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Posted by: AGelbert

« on: October 31, 2024, 10:14:17 pm »

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👉 Graphics and emojies by AGelbert. 👈

October 30, 2024 By 🕯️🗽 Alon Mizrahi

A Time of Piercing, Absolute Truths

SNIPPETS:

You see, it becomes very simple once you deconstruct fake complexity, created and constantly fueled by media outlets and political structures that benefit from the status quo, namely all the ills stated above.

In real life, nothing is ever exceptionally morally complex. Contrary to colonial thinking, morality is simple, intuitive, and clear. You do not molest and abuse children (or anyone). You do not harm innocent people. You do not use authority unethically. You do not sit comfortably in public transportation when someone who needs a seat more than you do can’t find a place to sit.

You never act, with people of any group, like they are less human than you or your group. If you do, you deserve to be shunned and punished by the rest of humanity. It is exceedingly simple.

So once you understand what’s going on, and what basic principles of humanity and morality have been breached, all you have to do as a political being, is to make your voice and judgment heard. And the greater the breach of humanity, the louder and more fierce your voice should be, as the outcry needs to match the severity of the crime. It is not complicated at all.

Israel is mass

murdering the 🥵 Palestinian and 🥵 Lebanese people because it is a sick, demented, psychopathic society.

The US is helping Israel because it is willing to sacrifice Palestinian children for its deranged quest for 🦍 world domination and because it is occupied by Zionists. Period. It is all as simple as that.

There is no need to argue, no need to engage. We only need to make this truth heard everywhere, all the time, unequivocally, unapologetically, without any regard for acceptable norms and narratives.

Be a fanatic for children and humanity. Yes. If you can’t do that, go to hell. I have nothing to say to you, and there is nothing you have to say to me.

https://alonmizrahi.substack.com/p/a-time-of-piercing-absolute-truths

Posted by: AGelbert

« on: May 03, 2024, 01:36:24 pm »

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3 May 2024 By 🕯️ Malak Hijazi

😬 🥺 😦 😞 😖 😵 😱 🥵 In Gaza’s overcrowded schools, there is little privacy or hygiene for displaced people. Here, women pray in Rafah. Ahmed IbrahimAPA images

Gaza’s mothers are going through hell

SNIPPET:

Um Amin, a mother with a few children, confronted with the harsh reality of displacement, recounted her family’s struggles during Israel’s aggression. As bombs relentlessly fell on their neighborhood, reducing their home to rubble, Um Amin had to seek refuge at a school run by the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) in the northern Gaza Strip taking only very few belongings.

She was pregnant. And in the school there was little by way of basic necessities such as clean water, food or even clothes for her children.

Stay or go?

She considered moving south, where food might be a little more accessible. Her husband refused, causing conflict between them.

He feared not being able to return. And while she believed that the Israeli army was attempting to force them to leave, she also felt it was a matter of life and death for her children.

“It was heart-wrenching to witness my kids fighting over scraps of bread. My 4-year-old started stashing away bread in his pocket for later. I was shocked. Before the war, I never slept without knowing my children were fed. Now, most of the time, I am certain they never feel satisfied.”

Her entire motivation to carry on became a matter of feeding her children She denied herself food for their sake, but had also to remind herself of the child within her.

“The baby inside me is also a priority, so I had to eat too.”

She found the balancing act incredibly challenging, an unbearable burden of motherhood.

“I am going to share something I’ve never told anyone I know: I contemplated suicide to escape the weight of this responsibility.”

After the Israeli army unexpectedly stormed al-Rimal, a Gaza City neighborhood, for a second time, Um Amin panicked and fled again, this time going from the UNRWA school to a relative’s house.

But her fear caused her to enter preterm labor. A doctor, at the nearby al-Sahaba medical center, had to resort to a cesarean section.

It was hell, Um Amin said. There was insufficient anesthesia and she could feel the scalpel cutting 🥵 into her body.

There was no electricity; the doctor had to use a handheld flashlight to see.

Um Amin’s cries of pain could not drown out the crashing of shells around her.

The operation left her utterly drained. She couldn’t believe she was still alive.

She needed nourishment to recover what she had lost during the bleeding and to breastfeed her son. But hunger was stalking Gaza.

Food was scarce, there was no white flour in the markets, and Israel was blocking aid trucks from entering the north.

“All I had to eat was bread made from animal feed and water. When I had my other children, I relied on foods rich in animal proteins, but it was impossible this time. The price of meat was five times higher than normal.”

The stone age

Read more:

https://electronicintifada.net/content/gazas-mothers-are-going-through-hell/46111

Posted by: AGelbert

« on: March 08, 2024, 01:48:04 pm »

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COUNTERPUNCH

MARCH 8, 2024 BY RALPH NADER

Stop the Worsening UNDERCOUNT of Palestinian Casualties in Gaza

Image by Nikolas Gannon.

SNIPPETS:

The extreme right-wing Netanyahu regime has enforced its declared siege of, in its genocidal words, “no food, no water, no electricity, no fuel, no medicine.”

