Veteran’s Day, 2013

Posted on November 11, 2013 by The Old Wolf

This post is dedicated to the memory of my maternal uncle, Courtney Rogers Draper, who lost his life on one of the Japanese “Hell Ships” in December of 1944.

Obituary from the Salt Lake Tribune of July 25, 1945. Courtney’s parents received the telegram the previous day.

Strike photo showing the sinking of the Enoura Maru in Takao Harbor (now Kaohsiung, Taiwan). The allies were unaware that the ship was packed to the gills with allied prisoners, as the Japanese ships were unmarked.

Painting of the Ebara Maru, a ship of the same class as the Enoura Maru. The Ebara was not used as a Hell Ship.

Monument in Memory Grove, Salt Lake City.

A photo of Lt. Draper in the Philippines before his capture, along with his purple heart ribbon.

The official POW record reads as follows:

World War II Prisoners of War, 1941-1946
Name: Courtney R Draper
Race: White
Residence State: Utah

Report Date: 7 May 1942
Latest Report Date: Jan 1945

Grade: First Lieutenant or Chief nurse or Head dietitian or Head physical therapy aides
Grade Notes: First Lieutenant or Lt. Jr. Grade
Service Branch: Army
Arm or Service: Air Corps
Arm or Service Code: Air Corps
Area Served: Southwest Pacific Theatre: Philippine Islands
Detaining Country: Japan
Camp: 502
STATUS: Executed, Died in Ship’s Sinking or Result of Ship Sinking, Shot While Attempting Escape
Notes: Enoura Maru
POW Transport Ship: December Sinkings: See code in previous field (REP). (B)DS=Brazil Maru; (E)DS=Enoura Maru; (O)DS=Oryoka Maru; (X) Died during transportation from Olongapo to San Fernando, PI.
Report Source: Individual has been reported through sources considered official.

Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, also known as Fort William McKinley Cemetery, honors the American and allied servicemen who died fighting the Japanese in World War II. The Cemetery offers repose to soldiers who died in the Pacific theatre, which included the Philippines, New Guinea, and the Pacific islands. Courtney’s last official status is “missing,” his remains “unrecoverable.”

Courtney was a promising and rising young attorney in his father’s practice before his death; his siblings, including my mother, always told me what an outstanding person he was. I’m saddened that I never knew him, but I honor his memory, as I do that of all the honored dead. May they rest in peace.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Fail to stop at a stop sign; get repeatedly raped (legally)

Posted on November 6, 2013 by The Old Wolf

This article is reblogged from TechDirt. Click through for the full article, including legal complaints and other documentation.

Edit: At least the poor guy was compensated to some degree. Hidalgo County and Deming coughed up $1.6 million to settle the suit. However, no disciplinary action was reported.

This is one of the most disgraceful abuses of power I’ve heard of in recent times, and some of them have been pretty bad.

I call for the immediate dismissal of the officers involved, and criminal charges to be filed against them, as well as against the doctors who performed these illegal, invasive procedures without the consent of the victim. Oh, and did I mention that the Gila Regional Medical Center is billing the victim for the invasive, non-consensual medical procedures and has threatened to take him to collections for non-payment?

By the holy skull of Mogg’s grandfather, this is beyond belief.

——————

Cops Subject Man To Rectal Searches, Enemas And A Colonoscopy In Futile Effort To Find Drugs They Swear He Was Hiding

from the a-vulgar-display-of-power dept

This post is going to be very short on commentary because the hideous abuse of justice has basically rendered me near speechless.

David Eckert, a resident of Deming, NM, was pulled over by police officers after failing to come to a complete stop at a stop sign. For whatever reason, the officers decided Eckert was hiding something, or perhaps they were unsatisfied that a routine stop hadn’t blown up into something bigger.

They asked him to step out of the car and then searched his vehicle (without his consent). Another officer brought in a drug dog which reacted (a relatively worthless indication of anything — drug dogs can easily be “alerted” by their controlling officers) to the driver’s seat. (Eckert’s lawyer calls into question this dog’s training, presenting documents that claim to show it hadn’t received the proper field training and recertification. See exhibits listed under docket item 27.) Then the officer “observed” that Eckert was standing “erect with his legs together” and his “buttocks clenched.” This was all the justification the Deming police needed to subject Eckert to the following horrific chain of events at a hospital in neighboring Silver City.

