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to not be is unAmerican, nonDemocracy

 
 
oristarA
 
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Reply Sun 22 May, 2022 10:18 am
@oristarA,




在線屏幕键盘电脑键盘


oristarA
 
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Reply Thu 26 May, 2022 01:31 am
@oristarA,
U.S. Speeds Up Reshaping of T



Russian Invasion of Ukraine
U.S. Speeds Up Reshaping of Taiwan’s Defenses to Deter China

May 24, 2022, 8:02 p.m. ET
May 24, 2022, 8:02 p.m. ET
Edward Wong and Eric Schmitt
F-16 fighter jets in Chiayi, Taiwan. Chinese leaders face a complicated calculus in weighing whether their military can seize Taiwan without incurring an overwhelming cost.
F-16 fighter jets in Chiayi, Taiwan. Chinese leaders face a complicated calculus in weighing whether their military can seize Taiwan without incurring an overwhelming cost.Credit...Ann Wang/Reuters
阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration has accelerated its efforts to reshape Taiwan’s defense systems as it projects a more robust American military presence in the region to try to deter a potential attack by the Chinese military, current and former U.S. officials say.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has made American and Taiwanese officials acutely aware that an autocrat can order an invasion of a neighboring territory at any moment. But it has also shown how a small military can hold out against a seemingly powerful foe.

U.S. officials are taking lessons learned from arming Ukraine to work with Taiwan in molding a stronger force that could repel a seaborne invasion by China, which has one of the world’s largest militaries.

The aim is to turn Taiwan into what some officials call a “porcupine”— a territory bristling with armaments and other forms of U.S.-led support that appears too painful to attack.

Taiwan has long had missiles that can hit China. But the American-made weapons that it has recently bought — mobile rocket platforms, F-16 fighter jets and antiship projectiles — are better suited for repelling an invading force. Some military analysts say Taiwan might buy sea mines and armed drones later. And as it has in Ukraine, the U.S. government could also supply intelligence to enhance the lethality of the weapons, even if it refrains from sending troops.

American officials have been quietly pressing their Taiwanese counterparts to buy weapons suitable for asymmetric warfare, a conflict in which a smaller military uses mobile systems to conduct lethal strikes on a much bigger force, U.S. and Taiwanese officials say.

Washington increasingly uses the presence of its military and those of allies as deterrence. The Pentagon has begun divulging more details about the sailings of American warships through the Taiwan Strait — 30 since the start of 2020. And U.S. officials praise partner nations like Australia, Britain, Canada and France when their warships transit through the strait.

In ramping up its posture and language, the United States is trying to walk a fine line between deterrence and provocation. The actions risk pushing President Xi Jinping of China to order an attack on Taiwan, some analysts say.

On Wednesday, the Chinese army described organizing combat drills in the waters and airspace around Taiwan to send a blunt message to the United States. The statement was ambiguous as to whether such drills had already taken place recently or were still to come.

A Chinese offensive against Taiwan could take many forms, such as a full-scale sea and air assault on the main island with missile barrages, an invasion of small islands closest to China’s southeast coast, a naval blockade or a cyberattack.

Read More on Biden’s Trip to Asia
Trade Policy: The new trade deal announced by President Biden during his trip to Asia is based on two big ideas: containing China and moving away from a focus on markets and tariffs.
In an Awkward Spot: Mr. Biden’s remarks about the future of U.S. defense of Taiwan complicate diplomacy for the Indo-Pacific bloc, particularly for Australia.
Strategic Intent?: Some view President Biden’s words as just a gaffe, but they are consistent with the administration’s new policy toward the territory.
Veering Off Script: Offhand comments that vary from the official talking points, the ones he made in Tokyo, have become a recurring feature of the Biden presidency.
“Are we clear about what deters China and what provokes China?” said Bonnie S. Glaser, director of the Asia program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “The answer to that is ‘no,’ and that’s dangerous territory.”

“We need to think long and hard on how to strengthen deterrence,” she said.

U.S. officials often discuss potential deterrent actions that end up being dropped because they are deemed too provocative. In the Trump administration, National Security Council officials discussed putting U.S. troops in Taiwan, one former official said. White House and Pentagon officials also proposed sending a high-level U.S. military delegation to Taiwan, but that idea was killed after senior officials at the State Department objected, another former official said.

President Biden’s strong language during a visit to Tokyo this week tiptoed up to provocation, Ms. Glaser and other analysts in Washington said.

The president asserted on Monday that the United States had a “commitment” to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan — the third time he has made such remarks during his presidency. And he explicitly said he would take measures that go beyond what the United States has done in Ukraine. While Beijing could see the words as belligerent, they are consistent with the new emphasis in Washington on forceful deterrence.

Image
President Biden’s strong language during a visit to Tokyo this week tiptoed up to provocation, analysts said.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
On Tuesday, Mr. Biden said in Tokyo that the decades-old policy of “strategic ambiguity” — leaving open whether the U.S. military would fight for Taiwan — still stands. “The policy has not changed at all,” he said.

Harry B. Harris Jr., a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea and a retired admiral who led the U.S. Pacific Command, said the United States now needed to adopt “strategic clarity” rather than “strategic ambiguity” to serve as a deterrent. China, he said, “isn’t holding back its preparations for whatever it decides it wants to do simply because we’re ambiguous about our position.”

The United States has been urging allies to speak up on Taiwan in an effort to show Beijing that Washington can rally other nations against China if it attacks the self-governing democratic island. On Monday, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan said at a news conference with Mr. Biden that the two leaders had affirmed “the importance of peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait.”

In the three months of war in Ukraine, Washington has held together a coalition of European and Asian partners to impose sanctions against Russia. U.S. officials say they hope the measures send a message to China and other nations about the costs of carrying out the type of invasion overseen by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. U.S. officials are already discussing to what extent they could replicate the economic penalties and the military aid deployed in defense of Ukraine in the event of a conflict over Taiwan.

