Located in semi-rural Sonoma County in Northern California, this small town has fewer than 8000 residents. Fierce resistance from the community has met the Chase/CVS effort to develop a drive-through mall at the busiest intersection in town, as well as some support from the business community.

The City Council, Planning Commission, and Design Review Board (DRB) have all rejected their plans. One citizens group, Committee for Small Town Sebastopol, has sued on environmental grounds. Occupy Sebastopol organized a recent rally at its remaining large tent on the plaza and then a march to where Chase/CVS wants to relocate.

JPMorgan/Chase’s recent loss of over $3 billion in derivatives trading further threatens the powerful bank’s chances of having its development approved. The next DRB meeting on this development is May 30 and the City Council meets May 29. Activists plan to speak at both.

What if a bank had been convicted numerous times of predatory banking practices and a pharmacy had been convicted of failing to clean up its toxic wastes? Would you let that bank and pharmacy move downtown into the commons?  Or would you consider the potential harm to the community and reject the proposal on ethical and moral grounds? Would you insist that they stay on the outskirts of town? Or are their “private property rights” more important than the greater good of the community? These are questions that Sebastopol faces.

Chase and CVS have each paid billions of dollars in fines for their many illegal activities. Such violations are considered customary business expenses to such white-collar criminal elements of the ruling banking/pharmaceutical/attorney/bought-politicians complex.

By developing a vacant automobile dealer’s site at the busiest corner in town, they would increase traffic and draw more money from local citizens out of the county and into the hands of the global 1%. Occupy Sebastopol and various community groups, like GoLocal, claim that it is time to reverse globalization and trumpet re-localization.

The U.S. Justice Department recently launched a criminal investigation into JPMorgan/Chase’s trading loss of over $3 billion by continuing their casino capitalism gambling with derivatives. This practice is what initiated the current extreme economic downturn.

JPMorgan/Chase has about $2.5 trillion in total assets. That’s roughly 20% of the U.S. economy, according to MIT professor Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund. It “is too big to fail,” Johnson said in an interview with Bill Moyers called “Are JPMorgan’s Losses a Canary in a Coal Mine?”

Even the corporate media has raised questions about Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. The daily Press Democrat here, until recently owned by the New York Times, describes him as part of “Wall Street royalty.” The arrogant Dimon is experiencing “some poetic justice,” its editorial noted.

“How the mighty have fallen” captions a May 21 Newsweek photo of Dimon, linking him to Jon Corzine of MF Global and Kweku Adoboli of UBS. Which other members of the 1% may soon to fall?

Even after the announcement of the bank’s staggering losses, shareholders confirmed Dimon’s $24 million dollar annual pay package. He seems to have been rewarded for gambling big, even when he lost, noted an Occupy Santa Rosa activist.

“Huge banks have been using their enormous wealth for years to buy off politicians and regulators,” said Moyers. “Chase just had to pay almost three quarters of a billion dollars in settlements and surrendered fees to settle one case alone, that of bribery and corruption in Alabama. It’s also paid billions to settle other cases of perjury, forgery, fraud and sale of unregistered securities.”

Is that the kind of predatory operation one would want to anchor their lovely downtown where people gather? In addition to being private property, downtowns are part of the commons, constructed by taxpayers with plazas and other places to gather, celebrate, have fun, shop, and pass through without having their pockets picked by corporations.

CEO Dimon, by the way, happens to be on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which is supposed to regulate banks. A conflict of interest?

“Some reports say that he (Dimon) meets with President Obama with some regularity. The political access and connections of Mr. Dimon are second to none,” Johnson reveals. This is why some in Occupy Wall Street consider Obama to be “the number one manager of the 1%.”

On ABC’s “The View” after the announcement of the stunning loss, Obama praised his friend as “one of the smartest bankers we got” and JPMorgan/Chase as “one of the best-managed banks there is.” Best managed for whom, other than its managers?

Dimon is close friends with Sandy Weill, Citigroup’s retired CEO, which already has a bank in downtown Sebastopol, as do Wells Fargo and Bank of America. How many big banks circulating money outside of the county does a small town need downtown?

In 2010 Weill bought a vineyard and huge house here in Sonoma County for $31 million dollars, thus joining this county’s 1%, which the wine industry anchors. He then gave $12 million dollars to Sonoma State University’s elite, expensive, fashionable Green Music Center, where the 1% can enjoy opera and symphonies, joined by a few others who can still afford it. With that he bought an honorary doctorate.

Dimon is described as being “like his mentor Weill, who ran Citigroup into derivative trading hell” by Robert Scheer, writing May 17 at Truthdig.com. “Dimon was in cahoots with his mentor, Sandy Weill, in engineering a series of mergers and acquisitions that would have violated the Glass-Seagall law,” Scheer continues, which made “the too-big-to-fail” banks legal.

SSU faculty, students, alumni, community members and activists from Occupy Petaluma, Occupy Santa Rosa, and Occupy Sebastopol engaged in a successful “Shame on SSU” direct action at the school’s May 12 graduation, where SSU rewarded Weill and his wife with honorable doctorates. The activists described them as “dishonorable” and turned their backs to shun them in a dignified action.

Their concerns include that other banksters and criminal corporate executives will retire, buy into the most lucrative wine industry in the U.S., and bring their predatory/polluting practices here. Sonoma County used to have a diverse agriculture industry; it is now a grape mono-culture. This threatens the county’s entire economy, due to wine’s boom-and-bust quality and the potentiality of a pest to destroy mono-crops.

Chase’s partner CVS is another globalized mega-corporation with a history of abuses.

“CVS must pay $13.75 million in civil penalties,” reports the April 26 weekly Sonoma West. This settlement recently was reached by 44 California district attorneys and city attorneys because CVS “violated California laws for safe storage, handling and disposal of sharps waste, pharmaceutical and pharmacy waste, photo waste containing silver, and hazardous waste generated from spills and customer return of hazardous products.”

This means that people and the environment have been hurt by the customary practices of CVS, which it can be expected to continue if allowed to move downtown into the commons.

“I researched CVS and after reading hundreds of pages of court documents and articles, decided to no longer shop there. CVS is merciless,” according to Sebastopol’s Eric Snyder in a letter to the weekly Sonoma West. It has been forced to pay hundreds of millions in fines. Its executives have been charged with bribery, conspiracy and fraud. CVS paid $75 million, the largest penalty ever paid under the Controlled Substances Act, in 2010. Other locals also already boycott CVS.

Big businesses like Chase and CVS threaten local businesses. Sonoma West published a May 17 commentary by Sebastopol resident Bill Shortridge that detailed the losses to local stores such as Sebastopol Hardware and Art & Soul. Such stores build rather than scatter community. When locals go there they converse with each other and create relationships. This is unlikely in the colder, corporate, industrial places that Chase and CVS build.

Many families have had their homes foreclosed as a result of Chase’s immoral practices. Others have lost their jobs because of the common practices of the giant financial operations. The faulty clean-up practices of CVS can lead to disease and even deaths. The practices of these two corporations have worsened and destroyed many lives.

“Let’s ban chain stores downtown and promote incentives so local businesses can flourish,” Shortridge concludes. Other Sonoma County and North Bay cities have such bans.

Sebastopol’s downtown is at risk of profiteering and polluting by the country’s largest bank and one of its largest pharmacies. Fortunately, credit unions have recently located in Sebastopol, since the successful move your money campaign to take money out of big banks and deposit it in local banks.

At nearly 70 years old, this reporter is old enough to remember Mom and Pop drug stores that anchored downtowns. We would come to the soda fountains and socialize. May our re-localization efforts restore such corner drug stores as places to gather and meet friends.

This is the year the APA puts the finishing touches on DSM-5, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a compendium that determines what treatments insurers will cover, what disorders merit funding as “public health” threats and, of course, Pharma marketing and profits. Some question the objectivity of a disorder manual written by those who stand to benefit from an enlarged patient pool and new diseases. Furthering the appearance of self-dealing is the revelation that 57 percent of the DSM-5′s authors have Pharma links.

No kidding. Present at this year’s meeting were former APA president Alan F. Schatzberg, MD and Charles Nemeroff, MD, both investigated by Congress for murky Pharma income. Schatzberg and Nemeroff are co-editors of the APA-published Textbook of Psychopharmacology whose 2009 edition cites the work of Richard Borison, MD former psychiatry chief at the Augusta Veterans Affairs medical center who was sentenced to 15 years in prison for a $10 million clinical trial fraud. Also present was S. Charles Schulz, MD, who was investigated for financial links to AstraZeneca believed to alter his scientific conclusions.

Even though Assistant Secretary of Defense Jonathan Woodson sent a memo to all branches of the military in February about over-prescription of antipsychotic medications like Seroquel and Risperdal for PTSD, military figures closely linked to that over-prescription were also listed in attendance at the APA meeting.

Elspeth Ritchie, MD, told the Denver Post that AstraZeneca’s Seroquel was “very useful for the treatment of anxiety and combat-related nightmares,” though it was (and is) not approved for such treatment while she was medical director of the army’s Strategic Communications Office in 2008, participated in many symposiums. Ritchie, who is now chief clinical officer for the District of Columbia’s department of mental health, appeared in an AstraZeneca and Eli Lilly funded webcast for the Massachusetts General Hospital Psychiatry Academy in 2008 in which she lauds the use of “sophisticated” psychiatric medicines “on the battlefield.”¹

Seroquel earned AstraZeneca nearly $6 billion in revenue last year, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer. “IMS Health, a healthcare information and services company, said that in the 12 months ending in February of this year, 14.1 million Seroquel prescriptions were written, more than any other antipsychotic,” it reports.

Also participating in the military and PTSD content at the APA meeting was Matthew Friedman, MD, Executive Director of the VA’s National Center for PTSD who reported, “I received an honorarium from AstraZeneca in the past year,” in a 2009 government slide show called “Pharmacological Treatments of PTSD and Comorbid Disorder.” Friedman also served as a Pfizer Visiting Professor at the Medical University of South Carolina College of Medicine last year yet is listed in the APA meeting guide as having no “significant relationships to disclose.” APA officials have not responded to several requests for comment.

Of course, disorders that Big Pharma has helped monetize like bipolar (which was termed “under diagnosed” and emerging in the elderly at the meeting) and “mood disorders” (once called “life”) were well represented. But an alarming amount of attention also went to the apparent new Pharma profit center of alcoholism and drug addiction.

Addiction specialists have known for more than 70 years that the only “treatment” for drug addiction and alcoholism (after patients are detoxed) are anonymous, self-help programs that are also free. In fact, medicine is as powerless to understand or treat drug addiction and alcoholism as alcoholics and drug addicts are over their addiction.

Still the National Institutes of Health, in conjunction with Big Pharma, continues to spend millions, some say billions, developing “animal models” of addiction and vaccines to “cure” them. Nora D. Volkow, MD director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, says she seeks a vaccine to treat those at risk of alcoholism and drug addiction on the basis of “biological and environmental factors,” before they get sick. (See: treating those “at risk” for psychosis or depression or bipolar disorder on the basis of their family histories with no symptoms evidence.)

It is pretty fair to say Volkow is not an alcoholic or drug addict. Any of them could tell her they don’t seek “help” until they’re out of options — and even then not from a doctor but from each other. In fact, if Pharma, the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the American Psychiatric Association think they can treat a disease caused by drugs with a drug, that’s pretty insane. In fact, one of the treatments suggested for alcoholism at the meeting was quetiapine, also known as Seroquel.

1. “The Returning Veteran: PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injury,” Massachusetts General Hospital Psychiatry Academy, May 28, 2008

Seventy-seven-years-old, Jimbo had a vending business selling pretzels, among other stuff, and worked at a factory making vent windows for Ford trucks. Like me, he has also washed windows, making a few bucks per job. In winter, water would sometimes freeze nearly as soon as it’s splashed on the pane, but thanks to global warming, this is becoming less of a problem.

A Chicago bus stop billboard: “I’m all for global warming if it will keep the city from being so damn cold.” Across the street is the Greenway Self Park garage, with a green VW bug emitting green leaves instead of ozone-killing exhaust on its very cool, I guess, sign.

Born and raised in Kensington, Jimbo still lives there. He gets $780 a month in Social Security, but his rent eats up $760. So much for piece-of-shit Kensington?! What in the fuckin’ UN is this world coming to? If I want to be chased around by goons toting submachine guns, then body slammed onto the ground, I’ll go to Chicago during the NATO summit.

With only 20 bucks a month to diddle with, Jimbo must beg, though he can also move to a cheaper neighborhood, such as the exburbs of Kabul or Baghdad, for example, but since he’s already well into his post-Cialis years, I don’t think Blackwater would hire him.

“Jimbo,” I said, “I keep hearing that black women are the most generous at giving money on the streets. Is that true?”

“Absolutely!”

“Why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know, but I think it’s because they’re more used to taking care of people.”

“Hummm. What about guys in suits? Do they give you money?”

“Those guys are the worst! Most of them won’t come near me because they think I might give them a disease or something.”

“That’s interesting.”

“The regular people, the working class people, are the ones who give me money. Black people give me money.”

“All black people, or just black women?”

“All black people, but, like you said, black women are the best. When I grew up in Kensington, I was told that black are this and that, that they’re no good, but now that I have to beg, I can tell you that black people treat me very nice.”

For over a century, Kensington had dozens of factories cranking out machine parts, carpets, textiles and glass. Now, it is an unholy mess, like all former industrial enclaves across America. Jimbo, “Many of my neighbors in Kensington get a government check at the beginning of each month, then a week later, they’re broke. You should go up there and see how it is.”

“I’ve been up there, many times.”

“You’ll see how how bad it is, the drug dealing.”

“And the prostitution.”

“Yes, that too. When people are broke, they’ll do anything. There used to be so many factories up there, but they’re all gone.”

In Kensington, a flyer is taped to a pillar of the elevated train, “HEALTH ALERT!!! THERE IS A prostitute By the name of SHERI Pitts that is HIV Positive. If you know her whereabouts please contact the Health Department. Description: 5’4” 95 lbs Blk Female. Tatoo on left Arm “Chocolate Sheri.” Tattoo on Right (Butt) Cheek “Sexy.” #173-60-6501. She NEEDS to be Stopped. She is spreading this Desease!!!”

The next time you’re in Kensington to help out the local economy, shine a flash light on her left cheek, and if you can make out “Sexy” in tribal, shaman, precious, voodoo or gothic script, just calmly smile and say, “I’m sorry, Chocolate, but it doesn’t look like our loving union can be gracefully consummated this night, or the next, or ever, though as a member of NATO, that master alliance of pale and well-armed people, I will try and try again. Oh, fuck it, let’s just fuck! Since it was me who made you sick in the first place! We’re destined for this death embrace, you maroon terrorist seductress!”

I’m sorry to use intercourse as an analogy for aggression, but I was railroaded into it by English itself, for what other language is so promiscuous with such couplings, as in I will fuck you up, fuck you over or fuck with you? In English, to fuck is to hate, if not kill, as in fuck Libya, Syria and Iran, or, if you prefer, fuck Israel, Wall Street, the CIA and the Pentagon!

