Nightline: Filthy Liars.

[Updated March 6, 2009 7:40pm CST New information in brackets.]

Omission is still a lie. This evening the ABC program "Nightline" lied their collective asses off. From what I understand, FOX News, that pantheon of truth, has also picked up the story. [FOX News eventually declined to run the story. The Nightline broadcast also coincides with the introduction of an obscure piece of legislation that asks for all chimp research to be halted. There's nothing like a little fear mongering and magical editing to trump up support for an otherwise doomed bill.]

The UL Lafayette New Iberia Research Facility. You heard me: monkeys and the allegation that facility researchers are abusing them.

Begin with this statement in the story's lead-in: "...chimpanzees and other primates, entrusted to the labs to be safely and humanely treated, but who would know if they're not?" Instead of listing the six agencies that oversee the facility, Nightline falls silent, leaving me to wonder if their research department is really just that bad.

"...a nine-month investigation into the largest chimpanzee research facility in the country." In the world. Perhaps the research department at Nightline really is a steaming pile.

The video footage begins with a sedated monkey falling from a counter. This clip is used twice in the broadcast. In nine months, this super undercover sleuth has brilliantly cracked the case in that one monkey, out of the six thousand housed at the center, fell off a counter. Bravo. By the way, that "investigator" who wished to be protected? She faked her credentials to get into the center. She has zero training in veterinary sciences or any other aspect of the facility's operation. Yes, the public knows about you Ms. Caroline Cook.
[The tech responsible for the safety of the monkey that falls is the tech you see picking up the monkey, Ms. Cook, our camerawoman. Additionally, Ms. Cook is now facing jail time, charged with perjury, for falsifying documents in order to obtain a government job.]

The next clip shows chimps being shot with darts to sedate them. The angle of the video and the reporter's voice tells you that the perches you see the chimps on are "several feet" off the ground. In reality, they are no higher than the seat cushions of your average couch. As Ms. Cook talks about chimps "smacking to the ground", please remember the woman who is recovering from the critical injuries she received from a chimp, then ask yourself if you are going to be the one who rushes into the pen to catch the animal. Also notice that Ms. Cook never makes this attempt herself.

The footage labeled June 2, 2008 is described to the viewer as a random researcher cracking a monkey in the teeth with a pipe. It never mentions that this "pipe" is actually a restraining pole similar to the ones used by dogcatchers and zookeepers throughout the nation. It also fails to identify that the researcher is not striking the monkey, he only brings the pole near the monkey while making sure the monkey can see the pole. This is to acclimate the monkey to the pole so that it can be used to calmly walk the monkey from his pen to the research chair, which Nightline and Ms. Cook both neglect to mention.
[The same device is also used to hold an animal's mouth open for the placement of an NG or other medical tube. This is done by timing the movement of the pole so that it reaches the monkey's mouth when he already has it open, not by striking the animal.]

The next bit tells us it was shot on March 10, 2008 and showcases an employee who strikes a small monkey on the head. It fails to inform you that the incident was never reported by Ms. Cook, who was the only witness to the event, and the employee was terminated.
[The employee has not worked at the facility for months, it is unclear as to whether she was terminated or quit prior to termination. Additionally, Ms. Cook did not follow clearly outlined facility procedure that calls for all acts of suspected or verified abuse to be reported immediately. Clearly, Ms. Cook was more interested in obtaining secret footage than actually protecting any of the animals in the facility.]

Ms. Cook goes on to claim that the footage titled March 6, 2008 shows an infant monkey being terrorized by having a "substance forced down his throat". What she does not talk about, and Nightline overlooks, is that when any animal in the facility refuses to eat on his or her own the staff must tube feed the animal. The "substance" referred to here is food.

Nightline spoke with Narriman Fakier, who claims to have been told to "quit or be fired". In truth, Ms. Fakier was informed that she was being sacked for a failure to show up for her job many times over the course of several months, at which point she quit and immediately filed suit claiming that she was fired for "whistle blowing". The USDA did investigate Ms. Fakier's claims of abuse, resulting in exoneration for the facility.

Nightline also spoke with a third former employee who chose not to appear on camera. This particular employee directly disobeyed medical orders given to her regarding the care of a sick chimpanzee, resulting in the animal's death. It is this offense that resulted in her termination.
[While an employee was terminated for the offense described above, it is now suspected that Nightline's "third former employee" does not actually exist.]

