexplainable. Killing is not justified in civilian life or even in war when the innocent die. But this may help to explain what happened, why it happened, how it might have been prevented, and could be prevented in the future.

The BBC reports that Hasan had long wanted to leave the military due to suffering harassment because of his religion, and that many Muslims in the U.S. military suffer harassment and this shooting has raised fears among them:

According to the Pentagon, there are 3,572 Muslims in active service. However, some Muslims in the military say the real number is as high as 20,000.

The US government has made no secret of the fact that it would like to see more people from Arab and Muslim communities joining the armed forces.

More American Muslim troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan has long been seen as a vital part in helping the US in its missions to win hearts and minds in those countries.

"They are a great asset to the army," Lt Col Nathan Banks, army spokesman for the Pentagon, told the BBC.

"When they do deploy they help facilitate a lot of our missions. American Muslims in the army work hand in hand with local Muslims, and we welcome that."

He said the army did not foresee heightened tensions within its ranks as a result of Fort Hood. Meanwhile tensions have risen sharply around the country, as we see on internet posts like this one, where many accuse Hasan of being a terrorist, sympathetic to the Muslims we fight against. This BBC article also reports that Muslims in the U.S. military now have a growing fear of harassment as a result. It's obviously very hard for people to distinguish between Muslims in general (including those in our own military) and the Muslims we fight as members of the Taliban or Al Qaeda.

Secondary PTSD a likely Factor

Hasan likely suffered from secondary PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) in listening to the many troops' horrid stories of war as they came to him after returning from war. Fort Hood Private Michael Kern who knew of Hasan tells of his own problems dealing with his killing a child, and how stories like this had to effect Hasan. Hasan had tried in vain to leave the military but there was no way once you are deployed as the private says.

Hasan's cousin tells Amy Goodman, "About a week before the incident, he hired a lawyer in order to leave the Army, get married, and live his life. But they rejected his request and asked him to go to Afghanistan. This was the biggest shock for him. So, there’s another reason why he did what he did, not just because of the harassment of the soldiers. There is another reason." Watch the Ft. hood video clip here.

An independent journalist and author Dahr Jamail describes how the military pressures troops to "suck it up" and not admit to any PTSD, which indicates the problem is a "rampant problem." According to Jamail, "And even those that do get help and go get treatment, they find themselves being put back into action anyway. As of last year, more than 43,000 soldiers already listed as medically unfit to be deployed were deployed anyway. We have a situation right now in Iraq where 12 percent of combat troops in Iraq, and then over in Afghanistan 17 percent of combat troops in Afghanistan, are already on psychotropic meds to help them sleep at night and because they have PTSD and severe depression. And this is just that we know of. So, they’re encouraged not to talk about it, not to get help. And then when they do, they simply don’t tend to get the treatment that they need."

Private Kern went on to say that he didn't think anyone at Ft. Hood saw Hasan's religion as the problem, "And even those that do get help and go get treatment, they find themselves being put back into action anyway. As of last year, more than 43,000 soldiers already listed as medically unfit to be deployed were deployed anyway. We have a situation right now in Iraq where 12 percent of combat troops in Iraq, and then over in Afghanistan 17 percent of combat troops in Afghanistan, are already on psychotropic meds to help them sleep at night and because they have PTSD and severe depression. And this is just that we know of. So, they’re encouraged not to talk about it, not to get help. And then when they do, they simply don’t tend to get the treatment that they need.:

Hasan's lawyer requested he not be interrogated until further investigation and doubts there can be a fair trial in light of Obama's Tuesday visit and public statement made by the post commander.

Retired Col. John P. Galligan said he was contacted Monday by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's family and was headed to an Army hospital in San Antonio to meet Hasan.

"Until I meet with him, it's best to say we're just going to protect all of his rights," Galligan said. "There's a lot of facts that still need to be developed, and the time for that will come in due course."