The relentless bombing has destroyed apartment buildings, marketplaces, refugee camps, hospitals, clinics, ambulances, bakeries, schools, mosques, churches, roads, electricity networks, critical water mains – just about everything.

The U.S.-equipped Israeli war machine has even uprooted agricultural fields, including thousands of olive trees on one farm, bulldozed many cemeteries and bombed civilians fleeing on Israeli orders, while obstructing the few trucks carrying humanitarian aid from Egypt.

With virtually no healthcare left, no medications, and infectious diseases spreading especially among infants, children, the infirm and the elderly, can anybody believe that the fatalities have just gone over 30,000? With five thousand babies born every month into the rubble, their mothers wounded and without food, healthcare, medicine and clean water for any of their children, severe skepticism about the Hamas Health Ministry’s official count is warranted. ... ...

In recent days, the situation has become more dire. In the March 2, 2024, Washington Post, reporter, Ishaan Tharoor writes: “The bulk of Gaza’s more than 2 million people face the prospect of famine — a state of affairs that constitutes the fastest decline in a population’s nutrition status ever recorded, according to aid workers. Children are starving 🥵 at the fastest rate the world has ever known. 😱 ... ...

Just like the entire mass media, many governments, even the independent media and critics of the war would have us accept that between 98% and 99% of Gaza’s entire population has survived – albeit the sick, injured and more Palestinians about to die. This is lethally improbable!

From accounts of people on the ground, videos and photographs of deadly episode after episode, plus the resultant mortalities from blocking or smashing the crucial necessities of life, a more likely estimate, in my appraisal, is that at least 200,000 Palestinians must have perished by now and the toll is accelerating by the hour.

Full article: 🕯️😵
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/03/08/stop-the-worsening-undercount-of-palestinian-casualties-in-gaza/

Posted by: AGelbert

« on: January 10, 2024, 01:01:29 am »

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21 December 2023 by 🕊️ Wedad Jalal Yousef Al-Hallaq

Creativity Still Shines Amid a Genocide

People are doing their best to continue with their daily lives. Bashar TalebAPA images

I never imagined the horrible situation in which we find ourselves.

We cannot enjoy the sunrise because of the bombings and the destruction.

Basic necessities like food, water and electricity are in short supply. Crossings through which goods are supposed to flow have been closed.

For two and a half months, Israel has been waging a genocidal war against us. Our living conditions are miserable.

Yet we remain creative in the face of adversity.

I heard my father say to my mother, “Did the electricity come back? We need it to make bread.”

“Sorry, it didn’t,” my mother replied.

Here is where my father’s creativity shone.

Our pressure cooker usually needs electricity to function. But my dad transformed it so that it could run on coal.

He was fully aware that coal can be harmful, especially for people like my mother, who has health issues. But we have to be flexible so that we can survive.

What choice do we have? 🤷‍♂️ We just want to live.

Baking bread should only take about an hour. Now it takes four or five hours.

Everyone involved in the process gets a back ache.

My brothers Younes and Nader travel long distances to schools and hospitals so that they can fetch water.

Unfortunately, some children end up drinking polluted water, which makes them ill.

People living in makeshift tents endure harsh conditions, especially when it rains.

Making coffee with a 🕯️ candle 👍

I have heard about a man who did not have any food for his children. What did he do?

He slaughtered a donkey, so they could have some meat. It is the worst crisis this man has ever faced, watching his children go hungry without being able to do anything for them.

During these wintry nights, my family gathers around a 🕯️ candle. Lighting a fire is not an option.

There is a concern that Israel might mistake any fire as a resistance operation and bomb the home where the fire has been lit.

Despite our fears, my family has shown some ingenuity in ensuring that we have hot drinks at night.

My brother came up with the idea of breaking a candle and placing it in a dish. We then put a coffee maker on top of the dish.

This is how we warm our hearts.

We miss sleeping peacefully in our own beds. Instead, we now use blankets provided by refugee agencies.

Two of us share the same bed. It is a challenging situation but we will never give up.

Never!

Most vegetables are unavailable in shops. So we have bought seeds and are trying to grow our own food.

We have waited weeks for it to 🌱 grow. How can we cope with the 😦 uncertainty?

I was taken aback when I saw a man picking up some dough from the remains of a house that had been bombed.

“What are you doing?” someone asked him.

“I am taking the dough for my family,” he said.

Honor

We are exhausted. 😞

Yes, we are resilient. But we cannot endure seeing our families starve to death.

My sister-in-law is pregnant and she really wants sweets. Sadly, there are none in the markets.

I have made her some, using sugar, water and sesame.

I crave cheese. The shops have none of it, either.

Thankfully, my grandmother made some at home. It was delicious.

Despite our misery, we are still alive. If we die, it will be with honor.

This horrible war causes particular health problems for women. 😟

Sanitary pads are unavailable, so we use diapers – for babies – as a substitute. Others cut pieces of cloth from tents.

These are the kind of makeshift solutions we have to find. It is an extraordinarily difficult and tragic situation.

Can you empathize with our plight?

We encountered major hardships previously.

During Israel’s war against Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009, our family also gathered around a 🕯️ candle.

