Friday, November 14, 2014


News Clips For The Day


U.K. leader on plans to "root out extremism"
CBS/AP November 14, 2014, 5:36 AM

CANBERRA, Australia -- British Prime Minister David Cameron used a rare address to the Australian Parliament on Friday to call for extremist preachers to be banned and for extremism to be rooted out of schools, universities and prisons.

Britain and Australia have both sent their militaries to fight in a U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) extremists in northern Iraq. They have also both had radicalized citizens leave to join terrorists fighting in Iraq and Syria.

Cameron told the Parliament the root cause of extremism was not poverty, social isolation from the mainstream or foreign policy.

"The root cause of the challenge we face is the extremist narrative. So we must confront this extremism in all its forms," Cameron said.

"We must ban extremist preachers from our country. We must root out extremism from our schools, universities and prisons," he said.

As CBS News' Clarissa Ward reported for "60 Minutes," there are at least 500 U.K. citizens fighting in Syria and Iraq and every week, according to British police, another five recruits join the fight.

British jihadis have been on the front lines with ISIS from the very beginning.

The spike in Western fighters may be due in part to Anjem Choudary, a British-born lawyer turned Islamic preacher, who lives in London and has for years been asserting his democratic right to call for an end to democracy.

Removing extremist material from the Internetposed a pressing challenge, he said. The British government was pushing Internet providers to strengthen filters, improve reporting mechanisms and become more proactive in taking down such material.

Australia recently passed counterterrorism laws that give law enforcement authorities more power to prevent Australians from joining the extremist fighters and to prosecute those who return.

Cameron briefly outlined proposed legislation in Britain aimed at preventing terror suspects from traveling, including cancelling their passports while they were overseas.

At a news conference later, Cameron defended a measure that would prevent British terror suspects from returning to the country.

"Successive governments have come to the view -- and I agree with the view -- that when you're facing an existential challenge as great as the one we face with Islamist extremists, you need additional powers as well as simply the criminal law," Cameron told reporters.

Cameron visited Canberra ahead of attending the G-20 weekend summit of leaders of wealthy and developing countries in the east coast city of Brisbane.



http://rt.com/usa/169508-cia-radical-islam-spread-britain/
Obama snubs MI5, sends CIA to investigate threat of radical Islam in UK
Published time: June 30, 2014 22:14 
Edited time: July 01, 2014 

As radical Islam spreads through the United Kingdom, US President Barack Obama has sent a special CIA unit to interrogate senior British security experts. The move is seen as a snub of Britain’s MI5 and MI6 intelligence agencies.

Up to 450 radical Islamic men from Great Britain have flocked to the battlefields in Syria and Iraq, joining the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Lahoor Talabani, director of counter terrorism for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), told Sky News in mid-June. A British Labour MP, Kahlid Mahmood, told the Sun that up to 1,500 UK militants are fighting in Syria. Talabani’s comments echoed those of British Prime Minister David Cameron, who said that 65 people have been arrested in the past 18 months for jihadist activities related to Syria. UK authorities have launched a campaign to encourage Muslim women to inform on relatives they suspect of planning to travel to the war-torn countries where ISIS holds large swaths of land.

Last week, the UK banned a radical group called Need4khilafah for incitement to terrorism, the Daily Mail reported. A leading hate preacher for the group, Abu Waleed, was linked to the “brainwashing” of three Welsh jihadists fighting in Iraq and Syria. Two of those young men, 20-year-olds Reyaad Khan and Nasser Muthana, have appeared in an ISIS recruitment video. Khan trained for holy war by practicing mixed martial arts at a gym in Cardiff, Wales.

British security forces have been “forced to admit they are struggling to keep track of the estimated 500 Britons who have travelled to the Middle East to fight alongside” ISIS, the Daily Mail reported on Sunday.

Since the US normally relies on information from MI5 and MI6 for intelligence within the UK, it is unusual for the CIA to send a team to investigate the country’s closest ally. Their primary goal is to establish the “stability” of the relationship between Sunni and Shia Muslims in Britain.

“The US is worried about the British situation. They fear there might be a knock-on effect for them,” Professor Anthony Glees, of the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies at Buckingham University, said to the Daily Mail. “The throat-cutting between Sunnis and Shias in Iraq and Syria has not yet spread to the UK, but it is a real threat. It is conceivable you could see Shia ‘hit squads’ in Britain targeting Sunnis preparing to go out to the conflict zones to fight.”

