Witch Hunts

     It is estimated that 80,000 people have been persecuted and executed as witches, following legally sanctioned and religiously motivated witchcraft trials.
     Witch executions are not over.  Saudi Arabia, Cameroon, India, New Guinea, and some African nations still have official legislation against witchcraft, punishable by death.  On December 12, 2011, Abdulhalim Nassar was beheaded in Saudi Arabia for practicing witchcraft, and on June 19, 2012, so was Muree bin Alibin Issa al-Asisri.
     When a government or religious group forbids witchcraft trials, these irrational executions stop.  The Christian theologian, St. Augustine spoke for the Catholic church in 420 AD when he said that witches didn't have supernatural powers--only God could be the source of inexplicable cures, natural disasters, and so-called magic.  He influenced the medieval church against tracking down and killing witches.  Charlemagne's Council of Frankfurt in 794 condemned witch burning, ordering the death penalty for people who killed witches.  Thereafter, the number of trials and killings of witches declined.  Similarly,  England's Witchcraft Act of 1735 pronounced that witchcraft would no longer be an act punishable by law--after that, the persecution of witches all but ended in England.
     It was the Protestant Reformation that gave a big boost to witch hunts.  People who were thought to have special abilities, including being able to heal others, were accused of having pacts with the devil.  During the Salem witch trials of 1692 and 1693, the logic was that magic was wrong not because it failed, but because it worked so effectively--therefore, it must be the domain of the devil.
     Witch hunts and executions are arbitrary, devoid of justice, irrational, and insane.  Witch trials follow a procedure that in no way can be called due process.
     In fact, with trials resemble Grand Jury trials of today.
     Grand Juries are convened in secret and conducted by government prosecutors.  They impugn defendants who are absent (and who may not even know a case is being mounted against them), and propagandize unschooled jurists to issue indictments against individuals who have never been given an opportunity to hear the charges or organize a defense.
     Witch hunts ended with the Enlightenment, starting in the 1680's.  The advent of scientific thinking, with its backdrop of reason, skepticism and humanitarianism, brought to an end the craziness, torture and forced confessions of the Reformation.
     At least, that's what the history books say.
     But it seems to me that a version of the witch hunts of the 1600's is alive and well today, masquerading as indictments against, for instance, doctors for "fraud."
     My lawyers tell me that it is most certainly the case that several Grand Juries have been convened in secret to "prove" my guilt.  Witchcraft trials were also held in secret.
     The witnesses in my case are none other than government agents, and people these agents have indoctrinated with their point of view and enticed with the chance of bonuses.  They have a vested interest in proving my guilt even if it means the destruction of my professional life.
     What do government officials have to gain?  For one thing, if they can usurp my assets they will be complying with the president's orders to take back Medicare fraud money.  For another, a third of the seized assets could become FBI property:  the FBI counts on such bestowals to fund its own oversized budget.  Last, the government loves to boast about its success in recuperating "stolen" money for its taxpayers, fueling a growing supposition that doctors are corrupt.
     Witchcraft trials were one-sided, too.  Many witches were forced, using torture, to "admit" guilt. Witnesses needed only the scantiest "evidence."
     My lawyers have advised me that plea-bargaining may be the cheapest way to end the government's investigation of my clinic.  This would, in effect, be tantamount to admitting guilt.  I'd be paying the government off without ever having information pertaining to the allegations about me, or the grounds for the raid and forfeitures that occurred last year.  It would cost too much, the lawyers say, for me to seek an acquittal--a payoff would be cheaper.  Never mind the exercise of reason or fairness.  Theirs is pre-Englightenment thinking.  This sort of thing happens all the time.
     Public officials, including Obama, waste no opportunity to say how much they're doing for the American people by "cracking down on fraud and abuse" in the Medicare and Medicaid systems.  Who would guess that many of the crackdowns are themselves fraudulent, an example of abuse of our legal system?  How many of us know that assets kept in plea-bargaining are really what represent the booty obtained in going after fraud, using this special form of government extortion?
     We are a barbaric race.  It doesn't matter that the barbarism is hidden behind a screen of government do-gooding.  Grand Jury trials are just an updated version of witchcraft trials.  They have to be held in secret, because otherwise they would be exposed as baseless.  The prosecutors must be able to petition jurists without defendants and lawyers present in the courtroom to shout, "You're wrong!  You're lying!"  because, otherwise, they wouldn't be able to issue indictments in 97% of the cases.
     I wonder if Grand Jury trials might be held during the full moon, in the woods, by cultish men in dark cloaks who use hysterical accusers to prove their cases?  I wonder if they consider the shadows cast by overhead trees to be messages from god that they are doing good work, and if the devil himself, screeching from the mouths of bats and owls, calls out:  "Kill the vermin!  Kill her!  Kill her!" 

