Mexico City Shut down by Recount Protesters

Angry protesters in Mexico city shut down access to the city forcing many city and office workers to walk to work today.  The protesters are demanding a recount of the recent election.

Its important to consider that Mexico is an oil producing country.  This puts one more oil producing country into play of the political turmoil cards.  For the second time in almost as many decades Mexico faces serious problems relating to political turmoil surrounding its democracy. 

In a world where all politics is local, it should be important for the United States to consider the most appropriate steps to help Mexico work through this democratical growing pain and help establish more reliable voting measures.  Unfortunately, the United States has little moral high ground to stand on in this area after voting irregularities created a constitutional crisis in 2000, and smaller voting irregularities surfaced in again in a back to back presidential election in 2004.

The United States needs to pay attention to the stability of its oil producing suppliers whether they are allies or not. 

Venezuela is contemplating purchasing arms from the former Soviet Union and threatening to shut off supplies to the US, while simultaneously negotiating oil supply contracts with China.

Saudi Arabia issued statements over the weekend that Israel's actions 'could lead to regional war.'  They purposefully did not indicate, whether they would be involved in that war against Israel.

Iran has moved one step closer to a show down with the United Nations over its Nuclear program. 

Iraq continues to underperform in oil output.


Whether there is an invisible hand, terrorist hand, or sovereign competing countries hand behind the problems in each of these countries, if viewed as a chess board, it would appear that countries that supply the United States oil are slowly being torn apart or torn away from the United States.

Might a check mate follow???

Related Stories

Mexico leftists choke capital in vote protest

Tags
Mexico City Protesters Voting Fraud Oil Politics

Louisiana Sends Message: Don't help Us Next Time

There have been many people and groups that helped to make Hurricane Katrina the catastrophe that will haunt our memories for decades. It would seem that some people and groups are still trying to join that band wagon.

The Attorney General of Louisiana, Charles C. Foti, decided to press murder charges for 2nd degree murder against one doctor and 2 nurses. They came to help at Memorial Medical Center the hospital in New Orleans that will linger in our visions of New Orleans at its worst. Staff waited for relief that never came, waited for evacuations that would not come for fear of sniper fire, waited for drinking water, food, and medical supplies to continue to support the hundreds of patients that first the city, the state and then the country abandonded along with the rest of the remaining population of New Orleans.

So now one of the doctors, Dr. Anna M. Pou, and two nurses, Lori Budo and Cheri Landry, are accused of killing four patients. The attorney General can provide no motive for the killings, but claims that tissues from four patients were found to have traces of the drugs, morphine and a sedative called Versed. Both drugs are often prescribed to provide palliative care, or care to keep a patient comfortable. They are recognized as drugs that would not be the most efficient or effective ways of providing a lethal injection as opposed to other drugs readily available in a hospital. However, lethal injection is what the Attorney General has described in his claim.

One of the deceased was 61 years old and weighed 380 pounds. Plus the patient was paralyzed. Another patient aged 89 suffered from dementia and gangrene. A third patient was 90 years old but had been reportedly recovering a day or two before the hurricane, off of support and with good blood work according to her relatives.

The conditions of the hospital are described by all as conditions at the extreme. No fresh water, dwindling food supplies, no electricity, looters in and outside of the hospital, sniper fire directed at the hospital and at rescuers attempting to assist the hospital, patients dying from the 100 degree heat and other squalid conditions, flooding, rats, mold, raw sewage and decay. The staff and volunteers, such as Dr. Pou, who came to assist soley as a result of the hurricane, had to care for hundreds of patients, with little time for rest or sleep and in conditions where their own lives were in serious jeopardy.

Dr. Mark Seigler of the Maclean Bioethics Center at the University of Chicago was quoted by The New York Times on 7/20/06 describing a comparable situation,
"How would I deal with it, if I were stranded on a desert island with 20 people on ventilators, with no electricity, no oxygen, no water and my life in jeopardy as well?”

His analogy is not even as stark as the realities that were faced at Memorial Medical Center.

The State of Louisiana can now add the Attorney General's office to the list of agencies that have or are failing the people of New Orleans. In arresting this doctor and these two nurses, New Orleans is adding insult to injury and sending a message to would be volunteers that if you come to help us, we will not support you, we will not come to your assistance, we will not provide aid or supplies and if you are comfronted with the worst possible situations and find your self in a situation where you feel that lives are in the balance and you must make decisions to help people or comfort people, we may prosecute you afterwards. We will retain our plausible deniability and protect our political positions, while doing nothing of substance, and those of you who perform actions of substance and choose to put yourselves in a position where plausible deniability of situations is not possible, You Will Face Our Consequences.