“The Americans regard the UK as a disaster because of our lax stance on immigration which has allowed this militancy to take hold,” Glees added. “Frankly, they would not be doing their jobs properly if it did not do this – forming an objective view of the situation outside of the reports they get from MI5 and their officers at the US Embassy in London.”

As US concerns over radicalization of the UK’s Muslims and over foreign fighters returning to Europe from Syria and Iraq deepens, the US is discussing an increase in security measures at airports within America and abroad, ABC News reported. The Obama administration is focused on a new generation of bombs that terrorists in Syria could smuggle onto commercial flights.

“[This threat] is different and more disturbing than past aviation plots," one source told ABC News. Intelligence agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, have been debating their options for months, and top-level officials met at the White House last week to discuss the issue.

The battle-hardened foreign jihadists fighting in Syria and Iraq pose a threat to Western nations because they will be able to enter the countries without visas on European passports.

"We've seen Europeans who are sympathetic to their cause traveling into Syria and now may travel into Iraq, getting battle-hardened. Then they come back," Obama told NBC News in an interview broadcast Sunday.

According to the Daily Mail, the Obama administration has become “increasingly anxious” about“strong links” between American and British radicals, and the potential for American Muslims to follow the lead of their UK counterparts in fighting alongside ISIS. The CIA feels British efforts to provide a reliable assessment of the threat posed by and identify the members of radicalized Western Muslims have been inadequate, sources from the American spy agency told the Daily Mail.



Islam by country
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Other parts of the world host large Muslim immigrant communities; in Western Europe, for instance, Islam is the second largest religion after Christianity, where it represents 6% of the total population.[11] …. US Muslim Population – 2,595,000 , UK Muslim Population – 2,869,000




“Cameron told the Parliament the root cause of extremism was not poverty, social isolation from the mainstream or foreign policy. 'The root cause of the challenge we face is the extremist narrative. So we must confront this extremism in all its forms,' Cameron said. 'We must ban extremist preachers from our country. We must root out extremism from our schools, universities and prisons,' he said.... Removing extremist material from the Internet posed a pressing challenge, he said. The British government was pushing Internet providers to strengthen filters, improve reporting mechanisms and become more proactive in taking down such material. Australia recently passed counterterrorism laws that give law enforcement authorities more power to prevent Australians from joining the extremist fighters and to prosecute those who return. Cameron briefly outlined proposed legislation in Britain aimed at preventing terror suspects from traveling, including cancelling their passports while they were overseas. At a news conference later, Cameron defended a measure that would prevent British terror suspects from returning to the country.... 'Successive governments have come to the view -- and I agree with the view -- that when you're facing an existential challenge as great as the one we face with Islamist extremists, you need additional powers as well as simply the criminal law,' Cameron told reporters.”

The rt.com/usa article blames Britain's lax immigration policies for the number of radical Islamists who live in Britain. At another place it states that dangerous people can easily get into Britain because of the fact that they don't need a Visa if they have a European passport. “Anjem Choudary, a British-born lawyer turned Islamic preacher, who lives in London and has for years been asserting his democratic right to call for an end to democracy.” I wonder how many people in the US would willingly do away with democracy itself? I looked on the net and found several articles, not based on an actual goal of dismantling democracy. It's clear, though, that there are those on the right who would block voting rights for minority citizens, and on the left some would dismantle the right of individuals and corporations to make a profit and keep a reasonable amount of it. Pure Socialism has never been tried here, and almost certainly could not be written into our laws. The number of left and right extremists in the US is small, I think, though often vocal. Most of the radicals here are rightist and racist. I did find the website of the American Communist Party, however. It's highly idealistic and will clearly never (or anytime soon) be adopted by Americans. I would like to see some of it enacted, but not all by any means. To read it, go to http://www.cpusa.org/socialism-usa-gus-hall/.





Mitch McConnell: A Republican Congress will end gridlock
By REBECCA KAPLAN CBS NEWS
November 1, 2014, 5:25 PM

A Republican Congress will end gridlock in Washington by getting more bills to President Obama's desk, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, said in the final Republican weekly address before the midterm elections.

