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Thursday, January 31, 2013
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
MySpace
Let me be perfectly honest. I'm over Facebook, to the point that I feel annoyed when I check in on my social network and find absolutely nothing of interest to me. With Twitter, I run hot and cold, some days enjoying the spontaneity and other times feeling like I'm not in sync with my network. Google+ is fine in theory, but remains fairly dry in practice. I am ripe for being drawn into a new social network, and surely many others are, too. The time is right for the next big thing. But could the next big thing just happen to be an old one reinvented? Is MySpace back?
The newly redesigned, revamped, retooled, refocused, and finally relaunched MySpace feels young, fluid, and sexy. It's so completely different from the original MySpace that I can't believe it doesn't have a new name, carrying that old brand and tarnished history around with it for no good reason. The interface so deftly integrates an ever-present music player that I wonder if MySpace is competing with the likes of Facebook and Twitter or iTunes and Spotify... or possibly both. Then again, maybe it competes with neither. The new MySpace shakes off all previous conceptions of social networking to truly become its own thing. If you're into exploring new music, it'll be your thing, too.
Sign Up
From New.MySpace.com, you can sign into the network with an existing MySpace username and password, or if (like me) you deleted that account years ago, you can sign up for a brand new one. You can join using credentials from Facebook or Twitter, which I wish I had done. I signed up via email and later realized I had no way of finding actual friends with whom I might want to connect other than individually sending them an invitation by email. I couldn't find an option after-the-fact to connect to another social network or email people en mass through Gmail, Yahoo! Mail or any of the other usual channels.
In signing up, you can opt for a public or restricted profile, something I always like to see. You can change that status at any time in the future in the settings.
For several years, MySpace has retooled its focus to be squarely on "entertainment," and more specifically than that, music. When you sign up, you can select whether you're a musician, photographer, DJ, promoter, or other kind of artist (including "writer/journalist") or just a fan, and there's an option to skip the step entirely if you prefer to not label yourself.
Fresh Design
Landing inside the new MySpace jolted me for a few moments while I got my bearings on the outrageously unconventional but hugely intriguing (and ultimately successful) design. Instead of vertical scrolling, everything moves horizontally. Instead of cramming little strips of text into a news feed, oversized text and images fill the screen, loudly and proudly. Even the search box launches into its own screen where massive point sized text in all caps nearly pops off the page.
The crux of MySpace is playing music while exploring the network. A music player remains ever-present at the bottom of the screen. Hover over it, and more controls and visibility into your recent play list appear. Surf around the site, and you can play songs, watch music videos, and even listen to radio stations based on genre. Music videos take over the full screen, with a small palette of controls tucked beneath the right edge of the screen and only visible when you mouse in that direction or scroll while the video plays.
What's Inside the Network?
Sure, you can connect with your friends on MySpace, but I get the sense that's not really the point. The point, if I'm to take the very unsubtle hints from the interface and interactive design, is to explore artists, mostly musicians, and listen to their music while looking for something else that's cool, new, unique, or as-yet undiscovered.
The worst part of the new MySpace experience is finding real people who aren't musicians and figuring out what else there is to do, as exploring music gets old fast if you're not into new music or (truth be told for me) barely into music, period. You can cultivate playlists or "mixes" as they're called here, listen to playlists that other people have created, comment on videos and songs and music celebrities, but even all those activities are still focused on music. I managed to find a few videos that were trailers for movies, but other than that, everything really revolves around music.
As mentioned, I couldn't find any easy methods that would allow me to find friends of mine who are already MySpace members. The search function doesn't have advanced features for finding people who meet multiple criteria, like city of residence of work, as LinkedIn has.
New MySpace for Music Lovers
The new MySpace has so much young, sexy, fresh, and innovative energy that I really do recommend most people who work in technology or the entertainment industry sign up immediately. At the very least, if music isn't really your scene, go to explore the intriguing design choices. It probably won't become "the next big thing" in social networking to rival Facebook, but I don't think it's trying to attract the same broad spectrum of people that Facebook has?grandparents and teenagers and major international companies and brands. MySpace has an edgy coolness factor that would be stripped away quickly if it attracted too many of the wrong people. Maybe that makes it a bit exclusive, but what's cooler than exclusivity?
More Internet Reviews:?
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/cd6jHXSIUK0/0,2817,2414743,00.asp
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Acne treatment ? The best way to boost your self esteem | Tips on ...
Acne is a common problem that occurs on skin of both men and women. The problem becomes so severe that people sometimes face embarrassment to go out or meet other individuals. Acne is a condition that can become really frustrating. Acne can also take different forms. These appear as the following:
a) Whiteheads
b) Blackheads
c) Blemishes
People are usually advised to go for successful treatment via meeting a professional. Meeting a dermatologist will provide you a clear view of what phase of acne your skin is facing. One may also face low self esteem due to all the problems and meeting with a dermatologist has on the mind.
There are several forms of acne that would explain the treatment and difficulty one needs to face. There are several treatment products available to treat acne. Treating acne is very important to boost one?s self esteem. When your facial skin faces problems, it is the time when your self esteem takes a toll. Fortunately, there are several to treat acne, these days. A ton of products are widely available and many hardworking and talented dermatologists are ready to help you in this regard.
You may try some of these products available on the market that claim to be effective enough to treat acne. Meeting a professional would also be very effective. In addition to using all the items available for treatment on the market place and meeting a professional, you must do the following. The tips mentioned below will help you to treat acne effectively and boost your self esteem.
a) Exercise regularly:
You need to exercise regularly in order to keep your body in a healthy condition. This will also build up your immune system.
b) Diet:
You need to maintain a healthy diet. Try to include at least five servings of fresh fruit and vegetables. You also need to consume at least eight glasses of water. This will keep your system clean and also cleanse your body.
c) Clean:
You need to focus on washing and cleaning your face thoroughly with a medicated soap or mild face wash. Make sure you remove all the cosmetics before, going to bed.
It may be possible to take a long time to notice visible results when undergoing treatment for acne. Hence, you need to exercise patience. Once you start the treatment, you would certainly notice a boost in your self esteem. However, to get desired results, you need to carry out the treatment for the prescribed period and not give up on it at any cost.
Make sure, you stay from any kind of stress. Once you go through acne treatment, you would notice a lift in your self esteem. Make a choice for your acne treatment wisely. All your efforts and hard work is surely going to give you good results.
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Tags: acne treatment for men, acne treatment for women, acne treatment skin, how to treat acne naturally, skin treatments for acne, treat acne, treating acne, treatment of acneSource: http://www.foodfitnesslifelove.com/beauty/acne-treatment-the-best-way-to-boost-your-self-esteem/
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Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Refugees again, Palestinians flee Syria's war
EIN EL-HILWEH, Lebanon (AP) ? When Syrian warplanes bombed a Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus last December, Umm Sami rounded up her three sons, shut the windows and locked the doors so they could neither hear nor heed the call to arms by rebels and pro-government gunmen fighting in the streets.
Then she told her sons they were leaving their home in the Yarmouk refugee camp in the Syrian capital for neighboring Lebanon, where they would wait out Syria's civil war.
"There will be no more martyrs for Palestine in my family," the 45-year-old widow said. "This war is a Syrian problem."
Now safe in Lebanon, Umm Sami and her family have joined thousands of other Palestinian refugees who have found shelter in the country since the uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad erupted nearly two years ago. The conflict has left more than 2 million people internally displaced, and pushed 650,000 more to seek refuge abroad.
Umm Sami's resolve to keep her sons out of the fight in Syria ties into a deep-rooted sentiment among a generation of Palestinian refugees who say they are fed up with being dragged into the region's conflicts on a promise of getting their own state.
The Palestinian exodus from Syria has also revived a decades-old debate over the refugees' right of return to their homes that are now in Israel. That has added another layer of complexity to a conflict already loaded with sectarian and ethnic overtones that have spilled over into neighboring countries, raising fears of a regional war.
Palestinians living in Arab countries ? including the half-million refugees in Syria ? are descendants of the hundreds of thousands who fled or were driven from their homes in the war that followed Israel's creation in 1948. Having scattered across the Middle East since then, Palestinians consistently have found themselves in the middle of the region's conflicts.
