Tuesday, September 30, 2014


News Clips For The Day


Secret Service Problems

http://news.yahoo.com/fence-jumper-ran-much-main-floor-white-house-212405509.html

Fence-jumper ran through much of main floor of White House: report
Reuters
September 29, 2014

The man who breached security at the White House this month overpowered a U.S. Secret Service officer and ran through much of the main floor, penetrating farther into the building than previously disclosed, the Washington Post reported on Monday, citing three people familiar with the incident.

A Secret Service official who spoke on condition of anonymity said an alarm box near the front entrance of the White House had been muted, the Post said.

“The Secret Service has no comment on that at this time due to the ongoing investigation,” Brian Leary, a spokesman for the agency, said of the Post story. A White House spokesman declined comment.

The suspect, Omar Gonzalez, 42, was charged with unlawfully entering a restricted building or grounds while carrying a deadly or dangerous weapon. Officials said he was carrying a knife when he jumped the White House fence and entered the executive mansion on Sept. 19.

A prosecutor said in court last week that officers found more than 800 rounds of ammunition, two hatchets and a machete in Gonzalez' car.

Gonzalez, a decorated Iraq war veteran, had been arrested in July with a sniper rifle and a map on which the executive mansion was marked, the prosecutor said.

The Post said Gonzalez ran past a guard immediately inside the door, past the stairway leading up to the Obama family's living quarters and into the East Room, where he was tackled at the far end of the room by an agent.

The alarm box near the entrance, designed to alert guards to an intruder, had been muted at what officers believe was the request of the usher's office, the Post said, citing the Secret Service official.

The officer posted inside the door appeared to be delayed in learning the intruder was about to come through, the Post said. Officers are trained to lock the front door immediately if they learn of an intruder on the grounds.

Secret Service Director Julia Pierson is expected to face questioning at a congressional committee hearing on Tuesday.

(Writing by Jim Loney; Editing by Peter Cooney)



Fence-jumper made it farther in White House than Secret Service let on
CBS NEWS September 29, 2014, 4:33 PM

...

The man, 42-year-old Omar J. Gonzalez, ran unobstructed for 70 yards across the front lawn of the White House before entering through the North Portico. On the way, he brushed by a Secret Service officer with a drawn gun, sources tell CBS News' Bill Plante.

Gonzalez then proceeded to run through the entrance hall to the cross hall of the White House, past the staircase that leads up to the first family's residence. He was confronted by a female Secret Service agent, who he overpowered, and made it all the way to the East Room, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told CBS News, citing whistleblowers. Gonzalez was brought down by a door leading to the Green Room, a parlor adjacent to the East Room, which is used for formal events including bill signings, press conferences, receptions and ceremonies.

...

The agency declined to comment, citing an ongoing investigation into the incident. The White House says the results of the review will "further enhance" security.

"He had just gotten inside the door [of the North Portico] . . . And was then wrestled to the ground by one of the Secret Service personnel . . . in the foyer," former Secret Service Director W. Ralph Basham, told CBS News, explaining his understanding of the apprehension. Basham spoke with current director, Pierson, as recently as this weekend.

Basham said that he believed "as soon as the individual got in the door . . . he was apprehended by one person."

The major security breach occurred Sept. 19, just minutes after President Obama, his daughters and one of their friends boarded the presidential helicopter for a weekend getaway to Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland. The first lady had traveled there separately. It prompted the Secret Service to erect a second fence about 12 feet further away from the White House than the permanent fence, creating second barrier that would-be fence jumpers would have to climb.

Officials originally argued the reason agents didn't shoot the suspect, Omar Gonzalez, as he sprinted across the lawn or release guard dogs to detain him was because he appeared unarmed.

The revelations will only heighten concerns about an agency that has had several high-profile security failures in recent years. On Sunday, the Washington Post reported that it took agents four days to realize a man had fired bullets that struck the White House in 2011.

...

"I don't see people being held accountable and I don't see changes that make the security situation better, so part of [the hearing] is to discuss the perimeter at the White House but I think the problems are much deeper seated than that," Chaffetz, a member of the committee, told CBS News Sunday. "There are other incidents that we might talk about but we're also going to reach back during her tenure to review what has happened and not happened."



http://fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/RL34603.pdf

Congressional Research Service
The U.S. Secret Service: History and Missions
Shawn Reese
Analyst in Emergency Management and Homeland Security Policy
June 18, 2014

In March 2003, the U.S. Secret Service was transferred from the Department of the Treasury to the Department of Homeland Security. Prior to enactment of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (P.L. 107-296), the U.S. Secret Service had been part of the Treasury Department for over 100 years. Since the September 2001 terrorist attacks, there have been consistent and continuing questions concerning the U.S. Secret Service. Are the two missions of the Service compatible and how should they be prioritized? Is the Department of Homeland Security the most appropriate organizational and administrative location for the Secret Service?

These, and other policy issues such as the Secret Service’s role in securing presidential inaugurations, have been raised and addressed at different times by Congress and various administrations during the long history of the Service. Additionally, there has been increased interest in the Service due to the inaugural security operations and the protection of President Barack Obama.

Some may contend that these and other questions call for renewed attention given the recent increase in demand for the Service’s protection function (for example, see P.L. 110-326 enacted by the 110th Congress) and the advent of new technology used in financial crimes. Numerous pieces of legislation related to the Service have been introduced and enacted by the 113th Congress, with all of the enacted legislation being appropriation bills.

Introduced in the 113th Congress, H.R. 1121, Cyber Privacy Fortification Act of 2013; H.R. 1468, SECURE IT; S. 1193, Data Security and Breach Notification Act of 2013; and S. 1897, Personal Data Privacy and Security Act of 2014 are related to personal data privacy and security, and confidential informant security. This report discusses these issues and will be updated when congressional or executive branch actions warrant.




This second news article dated today is largely a repetition of yesterday's so I only clipped the most salient parts. One article in the last few days quoted an official as saying that security has been less effective since the Secret Service was moved from the Treasury Department to Homeland Security in 2003. I personally think there have been several other problems with Homeland Security, especially the failure of FEMA during Katrina. It seems to me that when they set up Homeland Security they simply put too many different functions within it, so that they aren't able to do any of them as well as they should. I don't blame all this on Obama, and I don't want him to take too many hits over this issue, but I have to agree that the "service" of the Secret Service needs to improve.

First, I would like to know why the alarm box had been muted. I'll bet that won't happen anymore. Second, the guard at the door wasn't very alert or the runner wouldn't have gotten through the door -- which should not have been unlocked -- and then managed to get so far ahead of him, even if he was sprinting very fast. The door guard was armed, but he didn't shoot. A female agent tried to intercept him, but she was overpowered. Luckily another agent spotted him and tackled him to the floor.

I'm glad Gonzalez wasn't shot. They need to talk to him to investigate his connections, to see if he had anything to do with any conspiracy group. The picture of Gonzalez looked like he is a thoroughly frightened man. I can't help wondering what he was going to do with the 800 rounds of ammunition, machete and two hatchets, or why he left them in his car. He apparently had no accomplice. I don't think he was a very coherent person in his planning – very likely schizophrenic. I'll clip further articles as they appear.





Half the world's wildlife gone over last 40 years
By ELIENE AUGENBRAUN CBS NEWS
September 30, 2014, 6:00 AM

The world has lost 52 percent of its biodiversity since 1970, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) announced in a study released today on the state of our planet.

According to the Living Planet Report 2014, "the number of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish across the globe is, on average, about half the size it was 40 years ago. This is a much bigger decrease than has been reported previously, as a result of a new methodology which aims to be more representative of global biodiversity."

Scientists studied trends in more than 10,000 populations of 3,038 mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian and fish species and calculated a "Living Planet Index" (LPI) that measures the health of species in various environments and regions. While the LPI in temperate regions declined by a worrisome 36 percent from 1970 to 2010, in tropical climates the index dropped 56 percent. Latin American biodiversity took the biggest hit globally, plummeting 83 percent.

Jon Hoekstra, chief scientist at WWF, broke it down another way: "39 percent of terrestrial wildlife gone, 39 percent of marine wildlife gone, 76 percent of freshwater wildlife gone -- all in the past 40 years."

The toll was greatest in low-income countries. High-income countries showed a 10 percent increase in biodiversity. However, less affluent parts of the world more than canceled that out. Middle-income countries lost 18 percent of their wildlife populations, while low-income countries showed a 58 percent decline.

And the bad news does not end there.

WWF reports that the global human population already exceeds our planet's biocapacity -- the amount of biologically productive land and sea that is available to produce the resources we rely on for food, fuel, building and other needs, and that is needed to absorb the amount of carbon dioxide we generate. Indeed, it would take the equivalent of 1.5 Earths of biocapacity to meet our current demands, the report says.

The problem may get worse as more of the world adopts or aspires to the levels of consumption common in richer countries. "If all people on the planet had the Footprint of the average resident of Qatar, we would need 4.8 planets," the report says. "If we lived the lifestyle of a typical resident of the USA, we would need 3.9 planets.

The Global Footprint Network, a WWF partner, calculates the balance between each country's demand and capacity to arrive at a figure it calls the Ecological Footprint. In an email to CBS News, Hoekstra explained that the Footprint relies on publicly available data and is generated for each nation annually. The findings are expressed in units called global hectares, a measurement of land with the average level of biological productivity. The planet currently has a biocapacity of 1.7 global hectares per person; the Footprint exceeded that level in 91 out of 152 countries studied.

Worldwide, our Ecological Footprint decreased by 3 percent between 2008 and 2009, mostly due to a lower demand for fossil fuels, WWF reports. However, the latest figures available from 2010 show the Footprint resuming an upward trend.

Just two countries account for a third of the the world's total Ecological Footprint: China, at 19 percent, and the United States, with nearly 14 percent.

"High-income countries use five times the ecological resources of low-income countries, but low income countries are suffering the greatest ecosystem losses," Keya Chatterjee, WWF's senior director of footprint said in a press release. "In effect, wealthy nations are outsourcing resource depletion."