Another Way to Get Rich Quick

     It's simple.  File a whistleblower report.
     In fact, why not file lots of whistleblower reports?
     Chances are, one of them will pay out big.  You must be patient, because these things take time.  But this just might be the best way to fund your retirement.
     Here's how to do it.
     Make a list of local doctors.  It might help to visit each one at least once.
     Rather than going to multi-specialty clinics or gigantic group practices,  stick with solo doctors.  They're more vulnerable, and they don't have spanking-big lawyers to protest against your accusations.
     You've got to accuse the doctors of something.  There are many possibilities.
     Pay attention to the services these doctors provide.
     In my office, it's easy.  All the clinic services are listed on a poster in the waiting room.
     Remember the services you receive.  These are services your can say you didn't need, thereby implying that your doctor provided them just to make money.
     After your visit, go to Medicare.gov.  You will be given explicit instructions for reporting doctors, and you'll automatically become a "whistleblower."
     That designation may put you in line for a hefty reward.
     You can cover a broad swath by reporting a doctor to Medicare under the rubric of "billing for unnecessary services."  But you can also claim you didn't receive certain services, especially those that don't have a good paper trail--like counseling services, gait training, or what Medicare calls "face-to-face time."  Just say you didn't get what was billed:  it's your word against the doctor's, and these days it's likely that your word will prevail.  The political climate is in your favor.
     For example, if the doctor does an EKG on you, and the report comes back normal, you can claim the EKG was unnecessary.  It was normal, after all, so why did the doctor do it?  The implication, of course, is that the doctor was just trying to scam the system.
     If the doctor does any tests at all, and they come back normal, you can do report them as "fraud."
     One of Medicare's definitions of "fraud" is doing tests that aren't necessary.  You can "prove" the tests done on your behalf weren't necessary simply by the fact that they come back normal.
     Don't worry, the feds won't think beyond this superficial assessment.  It isn't in their interests to do so.  They want to take back money just as much as you want a payout.
     Even an abnormal test result can serve as evidence of fraud.  Medicare often refuses to pay for tests, despite those tests having served as a tool for identifying a health problem.  For example, an EKG that shows a bundle branch block in a patient who didn't "complain" of chest pain or chest symptoms, is called "an incidental finding" by Medicare auditors, who then deny payment for the EKG.  A doctor's suspicion of a problem is never proof that the test was legitimate.  In fact, doctors' brains, judgment, and reasonable suspicion are irrelevant to government auditors, who are motivated, perhaps by bonuses, "to recuperate" money that has already been paid out in claims.
     You should report ten or twenty doctors.  Report them for doing tests that weren't necessary.  Even if you tell the doctor you have chest pain, or abdominal bloating, or leg swelling--spurring that doctor to do tests like an x-rays, echos, abdominal ultrasounds, or blood tests--you can turn around and lie to Medicare--or any insurance carrier that has whistleblower incentives--and say you never told the doctor you had those symptoms--say the doctor made it up.
     It's a simple matter for federal investigators--who will take your "case" seriously--to jump to the conclusion that a doctor might make up symptoms as a way of justifying tests that result in payments to that doctor.   What a scandal!  Doctors treating patients and doing tests--and expecting to get paid!  Certainly, doctors do those tests as a way of padding their wallets.  No one really believes doctors care about patients any more, or want to be sure not to miss serious pathology.  Come on!  This is America, where the dollar is king.  The only motivation for doing anything is money.
     And, of course, that's your motivation, too.
     If you don't want to go it alone, there are plenty of specialists out there ready to take your accusations and run with them.
     Here's a sampling taken directly from the internet:

