13monsters

The Wrong Decision

Over a year ago, on my semi-defunct blog about Middle Eastern affairs, I published a post comparing the West’s intervention in Libya with its (now continued) policy of non-intervention in Syria.  From that post, here’s the crux of the matter:

The international community is playing with fire when they support foreign interventions, and there will be years of debate over whether NATO’s intervention in Libya essentially created a civil war there that led to 30,000 Libyans being killed.  Conversely, without intervention, the international community risks seeing the Syrian government commit another massacre similar to the Hama massacre in 1982, where 20-40,000 Syrians were killed.

Talk about a tough decision…

Since publishing that at the end of 2011, the situation in Syria has grown more grave. Today’s headline about an estimated 93,000 deaths due to the Syrian civil war is as chilling as it is incorrect, given that the actual figure is likely well over 100,000.

Everyone willing to pay attention knew that the ruling Assad family in Syria had a history is committing mass homicides to keep their grip on power.  When the Syrian conflict broke out, the West was still debating whether its intervention in Libya prolonged that conflict and created a civil war and 30,000 deaths; or, without the West’s intervention, if Gadafi would have steamrolled the rebels in a brief conflict or would it have become a prolonged civil war with 30,000 or more deaths?  

Since the West intervened in Libya towards the beginning of their conflict, we’ll never know the answer to that question — but this is not the case in Syria.  The West didn’t intervene, and we know exactly how tragic the situation has become.

The time of debating how many deaths may result from Western intervention in Syria has long since passed, and the only further damage we can cause is by continuing to isolate ourselves from the situation.  Something has to be done before the world finds out just how much violence the Assad family is capable of.

The First Amendment and the Right to Selectively Keep Quiet

Glenn Greenwald leads off another one of his long, boring and needlessly verbose rants against the president (he seems to hate all presidents), with this:

Yet another serious escalation of the Obama administration’s attacks on press freedoms emerges

That just explains it all, doesn’t it? An attack on the FREEDOMS of the PRESS. Since it’s all about the press, isn’t it?

The press has the right to say WHATEVER they want, ANYTIME they want, ANYDAY they want, and FUCK YOU if you DARE to say anything that differs with this.

Fine, I won’t contest it. The first amendment, after all, gives anyone the right to be a complete asshole. The first amedment gives me the right to run upto people at random and scream in their face if I want to. Hey, it’s my right! If you don’t like, FUCK YOU!

The only question is why I would do such a thing, even if I have the right? In the case of the press, maybe we should start questioning some things that they choose to print.

Read Jack Shafer’s piece on the leak to the AP that caused the Obama administration to flip out. The inside information published by the AP caused the outing of an informant that US intelligence had in a branch of al-Qa’ida. We don’t know if this informant, who was in the US at the time the story broke, had important associates who were endangered or killed. This leak will also make it harder to penetrate branches of al-Qa’ida, whose suspicion of new recruits will be heightened — and good luck to US intelligence in finding recruits if sources within the agency are willing to out them for a cheap, unneeded headline.

The AP story was about how US intelligence stopped a new underware bomber, but printing this leak meant burning that whole intelligence operation. There are lives at stake here, and lives that could be lost in the future because our intelligence operatives are losing the power to operate because the press feels the need to out them.

These are serious issues here. But will Glenn Greenwald, or any of those other first amendment-uber-allies nutters mention them? No, because it’s all about the Freedom of the Press — their freedoms. It’s all about them.

Should journalists who publish leaks goto jail? No, we have the first amendment. But, perhaps it’s time for some journalists to consider the damage about to be done by printing some of these stories.

For “journalists” like Glenn Greenwald to discuss these stories without a discussion that brings up the consequences of leaks is pretty fucking shameful.

The Republican’s Perpetual Search for the Next Blowjob

Since Watergate — when a Republican president was rightfully impeached and forced to resign before being removed from office for legitimate crimes that he committed — the Republicans have deployed the strategy of trying to grind the government to a halt whenever a Democrat is elected president.  They deploy this strategy so the Democrat administration can get as little accomplished as possible.

