It takes courage to jump off the band wagon and say, "THE EMPEROR IS NAKED" and "YOUR GOD IS TOO SMALL AND TOO CRUEL".
If people are shown the galaxies and they still choose to sacrifice to cruel gods, they must be stopped.
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Friday, July 31, 2015
YOUR GOD IS TOO SMALL AND TOO CRUEL - STOP BLOOD SACRIFICES!
It takes courage to jump off the band wagon and say, "THE EMPEROR IS NAKED" and "YOUR GOD IS TOO SMALL AND TOO CRUEL".
If people are shown the galaxies and they still choose to sacrifice to cruel gods, they must be stopped.
WORLD WAR THREE WILL END LIFE ON EARTH - BUT AMERICA IS BUILDING BIGGER BOMBS
While people fool around with games and gadgets, there are lunatics with their hands on nuclear weapons planning to add atomic missiles hundreds of times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki. The Trident missiles will be carried by submarines. These missiles will be able to destroy the world many times over.
All this will cost billions of American dollars and the American people will be buying these bombs to end life on earth.
This is not science fiction on Saturday night television. This is the nightmare being created right now by the U.S. Navy.
This is real. Wake up ! Speak up ! Or blow up and burn !
Weapons Officer Lt. A.J. Walker, left, aboard the USS Pennsylvania. Photo by Dan Sagalyn
Rarely have Americans seen the inner workings of the Navy submarines that sail the world under the sea, loaded with the most deadly weapons in existence: nuclear arms.
But PBS NewsHour, in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, was given a rare look at the Navy's plan to replace the current generation of nuclear-armed warships.
While reporting aboard the USS Pennsylvania, an Ohio-class submarine armed with up to 24 Trident D-5 nuclear missiles, we witnessed an abbreviated battle drill simulating the launch of one of those missiles.
It's a precise and efficient operation, and if exercised successfully, could initiate nuclear war.
A detail of the operation that caught our eye was a black joystick-looking device held by Weapons Officer Lt. A.J. Walker. This is the instrument that could ultimately launch the nuclear weapon.
The firing key that is used to actually fire a missile is red. Photo by Dan Sagalyn
In practice, it's a key part of the process. In reality, Pennsylvania's Commander John Cage says he hopes it's never used.
"Nobody on the boat wants [a launch] to happen, but it's important that we train for it, because if tasked, we are going to execute that mission."
Watch the full report from the USS Pennsylvania on tonight's PBS NewsHour. Read more from the series: How to resupply a nuclear submarine
This report was produced in partnership with The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
POLICE COVER UP FOR EACH OTHER'S CRIMES - IN MONTREAL, CANADA TOO
New information shows that Officer Phillip Kidd and another officer on scene during the Sam Dubose shooting were involved in the death of an unarmed African-American man five years earlier.
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
THE SHAME OF KENYA - KIBERA - FOUR YEAR OLD GIRLS RAPED - AUTHORITIES REFUSE TO ACT
THE POWER OF HOPE: SHINING HOPE FOR COMMUNITIES EMPOWERS GIRLS AND WOMEN IN ONE OF AFRICA'S LARGEST URBAN SLUMS
W4 spotlights the inspiring work of Shining Hope for Communities, which helps create healthier, brighter futures for the inhabitants of Kibera, one of Africa's largest urban slums, through the empowerment of girls and women.
Notwithstanding the emotional closing scene of Slumdog Millionaire, hope is not the first thing one associates with one of the world's poorest slums. Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya, is one of Africa's largest urban slums. Every night its estimated one million residents squeeze into makeshift huts that engulf an area the size of New York City's Central Park. Most of them live without electricity, running water, or schooling and have shockingly short life expectancies.
Born and raised here, Kennedy Odede embodies the sort of triumphal hope usually reserved for the big screen. In 2004, when he was a teenager with very little formal education, he set out with nothing but a soccer ball and a desire to help his community and ended up founding a movement, Shining Hope for Communities (SHOFCO). Through SHOFCO's soccer games and weekly support meetings, which allow local community members to openly discuss their problems with one another, Kennedy helped improve and empower the lives of people across Kibera.