To counteract these trends, WWF recommends a number of steps: focusing more on sustainable development, using resources more efficiently, incorporating environmental factors into measures of economic growth, and increasing efforts to protect natural habitats around the world. Carter Roberts, president and CEO of WWF, warned, "We're gradually destroying our planet's ability to support our way of life. But we already have the knowledge and tools to avoid the worst predictions. We all live on a finite planet and its time we started acting within those limits."




“Scientists studied trends in more than 10,000 populations of 3,038 mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian and fish species and calculated a "Living Planet Index" (LPI) that measures the health of species in various environments and regions. While the LPI in temperate regions declined by a worrisome 36 percent from 1970 to 2010, in tropical climates the index dropped 56 percent. Latin American biodiversity took the biggest hit globally, plummeting 83 percent.... Jon Hoekstra, chief scientist at WWF, broke it down another way: '39 percent of terrestrial wildlife gone, 39 percent of marine wildlife gone, 76 percent of freshwater wildlife gone -- all in the past 40 years.' The toll was greatest in low-income countries. High-income countries showed a 10 percent increase in biodiversity. However, less affluent parts of the world more than canceled that out. Middle-income countries lost 18 percent of their wildlife populations, while low-income countries showed a 58 percent decline.... WWF reports that the global human population already exceeds our planet's biocapacity -- the amount of biologically productive land and sea that is available to produce the resources we rely on for food, fuel, building and other needs, and that is needed to absorb the amount of carbon dioxide we generate. Indeed, it would take the equivalent of 1.5 Earths of biocapacity to meet our current demands, the report says....

“Worldwide, our Ecological Footprint decreased by 3 percent between 2008 and 2009, mostly due to a lower demand for fossil fuels, WWF reports. However, the latest figures available from 2010 show the Footprint resuming an upward trend.” What were we doing right in these two years to achieve a lower consumption of fossil fuel? Could it simply be that in that period of economic mini-depression people had less money for gasoline, heating oil and coal, or that businesses retracted their operations due to the financial squeeze?

What do we need to do to help our “ecological footprint” – just what we already know about, but find so hard to enforce, especially with Republicans ruling the Congress and blocking ecological bills – “using resources more efficiently, incorporating environmental factors into measures of economic growth, and increasing efforts to protect natural habitats around the world...” We could stop cutting down the rain forests and other forest land and draining swamps. Build houses of some other material besides wood, stop removing animal habitat to produce more agricultural land, ban the killing of certain species for “bush meat” and capture poachers. One item mentioned about intrigued me – the fact that fresh water wildlife has disappeared much faster than marine species. Could the combination of building dams that restrict the free flow of rivers and the pollution of fresh waters by industrial plants and mining operations (coal and gold, particularly) be the causes?





Hong Kong protesters play chicken with China
CBS NEWS September 30, 2014, 7:01 AM

HONG KONG -- Hong Kong's leader has told thousands of protesters in the city's streets that the central government in China will not meet their demands by backing away from a decision to limit voting reforms, but as CBS News' Seth Doane reports, the protesters aren't backing down either.

Instead of dispersing as their government has requested, protesters were replenishing supplies Tuesday morning, and there was a sense that they intended to stay for a while. In fact, says Doane, with China poised to celebrate its big "National Day" holiday on Wednesday, crowds were only expected to grow in a show of defiance.

Tens of thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators have been digging-in for days, and while they are are taking a more peaceful tone -- with some even singing in the streets -- they're also getting more specific: setting an October 1 deadline for democratic reforms, and demanding that Hong Kong's Beijing-backed chief executive step down.

For now, it doesn't look like they'll get their wish.

"The central government will not comply to illegal threats," Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying said Tuesday.

Protesters have vowed to remain united. In a show of solidarity overnight, thousands waved glowing cell phones in a sort of electronic vigil.

These have been the most significant protests since Hong Kong was handed over to Chinese rule from the British in 1997.

Over the weekend, police in riot gear used tear gasto try to disperse crowds, but the heavy-handed response may have only encouraged others to join.

"I watched the news and I saw the tear gas and I think the police had gone too far," said one man who decided to take to the streets.

"We are not armed, we are not using violence. We are just sitting on the street, we are hands-up," lamented another protester. "We only use umbrellas to defend against tear gas and pepper spray."

All those umbrellas prompted a nickname for the movement: "The Umbrella Revolution."

At the core, the demonstrators want the right to directly elect their new "chief executive" in 2017. Beijng's communist government has decreed, however, that only candidates vetted by a committee filled with Beijing loyalists will be permitted on the ballot.

Many in Hong Kong see that as reneging on the deal agreed with Beijing when Hong Kong was handed over. The arrangement was dubbed "One Country, Two Systems," and was meant to grant Hong Kong some degree of political freedom from the mainland, but the limits of that system are being sharply tested.

The scenes playing out in Hong Kong's streets now are leading some to draw comparisons to another student-led, pro-democracy protest in china; 25 years ago in the infamous Tiananmen Square crackdown.

Of course, there are a number of differences. Hong Kong has a robust media, so pictures of the demonstrations have spread around the world in real time. Very few of the images are making it to mainland China, however, where Instagram has become just the latest social media outlet blocked by government censors.

The difference in news coverage of the protests between Hong Kong and mainland China is striking: one Hong Kong newspaper's headline on Tuesday reads simply, "Democracy." An article in Beijing's China Daily newspaper, however, never even mentions "democracy," and talks instead only about snarled traffic, canceled bus routes, and the stock market being down.




“Tens of thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators have been digging-in for days, and while they are are taking a more peaceful tone -- with some even singing in the streets -- they're also getting more specific: setting an October 1 deadline for democratic reforms, and demanding that Hong Kong's Beijing-backed chief executive step down. For now, it doesn't look like they'll get their wish. 'The central government will not comply to illegal threats,' Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying said Tuesday.... 'We are not armed, we are not using violence. We are just sitting on the street, we are hands-up,' lamented another protester. 'We only use umbrellas to defend against tear gas and pepper spray.' All those umbrellas prompted a nickname for the movement: 'The Umbrella Revolution.' At the core, the demonstrators want the right to directly elect their new 'chief executive' in 2017. Beijng's communist government has decreed, however, that only candidates vetted by a committee filled with Beijing loyalists will be permitted on the ballot.... The difference in news coverage of the protests between Hong Kong and mainland China is striking: one Hong Kong newspaper's headline on Tuesday reads simply, 'Democracy.' An article in Beijing's China Daily newspaper, however, never even mentions 'democracy,' and talks instead only about snarled traffic, canceled bus routes, and the stock market being down.”

I have an interesting total of two people in China, sometimes a few more, who are regularly reading my news blog. They are probably more likely to be in Hong kong rather than beijing, I suppose. I imagine that they may be starved for outside news sources, and that the Chinese government doesn't even know about this blog. Actually, the only way to find it now is to, first, be on Google as your search engine, and then type in “Lucy Warner blog.” Some months back I could find it by entering the simple word “news”. That was probably the time period when I acquired most of my audience, as I am hardly a well-known personality.

It does please me to see that, even if there are only a few in each country, I am reaching people in a pretty wide range of nations, mainly in the US but also in some dozen other nations tabulated on the basis of a week. At times Ukraine had the highest readership of between a dozen and twenty; for a while Russia had a comparable amount, likewise Malaysia, and more recently Turkey, France, Germany and Romania. I am so glad to see that people in China are rebelling against this unfair reneging on China's promises as they took Taiwan over from Britain, even if the rebels should fail in their effort. It shows the persistence of the human spirit. There is no doubt in my mind that the freedom to think, then speak what we think, is basic to human happiness. Living under an enforced "moral order" such as Confucianism seems to be, and being threatened as children by the harsh saying about the "nail that sticks up" is crushing to individualism. Of course, that is the goal, after all. Such people are much easier to rule.





http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/acting-classes-could-help-kids-with-autism/?WT.mc_id=SA_googleplus_sciam

Acting Classes Could Help Kids with Autism
Aug 14, 2014 |By Simon Makin

Kids with autism may learn valuable social skills in drama-based therapies


Science and the arts have never made easy bedfellows, but three projects that unite psychology and theater could help treat autistic spectrum disorders (ASD). The skills developed in drama training closely correspond with three of the main impairments seen in autism: social interaction, communication and flexibility of imagination.

One drama-based intervention is the SENSE Theatre project, which aims to help children with ASD improve their social skills. “I knew from experience that acting can have a profound impact on how we interact with others,” says Blythe A. Corbett, a psychiatrist at Vanderbilt University and former actor, who started SENSE in 2009. “It can facilitate more flexible thinking and behavior.”

So far the SENSE project has run two summer camps that served as pilot studies. The camps begin with improvisation and role-playing games, move on to scripted sessions and culminate in the performance of a play. Corbett's team measured social perception and interaction skills before and after the camps. The children showed increases in social awareness and memory for faces after camp, as reported in Autism Researchearlier this year.

Similarly encouraging pilot studies have come from two other groups. The Shakespeare and Autism project, a collaboration between Kelly Hunter, a British actress with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Marc J. Tassé, an expert in developmental disabilities at Ohio State University, and their colleagues, uses drama games based on scenes from William Shakespeare's plays and the rhythm of iambic pentameter to implicitly teach social skills. And Imagining Autism, led by drama professors Nicola Shaughnessy and Melissa Trimingham, both at the University of Kent in England, is a weekly program for kids with autism that incorporates performance, puppetry and interactive digital elements.

None of these studies has compared the youngsters in drama with a group who did not get the intervention, so they cannot yet rule out other explanations, such as natural development over time. The SENSE and Shakespeare teams are now nearing completion of more rigorous studies that compare participants with kids who were wait-listed. Only time and scientific testing will tell if these methods work, but the existence of three independent groups, all claiming encouraging preliminary results, suggests they may be on to something.

This article was originally published with the title "Theater as Therapy."



