Monday, February 3, 2014


News Clips For The Day



'People are eating cats': Starvation, deaths plague Syria camp – NBC
By Ann Curry, NBC News National and International Correspondent

In a rare moment of cooperation between the Syrian government and rebel forces, aid agencies say hundreds of people were allowed to evacuate over the weekend from a suburb of Damascus where the nearly three-year-old civil war has yielded yet another horror: Hunger so severe that a significant number of people are said to be now starving to death.

The evacuation from Yarmouk Camp, a rebel-held suburb just south of Damascus, comes after 89 people, most of them children and elderly people, have died of malnutrition-related diseases since January 1, according to Jamal Hammad, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent. He said his count only includes cases with confirmed death certificates.

Children under the age of one and elderly people over 65 account for 60 percent of the deaths, he said.

Yarmouk Camp is a neighborhood of mostly Palestinians who fled to Syria in the 1950s and are now caught in the crossfire of the civil war.  The United Nations estimates that some 20,000 people remain there, virtually cut off from the rest of the world.
Hammad is one of multiple credible sources reached inside Yarmouk, including three relief workers and two photographers, who all said hunger is so severe there that people are dying in significant numbers.

(The England-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has said more than 80 people have died in recent months from both starvation and a lack of medical care.)
Hammad's wife Amal Ahmad, a trained x-ray technician who is also a relief worker, said that she is concerned that the rate of hunger-related deaths could soon spike, as many people are now in a weakened state. She said "many women have suffered miscarriages or died in childbirth due to extreme malnourishment."  Ahmad was one of several sources who described the situation as nearing a tipping point.
 
Some sources asked that their last names not be used out of fear for their personal safety, including Osama, a 26-year-old former graduate student in economics who is also a local relief worker.  He said that in Yarmouk, people are eating cats, grass and cactus they are so hungry.
 
Snipers have shot people dead while they are gathering grass to eat, he said. Ahmad said these dead are being called “martyrs of the grass” in Yarmouk.
The situation has become so desperate, Osama said, that people are now drawing blood in fights over food, and he's afraid of what may come next. Asked to name his greatest fear, he said, "Maybe the people can eat each other. I don't know. I don't know. I can't imagine.  Before, no one can imagine that a family can just cook a cat. Now it's happened."

Hammad corroborated Osama's account about people eating cats. He said people have also eaten dogs.

In recent days, a small amount of food aid has trickled in through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Ahmad said this was the first actual food she and many she knows have eaten in at least four months. She said many people, especially children, had problems digesting the food since their stomachs are completely empty, and they vomited their first meals.

She said the few families who were able to get food aid are sharing it with families who were not as lucky, but the overwhelming majority of people in Yarmouk did not get any aid.  

Osama said some people are down to consuming only water. "Sometimes we do this...drink some water with some sugar or some salt and go back to sleep. But when you go to the street you will find maybe the people next door...they're dead," he said.

Photographs of emaciated children have emerged across the Internet in recent days, purportedly from Yarmouk. Sources confirm that photos obtained by NBC News are of children in Yarmouk, and were taken in recent days and weeks.

NBC contacted two photographers who also confirmed they are seeing children and elderly people terribly weakened by hunger. One photographer named Niraz took most of the photos shown in this report (see images above), including one of two young children wrapped in white, lying next to one another on a blue cloth. Niraz identified them as 4-month-old Leila Khaled and 25-day-old Rahaf. Osama said those two children died on Tuesday, and that children die in Yarmouk every day now.
An analysis of the photos by NBC News has determined there to be no obvious signs of digital manipulation.

Chris Gunness, a spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, said that while he cannot confirm the number of starvation-related deaths, there are "widespread reports of malnutrition" including children with rickets and anemia. He also said, "people, including infants, are eating animal feed."

Gunness said the aid allowed into Yarmouk so far is "shockingly inadequate to meet the dire needs of these civilians," and called on Syrian authorities and all parties in the conflict to facilitate the rapid access of substantial quantities of food to civilians in Yarmouk.

A representative at the Syrian Consulate in New York City declined to comment on the situation, including why substantial quantities of food are being blocked from getting into Yarmouk.  