          Lawyers for qui tam whistleblowers:  we have won millions for clients.  (www.employmentlawgroup.net)
          Former feds will help you prove qui tam fraud. (JamesHoyer.com)
          Help the government.  Help yourself.  Millions in qui tam settlements.  (www.ashcraftand geral.com)
          Whistleblower laws are about incentivizing integrity to ferret out fraud.  (www.taf.org)
          Espert help with qui tam cases--lawyers provide free case reviews.  (attorneysforwhistleblowers.com)
          Former Justice Department attorney helps you seek a reward to report fraud. (www.ispionage.com)
          Medicare fraud--earn reward points and redeem them for free.  (www.swagbucks.com)
         Anti-piracy organization gives rewards for confidential reporting.  (reporting.bsa.org)

     There are thousands of sites just like this, to help you "recover" as much money as possible from the doctors you report.
     You can get up to 40% of this recovered money, just for being a whistleblower!  Pay off your mortgage!  Take a cruise!  Buy a new car!  Anti-fraud legislation under the False Claims Act was put into place just for you.
     And the best part is this:  your false claims against doctors won't cost you a thing.  There's no legislation that protects doctors against you.  Doctors have to pay lawyers to represent them against you, and this can get so expensive they're willing to settle out of court.  The settlement money provides the basis for your whistleblower fee!
      That's why so many lawyers are stacked up on the internet, waiting for your call.  They know the inflammatory language to use against doctors.  They can get the government's attention.
     They have a lot to gain, and so do you.
     So get busy.  You don't have to work for a living.
     Report your family doctor.  Report your specialists.  Make a list of your accusations.
     File lots of reports--and watch the payments roll in.

Why I Am Ashamed of America: Pakistan

     Pakistan is an example of America's hypocrisy, short-sighted self-interest, and general idiocy.  

     Americans have shown the world through our foreign policy over the years--and especially through our support of military dictatorships--that we do not care about the spread of democracy, but about our immediate financial and strategic interests.  These matter more to us than human life, world peace, or even our own long-term gain.  Our greed for oil matters more than other people's absolute need for clean water.

     Pakistan is one example.  There are many more.  

     Pakistan offered a tremendous opportunity for us to establish peace in the Middle East and develop a relationship with an Islamic country--not to mention the chance for us to guide an impoverished people out of a feudal system and toward equality for women, education for the masses, and freedom from preventable diseases.

     Pakistan is a fairly new country.  It came into being in 1947 when the British were forced out of India and the land was divided along lines separating the Hindus--who got India, from the Muslims-- who were given Pakistan.  

     In 1971, Zufikar Ali Bhutto became the first non-military president of Pakistan,  elected by popular vote.  Having been educated in the United States and at Oxford, he was a strong advocate of democracy, and used his considerable charm to bring Pakistan into world affairs.  His hope was to usher Pakistan out of the feudal system in which his family had been raised, and into the twentieth century.  He sought help from the United Nations, and from the United States.  

     India and Pakistan were at war almost constantly.  In 1971, one outcome of the constant strife was the division of East and West Pakistan to form a new country, Bangladesh.   President Bhutto went to the United Nations for assistance in negotiating an end to war with India, and for the return of East Pakistan--Bangladesh--to Pakistan.  But the U.N. was new, and would not defend Pakistan.  Nevertheless, Bhutto formed the People's Party and was able, with Ghandi, to make peace with India at the Simba Accords.

     Bhutto asked the United States for help when India detonated its first nuclear bomb.  He wanted Pakistan to have nuclear weapons as well, since it was one-eighth the size of India and could not otherwise defend itself against an invasion.   The United States refused, and when Bhutto said he'd get nuclear weapons on his own, Kissinger vowed that the United States would destroy Bhutto.  

     This is exactly what happened.  We ruined Bhutto by supporting his opponents, who were military brutes.  Bhutto was thrown in jail, tortured, and hanged.  Martial law was established in Pakistan.

     Then Russian invaded Afghanistan.  