"One drama-based intervention is the SENSE Theatre project, which aims to help children with ASD improve their social skills. “I knew from experience that acting can have a profound impact on how we interact with others,” says Blythe A. Corbett, a psychiatrist at Vanderbilt University and former actor, who started SENSE in 2009. “It can facilitate more flexible thinking and behavior.”... Corbett's team measured social perception and interaction skills before and after the camps. The children showed increases in social awareness and memory for faces after camp, as reported in Autism Researchearlier this year.... Similarly encouraging pilot studies have come from two other groups. The Shakespeare and Autism project, a collaboration between Kelly Hunter, a British actress with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Marc J. Tassé, an expert in developmental disabilities at Ohio State University, and their colleagues, uses drama games based on scenes from William Shakespeare's plays and the rhythm of iambic pentameter to implicitly teach social skills. And Imagining Autism, led by drama professors Nicola Shaughnessy and Melissa Trimingham, both at the University of Kent in England, is a weekly program for kids with autism that incorporates performance, puppetry and interactive digital elements.... The SENSE and Shakespeare teams are now nearing completion of more rigorous studies that compare participants with kids who were wait-listed. Only time and scientific testing will tell if these methods work, but the existence of three independent groups, all claiming encouraging preliminary results, suggests they may be on to something."

This article states that "rigorous" testing with comparison to children who did not get the drama therapy has not yet been done, but preliminary results are "encouraging." I am impressed by these studies, and I have dabbled enough with drama, art, poetry and music to know that those things "open" my mind in a way studying names and dates for a history class just doesn't. Music and art therapy have been used in treating other mental health problems with good results. Poetry is another art form that opens my mind also, as I seek in tangential ways to discover the meaning of a poem. Old fashioned poems aren't hard to understand, but modern poetry is like abstract art. Some people hate it, but I like it much more than heavily rhymed and rhythmical verse. The old poems are often telling a story, while the new poems usually are shorter and describe a feeling, a thought, or something visual. This explains why a good imagination makes anyone seem more "intelligent," than someone who depends totally on their "common sense." An article yesterday was about the brain redeveloping skills lost through brain damage, "stretching itself" so to speak to use its undamaged parts for the lost skills. This is a very interesting article, and encouraging. It's a good thing that these groups thought to test this therapy method. It shows that the brains of autistic people are flexible enough to improve with practice some of their problems. I look forward to finding more on the subject later.





U.S. troops race to stem Ebola outbreak in Africa
CBS/AP September 30, 2014, 7:32 AM

MONROVIA, Liberia -- U.S. mobile Ebola labs should be up and running in Liberia this week, and American troops have broken ground for a field hospital, as the international community races to increase the ability to care for the spiraling number of people infected with the dreaded disease.

Liberia is the hardest hit country in the largest ever Ebola outbreak, which has touched four other West African countries. More than 3,000 deaths have been linked to the disease across the region, according to the World Health Organization, in the largest outbreak ever.

But even that toll is likely an underestimate, partially because there aren't enough labs to test people for Ebola. WHO has warned that numbers for Liberia, in particular, have lagged behind reality because it takes so long to get test results back.

In addition, with too few doctors and nurses in the worst affected countries and not enough beds to isolate and treat the sick, the disease has whipped around communities, wiping out whole families.

The only way to stop its accelerating spread is to get sick people out of their homes and reduce the number of people they can infect. But the already weak health systems of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone - where the vast majority of the cases have been - have collapsed under the pressure of the disease. Aid agencies and WHO have moved in to set up treatment centers, and now several countries have pledged to do the same.

Two mobile Ebola labs staffed by U.S. Naval researchers arrived this weekend and will be operational this week, the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia said in a statement Monday. The labs will reduce the amount of time it takes to learn if a patient has Ebola from several days to a few hours.

The U.S. military also delivered equipment to build a field hospital, originally designed to treat troops in combat zones. The 25-bed clinic will be staffed by American health workers from the U.S. Public Health Service and will treat doctors and nurses who have become infected.

Ebola is transmitted through contact with bodily fluids, so that places health care workers at high risk of infection. They have become sick at an alarming rate in this outbreak, WHO says, with 375 infected so far.

The U.S. is planning to build 17 other clinics in Liberia and will help to train more health workers to staff them. Britain has promised to help set up 700 more treatment beds in Sierra Leone, and its military will build and staff a hospital in that country. France is sending field hospitals and doctors to Guinea.

But the needs remain enormous. The World Food Program said Tuesday it only has about 40 percent of the $93 million it needs to deliver food to people who are struggling to feed themselves because their neighborhoods have been quarantined or they've lost the heads of their households. WHO says around 1,500 treatment beds have been built or are in the works, but that still leaves a gap of more than 2,100 beds. Between 1,000 and 2,000 international health care workers are needed.




“U.S. mobile Ebola labs should be up and running in Liberia this week, and American troops have broken ground for a field hospital, as the international community races to increase the ability to care for the spiraling number of people infected with the dreaded disease.... In addition, with too few doctors and nurses in the worst affected countries and not enough beds to isolate and treat the sick, the disease has whipped around communities, wiping out whole families.... Two mobile Ebola labs staffed by U.S. Naval researchers arrived this weekend and will be operational this week, the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia said in a statement Monday. The labs will reduce the amount of time it takes to learn if a patient has Ebola from several days to a few hours. The U.S. military also delivered equipment to build a field hospital, originally designed to treat troops in combat zones. The 25-bed clinic will be staffed by American health workers from the U.S. Public Health Service and will treat doctors and nurses who have become infected.... The U.S. is planning to build 17 other clinics in Liberia and will help to train more health workers to staff them. Britain has promised to help set up 700 more treatment beds in Sierra Leone, and its military will build and staff a hospital in that country. France is sending field hospitals and doctors to Guinea.... WHO says around 1,500 treatment beds have been built or are in the works, but that still leaves a gap of more than 2,100 beds. Between 1,000 and 2,000 international health care workers are needed."


Mobile Army Hospitals as in the great movie “MASH” are being set up in Africa by the US Army and similar units by France and Britain, and there is still a need for 2,100 more beds as well as some 2,000 health care workers. The scope of this problem is really alarming. There have been over 3,000 deaths and “whole families have been wiped out.”

A disease that incubates for something in the range of 3 weeks without showing symptoms is a big part of the problem. After being infected, people can go about their daily life without becoming ill, but spreading the virus, long enough to leave their area and go for miles, including getting on airplanes and bringing it to other parts of the world. Meanwhile, we are all waiting for the few laboratories that are working on a vaccine to do their tests and get ready to produce it in large enough volume to provide immunity to the hundreds of thousand who have not yet contracted it. Luckily a vaccine will probably cure the disease even after symptoms have emerged, and blood transfusions from those who have regained their health can provide immunity as well. If the people could only be convinced to stay in one place or go to an isolation center when they first get a fever that would help even more. People who don't believe in viruses are hard to convince, though. Still this is one step forward in the fight. I'm glad our Tea Party Congress saw fit to give the President the necessary funding for this project.

Monday, September 29, 2014


News Clips For The Day


Pro-democracy protests expand in Hong Kong – CBS
AP September 28, 2014, 9:49 PM

HONG KONG - Pro-democracy protests expanded in Hong Kong on Monday, a day after demonstrators upset over Beijing's decision to limit political reforms defied onslaughts of tear gas and appeals from Hong Kong's top leader to go home.

And with rumors swirling, Hong Kong's Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying reassured the public that speculation that the Chinese army might intervene was untrue.

"I hope the public will keep calm. Don't be misled by the rumors. Police will strive to maintain social order, including ensuring smooth traffic and ensuring the public safety," said the Beijing-backed Leung, who is deeply unpopular. He added, "When they carry out their duties, they will use their maximum discretion."

The city's transport department said that besides road closures in areas such as Causeway Bay, Wan Chai and Admiralty - where the protests have been focused - main roads have also been blocked by demonstrators in Mong Kok.

More than 200 bus routes have been canceled or diverted in a city dependent on public transport. Subway exits have also been closed or blocked near protest areas.

The mass protest, which has gathered support from high school students to seniors, is the strongest challenge yet to Beijing's decision to limit democratic reforms for the semi-autonomous city.

The scenes of billowing tear gas and riot police outfitted with long-barreled weapons, rare for this affluent Asian financial hub, are highlighting the authorities' inability to assuage public discontent over Beijing's rejection last month of open nominations for candidates under proposed guidelines for the first-ever elections for Hong Kong's leader, promised for 2017.

Authorities said some schools in areas near the main protest site would be closed, as Leung urged people to go home, obey the law and avoid causing trouble.

"We don't want Hong Kong to be messy," Leung said as he read a statement that was broadcast early Monday.

That came hours after police lobbed canisters of tear gas into the crowd on Sunday evening. The searing fumes sent demonstrators fleeing, though many came right back to continue their protest. The government said 26 people were taken to hospitals.

The protests began with sit-ins over a week earlier by students urging Beijing to grant genuine democratic reforms to this former British colony.

"This is a long fight. I hope the blockade will continue tomorrow, so the whole thing will be meaningful," said 19-year-old Edward Yau, 19, a business and law student. "The government has to understand that we have the ability to undo it if they continue to treat us like we are terrorists."

When China took control of Hong Kong from the British in 1997, it agreed to a policy of "one country, two systems" that allowed the city a high degree of control over its own affairs and kept in place liberties unseen on the mainland. It also promised the city's leader would eventually be chosen through "universal suffrage."

Hong Kong's residents have long felt their city stood apart from mainland China thanks to those civil liberties and separate legal and financial systems.

Beijing's insistence on using a committee to screen candidates on the basis of their patriotism to China - similar to the one that currently hand-picks Hong Kong's leaders - has stoked fears among pro-democracy groups that Hong Kong will never get genuine democracy.

University students began their class boycotts over a week ago and say they will continue them until officials meet their demands for reforming the local legislature and withdrawing the proposal to screen election candidates.

Students and activists have been camped out since late Friday on streets outside the government complex. Sunday's clashes arose when police sought to block thousands of people from entering the protest zone. Protesters spilled onto a busy highway, bringing traffic to a standstill.

In a statement issued after midnight, the Hong Kong police said rumors that they had used rubber bullets to try to disperse protesters were "totally untrue."

Police in blue jumpsuits, wearing helmets and respirators, doused protesters with pepper spray when they tried to rip metal barricades apart.

