short notes:
will brady's ruminations
will brady's ruminations
2008-11-19
news blips
• Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzalez indicted in South Texas! Charges related to alleged abuse of prisoners in federal detention centers. A South Texas grand jury has indicted Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on state charges related to the alleged abuse of prisoners in`Willacy County, Texas federal detention centers.
Cheney's indictment on a charge of engaging in an organized criminal activity criticizes the vice president's investment in the Vanguard Group, which holds interests in the private prison companies running the federal detention centers. It accuses Cheney of a conflict of interest and "at least misdemeanor assaults" on detainees because of his link to the prison companies.
The indictment accuses Gonzales of using his position while in office to stop an investigation in 2006 into abuses at one of the privately-run prisons.
SOURCE: Houston Chronicle
• FDA questioned about widespread use of psychiatric drugs with children. Powerful antipsychotic medicines are being used far too cavalierly in children, and federal drug regulators must do more to warn doctors of their substantial risks, a panel of federal drug experts said Tuesday.
More than 389,000 children and teenagers were treated last year with Risperdal, one of five drugs known as "atypical anti-psychotics". In many cases, the drug was prescribed to treat attention deficit disorders.
But Risperdal is not approved for attention deficit problems, and its risks — which include substantial weight gain, metabolic disorders and muscular tics that can be permanent — are too profound to justify its use in treating such disorders, panel members said.
Food and Drug Administration officials wanted the committee to endorse the agency’s routine monitoring of the medicines in children.
But committee members unanimously rejected the agency’s proposals, saying that far more needed to be done to discourage the medicines’ growing use in children, particularly to treat conditions for which the medicines have not been approved.
SOURCE: New York Times
• Milky Way's Black Hole Sending Out Flares. Two different telescopes simultaneously observed violent flares from the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way. The outbursts from this region, known as Sagittarius A*, reveal material being stretched like bread dough out as it orbits in the intense gravity close to the central black hole.
Sagittarius A* is located at the centre of our own Milky Way Galaxy at a distance from Earth of about 26,000 light-years. It is a supermassive black hole with a mass of about four million times that of the Sun. Most, if not all, galaxies are thought to have a supermassive black hole in their center.
SOURCE: Universe Today
• Oil price dives under 55 dollars per barrel in London. Oil prices sank under 55 dollars a barrel on Tuesday to strike a 21-month low as fresh recession jitters fanned fears about slowing global energy demand, traders said.
On London's InterContinental Exchange (ICE), Brent North Sea crude for delivery in December plunged to 54.92 dollars per barrel -- a level last seen on January 30, 2007. Brent later stood at 55.94 dollar, down 3.14 dollars from Monday.
"News that China's crude oil imports jumped by 28 percent in October from a year ago and that militants are threatening to renew attacks on oil facilities in Nigeria failed to lift prices," noted Sucden analyst Michael Davies.
The oil market was also undermined by the strengthening dollar which tends to dampen demand because dollar-priced crude becomes more expensive for buyers holding weaker currencies.
OPEC president Chakib Khelil indicated over the weekend another round of production cuts may occur should oil prices remain below the cartel's preferred range of 70 to 90 dollars.
The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which pumps more than 40 percent of the world's crude, announced in October that its daily output would be cut by 1.5 million barrels per day to 27.3 million barrels per day from November.
SOURCE: Energy for the Future [blog]
Double click on the lead sentence of each article for the complete story quoted
• Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzalez indicted in South Texas! Charges related to alleged abuse of prisoners in federal detention centers. A South Texas grand jury has indicted Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on state charges related to the alleged abuse of prisoners in`Willacy County, Texas federal detention centers.
Cheney's indictment on a charge of engaging in an organized criminal activity criticizes the vice president's investment in the Vanguard Group, which holds interests in the private prison companies running the federal detention centers. It accuses Cheney of a conflict of interest and "at least misdemeanor assaults" on detainees because of his link to the prison companies.
The indictment accuses Gonzales of using his position while in office to stop an investigation in 2006 into abuses at one of the privately-run prisons.