Just a few years later, building on his success and experience with SHOFCO's programs, Kennedy began working with American college student Jessica Posner. Together, they developed Shining Hope For Communities's unique, grassroots approach to empowering Kibera's girls and women—by inviting the entire community to work together to solve the challenges posed by urban poverty. SHOFCO's work was sorely needed: although reliable statistics are hard to come by, it's estimated that only eight per cent of women in Kibera ever attend school and that 70 per cent of them have experienced or will experience violence in their lifetimes. Sex work is also common in Kibera since it is one of very few income-earning options available to women.
It was this damaging state of affairs that compelled Kennedy to take action: "I wanted to offer my life so that women and girls would have equal access to a [better] future… knowing that if girls and women were given opportunities to education and economic empowerment it would create a ripple of change that would improve life for all."
As is the case in many developing countries, when there is no tuition-free schooling available, families in Kibera find themselves forced to choose between funding their sons' or daughters' schooling and tend to prioritize their sons' education. However, in 2009, SHOFCO's Kibera School for Girls became the slum's first tuition-free school—and it brought to life an innovative and powerful idea: "By linking community services [such as maternal and child healthcare, clean running water and sanitation] with a school for girls, we are showing that benefiting women benefits the whole community and are helping to make women valued members of society. We are already beginning to identify this shift taking place. In our baseline survey, participants in our programs were more likely to report gender-equitable divisions of labor and less likely to report domestic violence and abuse. Our students are already showing leadership in their communities … a majority have taught their extended families and neighbors to read, and when tragedies such as fires befall their neighbors, they organize themselves to set up food drives and collect donations."
For SHOFCO, improving life in the slum does not end with the provision of basic services. Its mission is also centered on restoring community pride and providing "the tools [girls and women] need to find a path out of poverty for themselves and their families". Buoyed by the success of the school, which now educates over 100 girls, Odede turned to address one of the greatest problems affecting women in Kibera: HIV. It's estimated that HIV infection is five times more prevalent among Kibera's girls and young women (aged 15-24) than among their male counterparts. To combat the brutal stigma and neglect inflicted upon HIV-positive women by their communities, SHOFCO started a program that trains the HIV-positive women in business and entrepreneurial skills and later allows them to earn a living wage through the production and sale of bags and jewelry. The program also organizes social events for its women participants, encouraging the creation of a vital support system for the women. On completion of the program, the women become eligible for seed capital to start their own business. SHOFCO's team recently told W4 that these women now earn 50% more than the average household income in Kibera!
Although SHOFCO's programs focus on the slum's most vulnerable residents—girls and women—Kennedy Odede has placed great emphasis on engaging Kibera's men in the issues of women's rights and empowerment. SHOFCO's Gender Development Committee, Kibera's first community-led rape response and prevention group, for instance, is strategically comprised of both sexes. Engaging men helps to instill within the community the crucial notion that rape is a crime not only against a girl or woman, but against an entire family and community.
"[W]e are trying to change gender attitudes toward women," Kennedy explains, "by conveying the worth and value of women and girls to the entire community. This is a movement that would not stand without the support of men who recognize this idea and are willing to advocate it themselves… This model has helped to convince many men who otherwise would not have supported the women and girls we are trying to help."
One of SHOFCO's greatest achievements is keeping young people engaged and inspired. The result has been a mini cultural revolution, with a theater, library, food-growing project and even a local newspaper opening over the past two years. Nancy Akinyi is a reporter for the Ghetto Mirror, SHOFCO's free newspaper, whose mission is to represent the voice of people across Nairobi's slum neighborhoods. Nancy talks of SHOFCO's impact on her life: "When I finished going as far as my family could afford in school, I joined the SHOFCO youth group… Through theater, we get to know each other's ideas and opinions, it keeps us focused and away from things that can ruin our lives… The biggest challenge that youth face in slums is ignorance – without information your life is not your own. I write for the Ghetto Mirror to empower the community with information about things that impact them. Last month I wrote about untrained midwives and the consequences of giving birth at home. I write because I know I can save lives. Many women have told me they come to our clinic because they read my articles… My dream is to educate young people across all of the slums in Nairobi to empower girls and prevent early pregnancy and HIV."