Whenever you hear about a “scandal” involving a Democrat president, you must keep the GOP’s “Stop Government” strategy in mind because, no matter what the scope of the scandal is, the Republicans will use it to the best of their ability to grind the government’s ability to govern to a halt.

The GOP certainly deployed this strategy when Bill Clinton was in office.  Beyond the budget battles that led to actual Federal government shutdowns, the GOP kept digging into the supposed crimes of the “Whitewater” real estate deal until, after not finding anything illegal, they centered on a blowjob — which isn’t a crime.  It’s a fucking blowjob.  But that didn’t stop the Republicans from using a fucking blowjob to finally grind government to a halt by using it to impeach Clinton.

Right now, there are three “scandals” circling the Obama administration.  The Department of Justice getting phone records of Associated Press journalists is the only legitimate scandal out of the three; and currently, there isn’t a bit of evidence pointing to Obama having knowledge of DOJ actions.  There is a vast gulf of difference between an employee of the executive branch committing a crime and the president directing those crimes; and the latter was the situation with Nixon and Watergate.  Also, due to warrantless wiretapping by the National Security Agency during the Bush administration being declared legal by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, there exists the very real possibility that the DOJ’s actions weren’t even a crime.  

Should there be Congressional hearings into this matter?  Of course.  But there is a difference between having hearings and grinding government to a halt — a difference that the Republicans, due to their post-Nixon strategy, purposely obfuscate.

As for the Benghazi “scandal”, that attack happened at a time of protests in Muslim majority cities around the globe.  There was absolutely no intelligence about an upcoming attack on a US consulate office in Libya’s second city.  After all, usually it’s the embassy in a capital city that is targeted, not a minor office.  We don’t even know if the Benghazi attack was planned ahead of time or just happened on the spot.  I’ve lived in Cairo, so I’m familiar with how streets in Arab cities in Africa look; and there’s not a lot of opulence in those streets.  If an American ambassador is driving into town in a rich American car, with security in tow, then the city residents can at least deduce that this is somebody important.  There are a lot of weapons available in a country that just went through a civil war, and from there the only organizing that takes place is a couple of on the spot telephone calls and, bam, you have an attack.

That’s.  It.  There was no conspiracy to hide information about this attack because there was probably absolutely no information at all until it happened.  And it happened at a time of global protests in Muslim cities, which was enough to make anyone question whether it was a protest gone awry or an attack.  Period.  End of story.  

There is no reason for the Republicans to drag this Benghazi story out for months, but they have anyway.  Why?  Because they are trying to grind the government to a halt.

Besides the Department of Justice and Benghazi, we have the other new “scandal” revolving around an IRS office in Cincinnati targeting new organizations with words like “tea party” and “patriot” in their name applying for non-profit status as 501(c)4 groups.  The decision to target conservative organizations was, most likely, made at a middle management level in a satellite IRS office outside of Washington DC, so how, exactly, is Obama responsible for this?  Furthermore, groups that wish to qualify for 501(c)4 non-profit status should have a stated purpose and goals for “social welfare”.  One of the groups that was targeted, called “Tea Party Patriots”, spent most of their time rapidly organizing against Obama before the election.  Their biggest accomplishment was producing an anti-health care act movie called “The Determinators”, publishing it on DVD and sending it out to hundreds of thousands of Americans.  How, exactly, is that working towards aiding the “social welfare” of society?

The  IRS saw a sharp increase in organizations claiming 501(c)4 status after the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case.  And, quite frankly, if you have conservative organizations steeped in anti-tax and anti-government ideology forming blatantly political organizations that were applying for non-profit status as 501(c)4 “social welfare” groups, wouldn’t you be curious, too?  Yes, all organizations are supposed to be judged equally, but this targeting of conservative organizations was likely borne out of IRS employees looking for better ways to manage their workload.  Let’s face it, these conservative organizations are pretty suspect.  Besides the fact that this wasn’t ordered by the Obama administration, how exactly is this a scandal?

Should there be a hearing or two?  Of course.  But will Republicans pretend this is the end of the world?  Of course.  Why?  Because they are trying to grind the government to a halt.