“I want P.L.A. officers to wake up each day and believe they cannot isolate Taiwan in a conflict and must instead face the decision of initiating a costly, wider conflict where their objectives are beyond their reach,” said Eric Sayers, a former senior adviser to the U.S. Pacific Command who is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, referring to the People’s Liberation Army.

The statement from the Chinese army on Wednesday described China’s drills near Taiwan as “a solemn warning” to the United States and Taiwan. The spokesman for China’s Eastern Theater Command, Senior Col. Shi Yi, said in an online statement: “It is hypocritical and futile for the United States to say one thing and do another on the Taiwan issue.”

U.S. intelligence analysts have been studying the evolving relationship between China and Russia and the lessons Beijing might be drawing from Ukraine.

Chinese leaders face a complicated calculus in weighing whether their military can seize Taiwan without incurring an overwhelming cost.

A Pentagon report released last year said China’s military modernization effort continued to widen the capability gap between the country’s forces and those of Taiwan. But the Chinese military has not fought a war since 1979, when it attacked Vietnam in an offensive that ended in a strategic loss for China.

To take Taiwan, the Chinese Navy would need to cross more than 100 miles of water and make an amphibious assault, an operation that is much more complex than anything Mr. Putin has tried in Ukraine.

And in any case, perceived capabilities on paper might not translate to performance in the field.

“As we have learned in Ukraine, no one really knows how hard a military will fight until a war actually starts,” said James G. Stavridis, a retired four-star admiral and former dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. “China is probably not ready to take a risk of an invasion with current force levels and capabilities in terms of attacking Taiwan.”

American officials are not making that assumption. They have pressed Taiwan to buy weapons systems that they deem suitable for asymmetric warfare against China. The Biden administration recently told the Taiwanese Defense Ministry not to order MH-60R Seahawk helicopters made by Lockheed Martin, and it has also discouraged orders for more M1A2 Abrams tanks.

Admiral Stavridis said the United States needed to get weapons into the hands of the Taiwanese quickly if an invasion looked imminent, with a focus on systems that would wear down Chinese offensive capabilities.

“That would include smart mines, anti-ship cruise missiles, cybersecurity capability and special forces who can neutralize Chinese advance teams, and air defense systems,” he said.

U.S. officials consider mobility to be critical and are encouraging Taiwan to buy mobile land-based Harpoon anti-ship missiles. Stinger antiaircraft missiles could also be valuable for staving off the Chinese air force.

The pace of Taiwan’s weapons purchases has increased. Since 2010, the United States has announced more than $23 billion in arms sales to Taiwan, according to the Pentagon report from last year. In 2020 alone, authorizations totaled more than $5 billion. The sales included advanced unmanned aerial systems, long-range missiles and artillery, and anti-ship missiles.

Taiwan’s annual defense budget is more than 2 percent of its gross domestic product. President Tsai Ing-wen has increased the annual figure by modest amounts.

Both U.S. and Taiwanese officials say Taiwanese troops need better training, but each government wants the other to take more responsibility.

“The Taiwanese troops barely have opportunities to conduct exercises with the allies,” said Shu Hsiao-huang, a researcher at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, which is funded by the government of Taiwan. “Military cooperation between Taiwan and the United States should be strengthened in the aspects of regional exercises and the deployment of weapons.”

Ms. Glaser said Taiwan needed to create a strong reserve force and territorial defense force that could wear down an invading military, as the Ukrainians did.

“The U.S. has encouraged Taiwan’s military for years to talk to countries with a robust defense force,” she said. “Taiwan has sent delegations to Israel, Singapore, Finland, Sweden, some of the Baltic States. Now the situation is far more serious and far more urgent. There’s a lot more pressure.”

John Ismay and Julian E. Barnes contributed reporting from Washington, Paul Mozur from Seoul, and Amy Chang Chien from Taipei, Taiwan.
oristarA
 
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Reply Tue 31 May, 2022 07:47 am
@oristarA,
Medicalizing the Constitution?

oristarA
 
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Reply Thu 2 Jun, 2022 07:48 am
@oristarA,
In medicine, a condition which makes a particular treatment or procedure advisable.
oristarA
 
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Reply Fri 3 Jun, 2022 02:49 am
@oristarA,
The cost of living: an avoidable public health crisis
The Lancet Public Health

