On March 16th 2003, an Israeli bulldozer killed the American activist Rachel Corrie in Rafah, Gaza. Today, in Kafr Sur, near Tulkarem, and in Ramallah, family, friends and supporters gathered together to commemorate the anniversary of her murder.
Students of Kafr Sur Secondary School, who have been working on a research project about Rachel's life and death, today marked the anniversary with a march to a memorial stone at the entrance to the village. The students were joined by children from the nearby primary school, as the stone was unveiled and speeches were delivered by the headmaster, one of the students, and an ISM activist.
Approximately fifty Palestinians, Internationals and media then joined Craig and Cindy Corrie, Rachel's parents, for the inauguration ceremony of Rachel Corrie Street in Ramallah. Speeches were delivered by both the Mayor and Governor of Ramallah, the Minister of State, National Parties' Coordinator, an ISM activist and Rachel's parents.
Police officers who worked at the World Trade Center site in the weeks following its collapse from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack may be at greater risk for impaired heart function than other people, a study found.
As many as 60 percent of police officers who worked at or near the World Trade Center site after the Sept. 11 attacks had a condition in which the heart muscle doesn't fully relax after pumping blood, according to a study to be presented March 15 at the American College of Cardiology meeting in Atlanta. The abnormality can lead to other heart ailments, researchers said.
That disorder, called impaired diastolic function, was seen in just 8 percent of the people of a similar age range in separate studies conducted in Belgium and Minnesota. Further research is needed to determine whether the higher rates in police officers is a result of working at the World Trade Center site or from other factors, such as job stress or living in an urban setting, said Lori Croft, the study's author.
Under age 50 this is really uncommon,' said Croft, assistant professor of medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, in an interview. It may have something to do with working at the World Trade Center.'
Researchers at Mount Sinai in New York examined the heart health of 1,191 law enforcement officers with an average age of 45 who worked at the World Trade Center site at some point during the three weeks following the terrorist attacks. The heart abnormality seen in the officers is typically found in people over age 65 and is believed to be associated with aging, said Croft.
Separate research has found an increase in asthma and lung disorders among first responders that may be linked to the dust and debris inhaled at the site. New York City is being sued by thousands of ground zero workers who claim they have illnesses or injuries related to working at the site.
The research was funded by the Fraternal Order of Police of New York.
#1
I have heard horrer stories of health issues with both the police and fire fighters. This is the agent orange of their profession. The military, both veterans and active must help support them, give them what our Viet Nam vets never got. Support and understanding in their problems.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/17/2010 23:22 Comments ||
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#1
Not long after President Barack Obama gave his conciliatory speeches to the Islamic world, he chose not to meddle in the sham election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In fact, he offered not a word of support for the men and women who took to the streets against that totalitarian regime.
Then, as "man-made disasters" continued to spontaneously erupt around the world including at a U.S. military base the administration held steadfast in using non-offensive euphemisms lest anyone be slighted by our jingoistic need to use words that mean something.
And when the president was given a chance to fulfill a campaign promise and acknowledge the genocide of 1.5 million Christian Armenians by Turks during World War I, he instead did everything he could to block the resolution.
These days, as Christian farmers are being slaughtered by Muslim machetes in Nigeria, outrage from the White House is difficult to find. But it made sure to instruct our Libyan ambassador to apologize to "Colonel" Moammar Khadafy after he offered some mildly critical comments about the dictator's call for jihad against Switzerland.
Khadafy can be forgiven, but there are transgressions that can't. One such sin was perpetrated by Israel after the nation's decision to allow a new housing project to be built in Jerusalem.
The White House became so agitated with the new housing project and the ill-advised timing of the announcement, which came during Vice President Joe Biden's visit that the casual onlooker might have been led to believe the Jerusalem neighborhood in question was part of some unfinished negotiation with Palestinians, or even that it was one of those "settlements." It was neither.
Still, according to The Jerusalem Post, Hillary Clinton telephoned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who, along with many other Israeli officials, apologized for the poor timing of the project's announcement to "berate," "rebuke," "warn" and "condemn" Israel. White House senior adviser David Axelrod used NBC's "Meet the Press" to call the incident an "affront," an "insult" and "very, very destructive."
As the administration was manufacturing this anger, the Palestinian Authority was preparing the newly minted Dalal Mughrabi square. You know, just a place for folks to gather and commemorate the 32nd anniversary of 1978's Coastal Road Massacre, in which 37 Israelis 13 of them children were murdered in a bus hijacking.
An American named Gail Rubin, who happened to be snapping some nature pictures in the area, was also gunned down.
No worries. No affront taken. That's not "very, very destructive" to the process. We are above the fray. Above frivolous notions of "allies" or "friends." History only matters when our enemies deem it important. We don't want to tweak the fragile mood of the Arab street.