In Chicago, white masters are plotting on how to fuck with us all, including the lower whites. As expected, they’ve framed a few white youths and locked them up on bogus charge of terrorism. This is to condition the public to see poor whites, especially those with tattoos, nose rings or dread locks, as also the enemy. Like brown foreigners and native blacks, young disaffected whites will be branded as indiscriminate mass murderers who just want to blow things up because they hate “our way of life.” Thanks to the FBI, they have been prevented from collapsing a bridge in Cleveland and torching Obama’s Chicago campaign headquarters, but they might go after your local strip mall or International House of Pancakes next. If not dealt with most severely, they’ll splatter corn-syrup all over your transfat-padded faces! Instead of getting a job giving blow jobs, for example, these confused whiners would rather enlist in Occupy, which, the gobblement will soon tell you, is actually an offshoot of Al Qaeda supported by Iran and a trust fund left behind by Bin Laden.

Meanwhile, Jimbo begs because he can’t pay his bills otherwise. He also admits that he likes to sit in a cheapo restaurant every now and then to enjoy a $7 hoagie or cheesesteak, some fried chicken or a plate of pork lo mein, “So I can live like a real white man!”

Pharma is losing so much money from rising co-pays and prescription abandonment, it has launched cagey, public service announcement-sounding campaigns about “patients not taking the drugs they need,” as if it is a health and not revenue issue. Pharma has even instituted arrangements with some pharmacies to send visiting nurses to patients’ homes to ensure “compliance,” Big Brother overtones notwithstanding.

(Pharma has another PSA-sounding public relations campaign going on too: Patients are “abusing” prescription drugs! It’s not the billions Pharma spends advertising drugs that causes abuse — it’s patients.)

Prescription abandonment is an especially thorny issue for Pharma when the drugs are taken on faith, to reduce patients’ “risks” and patients do not necessarily feel them working. It is also a thorny issue when studies suggest the drugs being abandoned may not be necessary to begin with or working.

One such expensive placebo is the drug known by the brand name Risperdal. The Department of Veterans Affairs spent $717 million on the drug to treat post traumatic stress disorder in Afghanistan and Iraq troops with PTSD over nine years, only to discover it worked no better than a sugar pill! Veterans Affairs doctors wrote more than 5 million prescriptions from 2000 through June 2010 for naught, says a 2011 paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Nor was that the end of Pharma’s dupe of the government, taxpayers and veterans. Less than two weeks after the JAMA study was published, the VA awarded a contract for more than 200,000 bottles of generic risperidone, said published reports, containing more than 20 million pills.

While no one wants sick people to go without their drugs, some say the Pharma-concocted bills are designed to change the debate over the cost of exorbitant drugs to coverage issues over who pays for them — thus giving “the drug companies a free ride to charge as much as they want.” Pharma is even using patient front groups to whip up a contrived demand for expensive drugs, some charge.

Patients may seem to benefit from the proposed co-pay legislation but health care costs and taxes actually skyrocket as Pharma tries to pass along the cost of expensive brand name drugs that may not even be necessary and are often less effective than cheaper drugs. If they work at all.

An example of how Pharma is trying to play the co-pay card for its revenue stream is seen in a recent article in JAMA, called “Out-of-Pocket Medication Costs and Use of Medications and Health Care Services Among Children With Asthma.” Increased co-pay is resulting in less use of the asthma “controller medications” say the authors, who have links to Pfizer, Novartis and Bristol-Myers Squibb, three large drug companies. Asthma controller medications are drugs added on top of rescue inhalers or inhaled corticosteroids. They are well known, highly advertised drugs like Advair, Singulair, Symbicort, and Accolate.  But data published by Medco, the nation’s largest pharmacy benefit manager, says in a large group of patients studied, controller drugs reduce neither trips to the ER or hospitalizations. Worse, some reports say the controller asthma medications actually make asthma worse.

Do we really need laws written by Pharma to help “buy” drugs that may be worthless or even make us worse?

Clearly, thinking outside the box is not how our system deals with serious issues.  When having lunch with fellow educators and arguing about the crimes, especially against the Constitution and on war,  of both the Bush and Obama administrations, my frustration is palpable.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the Republicans enjoy being in the box whereas the Democrats don’t even know they’re in one.

On issues of war and economics, the Republicans and many Democrats I talk with clearly support the idea  that the US is a world economic power and needs to maintain it in any way they can.  They might acknowledge the wrongs committed but see it as necessary.  OK, that’s where dialog comes in.  My partisan Democratic friends, especially in the teachers’ lounge of my school, are simply oblivious to the wrongs or come up with every conceivable way of minimizing it or laying blame elsewhere. The most common response to the economic disaster that we’re in due to Obama’s Wall Street cabinet is that the Republicans won’t let him do what needs to be done. Another gem is that in politics you can’t always get what you campaign on and its corollary, the political climate is not ripe for what you’re asking.

Bush controlled the Congress. Obama is certainly the antithesis. He punted every major decision to them. Whether it be health care or Don’t Ask, President Obama relinquished the bully pulpit for the collaborative approach of having the other arm of government have a role, but in most cases, the only role.  If only President Obama, when he was elected with an American-style mandate, and with a Democrat-controlled Congress, were to have rallied the pro-Single Payer (Medicare for All) populous, a majority of Americans, for universal health care, it would have passed over both Democratic and Republican opponents in Congress.  He simply could have equated the health insurance industry with the likes of Al Qaeda.  Who would have had kind words for, or dare to come out and defend, the insurance industry? If not Single Payer, then at a minimum, a public option would be the law today, paving the way for universal coverage.  But President Obama preferred the box that we’re in. Yes, I’m implying that he falls within the Republican view of the box theory since he earlier sided with the industry by giving them what they wanted, and no public option, as long as they didn’t pull a Harry and Louise on him.

Missing in the dialog is acknowledgment of reality.  “No we’re not in a Police State because we’re not living like under Nazi Germany.”  True, unless you’re an undocumented alien or whistle blower- military or civilian-, where you’ll be tonight or tomorrow is likely known.  The drone war, supported by a majority of ‘progressives’ in America, is just a way of achieving a military solution without requiring the presence of American boots on the ground.  Rachel Maddow’s all for it so it must be the progressive thing to do when it’s done by a Democrat in the White House.  “Why make a case of habeas corpus?  Abraham Lincoln suspended it and thank God for him. I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for him.”

What is the ‘box’?: the capitalist economy. With it comes imperial wars for others’ natural resources (Why is our oil under their sand?); support for military coups against democratically elected governments (Honduras and the Maldives); support for apartheid regimes and theocracies in the Middle East yet mouthing praise for the Arab Spring, as long as it’s in the ‘right’ countries; wages far below needs; reform of health insurance but not health care reform; homelessness and foreclosures when vacant houses, owned by banks and local governments, sit idle; public education under severe attack by both Democrats and Republicans who want to privatize it, bust the unions, and, of course, blame the teachers for not increasing test scores that have no baring of the real learning that is taking place; for-profit prison population booming (especially for the undocumented being prepared for deportation); etc.

Electoral reform is certainly needed to remove the box of capitalism from discussions on solving our problems. As it stands, it is virtually impossible for a variety of Third Parties to have ballot access in every state. There’s too much of a fear that it would cause the demise, in particular, of the Democratic Party. After all, if their platform isn’t marketable and another’s is, then they would go the way of Betamax.  The Republicans can stay as the legitimate 1% Party; the Democrats would do best to merge with them. How can we have electoral reform when states like Virginia require a 10,000-signature petition (not terribly difficult, but onerous) yet require a minimum of 400 in each county? Can you imagine that many supporting a Socialist party in Pat Robertson’s neck of the woods?

Dialog on issues can work as long as there is a recognition of reality and ownership of responsibility for why things are as they are. Without it,  it’s status quo.  Your everyday, typical Republican, on matters of war and economics, needs to see how the system is not working for them, except for those in a minority that it does.  Democratic partisans and Obama die-hard supporters need to truly question their values and principles and objectively see if their party truly stands by it, or equivocates to the point of non-recognition of the principles.  Maybe easier said  than done but the box remains strong, or invisible, as long as thinking remains stagnant.

The present struggle is directly aimed at the peaceful and happy life of our future generations on this planet.

— Dr. Nguyen Trong Nhan

The widespread employment of the defoliant and herbicide Agent Orange (AO) by the U.S. military during its barbarous war against the peoples of Vietnam should by all accounts be considered one of the greatest war crimes of the twentieth century.  The mass ecocidal-herbicidal campaign to utilize dioxin-containing AO against the tropical environment of Vietnam, begun in 1961 by the liberal-imperialist Kennedy administration, greatly helped facilitate the murder of between 2 and 5 million Vietnamese that was prosecuted by U.S. forces in their war.

Continuing in the traditions practiced previously by Indochina’s French administrators of violently defending colonial relations—and, indeed, vastly extending the scope of these traditions—the U.S. military came to subject the Vietnamese people to a “chemical holocaust,” as writes Fred A. Wilcox, journalist and author of Scorched Earth: Legacies of Chemical Warfare in Vietnam. According to Vietnamese government statistics cited by Wilcox, 3 million Vietnamese are presently suffering from the effects of toxic weapons used by the U.S. in its neo-colonial war, with 500,000 of this total number being children.  150,000 of these minors today suffer specifically from the effects of exposure to AO 40 to 50 years ago, given the biologically persistent properties of dioxin.  As a means of considering and reflecting on these negating realities, Wilcox’s Scorched Earth is an important work, one that resists forgetting—instead attempting adequately to respond to the “call to all humans for help” made by Nguyen Quynh Loc on behalf of his children and all others victimized by AO and war.

As Wilcox reviews, the historical mass-utilization of AO aimed to suppress the Vietcong armed resistance both directly through the eradication of tropical forests that effectively served as a refuge for VC soldiers as well as indirectly by destroying agricultural communities that were suspected of nourishing the VC effort.  The AO defoliation campaign, estimated to have eradicated at least 3 million acres of vegetation, comprised a true scorched earth strategy.  Wilcox quotes Dr. Arthur Westing, one of the world’s foremost chemical experts on the TCCD-dioxin found in AO, as summarizing the general U.S. approach in the war as being characterized by “long term systematic fury inflicted… upon the environment of an enemy dependent for its survival upon a rural natural-resource-based economy.”  It is important not to forget that this highly destructive aspect of the larger counter-insurgency strategy in Vietnam was merely a complement to the mass terror-bombing campaigns carried out by the U.S.—with several hundreds of times the order of magnitude of the Hiroshima bombs being dropped in incendiary and napalm forms on Vietnam, in accordance with Henry Kissinger’s maxim of “anything that flies on anything that moves.”¹

As is to be expected, the herbicide strategy directly destroyed the lives and livelihoods of those deemed to be potential VC supporters by bringing about widespread hunger in rural regions and provoking severe erosion and flooding-events through its devastation of forests.  In part, this dual AO-bombing strategy sought forcibly to depopulate rural regions in its mass-displacement of agriculturalists who then fled to Vietnam’s cities—a vision for which the reactionary public intellectual Samuel P. Huntington famously served as an apologist, thus fulfilling his role as Geheimrat, or adviser of the sovereign, as write Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, or “expert in legitimation,” as Antonio Gramsci or Edward Said might call him.² The “moonscapes” or “parking lot[s]” to which Wilcox likens much of the land of Vietnam ravaged by U.S. imperial administration might serve as a symbol of the overall effects of the mad war on Vietnam’s resident peoples and ecology.

To begin to understand the devastating effects of dioxin exposure on humans, it is necessary to consider some basic biology, which Wilcox provides to us.  Through experimentation on Rhesus monkeys and other animals, scientists have determined the TCCD-dioxin to be carcinogenic and fetotoxic, in addition to being possibly mutagenic, meaning that it induces mutations in DNA.  Among other effects, it acts on animals by inhibiting mitosis, or cell division.  Dioxin has been observed to remain concentrated within fatty tissues for decades—indeed, it is unknown how long it will persist in human tissues.  The toxin is also transplacental, such that it passes from mother to developing fetus.  These considerations thus help explain the emergence of the various disabilities and birth defects seen in children of Vietnamese parents who were exposed to AO by U.S. forces: lack of limbs or eyes, hydrocephaly (large head), musculoskeletal inhibition, severe intellectual impairment, and other neurological effects, to give only a few examples.

Basic reflection on these realities demonstrate the extreme hardships impelled by imperial power relations.  The photographs taken by Wilcox’s son Brendan as printed in the book are a testament to the irrevocable fate to which the U.S. has subjected these children and their families, as to its generalized destruction of the lives of millions of people in Vietnam, as in many other of the world’s societies.  The anecdotal stories Wilcox shares about the means that Vietnamese fighters took to protect themselves from the effects of AO following suspected exposure by spraying—that is, taking baths and eating green beans due to their belief in the antitoxic properties of the latter—similarly well-illustrates the extreme power inequalities represented in the Vietnam War, like other colonial wars.

Rather than be a work that examines horror triumphant, Scorched Earth also examines the litigation efforts undertaken by Agent Orange victims against Dow Chemical and other manufacturers of AO in 1984 and 2004.  The proceedings of the two cases as related by Wilcox are at once disconcerting and typical of established power.  The same Judge Weinstein who presided over both cases practiced legal positivism in denying the plaintiffs’ claims regarding the willfull destruction of human life resulting from AO exposure, perpetuating the reactionary view that the U.S. government was unaware of its effects on humans at the time of its employment, and did not in any case intend directly to harm individuals by using it as an herbicide.  A similarly absurd argument is one advanced by the chemical companies’ legal defense, which claimed that the plaintiffs’ claims, if taken seriously in a court of law, would “risk a stark lack of respect for the Executive Branch” and potentially set a precedent for interfering with its war-making capacities.

Wilcox rightly likens the outcome of this attempt at legalistic redress as being governed by a “Realm” of power, a disorienting and Kafka-esque “magic show” in which dominant social forces hold sway.  As Kafka himself might argue, the fate of the Vietnamese litigants subjected to dioxin poisoning serves as yet another example of the radical inadequacy of approaches that would pursue struggles for justice within established institutions.  It should be evident that the millions of cases of Agent Orange victims to begin with are themselves embodied condemnations of established society, responsible as it is for the “bourgeois-democratic holocaust” that was Vietnam.³  Justice for these persons and all others similarly brutalized by imperial violence cannot be achieved within existing social relations: Wilcox’s elucidation of the juridical proceedings should be seen as confirming this.

This is not to say that Wilcox himself presents his testimony on the Vietnam War within a frame that is expressly anti-racist or revolutionary—however much his findings could be seen to serve these ends.  He invokes the slave-owning Thomas Jefferson to argue against the absurdities of the chemical companies’ legal defense, likening the hegemony of these corporations to that of kings.  Beyond this, Wilcox questionably claims that the US and its allied South Vietnamese military “intended to warn” rural Vietnamese of their plans for mass-application of AO to the environment—as though this postulated intention, never actualized in reality, lessened the actual crime, if it can be said to have existed at all in the first place.  Furthermore, the listing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is glaringly absent from a brief list Wilcox assembles of the usage of chemical and other non-conventional weapons throughout history.  Imperial Japan, Saddam’s Iraq, and Nazi Germany are listed, but the advent of direct employment of nuclear arms against persons is strangely overlooked.  Moreover, Wilcox’s closing words in the book—that we onlookers “ignore” the ongoing suffering of Vietnamese “at our own peril”—seem puzzling: Is the legacy of chemical warfare in Vietnam really about us?  These lapses aside, Wilcox’s book importantly represents a broadside against prejudice, egotistical narcissism, and self-induced blindness.