"A new Republican majority wouldn't mean we'd be able to get everything you want from Washington. But it would mean we'd be able to bring the current legislative gridlock to a merciful end," McConnell said Saturday. "Under a new majority, our focus would be on passing legislation that improves the economy, that makes it easier for Americans to find jobs and that helps restore Americans' confidence in their country and their government."

He argued that six years of a Democratic president and Senate hasn't resulted in policies that move the country forward and instead "caused Democrats to abandon trying to fix the economy in order to focus almost exclusively on protecting their control of Congress - seemingly at any cost."

Democrats block even bills that have bipartisan support, McConnell said, in order to protect the president from having to sign or veto legislation that might anger one faction of the Democratic Party.

"Well, we think it's time for the president to start doing the job he was elected to do," McConnell said. "He should worry less about massaging egos in his party and worry more about healing our country."

McConnell is hoping to replace Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid Tuesday. Not only will Republicans have to pick up six seats and defend the ones they currently hold, but the minority leader will have to win his own competitive race against Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky.

He told CBS News' Nancy Cordes that he wants to see the president "move to the middle" to work with a GOP Congress on issues like comprehensive tax reform and trade agreements. Other top priorities are a vote on a the Keystone XL pipeline and a repeal of the unpopular medical device tax that was included in Obamacare.

"Reagan and Tip O'Neill found things that they could agree on. Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich found things that they could agree on. My first choice is to make some progress for the country," he told Cordes. "And the only way to do that with the president in the office is with his involvement. So that's my first choice."

McConnell said in his weekly address that it's "OK" if Mr. Obama vetoes some of the bills passed by a Republican Congress.

Should Republicans win control of the Senate, they will likely have only a one- or two-seat majority. Consequently, the party will have to decide whether it will work with Democrats to move forward with a modest agenda or whether it will heed to its tea party faction and refuse to compromise on issues like tax reform. The direction the party takes could have implications for the 2016 election -- both the presidential and the Senate elections that year.

"We believe it's better to let the representatives of the people have their say and vote, even if the president disagrees with the policy. That's far preferable to the Democratic majority's policy of blocking bills from both sides of the aisle and shutting down debate," he said.

In his own weekly address, President Obama focused on making a final appeal to women, a key constituency that Democrats need to turn out to vote in the midterms.

"Right now, women make up almost half of our workers. More women are their family's main breadwinner than ever before. So the simple truth is, when women succeed, America succeeds. And we should be choosing policies that benefit women - because that benefits all of us," Mr. Obama said.

In particular, he said women need equal pay for the same work that men do, better paid family leave policies, better treatment for pregnant workers and more affordable child care.

He also criticized Congress for failing to increase the minimum wage. Senate Republicans blocked legislation that would have increased the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour in April, and it has been a top Democratic talking point all year.

"When most low-wage workers are women but Congress hasn't passed a minimum-wage increase in seven years, it's long past time that women deserve a raise," the president said. "About 28 million workers would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. And more than half of those workers are women."



McConnell wants Obama and the Democrats to “move to the middle.” Does that mean he and his party will also move to the middle? I doubt it. He certainly didn't say so. This article is a few days old, and McConnell is now the Majority Leader. He promises here to interact with Democrats to pass more laws, which Obama can then veto if he wants to. He tried in the last few days to “warn” Obama not to use his executive powers to make changes in our immigration policies, but he as already announced that he will, and I feel sure he will freely veto the bad laws that are sent to his desk. He doesn't show any sign of fearing the Republicans. They have threatened to sue him and some even want to impeach him. The problem is that Obama hasn't committed crimes, had a public affair, or anything else that is an impeachable offense. I expect him to hold his own against the newly elected Republican majority and continue to use his executive powers to the end of his tenure. Many white Americans have voted for Republicans because Obama is black, but he should proceed forward proudly. He has done a good job for the most part.





FBI's Vicious Letter To King Holds Lessons On Surveillance, Hindsight – NPR
By Sam Sanders
November 13, 2014

For decades, a graphic letter sent from J. Edgar Hoover's FBI to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was thought to only exist in a censored form. The letter focused on King's sex life and his extramarital affairs. Yale historian Beverly Gage, who's working on a biography of Hoover, recently uncovered an unredacted version of the letter at the National Archives. It begins:

"King,

In view of your low grade, abnormal personal behavior I will not dignify your name with either a Mr. or a Reverend or a Dr. And, your last name calls to mind only the type of King such as King Henry the VIII and his countless acts of adultery and immoral conduct lower than that of a beast."