We couldn’t find a sewing machine then, so we 🤠 designed one using bicycle wheels. That’s how we knitted clothes.

Gazans often invent remarkable things from practically nothing as we strive to stay alive.

It feels like Israel aims to wipe us out. Please do not turn your eyes away from the horrors we are going through. 🥺

Israel massacres and humiliates us and demolishes our homes. But Gazans will never lose. 🗽

Clever people will emerge victorious, leaving the entire world astonished.

Wedad Jalal Yousef Al-Hallaq is a teacher in Gaza.
https://electronicintifada.net/content/creativity-still-shines-amid-genocide/43046

Posted by: AGelbert

« on: October 17, 2023, 04:11:14 pm »

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October 17, 2023 by EDWIN LEAP
For those readers who follow me at the SC Baptist Courier, this is my October column. I thought it was worth sharing widely.

Avoiding Violence

Suggestions for navigating a dangerous world

Over the years I have seen treated many individuals who had been involved in violence. Most had violence inflicted upon them. But it was not uncommon for me to meet the alleged perpetrators, who sat on the ER stretcher in handcuffs.

Unfortunately, in these contentious times violence is not rare. So it’s probably good for us all to think about ways to avoid being involved in dangerous interactions. This is especially true for young men, who seem to find themselves in these situations more than other groups.

When my sons were young I gave them one of the most important bits of wisdom I could think of when it came to dealing with possible violence. “Boys, learn to keep your mouths shut.”

That is, don’t provoke angry, potentially dangerous people (particularly other men) and don’t give them reasons to stay angry. It’s all too easy to face off with another man and say, ‘oh, yeah, and what are you gonna do about it?’ Or ‘do you have a problem? Let’s take this outside!’

Things like 💣 that might feel empowering in the moment but in the end, one never knows when 💥 a gun or knife will appear, or when the unarmed individual turns out to be a dangerous person who has no restraint. (Or when all of his friends decide to join in the assault.)

By the way, it doesn’t take a weapon to create life-altering injuries. It’s not like the movies where everyone squares off and has a fair fight. There are no fair fights in the end.

The other thing I would say to a young man now is that it’s always best, when misunderstandings and

anger arise, to simply say ‘hey, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything,’ or ‘I apologize if I insulted you.’ 🕊️

Along the same lines, road rage incidents can lead to terrible injuries or death. It’s really wise to learn not to honk, make hand gestures, scream or try to speed past others or cut them off. We can never know which person is simply annoyed and which is fleeing from the police; who is using drugs and who is simply late for work. And the potential danger to uninvolved bystanders is a very real threat, as cars crash into other cars or pedestrians.

Another reality of violence, little discussed, is that alcohol is associated with half of all violence (including half of ☠️ murders) worldwide. People who are intoxicated are disinhibited and more prone to violence.

There’s a lot written on this topic, but I’ll close with this. When trouble is brewing, at a party or even on a city street, the best possible path is to find a safe exit and leave the area. Call the police along the way. But staying to watch, and film, the ‘festivities’ is dangerous. Bullets don’t care who is in their path. This is even more true when a man is responsible for the safety of his wife, girlfriend, a date or a child.

I’ve seen people die of violent injuries and it’s always a horrible thing, between the wounds, the blood and the weeping of family members. The less of it we all experience, the better.

PS: For further reading, The Gift of Fear, by Gavin De Becker, is an interesting book on learning to identify dangerous people and behaviors.
https://edwinleap.substack.com/p/avoiding-violence

AGelbert COMMENT: Well said. I believe that almost ALL later regreted negative verbalizations by humans, that trigger more violence instead of calming things down, are caused by Pride overcoming common sense and reason, within both the victim and the perpetrator of physically injurious violence.

C.S. Lewis 🕊️ wrote, and I agree, that

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"... it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began. Other vices may sometimes bring people together: you may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people. But Pride always means enmity—it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God."

-- Quote from Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis.

Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. -- Proverbs 16:18

What the ☝🏻 Bible REALLY Says About Alcohol

https://youtu.be/MRpA4njHF64

Posted by: AGelbert

« on: August 02, 2023, 01:22:50 pm »

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August 1, 2023 Reuters

Four Nigerians, Rescued in Brazil, Survived 14 Days on a Ship’s Rudder 😲

Nigerian refugees Thankgod Matthew and Roman Ebimene pose for a photo during an interview, after being rescued from a ship rudder on the Brazilian coast, in Sao Paulo, Brazil July 26, 2023. REUTERS/Carla Carniel

SNIPPET:

AO PAULO, Aug 1 (Reuters) – On their tenth day at sea, the four Nigerian stowaways crossing the Atlantic in a tiny space above the rudder of a cargo ship ran out of food and drink.

They survived another four days, according to their account, by drinking the sea water crashing just meters below them, before being rescued by Brazilian federal police in the southeastern port of Vitoria.

Photo courtesy Brazilian Federal Police

Their remarkable, death-defying journey across some 5,600 kilometers (3,500 miles) of ocean underlines the risks some migrants are prepared to take for a shot at a better life.