Representative in this sense is Wilcox’s quoting of Professor Ken Herrmann, an ex-veteran who has dedicated time to researching the effects of AO in Vietnam, as posing the question of why the unavoidably monstrous ongoing legacy of the U.S. military’s crimes in Vietnam does not “haunt the conscience of America.”  Part of the reason for this disconcerting suspension of mind may be due to a lack of awareness, one that Wilcox hence has crucially and helpfully addressed with Scorched Earth.  Yet this absence of awareness is likely associated more broadly with prevailing society’s tendency to render invisible the lived experiences of those persons who suffer the myriad ill-effects of imperialist power-arrangements—the dismissal of the interests of those Chomsky terms “unpeople,” who are even preconsciously denied interests altogether.⁴

The task of overcoming the “bourgeois coldness” Adorno observes as perpetuating life-negating political projects is a decidedly pressing one, given the various threats to life contemporarily observed around the planet, from the endless massacres in Afghanistan to Israel’s continuous bombings of Gaza and the plight of malnourished and ill children or those subjected to radioactive exposure, whether from depleted-uranium rounds, as in Fallujah, or from the melted-down nuclear reactors of Fukushima.⁵  In his comment that the fate of Vietnam is the “toxic mirror into which avaricious corporations do not want ordinary people throughout the world to look,” Wilcox points to the potential collective power of the now subordinated multitudes, hence perhaps pointing to a future possibility that could dismantle imperial rule and so finally succeed in preventing the recurrence of anything resembling the genocidal Vietnam War.

Thus, Wilcox is mistaken to claim that “all we [observers] can do is promise that we will tell [other] people” about the tragic realities of Vietnam.  Documentation and bearing witness—“lend[ing] suffering a voice,” as Adorno advocates—surely are important projects for the present and likely futures, but they are not all.⁶  We observers of the myriad negations perpetrated and overseen by constituted power can, instead of mere spectators, be subjects and agents—actors who rather than resign themselves to world-destructiveness rebel against it, seeking to overturn it.  Against the catastrophe that “just goes on,” in the words of Walter Benjamin, and the “normality” of “death”—the reign of genocidal-imperial racism and environmental devastation, or capitalism—a conscious humanity must labor, abolishing the institutions and ideologies that perpetuate brutality and unreason.⁷

1. Quoted in Noam Chomsky, “‘Losing’ the World: Amercan Decline in Perspective,” Truthout, 15 February 2012.
2. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude (London: Penguin, 2006).
3. Ronald Aronson, The Dialectics of Disaster: A Preface to Hope (London: Verso, 1984).
4. Noam Chomsky, Hopes and Prospects (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2010), 133.
5. Theodor W. Adorno, Critical Models (trans. Henry W. Pickford, New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 201.
6. Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics (trans. E.B. Ashton, London: Routledge, 1973), 17-18.
7. Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings. Volume 4: 1938-1940 (trans. Edmund Jephcott et al., Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 2003), 184; Adorno, Minima Moralia, §33.

The innocence of childhood is a precious jewel to be gently cared for and nurtured, allowing the child, whose future we are building, to develop happily and safely in an atmosphere of love and peace. For many Palestinian children their childhood is lived under a cloak of fear, and the threat of violence and abuse at the hands of an armed force that stalks the streets of their homeland.

In the eleven years since 2000 Israeli forces have killed 1,471 children in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the bulk of which are aged between 13 and 17 years old. The children of Gaza have been, and continue to be, at greatest risk, with almost a thousand murdered in the last twelve years — on the streets of their city, on their way to and from school, whilst playing with friends, shopping for their family or simply relaxing in their homes. Most are shot randomly, indiscriminately, or killed as a result of Israeli air and ground attacks. Around 50 were taken prematurely from their families by unexploded ordnance.

This latest attack on the people of Gaza began on Friday March 9, killing 25 Palestinians. According to the Palestine Monitor the Israeli air force fired missiles from the comfort of their warplanes at civilians arbitrarily, shooting onto the streets of Gaza and into peoples homes in the Jabaliya refugee camp that were mostly full of women and children, The faceless attackers even shot at mourners attending a funeral. Such is the callous, vicious nature of the Israeli security forces, that kills, injures and intimidates innocent women and children, destroying all hope of living peaceful decent lives, and all in the name of “security”.

Nonsense! This is criminal violence, nothing more or less. These most recent atrocities come on the back of the massacre that took place in December ‘08/January’09, when, according to If America Knew, a total of 1417 Palestinians were murdered, of which 318 were children and 116 women. Fresh in the children’s young memories lie the echo of that horrendous time, the constant bombardment, the loss of loved ones, and the shootings. In addition to the deaths, around 1000 children were injured in the three-week assault.  Many children were left with severe physical disabilities and deep psychological wounds, the mental/emotional effects more difficult to see and/or to treat than broken bones and scarred flesh.

The Gaza Community Health Programme estimates that half of Gaza’s  children – around 350,000 – will develop some form of post-traumatic stress disorder. This is staggering but unsurprising, and the attacks this March on unarmed civilians will serve to intensify the mental suffering and anguish that these children are living with. Occupied Palestine states:  “Both parents and psychologist fear that Gaza children could be affected psychologically in the long run.”

Children make up around 45% of the four million or so total Palestinian population, a fact that terrifies an aging Israel.  What impact does living under the brutal Israeli occupation have on them? Are they inclined towards peace and brotherhood? Is tolerance fostered in their hearts and minds or are the seeds of hate and the desire for revenge being carefully sown? Does violence ever bring peace, or does it perpetuate conflict? Violence we see begets not harmony, but further violence.

Colonel Desmond Travers, one of the co-authors of the UN’s Goldstone Report, in a July 2011 interview with Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss, stated that:

We spoke to a psychiatrist in Gaza,  who said ‘we already see in our schools in Gaza the next generation of Hamas revolutionaries, children exposed to so much violence, they have no option but to terminate their childhood and move into a different frame, and the likelihood is that they will never stabilize. In order to justify the unjustifiable, the unjust Israel needs to instil hate into another generation of Palestinians – to maintain Israel’s position as the ‘enemy within’, thereby excusing in some perverted distortion of the facts, their continued aggression, violence and violation of international laws, too many to count.

Intimidation and Torture

Palestinian children living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip under the illegal Israeli occupation are subjected to brutal treatment, illegal imprisonment, torture and intimidation by Israeli security forces. In its 2012 report “Bound, Blindfolded and Convicted”, the Defence for Children International states that a pattern of systematic ill-treatment [of Palestinian children] emerges, much of which amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, as defined in the UN Convention against Torture, and in some cases, torture – both of which are absolutely prohibited.

Since 1967 Palestinian children, as well as adults, have been subjected to Israeli Military Law, a legal system based on prejudice and short on justice. In the time since this emergency system was instigated 726,000 Palestinians have been arrested and detained. The numbers of children arrested and taken from their homes is shocking. According to Defence of Children International:

In the past 11 years alone, around 7,500 children, some as young as 12 years, are estimated to have been detained, interrogated, and imprisoned within this system. This averages out at between 500-700 children per year, or nearly two children, each and every day.

The  DCI report adds that mostly the arrested children live in villages in areas of tension, “friction points, namely, settlements built in violation of international law, and roads used by the Israeli army or settlers.” The situation appears to be escalating particularly in certain areas of the West Bank.

The International Solidaritary Movement (ISM) reports:

The extreme Golani Unit of the Israeli military is escalating its arrests of Palestinian children in Al Khalil (Hebron), targeting boys between the ages of 12 to15 years old with at least 10 reported cases of child arrests made (in early February 2012) just in the span of one week.

As well as arrests, incarceration in solitary confinement has also increased, with almost a quarter of all children arrested being held in isolation. Children, mainly boys, aged from 12 to 17 years old, are forcefully taken from their families, often at night, imprisoned in a tiny, dank cell, illegally beaten and tortured, intimidated and, on occasion, subjected to electronic shock treatment. Most children are detained for the terrible crime of throwing stones at soldiers armed with M16 rifles and tear gas, all courtesy of the American arms industry.

The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem described the ordeal of Yahia, aged 15 years, who together with four of his friends, was arrested and taken to the illegal Israeli settlement of Zuffin. They had their “hands tied behind their backs, they were blindfolded, before being forced to kneel on the ground for several hours”. The boys were then taken to a police station and interrogated.

The interrogator grabbed the boy’s head and slammed it against the wall, slapping him twice. A short time later he returned holding a small electric shock device [Taser]. Yahia says: “He placed the device on my body and I felt a great powerful shock and my body started shivering. I couldn’t feel my arms or legs and I felt extreme pain in my head. I felt I was going to be paralysed, so I decided to confess.”

The process of arrests, intimidation and violence is common practice by the Israeli occupation authorities. The kneeling on the ground, the isolation and the use of hand ties and blindfolds are also used extensively against Palestinians.

In 2010 the UN, in its study “Developments in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel”, documented 90 cases of “ill treatment” of Palestinian children in Israeli detention, of which 75 had their hands tied behind their backs and were also blindfolded. Almost a third of the children were under 15 years of age. Of the 90 detained, “62 children reported being beaten, 35 children reported position abuse and 16 children were kept in solitary confinement. In three cases, children reported the use of electric shocks on their bodies. Particularly concerning was the fact that there was an increase in documented cases of sexual violence.” All of which contravenes international law and conventions signed and ratified by Israel and the democratic principles Israel so loudly proclaims.

Mark Regev, the chief Israeli purveyor of propaganda and deceit, and Spokesman for Prime Minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, stated in The Guardian, “The test of a democracy is how you treat people incarcerated, in jail, and especially so with minors.” Democracy damned by words of duplicity. Much of the mistreatment exercised towards Palestinian children not only contravenes international law, but also violates Israel’s own domestic laws.

When in Israeli custody children are violently interrogated; they are shackled, blindfolded and bound to a chair whilst being questioned. In the B’Tselem report entitled “No Minor Matter: Violation of the Rights of Palestinian Minors Arrested by Israel on Suspicion of Stone-Throwing”, according to Israeli Law, interrogation of a minor may be conducted only by an interrogator who is trained as a youth interrogator. A parent is allowed to be present at all times, and minors have the right to consult with the parent before the interrogation.

According to Margaret Sherwood’s January 22, 2012 report in the Guardian, when in Israeli custody Palestinian children’s rights are ignored and they are verbally insulted. “You’re a dog” and “son of a whore” are common insults. Eventually the majority of children sign confessions that they later state were coerced,

Defence for Children International notes that children under interrogation unsurprisingly eventually admit to the “crimes”, and B’Tselem found that “in the end at least 90 percent will plead guilty, as this is the quickest way out of a system that denies children bail in 87 percent of cases”. According to The Guardian, accusations of crimes justifying these illegal detentions are commonly throwing stones or occasionally Molotov cocktails at soldiers or settlers – both of whom, let us remember. are illegally present upon Palestinian land. A few are arrested for “more serious offences such as links to militant organisations or using weapons. ”

Major Violation, Minor Insecurity

And what “national security information” is being elicited from the interrogation of these children who the Israelis are abusing? According to  The Guardian report,  “They are pumped for information about the activities and sympathies of their classmates, relatives and neighbours.” Within walls of intimidation a child can be forced to betray their friends and families.  Eliciting the names of other stone throwers is a primary aim of the torturer.

B’Tselem points out:

One method the police use to identify juvenile stone throwers is incrimination: the police arrest one or more youths, they are required to give names of other youths whom they saw throwing stones, and these youths are then arrested and required to provide the names of others, and so on.

The children under interrogation in a frightening isolated place, far from the sanctity of home, are under great emotional stress and inevitably give up the names of friends.  The experience is then compounded by the added trauma of guilt.

Children are mostly held inside Israel itself, which restricts access to legal support and excludes family members from visiting. Their freedom of movement is constrained under the occupation, and the necessary permit to visit the prisons is often impossible to obtain. Families are therefore unable to support their children through the ordeal of confinement. Holding children in prisons inside Israel is in violation of Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits such transfers. According to DCI, “testimonies [from 310 children] reveal that the majority of children are taken away to an unknown location for interrogation.” This process of arrests, detention and torture operating inside Israel and outside international and national law, offers the victims no legal recourse, and as DCI points out, “there is a general absence of effective complaint mechanisms.”

Legally Binding, Illegally Bound

The Israeli judicial system, as it currently pertains to Palestinian children, allows illegal practices to take place within the walled settlements — themselves illegal — inside police stations and Israeli prisons. International law on the rights of the child, to which Israel is bound, is clear and extensive. As the B’t Selem report points out, “The main document establishing the rights of children is the Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted by the UN in November 1989. Israel signed the Convention in July 1990 and ratified it in August 1991.

In the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, it states that:

Condemning the targeting of children in situations of armed conflict and direct attacks on objects protected under international law, including places that generally have a significant presence of children, such as schools and hospitals.

Schools are repeatedly targeted by Israeli security forces.  According to the UN in 2010:

There was an increase in the number of attacks on education institutions.  These attacks resulted in damage to schools or interruption of education, placing the safety of the children in Gaza and the West Bank at risk. The majority of cases involved the presence of Israeli security forces within school compounds following raids, forceful entry, and search and arrest operations, including the use of tear gas on students.

All international treatise and conventions signed by the lawbreaker, Israel, safeguard children in conflict, and Israel ignores them all.  As Defence for Children International points out:

These treaties relevantly provide that: in all actions concerning children their best interests shall be a primary consideration; children should only be detained as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.

Being held for 17 days in solitary as Mohammed was is neither short nor appropriate; indeed it is illegal. It is one example within a catalogue of atrocities that sees Israel contravening another convention, breaking yet another international law and doing so with impunity. This must stop.  Urgent action is required to safeguard the children of Palestine and protect them from the tyranny that is Israeli policy in the OPT’s.

In order to fuel what is a furnace of legal standards raging around Israel, let us add The Fourth Geneva Convention, which If America Knew says “grants special protections to minors” and provides 146 articles that protect in law the lives of all Palestinians living under the illegal Israeli occupation. Israel is in breach of them all. Indeed, grave breaches which, in itself, constitutes war crimes.  Israel is guilty of “grave breaches” of the convention and the more serious offense of ‘Crimes Against Humanity’, which is the “legal precursor to the international crime of genocide as defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.” The argument that Israel is committing, or has, in fact, already committed the crime of genocide is powerful and to many indisputable.

Genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, crimes against humanity; titles that all fit Israel bespoke. Call it what you will, the actions of Israel in the OPTs are vile, murderous, calculated and illegal. It is for the international community acting in unity, and led by the UN, to finally stand up and act to protect the lives of the innocent men, women and children of Palestine, lifting the shadow of constant fear, intimidation and aggression from their lives. Humanity is one. Together we must stand in the face of injustice, violence and hate to safeguard the lives of the innocent, the oppressed, the defenseless.