After the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq toppled Saddam Hussein, hundreds of Palestinians were killed as the Sunni and Shiite militias fought for dominance of the country. Iraq's Shiite majority saw Saddam, who like most Palestinians was a Sunni Muslim, as a patron of the stateless Palestinians, granting them rights the dictator denied his own citizens because they were of the rival sect.
About 1,000 Palestinians fled the 2004-07 sectarian bloodshed in Baghdad, living in a refugee camp near the Syrian border before being resettled in third countries.
During Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war, Palestinians played a major role, fighting alongside Muslim militiamen against Christian forces.
Umm Sami, who was born in a refugee camp in Lebanon before the war, was twice forced to flee the fighting, most notably in 1982 when her family escaped the Sabra and Chatilla camps during the notorious massacre of Palestinians there by Christian militias.
She would eventually bury her father, two brothers and her husband ? all fallen fighters ? before leaving for Syria and settling with her four sons in Yarmouk, one of nine Palestinian camps in Syria.
Her youngest son died in a traffic accident while serving in the Palestinian unit of the Syrian army just weeks before the anti-Assad revolt started in March 2011. None of her other sons joined the revolution, she said, because "they don't want to die."
Unlike in Lebanon, where Palestinians are cramped into notoriously lawless camps, banned from all but the most menial professions and barred from owning property, Palestinians in Syria are well integrated and enjoy full citizenship rights, except for the right to vote.
But when the uprising against Assad erupted in the southern province of Daraa in March 2011, some Palestinians living in a camp there joined in the peaceful protests. When the fighting spread to the northern city of Aleppo in last summer, some took up arms against the regime.
In Damascus, most stayed on the sidelines, but as the civil war reached Yarmouk late last year, a densely populated residential area just 8 kilometers (5 miles) from the heart of the capital, most residents backed the rebels. Some groups, however, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, opted to fight alongside Assad's troops.
Palestinian officials say more than 700 Palestinians have been killed in the Yarmouk fighting. Most of the camp's 150,000 inhabitants have fled, according to the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees. Some of them have found safe haven in areas of Damascus and other Syrian cities, but most have escaped to camps in Lebanon.
"We go from catastrophe to catastrophe, from refugee camp to refugee camp, but at least we are alive," Umm Sami said in Ein el-Hilweh, Lebanon's largest Palestinian refugee camp, near the southern port city of Sidon. She and her sons, who are all in their 20s and university graduates, fled Yarmouk with only the clothes on their backs, leaving behind a two-bedroom apartment and jobs that paid the bills.
Now, they are jobless in Lebanon, officially barred from legal employment, and left to live off help from relatives and handouts from the camp's mosques.
Ein en-Hilweh normally houses 65,000 people, but since mid-December, when a flood of refugees from Yarmouk started arriving, the population has steadily grown by several hundred a day, putting a further strain on resources.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he asked U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon last month to seek Israeli permission to bring Palestinians caught in Syria's civil war to their homeland. Last week, he said that Israel agreed to allow 150,000 Palestinians refugees from Syrian into the West Bank and Gaza ? as long as they relinquished the right of return to what is now Israel. Abbas said he refused.
With no end to the Syria conflict in sight, residents of Ein el-Hilweh have started building a camp within a refugee camp for their compatriots escaping the violence across the border.
They've converted the camp's children's library into housing for dozens of families. Reading rooms, offices, hallways and even bathrooms have been partitioned with makeshift walls, boards and even blankets as families try to carve out space to cook, eat and sleep.
In the library's front yard, a new structure is being built to house at least 10 more families.
"We do what we can to help and find them a home, because they are not going back to Syria soon," said Sheik Jamal Khatab, who oversees the registration of refugees and distribution of aid.
The biggest challenge facing the Palestinian refugees, Khatab said, is not to be dragged into the Syrian civil war ? on either side. He also warned that the hardship awaiting Palestinians after the war ends will be tougher than the one they have been living as stateless people.
"It's in our interest not to interfere in this conflict, even though the Syrian regime is a tyrannical regime," he said. "We are not Syrians, and any side that will win this war will consider us enemies."
___
Associated Press writers Mohammed Daraghmeh in Ramallah, West Bank, and Sameer N. Yacoub in Baghdad contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/refugees-again-palestinians-flee-syrias-war-063528290.html
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FACT CHECK: The stretched case against Chuck Hagel
FILE - This Jan. 7, 2013 file photo shows former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, President Barack Obama's choice for defense secretary, speaking in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
FILE - This Jan. 7, 2013 file photo shows former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, President Barack Obama's choice for defense secretary, speaking in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
FILE - This Jan. 7, 2013 file photo shows former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, president Barack Obama's choice for defense secretary, speaking in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
FILE - In this Jan. 7, 2013 file photo, President Barack Obama, left, shakes hands with his choice for Defense Secretary, former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, after announcing Hagel's nomination in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Republican-leaning groups opposing President Barack Obama's choice of Chuck Hagel to head the Defense Department have let loose a barrage of claims about the former GOP senator.
They say he endorses automatic cuts to the defense budget, that he wants to decimate the nation's nuclear arsenal, that his membership on the board of a major company that had a Pentagon contract is a conflict of interest that he's ignoring.
A look at Hagel's record suggests many of the contentions are overblown.
In statements and attack ads, the groups have sought to undermine Hagel's nomination in the weeks leading up to his confirmation hearing on Thursday before the Senate Armed Services Committee. His opponents face a tough challenge as Democrats have begun to rally around the president's choice, and the party has the majority votes to confirm the former two-term Nebraska senator, barring surprises.
Here's a look at the validity of some of the criticism of Hagel.
___
THE CLAIM: "We live in a dangerous world. Iran, North Korea, even Russia. But Barack Obama's nominee for secretary of defense wants America to back down. An end to our nuclear program. Devastating defense cuts. A weaker country."? An ad being run by Americans for a Stronger Defense in the home states of five Democratic senators up for re-election next year ? Alaska's Mark Begich, Arkansas' Mark Pryor, Louisiana's Mary Landrieu, Colorado's Mark Udall and North Carolina's Kay Hagan.
THE FACTS: Hagel has not proposed ending the nuclear weapons program, though he has supported deep cuts.
Hagel was co-author of a May 2012 study by the advocacy group Global Zero that called for an 80 percent reduction of U.S. nuclear weapons and elimination of all nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The group argued that with the Cold War over, the United States needs no more than 900 total nuclear weapons. Currently, the U.S. and Russia have about 5,000 each, either deployed or in reserve. Both countries are on track to reduce the deployed strategic warheads to 1,550 by 2018, the number set in the New START treaty that the Senate ratified in December 2010.
The study said: "These steps could be taken with Russia in unison through reciprocal presidential directives, negotiated in another round of bilateral arms reduction talks or implemented unilaterally." The report was by Hagel, former ambassadors Richard Burt and Thomas Pickering, retired Gen. James Cartwright, a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and retired Gen. John J. Sheehan.
An arsenal of 900 nuclear weapons would not be an "end" to the U.S. nuclear program, but Hagel and the organization did raise the possibility of unilateral reductions. In a statement Monday, Burt and others defended Hagel and dismissed suggestions that they were "unilateralists."
The group running this anti-Hagel ad was formed recently and offers little information about itself on its website. Board member Mauricio Claver-Carone also is director of the US Cuba Democracy Advocates in Washington and favors tighter restrictions on the Castro government.
___
THE CLAIM: "Opposition is growing even more due to his support for sequestration of the military: huge budget cuts that the Joints Chiefs have already warned the Senate Armed Forces Committee would result in a 'hollow force.'" ? A Jan. 22 statement from Move America Forward, a California-based group founded by conservatives in 2004 to show support for U.S. troops.
THE FACTS: The group offered no evidence Hagel supports sequestration, the budget mechanism that will mean automatic, across-the-board spending cuts March 1 if Congress does not act to avert them. The White House says he opposes the mechanism, which came into play after Hagel left the Senate.
To be sure, Hagel has spoken about cutting Pentagon spending. In a 2011 interview with the Financial Times, Hagel said, "the Defense Department, I think in many ways, has been bloated" and "has gotten everything it's wanted the last 10 years and more."