1. Eckert’s abdominal area was x-rayed; no narcotics were found.
2. Doctors then performed an exam of Eckert’s anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found.
3. Doctors performed a second exam of Eckert’s anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found.
4. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.
5. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema a second time. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.
6. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema a third time. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.
7. Doctors then x-rayed Eckert again; no narcotics were found.
8. Doctors prepared Eckert for surgery, sedated him, and then performed a colonoscopy where a scope with a camera was inserted into Eckert’s anus, rectum, colon, and large intestines. No narcotics were found.

At no time did Eckert give his consent to these searches. The police did obtain a warrant to rectally search Eckert but that warrant itself was problematic. For one, it was severely lacking in probable cause. For another, it was valid only for Luna County but the searches were executed inGrant County. Third, the warrant was only valid for four hours, up until 10 pm that night. Eckert was held for 14 hours and, according to medical records, prep for the colonoscopy didn’t even commence until 1 am the following day.

Why the venue shift? Because the doctor at the Deming hospital told officers the proposed search was “unethical.” Drs. Robert Wilcox and Okay Odocha of the Gila Regional Medical Center apparently had no qualms about forcibly “searching” Eckert eight times.

There’s more in Eckert’s complaint, including the fact that the second x-ray was of his chest, an area completely unrelated to the region where he was supposedly “concealing drugs.” In addition to what can be proven from medical records and police reports obtained by Eckert’s attorney, there are additional allegations that the officers Chavez and Hernandez mocked him and made derogatory comments about his “compromised position.” They also allegedly moved the privacy screen repeatedly to expose him to others in the hospital hallway. This verbal abuse apparently continued during Eckert’s ride back to the Deming police station. Understandably, Eckert now claims to be “terrified to leave the house” and does so “infrequently.”

There are many lawsuits filed where most details are alleged. This isn’t one of them. Most of what’s “alleged” by Eckert is documented by the routine paperwork that accompanies medical procedures and search warrants. And, to add insult to injury, KOB4’s news team states that the Gila Regional Medical Center is billing Eckert for the invasive, non-consensual medical procedures and has threatened to take him to collections for non-payment.

The only question that remains is why no one involved on the “law” side ever thought that anything past the first step on the list above might be excessive. These officers, along with two shamefully compliant doctors, went as far as they could to humiliate and violate someone simply because they could — in a collective effort that looks far more like making Eckert pay for the “crime” of making the cops look stupid than any sort of legitimate law enforcement effort.

The mind reels at the human corruption and institutional evil that allowed this travesty to take place.

Contact the Gila Regional Medical Center:

Complaint, send to our Patient Advocate: patientadvocate@grmc.org

Contact the Deming Police Department

700 E. Pine St. Deming NM 88030
Phone: (575)546-3012
Fax: (575)546-0503

Contact the Hidalgo County Sheriff

Saturnino Madero

720 E. 2nd Street
Lordsburg, NM 88045
575.542.3833
575.542.3143 FAX

The victim is suing for damages, and I hope he prevails beyond all expectations. A large settlement is the only thing that will make the various parties to this abomination sit up and take notice.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

12 Habits of Healthy, Happy People Who Don’t Give A Rat’s South-40 About Your Inner Peace

Posted on October 21, 2013 by The Old Wolf

Note: This has been reblogged from Yoganonamous. It has been bowdlerized for my audience (if you haven’t used that word before, it means I’ve cleaned it up a bit.) If you want to read the original in all its salty glory, you may do so at the original page. The Old Wolf approves this philosophy.

12 Habits of Healthy, Happy People Who Don’t Give A Rat’s South-40 About Your Inner Peace

By YOGANONYMOUS

Every time someone in my Facebook feed posts something like this, I click it. Every single time.

We all have this Facebook friend, right? People you genuinely love and admire. People you like hanging out with. People you invite to your birthday parties. You know. Actual friends. Until you’ve clicked links exactly like this again and again and again. For years. And all of a sudden, you start to wonder if this is some elaborate hoax, if you’ve actually just been reading the same article over and over.

It’s not like I have anything against happiness, or success, or meditation, or yoga, or being nice, or smiling more, or eating healthy, or losing weight, or being your best you, or embracing the day with a positive attitude. Those all sound great. Honestly, they do. And there are some really smart, simple truths to be found in all of those articles. There truly are.

It’s just that I have a problem with being told to do all of those things by skinny blonde ladies laughing on a beach wearing yoga pants.

Don’t believe me? Take the challenge. Next time you read one of these articles, I dare you not to play Inspirational Photo Bingo:

Don’t believe me? Compiling these photos took less than four minutes.

