Archive for December, 2014
Gaza City – Since this summer’s devastating war in the Gaza Strip, the number of patients seeking help from the Gaza Community Centre’s mental health programme has jumped by close to 50 percent.
The centre, which previously handled about 15 patients daily, is now seeing up to 25, administrators say – and the Gaza City centre is just one of three branches of Gaza’s mental health network. The NGO’s psychiatry, social work and physiotherapy services are available for free to residents, but social stigma still prevents an untold number from seeking help.
Psychologist Hasan Zeyada spoke with Al Jazeera about the challenges facing Gazans in the wake of a war that killed 2,200 Palestinians, and amid an ongoing, crippling siege.
Al Jazeera: How has your patient load changed since the summer war?
Hasan Zeyada: We have more cases that are referred to our centres. It’s the immediate reaction after war. A lot of people had psychological and behavioural consequences because of the trauma during the military Israeli aggression. A lot of people, they are in need of consultation, they are in need of intervention. We started to do our intervention immediately through field visits for the families who lost their homes and lost their family members, and for the injured people…
“The war was brutal and it was for a long time, and it’s the third experience for the children here in Gaza, so a lot of people have already developed acute stress disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. They are in need of intervention.”
::: click on through to piece in full @ Al Jazeera :::
This is not your sanitized, Hollywood version of Dr. King.As “Selma” opens in a number of cities this week and expands to nationwide release in a couple of weeks, the country is given a chance to assess the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement. Doing so is particularly relevant right now, in light of boisterous protests against police brutality that have been going on since the summer…
…just click image for piece in full @ AlterNet…
Doubts as water from giant China South North Water Diversion Project reaches capital
http://t.co/0xjqZvJcRWhttp://t.co/gGIeKsj6kZ
Prayer vigil held in New York for slain police officer
http://t.co/jzOcfZ2HKchttp://t.co/jiMBTQnhFn
Malaysia’s worst flooding in decades has forced some 118,000 people to flee their homes http://t.co/lx2IeJhDPGhttp://t.co/dAX4MGDm7n
Swedish protesters denounce mosque arson attack
Orphaned by 2004 tsunami, UK flip-flop kings repay Sri Lankan kindness
Chief UN investigator of North Korean human rights abuses, Michael Kirby, discusses the allegations of crimes against humanity:
North Korea is truly a totalitarian state … It is not content to take control of the physical lives of the citizens, it has to intrude into their way of thinking, into their attitudes to government … [It implements] the system of characterising citizens according to their loyalty to the government and the party. This is truly a state without any real equivalent in the modern world.
Michael Kirby
The UN-mandated inquiry team says the country’s leadership should be hauled before at the International Criminal Court:
…the inquiry found that pregnant women are starved, while their babies are fed rats and snakes; more than 100,000 people are in gulags; there is systematic torture; everyone is forced to inform on each other; entire communities are denied adequate food; and the bodies of the dead…
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In “First Class,” LEAP takes a look at at contemporary art education from the bottom up, thinking in terms of learning rather than teaching; we invite educators, curators, and artists—especially those who have recently left school—to share their experiences of self-education, and to discuss the possibilities of a hidden curriculum.
McKenzie Wark introduces a perfect example of interdisciplinary thinking—Joseph Needham. According to Needham, the processes of thought and movement would dominate the his future plans, not only for understanding biological systems or the social structure of China’s past, but to infer the outcome of current and future social systems. Karen Archey explores German artist Isa Genzken’s practice, demonstrating her unique sense of artistic “fun.” Through an interpretation of Yu Cheng-Ta’s new work “Practicing LIVE,” Rikey Cheng expands on the alienation of the piece’s creation, improvisational structures, imitation, irony, and self-referentiality.
In our regular column “My Miles,” we interview Korean artist Haegue Yang, exploring how her practice is tied to her cultural and linguistic backgrounds, travels, and other abstract narratives; “Shop Talk” analyzes the ways in which Liu Xinyi’s work is grounded in political histories of text and image; in “On Canvas,” Song Yi attempts to decipher Liu Chuanhong’s Memoir in Southern Anhui, in which every possible medium is brought into play to convey Liu’s dreamscape; and “New Directions” brings in two young artists, Wang Xin and Austin Lee. In addition, you’ll also read about Guccivuitton, an artist-run gallery in Miami Beach, in “Institutional Critique”; the architectural exhibition “Modernism Revisited,” which stresses an exploration of modernism neglected by mainstream purview; the excavation of “Exhibition and Expediency” in Huang Sun Quan’s new solo exhibition; and a semi-fictional piece from Indonesia by Adam Bobbette.
As Australia picked up its shameful fourth Fossil of the Day award at the Lima climate talks Thursday (11/12/14), Climate Action Tracker (CAT) released a new analysis showing that creative accounting and years of diplomatic manoeuvring are allowing Australia to increase emissions while still meeting its minimum five per cent reduction commitment. CAT says in real terms Australia’s emissions are likely to be 26 per cent above 2000 levels by 2020, and a huge 47-59 per cent above its original Kyoto pledge.
Yet while its actual emissions are soaring, Australia can still meet its already lax commitments with barely any action thanks to being selective on baseline emission sources, and its creative approach to accounting for land use change and forestry. Australia has now taken to making threats if it is not allowed to use these favourable rules, which would allow it to emit a further six per cent more carbon on top of its already worst-in-show per capita emissions.
abstract…
In slapstick comedy, the worst thing that could happen usually does: The person with a sore toe manages to stub it, sometimes twice. Such errors also arise in daily life, and research traces the tendency to do precisely the worst thing to ironic processes of mental control. These monitoring processes keep us watchful for errors of thought, speech, and action and enable us to avoid the worst thing in most situations, but they also increase the likelihood of such errors when we attempt to exert control under mental load (stress, time pressure, or distraction).