If the purpose in this manufactured angst is to pressure Israel into handing parts of Jerusalem over to a corrupt Fatah (we don't need to discuss Hamas, which unlike Fatah, has the decency not to pretend to recognize Israel's right to exist) then someone is exhibiting a profound naivete. And if the purpose of pursuing a Jewish-free West Bank is to create goodwill with the Muslim world, good luck.
It is this administration's prerogative to change our foreign policy and allies. Yet, it would be nice if someone reiterated to our new Muslim friends that the United States has yet to deploy a single soldier to risk life or limb for the security of Israel. It has, however, only recently sent thousands of Americans to perish, in part, for the cause of Muslim freedom in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo.
That sacrifice alone should be enough to absolve us from any more bowing or kowtowing.
#5
I usually don't do that. But I assume people are lazy/impatient like me and don't like to wait for the link-only articles and just skip them. This was a good one. Know anyone else who doesn't follow the links? ;-)
Thomas Szasz is a pysciatrist who wrote this opinion piece on July 15, 2009. It is worth another read despite being dated July 2009. Grist for the health care debate mill. Szasz has fairly liberal roots despite the opinion expressed here. The money quote is: Health isn't worth our freedom?
What would Thoreau have made of the current debate? By THOMAS SZASZ
#1
There is no way in pluperfect hell that a contingency plan for an Israeli attack would not be compromised all to heck by USAF officers and personnel, who are extremely top heavy with pro-Israel Evangelical Christians.
#3
The geographically challenged seem not to understand that Diego Garcia is more than 5000 Ks from Israel.
CONUS is only 2000 Ks further and Germany and the UK are one hell of a lot closer. Not to mention the UKs Cyprus airbases which are 20 minutes flying time from Israel and have US personel just hanging around.
#5
As phil_b points out, geography sez the writer's full of fecal matter.
Much better to use Okinawa.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/17/2010 11:25 Comments ||
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#6
As bunker busters go--the huge kind recently in the news--these are pretty small. The big, reinforced facilities we think Iran is using won't be bothered by direct hits.
However. The facilities have to have doorways, elevator shafts, ventilation system outlets.
For an analogy, tanks are discussed sometimes in terms of their armor. So and so much on the bow, so and so much on the gun mantle, etc.
The Tiger tank was reputed to have seven inches of armor on the bow. It also had a bow machine gun. Weak spot. You could hit it, if you were lucky. Mostly, you weren't. Then.
Current accuracy is considerably better.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
03/17/2010 11:47 Comments ||
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#7
Due to its complex legal status, Diego Garcia is probably as close to "neutral territory" as one can get in the real world.
Hypothetical attacks from bases on Cyprus, in the UK or in Germany would be made from EU territory. European governments, especially Germany's government would not have any diplomatic cover. They could not vote "present."
This buildup (and the leak) is an ostentatious display of military capability by the US. Given the simultaneous diplomatic hostility towards Israel (nonnegotiable demands) and the diplomatic self-abasement vis a vis Israel's foes this is more likely to put pressure on Israel than on other parties.
Is all this nuts? An insane theory?
Probably and hopefully so.
However, had I been given an accurate prediction of future political events e.g. back in 2007, I would have dismissed it as pure nonsense as well.
It is unlikely to happen. Jews currently block vote for Democrats. If Obama attacked Israel, Jews would block vote for the GOP. They would also stop donating to the Democrats. In combination, this would result in multi-decade minority status in Federal politics for the Democratic Party.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
03/17/2010 15:27 Comments ||
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#10
RA: You think that will do it?
Former Secretary of State James Baker is alleged to have said "F*** the Jews - they don't vote for us anyway". Obama's attitude appears to be "F*** the Jews - they vote for us anyway". An Obama attack on Israel would stretch the quasi-religious devotion of American Jews for the Democratic Party beyond the breaking point.
You're an optimist. The jewish block voting is so solidly wired in that they'll give up Israel first.
It's not a matter of not knowing what's been going on under the dems.
It's a matter of insisting to oneself that, if necessary, even Israel doesn't matter. What matters is the bone-deep identification with dems and liberalism.
Nothing supercedes that.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
03/17/2010 19:18 Comments ||
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#12
Among other, RADICAL ISLAM is working hard to destabilize parts parts of CENTRAL-EAST-SOUTH ASIA, + AFRICA ins order to make a US = US-ISRAELI WAR ON IRAN IRRELEVANT SAVE TO INDUCE THE US TO WASTE/EXPEND ITS VOLUNTEER ARMY + RELATED RESOURCES, besides also to control ASIA'S NUKES as complement to YEAR 2012 + IRAN'S ANTICIPATED WEAPONS NUCLEARIZATION.
Theres no reason for the US to attack Israel other than to PO the US Mainstream agz their own Govt [civil war].
"US President Barack Obama harbors anti-Semitism and the American Jews who voted for him are not pro-Israel, Dr. Hagi Ben-Artzi, the outspoken brother-in-law of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, said on Wednesday. In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, Ben-Artzi said it was no coincidence that the 78 percent of American Jews who voted for Obama was roughly the same percentage of Jews in the US who do not give their children a Jewish education."