Relief worker Osama estimated that there are about five dozen rebel fighters inside Yarmouk among the thousands of civilians.

When asked if there is any pressure on these fighters to stop firing at the Syrian Army in an effort to get more food into the area, Osama said, "Yes, people make pressure but there is no reason to let children starve to death, no reason to siege all of this area."

Children cry "all the time, not just the night, all of the time," Osama said. "You can hear their moms also. Most families just spend their day just looking for anything to eat."

Asked what Yarmouk needs most, he said, "We need to save the children inside Yarmouk. Maybe send them out of Syria...our families will be happy, believe me. Just save the children."



According to this article, the Syrian government is blocking “substantial quantities” of food from reaching the city of Yarmouk. The witness Osama said “Just save the children,” that the families will be happy if they are sent out of Syria. He said he fears the outbreak of cannibalism. That would be too terrible to imagine.

I wonder what the US State Department is going to do about this, if anything. The following is from the website http://www.albawaba.com/news/amnesty-assad-starvation-war-tactic-549553 which insists the starvation is an intentional move by Assad to break the will of the people there, a war crime. The citizens of Yarmouk are “unwilling to make major political concessions during the ongoing peace negotiations in Geneva” in spite of the starvation. The albawaba article accuses the Assad regime of “industrial scale killing” and torture as well, with photographs in evidence of 11,000 bodies.

From Albawaba, “On Wednesday, the heads of seven of the world’s largest humanitarian and human rights organization who are working on the crisis in Syria issued a joint call in Davos, urging the international community to stand up for the people of Syria who are enduring “the worst humanitarian crisis of our time.”
“The reputation of the United Nations and the member states of the Security Council are at risk unless they can show the resolve and responsibility needed to end the crisis and until that time take steps to ensure humanitarian assistance quickly reaches those who need it,” the statement read.”

http://blogs.wsj.com/davos/2014/01/24/saudi-prince-turki-u-s-must-lead-u-n-effort-on-syria/ – According to this The Wall Street Journal blog on January 24, 2014 the Saudi Prince Turki states that the US must lead the UN to authorizing armed intervention in Syria. The article continues: Saudi Arabia, with Qatar, is one of the main state backers of Syrian rebels fighting to overthrow Mr. Assad. Russia and China, both Security Council members, support Mr. Assad’s regime, and oppose any armed international intervention against it.

"The sharpest moments on the panel Friday came when Prince Turki sparred verbally with a leading Russian parliament member, also on the panel. The Saudi prince urged Russia to stop shipments of arms and other materiel to Mr. Assad’s government.
“Will Saudi stop supplying weapons to the rebels?” responded the Russian parliament member, Alexey Pushkov, chairman of the Russian Duma’s international-affairs committee."


The ongoing war between the US and Western allies and Russia/China is one of power and control, with smaller nations like Syria as a battleground. The fact that Russia and China are blocking UN action to stop the starvation and killing shows their cynical and ruthless stance. They don't care what happens to the citizens in Syria. I hope the UN Security Council will act and prevent something like the US and allies going in alone with military action. We don't need another war. Still, we need to do something.




Obama clashes with Fox News's O'Reilly over record – NBC

By Tom Curry, National Affairs Writer, NBC News

President Barack Obama hit back in a combative Super Bowl Sunday interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, defending his administration's record on everything from health care to Benghazi.

Most pointedly, the president aggressively pushed back at suggestions that he should have fired Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius over the botched rollout of Obamacare.  

“My main priority right now is making sure that it delivers for the American people,” Obama insisted.

Obama said the initial problems with the government’s Healthcare.gov web site have been fixed “and now it’s working the way it’s supposed to and we’ve signed up 3 million people ... . We’re about a month behind of where we anticipated we wanted to be.”

He brushed off questions from O’Reilly on why he hadn’t fired Sebelius for the fiasco of the web site’s debut.

When O’Reilly complained that “I’m paying Kathleen Sebelius’s salary and she screwed up and you’re not holding her (Sebelius) accountable,” Obama replied, “We hold everybody up and down the line accountable” and added later in a Super Bowl allusion, “I try to focus not on the fumbles, but on the next play.”

