Forecast Fun

Yaz side effects are so common that there are now legal recourses available to assist the grand amount of people sick by them. Yasmin side effects are unsafe and possibly lethal. Strides that need to be taken if you trust that you are worthy for retribution are to foremost talk with your medical specialist to affirm that Yaz is really the cause of your symptoms, then you should really retain legal advice. It is essential that you preserve the packaging and any leftover product, as well as any patient inserts that came with the packaging.

Women who are not diagnosed with PMDD and are taking Yasmin for oral contraception are now experiencing some of the PMDD symptoms that are directly affiliated to Yaz side effects. Women that take Yasmin for PMDD symptoms are greatly satisfied and like the product. Young ladies who do not have PMDD are having very serious side effects from Yaz. Some of the Yaz side effects are so critical that they cause permanent injury or death. Various organs can be affected as well as weight gain, and severe depression.

If you have sustained any of these side effects, you may be able to get compensation for what you have been through after taking Yasmin. Contacting TheLegalAdvocate.com at once for a consultation is the wisest choice for you to make at this time. They can go over your case and ascertain if you qualify for compensation. Do not wait because you deserve to be compensated for the pain this has caused you. In the fatal event of one of your family members death due to taking Yaz, you may also contact someone to see if their case qualifies as well.

A volunteers’ camaraderie can unite their community, and as you’d expect it will fulfill the volunteers’ goal of assisting their local needy. The obvious problem is that arranging to be free to volunteer often wastes some of that valuable free time. Of course, if volunteering becomes a group effort with friends or co-workers, it’s likely to be far more fun.

This is a call for other companies to look to the example of firms like Connecticut’s Adaptive Marketing LLC. As well as financial benefits programs including Shopping Essentials (MVQ*SHOPESSNTLS) made for the benefit of consumers, Adaptive Marketing organizes local volunteer activity so that its employees have more time to help the local community.

Company supported volunteering is more than blood drives and once-a-year collections. Looking at a specific company, Adaptive Marketing has provided its employees with a chance to help with anything from shoe recycling efforts to local tree replanting weekends. Using central organization the initiatives became larger events, with specific locations, dates and times noted in advance to help those signing up with their time management.

It’s hardly volunteering if there’s no opportunity to select projects, of course. Members of staff from Adaptive Marketing, the firm that offers the financial benefits program Shopping Essentials (MVQ*SHOPESSNTLS), can choose from an assortment of local volunteer drives. Previous and current projects have seen improvements made in a wide range of areas including aid and assistance for children and young adults, environmental programs, and events cultivating the area’s performance art. The result is that Adaptive Marketing volunteers have the chance to use their time as efficiently as they can and have fun joining in the process. Typically a company-supported charity project - fundraising with a homeless shelter, say, or helping out at a local school - is either for a one-off event or on a regular schedule designed to achieve a bigger goal. There will probably be those who assert they don’t have sufficient time, but even they can arrange the public library’s sale of used books.

Turning their profit-making skills to the benefit of their community has long been a tradition at many businesses. Adaptive Marketing maintains volunteer activities in part to generate positive feeling within the local community through its staff activities. Helping others can make you feel a lot better about yourself - just the sort of thing to motivate members of staff both in their regular work and their volunteer activities, too.

Drospirenone is just one of the causes ascribed to the onslaught of Yaz side effects reported regularly in America. Drospirenone is an ingredient allegedly unlike other progestins in the United States and was not utilized in America before it made an appearance in Yasmin, Yaz and Ocella. Also consider that the Food & Drug Administration issued advisory to the makers of Ocella, Yasmin and Yaz for using low-quality batches of drospirenone from Germany and you have the makings of a cautionary tale involving Big Pharma and its neglect for the consumers using its products.

Mass Tort is simply civil action that encompasses a number of plaintiffs. This process is taken against one or more corporate defendants in court. Unlike a class action where a number of people take it upon themselves to bring forth litigation together, in mass tort the original plaintiffs and attorneys use mass media resources to reach other possible plaintiffs. Those television and newspaper solicitations questioning if you are a loved one have been effected by a particular product are the result of a mass tort ruling.

Little know birth control side effects such as Cerebral Venous Sinus Thrombosis and even death have also been reported as a result of using Ocella, Yasmin and Yaz. With the research available on the internet, it is more important than ever to arm yourself with knowledge before deciding if a pharaceutical is right for you. Something as ever-present as ‘the pill’ can cause serious damage or even kill you if you are not mindful.

He never did say why he chose to call me, but for the past few months I have enjoyed some rather lively chats with Saddam. He said he has been wanting to speak to America and the rest of the world and he should only have to call one of us. He said he could have published his thoughts on the Internet, but he prefers the give and take of conversation. Our early conversations were personal enough, Saddam did not want them recorded or published, so I agreed to keep that between us. The transcript that follows is from a recent chat we had and Saddam requested I record and publish.