Shining Hope for Communities is changing the lives of over 36,000 people this year alone. But with an estimated one million people living in destitution within the Kibera slum's borders, any effort to change the current situation could seem like a mere drop in the ocean. Nevertheless, Odede is driven by the same massive hope and belief with which he started; his commitment to providing the slum's girls and women with opportunities is unwavering.
Energized by hope and the will to inspire positive change, Kennedy and his team have and will continue to achieve remarkable results. "Yes, poverty can be tough," Odede says, "but look how far we've come because of hope. Without it, I fear for where we would be. I still have hope and I know many others here in Kibera do too – it keeps us fighting."
We invite you to help the Shining Hope for Communities.
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
I AM A 79 YEAR OLD CANCER PATIENT - WATCH THE QUEBEC GOVERNMENT KILL ME
Of all the "optimization measures" that Quebec is imposing, the most controversial is compelling doctors to stop ordering tests that the government is now considering "unnecessary" in the context of fiscal austerity.
The Quebec government is ordering hospitals and other health facilities to slash $150 million from their budgets for medical tests, imaging scans and procedures to patients that it has judged are not "pertinent to care," the Montreal Gazette has learned.
In total, the Health Department is aiming to chop $583 million in spending through so-called optimization measures. And in a bizarre twist, the government has decided that it won't provide hospitals funding for next year's leap year day, Feb. 29, which will fall on a Monday, saving it $64 million.
It's up to hospitals to cover the shortfall on that day out of their own already diminished budgets.
One of the biggest cutbacks will take place at the McGill University Health Centre, which last year was forced to cut $50 million from its operating budget. It must now reduce its spending by an extra $21 million.
Of all the "optimization measures," the most controversial is compelling doctors to stop ordering tests that the government is now considering "unnecessary" in the context of fiscal austerity. Patient-rights advocates and managers in the health system are warning that this sets a dangerous precedent, opening the door to ageism and the prospect of clinicians no longer performing tests for people above a certain age.
Reducing the number of tests in the public system could also result in an increase in the number of tests in private clinics. Health Minister Gaétan Barrette has said he plans to propose legislation in August that would permit private clinics to start charging patients fees for some tests and procedures that would otherwise be covered under medicare in the public system.
Paul Brunet, president of the Conseil pour la protection des malades, expressed concern about the potential unintended consequences of the government's cost-cutting measures.
"Oh yeah, certainly patient care will suffer," Brunet said. "Long-term care facilities are going to take most of the hit. We know that."
Some institutions, however, have signalled to the government that they won't cut the number of medical tests.
"At this stage, it's out of the question to re-evaluate the pertinence of medical tests for patients," said Joëlle Lachapelle, a spokesperson for the Centre hospitalier de l'université de Montreal.
(A standard complete blood count test, for example, costs a hospital $5.77, while a private clinic will charge more than $60 for it. Private insurance would cover most, if not all, of the latter fee.)
The CHUM must cut $15.4 million in its 2015-2016 budget, and of that sum, $11.3 million is supposed to come from an optimization measure called "pertinence of care and physical health services."
Lachapelle said the CHUM will focus on reducing overtime rather than cutting the number of tests and procedures.
Joanne Beauvais, Barrette's press attaché, denied that the government is pressuring hospitals to cut patient care.
"We are not cutting funding for care, but implementing measures to help clinical professionals provide better care by foregoing tests and procedures that are expensive and shown not to result in either improved recovery or better diagnostics," Beauvais responded in an email.
"We expect the progress we will be making over the next year to yield recurrent savings of $150 million."
The $583 million in "optimization" savings breaks down as follows:
- Cutting $220 million in payroll costs by abolishing 1,300 management positions.
- Avoiding "unnecessary" (Beauvais's word) tests and procedures, saving $150 million.
- Not funding leap year day: $64 million.
- Persuading hospitals to team up in buying goods and services to save $35 million.
- Additional "compressions" that are unspecified: $114 million.
The CHUM will have to cut through attrition 15 managers out of 337. The MUHC, in contrast, will have to cut more than 100 managers out of 459. A cloud of fear and anxiety has descended over the managerial ranks at both the CHUM and MUHC.
