I know this is minor compared to the list of atrocities you have mentioned, but I cannot understand why wage theft in America is not a criminal offense. If I steal $20 from my boss I’m going to jail. Or at least getting on probation where I will probably end up in jail because things are illegal for people on supervision that aren’t illegal for regular people
But if my boss steals wages from a bunch of employees, the worst thing that happens to him is he has to pay people back extra. And even then they don’t
I live in New Hampshire and during the two weeks of lockdown that we had there were a whole bunch of local businesses that violated restrictions and got fined. Then they went to court to fight the fines and the state court waived all the fines
Employees and customers got sick, became disabled or died, and these businesses didn’t even have to pay the fines they were assessed for causing these problems?
It’s disgusting, my friends wonder why I’m not going out there spending money participating in consumerism. It’s because the stuff they sell us will kill us and when they get caught there might be a recall of their products, but that’s about it. If they kill enough people, like Johnson and Johnson’s baby powder did, they might get a class action lawsuit at some point. A medication made by Johnson & Johnson killed my mom, but I couldn’t get justice for her. If she was a boy who grew breasts because of the medication, I could’ve signed up for a class action lawsuit for her. But because it just did what the black box said it would do, they just shrugged and said well “Mentally ill people are kind of wacky anyway this is what happens”. The New Hampshire Board of medicine literally told me that because she was already suffering from mental illness it was fine that the medication she took caused a problem that killed her. A problem that was listed in the black box.
And thank you for having the kofi option, recurring charges really stress me out. But I don’t believe in feeling entitled to other peoples free labor so I love that I can contribute sometimes without committing to monthly charges. ❤️
It's a great rant! Absolutely right and I'm so sorry about your mum. Do you mind me asking about the medication that killed her? Was there any media coverage?
And no media coverage, we have had a mental health crisis in this state for years. (NH, USA) People go to the ER for help and get held there for weeks without a competency hearing that is supposed to happen within 3 days to determine if they can be held or released but those hearings take place in the state mental hospital and if they don’t have space for the patient there they don’t get sent there for the hearing.
It is so bad that the state was sued by the disability rights advocates for not providing care to folks who need to be hospitalized for mental health issues
And to make matters worse because there’s no space if someone does get committed for a year or more they sent that person to the men’s prison. To the secure psychiatric unit in a men’s prison. It’s called SPU, I can’t imagine being paranoid and delusional and being sent to PRISON (especially a woman in a men’s prison) where you are surrounded by the criminally insane, and the state expects that to be therapeutic.
My friends actually reminded me that if I had been able to stop my mom somehow she would have ended up in SPU and now she is at peace. And I hold on to that. She would have been traumatized more by that “help”.
Rispiridol, the long acting injection. She went to her local ER and reported the SI, they ended up calling her psychiatrist who told her that her thoughts were delusions and he gave her a double dose of the medication early and then sent her home with no follow up
Actually, the community mental health center claimed they followed up with her but she didn’t answer the phone. She didn’t answer the phone because she was dead. It took me calling them saying you know what she hasn’t been answering my calls either, and she usually calls me all the time, she usually calls you guys all the time have you heard from her at all? They were like no, yeah that’s weird, we’ll call for a wellness check.
I know you aren’t in the US but if anyone is reading this and they have a loved one suffering from mental illness, do not ever ever let them go to Seacoast Mental Health in New Hampshire or Exeter Hospital in Exeter New Hampshire. They will die and everyone will just say oh well, they had mental illness anyway. She didn’t have SI before she was injected with a medication With a black box warning for SI.
Also, I found out the hospital really doesn’t care about HIPAA regulations if you are screaming at them and posting all over Facebook that they murdered your mother. Maybe it was because I was her emergency contact they felt OK doing it but they ended up sending me her medical records from that visit to prove to me that it was her doctors decision to overdose her and send her home. Not that it mattered, but the board of medicine was extremely impressed with my ability to bully them into giving me medical records.
Thank you for your kind words, she’s not the only one in this state who has been abused by their mental healthcare provider. It’s really bad here. But I know it’s really bad everywhere these days.