I can’t remember the last time I pranced around a tropical island paradise waving a white scarf around my head as a professional photographer snapped a picture, but I bet if I did, I’d be a whole lot happier too.

Below please find my version of this article, that I want to share with you, the internet. May it bring you all the inner peace you can cram into your backpacking gear right before downward dogging it atop that mountain at sunrise.

Do whatever you want.
Do whatever you want.
Seriously, do you want that burger? Then just eat a burger. Don’t be gross about it, and don’t eat a burger three meals a day. But I beg you, women and image-conscious male humans of the world, stop beating yourself up about it and just eat the burger.
Do whatever you want.
Have good friends. Call them. Complain a little. That’s what friends are for. Return the favor. Don’t be a crappy friend.
Learn how to laugh about farts. Fart more. Laugh about it.
Be incessantly curious about the world around you! Experience art, science, beauty, and nature! But stop beating yourself up on those nights when you just want to sit your ass on the couch and watch reruns of Friends.
Smile when you feel like smiling. Laugh whenever you feel like laughing. Pro tip: Being told to ‘laugh more’ is not going to make you laugh more. Being told to ‘smile more’ is not going to make you smile more.
Make time for yourself. After you’ve run that 5K, started a load of laundry, harvested your organic vegetable garden, run to the bank, paid the bills, dazzled everyone with recipes that are cost-effective, healthy, and delicious, thought of something witty and clever to share with your social networking site, caught up on current events and politics, and cleaned all of the house, that special hour set aside just for you is so critical to your well-being.*
Do whatever you want.
Don’t care what other people think. Unless they’re right. In which case, humble yourself enough to listen to them.
Do. Whatever. You Want.

Do what you want. Be your self. Don’t be a terrible person. Be nice to others. Be supportive of your friends and allow yourself to give them the benefit of the doubt when they want to try something new, like rescuing shelter dogs, or making performance art in the nude, or dating terrible people. They’re your friends and you love them, and if they suck, stop being their friend. Show up for work. Pay your bills. Find some purpose in your life, and figure out a way to share that purpose with others in a way that isn’t sanctimonious and doesn’t involve a picture of a woman laughing at an empty beach. Smile because something makes you smile. Laugh because you’ve surrounded yourself by people who make you laugh, and they’re funny people, and you’re happy to be with them. Dance because you’re drunk at a big dance party with your friends and Michael Jackson is playing, not because ‘no one is watching.’ Everyone is watching. We’re at a party. That’s how parties work.

Do whatever you want.

And the next time one of you has the kind of spare cash around to take a prancercise vacation to a tropical island, for the love of all that is holy please bring me with you. I am excellent at waving scarves around but even better at buying drinks with tiny umbrellas.

*And I don’t even have kids! Or a husband! Or a boyfriend! I can’t even imagine how condescending that advice must feel to working moms. As someone who works all the time and can barely remember which day of the week the trash gets taken out: making time for yourself seems like one of the cruelest bits of advice of all. I’ll make plenty of time for myself. Once I finish all of the things.

With massive thanks to Katherine Fritz, who has a great blog called “I Am Begging My Mother not to Read This Blog,

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Stupidity, hard at work in the White House

Posted on October 18, 2013 by The Old Wolf

The Post Office designed a new set of stamps to encourage kids to get active. Great idea, right?

Unfortunately, thanks to some on the President’s Council on Fitness, the project has now been put on hold, because it appears that these three stamps are promoting “unsafe” activities:

The stamps deemed unsafe by federal officials included illustrations of kids skateboarding without kneepads, doing a cannonball dive into a swimming pool, and doing a handstand without wearing a helmet. A handstand without wearing a helmet???

There are times I really wish I could swear. Of all the chuckleheaded, doltish, ludicrous, ill-considered, short-sighted and politically correct nonsense I have ever heard, this takes the cake. YOU BLISTERING SIMPLETONS! Yes, I’m SHOUTING! Did you get run over by the stupid truck? What, are you going to put federal monitors on every school playground and in every backyard, to make sure kids don’t run, jump, do cartwheels, tumble, climb trees, roll down hills, do somersaults, and everything kids do to enjoy life and burn off energy? ^[1]

I’ve written about the difference between safety and paranoia, but it appears the general trend continues in favor of paranoia, fueled largely by attorneys hungry for billable hours and with far too much time on their hands. For the love of anything you consider holy, every single one of those activities on the stamp sheet come with some inherent risks; we might as well curl up in a ball under our bed if we’re worried about safety to that extent. At least that way, nothing will get us but the dust mites.

I don’t believe in violence, but things like this are very stressful for me ^[2].