Nightline then claims that these three former employees have never met each other. As a resident of south Louisiana and a long time figure on the university campus, I call straight bullshit. The residents of this town are the original six degrees of separation and the people who work at the university are cliquish, even after they've moved on to new employment. I am sure these people have met, probably over at the Community Coffeehouse on the corner of Johnston Street and North College Drive.

When talking to a member of the Humane Society of America, Nightline shows video of monkeys biting themselves and running in circles inside cages. What they do not mention is that these are animals that have been sequestered from the main population in order to treat their wounds and protect the others while staff studies the behavior so that the situation can be rectified, allowing the animals to be soothed so that they can return to the main living area.
[This behavior occurs not only at every research facility in the world, but also in the wild. In fact, the average occurrence rate in a facility is around 7% while the NIRC maintains an occurrence rate of around 0.5%.]

Nightline then moves on to a couple of rapid-fire allegations. They repeat the clip of one monkey falling to the floor, then reveal complaints that cages are not maintained. Other than one cage that appears to have slid off of its base, no visible damage appears in the footage.

The next assertion is that the animals are sedated then transported without protection or restraint. This is a contradiction in that it is stated that the chimps are sedated, which is a chemical restraint. They are moved to the back of a van where two staff members ride with the animals while it is transported across the facility at a blistering pace of between five and ten miles per hour.

At this point, Ms. Fakier claims that the sedated chimp "could wake up at any moment" and that the "direction was if he wakes up, run". Ketamine is the sedative of choice. When the ketamine begins to wear off, the animal does not suddenly spring up, fully awake and spoiling for a fight. The process is very gradual and if the sedation begins to subside while the chimp is still en route, another dose is administered. Any suggestion that personnel should "run" if the chimp begins to wake is a joke since there would be no reason for flight.

In short, this is a steaming pile of crap that never should have been aired. Three disgruntled employees and out of context video that amounts to roughly seventeen minutes of footage after "nine months of undercover investigation"? That's all you have?

I am not Paul Harvey, but now you know the rest of the story.

[For more information please see the reaction from the University President, additional video and information from the local paper, as well as continuing updates from local news sources.]

Louisiana Hurricanes (not the football team)

The following passages are re-worked excerpts from personal journal entries. After what I've seen and heard over the last few days, I felt they were warranted.

[Edited for clarification 3:00pm CST, February 26, 2009]

This first entry was written following a breakdown or "freak out", as I like to call it, concerning everything I had witnessed during and after Hurricane Katrina. Being a resident of south Louisiana, I did not watch the events unfold on a television screen far away from the action (the exception being WDSU. Thank $deity for WDSU!). For myself and my loved ones, everything came to pass over frantic telephone calls and various evacuation "shelters".

My best friend, a child of NOLA born and raised, was a nursing student at the time. The call went out for as many capable volunteers as could be found to report to the Cajundome and assist with incoming evacuees from the waters that had engulfed the city we loved. We answered, and on the overnight shift she assisted in the care of the sick and infirm while I was stationed at an "intake" post where all arrivals were "processed".

The events described below are just a small sample of what we dealt with in our many days of volunteering before the Red Cross huffed in and clusterfucked the whole operation.

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Re: Saturday night/Sunday morning's freak out.

It would be easy to shrug it off as being a drunken ass but I can't. I royally freaked out. For crying out loud, I texted [person] in the middle of it, in the middle of the night, just to reach out for someone who might have the slightest clue about the magnitude of what I'd witnessed. That bitch was nearly four years ago. I didn't have that large of a part to play in the events that unfolded, but I'm not over it. I'm not over holding an old man's hand as his life slipped away. I'm not over children who should be laughing and playing clustered together in whispers and haunted looks more befitting a funeral parlor. I'm not over cutting the reeking clothes off a young mother whose eyes don't reflect that she is registering anything around her while her three small, frightened children cling to her body in silent desperation. I am not fucking over it. Who the hell could be?

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This second entry came about following a viewing of the February 25th episode of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart". I suppose I should thank Mr. Stewart for making me want to hit him because he drove home what the rest of the US seems to think of south Louisiana.

• All of Louisiana is New Orleans. Seriously, check the map. There is nothing else here. Absolutely all of Louisiana's population is contained within metropolitan New Orleans.
• No one in Louisiana can get by without sticking their hand out and crying "Katrina!"
• Hurricanes hit Louisiana all the time.
• Louisiana is populated by morons. (I have to give partial credit here since a large portion of the population bears this out on a daily basis.)
• New Orleans was the only location affected by Hurricane Katrina.
  