I've been reading Merchants of Doubt, an interesting book about the history of interference by corporations using prominent scientists to cast doubt on the dangers of smoking. What is striking to me is the similarity to what we have seen in the pandemic. Truly significant scientists willing to promote what they must - or should - know is a terrible position. The difference with the pandemic is that it seems to be done mainly for perceived political gain rather than profit.
The takeaway I have is the current malaise has deep roots. As someone in a science adjacent profession I have to wonder how much science in the twentieth century harmed as well as helped our world.
It is a feature of empire that imperial actors expect and receive impunity. Because it is the product of an infantile worldview, empire does not comprehend consequences. All it knows is that it wants what it wants right now. As far as it is concerned, whatever it does in pursuit of its wants is self-evidently good. Anyone who questions its intentions or complains of consequences is a troublemaker and should be dealt with accordingly. 🌼
In my writing on climate change, I come back to behavior over and over again. While industry trots out "solutions" and politicians go along, the fundamental problem of legally sanctioned and money greased sociopathic behavior isn't addressed. Add in those who are brainwashed by right wing media, under informed by "mainstream" media, and those who have an inkling of the truth, but feel powerless, and you have what you see, a death march over the cliff. People in this country won't get it until they're fighting in the grocery store over a can of beans and a roll of toilet paper. With their automatic weapons, of course. Pathetic.
I know this is minor compared to the list of atrocities you have mentioned, but I cannot understand why wage theft in America is not a criminal offense. If I steal $20 from my boss I’m going to jail. Or at least getting on probation where I will probably end up in jail because things are illegal for people on supervision that aren’t illegal for regular people
But if my boss steals wages from a bunch of employees, the worst thing that happens to him is he has to pay people back extra. And even then they don’t
I live in New Hampshire and during the two weeks of lockdown that we had there were a whole bunch of local businesses that violated restrictions and got fined. Then they went to court to fight the fines and the state court waived all the fines
Employees and customers got sick, became disabled or died, and these businesses didn’t even have to pay the fines they were assessed for causing these problems?
It’s disgusting, my friends wonder why I’m not going out there spending money participating in consumerism. It’s because the stuff they sell us will kill us and when they get caught there might be a recall of their products, but that’s about it. If they kill enough people, like Johnson and Johnson’s baby powder did, they might get a class action lawsuit at some point. A medication made by Johnson & Johnson killed my mom, but I couldn’t get justice for her. If she was a boy who grew breasts because of the medication, I could’ve signed up for a class action lawsuit for her. But because it just did what the black box said it would do, they just shrugged and said well “Mentally ill people are kind of wacky anyway this is what happens”. The New Hampshire Board of medicine literally told me that because she was already suffering from mental illness it was fine that the medication she took caused a problem that killed her. A problem that was listed in the black box.
And thank you for having the kofi option, recurring charges really stress me out. But I don’t believe in feeling entitled to other peoples free labor so I love that I can contribute sometimes without committing to monthly charges. ❤️
Sorry for my rant this morning
It's a great rant! Absolutely right and I'm so sorry about your mum. Do you mind me asking about the medication that killed her? Was there any media coverage?
And no media coverage, we have had a mental health crisis in this state for years. (NH, USA) People go to the ER for help and get held there for weeks without a competency hearing that is supposed to happen within 3 days to determine if they can be held or released but those hearings take place in the state mental hospital and if they don’t have space for the patient there they don’t get sent there for the hearing.
It is so bad that the state was sued by the disability rights advocates for not providing care to folks who need to be hospitalized for mental health issues
And to make matters worse because there’s no space if someone does get committed for a year or more they sent that person to the men’s prison. To the secure psychiatric unit in a men’s prison. It’s called SPU, I can’t imagine being paranoid and delusional and being sent to PRISON (especially a woman in a men’s prison) where you are surrounded by the criminally insane, and the state expects that to be therapeutic.
My friends actually reminded me that if I had been able to stop my mom somehow she would have ended up in SPU and now she is at peace. And I hold on to that. She would have been traumatized more by that “help”.