Gage wrote about her discovery for the New York Times:

"The word 'evil' makes six appearances in the text, beginning with an accusation: 'You are a colossal fraud and an evil, vicious one at that.' In the paragraphs that follow, the recipient's alleged lovers get the worst of it. They are described as 'filthy dirty evil companions' and 'evil playmates,' all engaged in 'dirt, filth, evil and moronic talk.' The effect is at once grotesque and hypnotic, an obsessive's account of carnal rage and personal betrayal. 'What incredible evilness,' the letter proclaims, listing off 'sexual orgies,' 'adulterous acts' and 'immoral conduct.' Near the end, it circles back to its initial target, denouncing him as an 'evil, abnormal beast.' "

Gage spoke with NPR, to share a little more about the letter, its back story, and the lessons it still holds for law enforcement officers and journalists.

Gage said that when she stumbled on the document, while going through photos she had taken of "super-special secret files" from Hoover's office kept by the National Archives, she was surprised.

"I knew there was probably some new material in there, but I didn't know what it would be," Gage told NPR. "I was amazed. This really is one of the most famous documents that there is. It's sort of like this Holy Grail."

Gage said the letter probably wasn't written by Hoover himself, but by William Sullivan, an assistant director at the FBI, and a deputy to J. Edgar Hoover. Gage wrote in The Times that Sullivan is believed to have sent the letter anonymously, just days after Hoover called King the "most notorious liar in the country," at a press conference in 1964.

The letter and what it revealed about the psyche of Hoover's FBI is nothing new. But Gage said that what the FBI did with the letter is more interesting.

"The FBI took the information they had about King's sex life and talked to a lot of friendly reporters in Washington and elsewhere," Gage said, but the press wanted no part of it — partly because press culture was very different then.

Gage pointed out that this was the era of John F. Kennedy, and the media wasn't reporting his affairs either. She also said lots of journalists in the '60s didn't want to tarnish King's cause.

"I think reporters were also quite aware that this was a pretty targeted effort to discredit Martin Luther King — and by extension the Civil Rights Movement in general — and were kind of leery of playing into that campaign."

Gage said it's impossible to know what would have happened if the letter had been released.

"The tragic implication is that King would have been discredited and he would have never been able to become the revered public leader he became, that it would have done a lot of damage to the Civil Rights movement," she said.

Enduring Lessons

Gage also said there are lessons in the letter, in what led the FBI to investigate King, and in what the media chose to do with the story.

"The first lesson is that this is a really good example about why you need to be cautious about how much it is that intelligence agencies know about people's private and sexual lives," said Gage. "And this is obviously an issue at the moment in terms of online communication."

She pointed out that the investigation into King's personal life began as a national security inquiry. Officials were looking into possible ties between King and communists and former communists, who the FBI thought could be Soviet spies. But that investigation quickly moved from matters of national security to those of King's sex life.

The other lesson, said Gage, is really one of hindsight.

"It's very hard to know what's going on in the present as it's happening," Gage said.

She said the first public knowledge of the letter didn't come about until more than a decade after it was written. But just because people revere Dr. King now and consider the FBI's actions reprehensible doesn't mean they would have felt the same way in the 1960s.

"It's always a little bit easier to make those judgments once we've all agreed that Martin Luther King was a hero, whereas in the '60s ... he was this hugely controversial figure," said Gage. "When lots of people really did think he was a threat to the social order, it's much harder to make those kinds of judgments."

Ultimately, said Gage, she's happy things worked out the way they did.

"We can't really know what would have happened," she said. "But my own impulse is that's it's very, very good that the press did not cooperate with the FBI in this instance."




Martin Luther King, due to his commitment to non-violent means, led our country to the easiest possible resolution to the pursuit of equal rights of, for and by people of color. It was a movement whose time had come. It washed our federal government free of the taint of national and local dirty and unjust politics. At least, it made a huge improvement. I am glad to have lived through that time when I was young and to have seen the changes that are to this day still occurring.