Thousands of people breached a police cordon Sunday as they tried to join the sit-in, spilling out onto a busy highway and bringing traffic to a standstill.

Although students started the rally, leaders of the broader Occupy Central civil disobedience movement joined them, saying they wanted to kick-start a long-threatened mass sit-in demanding Hong Kong's top leader be elected without Beijing's interference.

Occupy Central issued a statement Monday calling on Leung to resign and saying his "non-response to the people's demands has driven Hong Kong into a crisis of disorder."

The statement added that the protest was now "a spontaneous movement" of all Hong Kong people.

Police said they had arrested 78 people. They also took away several pro-democracy legislators who were among the demonstrators, but later released them.

A police statement said the officers "have exercised restraint and performed their duties in a highly professional manner." It urged the public to not occupy roads so that emergency vehicles can get through.

Among the dozens arrested was 17-year-old Joshua Wong, who was dragged away soon after he led a group of students storming the government complex. He was released Sunday evening.





“Pro-democracy protests expanded in Hong Kong on Monday, a day after demonstrators upset over Beijing's decision to limit political reforms defied onslaughts of tear gas and appeals from Hong Kong's top leader to go home. And with rumors swirling, Hong Kong's Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying reassured the public that speculation that the Chinese army might intervene was untrue. 'I hope the public will keep calm. Don't be misled by the rumors. Police will strive to maintain social order, including ensuring smooth traffic and ensuring the public safety,' said the Beijing-backed Leung, who is deeply unpopular. He added, 'When they carry out their duties, they will use their maximum discretion.'... More than 200 bus routes have been canceled or diverted in a city dependent on public transport. Subway exits have also been closed or blocked near protest areas. The mass protest, which has gathered support from high school students to seniors, is the strongest challenge yet to Beijing's decision to limit democratic reforms for the semi-autonomous city.... The protests began with sit-ins over a week earlier by students urging Beijing to grant genuine democratic reforms to this former British colony. 'This is a long fight. I hope the blockade will continue tomorrow, so the whole thing will be meaningful,' said 19-year-old Edward Yau, 19, a business and law student. 'The government has to understand that we have the ability to undo it if they continue to treat us like we are terrorists.'”


See the following Wikipedia article for information on the history of democracy in China and its opponents.

Chinese skepticism of democracy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Starting in the mid-eighteenth century, Chinese scholars and politicians debated at length how to deal with the ever-encroaching Western culture. Though Chinese Confucians were initially opposed to Western modes of thinking, it became clear that aspects of the West were appealing. Industrialization gave the West an economic and military advantage. The devastating defeats of the First and Second Opium Wars compelled a segment of Chinese politicians and intellectuals to rethink their notion of cultural and political superiority.[1]

Democracy entered the Chinese consciousness because it was the government of the West, potentially responsible for its industrial, economic and military advancements. A segment of Chinese scholars and politicians became persuaded that democratization and industrialization were imperative for a competitive China. In response, a number of scholars resisted the idea, saying democracy and Westernization had no place in traditional Chinese culture. What most agreed upon was Liang Shuming's opinion that democracy and traditional Chinese society were completely incompatible, and China’s only choice was either wholesale Westernization or complete rejection of the West.[2] The debate centered around the philosophical compatibility of traditional Chinese Confucian beliefs and the technologies of the West.[3]
At a fundamental philosophical level, Confucian tradition is contingent upon an idea articulated by Thomas Metzger as epistemological optimism. This expresses the belief that it is possible to understand the essence of high morality and design policies and laws that reflect that knowledge. ….The modern conception of liberal democracy is grounded in the opposing principle of ideological pessimism. This denies that such knowledge is possible, thus the theory and practice of liberal democracy does not make rules in the pursuit of high morality.[4]

A primary motivation within traditional Chinese philosophy is to preserve social harmony. It looks unfavorably upon anyone who attempts to disrupt this placidity. The election process that takes place in modern liberal democracy directly opposes this ideal. ... Chinese Confucians consider these controversial issues to be cleavages within the fabric of social harmony. Western politicians rely on utilizing these social cleavages to garner support from voters. In Chinese culture it would be proprieties for a politician to exploit these social cleavages to achieve the personal goal of getting elected. ,,,,

Another motivation in Chinese culture is to benefit the common good. Modern liberal democracy is based upon the self-interest of each voter. Voters are encouraged to choose an official that benefits them and promotes their interests. Elected representatives serve the interests of their individual constituents. …. Consequently, people of a traditionalist Chinese perspective tend to believe that the collective good of the people is under-represented in a democracy, which instead reflects majoritarianism.[6]

Confucian societies are centered around familial relationships; an individual had no authority to revolt against these societal ties. An individual disconnected from the family is widely considered an outcast and relegated to the bottom of the social ladder.

Confucianism lacks a universal reverence for the individual; personal status in Confucian communities is inexorably linked to one’s position within the social hierarchy. In this context, many individual rights cannot exist in the same way they do in the West. Naturally the right of the individual to partake in the direct appointment of a ruling official is an ideological inconsistency with traditional Confucian society.[9]

Disassociation of democracy and well-being –

The economic success of Firstly, the boom of the Four Tigers and other growing Asian economies has severed the links between Western culture and material wealth in the eyes of many Chinese. In the early 1900s, scholars like Liang Qichao conflated democracy and power.  Confucian and authoritarian societies has debunked the idea that wholesale adoption of Western beliefs such as Democracy are requisite for economic success.
The Chinese see democracy as enabling social ills to spread through the U.S. Increasing rates of divorce, homosexuality[citation needed] and other trends are viewed as the negative results of the relaxed social control in the U.S.

Proposal for a Confucian society –

Scholars and governmental officials alike recognize the weakening grasp of the People’s Republic of China. It is becoming more and more clear that drastic political changes are in China’s future. The aforementioned philosophical debates suggest the necessity for a governmental system that is in line with Confucian beliefs. Many view liberal democracy as unfit for modern China and its traditions of legalism and Confucianism.[10]
Pan Wei addresses these issues and promotes a system of governance that is more appropriate for a Confucian society. He blends aspects of democracy, like governmental responsiveness to the will of the people, with Confucian values like social harmony. The proposed Consultative Rule of Law supersedes individual interest groups and promotes the good of the people at large. Pan’s system also directly addresses China’s most crippling shortcomings, most notably corruption. Identified as the largest problem in China’s current government, corruption among officials is directly tied to the institutional structure of the PRC. An institutional shift to consultative rule of law would serve to alleviate corruption and evolve from authoritarianism, all while promoting the traditional values of a Confucian society.[11]




American thought comes from European Enlightenment thinking of philosophers who boosted the position of the individual to a point that is more equal to that of noblemen and landowners, who had literally owned all the land, while the serfs did all the farm work, and were not free to leave the land to set up businesses in the towns. They were legally bound to the landowners.

In 1381 England experienced what is called the Peasant's Revolt, under the influence of radical cleric John Ball and led by a Wat Tyler. He and his rebels marched on London, causing King Richard II to retreat to the Tower of London, from which he acceded to the peasants' demands the next day, including the abolition of serfdom.

For Western thinkers to go back to a time of terrible repression like the Middle Ages is unthinkable, and to me it is impossible to understand things like the social pressure to conform to a very high degree, as is expressed in the Japanese saying “the nail that sticks up will be hammered down.” That is how they view individualism. In the Wikipedia article above on China and democratic thinking, Confucianism seems to be very similar in its philosophy to that statement, which isn't surprising since Confucianism has been an influence in Japan, too. It is equally not surprising, however, that the Chinese who were born in Taiwan and grew up under British rule, would be considerably more democratic in their temperament and philosophy than those living under the Confucian way of thinking. I can't help hoping that they will succeed in establishing a truly democratic government there. The Chinese government's failure to put democratic reforms in place as they promised will not be taken lightly by those people, I don't think.






ISIS-held oil refinery in Syria hit by U.S.-led strikes, locals say
CBS/AP September 28, 2014, 8:35 AM

SANILURFA, Turkey - Residents of a Turkish border town say that U.S.-led coalition warplanes have struck an oil refinery controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

They say the airstrikes hit the Tel Abyad refinery in the early hours of Sunday, a few hundred yards from the Turkish town of Akcakale.

"There was an explosion and I jumped out of bed," said Akcakale businessman Mehmet Ozer.

The U.S.-led coalition has been targeting oil installations controlled by the militants, aiming to cripple revenue sources for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, also known as ISIL,) estimated at some $3 million a day.

The United States and five Arab allies launched an aerial campaign against ISIS fighters Tuesday with the aim of rolling back and ultimately crushing the extremist group, which has created a proto-state spanning the Syria-Iraq border.

On Saturday, U.S. Central Command said airstrikes targeted ISIS militants attacking a town near the Turkish border for the first time, as well as positions in the country's east.

Fighter jets and drones conducted a total of seven airstrikes in Syria Friday and Saturday, Central Command said. Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates participated in the strikes with the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy.

ISIS' assault on the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani has sent more than 100,000 refugees streaming across the border into Turkey in recent days as Kurdish forces from Iraq and Turkey have raced to the front lines to defend the town.

CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports that the strike near Kobani was intended to take some of the pressure off of the town.

Central Command said an ISIS building and two armed vehicles at the Kobani border crossing were destroyed.

Nawaf Khalil, a spokesman for Syria's Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD, said the strikes near Kobani, also known as Ayn Arab, destroyed two tanks. He said the jihadi fighters later shelled the town, wounding a number of civilians.

The strikes also destroyed an ISIS vehicle south of Al-Hasakah in eastern Syria and several buildings near Al-Hasakah that were part of an ISIS garrison, Central Command said. The strikes also damaged an ISIS command and control facility near Manbij in Syria's north.