CW/TW Suicide talk
Rispiridol, the long acting injection. She went to her local ER and reported the SI, they ended up calling her psychiatrist who told her that her thoughts were delusions and he gave her a double dose of the medication early and then sent her home with no follow up
Actually, the community mental health center claimed they followed up with her but she didn’t answer the phone. She didn’t answer the phone because she was dead. It took me calling them saying you know what she hasn’t been answering my calls either, and she usually calls me all the time, she usually calls you guys all the time have you heard from her at all? They were like no, yeah that’s weird, we’ll call for a wellness check.
I know you aren’t in the US but if anyone is reading this and they have a loved one suffering from mental illness, do not ever ever let them go to Seacoast Mental Health in New Hampshire or Exeter Hospital in Exeter New Hampshire. They will die and everyone will just say oh well, they had mental illness anyway. She didn’t have SI before she was injected with a medication With a black box warning for SI.
Also, I found out the hospital really doesn’t care about HIPAA regulations if you are screaming at them and posting all over Facebook that they murdered your mother. Maybe it was because I was her emergency contact they felt OK doing it but they ended up sending me her medical records from that visit to prove to me that it was her doctors decision to overdose her and send her home. Not that it mattered, but the board of medicine was extremely impressed with my ability to bully them into giving me medical records.
Thank you for sharing Maggie. This is so beyond the bounds of what care should look like, it's disgusting. I'm so sorry again
Thank you for your kind words, she’s not the only one in this state who has been abused by their mental healthcare provider. It’s really bad here. But I know it’s really bad everywhere these days.
I am so so sorry. No one should go through that. And they absolutely should be held accountable.
Thanks for your response
South Africa's government is doing a good thing, a really,really, good thing.
The rule of law will depend upon the rule of law,
The meaning of the rule of law is going to change.
Thought provoking essay.
I've been reading Merchants of Doubt, an interesting book about the history of interference by corporations using prominent scientists to cast doubt on the dangers of smoking. What is striking to me is the similarity to what we have seen in the pandemic. Truly significant scientists willing to promote what they must - or should - know is a terrible position. The difference with the pandemic is that it seems to be done mainly for perceived political gain rather than profit.
The takeaway I have is the current malaise has deep roots. As someone in a science adjacent profession I have to wonder how much science in the twentieth century harmed as well as helped our world.
Yes they cherry 🍒 pick data designed to create misleading information
It is a feature of empire that imperial actors expect and receive impunity. Because it is the product of an infantile worldview, empire does not comprehend consequences. All it knows is that it wants what it wants right now. As far as it is concerned, whatever it does in pursuit of its wants is self-evidently good. Anyone who questions its intentions or complains of consequences is a troublemaker and should be dealt with accordingly. 🌼
This is a very helpful standard.
Doing bad things--killing, stealing, maiming.
We have laws. The laws won't be utilized against the powerful. This concerns me.
Agree their must be consequences
In my writing on climate change, I come back to behavior over and over again. While industry trots out "solutions" and politicians go along, the fundamental problem of legally sanctioned and money greased sociopathic behavior isn't addressed. Add in those who are brainwashed by right wing media, under informed by "mainstream" media, and those who have an inkling of the truth, but feel powerless, and you have what you see, a death march over the cliff. People in this country won't get it until they're fighting in the grocery store over a can of beans and a roll of toilet paper. With their automatic weapons, of course. Pathetic.
Unless you are rich. of course. ;)
To this list we can add the modus operandi of The Department for Work and Pensions in the UK. 'Evidence stretching back more than a decade shows how the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) repeatedly ignored recommendations to improve the safety of its disability benefits assessment system, leading to countless avoidable deaths of disabled claimants.' https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/the-department-for-work-and-pensions-deaths-cover-up-and-a-toxic-30-year-legacy/ And also The Post Office 'Horizon' IT scandal in the UK, which is also connected to the DWP's operations as the Horizon IT system was originally purposed for the old dogwhistle of 'clamping down on benefit fraud'. https://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/post-office-horizon-software-originally-aimed-at-claimants