Celebrating the Buddhist part of Christmas: I'm swamped. Best wishes for holidays. Will post when/if. Yes, we got snowed in with two feet of snow, plus drifts. 15K people around us lost power; massive clean-up still in process, but it will be a white Christmas for those who celebrate it. Here, we will celebrate the Buddhist Part of Christmas, as usual -- that would be the peace on earth, good will to all sentient beings part of Christmas.
Her father was a rich and powerful man. His name was Francis S. Van Derbur, but his friends -- and he had many -- just called him "Van." He owned mortuaries and made himself a millionaire.More on Ms. Van Derbur here. More on Child Abuse Prevention Month at the National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse and Neglect Information, here.
He was a socialite, a philanthropist, a renaissance man who recited poetry from memory -- and a rapist of children who violated his own daughter hundreds of times.
"Terror was my nightly blanket," Van Derbur writes in her award-winning autobiography, Miss America By Day. . .
When Van Derbur talks about child molestation, her demeanor is fierce, and her turquoise eyes burn with a natural-born warrior's zeal for battle. She rattles off shocking statistics like this: "One in six boys and one in four girls are sexually violated before the age of eighteen in this country; fourteen-year-olds comprise the greatest number of sex offenders of any age group. If those statistics don't frighten you, you are in total denial."
Or sums up the feelings of victims of child molestation like this: "We stay shamed by acting ashamed, when we have nothing to be ashamed of. Together we must say to every violator, 'The child may be mute today, but someday the child will speak her name and your name. The children will speak every single name!'"
Goal: man on moon.
Outcome: man on moon.
Goal: to fly
Outcome: flying
Goal: Medicare Equality for All
Outcome: take steps along path to goal
Cognitive frame: flying is impossible
Outcome: none
Cognitive frame: man on moon is impossible
Outcome: none
Similarly:
Cognitive frame: Medicare Equality for All/ Single=pay is impossible
Outcome: na ga happen
The one time the left pulled the pin, it voted for Nader in 2000. And look how that worked out.
You misunderstand. I’m not talking about the left. I’m talking about the fake “left” that propagated misogyny and CDS and elected Obama. That “left” will never oppose Obama or even attempt to hold him accountable.
No, what I’m talking about is WOMEN needing to play madwoman political bargaining with the Dems. Because when it comes to women’s rights, the Democrats and the Republicans are identical. Women’s rights, including abortion, are nothing more than political bargaining chips.
Let me put it this way: After the Democrats — led by Democrat Bart Stupak — passed the Stupak/Pitts amendment I got all these “call to action” emails from Democrats to save abortion rights by appealing to more Democrats and sending money to more Democrats. It’s deeply, deeply screwed up. And there’s nary a Republican to blame for it.
I’m done. Nothing, not one thing, not a “public option” health insurance plan, not universal health care, not single payer health care, not the success of the historic Obama presidency, not poor people’s rights, not people of color’s rights, not a jobs plan that actually works, not the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq, not the Guantanamo detainees — nothing is worth accepting, putting up with, or losing the battle on this steady erosion of women’s equality. Nothing. My “allies” are on notice. Nothing matters to me but winning this fight on women’s equality. Nobody gets anything from me on any other issue — not money not votes not feet on the street. Nothing.
And voting “yes” or “no” isn’t enough anymore, either. There has to be solid work toward building a coalition that will have the ability and the power to stand firm and pass legislation that will advance women’s equality and thus protect abortion and reproductive rights. And I mean a Constitutional Amendment or a statute that kills the Hyde Amendment, the Global Gag Rule, and Stupak dead for the foreseeable future. That’s all I will accept.
And beyond lack of support, I will oppose every effort that further enshrines or advances women’s inequality. I don’t care what gets scuttled. If you have to suffer until I get my rights, that’s too bad for you. Because nobody gets ahead while I wait. Never again...
As an army psychiatrist treating soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, Major Nidal Malik Hasan had a front row seat on the brutal toll of war. It is too early to know exactly what may have triggered his murderous shooting rampage Thursday at Fort Hood - Hasan is accused of killing 12 people and wounding 32 others before he was wounded by a police officer - but it is not uncommon for therapists treating soldiers with Post Trumatic Stress Disorder (P.T.S.D.) to be swept up in a patient's displays of war-related paranoia, helplessness and fury. .