The base defense budget has nearly doubled over 10 years, to about $528 billion this year. That doesn't include the billions spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Obama and congressional Republicans agreed in August 2011 on a deficit-cutting plan that would cut $487 billion from projected defense spending over 10 years. Democrats and Republicans also voted for automatic cuts of $55 billion this year if a special congressional panel can't come up with a sweeping deficit-cutting plan.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has warned against the approach of across-the-board cuts, and Hagel has given no sign that he has a different view.
___
THE CLAIM: "Now Hagel sits on the board of Chevron, which receives hundreds of millions in Pentagon contracts. ... How can Chuck Hagel run the Pentagon with so many ethical questions about his own record?" ? Ad by the American Future Fund, which is running a "Hagel No" campaign. The group describes itself as advocating conservative, free-market ideals.
THE FACTS: It's widely assumed that Hagel will be leaving the Chevron board, a move common for nominees who face the prospect of such ethical conflicts. The Senate Armed Services Committee has some of the most stringent rules for nominees for senior civilian positions in the Defense Department. The panel requires nominees to divest all financial interests in companies doing business with the department. Stepping down from any board would certainly be required.
The committee bases its decisions on the Defense Department list of companies with contracts valued at $25,000 or more. The list is 330 pages long and includes Chevron.
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Housing Recovery is Halfway Back to Normal | Keller Williams ...
Each month, Trulia?s Housing Barometer charts how quickly the housing market is moving back to ?normal.? We summarize three key housing market indicators: construction starts (Census), existing home sales (NAR), and the delinquency-plus-foreclosure rate (LPS First Look). For each indicator, we compare this month?s data to (1) how bad the numbers got at their worst and (2) their pre-bubble ?normal? levels.
In November 2012, home sales saw strong increases, and the delinquency-and-foreclosure rate held steady ? both signs of market improvement. However, new construction starts declined.
Hurricane Sandy appears to have lowered construction (and sales, to a lesser extent) in the Northeast. Average monthly construction starts were 14 percent higher nationally in October and November ? the months affected by Sandy ? than in the previous four months, but 5 percent lower in the Northeast. Average monthly home sales were 7 percent higher nationally in October and November than in the previous four months, but just 3 percent higher in the Northeast.
Construction starts dipped in November but remain strong. Starts in November were at an 861,000 annualized rate, down 3 percent month-over-month and up 22 percent year-over-year. For the past three months, construction starts have remained solidly above 800,000 ? the highest level since September 2008. Nationally, construction starts are 37 percent of the way back to normal.
Existing home sales rose once again in November. After climbing in October, existing home sales rose 6 percent month-over-month to 5.04 million in November?the highest level since November 2009. Sales are 73 percent back to normal. Even better, ?distressed? sales (foreclosures and short sales) represent a declining share of overall sales, making way for more ?conventional? home sales.
The delinquency-and-foreclosure rate maintained a new post-crisis low. In November, 10.63 percent of mortgages were delinquent or in foreclosure, down a hair from 10.64 percent in October. The combined delinquency-and-foreclosure rate is at its lowest level in four years and is 41 percent back to normal.
Averaging these three back-to-normal percentages together, the housing market is now 51 percent of the way back to normal, compared with 28 percent in November 2011. Trulia?s Housing Barometer has jumped 5 points in each of the last two months. Does halfway back to normal mean the glass is half-full or half-empty? The half-empty view is that our three housing measures hit bottom (on average) in 2009, so it?s taken the market a long time-three years-to get to the halfway mark. But the half-full view is that halfway back to normal is better than anyone ? myself included ? predicted for 2012 at the start of this year.
By Jed Kolko, Trulia Chief Economist www.realestate.aol.com
Source: http://www.kwcalabasas.com/residential/housing-recovery-is-halfway-back-to-normal/
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Artificial pancreas: The way of the future for treating type 1 diabetes
Jan. 28, 2013 ? IRCM researchers, led by endocrinologist Dr. R?mi Rabasa-Lhoret, were the first to conduct a trial comparing a dual-hormone artificial pancreas with conventional diabetes treatment using an insulin pump and showed improved glucose levels and lower risks of hypoglycemia. Their results, published January 28 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), can have a great impact on the treatment of type 1 diabetes by accelerating the development of the external artificial pancreas.
The artificial pancreas is an automated system that simulates the normal pancreas by continuously adapting insulin delivery based on changes in glucose levels. The dual-hormone artificial pancreas tested at the IRCM controls glucose levels by automatically delivering insulin and glucagon, if necessary, based on continuous glucose monitor (CGM) readings and guided by an advanced algorithm.
"We found that the artificial pancreas improved glucose control by 15 per cent and significantly reduced the risk of hypoglycemia as compared with conventional insulin pump therapy," explains engineer Ahmad Haidar, first author of the study and doctoral student in Dr. Rabasa-Lhoret's research unit at the IRCM and at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at McGill University. "The artificial pancreas also resulted in an 8-fold reduction of the overall risk of hypoglycemia, and a 20-fold reduction of the risk of nocturnal hypoglycemia."
People living with type 1 diabetes must carefully manage their blood glucose levels to ensure they remain within a target range. Blood glucose control is the key to preventing serious long-term complications related to high glucose levels (such as blindness or kidney failure) and reduces the risk of hypoglycemia (dangerously low blood glucose that can lead to confusion, disorientation and, if severe, loss of consciousness).
"Approximately two-thirds of patients don't achieve their target range with current treatments," says Dr. Rabasa-Lhoret, Director of the Obesity, Metabolism and Diabetes research clinic at the IRCM. "The artificial pancreas could help them reach these targets and reduce the risk of hypoglycemia, which is feared by most patients and remains the most common adverse effect of insulin therapy. In fact, nocturnal hypoglycemia is the main barrier to reaching glycemic targets."
"Infusion pumps and glucose sensors are already commercially-available, but patients must frequently check the sensor and adjust the pump's output," says Mr. Haidar. "To liberate them from this sizable challenge, we needed to find a way for the sensor to talk to the pump directly. So we developed an intelligent dosing algorithm, which is the brain of the system. It can constantly recalculate insulin dosing based on changing glucose levels, in a similar way to the GPS system in a car, which recalculates directions according to traffic or an itinerary change."
The researchers' algorithm, which could eventually be integrated as software into a smart phone, receives data from the CGM, calculates the required insulin (and glucagon, if needed) and wirelessly controls the pump to automatically administer the proper doses without intervention by the patient.
"The system we tested more closely mimics a normal pancreas by secreting both insulin and glucagon," adds Dr. Laurent Legault, peadiatric endocrinologist and outgoing Director of the Insulin Pump Centre at the Montreal Children's Hospital, and co-author of the study. "While insulin lowers blood glucose levels, glucagon has the opposite effect and raises glucose levels. Glucagon can protect against hypoglycemia if a patient with diabetes miscalculates the necessary insulin dose."
"Our work is exciting because the artificial pancreas has the potential to substantially improve the management of diabetes and reduce daily frustrations for patients," concludes Dr. Rabasa-Lhoret. "We are pursuing our clinical trials to test the system for longer periods and with different age groups. It will then probably be introduced gradually to clinical practice, using insulin alone, with early generations focusing on overnight glucose controls."
This study was conducted with 15 adult patients with type 1 diabetes, who had been using an insulin pump for at least three months. Patients were admitted twice to the IRCM's clinical research facility and received, in random order, both treatments: the dual-hormone artificial pancreas and the conventional insulin pump therapy. During each 15-hour visit, their blood glucose levels were monitored as they exercised on a stationary bike, received an evening meal and a bedtime snack, and slept at the facility overnight.
Dr. Rabasa-Lhoret's research is funded by Diabetes Qu?bec, the Canadian Diabetes Association, and the IRCM's J.A. De S?ve Chair in clinical research. IRCM collaborators who contributed to study include Maryse Dallaire, Ammar Alkhateeb, Ad?le Coriati, Virginie Messier and Maude Millette.
About diabetes
Type-1 diabetes is a chronic, incurable disease that occurs when the body doesn't produce enough or any insulin, leading to an excess of sugar in the blood. It occurs most often in children, adolescents or young adults. People with type-1 diabetes depend on insulin to live, either through daily injections or with a pump. Diabetes is a major cause of vision loss, kidney and cardiovascular diseases.