In light of all of these “scandals”, wherein evidence of direct involvement from the Obama White House doesn’t exist, it’s worth mentioning two actual scandals from the Bush administration that Republicans (and their savant-like stenographers in the mainstream media) cared nothing about — two non-scandals that had evidence of the Bush White House being directly involved.

The most important non-scandal of the Bush administration was the Downing Street Memo.  Published in the British press on May 1, 2005, the memo proved that the Bush administration was lying to the world about the evidence we had regarding Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction during the run up to the Second Iraq War.  That unneeded war killed over 4,800 soldiers, injured over 32,500 soldiers, and likely killed over 120,000 Iraqi civilians.  I could get into the monetary costs that we’re still paying off, but the human toll is sick enough.  Why didn’t the Republicans or the mainstream media regard the Downing Street Memo as a scandal?

The second non-scandal is one I mentioned previously, the National Security Agency executing warrantless wiretaps.  This was initiated by the Bush administration after 9/11, and Republicans weren’t appalled by it.  In fact, one of the groups who was spied upon took their case to court but it was recently thrown out in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.  The case has yet to make it to the Supreme Court, and lawyers the group spied on fear that an appeal to the Supreme Court would only uphold the ruling from the 9th Court because of the conservative-leanings of the current Supreme Court justices.

Why didn’t the Republicans use these two scandals, with direct connections to the Bush White House, as a reason to host a number of hearings and grind government to a halt?  Why do they only care when lesser crimes are committed that don’t have any apparent connections to the White House?

The answer is simple: Republicans want power, period.  That’s why they’ll turn a blind eye when one of their own commits impeachable atrocities against the Constitution and humanity.  But when a Democrat is in office, then they’re constantly searching for the next blowjob.

Terrorism and the, unfortunate, Islamic Exceptionalism

Yigal Amir.  You probably won’t know why this man is relevant unless you Google him.  I’ll save you the effort — Amir was a militant Jewish man who assassinated Israeli Prime Minster Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.  Rabin’s supposed crime?  Working towards an agreement that would may have brought actual peace between the Palestinians and Israelis.  Since Rabin was murdered by a religious radical, Israelis have elected more rightwing governments that have been more concerned with occupying Palestinian land rather than coming to peace with them. 

Despite these heinous crimes, the entirety of Judaism has not been accused of being a radical religion, where every member is to be held responsible for the violence committed by one of them. 

Adam Lanza.  You don’t need to Google him, and you don’t need to be reminded of his actions.  We found out after Adam Lanza’s massacre that he had a certificate from the NRA.  The NRA maintains that the young Lanza was never a “member” of their organization, but Lanza’s NRA certificate demonstrates that he showed interest in and sympathy to an organization that, quite frankly, showed indifference to Lanza before he committed his crimes. 

Despite those atrocities, the entirety of the NRA has not been accused of supporting massacres — horrible crimes that their lobbying in DC for lax gun regulations, quite frankly, helps perpetuate.

Timothy McVeigh.  When he bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City, committing the second worst act of terrorism on American soil in our country’s history, nobody said: “It’s time to watch out for those Irish people.”  

Nobody suggested that we should be afraid of white people. 

Yet whenever somebody who claims to be a Muslim commits a horrible crime, the suggestions that over one billion Muslims — a very pluralistic group of humanity containing numerous different countries, societies, languages, and sects of the religion who have different ideas regarding faith and worship — we’re going to hear the usual calls to blame all Muslims. 

This notion is just as ridiculous as the notion of blaming the religion, nationality, and organizations that the other criminals I mentioned belonged to and associated with.  People need to stop thinking in blanket statements about Muslims, because that method of thought certainly isn’t causing any good. 

Losing it phase

My “losing” phase, that I described in my last post, is pretty weird right now.  Maybe it’s normal and I’m just, finally, paying attention to it, but I still don’t get it.  

A month ago, I thought my body was at a state where I was gaining weight but unable to exercise.  Right now, just like this time last year, my body still won’t let me exercise, but it has decided that it wants to lose weight.  Conversely, despite my love handles, I’ve decided that I want to keep whatever weight I have on my body after finding out that I have a low white blood cell count.  That means I have a weakened immune system, so I figure whatever weight I can keep on my bones will help me out. 