Ian Popple, a spokesperson for the MUHC, said the reduction in the number of managers will be carried out over three years.
"Part of the reduction will be done by attrition as managers leave or retire," he explained. "Other reductions will have to occur by transforming some manager positions into professional-level positions (that pay less) in order to meet the ministry target. We are looking at every option, but there remains a shortfall that is requiring ongoing work to address."
Beauvais dismissed the notion that the government is actually making cuts:
"These are not cuts. Quebec cannot afford the kind of growth rate in health-care spending we experienced over the past decades, and the system is clearly able to do more with less. The best-performing teams in the network prove it. Since the health-care budget keeps growing, those measures are not cuts. They are a strong inducement to everyone in the system to improve their game."
Quebec has budgeted $32.8 billion this fiscal year on health care, an increase of 1.4 per cent, but less than the 5-per-cent annual hikes of previous years.
REMEMBERING OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND
SATURDAY, AUGUST 2, 2014
OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND IN MONTREAL -
SHE WAS VERY GRACIOUS TO ME
As a young teenager in Montreal in the early 1950's, I would go to the movies three times a week and attend concerts and plays with my Pop or on my own. I had the good fortune to see Olivia de Havilland perform in Candida with Ron Randell, Terrance Kilburn and and Bramwell Fletcher .
After every performance, I would sneak backstage or wait at the stage door to meet the stars and get their autographs. Pop introduced me to the movies and music and it was he who first got autographs for me at our family's store, Metropolitan News Agency, when I was only about eleven.
When I went backstage to meet Olivia de Havilland, I was very disappointed. Bramwell Fletcher told me she was in a hurry to leave for an appointment. But Mr. Fletcher gave me Olivia de Havilland's address.
I wrote to Olivia de Havilland. Not only did she send me a paper with her autograph. She also enclosed a personal letter. That's the kind of memory I cherish.
1952 Playbill Candida Olivia de Havilland
Also in the cast
Ron Randell, Terrance Kilburn,
and Bramwell Fletcher
Olivia Mary de Havilland was born on July 1st, 1916 in Tokyo, Japan. Her father, Walter de Havilland, was the head of a patent attorneys firm and her mother, Lilian Auguste Ruse (later Fontaine), was an actress and singer. Her sister, Academy Award winning actress Joan Fontaine was born a year later. When asked if she can still speak Japanese today Olivia replies, "Ich ni sanshi go roku shichi hachi kyu ju." (That counting 1-10) At the age of two, Olivia's parent's divorced and along with her sister Joan, Olivia moved with their mother Lilian to Saratoga, California. Shortly after her divorce from Walter, Lilian married a San Jose businessman named George Fontaine.
Quite the academic achiever, Olivia excelled at her studies and was engaged in a variety of activities including: editor of her school newspaper, public speaking, and ofcourse, performing in local theatre companies. She played the title role in a stage production of Alice and Wonderland, and was Puck in their rendition of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Olivia attended Los Gatos High School as well as the Notre Dame Convent Catholic Girl's School in Belmont, California.
After graduating from high school, Olivia was preparing to attend Mills College on a scholarship when she caught word of director Max Reinhardt's plan of an outdoor production of A Midsummer Nights Dream to play in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Olivia managed to get an audition through a friend and was offered the understudy role of Hermia. Not too shabby for a first time player! Olivia, still planning on attending college in the fall, went to Los Angeles to watch rehearsals when the actress playing Hermia suddenly dropped out of the production. Eighteen year-old Olivia is thrusted into the spotlight before all of Hollywood and, thank goodness, she and the play become a smash hit with audiences from around.
Warner Brothers decides to capitalize on the stage success and hires Max Reinhardt to direct the screen version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Reinhardt in turn, decides to take Olivia with him and the unknown but up-and-coming-quick Olivia de Havilland signs a seven year contract with Warner Brothers. She kicks off her screen career as a co-star in 1935's Alibi Ike and follows with the film version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Hollywood has a new leading lady and Mill's College, a prospective postponement.