The label on the malaria drug, developed by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in the 1970s after another malaria drug used in Vietnam failed, warns of psychosis, hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, aggression, tremors, confusion, abnormal dreams and suicide.

Military officials blamed the Fort Bragg murders on marital problems and combat stress — explanations already heard with Army staff sergeant Robert Bales, suspected of killing 16 Afghan civilians this month, 17 by some reports.

But soon after the Fort Bragg killings other soldiers given Lariam spoke out.  A 27-year old Air Force Staff Sgt. named Kevin based in Little Rock, who only gave his first name, told United Press International he too experienced delusions, hallucinations, blackouts and frightening flashes of anger after taking just five doses of Lariam.

“These guys who killed their wives and then themselves (near Fort Bragg). If they were having a reaction to Lariam I can totally understand why they did it. The patience level goes way down. You feel confused, and the anger and frustration level goes way up,” Kevin said. “The only reason I have not done anything to myself yet is because I think it is a one-way ticket to hell.”

Even lawmakers doubted Lariam’s safety. “Our military said there is no problem with (Lariam) because they developed it,” remarked Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich when an Army report about the Fort Bragg killings discounted Lariam as a factor. “The hardest thing to do is develop a drug and then admit there is a problem.”

One side effect of Lariam can be abrupt personality changes. A seventeen-year marine veteran serving in Afghanistan in 2009 and given Lariam, “went from being loving on the phone, to saying he never wanted to see me and our daughter again,” said his wife in an interview. “He said not to even bother coming to the airport to meet him, because he would walk right past us.” When the couple did reunite, her husband was frail and thin, and “the whites of his eyes were brown,” says the wife. The formerly competent drill instructor became increasingly unpredictable, suicidal, and violent and was incarcerated in the brig at Camp Lejeune for assault in 2011.

In her nonfiction book, Murder in Baker Company, Cilla McCain also speculates whether the use of Lariam might explain, or partially explain, the brutal actions of the soldiers accused in the death of Army Specialist Richard Davis in 2003.

The Air Force bans pilots from using Lariam and the Army says it is substituting a safer drug, but the Navy and Marine Corps have actually increased prescriptions for Lariam the Associated Press reported last year. And, “numbers could be higher still because prescriptions filled overseas are frequently not counted.” The effects of Lariam can last for “weeks, months, and even years,” after it’s stopped, warns the VA. The drug “should not be given to anyone with symptoms of a brain injury, depression or anxiety disorder,” reported Army Times, which describes “many troops who have deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan.”

A medical presentation about Lariam by Army major Dr. Remington Nevin on YouTube links Lariam to seizures, PTSD effects, extreme and unexpected reactions and probable permanent brain toxicity. Like “angel dust” Lariam is associated with incredible acts of violence and self-mutilation, marked by depersonalization — the feeling that someone else is committing the acts — and tissue binding in which the drug remains stored in the body long after it is taken. Lariam, not only intensifies PTSD, it intensifies PTSD drugs and makes them more dangerous, says the presentation.

How widespread is the use of Lariam among troops? Why is it in use at all?

What if Tim Tebow was a Muslim, and he, instead of Tebowing (kneeling in prayer during and before and after games) he kept turning towards Mecca and went to his knees in prayer before, during and after games? One wonders if those same folks who think Tim is such a devout religious man would think the same of Tim Tebow, Muslim. By the way, if one truly is a follower of Jesus the Christ (as this writer happens to be, by the way) one would know that Jesus taught to not parade one’s beliefs in public prayer or ceremony. Rather, he said to go and pray in the upmost privacy or with another in the upmost privacy… and NOT in public displays of passion.

What if Israel had a Palestinian man who lived next door to you on their “terrorist watch list” for compensating the families of suicide bombers? This neighbor of yours was a congenial guy, with a good profession, and he was a darn nice neighbor at that. One day, the Israelis decide to “take him out” with a drone attack. It succeeded, but in doing so there is the collateral damage of the two homes adjoining his — one of which happens to be yours! You get that terrible phone call at work informing you that your spouse and your two kids are….dead!! Will you still support the politicians (of both corrupt parties, by the way) who advocate drone attacks into Pakistan and elsewhere?

What if you support this corrupt and disgraceful health care system of private insurance OR the so called “Obama Care” which continues to feed the private insurance beast? You refuse to stand firm and demand that we have the option for buying into the Medicare system at obviously lower prices and somewhat better coverage than what private insurance now offers. What if you or your spouse or your teenage child gets a devastating illness that private insurance cannot cover completely? The costs are astronomical and they come after you, once the dust settles, for tens of thousands of dollars that you do not have?

What if you continue to support this military industrial empire that takes over 50% of your federal taxes each year? You buy the lies that this is necessary for our defense, while you notice more and more budget cuts are happening around you… locally, statewide and nationally. Your schools are being abandoned, library funds cut drastically, police and fire personnel being cut down. You see layoffs and foreclosures abound, and the “rally round the flag” festivals and events increase. They tell you to “support our troops” as they are sent to occupy, control and destroy other nations that pose no real threat to our national security. When unemployment and uncertainty suck the very life out of your community, and you see more and more homeless, destitute and desperate folks walking about — when is “enough really enough” ?

So, keep buying into the con job that “your vote counts” as you support either of these two corrupt political parties. Keep thinking that an annual visit to a voting booth is enough to counteract the empire’s tentacles. Don’t dare get out and stand in public for a better world… week after week, month after month until more of your neighbors begin to “get it”. No, just keep saying, “Oh, what can I do anyway?” as we all slide into the black hole caused by apathy and self interest. Remember, the greed and the violence and the corruption that many of us disdain must still have some elements of them imbedded within our own psyches or we would finally rid our society of them.

As the Washington Post reports, the mandate was a Republican idea that originated with conservatives: “The tale begins in the late 1980s, when conservative economists such as Mark Pauly, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of business, were searching for ways to counter liberal calls for government-sponsored universal health coverage. Pauly then proposed a mandate requiring everyone to obtain this minimum coverage, thus guarding against free-riders…Health policy analysts at the conservative Heritage Foundation, led by Stuart Butler, picked up the idea and began developing it for lawmakers in Congress. The Heritage Foundation worked with then-Gov. Mitt Romney (R) to pass Massachusetts’ 2006 health reform law, which required all Bay State citizens to purchase coverage.”

Someone from the Heritage Foundation came up to us, wanting to take a photo of our sign. I asked him – does the Heritage Foundation oppose the mandate? He said “yes.” I told him that the idea came out of the Heritage Foundation. He looked confused, mumbled an unclear answer “not since 2006” and walked away.

Of course, Democrats opposed this Republican idea. They saw it for what it is: a massive giveaway to the insurance industry that will lead to their entrenchment and continued domination of heath care. The idea was used by Republicans to oppose the Clinton health plan. Of course, the Clinton’s opposed it. But, by the 2008 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton supported the mandate (by then the insurance industry was a big financial backer of hers), but candidate Barack Obama opposed it. One of his campaign advertisements said: “What’s she not telling you about her health-care plan? It forces everyone to buy insurance, even if you can’t afford it, and you pay a penalty if you don’t.”

So, while I was out there watching groups like the National Organization for Women, who supports single payer favoring this pro-insurance law, as part of a coalition of Democratic Party aligned groups, I thought, what if President McCain had passed this law. My conclusion, we’d have the same people out here protesting, they’d just reverse sides. This was really not about healthcare, it was about Obama vs. the Republicans in this 2012 election year.

The people protesting followed their leader’s orders, said the chants they were told to say, and held the signs they were given to hold, but they were confused. When we talked to people on both sides the partisan confusion was evident.

My colleague, Margaret Flowers, asked two women carrying an Americans for Prosperity sign (a group opposed to Obama’s law) whether they were on Medicare. They said “yes.” “Do you like it?” Again, “yes.” “Do you know Medicare is a government program?” A confused look. “Do you know the Republicans want to end Medicare, make it into private insurance?” “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You probably support Obama”; and they started to walk away. “No, we oppose ObamaCare,” the women stopped and listened again, “We think everyone should have Medicare. Don’t you think it would be a good idea if every American could have the Medicare you have and like?” “Hmm, yes” then, more confusion in their faces.

Then, talking to the Democrats showed equal partisan confusion. I explained: “We oppose the Obama mandate because we want to end insurance control of health care. We support single payer, Medicare for all?” Response: “So do I.” I asked: “Single payer ends insurance, and Obama’s law entrenches insurance more deeply in control of health care, aren’t those opposites?” Response, obviously not understanding what ‘opposite’ means: “It’s a step in the right direction.” I ask: “How can it be a step in the right direction when it is going in the opposite direction?” No longer able to say it is the right direction, spouts another talking point: “This is the best we can get, we can build on this.” Me, trying to figure out what the Democrat thinks there is to build on, asks: “But, if we want to end insurance domination, how do we build on a law that is based on insurance?” Unable to explain it, the Democrat answers: “We can’t get what we want.” I say: “Of course, not, if people like you and organizations like yours who support single payer, spend their time advocating for the insurance industry, we can’t get what we want. But, if people who support single payer work for it we could.” Answer: “But, we have to re-elect President Obama.”

Partisan confusion reigned.

And, sadly partisan confusion dominates our airwaves as well. Of course, the right wing radio continues to attack Obama and confusingly calls a market-based, insurance-dominated health law socialism. But, sadly the “liberal” media sends out equal partisan confusion. We were able to go into Radio Row, where all the liberal radio outlets were interviewing “experts” on health care. The talking points, like in the conversation, were repeated and repeated. When one radio host wanted to interview me, really debate me since he was a Democratic apologist, I sat down. An organizer in the room asked the host to speak with her. She came back and told me I had to leave. This was private property and only people allowed to be here were allowed to be here. I explained I was invited by a station to be interviewed. She explained: “I tell them who to interview. The stations have slots and we fill them.” I asked: “Do you mean only people who support Obama can be interviewed.” She explained “The Republicans do it to.”

So, partisan confusion reigns and it permeates the airwaves leaving many people confused. We need to clear the FOG (Forces Of Greed) and get the truth on the air.

Despite all this supermajorities of Americans have consistently supported single payer, whether inaccurately called socialism or correctly described as “Medicare for all” 60% or more support it. Why? For the same reason that the great salesman President Obama and his superb marketing team have been unable to sell forced purchase of health insurance: Every family, business whether large or small; and every doctor or other health care provider have suffered insurance abuse. Two thirds of those who go bankrupt from a health problem have health insurance. The American experience is that health insurance is expensive, provides inadequate coverage and tries to avoid paying for health care. We all know this. So, no matter what the politicians say – Americans do not trust the health insurance industry.

But, one thing the two parties in Washington agree on – they will protect health insurance at all costs. After-all, they are a great source of campaign contributions – as the two politicians responsible for forcing Americans to buy insurance, President Obama and Mitt Romney, well know.

Recently 50 physicians, all strong supporters of Single-Payer, along with the Left wing non-profits, Single Payer Action and It’s Our Economy, have joined conservative and libertarian opposition to Obamacare. They have submitted to the Supreme Court an amicus brief which is a dagger aimed at the noxious heart of Obamacare, the individual mandate which codifies in law the domination of the health care system by the insurance companies. The brief states:

Amici thus submit this brief for the purpose of disputing the primary tenet of the Government’s position, that Congress cannot regulate the national healthcare market effectively unless it has power to require that citizens purchase insurance from private insurance companies. On the contrary, as set forth herein, Congress has already demonstrated that it can regulate healthcare markets effectively by implementing a single payer system such as Medicare or the VHA (Veterans Health Administration).

And in case the dagger failed to pierce its mark with that, the brief plunges deeper:

Government contends that the provision is not only “reasonable” but also “necessary” to its broader regulation of the national healthcare market. In particular, the Government contends that the individual mandate is “key to the viability of the Act’s guaranteed-issue and community-rating provisions.” But while it might be true that these provisions will adversely impact private insurers’ profits, and that the individual mandate offsets this adverse impact by guaranteeing the private insurers a large stream of new customers who are required by law to purchase insurance, that is not sufficient to render the individual mandate constitutional. If it were, Congress could “reform” any private industry – whether it be automobiles, coal, pharmaceuticals or any other – by enacting legislation requiring every that American purchase the industry’s goods or services in exchange for some perceived public good the industry provides. Yet Congress has never before enacted such a mandate.

The amicus brief makes no argument against other features of Obamacare, for example, regulation of insurance companies and coverage of those with pre-existing conditions. Such “severability” has been advocated by many, most recently by Columbia law professors, Abbe Gluck and Michael Graetz in a New York Times Op-ed on March 23. But the Obama administration has resisted this separation and many Left groups have been pushed into silence for fear that they will be seen as opposing the “good” features of Obamacare. Severability, never mentioned by Obama loyalists, provides a simple way to oppose the nefarious features of Obamacare and yet allow the other features to go forward.

Much of the rest of the brief is devoted to describing the superiority of single-payer systems, most notably affordability and equality of care. The simplest argument for Single-Payer is that it works as advertised, as can be seen readily in Canada or France, for example.

It is a grave misperception to regard Obamacare as a stepping stone to Single-Payer, as promoted by Obama loyalists. It is not. In fact, it is a massive obstacle. Once in place it will create the impression that universal coverage with cost controls has been achieved, postponing genuine change to another day. And until that day there will be much needless suffering, even as we spend ever more on health care.

Quite simply, Obamacare is the preferred option for both the Republican and Democratic establishments and their backers in the financial sector. Romneycare, its older, Republican twin, has failed to deliver on the promise of cost control and decent care for all. Instead it has delivered a captive population up to the tender mercies of the insurers. Obamacare is more of the same. The coinage Obomneycare says it all.

The real struggle is not between Left and Right but between the top, which favors Obomneycare, and the bottom, the 99% in the parlance of the moment. Hence it is no surprise to see groups of diverse political philosophies, even divergent ones at first sight, rise from among the vast majority to oppose this latest scheme to make money from human illness in the guise of health care reform.

This year the poverty meeting attracted a surprisingly large number of people, estimated to be well over a hundred. Many appeared to be ‘workers’ in the system – possibly on ‘company’ or taxpayer time.  There were also some interested private citizens.  A tiny number – maybe five or six – were real people, those who depend on the system for survival.

This article was inspired by the comments heard at the conference. Most showed a lack of understanding about the causes and effects of poverty.  The people meant well and were well-motivated. They were sincere and the compassion in their hearts was apparent, but many in our culture across the United States just do not get it.   Our culture is obsessed with a worship of wealth and material goods.  The bottom line is that we live in a very classist society.

In Bennington there are three very distinct classes.  First, there are the ‘fancy people’. They are the ones who rule and control everything. They are on the boards — the hospital board, the library board, the select board, the school boards.  They attend the formal fundraisers for the hospital and other institutions. They have the power — even the power over life and death. They, occasionally during a medical crisis in the hospital, make the decision to pull the plug or allow life to go on.

