If President Obama wants to better understand why America's discomfort with end-of-life discussions threatens to derail his health-care reform, he might begin with his own Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He will quickly discover how government bureaucrats are greasing the slippery slope that can start with cost containment but quickly become a systematic denial of care.
Last year, bureaucrats at the VA's National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, "Your Life, Your Choices." It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA's preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes. After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated "Your Life, Your Choices."
The Pentagon has approached Congress to grant the Secretary of Defense
the authority to post almost 400,000 military personnel throughout the
United States in times of emergency or a major disaster.
Lewiston, Maine
Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School will be the site of a National Guard riot control drill Thursday morning to prepare in the event of a panic over distribution of serum to treat the swine flu.
The school on Route 26 at the Paris-Norway town line has been designated by state officials as a distribution site for the H1N1 flu vaccine. The drill is to prepare for a worst-case scenario should the serum have to be transported from Augusta and people rush to get it.
On Thursday morning, four or five National Guard Humvees will travel from Augusta to Paris with vials of fake serum. The National Guardsmen will take on the roles of panicked citizens and military police and practice what they would do, such as using tear gas, in the case of a riot.
"This is just a component of moving the stuff from point A to B," said Oxford County Emergency Management Agency Director Scott Parker. The plan will be put into place only if needed, he said.
As pilotless US drones do battle from the sky in Afghanistan,
Pakistan and Iraq, a top US Army general is urging the military to step
up the deployment of unmanned vehicles on the ground.
"It's
all about saving lives," said Lieutenant General Rick Lynch, the
commander of the III Armored Corps and the holder of a master's degree
in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT).
The
National Governors Association sent a letter Friday to the U.S.
Department of Defense condemning an effort to usurp domestic control of
National Guard and federal forces deployed in the event of a natural
disaster or terrorist attack.
The
Air Force tracked the instant messaging service Twitter, video carrier
YouTube and various blogs to assess the huge public backlash to the Air
Force One flyover of the Statue of Liberty this spring, according to
the documents.
Newly released government documents show the military uses
Internet tools to monitor and react to coverage of high-profile
events.
The Air Force tracked the instant messaging service Twitter, video
carrier YouTube and various blogs to assess the huge public backlash to
the Air Force One flyover of the Statue of Liberty this spring,
according to the documents.
Doubt the government plans to impose martial law and round up dissidents and other malcontents? Well, the Army National Guard is advertising for qualified personnel to work as Corrections Officers and Internment/Resettlement Specialists....
The military isn’t about to deploy
its pain ray to the battlefield. But someone in the commercial sector
is about to one. We don’t know who. The sale is mentioned in a presentation by Raytheon, who built the microwave weapon for the Defense Department.
XREP Wireless Taser Shotgun
This new Electroshock torture weapon will be sure to come to a check point near you. A heart stopping 20 seconds high voltage pain compliance with a range of 65 feet with a fire rate only limited to how fast one can pull his trigger finger.
And to top things off, those people I had never met who would have the right to tell me when to kill were politicians – the very same slippery scoundrels I had heard lying to me with a straight face my entire life. It was truly bone chilling...
According to CNN, the Pentagon is “to
establish regional teams of military personnel to assist civilian
authorities in the event of a significant outbreak of the H1N1 virus
this fall, according to Defense Department officials.”
For the second year running, engineering, construction and services company KBR Inc. has been named by the British Ministry of Defense as its top key supplier.
While
the Patriot (Sovereign-Citizen) and Militia communities has been
focused on National Level Exercise 2009 (NLE 09), the far more
upsetting “Vibrant Response 2009” exercise is being held right now at
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
In Springfield,
Illinois, the commoners will get acclimated in the coming week to the
idea of the military on the streets. “A Springfield-based military
police company will be training with a new armored vehicle in the area
this week,” the Associated Press
reports. “The Illinois Army National Guard says training with the new
Armored Security Vehicles will start Thursday and run through Sunday.”
Under the revamped structure, the White House Military Office, which
reports to the office of the White House chief of staff, has assumed a
more central role in setting up a temporary “shadow government” in a
crisis.
