Corruption in Left-Wing Pseudo Charity (updated 11:30 16/9)

There has been an undercurrent of grumbling about pseudo charities (non-profit organisations which are largely funded by government and use a significant proportion of those funds for political lobbying and campaigning) in the right-wing and especially in the libertarian blogosphere. Mostly the complaints are about political influence and the waste of tax-payers’ money.

In America they appear to have a problem that is at least a couple of orders of magnitude beyond that. ACORN (Association of Community Organisations for Reform Now) has been shown to have been willing to assist importation of children for the purpose of sexual slavery, for profit with the aim of political campaigning. Assistance went as far as advising how to buy a brothel and to cheat the taxes on the money earned, by claiming the child prostitutes as dependents. ACORN then requested a donation.

Really. I am not kidding. Tax evasion. Mortgage fraud. Children. Slavery. Sex. Selling actual children for sexual gratification. Then claiming tax benefits because they are children. Then using the money for a political campaign.

This happened in three different states. It could possibly be worse if they start advising on how to hide the bodies once they are too old to work, but I am not sure how else it could be. Yet there are rumours that the people exposing this have something devastating to release today. WTF?

To paraphrase the article linked above, once is a bad apple, twice is an unfortunate coincidence, thrice is systematic corruption resulting from policy.

There are two things that really strike me about the response to this.

Seven senators, six Democrat and one independent, voted to carry on funding ACORN.

This has not been a huge international news story; even in the US it has been remarkably quiet. Below is what the BBC considers to be world news and Americas news at 14:00 today (click to enlarge World News).

ACORN is an organisation that has strong connections with Barack Obama which looked like having significant political influence with the Democrats in power. They were at one-time a client of Obama’s. They helped elect him, in many cases breaking electoral law, in other alleged cases breaking employment law. He had arranged for them to work on the national census (risking a constitutional challenge, which should be a big deal to a former constitutional law professor). He had arranged for them to be in the stream for government funding that was potentially to total several billion dollars.

Is Patrick Swayze’s sad but not unexpected demise really more newsworthy? Is the entirely predictable anger of Islamic fascists really more important for us to know about than a charity supporting child sexual slavery in the USA? Can you imagine the headlines if Halliburton or any other organisation with real or alleged connections with Bush had been caught on tape giving illegal advice? Three times.

Update: note I did not mention which party’s candidate ACORN thought would gain from political donations they were advising on the laundering of. Do I need to?

Update: a fourth video has been released, of a similar nature, filmed in California. It’s a good one though, naming politicians, ACORN employee offering to kill anyone exposing the brothel, suggesting violence against the underage girl, admitting killing her husband. It’s … wow, just watch it.

One ellipsis here hints at more videos to come …

Oh, and it appears that Acorn was breaking the law even operating in Maryland where the first video was shot.

Update: Hot Air has more on the embarrassed silence of the media.

Update: The co-founder of ACORN Wade Rathke, has responded, claiming that this is a “…fake issue”. My response warranted a new post …

Thanks to Instapundit for some of the links.

Dehumanising the ‘Other’

I have been highly critical of the race 'equality' industry before. Reading a recent case of torture, rape and murder again brought its pernicious influence to mind.

Via Instapundit I came across an horrific story of a terrible crime in Tennessee. The crime itself is sufficiently covered in that blog post and the stories it links, so I will only recount the barest details relevant to my point.

A young couple, Chris Newsom and Channon Christian, were taken at gunpoint. He was tortured and killed , she was tortured, raped and killed over a period of 24 hours. During her captivity the young men involved left the house where Channon Christian was trapped and went about their daily business before returning to repeat their crimes. During this time at least one woman was present in the house, probably more than one, and knew that Channon Christian was there, although with no direct involvement in the crime.

Katie, the blogger who posted the Mamapundit story linked above, suggested that there was no evidence that  race played a role in the crime. I think that it is possible that on one level this is not about race, not about blacks killing whites per se.

I think that on some level this is about young blacks killing people of a different race, and how identity politics that make it increasingly likely that one race does not identify with another. The ‘equality’ industry has a vested interest in emphasising differences, in pulling communities further apart.

I don’t think that is why the men carried out vicious crimes. That was evil. What I think it explains is how they could be so sadistic, how they could go about their normal lives in between, and even more clearly I think it is how Vanessa Coleman, the woman who admitted to being in the house, could be there yet do nothing for Channon Christian.

Vanessa Coleman has been told over and again by the race industry, by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, even by the Democrat Party, that she is a black first. She has been told that whites are different and don’t care about her, in fact that white people are responsible for her problems (of course to socialists Miss Coleman certainly is not responsible, nor are her parents). With all that propaganda dehumanising both Miss Christian and Miss Coleman, why should Vanessa Coleman care?

I have written about the logical conclusions of the race industry, and these aspects of the case are, sadly, not entirely surprising to me. There are better responses to racism, and they can be very promising. We just need to defeat the lies behind Critical Theory before a rational response becomes normal.

