News and Current Events - 2013 to 2014

[oilgun]

NOT going back! Why does she have to defend her decision?


Amanda Knox on Retrial: 'Everything Is at Stake'
ABC News

American student Amanda Knox on Friday defended her decision not to return to Italy for a new appeals trial over the 2007 killing of her British roommate, Meredith Kercher

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/amanda-knox-retrial-stake-20315901

Her Italian ex-boyfriend doesn't have that choice unfortunately.

[doodler]

Perhaps he should have moved.

[janjo]

Mental illness is the excuse we give everyone who doesn't "fit in." There is a mental illness category for everything.

And it won't happen to me because
1) I'm female and females do not murder groups of people
and
2) if I ever put a bullet in someone, they will see it coming and deserve it and I won't pretend I didn't mean it.

What about if the voices tell you to?
To say that you could never become mentally ill is like saying you will never get pneumonia.

[doodler]

Since I don't hear voices, that's not a problem. If someone IS hearing voices, I suggest they seek help immediately, not that it will make any difference, but at least there will be a record of it and someone to blame.

I've been thinking about your "1 in 4" statistic and I think it's bull.
Just for instance, let's take my family. There's me, my two sisters and 7 maternal cousins. (We were not raised around my father's family, so I don't have much of an idea what has happened with them the last 50 years or so, although a cousin from that side got in touch a couple years back and brought me up to date.) In the next generation, my sisters and I have 4 biological and 5 adopted children. (Not going to get in to the cousins since they're all Catholic and have flocks of kids. And I'm not going to discuss adopted kids because, contrary to popular belief, there is a HUGE difference between biological and adopted children raised in the same family and that difference is genetics.) Of the 4 bio-kids, there are 9 (third generation) grandchildren. Without talking about the add-ons, that's 23 adult people. I don't know what happened to us but nary a one has been institutionalized in a jail or mental hospital. As far as I know... and as I said a few posts back, I'm the Mother Confessor... none of us has sought psychiatric help although we have made use of a couple divorce lawyers and I can speak only for my own kids, but we  don't take prescription aids to get through the day or night. If you insist on adding in the cousins' kids and the adoptees, it doesn't change the rate of incarceration or mental health problems one iota... except for my adopted niece who is a drug addict or as everyone likes to say, a recovering addict, which is only a mental health issue when it's needed as an excuse for bad behavior.

Poor Grayson. We're so overdue for our 1 in 4, we should just lock him up now and throw away the key.


And Igot the pneumonia shot two years ago.

[oilgun]

 

[brokebacktom]

I feel sorry for the dog. Looking like that Evil man is sad.

[Sara B]

Doodler, how very lucky you and  your family have been.

[tfferg]

Exactly. Here's hoping to an end of the Pharisee era, having begun perhaps in 1978, or at the end of the Second Vatican Council, for at least a little while since it will always return sometime. May he live healthily and long.

This evening's news is of a Melbourne priest who was excommunicated by the pope in May. The priest openly supports the ordination of women and same-sex marriage.

[Marge_Innavera]

What about if the voices tell you to?
To say that you could never become mentally ill is like saying you will never get pneumonia.

In a way, mental illness is like suicide in that people still want to believe that "it won't happen in our family".  So many people never get any help from professionals or from their own families and if they're not violent, who notices?  It's easy to imagine that a problem can be solved via a good talking-to or a slap upside the head; and if no troubled person in a family has ever been treated, then 'it doesn't happen here' is an automatic option. 

I assume that's why people in politics don't openly seek help; don't want to be on the record as being tainted with what a lot of people still deem weakness.  Which might answer a lot of questions, come to think of it.   

[doodler]

Doodler, how very lucky you and  your family have been.

Absolutely. Generation after generation of luck. Probably has nothing to do with being taught, and teaching the next generation, that you have to be strong and face up to your disappointments and accept that you and you alone are responsible for your own happiness and unhappiness. Knowing that shit happens to everyone many times, but you have to fight through it, learn from it and go on with your life. Figuring out that it is okay to cry, even to whine, for a short time, but then you have to let it go because it's a temporary situation and won't matter to anyone, including yourself, in a hundred years. Realizing that taking a pill or a drink or paying someone to say "There, there, it's not your fault" doesn't change anything. You're right. It's all about luck.

[doodler]

In a way, mental illness is like suicide in that people still want to believe that "it won't happen in our family".  So many people never get any help from professionals or from their own families and if they're not violent, who notices?  It's easy to imagine that a problem can be solved via a good talking-to or a slap upside the head; and if no troubled person in a family has ever been treated, then 'it doesn't happen here' is an automatic option. 