"You've got his commander in chief showing up tomorrow," Galligan said. "That same kind of publicity naturally creates an issue as to whether you find a fair and impartial forum, whether that's in the military or even if it were in a federal forum."

Hasan, 39, is accused of opening fire on the Army post on Thursday, killing 13 people and wounding 29 before civilian police shot him in the torso. He was taken into custody and eventually moved to Brooke Army Medical Center, where he was in stable condition Monday and able to talk, hospital spokesman Dewey Mitchell said.

But Hasan has not yet been charged. Meanwhile the AP reports that a 9/11 terrorist contact praised Hasan's actions, which exacerbates the widespread hatred toward Hasan and is exactly the kind of reporting that makes for this issue of him being unable to get a fair trail. Military justice experts agree that this trial will be a long complicated proceeding. His physical and mental health will first have to be evaluated and will likely cause a delay of many months. He will be tried under the military justice system, not civilian law, unless there are findings that he was operating as an international terrorist, in which case he'll be transferred for federal prosecution under ant-terrorism laws. If he remains in military custody it's unlikely he'll get the death penalty since the military justice system's lengthy appeals process has effectively thwarted all executions since 1961. Hasan has not yet been charged with any crime either civilian or military. Richard Durbin, chief of the criminal section for the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Antonio declined to comment on Sunday. Because of the high publicity the Army will offer his defense a "wide latitude." The Houston Chronicle reports the following:

“We're in for a long haul,” said Scott L. Silliman, a retired career JAG officer in the Air Force who now directs Duke University Law School's Center on Ethics and National Security....

What's likely to occur is a court-martial under Article 2 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, to punish offenses allegedly committed by a man wearing a U.S. military uniform against other military personnel on a military base. The Army's Criminal Investigation Division is responsible for recommending charges, prompting the military equivalent of a grand jury, known as an Article 32 hearing, where both prosecutors and defense can present evidence.

Those results would be reviewed by base commander Cone, who would decide whether to convene a court-martial. The 12-person jury would be composed of officers higher in rank than Hasan – lieutenant colonels and above.

Under the rules of military justice, Hasan is permitted to have a lawyer present during interrogation, but former military lawyers say that the Army psychiatrist cannot be questioned by Army Criminal Investigation Division agents until doctors formally deem him medically and mentally able.

“A doctor would have to certify that the suspect is competent to decide whether to remain silent, speak to investigators or ask for a lawyer,” Silliman said. “He would have to be able to make an intelligent and informed decision before waiving any of his rights.”

....One military justice expert also predicted that an insanity defense is unlikely. Silliman said the standard for an insanity defense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice is that the suspect “cannot comprehend the wrongfulness of his actions.”

Hasan's family demands that he be allow to speak to a lawyer before investigators or any mental health evaluation. The Chronicle also reports that the trial will likely be moved from the Ft. Hood location because of the "climate" there and the large number of local victims.

CIGNA Kills Girl, Doctor Arrested

Grigor Sarkisyan tells us of his daughter who was denied treatment and died because of it, as Dr. Matt Hendrickson MD and others get arrested and protesters chant "CIGNA profits, people die, arrest the real criminals." This happened in Glendale CA as similar sit-ins at health insurance companies take place around the country. Over 900 people have signed up to risk arrest at these ongoing sit-ins including a number of doctors. They do not accept the public option as the answer to this problem. Only a single payer system that covers all Americans at affordable costs is acceptable and these rallies and sit-ins will continue until that happens.

Margaret Flowers MD, seen in this video after a Senate hearing this summer, was arrested Thursday 10/28/2009 and remains in custody vowing to stay there until she gets a meeting with the CEO of CareFirst 3401 Boston St &1501 S Clinton St, Canton Crossing, MD.

In Louisville KY seven occupied the Humana lobby for over 24 hours. Humana allowed them to stay as long as they wanted and stated they too want health care reform.

