Wednesday, May 07, 2008

THIS JUST IN! BARACK STILL STRUGGLES!

BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID TABLE.
 
TWO PRIMARIES TONIGHT AND SENATOR BARACK OBAMA, THE 'CHOICE' OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY, AGAIN PROVED HE WAS NOT ABLE TO CLOSE THE DEAL.
 
HE MUSTERED A WIN IN NORTH CAROLINA AND IS TRAILING IN INDIANA. 
 
HE CONTINUES TO BE UNABLE TO REACH OUT TO LATINOS AND WORKING CLASS WHITE VOTERS. 
 
SPEAKING WITH THE CAMPAIGN TONIGHT, DAVID AXELROD SHARED A GENERAL ELECTION STRATEGY SHOULD BARACK GET THE NOMINATION: "WE'LL BUS DETROIT VOTERS OUT ACROSS THE UNITED STATES."
 
WHEN THESE REPORTERS POINTED OUT THAT VOTERS COULD NOT VOTE IN MULTIPLE STATES, AXELROD REPLIED, "BY THE TIME THEY START BUSTING PEOPLE, WE'LL HAVE STOLEN THE ELECTION.  I MEAN WON!"
 
 
 
 
Starting with war resistance.  Claudia Parson (Reuters) reports on Iraq Veterans Against the War's Eli Wright who awaits "a medical discharge for post traumatic stress disorder and a shoulder injury" and has added to his tattoo collection "a black paper clip on his right hand."  From Different Drummer Cafe, Wright explains, "During Vietnam, guys that were against the war would wear a paper clip on their uniform somewhere, it was a little way for them to identify themselves. It stands for People Against People Ever Re-enlisting -- Civilian Life is Preferred.  We decided instead of just ewaring paper clips, we would actually tattoo them, a permanent reminder of our dedication to getting out."
 
March 14th, Wright testified at IVAW's Winter Soldier on the experience of health care and cautioned veterans, "Don't keep it quiet," demand the health care you've been promised.  Vet health care will be a later topic this snapshot but if  you missed Winter Soldier you can stream it online at IVAW's Winter Solider page (audio or video). You can also stream audio at War Comes Home, at KPFK, at the Pacifica Radio homepage and at KPFA, here for Friday, here for Saturday, here for Sunday. Aimee Allison (co-host of the station's The Morning Show and co-author with David Solnit of Army Of None) and Aaron Glantz were the anchors for Pacifica's live coverage. Allison and Glantz also hosted KPFA's live coverage April 22nd on the lawsuit against the Veterans Administration.

 
In Canada, war resisters are hoping the Parliament will take action on a motion waiting to be debated.   Currently, you can utilize the following e-mails to show your support: Prime Minister Stephen Harper (pm@pm.gc.ca -- that's pm at gc.ca) who is with the Conservative party and these two Liberals, Stephane Dion (Dion.S@parl.gc.ca -- that's Dion.S at parl.gc.ca) who is the leader of the Liberal Party and Maurizio Bevilacqua (Bevilacqua.M@parl.gc.ca -- that's Bevilacqua.M at parl.gc.ca) who is the Liberal Party's Critic for Citizenship and Immigration.  In addition Jack Layton, NDP leader, has a contact form and they would like to hear from people as well. A few more addresses can be found here at War Resisters Support Campaign. For those in the US, Courage to Resist has an online form that's very easy to use.         

There is a growing movement of resistance within the US military which includes Matt Mishler, Josh Randall, Robby Keller, Justiniano Rodrigues, Chuck Wiley, James Stepp, Rodney Watson, Michael Espinal, Matthew Lowell, Derek Hess, Diedra Cobb, Brad McCall, Justin Cliburn, Timothy Richard, Robert Weiss, Phil McDowell, Steve Yoczik, Ross Spears, Peter Brown, Bethany "Skylar" James, Zamesha Dominique, Chrisopther Scott Magaoay, Jared Hood, James Burmeister, Jose Vasquez, Eli Israel, Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Clara Gomez, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Agustin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Abdullah Webster, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder, Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, Blake LeMoine, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Logan Laituri, Jason Marek, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Dale Bartell, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Kjar, Kyle Huwer, Wilfredo Torres, Michael Sudbury, Ghanim Khalil, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, at least fifty US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.