SOURCE: Houston Chronicle
• FDA questioned about widespread use of psychiatric drugs with children. Powerful antipsychotic medicines are being used far too cavalierly in children, and federal drug regulators must do more to warn doctors of their substantial risks, a panel of federal drug experts said Tuesday.
More than 389,000 children and teenagers were treated last year with Risperdal, one of five drugs known as "atypical anti-psychotics". In many cases, the drug was prescribed to treat attention deficit disorders.
But Risperdal is not approved for attention deficit problems, and its risks — which include substantial weight gain, metabolic disorders and muscular tics that can be permanent — are too profound to justify its use in treating such disorders, panel members said.
Food and Drug Administration officials wanted the committee to endorse the agency’s routine monitoring of the medicines in children.
But committee members unanimously rejected the agency’s proposals, saying that far more needed to be done to discourage the medicines’ growing use in children, particularly to treat conditions for which the medicines have not been approved.
SOURCE: New York Times
• Milky Way's Black Hole Sending Out Flares. Two different telescopes simultaneously observed violent flares from the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way. The outbursts from this region, known as Sagittarius A*, reveal material being stretched like bread dough out as it orbits in the intense gravity close to the central black hole.
Sagittarius A* is located at the centre of our own Milky Way Galaxy at a distance from Earth of about 26,000 light-years. It is a supermassive black hole with a mass of about four million times that of the Sun. Most, if not all, galaxies are thought to have a supermassive black hole in their center.
SOURCE: Universe Today
• Oil price dives under 55 dollars per barrel in London. Oil prices sank under 55 dollars a barrel on Tuesday to strike a 21-month low as fresh recession jitters fanned fears about slowing global energy demand, traders said.
On London's InterContinental Exchange (ICE), Brent North Sea crude for delivery in December plunged to 54.92 dollars per barrel -- a level last seen on January 30, 2007. Brent later stood at 55.94 dollar, down 3.14 dollars from Monday.
"News that China's crude oil imports jumped by 28 percent in October from a year ago and that militants are threatening to renew attacks on oil facilities in Nigeria failed to lift prices," noted Sucden analyst Michael Davies.
The oil market was also undermined by the strengthening dollar which tends to dampen demand because dollar-priced crude becomes more expensive for buyers holding weaker currencies.
OPEC president Chakib Khelil indicated over the weekend another round of production cuts may occur should oil prices remain below the cartel's preferred range of 70 to 90 dollars.
The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which pumps more than 40 percent of the world's crude, announced in October that its daily output would be cut by 1.5 million barrels per day to 27.3 million barrels per day from November.
SOURCE: Energy for the Future [blog]
Labels: big pharma, cheney, gonzalez, oil prices, prisons, space, treason
¶ 08:29 0 comments
2007-02-12
criminals
As far as I'm concerned the Director of the Michigan Department of Corrections Patrica Caruso, should be personally held accountable for the murder of 21 year old Timothy Joe Souders.
Timothy Souders, a 21 years old man diagnosed with a major dpressive disorder, died naked and dehydrated in his isolation cell. Mr. Caruso was serving one to four years for resisting arrest, assault and destroying police property. He took medicine for manic-depression, psychosis and hypertension, and attempted suicide three times while a prisoner.
He was placed in solitary confinement "...because of unruly behavior... and left to lay shackled by his arms and legs to a concrete slab in temperatures exceeding 100 degrees, for 17 hours soaked in his own urine. The guards claimed he refused water when offered. The "offere of water was necessary since the gurads had shut off water to the sink in his cell.
Mr. Souder was on a complex polypharmaceutical "cocktail, typical of those foisted on people deemed as severely mentally ill.
Several of the chemicals Souders was administered, including lithium and the antipsychotic drug Seroquel, are well known to cause kidney failure, increased urination, and dehydration without careful psychiatric monitoring.