In medical parlance it is known as "secondary trauma", [vicarious trauma] and it can afflict the families of soldiers suffering from P.T.S.D. along with the health workers who are trying to cure them. Dr. Antonette Zeiss, Deputy Chief of Mental Health Services for Veteran Affairs, while not wishing to talk about the specific case of the Fort Hood slayings, explained to TIME that: "Anyone who works with P.T.S.D. clients and hears their stories will be profoundly affected."
It's entirely possible that other factors may have acted as a trigger for Hasan . . [who] . .had developed strong objections to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But he was also due to be shipped out to Afghanistan, drawing him closer to the terrible scenes described in detail by his patients. At army hospitals dealing with P.T.S.D. patients, the staff is required to periodically fill out a 'resiliency' questionnaire that is supposed to gauge how well they are coping with the burden of their patients' emotional and psychological demands. [filling out a questionnaire? Wow, what a profound therapeutic intervention!] "It takes its toll on people," says one officer at a Colorado military hospital. "You cannot be un-affected by the terrible things these soldiers have undergone."
Most army psychiatrists now have a full caseload of men and women returning from combat zones with P.T.S.D.. A survey by the Rand Corp. last April revealed that one in five service men and women are coming back with post-traumatic stress and mental depression. Previously known as "combat fatigue" or being "shell-shocked", P.T.S.D was only diagnosed as an illness in the 1980s, but it has been around for as long as men have been killing one another and undergoing fearful experiences. It can lead to outbursts of rage, emotional numbness, severe depression, nightmares, and the abuse of alcohol and pain-killers. In extreme cases, P.T.S.D. sufferers have committed suicide and murder. Since the late 1980s, doctors have also learned that over time, along with drugs and therapy, P.T.S.D. is curable.
As part of their therapy, PTSD sufferers are typically asked to dredge up their worst wartime memories. [this is crap. it is also not standard of care. Note the "dredge up' frame, too.]Hearing these nightmarish experiences can stir up powerful reactions in even the most seasoned therapists [note how writer demonizes empathy]. One Colorado sergeant, diagnosed with P.T.S.D., who had served as a dog-handler in Iraq, told me how his psychiatric counselor had broke down sobbing after the soldier described how he had been sent out to find the remains of his close friend, a helicopter pilot, shot down in southern Iraq. "I looked up, and there she was crying," the sergeant says. "I didn't want that from a shrink." [well, that's crap, sergeant.]
But there is a major difference, says Veteran Affairs' Zeiss, between a therapist being moved by combat horror stories and being traumatized by them - though it can happen. "Psychiatrists are trained to notice their own reactions and emotions, and if there's something hard to deal with, they should turn to their peers," she says. [This is incorrect. One should not turn to one's peers. One should go get oneself a competent therapist] But according to some news reports, Hasan's unprofessional conduct was red-flagged early on; at Walter Reed he was given a poor performance report, but that did not hinder his transfer to Fort Hood.
And for even the most hardened army psychiatrist, that would be a grueling assignment. [note how sentence equates "hardness" with competence. Besides being a sexist frame, "hardening" is more like "numbing," a symptom of PTSD] Fort Hood has the highest suicide rate of any army base in the country, largely because so many service men and women stationed there have undergone severe trauma while deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. At Fort Hood, in other words, there was no shortage of horrific tales that could have set loose the demons in Hasan's mind.
Deaths in US army base shooting
. . . Lieutenant-General Bob Cone, the base's commanding officer, said the shooting took place at about 1:30pm local time (1930 GMT) on Thursday at a Soldier Readiness Facility.
The suspect has been named as Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a 39-year-old army psychiatrist.
"There was a single shooter that was shot multiple times at the scene. He was not killed as previously reported. He is currently in custody and in stable condition," Cone said.
Hasan was born in the US to Muslim Palestinian parents who had emigrated from a small town near Jerusalem, US media said. . .
Josh Rushing, Al Jazeera's correspondent at Fort Hood, Texas, said: "[Hasan] is a first-generation American. He joined the army after high school and went to the Virginia Tech university to get a psychiatry degree through a military programme.
"He became a psychiatrist at the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington ... where he counselled soldiers coming back from war.