And I’ve been mostly successful with maintaining a weight of 180 pounds.  But it’s been a struggle — I need to eat 2300-2500 calories every day of good, healthy foods.  A thousand calories of chocolate doesn’t count, I’m trying to get my fruits and veggies in.  But a medium size apple or orange is only around 100 calories; that becomes 350 calories when paired with a handful of nuts.  But that’s it.  My dinners lately have been either take out or homemade eggplant parm…  Nothing that’s especially bad, but I’ve made sure that both options are calorie bombs. 

I’ve also tried to start working out again.  And by “start”, I mean that my workouts are 20 push-ups and 16 curls of 21lbs. dumbbells after I shower.  I do this in about 10 minutes and my lack of need to produce a sweat shows you just how much I’m not working out.  These workouts are more like asking for permission from my body to exercise.  

And my body has a reply: Fuck no.  

This much was evident to me around noon today, when I wasn’t able to concentrate and I started getting the sweats, which are a precursor to the shakes, which tells me that my body was going into a blood sugar low because I hadn’t had enough to eat.  But I had plenty to eat today: a protein shake after my brief “workout”, a glass of cocunut milk before I left the house, a Dunkies bagel with cream cheese at work, and a Fiber One bar.  If you’re a calorie counter, that’s around 900 calories before lunch.  Not half bad, but my body was like FUCK YOU.

I had plenty to eat last night, too.  Besides the aforementioned eggplant parm dinner, I decided to experiment with a small bag of Doritos, half a six pack of brown ale, and 20 or so Ritz crackers.  I told myself, “Consume all of this after dinner, then weigh yourself tomorrow morning.  Surely, you’ll be up a couple of pounds.” 

I wasn’t.  Then I was knocked into a blood sugar low this afternoon.  

Really, I just don’t get my body.  A couple months ago, I couldn’t exercise and I was gaining weight.  Now, I still can’t really exercise but I’m fighting to keep weight on my body.  

Aesthetically speaking in our culture of body image, I suppose that have fighting to keep weight on your body is a “problem” most people would like to have.  An ex-girlfriend posted some pictures of me from a roadtrip we took last summer to Facebook, when I was in another losing phase and accepted it to a certain extent.  I looked at those pics and thought, holy crap, I was really skinny — between that and my low blood cell count, no wonder I feel like total shit sometimes. 

But I want the freedom to do what I want with my body.  I want to bike 100 miles in a day if I so choose, and my late uncle did such when he was younger then myself.  Fundamentally, I don’t accept the physical limitations of my body right now.  Something’s wrong beyond my age, and I still need to find out what that is. 

Losing Phase

Unlike most people who keep a tumblr for moving GIFs of movies and pictures of cats or what not, I use mine as a personal journal.  I like the format, don’t care if everybody else reads it, and it’s important to write about myself since I tend to forget about myself. 

For example, last spring I jotted down some things on this here tumblr that I forgot about: I was managing unexpected weight loss.  I was hungry all the time, and it seemed like all I could do to keep meat on my bones was just eat and eat and eat. 

Similar to how I feel right now, I was still fatigued — though my fatigue wasn’t as bad as it is now. 

And lately, I’ve tried to keep myself from gaining weight while not being able to exercise because of those fatigue issues.  But yesterday, I felt a feeling that was familiar to what I felt last spring — I was ravenously hungry.  So, after work, instead of going home and eating a salad, I stopped at a Mexican restaurant.  I ordered a big ass shredded beef and pinto bean burrito, topped with cheese, and washed it down with a margarita and two beers. 

After I took a shower this morning, I weighed myself.  Lost a pound. 

And so it begins…  I’m moving from gaining phase to losing phase again.  My body is very, very weird. 

Tonight, it also dawned on me that my heightened fatigue issues after workouts this winter makes sense.  I’m not sure when my issues with having a low white blood cell count started, since I felt fatigued last year but I was still able to workout.  I was bench pressing around 145 pounds for 3-5 reps per set, 2 sets, before I injured my hand last February; which isn’t half bad.   Only took a couple months to get myself back upto that level of strength, and I recovered from those workouts. 