The U.S. military wants to establish regional teams of military personnel to assist civilian authorities in the event of a significant outbreak of the H1N1 virus this fall, according to Defense Department officials.
The proposal is awaiting final approval from Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
The officials would not be identified because the proposal from U.S. Northern Command's Gen. Victor Renuart has not been approved by the secretary.
The plan calls for military task forces to work in conjunction with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. There is no final decision on how the military effort would be manned, but one source said it would likely include personnel from all branches of the military.
The plan calls for military task forces to work in conjunction with the
Federal Emergency Management Agency. There is no final decision on how
the military effort would be manned, but one source said it would
likely include personnel from all branches of the military
.
The sight was not that unusual, at least not for Mosul, Iraq, on a
summer morning: a car parked on the sidewalk, facing opposite traffic,
its windows rolled up tight. Two young boys stared out the back window,
kindergarten age maybe, their faces leaning together as if to share a whisper.
A member of the American Resistance Movement was making snooping rounds
when he spotted this equipment being offloaded at a local trucking yard
in Brunswick County, NC.
The FEMA exercise will include foreign troops. “This year the United States welcomes the participation of Australia, Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom in NLE 09.” The FEMA factsheet does not explain why the participation of foreign troops is necessary.
Los Angeles – David Vine will be the featured guest on the Scott Horton Show at Antiwar Radio, 2:30pm Eastern, Friday July 24th.
David Vine will be discussing his book, Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia.
David Vine is an assistant professor of Anthropology at American
University. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington
Post, Mother Jones online, Foreign Policy in Focus, Chronicle of Higher
Education, and elsewhere.
The Scott Horton Show airs Tuesday through Friday from 2PM-4PM
Eastern on KAOS 95.9FM. Additional feeds and archives available at
Antiwar Radio.
For more information on Scott Horton or Antiwar Radio please contact:
German Tank spotted on a flatbed trailer going down a road in Michigan
yesterday, (07-22-2009). Remember NLE 09 the largest military exercise
in US history involving the militaries of over 6 countries begins July
27,2009.
For years, science fiction author Issac Asimov’s Three Laws of
Robotics were regarded as sufficient for robotics enthusiasts. The
laws, as first laid out in the short story “Runaround,”
were simple: A robot may not injure a human being or allow one to come
to harm; a robot must obey orders given by human beings; and a robot
must protect its own existence. Each of the laws takes precedence over
the ones following it, so that under Asimov’s rules, a robot cannot be
ordered to kill a human, and it must obey orders even if that would
result in its own destruction.
But as robots have become more sophisticated and more integrated
into human lives, Asimov’s laws are just too simplistic, says Chien
Hsun Chen, coauthor of a paper published in the International Journal of Social Robotics
last month. The paper has sparked off a discussion among robot experts
who say it is time for humans to get to work on these ethical dilemmas.
While numerous attempts to clarify the historical record have been successfully fought by the administration's lawyers, the issue became much more serious when Maj. Stefan Cook, a U.S. Army reservist with deployment orders to Afghanistan, filed a lawsuit regarding his questions about the legality of a deployment order based on the command of a potentially illegitimate commander in chief. But rather than contesting the suit, the Army took the highly peculiar step of revoking the major's deployment order, suggesting that the Pentagon generals are not entirely confident that they can demonstrate the legitimacy of their purported commander in chief......
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the size of the
Army will be increased temporarily by 22,000 soldiers to help meet the
needs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other missions around the
world.
Yes, I couldn’t help but note the long and generally favorable obits on
Robert “the Strange” McNamara, at age 93. The obituaries ranged from
glowingly positive to, at worst that I read, neutral. I was shocked and
disgusted by these things. I considered the man to be a classic
sociopath and a war criminal, among other things. He was one of the
worst human beings ever to have lived.
Dr.
Taitz brings forward allegations that Barrack Obama is unlawfully
holding the position as President of the United States. She currently
is representing approx. 170 military members including commissioned
officers in a lawsuit to force Barrack Obama to produce his birth
certificate, proving that he is eligible to hold the position of
President.
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