It was earlier reported that the entire run of stamps is being destroyed, but according to USPS spokeman Roy Betts, “The stamps are on hold and a decision would be made later.”

You can read more about this mind-boggling witlessness at ABC News.

[1] It appears stupidity is not limited to the USA. A school in Australia actually tried to ban kids from doing cartwheels.

[1] Stress: The confusion created when one’s mind overrides the body’s basic desire to choke the living daylights out of some jerk who desperately deserves it.

Avag Co Bepsig: These coins are Evil!

Posted on October 3, 2013 by The Old Wolf

http://theoldwolf.com/Fraud/index.htmlNote: Before you read the article below, please read the following disclaimer, made necessary by some of the comments this post has generated.

These coins are not evil. They are cheap bits of plastic from some manufacturer in China. They have no special qualities, no magic powers. There is no witch named “Avagnanian Coishousness of Bepsigosity” – that’s just nonsense from a writer of satire. He might as well have used “A Vague Consciousness of BepsiCola.” There are no witches in this world. A lot of people who want to be one, and pretend they are, but dark magic and fortune telling and bad luck and the evil eye are all products of people’s imaginations.

Well, let me backpedal a bit.

Somehow, I managed to come into possession of one of these little plastic gems:

I’m certain it came to me from one of the fraud letters that my mother used to receive when she was alive (and continues to receive years after her death).

At any rate, here it is. Being a linguist by profession, I was curious about the inscription – whether it was sheer garbage or was based on anything real. I found a lovely description, completely tongue-in-cheek, at The Captain’s Blog:

This is a warning for aspiring pirates intent on purchasing a bag full of plastic novelty coins. Be aware that the brand of plastic coins bearing the legend “AVAG CO BEPSIG” are enchanted. That’s right, enchanted….

At our very first PiratePalooza I made the mistake of buying just such a bag of Avag Co Bepsig coins and made a fair show of giving them out whenever possible. Yet, when I returned to port I found that I still had a good many of the coins in me purse. Over the course of the year I continued to find more of the coins. Some in my bed, some in the settee, some in the stern of my autocarriage. Every time I found an Avag Co Bepsig coin I returned it to me leather coinpurse, full in the knowledge that I had them collected, each and every one.

And still I continued to find more, in places I thought I’d looked before. It’s fairly ridiculous how these things seem to breed in captivity, easily outstripping the population of coat hangers rutting in me washroom.

Without a doubt, my collection of these bewitched plastic coins outnumbers my original purchase and I am now consigned to the fact that some day in the future my ship will be awash in these devilish discs of dementia, certain to sink ‘neath their accursed weight and artificial shininess. For now I can only serve as example to those of you lucky enough yet to avoid these shiny promises from the heart of Avagnanian Coishousness of Bepsigosity, for that it what it turns out the name means.

Avagnanian Coishousness be a person… a Bane Witch of terrible antiquity and uncertain designs upon humanity, Cap’n Drew in particular. And even though I now know the source of me curse don’t expect me to take it all noble-like. No, no.

Know this, me hearties: I’ll take no pity upon any of you, so watch your backs. I’ll be certain to try slipping one of me famous cursed coins into your open pockets, purses, pouches and gaping glimpses of cleavage.

You’ve been warned.

Of course, this is all in fun. But the world is so full of a number of things, I suppose we should all be yanking our hair out in frustration if we knew the depth and breadth of human gullibility. Over at Ripoff Report, I found this letter from a dear soul who was so glad she was warned about the evil enchantment that lay on these coins, received in one of these fraudulent “prayer letter” scams:

You have sent me prayer letters. The one I recently opened on Oct. 16, 2011 although you sent it in May 2011. I just came across it . Although the letter was right on in what I was specifically praying for..you placed 2 coins in the letter to put one in my house that fiances will increase in my house & the other to place in my purse for financial increase. Once i did this & went to bed all night I could not sleep God woke me & told me to google the words on the coins they say “Avag Co Bepsig” I googled these words & discovered they are a WITCH”S name. You see I am a born again believer in Christ Jesus He Is My Lord & Savior..He Promises To Not Let His Children Walk In Darkness…I was at my dad’s house who is a Pastor & has won many to Christ. I was going to put one coin in his house but The Holy Spirit kept telling me NO!!! You see I am EXPOSING YOU !!! THis witch turned a man’s coins to plastic…if you people are really of Christ Jesus why would’nt God show you about these coins before you started sending them out??? God Promises Not To Let THose Who Truly Love Him Walk In Darkness…He EXPOSED you to me!!!