Ed: Hi Saddam, what is happening with you lately?

Saddam: Things are great! It is much less stressful living here in the U.S.

Ed: You’re kidding me, right?

Saddam: Maybe. Why does the idea surprise you?

Ed: Because U.S. security is so tight these days.

Saddam: Now it’s you who are kidding, right? Every day, dozens and sometimes a hundred poor people come into the U.S., uninvited. Don’t you read the papers or watch TV?

Ed: Good point! Aren’t you afraid of being seen?

Saddam: No. Over the past six months, I’ve had some excellent plastic surgery. I don’t look much like my old self, but I must say I have never looked this good. None of my old friends recognize me. I am living with some old friends now and I really don’t need to go out much and tempt fate. If you should see me with my friends, I’m the handsome Oriental man. Cute huh?

Ed: Clever, I’d say. Have you been listening to the news since you’ve been here?

Saddam: Of course! It’s really good for laughs.

Ed: This is true. So you have noticed that every day they talk about your weapons of mass destruction? Why can’t they find them?

Saddam: I sent them all to friends before the invasion; friends all over the world.

Ed: I was under the impression you didn’t have too many friends.

Saddam: It’s funny about impressions. If you have been following the news, you know the Americans and their friends come under attack nearly every day. There are just a few of my friends behind that. To be honest with you, I have never been so popular in the world.

Ed: Is that so?

Saddam: Yes. Most are new friends, since the Iraqi Freedom thing. I think it’s about ten million of them but I don’t want to boast. Did you ever hear that I am a very rich man? It’s true. I can buy anything I want, any time, any where. I can buy friends, weapons, cars, houses, anything. But I don’t have to buy friends and many of my friends would give me whatever I asked of them. Is that so hard to believe?

Ed: Not any more.

Saddam: To get back to WMDs. I mostly sent them where they would do the most good. Keeping them in Iraq would have been utterly pointless. It wasn’t about embarrassing the President and his aides or calling intelligence into question, although it has been great fun. It was just a simple strategic military move. Get them close to where I want them.

Ed: Did you ever get the nukes you wanted?

Saddam: Not the ones I originally wanted for my missiles. But I have bought quite a few neat little portable models. Osama split an order with me.

Ed: You’ve been talking with Osama? I thought you were enemies.

Saddam: Like I was saying, Operation Iraqi Freedom changed a lot of things. We will probably never sit and drink tea together, but our conversation has been cordial and productive. He doesn’t need half the funding that the frozen assets represent, but I told him I’m ready to contribute anything he doesn’t want traced. Did I tell you I am rich?

Ed: I believe you did. What does Osama think of your disguise?

Saddam: He thought it was clever. He asked if I’d send him my surgeon.

Ed: Did you?

Saddam: Yes. They met at a Swiss hospital a couple months ago. I asked him to send me a picture. He hasn’t sent one.

Ed: So how come you didn’t leave Iraq when President Bush said you could have safe passage out?

Saddam: He would have tried to kill me. And I’m not used to being told what to do. You understand. I thought it would be much safer if I waited a while and I thought it would be good to be seen by friends in Iraq. If I had left when the President suggested, it would have looked like I was a coward, a scared rabbit. Why would I want to do that? Friends needed my moral support and I wanted to give it - can’t just run out on my friends. Would President Bush do that?

Ed: Not on his special friends anyway. So what is Osama doing for you?

Saddam: You have heard that there are now members of Al Qaeda fighting in Iraq? They bombed the U.N. headquarters last month. I heard they are moving in a few thousand each month. They are well trained so they don’t need a lot of them to get the work done. They could hardly wait to get to Iraq. My friends are in touch with them and they will be attacking with increasing frequency. The non Iraqi civilian workers will have to leave, over the next few months, for lack of security. There won’t be any Iraqi police in a few months either.

Ed: I got a hunch just following the daily news that could be the case.

Saddam: Ed, my dinner is on the table, so I’ll call you back in a few weeks. We’ll discuss the news.

Ed: Thanks for calling, Saddam. I look forward to hearing from you again.

About the Author

A freelance writer published on many websites and in newspapers.
edhowes@hotmail.com
justanotherview.com

INTRODUCTION

PERHAPS the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.

You don’t want to hear this, you are content in your general ignorance. You have been brainwashed into thinking that your personal views are the only correct views so any dissent makes you uncomfortable, if not down right irritable. However, after the initial shock that world does not revolve around you has worn off, and you begin to see you do not get to dictate to the world how it should live and what everyone should believe, you will begin to open you mind to the possibility that maybe, just maybe, you are not right all the time.