"Every day, he heard how horrible those stories were and he really started to question the wars, according to what his cousin and sources who knew him said.
"Hasan became more devout in his religion and started arguing with soldiers about whether the wars were right or not, to the point where he received disciplinary action and negative work reviews.
"He was transferred to the medical facility here at Fort Hood, where apparently these feelings continued.
"It raises a major question - how can a person responsible for the mental health of soldiers returning [from war] be allowed to continue in this profession when he has these kinds of questions himself?"
The rampage occurs at a time of stress for the US armed services burdened by two wars, with commanders struggling to ease the effect of repeated combat tours on troops and their families.
Repeated deployments
Suicides in the army hit a record level last year, with at least 128 taking their lives, and are on track to set a new high this year - surpassing the rate among the wider civilian population.
US commanders believe repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan have played a role in the spike in suicides, as well a surge in post-traumatic stress and depression.
Hasan faced his own imminent deployment for military service, officials said.
Nader Hasan, a cousin, said Hasan was "mortified by the idea of having to deploy" and that he had been harassed by other soldiers for being a Muslim.
He told the New York Times newspaper that Hasan had retained a lawyer and sought to get out of the army before the end of his contract.
According to human rights lawyer John Sifton, the CIA tortured some of its detainees in the War on Terror so severely that it had to take measures to keep them alive so they could continue being tortured.
Sifton, who is the executive director of One World Research, told an interviewer for Russia Today that there was both a CIA detention program and a military detention program and that "The CIA program was by far the most secretive. ... That's the one that only had a few dozen detainees at any given time -- but it's the one that saw the biggest abuses, the most serious forms of torture."
"In the military, there was actually a larger number of deaths than with the CIA," Sifton continued. "The CIA engaged in some horrendous abuses, but they appear to have taken precautions to have actually prevented people from dying -- which might sound humanitarian, but in fact was kind of sickening."
. . . patients and therapists wrote in with allegations that insurers are routinely denying long-term mental health care to women who have been sexually assaulted.
A Jordanian man was charged on Sunday with premeditated murder after allegedly stabbing to death his 22-year-old daughter because she became pregnant outside wedlock, police said.
"The father and his brother took the girl on Saturday to a doctor because she suffered stomach pains, and everybody was surprised to learn that she was six months pregnant," a police spokesman said.
"On their way home, the father stabbed the girl with a sword 25 times in her stomach, killing her immediately as well as her unborn baby boy."
The source said the suspect had confessed to the crime, which took place in the Jordan Valley.
"His brother was also charged with premeditated murder, while the victim's boyfriend is being held in custody for his own protection," he added.
Murder is punishable by the death penalty in Jordan but in such cases of the so-called "honour killings" a court usually commutes or reduces sentences, particularly if the victim's family urges leniency.
Neighbors who lived near the home where five adults were arrested for abusing a 4-year-old boy described a horrific scene on Friday - detailing the insides of the Hattiesburg home where the abuse took place.
They told of a vacant home with blood stains, a dog cage that may have been used to confine the child and rooms cluttered with trash and debris surrounded by graffiti-covered walls.
"There's stacks and stacks of clothes and little mats on the floor. It has the smell of feces," said the landlord, who didn't want his name publicized, of the home at 215 N. 25th Ave.
Among the suspects charged with one felony count of child abuse are: Sue Miller, 53; Nancy Miller, 34; Patricia Aguilar, 30; Francys Albertson, 20; and Christopher Lee, 37, all of Hattiesburg.
The landlord, who lives near the house, said all five suspects lived in the home, but only Sue Miller and her daughter, Nancy Miller, and Albertson were listed on the lease of the home, he said.
The suspects were arrested Tuesday after police received an anonymous tip from someone concerned about the welfare of the child inside the residence. Police said the child was in Sue Miller's care.
The 4-year-old boy was one of 10 children taken from the home by Forrest County Department of Human Services officials, police spokesman Synarus Green said. Green said investigators have not determined the relationship between the other nine children and the adults arrested.
The 4-year-old remains in critical condition at a Jackson hospital, police said.
The other nine children are in the custody of the Department of Human Services.
"The child's body was covered with new and old bruises, marks, cuts and abrasions," Green said in a prepared statement. "A lot of them were old injuries. He didn't receive them in one day," he said.