Then there is the large group of ordinary citizens. Some are blue collar workers.  Most work hard. Love their families. And have had family in Vermont for generations.  They acknowledge the class system in conversation often.   They call it the ol’ boys network – croneyism.

The third group consists of those who are in need. Those on the bottom of the economic pile.  At the conference some of the most impressive comments were made by a poor mother of two disabled children. She talked about the oppressive avalanche of redundant paper work required to get any tiny benefit.  The social services system is designed by nameless, faceless, unelected beaurocrats.  It is set up to assure maximum job security to the workers in the system. To a struggling family it often feels like an attack of the ‘paper churners’.   Being poor is a full time job.  Sadly, it often takes precious time away from the children.

Below are some observations, made during many years of studying the culture, not only in Vermont but across the US.

Poverty means living with shame.

Poverty means working three jobs, and still not ‘making it’.

Poverty means that you go to work when you are sick.  Worse than that you send your children to school when they are sick.

Sometimes poverty means that you skip meals so that your children can eat.

Poverty means that your housing is never secure.

Once in a while, poverty means that your child will be stereotyped and misjudged by his teacher.

Poverty means having no dependable source of transportation.

Poverty means that you will receive inferior health care – maybe no health care at all.

Poverty means that you have no access to dental care. Remember the death of Diamonte Driver – a 12 year-old Maryland boy.  His mother could not afford dental care for him. He died of a tooth abscess. An $80 tooth extraction would have saved his life.

Poverty is not like that described in The Waltons. Poverty can mean isolation from family and friends.

Poverty can mean missing your mother’s funeral because you had to go to work.

Poverty means you are invisible and voiceless.

Poverty means that no matter how hard you work, you will still be on the wrong side of the desk.

Poverty means that your hobby is not skiing or surfing.  It is surviving.

Living in poverty means that you will probably never hold elective office.

Poverty is declaring bankruptcy because your wife has cancer.

Being a low income father means that you will miss your son’s games because you have to work.

Living in poverty means that you have no options – no choices about where to live, what to eat.

Poverty means that you pay for the family groceries with a credit card – until it is maxed out.

Poverty means following all of the rules. Then graduating with oppressive student debt so that the president of UVM can be paid $447,000 per year.

Being poor means no access to gyms, fitness centers, etc.

Being poor means that you do not have equal access to the legal system.

Being a poor child means that you will be at increased risk of being bullied.

Being poor means that you dread the holidays. Your family celebrations are not like those depicted in Norman Rockwell paintings.

Being a baby in a low income family means that you might spend all of your infancy strapped to a plastic baby carrier in a day care center, while your mother goes to work.

Being poor could mean that you are the waitress serving Mothers’ Day dinner to other mothers in a fancy restaurant.

Being poor keeps you on the wrong side of the digital divide – no computer, no ISP, no cell phone, no Facebook, no Twitter.

Being poor might mean that you never get to see the ocean - never get to see your children playing in the surf…

Being young and poor in Bennington might mean that you never get to go to a library that doesn’t ban books.

Being poor means that you feel disenfranchised when there is so much focus on the middle class, and so little on the poor.

Living in poverty means that you care more about what is in your grocery sack than any news about Goldman Sachs.

Poverty means that your life-span will be shortened.

Even in death you might not escape the chains of poverty.  Being poor might mean that you have no say in the final disposal of your remains.  Cremation might be imposed, even if you would have preferred burial.

Being poor means that you carry the burden of the misjudgment of others.

Will the United States ever rise above the evils of classism and racism?   Is ‘poverty’ the new black?

We support health care reform but oppose the insurance mandate.  Merely removing two words from existing law will achieve the President’s stated goals of universal, affordable and guaranteed health care.  By removing the words “over 65” from the Medicare law, every American will have health care based on a proven public health care model that has been in existence since 1965.  This will control costs and immediately provide health care to everyone in the United States.

Forcing Americans to buy insurance is both unconstitutional and bad policy.  Even the most favorable estimates of the Affordable Care Act predict that tens of millions of Americans will not have health insurance when it is fully implemented in 2019. The number of employers offering health benefits will decline under the ACA pushing employees into the individual insurance market where coverage is skimpier and more expensive.  The cost of premiums continues to rise and insurance coverage continues to shrink, putting patients at risk of personal bankruptcy when they suffer a serious accident or illness.

The United States already spends enough to provide health care to all.  As the amicus brief states:

Studies conducted by the nonpartisan General Accounting Office and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office have consistently concluded that if a national single payer system were implemented in the United States, administrative cost-savings alone would be enough to guarantee universal coverage without increasing overall healthcare spending.

In addition, improved Medicare for all will slow the growth in the cost of health care. The cost of health care under Medicare is growing more slowly than private insurance-based health care, despite the fact that it deals with America’s elderly and disabled populations, groups that generally need more health care services.  Unlike private insurance, under Medicare the increased cost is not due to administrative costs and bureaucracy. Medicare’s administrative costs have been consistently about 2% while private insurance is 16% administrative costs.

Instead, the ACA builds and expands the system of private insurance. This system is among the least efficient of any healthcare system currently operating in developed nations.  The brief states:  “In 2009, 28 healthcare expenditures accounted for 17.4 percent of GDP in the United States, compared with only 9.6 percent in the average OECD [The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development] nation” and “measured per capita, healthcare expenditures in the United States ‘are by far the highest among OECD countries.’”

Medicare provides health services that people like, as the brief points out:  “In addition to achieving universal coverage for Americans aged 65 and older and maintaining consistently low administrative costs, Medicare is also highly rated by senior citizens who are its primary beneficiaries – 51 percent of whom give their health insurance an ‘excellent” rating.’”

If the US Congress had considered an evidence-based approach to health reform instead of writing a bill that funnels more wealth to insurance companies that deny and restrict care, it would have been a no brainer to adopt improved Medicare for all. All the data points to a single payer system as the only way to accomplish universal health care and control health care costs.

It is also bad precedent to allow the federal government to mandate all Americans buy a corporate product.  This takes corporate welfare to new levels of extreme.  If this is upheld, will a future president facing an economic crisis require Americans to buy cars made in the USA – of course, with a government subsidy?  Or, will the pension crisis in the United States be ‘solved’ by setting up a pension exchange of JP Morgan, Bank of America, Well Fargo, Chase and Citibank and require Americans to buy a federally subsidized pension from Wall Street?

Finally, an improved Medicare for all system will give everyone in the United States the greatest control of their own healthcare.  The insurance industry will be removed from between doctors and patients.  Doctors will not have to convince an insurance, profit-minded, bureaucrat to pay for a treatment.  And, people will no longer be threatened with increased premiums, decreased coverage and financial ruin caused by an insurance industry that puts profits before people.

We filed the amicus brief because forcing people to purchase a flawed product, private health insurance, is not necessary and will not achieve the goals of universal, guaranteed and affordable health care. There is a health care model in the US already that will achieve these goals – that’s improved Medicare for all. Medicare for all is constitutional and simple to attain – just drop a few words from existing law and we will be on the path to joining the rest of the civilized world when it comes to health care.

It makes no difference if it’s timber, oil, or coal. In the 1970s and 1980s, the nuclear energy industry promised well-paying jobs, clean energy, and a safe health and work environment. Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima Daiichi, and thousands of violations issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Agency, have shown that even with strict operating guidelines, nuclear energy isn’t as clean and safe as claimed. Like all other energy industries, nuclear power isn’t infinite. Most plants have a 40–50 year life cycle. After that, the plant becomes so radioactive hot that it must be sealed.

In the early 21st century, the natural gas industry follows the model of the other energy corporations, and uses the same rhetoric. James M. Taylor, senior fellow at the Heartland Institute, claims on the Institute’s website, “The newfound abundance of domestic gas reserves promises unprecedented energy prosperity and security.”

The energy policy during the eight years of the George W. Bush–Dick Cheney administration was to give favored status to the industry, often at the expense of the environment. In addition to negating Bill Clinton’s strong support for the Kyoto Protocol, signed by 191 countries, to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, former oil company executives Bush and Cheney pushed to open significant federal land, including the 19 million acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), to drilling that would disrupt the ecological balance in one of the nation’s most pristine areas.

A study by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), published in 2004 concluded that fracking was of little or no risk to human health. However, Wes Wilson, a 30-year EPA environmental engineer, in a letter to members of Congress and the EPA inspector general, called that study “scientifically unsound,” and questioned the bias of the panel, noting that five of the seven members had significant ties to the industry. “EPA’s failure to regulate [fracking] appears to be improper under the Safe Water Drinking Act and may result in danger to public health and safety.”

The following year, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 — on a 249–183 vote in the House and an 85–12 vote in the Senate — exempted the oil and natural gas industry from the Safe Water Drinking Act. That exemption applied to the “construction of new well pads and the accompanying new roads and pipelines.” The National Defense Resource Council noted that the EPA interpreted the exemption “as allowing unlimited discharges of sediment into the nation’s streams, even where those discharges contribute to a violation of state water quality standards.” The exemption became known derisively as the Halliburton Loophole, named for one of the nation’s major energy companies, of which Cheney, whose promotion of Big Business and opposition to environmental policies is well-documented, had once been the CEO.

Bills introduced in the U.S. House (H.R. 2766) and U.S. Senate (S. 1215) in June 2009 to give federal regulatory oversight under the Safe Water Drinking Act to hydraulic fracturing languished. New bills (H.R. 1084 and S. 587), introduced in March 2011 in the 112th Congress, are also expected to die without a vote.

The natural gas industry has a long history of effective lobbying at the state and national level. America’s Natural Gas Alliance has four former Congressmen as lobbyists, according to research by the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP). Through various political action committees (PACs), the industry has contributed about $238.7 million in campaign contributions, about three-fourths of it to Republican candidates, since 1990, according to the CRP. For the 2008 election, the gas and oil industry contributed $27.4 million, including contributions from individuals, PACs, and soft money, according to CRP data. Total contributions for the current election cycle, as of mid-March, are $20.6 million, with almost 90 percent of it going to Republicans.

At the federal level, the top recipients of oil and gas contributions during the current election cycle, according to the CRP, are former presidential hopeful Gov. Rick Perry of Texas ($833,674), Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst of Texas ($650,850), presidential hopeful Mitt Romney ($597,950), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ($264,700), and Sen. John Barasso of Wyoming ($225,400), a member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Every one of the top 20 recipients is a Republican.

Barack Obama, although significantly more environmental friendly than his predecessor, had opened up off-shore drilling just prior to the BP oil spill in the Gulf Coast in April 2010. He has repeatedly spoken against the heavy use and dependence upon fossil fuels, and sees the expanded use of natural gas as a transition fuel to expanded use of wind and solar energy. Nevertheless, he has still received funding from the natural gas industry. During the 2008 presidential campaign, he received $920,922 from the oil and gas industry, according to data compiled by the CRP. His opponent, Sen. John McCain, according to CRP, accepted $2,543,154.

In contrast, the 1.4 million member Sierra Club, since August 2010, has refused to accept any donations from the natural gas industry. The Sierra Club, which has actively opposed the development of coal as an energy source, had received $27 million since 2007 from Chesapeake Energy. By 2010, “our view of natural gas [and fracking] had changed [and we] stopped the funding relationship between the Club and the gas industry, and all fossil fuel companies or executives,” says Michael Brune, Sierra’s executive director.

Mixed into Pennsylvania’s energy production is not only a symbiotic relationship of business and government, but a history of corruption and influence-peddling. Between 1859, when an economical method to drill for oil was developed near Titusville, Pa., and 1933, the beginning of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” Pennsylvania, under almost continual Republican administration, was among the nation’s most corrupt states. The robber barons of the timber, oil, coal, steel, and transportation industries essentially bought their right to be unregulated. In addition to widespread bribery, the energy industries, especially coal, assured the election of preferred candidates by giving pre-marked ballots to workers, many of whom didn’t read English.

In a letter to the editor of The New York Times in March 2011, John Wilmer, a former attorney for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), explained that “Pennsylvania’s shameful legacy of corruption and mismanagement caused 2,500 miles of streams to be totally dead from acid mine drainage; left many miles of scarred landscape; enriched the coal barons; and impoverished the local citizens.” His words serve as a warning about what is happening in the natural gas fields.

Pennsylvania’s new law that regulates and gives favorable treatment to the natural gas industry was initiated and passed by the Republican-controlled General Assembly and signed by Republican Gov. Tom Corbett. The House voted 101–90 for passage; the Senate voted, 31–19. Both votes were mostly along party lines.

In addition to forbidding physicians and health care professionals from disclosing what the industry believes are “trade secrets” in what it uses in fracking that may cause air and water pollution, there are other industry-favorable provisions.

The new law guts local governments’ rights of zoning and long-term planning, doesn’t allow for local health and environmental regulation, forbids municipalities to appeal state decisions about well permits, and provides subsidies to the natural gas industry and payments for out-of-state workers to get housing but provides for no incentives or tax credits to companies to hire Pennsylvania workers.

It also requires companies to provide fresh water, which can be bottled water, to areas in which they contaminate the water supply, but doesn’t require the companies to clean up the pollution or even to track transportation and deposit of contaminated wastewater. The law allows companies to place wells 300 feet from houses, streams and wetlands. The law also allows compressor stations to be placed 750 feet from houses, and gives natural gas companies authority to operate these stations continuously at up to 60 decibels, the equivalent of continuous conversation in restaurants. The noise level and constant artificial lighting has adverse effects upon wildlife.

As a result of all the concessions, the natural gas industry is given special considerations not given any other business or industry in Pennsylvania.

Each well is expected to generate about $16 million during its lifetime, which can be as few as ten years, according to the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center (PBPC). The effective tax and impact fee is about 2 percent. Corbett had originally wanted no tax or impact fees placed upon natural gas drilling; as public discontent increased, he suggested a 1 percent tax, which was in the original House bill. In contrast, other states that allow natural gas fracking have tax rates as high as 7.5 percent of market value (Texas) and 25–50 percent of net income (Alaska). The Pennsylvania rate can vary, based upon the price of natural gas and inflation, but will still be among the five lowest of the 32 states that allow natural gas drilling. Over the lifetime of a well, Pennsylvania will collect about $190,000–$350,000, while West Virginia will collect about $993,700, Texas will collect about $878,500, and Arkansas will collect about $555,700, according to PBPC data and analyses.

State Sen. Daylin Leach, a Democrat from suburban Philadelphia, says he opposed the bill because, “At a time when we are closing our schools and eliminating vital human services, to leave billions on the table as a gift to industry that is already going to be making billions is obscene.” State Rep. Mark Cohen, a Democrat from Philadelphia, like most of the Democrats in the General Assembly, agrees. The legislation, he says, “produces far too little revenue for local communities, gives the local communities local taxing power which most of them do not want, because it pits one community against the other, and gives no revenue at all to other areas of the state.”

The new law is generally believed to be “payback” by Corbett and the Republican legislators for campaign contributions. The industry contributed about $7.2 million to Pennsylvania candidates and their PACs between 2000 and the end of 2010, including $860,825 to the Republican party and $129,100 to the Democratic party, according to data compiled by Common Cause. In addition, the natural gas industry contributed about $1.6 million to Corbett’s political campaigns during the past 10 years, about $1.1 million of that for his campaign for governor, according to Common Cause. Rep. Brian L. Ellis (R-Butler County), sponsor of the House bill, received $23,300. Sen. Joseph B. Scarnati (R- Warren, Pa.), the senate president pro-tempore who sponsored the companion Senate bill (SB 1100), received $293,334. Of the 20 Pennsylvania legislators who received the most money from the industry since 2001, 16 are Republicans, according to Common Cause.