In Warwick, CT, sit-protesters, including Robert Darling, a cancer patient being denied care, occupied the United Health Care office, demanding that the insurer cover Robert’s bone marrow transplant immediately. The CEO was unavailable but the PR manager talked with them and promised to meet with Mr. Darling within a week to answer him.


40 risked arrest at a San Francisco sit-in while 200 rallied in support and 30 others blocked entrances to Blue Shield offices. Protesters advocated a “single-payer” system in which the state or federal government would create one system of health insurance to cover everyone, as would be created by Rep. John Conyers’ H.R. 676, which would improve Medicare and expand it to cover everyone. The California legislature has twice passed bills creating a similar single-payer system on the state level, but Gov. Schwarzenegger vetoed both these bills.

In New York nine were arrested at a Welpoint sit-in. Simone Morse, a 19-year old student at Hunter College, was the first to be handcuffed and pulled up from the floor this morning at 1 Liberty Plaza in lower Manhattan, the corporate offices of WellPoint, one of the largest health insurers in the United States.

Cameron Gibson, a 23-year-old medical student at SUNY Downstate, was one of the next to go, followed by Frank Broadhead, a 67-year-old senior on Medicare, who was carried out on his back and deposited into a nearby police van by two members of the New York Police Department. In total, nine protesters were arrested on Wednesday morning on charges of disorderly conduct and/or trespassing, according to an NYPD officer on site who spoke off the record.

“My name is Matt Hendrickson, I am an Emergency Physician and a member of Physicians For A National Health Program.

I am sitting in at Cigna tomorrow to ask Cigna why the health insurance industry is denying health care.Why are they charging America a 25% tax on all healthcare transactions to support a system that avoids the sick? Why has the number of physicians grown by 200% in the last 40 years while the number of insurance administrators has grown by 3,000%? Why does their industry have 1 million administrators, while there are half as many physicians and Medicare only has 15,000 employees?

Why does Medicare pay their chief executive $150,000 while Cigna pays Ed Hanway $12 million? Why is their industry raising premiums for small businesses by 15% a year? And then diverting 15 cents off every dollar to deny care to their paying customers.

I'm going inside Cigna today to ask these questions. I’m going to bring some pictures with me. Some of the faces will be familiar to Cigna.Like Nataline Sarkisyan who lived in Glendale until she was 17 when she died because Cigna denied her transplant. But they may not know Jenny Fritts who was 24 when this picture was taken with her two-and-a-half year old daughter Kylee. She was also seven and a half months pregnant with her second child- a beautiful baby girl. Jenny is dead. Jenny’s unborn baby is dead. They died because she was turned away for appropriate care from a for-profit hospital due to lack of insurance.

I want Cigna to know about this young woman, seen here at her two-year-old son’s birthday. She came to my ER with a mole behind her ear and a swollen lymph node. Her husband had recently lost his job when their tech firm downsized.

We recommended she get a biopsy. The family used part of their savings to get the biopsy done promptly by paying cash. The biopsy revealed metastatic melanoma. Now the Thomas family has no income, depleted savings and the mother of their three young children has an invasive cancer with no health insurance.

If Cigna won’t let me inside their offices, I’ll sit down outside and wait to speak to them. If police won’t let me wait, I will be arrested. It is my duty as a physician and my honor as a citizen to be speak out for My patients who are losing their savings, losing their homes and losing their lives because of the existence of the private insurance industry.

America cannot wait any longer. Our uninsured cannot wait. Our small businesses cannot wait. Our middle class cannot wait.

This is just the beginning Cigna. Other physicians are risking arrest today. And there will be more next month, and the month after that. We will not stop speaking out for our patients and stating unconditionally that private health insurance must go.”

