Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalBoy's body is failing, parents discover extraordinary solution
Life has been consistently unlucky for 7-year-old Jameson Wall, an autistic Tennessee boy who was born drug-dependent and later diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disorder.
A series of at-home videos document years of struggles, doctor visits and hospital stays.
In one video, Jameson is shaking and crying, telling his mother, “I don’t know how to control my body!”
In other videos, Jameson is hooked up to monitors, shaking and twitching or struggling to control his arm so that he can feed himself.
Stanford Medicine identifies PANS as a dramatic onset of neuropsychiatric symptoms that can include obsessions and eating disorders thought to be “triggered by infections, metabolic disturbances, and other inflammatory reactions.”
PANDAS creates a sudden onset of neuropsychiatric symptoms like OCD or tics following a streptococcal infection, according to Stanford Medicine. Symptoms can also include uncontrollable emotions, irritability, anxiety and loss of motor skills.
https://www.wvlt.tv/2022/08/26/boys-body-is-failing-parents-discover-extraordinary-solution/
I'm not crying, you're crying
Louisiana woman denied abortion despite fetus's fatal abnormality to travel to North Carolina
An expectant Louisiana woman who is carrying a skull-less fetus that would die almost immediately after birth has cemented plans to travel to North Carolina to terminate her pregnancy, she said on Friday.
Nancy Davis, 36, has been facing a choice of either carrying the fetus to term or traveling several states away for an abortion after she says her local medical provider would not perform the procedure amid confusion over whether the state’s abortion ban outlawed it.
Standing on the steps of Louisiana’s capitol building in her home town of Baton Rouge, Davis announced that her trip would be next week. The trip is being financed by more than $30,000 in donations raised by an online GoFundMe campaign that was launched after she went public with her plight earlier this month.
Her lawyer, the prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump, also called on Louisiana’s lawmakers to at least clarify the wording of their abortion ban – or to repeal it altogether – to prevent anyone else there from enduring what Davis and her family had during the last several weeks. He said the state’s governor, John Bel Edwards, should call a special legislative session in advance of the regular one scheduled to begin in April of next year to do that if necessary.
“Louisiana lawmakers inflicted unspeakable pain, emotional damage and physical risk upon this beautiful mother,” Crump said, gesturing at Davis, who was accompanied Friday by her partner, Shedric Cole, their young daughter and her two stepchildren. “They replaced care with confusion, privacy with politics and options with ideology.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/26/woman-refused-abortion-fatal-abnormality-louisiana
Lousyanna! (But Tennessee is doing the same damn thing)
Kremlin TV Desperately Wants You to Move to Russia Right Now
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was meant to bring Russia millions of new citizens, as well as the country’s fertile land, flush with mineral and energy resources. Instead, the war has caused monumental losses on the battlefield, and the exodus of the best and the brightest from Russia.
Now, dwindling human resources are causing the Kremlin and its pliant mouthpieces to brainstorm about replenishing the gaping holes in Russia’s general population, workforce, and military.
Appearing on the state TV show Who’s Against? on Tuesday, Anna Revyakina, deputy chairwoman of the Public Chamber of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic in occupied Ukraine, voiced her ideas about attracting potential immigrants to Russia. She suggested that instead of worrying about the wave of European visa bans on Russians who want to travel abroad, Moscow should do more to attract foreigners to Russia.
“All of us Russians and our government should create maximally attractive conditions for the citizens of other countries to come to us, augmenting our population,” she said. “We have an enormous territory, a huge country, maybe not even fully developed, 140 million people—of course, we need more. Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin] is concerned about this, with various programs for families with many children.”
Revyakina urged Russian-speakers living in the Baltics to move to Russia, adding that such potential immigrants should be “loyal, in love with Russia, and speaking the language.” Moscow has long looked with hopeful anticipation at Russian-speakers in the Baltic states, with state TV propagandists highlighting their protests against the removal of Soviet-era monuments and urging them to come to Russia.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/kremlin-backed-media-makes-desperate-push-for-more-immigrants-to-russia?ref=home
Da, konechno, Vovka (yeah, sure, Vlad)
Nebraska school officials close newspaper after LGBTQ issue
Administrators at a Nebraska school shuttered the school’s award-winning student newspaper just days after its last edition that included articles and editorials on LGBTQ issues, leading press freedom advocates to call the move an act of censorship.
The staff of Northwest Public Schools’ 54-year-old Saga newspaper was informed on May 19 of the paper’s elimination, the Grand Island Independent reported. Three days earlier, the newspaper had printed its June edition, which included an article titled, “Pride and prejudice: LGBTQIA+” on the origins of Pride Month and the history of homophobia. It also included an editorial opposing a Florida law that bans some lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity and dubbed by critics as “Don’t Say Gay.”
Officials overseeing the district, which is based in Grand Island, have not said when or why the decision was made to eliminate the student paper. But an email from a school employee to the Independent cancelling the student paper’s printing services on May 22 said it was “because the school board and superintendent are unhappy with the last issue’s editorial content.”