Now, in the interest of full disclosure I need to point out that I have a spiritual walk of my own, but I’ve always done my best to temper my faith with reason.^[1] Not doing so leads to madness, or to the kind of attitude one sees above, where “if you read it in the Bible, or if you see it on the Internet, it has to be true.” In the end, it’s scary to think the kinds of world views upon which ordinary people, legislators, and national leaders can base their behavior.

In a recorded interview which once existed on YouTube, Richard Dawkins fielded a question from a Muslim who asked whether atheists could judge right from wrong in the absence of an absolute morality. Professor Dawkins proceeded to shred the question simply by making reference to things like the beating of women and punishment for apostasy, and summed up his analysis by saying that if these kinds of things are what absolute morality brings, he’d rather live without it; instead, he favors a morality that is developed and tested and tried and revised by the strength of reason and humanity. I’m put in mind of the four-way test of the Rotarians, used as a guide for business and personal relationships:

Of the things we think, say or do

Is it the TRUTH?
Is it FAIR to all concerned?
Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?

There’s a lot of wiggle-room in the first one, because among humans “truth” is hard to ferret out, except within the realm of pure science; but the last three ask the same question in different ways, to wit, “will it raise the human condition?”

Whatever we believe, we cannot afford to go through life not asking this question. Religion and humanism have as their ultimate goal to make their practitioners better people. If you’re still a jerk, it’s not working.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

[1] Now don’t jump down my throat about inconsistencies here… one of these days I’ll get my thoughts together in a more comprehensive essay about why I believe what I do, although a brief summary might be extrapolated from this entry. After that, feel free to shred my Weltanschauung if it brings you joy, but I’m pretty certain that the exercise will be entirely academic.

Post 1000: An Open Letter to Congress and the White House

Posted on October 3, 2013 by The Old Wolf

This is my 1000th post on this blog since I began writing 18 months ago. I wish I had a happier topic to write about, but today is day 3 of an inexcusable, unconscionable, and cruel shutdown of our “government.” Notice those scare quotes there… they were placed for a reason.

We do not have a government. What we have is this:

Babies.

Babies in a miserable, wretched sandbox fight.

Babies crying about not getting their way. Throwing sand, pulling hair, crying, taking their ball and going home… babies who are charged with the stewardship of trillions of dollars, not a single one of which belongs to them. They are fighting amongst themselves for only one reason – to shore up their support for the next election. And in the meantime, thousands of workers have been furloughed, parks are closed, visitors are being turned away, revenue is being lost, women and children in desperate need are unable to get supplemental food, critical space projects^[1] are coming close to missing deadlines imposed not by some mid-level government functionary but by physics^bitches, our debt rating with the world is being flushed down the toilet, along with seven jillionteen other detrimental consequences, and still they sit there, crying, beating their breasts about dogma and ideology, and not giving a rat’s south-40 that almost all of America, regardless of political persuasion, is saying,

Stop it!

As a body, you are not governing. You’re not doing the job you were elected to do. Although a few of you see the folly and are doing your best to make things happen, but the numbers just aren’t there in the face of all the partisan, ideological obstructionism that pervades both houses of Congress and the presidency, and we, the people, are sick to death of it. As for me, I want to slap every one of you until you come to your senses.

We need jobs. We need education. We need healthcare for every citizen of this country, regardless of their ability to pay. We need to work on reducing poverty, crime, alienation, disenfranchisement, and a host of other social ills – and you arrogant, selfish, short-sighted, privileged buffoons sit there and allow the mechanism that our founding fathers put in place to address those problems to shut down.

This is where I’m at. I’m disgusted with all of you. I would like to see a total sweep. But in very truth, things are reaching a tipping point.

You, the “leaders” of our country who are leading us nowhere but into deprivation and destruction, are fast approaching a time when voting you out of office will not be enough; rather, you are courting insurrection among the people whom you are charged to govern, and if it comes to that, it will be upon your own heads. America is champing at the bit for a chance to clean the inward vessel.

Take heed. Get off your privileged butts and get the government back to work. Hundreds of millions of people, of whom 15% live in poverty and a much vaster percentage can feel economic terror snapping at their heels on a daily basis, depend on you to do your jobs. Now stop throwing sand, and do them.

The Old Wolf has spoken.^[2]

[1] The next time you wonder about what good comes from space exploration and research, have a look at your GPS-enabled phone.
[2] And I’m quite pleased that I was able to express my feelings without sinking to the level of vulgar profanity that I feel is warranted by this debacle.