Matt Hendrickson, MD MPH
Vice Chair, PNHP/CaPA LA
Chair, LA Single Payer Coalition

Rape in the Ranks: The Enemy Within

This is a synopsis of the 28 minute French film by Pascale Bourgau who interviewed US military women raped on duty. It's been seen on European TV but not in the US. Pascale, a reporter for the Belgian channel RTBF (Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon), while six months pregnant, along with Anne Barrier, toured the United States to meet these women and tell of their pain, rebellion and today, their struggle. The documentary was selected for the New York Independent Film Festival and will be shown Monday evening, October 26 at 5:45pm at the City Cinema East, 181 2d Ave, NYC. Following the showing of "Rape in the Ranks", we will have a panel to discuss rape in the US military at the Telephone Bar and Grill, 149 2nd Ave (212-529-5000). See http://nyfilmvideo.info/2009-new-york-october-film-schedule-tickets/monday-octob... Filmmaker Pascale Bourgaux is available for interviews. Her telephone is 212-982-0684 and 646-2638402.

Synopsis:

Raped by their comrades, Tina, Jessica, Suzanne and Stephanie have been ignored by U.S. military officials in seeking justice. Though the Pentagon acknowledged receiving 3,000 reports of sexual assault in 2006 alone, and had launched a rape prevention program in 2004, the number of reported sexual assaults has since skyrocketed, but not the number of convictions. Only 2% of accused rapists are ever brought before a courts martial. Very few women have been willing to speak out, with the exception of these four brace women. Unable to stand the nightmarish daily rapes by her commander in Iraq, 21-year-old Suzanne refused to report back for mission and was brought before a courts martial. 25-year-old Jessica was raped in the U.S. and Korea, yet still dreams of going back to active service and seeing her attackers brought to justice. Stephanie has come to regret never reporting her own rape and perpetuating the law of silence. 20-year-old Tina, who was raped in Iraq, is no longer around to recount her nightmare. She supposedly "killed herself." Her mother claims she was murdered. This report tells the story of their pain, revolt, and uphill battle for justice.

Image captions: Left: Pascale Bourgaux interviewing Ann Wright, a former colonel who resigned before the war in Iraq; now a pacifist and defender of the cause of raped female soldiers (Washington, outside the White House). Right: Jessica and her husband Brendan Brinkman.

En francais: http://www.capatv.com/?p=2609

Visit the Stop War Project: http://stopwar.lafilmonline.com

Single Payer is NOT Off the Table

Los Angeles 10/15/09 – 12 arrested for a sit-in at Anthem Blue Cross offices as Maureen Cruise, Public Health Nurse, explains why single payer is not off the table. Along with a contingent of doctors, Cruise believes universal health care (a.k.a. single payer or medicare for all) is the only option. As Dr. Jo Olson recently told me, single payer is the only fiscal and moral solution. She has been working for a single payer system for the past five years. Nurse Cruise was an L.A. public health care nurse at numerous clinics until they all closed with the recent economic downturn. As she explains, over 100 people die every day for lack of health care in the U.S. More die every day because they are denied health care from insurance companies despite paying their high premiums. Yet we see public free clinics closing. People are forced into medical debt and foreclosure to pay for health care, unlike every other country. “What kind of country does this to it’s people?” she asks.

Nurse Cruise goes on to say that Pelosi’s announcement to the world that single payer is off the table was a ploy to make everyone forget about it and go for a public option instead, a public option written by and for the insurance industry, which spends over a million dollars per day lobbying Congress. The public option, as she says, is an insurance industry bailout, because with our economic downturn and the insurance industry’s annal retentive (my words) policy of raising rates to make up for losses, they are losing customers and so they look to the deep pockets of our government in the corporate welfare state we call America. But as long as we don’t have a viable health care system without the for profit insurance factor, and as long as we don’t have universal health care, people will continue to rally.

It’s interesting that the right tea baggers agree with the left in this area. Both sides agree that government bailout spending is wrong. But the right has been deluded by the right wing bumper sticker mentality media propaganda into believing that it is an Obama socialism agenda at fault. in fact it is a Wall Street corporate socialist agenda, since as cruise and many others agree, Wall Street owns Congress, and seemingly the Presidency as well.