Rep. H. William DeWeese (D-Waynesburg, Pa.), received $58,750, the most of the four Democrats. DeWeese, first elected in 1976, had been Speaker of the House and Democratic leader.

It’s possible that the significant campaign contributions didn’t influence Pennsylvania’s politicians to rush to embrace the natural gas industry and its controversial use of hydraulic fracking. It’s possible that these politicians had always believed in fracking, and the natural gas industry was merely contributing to the campaigns of those who believed as they do. However, with the heavy amount of money spent by the natural gas lobby and, apparently, willingly accepted by certain politicians, there is no way to know how they might have voted had no money or lobbying occurred.

Tom Corbett’s first major political appointment after his election in November 2010 was to name C. Alan Walker, an energy company executive, to head the Department of Community and Economic Development. The Pennsylvania Progressive identified Walker as “an ardent anti-environmentalist and someone who hates regulation of his industry.” A ProPublica investigation revealed that Walker had given $184,000 to Corbett’s political campaign.

Shortly after taking office, Corbett repealed environmental assessments of gas wells in state parks. The result could be as many as 2,200 well pads on almost 90 percent of all public lands, according to Nature Conservancy of Pennsylvania.

Corbett’s public announcements in March 2011, two months after his inauguration, established the direction for gas drilling in Pennsylvania.

In his first budget address, Corbett boldly declared he wanted to “make Penn­syl­va­nia the hub of this [drilling] boom. Just as the oil com­pa­nies decided to head­quar­ter in one of a dozen states with oil, let’s make Penn­syl­va­nia the Texas of the nat­ural gas boom. I’m deter­mined that Penn­syl­va­nia not lose this moment.” Lt. Gov. Jim Cawley would later boast, “The Marcellus [Shale] is revitalizing our main streets in downtowns.”

Within the budget bill, Corbett authorized Walker to “expedite any permit or action pending in any agency where the creation of jobs may be impacted.” This unprecedented reach apparently applied to all energy industries. That same month, Corbett created an Advisory Commission, loaded with persons from business and industry. Not one member was from the health professions; of the seven state agencies represented, not one member was from the Department of Health.

Between 2007 and the end of 2010, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) issued 1,435 violations to natural gas companies; 952 of those violations related to potential harm to the environment. In March, Michael Krancer, the new DEP secretary, also a political appointee, took personal control over his department’s issuance of any violations. By Krancer’s decree, every inspector could no longer cite any well owner in the Marcellus Shale development without first getting the approval of Krancer and his executive deputy secretary.

“It’s an extraordinary directive [that] represents a break from how business has been done” and politicizes the process, John Hanger told ProPublica. Hanger, DEP secretary under the Ed Rendell administration, said the new rules “will cause the public to lose confidence entirely in the inspection process.” He told the Scranton Times-Tribune the new policy was the equivalent of every trooper having to get permission from the state police commissioner before issuing a traffic citation.  Because the new policy is so unusual and broad “it’s impossible for something like this to be issued without the direction and knowledge of the governor’s office,” said Hanger. Corbett denied he was responsible for the decision. Five weeks after the Krancer decision was leaked to the media, and following a strong negative response from the public, environmental groups, and the state’s media, the DEP rescinded the policy—which Krancer claimed was only a three-month “pilot program.”

“When state agencies say they will ‘regulate’ or ‘monitor’ hydraulic fracturing to reduce known threats, we should not accept this as a guarantee of any kind,” says Eileen Fay, an animal rights/environmental writer. Fay argues that because of legislative corruption, it is a responsibility of citizens to protect their own health and environment by “putting pressure on our legislators.”

In February 2012, Corbett proudly signed Act 13, a merger of the House and Senate bills.

HB 1950 had initially included a provision to provide up to $2 million a year in funding to the Department of Health for “collecting and disseminating information, preparing and conducting  health care provider outreach and education and investigating health related complaints and other uses associated with unconventional natural gas production activity.” That provision, strongly supported by numerous public health and environmental groups, was deleted in the final bill.

The Pennsylvania Constitution (Article I, section 27) declares:

 The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment. Pennsylvania’s public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the Commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people.

However, unlike New York state, which placed a moratorium on well permits while it is evaluating the health and environmental risks, Pennsylvania has rushed to embrace the natural gas industry and its use of fracking, apparently disregarding its own Constitution. The Susquehanna River Basin Commission has routinely approved requests from drillers to remove millions of gallons of water each day from the river, although the commissioners have not requested any health impact statements or undertaken a complete cumulative impact study, according to Iris Marie Bloom, an environmental writer and activist. Because of the nature of the Marcellus Shale deposit in Pennsylvania, as opposed to neighboring states, natural gas companies have to transport the wastewater to other states for re-use or disposal or take it to sewage treatment plants. The plants then discharge the treated wastewater into the state’s rivers. However, present methods can’t remove the salt and some other chemicals and radioactive elements. Currently, about 11 million gallons of wastewater a day are taken from the Susquehanna for fracking operations; about three times that amount is anticipated when fracking reaches its peak in the state, according to Paul Swartz, Commission executive director. In contrast, the Delaware River Basic Commission has put a moratorium on taking water from that river until studies have been completed.

Pennsylvania is “handing out permits almost like popcorn in a theater,” says Diane Siegmund, a psychologist from Towanda. Between Jan. 1, 2005 and March 2, 2012, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection issued 10,232 permits, and denied only 36 requests.

Siegmund is frustrated by what she sees not only as state government’s acceptance of fracking but of numerous local governments in the Marcellus Shale region from speaking out on behalf of the preservation of health and the environment. When she went to the Bradford County commissioners with stacks of research about problems with fracking, “all they did was to thank me and claim it’s not their problem.” She says residents are beginning to believe that local governments are operating in collusion with the energy companies.

But it isn’t just governments. The issue of fracking has divided towns like Dimock, Pa. In November 2009, 15 residents sued Cabot Oil and Gas, charging that the company contaminated their drinking water. Tests conducted by the DEP during the last years of the Ed Rendell administration had revealed there was higher than expected methane gas in 18 water wells that provided drinking water to 13 homes near the drills. The build-up of methane gas had also led to well explosions and DEP warnings to citizens to keep their windows open. Among the provisions of a consent order, the state required Cabot to provide fresh water to families whose water had been affected by the excess methane gas. Cabot denied its fracking operation was responsible for the elevated levels. On November 30, 2011, after the DEP, now under the Tom Corbett administration, declared the water to be safe to drink, Cabot stopped delivering water.

And then something strange happened. The town of Binghamton, N.Y., about 35 miles north, said it would provide a tanker of fresh water. However, the supervisors of Dimock Twp., supported by most of the 140 residents who attended the meeting, most of them with some economic ties to the natural gas industry, refused the offer. According to reporting in the Scranton Times-Tribune, when Binghamton mayor Matthew T. Ryan asked “Why not let people help?” he was rebuffed by one of the township’s three supervisors who snapped, “Why should we haul them water? They got themselves into this. You keep your nose in Binghamton.”

In January 2012, after declaring that the water “contains levels of contaminants that pose a health concern,” the EPA decided it would bring water to residents in Dimock. The response by Cabot was that the EPA was wasting taxpayer money in its investigation of Cabot environmental and health practices. The response by Pennsylvania’s DEP was almost as inflammatory as the water in the taps. Michael Krancer, DEP’s head, not only disagreed with the EPA findings, he called the agency’s knowledge of fracking to be “rudimentary.”

In mid-March, following preliminary tests on several of the wells serving Dimock residents, the EPA found that the water “did not show levels of contamination that could present a health concern.” However, it acknowledged arsenic, some metals, and potentially explosive methane gas remained in the water. A ProPublica investigation revealed that four of the five water samples it obtained showed methane levels exceeding Pennsylvania standards.

“We are deeply troubled by Region 3’s rush to judge the science before testing is even complete, and by their apparent disregard for established standards of drinking water safety,” said Claire Sandberg, executive director of Water Defense. She questioned why EPA Region 3’s handling of the Dimock case differed from how other EPA regional offices handled similar cases in Texas and Wyoming when it didn’t release the information until all testing was completed. Dr. Ron Bishop, professor of biochemistry at SUNY/Oneonta, told ProPublica, “Any suggestion that water from these wells is safe for domestic use would be preliminary or inappropriate.”

The extraction of natural gas has also led to the development of other industries—and the exploitation of the people. In Jersey Shore, Pa., about 20 miles west of Williamsport, Aqua PVR bought a 37-unit mobile home village, with plans to build a water withdrawal plant to provide up to three million gallons a day to the natural gas industry. The day the purchase was completed on February 23, 2012, Aqua told the residents their leases were terminated “immediately,” according to reporting in the Sun-Gazette. The company gave residents until May 1 to leave. To sweeten what may be seen as a callous corporate action, Aqua said it would give $2,500 to each resident that moved by April 1, and $1,500 if they moved by May 1. However, as the Sun-Gazette reported, the cost to move each mobile home ranged from $5,000 to $12,000. Many of the residents lived in the village more than a decade; one was there 38 years. The newspaper reported that most trailer parks in the area were already at maximum occupancy, and others would not accept the older trailers.

“Residents are afraid to speak up,” says Diane Siegmund, who points out there is “a lot of fear” among the residents, those whose lives are being uprooted, those whose health is being compromised, and those whose economic benefits may be compromised if fracking operations are reduced.

“As long as the powers can keep the people isolated and fragmented,” says Siegmund, “the momentum for change can never be gained.” The experience in Dimock is seen throughout the Marcellus Shale region.

It’s not unreasonable to expect people who are unemployed or underemployed to grasp for anything to help themselves and their families, nor is it unreasonable to expect that persons—roustabouts, clerks, truck drivers, helicopter pilots, among several hundred thousand in dozens of job classifications—will take better paid jobs, even if it often means 60 hour work weeks under hazardous conditions. It’s also not unreasonable to expect that families living in agricultural and rural areas, who are struggling to survive, will snap at the lure of several thousand dollars to lease mineral rights and some of their land to an energy company, which will also pay royalties. But what is unreasonable is that government allows corporations to flourish at the expense of the people and their environment.

The Sierra Club urges that the country needs “to leapfrog over gas whenever possible in favor of truly clean energy. Instead of rushing to see how quickly we can extract natural gas, we should be focusing on how to be sure we are using less—and safeguarding our health and environment in the meantime.”

Christopher Portier, director of the National Center for Environmental Health, calls for more research studies that “include all the ways people can be exposed [to health hazards], such as through air, water, soil, plants and animals.”

In November 2011, the Advisory Board of the U.S. Department of Energy concluded: “The public deserves assurance that the full economic, environmental and energy security benefits of shale gas development will be realized without sacrificing public health, environmental protection and safety.”

When the history of natural gas exploration in Pennsylvania is finally written, the story will be that it was a cheaper, cleaner energy source, and that it temporarily helped some people in rural areas, and brought some well-paying jobs into the state. But history will probably also record that the lure of immediate gratification led Pennsylvania’s politicians to willingly accept political donations that led them to sacrifice their citizens’ health and the state’s environment.

• Assisting on this series, in addition to those quoted within the articles, were Rosemary R. Brasch, Eileen Fay, and Dr. Wendy Lynne Lee.

Why the milk drinking nosedive? First, many U.S. groups from ethnic minorities, the lactose intolerant and allergic to dieters, the health conscious and vegans simply do not drink much, or any, milk. Kids themselves often dislike milk–probably why they invented chocolate milk–and it is often the last choice among teens and tweens–on whom much milk marketing is focused. Health care professionals, unless subsidized by the dairy industry, seldom recommend milk because of its cholesterol, fat, calories, allergens and impurities and its possible links to rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone) since milk made with the cow milk enhancer has never been labeled.  Benjamin Spock, MD, the famous baby boom–era pediatrician, recommended no milk for children after age two to reduce their risks of heart disease, obesity, high blood pressure,  diabetes, and diet-related cancers.

Milk marketers admit that the public’s “preference” for milk may be changing, but also blame calcium-fortified juices and vitamin-enhanced beverages that  “undermine” milk’s healthy image and “limited availability” of milk in eating establishments and even milk’s price. You can’t find milk anywhere — and when you do, you can’t afford it! The agencies also note that national milk sales are falling as the “proportion of African Americans in the population increases”– a group not known to be big milk drinkers — and because the proportion of children under six has not grown much.

Milk marketers have tried everything to reverse falling sales. During the 1980s when the slogan was “Milk: It Does a Body Good,” they began marketing milk for strong bones and to prevent osteoporosis. “One in five victims of osteoporosis is male,” said milk ads featuring  model Tyra Banks, as the mustache campaign debuted. “Don’t worry. Calcium can help prevent it.” Another early mustache ad with musician Marc Anthony read,  “Shake it, don’t break it. Want strong bones? Drinking enough low fat milk now can help prevent osteoporosis later.”

But there were both marketing and scientific problems with the campaign. Teens and tweens don’t worry much about old people diseases whether osteoporosis or skin damage from sun exposure because who’s gonna get old? And African Americans, Latinos and men, groups targeted in the strong bone campaign, are the least at risk for osteoporosis say doctors. Oops!

Health professionals also disputed the bone claims themselves. A 2001 USDA expert panel report said that calcium intake by itself , as milk offers, does not prevent osteoporosis because exercise and nutrients other than calcium are part of the bone health picture. Panelists also said whole milk could increase the risk of prostate cancer and heart disease and ads should include such warnings.

And other experts like T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D., author of The China Study and heart expert Dean Ornish, M.D, of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute, agreed that osteoporosis and fractures are not caused by what marketers were presenting as “milk deficiencies.” In fact, the Western diet itself, which often has too much protein and acid, is blamed by some researchers and nutritionists for osteoporosis and fractures. The popular proton pump inhibitors like Nexium, Prevacid and Prilosec, which people take for acid reflux, are also blamed for fractures.

Undaunted, in 2002, milk marketers told Congress they were marketing the scientific benefits of milk for osteoporosis, breast cancer and hypertension and especially focusing on African Americans.

“The Fluid Milk Board continues to spotlight the high incidence of high blood pressure among African Americans and to promote milk and milk products as a dietary solution as part of the DASH [Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension] diet,” says the report to Congress. “The program also addresses misconceptions about lactose intolerance and shows why it should not be a barrier to including milk in the diet. The Board launched a new lactose intolerance initiative that focuses on educating African Americans on the importance of incorporating milk into their diet. The programs provided educational material on osteoporosis and lactose intolerance.”

