Daily Archives: 27 Oct 01
A Smarter Web: Tim Berners-Lee and others dream of the semantic web. MIT Technology Review
Microwave beam weapon to disperse crowds: “Tests of a controversial weapon that is designed to heat people’s skin with a microwave beam have shown that it can disperse crowds. But critics are not convinced the system is safe.” Microwave levels of the weapon, which we are assured by its developers are within federal safety guidelines, are undisclosed; the level that would ‘scare’ people is thought by some to be close to the level causing injury; and who trusts the federal guidelines anyway? New Scientist
First US ground attack ‘could have ended in disaster’: “The attack was meant to be a purely cosmetic exercise for the benefit of the media and the public against a relatively safe and poorly defended target.
But there had been a failure of intelligence, and the troops from the elite 75th Rangers Regiment ran into such heavy fire on the ground near Kandahar that they had to beat a hasty retreat. A Chinook helicopter airlifting them out lost its undercarriage and had to make a forced landing.
The Pentagon presented the operation as a complete success and evidence that Operation Enduring Freedom was going according to plan. There was blanket and mainly adulatory media coverage on both sides of the Atlantic with the prognosis that the ground war had begun.
But, instead, what happened last weekend made US and British planners at central command in Tampa, Florida, reappraise the military campaign, and continue with air strikes rather than carry out any more missions on the ground. Within 24 hours the Pentagon has requested special forces troops from Britain and Australia. And the British Government was forced to consider a much larger deployment of ground troops than originally envisaged.” Independent UK
Helping the enemy — “Kneeling side-by-side in the West Bank soil, a rabbi helps a Palestinian farmer harvest olives. It is a sign of solidarity during times that are tough, especially for those trying to eke out a living from unforgiving land.
The West Bank village of Haris lies next to the Jewish settlement of Revava. The settlers, citing army security regulations, say the farmers of Haris may not tend trees growing less than 300 yards from the settlement walls.
The Palestinian farmers say they do not challenge this edict for fear the settlers, or the soldiers who guard them, may open fire.
So Rabbi Arik Ascherman and eight other Israeli human rights activists traveled to Haris to give the villagers a Jewish human shield and help them harvest their olive crop.” USA Today
“I do not think your US administration deserves that Iraqis condole with it on what happened, unless it condoles with the Iraqi people on the death of 1.5 million Iraqis who it killed.”
— Saddam Hussein
Saddam’s surprise message — ‘Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has for the first time offered condolences to the American people for those who died in the 11 September attacks.
He was replying to an e-mail from an American who appealed to him to take a stand toward removing terrorism, hunger and strife around the world.
Iraq is the only Arab country not to have condemned the attacks.
Saddam Hussein’s traditional Muslim message of condolence came in what appeared to be an unprecedented personal exchange with an American citizen, published by the Iraqi Information Ministry.
In it, a man called Christopher Love, who described himself as a computer engineer from Pennsylvania, urged the Iraqi leader to seize the moment and, in his words, side with the world.’ BBC
“Conflict index” warns when a nation faces civil war: ‘Their “conflict barometer” gives a week-by-week measure of the scale of unrest. Although the barometer’s forecasting prowess remains to be proved, its developers say it could have presaged the slide of Algeria and Sri Lanka into civil war. They also believe it could help the US and Britain decide how long to fight Operation Enduring Freedom.’ New Scientist
“Given that this is the administration that was touted as being run with
C.E.O. clockwork, perhaps it should be added to the growing list of Things
That Have Changed Forever since Sept. 11.” How to Lose a War: ‘The “America Strikes Back” optimism that
surged after Sept. 11 has now been
stricken by the multitude of ways we’re
losing the war at home. The F.B.I. has
proved more effective in waging turf
battles against Rudy Giuliani than waging war on terrorism. Of the more
than 900 suspects arrested, exactly zero have been criminally charged in
the World Trade Center attack (though one has died of natural causes,
we’re told, in a New Jersey jail cell). The Bush team didn’t fully recognize
that a second attack on America had begun until more than a week after
the first casualty. The most highly trumpeted breakthrough in the hunt for
anthrax terrorists — Tom Ridge’s announcement that “the site where the
letters were mailed” had been found in New Jersey — proved a dead
end. And now the president is posing with elementary-school children
again.’ NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]
How to Lose a War: ‘The “America Strikes Back” optimism that
surged after Sept. 11 has now been
stricken by the multitude of ways we’re
losing the war at home. The F.B.I. has
proved more effective in waging turf
battles against Rudy Giuliani than waging war on terrorism. Of the more
than 900 suspects arrested, exactly zero have been criminally charged in
the World Trade Center attack (though one has died of natural causes,
we’re told, in a New Jersey jail cell). The Bush team didn’t fully recognize
that a second attack on America had begun until more than a week after
the first casualty. The most highly trumpeted breakthrough in the hunt for
anthrax terrorists — Tom Ridge’s announcement that “the site where the
letters were mailed” had been found in New Jersey — proved a dead
end. And now the president is posing with elementary-school children
again.’ NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]
Human Rights in Mexico — “Last week’s killing of Digna Ochoa,
one of Mexico’s foremost human rights
lawyers, had all the markings of a political
execution carried out by powerful interest
groups that are confident they can act with impunity, as they always
have. Ms. Ochoa was shot at close range in her downtown Mexico City
office. A note left behind warned other human rights lawyers that they
would be next.” NY Times editorial[“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]
I continue to be amazed, professionally, by the overlay of needless suffering people with psychiatric illnesses go through on top of that they must endure from their conditions. Much of this comes from the central conflict both within the mental health field and in the zeitgeist between the “minders” and the “brainers”, which Followers know I’ve written various takes on.