But the bottom line is that, by law and on paper, this is still a democracy for and by we the people, not the corporations; and so the people have taken to the streets, lead by doctors and health care professionals like nurse Cruise, Dr. Olson and many others. They hold rallies and sit-ins around the country and get arrested in protest. Dr. Susie Baldwin calls the public option a government insurance industry jobs program, which leads me to wonder, why can’t the insurance industry make an honest living selling a service that people need? Why must they resort to living off the government, pushing Congress to make laws forcing people to buy their worthless product which amounts to a mafioso payoff to keep their useless thug industry alive. Why must the insurance industry live on government corporate welfare? Are they too lazy to get a real job and pay their way like the rest of us?

As Dr. Paul Papenek told me, people don’t need actuaries or claims adjusters. People need doctors and nurses. Shouldn’t we forsake the misguided careers of insurance professionals, not only for the 45,000 lost lives every year for lack of health care, but also for the high cost and fiscal deterioration of our country due to the exorbitant waste, fraud and spending on health care due to a corrupt monopolistic health insurance industry.

Parts of this clip will be included in a feature documentary, Got Healthcare?

Sam Pullen Arrested at Health Care Sit-In Remains in Jail to End Insurance Abuse

Washington DC – Chanting “patients not profits,” citizens and health care providers held rallies and sit-ins at health insurance company offices in New York, Washington, Phoenix, Palm Beach, Portland, Boston, Cleveland, Los Angeles, and Reno. (Full list of cities and arrests below.) 54 were arrested to support an end to insurance abuse and win health care for all. 14 arrested in New York have not yet been released. Sam Pullen, 31, arrested in Los Angeles is refusing to give information to police, vowing to stay in jail until Blue Cross, where he protested yesterday, stops denying care to those who need it most. Another round of sit-ins and rallies is planned for Wednesday, October 28.

Pullen was inspired to action by his mother, who was denied coverage for a lifesaving bone marrow transplant by Blue Cross when he was a teenager. Weakened by her cancer treatments, Pullen’s mother staged a one-woman sit-in at the insurance company office, resulting in the approval of the transplant that extended her life for years. Thanks to the transplant, she lived long enough to see Pullen reach 18 years of age.

“I am honoring my mother’s sprit by refusing to leave custody until Blue Cross ceases its practice of denying doctor-requested treatments for patients with life-threatening conditions,” said Pullen, who is being supported by Mobilization for Health Care for All and other groups. “We will not back down until profit-driven insurance companies no longer stand between the American people and the health care they deserve!”
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The above was copied from the Mobilize for Health Care website, which updates the article daily. Sam Pullen organized the Los Angeles financial district sit-in at the Anthem Blue Cross offices. 12 were arrested there as seen here.

Rallies and more such protest actions are planned for future events and will continue, not until a public option is passed, but until a universal fair affordable health care system is agreed upon, a system such as medicare for all or a single payer system. A silent rage has been awakened in Americans across the country and this will only escalate as the right and the insurance industry push back.

Pelosi has stated that single payer is off the table. But the doctors, health care professionals and other activists who continue to stand up for universal health care will not acknowledge Pelosi’s statement. Single payer is not off the table. It’s the people’s table, not Congress’.

Good luck to Sam and the other American heroes who remain in jail to protest our corrupt monopolistic socialized corporate welfare state insurance industry that preys upon all Americans for it’s very survival.

The Public Option: Obama's Health Insurance Jobs Program

President Obama recently mentioned at a town hall on health care reform that he didn't support a single payer system because it would be too disruptive. He didn't explain what he meant by disruptive but industry professionals assume he refers to health insurance industry management and employees who would become jobless in short order under a single payer system. It's not clear if management outnumbers other employees.

Obama is keeping these insurance industry jobs on as part of the government public option plan to persist health insurance industry control over people's health care. Even without a public option, insurance companies stand to have an even better stake in the health care market. The future looks bright for health care insurance employees who will be able to continue their never ending thankless job of denying health claims to people in need of medical care.

