As Riots Spread, the World Points Fingers at The United States, But They Are All Missing One Thing.

Right now, around the world, nearly every country is showing the riots in Baltimore as they did in Ferguson. They are doing this to highlight American inequality, and justify to their own citizens that United Sates is not so great, not so exceptional and that even though United Sates is prosperous for some, it is actually not equal. They are right. But not exactly.

What they don't show is the numbers. Yes U.S. is not equal, yes it is corrupt, yes there are class divides. But there is one major difference: in United States, we have riots and media coverage of them. Meaning people have the right to show dissatisfaction with the same issues that exist the world over. While the people in Russia, in Iran, in North Korea, in their Baltimore's and Fergusons have no hope for change, have no voice, have no ability to show their grievances to the government.

Even the countries like France and Britain where huge protests swept some changes followed. In United States, we might not have changes following current protests, at least not in laws, but the police will know that terrorizing will have grave costs. The Los Angeles Police learned their lessons in the 1990's well as did all people on the West Coast following the LA riots. The same way the East Coast police are learning their lessons. The world over the leaders think that they are showing their citizens that United States is imperfect, and they are right.

However, the smart ones try not to, because they know that they have the same issues of corruption and class divide and racism, except they have even larger divides, even less accountability in their police ranks and should they have a protest, it will be put down, quickly, and violently, and it will not be televised, it will not be Tweeted, it will not be shared, because while the people of Baltimore share grievances of people of Turkey, people of Baltimore, unlike people of Turkey, Bahrain, China and Saudi Arabia have a free press and freedom of speech and freedom to Tweet, freedom to Facebook, freedom to think and freedom to demand change.  And a public with that freedom makes America stronger, while it makes the regimes of Putin, Ayatollah, Hamas, ISIS and Kim Jong Un, much much weaker.

So let them broadcast our dissatisfaction, and let them think about the real issue, which is change.

Posted by Brave New Films on Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Police Body Cameras! Great!? Not So Much

Remember when the news came out that Walter Scott was shot in the back running away? Afterwards body cameras were touted as a quick solution. Sounds great right? Yes. For cops and the company making millions on the cameras. The cameras would be great if the footage were public knowledge, it isn't. In fact what the outcome could be as actually decrease in accountably and increase in public harm, if not done right.

Why? Well, many cops are already after citizen journalists, attempting to pass laws to limit our surveillance. Having cameras on them is their case for taking away our cameras. But if you look into the story of Walter Scott deeper, you will realize that there already was footage, Police footage, and it did not bring about justice, and it was not shown to the public until after the citizen footage went public. Even though that police footage showed that there was no scuffle and that the subject ran from the cop.

So what will happen to us if these body cameras become ubiquitous? Hopefully not what happened to Ramsey Orta, the citizen journalist behind the footage of Eric Garner who was chocked to death by cops in broad daylight and subsequently jailed on trumped up charges after his family was harassed by cops for months and months.

Watch out the Big Brother says, you dare question our authority over our injustice? And you will pay. So why would they act with the cameras any different. If recent history has anything to tell us is that they will be used against us, not against the cops. Because he who holds the footage, is he who holds the power. And they want to take our footage.

A Case for the War on Drugs

He pretty much started convulsing right there in front of us, in the crowd of 30,000 people while Alesso played. People called the medics and by the time they took the kid in his twenties out, he looked dead. Alesso never stopped playing and everyone danced as if nothing happened.

