PayPal

StatCounter

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

IMPARK

© MMVIII

Subject: Hate

Dear IMPARK:

Your racket, masquerading as a business, is the biggest rip-off I have ever seen. How can a $2.00 parking fee magically go to $63.60 the second the time expires? Oh sure, you got your inspiration from the cops. And like them, you offer a 50% discount if your victim pays up fast and doesn't make a fuss. And you have costs to cover, such as legal fees, ticketing minions, towing and related hostage fees. Don't want to pay up? Your car could be shipped to a chop shop or Hong Kong. Or you can pay an exorbitant ransom to get it back. Yesterday, when I parked at the lot you now control, I couldn't figure out your system. I couldn't find anyone who could answer a question either. But I did manage to find a way to give you $2, expecting the worst. I notice one of your minions was lurking somewhere nearby because a real person managed to put your extortion note under my windshield wiper. Frank Nitti (The Enforcer) would be proud of IMPARK. "Imperial Parking Canada Corporation" is well named: like cancer, your empire of rip-off centres metastasizes on empty lots across North America. I notice your website says you are "Carbon Neutral". Too bad you aren't rip-off neutral. Of course there is no one to answer questions. If there were, you'd have to pay that person and you would have received only $2 instead of $33.80 and it could have been $65.60 if I hadn't paid up immediately. What a racket. Some day you are going to get yours. I don't know how, but it will come. Have a nice day.

Helpful hints to the ripped-off: write to the proprietor of the business that has leased its parking lot to IMPARK. Tell him (or her) that you won't be patronizing his business again as long as he runs a rip-off operation where you park.

Whether you live in Regina, Vancouver or Tucson, you can send your own hate mail here:
Suite 140
1870 Albert Street
Regina, SK S4P 4B7
Tel: (306) 352-2681
Fax: (306) 359-6930
Randy McKinnon, General Manager

Monday, July 28, 2008

Morley's Gallery

© MMVIII


MobileMe and ME
• Summer 08
• Burmese
• Ferrari 430
• Kiwanis Park
• Petunias 06



http://gallery.me.com/morleyevans

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

One More Time

© MMVIII v 1.0.7

Here's a summary of world politics that I sent to a supporter of rebuilding the Iraqi military and police — and sending Iraqi children to school, of course. He wants me to know the truth about what is going on in Iraq: Those benighted Iraqis are making progress, with our help, he thinks. "What's happening is their own fault. But we can help. We are helping."

Sadly, it's all a lie.

The truth is that Iraq is a cow being milked by the Empire (that's us). This started with World War I when the British Empire took over the Ottoman Empire and Persia. Oil may have been one of the more important reasons for WW I. After WW II, the American Empire took over running the Empire from the British. Who runs the Empire may have been one of the more important reasons for WW II. The institutions that are being rebuilt in Iraq (after we destroyed them) are apparatuses of the State (which we destroyed). Can Al Humpty Dumpty be put back together again? Can Al Humpty be turned into a loyal slave of the Empire? Not a chance. Iraq is worse than Vietnam and it has none of the things going for it that helped the Vietnamese defeat the Empire: no mountains; no jungle; no superpower sponsors; no disloyal 5th column undermining the Empire at home (unless you count me); no stab-in-the-back media (the Empire fixed the media long ago); no political opposition (the Democrats and the Republicans are both the same). All this is combined with an even greater technology and weapons advantage than the Empire had in Vietnam. Yet, despite everything the Empire has going for it, retired U.S. generals (the ones who have jobs don't talk) have been saying for years that the war in Iraq is lost and nothing can be done to change that.

The U.S.A. has lost more than respect. It has lost the Empire. The dollar is going down the drain. Economic power has shifted away from the Empire and it won't be coming back until we are competitive again. Dropping bombs and sending in the Marines won't help anymore. Where was your car built? Do you buy anything at Wal-Mart? Every military move the Empire makes drives up the price of oil and undermines the economy — driving down the U.S. dollar even further. The price of gas today is $4 a gallon. What will happen when the price of gas hits $12 a gallon? Will you be driving? What will happen to the long-haul trucking business? Will the Sixth Fleet [1] [2] be sailing? The Empire was built on oil [3] that was lower than $3 a barrel before 1972 when OPEC raised the price to $22. Today, after the destruction of Iraq, oil is approaching $150 a barrel. If we start bombing Iran, oil could hit $500 a barrel overnight, according to market watchers. The United States DoD (Department of Defense) is the world's largest single consumer of oil. The jig is up.[4] It's time to make some friends. It's time to put away the guns. We in the Empire can't be the bully in the sandbox anymore. We have to learn to play with the other children. Eventually, all evil schemes stop working (they come to nothing) and evil-doers pay the price. You can look it up.