A global recession looms. Disruptions to supply chains—caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine—have pushed the cost of living up dramatically for millions of people around the world. Governments have cut back on the social protections communities had come to rely on during the pandemic. As annual inflation rates in high-income countries approach 10%, a growing number of people are being forced to choose between feeding their children and paying their bills. Stories of families missing meals, wearing winter coats in unheated homes, and living in the dark fearful of escalating energy prices are becoming too common. The cost-of-living crisis has surpassed COVID-19 as the main concern for many communities.
According to a survey done by The Food Foundation, one in seven (7·3 million) UK adults, and 2·6 million children, were food insecure in April, 2022. The Trussell Trust, a charity with the UK's largest network of food banks, has supplied more than 2 million emergency food packages annually since 2020. It is astonishing that so many people are unable to meet their basic needs in some of the world's wealthiest countries. The war in Ukraine is also threatening those in low-income and middle-income settings. Interrupted exports of wheat and cooking oil are creating food shocks in countries such as Egypt and Tunisia. And this worldwide political emergency is only going to worsen. The EU has revised its growth forecasts for Eurozone countries downwards for 2022, from 4% to 2·7%. Growth will decline further in 2023, to 2·3%. The result will be reduced net incomes, higher unemployment, and rising rates of social precarity. The Governor of the Bank of England has invoked the vision of an apocalypse to sum up the present crisis.
Allowing a worsening cost of living to drive more people into poverty will have serious consequences for population health, as the evidence published in this issue of The Lancet Public Health highlights. A systematic review by Rachel Thompson and colleagues emphasises the health impacts of poverty—especially the relation between changes in individual or household income and mental health and wellbeing. Importantly, exposure to poverty at a young age can have implications across the life-course. The study by Davara Bennett and colleagues reports that increases in child poverty levels in England between 2015 and 2020 were associated with more than 10 000 additional children entering state care. David Batty and colleagues’ systematic review reports evidence that a history of temporary out-of-home care in childhood is associated with an increased risk of early adult mortality compared with people with no history of early-life state care.
In countries such as the UK, where government action to mitigate the cost-of-living crisis has been minimal, the need for bolder intervention is urgent. By allowing children to fall into poverty, society is failing them now and in the future. A modest uplift in social security benefits could be of vital help in keeping many households solvent. The UK Government decision not to increase state benefit payments in line with inflation could push 600 000 people into poverty, of whom around a quarter are children, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The UK is not alone. All governments must urgently fulfil their social responsibilities. For example, for the new Prime Minister of France, Elizabeth Borne, her number one priority must be to find ways to materially protect citizens who have expressed their frustrations, both at the ballot box and in street protests. Government indifference is a real danger to social order.
Good nutrition, shelter, and the ability to lead a dignified life are essential foundations of good health. If unaddressed, rising living costs will leave people in health-harming, even life-threatening, situations in the short term, while embedding a public health timebomb for the future. For children, many have already faced educational and health challenges during the pandemic; adding a cost-of-living crisis will only worsen their prospects. Governments face a choice: to ensure that citizens can maintain a decent standard of living during this crisis or to allow population health fragment further. Instead of economists sounding the alarm, public health leaders must step up and speak out about the health consequences of failing to protect communities from the cost-of-living crises engulfing nations.
oristarA
 
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Reply Fri 17 Jun, 2022 10:41 am
@oristarA,

Capitol Rioters Came Within 40 Feet of Vice President Pence
A mob chanting “hang Mike Pence” got close to the then-vice president on Jan. 6, and he spent nearly five hours hiding underground.
Former President Trump called Mr. Pence a “wimp” and worse in a coarse and abusive call that morning from the Oval Office
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/16/us/politics/pence-trump-jan-6.html



欺世盗名的连花清瘟、张亭栋和饶毅
2022年6月15日 方舟子 科舟求见
文|方舟子

连花清瘟胶囊是一个叫吴以岭的骗子搞出来的骗人的药,很早以前就有了,并不是针对新冠病毒搞出来的。我以前已经多次批过它。最近连花清瘟胶囊引起了众怒。上海封城期间上海人民都在家里挨饿,但是每户上海人家都领到了连花清瘟用于预防新冠感染。网上有人透露说,上海物流现在很紧张,但是三分之一的物流能力都被用来配送连花清瘟了。于是很多人,包括王思聪等名人都一起骂连花清瘟。北大教授兼首都医科大学校长饶毅也凑热闹写了一篇文章,建议不要强制人们去服用这种没有经过证明的药。

饶毅的这篇文章没有什么新意,谈的内容别人都已经早就谈过了,但毕竟他是有一定影响力的名人,所以这篇文章流传很广。有一些人说饶毅是在反中医,吓得饶毅赶快在第二天又发表了一篇文章来撇清自己,说他不反中医,反的是假的中医、中医当中的骗子;他是支持真中医的,对那些好的、有效的中药的研究他一向是支持的。他说他曾经多次发表文章,推崇过中医药的研究,还因此被人说成是中医的拥趸。他说他只是要认这个真、认这个理。他举的他推崇中药研究的例子当中,包括哈尔滨医科大学中医科医生张亭栋发明用三氧化二砷治疗急性早幼粒白血病。他拿这件事作为例子来标榜自己认真、认理,是非常无耻的。

三氧化二砷是毒药砒霜的主要成分,用它治疗白血病,经常被说成砒霜治疗白血病是中国人的一个重大发现。这个说法很不准确。用三氧化二砷治疗白血病不是中国人发现的,在很早以前,外国人已经这么做了,发现有一定的效果,但是没有那么好。哈医大的研究人员最重要的发现是,如果只用三氧化二砷治疗一种类型的白血病——急性早幼粒白血病(简称APL),效果非常好,治愈率能够达到90%。这个发现是在上个世纪70年代做出来的,是那个年代中国最重大的医学发现之一。但是,一方面,参与这项研究的人很多,时间持续比较长;另一方面,那个年代不像现在,科研人员并没有知识产权保护意识,各方面的记录都是不全的,这样就导致在这项研究当中究竟谁的贡献最大变成了一个谜。

2013年,饶毅和另外两个人合作,声称查阅了最原始的文献,破解了这个谜。他们认为,在1979年,时任哈医大一院中医科主任的张亭栋发表了一篇论文,是关于三氧化二砷治疗APL这项研究最关键的一篇论文,他们把它叫做“里程碑论文”。所以他们认为张亭栋是这项研究最大的功臣,是最主要的发明人。饶毅的这个研究起到了一锤定音的作用,张亭栋因此收获了无数的荣誉,得了很多奖。最近的一个奖是在2020年获得“未来科学生命科学奖”,奖金高达100万美元,号称是中国奖金最高的科学奖。

