acorn shells
Medical experts: vaccine urgently needed to stop UKIP epidemic
(satire?)
The UKIP epidemic – which many experts say is in danger of becoming out of control across the country – may not end until the world has found a vaccine against the debilitating disease, according to one of the scientists who discovered the xenophobic and highly-contagious virus.
Professor Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said there was a serious risk of the disease – which causes those affected to hemorrhage common sense and rationality from every orifice of their body – becoming an epidemic.
“Something that is easy to control got completely out of hand,” said Piot, who was part of a team that identified the causes of the first outbreak of UKIP in Skegness in 2005, as well as the present serious outbreak centred around Clacton.
Other symptoms of the UKIP virus – which within days can cause those affected to be completely brain dead – include severe narrowing of the…
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My 2 Cents….. – ‘Nurse may have had symptoms of Ebola longer than first thought’
Self-delusion and denial are as strong as facing the music and getting on with it!
‘Amber Vinson was hospitalized Tuesday, one day after she took a
Frontier flight from Cleveland to Dallas’.
‘Tests later found that Vinson — who was among those who cared for
Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the
United States, at Dallas’ Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital — had
Ebola’.
‘Authorities indicated Vinson had a slightly elevated temperature of
99.5 degrees Fahrenheit, which was below the fever threshold for
Ebola, but didn’t show any symptoms of the disease while on her
Monday flight’.
‘This is significant because a person isn’t contagious with Ebola,
which spreads through the transmission of bodily fluids, until he or
she has symptoms of the disease’.
‘But on Thursday, Dr. Chris Braden of the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention told reporters in Ohio that “we have started to look
at the possibility that she had symptoms going back as far as
Saturday. ……
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When black women die from street harassment
You’ve read this piece before. You’ve read it a dozen times over. I’ve written it before. I could have written it a dozen times over. It’s the piece where someone complains about how little outrage there is surrounding something which deeply affects them, and then the reader is left to wonder, “Well, if it means that much to you, what are YOU doing about it?” You may have written that piece before. And we keep writing them because I don’t think any of us are quite sure what to do.
Where black women are concerned, we aren’t just talking about mounting the evils of misogyny, or even racism. We compete with the sacrifices black women make for their community.
I understand that there’s an impulse to not make black men the faces of street harassment, given all of the ideas that already exist around black male hypersexuality, as well as the disproportionate amount of police violence that black men face as the result of the constant criminalization of behaviors associated with black men. But black women have been allowed to suffer too much for the protection of black men. They have paid with their lives.
And here I am, writing another blog post wondering why no one seems to care.
Street harassment is vile. It makes women feel unsafe in public. But when black women die because we have failed to teach boys and men to keep their thoughts and hands to themselves, that they are not entitled to the sexual attention of any and every woman, or that their attempts at proving their masculinity through verbal and physical assaults on women are failures, the concern fades before it has a chance to actually surface. Black women are expected to keep sacrificing.
Who cries when black women die? Nobody. No damn body.
Anti-right to work moment has passed in Michigan?
“They have the issues on their side, in right to work and other attacks on union rights. If they can’t motivate their members now, they never will.”
What political observers are watching for but haven’t seen yet is evidence that labor is constructing coordinated absentee ballot and get out the vote drives.
If it’s happening, it’s not as visible as it has been in past elections, although there’s certainly time for such efforts to emerge between now and Nov. 4.
To remain politically relevant, labor must not only sway the race for governor, but also the legislative campaigns. It was Republican lawmakers, after all, who passed right to work. If big labor can’t use its muscle to punish anti-union legislators in Michigan, of all places, why would lawmakers anywhere be afraid to take up similar measures?
It’s an overstatement to call this labor’s last stand. But unions did promise to hang right to work around GOP necks in 2014, and so far they haven’t delivered.
Settlers raid Ibrahimi mosque under armed guard | Maan News Agency
Jewish settlers raided the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron late Thursday under armed guard, a local Palestinian official said.
Head of Hebron’s endowment directorate, Taysir Abu Snineh, said mosque guards were held in the al-Jawliya area during the raid, which he labeled a “dangerous act” that could have “serious consequences” for the mosque.
Israeli authorities requested access to the mosque, referred to by Jews as Isaac’s Hall, late Thursday but endowment officials refused as it violates a previous agreement on access days, which is limited to 10 visits per year.
The agreement came into place after a Brooklyn-born Jewish settler massacred 29 Palestinians in the mosque after opening fire at worshipers in 1994.
Abu Snineh said the raid was a “dangerous escalation” in tensions at the holy site.
via Settlers raid Ibrahimi mosque under armed guard | Maan News Agency.
Sierra Leone now but where next? Law in a time of Ebola — New Internationalist
Just this week, a woman was arrested for failure to wash her hands. There are chlorinated hand-washing buckets across Freetown these days and it is common to have to wash your hands several times a day before you enter any premises. This woman refused to wash her hands as she said she had just done so and was afraid of the effect of the chlorine. Not everyone is aware of how much chlorine to add to the water; some hand-washing points can make your hands burn or smell of chlorine all day. The woman said she was afraid of developing cancer from all the chlorine – a common fear. Our paralegal was able to advise her at the police station and contacted the woman’s family, who assisted with paying her fine.
It is a difficult time for Sierra Leone. These laws are put in place to try to halt this tragic epidemic as quickly as possible. We recognize and value this, but also want to make sure that we play a role in monitoring the current State of Emergency and ensuring that it is enforced in a proportionate way that respects people’s rights. It is easy for law-enforcement officers to assume that rights are done away with and that anything can be done just because we are under a State of Emergency.
The Ebola epidemic has impacted all areas of life in Sierra Leone and has had a significant impact on the justice system. The courts have scaled down the number of hearings per day and adjournments can be lengthy. Many magistrates and lawyers have left the country. Others cannot return from abroad due to flight cancellations caused by the epidemic. Still others cannot attend court because of the quarantines. So women may spend much longer in pre-trial detention than usual, which negatively impacts on their families: women are the main caregivers and often the main income-earners. Many women have young children in prison with them. So we try very hard to ensure our clients get bail.
Senator Paul calling for banning ship and passengers? Health Worker Who May Have Had Contact With Ebola Is on Cruise Ship – NYTimes.com
Adding a new and troubling dimension to the search for Americans possibly exposed to the Ebola virus, the State Department said Friday that an employee of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital who might have had contact with specimens of the disease had left the United States aboard a cruise ship.
The employee and a traveling partner, who were not identified by name, agreed to remain isolated in a cabin aboard the vessel, the State Department said, and “out of an abundance of caution” efforts were underway to repatriate them. A physician aboard the cruise ship told the authorities that the employee was in good health.
via Health Worker Who May Have Had Contact With Ebola Is on Cruise Ship – NYTimes.com.
VIDEO: Danish mums’ breastfeeding protest – The Local
Danish mothers in seven cities carried out a coordinated public ‘feed-in’ to protest against what they feel is society’s skewed view of breastfeeding.
Up to 200 women brought their babies to train stations in Copenhagen, Aarhus, Odense, Esbjerg, Aalborg and Herning on Thursday to breastfeed in public.
“I’m here because I think it is important for women to have the option of breastfeeding in public. The current debate is full of people who don’t seem to understand how often a baby needs to eat. Sometimes the tone in the debate is downright nasty,” Nanna Reffstrup, who was breastfeeding her son in Copenhagen Central Station, told DR.





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