That's the sad truth, the dirty lowdown.

- Morley

"Power for Peace" "Peace Through Strength" "Peace is Our Profession" are a few slogans of the military of the Empire's current master, the U.S.A.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_6th_Fleet
[2] http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/navy/c6f.htm
[3] http://www.geography-site.co.uk/pages/citizenship/oil_products.html
[4] http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/

Monday, July 21, 2008

Right of Way in Regina

© MMVIII v 1.0.4

Here, I must stand up for my home town, Regina, Saskatchewan.

I assert (though I haven't driven in Bangkok) that Regina, and not some other place, has the stupidest drivers in the world.

Drivers here are so dumb, they are unaware of the first rule of the road which is "Avoid Running Into Things." Did you know that any object in front of you always has The Right Of Way? Think about it: Brick walls, concrete abutments, Mac Trucks, Fiats, even people. Regina also has an extraordinarily large number of traffic control devices and it is always getting more.

(Regina drivers are very good with pedestrians. They will slam on the brakes and may even cause an accident to avoid a jay-walker. In Los Angeles, on the other hand, people are excellent drivers, but pedestrians there are likely to be arrested for unusual and suspicious behaviour.)

In Regina, drivers will run into you if they "have the right of way." They will not lift their foot off the gas pedal to slow down slightly to avoid a collision. They will certainly never move their foot to the pedal to the left of the gas pedal.

They might step on the gas to punish you for daring to infringe on their "rights". Yes, indeed. Drivers have "rights" here in Regina and they aggressively defend them.

One day at noon, the power went out where I was. (College Ave. and Albert St.) The power almost never goes out in Regina. This was very unusual. All the traffic lights went dead on Albert Street all the way south for 3 miles. I expected chaos.

What will they do, I wondered? These people often don't know what to do at a four-way-stop. Can't they count to one and take turns? But I was completely amazed. Everyone does know how to drive! They were courteous. They were considerate. They shared the roadway. They yielded the right of way. They were NOT AGGRESSIVE. What happened?

Drivers stopped being "guided by the signs" and started seeing and thinking. The lights switched off and their brains switched on.

In Britain there are areas such as fashionable Kensington High Street in London, Prince Charles’s village of Poundbury, and a few others where they have removed traffic controls: “The intention is to create environments in which everyone is more focused, more cautious, and more considerate.”[1]

Then the power came on and everyone started driving as they always do. They WILL run into you if they "have the right of way." I see 4 or 5 moving violations every time I go anywhere in Regina. They do kill people here.

The cops? Sure, like all those signs and lights and cameras they’re a big help! The cops have RADAR and computers and poleece interceptors and guns.

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200807/traffic

Does it matter, really? Yep, it really matters.

On the highways around Regina, there are many level crossings. It is dead flat here. The roads are as straight as arrows. You can see for miles. It is never foggy and only rarely do winter blizzards obscure a driver's vision. During a white-out, drivers are very careful, or they stay home. Yet collisions at intersections are not uncommon. When a semi hits a car crossing the highway, the car is destroyed and its passengers are killed. Could the parties involved not see? Why not? Were their brains switched off? These are classified as "accidents".

When a train hits a motor vehicle, the train always has the right of way because the train cannot stop, yet railroads have always taken steps to avoid collisions. A few drivers ignore the precautions. Are their brains switched off?

In the City, it is not uncommon for someone to cruise through a red light and hit someone crossing in front. I knew twin sisters who were whacked while turning left on an advance green arrow. The driver who killed them was driving his 4x4 while under the influence. He ran a red light. He was going pretty fast. The City installed a camera at the intersection to give a ticket to people who run a red light. The twins' killer is still driving. The incident was deemed to be an "accident."

We know a priori that whatever you hit was there before you got there. It had the "right of way", not you. Anyone who is in an intersection has the right to proceed through the intersection without being killed. It's right there in the Act. We know by skid marks whether or not any effort was made to slam on the brakes to avoid a collision. There were no skid marks where the Evans twins were killed.