The 45,000 people who die every year due to lack of health care and from denial of insurance as well as the 14,000 daily who lose their health insurance are apparently forsaken for the few hundred thousand jobs in the health insurance industry. What's a few hundred thousand lives and disrupted families every few years to as many well fed well paid industry office workers' jobs? We need to have at least one or two industries that continue to make record profits while the rest of us face financial ruin.

The move by Obama is in line with America's ongoing shift toward corporate welfare socialism. The U.S. is the only industrialized nation that does not have a single payer type system to ensure all it's citizens have health care and have healthy productive lives. It's not certain if this fact is the symptom or the result of America slipping into the list of third world countries where 5% or less of the population control 95% or more of the country's wealth and power. America is no longer considered a democracy by most people who understand the meaning of the term. We are at best an oligarchy, with our government under corporate control by the wealthy few.

In light of America's failure to deliver health care, despite our advanced technology (only available to the very rich here) we now rank 37th in the world in health care. France is number one.

My suggestion is that Americans stop buying health insurance if they can avoid it. Vote with your wallet. That's the only thing these people understand.
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Follow Jon Raymond on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jonraymond

This video is a clip from a longer film currently in production. The title of this clip is based on Dr. Susie Baldwin's reaction to Obama's statement that a Single Payer system would be too disruptive, as seen in this video. So blame her for it.

Much of this video was shot at the recent Mad as Hell Doctors' rally in Hollywood last week. Special thanks to Dr. Jo Olson, Dr. Susie Baldwin, Dr. Paul Panacek, Dr. Nikki Mihara, and Dr. Horace Williams for their participation.

See more on this project or join us at http://outinthestreetfilms.com
Also on YouTube

No Health Care? Tough. This is America. Die.

Here's a rundown of the right's genius response to heath care reform based on interviews at this recent health care town hall in Alhambra CA.

1. Solution for the 48 million uninsured: Life is tough. Get over it. Die.
2. Solution for those uninsured who end up walking into hospitals: Well there should be some kind of program for them (duh - like government socialized health care?).
3. Major concern: the health care reform is not about health care (What's it about then? Toilet paper?).
4. Yup. Major problem with socialism: Toilet paper (Wasn't that a 60s U.S. propaganda spin?)

So if we keep the current system and 48 million people remain uninsured, who picks up the bill when they walk into the hospital? The government.

So, it is then the government's prerogative to insure these people ahead of time in order to save money on their hospital bills, is it not? It is also only fair that everyone else has the same option to choose that government insurance as well.

Keep posted on our projects and videos: Sign up at http://outinthestreet.ning.com.

The End is Here

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? How about if our troops kill a million innocent Iraqis and none of it is reported (no pictures, no video). Did it happen? What about if five billion people around the world decide to stop using banks and the present day financial infrastructure has to rely on corporate social welfare to survive, but they eventually fade away anyway. Did they ever really exist? I mean, the money we all have is our money. Even if it's in a bank, it's our money. Take the bank away and it's still our money. Banks are a mere illusion that charge fees for a show.

Suppose they gave a war and no one showed up? Suppose a lot of filmmakers (tired of playing Hollywood games) went out and made their own films, self-distributed them and banded together to help each other in what eventually became an alternate movie industry of and by real filmmakers instead of executive fat cats who do nothing but collect dust, money, and hookers. Suppose said fat cats disappeared from the movie scene altogether. Were they ever really there to begin with? I mean the filmmakers still make their movies with or without them.

What if people stopped using insurance companies altogether and got the government to be there for them in case of medical emergencies and accidents, just like the police and firefighters, and then no one would have to dole out 30% to insurance company administrators? Would those administrators have ever really existed?

If you were one of the million plus Iraqis who was killed, and who saw your family, friends, neighborhood, and country annihilated before your eyes, I think that would qualify as your rapture. By the same token, if you're a conservative authoritarian who lives by the rule of law and order and follows whatever the current law and order of the day has been determined to be by whoever is in charge, but then things suddenly turned on you and suddenly there was no law and order as you once knew it, there was no democracy or free market capitalism, and there was absolutely nothing you could do about it (What can you do? Drop a nuke on Wall Street?) - if all of that were the reality (which it is by the way) would that be your rapture?