As a long and violent abuse of power, is generally the Means of calling the right of it in question (and in Matters too which might never have been thought of, had not the Sufferers been aggravated into the inquiry) and as the King of England hath undertaken in his own Right, to support the Parliament in what he calls Theirs, and as the good people of this country are grievously oppressed by the combination, they have an undoubted privilege to inquire into the pretensions of both, and equally to reject the usurpations of either.

As long as “We the People…” stand aside and do nothing as fellow Americans are having their right trampled upon, as long as we watch in silence as the hammer of our might is wretched from the people, wielded to create pale reflections of what we think we are by careless, clumsy and brutal hands, as long as we stand aside and allow those who are our representatives to the world act with disdain towards the trillions of other inhabitants of this earth we must all share we are implicit co-conspirators in their tyranny, enablers of injustice both at home and abroad. We cannot sit idly by and watch our power, the people’s power, taken away and given to a group of so-called representatives with little to no clue of how the average person lives, how we survive.

In the following sheets, the author hath studiously avoided every thing which is personal among ourselves. Compliments as well as censure to individuals make no part thereof. The wise, and the worthy, need not the triumph of a pamphlet; and those whose sentiments are injudicious, or unfriendly, will cease of themselves unless too much pains are bestowed upon their conversion.

I do not seek to sway political views. My incongruity is with the powers that be on all sides. I wish to remind my fellow Americans of the things that unite us as a people. I wish to open your minds to the possibilities of all we still could be. It is this authors’ humble opinion that our political parties are necessary, both right and left, to compliment and balance one another, in order to ensure that all people are represented and all values devotedly held are worth fighting for and should be fought for.

I am just an average conservative hippie veteran living in a very blue pocket of a very red state.

Do you really want to get ahead in your life? Do you want to grow a business really large? Do you want to be powerful? Well then do what works. For instance the United States Government is big and powerful. They control every aspect of your life and your business if you own one. They never tell the truth about much of anything. An example would be the Justice Department and their bunk lawsuits. Much of the time they make stuff up, doctor the truth and file it in court. Why do they do this, it seems to be unethical? Well, because it works. You see the Justice Department has had lots of practice suing law abiding Americans and they have failed a lot and study what works. Like the Donald Trump show they have learned to slander brand names and people in the court of public opinion and trump their almighty ethics. Same as the kids as they lie, cheat and smear their fellow man on the Donald Trump “You’re Fired” series. The Government has learned this tactic to win cases.

They have learned to not tell the truth, deny any sense of responsibility, place blame on anything, which occurs. Most of the businesses they sue are sued due to discrepancies in law, the same laws they created. One agency tells you to do it one way and another agency a different way. The business owner has to decide which agency’s rules to follow in which jurisdictions and which is the least likely to get them sued. The government regulators know this, so they have an abundance of quote; “criminals” after all they created them. Then some moron, brain dead regulator with an axe to grind because they are envious of over achievers and winners, business owners, starts fabricating a story, writes it down, throws in a little profiling and files it in a court? The court obviously sides with the government after all they are the government. The government regulatory bodies use Public Relations tactics and falsely miss represents them selves so that the citizens think they are actually doing good things. The Businessman who is the pillar of his community is slandered, which cannot be done without lying. The government and mind you this is at every level from the code enforcement of a city, where we recently found the BTK-Bind, torture and kill to the Federal Regulator who lies on the stand to make a case as in the Martha Stewart case.

Now the regulatory bodies are so big and mighty in the ever-growing blob of bureaucracy that a small business has no chance. The only way to beat their lies is to grow really big like they are and hire homosexual call boys as lobbyists to suck a little you know what. This way you can relieve the stress of the brain dead loser regulators who wish to attack your company because quite frankly they have nothing better in life to do. And that folks is the honest to God’s truth. You see why you should lie? If you ever tell it like it is, the blob will work real hard to stop you.

So learn from the government to get a “Head” pun intended. Stop fighting it. Go with the flow and lie, lie, lie like the government you know? I believe that the government regulators have been lying so long about their own minutia, that they would not recognize it if they found it anyway. So, why bother telling the truth, helping the consumer or even running an honest business? Just lie like they do and turn in your competitors; call them a bum, after all apparently this is as far as the human race has cum. (intended). Think on it and like it or not that’s the truth.

“Lance Winslow” - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

The untimely deaths of Birdia Keglar and Adeline Hamlet officially resulted from an “auto accident,” even though no investigative reports exist - and most likely never existed.
Still, many serious questions remain among family members, close friends, and several others who say they witnessed what took place.

Looking back to the fall of 1965, however, offers important clues: this was a time when the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) opened hearings lasting from October 19 through February 1966 in Washington, D. C. on the activities of the Ku Klux Klan, including Klansmen from Leflore County, where Keglar and Hamlet were killed.