According to the Canadian Diabetes Association, an estimated 285 million people worldwide are affected by diabetes, approximately 10 per cent of which have type 1 diabetes. With a further 7 million people developing diabetes each year, this number is expected to hit 438 million by 2030, making it a global epidemic.?
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Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Institut de recherches cliniques de Montreal.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Ahmad Haidar, Laurent Legault, Maryse Dallaire, Ammar Alkhateeb, Ad?le Coriati, Virginie Messier, Peiyao Cheng, Maude Millette, Benoit Boulet, Chiu-Ching Huang, R?mi Rabasa-Lhoret. Glucose-responsive insulin and glucagon delivery (dual-hormone artificial pancreas) in adults with type 1 diabetes: a randomized crossover controlled trial. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 2013 DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.121265
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/IsBFXJa7YCU/130128151928.htm
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10 dead Borneo pygmy elephants feared poisoned
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) ? Ten endangered Borneo pygmy elephants have been found dead in a Malaysian forest under mysterious circumstances, and wildlife authorities suspect that they were poisoned.
The wildlife department in Malaysia's Sabah state on Borneo island says the elephant carcasses were found near each other over the past three weeks at the Gunung Rara Forest Reserve.
In one case, officers rescued a 3-month-old calf that was trying to wake its dead mother.
Sabah environmental minister Masidi Manjun said Tuesday that the elephants probably were poisoned. He says that if they were intentionally killed, "the culprits would be brought to justice."
The WWF wildlife group estimates that fewer than 1,500 Borneo pygmy elephants exist. They live mainly in Sabah and are known for their babyish faces, large ears and long tails.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/10-dead-borneo-pygmy-elephants-feared-poisoned-054810375.html
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Monday, January 28, 2013
The Feminist Assault on the Military | rip and reader
Editor?s note: With the Pentagon?s recent elimination of the ban against? women serving in combat, Frontpage editors have deemed it important to reprint an article written by David Horowitz twenty years ago that now, for obvious reasons, proves extremely relevant to the issue at hand. [David Horowitz, "The Feminist Assault on the Military," Center for the Study of Popular Culture, October 5, 1992.]:
For nearly two decades after the Sixties, the U.S. military remained the one institution that had withstood the baleful influences of the radical left. Now that the cold war is over, this immunity appears to have ended. A series of relatively trivial incidents ? a joke about women?s sexual excuses, a skit with sexual innuendos mocking a female member of Congress ? and a drunken party at which crotches were grabbed in a gantlet ritual, have triggered a national hysteria and a political witch-hunt ? referred to in the media as ?the tailhook scandal? that is threatening the very foundations of the military establishment.
Already, the witch-hunt has terminated or blighted the careers of a Secretary of the Navy, four Admirals, a military aide to the president, and three ?top gun? flight commanders. A question mark has been placed over the careers of thousands of naval and marine officers. And every male in the navy judged guilty under the draconian law of the new puritanism before the fact ? has been condemned to eight hours of re-education in ?sensitivity training? classes, designed ? as in a latter-day Salem-to purify their souls.
The dimensions of what is happening are only dimly appreciated by the American public. The case of three-star Admiral John H. Fetterman Jr., a naval aviator with thirty-seven years of service, provides some clues. A family man with conservative moral values and a reputation for honesty and integrity, Fetterman had earned respect as the ?people?s Admiral,? for his concern for the ?little guy,? and for his advocacy of a wider role for women in the Navy. Capping his long and distinguished career, he had headed the Navy?s air forces in the Pacific before being appointed chief of naval education and training, the Navy?s number one shore command. A month after the Tailhook revelations, Fetterman was busted in rank. Days later, he took an early retirement.
Fetterman?s crime? He had been accused over a harassment ?hotline? of shielding an aide from naval investigators. The aide, a chief petty officer, had made a pass, while drunk, at another enlisted man. In less fevered circumstances this incident might have slipped by without notice. But in the wake of Tailhook, the furies of sexual purity demanded blood. (One female officer, among the hundreds who rallied to Fetterman?s support, told the San Diego Union in horror, ?They?re going after the wrong admiral. This shows you the whole world is upside down.?)
In justifying an otherwise incomprehensible act against one of its most respected commanders, the Navy hierarchy reached for the blunt instrument of innuendo. In an official statement, the Navy said that the relationship of Fetterman and his wife with the chief petty officer, ?appears to have been unduly familiar.? In a poignant defense to his commanding officer, Fetterman replied:
That conclusion is based upon observations that my wife extended the courtesies of our home to the chief in question. In response, I must note my wife is a caring and gracious person. She has always made all members of the Navy family feel like they are part of our family. That particular attribute is one of her greatest strengths and one for which I will not apologize.
Then he warned that the measures being taken to root out sexual harassers might end up doing ?irreparable damage to the military.?
For the past few months, we have seen the reputations of honorable men and women tarnished by innuendo, falsehood and rumor. Enough! Our Navy is populated by decent, honest and dedicated people. They need to be recognized as such.
But it will be a long time before the Navy?s honor is restored and the American concept of innocent until proven guilty is respected again in military quarters. The movement which has led to the current witch-hunt is far from spent. It began in earnest a decade ago, when the army attempted to introduce a sex-neutral system to test the physical strength of recruits. Designed to match individual abilities to military requirements, the Military Enlistment Physical Strength Capacity Test (MEPSCAT) provoked objections at the time from feminists inside and outside the military, who feared that sex-neutral standards might cause women to be barred from certain roles, particularly combat roles, which were the keys to military status and advancement.
Although the Air Force held out, and maintained the objectivity of the test, the Army and Navy caved in to their feminist critics. As the feminist objections were met, the MEPSCAT test was reduced to little more than a ?guidance tool.? The double standard had taken its first step in becoming a way of life in the military as it has in other institutions of American life. The only area where a true standard remained in force was combat itself. Now, ten years later, combat has become the issue, and with incidents like Tailhook ripe for exploitation, the pressure to surrender to the feminist levelers appears all but insurmountable.
That pressure is embodied in the ?Schroeder Amendment,? which would open the door to allow women to fly in combat. The Amendment is named after its sponsor, liberal Democrat Pat Schroeder, who appears to be the aspiring Senator McCarthy of the current investigative frenzy {I have in my hand a list of harassers?) In a July 9 letter to Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, Schroeder put the Pentagon on notice that ?Tailhook ?91 is a symptom of a larger problem? and that the resignation of Navy Secretary Garrett does not begin ?to address the problem.? To do just that, the Congresswoman wants investigations and prosecutions that will enable the navy to purge itself of sexual miscreants:
The Navy?s inability to complete an accurate investigation and the failure to identity and prosecute the attackers?.sends a clear message?
In addition, Schroeder demands (and has succeeded in getting) re-education classes ? ?sexual harassment training [for] all personnel? ? to cleanse the navy of existing bad attitudes.
Schroeder?s bill to allow women in combat (which would also make women eligible for a future military draft) is the other face of the feminist juggernaut. It is seen by supporters as a ?wedge? measure that would lead to expanded combat roles and true institutional equality for women. A Presidential Commission has been appointed to review the issue and is scheduled to make a recommendation in November.
While the primary concern in making such a decision ought to be its possible impact on military capabilities, many of the advocates of change and many of those who will actually decide the issue have shown little interest in the maintenance of an effective defense. Schroeder, for example, was an anti-war activist before entering the House where, as a ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, she has been a longtime proponent of reductions in America?s military posture. Serving alongside her on the Committee are feminist allies Beverly Byron (who has demanded that every officer merely present at Tailhook be thrown out of the service) and California ?anti-war? liberal Barbara Boxer. Another ranking Committee member and ardent Schroeder supporter, is radical Congressman Ron Dellums, a recent camp follower of Fidel Castro and other U.S. adversaries, an opponent of U.S. military interventions over the last three decades who denounced the Carter White House as ?evil? for opposing Soviet aggression in Afghanistan, and a legislator who every year has sponsored an alternative defense authorization bill mandating crippling cuts in Americas military forces.