It isn't just the drivers here whose brains are switched off.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Justice and Patience

Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all.


- Friedrich, Freiherr von Logau (1604-1655)

Friday, July 18, 2008

Questions About WWII

© MMVIII

Nicholas Strakon to Morley Evans

Dear Mr. Evans:

There were POW camps for Axis servicemen scattered all over the U.S., Canada, and the UK. In fact there was one for German POWs in Fort Wayne, Ind., the nearest town of any size to my little burg. In the United States, many were released on parole to work for the "Allied war effort." (In my area, I think they mostly did farm work.)

There are a number of fairly well-known movies that deal with or at least mention these POWs -- remember the young Italian POW in "The Godfather," Part One? "The Summer of My German Soldier" is one film that actually focuses on the POW thing; it's based on a book that is considered a "juvenile classic," for better or worse. (For my sins, I actually found myself watching this film some years azgo.)

One flick that I can actually recommend is one I saw just the other night, on a DVD from Netflix: "The One That Got Away." It's a British film from 1957 that tells the thrilling story of Luftwaffe Oberleutnant Franz von Werra, who was shot down over England in 1940 and decided that he was going to escape and return to Germany. I think he was in three different camps in England; he was finally sent to Canada, where he managed to escape from a moving train in the middle of winter and cross the icy St. Lawrence to the still-neutral U.S. One nice thing about the movie is that it was made before all WWII Germans were demonized as psychopathic Nazis.

Another German-POW movie that I remember (not as good as "The One") is "The Mackenzie Break," with Brian Keith. In this one, as I recall, it's a U-boat commander who plots an escape. I believe Scotland is the setting.

Once Axis POWs reached Allied camps, they were mostly safe and well cared for. But that sunny scenario did not obtain after the mass surrender of the Wehrmacht in the final collapse, according to James Bacque's OTHER LOSSES, which accuses Eisenhower of knowingly permitting hundreds of thousands of German POWs to starve to death.

Also worth mentioning is the Anglo-American Operation Keelhaul, which forcibly returned millions of Soviet refugees and large numbers of POWs to Stalin's tender mercies. Many committed suicide rather than let themselves be taken to the USSR. Nicolai Tolstoi made himself a thoughtcriminal in Britain for publicizing Keelhaul as a war crime.

Moreover, I've read somewhere -- in one of Paul Fussell's books, maybe -- that only about 50 percent of German POWs made it alive to the rear areas. American soldiers, at least, pretty routinely shot them after they surrendered. This is reflected (remarkably enough) in an episode of the HBO series "Band of Brothers," where an officer assigns a GI to escort some German prisoners to the rear area but allows him only one round for his rifle. The officer figures that otherwise the dogface would murder the prisoners, in keeping with usual GI practice.

I do find little in the American popcult that deals with Japanese POWs. I'm sure that dreadful stuff happened, more dreadful than in the European theater. I've always heard that the relative scarcity of Japanese POWs resulted from the Japs' refusal to be taken prisoner -- my dad, for one, always told me that. And no doubt there's a lot of truth there. But it seems likely that if American GIs routinely assassinated surrendered Germans -- their racial brethren -- they massacred most Japs who tried to surrender, in the great Pacific "race riot" of 1941-45.

Got to wind this up -- I'm overdue for Sunday dinner -- but those figures for German losses at Stalingrad are much-inflated. The German Sixth Army was the largest in the Wehrmacht, but it numbered only about 300,000 effectives at its strongest in the summer of '42, if memory serves. I'll look up some scholarly estimates when I return.

Prisoners of War REPLY

© MMVIII

Nicholas Strakon to Morley Evans

Dear Mr. Evans:

According to the conventional accounts, the majority of Soviet POWs taken by the Germans in 1941 succumbed to starvation, disease, and exposure. The number of POWs was unexpectedly huge, testing German resources and logistics, and in any case the Germans were indifferent to their welfare, thanks to the Nazi "Untermenschen" ideology and the fact, which the Germans made much of, that the Sovs were not signatory to the Geneva Convention.