What’s the difference between then and now?  Last winter was much warmer.  We didn’t have a single snowstorm, and by St. Patrick’s Day it was 65-70 degrees.  This winter has been different, with cold temperatures and back-to-back snowstorms since the end of January. 

With a low white blood cell count, I have a weak immune system.  Last winter was more forgivable than this winter, though — so I had less day-to-day ailments to fight off.  Compare that to this winter where, when I ask my body to recover from a workout, it’s essentially telling me, “Fuck you, I have to recover from all of this other shit, first.” 

Which means I should feel better soon, since winter is over.  And, I suspect, I’ll be fighting to keep weight on again. 

I use MyFitnessPal to track calories, so I updated my settings to maintain my current weight of 180 pounds.  Now that I know my immune system is weak, I’d like to keep an extra 10-20 pounds on my bones in case I catch a bad virus that incapacitates me for a week, since then I’d need weight to burn.  You can never be too safe.  

This means I’ll need to eat 2200 calories a day, and that’s the bare minimum.  But if I can successful perform light weightlifting activities, now, I can progressively ramp those up and make sure that all of the weight I gain is muscle.  Muscle or fat, if I get sick it’ll go quick — why not make it muscle?  It looks better, and I’m vain.  

In the meantime, this second beer finally pushes my calories for the day above 2200.  And I don’t have to feel guilty. 

Doctors with Low Brain Cell Counts

Claiming that you’re a “big guy” can sound conceited.  In my case, it’s also not really true anymore, but it’s still accurate to say that I have a body type with the potential to get bigger.  This makes whatever size I am a choice, and I have more choices than other people.  If I was healthy enough to ramp up my weight lifting workouts, I could start a two year program on a track with gaudy goals — 300 lbs bench press, 500 lbs dead lift and squats, etc.  A lot of people can’t say that because they don’t have my body type.  Now, if only I didn’t have this nasty book reading habit taking up some of my time… 

Or, if I didn’t have a low white blood cell count holding me back from being too fatigued to put in a decent workout.  Except the doctor’s office didn’t think the amount of white blood cells I have was a big deal, but I don’t think they understand the needs of somebody with the body type of big-potential.  

We’re not normal, and we need more of everything — more calories, more nutrients, more painkillers if we’re hurt.  More, more, more.  When I waited tables in college, I had to consume 3000 calories a day just to maintain a weight of 175 lbs.  If my weight dipped below 170 lbs., I got sick.  For most people, approaching 170 lbs. means that they could be overweight — just look at all the Body Mass Index charts that claim 150 lbs. is an optimal weight for a man who’s 5’10 - 6’ tall.  To me, those charts are laughable.  When I’m able to live an active lifestyle, I need 3000 calories a day just to keep myself normal.  Like I said, people like myself need more. 

The fact that the medical profession has come up with bullshit like BMI index charts to judge people’s health in relation to their height and weight tells me that they don’t know how to handle people like myself, with big-potential.  So I shouldn’t be surprised when I found out that the doctor’s office didn’t intend to even tell me the results of the blood tests I had two weeks ago. 

I gave them a call yesterday, and after going through the results and being told everything is “normal”, I had to ask questions for a couple more minutes to pry an abnormality from the tests out of them.  Finally, the nurse on the phone admitted that I had a low white blood cell count of 3.9.  ”Normal” count range is between 4.5 - 10.8 — but that’s for normal people.  I, however, am not normal.  I don’t get what’s so difficult to comprehend about this fact. I need more of everything.  So if I have a low white blood cell count in comparison to “normal” people, I’m likely feeling the effects of it worse than a normal person would. 

I think my anger here is measured and reasonable since I didn’t goto medical school, they did.  I am taking responsibility to take care of myself, trying to make sure that there’s nothing wrong with me now and trying to avoid health problems in the future.  I’m asking them for help because I can’t do everything myself.