Olivia was then cast in a series of success film movies, most of which were with eight-time co-star Errol Flynn with whom her natural chemistry with sizzled on screen. Among the films they made together include: Captain Blood (1935),The Charge Of The Light Brigade (1936), andThe Adventures of Robin Hood (1938).
In 1939, Olivia was cast in what is perhaps considered the greatest masterpiece of all time,Gone With The Wind. She played the role of Melanie Wilkes alongside super star Clark Gable and at the time, relatively unknown British actress Vivien Leigh. Olivia de Havilland received a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress but lost to co-star Hattie McDaniels who was the first African American to win an Oscar. The following year, Olivia received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for her performance in Hold Back The Dawn. This time however, Olivia didn't lose to her co-star but her sister, Joan who won for her performance in Suspicion (1941).
After Olivia requested Warner Brothers to cast her in more substancial roles the studio retorted with a six month suspension. Adding to the suspension, when Olivia's contract with Warner Brothers was up, they demanded she make up time for the six month suspension. Though the demand went against California law, many in Hollywood had accepted just the sort as no actor or studio employee had been successful in doing otherwise. That was ofcourse until Olivia de Havilland stood up. Olivia decided to challenge them on this action as well as the entire perception at the time that actors were merely property of a studio. Olivia sued the studio and during the two year duration of the court battle she didn't appear in a single film. The court ruled not only in Olivia's favor, but in the favor of all actors stating that all performers were to be limited to a seven year contract that would include any suspensions. The "de havilland decision" was monumental as no longer were actors to be treated as slaves to their studios.
Olivia returned to the screen in 1946's To Each His Own and finally took home an Oscar of her own. Her performance earned The Academy Award for Best Actress. Olivia's next film, The Snake Pit, was one particularily close to her heart. During her court battles with Warner Brothers, Olivia had taken some time to tour the real-life battles of World War II. She witnessed the sad and often stuck with stigma mental illnesses that often plagued returning servicemen. This was her chance to bring the issue into the national spotlight. The Snake Pit's exposure to the conditions of the U.S. mental instutions at the time resignated anger amongst the public who now protested reform - and got it.
P.S. Just in case you are wondering, Olivia de Havilland was outstanding. What else is new now?
Olivia received Best Actress Oscar #2 in 1949 for her performance in The Heiress. Olivia plays a naive girl in love with a dashingly handsome man who her father suspects is out to get her fortune.
The 1950's was more or less a transitional time for Olivia. She began appearing less frequently on screen and was focused on spending time with her family. By now she had remarried to Pierre Galante, a French business man with whom she had her daughter Gisele with, and was also raising her son Benjamin from her first marriage with Marcus Goodrich. Olivia also started to appear on stage, Broadway that is, with starworthy performances in Romeo and Juliet and A Gift in Time.
Never the one to disappoint, Olivia didn't completely abandon the screen, nor would they let her, and some of her high performances included My Cousin Rachel, Not As A Stranger, and The Proud Rebel.
In 1962 Olivia took a shot at author and what do you know? She's a 'best' at that too. Her book Every Frenchman Has One, recounts Olivia's life in France and instantaneously became a bestseller. As for the big screen, throughout the 1960's de Havilland was dramatic! She took on roles in thrillers such as Lady In A Cage andHush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte with buddy Bette Davis. Over the next decade Olivia would continue on screen as well as enter the new medium of television with series such as Roots: The Next Generation, North and South andAnastasia: The Mystery of Anna which earned her an Emmy and Golden Globe. Though for many years now, her performance in 1979's The Fifth Musketeer has been considered her last appearance on screen. However, it seems we may be lucky and see her highness once more in the 2009 production of I-59 South. Cross your fingers!
Today, when she isn't receiving recognition left and right, Olivia spends her days in the city of Paris and is reportedly writing her memoirs. She been given just about every award under the moon, her more recent including: a special appearance and a standing ovation at the 2003 Academy Awards, a 2005 International Medal of the Arts from the Kennedy Center, a tribute from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts in Science in 2006, and her Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is located at 6764 Hollywood Boulevard. Not to mention an honorary degree given to her by the University of Hertfordshire, England at the age of 82. Very savy!
Whether it's the screen or stage, judicial or mental health system, television or literature, one thing is clear: Olivia is always a winner.
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