Some of the Tea Party followers who make racially charged statements and the local police forces which, as in Ferguson, MO, employ a violent and unjust form of “policing” are still grinding slowly toward becoming a fair and law abiding white citizenry. Many whites already are very much in favor of full civil rights for all Americans, and good human relations between all people. Martin Luther King's job is not finished, but we have seen a great deal of improvement.

But there is much more to be done. Black people need to come together in their local communities to seek out violations of the law by police officers, citizens, and government leaders and demonstrate together for just causes. But more importantly, they should go to the DMV with their birth certificate, original Social Security card, or other form of ID to get a picture ID card for voting purposes. That needs to be done now, well before the next election, so that they will be ready when the time comes. There is usually a route to getting a free ID card if the fee is a problem. I know some blacks hate whites to the point that they don't want to cooperate on the matter of ID cards, but those laws are still on the books and the Supreme Court has in many cases viewed them as constitutional. Without a large number of black votes, the increasingly powerful right wing in this country will take over completely, I'm afraid. At every election from local to national, black people need to vote their preference year after year. The Jews have endured great persecution from white Anglos for centuries, and there's no reason to think that a miracle will occur whereby the blacks will totally cease to have problems. Therefore there's a need for an ongoing struggle.

Local political study groups could make decisions on which candidates are going to be in favor of full civil rights and improved living conditions for everyone. Black people who have completed high school and maybe some college, and especially if they have become ministers, lawyers, doctors, etc., should run for office starting at the local level and going up to the state and federal offices, and yes, apply for jobs on the police force. Young black students should go against the peer pressure that sometimes exists, and study hard on the schoolwork. There's nothing like good grades to move a person forward in life. We need more black faces in politics, so the public will get used to seeing them and start to change their viewpoints. Jacksonville's mayor is a black man – a Republican, actually. One of the things I would like to see is black people and whites attending church together and making friends across the color line on jobs and in the neighborhoods. Move forward – don't give up on these issues.





'Muffled' Alerts, Personal Calls: Report On White House Fence Jumper – NPR
DANA FARRINGTON
November 13, 2014 8:51 PM ET

Secret Service communication failure and gaps in training allowed a man to jump the White House fence and run into the mansion on Sept. 19, a review of the incident finds.
One officer was slow to respond because he was on his personal cellphone, according to a summary of the Homeland Security Department's report released Thursday. The canine officer didn't have his earpiece in and only responded after seeing another officer running. (Security dogs helped bring down another fence jumper in October before he reached the White House.)

On Sept. 19, four officers spotted Omar Gonzalez before he made it over the fence around 7:20 p.m, the report says. He ignored their verbal commands as he prepared to climb part of the fence where an "ornamental spike" was missing on top. Construction around the White House obstructed other officers' views.

Once Gonzalez made it onto the grounds, two officers followed him with rifles, "but determined that lethal force was inappropriate because Gonzalez did not appear to be armed."

Radio transmissions were reported by some other officers as "unintelligible" or "muffled."

The doors to the White House were unlocked, so Gonzalez just pushed his way past an officer inside. Ultimately, two agents who had just completed their shifts — and were on a lower floor — ran to the scene and helped bring Gonzalez down.

Emergency Response Team members outside the North Portico "did not immediately enter the Mansion. They were unfamiliar with the layout of the White House, and waited to assemble into a tactical formation before entering the North Portico door. By the time they entered, Gonzalez had already been subdued."

In summary, the review says, training was a problem. There hasn't been enough of it "due to staffing shortfalls" and the training the officers did have apparently did not prepare them for "non-lethal force scenarios."

Poor communication resulted from "a combination of technical missteps, lack of radio discipline, improper use of equipment and aging infrastructure," it says.

The report also notes that Gonzalez had been stopped and searched three times over the summer, but officers lack a "one stop" database that would have shown them his full background.

NPR's Brian Naylor adds that this review "is part of a larger look at recent episodes involving the agency, which led Secret Service director Julia Pierson to step down."




“The report also notes that Gonzalez had been stopped and searched three times over the summer, but officers lack a 'one stop' database that would have shown them his full background.... Emergency Response Team members outside the North Portico 'did not immediately enter the Mansion. They were unfamiliar with the layout of the White House, and waited to assemble into a tactical formation before entering the North Portico door. By the time they entered, Gonzalez had already been subdued.'... the training the officers did have apparently did not prepare them for 'non-lethal force scenarios.'”