Of all congressional committees, why had HUAC, known for its red-baiting and conservative nature, suddenly decided to investigate the Klan? Could this turnabout relate to Keglar’s death?

HUAC’s sudden shift occurred shortly after the Alabama shooting of a white Michigan volunteer who was shuttling demonstrators from Montgomery back to Selma. Viola Liuzzo, the mother of a five-year-old, was killed by a volley of bullets fired from a passing car.

President Johnson had taken an intense interest in the murder and within 24 hours of her death, with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover at his side, Johnson announced the arrest of four suspects, all members of the Ku Klux Klan.

At the time, Johnson praised the FBI for their efficient work and then urged Congress to mount a full-scale investigation of Klan activities; immediately HUAC accepted this task.
But Johnson did not explain that the crime was solved so quickly because one of the arrested Klansmen, Gary Rowe, was also a paid FBI informer.

Edwin E. Willis, the House subcommittee chair, released a statement on November 9, 1965, outlining overall findings, once hearings had gone on for twelve days with testimony from 52 witnesses:

There were “about a dozen different Klan organizations operating [at that time]” with “considerably greater” strength than was estimated. Instead of a total Klan membership of 10,000, the committee now estimated “four to five times that number.”

According to the HUAC report, Klans were making “extensive use of innocent-sounding cover or front names - such as civic, improvement or rescue societies and hunting, fishing or sportsmen’s clubs - to conceal the existence of their Klaverns and bank accounts.”

Further, “Klan members and officers speak about burning schools which integrate and setting off intense fires in automobiles and department stores.”

Secret Klan organizations known by such names as the Vigilantes or Black Knights, the Underground, and the White Band had been formed by Klan members for carrying out acts of violence and terrorism, according to HUAC’s report.

Willis and his committee also learned of a “small minority of law enforcement officers who were Klan members,” an important key in examining Keglar and Hamlet’s deaths.

As the HUAC hearings turned to the specific testimony of Mississippi’s Klansmen, three deaths of civil rights activists transpired in the first two weeks of January 1966.

The first killing received international coverage while the other two murders of Keglar and Hamlet barely made state news. (Even today, numerous “old” Delta murders remain unexamined as the more heavily reported incidents, particularly in and near Jackson, are being given a second look by the media and law enforcement.)

Vernon Dahmer, 58, was fatally injured in a night riders firebomb attack on his Hattiesburg home the night of January 11, one day before Keglar’s death, after leading a voter registration drive. Dahmer’s store and home were both destroyed because he had allowed blacks to pay in his store the $2 poll tax necessary for voting.

The past president of the Hattiesburg NAACP, Dahmer, died of shock from burns the next afternoon; his respiratory tract seared from inhaling so much fire and smoke.

Dahmer’s wife and 10-year-old daughter were also burned; the child was hospitalized in fair condition. Members of NAACP, SNCC and others attending a meeting in Edwards, in the outskirts of Jackson, quickly took off in the early morning hours for Hattiesburg after hearing the news. But no one left for Charleston.

Three deaths in Leflore County

In the early evening hours of January 12, 1966, as they returned home from a special meeting with Senator Robert F. Kennedy in Jackson, the two civil rights activists from Tallahatchie County were killed and four other passengers injured, two seriously, after their car left the road near the small town of Sidon, south of Greenwood in Leflore County.

Birdia Keglar, 56, was found decapitated and both of Adeline Hamlet’s arms had been “cleanly” severed from her body, confirm two Keglar family members, a close friend, and a Tallahatchie County minister. Hamlett was 78-years-old when she was killed and mutiliated.

Months earlier, both women were hanged in effigy by local Klansmen and warned not to participate in further voting rights activities. Each had testified before a congressional hearing in support of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Keglar and the others were coming back home this time from a subcommittee meeting on discrimination and poverty in the Delta headed by Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

Several times before, Klansmen had tried to force Grafton Gray off the road; Klansmen running blacks off the road was not an unusual event to take place in the Delta. Stories abound of such incidents, Chism and others confirmed.

Gray’s surviving second wife said that she was married after the accident “… and he would not tell me anything about it, nothing at all. I could tell that he was still afraid to talk. He had told me about other times Klansmen tried to run him off the road, but he would say nothing about this accident. It affected him greatly.”

Robert Keglar could not shake out details of his mother’s death from Gray, the county sheriff or any public officials, as well.
A highway patrol officer threatened him to stay away from the accident site, he said, but Keglar sneaked out to Sidon to look around anyway and talked to people living near the site of the wreck.

Richard L. Simpson, 27, of Massachusetts, a white SNCC volunteer who was reported as seriously injured, was not allowed any black visitors in the Greenwood hospital, Robert Keglar said. “We tried to visit him to find out what happened, but the hospital did not treat black people and would not let us into the hospital.

