Some thoughts about Fidel Castro

I have been listening to the audiobook autobiography of Fidel Castro.  It was in the form of an interview in 2005 between foreign journalist Ignacio Ramonet, and Fidel himself.  The transcript had to be approved by Castro first before publication, and was translated into English, and performed by 2 actors for my enjoyment.  I borrowed it from the Public Library. 

One major theme throughout the tale was ethics.  Fidel explained that there is subjective and objective ethics.  Subjective ethics are about honor, protecting the innocent, being able to sleep at night.  Subjective ethics are about seeing international corporations coming into a nation and exploiting the human and natural resources to depletion for their own profit, and seeing the indigenous people being robbed of their capital legacy. 

Another shocking realization that has lifted the wool from my eyes is that the USA, the land I was raised to think had the moral high ground, has been sponsoring terrorism on the sovereign nation of Cuba for 55 years starting with our beloved JFK.  The fact that the microscopic nation of Cuba has persisted this long in spite of the acts of aggression from its giant nearby neighbor only attests to the validity of Castro’s assertions. 

And why should giant USA be threatened by the tiny little Caribbean nation of Cuba?  Why not be friends and trading partners like we are with Communist China?  The obvious reason is that the validity of Castro’s philosophy of ethics is so infectious, that it threatens the corporate oligarchy, which has been in control of our government for longer than we think. 

Castro actually admired JFK for withdrawing from the 1961 Bay of Pigs and admitting defeat.  He understood that Kennedy had inherited the plot from Eisenhower.  Castro’s forces had taken 1200 prisoners of war, which they ethically exchanged in 1962 with lawyer James Donovan for $53 of private medical supplies.  On the other hand, the non-violent Cuban 5 in the USA unethically all got life sentences, and Luis Posada Carriles, a convicted terrorist, lives free in luxury in Miami. 

Once again, our media portray Fidel Castro and Che Guevara as dangerous maniac armed revolutionaries.  But when you read their writing, they were totally rational and ethical.  They both saw the corporate machine robbing every resource possible if not stopped by persons with ethics.  They heroically stood up to the plate, but corporate censorship and spin have rewritten history to make the corporate oligarchy the good and moral side, and Castro and Guevara were on the bad and destructive militant revolutionary side. 

What Fidel & Che began to fight is upon us all with spades now, worldwide.  We are drowning in the toxic wastes of the for profit corporate depletion of our natural and human resources.  We are fed up with governments that serve corporate interests over the interests of the electorate, and enable our nation to descend into a banana republic.  Let We the People unite to non-violently create a “wall of separation between corporation and state” by amending the Constitution to define a person under the law as a human being, and money is not speech.   And with another amendment to mandate public funding of political campaigns with an eight-week campaign limit. 

593 H1N1 deaths generates a National Emergency

Although Obama recently declared the H1N1 flu a national emergency, it still remains that there are 36,000 deaths in the USA from the regular flu every year, but there has been less than 600 deaths this year from the H1N1 flu.  President Obama is not calling a national emergency for the 36,000 that die from regular flu. 

Preventable deaths last year in the USA that were not declared a national emergency:
MD errors (iatrogenic)        2,200,000
Nosocomial                        2,000,000
Tobacco                                440,000
Obesity                                 287,000
Diabetes                                 71,300
No medical insurance              45,000
Influenza                                 36,000
Suicide                                    33,300
Infant deaths                           28,527   (2500 of them from SIDS)
Alcohol                                    22,000+
Anaphylaxis                            15,000+
War in Iraq & Afghanistan         5,130 (American GI combat deaths only)
                                                         (pvt contractors, deaths in
                                                         hospital from war injuries,  
                                                         friendly fire, and accidental 
                                                         deaths not included)
Asthma                                      4,000+
Domestic violence                     1000-1600
H1N1 flu  2009                            593     Only this one is declared a national emergency. 

I am confounded at the hullabaloo caused by the H1N1 flu rather than the sharp increase of smoking among youths and young adults, or obesity rates of 1 in 3.  I believe the H1N1 "pandemic" preparations are nothing more than a drill for the real pandemic in the unknown future. 

If only they could get MD's to wash their hands, we could prevent the majority of the 2M annual deaths from people catching a contagious disease in the hospital (nosocomial disease).  Where's the national emergency about this?  Maybe they can rush through a vaccine that will prevent hospital patients from catching diseases before entering the hospital.  Or better yet, a vaccine that will promote hand washing among doctors.  How about a vaccine that will prevent greed in corporate executives? 

I believe the declaration of a "national emergency" is nothing more than the means for another corporate robbery of taxpayer funds to pay BigPharma for a vaccine that grandfathered in safety testing from another similar vaccine. 

H1N1 flu and mandatory vaccinations

Dr. Toy sent me a notice on how to protect oneself from mandatory H1N1 flu vaccinations enabled by the Patriot Act. This is my response:

I haven't read the Patriot Act, but I seriously doubt that any government agency could force people to be vaccinated outside of the military or prisons. For example, the WHO wants every child to be vaccinated against HepB, but parents still have to sign a permit, and if they don't, there is no penalty whatsoever. Every nation in the world vaccinates their newborns against HepB, a disease of IV drug users. It is a noble ambition of WHO to aspire to wipe HepB off the face of the Earth like it did with smallpox. But parents are free to decline the vaccine. My son got himself vaccinated at age 18.