但是,关于这事一直有争论。在哈医大一院内部,那些曾经参与过研究的人不服。参与当年研究的人有的已去世,他们的亲属也不服。他们向各个渠道反映,包括向我反映,说这个研究其实跟张亭栋没啥关系,张亭栋剽窃了别人的研究成果。我看了他们发给我的材料,认为是可信的。参与这项研究的人虽然很多,但是根据我看到的材料,做出最大贡献的主要是这么几个人。检验科的药剂师韩太云最早做出了用来治疗白血病的砷剂。中医科的一些医生摸索用砷剂治疗白血病,后来发现如果把白血病分型,对于治疗APL效果是最好的。在中医科医生当中,贡献最大的是孙鸿德和胡晓晨。再后来,血液科医生张鹏领导了对这项研究做更深入的研究,把治疗规范化,做了临床研究,然后推广开去。这些人是关于这项研究的最重要的发现人、发明者,没有张亭栋什么事。

我很早就知道这事的真相,张亭栋就是一个剽窃别人成果的学术骗子。我公开讲过几次,在新语丝网站上也发过这方面的材料。因为饶毅经常拿这事来标榜自己在科学史上做出了贡献,所以我几次提醒过他,他是在当一个学术骗子的吹鼓手、帮凶。但饶毅是不服的。由于年代久远,我们看到的那些材料有些是属于回忆性的,是当事人的陈述,不算是证明张亭栋剽窃的很确切的证据。但是在去年年底,铁证出现了,能够证明的确是张亭栋剽窃了别人的成果。

在去年年底我跟饶毅有一场关于科学史的争论。因为我一直在说饶毅没有研究科学史的能力和资格,饶毅为了证明自己有,列了他在科学史上做出的原创性的贡献,其中一条就是关于张亭栋发现用砷剂治疗APL。所以这件事在去年年底又被翻出来。棒棒医生(黄石人民医院血液科医生余向东)也认为张亭栋剽窃别人的成果,因此写了一系列的文章跟饶毅商榷。在写这一系列文章的过程中,棒棒医生发现了新的证据,而且是铁证。他从孔夫子旧书网买到一份材料,是1978年黑龙江中医学会年会的学术论文,其中有一篇是关于哈医大一院用三氧化二砷治疗APL的总结,署名是该医院的检验科和中医科集体。这篇论文跟张亭栋在1979年发表的那篇被饶毅称为“里程碑论文”对比,几乎是一模一样的。也就是说,张亭栋把一年前集体创作的一篇论文照抄了一遍,几乎是逐字逐句地抄,只是改动了个别的字、句,加了一个表,然后以个人的名义拿去发表。张亭栋这么做显然没有得到参与这项研究的其他人的授权,否则也不会有后来的争端。何况根据内部的反映和记录来看,张亭栋实际上没有参与研究。所以这就是一个铁证,证明张亭栋剽窃了别人的论文。张亭栋还剽窃过其他的论文,是一个惯犯,符合学术骗子的规律,即他们剽窃一次是不会罢手的,会一直剽窃下去。所以这件事可以说有了定论,铁证如山,证明了三氧化合砷治疗APL的发现是别人做出来的,跟张亭栋没有关系,是张亭栋剽窃了别人的论文拿去发表。

棒棒医生这么一篇一篇地写文章,要跟饶毅商榷,饶毅都置之不理,没有任何回应。是饶毅不知道棒棒医生在跟他商榷吗?不是。棒棒医生的这些文章我都一篇一篇转给饶毅。我有时候也在推特上评论一下棒棒医生的文章,我的评论也都转给饶毅。但饶毅都假装没看见。人家是在摆事实、讲道理,而且有了新的发现在跟你商榷,针对的是你一个“重大的科学史研究的成果”,那么,如果你是一个真正的学者,就应该给回应。如果别人的商榷文章有不对之处,你就应该一一地反驳。如果对方事实准确、逻辑合理,没法反驳,那就证明了你的“学术研究的成果”是站不住脚的,你就应该大大方方地认错。这是作为一个学者应有的品格。

中国的很多的“学者”,包括饶毅这种明星科学家,没有学者应该有的品格,他们是死不认错的。那好,我们退一步,不以学者的标准来要求饶毅,就以一个普通人的标准来要求饶毅吧。如果脸皮薄一点、有一点羞耻心的话,虽然拉不下脸,不愿意认错,那么也不应该再去提这事,不要再把“发现张亭栋”作为自己的学术成果拿出来。但是饶毅一方面对别人的,包括棒棒医生、我的质疑、商榷一概不予理睬,另一方面继续把“发现张亭栋”作为他的重大学术成果亮出来,这就非常无耻,是在继续当一个学术骗子的帮凶。更无耻的是,饶毅不仅继续把这作为他的学术成果,而且还要拿它来标榜自己是在认真、认理,这就无耻到极点了。不仅是无耻,而且是坏,是那种没有任何羞耻心的坏透的坏。一方面继续当学术骗子的帮凶,另一方面还要自吹自擂自己是认真认理的,光是从这件事我们就可以认定,饶毅是一个欺世盗名的恶人。可笑的是饶毅却被很多人当成中国科学的良心、中国科学界的鲁迅,这可以说是这个荒诞时代的一大笑话。

2022.4.19.录制
2022.6.15.整理

oristarA
 
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Reply Sat 18 Jun, 2022 11:23 pm
@oristarA,
As Vaccines Arrive for Young Children, Parents Are Put on the Spot
It’s a moment many parents have awaited for months: Children younger than age 5 are now eligible for Covid vaccines, among the last Americans to qualify.
The vaccines seem safe and are likely to protect against severe illness. But data on efficacy is thin, and most children have already been infected.
C.D.C. Recommends Covid Vaccines for Very Young Children
The recommendation comes despite reservations about the paucity of data. Young children may be able to receive shots Tuesday. Catch up on virus news.
oristarA
 
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Reply Sun 19 Jun, 2022 11:55 pm
@oristarA,
The Ukrainian paediatric mental health system: challenges and opportunities from the Russo–Ukrainian war