Training is a good thing, but it doesn't make up for a lack of common sense or alertness. The presence of an obvious emergency should have caused them to react immediately even though the man wasn't armed. They should be trained to fight without a weapon and have proceeded to do that as individuals and without “a tactical formation.” It is shocking that the Emergency Response Team were “unfamiliar with the layout of the White House.” How could that be? The final shocker is that Gonzales had been stopped three times at the same place behaving abnormally, but the guards had no access to that information. It also shouldn't be forgotten that one guard was talking on his cell phone, and another one didn't have his earpiece in place, so that they didn't get the notice that there was a problem.





Reports: Obama Will Approve Immigrant Work Permits For Millions – NPR
BILL CHAPPELL
November 13, 2014 2:03 PM ET

Following on a pledge to use his office's discretionary powers to adjust the U.S. approach to immigration, President Obama reportedly plans to remove the threat of deportation for up to 5 million people who entered the U.S. Illegally.

The administration's shift in approach was reported by The New York Times, which cited "administration officials who have direct knowledge of the plan."

The White House did not confirm the plan's details Thursday, but press secretary Josh Earnest said that Obama "is still planning to make some decisions and announce them prior to the end of this calendar year. That should be an indication to you that the President is nearing a final decision."

Earnest added that the president has met with Homeland Secretary Jeh Johnson and Attorney General Eric Holder.

The details of the executive actions are still being finalized, but it could "avert 5 million deportations," the Times says.

It would also likely trigger an angry response from Republicans such as House Speaker John Boehner, who recently called the White House approach "executive amnesty."

A formal announcement of the plan could come next week, the Times says.

Fox News is reporting similar details, saying the Obama administration is reviewing "10 initiatives that span everything from boosting border security to improving pay for immigration officers," adding that "the most controversial pertain to the millions who could get a deportation reprieve under what is known as 'deferred action.' "

One phase of the White House's plan would reportedly let the parents of American citizens or legal residents acquire legal work papers, even if the parents didn't come to the U.S. Legally.

"That part of Mr. Obama's plan alone could affect as many as 3.3 million people who have been living in the United States illegally for at least five years," the Times says, adding that another version of the plan would require the immigrants to have lived in the U.S. for at least 10 years.

Reports of the White House plan come a week after President Obama urged Congress to take up immigration reform, citing a crisis along U.S. Borders.

"There's a cost to waiting," the president said, one day after the midterm elections. He added that his actions would be nullified by laws that Congress passes.

If he issues the executive orders, the move would come months after Obama seemed poised to take such action. He delayed the move after his fellow Democrats complained it could hurt their campaigns, as NPR's Sam Sanders recently reported.

"We're deporting people that shouldn't be deported," the president said last Sunday on CBS's Face The Nation. "We're not deporting folks that are dangerous and need to be deported."




President Obama isn't planning to declare “blanket amnesty,” as their nearly deified leader Ronald Reagan did, and when the legislature gets down to enacting a reform bill it will supersede Obama's Executive Order. So there should be no problem here. I think we should have an arrangement with the government Mexico that work permits will be issued there rather than here, and anyone possessing a work permit can enter the US legally. If they want to stay they could then apply for citizenship here during the time that they are holding a work permit. American employers should verify their identity and issue them a social security card. They should pay taxes like a citizen. They should get a guaranteed wage that is at least as high as the minimum wage. At the present too many employers knowingly hire illegal aliens because they will usually work for less money than the minimum wage. That is unfair to all, including Americans who would have taken those jobs, but won't work for under the minimum. These work permits shouldn't last longer than one year or so, with no renewals unless they apply for citizenship. The fact that they have a job should help them get their citizenship. Parents of young people who live in the US should get priority over others in the Citizenship process to try to keep their families together. That's my take on the problem. That may or may not be in line with what the president plans to put in place.





Mali Already Has An Ebola Cluster: Can The Virus Be Stopped? – NPR
By Jason Beaubien
November 14, 2014

"This is not just one case," says Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "It's a cluster." He's talking about the Ebola situation in Mali, where two people have likely died of the disease in Bamako, the capital, and two others have tested positive.

Hundreds more may have been exposed. Officials from the U.N., the World Health Organization, the government of Mali and the CDC are all calling for swift action to keep Mali from descending into the Ebola chaos that's hit neighboring Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

"This is very deeply concerning," says Frieden. The CDC is sending additional staff to help respond to the outbreak.