“They were very rude and would not even tell us if he was okay. I don’t know what ever happened to him,” Keglar said. Simpson had worked on voting rights in Belzoni, a Delta town south of Tallahatchie County.

Chism believes that Simpson, “if he survived, was probably taken out of Mississippi and sent home as soon as possible. That would have been the only way to keep him safe.” Grafton Gray, Birdia Keglar’s cousin who was the driver, was also injured seriously and taken to the Mound Bayou hospital, said Gwen Dailey, Grafton Gray’s great-niece.

Gray suffered emotionally afterwards and “was never the same,” she said. Dailey could tell that her father was suspicious of what happened to his brother and to the others who were injured or killed:

“My great-uncle was already a quiet man. He received under-handed threats while in the hospital to keep quiet about ‘what happened,’ my father learned.

“Employees and visitors would come into his room and tell him to ‘be careful,’ but not in a caring way. When he came home, the threats continued.

“He would go out into the fields by his house and stand, gazing away. He rarely talked. Even my own father became far more cautious with his own children, and he watched Uncle Grafton like a hawk. Mr. Brewer was injured too, and he was never the same. His reaction was the same as my great-uncle.”

Three months later in April, Birdia Keglar’s son, James Eddie “Sonny Boy” Keglar, died unconscious in a suspicious fire in his home.

James had been trying to learn what happened to his mother, said Alma Chism of Memphis, James’s daughter and Birdia Keglar’s granddaughter.

“My father, James Keglar, was hit on the head before the fire was started,” said Chism. “I know his death was not an accident.”

Nearly forty years later, she joined with relatives and friends to aid in piecing together this story as they continued trying to learn what happened the night as Keglar and others were returning home.

“I know that Sonny Boy was trying to get answers and had even gone to Washington, D.C. about my grandmother’s murder. But I never knew who he talked to in Washington. It might have been someone in the Justice Department.

“I just don’t know. We all knew they had been murdered. Nothing indicated to us that Birdia’s death, and Adeline’s death, were due to an auto accident.”

James Keglar, 38, was typically a quiet person, both Chism and his brother Robert Keglar said. “My grandmother’s death really changed James. He became very angry and outspoken, and he wanted to know who did this to his mother.

“He had just come home from the military service and stayed in Charleston while I worked on this from Memphis, where I lived with my family,” Mrs. Chism said.

When Chism attended her grandmother’s funeral in Charleston, she also visited the site of the car wreck to gather information. “I talked to some people who lived in Sidon and learned the other car came straight at them, crossing over the line.

“The other driver was not hurt. It was obvious to me - and to the witnesses - they had been run off the road.”

“James was a lot like my dad,” Keglar said of his brother who had left the military and returned home upon his mother’s death. “He would drink too much. But he never committed any crimes.”

The weekend of James Keglar’s death, James had called his brother from jail after being arrested for car theft - “something he would never do,” Robert Keglar said. “I could tell that he was scared.” James asked Robert to call the FBI in Clarksdale, “… and I did, but no investigators came to see him,” Robert Keglar said.

“James got out of jail and went straight on to a house party. Early that Sunday morning at about 6 a.m., the police came to my house and said that James was dead.

“They would not tell me what happened to him. Later, I was told by others that ‘a hired killer’ had murdered him. I know that he had been hit on the head and a fire was started that burned down his house. He died in the fire.”

BIRDIA KEGLAR WAS anticipating the Jackson meeting that was supposed to be kept a secret, according to Gwen Daily, Keglar’s great niece.

“Senator Robert Kennedy’s committee was coming to Jackson to meet with a small group of people who had met with him before. They were not to tell anyone about this meeting, but Birdia, I’m afraid, may have let it slip out.

“She was excited about the meeting and would come over to our house with different suits and dresses on, asking which she should wear. The fact of the meeting and the route they took somehow got out and the Klan knew where to find them. Birdia had passed some notes about times and routes to people she thought she could trust.”

The Tallahatchie and Leflore county sheriff’s departments and the state highway patrol could not provide reports or further information when asked about this accident in 2004.

Leflore county deputies, responding to a Freedom of Information Act or FOIA request refused to look for records, stating “they don’t exist.”

A spokesperson for the state’s department of safety maintained - “It’s been too long ago for any records to exist now.” He did ask a clerk to search, but nothing was reported found.
Brown Lee Bruce, Jr., the reported driver of the second car, was not injured, Chism learned during her investigations. “I’m sure his family could put on all kinds of pressure to keep anything from happening to him.”