O’Reilly also grilled the president on how he and his aides handled the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic facility in Libya that resulted in the killing of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. 

O’Reilly pressed Obama on whether Defense Secretary Leon Panetta had told him that the attack was carried out by terrorists, as Gen. Carter Ham of the U.S. Africa Command had informed Panetta.

“What he (Panetta) told was there was an attack on our compound ... . In the heat of the moment, Bill, what folks are focused on is what’s happening on the ground, do we have eyes on it, how can we make sure our folks are secure.”

This led to several minutes of interruption and crosstalk as Obama and O’Reilly debated whether the administration had misled the American people about the nature of the attack because Obama and his aides didn’t want Benghazi to affect the 2012 re-election campaign.

Obama said he had characterized the attack as an act of terror the day after it took place
Obama told O’Reilly that “when you look at the videotape of this whole thing unfolding, this is not some systematic, well-organized process ... . You have a mix of folks who are just troublemakers, you have folks who have an ideological agenda, you have some who are affiliated with terrorist organizations, you have some that are not” but the main lesson of the episode is that “our diplomats are serving in some very dangerous places” and need better protection.

Obama also tangled with O’Reilly over the Internal Revenue Service’s investigation of conservative political groups that sought non-profit status.
He said the reason that former IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman had visited the White House 157 times was that he was discussing with Obama aides the IRS’s role in implementing the Affordable Care Act. The agency is responsible for administering tax credits which will go to those who qualify for subsidies to buy insurance.
Obama said Shulman had also been working with White House aides on ways to implement financial reforms to avoid taxpayer bailouts of corporations.

He added that while “bone-headed decisions” were made in the IRS probes of non-profit groups, there was “not even a smidgen of corruption.”
Of the controversy, Obama said, " ... These kinds of things keep on surfacing, in part because you and your TV station will promote them."

As for Super Bowl, Obama deftly sidestepped giving a prediction about the winner. The two opposing teams are “too evenly matched,” he said. 
He predicted a final score of 24 to 21, but said “I don’t know who’s going to be 24 and I don’t know who’s going to be 21.”
 


President Obama and Bill Clinton, both being lawyers, do seem to enjoy a good argument and acquit themselves well. Why else would Obama go on the Bill O'Reilly show? At least he's not afraid of him, as some people are. O'Reilly is the only TV conservative pundit that I have watched very much at all. He is intelligent and often funny, and will give credit when the other party makes a good point, unless it is over an important Republican issue, in which case he will fight fiercely. I could do without his name-calling, “pinhead,” etc., because I think it is too arrogant and doesn't really make a point. I don't pay for cable television anymore since my income went down and their prices went up, so I don't get to see some of the news and political shows that I used to watch. Oh, well, the news blog is almost as good for keeping up.





Racial discrimination in teen years could mean health problems later – NBC
Joan Raymond TODAY contributor


Racial discrimination may be a health problem, too, research suggests.
Racial discrimination isn’t just a civil rights issue — it can also affect teenagers’ health, a new study suggests.

Adolescents who experienced frequent racial discrimination without emotional support from parents and peers had higher levels of blood pressure, a higher body mass index, and higher levels of stress-related hormones at age 20, placing them at greater risk for chronic disease as they get older.

While other studies have looked at perceived racial discrimination and health among adults, this study, published Monday in the journal Child Development, is the first of its type to track the effects in youth. The good news: Teens who did receive emotional support didn't show the biological effects of racial discrimination.

Researchers wanted to look at the relationship between racial discrimination and what scientists call allostatic load, basically the “wear and tear” on the body over time caused by frequent and repeated stressors. Frequent activation of the body’s stress response causes a cascade of problems including high blood pressure, cardiac disease, stroke and increases in the body’s inflammatory response. The researchers also wanted to determine whether parental and peer support would help mediate that stress, leading to potentially better health outcomes. 

The study involved 331 African Americans, all of whom lived in the rural South, who were asked to rate the frequency of perceived discrimination at ages 16, 17 and 18. These discriminatory events included racially based slurs and insults, disrespectful treatment from community members, physical threats, and false accusations from business employees or law enforcement officials.