“It was a terrible experience for me,” said 38-year-old Thankgod Opemipo Matthew Yeye 🕊️, one of the four Nigerians, in an interview at a Sao Paulo church shelter. “On board it is not easy. I was shaking, so scared. But I’m here.”

Their relief at being rescued soon gave way to surprise.

Stowaways Rescued After 13 Days On Ship’s Rudder

The four men said they had hoped to reach Europe and were shocked to learn they had in fact landed on the other side of the Atlantic, in Brazil. Two of the men have since been returned to Nigeria upon their request, while Yeye and Roman Ebimene Friday, a 35-year-old from Bayelsa state, have applied for asylum in Brazil.

“I pray the government of Brazil will have pity on me,” said Friday, who had already attempted to flee Nigeria by ship once before but was arrested by authorities there.

Both men said economic hardship, political instability and crime had left them with little option but to abandon their native Nigeria. Africa’s most populous country has longstanding issues of violence and poverty, and kidnappings are endemic.

Yeye, a ☝🏻 pentecostal minister 🕊️ from Lagos state, said his peanut and palm oil farm was destroyed by floods this year,

leaving him and his family homeless. He hopes they can now join him in Brazil.

Full article:

https://gcaptain.com/four-nigerians-rescued-in-brazil-survived-14-days-on-a-ships-rudder/

Posted by: AGelbert

« on: July 28, 2023, 07:26:35 pm »

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July 27, 2023 by EDWIN LEAP

😇 Bessie's Life had 🕊️ Meaning ☝🏻

A reminder for us all

Bessie, some three score and ten years old, lay on the backboard motionless. Her old, gray head was surrounded by great orange blocks of foam; her neck encased in a hard plastic collar. Straps criss-crossed her body, as if she might make some miraculous attempt to escape. As if we strapped her body down so it wouldn’t float away, though she was already floating, I suspect. Oxygen passed into her lungs from the tube that protruded from her dry mouth.

She was found slumped in the floor of her nursing home. God bless those paramedics, whose skill revived her dying heart and who, with strong hands bound her top to bottom for her ride to the emergency room. They snatched her from something; from death a while, from life a while. But she arrived and she was ours.

Standard stuff. No one knows quite what happened. But we knew a few things. She did not breath. She did not wince from any pain. She did not startle with any sound. And she appeared as old as Methuselah. Older than her years. ‘Older than her stated age,’ as we delicately say in medical charts.

I did have some information. She was a long-time resident of a local assisted living center. She was profoundly retarded and always had been. She was blind. And all she would do was suck her fingers and try to sing some hymns. Maybe she mumbled ‘Amazing Grace’, or ‘On Christ The Solid Rock’, slurring words and verses, annoying some passersby, inspiring others.

It suddenly seemed so easy! She had a cardiac arrest. She was probably a ‘no code’. She was going to die with no one around. The nursing home would tell me, ‘she has no family. Some old friends stop by sometimes, but no one checks on her. Do what you think is best’. All so easy.

Until they gave me that cussed (two syllables, please) phone number, and told me she was a ‘full code.’ No one had ever filled out the ‘blessed’ paperwork for this little old lady. Fine. I called her sister. I expected more ease. ‘No, I’m her only family. I don’t want you to do anything. I can’t come over. Just call me when she passes’.

But to her credit, Bessie would not leave me alone. Bessie had a message for me. Bessie was speaking through her silence, through her loneliness, through her confusion and into my busy day. Bessie was standing with one food in heaven’s gate, looking back and talking to me. And laughing! What her sister actually said was, ‘I’ll come right over. I’m calling her other sister, her brothers and her nieces. We’ll be there as soon as we can.’

And they filed in, slowly, until they were all there. All of her siblings were older. All of them seemed weary, like this was just one more piece of sadness in a long sad story. Any of them could have been lying on that backboard that day. But they sat in assorted chairs and touched one another. Their eyes swollen and red, tears on their sagging, age lined faces. They sat there and looked at her. They looked at her like she mattered.

I told them the score. What I knew, by the time they arrived, was this: she appeared to be having a large MI, or heart attack. But she also had experienced a large cerebral hemorrhage and her brain was already ‘herniating’; it was being pushed down through the base of her skull where her spinal cord and blood vessels traveled. This was a death sentence. I wondered in physician fashion, ‘is it really an MI, or are the EKG changes from her brain bleed? Or did she have an arrhythmia and then fall, hitting her head?’ And then I thought, ‘who really cares?’ Her family certainly couldn’t have cared less about the fascinating cause and effect of medical science, that thing that makes doctors call terrible events ‘interesting’. I really didn’t care either. It’s hard to care about things you can’t change. I knew what had to be done. I knew I would be her doctor, start to finish.

We took her off of the backboard. I told her people everything. I told them she was going to die as soon as we stopped breathing for her. They understood and waited for everyone to arrive. They told me she was their baby sister. They said it like they remembered how precious she was, simplicity, drooling, singing and all. They said it like she was worthwhile. They all wanted to be with their old baby sister and hold her hand as she fell asleep the last time.