As a recent example, a therapist friend of mine recently sent me a posting from a Rogerian therapy mailing list to which he belongs. Rogerian therapy, also called client-centered, was pioneered by humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers and is based on the primacy of active empathic listening on the part of the therapist. The implicit theory behind it is that the experience on the part of the client of “unconditional positive regard” will heal all ills. A prime directive is that the therapist be non-directive.
In the one-paragraph email message forwarded to me, the Rogerian therapist described the somnolence his client (who had had a history of a psychotic break several years before which had required hospitalization but had been stable since on medication) was experiencing, leaps to the conclusion that it is caused by the medication, and is so concerned by this trumped-up evil that he considers abandoning his non-directive stance and suggesting his client stop the medication.
In my response, which I allowed my friend on the listserv to post to the group, I said that I was amazed the poster had managed to raise as many red flags as he had in one brief paragraph — the automatic assumption that it was the medication, lack of plans on the part of the therapist to collaborate with the prescribing physician, his failure to evaluate the possibility that the client’s stability since such a severe episode of psychosis probably depended upon the medication. It worried me that the therapist’s PDR was so outdated that he admitted he had not been able to find the medications his client was taking to read up on them before deciding to advise his client to discontinue them. I was bothered that the therapist sought consultation about his clinical dilemma from a mailing list where he was likely to get only similar anti-medication biases.
I mentioned that, before medical school, I had trained and practiced in a Rogerian model; passionately so. But I had found it “hopelessly inadequate” (yes, I know, an inflammatory comment) to deal with patients with the major mental illnesses I sought to treat, who I am emphatically convinced need — but need, no matter how unconditional, much more than — empathy and positive regard. (Courts have agreed, by the way, for what it’s worth. No matter how non-medical [or anti-medical] the biases of a given therapist are, s/he is considered liable for failing to raise the issue of medication with a patient who has a degree of psychiatric distress more likely to respond to the addition of drugs than solely to the techniques advocated by the therapist.)
As expected, there was a firestorm of backlash from the members of the listserv. They were convinced my friend was a traitor for sharing the message with me, that I might be a traitor for abandoning my Rogerian roots but that it was more likely that I had never ‘gotten it’ in the first place. It was clear that I could not stand the pain of ‘sitting with’ clients in severe distress and was resorting to medications to salve my own distress. Really. I wasn’t offended, but mightily saddened. For the sloppy thinking and intolerance of these supposedly intelligent and well-meaning people… and for the spectre of the numbers of unsuspecting clients placing themselves in their and similar hands.
This all came back to me when Alwin Hawkins (who undeservedly described himself thusly: “think Drew Carey without the keen fashion sense and subtle wit”), gently suggesting it’s more up my alley than his (he’s a veteran critical care nurse in a coronary care unit), pointed me to this British Medical Journal editorial.
Improving outcomes in depression
:
Around 450 million people worldwide have mental or psychosocial problems, but most of those who turn to health services for help will not be correctly diagnosed or will not get the right treatment. Even those whose problems are recognised may not receive adequate care. In a World Health Organization study of psychological disorders in general health care carried out in 14 countries around the world patients with major depression were as likely to be treated with sedatives as with antidepressants, although antidepressants were associated with more favourable outcomes at three month follow up. This benefit had dissipated by follow up at 12 months; but patients had only been taking drug treatment for a mean of 11 weeks, with a quarter of them doing so for less than a month. About two thirds of patients whose illnesses were recognised and treated with drugs still had a diagnosis of mental illness at follow up one year later, and in nearly a half the diagnosis was still major depression. Indeed, there are no observational studies of routine care for patients with major depression in the United Kingdom or in the United States that have found most patients to be receiving care consistent with evidence based guidelines.
U.S. Planes Bomb a Red Cross Site for Second Time. Error compounds error. In the first bombing, the depot, housing relief supplies for Afghan civilians, was erroneously chosen as a target by military planners. Furthermore, the bombs fell wide and hit the surrounding civilian neighborhood. This time, they used satellite-guided precision weapons to hit a target Pentagon planners put off limits after the first error. Oh, and there are big red crosses painted on the roofs of these buildings. At least there were no deaths in the bombing.
In other words, the pilots dropped their bombs where they were
instructed, and the bombs mostly hit the targets at which they were aimed.
The bomb that struck the residential neighborhood did so, the Central
Command said, when the guidance system malfunctioned on an FA-18 jet.The Red Cross seemed stunned by the Pentagon’s admission today.
“Whoever is responsible will have to come to Geneva for a formal
explanation,” said Kim Gordon-Bates, the Red Cross spokesman there.
“Firing, shooting, bombing, a warehouse clearly marked with the Red
Cross emblem is a very serious incident. It is a serious thing. It cannot be
accepted, especially since we went through the notification of our facilities
twice. Now we’ve got 55,000 people without that food or blankets, with
nothing at all. Recognizing an error does not exactly solve the
humanitarian problem.” NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]
[If there are other warehouses storing relief supplies around the country with red crosses painted on their roofs, perhaps they should paint over them. They seem to look like bullseyes to pilots and planners… -FmH]
