Showing posts with label Children. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Children. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Perhaps Not... "Veterans Affairs Claims Progress In Ending Homelessness Among Vets"
And many of the new generation will end up out on the streets again (I KNOW THIS for a fact having witnessed it personally with Veteran acquaintances over the years...).(Image at the left, 11/7/2007) «o» Historically, a number of fighters in U.S. wars have become homeless. In the post-Civil War era, homeless veterans sang old Army songs to dramatize their need for work and became known as “tramps,” which had meant to march into war, said Todd DePastino, a historian at Penn State University’s Beaver campus who wrote a book on the history of homelessness.
After World War I, thousands of veterans — many of them homeless — camped in the nation’s capital seeking bonus money. Their camps were destroyed by the government, creating a public relations disaster for President Herbert Hoover.
The end of the Vietnam War coincided with a time of economic restructuring, and many of the same people who fought in Vietnam were also those most affected by the loss of manufacturing jobs, DePastino said.
Their entrance to the streets was traumatic and, as they aged, their problems became more chronic... [More @ MSNBC]
From today's Washington Post:
"Making aggressive use of a voucher program, Veterans Affairs has housed more than 33,000 veterans in the past 21 / 2 years. It did so by changing its longtime policy of requiring homeless veterans to be successfully treated for substance abuse and mental ailments before being given apartments." [Washington Post Federal Insider]The vouchers for the housing, at least the regulatory details, seem to be cribbed from Section 8 FHA/HUD programs (Google) and all the federal requirements of the tenants are the same. "Act out", or have any drug related altercations, and yer out.
I just wonder if the VA IS usurping federal housing money (via some back door transfer of funds perhaps) that was to be used for other people like those 38 percent increase in homeless children (and their mothers) over the last four years reported the other day?
(Just in... A local VFW officer and friend in-the-know has informed me that indeed, the money has been diverted from civilian housing preograms)
I also suspect that many high school and college students will find less service jobs available next summer as SOME Vets return, and are immediately plugged into "Do you want fries with that..." jobs.
In my estimation, the US government IS SCARED of it's veterans, and their pandering to them with jobs/housing is a fear based reaction. Not due to any patriotic 'love' for them. If you have any doubts just look up the phrase "Bonus Army" on your favorite search engine or at Wikipedia
I wonder how many returning Veterans will be satisfied for long with those 'funny hat' jobs and housing that resembles in sociological detail and regulations, 'project housing'?
Labels:
Bonus Army,
Children,
Children At Risk,
Homelessness,
Housing,
Jobs,
Pentagon,
Section 8,
Students,
Unemployment,
US Economy,
Veteran Affairs,
Veterans
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Tragedies Of War, Mothers Day Edition: 6 Years After Watching US Soldiers Kill Her Parents, 11 Year Old 'Tal Afar Girl' Samar Hassan Still Traumatized
Alternate version, OnIslam.netMOSUL, Iraq — Until the past week, Samar Hassan had never glimpsed the photograph of her that millions had seen, never knew it had become one of the most famous images of the Iraq war....
[The photo for Samar, then 5 years old, showed her screaming and splattered in blood, mostly of her parents,]
"Samar, almost 12-year-old now, lives the outskirts of Mosul in a two-story house with four other families, mostly relatives.
Losing her brother Rakan, who died when an insurgent attack badly damaged the house, she currently lives with her older sister, Intisar, and her husband, an unemployed former police officer.
Intisar’s husband, Nathir Bashir Ali, says that the family could not pass the accident psychological trauma, in a country with a failing health system.
“The pains of war have been visited on thousands of Iraqis, but even here Samar’s story stands apart. Three years after her parents were killed, her brother Rakan died when an insurgent attack badly damaged the house where she lives now. Rakan had been seriously wounded in the shooting that killed their parents, and he was sent to Boston for treatment after Mr. Hondros’s photos were published. An American aid worker, Marla Ruzicka, who helped arrange for Rakan’s treatment, was herself later killed in a car bomb in Baghdad.
Intisar’s husband, Nathir Bashir Ali, suspects his house was bombed by insurgents as retribution for sending Rakan to the United States. “When Rakan came back from America, everyone thought I was a spy,” he said.
Samar left school last year because she was too shy and not doing well, Mr. Ali said, although Samar said she would like to return and hoped to be a doctor when she grew up. She leaves the house only on infrequent family excursions and has two friends who visit to play with dolls and chat. She spends her days cleaning, listening to music on her purple MP3 player and watching episodes of her favorite television show, the Turkish soap opera “Forbidden Love,” about lovers named Mohanad and Samar.