New York City schools will be conducting H1N1 flu vaccinations in October, when the vaccine will be released. But still, no one will get vaccinated without the parent signing a consent. Most assuredly, there will also be a Waiver to sign for those parents who don't want their child vaccinated. Plenty of parents already sign the waiver for the mandatory school vaccinations.

Undoubtedly, part of the H1N1 flu "pandemic" is the need to sell vaccines. Another is to sell alcohol based hand sanitizer. As a School Nurse, I have noted that schools often think hand washing is too time consuming and uses too much water, so they buy hand sanitizer at $4 per 8 oz bottle. In times of drastic budget cutting, who can afford that???

There are 3 processes to guard ourselves and our children against the H1N1 flu or any other communicable disease.
1) Hand washing. It must include lathering the soap all over the hands for at least 10 seconds, 20 preferred; tell kids to sing Happy Birthday twice while lathering, then rinse. Large numbers of students can be accommodated by mixing some liquid soap with water in a spray bottle, and spraying all the children's hands to lather up while they are waiting in line to rinse. Strategic timing to wash hands is also essential: before eating, after coughing or sneezing into your hand, after blowing your nose, after touching pets like turtles or other reptiles/amphibians, and after using the bathroom, etc.
2) Bolster the immune system with good nutrition and nutritional supplements. Get enough exercise and sleep.
3) Clean all commonly touched areas with an antibacterial cleanser. I suggest 70% isopropyl alcohol because it is cheap and the fumes are non-toxic. Just don't drink it. Clean door knobs, the phone, faucet handles, the toilet flusher, the refrigerator handle, light switches, video game controllers, computer keyboards, remote control, etc. At school, this should be done nightly. If there is a known infected person, it would be prudent to repeat it at midday.

Germs are everywhere all the time anyway. I agree with Foster Gamble, the author of the article in question, that the H1N1 flu may be no worse than any other flu. I am very hesitant to expose myself or any child to a rushed-through vaccine that hasn't yet been fully tested over the long term on large numbers of subjects. I tell the parents at school that vaccinations are an ethical issue that is up to every individual parent.

Unfortunately, we live with a government that devalues the Common Good. Historically, the government has dropped many safeguards and has rushed-through several pharmaceuticals that were not fully tested; they subsequently became fully tested by using the unwitting general public as test subjects without their consent. We have a crisis of trust with our government which protects corporate interests at the expense of the Common Good.

Another huge factor affecting our immune systems is that of pollution. As long as the government allows pollution, and our bodies become toxified with air, water, and soil pollution, our immune systems become impaired. The government would rather vaccinate us than prevent pollution and force the polluters clean up their messes. Once again, our government protects corporate profits at the expense of the Common Good.

So the H1N1 flu "pandemic" may be another way to bolster corporate profits for the vaccine and sanitizer companies. Maybe. Or maybe not. Either way, effective hand washing is the key to controlling the spread of contagious disease. Hand washing and good nutrition is more important now than ever before.

Pawn Fodder for Endless War

What amazes me is that the American public all realize that we were led into a war on false pretenses, and they all want the illegal war to end, but they vote for warmonger candidates and consider the peace candidates not viable.

Another thing that amazes me is that the Democrats continue to vote to fund the illegal occupation of Iraq. That they all know that the war funding is being drained into mercenary expenses yet choose not to discuss it. That they pretend that having voted to authorize the use of force, that they didn't know force was going to be used. And that the war in Afghanistan was obviously to protect the natural gas pipeline that now crosses Afghanistan, and the war in Iraq was to get control of Iraqi oil, yet our Congress pretends the wars were to apprehend terrorists.

I am amazed again and again at how the neo-cons can force their spin of the issues, and the Democrats and the American public accept the neo-con definitions of the issues as if carved in stone.

For example, the immigrant issue. This issue, from the start, has been for greedy businesses to be able to undercut minimum wage laws and worker rights and protections. The same folks who wink winked and looked the other way while millions of undocumented sweat shop and agricultural workers poured across the border to be exploited by the greedy businesses, are now using the very same issue that they created to be their bigoted hate-fomenting campaign issue. At the same time that their greedy policies have kept American food prices artificially low, the factories and farms have become dependent on undocumented immigrant labor. As the neo-cons talk about building border walls to keep the undocumented laborers out, factories and farms are going out of business due to the inability to pay legal wages to legal workers and still sell their products at a competitive price. It leaves the only survival strategy being to relocate their business over the border.

Our dear neo-cons who seem intent on collapsing the American economy are delighted when businesses move abroad. That furthers their agenda to eliminate birth control, education, and jobs in order to breed an endless supply of youths who have no other recourse than to join the military. The neo-cons want more pawn fodder for endless wars.