Vaccination Safety Choice: Lives ruined, “Gardasil Girls” abandoned by CDC/ manufacturers/ media – CHECK OUT CA BILL re 12 yr olds
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Thursday, September 15, 2011
Contact: Vaccine Safety Council of Minnesota / Nancy Hokkanen 952-831-3777 GOP Debate Spotlights Vaccination Safety, Choice
Lives ruined, ³Gardasil Girls² abandoned by CDC, manufacturers & media
ST. PAUL, MINN. Vaccine consumers were shortchanged yet again by media¹s
selective reporting of Rep. Michele Bachmann¹s HPV vaccine comments from Monday night¹s Tea Party debate. Whatever one¹s opinion of Republican Presidential candidate Bachmann, the seriousness of vaccine injury was lost to many journalists indulgences in bias, jingoism and ignorance.
In September 2009, Worldchanging published my interview with thrivability consultant Jean Russell. I’m republishing the interview here in its entirety. Jean and I have had many conversations since, and I’m persistently intrigued by her well-grounded positive vision of a world in which we humans not only survive sustainably, but thrive. (Last February, Jean arranged for Todd Hoskins to interview me – that interview’s at Thrivable.net.)
Technology consultant, entrepreneur and thrivability theorist Jean Russell joined Jerry Michalski’s August 3 Yi-Tan Conference Call for a conversation about thrivability as a conceptual replacement for sustainabilty. After that talk (which you can hear via the above link), I asked Jean to join me in a brief but enlightening Worldchanging interview.
Jon Lebkowsky: Let’s start with the definition of thrivability I found at http://thrivable.wagn.org/wagn/Nurture, that it’s “our path out of unsustainable practices toward a world where all people have a high quality of life, a voice, and a nurturing earth supporting them. Using whole systems approach, it demands that we evolve our way of being together, of collaborating, so that our collective wisdom and action bring forth a flourishing world and thriving life.”
What’s the origin of this definition, and what led you to start thinking about “thrivability” vs sustainability?
The shift from an era of broadcast mass media to that of networked digital media has altered both information flows and the nature of news work. Mainstream media (MSM) outlets have adopted Twitter as a means of engaging with and enlarging audiences, strengthening their reach and influence while also changing how they rely on and republish sources. During unplanned or critical world events such as the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings, MSM turn to Twitter, both to learn from on-the-ground sources and to rapidly distribute updates.
The data and findings on this site are based on our paper The Revolutions were Tweeted in which we extracted and analyzed prominent information flows on Twitter during the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings. The flows are drawn from two datasets of public tweets each shared during a period of approximately one week. The first covers the Tunisian demonstrations from January 12–19, 2011; the second covers the Egyptian demonstrations from January 24–29, 2011. We analyzed both data sets to identify different types of users who posted to Twitter regularly, sorting them into what we call “key actor types”: e.g., MSM organizations, individual journalists, influential regional and global actors, and other participants who actively posted to Twitter on these two revolutions. We look at how each actor produced and passed information over the networks of Twitter users. In each case—Tunisia and Egypt—we describe how information flowed across different actor types and discuss why we see certain patterns. We conclude by discussing the symbiotic relationship between news media and information sources.
We display our coded and analyzed data on this site for others to explore. By clicking on ‘start visualization' you can dive into specific information flows, seeing the actor types we identified during the coding process.
Phi Beta Iota: Two ominous signs in the USA are that the Day of Rage (which is about electoral reform) was squelched across the corporate news media, and Mayor Bloomberg blanketed the area with cell jammers to repress any social network communications. The police state is alive and well in New York City.
When the Central Intelligence Agency established a Center on Climate Change and National Security in 2009, it drew fierce opposition from congressional Republicans who disputed the need for an intelligence initiative on this topic. But now there is a different, and possibly better, reason to doubt the value of the Center: It has adopted an extreme view of classification policy which holds that everything the Center does is a national security secret.
Last week, the CIA categorically denied (pdf) a request under the Freedom of Information Act for a copy of any Center studies or reports concerning the impacts of global warming.
“We completed a thorough search for records responsive to your request and located material that we determined is currently and properly classified and must be denied in its entirety…,” wrote CIA's Susan Viscuso to requester Jeffrey Richelson, an intelligence historian affiliated with the National Security Archive.
With some effort, one can imagine records related to climate change that would be properly classified. Such records might, for example, include information that was derived from classified collection methods or sources that could be compromised by their disclosure. Or perhaps such records might present analysis reflecting imminent threats to national security that would be exacerbated rather than corrected by publicizing them.
But that's not what CIA said. Rather, it said that all of the Center's work is classified and there is not even a single study, or a single passage in a single study, that could be released without damage to national security. That's a familiar song, and it became tiresome long ago.
During WWII, statistician Abraham Wald was asked to help the British decide where to add armor to their bombers. After analyzing the records, he recommended adding more armor to the places where there was no damage!
This seems backward at first, but Wald realized his data came from bombers that survived. That is, the British were only able to analyze the bombers that returned to England; those that were shot down over enemy territory were not part of their sample. These bombers’ wounds showed where they could afford to be hit.
Said another way, the undamaged areas on the survivors showed where the lost planes must have been hit because the planes hit in those areas did not return from their missions.
Click on Image to Enlarge
Phi Beta Iota: The US secret intelligence community is largely worthless, providing “at best” 4% of what the President or a major commander needs, and virtually nothing for everyone else. They keep doing the wrong thing righter, instead of the right thing. To do the right thing requires integrity. Go figure.
As our country continues on its downward spiral, we need to come together and unite against the two political parties that have led us into this crisis. Both parties have been paid off and represent the interests of the most powerful and tyrannical global corporations over hardworking American citizens. With all-time high disapproval ratings for the Democratic and Republican parties, the time is ripe for an Independent ticket to winthe 2012 presidential election.
Technology consultant, entrepreneur and thrivability theorist 