When New Left radicals, like myself, launched the movement against the war in Vietnam, we did not say we wanted the Communists to win ? which we did ? we said we wanted to give peace a chance; we wanted to bring the troops home. By persuading well-meaning Americans to take up our cause and by forcing Washington to bring the troops home, we accomplished our objective: the Communists won. With disastrous consequences for Vietnam and the world.
Examples of this kind of double agenda abound in the current feminist campaign and can be found in testimony before the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces. Dr. Maria Lepowsky, a graduate of Berkeley and an associate professor of anthropology and Women?s Studies at the University of Wisconsin, provided testimony in support of a combat role for women. Then Professor Lepowsky asked herself: ?What would be some possible consequences? ? if women were put in combat ? on American cultural values and American society??? And then she answered her own question: ?I think there might be increased concern about committing troops to combat, also perhaps a good thing??
In other words, Lepowsky was advocating that women be put in combat roles because to do so would make it more difficult to commit troops to combat! This kind of candor is unusual for the left.
The feminist movement, which supplies the ideological framework for witnesses like Professor Lepowsky and advocates like Pat Schroeder is typical of those in which radicals have played significant roles. It is a coalition of different voices in which radicals set the political agendas and in which not all the agendas are on the surface.
Moderate feminists generally are seeking modest reforms in American society. Technological developments in the 20th Century have dramatically changed women?s social roles. Women no longer risk death in the normal course of childbirth, and can choose whether to become pregnant or not. Together with labor saving devices in the home, which have reduced the demands of maintaining a household, these technological advances have freed women to consider careers in the world at large, including careers in the military, where they have historically made significant contributions.
Naturally these changing opportunities for women have required some adjustments in the culture, particularly since many of the developments occurred in a relatively short time span. The development of contraceptives alone, for example, would have been a catalyst of important changes. When women entered the work force in unprecedented numbers, attitudes had to be adjusted and laws had to be changed; some traditions had to be modified and others abandoned.
America is a remarkably open society, with remarkably responsive institutions and these changes have taken place with consequent alacrity. And they are still taking place. The best and most constructive way for them to take place is deliberately, with careful consideration of possible consequences, and special respect for consequences that maybe unforeseen. As the inhabitants of the former Soviet empire discovered, at great human cost, revolutionary cures can often be worse than the diseases they were prescribed for.
This is a lesson lost on feminism?s radical wing whose ideology has been described by philosopher Christina Sommers as ?gender feminism.? (Sommers contrasts this with ?equity feminism,? a moderate position that really means getting a fair shake.) When advocates of reform speak of ?gender integration? of the military, they are often invoking the ideas of the radical feminists without necessarily recognizing them for what they are.
Gender feminism is a bastard child of Marxism. It is the dominant ideology of women?s studies in American universities and of feminist groups like the National Organization of Women. Gender feminism holds that women are not women by nature, but that patriarchal society has ?constructed? or created them female so that men could oppress them. The system that creates females is called ?gender-patriarchy.? As the source of their oppression, it must be destroyed.
Radical feminists are social engineers in the same way that Communists are social engineers. They deny that there is a human nature, and they deny that there is a female nature, that human biology in any way fundamentally influences who or what we are. The solution to all social problems, conflicts and disappointments in life is to manipulate laws and institutions so as to create liberated human beings ? beings who will not hate, have prejudices, exhibit bad sexual manners, get into conflicts, or go to war. By changing institutions, especially powerful institutions like the military, and using their administrative power to brainwash people into adopting attitudes that are politically correct, these radicals believe that the problems that have plagued mankind since the dawn of creation will be miraculously cured.
Social engineers like the gender feminists have little interest in questions of Americas national security not because they are in the pay of foreign powers, but because they believe that America is a patriarchal, sexist, racist oppressor and that its institutions must be destroyed or transformed beyond recognition, if women and other oppressed groups are to achieve their ?liberation.? Of course, the gender feminists are not so naive as to admit their radical agendas outside the ideological sanctuaries of Women?s Studies departments. In testifying before presidential commissions what they sound like are equity feminists. They will say that placing women in combat positions is merely an extension of women working outside the home, and of expanding equal opportunity
But placing women in harm?s way and training them to kill one-on-one is not a mere extension of working outside the home. Furthermore, there are definite limits to equal rights and equal opportunity when biology is involved. Do I, for example, as an American male, have a right to bear a child? Do I have an equal opportunity with women to do so? Do they have an equal aptitude for combat? Ninety percent of the people arrested for violent crimes in the United States are, and always have been, male. From this statistic alone it would be possible to conclude that males have a distinct advantage over females when it comes to mobilizing an existing instinct for aggression for the purposes of organized combat.
One of the leading military advocates of equal roles for women and men is Commander Rosemary Mariner, a nineteen year career naval officer. In June, Commander Mariner testified before the Presidential Commission that women should not be excluded from combat because ?separate is inherently unequal.? Perhaps. But so what? The founding documents of this country recognize the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They do not recognize the rights of short people to be tall, of less intelligent people to have higher intelligence, of less aggressive people to be more aggressive, of physically weaker people to be stronger, of men to bear children or of women to be deployed in military combat.
Men and women are different and unequal in various abilities. That, to all but gender feminists, is an obvious, indisputable fact. The question is, what are the consequences of that fact?
The difficulty in answering the question is the emotional element that is introduced into the discussion by the moral and political claims of the feminist left. Mariner?s testimony before the Commission ? a testimony infused with radical nostrums is instructive:
As with racial integration the biggest problem confronting gender integration is not men or women, but bigotry. It is bigotry that is the root cause of racial and sexual harassment. From common verbal abuse to the criminal acts of a Tailhook debacle, sexual harassment will continue to be a major problem in the armed forces because the combat exclusion law and policies make women institutionally inferior.
The basic elements of the radical view are all here. Sexual relations between men and women are to be understood in terms of racial relations between blacks and whites. The problem of sexual harassment is analogous to racism and is unrelated to the different biologies and sexual drives of men and women. At the root of the problem is institutions. ?Tailhook ?91,? wrote Schroeder in her letter to the Secretary of Defense, ?is the symptom of a larger problem: institutional bias against women.? In feminist terms, the social construction of women that renders them different from men is made possible by a patriarchal system of institutions that causes them to be perceived as inferior. In the eyes of the gender feminists, the exclusion of women from combat is a keystone of this system. If women were to be included in combat (and thus treated as the equals they are), if gender roles were to be abolished, then sexual harassment would cease to be a ?major problem.?
Consider the proposition: For five thousand years men have been more aggressive sexually than women. Recognizing this, societies have universally established different (unequal) sexual rules for men and women. And for all that time, men (but not all men) have failed to heed those rules and have overstepped the boundaries of decent behavior. But according to the gender feminists, that is ?merely? the past. Now the U.S. military has a chance to solve this problem once and for all. By passing the Schroeder amendment. By removing the barriers to women in combat. As soon as the ?exclusion law? is changed, women?s self-esteem will rise, men?s respect for women will increase, and mirabile dictu sexual harassment will cease.
It is difficult to believe that rational human beings could propose such nonsense, let alone a commander in the U.S. Navy or a U.S. Congresswoman. But this is the fundamental idea that feminists ? from the ideological professoriate on our benighted campuses to such public ?spokespeople? as Gloria Steinem and Pat Schroeder promote from their pulpits ad nauseam. And to which our military brass and political leadership are kowtowing at a frightening pace. It is an instructive example of how radical ideology, given the chance, can glue up the human brain. If anyone were seriously looking at the question of military effectiveness, they would see that the greatest threat to military morale today is being created by the onslaught of half-baked feminist ideas that are making every man Jack in the military ? from the highest brass to the lowliest grunt ? guilty before the fact, guilty just because he is a male.
Item: This summer, Jerry Tuttle, a three-star Admiral who had been nominated by the President for one of the 12 top posts in the navy, was subjected to public humiliation when the President was forced to withdraw his nomination. Why? Because a newsletter for which he was responsible printed the following joke: Beer is better than women because beer never has a headache.
Item: Three ?top gun? fliers were relieved of their commands because of their participation in, or witnessing of, a privately shown skit in the annual Tom Cat Follies at the Miramar Naval Station. The skit lampooned Congresswoman Schroeder.