“Residents of a Turkish border town say that U.S.-led coalition warplanes have struck an oil refinery controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. They say the airstrikes hit the Tel Abyad refinery in the early hours of Sunday, a few hundred yards from the Turkish town of Akcakale. 'There was an explosion and I jumped out of bed,' said Akcakale businessman Mehmet Ozer. The U.S.-led coalition has been targeting oil installations controlled by the militants, aiming to cripple revenue sources for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, also known as ISIL,) estimated at some $3 million a day.... Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates participated in the strikes with the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy. ISIS' assault on the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani has sent more than 100,000 refugees streaming across the border into Turkey in recent days as Kurdish forces from Iraq and Turkey have raced to the front lines to defend the town.... Nawaf Khalil, a spokesman for Syria's Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD, said the strikes near Kobani, also known as Ayn Arab, destroyed two tanks. He said the jihadi fighters later shelled the town, wounding a number of civilians. The strikes also destroyed an ISIS vehicle south of Al-Hasakah in eastern Syria and several buildings near Al-Hasakah that were part of an ISIS garrison, Central Command said. The strikes also damaged an ISIS command and control facility near Manbij in Syria's north.”

It is too bad that we have to be involved in so many little wars in the Middle East, but as terrorist groups keep proliferating it is a necessity. ISIS in particular is a major threat, as their goal is conquest over a vast swath of land over two countries. I have never been a pacifist, though I am a Democrat, so I approve of Obama's actions. I am grateful that a number of the Middle Eastern countries are joining in the fight against them, and I will check on events from time to time to see what is being achieved.

I still say the US needs to arm the Kurds in Syria, Iraq and Turkey, however, because they are really good fighters and motivated to defend their country against ISIS. Last night's TV news showed a gathering of 50 or so Kurds who were watching the fighting between Kurds and ISIS and cheering loudly as though they were watching a sports event when the Kurds made an advance. Several men from that group then ran down to the join the fighting, though they didn't have weapons.





Afghanistan gets new president, replacing longtime leader Hamid Karzai – CBS
AP  September 29, 2014, 3:15 AM

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai was sworn in Monday as Afghanistan's new president, replacing Hamid Karzai in the country's first democratic transfer of power since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban.

Moments after Ghani Ahmadzai took the oath, he swore in his election challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, as chief executive, fulfilling a political pledge he had taken to share power and defuse election tensions that had threatened to spark violence between the country's north and south.

Ghani Ahmadzai, a former World Bank official and Afghan finance minister, wore a dark black turban popular in the country's south as he swore in his two vice presidents and then Abdullah.

Abdullah, a former foreign minister, spoke first and thanked Karzai for his service and the people of the country for casting votes in the millions despite the threat of attack from Taliban militants who tried to thwart the election process.

"We are committed as one in the national unity government," Abdullah said. "Our commitment will be fulfilled together as unified team to create national unity."

Ghani Ahmadzai then congratulated Karzai for a peaceful and democratic transition of power, and he thanked Abdullah for making the national unity government possible.

"I am not better than anyone from among you. If I do any good, give me your support. If I go wrong, set me right," Ghani Ahmadzai said.

Karzai - the only president Afghanistan and the West have known since the invasion - wore a wide smile as he greeted his presidential guards upon entering the palace. Karzai has said he is glad to be stepping down after more than a decade of what the U.S. ambassador recently said was one of the most difficult jobs in the world.

The inauguration caps a nearly six-month election season that began when ballots were first cast in April. A runoff election in June between Ghani Ahmadzai and Abdullah stretched on for weeks as both sides leveled charges of fraud. The United Nations helped carry out what it said was the most thorough recount in its history, a count that reduced Ghani Ahmadzai's vote percentage from 56 percent to 55 percent, but still gave him the win.

But the real power struggle was taking place in marathon talks between the two sides, often brokered by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and other U.S. officials. The political deal the sides agreed to created the new position of chief executive that Abdullah will now fill.

U.S. officials have said they expect Ghani Ahmadzai to sign a security agreement with the U.S. shortly after his inauguration to allow about 10,000 American troops to stay in the country after the international combat mission ends on Dec. 31.

Even as the inauguration unfolded in the heavily guarded presidential palace, two bomb attacks took place on the road connecting the country's main airport with the palace. A roadside bomb didn't result in any deaths or injuries, but a second attack about a half mile from the airport by a suicide bomber killed six or seven people, police officer Abdul Latif said.

A bigger attack took place in the eastern province of Paktia. Police Capt. Mohammed Hekhlas said a car bomb exploded near a government compound as gunmen attacked, sparking a gun battle that killed seven Taliban militants. Another police official, who gave his name as Azimullah, said four police officers and two civilians also were killed.

The inauguration took place eight days after the political deal was signed between Ghani Ahmadzai and Abdullah. Though Kerry played a big role in the political deal, the short notice of the inauguration date and events elsewhere in the Middle East did not enable him to attend. Instead, the U.S. was represented by John Podesta, counselor to President Obama. Other notable guests included Pakistan President Mamnoon Hussain and Indian Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari.




“Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai was sworn in Monday as Afghanistan's new president, replacing Hamid Karzai in the country's first democratic transfer of power since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban. Moments after Ghani Ahmadzai took the oath, he swore in his election challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, as chief executive, fulfilling a political pledge he had taken to share power and defuse election tensions that had threatened to spark violence between the country's north and south.... 'We are committed as one in the national unity government,' Abdullah said. 'Our commitment will be fulfilled together as unified team to create national unity.' Ghani Ahmadzai then congratulated Karzai for a peaceful and democratic transition of power, and he thanked Abdullah for making the national unity government possible....U.S. officials have said they expect Ghani Ahmadzai to sign a security agreement with the U.S. shortly after his inauguration to allow about 10,000 American troops to stay in the country after the international combat mission ends on Dec. 31.... Though Kerry played a big role in the political deal, the short notice of the inauguration date and events elsewhere in the Middle East did not enable him to attend. Instead, the U.S. was represented by John Podesta, counselor to President Obama. Other notable guests included Pakistan President Mamnoon Hussain and Indian Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari.”

Achieving peaceful elections and a politically balanced government is grounds for congratulations, to Kerry and the two new political leaders. I was glad to see that Karzai “wore a wide smile.” He hadn't been so happy in the last days of his presidency. He was unhappy with the way US soldiers sometimes acquitted themselves during the war, especially the practice of bursting into private homes looking for Taliban and the setting up of prisons in which CIA and others administered torture to extract information. I was not proud of that, though I could see the need behind those actions. The Taliban are fighters one day and regular citizens the next. Catching them and their leaders wasn't easy. The jihadists are based, an article a couple of years ago said, in the tribal areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and who joins the militants results directly from their family relationships, so in a way, those ordinary citizens are not “innocent.” Still, breaking into a house and terrorizing women and children didn't make friends for the US. Peaceful Islamic people have to ostracize the fundamentalist radicals and take over the Islamic religion again.

I don't like rhymed poetry in general, but this one is an exception.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173698 –

Abou Ben Adhem
BY LEIGH HUNT

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold:—
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the presence in the room he said,
"What writest thou?"—The vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."
"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so,"
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still; and said, "I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow men."

         The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blest,
And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.





At least a dozen arrests in Ferguson
CBS/AP September 29, 2014, 4:15 AM

At least a dozen people were arrested Sunday night in Ferguson, Missouri as a large crowd gathered in front of the city's police headquarters, St. Louis County Police report.

Officers said bottles and rocks were thrown at Ferguson officers.

According to CBS St. Louis affiliate KMOV-TV, police said many of the arrests were on allegations of either not following orders from police or agitating the crowd.

Separately, authorities searched Sunday for a suspect in the shooting of a police officer in Ferguson, the St. Louis suburb where there have been .angry protests since a white officer fatally shot an unarmed 18-year-old black man last month

Although there were two protests about the Aug. 9 shooting of Michael Brown happening when the officer was shot Saturday night, St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said at a news conference early Sunday he didn't think they were related to the wounding of the officer.

St. Louis County Police Sgt. Brian Schellman, a police spokesman, said in an email that only one suspect was involved in the shooting, not two as earlier reported.

The suspect was standing outside a closed community center when the officer approached Saturday night. The suspect fled and the officer gave chase. That's when the man turned and shot him in the arm, police said.

Belmar said the officer returned fire, but that police have no indication that anyone else was shot.

The officer was treated and released from a hospital, Schellman said.

Schellman said he didn't know why the body camera the wounded officer was wearing was turned off during the shooting.

The shooting comes amid simmering tension between community members and police in Ferguson, where two-thirds of the residents are black, but only three of the city's 53 police officers are African-American. The shooting of Brown and police response to the protests stoked a national discourse about police tactics and race.

On Saturday, Brown's parents told The Associated Press they were unmoved by a videotaped apology released days earlier by Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson,whose attempt to march with protesters Thursday night sparked a clash that led to several arrests.

When asked whether Jackson should be fired, Brown's mother, Lesley McSpadden, said he should be. Brown's father, Michael Brown Sr., said rather than an apology, they would like Darren Wilson, the officer who shot their son, to be arrested.

A county grand jury is weighing whether to indict Wilson in Brown's shooting.

The Justice Department, which is investigating whether Brown's civil rights were violated, is conducting a broader probe into the Ferguson police department. On Friday, it urged Jackson to ban his officers from wearing bracelets supporting Wilson while on duty and from covering up their name plates with black tape. The bracelets, which sparked complaints from Ferguson residents, are black with "I am Darren Wilson" in white lettering.




“At least a dozen people were arrested Sunday night in Ferguson, Missouri as a large crowd gathered in front of the city's police headquarters, St. Louis County Police report. Officers said bottles and rocks were thrown at Ferguson officers. According to CBS St. Louis affiliate KMOV-TV, police said many of the arrests were on allegations of either not following orders from police or agitating the crowd. Separately, authorities searched Sunday for a suspect in the shooting of a police officer in Ferguson, the St. Louis suburb where there have been angry protests since a white officer fatally shot an unarmed 18-year-old black man last month. … Belmar said the officer returned fire, but that police have no indication that anyone else was shot. The officer was treated and released from a hospital, Schellman said. Schellman said he didn't know why the body camera the wounded officer was wearing was turned off during the shooting....