This is how we treat death of a drug overdose. We don't think of it. In fact, we are ok with making it more common. How differently do we look at deaths of firearms? Or falling? Or planes? We have an equally costly wars on those fronts too. Incarcerating millions for murder, spending millions on lawsuits when places don't put barricades and millions more on safety precautions and procedures on plane safety. Even one plane crash is good enough for us to look at the industry and make things illegal. We do so much to avoid preventable death and yet the publicly is publicly turning against it. We've made a mockery of the process and partially the process is to blame. Nearly everyone at my school did drugs but no one went to jail. Kids drove nice cars because they sold drugs to others and no cop every stopped them. Drastically different than how cops treat minorities for drug offenses. They go to jail and they are often stopped when driving a nice car in a poor neighborhood. The war on drugs is a mockery not because it isn't important. Deaths of Jimmi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Juaquin Phoenix and Heath Ledger are just some of the bright minds who died as a result. But tens of thousands die every year, in fact Washington Post says drug overdoses are more common than auto accidents but we don't hear about because they never got a chance to become musicians, actors, doctors or lawyers.

Our lack of perception about the impact of drugs doesn't just affect us, it affects the world, the drug war in Colombia in Mexico where drug use is low have created deaths in the numbers that make all other war conflicts minor in comparison. Over 250,000 people died in Mexico over ten year period. They died horrible horrible deaths all because in United States, the kids stopped caring about doing drugs, because we think they are harmless.

But what is a drug? It is a chemical substance, untested, unregulated. Would we eat food that came by black market? Would we take pills that no one tested? And yet kids take pills and smoke herb that they do not know anything about, which can be addictive to some and certainly deadly. Now it might be part of pushing something underground that made it so. Also many things out there could kill us and we don't make them illegal, just look at paint thinner. But there are many things which cause harm and will never be "cured" like theft and murder which we don't give up on because we haven't solved them, we work on them because they are signs of a sick society and we fix society to fix those symptoms. In the same way, the war on drugs must be fought, it is a serious issue, but we must not go after the symptoms but after the causes, like our inability to accept gay people, give the poor a chance to get education that would offer them jobs or services for veterans and those with traumas which would allow them to move on rather than use drugs, alcohol or gambling as a way to cope.

There are many things that we can do better, but assuming that drugs are harmless and ending the war to end drug abuse, is not one of them.

What happens when new and confused health care meets the expertise of modern data mining and product placement.

Day 0 and 1

It seemed like a zit, deep inside my upper cheek. It didn't bother me much but then it turned into a little knot and then my cheek began to swell and then came the headaches. It was time to go to the doctor.

As a healthy individual in my early thirties, I was happy for the Affordable Healthcare Act. I saw it helping those who needed it and as a means of helping the system stay solvent. It was a C grade I was sure and the quality would suffer, but such is the consequence of spreading something to the massess, the quality degrades. So when I lost my job, I become an owner of a silver policy with a $100 subsidy and it was time to put it to use.

I went online and the website seemed confusing but ok and there I found my primary care physician. The physician was at my old address so I changed the address and physician. But nothing seemed to change on the screen. The change would come in a week it said. Fine I thought, I'm going to my parents' tomorrow anyway, I'll call and see this doctor for this lump and headache. I figured I'd call and make an appointment, or so I thought.

15 minutes on hold, they make an appointment for a nearby office, an hour and a half from my house and thirty minutes from my parents. Fine I think, I'll do it, the headache is throbbing and the eye is hurting. I go to bed that night not actually sure if I'll wake or not.

Day 2:

I wake and head to the doctors. The office is a large two story building without any clear signs. I wait in one line, get sent to another and then sent to another until I resemble a human ping pong. Finally, I am told that I am not in the network. The week to a month change was instantaneous, the person making the appointment never checked if I am who I am and if it is my insurance. So off I am sent with a phone number and 3 hours less to live.

I am exasperated but the day is young and not all is lost. I call this new doctor who on the website was taking new patients. On the phone it is a different story, they are not taking patients, the walkins are at 8am on Monday and next appointment available is in a Month. It's Friday, I consider waiting two days.
"How long is the wait?"
"You could be here all day."
"Thanks" I say and hang up the phone.
Almost defeated, I pick up the phone and call my insurance. A peppy call girl gives me the information to Urgent Care. Instead of $40 copay it is only $80, a bargain compared to the emergency room.
The Urgent care is only a half mile away, I feel almost cured already! Aside from this headache...