     Suddenly, Americans were worried about their oil supplies.  If Russia took over Afghanistan, it would have a strategic position in the Middle East, threatening American imports of oil.  Now, where were our concerns about the proliferation of nuclear weapons?  We sent billions of dollars in aid and arms, including the recipe for nuclear weapons, to Pakistan's ruthless military leader, Zia-ul-Haq, so that Pakistan could beef up its army and help Afghanistan fight back the Russians. 

     When the Russians were defeated, the United States made a quick exit and forgot about Pakistan.  We deserted a country that had a 50% illiteracy rate, a military dictator, and billions of dollars of weapons.  Rival factions formed, including the militant Muslim group, Al Quaeda, founded by Osama bin Laden--whom we financed and trained.  

     We abandoned Pakistan in its hour of need, after thousands had lost their lives fighting a war against the Russians with our weapons.  Four million refugees poured into Pakistan, and we didn't help.  They coalesced into subgroups that were bonded through military training and radical religious education. Is it any wonder that Pakistan--the part ruled by jihadist factions--declared the United States its worst enemy?

     By the time Benazir Bhutto--daughter Zufikar, the people's choice, and herself a strong advocate for democracy-- was elected, the situation in Pakistan was dangerous.  Extremist religious-military groups had control of the country.  Still, Benazir appealed to George W. Bush for support, and was rebuffed.  Bush backed the military thugs.

     Benazir established 48,000 schools, eradicated polio, and brought clean water and electricity to much of the country.  But Islamist extremists opposed her, removed her government in 1990, had her deposed for "corruption"--despite her popularity, put her in solitary confinement, and finally assassinated her when she returned to Pakistan to serve a third term after eight years of forced political asylum in Dubai.

     Benazir Bhutto thought she had an ally in the United States, which pretends to advocate for democracy abroad.  In fact, the Bush administration was of no assistance, supporting instead the militant Musharraf regime which may have been responsible for Bhutto's assassination.

     It is essential that the United States stop playing power games with dangerous military governments whose leaders have no interest in democracy or the well-being of their people.
     Here was a country that begged us for help nurturing its young democracy, and, instead, we sent billions to support radical military coalitions that would make democracy impossible.  Gerald Ford (R) refused to help Zufikar Bhutto defend his country against India, and his administration made an enemy of Pakistan by vowing to "make a terrible example of him"(Kissinger's words).
    Reagan's (R) administration provided unconditional support and huge military funds to jihadist forces, called "freedom fighters," who became Al Quaeda.  Osama bin Laden was trained by the CIA, which recruited 45,000 Muslim boys from many countries to fight "for freedom."  George W. Bush (R) not only ignored Benazir Bhutto when she told him he was "creating a Frankenstein" by continuing to support the militant regime in Pakistan, but may have played a role in her assassination.  These Republican presidents and their aides were responsible for the mutiny of the Bhuttos in Pakistan, for the ruination of a burgeoning democracy, and for the terrorism that has become business as usual in this part of the Middle East.   

     I hope that by voting against Republicans on Tuesday I may be exercising a small part in reversing our country's horrible record of international relations.  Obama's election four years ago signaled to the world that we want to do better, and that we know we have been monsters who are responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in the Middle East.
     It was not an accident or a mistake that Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize shortly after his first win.  It was a big thank-you from the international community.  Let's not disappoint them this go-round.

For more information about Benazir Bhutto and the events leading to her assassination, see:

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/dec2007/bhut-d28.shtml Prime Minister. 

  