The paper’s demise also came a month after its staff was reprimanded for publishing students’ preferred pronouns and names. District officials told students they could only use names assigned at birth going forward.
Emma Smith, Saga’s assistant editor in 2022, said the student paper was informed that the ban on preferred names was made by the school board. That decision directly affected Saga staff writer Marcus Pennell, a transgender student, who saw his byline changed against his wishes to his birth name of “Meghan” Pennell in the June issue.
“It was the first time that the school had officially been, like, ‘We don’t really want you here,’” Pennell said. “You know, that was a big deal for me.”
https://apnews.com/article/gender-identity-nebraska-gay-rights-newspapers-censorship-229d12b873a51cfe5f6eb3a4b9b715f5
"Children" are not allowed freedom of speech by adults acting like children.
Nebraska school officials close newspaper after LGBTQ issue
Administrators at a Nebraska school shuttered the school’s award-winning student newspaper just days after its last edition that included articles and editorials on LGBTQ issues, leading press freedom advocates to call the move an act of censorship.
The staff of Northwest Public Schools’ 54-year-old Saga newspaper was informed on May 19 of the paper’s elimination, the Grand Island Independent reported. Three days earlier, the newspaper had printed its June edition, which included an article titled, “Pride and prejudice: LGBTQIA+” on the origins of Pride Month and the history of homophobia. It also included an editorial opposing a Florida law that bans some lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity and dubbed by critics as “Don’t Say Gay.”
Officials overseeing the district, which is based in Grand Island, have not said when or why the decision was made to eliminate the student paper. But an email from a school employee to the Independent cancelling the student paper’s printing services on May 22 said it was “because the school board and superintendent are unhappy with the last issue’s editorial content.”
The paper’s demise also came a month after its staff was reprimanded for publishing students’ preferred pronouns and names. District officials told students they could only use names assigned at birth going forward.
Emma Smith, Saga’s assistant editor in 2022, said the student paper was informed that the ban on preferred names was made by the school board. That decision directly affected Saga staff writer Marcus Pennell, a transgender student, who saw his byline changed against his wishes to his birth name of “Meghan” Pennell in the June issue.
“It was the first time that the school had officially been, like, ‘We don’t really want you here,’” Pennell said. “You know, that was a big deal for me.”
https://apnews.com/article/gender-identity-nebraska-gay-rights-newspapers-censorship-229d12b873a51cfe5f6eb3a4b9b715f5
"Children" are not allowed freedom of speech by adults acting like children.
Video confirms abuse of immigrants by federal agents in East Tennessee slaughterhouse raid
Video obtained by the Tennessee Lookout confirms that a U.S. Department of Homeland Security agent stepped on the neck of a Grainger County slaughterhouse worker who was facedown on the floor with another agent on his back during a controversial raid in April 2018.
Additional videos and depositions obtained also show that federal agents seized, searched, cursed, handcuffed and detained all Latino workers at the Southeastern Provision slaughterhouse in Bean Station, Tenn., without any proof of wrongdoing but allowed white workers to go free without further investigation.
The Tennessee Lookout earlier this month filed a motion seeking the unsealing of video footage from the slaughterhouse raid that federal agents sought to keep under wraps. U.S. Magistrate Judge Christopher Seger unsealed the footage and related documents, including excerpts of deposition testimony, two days later.
The video and documents are part of a U.S. District Court lawsuit filed on behalf of Latino plant workers against federal agents and the U.S. government after the raid — which was supposed to be a search for tax-related records but was, instead, one of the nation’s largest workplace immigration raids in recent history.
The workers contend the raid was designed to bolster then-President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to get tough on illegal immigration.
Agents spent nearly a year planning the raid, including obtaining dozens of plastic zip ties to use as handcuffs, securing use of a National Guard armory in a neighboring county as a makeshift immigration detention center and lining up buses to transport Latino workers, but never sought to determine if any of the plant workers were in the country illegally before storming inside the plant with guns drawn, records reviewed by the Tennessee Lookout show.
https://www.rawstory.com/video-confirms-abuse-of-immigrants-by-federal-agents-in-east-tennessee-slaughterhouse-raid/
This happened just outside my former hometown. Even the ordinary citizens there were furious about it.
After Roe, teens are teaching themselves sex ed, because the adults won't
Sweating in the sun, two dozen teenagers spread themselves across picnic blankets in a grassy park and prepared to discuss the facts of life they never learned in school.
Behind them on a folding table, bouquets of pamphlets offered information teachers at school would never share — on the difference between medical and surgical abortions, and how to get them. Beside the pamphlets sat items adults at school would never give: pregnancy tests and six-packs of My Way Emergency Contraceptive.
Emma Rose Smith, 17, rose from the blankets, tucked her pale-blonde hair behind her ears and turned off the music on a small, black speaker. She faced the assembled high-schoolers, all members of her newfound group, Teens for Reproductive Rights, and began talking about the nonprofit Abortion Care Tennessee. Her words hitched at first, then tumbled in a rush.