Mr. Souder's death was videotaped by prison guards. The length of time in restraints was not disputed. Staff attempted to validate their own callous actions and fired a nurse for being inattentive and not completing paper work on time to get him transferred out of the prison.
Although a DOC social worker recommended that Mr. Souter be immediately transferred to a less restrictive mental health facility before has last days, that reccomendation was ignored. Providing mental health care, in Michigan, is corntrated out to Correctional Medical Services, which prides itself on "... reputation for providing quality, responsible correctional healthcare services nationwide." I suppose it is moot to determine whether or not they actually do provide excellent care, but they were faulted as not taking Mr. Souter out of the prison and placing himn in an appropriate care setting in a timely manner. The independent reviewers at the Prison Policy Initiative, has cited CMS as providing below standard or incomletent treatment in at least two other states, including Missouri and Texas.
While I seriously doubt that Ms. Caruso was present for Mr. Souder's ungraceful death [he died of thirst after 4 days in locked seclusion and restraints] her leadership role at the Michigan State Department of Corrections clearly sets a tone for what is acceptable for her guards to do to inmates and what is not. She laughed during the 60 Mnutes interview, defending this reaction with a glib "...well, the guards have to protect themselves from being hit with feces and urine by the inmates". Her rationales presented for restratints, although prefaced with empty claims such as that "...restraints are never used to punish inmates", that they'd only be used for safety purposes, except that, clearly, the safety of young Mr. Souder apparently was never in the cards.
Evidently, indiscriminate use of restraints is deemed acceptable in the State of Michigan. In the facility where I work, the maximum length of time that a person can be kept in restraints is 3 hours. Even then there must be 15 minute checks to see if the person has calmed down and released. But where I wrok, use of restraints has been aggressively discouraged in favor of actively working to help someone who is out of control to de-escalate aggressive behaviors. In Michigan, Commissioner Caruso said they are "considering" limiting the use of restraints to 6 hours. That said, the prios has already been reported as violating Court orders to limit this type of intervention.
According to Amnesty International standards, this suggests that Michigan officials consider torture by means of excessive use of restraints is acceptable as well. Personally, I find this reprehensible if not truly obscene.
At the very least, I hope Commissioner Caruso doesn't sleep well these days. But why is that I suspect that she doesn't care at all. Maybe it was the nervous laugh on the 60 Minutes interview about dealing with unruly prisoners.
As far as I'm concerned the Director of the Michigan Department of Corrections Patrica Caruso, should be personally held accountable for the murder of 21 year old Timothy Joe Souders. Timothy Souders, a 21 years old man diagnosed with a major dpressive disorder, died naked and dehydrated in his isolation cell. Mr. Caruso was serving one to four years for resisting arrest, assault and destroying police property. He took medicine for manic-depression, psychosis and hypertension, and attempted suicide three times while a prisoner.
He was placed in solitary confinement "...because of unruly behavior... and left to lay shackled by his arms and legs to a concrete slab in temperatures exceeding 100 degrees, for 17 hours soaked in his own urine. The guards claimed he refused water when offered. The "offere of water was necessary since the gurads had shut off water to the sink in his cell.
Mr. Souder was on a complex polypharmaceutical "cocktail, typical of those foisted on people deemed as severely mentally ill.
Several of the chemicals Souders was administered, including lithium and the antipsychotic drug Seroquel, are well known to cause kidney failure, increased urination, and dehydration without careful psychiatric monitoring.Mr. Souder's death was videotaped by prison guards. The length of time in restraints was not disputed. Staff attempted to validate their own callous actions and fired a nurse for being inattentive and not completing paper work on time to get him transferred out of the prison.
Although a DOC social worker recommended that Mr. Souter be immediately transferred to a less restrictive mental health facility before has last days, that reccomendation was ignored. Providing mental health care, in Michigan, is corntrated out to Correctional Medical Services, which prides itself on "... reputation for providing quality, responsible correctional healthcare services nationwide." I suppose it is moot to determine whether or not they actually do provide excellent care, but they were faulted as not taking Mr. Souter out of the prison and placing himn in an appropriate care setting in a timely manner. The independent reviewers at the Prison Policy Initiative, has cited CMS as providing below standard or incomletent treatment in at least two other states, including Missouri and Texas.