Whistleblowers

     There is an issue of integrity with the whistleblower program as framed by the government--and here I'm referring particularly to Medicare whistleblowers, as they are the cause of my current predicament.
     Medicare encourages whistleblowers to report doctors when there is suspicion of fraud.  In and of itself, this should not be problematic.  If a doctor or corporation is attempting, systematically, to defraud the government of money, it is in everyone's best interests to bring that to an end.
     But by what means?
     If there is a vandalism circuit in the neighborhood, does it make sense for law enforcement officials to use guns and brute power to raid every house, taking all valuables in sight--then tell the public it has "recovered" the vandalized goods because it confiscated the equivalent of the stolen goods?  And is it fair, then, to block the owners whose houses have been robbed by the government from registering a complaint, or demanding their property back?
     The government claims to have recovered $10 billion in Medicare fraud over the past three years.  But is it really fraudulently acquired money that it has recovered?   Or is it any money at all that the FBI and government prosecutors can bully out of doctors, through raids, threatening tactics, silent treatment, sealed affidavits, and a refusal to communicate in any substantive way with the doctors they raid or the lawyers who represent them?
     There is something wrong with a system that has removed, preemptively, any right to appeal or for due process on the part of those who may have been falsely accused and punished.  In fact, a system that operates in this manner is referred to as fascist.
     Fascism:  radical, authoritarian, nationalist, political policy, where the stated goal is to seize power and protect the interests of the proletariat.  
     Fascism is a pejorative term which is loosely used as an equivalent of "bully."  Fascists take from those who have, and redistribute to those who don't.  
     The government recruits and uses Medicare whistleblowers as a starting-point for bullying doctors in their effort to recuperate money--per executive orders passed down to the Department of Justice--for a flagging United States economy.   The stated objective is to protect taxpayers' money.  The real aim is to take back money in the easiest way possible so that it looks as though government agents are doing their jobs, even though the real fraud-gangsters are not nuts-and-bolts doctors who are trying to make sense of abstruse Medicare coding and documentation guidelines--and who are being terrorized out of medicine by perpetual threats of take-backs, and by overzealous auditors--but racketeers who hack into Medicare portals, represent themselves as doctors, submit false claims, have large payments routed first into legitimate-looking bank accounts, and then into foreign bank vaults, and remain incognito throughout.  Long after the government gets a whiff of what's going on, these large-scale criminals have moved on to newer grazing fields to start the process over again.
     It's a billion-dollar industry, and I'm not part of it.
     Neither, apparently, is the FBI.
     "It's too hard to go after those guys," three different FBI agents told me two and a half years ago, when I explained to them what I thought was going.
     Back then, the FBI had approached me to "review" lists of patients whose Medicare accounts had been billed for expensive pieces of home medical equipment.  My license information had been registered on the line for the referring physician.  Unless government agents were trying to entrap me at the time, the lists of Miami patients I was shown were people in whose names false claims had been submitted--and paid out--using Medicare claims-submissions software.
     "Yeah, there's a whole lot of fraud going on out there, but we're not going to catch it," one FBI agent casually commented.
     "Why not?"  I asked.  "Isn't that your job?  Aren't you guys good at espionage stuff?"
     "These people are professional crooks.  They come from foreign countries and do a number on the system," he answered.  "They're gone before we can say, 'Boo!'"
     "Why can't you track them down?"
     "They use false ID's, and have bank accounts under false names.  It's an industry."
     "How much do they wrangle out of Medicare?"
     "Oh, millions a pop."
     As for whistleblowers, it's possible that they might be able to identify small errors in billing.