I arrive and I am told it is a 45 minute wait, no problem I think, I brought a book! I proudly give them my Obamacare Affordable Health Care Health Net card and they proudly tell me:
"Sorry, that's not in the network."
"I just called them and they sent me here."
"I know, we keep telling them that. We are Urgent Care but we bill as Primary Care."
I leave and look at the giant Urgent Care sign, and think of the strange double-speak of the sentence the receptionist just said.

I am defeated and when I arrive at my parents, the efficient data mining algorithms are there to inform me of my chances of seeing a doctor in the form of an advertisement mailer:
   "SMART Cremation Services."

Well, at least something in this country is still efficient.


Update:
 Day 3
I go to the only urgent care center that is open on a weekend, listed on the HealthNet site. I am happy to see no cars in the parking lot and when I open the door three nurses are chatting in an empty waiting room. As I present my insurance card, a deja vu moment occurs: "Health Net is not in our our network."
"Oh really? You're on their website."
"Well we are not in their network. Sorry."
I head home and realize that there's a 24 hour nurse line on my card. I call that number. I called it before and remember being told that I called after business hours. I'm not sure how that is possible with a 24/7 service. I call again and get on the phone with a customer service representative. She informs me that the nurse number on my insurance card is wrong. They can't even put the right phone number on the millions of cards they print. I tell her everything that's happened and she assures me that she will tell the supervisor. I highly doubt that as I wait to be transferred to the nurse line. After two minutes on hold, I am told that I am calling during off-hours.....

Where is that cremation card again???

Update Day 3 and 4:
My best friend happen to have antibiotics at their home but suggests I call his father in law who is a doctor who lives on a ranch near San Luis Obispo. Papa G immediately diagnoses me after I send him a selfie of my swollen face and prescribes an antibiotic. Success! I think. So I head straight for the Pharmacy.

I announce my name and birth date and they have no prescription for me. They take my number and call me back in about ten minutes that they found it on a voice mail and they will have it ready for me. I come back to pick up prescription and after they run my HealthNet insurance, they tell me that they are giving me the antibiotics without insurance.. it is cheaper to do it without insurance....

WHY DO I HAVE INSURANCE???

Papa G is texting me with updates.. I wish the good ol days of home doctor were back.. The problem seems to be not the doctors but the insurance companies and middle men. I thought that people not having insurance was the issue but now it seems to me the opposite, it was people having insurance which created the problem.

It seems to be a necessity of modern life, but somehow the inefficiency it saves and innovation it provides comes at an inconvenience that is sometimes hard to overcome and a cost that is difficult to justify. Even in this day and age, as the Pharmacist said it is still "good to have friends."

Don't Rush With a Book

Books, life, sex, road trips and even food, all things one ought not rush. A lot of people comment on my slowness. I've always been slow. I often finished assignments late, I was a late bloomer, I didn't really figure out what I wanted to be until my thirties and I even graduated college a couple years late. But when I graduated, I finished two technical majors, founded three clubs and a fraternity, and worked at five jobs, most of them technical. I'd say I got the most out of college, except possibly certain skills that could be marketable, although that is not taught in college, college courses give access to knowledge that you will want to come back to later and a mastery good enough to dive in when you are actually working. So what I'm saying is that there are certain things that when rushed, a lot can be lost.

When it comes to books, it is the same. You could read it in one go, but it is the time in between chapters that is most valuable. That mulling and thinking and coming back to read some more, remembering what it said re-hashing. Sometimes you will come back and read the book again and you will read it even slower. You see, a book is never just a book, it is the thoughts and soul and experiences of another human being with all the complexities woven into every word. To read a book quickly is like to go through a crowd and never notice the clown, to miss his act and over look the sadness that is within, the desperation of coming to the street corner every day. Or maybe the fight between the woman and the man or the child that runs chasing the pigeons in the park. It is these things that make life more enjoyable and books are windows into other people's lives, often brilliant and interesting lives. Why would we hurry that?