(Bruce died in 2003. A relative claimed he suffered traumatic brain injuries from the 1966 accident, but Hamlett’s granddaughter said that several relatives spoke to Bruce in the hospital, trying to learn more about what took place. “He was rude and unwilling to help. But he knew exactly what we were talking about,” she said.)

REV. EDWIN KING, an active civil rights leader from Tougaloo College of Jackson was in Hattiesburg when Keglar and Hamlett were killed, having attended a SNCC meeting in Edwards the day before.

King left for Hattiesburg upon hearing about Vernon Dahmer’s incident. He remembers hearing much later of Keglar’s car accident, but no further information was given.

“We all assumed it was a car accident,” he said years later.
No one from outside of the Delta came to Keglar’s funeral that Lucy Boyd could recall. “This really hurt. We needed them in the worst way.

“This was the ‘Free State of Tallahatchie’ and it was a terribly frightening place to be. None of us, even Birdia’s son, could dig around, and find out what really happened without taking a risk we would be killed. We could have used some outside help.”

“We were not allowed to see the car - a 1965 Plymouth Fury II - and we were too afraid to push the matter. No one ever returned the brief case that held all of Birdia’s records. Somehow, it disappeared along with the car.

“The rumor was that deputies or patrolmen pulled the car away.”
Boyd said she remembered hearing - “and I don’t remember where this came from - that a patrolman had shined a flashlight in the faces of their victims when they were inside the car, and said ‘These are the sons of bitches we’re looking for.’”

Technology patents stifle innovation. You may have heard this, and the arguments surrounding it, since the first software patents were issued. Until now, however, the average individual in the United States has not noticed really noticed the reach that intellectual property law protection has in their everyday lives. After all, one does not miss innovation that has been crushed prior to the product’s shipment into the supply chain. The “wouldn’t it be nice if we had something like this” thought doesn’t normally result in a search for that item just to find that someone tried to develop it but was stopped either by being threatened with the high cost of patent infringement, threats of never ending lawsuits based on copyright or other claims, or even threats of federal legislation that will leave their product useless.

Today, however, rather than squelching potential technology, patent law may be used to prohibit the use of technology that already exists and is in use by people around the world - the Blackberry. Given what’s at stake, the publicity truly can’t hurt, and will likely assist the fans of innovation in their proverbial fight to create while steering clear of intellectual property restrictions. The more people who know what is happening, the more most will clamor for change in intellectual property law.

It is already rather dangerous for BlackBerry users. A company called NTP is asking for the court to enforce an injunction which would prohibit the sale of BlackBerries in the United States, and would also shut down email to all users except for US government account holders. Ironically, this would mean that the US Patent and Trademark Office and the federal judges hearing this case would continue to have email access while ruling on whether that privilege would be granted to the rest of us mere mortals. Since a three judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington already ruled that RIM, makers of the BlackBerry, was in violation of seven of NTP’s patents, things don’t look very good for BlackBerry users at this point, especially if the USPTO upholds the validity of the patents in question.

The story is a typical one - a software patent on technology already in use but packaged in a way that the US Patent and Trademark Office didn’t recognize as “prior art,” held by a company whose sole job is to collect such patents and use them as clubs against any company who creates something using technology that the patent was wrongly granted to protect. This story happens over and over in a typical year in the United States, but rarely has it been taken this far, regarding a product this popular.

Patent law, and other intellectual property law was created in order to foster innovation and production of products in the United States. By granting a limited time monopoly on technology used to produce certain products or services, the public received the right to use the technology uninhibited once the patent term (usually 17 years from the patent’s issue date) has run out. In the days before computers and software applications, 17 years may have been a fine period of time. It may still be a fair time period for certain products that have taken years to develop and research, such as drugs. However, when talking about fundamental building blocks common to MANY items that are powered by computer software, waiting 17 years may as well kill any hopes of development or innovation in any fields even remotely touched by the patents.

Looking at this from a business perspective, back when I was in law school, I was told that a conservative estimate of expense that one could expect to incur from a patent lawsuit would be around $125,000.00. Part of the reason for this is because of the scarcity of patent attorneys, the difficulty of finding expert witnesses (who are generally quite expensive), and the necessity to get technologically competent judges. In any case, when threatened with approximately $125,000.00 in legal fees, most small firms (where much of the technology innovation comes from these days) will be loathe to roll the dice on an untested possible product. A mere threat might be enough, regardless of whether the small company feels that the suit would be won because the product is not using protected technology. Of course, this means that the consumer will be denied the opportunity to choose these products, as they will never reach the marketplace.

In the case of RIM vs. NTP, the stakes are even higher, as the Blackberry is a major staple of international business. NTP has claimed that the Blackberry infringes on 8 of its patents, five of which are currently being re-examined by the US Patent and Trademark Office for validity. The USPTO may rule that the patents are valid and enforceable, or they may rule that these patents are invalid, making it possible for RIM to likely continue with making and selling the Blackberry, and businesspeople everywhere will breathe a sigh of relief.