     For example, the patient may see a statement reporting that Medicare paid for a nebulizer treatment, but he knows he had to cut out of the doctor's office early, and never received the treatment.  That's not 'fraud"--it's not even "abuse" of the system.  It's an error.  And there are likely to be as many errors going in the opposite direction--a patient who does receive a nebulizer treatment, but the nurse or provider forgot to circle it on the coding sheet, and it never gets billed to Medicare.
     The integrity problem with the whistleblower system is that whistleblowers--like people pointing an accusatory finger at witches in the 1600's--get protection from authorities.  In America, Medicare whistleblowers are allowed to remain anonymous.  If they're wrong, they don't suffer ignominy, they aren't fined, there's no slap on the wrist--they don't lose a thing.  
     Why not be a whistleblower?  If you report your doctor and the government "recuperates" money by any means, legitimate or not (plea-bargaining is not legitimate) you get up to 40% of the take-back.
     Wow!  That's like winning the lottery for most people.  And you don't even have to buy a lottery ticket to enter into the gamble.
     One of the first actions Pat McCullough took in the weeks after she purchased Hawthorne Medical Center from me was to call Bill Nelson, the U.S. Senator from Florida, and ask, "How does someone report a doctor for fraud?"
     What did she have to lose?
     She knew I hadn't committed fraud of any kind.  But she also knew how to roust government officials out of their slumber and present the profits my office generated as illegitimate. 
     It's likely that this was part of her grand plan, which would assure her a source of "income" long after she had seized the assets of the medical center, sold equipment, re-routed the money, and declared "bankruptcy" for $12 million.  She knew, perhaps, how greedy government agents are for tips that might lead to easy monetary take-backs.  After all, a goodly percentage of those take-backs end up in the FBI's coffers, and are necessary to flesh out the FBI's operating budget.  And a solo woman doctor is pretty defenseless in the face of a SWAT team.
     Pat McCullough's identity as the initial whistleblower was supposed to be protected.  The affidavits containing information that justified, supposedly, the government's intrusion into my affairs, remain sealed. Magistrate Judge Jones refused to order the unsealing of these affidavits because he believed the prosecutors when they said they wanted to assure the anonymity and protection of the witnesses.  He wouldn't even allow information propping up the raid on my clinic to be released if all identifying elements were redacted.
     That didn't matter.  Information like this has a way of leaking out.  Pat McCullough appeared almost immediately under Justia.com as the initial whistleblower;  afterwards, several ex-employees hopped into the fray--why not?  Nothing to lose.  They had no fear about identifying themselves.
     "I called the FBI," one of my ex-billing clerks--a woman perpetually in arrears--said, proudly.
     She couldn't have been proud because there was actually something fraudulent to report.  She was proud, I believe, because this is America, and if someone can get big money in any way at all--even by lying to the government--that person is an idol.  She was prepared to wait for the payout.
     I hope the government doesn't play into the hands of these false whistleblowers.  It doesn't look good for America.  If we don't operate with integrity in this country, we're headed down the tubes fast.
    But the national economy is insolvent, and its agents are under duress.  Take back money for Medicare!  We're running out of cash!  We can't print it fast enough at the Federal Reserve!  Therefore--go after doctors!  These are the marching orders given to government prosecutors and their FBI underlings.
     And I'm one of their cash cows, I guess.  They've come into my clinic with their guns and puffed up facades, with the power of undemocratic statutes behind them, and they've taken whatever they could find.
     Now they are able to claim they've "taken back" $10 billion plus my $400,000 for the American people.  What a way to solve the country's indebtedness issue.
     The problem is, government vandalism isn't going to solve anything.  If you take it from the people, are you really taking it for the people?