The body camera was turned off – ill will, or forgetfulness? That was one complaint against the use of body cams given in an article several weeks ago, that there is no guarantee the officers will use them correctly. I am discouraged by the continued police behavior in Ferguson. It's been one thing after another ever since the situation exploded. I think the Justice Department needs to press the police chief to resign, as the blacks there want, or maybe they can make a case against him for malfeasance. It appears to me that there is a need for a large group of the Ferguson police officers to be fired and others, perhaps say 20 new black officers, be hired. The city government needs to elect some black members, too, and enact some new laws like stopping the practice of giving out a great many tickets for mainly small infringements in order to raise money for the town. The town needs a better source of income than that, and fines of $100.00 or so for failing to use a seat belt counts up after awhile for poor people. The city should vote in a sales tax or something.





"Yes means yes" becomes law in California
CBS/AP  September 28, 2014, 10:21 PM

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Gov. Jerry Brown announced Sunday that he has signed a bill that makes California the first in the nation to define when "yes means yes" and adopt requirements for colleges to follow when investigating sexual assault reports.

State lawmakers last month approved SB967 by Sen. Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, as states and universities across the U.S. are under pressure to change how they handle rape allegations. Campus sexual assault victims and women's advocacy groups delivered petitions to Brown's office on Sept. 16 urging him to sign the bill.

De Leon has said the legislation will begin a paradigm shift in how college campuses in California prevent and investigate sexual assaults. Rather than using the refrain "no means no," the definition of consent under the bill requires "an affirmative, conscious and voluntary agreement to engage in sexual activity."

"With one in five women on college campuses experiencing sexual assault, it is high time the conversation regarding sexual assault be shifted to one of prevention, justice, and healing," de Leon said in lobbying Brown for his signature.

The legislation says silence or lack of resistance does not constitute consent. Under the bill, someone who is drunk, drugged, unconscious or asleep cannot grant consent.

In a "CBS Evening News" report last month, UCLA senior Savanah Badalich, an advocate for the law, used her own personal experience of being raped to describe its significance.

"I had said 'no' numerous times. But after a while, I just stopped saying anything at all," she said. "I don't think had I said 'no' nine times versus the eight times that I did, it would have made a difference, so I just stopped talking. And that could technically be used against me without this affirmative consent bill."

Lawmakers say consent can be nonverbal, and universities with similar policies have outlined examples as a nod of the head or moving in closer to the person.

Advocates for victims of sexual assault supported the change as one that will provide consistency across campuses and challenge the notion that victims must have resisted assault to have valid complaints.

The bill requires training for faculty reviewing complaints so that victims are not asked inappropriate questions when filing complaints. The bill also requires access to counseling, health care services and other resources.

When lawmakers were considering the bill, critics said it was overreaching and sends universities into murky legal waters. Some Republicans in the Assembly questioned whether statewide legislation is an appropriate venue to define sexual consent between two people.

There was no opposition from Republicans in the state Senate.

Gordon Finley, an adviser to the National Coalition for Men, wrote an editorial asking Brown not to sign the bill. He argued that "this campus rape crusade bill" presumes the guilt of the accused.

SB967 applies to all California post-secondary schools, public and private, that receive state money for student financial aid. The California State University and University of California systems are backing the legislation after adopting similar consent standards this year.

UC President Janet Napolitano recently announced that the system will voluntarily establish an independent advocate to support sexual assault victims on every campus. An advocacy office also is a provision of the federal Survivor Outreach and Support Campus Act proposed by U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer and Rep. Susan Davis of San Diego, both Democrats.




“Gov. Jerry Brown announced Sunday that he has signed a bill that makes California the first in the nation to define when "yes means yes" and adopt requirements for colleges to follow when investigating sexual assault reports. State lawmakers last month approved SB967 by Sen. Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, as states and universities across the U.S. are under pressure to change how they handle rape allegations. Campus sexual assault victims and women's advocacy groups delivered petitions to Brown's office on Sept. 16 urging him to sign the bill. De Leon has said the legislation will begin a paradigm shift in how college campuses in California prevent and investigate sexual assaults. Rather than using the refrain 'no means no,' the definition of consent under the bill requires 'an affirmative, conscious and voluntary agreement to engage in sexual activity.'... The legislation says silence or lack of resistance does not constitute consent. Under the bill, someone who is drunk, drugged, unconscious or asleep cannot grant consent.... 'I don't think had I said 'no' nine times versus the eight times that I did, it would have made a difference, so I just stopped talking. And that could technically be used against me without this affirmative consent bill.' Lawmakers say consent can be nonverbal, and universities with similar policies have outlined examples as a nod of the head or moving in closer to the person. Advocates for victims of sexual assault supported the change as one that will provide consistency across campuses and challenge the notion that victims must have resisted assault to have valid complaints. ... SB967 applies to all California post-secondary schools, public and private, that receive state money for student financial aid. The California State University and University of California systems are backing the legislation after adopting similar consent standards this year.... An advocacy office also is a provision of the federal Survivor Outreach and Support Campus Act proposed by U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer and Rep. Susan Davis of San Diego, both Democrats.”

“Gordon Finley, an adviser to the National Coalition for Men, wrote an editorial asking Brown not to sign the bill. He argued that "this campus rape crusade bill" presumes the guilt of the accused.” See the thinkprogress article below on NCFM and perhaps the Wikipedia article on the subject of the group, which began in the 1970's.

In that women have undoubtedly sometimes accused a man of rape when it was consent or even seduction, if those situations are present and brought out in trial, then the man should definitely be acquitted. However, under this new law, the woman's consent must be an unequivocal “YES” and not “a nod of the head” or “moving closer” to the man.

Likewise, if a woman assaults a man they should be liable for arrest and conviction. The man would have to have her arrested, though, rather than simply beating her up in revenge. It is high time couples stopped fighting when they disagree. People in general need to use words and not force. Domestic abuse is not an acceptable part of a loving relationship. Women should not hit men any more than men should hit women. It's a severe abuse, whoever does it.

As for rape, a sexual liaison is either consensual or not. The rise of a drug called Rohypnol began to appear in cases about twenty years ago, which renders a woman unable to resist and often leads to amnesia surrounding the rape. It was called “the date rape drug.” The act of sex with a woman who is incapacitated is rape. Long before the date rape drug, however, there was alcohol. As the old phrase went among college men, “Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.”

However, the very lovemaking process as it proceeds tends to confuse the issue of whether the “No” is timely enough, as each person becomes more and more aroused by the minute. Women and men need to be taught not to be involved with “petting” which is, of course, nothing but “foreplay,” until they are old enough to consent to sex, as it leads to increased arousal on both sides, possibly beyond the point of control. Men and women drinking heavily together is often the cause of their mental control becoming deadened, with both proceeding from step one to step two at a rapid pace.

It is, in a way, unfair for a woman to suddenly put a halt to something which she was actively pursuing just a few minutes beforehand. Let's face it, though, NO is still NO, even if it isn't uttered in the very beginning. Also, a woman never knows how rough the man will be. Men are not all “lovers.” When that happens it is rape, even if there had been some consent in the beginning. These things, when brought out in court should cause a judgment of rape, because the truth is, women are generally weaker than the man and unable to fight him off. “Rough sex” is rape. Many a married woman has been raped by her husband in that way.

The articles on this subject which appeared a month or so ago and this one today dealt with the issue of how college administrations should handle it, and it is my position that they shouldn't. They should immediately involve the police instead, because even if it happens on a college campus and in a dating situation, it is still the same thing as if the woman were walking down the street and were suddenly assaulted – the “classic” case of rape. It is a crime wherever it occurs and should be tried in the courts unless the woman is too afraid of the man to testify against him. If she is, sometimes the police can set up protection for her as with any assault or threat. She may also want to buy a hand gun and learn how to shoot it. I think colleges in the past have been dealing with it as though it were the misbehavior of two kids, but a nineteen year old is no kid, and if sexual activity has occurred against the woman's will it is a crime. So I think this new law is a step forward, but it still doesn't solve the problem of women who don't get justice because the campus system judges them to be “provocative” or consenting.

This article on the National Coalition For Men is very interesting. The fact is that women's rights have been unfair since the beginning of time in most human cultures, and if women want to vote, argue with their husbands, go to college, run for political office, own property, refuse the advances of any man, choose to marry nobody at all, make love to a woman, get alimony as a part of a fair divorce settlement or other rights that they have only won in the 1900's, I think that is fine. Just because men aren't little kings anymore doesn't make them abused by women or the law. See the following article on the NCFM.

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/05/16/485285/ncfm-vawa/

Misogynistic ‘Men’s Rights’ Group Endorses GOP Version Of Violence Against Women Act
BY IGOR VOLSKY POSTED ON MAY 16, 2012

Most women’s rights and LGBT equality organizations are opposing the GOP’s version of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which removes the protections for marginalized communities from the Senate’s version of the bill.

But at least one group is coming to the GOP’s defense. The National Coalition for Men (NCFM) has released a statement arguing that the Republican alternative will “ensure more of the abused are better served” and provide protections for the “true victims” of domestic violence — heterosexual men:

Those opposing H.R. 4970 loudly assert that VAWA serves all people, which is absurd on its face given the name of the Act. Opposing versions, by omission and lack of specificity generally exclude men, particularly heterosexual men, regardless of specious arguments to the contrary.
We cannot adequately address violence related issues by excluding half of the population, allowing precious resources to be squandered for ideological purposes, empowering false accusers at the expense of the true victims, and letting malfeasance and maladministration to run unchecked without holding applicable administrators accountable.

Their accusation is hard to take seriously. The Senate version of VAWA “builds on the efforts of previous reauthorizations to better address the needs of male victims of domestic and sexual violence” and, by prohibiting VAWA-funded programs from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation (gay men) and increasing the number of visas offered to undocumented victims of domestic violence (so-called “U Visas”), it does more to help abused men than the House alternative.

But the NCFM’s long history of advancing misogynistic causes suggests that it’s not interested in addressing actual domestic violence. For instance, the group sued a strip club in California for offering free admission to women during Ladies’ Night, threatened to sue the organizers of a cycling festival for including a “Ladies Activities Day” that was intended to promote the involvement of women and girls in cycling (because women would have been admitted for free) and essentially criticized Rihanna for fighting back against Chris Brown’s abuse.