What is most interesting in this case is that NTP is not an innovator at all, and is not defending its own hard developed technology in which it has invested great deals of money, time and engineering know how. Instead, NTP is a company that buys wireless e-mail related patents. Five of the patents in question have to do with what we normally do every day when we send and receive electronic mail, the only difference is that these activities are completed “over RF.” RF, or radio frequency, is used in Treos, in Airports and other wireless routers and hubs, AND over ethernet, although the RF in that case is contained within the cable itself. If the patents are somehow held as valid, ALL email communications would be at risk for patent infringement, and we could all find ourselves shut down. This, of course, would catch the attention of quite a number of email using individuals around the world.

The next move is anyone’s guess. Will NTP then decide to pursue action against all users who send or receive email over RF? Will enough high powered business people become angry enough that they demand patent reform? Or will things just continue as they are for the next seven years until the NTP patents expire? Only time will tell.

Mikki Barry is an intellectual property attorney in Great Falls, Virginia. She has been commenting on Internet legal issues and policies since 1984. To contact Mikki, please visit http://www.mikkibarry.com

I got caught up in the presidential election this year. Everything I read, watched on television or listened to on the radio was tainted by the smell of the election. I felt disgust for my guy, the other guy and all the guys that came before.

On election night, all of us watching from home were reduced to red or blue. Not purple or pink. No gradations, no patches of different colors. Just one or the other, our red or blue state became a perfect symbol of the duality of our beliefs.

On that night, you were with me or against me, to paraphrase our President.

We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.

Epictetus, a Greek Stoic philosopher (55-c.135)

I wasn’t alone though. All the pundits and most of America joined in. My former colleagues in the news business loved it.

I left the newspaper business many years ago because I’d lost my idealism about the nobility of the profession. Sitting on the news desk as a nightly participant in creating Atlanta’s agenda for the next morning, I began to see how much information never saw the light of day. I began to see that only the most sensational, bloody, and outrageous events were fit to print. And I began to realize that after reading the paper every day, I was angrier and angrier.

Talk radio came along polluting the air waves with pure venom. I would scream at the radio and the callers emmulating the host. Each day, I listened as I tried to work, and became angrier and angrier.

Finally, I shut it off.

Still I’m discouraged by Crossfire, Hardball, and the other screaming “analysts” who talk, but never listen. Since I never watch the programs, I’m contaminated as I pass them in my channel surfing.

I began looking for a better way.

From high school, I recall that in a true debate, one party presents a point, the other party listens. If red can’t talk to blue, how does a resolution that is good for all come into being.

What happened to listening? How can we compromise if listening is lost? And can there be any Peace if there is no understanding that comes from listening?

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The official figures are staggering: 35% of the workforce - about 280,000 people - are unemployed and looking for a job. Each 1.43 employee support 1 unemployed person. In the USA the figure is 3.3 to 4 employees supporting all the unemployed AND all the pensioners!

The truth is less ominous. Many employed people in Macedonia go unreported. Their employers prefer not to report them as employed in order to avoid paying social benefits and retirement benefits to the state. This greatly distorts the official figures - yet, it would be safe to assume that the unemployment rate in Macedonia is close to 20%.

Unemployment has only bad aspects. A certain level of unemployment is considered to be healthy. People move between workplaces - this is called labour mobility. People desert old professions for new ones, training themselves to occupy higher paid, higher education positions. This kind of healthy unemployment is called “friction unemployment”. A level of 3% to 6% is considered to be friction unemployment in the West (depending in which country).

But the kind of unemployment that is prevalent in Macedonia is not of this kind. It is permanent in the sense that the same people are unemployed continuously for more than a year. It is habit - forming: people lose their self dignity, they become dependent on outside assistance, they are afraid to face reality. Such unemployment has grave psychological consequences. People change under its influence to such an extent that they no longer qualify as workers. This affects the situation inside families. People who used to provide for their families are cast aside as no goods, losers with no prospects for the future. This deeply and adversely affects the very fabric of society’s basic unit: the family.

But unemployment also has a great macroeconomic impact. The State doles out millions of DM each month to pay unemployment benefits. Multiply 60-100 DM per month per 283,000 job seekers - and you will face the frightening figures the Macedonian Minister of Finance is faced with every morning. Instead of putting this money to productive use - it is spent on keeping people idle at home on an allowance which is not even enough for bare subsistence. No one is happy: the Government - because its budget is unduly and unnecessarily inflated, the nation - because good money is thus spent instead of being invested and the unemployed - because they can hardly survive on what the State gives them.