“I am Samar,” she said, wearing a long red dress and sitting on the couch next to Mr. Ali. Two of her siblings, also in the car when their parents were killed, sat nearby.
“I’ve taken them many times to the hospital, where they get pills” for emotional problems, Mr. Ali said. “All of them take pills.”
He says Samar’s 8-year-old brother, Muhammad, talks to himself when he is alone.
“When we go out and see a family, they get sad,” he said.
Sometimes he finds the children in a room together, crying.
“When they remember the accident, it’s like they just died.”
Under George W. Bush’s administration, the US invaded Iraq in 2003 to oust the Saddam Hussein regime on claims of possessing weapons of mass destruction, a claim never proved true.
Since the 2003 US invasion, Iraq has plunged into abyss with overlapping civil conflicts that have left tens of thousands of civilians dead... [Much more @ the New York Times]
Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."Preamble to the "Mother's Day Proclamation" by Julia Ward Howe.
One of the early calls to celebrate Mother's Day in the United States.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Drugging The Children Vs. Marijuana Legalization: "We WILL win in this battle pitting the organic forces of LIFE against the chemical forces of DEATH"
In light of the recently passed 4-2-0 celebration, a holiday for a harmless relaxing herb outlawed by the US government, this article show the INCREDIBLE SICKNESS OF AMERICAN ADULTS AND THE ABUSE OF THEIR OWN CHILDREN TO ENFORCE AN "ADULT" 'CONFORMITY' that makes MARIJUANA a NECESSITY in American society today:
Also See: Upping the anti (depressant) - Everything you'd want to know about the non-functionality of anti-depressantsAn American Phenomenon: The Widespread Psychiatric Drugging of Infants and Toddlers
The United States has become the psychiatric drugging capital of the world for kids with children being medicated at a younger and younger age.
Evelyn Pringle / CounterPunch
The United States has become the psychiatric drugging capital of the world for kids with children being medicated at a younger and younger age. Medicaid records in some states show infants less than a year old on drugs for mental disorders.
The use of powerful antipsychotics with privately insured children, aged 2 through 5 in the US, doubled between 1999 and 2007, according to a study of data on more than one million children with private health insurance in the January, 2010, "Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry In Full
"We WILL win in this battle pitting the organic forces of LIFE against the chemical forces of DEATH"
See our BONG razed(sic) in victory!
Join US!
Take it easy... But TAKE it!
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Three Tax Time Tips For "Tea Baggers"
Here are some tips for the attendees to these events,, most never having committed an illegal act more serious than a traffic violation in their lives:
Something else the 'teabaggers' might want to know, because they live in fear of the word, no less the potential for it's enactment in American society (fat chance in the current mileau):
Nine Myths About Socialism in the US
Monday 12 April 2010
by: Bill Quigley, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
Glenn Beck and other far right multi-millionaires are claiming that the US is hot on the path toward socialism. Part of their claim is that the US is much more generous and supportive of our working and poor people than other countries. People may wish it was so, but it is not.
As Sen. Patrick Moynihan used to say "Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. But everyone is not entitled to their own facts."
The fact is that the US is not really all that generous to our working and poor people compared to other countries.
Consider the US in comparison to the rest of the 30 countries that join the US in making up the OECD - the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. These 30 countries include Canada and most comparable European countries, but also include some struggling countries like Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Korea, Mexico, Poland, Slovak Republic and Turkey.
When you look at how the US compares to these 30 countries, the hot air myths about the US government going all out toward socialism sort of disappear into thin air. Here are some examples of myths that do not hold up.
Myth No. 1: The US Government Is Involved in Class Warfare, Attacking the Rich to Lift Up the Poor.
There is a class war going on all right. But it is the rich against the rest of us and the rich are winning. The gap between the rich and everyone else is wider in the US than any of the 30 other countries surveyed. In fact, the top 10 percent in the US have a higher annual income than any other country. And the poorest 10 percent in the US are below the average of the other OECD countries. The rich in the US have been rapidly leaving the middle class and poor behind since the 1980s.
Myth No. 2: The US Already Has the Greatest Health Care System in the World.
Infant mortality in the US is fourth worst among OECD countries - better only than Mexico, Turkey and the Slovak Republic.
Myth No. 3: There Is Less Poverty in the US Than Anywhere.
Child poverty in the US, at over 20 percent or one out of every five kids, is double the average of the 30 OECD countries.
Myth No. 4: The US Is Generous in Its Treatment of Families With Children.