Finally, it was time to put an end to the futile. With all her local kin at the bedside, I deflated that cuff and pulled out that tube and we put a little oxygen over her face and watched. Tuned in to modern medical drama, her brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews watched the green blip of the monitor until I turned it off. People have watched death far longer than there have been heart monitors. None of us needed to see the plummeting oxygen saturations or the transformation of heart beats into flat lines.

Bessie never drew another breath. Some three or four hours after she arrived, we let her walk on through the door to glory, where the hymns’ final verses are all written down. She walked through smiling, blowing kisses at her family. Baby sister, all grown up at last. She walked from confused infirmity into forever perfection, waiting and hoping for them all to come to her in due time.

At least that’s what I believe. I think it’s what they believed. She left behind a place where some might have considered her pathetic, her life meaningless. But in her years of hymns mumbled in the dark of her blindness, she focused the love of a family into rare clarity, and helped to teach us that what is worthless to some is a treasure to others.

She sang as she looked back, sang in a clear voice, eyes clear. Maybe that last verse of ‘Amazing Grace’, ‘When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun…’.

And we covered her old house in plastic and went our separate ways.
https://open.substack.com/pub/edwinleap/p/bessies-life-had-meaning

AGelbert COMMENT:

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"She walked through smiling, blowing kisses at her family. Baby sister, all grown up at last. She walked from confused infirmity into forever perfection, waiting and hoping for them all to come to her in due time.

At least that’s what I believe."

I too firmly believe it with every fiber of my being.

Quote

“Every event which might claim to be a miracle is, in the last resort, something presented to our senses, something seen, heard, touched, smelled, or tasted. And our senses are not infallible. If anything extraordinary seems to have happened, we can always say that we have been the victims of an illusion. If we hold a philosophy which excludes the supernatural, this is what we always shall say.

What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience.” C.S. Lewis

Posted by: AGelbert

« on: July 24, 2023, 04:52:33 pm »

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July 17, 2023, 3:31 pm By David Goodman

Just when Rick Dente thought it was over, three tenants who lived above his store came down, ropes around their waists. They banged open the door and rescued the exhausted shopkeeper.

The mud-filled back room of Dente’s Market where Rick Dente was trapped and nearly drowned on July 11, 2023 before being rescued by his tenants. Photo by David Goodman/VTDigger

Vermont Conversation: ‘☝🏻 Someone was watching over me’: A near death and a second chance for Barre

Posted by: AGelbert

« on: July 23, 2023, 11:19:27 pm »

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td

LYNN PARRAMORE / INSTITUTE FOR NEW ECONOMIC THINKING

JULY 19, 2023

Why Is Getting Old So Hard and Expensive in America?

In "The Measure of Our Age," elder justice expert M.T. Connolly offers both a warning and challenge about our eldercare systems.
SNIPPET:

We’re not ready for old age. Not as individuals, not as a society. That’s the sobering news from lawyer M.T. Connolly, former coordinator of the Elder Justice and Nursing Home Initiative at the U.S. Department of Justice. In her new book, The Measure of Our Age: Navigating Care, Safety, Money, and Meaning Later in Life, she outlines how our institutions, laws, and cultural practices have failed to keep up with our amazing advances in longevity over the last century. As a result, many, if not most of us, are spending our final years with far less security, health, purpose, and joy than we could be having. (Americans have been falling behind peer countries on mortality rates in recent years).

We aren’t prepared to care for people living longer, either. As many a midlife person can tell you, I’ve found my own journey through the land of caring for an elderly parent to be difficult in ways I never anticipated—often unnecessarily so. Gaps and ambiguities in the law made it hard to figure out who could decide and do what, despite my mother’s diligent planning. Well-known financial institutions my family had trusted for decades turned out to be predatory—with whole divisions set up to take advantage of an aging population. Help was hard to come by, as was knowledge of how to navigate confusing systems of insurance, home care, and the constantly-shifting needs of a person with diminishing capacity. All of it was crushingly expensive—and my mother was one of the lucky ones of her generation, reaching old age with a pension and educated children to help oversee her medical needs and combat the scammers that seemed to lurk around every corner, some wearing handyman overalls, others in suits and ties.

Connolly has written a book not just to warn us, but to prepare us and to offer insight into the changes and adaptations we must make in order not just to live longer, but to live longer better. She spoke to the Institute for New Economic Thinking about what prompted her to take on the challenge of aging and what she envisions for a final stage of life that is healthier and happier.

Lengthy article:

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/why-is-getting-old-so-hard-and-expensive-in-america/

Posted by: AGelbert

« on: June 15, 2023, 02:36:34 pm »

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June 14 2023

Rev. Devon Thomas: Homelessness can affect us all when we least expect it

SNIPPETS:

It baffles me that our Legislature will work to keep gas prices low for struggling families but will not work to put a roof over their heads.

... ...

Housing and homelessness will always be problems to which our communities should pay close attention. If the state will not take up the problem, it falls to us in our local communities to do the right thing and provide a place to sleep for a neighbor in need.