Unemployment is not unique to economies in transition. Even much stronger economies - like France’s and Spain’s - suffer from it. Spain’s real unemployment rate is similar to Macedonia’s.

What are the long term, structural causes for unemployment?

There are more theories than there are unemployed people.

Some say that free trade encourages unemployment of unskilled and semi-skilled labour. Factories move overseas to places where labour is cheaper. Inexpensive imports of textiles and basic electronic wares compete with the local production and - usually - wound it badly.

Others blame labour market rigidities. If the psychology of employees and employers alike is that of “one big family” where no one is fired even in hard times and even if he is incompetent. If the laws and regulations of the state are in favour of a static workforce. If social benefits (annual vacation, sick pay, child support) increase the costs of employing - unemployment will be created. Employers will not hire additional staff in times of economic boom - because they will not be able to fire them in time of crisis. They will prefer to manufacture in places where labour costs are negotiable and low. Where trade unions have been abolished (Britain and the USA are the prime examples) - unemployment all but disappeared. Yet others emphasize the technological revolution (mainly in the fields of informatics). So many professions become obsolete at such a quick pace - and so many professions are revolutionized so often - that more jobs are lost than created.

But whatever the reasons are for unemployment - certain countries are battling this cancer of society in creative ways.

During the 1990’s, Israel - a country with 4,500,000 million people and 20,700 square kilometres - absorbed an inflow of more than 600,000 immigrants (=15% of the population), mainly from the former USSR.

One could expect a dramatic increase in unemployment. If Macedonia were to absorb 300,000 additional immigrants (=15% of its population) tomorrow - its unemployment rate would have skyrocketed until the newcomers would have been absorbed by the marketplace.

Not only did Israel succeed in providing most of this deluge of immigrants with jobs - it also reduced the overall rate of unemployment among its old population! How did it succeed in doing the impossible?

Israel decided to give the unemployment benefits to the employer - not to the unemployed. Let us study an example:

The average unemployment benefit was 900 DM per person per month.

The average salary which an employer was supposed to pay this person if he were employed - would have been 1400 DM per month.

The Government came to the employer with the following suggestion:

Find employment for the unemployed person. Pay him a salary of 1400 DM. We will give you, the employer, 900 DM - instead of paying this amount directly to the unemployed person in the form of unemployment benefits.

So, everyone was happy:

The employer hired an experienced and well - educated worker for 500 DM (The difference between the 1400 DM that he paid him - and the 900 DM that he got back from the Government).

The unemployed person - because he finally found employment with a real chance to continue to be employed in the future if he really contributed to the business that he was employed in.

The Government was happy - because it did not increase its budgetary outlays and expenditures. Yet, at the same time it has increased the level of employment in the economy.

Another Israeli twist: the Government also paid part of the social benefits of the person who was previously unemployed in his first three years of employment. This saved the employer a lot of money and encouraged him to employ and to report the employed person to the authorities.

A whole different approach was experimented with in Great Britain.

All those unemployed in a specific geographic region were assembled into a “Community”. The Community included a wide variety of professions:

carpenters and tailors, electricians and farm hands, gardeners and teachers. A computerized centre was set up. Each unemployed person registered with this centre, listing both his professional capabilities - and goods and services that he was interested in, but did not have the money to purchase.

A matching process then ensued: the tailor was looking for a teacher to give his children some private lessons (which he could not afford in his current financial straits). The teacher was looking for a tailor to saw a communion dress for her daughter. So, the computer matched them up:

The teacher tutored the tailor’s children - in return for his services in sawing the dress for her daughter. Both of them were thus employed, recovering their sense of self-worth and dignity. Moreover, both of them were able to afford things which were badly needed by them but which they could afford under no other circumstances.

This is a return to primordial, pre-monetary, barter economy.

But who will determine how many private lessons provided by the teacher - are worth one dress sawed by the tailor?

A special tariff was published. It reflected the conditions which prevailed in the “real” marketplace in which real money changed hands.

To ease the “payment” process - special Community money was printed in lieu of the unemployment benefits which the government used to dole out to the members of the Community.

Now, each member of the Community received from the Government a monthly allowance in Community money (instead of real money) which he was able to use only with other members of the community, unemployed as he was.

This way, the purchasing power of the unemployed was used exclusively with the other unemployed, easing their overall situation. It also eased the Government’s situation - because it did not have to print additional money to pay out unemployment benefits.

Admittedly, this was a fairly small and restricted experiment - but it was so successful that I believe that it warrants the attention of every nation facing high unemployment.

About The Author

Sam Vaknin is the author of “Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited” and “After the Rain - How the West Lost the East”. He is a columnist in “Central Europe Review”, United Press International (UPI) and ebookweb.org and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory, Suite101 and searcheurope.com. Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia.

His web site: http://samvak.tripod.com