Torture Report, North Korea, AMR

I was wondering why Condoleezza Rice was a tad testy in her interviews on CNN and NPR last weekend, now I know why. The Senate Armed Services Committee released a report on the use of torture and waterboarding at military instillations like Guantanamo. It condemned Donald Rumsfeld and Ms Rice for attending the meetings that ok'ed its use as a policy decision. Ms Rice and President George Bush have been making the rounds of interviews trying to rewrite history and their roles in a kinder, more gentler version. History lite, for all of you drinkers of fake beer...

In February of 2007, North Korea verbally agreed to dismantle their nuclear facilities. Two months ago the US removed them from the list of terrorist nations. Suddenly, they were no longer considered part of the Axis of Evil. Talks have just broken down, North Korea does not want to provide verification that they are actually dismantling their facilities. This would have been letting air and soil samples taken near the buildings and examined outside of the country.“Well, it’s the same old problem,” the American negotiator, Christopher R. Hill, said in Beijing, according to a State Department transcript. “The North Koreans don’t want to put into writing what they are willing to put into words.”

My nephew works as an EMT for American Medical Response. According to the stories I have heard, this is one of the most irresponsible companies in the they way they treat their employees.

He has worked here in Colorado Springs, Mobile, Alabama, and now is in Austin, Texas. The company is constantly having workers work overtime and then short them in their paychecks, or, in my nephew's case, not give him a paycheck at all. When it happened in Colorado Springs, he had to go to the HR department up in Denver to get things straightened out. When he worked out of Mobile, he was lent out to FEMA during the last two hurricanes, and FEMA still hasn't reimbursed AMR for services rendered. The accounting for Austin is done in San Antonio, and they found a way not to pay him the rate that was agreed to on a signed contract, they have consistently shorted employees by $300-400 on their paychecks, and now they sent his current paycheck to a closed bank account in Alabama. He never gave the Texas office any personal information from when he lived in Alabama, they somehow took it on themselves to look up outdated information and use it. In the meantime, he doesn't have enough gas to get home after a 36 hour shift...

If you want to know what happens on the mean streets of your town after dark, the ambulance drivers are the ones to ride with and talk to. On his first night working, there was a horrible fire in a large apartment complex called Castle West. While he was helping to evacuate the building, going down the hallway with an elderly woman in one arm and a baby in another, two firemen rushed up to him and took the baby out of his hands. Right around a bend in the hallway was a television news crew, and the firemen left him to get the elderly woman out while they got a photo op to be on the news.

He had to take the police chief's wife to get her methadone. He was stalked by a woman police officer who thought he was cute. She handcuffed him and molested him in the back of the police car while her partner stood by outside and laughed. Often the patients he had to take were drunk or drugged and could be dangerously violent, and then the police were nowhere around to help. Good luck, buddy.

Recently, paramedics have been in the national spotlight for molesting patients from Oregon to South Carolina, and of course, in Texas. The Laredo division was recently busted by the Feds because employees were taking ambulances down into Mexico, filling them up with illegal drugs, and then driving them back across the border. If you need a job, there are current openings at the Laredo office...