Day: September 3, 2019

Are You An Organ Donor?

Closing Thought–03Sep19

I am not…..an organ donor that is……my thoughts are if I donate a kidney then why should all along the medical line make money off my free kidney?

When the whole process is free then all my organs can be had.

This is a story that I wish I did not have to read or report…..

Speaking of kidneys and transplants….

Every day, 12 Americans die while waiting for a kidney transplant. In what will be an especially hard pill to swallow for the 93,000 Americans currently on the waiting list, about 10 donated kidneys are discarded in that same period, reports USA Today. A study published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine found that 17.9% of kidneys donated in the US over the decade ending in 2014 were rejected (28,000 kidneys in all), compared to 9.1% in France. In 2016 alone, about 20% of 3,631 donated kidneys in the US were discarded, per CNN.

France, it turns out, is more willing to use kidneys from older donors or those who have an ailment such as diabetes, high blood pressure, or Hepatitis C. Researchers cite the “intense regulatory scrutiny of US transplant programs, which may lose credentials if their one-year death and graft failure outcomes exceed predicted outcomes.” Meaning, the programs don’t want to risk their credentials and opt to use only organs in the best condition. But patients “using kidneys from diabetic donors do remarkably well,” study co-author Sumit Mohan of the Columbia University Medical Center tells USA Today.

You read it right 28,000 wasted kidneys in a decade.

Someone please explain that waste to me.

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

That Short War

As a student of war or as we like to call it conflict we study the longest wars like the 100 years war between England and France……or the 7 years war once again between England and France ….then there was the US longest war until 2001 Vietnam and today we have the 18+ year war in Afghanistan……with all these so-called “long wars” can anyone tell me the shortest war in history?

I would imagine that there is a stampede to the Google machine…..

Let me help…..

Once again the UK is involved in the shortest war…..the Anglo-Zanzibar War….

The little known Anglo-Zanzibar War of 1896 is generally considered to be the shortest war in history, lasting for a grand total of 38 minutes.

The story begins with the signing of the Heligoland-Zanzibar treaty between Britain and Germany in 1890. This treaty effectively drew up spheres of influence between the imperial powers in East Africa; Zanzibar was ceded to British influence, whilst Germany was given control over mainland Tanzania.

With this new found influence, Britain declared Zanzibar a protectorate of the British Empire and moved to install their own ‘puppet’ Sultan to look after the region. Hamad bin Thuwaini, who had been a supporter of the British in the area, was given the position in 1893.

https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-Shortest-War-in-History/

38 minutes? 

Seriously?

Why bother?

I love my job!

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

Class Dismissed!

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

What Is ‘Disinformation’?

In the era of social media and the claim that it is ‘fake news’ how can we be sure what is true and what is just manure?

Disinformation?

Disinformation is a type of untrue communication that is purposefully spread and represented as truth to elicit some response that serves the perpetrator’s purpose.

Disinformation is sometimes confused with misinformation but the two are distinguished by their intention. The purpose of disinformation is to deceive. Although misinformation is also false, it is  presented as truth only because the communicator does not have the facts straight.

The relative anonymity of the Web and the affordability of creating websites have made it easy for people to post disinformation online. Sites developed for the purposes of disinformation typically share several characteristics. For example, such a site usually either has no clearly stated purpose or has little content related to its stated purpose. The majority of content on a disinformation site is usually related to a particular agenda, is likely to be very contentious and may contain blatantly false information that is easily disproved. The most common characteristic of disinformation websites is an absence of contact information or any “About us” page. 

Sorry about boring you to slumber….but there is madness to my method…..

The department in the DoD that researches stuff has been given a task to fight ‘disinformation’…..this is almost laughable….

The US military may soon be deciding what is considered fake news on social media. The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), an agency of the US Department of Defense, announced the development of a new program to combat “disinformation” on social media.

The Semantic Forensics program will “develop technologies to automatically detect, attribute, and characterize falsified, multi-modal media assets (e.g., text, audio, image, video) to defend against large-scale, automated disinformation attacks.”

DARPA is looking to develop software that can detect fakes amongst 500,000 stories, photos, videos and audio clips. The plan is to undergo four years of trials until the software is ready, so the program will not be used in the run-up to the 2020 election.

Only time will tell how accepting social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube will be of the DoD determining what is considered fake news.

The program is likely a reaction to the claim by Robert Mueller that the Russian company, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), led a social media campaign with the aim of “sowing discord” to help President Trump get elected. Although Mueller claimed the IRA was taking orders from the Kremlin, he provided no real evidence to link the IRA to the Russian government.

The actual influence of the IRA is much smaller than what Mueller alludes to in his 2018 indictment of the company. According to a Senate commissioned report by the firm New Knowledge, just “11 percent” of the IRA’s total content was election related. The IRA’s posts were “minimally about the candidates” with “roughly 6% of tweets, 18% of Instagram posts, and 7% of Facebook posts” having “mentioned Trump or Clinton by name.”

(antiwar.com)

I am all for the fight against ‘disinformation’….but I ask if the agency that puts out more such propaganda is the agency to fight it…..has anyone thought about who helped spread the Iraqi WMDs?

Answer that question then ask if they are the ones to fight it.  Or why not get the PsyOps people to develop this fight after all they generate most of the governmental ‘disinformation’.

God I love this stuff!

Learn Stuff!

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Afghanistan–Deal Or No Deal?

I have been watching the events in Afghanistan around the possibility of a peace deal between the US and the Taleban……https://lobotero.com/2019/08/27/afghanistan-yes-we-have-a-deal/

After months of back and forth….the news is that there is a deal…..

US negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad has reported that the US and Taliban have a peace deal “in principle” now, and that it is just pending approval from President Trump. The Afghan government has confirmed being given a copy of the draft deal.

The specifics are not all public knowledge yet, but negotiators say that the deal would remove some 5,000 US ground troops from Afghanistan in the first five months, in return for the Taliban agreeing to keep ISIS and al-Qaeda out, and reduce violence.

All previous indications were that the deal was meant to see a full withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan. This raises questions since Trump promised last week that he would “always” have a presence in Afghanistan.

With only mentions of 5,000 leaving, it leaves questions of what will happen to the other 8,000 or so troops. It is unthinkable for the Taliban to have not covered this matter, but so far those facts are not known.

What is known is that some in the White House want to expand the number of CIA on the ground in Afghanistan even as troops leave. Both the CIA and military are expressing concerns about this, since the CIA has embedded with troops in the past. The in-administration debate is further adding to resistance to leaving Afghanistan at all.

(antiwar.com)

We have been close before…..hopefully this time it is closer than in the past…..

“Lego Ergo Scribo”