The end is here.

Right Wing Nut Cases

The other day I went to a health care town hall meeting in Alhambra CA, with Congressman Adam Schiff. (D-CA) who supports a single payer health care system. The meeting was jammed with the now typical right wing nut cases. I hesitate to call them Republican, though most Republicans support what they do, but some do not, as you may have heard about Rep. John Isakson (R-GA) citing Palin as "nuts" for her "natterings about the health-care reform bill [that] are anything except the figments of a discombobulated imagination." In fact I heard that a number of advertisers are pulling out of Glen Beck's Fox News show, due to his remark that he considered Obama racist. Meanwhile, though down for a while it appears Obama's ratings are back up in the 60% area. Ain't that a bitch? What the hell is going on? Is there some kind of rational thought virus going around?

Let me push this a little further. I recently saw a video with Douglas Rushkoff, author of NY Times bestseller, Life Inc. who talks about how our current bank centered money system evolved from a personal based money system due to the aristocracy becoming comparatively poor to the masses of average people. He talks about a future utopia where people won't need money or at least not government issued currency. They'll trade on their own merits and labor. Money will come from the people up instead of a government controlled trickle down, which basically means people are pissed on by the government. This sounds kind of nuts at first but not when you think about how nuts our banking system is today it's certainly no where near as nuts as the right wing nuts going off at health care rallies, not to mention Sarah "fucking nut case" Palin.

So here's the thing. If you read John dean, another Republican gone rational, in his book, Conservatives Without Conscience, he talks about authoritarian conservatives, the worse kind of conservatives. These "nuts" (if you will) believe that people follow the rule of a leadership. It's a Nixonian, Cheyenian, Bushian, Palinesque kind of do what ever I tell you to do, and think whatever I tell you to think, organizational structure. Authoritarians are either leaders or followers. None of them subscribe to the idea that people can think for themselves. No. They are on a groupthink Orwellian mindset. So, what I'm thinking now is that we've had eight years of authoritarian conservatives running our government and its not easy for them to let go of that power they thought they had over us. Ergo, town hall nut cases.

The town hall nuts that I interviewed for a forthcoming documentary, stated that they were not protesting nationalized health care because of nationalized health care (I told you they were nuts). No. They stated their concerns are really about socialism in America. That America would become a socialist state. That nationalized health care was just the first step toward a terrible socialism, as bad as Nazi Germany, Russia or Cuba.

Now you have to feel sorry for these people. Obviously they are simply misinformed. They just didn't get the memo. The socialism town halls are not scheduled until like 2015. Someone must have got their dates mixed up. France, England, Canada and a total of 39 major countries have very successful socialized medicine programs. They have yet to become socialist states or Nazi Germany. In fact if any country is headed down the road to totalitarianism it's the present day capitalist United States of America, with it's now policy of corporate outsourced military, preemptive war, torture, and international terrorism on the greatest scale ever in the history of the world. If these people were really worried about a government socialism that takes away our freedoms they'd repeal the Patriot Act, and pull all (not just a token few) our troops out of the preemptive wars we continue to wage in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obviously they are not doing anything of the kind and reports of them being lead by paid insurance industry at these town halls shills seem quite reasonably true.

I personally observed a select few individuals at the town hall I was at, who consistently shouted out in disruption trying to interrupt proceedings with inane requests, or they'd attempt to lead the crowd in Palinesque chants about freedom and so on.. But most of the people there didn't bite. They didn't go along enough to make those chants turn into an angry mob of protests and disruption. People are on to this tactic. These few agitators later banded together to laugh and joke about how things were going. Obviously they aren't too smart to be so easily observed this way.

The jig is up guys. We all know for a fact that you're just a bunch of fucking nuts.