I am prepared to cautiously accept those conventional accounts, because there is a lot of detailed, credible documentation backing them up (as there is not, for example, for the stories about mass extermination of Jews in gas chambers). German commanders in the East and senior officials in Berlin seem to have explicitly stipulated to the mass die-off of the POWs. I think it was Goering who cracked a very bad joke about the cannibalism that became endemic in the camps.

After 1941-42, it seems to have dawned on the Germans that they could exploit the labor of the Soviet POWs for the war effort. Also (and against Hitler's explicit orders, at least at first), commanders in the East began recruiting Soviet POWs to conduct behind-the-lines anti-partisan operations and to support front-line units (these were the "Hiwis"). One Establishment historian -- David Glantz, I think -- estimates that a million ex-POWs actually =fought= in the front lines alongside the Germans and against the Red Army. They can have had little love for Hitler or Hitlerism, so we can only imagine the bottomless hatred they had for Stalin and Stalinism.

The Axis POWs who had made it safely to camps in Britain, the U.S., and Canada were repatriated after the war in the normal way, except for a handful who were held and tried for "war crimes" -- or, alternatively, hired as rocket scientists. Also, I believe some ordinary German and Italian ex-POWs in the U.S. were allowed to stay as immigrants and resident aliens, if they chose.

After the terror bombing really got underway, Hitler kept threatening to execute the Allied "air gangsters" whom the Wehrmacht had captured, but he never did, except for a relatively small number of escapees who were then recaptured. My own idea is that murderers deserve to die.

Your account of the winter march of the "Kriegies" westward rings a bell. As a lad, I read a book (maybe a memoir) about that. I suppose those POWs had almost as hard a time as the millions of civilian refugees fleeing westward to escape the onrushing Bolshevik savagery.

Dear Mr. Evans:

First, a clarification of a statement in my message of yesterday: "Once Axis POWs reached Allied camps, they were mostly safe and well cared for." I speak of camps run by the =Western= Allies, of course, not camps run by the Soviets. But beyond that, I've never actually seen any account of how the French treated German and Italian POWs in the camps they ran. I do recall reading that in the early days of the occupation of Germany, the French were beastlier in their conduct -- toward both German civilians and POWs -- than the Americans or British were.

Now to Stalingrad. In his STALINGRAD: THE FATEFUL SIEGE: 1942-1943 (Viking, 1998), the British historian Antony Beevor cites figures (calculated by other historians) of 250,000, 268,000, and 294,000 Germans, Italians, Romanians, and ex-Soviet "Hiwis" ("helpers") being surrounded after the Sovs pulled off their great Operation Uranus in November '42.

Beevor reports that "all writers are agreed that around 25,000 wounded and specialists were flown out, but there is little certainty over the numbers killed or taken prisoner," from November '42 to February '43. He writes further that "just under 52,000 members of the Sixth Army" (Germans and Hiwis) died between Nov. 22 and Jan. 7. Usual estimates for the number of Germans surrendering at the beginning of February are about 60,000, according to Beevor.

Naturally, only a few thousand ever made it back to Germany.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

What Did You Expect?

© MMVIII v1.0.0

Last night PBS aired a program on NOVA that had to do with Pizarro's conquest of the Inca Empire.[1] The story has always been that he and his tiny band of intrepid adventurers had done it all by themselves. That has been the official story for 500 years. But actually, the official story is wrong. The Inca Empire was in the process of falling apart when the Spanish arrived and the Inca Empire was only a few hundred years old at the time. The conquered tribes were already looking for ways to get rid of the Inca when Pizarro showed up. So the truth is he and the Spanish had all sorts of help from the Indians. After they were in charge, the Spanish took all the credit. Well of course they did. What do you expect?

The non-official story has been around for 500 years too, but nobody was listening. The exact same thing is true in Mexico. There the Aztec were just not popular. I wonder why? All sorts of Indians rose up to get rid of the Aztec when the Spanish arrived. Actually, the Spanish in Mexico, themselves, acknowledged their partners long ago. They had to do that to keep their partners happy. But the upper class still kept most of the power for itself anyway. Well of course they did. What did you expect?

All sorts of things helped the Spanish: things like being 3,800 years ahead of the aboriginals in organization, weapons and other technologies. Horses. Smallpox. (The Europeans cannot be blamed for knowingly spreading disease because they didn't even know about germs until the end of the 19th century.) Credit where credit is due. Aboriginals fighting for their own freedom were the most important factor in the conquest. Numbers matter, but people with power like to keep power. What did you expect?