While I seriously doubt that Ms. Caruso was present for Mr. Souder's ungraceful death [he died of thirst after 4 days in locked seclusion and restraints] her leadership role at the Michigan State Department of Corrections clearly sets a tone for what is acceptable for her guards to do to inmates and what is not. She laughed during the 60 Mnutes interview, defending this reaction with a glib "...well, the guards have to protect themselves from being hit with feces and urine by the inmates". Her rationales presented for restratints, although prefaced with empty claims such as that "...restraints are never used to punish inmates", that they'd only be used for safety purposes, except that, clearly, the safety of young Mr. Souder apparently was never in the cards.
Evidently, indiscriminate use of restraints is deemed acceptable in the State of Michigan. In the facility where I work, the maximum length of time that a person can be kept in restraints is 3 hours. Even then there must be 15 minute checks to see if the person has calmed down and released. But where I wrok, use of restraints has been aggressively discouraged in favor of actively working to help someone who is out of control to de-escalate aggressive behaviors. In Michigan, Commissioner Caruso said they are "considering" limiting the use of restraints to 6 hours. That said, the prios has already been reported as violating Court orders to limit this type of intervention.
According to Amnesty International standards, this suggests that Michigan officials consider torture by means of excessive use of restraints is acceptable as well. Personally, I find this reprehensible if not truly obscene.At the very least, I hope Commissioner Caruso doesn't sleep well these days. But why is that I suspect that she doesn't care at all. Maybe it was the nervous laugh on the 60 Minutes interview about dealing with unruly prisoners.
THINGS YOU CAN DO: Watch the 60 Mnutes Video | Check out the Real Cost of Prisons Blog | Sign on to the petition to restrict restraint use in Michigan prisons
UPDATE 02/15/07: Other bloggers writing about the murder of Timothy Souder include Care2 : Friends of Timothy Joe Souter and John Schneider | PICTURE CREDITS: Michigan Department of Corrections; Stills taken from CBS 60 Minutes
UPDATE 02/15/07: Other bloggers writing about the murder of Timothy Souder include Care2 : Friends of Timothy Joe Souter and John Schneider | PICTURE CREDITS: Michigan Department of Corrections; Stills taken from CBS 60 Minutes
Labels: arrogance, malfeasance, mentally ill, prisons, torture
¶ 14:55 1 comments
2006-04-15
rainbow's promise | mental health
We had a rainbow show up over the max-security building at work the other day, and perhaps this bodes well, for things have not been good of late.
It's no secret that the Department of Justice is coming to do a site visit where I work. The reasons for this are varied, but doubtless include the death of James Bell, in 2002, when, in front of nearly 30 staff, died of a heart attack yet, according to investigative reports, no one did anything except put him in restraints.
Among the residents where I work [you might call them "patients"], there is a sense that little has changed since that event, though much has.
The place still has a long way to go and even though, according to the the National Alliance on Mental Illness [NAMI] the state of Connecticut ranks a "B" [tied with Ohio for the quality of care provided to people], there is far to go before care providers can rest on their laurels.
Many staff still fail to grasp the importance of respecting another person's personal space [let alone their rights]. Grievances I receive all too frequently have
birth in someone's utter lack of consideration about others. This kind of obdurate behavior muddies what might be a person's really critical issues. The nurse who rudely dismisses a man complaining of severe lower back pain, might be ignoring a developing tumor [that actually happened ~ the man is now paralyzed from the waist down].
Then there's the preoccupation, even sloven fealty to Big Pharma; as if taking a mouthful of meds actually solves problems like some magic bullet. Let me clue you in here ~ in and of themselves, psychotropic meds are not cure-alls. Many have severe and crippling side-effects that could last for life and the taker of meds has to "choose" between living with extreme discomfort, diabetes, kidney failure, even the possibility of premature death. All this in exchange for numbing the intensity of one's psychiatric symptoms. Yet, so frequently, nursing staff's first response to expression of crisis is "So do you want a PRN?" Make's you wonder what ever happened to sitting down and actually listening to someone to hear their personal tales of woe before being inappropriately prescriptive.