Published:May 22, 2022DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(22)00148-1
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On Feb 24, 2022, Russian military troops invaded Ukraine. As the war continues, millions of Ukrainian children and their families are desperate for safety and shelter. The adverse long-term consequences of war-related psychological trauma are well known,1 but little attention is paid to the mental health challenges during the active phases of wars.
Children and adolescents with pre-existing psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders are among the most vulnerable populations. The war in Ukraine began at the end of a surge in quarantine restrictions related to COVID-19. The transition of children's education to distance learning resulted in social isolation and the loss of routines and peer support. Child victims of domestic abuse were trapped indoors with their perpetrators.2 Studies of the COVID-19 pandemic have shown that children with pre-existing psychiatric disorders presented with increased impairment and decreased resilience, resulting from both pandemic-related stress or trauma and decreased access to psychiatric care.3 The Russo–Ukrainian war has compounded this trauma and led to a further loss of support from families, schools, neighbourhoods, and mental health services. In particular, these losses have been experienced acutely by young people with pre-existing mental disorders.
In Ukraine, psychosocial interventions for mental health are not widely available. Instead, psychiatry uses a primarily biomedical, medication-focused approach.4 The war-related panic buying of medications, destruction of pharmaceutical storage facilities and hospitals, and blockade of humanitarian aid all resulted in a sudden and severe depletion of psychiatric medications. We observed that the ensuing medication shortages exacerbated the severity of symptoms in children with pre-existing neurodevelopmental disorders, ADHD, and mood and anxiety disorders. We recommend that identifying and meeting the needs (including medication needs) of young people with pre-existing psychiatric or neurodevelopmental disorders should be a priority in the efforts to provide child mental health services during the active phases of war.
Ukraine has a highly centralised system of paediatric mental health care that relies on hospital inpatient units and specialised neuropsychiatric clinics, primarily located in major cities.5 During the first 2 months of the Russo–Ukrainian war, most of the children exposed to military actions did not or could not seek psychological or psychiatric care, partially because war-related disruption of public transport and of family and community networks due to displacement and shelling made it difficult to access mental health services. Children with severe physical and psychological trauma were brought to general hospitals that had an extreme shortage of mental health specialists among their staff, even before the war. As an essential step towards increasing the accessibility of paediatric mental health care, we recommend prioritising support for the future transition from centralised inpatient and tertiary care to community-based outpatient care.
The military actions of 2014 in eastern Ukraine increased the prevalence of psychiatric disorders among Ukrainians displaced internally;6 however, many parents did not seek psychiatric or psychological help for their children, possibly because they were discouraged by the stigma associated with mental health treatment. When they did seek such help, parents tended to access paediatricians and paediatric neurologists. Although Ukraine was among one of the first countries to implement WHO's Mental Health Gap Action Programme intervention guide, the country focused on education of adult mental health-care providers.7 Paediatricians and paediatric neurologists did not receive the necessary training and were unprepared to meet the mental health-care demands of children, even before the Russo–Ukrainian war began. We recommend increased collaboration with and training of primary care providers in the screening and treatment of children with mental health disorders. Such collaboration would greatly benefit from building capacity for telehealth consultations through the adaptation of evidence-based models of care, such as the Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Project.8
The elimination of postgraduate training in child psychiatry in 2005, followed by the underfunding of Ukrainian mental health services in the 2010s, led to predictable workforce shortages. Residency in child psychiatry has been replaced by 3–6 months of education specialisation,9 which can be completed after 3 years of independent medical practice. These changes have greatly reduced the number of applicants interested in training in child psychiatry. The number of practising child and adolescent psychiatrists in Ukraine fell from 500 in 20095 to less than 70 before the war began (Martsenkovsky I, unpublished). Since February, 2022, many physicians have become internally displaced or have left Ukraine altogether, exacerbating the workforce shortage. We strongly recommend support for dedicated residency training in the specialty of child psychiatry. Before any system-wide training interventions are planned, a careful needs assessment of both the available and required capacity of mental health services will be crucial. This needs assessment will require the development of effective comprehensive screening of children for psychiatric disorders. We have seen an urgent need for translation and validation of instruments for paediatric mental health screening, for use by non-mental health providers, building on the work of The International Trauma Consortium for screening adults in Ukraine, among many others.
As Ukraine prepares for healing from this war, it will be paramount to build broad, community-based mental health and resilience networks. These multilevel-stepped systems will need to include families, schools, neighbourhoods, and primary care clinics. All professionals in child mental health will need to increase their cross-disciplinary collaborations. We recommend investing in the training of Ukrainian providers in individual and group evidence-based interventions for both children and their caregivers.10
Although the needed reforms are resource intensive and would normally require decades to implement, the war in Ukraine has generated remarkable support from the international community. Countless volunteer groups have already translated materials, administered training, and raised funds.
As grateful recipients of this support, we also acknowledge its current challenges, including limited penetration of these resources into the mental health-care community of Ukraine. Future efforts aimed at supporting child mental health in Ukraine would greatly benefit from increased coordination and information sharing between Ukrainian physicians and international volunteers. There is an urgent need for establishing an online education and collaboration forum in Ukrainian, Russian, and English, which is supported by the Child Section of the Ukrainian Psychiatric Association. Such a forum would greatly increase the effectiveness of connecting professionals and sharing resources that support the mental health in Ukrainian children across borders and languages.
Notwithstanding its terrible consequences, this humanitarian catastrophe presents the Ukrainian health-care system with a unique opportunity for reform that could harness the creative potential of both Ukrainian and international communities to an unprecedented degree. We would appreciate hearing from anyone interested in joining this effort.
We declare no competing interests. We would like to thank the following colleagues for their help in reviewing this manuscript and for providing their valuable feedback: Sheldon Benjamin, Yael Dvir, Andres Martin, and Luchian Belau.
References
oristarA
 
  1  
Reply Sun 26 Jun, 2022 10:12 pm
@oristarA,
The Supreme Court declares war on modern America
By Jennifer Rubin
oristarA
 
  1  
Reply Fri 8 Jul, 2022 09:51 am
@oristarA,


Johnson’s Lies Worked for Years, Until They Didn’t
The British prime minister thought he could swagger and dissemble his way through any scandal, but found the rules of gravity applied after all.