Milk marketers also seemed to take a cue from the cartoon character, Joe Camel, used by R. J. Reynolds to market Camel cigarettes, and made milk more fun. Milk containers were redesigned into new hand-friendly decanters, called the Chug and a spoof-y musical group was rolled out on YouTube and social-networking sites called White Gold and the Calcium Twins.

http://www.spinner.com/2008/05/12/milk-strikes-white-gold-with-new-ad-campaign/ The “Got Milk?” site also ran an animated cartoon of a farm which depicted happy cows, chickens, ducks, and pigs (and a horse working out on a treadmill), while milk cartons moved by on a conveyor belt. A helium balloon pops up continually, saying, “Tell Your Friends.” (no Web link anymore)

“Do you think drinking calcium fortified beverages like soy drinks and orange juice will meet your bones’ requirements?” asks the  site. “Not really, says research that concluded 75 percent of calcium added to popular beverages gets left at the bottom of the carton.” But then, a disclaimer pops up and confesses that milk’s actual benefits for “bones, PMS, sleep, teeth, hair, muscles [and] nails” have been “purposefully exaggerated so as not to bore you.” What?

And that’s the least of the student marketing. Posters of mustache-wearing actors, sports figures, musicians, and models are sent to sixty thousand U.S. elementary schools and forty-five thousand middle and high schools and ads appear in Sports Illustrated for Kids, Spin, Electronic Gaming, CosmoGirl, Blender, Seventeen and elsewhere.

Students have been told if they visit milk websites, they can win an iPod, a Fender guitar, clothes from Adidas and Baby Phat and their schools could qualify for sports gear, classroom supplies, and musical instruments. There was also peer-to-peer, in-class selling at three California schools where students got a chance to create their own “Got Milk?” campaigns and qualify for an all-expense-paid trip to San Francisco to present their ideas to milk officials for future milk marketing campaigns.

The cost of an ad campaign guaranteed to sell milk to teens because it was created by teens? Priceless.

In 2005, milk marketers tried to widen the demographic by positioning milk as a cure for premenstrual syndrome, commonly called PMS. TV ads showing bumbling boyfriends and husbands rushing to the store for milk to detoxify their stricken women. But the study on which the campaign was based, credited calcium, not milk, with relieving PMS — a substance found in many sources besides milk (including the “calcium-fortified juices” that milk marketers battle against). And when milk marketers tried to revive the PMS campaign in 2011, the second time around it elicited  a tsunami of sexism charges and had to be scrapped.

Then, milk marketers sought an even wider demographic by rolling out the idea of milk as a diet food. “Studies suggest that the nutrients in milk can play an important role in weight loss. So if you’re trying to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight, try drinking 24 ounces of low-fat or fat-free milk every 24 hours as part of your reduced-calorie diet,” said the ads. The diet campaign was especially targeted to the Hispanic community, which is known both for its high obesity rates and its low milk consumption. There was even a related school program called “Healthiest Student Bodies,” which recognized twenty-five schools around the country for providing “an environment that encourages healthy choices for students.”

The milk-as-a-diet-food campaign had many catchy slogans — “Milk Your Diet,” “Body by Milk,” “Think about Your Drink,” “Why Milk?” “24oz/24hours, 3-a-Day” (and, of course, “Got Milk?”) — and the help of hotties Elizabeth Hurley and Sheryl Crowe modeling mustaches.  But soon after it debuted,  a study of twenty thousand men who increased their intake of low-fat dairy foods found they did not lose weight. “The hypothesis that has been floating around is that increasing dairy can promote weight loss, and in this study, I did not find that,” said researcher Swapnil Rajpathak, MD, assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Population Health at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Worse, the research behind the weight-loss claims was largely conducted by Michael Zemel, Ph.D, director of the Nutrition Institute at the University of Tennessee, who had “patented” the claim that calcium or dairy products could help against obesity. The patent was owned by the university and licensed to Dairy Management Inc., reported USA Today.

The milk-as-a-diet-food suggestions also did not sound like they would produce weight loss. They included, “Make soups and chowders with milk,” “Add milk to risotto and rice dishes for a creamier texture,” and “Order a milk-based soup like corn chowder, potato leek or cream of broccoli as a first course at dinner.” What is the next course– a stick of butter?

Soon the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Bureau of Consumer Protection directed milk marketers to stop the weight-loss campaign “until further research provides stronger, more conclusive evidence of an association  between dairy consumption and weight loss.” Milk marketing materials stopped claiming that milk makes drinkers lose weight, instead saying it doesn’t necessarily add weight – which is pretty different. They also retooled their claims to say that milk may have “certain nutrients that can help consumers meet dietary requirements”—pretty much the definition of “food.”

In February, milk marketers went for an even wider demographic — the set of all people who eat little or no breakfast — or at least a breakfast without milk. Using the bilingual actress Salma Hayek as pitchwoman, the new campaign, called the Breakfast Project, also targets  Spanish speaking communities with ads in People en Español and Ser Padres magazines and on the Univision morning show “Despierta América” as well as on English speaking media. “It’s Not Breakfast Without Milk,” say the new slogans; “Because Every Good Day Starts With Milk,” and “Hello, Sunshine.”

Like other milk marketing campaigns, the Breakfast Project is upbeat, interactive, inclusive and fun, offering recipes, tips, a “morning survival guide” and even a chance to win free milk. And like the other campaigns, it has little chance of selling a product people don’t particular like which is not particularly good for them. We won’t even talk about the filth and cruelty of modern dairy farms and what happens to veal calves, a “byproduct” of the industry to keep cows lactating.

Still, milk marketers seem to have learned one lesson from the disproved osteoporosis, PMS and weight loss claims of past campaigns: the Breakfast Project makes no appeal to science or medicine to support the marketed milk benefits. Instead of “studies have shown,” or “research has revealed” the new campaign simply says, “We believe milk is part of getting a successful day started.” Of course, they believe it, they are the dairy industry. Have they ever lied to us?

•  An earlier version of this story ran on Alternet.org.

The industry claims well drilling in the Marcellus Shale will bring several hundred thousand jobs, and has minimal health and environmental risk. President Barack Obama in his January 2012 State of the Union, said he believes the development of natural gas as an energy source to replace fossil fuels could generate 600,000 jobs.

However, research studies by economists Dr. Jannette M. Barth, Dr. Deborah Rogers, and others debunk the idea of significant job creation.

Barry Russell, president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, says “no evidence directly connects injection of fracking fluid into shale with aquifer contamination.” Fracking “has never been found to contaminate a water well,” says Christine Cronkright, communications director for the Pennsylvania Department of Health.

Research studies and numerous incidents of water contamination prove otherwise.

In late 2010, equipment failure may have led to toxic levels of chemicals in the well water of at least a dozen families in Conoquenessing Twp. in Bradford County. Township officials and Rex Energy, although acknowledging that two of the drilling wells had problems with the casings, claimed there were pollutants in the drinking water before Rex moved into the area. John Fair disagrees. “Everybody had good water a year ago,” Fair told environmental writer and activist Iris Marie Bloom in February 2012. Bloom says residents told her the color of water changed (to red, orange, and gray) after Rex began drilling. Among chemicals detected in the well water, in addition to methane gas, were ammonia, arsenic, chloromethane, iron, manganese, t-butyl alcohol, and toluene. While not acknowledging that its actions could have caused the pollution, Rex did provide fresh water to the residents, but then stopped doing so on February 29, 2012, after the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) said the well water was safe. The residents vigorously disagreed and staged protests against Rex; environmental activists and other residents trucked in portable water jugs to help the affected families. The Marcellus Outreach Butler blog (MOB) declared that residents’ “lives have been severely disrupted and their health has been severely impacted. To unceremoniously ‘close the book’ on investigations into their troubles when so many indicators point to the culpability of the gas industry for the disruption of their lives is unconscionable.”

In April 2011, near Towanda, Pa., seven families were evacuated after about 10,000 gallons of wastewater contaminated an agricultural field and a stream that flows into the Susquehanna River, the result of an equipment failure, according to the Bradford County Emergency Management Agency.

The following month, DEP fined Chesapeake Energy $900,000, the largest amount in the state’s history, for allowing methane gas to pollute the drinking water of 16 families in Bradford County during the previous year. The DEP noted there may have been toxic methane emissions from as many as six wells in five towns. The DEP also fined Chesapeake $188,000 for a fire at a well in Washington County that injured three workers.

In January 2012, an equipment failure at a drill site in Susquehanna County led to a spill of several thousand gallons of fluid for almost a half-hour, causing “potential pollution,” according to the DEP. In its citation to Carizzo Oil and Gas, the DEP “strongly” recommended that the company cease drilling at all 67 wells “until the cause of this problem and a solution are identified.”

In December 2011, the federal Environmental Protection Agency concluded that fracking operations could be responsible for groundwater pollution.

“Today’s methods make gas drilling a filthy business. You know it’s bad when nearby residents can light the water coming out of their tap on fire,” says Larry Schweiger, president of the National Wildlife Federation. What’s causing the fire is the methane from the drilling operations. A ProPublica investigation in 2009 revealed methane contamination was widespread in drinking water in areas around fracking operations in Colorado, Texas, Wyoming, and Pennsylvania. The presence of methane in drinking water in Dimock, Pa., had become the focal point for Josh Fox’s investigative documentary, Gasland, which received an Academy Award nomination in 2011 for Outstanding Documentary; Fox also received an Emmy for non-fiction directing. Fox’s interest in fracking intensified when a natural gas company offered $100,000 for mineral rights on property his family owned in Milanville, in the extreme northeast part of Pennsylvania, about 60 miles east of Dimock.

Research by a team of scientists from Duke University revealed “methane contamination of shallow drinking water systems [that is] associated with shale-gas extraction.” The data and conclusions, published in the May 2011 issue of the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, noted that not only did most drinking wells near drilling sites have methane, but those closest to the drilling wells, about a half-mile, had an average of 17 times the methane of  those of other wells.

“Some of the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing—or liberated by it—are carcinogens,” Dr. Sandra Steingraber told members of the Environmental Conservation and Health committee of the New York State Assembly. Dr. Steingraber, a biologist and distinguished scholar in residence at Ithaca College, pointed out that some of the chemicals “are neurological poisons with suspected links to learning deficits in children,” while others “are asthma triggers. Some, especially the radioactive ones, are known to bioaccumulate in milk. Others are reproductive toxicants that can contribute to pregnancy loss.”

An investigation by New York Times reporter Ian Urbina, based upon thousands of unreported EPA documents and a confidential study by the natural gas industry, concluded, “Radioactivity in drilling waste cannot be fully diluted in rivers and other waterways.” Urbina learned that waste water from fracking operations was about 100 times more toxic than federal drinking water standards; 15 wells had readings about 1,000 times higher than standards.

Research by Dr. Ronald Bishop, a biochemist at SUNY/Oneonta, suggests that fracking to extract methane gas “is highly likely to degrade air, surface water and ground-water quality, to harm humans, and to negatively impact aquatic and forest ecosystems.” He notes that “potential exposure effects for humans will include poisoning of susceptible tissues, endocrine disruption syndromes, and elevated risk for certain cancers.” Every well, says Dr. Bishop, “will generate a sediment discharge of approximately eight tons per year into local waterways, further threatening federally endangered mollusks and other aquatic organisms.” In addition to the environmental pollution by the fracking process, Dr. Bishop believes “intensive use of diesel-fuel equipment will degrade air quality [that could affect] humans, livestock, and crops.”

Equally important are questions about the impact of as many as 200 diesel-fueled trucks each day bringing water to the site and then removing the waste water. In addition to the normal diesel emissions of trucks, there are also problems of leaks of the contaminated water.

“We need to know how diesel fuel got into our water supply,” says Diane Siegmund, a clinical psychologist from Towanda, Pa. “It wasn’t there before the companies drilled wells; it’s here now,” she says. Siegmund is also concerned about contaminated dust and mud. “There is no oversight on these,” she says, “but those trucks are muddy when they leave the well sites, and dust may have impact miles from the well sites.”

Research “strongly implicates exposure to gas drilling operations in serious health effects on humans, companion animals, livestock, horses, and wildlife,” according to Dr. Michelle Bamberger, a veterinarian, and Dr. Robert E. Oswald, a biochemist and professor of molecular medicine at Cornell University. Their study, published in New Solutions, an academic journal in environmental health, documents evidence of milk contamination, breeding problems, and cow mortality in areas near fracking operations as higher than in areas where no fracking occurred. Drs. Bamberger and Oswald noted that some of the symptoms present in humans from what may be polluted water from fracking operations include rashes, headaches, dizziness, vomiting, and severe irritation of the eyes, nose, and throat. For animals, the symptoms often led to reproductive problems and death.

Significant impact upon wildlife is also noted in a 900-page Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) conducted by New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation, and filed in September 2011. According to the EIS, “In addition to loss of habitat, other potential direct impacts on wildlife from drilling in the Marcellus Shale include increased mortality . . . altered microclimates, and increased traffic, noise, lighting, and well flares.” The impact, according to the report, “may include a loss of genetic diversity, species isolation, population declines . . . increased predation, and an increase of invasive species.” The report concludes that because of fracking, there is “little to no place in the study areas where wildlife would not be impacted, [leading to] serious cascading ecological consequences.” The impact, of course, affects the quality of milk and meat production as animals drink and graze near areas that have been taken over by the natural gas industry.

Christopher Portier, director of the National Center for Environmental Health, calls for more research studies that “include all the ways people can be exposed [to health hazards], such as through air, water, soil, plants and animals.”

The response by the industry and its political allies to the scientific studies of the health and environmental effects of fracking “has approached the issue in a manner similar to the tobacco industry that for many years rejected the link between smoking and cancer,” say Drs. Bamberger and Oswald. Not only do they call for “full disclosure and testing of air, water, soil, animals, and humans,” but point out that with lax oversight, “the gas drilling boom . . . will remain an uncontrolled health experiment on an enormous scale.”

Dr. Helen Podgainy, a pediatrician in Coraopolis, Pa., says she doesn’t want her patients “to be guinea pigs who provide the next generation the statistical proof of health problems as in what happened with those exposed to asbestos or to cigarette smoke.”

Fracking is the controversial method of forcing water, gases, and chemicals at tremendous pressure of up to 15,000 pounds per square inch into a rock formation as much as 10,000 feet below the earth’s surface to open channels and force out natural gas and fossil fuels.

Advocates of fracking argue not only is natural gas “greener” than coal and oil energy, with significantly fewer carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur emissions, the mining of natural gas generates significant jobs in a depressed economy, and will help the U.S. reduce its oil dependence upon foreign nations. Geologists estimate there may be as much as 2,000 trillion cubic feet of natural gas throughout the United States. If all of it is successfully mined, it could not only replace coal and oil but serve as a transition to wind, solar, and water as primary energy sources, releasing the United States from dependency upon fossil fuel energy and allowing it to be more self-sufficient.

The Marcellus Shale—which extends beneath the Allegheny Plateau, through southern New York, much of Pennsylvania, east Ohio, West Virginia, and parts of Maryland and Virginia—is one of the nation’s largest sources for natural gas mining, containing as much as 500 trillion cubic feet  of natural gas.  Each of Pennsylvania’s 5,255 wells, as of the beginning of March 2012, with dozens being added each week, takes up about nine acres, including all access roads and pipe.