...The Boston Tea Party would make a strange lodestar for an anti-American movement. The tea partiers certainly aren't dropping out' of the system; if they were, we wouldn't be talking about them. And they aren't reading Marxist tracts in a desire to tear down the system' either. They're reading Thomas Paine, the founders, and Friedrich Hayek in the perhaps naïve hope that they'll be able to restore the principles that are supposed to be guiding the system. (To the extent they're reading radicals such as Saul Alinsky, it's because they've been told that's the best way to understand his disciple in the White House.)
Restoration and destruction are hardly synonymous terms or desires. And maybe that's a better label for the tea parties: a political restoration movement, one that reflects our Constitution and the precepts of limited government....
...The elite' the restorationists dislike is better understood as a new class' (to borrow a phrase from the late Irving Kristol). The legendary economist Joseph Schumpeter predicted in 1942 that capitalism couldn't survive because capitalist prosperity would feed a new intellectual caste that would declare war on the bourgeois values and institutions that generate prosperity in the first place. When you hear that conservatives are anti-elitist, you should think they're really antinew class. Conservatives see this new class of managers, meddlers, planners, and scolds as a kind of would-be secular aristocracy empowered to declare war on traditional arrangements and make other decisions for your own good.'
And that's why Obama backlash is part of the culture war. Defenders of Obamacare, cap-and-trade, and the rest of the Democratic agenda insist that they're merely applying the principles of good governance and the lessons of sound, sober-minded policymaking. No doubt there's some truth to that, at least in terms of their motives. But from a broader perspective, it is obvious that theirs is a cultural agenda as well.
The quest for single-payer health care is not primarily grounded in good economics or in good politics but in a heartfelt ideological desire for social justice.' The constant debate over whether the European model' is better than ours often sounds like an empirical debate, but at its core it's a cultural and philosophical argument that stretches back more than a century.
The restorationists reside on one side of that debate, while the Obama administration and the bulk of the progressive establishment reside on the other. And that debate is far from over....
Posted by: Mike ||
03/17/2010 08:51 ||
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#1
The Tea Party movement is a grass roots movement made up of Republicans, discontented Democrats, Libertarians, and independents. There are other groups that fall ideolgically within this rapidly growing movement. These folks do not want the hard-left, big-spending, central control-oriented direction of the current administration.
#2
Restoration, in this case, should be equated with "error correction", which can be categorized into groups:
1) Original error. Inherent flaws in the constitution, which have long been known.
2) Executive errors. The POTUS and VPOTUS need to be limited to acting only through senate approved cabinet officers, who can themselves be impeached. No "Czars", very limited recess appointments, memorandums or signing statements. No more takings of State lands by presidential whim.
3) Legislative errors. Mostly the 16th and 17th Amendments, the over-extrapolation of the 14th Amendment, the Interstate Commerce and General Welfare Clauses, and the delegation of authority to the bureaucracy.
4) Judicial errors. Legal precedents that have taken on a life of their own, far beyond their original intent, such as corporate civil rights, over-broad appellate authority, forced State appropriation of money and the use of special masters. Both civil and criminal legal reform, as well as structural reform of the judiciary.
5) Treaty abrogation, where such treaties violate US sovereignty.
6) Incorporation of such amendments that are needed to establish ideas now only in law, such as a War Powers and Posse Comitatus Acts.
#3
One view of the original American Revolution is that the objective at the beginning was a return to the autonomous colonies status [benign neglect] they enjoyed prior to the Seven Years War/French and Indian War. It was the actions of the government in London to impose authority and rule over the colonies after that war that created the agitations that lead to the conflict.
What that set in motion is something we face today. One little small phrase 'all men are created equal' would ensure that no stability will ever happen and that chaos would be a reoccurring aspect of the American Democracy. Nature is hierarchical and territorial. The American concept flies in face of nature. It is the mutant form of social organization compared to the vast majority of others. There is no acceptance of a 'natural' set of governed and governing in the culture. When the society and system slide towards the natural side there is a reaction to it. There is a throwing out of the old order who've become comfortable and smug in thinking themselves the natural governing by deed, word, or actions. Most Americans want to be left alone to do their own thing, raise a family, or get on in life. They generally don't want to be part of a political process. However, every now and then the people who do engage in public business get too powerful, too overreaching, too corrupt, they awaken that population who say 'enough is enough'. We are not ruled. There is no consent. This is one of those times. They will be interesting times.
#4
However, every now and then the people who do engage in public business get too powerful, too overreaching, too corrupt, they awaken that population who say 'enough is enough'. We are not ruled. There is no consent. This is one of those times. They will be interesting times.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Police officers who worked at the World Trade Center site in the weeks following its collapse from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack may be at greater risk for impaired heart function than other people, a study found. 