Boris Johnson staved off political extinction for years, swaggering his way through scandals on the strength of his prodigious political skills — a potent mix of charm, guile, ruthlessness, hubris, oratorical dexterity and rumpled Wodehousian bluster.
Boris Johnson staved off political extinction for years, swaggering his way through scandals on the strength of his prodigious political skills — a potent mix of charm, guile, ruthlessness, hubris, oratorical dexterity and rumpled Wodehousian bluster.Credit...Kirsty Wigglesworth/Associated Press

After a lifetime of swaggering and dissembling his way through one scandal after another on the strength of his prodigious political skills — a potent mix of charm, guile, ruthlessness, hubris, oratorical dexterity and rumpled Wodehousian bluster — Boris Johnson has finally reached the end. It seems that the laws of gravity apply to him after all.

It’s not that he ever fooled anyone about who he really was. Over the years, he has routinely been described as mendacious, irresponsible, reckless and lacking any coherent philosophy other than wanting to seize and hold on to power.

“People have known that Boris Johnson lies for 30 years,” the writer and academic Rory Stewart, a former Conservative member of Parliament, said recently. “He’s probably the best liar we’ve ever had as a prime minister. He knows a hundred different ways to lie.”

In contrast to former President Donald J. Trump, another politician with an improvisational and often distant relationship to the truth, Mr. Johnson’s approach has rarely been to double down on his lies or to delude himself for consistency’s sake into acting as if they were true. Rather, he recasts them to fit new information that comes to light, as if the truth were a fungible concept, no more solid than quicksand.

Image
In happier times, Boris Johnson surveyed his domain as mayor of London from the Shard building in 2013.Credit...Matt Dunham/Associated Press
Mislead, omit, obfuscate, bluster, deny, deflect, attack, apologize while implying that he has done nothing wrong — the British prime minister’s blueprint for dealing with a crisis, his critics say, almost never begins, and rarely ends, with simply telling the truth. That approach worked for him for years — until finally it didn't.

His government weathered scandal after scandal, much of it centered on Mr. Johnson’s own behavior. He was rebuked by the government’s own ethics adviser after a wealthy Conservative donor contributed tens of thousands of pounds to help him refurbish his apartment. (Mr. Johnson repaid the money.) There were the private text messages he exchanged with a wealthy British businessman over his plan to manufacture ventilators in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, which raised questions of impropriety. There was an almost farcical accrual of embarrassing disclosures about how often Mr. Johnson’s aides (and sometimes Mr. Johnson) attended boozy parties during the worst days of the Covid lockdown, flagrantly violating rules the country had set for itself.

In the end, the prime minister’s different explanations for what he knew, and when, about Chris Pincher, a Conservative legislator accused of sexual impropriety, finally tipped the scales against him. It was clear that he had once again failed to tell the truth.

“He’s been found out,” said Anthony Sargeant, 44, a software developer who lives in the northern city of Wakefield. “The annoying thing about it is that the signs were there.”

“He’s been sacked from previous journalism roles for lying,” Mr. Sargeant went on, pointing to the time Mr. Johnson, then a young reporter, was fired from The Times of London for making up a quote. “Yet there he was, the leader of the Conservative Party becoming the prime minister.”

After helping engineer the downfall of his competent but lackluster predecessor, Theresa May, in 2019, Mr. Johnson entered office with an energetic mandate for change. His populist message, buoyant personality and easy promises to cut taxes and red tape, free Britain from the burdens of belonging to the European Union and restore the country’s pride in itself appealed to a public weary of the brutal fight over the Brexit referendum and eager to embrace someone who appeared to be expressing what they themselves felt.

But like Mr. Trump, who put a more sinister cast on his own populist message, Mr. Johnson has always behaved as if he were bigger than the office that he held, as if the damage he caused was inconsequential as long as he could remain in power. His resignation speech, in which he vowed to remain in office until the Conservatives could choose a new leader, was notable for its lack of self-awareness and its misreading of the curdled mood of his former supporters.

Born Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson — he began using “Boris” in a sort of rebranding exercise in high school — the soon-to-be-ex prime minister has a long and well-documented history both of evading the truth and of acting as if he believes himself to be exempt from the normal rules of behavior. His many years in public life — as a newspaper reporter and columnist, as the editor of an influential London political magazine, as a politician — have left a trail of witnesses to, and victims of, his slippery nature.

Image
Critics said Mr. Johnson was well suited to the London mayoralty, where he played a mock buffoonish character. That did not translate well to the prime minister’s post.Credit...Andrew Testa for The New York Times
When he was editor of the Spectator magazine, he lied to the editor, Conrad Black, promising not to serve in Parliament while working at the magazine. (He did.) When he was first elected to Parliament, he lied to his constituents when he promised to quit his Spectator job. (He didn’t.) As a legislator, he lied to the party leader, Michael Howard, and to the news media when he publicly declared that he had not had an affair with a writer for the magazine, nor gotten her pregnant and paid for her abortion. (He had done all of that.)

In a strange incident that he found hilarious but that epitomized his general lack of seriousness, in 2002 he ordered an employee at The Spectator to impersonate him when a photographer for The New York Times arrived to take his picture, fully expecting The Times to embarrass itself by publishing a photograph of the wrong person. (The ruse was discovered only toward the end of the photo shoot, when the magazine’s publisher found out what was happening.)