Investigators don't know how long the abuse had been going on, Green said.
A preliminary medical exam showed that the child had cuts on his head and body, broken teeth with damaged gums and internal abdominal injuries caused by blunt-force trauma. . . ."
A security guard at a National Guard facility in Oklahoma City called police on Friday after the teen showed up malnourished and with numerous scars and other signs of abuse, police Sgt. Gary Knight said.
"He was hungry. He was dirty. He had numerous scars on his body," Knight said. "It was very sad."
The boy was taken to a hospital to be examined and then turned over to the custody of the Department of Human Services, Knight said.
After police interviews, officers on Saturday arrested the boy's mother, 37-year-old LaRhonda Marie McCall, and a friend, 38-year-old Steve Vern Hamilton, on 20 complaints each of child abuse and child neglect. Formal charges have not been filed, and both were being held on $400,000 bond, according to jail records.
Jail officials were not sure if either had retained an attorney, and no one answered the phone at McCall's home.
The teen, wearing only a pair of oversized shorts held up by a belt, walked up to a security guard at the Guard facility around 5 p.m. Friday and asked where a police station was located so he could report being abused, according to a police report.
He told police that scars on his stomach and torso were from where alcohol had been poured on him and set on fire. Other scars were from being tied up, hit with an extension cord and choked, the boy told police.
"He had scars covering most of his body," Knight said. "They were basically from head to foot."
The teen told police he moved to the Oklahoma City area from New Jersey about 4 1/2 years ago after his mother was released from jail. Since arriving in Oklahoma, he said, he had never been to school and spent most of his time locked in a bedroom closet.
Jessica Banks, 65 was the pastor of a small church in Riverside County, California and adopted five girls about five years ago. She was convicted in July of 16 felonies for child abuse, and this week was sentenced to 36 years and 8 months in prison, along with two consecutive terms of 15 years to life.
Jessica Banks kept the girls locked in an unheated garage, and kicked and beat them daily with cords and sticks, high heeled shoes, extension cords and belts. The five girls were between 4-11 of age at the time, and were forced to wear two layers of diapers and long black dresses, according to authorities. Jessica Banks also fed the girls spoiled food and made them take sleeping pills, and sexually abused them with paint sticks.
"There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai," Calley told members of the Kiwanis Club of Greater Columbus on Wednesday. His voice started to break when he added, "I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry."
Manchester – A man is accused of choking and punching his girlfriend’s 5-year-old daughter and putting her in a clothes dryer . . . In court, police prosecutor Lt. Robert Cunha sought to maintain the high bail set following Zawadzki’s arrest, saying the photos of the child’s injuries showed “an egregious assault on a 5-year-old girl."
The affidavit supporting Zawadzki’s arrest said the child’s mother had left her in the care of her boyfriend Monday night and the boyfriend’s explanation for the child’s injuries were that he had to slap her for being fresh and that the child had fallen in the shower when reaching for a shampoo bottle.
According to the affidavit, police spoke with the child after her mother reported the assault yesterday. The girl said Zawadzki became angry with her and choked her with his hands around her neck, lifting her from the floor as he did so. She said he hit her in the face and head and punched her in the legs before putting her in the clothes dryer and spinning the tub with his hands.
In court today, Cunha said the physician who examined the child said the injuries were the worst she’d seen. Police described the injuries as bruising to the child’s face, shoulder, legs, buttocks and vaginal area, as well as a swollen upper lip.
PORTSMOUTH - Police are seeking a man who is accused of causing severe internal injuries to a four-year-old boy.
It was determined that the juvenile suffered severe internal injuries and minor external injuries. . ," Doyle said.
Lorenzo R. Clark, Sr., 26, of Channing Avenue in Portsmouth, VA, is wanted on a charge of felony child abuse, Doyle said.
"Mr. Clark was a family friend and watching the child when the injuries occurred," Doyle said.
The police report said that when officers unlocked a door at the top of the stairs leading to the attic they found the boy "completely naked, covered in feces from head-to-toe crying to "go downstairs.''
The room was covered in human feces and there were several children's finger markings along the wall, made with feces, that appeared to have been there for a considerable amount of time, the report said.