Read more:

https://vtdigger.org/2023/06/14/rev-devon-thomas-homelessness-can-affect-us-all-when-we-least-expect-it/

Posted by: AGelbert

« on: June 12, 2023, 05:50:15 pm »

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June 10, 2023 by EDWIN LEAP

A Different Kind of Orphan

All around us, every day in medicine
SNIPPET:

While some hospitals have more of the ‘exciting stuff,’ than others, much of what I and my amazing colleagues do is treat the injuries and illnesses of a rapidly aging population.

Although that may sound mundane it really isn’t. As humans live longer and medical science advances, managing the infections, heart disease, lung disease, stroke, fractures, head injuries and other assorted travails of the

elderly becomes ever more complicated. Indeed, we’re getting better at it. We’re just not so good at adding quality of life to quantity, but that’s another discussion for another day.

We also do more than manage the medical issues. Every day, every night hospitals have to deal with the social crises associated with aging and infirmity. Whether it’s how to arrange home health after a broken arm, or where to place the confused and violent patient with dementia, there are few easy answers as skilled nursing beds fill up, neurologists and psychiatrists are few and far between and perhaps most poignant of all, men and women are aging all alone.

Whether this happens because they had no children, lost their children to disease or injury, or are estranged from their families, it comes to the same. Many seniors with disability or chronic illnesses have no advocates and little hope of flourishing in their later years. 😞

As I was contemplating this I had a minor epiphany. And since it’s almost Sunday, I’ll throw in some James 🕊️ (brother of Jesus).

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” James 1:27

That seems fairly 🕊️ straightforward. It’s a statement free of politics. (Unlike so much that comes from my fellow 😒 believers in these dark days.)

But as I thought about my aging mother, my aging in-laws, the men and women I see in the ER, confused and frightened, lonely and without help or hope, I realized what I was missing.

Full article:

https://edwinleap.substack.com/p/a-different-kind-of-orphan/

Posted by: AGelbert

« on: June 11, 2023, 02:31:04 pm »

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June 6, 2023 by by Robin Dickinson, MD

SNIPPET:

As physicians, we know our advice to patients to eat a particular diet for their health condition is at least as important as medication, and often more so. Caring for our most vulnerable by making sure they have food to eat should be a non-partisan issue. So why is the government making access to food even more challenging? 🥺

Full article:

How I Became a Physician on Food Stamps

Posted by: AGelbert

« on: June 04, 2023, 01:44:02 pm »

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Empathy by Occupation:

June 1, 2023 by Edwin Leap, MD

Dear Colleagues: You Don't Hate People

— You're just stretched really thin

It's something one hears too often in healthcare. I've heard it my entire career at one time or another. More in the last few years, with the shortages, pandemics, lions, tigers, and bears...

A nurse, physician, medic, or someone else involved in the madness of bedside care comes back to their desk, collapses into their chair in frustration, and says "I really hate people!"

It might be because their intoxicated patient keeps pulling out his IV, blood pooling on the floor and dragged all across his sheets. Later he was squatting in the corner, relieving himself on the floor of his room.

It could be because a family member of a patient is particularly demanding, and due to their own fears and frustrations, says angry, biting things to the staff member. It makes it hard to go back into the room.

Sometimes it's because there are just too many patients, who are too sick, and the demands keep rising. Physicians and nurses alike face this as people live longer and have more complex illnesses. It's made worse because administrators keep piling on charting requirements; medical records systems add new time-stamps to track; and nurses, patient care techs, labs techs, respiratory therapists, and all the assorted staff of the hospital are in short supply. To top it off, housekeeping is wildly overworked and underpaid.

Patients can't get discharged because they can't go to nursing homes, or to their own homes due to weakness and infirmity. They lie in the hospital for days or weeks in a perpetual holding pattern, like a commuter flight circling Charlotte.

Other times it's far more painful. The team staggers out the room where they tried to save the child who was beaten to death by an adult. Men and women go to separate corners, cry, scream, and dream of justice.

The car crash, caused by an impaired driver, leaves a young mother paralyzed, a young father near death.

The great-grandmother, doing her best, is raising her great grand-children on virtually no money, because the children's mother and father can't escape fentanyl, or meth, or any other substance.

A fellow staff member berates a colleague. It happens to everyone. I've received my own share of this from other physicians. We are not a monolithic group. Everyone in healthcare is potentially divided by tribe and family. We can be very cruel and our words, which should heal, can cut like #11 scalpels.

After all of this, people say "I hate people, I really do!"

To which I try to reply, "I've seen you take care of patients. If you hated people, you wouldn't do this job. You love people, you just hate the way things are."

Before COVID, during COVID, after COVID, it has always been hard to take care of the sick and dying. There have always been and will always be tragic situations, hateful people, unkind fellow travelers.

All of it takes a toll. The suffering, the wounds, the death, all imprint themselves on our memories and likely onto our DNA.

But to everyone who thinks, in the midst of the fight, "I hate people," I submit that you don't.

Quite the opposite. I think you love people.

If you didn't, you would never be there in the first place, telling us about your hatred. Which is, by the way, just another way of saying that you care enough to keep doing the job even when it's terrible. You're just stretched thin; physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

So, keep the faith brothers and sisters.