When the adolescents turned 18, the youths were asked to assess their peer emotional support during these years. Caregivers, too, were surveyed regarding the emotional support they provided, with questions including “If my child talks to me I have suggestions about how to handle problems,” and “If my child needs help with school or work, she/he can ask me about it.”

Blood pressure, body mass and stress-related hormones were assessed when youths turned 20. The researchers controlled for variables including low economic status, depression, or unhealthy behaviors such as drug use, for example, all of which can affect health.

Although many African Americans, as well as other minorities, experience discrimination as a stressor, only a small percentage show increases in the biological havoc that stress can cause.

“People ask why is that, and one reason we’ve shown is that it’s due to emotional support, which is important at all times in life, but especially during adolescence,’ says lead investigator Gene Brody, Regents Professor and Director of the Center for Family Research at University of Georgia. “These kinds of relationships can be a protective barrier from stress-changing biology.”

In recent years, racial discrimination as a stressor affecting biology has been the subject of numerous studies, mostly involving adults, says David Williams, a professor of public health at the Harvard School of Public Health. Other research has shown that racial discrimination and resulting health problems are a global phenomenon.

“It is not just an African-American problem, it is a universal problem, affecting the health of disadvantaged populations across the world,” adds Williams, the developer of “The Everyday Discrimination Scale,” which is widely used to assess perceived discrimination. “When a person’s sense of human dignity is violated, there are physiological consequences.”

Although the study does have some limitations since researchers still must determine the mechanism by which parental or peer involvement actually worked in reducing the stress response, it challenges researchers to explain “the how” of their findings, says Megan Gunnar, Regents Professor and Distinguished McKnight University Professor, Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota.

“While we are working out the how this comes about in the body, this study provides us with rich targets for increasing resilience in youth and, as if we needed them, more arguments for working to reduce racism and discrimination in our society.”
For caregivers the message is simple. “Just sitting with them, gauging how they are doing is not race specific, it is important across all races, and can have a powerful effect in buffering the effects of discrimination," says Brody. 



This article says that racial discrimination, like other negative social interactions – bullying, name-calling, shunning, gossiping, etc. – has more lasting and serious effects than merely temporary emotional disturbance. One incident is bad enough, but the day in and day out struggle against that kind of thing that some teenagers in school, or even adults on the job, experience brings on depression, chronic anger and even more serious mental or physical illness.

A good confidante, a sympathetic family member, an organization like church or other social membership all provide sources of positive interaction to counteract the pain. The reason I always stress things like church and girl or boy scouts is that they aren't social class based, or at least not ideally. School organizations often are. People need to make contacts early in their life with members of other groups and learn to make friends across the boundaries. With that it's possible to have a broad base of support, so when some individual disrespects another on racial or class grounds, the victim can bolster his own self-esteem and learn to laugh it off.




Obama call makes serving soldier, Seahawks superfan's day – NBC

By Jamieson Lesko, Producer, NBC News

If watching his team destroy the Broncos from his U.S. Army post in Kandahar, Afghanistan, wasn’t good enough for diehard Seahawks fan Sgt. Christopher Hogan, a call from President Barack Obama to issue congratulations rather than orders really topped everything off.

"It's nice to have something special happen to you when you deploy," he told NBC News via Skype. "This is definitely one of the funnest days I've had since I've been in Kandahar."

For the men of the U.S. Army's 2nd Cavalry Regiment, a nine-and-half hour time difference meant waking up in time for kickoff at 3:55am. After putting in a long day workday on Sunday, most of them "skipped the gym and went straight to bed," in order to get a few hours of rest, said Hogan. 

With Broncos fans outnumbering Seahawks fans on the base there had been a lot of good natured trash talking in the run up to the regiment’s Superbowl party, which saw the troops wash down pizza with a few “near beers,” a non-alcoholic brew substitute. Thanks to the “Legion of Boom” those tables have been turned.

"Anything that can bring us closer to home makes a difference,” said Hogan, whose regiment has served a long deployment in one of the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan. “It's the little things.”