Information on war resistance within the military can be found at The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline [(877) 447-4487], Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters. Tom Joad maintains a list of known war resisters. In addition, VETWOW is an organization that assists those suffering from MST (Military Sexual Trauma).
 
Today the US House Committee on Veterans' Affairs held a hearing entitled "The Truth About Veterans' Suicides."  Among those questioned by the committee were the Sec of the Dept of Veterans Affairs James Peake, Deputy Under Secretary for Health, Veterans Health Administration Gerald Cross, the VA's Dr. Iraq Katz, the University of Georgia's Stephen L Rathbun, Texas Tech's M. David Rudd, University of South Carolina's Ronald Maris and, from the Inspector General's office, Dr. Michael Shepherd.
 
US House Rep Bob Filner chairs the committee and noted in his opening statements, "On December 12, 2007, this Committee held a hearing entitled 'Stopping Suicides: Mental Health Challenges within the Department of Veterans Affairs.'  Nearly five months later, we are again holding a hearing on the tragic issue of suicide among our veterans and what the VA is doing to address what is clearly an epidemic.  In November of last year, CBS News aired a story entitled 'Suicide Epidemic Among Veterans.'  On April 21, 2008, CBS News aired a story 'VA Hid Suicide Risk, Internal E-mails Show.'  The first step in addressing a problem is to understand the scope and extent of the problem.  In the case of the VA and the epidemic of veteran suicides, either the VA has not adequately attempted to determine the scope of the problem, which is an idictment of the VA's basic competence, or the VA knows the extent of the problem, but has attempted to obfuscate and minimize the problem to veterans, Congress, and the American people, which is an indictment of the leadership of the entire Department.  In December, Dr. Katz, in testimony before this Committee, stressed a low-rate veteran suicide, stating that 'from the beginning of the war through the end of 2005 there were 144 known suicides among these new veterans.'  In responding to the figures used by CBS, Dr. Katz stated that 'their number for veteran suicides is not, in fact, an accurate reflection of the rates of suicide'."
 
The reports Filner references were done by CBS Evening News and Armen Keteyian was the reporter and Pia Malbran the producer for both reports.  CBS obtained (for the April report) an e-mail (warning PDF format) that Katz had sent out stating that "our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among that veterans we see in our medical facialities" which was considerably higher than the less than a thousand suicides (790) per year that the VA had insisted to CBS was the accurate number.  In addition, the e-mail opens with "Sh!" and is entitled "Not for the CBS News interview segment." The e-mail was sent to the VA's chief communications director, Ev Chasen, who replied, "I think this is something we should discuss among ourselves, before issuing a release.  Is the fact that we're stopping them good news, or is the sheer number bad news?  And is this more than we've ever seen before?  It might be something we drop into a general release about suicide prevention efforts, which (as you know far better than I) prominently include training employees to recognize the warning signs of suicide."  Kats replies back, "I want to wait until Jan gets back from leave and then plan talking points with her." 
 
Speaking for the VA, Peake attempted to bore the world with a lecture on suicide, its history, its measurements.  Well into his opening remarks he admitted something truly appalling that some may miss: "Until VA committed itself last year to providing full time suicide prevention coordinators at each of its 153 hospitals, it could provide no useful number of attempted suicides among patients."  Suicide is epidemic for Iraq and Afghanistan wars, no question.  But suicide is also a serious isssue for veterans period.  That's Vietnam, that's Korea, that's . . .  The idea that until 2007 the VA was not staffing each VA hospital with a full time suicide prevention coordinator is appalling.  And, as Dr. Ronald Maris would later point out, this is just VA hospitals, it doesn't include the 875 VA Community-Based Outpatient Clinics.  Maris noted [paraphrase on at least two words]:
 
Thus the vast majority of VA facilities in fact do not have suicide coordinators.  Several questions remain.  What do these coordinators do, exactly?  How are they trained to do suicide assement and prevention ?  What are their professional credentials and licensing?  Who supervises these suicide coordinators?  Do suicide coordinators interact directly with suicidal vets in clinical care of the VA?  What exactly are they coordinating?
 