The US ranks in the bottom half of countries in terms of financial benefits for families with children. Over half of the 30 OECD countries pay families with children cash benefits regardless of the income of the family. Some among those countries (e.g. Austria, France and Germany) pay additional benefits if the family is low income or one of the parents is unemployed.
Myth No. 5: The US Is Very Supportive of Its Workers... Read On
One more thing for the mostly middle class Americans who make up the Tea Bag societal cohort to think about... Your days of mindless "Happy Motoring" are just about over:
In Other Words: Say goodbye to a culture based on 'plastic crap' folks!
The last few drops of 'black blood' will be used to power the Pentagon's military machine defending us from a world of enemies we've created for ourselves, NOT to run your car on your last long drive down to the store for a sixxer and some cigs. Did you ever think otherwise?
Even the food we eat is grown in an artificial environment based on petroleum derived fertilizers, and the pills you take to stay calm... petroleum-based production facilities and ingredients... poised to be unavailable as American society collapses. In Full
Also see: "Listen Teabagger!", title loosely adapted from Wilhelm Reich's anti-Fascist pamphlet "Listen, Little Man!"
Labels:
April 15,
Boston Tea Party,
Children,
Class War,
Glenn Beck,
Health Care,
Kool-Aid,
Myths,
Poverty,
Socialism,
Taxes,
Tea Bagger,
Tea Party,
Teabagger,
US History
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Children Rage Against The Deus Ex Machina ('No Future For Kids' Edition)
"Nietzsche argues that the deus ex machina creates a false sense of consolation that ought not to be sought..." [Wikipedia].
.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
"Imagine if she had been doodling something dark and disturbing." - 12 Year Old Handcuffed & Arrested For Writing On Desk
Perhaps she will now...
More dialog on this, and other incidents of mass institutional child abuse below the Youtube blurb
"A 12-year-old Queens girl was hauled out of school in handcuffs for an artless offense -doodling her name on her desk in erasable marker, the Daily News has learned Alexa Gonzalez was scribbling a few words on her desk Monday while waiting for her Spanish teacher to pass out homework at Junior High School 190 in Forest Hills she said."I love my friends Abby and Faith," the girl wrote, adding the phrases "Lex was here. 2/1/10" and a smiley face."H/t: TroubleTown
Arrested for Doodling on a Desk?
"Zero Tolerance" at Schools Is Going Way Too Far
Saturday 27 February 2010
by: Liliana Segura
AlterNet
How much longer can we tolerate abuses of power by teachers and school officials in the name of 'zero tolerance' policies? This week, the FBI announced it was launching an investigation into a surveillance scandal out of Lower Merion County, Pennsylvania, where it was recently discovered that school officials had used Web cams on school-issued laptops to spy on a student, 15-year-old Blake Robbins.
Robbins was falsely accused of possessing illicit drugs after the vice principal at his high school, Lindy Matskhis, called him into a meeting where she revealed that she had seen images of him at home through his laptop. According to Robbins' attorney, Mark Haltzman, "She called him into the office and told him, basically, 'I've been watching what was on the Web cam and saw what was in your hands. I've been reading what you've been typing, and I'm afraid you are involved in drugs and trying to sell pills.'"
Matskhis, it turned out, was grievously mistaken. What looked like pills turned out to be Mike and Ike candies.
Robbins' parents sued. Now the case has prompted a debate about student privacy and the threat of technological overreach.
The Robbins case may seem to be uniquely bad in some ways. But it comes at a time when there's no shortage of disturbing stories in the news about the intrusive and repressive measures taken by public schools against students, in districts across the country. Last year the Supreme Court finally ruled in favor of Savana Redding (now an adult, who, at the age of 13, was strip-searched by school staff in search of prescription ibuprofen); yet from violations of privacy to wrongful arrests by school "peace" officers, the story seems to be expanding.
On February 1, in Forest Hills, Queens, 12-year-old Alexa Gonzalez was arrested after she was caught doodling on her desk. Profanity? Threats against her teacher? No, the middle school student had written, with an erasable marker, "I love my friends Abby and Faith," along with "Lex was here. 2/1/10" and a smiley face... More @ Alternet
Monday, February 1, 2010
The ABCs of Anarchy: A great way for kids to learn the non-corrupted meaning of the word Anarchism
.H/t: Roxanne Amico, Spiritmorph Studio
A is for Anarchy, B is for Black Bloc, C is for Critical Mass, D is for...
Labels:
Anarchism,
Anarchy,
Children,
Disinformation,
Education,
Myth Busting,
Political Education,
Politics,
Propaganda
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