Who's Buried In The 'Magnificent' Tomb From Ancient Greece? – NPR
by JOANNA KAKISSIS
September 29, 2014

Early last month, on a hill outside a tiny, windy village of almond and tobacco farmers in northeastern Greece, veteran archaeologist Katerina Peristeri announced that she and her team had discovered what is believed to be the biggest tomb in Greece.

The "massive, magnificent tomb," Peristeri told reporters, is likely connected to the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia, which, in the fourth century B.C. produced Alexander the Great.

Shortly after Peristeri's announcement, Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras held his own press conference at the site — known as Amphipolis — declaring it an "exceptionally important discovery" from the "earth of our Macedonia."

And since then there have been daily reports in the Greek media, even though Peristeri and her team have refused interviews. They release each tidbit of news — each discovery of a caryatid, sphinx and other impressive artifacts — in press releases through the Greek Ministry of Culture.

Speculation over who is buried in the tomb has drawn a steady stream of visitors to nearby Mesolakkia, where the village's president — Athanassios Zounatzis, a silver-haired, retired tobacco farmer — now doubles as a tour guide.

"We've seen tour buses full of German tourists, the Dutch have gone, even a few American families," he says. "And they all ask, 'Where is the tomb?' But they leave disappointed, because they don't even get a glimpse."

That's because Greek police have set up a roadblock to the excavation, which left Bernard Boehler, an art historian from Vienna, looking longingly at a grassy hill obscuring the site.

"Needless to say, we are more than curious to see a little bit more, but we realize there is heavy surveillance and we can't come closer," Boehler says.

Archaeologists say the secrecy and security surrounding the tomb is about keeping the facts straight. They're also worried that visitors could get hurt at the partially excavated site.

But retired sanitation worker Giorgos Karaiskakis, who has visited the roadblock to the site three times, says he suspects the measures are also related to the conflict with neighboring Macedonia — the former Yugoslav republic — over who owns Alexander the Great. This discovery, he says, is just more proof that Alexander belongs to Greece.

"This great discovery doesn't get us out of the crisis, because if you don't have money, what are you going to do?" he says. "But it shows one more time that Macedonia is here, OK? Not up there with the Slavs."

Regardless of where Macedonia is, the tomb likely doesn't hold its most famous son, Alexander, who died at age 32 in Babylon, now in modern-day Iraq. It also doesn't likely hold his immediate family, such as his son Alexander IV, who is likely buried at one of the royal tombs in Aigai, the ancient first capital of Macedonia which is located near the present-day northern Greek city of Vergina, and also likely contains the remains of Alexander's father, Philip II.

So who might be buried there?

Robin Lane Fox, a noted historian at Oxford University and an expert on ancient Macedonia, says the existing scholarship suggests the tomb might belong to a top admiral in Alexander's empire-expanding Macedonian army, someone such as Nearchus, Alexander's best friend since childhood.

In Plutarch's Life of Alexander, another important friend of Alexander's — Demaratus of Corinth — was honored with an individual grave mound over his burial site that is comparable in size to the one at Amphipolis, Lane Fox says.

"So my suspicion is that this is a very high-ranking companion in Alexander's former army, who has returned back or has been returned back as a body to his home in Amphipolis," he says.

But Olga Palagia, an archaeologist at the University of Athens, suspects that the Amphipolis tomb might not be Greek at all — but Roman.

"Nobody has realized that Amphipolis was a very significant place in the first century B.C. because it was the headquarters of a huge Roman army led by Marc Antony and Octavian when they were fighting Brutus and Cassius, who had killed Julius Caesar," she says.

Palagia, an expert in ancient sculpture, hasn't visited the site, but says the Amphipolis sculptures look Roman, not Greek. If the tomb is a monument to Roman generals, she says, it won't mean much to Greece.

"Modern Greeks are very insular, inward looking and extremely traumatized by the financial crisis," she says. "I think they will feel really cheated if it's not Greek."

Peristeri, the lead archaeologist in Amphipolis, insists that the site is Greek, beyond a doubt.

That's also the sentiment back at Mesolakkia, where the townspeople remember a Greek archaeologist named Dimitris Lazaridis, who first discovered the Amphipolis mound in the 1950s but ran out of money to excavate it. Lazaridis said he also suspected that the tomb contained a major Macedonian tomb.

"He was sure of it," says Alexandros Kochliariades, who worked for 30 years as a guard for Lazaridis, who excavated other sites in the area. "Now, so many years later, his hypothesis is turning out to be true."

Kochliarides sips coffee at a gas-station cafe near Mesolakkia, the village which has now become ground zero for what one archaeologist called "Amphipolimania." The retired guard says he understands why the tomb means so much to Greeks right now, who have suffered a psychological as well as economic beating during the four years of the debt crisis.

"It reminds us that we are rich, in history at least," he says. "And that Amphipolis was once the apple of an empire."




“The "massive, magnificent tomb," Peristeri told reporters, is likely connected to the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia, which, in the fourth century B.C. produced Alexander the Great.... Regardless of where Macedonia is, the tomb likely doesn't hold its most famous son, Alexander, who died at age 32 in Babylon, now in modern-day Iraq. It also doesn't likely hold his immediate family, such as his son Alexander IV, who is likely buried at one of the royal tombs in Aigai, the ancient first capital of Macedonia.... 'So my suspicion is that this is a very high-ranking companion in Alexander's former army, who has returned back or has been returned back as a body to his home in Amphipolis,' he says. But Olga Palagia, an archaeologist at the University of Athens, suspects that the Amphipolis tomb might not be Greek at all — but Roman. 'Nobody has realized that Amphipolis was a very significant place in the first century B.C. because it was the headquarters of a huge Roman army led by Marc Antony and Octavian when they were fighting Brutus and Cassius, who had killed Julius Caesar,' she says.... Peristeri, the lead archaeologist in Amphipolis, insists that the site is Greek, beyond a doubt. That's also the sentiment back at Mesolakkia, where the townspeople remember a Greek archaeologist named Dimitris Lazaridis, who first discovered the Amphipolis mound in the 1950s but ran out of money to excavate it. Lazaridis said he also suspected that the tomb contained a major Macedonian tomb. 'He was sure of it,' says Alexandros Kochliariades, who worked for 30 years as a guard for Lazaridis, who excavated other sites in the area. 'Now, so many years later, his hypothesis is turning out to be true.'... 'It reminds us that we are rich, in history at least,' he says. 'And that Amphipolis was once the apple of an empire.'”

Ancient finds are very appealing, and this one is causing quite a ruckus. The preliminary idea that it is connected to Alexander The Great has been challenged by Olga Palagia, who thinks it may be Roman. She, however, hasn't been to the site and has only seen pictures of the statues. Peristeri the lead archaeologist says no, it is “beyond a doubt” Greek. I wonder if they have done any carbon dating or other scientific testing yet. Palagia said Rome had an army there, but that was in the first century BC and not 400 BC. Also, archaeologists can usually tell a difference between the types of tombs as to when and to whom they were connected. Hopefully there will be more articles within the next year as to what has been decided. If I ever win the lottery I may take a tour of old ruins from the British Isles to the Mediterranean, because there are thousands of sites known at this time. For now I will content myself with reading about them.





A Doctor Unlocks Mysteries of the Brain By Talking And Watching – NPR
by JON HAMILTON
September 29, 2014

The heavyset man with a bandage on his throat is having trouble repeating a phrase. "No ifs..." he says to the medical students and doctors around his bed at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

"Can I hear you say no ifs, ands or buts?" says Dr. Allan Ropper, the Harvard neurologist in charge. The patient tries again. "No ifs, buts, ands or," he says.

Ropper's heard enough. "I think he's probably had a little left temporal, maybe angular gyrus-area stroke," he tells the students and doctors, once they're assembled outside the patient's room. A brain scan confirms his diagnosis.

Later, Ropper tells me that the patient's inability to repeat that simple phrase told him precisely where a stroke had damaged the man's brain. "What we did was, on clinical grounds we nailed this down to a piece of real estate about the size of a quarter," he says.

This reliance on bedside observation and conversation is what makes neurology such a remarkable specialty, Ropper says. "The rest of medicine has moved very strongly toward laboratory diagnosis" and scans like MRI and CT, he says. But the brain, he says, "is too complicated to believe that by looking just at the images you can sort out what's going on for an individual patient."

Ropper shows me example after example of this as I follow him on rounds. The hospital allowed me to record what I saw and heard so long as I didn't use the names of any patients.

In one room, we meet a woman in her late 60s who came in for back surgery, but ended up with another problem. "I came out of surgery and I opened my eyes and everything was double," she says.

The surgeons thought her double vision might be from a stroke. But Ropper checks the muscles that control her eyes and realizes they're being affected by something else.

"Do you have trouble with your eyelids drooping?" he asks. "Do you have trouble with your head staying upright at the end of the day?" The woman answers yes to both questions.

Ropper suspects she has myasthenia, a disease that causes muscles to weaken rapidly with use. So he has her repeatedly squeeze a rolled-up blood-pressure cuff. The pressure gauge on the cuff shows that each squeeze is weaker than the previous one.

That clinches the diagnosis for him, although a blood test will eventually confirm his bedside assessment. "That's an example of the craft of neurology," Ropper says. "There's no book that would have extracted that diagnosis from that lady."

When someone develops a serious brain problem, Ropper says, it can be like falling down a rabbit hole and entering an Alice-in-Wonderland world — where nothing looks or works the way it's supposed to. A neurologist's job is to find a way to understand the odd landscape of a damaged brain, he says.

"You're querying the organ that has the problem and you're asking it to talk to you, but it can't do it properly because of that damage," he says. "That's the Alice in Wonderland part. You have to figure out with mirrors and metaphors how to get at the problem."

Ropper and coauthor Brian Burrell describe that process in a new book called Reaching Down the Rabbit Hole. An entire chapter is devoted to patients whose problems cannot be detected by any test or scan.

We meet one of these patients during morning rounds. She's a charming, soft-spoken woman in her 30s who says her left leg is so weak she can't move it.