Maris points would come after Peake was done.  During his testimony, Peake cited the e-mail CBS got hold of from Katz and attempted to state that due that the lack of full time coordinators (apparently until October) resulted in the data having only been compiled for "three months" which he maintained was "too short a time period to determine if it was reliable."  For that reason, Peake stated, "The data was not sent to CBS".  He identifes that as one of Katz' "concerns" but that's not in the e-mail.  Peake's inventing a cover story after the fact.  Katz'  e-mails reflect that he does not the want the number getting out.  There is nothing about the time period the figures are being pulled from. He then tries to question the numbers themselves stating that people were still learning -- full time suicide prevention coordinators are still learning?  On the tax payer dime?  Was the VA unable to find qualified people to fill the positions because, if so, that should be the subject of another committee hearing.
 
He claims that "borderline calls" were being included.  Despite his lengthy lecture on sucides at the beginning of his remarks, he didn't define that term.  But presumably a "borderline call" would be included by most studying suicide. 
 
Peake needs to resign.  He needs to resign effective immediately and the VA needs to apologize.  That's for what he then launched into.  Peake announced that the VA, as part of their efforts, "intends to ask suicide prevention coordinators for the names of all those in their facility who have attempted suicide."  The VA has regularly and repeatedly lost computers, accidentally disclosed private information to the public and a host of other issues.  Is Peake such an idiot that he doesn't grasp that his little bit of information will likely result in at least some (possibly many) who need help deciding to forgoe out of fear that they'll be on some list that will follow them around -- follow them around outside of the VA? 
 
Peake then wanted to play with the data (Dr. Stephen L Rathbun's testimony refuted Peake's nonsense so we won't even go into it) and shade the issue before launching into what the VA's doing.  What is the VA doing?  Not a damn thing to be proud of and a hell of a lot to be ashamed of.  Peake spoke of the "two National VA Suicide Prevention Awareness Days" -- one of which piggy-backed on the National Suicide Prevention Awareness Week.  The same way that 'their' hotline piggy backs on the National Suicide Hotline (already set up).  Peake revealed that callers who press "1" (we went over this before) are immediately taken to a separate call center because they are veterans (no, they are not always taken there) and that they then receive help from "mental health professionals . . . trained in both crisis intervention strategies and in issues" such as PTSD and TBI.  He goes on to reveal something else and again this DOES NOT encourage veterans to call.  If the veteran has a VA record and gives out his or her information, the 'operator' is pulling up their information and putting "consults in the patient's medical record," etc.  That's not how the National Suicide Hotline works.  They guarantee confidientiality and since the VA has -- to save money -- piggy-backed on their efforts, they should follow the same system.  That they aren't is misleading and hurts veterans as well as the National Suicide Hotline.  Is it really the place of some 'operator' to, as Peake says they do, "check patient's records to see if consultations were completed; actions are taken; and follow-ups are ongoing"?
 
It's past time for the press to stop treating the VA as its own little island.  Doctors and counselors working in suicide prevention can tell you (loudly) that the hodge-podge system Peake's speaking of does not encourage those in need to reach out and that, again, it will actually harm the National Sucide Hot Line because people will confuse the two and assume they are being put (with their names) on some national list if they call (I'm referring to civilians).  What is the VA doing?  Not a damn thing.  Peake spoke of posters!  Posters!  Wow, what is this third grade?  And MTV's doing a video!  This is a disgrace and the resignations from all in leadership at the VA should be turned in immediately.  They repeatedly refuse to address this problem and any tiny steps they take are done on the cheap (and in such a way that it puts veterans and civilians at risk).  This is shameful.
 
 
 

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