The Americans who founded the United States told everyone the revolution was for them. But they kept all the power for themselves. Well of course they did. Canada is not different, nor is any other place. What did you expect?

[1] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/inca/producer.html

Monday, July 14, 2008

Prisoners of War

© MMVIII v 1.0.1

If you bomb the enemy, you won't have any prisoners. If you march your prisoners to Siberia in February, you won't have many prisoners for very long. So the answer to the question, "Where were our concentration camps?" may be that we didn't have concentration camps because we didn't take prisoners. Still, we must have taken some prisoners. What happened to them?

The Germans captured vast Soviet armies in the beginning of Barbarosa. What did the Germans do with their prisoners? There were millions in the Soviet armies. It was summer so the Germans didn't have any help from the Russian freezer. Did the Germans kill all their prisoners? I haven't heard that. What happened to them?

Prisoners are a problem. Prisoners have to be cared for, like it or not. Prisoners are expensive. Prisoners have to be fed, clothed, protected from the elements. Sanitation needs to be looked after properly: disease can wipe out, in a few days, a population kept in close quarters. Anyone who keeps prisoners alive, however miserably, is humane. Is mass murder more humane?

Knowing these things casts events in a different light than we are used to seeing them. Killing people is easy. Keeping them alive is not easy and it is not cheap: prisoners take resources away from their captors. They take away things like fuel, shelter and food. Even if you kill them, prisoners take away bullets. Everything costs something.

I had a friend who just recently passed away at 83. Like most veterans with combat experience, he didn't talk about the war very much. But Larry [1] did tell me this: He spent the last years of the war in Stag Luft 3 [2]. My friend told me he had been shot down over The Netherlands on his way home one night. He became a prisoner of war a few months after "The Great Escape" (January 1943). He spent several years in the camp. Then one night, they were all rousted out of bed. They were not too happy about it. It was cold. They were sleepy.

The prisoners were assembled and marched west. They marched for several days until they came to a railway where they were loaded onto a train that took them to a large camp near Bremmen where they were liberated soon after by the British Army. Why had they been evacuated? The Red Army was coming. The Germans were fearful of the Soviets — for good reason.

My friend piloted Halifax bombers [3], the second largest heavy bomber in Bomber Command after the Lancaster. His job, he said, was to get the plane over a target where they would drop everything. Strategic bombing? The drop would be over a burning city which was easy to see at night. Finding the way there and back was the job of the navigator. "I just flew the plane. The navigator was the most important person on board. He got us there and back." How did the Halifax compare to the B-17? [4] "We were bigger, but they had more guns," Larry said cheerfully.

The Germans looked after the British and American airmen who were responsible for terror bombing that began in 1940 and ended in 1945. We don't usually think of it in those terms. Why would the Germans feed, clothe and guard these men? They had dropped bombs on Germany day and night for years. Why wouldn't they leave them for the Russians — just throw them to the wolves?

It's something to think about.

[1] http://www.kiwanisregina.org/In%20Memoriam/Larry.pdf
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalag_Luft_3
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_bomber
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Fortress

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Questions about WWII

© MMVIII v1.0.3

There are zillions of unanswered questions about World War II. Here is one:

Were there any Allied POW camps for captured German and Japanese soldiers, airmen and sailors? I've never heard of any. Did the Allies capture no prisoners? Why not?

Okay, that's three questions, not one.

Everyone knows the Germans and Japanese had concentration camps where they interned captured Allied military personnel. We have been watching movies and TV shows about them for decades. "The Great Escape" and "Hogan's Heroes" were two of the most popular. We have been told of the Bataan Death March [1] and the Thai-Burma railroad [2] that was built by prisoners of the Japanese. So what did we do with the Germans and Japanese?

The Germans lost 800,000 men (not including their allies) when the entire German Sixth Army was captured in February 1943 at Stalingrad [3]. The Soviets launched their prisoners on a death march to the Gulag archipelago. Some survived the march to Siberia. Almost none ever returned from oblivion. Surely we didn't do anything like that? Did we?

Yet, I can find no reference to our own concentration camps except for the Japanese-American and Japanese-Canadian civilians whose property was stolen when they were put into concentration camps in Canada and the United States. Oddly, while some Germans and Austrians (and even Ukrainians) went to concentration camps in Canada and the United States in WW I, none were incarcerated in WW II. Why not?