Ironic errors in attention and memory occur with identifiable brain activity and prompt recurrent unwanted thoughts;…piece in full pdf below…
| Author: | Wegner, Daniel M. |
| Citation: | Wegner, Daniel M. 2009. How to think, say, or do precisely the worst thing for any occasion. Science 325(5936): 48-50. |
| Full Text & Related Files: | Worst_Thing.pdf (229.5Kb; PDF) |
extract…
International law prohibits the granting of immunities to public officials who have engaged in acts of torture. This applies not only to the actual perpetrators but also to those senior officials within the US Government who devised, planned and authorised these crimes.
As a matter of international law, the US is legally obliged to bring those responsible to justice. The UN Convention Against Torture and the UN Convention on Enforced Disappearances require States to prosecute acts of torture and enforced disappearance where there is sufficient evidence to provide a reasonable prospect of conviction. States are not free to maintain or permit impunity for these grave crimes.
It is no defence for a public official to claim that they were acting on superior orders. CIA officers who physically committed acts of torture therefore bear individual criminal responsibility for their conduct, and cannot hide behind the authorisation they were given by their superiors.
However, the heaviest penalties should be reserved for those most seriously implicated in the planning and purported authorisation of these crimes. Former Bush Administration officials who have admitted their involvement in the programme should also face criminal prosecution for their acts.
President Obama made it clear more than five years ago that the US Government recognises the use of waterboarding as torture. There is therefore no excuse for shielding the perpetrators from justice any longer. The US Attorney General is under a legal duty to bring criminal charges against those responsible.
Torture is a crime of universal jurisdiction. The perpetrators may be prosecuted by any other country they may travel to. However, the primary responsibility for bringing them to justice rests with the US Department of Justice and the Attorney General.”
(*) Check the Special Rapporteur’s full report: http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/RegularSession/Session22/A-HRC-22-52_en.pdf
Ben Emmerson (United Kingdom) is the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism. On 1 August 2011, he took up his functions on the mandate that was created in 2005 by the former United Nations Commission on Human, renewed by the UN Human Rights Council for a three year period in December 2007, in September 2010 and again in March 2013. As Special Rapporteur he is independent from any Government and serves in his individual capacity. Learn more, log on to:http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Terrorism/Pages/SRTerrorismIndex.aspx
The Special Rapporteurs are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Council’s independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures’ experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity.
UN Human Rights, country page – United States of America: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Countries/ENACARegion/Pages/USIndex.aspx
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Those who toil for Big Dairy face vile and often dangerous conditions. BY JOSEPH SORRENTINO
Retirees stand to lose as Congress nears a vote on the changing private pension law. BY COLE STANGLER
Some activists are trying to beat back the tide of the market. BY YANA KUNICHOFF
We can’t change the grand jury’s verdict, but we can require police to wear body cameras. BY IAN REIFOWITZ
Big banks are more than happy to take workers’ retirement funds–as long as those workers don’t want to know what the banks are doing with the money. BY DAVID SIROTA
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| WORKING IN THESE TIMES |
| A Chicago Teacher Explains How Her School Fought Back Against Standardized Testing–And Won
Parents, teachers and students worked together to lead a successful standardized testing boycott. BY SARAH CHAMBERS |
“Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong”
William D. Nordhaus is Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale. (March 2012)
His evidence based article is freely available below and above at
the New York Review of Books…
www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/22/why-global-warming-skeptics-are-wrong/
Australia’s status as a climate wrecker at last years UN climate meeting in Warsaw (COP19) is deteriorating even further this week, with the gulf between the Abbott government’s actions on climate change and its rhetoric growing wider and more confusing by the day.
The Government was planning to not send a minister to the latest climate meeting in Lima (COP20), until Foreign Minister Julie Bishop forced the issue in cabinet. Her request was approved on the proviso Trade Minister Andrew Robb “chaperoned” the trip due to “the significant economic and investment matters involved”. This statement is totally at odds with the Government’s fight to stop climate change being discussed at the G20 given it was an “economic meeting”. Allegedly leaked talking points from the Prime Minister’s office show that it is spinning its grudging allowance of Bishop to attend COP20 with Robb in tow as a sign of its “commitment to dealing with climate change”, but the attendance of the Foreign Affairs and Trade ministers instead of the Environmental Minister has also been dubbed an attempt to set up the climate talks to fail. Either way, the move appears to again be for show, not action, with the Government refusing to contribute to the Green Climate Fund when even conservative buddies Canada and New Zealand are.
Australia has already won two Fossil of the Day awards, and with it being named the worst performing industrial economy on climate change and Julie Bishop talking down unprecedented moves by China to cap coal use and emissions as “business as usual to 2030″, it is quite likely it could see a repeat of the five fossil awards it picked up at COP19.
Rupert Murdoch ordered editors to ‘kill Whitlam’, according to US diplomatic cables
http://t.co/9SA0wmTT06 #auspol
Rupert Murdoch ordered editors to ‘kill Whitlam’, according to US diplomatic cables #auspol
Document date: 2014-10-20 23:54:11
Released date: 2014-10-20 23:54:11
‘A treasurer under siege, a foreign minister in a sulk and a defence minister about to be forced to walk the plank.
December 2014
…Mexico, a massacre too far; Ukraine’s uncertain east; Afghans fearful as West pulls back;US, philanthropy or welfare? Italy stems migration; South Africa’s own subprime crisis;fall of France’s man in Africa; China’s workers strike; media information belongs to us all;scripting the future … and more…::: click cover to access :::
the interpretOr 