This is one additional distressful chapter to be added to the Hurricane Katrina disaster. For some people earlier this year, the most fearful thing that we heard were the words of the new FEMA director that declared that FEMA was ready for hurricane season this year. Fearful words coming from an organization led by an administration that suffers from a complete void of credibility. No one believes that FEMA is ready. No one believes that Louisiana is ready and no one believes that New Orleans is safe today.

Now the Louisiana Government has sent us the message that when local, state and federal governments fail to deliver assistance, Volunteers Will Be Prosecuted!

Related Stories

Medical and Ethical Questions Raised on Deaths of Critically Ill Patients (July 20, 2006)

Patient Deaths in New Orleans Bring Arrests (July 19, 2006)

154 Patients Died, Many in Intense Heat, as Rescues Lagged (September 19, 2005)

Hurricane and Floods Overwhelmed Hospitals (September 14, 2005)

Text: Criminal Affidavit

Sperm Creation: No Men Required

Researchers have found ways to make sperm without men. This comes as no surprise to most men. We men have known for a long time that researchers are trying to find ways to make us obsolete.

In this situation researchers were able to create sperm from embrionic stem cells.
The sperm is considered to be of low quality in these early efforts but with more research could generate higher quality sperm capable of conceiving a healthy human baby.

This is a medical advance that is worthy of note, however as a society we have to ask ourselves about the use of a technology that comes so close to our humanity.
Its not that the technology is un-natural. Too the contrary many other species have the capability given the right circumstances to take on the role of a male and produce sperm to create offspring and propogate the species.

The question we must ask is whether or not we as people are ready to live in a society where roles of male and female partnership are scientifically not abosolutely necessary. Can our psyche's survive such a scenario? Not just the men and our ego's but also women. If the society evolves to a point where a partnership between two people is unnecessary, what does that mean for our future? When we can survive as a species without having to learn to cooperate with at least one other human, will we take the time to generally get along with masses or groups of other humans? Will this push us apart even further?

Support Network for Over-Stressed Doctors Needed

I think too many doctors are going crazy these days and when they lose it they lose it in ways that are very harmful. For a profession that requires an oath whereby a doctor must committ to helping all people and at minimum doing no harm, complete breakdowns in a doctor's psyche seems recently to translate into a short circuit causing the doctor to do maximum harm to those closest to him.

A doctor from Illinois recently threw his two young children (I believe ages 4 & 8) from a balcony in Miami and then followed them over the edge. All three perished. This week a doctor in New York was embroiled in a bitter divorce and rather than lose his home and office in an auction proceeding to pay to his ex-wife, he arranged for a gas explosion that severely injured him and almost killed several people.

I suspect that we need to establish better support organizations and mechanisms around physicians. They have an extreme responsibility such as is possibly only felt by soldiers in battle or police and fire rescue in extremen life or death situations. Physicians too need support for their emotional state such that they can continue to bear their responsibility. The notion of 'Physician heal thyself' is not valid as the physician may or may not be able to make an objective review of their mental state let alone act on the review even if its is objective.

Big Dig Fiasco

Boston's Big Dig tunnel has to be one of the worst examples of publich works in the last century. There have been many scandals throughout the decades from $900 hammers sold to the pentagon to War profiteers in Iraq to War Profiteers in World War II and the commissions established by Truman before his presidency to wrangle them in line.
Boston's Big Dig has gone far over budget and far over its time line and spawned much derision and criticism since its inception.

Today, news reports that originally identified over 60 concrete panels with loose bolts, like the panels that fell and killed a female driver were actually counted to low. The figure has been revised to a number over 200 panels. The Governor of Massachusetts has taken control over the project dismissing his own governmental group responsible for watching the project.

The project has long been rumored to be victim of political corruption, contractor corruption and even claims of organized crime involvement at all levels.
In fairness it was a massive undertaking as tunnels go, nothing like the Chunnel project from Britain to France, but digging a tunnel so near swamp land is bound to have its own problems.

News that will get an Editorial Today

Here are some articles that I am writing editorials on. I am posting this map to experiment with putting clickable images into a blogger posting. (If you are interested in learning how to perform this, please contact me by commenting on this article.)