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I sit here wanting to throw up. After all that has happened, after all that we've been through, Hurricane Katrina is a punchline. I lay blame both on Bobby Jindal for pulling the Katrina card in an attempt to further his own politics and on the tasteless writers across the nation who took the bait. I'm ashamed of Jindal and embarrassed by his actions. I'm wounded by those, who sat watching their television sets far from the scene as it all unfolded, that think they are informed enough to criticize us, the survivors, while saying things to us that they would not dream of uttering to the residents of Greensburg, Kansas.

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There is far more to Louisiana than New Orleans. Katrina's scope was far more than New Orleans. I can't think of many people outside the affected area that can identify Waveland, Bay St. Louis, Pass Christian or Long Beach. Utter those names to most of the nation and the nation is clueless that these are the names of the communities in southern Mississippi where countless lives were lost and vast stretches of land were wiped completely clean by the storm's fury. No one remembers these people and places because they are too busy making fun of New Orleans.

Hurricane Katrina herself did not do insanely large amounts of damage to New Orleans. Residents in the city as the hurricane came through reported dry streets and no more damage than any other hurricane in the first few hours after landfall. The damage done to the city occurred when the levee system failed. That damage was compounded, many believe, when the Army Corp of Engineers called for the pumps that had kept the city dry throughout the storm to be shut down. The pumps themselves were then flooded and rendered inoperable for weeks, long after the levee breeches had been patched.

Evacuations of the city failed due to governmental failure. The Louisiana state government had already issued several unnecessary evacuations earlier in the season for storms that lacked both the strength and the track to pose a true threat to the area. This lead to a "cry wolf" situation where the older residents, who had survived Betsy and Camille, left in the earlier evacuations but found themselves unwilling to believe in danger again. When their elders refused to leave their homes, many stayed against their better judgment, hoping to provide assistance and protection should the need arise.

Evacuations also failed due to their massive impact on family budgets. I have kept track of how much my family of five spends on a single evacuation. The average is $1800USD, more than a third of our family's net monthly income and more than our monthly mortgage payment. That number includes only food and transport, as we are lucky enough to have family outside the "cone of uncertainty" who are willing to house us until we can return home. The cost for other families includes added travel to an available hotel in addition to the cost of the hotel itself. It is not unusual for a single family to spend more than $3000USD on a single evacuation. In the end, each family has to decide for itself when the risk justifies the cost to their household.

Finally, I'd like to ask where the proponents of abandoning coastal Louisiana expect us to live. I'd like to ask them to name me one area of the country that is not at risk due to tornado, blizzard, wildfire, hurricane, volcanic eruption or earthquake. The way I see it, the residents of coastal Louisiana are the smart ones. We've settled in an area where, up to a week beforehand, we are
armed with the information of when to expect our disaster and how extensive the damage may be. We can then decide for ourselves to stay or go. We actually have some experience in this area, and just because one storm caught us by surprise does not make us fools.

There's so much more I want to say, but just can't find the words, so I'll simply provide a link to this rant's required reading 1 Dead in Attic by Chris Rose.

Haha

So the Texans in #phpc were picking on me for living in Louisiana, and we all started picking on Houston. That lead to the discussion of why San Antonio's too lame to even pick on. Someone wanted a postcard as a souvenir. Here is the result. Clicky to make bigger.

Silent Poetry Reading

It's time again for the annual Silent Poetry Reading, where bloggers around the world devote today's post to a poem of their choice. Since I chose a Louisiana poet last year, I'll keep with that this year.

MORNING JOY

Piano buttons, stitched on morning lights.
Jazz wakes with the day,
As I awaken with jazz, love lit the night.
Eyes appear and disappear,
To lead me once more, to a green moon.
Streets paved with opal sadness,
Lead me counterclockwise, to pockets of joy,
And jazz.

Bob Kaufman

A little more information on the poet from Poets.org:

Bob Kaufman was born on April 18, 1925, in New Orleans, Louisiana, one of thirteen children. His mother was a black Catholic from Martinique, his father a German Orthodox Jew. As a child, Kaufman took part in both Catholic and Jewish religious services; he was also exposed to the voodoo beliefs of his maternal grandmother. At the age of thirteen, he ran away and joined the Merchant Marine, surviving four shipwrecks and circumnavigating the globe nine times in the next twenty years.

When Kaufman left the Merchant Marine in the early 1940s, he went to New York City to study literature at the New School, where he met William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. The three went to San Francisco, joining Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti at the center of the Beat scene.