When he was the Brussels correspondent for the right-leaning Daily Telegraph in the late 1980s, Mr. Johnson wrote highly entertaining but blatantly inaccurate articles designed to paint the European Union as a factory of petty regulation intent on stamping out British individuality — articles that helped establish an anti-Europe narrative for a generation of Conservatives and pave the way for Brexit, two decades later.

Mr. Johnson himself described the experience years later to the BBC as akin to “chucking rocks over the garden wall” and then realizing that “everything I wrote from Brussels was having this amazing, explosive ­effect on the Tory party.”

“And it really gave me this, I suppose, rather weird sense of power,” he said.

In 2016, serving simultaneously as mayor of London and a member of Parliament, Mr. Johnson betrayed the Conservative Party leader, Prime Minister David Cameron, when he led the pro-leave side of the Brexit debate, contrary to the party’s position. Serving as foreign secretary under Mr. Cameron’s successor, Ms. May, he stabbed her in the back — and set the stage for his own accession to the job — by resigning from the government and publicly denouncing the Brexit agreement she had spent months negotiating.

Image
Boris Johnson, then foreign secretary in Prime Minister Theresa May’s cabinet, at a meeting at Downing Street in 2016. He subsequently stabbed her in the back, setting the stage for his ascent. Credit...Pool photo by Peter Nicholls
His womanizing and affairs were an open secret during his long marriage to his second wife, Marina Wheeler, the mother of four of his (at least) seven children. They separated when his affair with a Conservative official, Carrie Symonds, now the mother of two of the seven, came to light.

He has at least one other child, a daughter born during a liaison with a married adviser when he was the (still-married) mayor of London, in the early 2010s.

“I would not take Boris’s word about whether it is Monday or Tuesday,” Max Hastings, the Telegraph editor who hired Mr. Johnson as his Brussels correspondent, once said. In 2019, when Mr. Johnson was poised to become prime minister, Mr. Hastings wrote an article entitled “I was Boris Johnson’s Boss: He is Utterly Unfit to be Prime Minister.” In it, he called Mr. Johnson a “cavorting charlatan” who suffered from “moral bankruptcy” and exhibited “a contempt for the truth.”

Image
Mr. Johnson celebrating the signing of the Brexit trade deal with the European Union in December 2020. While a historic accomplishment, Brexit has yet to deliver the rewards Mr. Johnson promised.Credit...Pool photo by Leon Neal
Mr. Hastings, who employed Mr. Johnson when the future prime minister was in his 20s, was not the first to raise questions about his seriousness of purpose and inflated sense of self.

When Mr. Johnson was 17 and a student at Eton College, the all-boys boarding school that caters to the country’s elites, his classics teacher sent a letter home to Mr. Johnson’s father, Stanley.

“Boris really has adopted a disgracefully cavalier attitude to his classical studies,” the teacher, Martin Hammond, wrote, and “sometimes seems affronted when criticized for what amounts to a gross failure of responsibility.”

He added, speaking of the teenager who would grow up to be a prime minister: “I think he honestly believes that it is churlish of us not to regard him as an exception, one who should be free of the network of obligation that binds everyone else.”

Isabella Kwai contributed reporting from London.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/world/europe/boris-johnson-lies-britain-parliament.html
oristarA
 
  1  
Reply Wed 27 Jul, 2022 12:04 pm
@oristarA,
OPINION
BRET STEPHENS

Our Leaderless Free World
July 26, 2022

Credit...Martin Barraud/Getty Images
Give this article

217
Bret Stephens
By Bret Stephens

Opinion Columnist

The central fact about the democratic world today is that it is leaderless.

Twenty-five years ago, we had the confident presences of Bill Clinton, Helmut Kohl and Tony Blair — and Alan Greenspan. Now we have a failing American president, a timorous German chancellor, a British prime minister about to skulk out of office in ignominy and a chairman of the Federal Reserve who last year flubbed the most important decision of his career. Elsewhere: the resignation of Italy’s prime minister, a caretaker government in Israel, the assassination of Japan’s dominant political figure.

This is bad in normal times. It is catastrophic in bad ones. We are stumbling, half-blind, into four distinct but mutually reinforcing crises, each compounding the other.

The first crisis is one of international credibility. The war in Ukraine is not merely a crisis unto itself. It is a symptom of a crisis, which began with a withdrawal from Afghanistan that telegraphed incompetence and weakness and whose consequences were easily predictable. Beyond Ukraine, in which President Biden has committed enough support to prevent outright defeat but not to secure a clear victory, there is an imminent nuclear crisis with Iran, in which the president seems to have no policy other than negotiations that are on the cusp of failure, and another looming crisis over Taiwan, in which he alternates between challenging Beijing and trying to mollify it.

Talented leaders turn proverbial lemons into lemonade. Biden seems to be mastering the trick of turning lemonade into lemons. He has risen just enough to the occasion in Ukraine — generating a moment of allied unity and resolve — to have that much more to lose if it loses. If the war is still raging in winter and Europe caves to Russian energy blackmail (by, for instance, demanding that Kyiv accept an armistice in some kind of humiliating Minsk 3 agreement), what conclusions will Tehran and Beijing draw?

The second crisis is one of economic credibility. This is distinct from a normal economic crisis, which can happen for reasons leaders do not control. The credibility crisis occurs when leaders make confident predictions, in the face of abundant contrary evidence, that turn out to be catastrophically wrong. Insisting that inflation was “temporary,” as Biden did last year, was one such prediction. His insistence on Monday that “God willing, I don’t think we’re going to see a recession” may be the next.

Economic credibility is vital when decisions are bound to be painful. At least Jimmy Carter had the guts to nominate Paul Volcker. Where is a similar confidence-inspiring move from Biden, who, remarkably, retains the same inept economic team that helped lead us into this mess? And how much graver are the consequences of economic incompetence if a U.S. recession aggravates a global recession, which the International Monetary Fund expects is coming soon?