The thing we know most about ourselves is that we are so darn decent. Isn't that right? I'm decent. You are decent. Decent. We sure are! Maybe we put our prisoners up at the Plaza in New York City or the Savoy in London.

"From infancy, by every possible means — class books, church services, sermons, speeches, books, papers, songs, poetry, monuments — [we are lead to be] stupefied in the one direction." - Tolstoy

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bataan_Death_March
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Railway
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stalingrad

Friday, July 11, 2008

Dianne's Medical Emergency

© MMVII v 1.0.5
Morley Evans February 3, 2007

Map of South East Saskatchewan
from Regina to Manitoba border
showing Madge Lake 1, Kamsack 2, Regina 3&7, Glenavon 4, Wolseley 5, Broadview 6




A. Principal Characters:

0.1 Dianne: patient (home - Wolseley, Sask.)
0.2 Brad: Dianne's boyfriend (home - Glenavon, Sask.)
0.3 Dr. M. Heroux: emergency, Regina General Hospital
0.4 Dr. Bella: Wolseley Hospital (Wolseley, Sask.)
0.5 Dr. DeWit: Broadview Clinic (Broadview, Sask.)
0.6 Dr. E.J. Smith: surgery, Regina General Hospital

B. Events:

1. Saturday 25th Feb 2006: Dianne was cross country skiing on a trail at Madge Lake, Saskatchewan
1.1 She fell between 1:30 pm and 2:00 pm and broke her right humerus just below the ball in the shoulder socket, it was later determined.
1.2 She was rescued by a fellow skier who immediately went for help.

2. Dianne was put on a stretcher back board and evacuated by ambulance to the nearest hospital in Kamsack, Saskatchewan.
2.1 She was strapped onto a board because the ambulance people were afraid she might have a spinal injury.
2.2 At the Kamsack hospital, X-rays were taken. The hospital said they couldn't provide a complete picture of the injured area because they were unable to position the patient properly because she was strapped to the board and she had excruciating pain in her right arm.

3. Dianne was taken by ambulance to the Regina General Hospital (RGH) — 300 kms (about 3 hours)
3.1 At RGH, Dr. M. Heroux looked at the X-rays from Kamsack and said Dianne had two hairline fractures in her humerus (upper arm bone).
3.2 The doctor said her spine and neck were not injured.
3.3 Dianne insisted she had a broken arm or shoulder — because she could feel it crunch when she moved it, even slightly — and that they should X-ray the arm and shoulder again. Dianne suspected, but was uncertain, that she had osteoporosis at this time.
3.4 Dr. Heroux refused to take an X-ray of the arm and shoulder.
3.5 Sunday 26 Feb 2006: Dianne was discharged from RGH in her son's care in the early morning hours. She was wrapped in a bed sheet with paper slippers in the cold of winter. Her winter clothes and shoes had not been sent with her in the ambulance at Kamsack. Instead they were given to Brad who returned to Glenavon from Kamsack to await a call from RGH. Dianne was in great pain and discomfort. What if something had happened to the vehicle enroute?
3.6 Regina General Hospital (RGH) only prescribed STATEX (Morphine) 5mg before discharging Dianne with a broken shoulder.

4. Brad drove Dianne to his residence in Glenavon from her son's home on Sunday afternoon. She spent a terrible night in pain there.

5. On Monday morning Brad drove her to Wolseley hospital where more X-rays were taken of her arm and shoulder. No mention of a major problem was made by Dr. Bella who was the attending physician in Wolseley.

6. With nothing done in Wolseley hospital, Brad drove Dianne to Broadview medical clinic with the Wolseley X-rays for another opinion of the injury. After one look at the X-rays, Dr. DeWit phoned Regina and booked an appointment in RGH for 9:00 am the next morning (Tuesday).

7. Early Tuesday morning, Brad took Dianne back to Regina for her appointment at the RGH. She was kept in the hospital and booked for surgery that day.
7.1 Tuesday 28th Feb 2006: Surgery was done by Dr. E.J. Smith late that evening. He had to use a plate to reattach the body (shaft) of the humerus to its head (ball). http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Humerus
7.2 The operation at RGH went well. The pain was intense a few hours later as the anaesthetic wore off.
7.3 Thursday 2nd March 2006: Dianne was discharged into Brad’s care.
7.4 Dianne started therapy 3 weeks later in Grenfell, Sask.