     

A Bad Dream Interpreted

     The foregoing dream has as its theme a certain kind of death:  an unjust, inhumane, persecutory death.  Death of this sort has for millennia served a multitude of purposes for society.
     First, it allows a community of individuals to scapegoat one individual as the sole carrier of evil, thereby freeing others from owning their share of iniquity.
     Second, it serves as an "explanation" for suffering--especially that caused by natural phenomena like epidemics and crop failures, but also the suffering endured by those who must witness another person's success alongside their own mediocrity.  A witch's success at curing the ills of others could, if it profited her greatly, be turned against her--even by those who benefited from her special skills--if they could not admit and process the sin of envy.
     Third, accusing one person of evildoing maintains solidarity within a group.  Social groups survive and thrive through a tolerable commixture of conformity and differentiation.  The greater the degree of outside threat to a group, the less it can accept uniqueness among its members.  (Hence, the need for nationalist fervor after 9/11, when speaking out against a war in Iraq was considered "unpatriotic.") Without outliers, who introduce creative new concepts into the group, society wastes away into sameness, like a sweet, bland pudding that fails to nourish.  The function of artists, seers, manic-depressives, and the psychotic mentally ill may be to keep the vast human organism from becoming one homogeneous lump of dough, stuck on its flat resting surface, unleavened, perpetually self-referential.
     Fourth, sacrifices appease a restless inner God who demands, on penalty of worse punishment, that each one of us acknowledge the existence of a primary, creative potency, the mysterious force that makes possible the flight of birds, the hemolymph-pumping hearts of grasshoppers, and the mathematical spin of the solar system.  We are forced to make sacrifices throughout life, as we give up our vivacity, beauty, mental capacity, and youthful hopes and dreams on the altar of time.
     Fifth, killing, burning, and burying all signify repression of unacceptable desires and feelings.  Killing a witch offers those in the vicinity temporary reprieve from anger, envy, enmity, and lust.  Afterward, they can imagine that their sinful feelings are "gone"--but, in fact, the acuity of modern psychology has pointed out that unpleasant feelings are merely pushed below the surface for a time, and will return in one form or another, often as neuroses.
     The unconscious is a real entity, and it speaks through dreams.  It regards death not as a final event, but as a major transformation.  Dreams of death almost never signify physical death, but point to concerns about the annihilation of the personality and a change in life circumstances, especially surrounding irrevocable events such as ending a career, leaving a relationship, or moving to another place.  Death dreams are also reminders that we have a limited time to accomplish spiritual tasks and to acquire wisdom.
     The scenario in my dream places me in the mindset of a child who is witnessing a horror that cannot be understood or borne, and at the same time in the position of a castigated man, a member of a social group which preserves its small-minded mores by destroying whoever threatens the group's survival in its present, singular form.
     The child is a new and innocent element in this social group, someone who understands and internalizes the real situation:  that fear is the energizing force of those who uphold the old regime, that the group has failed to incorporate and benefit from differences among its members, that there has been an insupportable reframing of fortune into blame, and that the hypocrisy of torture and martyrdom are acceptable in a group that claims to be just and godly when it cannot accept its own "evil" passions.
     The child is an aspect of my own personality, a part that observes things with a certain clear-mindedness, but is impotent to change the course of events.  The child's understanding is an effort on my part to reconcile opposites within my own being:  my ambition, the drive to succeed professionally and financially, the wish to preserve a good reputation--alongside my guilt at having been successful (so common among American career-women) and at having failed to fulfill the traditional, feminine, homemaking role I was assigned at birth.  There is also a certain element of self-repudiation for having surpassed my parents and many of my age-mates.  Further, the task of the second half of life involves leaving material concerns behind and developing a relationship to the divine.  If I continue my pattern of overwork and entanglement with external concerns--like dealing with the government as though it's a rational institution--I will have little time left for the tasks of maturity.
     The man about to be burned at the stake represents the non-befitting male values I have adopted all these years--having taken seriously"women's lib," becoming skillful as a physician and entrepreneur in a society that prizes cutthroat business skills, professional accomplishment and financial prosperity.  This is my mid-life sacrifice:  I am being forced to give up my success and social role in this reproachful, paternalistic world in order to make room for something new--perhaps a bird that can take flight from the ashes that will be left at the altar of witch-burning.
     I have no more than a vague sense of what this new thing might be.  I am wandering about the grounds of the compound in my dream, aimless, aware only of impending doom, and wondering if I will be able to bear my fate.
     I understand that I have become a scapegoat for others in this dream-society, people who are rigid, police-like, and unable to see where they themselves are going wrong.  I am a scapegoat in America for the FBI's failure to identify and punish the real perpetrators of Medicare fraud, and for the federal government's inability to rectify the problem of our national debt.
     The fact that it is very early morning in the dream suggests the birth of a new day, a new start.  The shadowy light--still essentially night--is like that in the metaphorical night-sea journey--an experience best symbolized in the western canon by Jonah's trial in the belly of the whale.  It is a period of gestation and germination, one with great potential, from which I may burst forth into the light of day, and be redeemed.
     It is too dark for me to know if there can be any sort of redemption at the end of this process, the real-life federal investigation of my clinic and attack on my person.   In the hours before death, in the belly of the whale, on the night-sea journey, one cannot know anything factual about the future, and must look within for strength, and exercise exorbitant faith.

A Bad Dream

     The scene is a remote, wooded settlement.  The grounds are dimly lit by fire-pole torches.  It is very early in the morning, before dawn.  It might be the 1600's.
     I am a child caught up in a scuffle of activities.  There is an event about to take place.  It is being prepared for by all, with great seriousness of intent--although the necessities of life, such as eating and sweeping and infant care cannot be ignored, so there is the eerie juxtaposition of the ordinary with the sacred.
     But is it "sacred"?  Someone is going to be burned at the stake, according to the custom for ridding the group of a dangerous, devil-possessed misfit.  
     That misfit is me, a man , an outcast, a group member who has been disbarred with marginal evidence and a great deal of public projection.
     I am, oddly, both the lonesome child and the grown man about to be sacrificed.
     People are collecting kindling and firewood in baskets.  As the man shortly to be deflagrated and humiliated, I am feeling remote and betrayed, and wonder if I will be able to bear the torture of immolation.
     As the child whose opinion does not matter, I am perplexed and outraged at the cruelty of this punishment.  It seems unnecessary, irrational, and somehow cut off from the reality of being human.  I know that it is not permissible to pose my question to the adults, but I ask myself--with growing horror--"Why?"  "Why?"  "Why??"