What is going on in America that a three star Admiral can be denied a promotion over a lame joke that he didn?t even make? Or that seasoned fliers can have their careers terminated because of possible offense to a politician? How could a Republican President and Navy Department cave in to pressures like this, and why isn?t there national outrage over the injustice and stupidity of it? And, finally, what is the problem with feminists who can?t handle this kind of trivia? And yet want to enter a war zone and engage in combat!
There is a big problem out there and it is this: We are fast becoming a nation of hypocrites and liars in our unseemly haste to humor ideological bluenoses like Mariner and Schroeder, and to submit the lives of honorable and dedicated men like Admiral Tuttle and the Miramar commanders to the tender mercies of the feminist thought-police.
Thanks to Representative Schroeder, her supporting wolfpack and the weak-kneed defense brass who won?t stand up to them, the men in our armed services are now guilty for being men: for having encountered women who have used headaches as an excuse for not wanting sex, for suffering the abuse of a vindictive Congresswoman in silence, and for making lame jokes to ventilate their frustrations.
But it is not only men who are guilty when the radical star-chamber is in session. Women who are not politically correct are equally suspect. Thus Commander Mariner: ?As with racial integration, the biggest problem confronting gender integration is?bigotry. ..Bigotry?is the root cause of racial and sexual harassment.?
Anyone who even suggests now that it might not be a good idea to include women in combat, is hereby put on notice that they are, at the very least, encouraging bigotry and most likely bigots themselves. Studies conducted at West Point have identified 120 physical differences between men and women that may bear on military requirements. Yet the US Naval Academy has been criticized for not moving fast enough to increase its female enrollment on the grounds that this is mere prejudice. Senator Barbara Mikulski has demanded ?an attitude change? at the Academy, and an official Committee on Women?s Issues headed by Rear Admiral Virgil Hill has called for the ?immediate dismissal of senior officers who question the role of women in the military.? To question ? to question ? the role of women in the military is now regarded as bigotry by the military itself.
The word ?bigot? has resonance. It is meant to invoke the specter of racism and, simultaneously, to appropriate the moral mantle of the civil rights movement for the feminist cause. This feminist attempt to hijack the civil rights movement has always struck me as spurious and offensive. Women, as a gender, were never oppressed as American blacks and their ancestors were oppressed. It is the big lie of feminism to speak of ?patriarchy? as a system of oppression comparable to slavery, and to see women?s restricted role in society as fundamentally unrelated to restrictions imposed by their biology and the state of technological development.
Black people were enslaved for centuries. Their slavery was justified by whites who judged them to be less than human. ?Three-fifths of a man.? That was bigotry. That was racism. Sexism, by contrast, is an inane and meaningless term invented by Marxist radicals to stigmatize their opponents. Its primary function aside from abuse, is to appropriate the moral legacy of the struggle against racism. No western civilization, let alone western democracy, has ever regarded women as inferior beings in the sense that blacks were considered inferior. None has ever failed to value and cherish them.
Despite the fog of feminist propaganda that has enveloped the nation, we don?t need elaborate studies to prove this. Men?s feelings for women have been richly recorded in Western culture. Homer?s Iliad, which gives expression to the informing myths of Hellenic society, and is a founding document of Western civilization is about a war over a woman. Even the most dim-witted ideologue can see that there is power in womanhood there.
As for more recent attitudes, anyone who thinks that before The Feminist Mystique, women in America were denigrated as mere bodies without character or brains, should catch the next showing of any Katherine Hepburn film on American Movie Classics. In Adams Rib, to invoke but one example, Hepburn and Tracy play husband and wife lawyers who wind up on opposite sides of a major case. The wife wins. Only in Betty Friedan?s febrile imagination was the American family a ?comfortable concentration camp? before the advent of NOW.
Yet the argument is still pressed that the decision to put women in combat is somehow crucial to women?s self-esteem and to men?s respect for women. It is a constant theme of the Presidential hearings. In discussing the inclusion of women in combat, Professor Lepowsky had this to say: ?There might be a significant impact?on female self-esteem, especially for young girls and young women, the idea that male fraternity and male respect of women was possible.?
On what planet is Professor Lepowsky living? Including women in combat would give women the idea that male friendship for and respect of women was possible} If men don?t respect women, why do women fall in love with men and marry them? Is there something wrong with women? Are they so brain deficient or brainwashed as to be involved intimately with a species that doesn?t even respect them? Only a feminist ideologue could come up with such malicious lunacy. It only serves to confirm the suspicion that behind every radical feminists concern for what women might be, lies a profound contempt for who they are.
And yet this is the kind of thinking that is being factored into the future of our armed forces.
What is truly worrying about all this is that there is now an atmosphere of intimidation in the public sphere that prevents any candor on these issues. Jobs can and are being lost, careers are being ruined, reputations are being tarnished because of politically incorrect views; because of bad attitudes; because the party line is not being observed. These are disgraceful times in America. And they are fraught with danger where national security matters are concerned.
In its Washington session in June, the Presidential Commission also heard testimony from William S. Lind, former defense advisor to Gary Hart. In his testimony, Lind referred to the suppression of information vital to the decisions the Commission was going to make. According to Lind, the Army Personnel Office had detailed information on problems encountered with women troops in Desert Storm, which had not been released to the public. They included the fact that the non-deployability rate for women in the Gulf was many times higher than that for men. Specifically, when the troops were called to battle, between three and four times as many women per enlisted personnel were unavailable for duty. The inability to deploy women troops apparently caused an immediate turmoil with negative effects on unit cohesion, which is a primary component of combat effectiveness. Another piece of important information that was not made public was the fact that despite rigid measures taken in the field, there was no drop in the pregnancy rate through the period of deployment. (Pregnancy rates in the military are now 10-15%.) Pregnancy during Desert Shield was the primary reason for non-deployability.
Why is this information on the back burner? Where are the famous investigative reporters from 60 Minutes and the Washington Post, ever vigilant against the evils of military censorship? Perhaps a politically correct media lacks interest in information that could sow doubts about the case for ?gender integration?. Even if the suppression of that information might jeopardize our men on some future field of battle.
(Suppression of information about women?s actual performance in some traditionally male jobs is not unique to the military. As a journalist I have interviewed policemen who will tell you ? off the record ? of the dangers they face because of women partners who are not as physically intimidating as men. I have talked to construction workers who will tell you ? off the record ? of having to carry women the law has forced onto their crews even though they are not physically strong enough to do a full share of the work.)
The suppression of information has provided one ?answer? to these problems. ?Gender norming? has provided the other. ?Gender norming? is the practice of institutionalizing the double standard, so that women are measured in performance against other women, rather than men who can outperform them. ?Gender norming? is now the rule at all military service academies. As is the cover-up of the adverse consequences of their new policies of admitting women.
The official position at West Point, for example, is that there have been no negative effects stemming from the admission of women to the Academy. The facts, as revealed in a recent Heritage study by Robert Knight, are quite different. Knight?s information is drawn from the sworn testimony of a West Point official taken in a Virginia Court:
- When men and women are required to perform the same exercises, women?s scores are ?weighted? to compensate for their deficiencies.
- Women cadets take ?comparable? training when they cannot meet the physical standards for male cadets.
- In load-bearing tasks, 50% of the women score below the bottom 5% of the men.
- Peer ratings have been eliminated because women were scoring too low.
To appease the heightened sensitivities of women in the present political atmosphere, even the men?s training program has been downgraded:
- Cadets no longer train in combat boots because women were experiencing higher rates of injury.
- Running with heavy weapons has been eliminated because it is ?unrealistic and therefore unappropriate? to expect women to do it.
- The famed ?recondo? endurance week during which cadets used to march with full backpacks and undergo other strenuous activities has been eliminated, as have upper-body strength events in the obstacle course.
It is one thing to have second-rate professors in the humanities because of affirmative action quotas that lower standards. But a second rate officer corps?
Not surprisingly, resentment on the part of male cadets is high. One indication is that more than 50% of the women cadets at West Point reported that they had been sexually harassed last year.