8. Dianne was very happy with the care she received once she got some care.

C. SUMMARY of emergency treatment for Dianne’s broken shoulder

• Total distance travelled seeking treatment - over 700 kms
• Total days before treatment was received - 3.5 days
• Total hospitals visited - five hospitals
• Total medical staff involved - emergency, nurses, doctors, support . . .
• Dianne lost over 4 months from work.

Why didn’t they take Dianne to the hospital in Yorkton? 80 km (about 1 hour). They could have gone to Winnipeg 472 km (about 4.5 hours) They could have gone to Minot, ND which is closer than Winnipeg!

So many questions. So few answers. Why?

More Medical Mishaps

© MMVIII v1.0.1

My sister-in-law, Denise, lost her first baby:

After looking after herself and seeing her doctor faithfully, everything looked fine. They did take measurements and decided the baby might be too big to get through the birth canal. Then Denise went into the hospital to discover her doctor had gone fishing. A doctor she had never met looked after her delivery. She was in labour for hours and hours, but the baby could not get out. Then the doctor performed a caesarian section and delivered the baby. Tragically, the little girl's head was damaged from the hours of bashing that it had suffered. A day later, the baby died. "Just as well," the doctor observed. "She would have been brain damaged anyway." This guy probably was asleep when they discussed compassion at medical school.

My brother was going to sue, but he was talked out of it. (And now we know Canadians can't sue doctors, thanks to the CMPA). The doctor who had gone fishing (or was it golfing?) returned to life as it had been before. The attending physician was not affected either. He eventually moved on to Vancouver where he is practising medicine.

This happened in 1982 when I was living on Millstream Road in West Vancouver. Subsequently, Denise has had four baby boys by caesarian section. They turned out pretty well.

Regina has some good doctors, but it certainly has some bad doctors. I have had some of Regina's worst doctors, myself. I have had decades of clinical experience with them. Regina has some of the stupidest doctors in the world. People just let bad doctors get away with murder here. I would put Regina's health care system at the bottom of the list for quality. It is completely unresponsive to feedback.* The people who run the health care system should be flogged.

Public flogging: It might be time to resurrect the practice.


* Things that are "completely unresponsive to feedback" are usually considered to be dead.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Wrong on Russia?

© MMVIII v1.0.3

Wrong on Russia? Steven F. Cohen of the International Herald Tribune thinks we are.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/01/opinion/edcohen.php

It is not merely the current candidates for POTUS who are wrong on Russia. In fact, the current incumbents merely appear to be aberrations if one believes we used to be the good guys before these guys.

When was that? Oh sure, there was The Good War. We'll deal with The Great Victory of 1945, in another piece. Suffice it to say now that what we have all been told over and over for sixty years deserves scrutiny.

The current political leaders are not aberrations. Start to peal the onion. Examine George W. Bush and then Dick Cheney and then the rest. Then examine William Jefferson Clinton and then the rest. Go all the way back to George Washington. And it is not merely the Americans.

After you look at the Americans, look at the British. You could look at the record as far back as James VI and I (19 June 1566 – 27 March 1625). But it would be instructive to go back to William I of England (1027 – 9 September 1087). You will see an almost unbroken chain of war and high crimes. You will see a thousand years of aggression.

"Everybody does this," you say? Do they really? Who is really the aggressor, now and in the past? Take a look. Then ask yourself if you want to be part of this. Are you a criminal?

Maybe we are just the most successful criminal empire since the Romans (9th century BCE - 15th century CE). Could be. But we still are not the people we think we are and that could be the problem, if you are wondering why we live in a dangerous world filled with evil.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

A Forecast for The Holy Land

© MMVIII v 1.0.1

In this brief essay, Jonathan Cook has encapsulated the 130-year-long history (which began with the first Rothschild colony) of the Zionist project in The Holy Land. Cook forecasts its probable conclusion, possibly coming soon.

Missing only is the significant fact that today a majority of Jews in the State of Israel are beginning to question the paranoiac racist junta that has always ruled "Israel" and has set the Israeli political agenda all these years. Most people are not monsters, though, sadly, most of their leaders usually are. Power does affect what people think and what they do.

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/cook.php?articleid=13058