Regardless of my body type, a low white blood cell count can be an indicator of other conditions.  Leukemia, aplastic anemia, lupus; a zillion other things as far as I’m concerned.  All of which I’d now love to get some tests for to see if my health is at any further risk.  

For now, fatigue is a symptom of having a low white blood cell count; fatigue was also the reason why I wanted to get my blood tested.  I told the doctor about my situation: My levels of energy have been progressively getting worse, to the point where I can’t get into workout routines, I’m gaining weight, and if I overdo a workout I’m liable to take the next day or two out of work because working up the energy to get out of bed is a challenge. 

Yet I had to pry knowledge about my condition out of the nurse on my call.  I had to ask them if they intended to call me about these results or mail the results to me, and she said that they had no intention to do such.  When I asked if these results warranted another appointment with the doctor, the nurse told me that their only intent was to call me a year from now to see if I needed another physical.

You’ve. Got. To. Be. Shitting. Me. 

I’m so sick of the medical profession not giving a fuck about me.  I’ve fucking had it. 

I told the nurse that I want the complete results of my blood exams mailed to me, I intend talk about them with a new doctor.  To me, it’s obvious that I need some sort of treatment immediately and more testing to make sure this isn’t an indication of something serious.  I’m also wondering if I should talk with a lawyer about possible legal action against this doctor.  I’m sick of doctor’s I see not caring about my health and not bothering to understand my body type, so I might in the mood for a scalp.  

Then again, it’s not like I’m first person doctors have treated in such a horrible manner.  I’m probably the 10 trillionth; nobody special.  So I shouldn’t take it personally.  

Ask me if I even give a fuck at this point.

All Saints Day

A couple months ago, I was invited to a friend’s St. Patrick’s Day Party at his apartment on Dot Ave in Southie — basically the capital of drunken debauchery worldwide on whichever day in March is graced to be St. Patrick’s Day each year.  So, you know, fun times.  This year, though, there are two complicating matters.  The first one trumped the party, but the second one circles right back to good ole Dottie. 

First matter: My closest uncle passed away this week.  Second matter: My friend’s grandma passed away this week.  Two shitass situations… 

Most of my friend’s family lives in the Chicago area, too.  I feel pulled by two obligations right now, and I know my friend is going to be completely and totally blasted tomorrow.  But, as I can attest to right now, sometimes a hug can mean the world. 

So, it looks like I’ll be in the worldwide capital of drunken debauchery tomorrow afternoon, after all.  My drinking will not have started at 10:00am, so I’ll be one of the most sober people on the T before arriving. 

Regardless, tomorrow will not be a party.  But I wish the rest of Boston the best of wishes on their endeavors to make sure that Monday morning is the beginning of St. OFMG Fucking Hangover I Want To PukePukePuke Uggggghhhnnnn HUCK Day. 

As for myself, I’ll be celebrating the saints of two families.  

Nothing Serious

I saw the doctor on Monday, and submitted a couple vials of my blood for a litany of tests, and it’s dawned on me that I think nothing is normal about this process.  It just seems normal. 

Even before I can remember, it seems like I’ve been a bundle of strange medical problems.  My collarbone and wrist were broken while I was being born.  When I was a young kid, my motor skills were kinda fucked up, I needed speech therapy, and  had enlarged adenoids that gave me the world’s longest cold along with some trouble breathing. 

By the time all of that was cleared up when I became a teenager, I grew too quickly and that resulted in Osgood–Schlatter disease.  That cut short any lackluster athletic career I might have put together, since it placed my knees in a decent amount of pain 24/7. 

That went away during my early 20s, but then I found out I was hypoglycemic — probably eating myself into Type 2 Diabetes.  I improved my diet and started getting into decent workout routines since my knees no longer hurt, and got myself into pretty decent shape. Entering my 30s, I thought I had things under control. 

And now, I dunno. 

I’m not afraid if the fact that news of a new ailment could be coming because it just seems normal.  What, something’s wrong?  Again?  Sigh.  OK, let’s find out what it is this time, hope it’s nothing serious, and learn how to bring it under control and feel normal again. 

I just hope it’s nothing serious.