Does the Government Investigate More Italians?

     A podcast on "This American Life" (episode 473) suggested to me the possibility that the government might be especially interested in me because I have an Italian last name.  My father was from Naples, Italy.
     One of my friends said to me, in reference to this possibility:  "The FBI has a long history of going after the Mafia, and it would not surprise me if the institutional memory continues to be suspicious of anyone with an Italian last name."
     The podcast is about an Italian-American lawyer who found a legitimate way to make a lot of money on annuities.  He found a loophole in the annuity contracts written by big banks, and made a substantial amount of money for himself by selling them to people who were about to die.  It sounds gruesome, but in fact those people were glad to have a few thousand dollars, and when they purchased annuities the lawyer made out big.  Questions were raised about the legitimacy of his dealings, but so far no one can prove that he did anything wrong.  In a way, the big banks were caught in the backfire of one of their own scheming enterprises, and this lawyer is the one who found a way to capitalize on their business-as-usual pillaging of small-tiime investors and clients.
     More than 16 million Americans have Italian ancestry, making up 6% of the population.  In the early 1900's, about 4 million Italian immigrants came to the United States, most of them farmers from southern Italy, and another 1 million arrived at the end of World War II, in 1945.  For many years Italy had been ruled by a feudal system, and the peasants were robbed by feudal landlords of everything they earned, grew, or accumulated.  The Italian farm people revolted, and there was a great deal of bloodshed--1 million lives lost in the 1800's--but the feudal system persisted.  With the growth of industry, northern Italy flourished, but southern Italy remained poor, having arable land but few of the other highly prized natural resources, such as coal and iron ore, for running factories and building railroads.  Trees were cut down, the wonderful soil was eroded, and farming could no longer support the growing population in southern Italy, when, in the early 1900's, Mt. Vesuvius erupted, decimating an entire town, and an earthquake killed 100,000 people in Sicily in 1908.
     Many Italians, called "Birds of Passage," fled to the United States in the hope of earning money as laborers, to go back to Italy.  While a lot of Italians returned, many stayed in this country.
     During and after World War II many Italian-Americans were arrested by the FBI.  They were referred to as "enemy-aliens" and were forced to leave their homes if they resided in coastal areas.  The government's fear was that foreign-born Americans and their families might feel loyal to their native countries--Italy, Germany, Japan--and operate against American interests in the midst of world conflict.
     My father spoke Italian as his first language, and was fluent.  His parents spoke no English.  But he never allowed us, his six children, to learn Italian, and he was careful to follow a dictum to, "Speak American" from the 1940's, when being Italian was a life-threatening identity. Many Italians changed their names to disguise their backgrounds.  My father's name was Biagio Antonio Colasante--too "Italian."  He changed it to Anthony Daniel Colasante.
     Over a six-month period between 1941 and 1942 the FBI arrested 1,521 Italian-American "aliens," some of whom were placed in internment camps in Oklahoma, Montana, Tennessee and Texas.  Their crime?  Being Italian.
     Italian organized crime has infiltrated almost every country in the world.  Mafia members are linked by blood and protect one another for the purpose of protecting their power and money.  The Calabrian Mafia has several hundred members in New York and Florida.  Perhaps the FBI thinks I could be connected by blood to this branch of the Mafia. 
     The FBI, however, has partnered with the Italian-American Working Group which attempts to address organized crime schemes involving money laundering and racketeering, as well as terrorism, smuggling, extradition and cyber-crime.
     Just for the record, this is a message to the FBI.  I am not involved in organized crime.  I have no ties to any branch of the Mafia.  I am just a first-generation Italian-American proud to have ancestral ties to a country so full of life, and love, and food, and music and art, and to have been born in this great country.

Note:  Some of the information in this blog was paraphrased from "The Quagliata Family Geneaology Project," which is easy to locate online under comcast.net.