It is a perfectly sinister combination. Rub men?s noses in arbitrariness and unfairness, and then charge them with sexual harassment when they react. It is also a perfect prescription for accumulating power and controlling resources. Which is what this witch-hunt ? no different in this regard from any other ? is ultimately about. For every male who falls from grace because he is suspected of sexual harassment, or of defending standards that maybe unfavorable to women, or of not reacting strongly enough to sexual harassment, there is a politically correct career officer or politician ready to take advantage of his misfortune. Rosemary Mariner is a candidate for Admiral; Beverly Byron has been mentioned as a possible Secretary of the Navy; Pat Schroeder has her sights on a cabinet post, perhaps Secretary of Defense.
Who is going to pay the price for these ambitions on the field of battle?
This brings us to another problem raised by William Lind, which is unit cohesion and combat effectiveness. In combat men will act to protect the women and this will undermine the effectiveness of the unit. The male soldier?s protective instinct is heightened by his knowledge of what the male enemy will do to females taken prisoner of war. This is not mere theory. The Israelis, who pioneered the introduction of women in combat during their War of Liberation now bar women from combat. They found exactly this, that ?if you put women in combat with men, the men immediately forget about their tactical objective and they move instead to protect the women.?
The Israelis abandoned the practice of putting women into combat positions because it weakened their forces and exposed their fighting men to even greater risks. Is there is a reason for Americans to repeat the Israelis? mistake just to humor the feminist left?
No amount of sensitivity training, no amount of brainwashing can alter human nature. The Communists proved that at unbelievable cost. They could not make a new socialist man (or woman) who would be cooperative and not competitive under a social plan, who would respond as effectively and efficiently to administrative commands as they had to market incentives, who would be communist and not individualist.
The Communists killed tens of millions of people and impoverished whole nations trying to change human nature, all the time calling it ?liberation,? just as radical feminists do. It didn?t work. Social experiments that disregard fundamental human realities in the name of abstract pieties will always fail. But they will cause incalculable social damage and irreparable human suffering before they collapse.
And yet, under the guidance of feminist social engineers, our newly sensitized military leadership marches on. The Air Force has established a SERE program (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape), including its own ?prisoner of war? camp in the state of Washington to de-sensitize its male recruits so that they won?t react like men when female prisoners are tortured. In short, in their infinite wisdom, Ms. Schroeder and her feminist allies have enlisted the military in a program to brainwash men so that they won?t care what happens to women. That?s progress and social enlightenment, feminist style.
Of course, it is not necessary to gain access to the information that the military has suppressed or to be familiar with military terms like ?unit cohesion? to see that America?s war-making ability has already been weakened by the decision to deploy large numbers of women on battlefields overseas, even absent a combat role. Who does not remember the poignant stories which the networks elaborated in lavish detail about the children left behind by their mothers on duty in the Persian Gulf? And in some cases mothers and fathers. (In fact there were 16,337 single military parents and 1,231 military couples, who left anxious children behind during the Gulf War.) In the irresponsibly gifted hands of network reporters, even the family pets orphaned by their owners became objects of national concern. And for some, occasions to oppose the war.
The net result is that an American President now is under pressure to win a war in four days or risk losing the war at home. How many dictators are going to test the will of America s liberated military and compassionate citizenry in future conflicts? These changes have implications for diplomacy and long term national security that are literally incalculable. Yet Schroeder and Co. want them decided on the basis of cheap slogans like ?separate is inherently unequal.?
In the summer of 1992, the military establishment has acted like pussies in responding to the all-out assault on America?s armed services by Congresswomen Schroeder, Byron, Boxer, Mikulski et al. In the reigning atmosphere of political intimidation, even an offending skit could send career servicemen to the stake. Among the public figures lampooned in the Tom Cat Follies were President Bush and Vice President Quayle. But it was a rhyme about Representative Pat Schroeder that sent the Navy brass into paroxysms of fear and scrambling for a sword to fall on. When the smoke cleared, three dedicated careers were in the toilet because of this nonsense. Three careers destroyed as a result of Navy hypocrisy and fear of the wrath of one bigoted US Congresswoman. When the history of this sorry episode is written, maybe someone will call it the Feline Follies.
One might well ask what qualifies someone like Pat Schroeder to intimidate the entire American military establishment and to shape its destiny through the next generation? During the cold war Pat Schroeder and her supporters in the Congressional left worked overtime to hobble and disarm America in the face of the Soviet threat. In 1981, when Soviet armies were spreading death and destruction across Afghanistan and the United States had boycotted the Olympics in order to isolate the Soviet aggressor, Pat Schroeder and a group of leftwing House members hosted a delegation from the World Peace Council, a proven Soviet propaganda front, thus providing a KGB operation with a forum in the halls of Congress.
In 1982, with Soviet armies occupying Afghanistan, with 50,000 Cuban troops waging civil war in Ethiopia and Angola, with a Communist base established on the American mainland, with a Communist insurgency raging in E l Salvador, with thousands of nuclear warheads in Central Europe and Warsaw Pact forces outnumbering NATO troops by a two to one margin, Congresswoman Schroeder proposed an amendment to reduce the number of U.S. military personnel stationed overseas by half. (HR6030). If ever a member of the U.S. Government proposed a prescription for national suicide, this was it. Fortunately, three hundred and fourteen Democrats joined Republicans in defeating Schroeder?s amendment on the floor.
In the Congressional Quarterly, Pat Schroeder is noted for her efforts against nuclear testing while the Soviets were still our adversaries, against further development of the MX missile, against proposed funding levels for the Strategic Defense Initiative and the B-2 bomber ? and against authorizing the president to use force to stop Saddam Hussein.
Maybe Ms. Schroeder?s Denver constituents approve of the attitudes these positions reflect. For most Americans Pat Schroeder?s credentials on issues of national defense will be cause for alarm.
The military is the one American institution that survived the Sixties intact. Now it threatens to become a casualty of current radical fashions. Of far more concern than any possible injustice that might be associated with the exclusion of women from combat, is the assault on the military that is now being conducted in the name of ?gender integration,? the elimination of sexual harassment and the purging of male bigots. The worst crimes of our century have been committed by idealists attempting to eradicate just such ?injustices,? stamp out politically incorrect attitudes and reconstruct human nature. Let?s not add the weakening of America?s military to the depressing list of disasters of these Utopias that failed.
Source: http://ripandreader.com/the-feminist-assault-on-the-military/
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Sunday, January 27, 2013
Casey Anthony files for bankruptcy protection
After a court acquitted her of murder charges, Casey Anthony is filing for bankruptcy, saying she's only worth $1,100 and still owes close to $800,000 to her lawyers and law enforcement officials.
By Gil Aegerter, Staff Writer, NBC News
Casey Anthony has filed for bankruptcy protection in Orlando, Fla.
Pool / Getty Images
Anthony owes about $792,000 -- most of it to her defense attorney, according to a Chapter 7 petition filed Friday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, The Associated Press reported.
She also faces three civil lawsuits stemming from the disappearance of her daughter, Caylee Marie, ?the Orlando Sentinel reported.?The 2-year-old girl was reported missing in July 2008 and her body was found that December near the home of Casey Anthony's parents in the Orlando area.
Anthony was found not guilty of murder in July 2011 but was convicted of lying about the child's disappearance. She was sentenced to time served, and on Friday an appeals court struck down two of the lying convictions.
Anthony claimed that a babysitter had kidnapped Caylee, and a woman with the same name is suing for defamation, as is the former meter reader who found the body -- he says Anthony's attorneys damaged him by painting him as a possible killer.
The third suit is by Texas EquuSearch, a search and rescue organization, which says it spent more than $100,000 searching for Caylee.
Anthony's bankruptcy filing said she had only $1,084; here are her main debts, according to the Sentinel report:
- About $500,000 to defense attorney Jose Baez
- $145,660.21:?Orange County Sheriff's Office
- $68,540: Internal Revenue Service
- $61,505: Florida Department of Law Enforcement
- $10,283.90: to the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation?
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At least 30 killed in clashes over Egypt soccer disaster
Mohammed Nouhan / AP
Families and supporters of those accused of soccer violence from the Port Said soccer club react to the announcement of death sentences for 21 fans.