Giving Up Can Be Murder

Suicide is not the intended effect of giving up smoking. Nor is committing the perfect murder.

My apologies for the long post. I felt that some background was needed, but there is a serious point at the end which I have not seen documented anywhere else.

Champix (or Chantix in the USA) is the trade name of varenicline. It is intended as an aid to stopping smoking, and is available on the NHS. Of course like any medical treatment it has side effects. Could those side effects lead to serious violence?

With the authoritarian stamp of the smoking ban and other government pressure there are a lot of people trying to give up smoking. There is also an increasing medicalisation of attempts to give up. Every other advert on our local radio station seems to be for the Stop Smoking Service. Fortunately Pirate FM rarely manages to finish an advert without interrupting it with the start (or even the middle) of another. Has anti-smoking political pressure allowed an unsafe drug on the market?

Varenicline is the first drug to be licensed to help stop smoking that doesn’t contain nicotine. The manufacturer, Pfizer, quotes that after twelve weeks of treatment with Champix or an inert placebo four times as many of those taking Champix are still not smoking. The figures at twelve weeks are 44% of those taking the real drug not smoking and 11% of those on the placebo. This is better than none-medical methods or nicotine-replacement therapy (NRT).

Here is where I follow Pfizer’s publicity off the path of good science, because they don’t quote figures that I can find, and I am quoting non-specifics without being able to provide a reference, as I heard this on Radio 4 some days ago. I looked in the NICE Report (National Institute for Clinical Excellence) and they have blanked out the figures.

Pfizer boasts about rates of success giving up at 12 weeks, and these are better than NRT. The problem is that giving up for 3 months does not provide great health benefits. The suggestion I heard on the radio, although the figures are redacted from the table 5, page 32 of the NICE report (lovely word, redacted; has a ring of dishonesty about it) was that at twelve months the success of Champix was almost identical to NRT, certainly within the statistical errors of the trials.

So we have a drug that is as effective as NRT. I have never smoked, but from friends I am aware that NRT can be unpleasant and quitting can be difficult, so an alternative is surely welcome, is it not? Well let us look again at the side effects.

Side effects listed as common include dizziness and hypertension, either of which can themselves be dangerous in some circumstances. However that is within the normal range of side effects of many medicines. Also listed as a common side effect is ‘emotional disorder’. The point made on Radio 4 and in the side effects link was that this can go as far as depressed moods and suicidal ‘ideation’, i.e. feeling down and having thoughts about suicide, a combination that seems to me rather dangerous.

So far this is an accepted, documented problem. Careful monitoring and warnings to patients to see a doctor or stop taking the medication at the first sign of depression or suicidal thoughts can deal with this. What about the undocumented effects? Could Champix lead to murder?

There is nothing I can find in the literature beyond warnings of ‘behavioural changes, depression, or suicidal ideation’. Even these do not get a mention in Pfizer’s adverts, although warnings against operating machinery do and all the information is on the website.

I think that “I wanted to kill ’im”, to quote a friend who was taking Champix, goes a bit beyond the usual understanding of ‘behavioural changes’. A mild and pleasant young lady, very fond of her lover, was driven to thoughts about killing him, and a desire to do so.

Of course this is more bad science, anecdotal evidence, but as I do not have the authority or capacity to do better science it will have to do. This friend had never had such thoughts before taking Champix, nor has she since giving up in fright. She was on no other medication likely to have this effect, and had no expectation of a reaction that might cause a placebo effect. Champix warnings do suggest psychological changes, and the friend said that she suffered others, being in a daze much of the time. In fact she attributes her giving up entirely to forgetting to smoke, such was the influence of the drug (of course that means the drug succeeded, as an addict would be unlikely to forget even then).

So what if my friend had killed her lover? Beyond the distress to her and others, she would have been given a life sentence, as this is not an acknowledged side effect. Her life would have been ruined. What if she had not been a pleasant person in love with her paramour, and clever enough to recognise the responsibility of the drug for her thoughts? What if such feelings are induced in a self-centred, unintelligent but otherwise harmless person? Thousands of them smoke. Will any be induced to murder?

As more is known about the drug, and this effect, if real, is documented the drug becomes a serious danger. What is to stop any smoker bored of someone close to them from starting a course of Champix, then in cold blood murdering that person? In court the murderer breaks down in remorse, blaming the medication. Manslaughter while the balance of mind disturbed milord, now given up the medication, no longer a threat. Free to go. So we are where I hinted that we would reach; the perfect murder.

Fortunately my other half cannot take Champix, due to her job, so I am safe!

Update: Mark (whose profile indicates he is interested in "smoking cessation") confirms in the comments that both Champix and NRT have overall success around 7%. Also in the comments generalsn has a link to a brief article on a financial website which does mention FDA concerns over violence in people taking the drug.