Clinical professionals, as well as lay-people fail to grasp the basic reality that many individuals with perceptual and cognitive conditions that become disabling, severe and long-lasting, can and do recover from their inability to deal with those conditions. For some, "recovery" means the conditions go away completely, for others, they learn to adapt and function with the conditions, however difficult that me be for not only themselves, but for others with whom they live.
But that recovery rarely occurs in a vacuum. Those around those with the difficulties and travails that society has dubbed to be "mental illnesses" have to be available to provide, care, compassion, support, uncondtional love, understanding and forebearance. Not someting easily done, perhaps, but without it the rainbow's promise is all the more difficult to find.
RESOURCES: Advocacy Unlimited; Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law; Dr. Peter Breggin; Centre for Evidence Based Mental Health; Copeland Center for Wellness and Recovery; MindFreedom; National Alliance on Mental Illness; National Institute of Mental Health; Mental Health Matters | Cross posted at Rondacker's LiveJournal Diary
It's no secret that the Department of Justice is coming to do a site visit where I work. The reasons for this are varied, but doubtless include the death of James Bell, in 2002, when, in front of nearly 30 staff, died of a heart attack yet, according to investigative reports, no one did anything except put him in restraints.
Among the residents where I work [you might call them "patients"], there is a sense that little has changed since that event, though much has.
The place still has a long way to go and even though, according to the the National Alliance on Mental Illness [NAMI] the state of Connecticut ranks a "B" [tied with Ohio for the quality of care provided to people], there is far to go before care providers can rest on their laurels.
Many staff still fail to grasp the importance of respecting another person's personal space [let alone their rights]. Grievances I receive all too frequently have
birth in someone's utter lack of consideration about others. This kind of obdurate behavior muddies what might be a person's really critical issues. The nurse who rudely dismisses a man complaining of severe lower back pain, might be ignoring a developing tumor [that actually happened ~ the man is now paralyzed from the waist down]. Then there's the preoccupation, even sloven fealty to Big Pharma; as if taking a mouthful of meds actually solves problems like some magic bullet. Let me clue you in here ~ in and of themselves, psychotropic meds are not cure-alls. Many have severe and crippling side-effects that could last for life and the taker of meds has to "choose" between living with extreme discomfort, diabetes, kidney failure, even the possibility of premature death. All this in exchange for numbing the intensity of one's psychiatric symptoms. Yet, so frequently, nursing staff's first response to expression of crisis is "So do you want a PRN?" Make's you wonder what ever happened to sitting down and actually listening to someone to hear their personal tales of woe before being inappropriately prescriptive.Clinical professionals, as well as lay-people fail to grasp the basic reality that many individuals with perceptual and cognitive conditions that become disabling, severe and long-lasting, can and do recover from their inability to deal with those conditions. For some, "recovery" means the conditions go away completely, for others, they learn to adapt and function with the conditions, however difficult that me be for not only themselves, but for others with whom they live.
But that recovery rarely occurs in a vacuum. Those around those with the difficulties and travails that society has dubbed to be "mental illnesses" have to be available to provide, care, compassion, support, uncondtional love, understanding and forebearance. Not someting easily done, perhaps, but without it the rainbow's promise is all the more difficult to find.
RESOURCES: Advocacy Unlimited; Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law; Dr. Peter Breggin; Centre for Evidence Based Mental Health; Copeland Center for Wellness and Recovery; MindFreedom; National Alliance on Mental Illness; National Institute of Mental Health; Mental Health Matters | Cross posted at Rondacker's LiveJournal Diary
Labels: big pharma, drug wars, mentally ill, obituaries, prisons, Recovery
¶ 13:17 0 comments