By Yusri Mohamed and Yasmine Saleh, Reuters
PORT SAID/CAIRO - At least 30 people were killed on Saturday when Egyptians rampaged in protest at the sentencing of 21 people to death over a soccer stadium disaster, violence that compounds a political crisis facing Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.
Armored vehicles and military police fanned through the streets of Port Said, where gunshots rang out and protesters burned tires in anger that people from their city had been blamed for stadium deaths last year.
The rioting in Port Said, one of the most deadly spasms of violence since Hosni Mubarak's ouster two years ago, followed a day of anti-Morsi demonstrations on Friday, when nine people were killed. The toll over the past two days stands at 39.
The flare-ups make it even tougher for Morsi, who drew fire last year for expanding his powers and pushing through an Islamist-tinged constitution, to fix the creaking economy and to cool tempers enough to ensure a smooth parliamentary election.
That vote is expected in the next few months and is meant to cement a democratic transition that has been blighted from the outset by political rows and street clashes.
Amr Abdallah Dalsh / Reuters
Al Ahly fans, also known as "Ultras", celebrate and shout slogans in front of the Al Ahly club after hearing the final verdict of the 2012 Port Said massacre in Cairo Saturday.
The National Defense Council, led by Morsi and which includes the defense minister who commands the army, called for "a broad national dialogue that would be attended by independent national characters" to discuss political differences and ensure a "fair and transparent" parliamentary poll.
The statement was made on state television by Information Minister Salah Abdel Maqsoud, who is also on the council.
The National Salvation Front of liberal-minded groups and other opponents cautiously welcomed the call but demanded any such dialogue have a clear agenda and guarantees that any deal would be implemented, spokesman Khaled Dawoud told Reuters.
The Front spurned previous calls for dialogue, saying Morsi ignored voices beyond his Islamist allies. The Front earlier on Saturday threatened an election boycott and to call for more protests on Friday if demands were not met.
Its demands included picking a national unity government to restore order and holding an early presidential poll.
Threats of violence
The political statements followed clashes in Port Said that erupted after a judge issued a verdict sentencing 21 men to die for involvement in the deaths of 74 people after a local soccer match on February 1, 2012, many of them fans of the visiting team.
Visiting fans had threatened violence if the court had not meted out the death penalty. They cheered outside their Cairo club when the verdict was announced. But in Port Said, residents were furious that people from their city were held responsible.
Protesters ran wildly through the streets of Mediterranean port, lighting tires in the street and storming two police stations, witnesses said. Gunshots were reported near the prison where most of the defendants were being held.
A director for Port Said hospitals told state television that 30 people had been killed, many as a result of gunshot wounds. He also said the more than 300 had been wounded.
Inside the court, families of victims danced, applauded and some broke down in tears of joy when they heard Judge Sobhy Abdel Maguid declare that the 21 men would be "referred to the Mufti", a phrase used to denote execution, as all death sentences must be reviewed by Egypt's top religious authority.
There were 73 defendants on trial. Only a handful appeared in court in Cairo. Those not sentenced on Saturday would face a verdict on March 9, the judge said.
At the Port Said soccer stadium a year ago, many spectators were crushed and witnesses saw some thrown off balconies after the match between Cairo's Al Ahly and local team al-Masri. Al Ahly fans accused the police of being complicit in the deaths.
The fans, who call themselves "Ultras Ahlawy", said Saturday's ruling started the process of retribution, and hoped the rest would face the same fate when verdicts are issued on March 9.
Among those killed on Saturday was a former player for al-Masri and a soccer player in another Port Said team, the website of the state broadcaster reported.
Teargas rains down
On Friday, protesters angry at Morsi's rule had taken to the streets for the second anniversary of the uprising that erupted on January 25, 2011 and which brought Mubarak down 18 days later.
Police fired teargas and protesters hurled stones and petrol bombs. Nine people were killed, mainly in the port city of Suez, and hundreds more were injured across the nation.
On Saturday, some protesters again clashed with police. In the capital, youths pelted police lines with rocks near Tahrir Square. In Suez, police fired teargas where protesters angry at Friday's deaths hurled petrol bombs and stormed a police post.
"We want to change the president and the government. We are tired of this regime. Nothing has changed," said Mahmoud Suleiman, 22, in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the cauldron of the 2011 anti-Mubarak revolt and near where youths again stoned police.
Port Said, Ismailia and Suez, which have witnessed some of the worst violence in the past two days, lie on the Suez Canal but a canal official said there was no disruption to shipping through the waterway vital to international trade.
Morsi's opponents say he has failed to deliver on economic pledges or to be a president representing the full political and communal diversity of Egyptians, as he promised.
"Egypt will not regain its balance except by a political solution that is transparent and credible, by a government of national salvation to restore order and heal the economy and with a constitution for all Egyptians," prominent opposition politician Mohamed ElBaradei wrote on his Twitter account.
Morsi's supporters say the opposition does not respect the democracy that has given Egypt its first freely elected leader.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which propelled Morsi to office, said in a statement that "corrupt people" and media who were biased against the president had stirred up fury on the streets.
The political schism between Islamists and secular Egyptians and frequent bouts of violence have hurt Morsi's efforts to revive an economy in crisis as investors and tourists have stayed away, taking a heavy toll on Egypt's currency.
Mustapha Kamal Al-Sayyid, a professor of political science at Cairo University, said the latest violence reflected the frustration of many liberal-minded Egyptians and others.
"The state of polarization between Islamists and others is most likely to continue and will have a very negative impact on the state's politics, security and economy," he said.
Related:
Egypt court sentences 21 to death for stadium disaster
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Direct marketers struggle for viability | TribLIVE
By Tory N. Parrish
Published: Saturday, January 26, 2013, 12:01?a.m.
Updated 6 hours ago
The recession, postal rate hikes, targeted mailings and increased use of the Internet have cut into direct-mail advertising, and some marketers say they?re bracing for another hit when the Postal Service increases rates again on Sunday.
?Many direct marketers have a fixed budget ? and as postage goes up, they can mail fewer pieces, and that means they won?t mail as far down their mailings lists,? said Jerry Cerasale, senior vice president of government affairs with the Direct Marketing Association.
He said increased costs of printing and paper also have spurred advertisers to cut back.
For some people, less direct-mail advertising is a good thing.
?I?m always excited about the idea of less junk in my mail,? said Dawn Meling, 28, of Ross.
The Postal Service posted a $15.9 billion loss in fiscal 2013.
The latest increase will be its third in three years. Prices for all types and classes of mail will increase overall by 4 percent; a first-class stamp will go up a penny to 46 cents, and bulk-mail rates will rise 2.6 percent.
Bulk mailers are among the best customers.
In 2012, advertising mail was the agency?s largest industry segment in volume at 50 percent, accounting for 25 percent of revenue at $16.4 billion.
?I think the post office is making it difficult for themselves and for us, because direct marketing is actually very viable and is actually growing in my company,? said Dave Jones, owner of Crafton-based Allegra Pittsburgh, which provides direct mail, marketing and other services for mostly business clients.
Direct mail generates revenue for businesses, and the consumer response rate for direct mail exceeds that of email marketing, according to the Direct Marketing Association, a New York City-based trade organization.
Yet some customers consider catalogues and brochures in their mailboxes an intrusion.
Catalog Choice, one of the largest mail preference companies in the United States, since 2007 has processed 26 million ?opt out? requests for consumers who want to be removed from mailing lists.
?I don?t think we?re in favor or not in favor of direct mail. What we?re in favor of is giving consumers a choice of whether they want to receive that mail,? said spokeswoman Lyn Chitow Oakes.
Between 2007 and 2012, annual advertising mail volume declined 23 percent from 103.5 billion to 79.5 billion pieces.
The Postal Service attributes some of the decline to companies using more targeted mailings based on data about customers, rather than casting a wide net with generalized advertising.
Some companies that frequently use mail advertising said they aren?t ready to scale back but will watch how they spend money.
Mt. Lebanon-based Rollier?s Hardware mails about 20,000 newsletters to customers four times a year and includes fliers in mailed publications, said Derek Satterfield, floor manager.
?We still look at advertising on the basis of how much we?re getting back in return,? he said.
Tory N. Parrish is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. She can be reached at 412-380-5662 or tparrish@tribweb.com.
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