“A little bit about them,” Emma Rose said, “is they’re an organization that funds people’s abortions if they can’t afford it. Also, by the way, there’s another organization that we can also talk about later, when we give you guys, like, resources, that actually does free mail-in abortion pills.”
Twelve days after the teens’ picnic, abortion would become illegal in Tennessee, a measure made possible by the Supreme Court’s June decision, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning Roe v. Wade. The students wouldn’t hear anything about it in school: State law does not require sex education, and it holds that schools in areas with high pregnancy rates must offer “family life education” focused on abstinence.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/08/23/teen-sex-education-roe/?itid=hp-more-top-stories
This is a GREAT article! The kids really are all right. It's adults that suck.
Hopi teens see need for skateboarding park, make it happen
They skateboarded on basketball courts and in parking lots, through highway intersections and down roads that twist from the mesas that rise above the high desert.
They set up tricks with old railroad ties and lumber, sometimes using their own skateboards to move the materials in place. During a pandemic that led to lockdowns, curfews and mask mandates on the Hopi reservation, the solo nature of skateboarding was a comfort.
But the reservation that borders the northeast corner of Arizona lacked a designated skate spot. So a group of Hopi teenagers made it happen, seeing out a project they initially thought would take months and displaying the Hopi cultural value of sumi’nangwa — coming together for the greater good.
“I hope this will inspire other youth groups to try and do something like this to make the Hopi community a better place for the future generations of our people,” said Quintin “Q” Nahsonhoya, one of a handful of co-leads on the project.
The skateboarding destination opened late this spring in the Village of Tewa. It’s called Skate 264 for the highway that runs through the 2,500 square-mile (6,474-square-kilometer) Hopi reservation and connects the more than dozen villages. Kira Nevayaktewa came up with the logo that features a cat named “Skategod” that was part of the crew.
https://apnews.com/article/arizona-8f521edc0f0d58f44369a3393815b35d
The kids are all right!
Conservative activists want to ban 400 books from a library -- but they aren't even on shelves
For months, a group of conservative Christians have inundated the staff and board of a public library in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, with complaints about books they didn’t want to see on the shelves.
Their list of more than 400 titles predominantly focuses on young adult books with LGBTQ characters, scenes describing sexual activity or invoking the occult.
The only problem: None of the books are in the library’s collection.
Still, the activists in this town of 2,500 people wanted the books preemptively banned. They fumed that the library planned to join the American Library Association, a nonprofit trade organization known for fighting censorship that local activists falsely accused of “promoting pedophilia.” They started a campaign to recall four of the five library trustees over a policy against restricting access to controversial books, putting up signs around town that read: “Our Mission is to protect children from explicit materials and grooming.”
The fervor has become so heated that the library’s director is quitting after just nine months, citing a barrage of harassment that she said made it impossible to do her job. Kimber Glidden, 51, a former bank manager turned librarian, said the stress became so bad that she developed a tic that makes her thumb quiver uncontrollably.
In Glidden’s Aug. 16 resignation announcement on Facebook, she stated, “nothing in my background could have prepared me for the political atmosphere of extremism, militant Christian fundamentalism, intimidation tactics, and threatening behavior currently being employed in the community.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/conservative-activists-want-ban-400-books-library-arent-even-shelves-rcna44026
There are a lot of conservative Mennonites here who are among our library's heaviest users, but they do not attempt to ban books. Their philosophy is more live and let live.
Women in Ohio Are Using TikTok to Warn Each Other About Brock Turner
Brock Turner is going viral again.
Convicted in 2016 of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman, Turner was sentenced to just six months in jail—a sentence that, to many, was proof that the criminal justice system doesn’t care about rape victims. But Turner was also required to register as a sex offender, and now, people on Facebook and TikTok are using that registry to warn one another to stay away from him.
“Brock Turner is now living in the Dayton, Ohio, area,” one recent post on Facebook read. “He is frequenting bars in the area. Do not let him leave with an intoxicated woman. Inform the women of who he is. Inform the bartender, bouncers. Brock Turner does not belong in public.”
Versions of that post have popped up repeatedly on Facebook over the last several weeks. Another post read, “Just trying to spread awareness that this r@pist is back in our midst. Please tell your female and femme-presenting friends, family members, co-workers, literally everyone. This man does not deserve peace.”
It’s unclear why, exactly, these warnings are popping up now. Although Ohio’s sex offender registry does not publicly list when people register or re-register, Turner is from the state and has been reported to live there for years. But the re-emergence of the warnings, years after #MeToo washed across social media and supposedly introduced the concept of consequences for sex crimes, the warnings about Turner reveal that women are still relying on so-called “whisper networks” to protect themselves when they believe the system has failed them.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/3adany/brock-turner-tiktok-ohio-rape
Don't do the crime if you don't want your reputation slimed. That's all I've got to say.
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Gender: Do not displayCurrent location: Virginia
Member since: Wed Jun 1, 2011, 07:34 PM
Number of posts: 9,965