The world needs you. Especially the people you think you hate.

You see, I know the work you do.

Hatred doesn't look a thing like that.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/rural/104783?xid=nl_secondopinion_2023-06-04&eun=g2211511d0r

Edwin Leap, MD, is an emergency physician who blogs at edwinleap.com opens in a new tab or window, and is the author of The Practice Test opens in a new tab or window and Life in Emergistan opens in a new tab or window. You can read more of his writing on his Substack column, Life and Limb opens in a new tab or window, where this post opens in a new tab or window originally appeared.

COMMENT by Charles_Beauchamp 👍
I can vouch as a rural general internist at the pinnacle of the Stroke & Diabetes Belts and the Southern Chronic Poverty Areas in NE NC that:

1) Hospital at Home services are needed;

2) 24 x 7 outpatient call is sometimes impinging on having unconditional regard for patients;

3) Daunting are the forensic aspects of our care for those with Intermittent Explosive Disorder & the ubiquitous availability of guns to settle disputes;

4) Unless cultivated and curated regularly and with "vigah", community pride in helping others can sputter to a standstill;

5) Riding on country roads to do home visits can be very hazardous to one's health, especially at dusk and later during hunting season;

6) Prior authorization of urgently needed medications is more than a major nuisance;

7) Managed (very poorly) Medicaid with four different coverage options in sparsely populated areas = a sign of insanity of the politicians;

8 ) Sham phone call coming in on the clinic number --> wish one could push a button to fry the origin of the robocall

9) The lack of local youth trained & certified to be community health workers and home caregivers = a bad reflection on the school system's inability to give youth the vision and the means of becoming care team players in rural areas.

10) It is very difficult to recruit replacements for ole farte physicians like yours truly in rural areas

11) Lack of help in making needed referrals, transporting patients from the hinterlands to tertiary care centers, arranging ongoing home care....etc = impairment of needed care and increase in unnecessary deaths, especially during the pandemic;

12) disparities in pregnancy outcomes, lack of adequate means of protecting the fetus in its transition to becoming a person, lack of protection of the mother, lack of doulas and ready access to needed care = third world pregnancy outcomes

Posted by: AGelbert

« on: May 05, 2023, 02:51:50 pm »

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Leading Civil Rights, Faith, And Housing Policy Groups Urge HUD To Swiftly Adopt Final AFFH Rule » NCRC

April 25, 2023

Fair housing, civil rights, faith and housing advocacy organizations issued a joint statement urging the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to move quickly in adopting a final affirmatively furthering fair housing (AFFH) regulation following the closure of the proposed rule’s comment period.

“The goal of the federal Fair Housing Act and, specifically, its mandate to affirmatively further fair housing (AFFH) was to rectify the deeply inequitable systems in our nation caused by decades of unjust policies and practices that deprived millions of people from gaining access to secure and healthy housing opportunities. However, for much of the past 55 years, we’ve lacked a robust framework for actually enforcing this important AFFH mandate. As a result, issues like unfair appraisals, biased technologies, a dual credit market, restrictive zoning policies, health and food deserts and aspects of subsidized housing administration persist and continue to drive disproportionate outcomes in health, education, wealth, homeownership, technology, environment, climate, employment and other areas.

“Our organizations commended HUD’s leadership for releasing its updated Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) proposed rule this year, an important step toward expanding fair housing. Now that the proposed rule’s comment period has closed, we call on HUD to move swiftly in adopting a final rule that creates more equitable, well-resourced and inclusive communities in which all residents can thrive. In order for the final rule to accomplish this, a number of elements must be strengthened, such as:

1. Local fair housing outreach and enforcement capacity should be a fair housing goal category.

2. The requirements of the community engagement process must be clarified.

3. HUD must increase transparency in the equity planning process.

“In addition, HUD must address the full scope of the AFFH mandate.

“We look forward to working with HUD to advance an effective final AFFH rule, and we are eager to further work with the broader administration to implement the regulation in a way that truly benefits everyone in this nation.”

This statement was issued jointly by the following organizations:

🗽 The National Fair Housing Alliance
🗽 American Civil Liberties Union
🕊️ Justice in Aging
🌞 National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development (National CAPACD)
🗽 National Community Reinvestment Coalition
🗽 National Housing Law Project
🕊️ National Low Income Housing Coalition
🗽 The Arc of the United States
🌞 UnidosUS
ncrc.org/leading-civil-rights-faith-and-housing-policy-groups-urge-hud-to-swiftly-adopt-final-affh-rule/

Where does blind obedience to Capitalism's Social Darwinist Ideology of socially and environmentally destructive Profit over People and Planet end and a sense of responsibility start to take effect, if not at the highest levels of government power?

"The righteous man wisely considereth the house of the wicked: but God overthroweth the wicked for their wickedness. Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself, but shall not be heard." -- Proverbs 21:12-13

Posted by: AGelbert

« on: January 25, 2023, 12:48:02 pm »

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The casual disregard for the lived experience

of working people in America is a 🚩 sign of an unhealthy (SEE: 👿🦍 Social Darwinism) society.