Ropper turns the exam over to Dr. Shamik Bhattacharyya, a senior resident at Brigham and Women's. It's a part of Ropper's mission to make sure the next generation of neurologists also knows how to reach down the rabbit hole.

During a long conversation, the woman tells Bhattacharyya about a similar episode a few months earlier. At the time, doctors ordered nerve conduction studies, ultrasound, MRI — pretty much everything medical technology has to offer. Nothing turned up a problem.

So Bhattacharyya tries a low-tech approach that doctors have been using for a century. He has the woman lie on her back and lift her healthy leg. When the woman does this, she involuntarily pushes down hard with the supposedly disabled leg.

Neurologists know this as Hoover's sign and it confirms what Bhattacharyya suspected. The problem isn't physical; it's psychological. But it's hard to treat, Ropper says, because the weakness is very real to the person experiencing it.

"You've got a normal functioning brain that somehow goes out of its way to produce blindness, paralysis, tremor, walking difficulty and so on," he says "There's no other organ that does that. Your liver doesn't decide one day to wake up and say, I'm going to feign liver failure."

But the brain isn't like other organs. And Ropper says that's why he gets up and goes to work each day.




“This reliance on bedside observation and conversation is what makes neurology such a remarkable specialty, Ropper says. 'The rest of medicine has moved very strongly toward laboratory diagnosis' and scans like MRI and CT, he says. But the brain, he says, 'is too complicated to believe that by looking just at the images you can sort out what's going on for an individual patient.'... When someone develops a serious brain problem, Ropper says, it can be like falling down a rabbit hole and entering an Alice-in-Wonderland world — where nothing looks or works the way it's supposed to. A neurologist's job is to find a way to understand the odd landscape of a damaged brain, he says.... So Bhattacharyya tries a low-tech approach that doctors have been using for a century. He has the woman lie on her back and lift her healthy leg. When the woman does this, she involuntarily pushes down hard with the supposedly disabled leg. Neurologists know this as Hoover's sign and it confirms what Bhattacharyya suspected. The problem isn't physical; it's psychological. But it's hard to treat, Ropper says, because the weakness is very real to the person experiencing it.”

When I was young I can remember doctor's doing much more observation and talking in general than they seem to now. Now they do tend to start ordering lab tests as a first preference. That is the cause, to some, of the increasing medical bills in many cases. Of course doctors are aware of more possible conditions and causes now, and they often want to eliminate some dangerous possibility with a test. I always feel a little more secure if a lab test or examination by a specialist clears me of some scary condition.

Knowledge of brain function has increased tremendously since I was young. From physical disability to mental health problems, research has really improved the life condition of the average person. When I was a young child, I was aware that some kids were mentally disabled, which was called “retarded,” now considered a pejorative term. Now “disabled” is often avoided as well, with the use of “challenged” instead. Whatever it's called, most such kids simply had trouble learning in school. I now know that many of them aren't “intellectually challenged,” but suffer from autism, ADHD, dyslexia, etc. Psychologists and – not to be forgotten – school teachers have worked with those conditions to develop ways around their disability. It's slow, but it often works. They aren't “unable to learn,” but unable to keep up with a large class with the teacher trying to move forward as fast as possible. That's why I always argue for teachers to have a teaching assistant to help with special needs.

Science is still making new findings about these conditions as to whether it is a biochemical disorder, brain damage such as from a stroke or blow to the head, a physical flaw in the brain, or some other problem. I never can resist articles about brain disorders, because the brain is so very complex and amazing. I was astounded when I saw a documentary about a young child with very debilitating seizures sited on just one side of her brain. It was so extreme that the surgeons removed that half of her brain. Within months she had regained functions using only her remaining hemisphere. Her brain had retrained itself. Equally importantly, she had no more seizures. In the old days people just kind of gave up on kids with problems, often feeling shame about it. Nowadays we keep working to find solutions. I'm glad to live in modern times. The “good old days” were often romantic, but they weren't always good.





To Counter Gun Violence, Researchers Seek Deeper Data – NPR
by KIRK SIEGLER
September 28, 2014

For the first time in nearly two decades, federal money is beginning to flow into gun violence research. And there's growing momentum behind creating a reliable national reporting database for firearm injuries and deaths.

On the front lines at the Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center, one of the top trauma hospitals on the West Coast, researchers like Dr. Demetrios Demetriades hope to get a better picture of the scope of the problem, so states can better target their prevention programs.

"This is very important because firearm injuries, it's a huge medical problem in the country," Demetriades says.

Not knowing the full range of the problem poses a challenge for Demetriades, who's the hospital's trauma director and a professor of surgery at USC. He's trying to better understand who's getting hurt and who's dying from gun violence, where and when — and even why.

On average, his trauma ward sees one or two new patients a day who are victims of gunshot wounds. On a recent afternoon, doing rounds through the ICU, he was particularly interested in a progress report on a man who was shot in the head the night before.

The shooting occurred in El Monte, a city east of the hospital. The two men involved were first taken to the closest hospital, which wasn't a trauma center. One of the men died there. The other was transferred to this Level 1 trauma center, where Demetriades and his team ended up saving him.

Because the first man didn't die in a trauma hospital, that fatality will likely never get reported to any national registry. And this highlights a serious problem: there are big gaps in what gets reported and what doesn't when it comes to gun violence.

"You'll be able to address the problem only if you have reliable information," Demetriades says, "Without reliable information, you cannot take the appropriate corrective action — you cannot allocate the resources as needed."

Money, Politics Block Data Collection

There are several reasons why more of this information isn't being collected. Logistics, for one: It's hard to get every single law enforcement agency, hospital and coroner in every city and every state on the same page.

Some of the other reasons are a little more clear-cut: money and politics.

"For essentially the last 20 years, there has been almost no federal support for research on a health problem that kills upwards of 30,000 people a year," says Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at UC Davis.

Wintemute, who's also an ER physician, says since the mid-1990s, Congress has barred federal funds from going to gun violence research, linking it with gun control.

But last year, a big change happened. By executive order, President Obama directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal labs to resume the research and craft prevention strategies.

Wintemute is encouraged, and points to the research that has gone into motor vehicle injuries as a good case study.

"There are such data systems, and have been for decades, for motor vehicle injuries, and that sort of continuing flow of data has done a great deal to shape our efforts to prevent motor vehicle injuries," he says.

Violent Death Database Expansion

It remains to be seen if the same thing can be done for gun violence. But to start with, the CDC has begun offering more than $7 million in grants to states to expand the agency's National Violent Death Reporting System. The hope is that will also capture more data on firearm fatalities.

Epidemiologist Alex Crosby, of the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, is one of the researchers who's helping spearhead this expansion.

Similar to the push for better data on gun trauma deaths, Crosby says the goal behind expanding the CDC system is to give states more information so they can start to take action.

Say, for example, a county is trying to figure out how to tackle the growing problem of suicide by firearms among older men. With access to detailed data, Crosby says they could spot trends.

"A job crisis in the past two weeks or an eviction, foreclosure; these were some of the precipitating circumstances that involve that suicide," Crosby says. "Now let's see what we can do to try to make our programs more focused on some of these risk factors and hopefully we can make a difference in terms of bringing those kind of things down."

Getting a nationwide database together is a huge task, and it's still very early. But Crosby says there have been some early successes: a suicide prevention program in Oregon and a homicide crackdown in Oklahoma, for starters.

He hopes to one day expand the system from 32 states, its current size, to all 50.




“For the first time in nearly two decades, federal money is beginning to flow into gun violence research. And there's growing momentum behind creating a reliable national reporting database for firearm injuries and deaths. On the front lines at the Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center, one of the top trauma hospitals on the West Coast, researchers like Dr. Demetrios Demetriades hope to get a better picture of the scope of the problem, so states can better target their prevention programs. 'This is very important because firearm injuries, it's a huge medical problem in the country,' Demetriades says. Not knowing the full range of the problem poses a challenge for Demetriades, who's the hospital's trauma director and a professor of surgery at USC. He's trying to better understand who's getting hurt and who's dying from gun violence, where and when — and even why.... Because the first man didn't die in a trauma hospital, that fatality will likely never get reported to any national registry. And this highlights a serious problem: there are big gaps in what gets reported and what doesn't when it comes to gun violence....There are several reasons why more of this information isn't being collected. Logistics, for one: It's hard to get every single law enforcement agency, hospital and coroner in every city and every state on the same page. Some of the other reasons are a little more clear-cut: money and politics.... Wintemute, who's also an ER physician, says since the mid-1990s, Congress has barred federal funds from going to gun violence research, linking it with gun control. But last year, a big change happened. By executive order, President Obama directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal labs to resume the research and craft prevention strategies.... Similar to the push for better data on gun trauma deaths, Crosby says the goal behind expanding the CDC system is to give states more information so they can start to take action. Say, for example, a county is trying to figure out how to tackle the growing problem of suicide by firearms among older men. With access to detailed data, Crosby says they could spot trends.”

I hate to cry foul on Republicans again, but they and a powerful organization called the NRA are behind this block on federal action, which they apparently see as a threat to the highly lucrative manufacture and sale of guns. That's big business, so they are a powerful congressional lobby. Now Obama has come out ahead of the pack with his research on gun violence. It is interesting to me that the CDC are doing part of the research. The way people relate to their guns is often pathological, I am convinced. It has become a national obsession and the focus of a part of the right-leaning turn of mind in general. For people to buy a gun if their life has been threatened or their environment is dangerous is one thing, but concerning people like Michael Dunn – if he hadn't had a gun in his glove compartment, probably would have backed down in the confrontation with the four black youths.

Personally, I wouldn't have confronted them at all. I would have moved my car farther down to another parking space and then called the police. That way I could still get them to turn their music down without shooting anybody. Only by means like this will shootings be made an uncommon occurrence, while unruly people will still be discouraged. At this point in Jacksonville, there are two or three shootings almost every day. It starts with an argument, and then when the fight gets too difficult, somebody pulls out a hand gun to decide the issue. It's anger, for the most part. We should go ahead and call the police when people are being abusive. I have twice called the law on people who were having very loud parties after 10:00 PM. That's what police are for -- to step in and prevent really bad trouble from occurring.