This cluster of new cases centers around a private hospital in Bamako. On Oct. 27, an imam from Guinea died at the clinic from what had been diagnosed as kidney failure.

This week a nurse who treated him died of Ebola. Two other people from the clinic — one of them a doctor — have tested positive for the virus. The body of the imam was sent to a mosque for ritual cleansing, then returned to Guinea for a large public funeral before authorities in Mali realized he probably died of Ebola.

Frieden says the risk of this cluster turning into a major outbreak is high.

"There will be hundreds of contacts who need to be traced. Every single one needs to be contacted every day. If anyone dies, they need to be safely buried."

Frieden says the CDC may introduce exit screening at the Bamako airport and the U.S. may consider new entry requirements for travelers arriving from the landlocked nation.

Prior to this cluster, Mali had had only one Ebola case: a 2-year-old girl from Guinea who died on Oct. 24. But there were worries about the virus, and the country had been preparing just in case.

Teresa Sancristoval, who's with the emergency desk of Doctors Without Borders, had helped the health ministry set up a 13-bed Ebola isolation hospital in Bamako. The two confirmed cases are being treated there.

"The challenge is that all the people working with us [are] new to the disease so there's a lot of training to be done," she says.

The staff need to be taught meticulous infection control. Contact tracers need to be trained. And when anyone now dies of an unexplained illness, the body needs to treated as if it's potentially infected.

Because West Africans often touch the body before burial, funerals have been a potential place for transmission during this outbreak. Sancristoval says getting people to change deeply-held cultural beliefs about how they say goodbye to a loved one is hard.

For the moment, traditional burials continue in Mali, she says. Up until now there hasn't been the need for campaigns warning people about the risks of touching dead bodies as there have been in the other Ebola-affected countries.

Sancristoval says it's very hard to predict whether this flare-up will be snuffed out quickly. The international community knows how to contain it, she says. The question is whether aid organizations and the government can mount an adequate response fast enough.

Meanwhile, she has her own perspective on the virus.

"People who take care of you while you are sick [are] the people who get affected," she says. "People who prepare your body for the burial are the people who get affected."

That's why she thinks of Ebola as the disease of love: The virus turns acts of compassion into chains of transmission.




“He's talking about the Ebola situation in Mali, where two people have likely died of the disease in Bamako, the capital, and two others have tested positive. Hundreds more may have been exposed. ... This cluster of new cases centers around a private hospital in Bamako. On Oct. 27, an imam from Guinea died at the clinic from what had been diagnosed as kidney failure. This week a nurse who treated him died of Ebola. Two other people from the clinic — one of them a doctor — have tested positive for the virus. The body of the imam was sent to a mosque for ritual cleansing, then returned to Guinea for a large public funeral before authorities in Mali realized he probably died of Ebola. Frieden says the risk of this cluster turning into a major outbreak is high.... Frieden says the CDC may introduce exit screening at the Bamako airport and the U.S. may consider new entry requirements for travelers arriving from the landlocked nation.... 'The challenge is that all the people working with us [are] new to the disease so there's a lot of training to be done,' she says. The staff need to be taught meticulous infection control. Contact tracers need to be trained. And when anyone now dies of an unexplained illness, the body needs to treated as if it's potentially infected.

“'People who take care of you while you are sick [are] the people who get affected,' she says. 'People who prepare your body for the burial are the people who get affected.' That's why she thinks of Ebola as the disease of love: The virus turns acts of compassion into chains of transmission.” This is truly a sad situation, because the innocent are the ones who come into contact with the virus. Family members and friends hug when they meet, and that hug can cause bodily fluids to be transmitted to the next person. Perspiration alone can transmit it, and so can saliva. In one news article it said that the virus can live on physical surfaces at least for awhile. I haven't seen that in any other article, but it could explain how the African epidemic has literally exploded among the people.

Hopefully this cluster in Mali will not spread any further than it already has, and in January as promised a vaccine will be available for human testing. That's what we need. Meanwhile another partly successful treatment needs to be used – giving the patient literally gallons of water with sugar and salt dissolved in it. That replaces liquid and electrolytes in their body so that the patient's immune system can fight the virus. A number of people have been cured by that simple treatment.