"Let no man seek his own, but every man another’s wellbeing." -- 1 Corinthians 10:24

"Fascism has always involved a morally unprincipled, ruthless, and sociopathic pursuit of power as the supreme goal in and of itself. ... ... Having no moral center and being perfectly willing to lose and disdain old friends and allies is part of the game. Fascism has no problem with self-centered individual accumulation of wealth and/or power. To the contrary, its Social Darwinian ethos celebrates such accumulation in the name of natural selection, survival of the fittest, and proper social hierarchy." -- Paul Street - January 6, 2023

It's the 👿🦍 SOCIAL DARWINISM, STUPID!

Social Darwinists believe that the dictum “survival of the fittest” (a term coined not by Charles Darwin but by sociologist Herbert Spencer) means that only the 😈 fittest should survive. Darwin's book published later ("Descent of Man") made it clear that Darwin completely supported the morally bankrupt views of Spencer.

Enthusiastic converts to Social Darwinism have, to this day, used the language of evolution to frame an understanding of the growing gulf between the rich and the poor, as well as the many differences between cultures all over the world. The explanation they arrived at, and continue to use to justify biosphere trashing profit over people and planet, regardless of any alligator tear filled mendacious claims to the contrary, is that businessmen and others who are economically and socially successful are so because they are biologically and socially “naturally” the fittest.

Conversely, they reason that the poor are “naturally” weak and unfit and it would be an error to allow the weak of the species to continue to breed.

The money lenders have played a key role in funding this deceit propagated in high schools and universities, where it is passed off as "the Capitalist fiduciary duty of corporations to make a profit above ANY OTHER CONSIDERATION, be it the health and wellbeing of employees or the environment". It is, and always was, legerdemain formulated by the monied elite to dress up selfish, abusive, exploitative and cruel behavior towards "less important" humans and/or animals experimented upon in research labs, as "scientifically justified".

Social Darwinists believe that ethics based principles are 'limitations pretending to be virtues'. To them, ethics are 'feel good illusions' that humans invented to pretend our species has empathy. To Social Darwinists, empathy is irrefutable evidence of inexcusable weakness. To them, all who are guided by ethics are deluded fools that should be eliminated from the human 'apex predator' gene pool for the "good" of our species.

The ideology of the Social Darwinist is indistinguishable from the despicable ideology of NAZI Germany, clearly exemplified in their brutally enforced morally bankrupt concentration camp law: “Eat your own bread, and if you can, that of your neighbor.”
Social Darwinists are governed by both unbridled greed and fear of tomorrow, which provide the morally bankrupt excuse for rejecting altruism and empathy and embracing a selfish, greed dominated, hoarding modus vivendi.

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"One who fears tomorrow does not offer his bread to others. But one who is willing to divide his food with a stranger has already shown himself capable of fellowship and faith, the two things from which hope is born." -- Primo Levi, author of Survival in Auschwitz

Social Darwinism is the morally bankrupt world view that spawned the profit over people and planet neoliberal ideology. Neoliberal intellectuals like Friedrich von Hayek, Ludwig von Mises and Milton Friedman were all Social Darwinists long before they renamed laissez-faire liberalism (that had been thoroughly discredited by the Great Depression) with the catchy title of "Neoliberalism".

🤔 Based on what celebrated social theorist and geographer David Harvey has written, I'm surprised that he has not reached the "It's the Social Darwinism, stupid" conclusion yet (see below):
David Harvey asked, "Is there a way to capture what (to the detriment of human civilization) is going on now" ?
YES.

David Harvey explains that neoliberal ideology serves the following principle:

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"There shall be no serious challenge to the absolute power of money to rule absolutely. And that power is to be exercised with one objective: Those possessed of money shall not only be privileged to accumulate wealth endlessly at will, but they shall have the right to inherit the earth, taking either direct or indirect dominion, not only of the land and all the resources and productive capacities that reside therein, but also assume absolute command, directly or indirectly, over the labor and creative capacities of all those others it needs. The rest of humanity shall be deemed disposable."

David Harvey, “The Party of Wall Street Meets its Nemesis,”. Also, by David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Agelbert OBSERVATION: If the morally bankrupt, socially destructive ideology which champions the absolute power of money to rule absolutely, while it simultaneously deems the rest of humanity disposable, is not SOCIAL DARWINISM, I don't know what is. 😠

The Social Darwinist Oligarchs hate you. They want you to be slaves on their plantation. They want you to have no rights, no freedom, and no future. The Social Darwinist DUOPOLY is there to turn your energy state into fear and anger and sorrow.

Whether he realized it or not at the time, when Sinclair Lewis wrote this in 1935, he was describing the Social Darwinist worldview: “Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on.” -- Sinclair Lewis

"The righteous man wisely considereth the house of the wicked: but God overthroweth the wicked for their wickedness. Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself, but shall not be heard." -- Proverbs 21:12-13

"The wicked shall be a ransom for the righteous, and the transgressor for the upright." -- Proverbs 21:18

S.T.

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