Facing his wife Kaitlin, a lifelong Broncos fan, might be a tougher assignment for Hogan after his team’s victory as both compete to influence their four-year-old son Brycen.

“I get him to say ‘go Seahawks,’ just to get her riled up,” he joked.    



Every now and then Obama takes the time to contact a citizen. He or a staff member gave a long email in answer to one I sent to him about the government shutdown. He tries to keep in touch with the public in a personal way. Of course, that's good politics, but I do think he is interested in the life of his voters and cares when we struggle with finances or illness. I think he is very “human' – a man who feels and cares.





Christie administration staffer resigns amid lane closures probe – NBC

By Daniel Arkin, Staff Writer, NBC News

A member of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's administration who has been subpoenaed in the investigation of the September bridge lane closures has resigned.
Christina Genovese Renna — one of 17 people with ties to Christie subpoenaed by a legislative panel — exited the governor's office Friday, according to a statement provided to NBC News on Sunday by her lawyer, Henry Klingeman. 

In the statement, Renna said her resignation "reflects a decision I have been considering since shortly after the election." Christie won a second term in office in November.

Renna, the state director of departmental relations, reported to Bridget Anne Kelly, Christie's since-fired deputy chief of staff, who apparently set the traffic jam on the George Washington Bridge in motion with an email to David Wildstien, a Christie appointee and ally at the Port Authority.

Wildstein, who has since resigned, was the recipient of Kelly’s “Time for some traffic problems” email on Aug. 13. The lane closures began Sept. 9. 

On Friday, Wildstein claimed to have evidence contradicting the government's account of an alleged scheme to snarl traffic on lanes that funnel traffic from Fort Lee, N.J., to the George Washington Bridge as an apparent act of political retribution against the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, who had declined to endorse Christie in the governor’s re-election bid.

In a letter to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, a lawyer for Wildstein said "evidence exists tying Mr. Christie to having knowledge of the lane closures, during the period when the lanes were closed, contrary to what the Governor stated publicly in a two-hour press conference."


http://www.politico.com/story/2014/02/chris-christie-staffer-christina-genovese-renna-resigns-103009.html reports that Renna has not been accused of wrongdoing nor was she fired, and had been thinking of changing jobs for awhile. She still remains loyal to Christie.






U.S. abortion rate hits lowest level since 1973 – NBC
Angela Moon, Reuters


The abortion rate in the United States dipped to its lowest since 1973, coinciding with a steep decline in overall pregnancy and birth rates, a study from a nonprofit sexual health organization showed on Sunday.

The rate declined to 16.9 abortions per 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44 in 2011, the latest year studied, which was well below the 1981 peak of 29.3 per 1,000 and the lowest since 1973 when the rate was 16.3 per 1,000, the study from Guttmacher Institute showed.

"With abortion rates falling in almost all states, our study did not find evidence that the national decline in abortions during this period was the result of new state abortion restrictions. We also found no evidence that the decline was linked to a drop in the number of abortion providers during this period," says Rachel Jones, lead author of the study.

The decline in abortions coincided with a drop in overall pregnancy and birth rates, and contraceptive use and methods improved during the period, Jones said. The recent recession also led many women and couples to want to avoid or delay pregnancy and childbearing.

The study also found that the total number of abortion providers declined by only 4 percent between 2008 and 2011, and the number of clinics, which provide the large majority of abortion services, declined by just 1 percent.

While the overall abortion rate declined, the proportion of abortions that were early medication procedures continued to increase, according to the study.

An estimated 239,400 early medication abortions were performed in 2011, representing 23 percent of all nonhospital abortions, an increase from 17 percent in 2008. The study estimated that 59 percent of all known abortion providers offer this service.



This looks as though if women have better birth control they will use it, and that they are responding to common sense issues like having too little income to afford a baby. The “early medication abortions” must be the “morning after pill,” which seems to be effective. I wonder how the trend that had developed for teen aged girls to get pregnant purposely as a mark of fertility and desirability is going. Hopefully it has slowed down or stopped – I'll bet a number of those pregnant teens discovered that having a baby to care for day in and day out while attending school and working is not really very much fun.