Over the expected life time of each well, companies may use as many as nine million gallons of water and 100,000 gallons of chemicals and radioactive isotopes within a four to six week period. The additives “are used to prevent pipe corrosion, kill bacteria, and assist in forcing the water and sand down-hole to fracture the targeted formation,” explains Thomas J. Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research. However, about 650 of the 750 chemicals used in fracking operations are known carcinogens, according to a report filed with the U.S. House of Representatives in April 2011. Fluids used in fracking include those that are “potentially hazardous,” including volatile organic compounds, according to Christopher Portier, director of the National Center for Environmental Health, a part of the federal Centers for Disease Control. In an email to the Associated Press in January 2012, Portier noted that waste water, in addition to bring up several elements, may be radioactive. Fracking is also believed to have been the cause of hundreds of small earthquakes in Ohio and other states.

The law, an amendment to Title 52 (Oil and Gas) of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes, requires that companies provide to a state-maintained registry the names of chemicals and gases used in fracking. Physicians and others who work with citizen health issues may request specific information, but the company doesn’t have to provide that information if it claims it is a trade secret or proprietary information, nor does it have to reveal how the chemicals and gases used in fracking interact with natural compounds. If a company does release information about what is used, health care professionals are bound by a non-disclosure agreement that not only forbids them from warning the community of water and air pollution that may be caused by fracking, but which also forbids them from telling their own patients what the physician believes may have led to their health problems. A strict interpretation of the law would also forbid general practitioners and family practice physicians who sign the non-disclosure agreement and learn the contents of the “trade secrets” from notifying a specialist about the chemicals or compounds, thus delaying medical treatment.

The clauses are buried on pages 98 and 99 of the 174-page bill, which was initiated and passed by the Republican-controlled General Assembly and signed into law in February by Republican Gov. Tom Corbett.

“I have never seen anything like this in my 37 years of practice,” says Dr. Helen Podgainy, a pediatrician from Coraopolis, Pa. She says it’s common for physicians, epidemiologists, and others in the health care field to discuss and consult with each other about the possible problems that can affect various populations. Her first priority, she says, “is to diagnose and treat, and to be proactive in preventing harm to others.” The new law, she says, not only “hinders preventative measures for our patients, it slows the treatment process by gagging free discussion.”

Psychologists are also concerned about the effects of fracking and the law’s gag order. “We won’t know the extent of patients becoming anxious or depressed because of a lack of information about the fracking process and the chemicals used,” says Kathryn Vennie of Hawley, Pa., a clinical psychologist for 30 years. She says she is already seeing patients “who are seeking support because of the disruption to their environment.” Anxiety in the absence of information, she says, “can produce both mental and physical problems.”

The law is not only “unprecedented,” but will “complicate the ability of health department to collect information that would reveal trends that could help us to protect the public health,” says Dr. Jerome Paulson, director of the Mid-Atlantic Center for Children’s Health and the Environment at the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C.  Dr. Paulson, also professor of pediatrics at George Washington University, calls the law “detrimental to the delivery of personal health care and contradictory to the ethical principles of medicine and public health.” Physicians, he says, “have a moral and ethical responsibility to protect the health of the public, and this law precludes us from doing all we can to protect the public.” He has called for a moratorium on all drilling until the health effects can be analyzed.

Pennsylvania requires physicians to report to the state instances of 73 specific diseases, most of which are infectious diseases. However, the list also includes cancer, which may have origins not only from chemicals used to create the fissures that yield natural gas, but also in the blow-back of elements, including arsenic, present within the fissures. Thus, physicians are faced by conflicting legal and professional considerations.

“The confidentiality agreements are worrisome,” says Peter Scheer, a journalist/lawyer who is executive director of the First Amendment Coalition. Physicians who sign the non-disclosure agreements and then disclose the possible risks to protect the community can be sued for breech of contract, and the companies can seek both injunctions and damages, says Scheer.

In pre-trial discovery motions, a company might be required to reveal to the court what it claims are trade secrets and proprietary information, with the court determining if the chemical and gas combinations really are trade secrets or not. The court could also rule that the contract is unenforceable because it is contrary to public policy, which places the health of the public over the rights of an individual company to protect its trade secrets, says Scheer. However, the legal and financial resources of the natural gas corporations are far greater than those of individuals, and they can stall and outspend most legal challenges.

Although Pennsylvania is determined to protect the natural gas industry, not everyone in the industry agrees with the need for secrecy.  Dave McCurdy, president of the American Gas Association, says he supports disclosing the contents included in fracturing fluids. In an opinion column published in the Denver Post, McCurdy further argued, “We need to do more as an industry to engage in a transparent and fact-based public dialogue on shale gas development.”

The Natural Gas committee of the U.S. Department of Energy agrees. “Our most important recommendations were for more transparency and dissemination of information about shale gas operations, including full disclosure of chemicals and additives that are being used,” said Dr. Mark Zoback, professor of geophysics at Stanford University and a Board member.

Both McCurdy’s statement and the Department of Energy’s strong recommendation about full disclosure were known to the Pennsylvania General Assembly when it created the law that restricted health care professionals from disseminating certain information that could help reduce significant health and environmental problems from fracking operations.

•  Assisting on this series, in addition to those quoted within the articles, were Rosemary R. Brasch, Eileen Fay, Dr. Bernard Goldstein, and Dr. Wendy Lynne Lee.

If, as a nation, we impose economic sanctions on another country as a method of foreign policy, it’s okay for that nation’s economy to suffer because it puts pressure on the government and state leaders to capitulate.  What you’re not allowed to talk about are the direct outcomes on the population because the point is to get the boogey man—Saddam or Osama—but not to cause a humanitarian crisis characterized by the starvation of children in, say, Afghanistan.  Unfortunately, severe economic decline and mass suffering are inexorably linked as is clearly demonstrated by the Palestinian condition.

Starting in 2009, one of the world’s leading medical journals, The Lancet, began publishing a series of studies and commentaries concerned with the socioeconomic condition in the occupied territories.  The chief editor of the journal, Richard Horton, recognized that “since 2000, the occupied Palestinian territory has experienced increased human insecurity, with the erosion and reversal of many health gains made in earlier years” and that “these setbacks, together with the latest Israeli air and ground attacks on Gaza, have plunged the region into a humanitarian crisis”.  Indeed, a February 2012 poll by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion reported that 54.7% of Palestinians are concerned about their subsistence of themselves and their family.  Furthermore, when asked about their main present concern, 39.6% said it was employment and 22.4% said it was security.

The reason for their bleak outlook is pretty straightforward.  Let’s just look at the facts.  The aftermath of the Second Intifada and the blockade of the Gaza Strip left the population of 1.7 million in a devastated state.  In 2008, 37% of the active workforce in Gaza was unemployed and 74% of the population lived below the poverty line of $3.15 per person per day.  Unemployment in the West Bank was 19% and 40% lived under the poverty line.  Though physical, institutional, and trade restrictions imposed on the Occupied Territories since the Oslo accords had been deteriorating the internal Palestinian economy, foreign aid allowed for continued development (32% of GDP according to the World Bank) .  However, the situation collapsed upon the popular election of Hamas: “Diplomatic ties and international donor funding were cut, and Israel withheld Palestinian tax revenues, which together form about 75% of the budget of the Palestinian National Authority.”

Health outcomes also deteriorated sharply as a result of economic penalties and restrictions.  Electricity and cooking gas to Gaza was heavily diminished which subsequently “disrupted the operation of water and sewage pumps throughout the Gaza Strip.”  In addition to continual shortages of medicines and medical supplies, a WHO report found that “medical devices are often broken, missing spare parts, or out of date”.  Amnesty International’s 2011 Report revealed that the infant mortality rate in the occupied territories is 23/18 (m/f) per 1000 in contrast to 6/5 in Israel.  Furthermore the life expectancy in the territories is 72.9 years as opposed to 80.3 years in Israel .  Proper access to health care has also been severely impaired by the stringent restriction on travel outside of the occupied territories.  Reports by Physicians for Human Rights revealed an increase in the medical referrals outside of Gaza coupled with a decreased in travel permissions allowed for these cases by Israeli officials.  The population inexorably suffers.

The fundamental barrier Palestinians face in attaining health care is ubiquitous: inability to afford high costs.  There is no realistic way of implementing a system of pooled risk to decrease up-front costs, and the distribution of health care resources (including personnel) among the sick is extremely inefficient.  Because of the stipulations of the Israeli occupation, the “Palestinian National Authority is expected to perform as the government of a state while lacking control over its borders, basic resources, and many of the social determinants of health” and “vague institutional arrangements have hindered the establishment of a proper governance system”.

Modern medicine is built upon basic principles of inter- and intra- state trade.  This is in sharp contrast to an advanced profession such as law where an expertly trained professional can provide legal counsel just about anywhere and to anyone.  In addition to the physician’s knowledge base and skill set, he/she requires material goods and resources such as medicines and biomedical equipment.  The internal economy of Palestine is deeply impoverished and exchange with external parties is severely hindered by check points, roadblocks, and blockades.  There are no economic and logistical frameworks to get patients what they need.

The bottom line is that the population suffers due to external forces beyond their control (and desire as revealed by the polls).  A crippled economy left the people without jobs or an infrastructure for societal development: they’re stuck.  In the ghetto that is Gaza Strip: “social solidarity and resilience have nurtured the Palestinian health response to occupation.”  However, in light of continued political and economic degeneration, “the social fabric of Palestinian society is eroding.”  Ordinary Palestinians are completely disenfranchised.  Even if they were to engage in popular demonstration which has been used globally to achieve egalitarian health objectives, the Palestinian Authority does not have the capacity to react significantly in any way.  If the only parties that enter the discourse are Fatah, Hamas, Israel, and the United States, then health outcomes will decline.  Poor health care has become an effective means of nonviolently undermining a population.  Sadly enough, the same strategy was employed in Apartheid South Africa.

A similar Big Pharma bubble, leavened with risky blockbuster drugs that also blew up, is now bursting. Like Wall Street’s bundled high risk loans, the “tide” created by Big Pharma’s high risk drugs raised many ships during the 2000s from advertising, public relations and medical communication agencies to TV and radio stations, medical journals and doctor/pitchmen who shoveled in its marketing budgets. But now the joy ride is over and Pharma is shedding jobs and settling billions in claims without changing its risky business model, like Wall Street.

In Europe, governments are no longer willing to pay the high prices for drugs that they once did say published reports and some countries are drafting laws making drug makers “prove their drugs are effective or risk having them dropped from the coverage list, or covered at a lower rate.” Imagine!

Germany has already saved 1.9 billion euros in 2011 by refusing to pay higher prices for drugs unless they are clearly superior to existing medicines, and Pharma worries that other countries will also get tough and want scientific proof for drug effectiveness instead of marketing and spin. In the U.S. and elsewhere, a drug only needs to be superior to no drug (placebo) to be approved by regulators — yet “new” is conveyed as “better than any drug to date” in advertising.  Some clinicians say Haldol, an inexpensive antipsychotic, and lithium, a similar affordable bipolar drug are better than blockbuster antipyschotics and bipolar drugs that created Pharma’s 2000 bubble.

Before the Vioxx scandal and major settlements over blockbuster drugs like Zyprexa, Bextra, Celebrex, Geodon and Seroquel, being a Pharma rep was probably the next best thing to working on Wall Street. Direct-to-consumer advertising did your pre-sell for you, and all you had to do was show up with your snappy Vytorin tote bag and samples case. Some Pharma reps had their own reception room with ice water, swivel chairs, and laptop ports at medical offices, and most waltzed in to see the doctor right in front of waiting and sick patients. (It didn’t hurt that reps were usually “hotties,” both men or women).

But, by 2011, the bloom had fallen off Pharma reps’ roses. The number of prescribers willing to see most reps fell almost 20 percent, the number refusing to see all reps increased by half, and eight million sales calls were “nearly impossible to complete,” reported ZS Associates. Blockbuster drugs that were found to be unsafe after their big sales push or even withdrawn altogether, did not help the reps’ credibility with doctors. After the aggressively marketed hormone therapy was linked to high incidences of cancer, stroke and heart attack, Wyeth (now Pfizer) announced it was eliminating 1,200 jobs and closing its Rouses Point, New York plant where Prempro products were manufactured.

As government and private insurers increasingly say, “You want us to cover what?” about expensive, dangerous drugs that are not even proven effective, Pharma bubble jobs are evaporating. Almost 20,000 jobs have vanished at AstraZeneca, Novartis and Pfizer in the last 12 months alone. (AstraZeneca scrapped 21,600 more since 2007). Meanwhile, Pharma is outsourcing more of its operations to poor countries.

Workers and people willing to be trial subjects are both a bargain in poor countries where many can’t understand drug risks or refuse them if they did (and most can’t afford the very drugs they help sell). In January the Argentinian Federation of Health Professionals accused drug maker GlaxoSmithKline of misleading participants and pressuring poor families into joining a trial for the Synflorix vaccine, which the company says protects against bacterial pneumonia and meningitis, reported CNN. In 2010, 10 deaths occurred during Pfizer and AstraZeneca drug trials at the Bhopal Memorial Hospital and Research Centre which was ironically built for survivors of the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster, reports MSNBC. 3,878 workers perished in Bhopal when chemicals leaked at a Union Carbide pesticide plant.

Outsourcing drug manufacturing to cheap venues also contributes to Pharma’s cascade of “quality control” problems in which drugs are mislabeled, contaminated or otherwise made dangerous. It is speculated that Johnson & Johnson’s CEO William Weldon “was pushed to retire because of all of the quality issues at McNeil as well as with the company’s hip implant products, which have resulted in a raft of litigation,” reports FiercePharma.

Like the Wall Street bubble, the Pharma bubble was built on products that industry, but not the public, knew were risky, sold for quick profits. Now regulators are examining some of these “assets” more closely and with disturbing findings. The FDA now warns that bestselling statin drugs like Lipitor and Crestor, even approved for children, are linked to memory loss and diabetes associated with. The equally well selling proton pump inhibitors like Nexium and Prilosec for acid reflux disease (GERD) are now believed to increase the risk of bone fractures by 30 percent.

In March, the FDA even rejected a Merck drug that combines the active drug in Lipitor with the active drug in Zetia and Vytorin, a drug that Forbes calls Son of Vytorin. Vytorin (the father) was advertised to treat both food and family “sources of cholesterol” until results from a study that Merck and Schering-Plough appeared to withhold from regulators showed the drug had no effect on the buildup of plaque in the arteries (believed to correlate with heart attack and stroke). There was such a gap between marketing and science, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) asked the General Accounting Office to investigate why the FDA was approving “drugs that appear to have little to no effect in protecting lives and increasing health.”

Yet even as clouds develop over Pharma’s top-selling drugs, some say the FDA is too hard on new drugs, not too easy. “The FDA is impeding useful innovations in the U.S.,” says former FDA deputy commissioner Scott Gottlieb in the a Wall Street Journal oped and lagging behind other countries. Former FDA commissioner Andrew Von Eschenbach, also writing in the WSJ, agrees. The FDA should improve U.S. drug competitiveness by allowing drugs “to be approved based on safety, with efficacy to be proven in later trials,” while the public is already taking the drugs. Isn’t that what’s happening now?