I assume that's why people in politics don't openly seek help; don't want to be on the record as being tainted with what a lot of people still deem weakness.  Which might answer a lot of questions, come to think of it.   

Ninety percent of "mental illness" IS weakness. It is coddling. It is treated, but never cured, with a pill. And of course, there is no way to make people take their pills. The other ten percent is actually a physical illness or "imbalance," also treated with a pill and again, there is no way to make people take their pills. People have to learn to get along, to survive, with PHYSICAL issues, why are mental ones any different? If you have a communicable disease, you are isolated. But if you have a mental problem, you're free to inflict on everyone in your world.

[Marge_Innavera]

Ninety percent of "mental illness" IS weakness. It is coddling. . . But if you have a mental problem, you're free to inflict on everyone in your world.

This is my last post on the subject: I rest my case.  

I come from a family where mental illness is an embarrassment that people would never even talk about, and that's no more constructive than dismissal on the grounds of "coddling".  Both types of family cultures are bombs waiting to go off, in more ways than one.

http://www.stjosephmuseum.org/glore.htm

[doodler]

Perhaps instead of waiting for a bomb to go off, it might be best to detatch the fuse. If mental illness is a problem in a family, members of it should not produce another generation. Genetics has a way of trumping environment time and time again.


The Chicago woman whose 3 year old grandson was shot in the face in the park on Thursday night said it was time for parents to stop being afraid of their children.
Amen to that.

[bentgyro]

When I was young my cousins and I used to joke to each other the old adage
"Everyone in the world is crazy, except thee and me and I am starting to wonder about thee!"
 

[doodler]

North Dakota town ready for trouble as white supremacists stake claims

By Dave Thompson
 
BISMARCK, North Dakota (Reuters) - Grant County Sheriff Steve Bay is ready for fireworks if clashes break out between a band of neo-Nazi white supremacists and protesters determined to keep them from taking over the tiny North Dakota town of Leith.
 
With a population of just two dozen in a mostly white county, Leith is an attractive destination for members of the U.S. National Socialist Movement, who recently revealed that they are joining plans to turn the disintegrating town into an all-white enclave.
 
Group members plan to be in town on Sunday and Monday to introduce themselves to the community in what their organization's leader, Jeff Schoep, calls an "act of good will and faith."
 
"We have every intention of legally assuming control of the local government," Schoep said in a statement.
 
The group is America's largest neo-Nazi organization, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups.
 
According to the center, for more than a year, white supremacist activist Craig Cobb has been buying up properties in Leith and inviting his fellow supremacists to move in and set up a "Pioneer Little Europe," as some supporters have called it.
 
In an interview with WXMB-TV in Bismarck, Cobb said he had gotten a lot of offers to buy up land from what he termed like-minded people who believe white people should not be punished for wanting to live near each other.
 
"It's fine for all these other minorities, but not us," he said in the televised interview. "If you merely speak about it, you're going to be defamed in this country."
 
Schoep said that the visitors would inspect the new property, raise ceremonial flag poles, and hold a town meeting and a news conference.
 
"We know that opinion is divided in the town and in the media," Schoep said in the statement, adding that the trip was "a symbolic gesture of good will and faith."
 
Schoep will be met by a grassroots group organized through social media to protest the National Socialists' presence in the time. Organizers are hoping several hundred will attend.
 
"We are planning a true grassroots peaceful protest to demonstrate that we are united in a stance against hatred, violence and prejudice," reads a statement by UnityND, an anti-racism group organizing the protest, on its website. "Join us as we take to main street rural America to fight against racism."
 
Sheriff Bay said does not expect any trouble to break out among the 350 people expected at the event and protest, but he is prepared.
 
He has his officers, members of the North Dakota Highway Patrol and others coming to Leith on Sunday to help in crowd control.
 
"Both sides say they plan on having their demonstrations," Bay said. "They have both indicated to me that they will be peaceful demonstrations. They may be a little loud, but peaceful."
 
Cobb's plans were revealed in August after the Montgomery, Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center published a report detailing his land purchases in Leith, which is located in a county that is 97 percent white.
 
The center's report also cited county tax and property records showing that other leading supremacists, in addition to the National Socialists, had followed his lead, including Tom Metzger, leader of the White Aryan Resistance, and Alex Linder, who runs the Vanguard News Network, an online forum for the neo-Nazis.


http://news.yahoo.com/north-dakota-town-ready-trouble-white-supremacists-stake-120240693.html