The third crisis is in poorer countries. Sri Lanka’s political and economic collapse this month, spurred partly by the pandemic but mainly by domestic mismanagement, is a foretaste of what we can expect in other developing countries, from Pakistan to Mexico to much of Africa. But unlike in Sri Lanka, crises in those places aren’t likely to remain within their own borders. In Pakistan, economic crisis can quickly turn into a nuclear crisis. In African nations and Mexico, the risks are in the form of state collapse and mass migration.

The last time the world had a global recession (and spiking food prices), the result was the Arab Spring, civil wars in Syria and Libya, the rise of the Islamic State, migrant waves into Europe and populist revolts that included Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. Imagine all this but on a vastly greater scale, a year or two from today.

The fourth crisis is one of liberal democracy. Democracy is not its own justification. It justifies itself by what it delivers: security, stability, predictability, prosperity — and then consent, choice and freedom.

People who have spent their entire lives in stable democracies often assume that freedom is everyone’s supreme value. The depressing lesson of the past 20 years is that it isn’t. Illiberal democracy, on the Hungarian model, can be a successful form of government. Ditto for effective autocracies, like in Singapore and the United Arab Emirates. Democracies that fail at delivery — by letting prices or crime or control of borders or common understandings of right and wrong get out of hand — put the best of what they stand for at risk.

The free world will always retain formidable advantages over its antidemocratic adversaries because we are better able to acknowledge our mistakes and correct them. But the cascading crises we face would challenge even the most inspired leaders. Except for Volodymyr Zelensky, there are none.

The best thing Biden could do for the country is announce he won’t run for re-election — now, not after the midterms. Let his party sort out its own future. Appoint a confidence-inspiring Treasury secretary (if not Larry Summers, then Jamie Dimon). Ensure that Ukraine wins swiftly. Put fear and hesitation in the minds of dictators in Moscow, Tehran and Beijing.

It might be enough to rescue a floundering presidency in a sinking world.
oristarA
 
  1  
Reply Fri 26 Aug, 2022 09:15 pm
@oristarA,
22 August 2022
‘He has saved countless lives’: US scientists on Fauci leaving NIH role
From the AIDS epidemic to the COVID-19 pandemic, the iconic medical chief has advised seven presidents on numerous outbreaks.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02301-x
oristarA
 
  1  
Reply Thu 1 Sep, 2022 10:58 am
@oristarA,
Does This Fisherman Have the Right to Be in a Billionaire’s Backyard?
A fight along Colorado’s waterways pits an alliance of white-water rafters and amateur anglers against some of the nation’s wealthiest landowners.


坐看群魔乱舞
@wudawei6

普京污蔑中国政府!
俄罗斯总统普京近日发表电视讲话,带着轻蔑的神态说:“你们毫无羞耻地替中国政府辩护,俄中签署的原油供应合同,25年时间为贵国“供应”3.6亿吨原油,合同总金额2700亿美元,你们知道你们的官员从中拿了多少回扣? 我不妨跟你们讲句实话,在这个世界上,我最看不起的国家就是中国!


oristarA
 
  1  
Reply Wed 7 Sep, 2022 03:32 am
@oristarA,
More work in this area is great, and I think it’s fantastic that they’re giving this attention,” says Ken Shepard, a professor of electrical and biomedical engineering at Columbia University, who is part of a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency initiative to develop
a flexible, implantable wireless chip that uses electrodes on the surface of the brain to record up to a million neurons. Neuralink is focused on three themes that will be important to any future brain-computer interface technology, Shepard says: flexible materials for the electrodes, miniaturization of the electronics with integrated circuit technology and fully wireless interaction with outside devices. “They have made significant progress in the first two,” he says.
oristarA
 
  1  
Reply Thu 8 Sep, 2022 12:09 am
@oristarA,
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-inside-of-a-black-hole-is-secretly-on-the-outside/
oristarA
 
  1  
Reply Sun 11 Sep, 2022 10:58 am
@oristarA,
Mindfulness and Compassion During Tumultuous Times: Essential Tools to Remain Steady and Whole
Date(s):
November 4, 2022
Description:
Between pandemics, the electronic medical record, and the emphasis on the bottom line, the pressures of a career in medicine have never been higher. We can get caught in worry, harsh self-judgment, and feeling like an imposter; the rapid pace of our minds contributes to the high rates of physician burnout seen today. In this half day course, you’ll acquire practical strategies to quiet your mind and gain mastery over worries and self-doubt. You’ll learn about the neuroscience behind mindfulness and meditation, and practice with a variety of readily accessible tools that will help you attain calm, clarity, and the balance you need to build resilience and avoid physician burnout.

The program will be followed up with two virtual meetings to enforce and reflect on learning and utilization of strategies and practices.

Website:
https://www.massmed.org/Continuing-Education-and-Events/Online-CME/COVID-Mindfulness/
oristarA
 
  1  
Reply Mon 26 Sep, 2022 07:41 am
@oristarA,
Asteroid-bashing spacecraft is ready to test an Earth-saving manoeuvre
NASA’s DART mission is on course to slam into the asteroid Dimorphos on Monday.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03030-x

张嫒检察长在唐山被刺
0 Replies
 
oristarA
 
  1  
Reply Sun 2 Oct, 2022 10:55 am
The War-Zone Mentality — Mental Health Effects of Gun Violence in U.S. Children and Adolescents

James Garbarino, Ph.D.

Does gun violence affect the mental health of U.S. children? That question has the same answer as most inquiries about child and adolescent development: it depends. Rarely does a simple cause–effect relationship apply to the same degree to all children, and the same exposures may even have opposite effects on different children. Such variability is an essential truth of the “ecological perspective” on child and adolescent development. But from this perspective, consideration of gun violence’s effects on the mental health of young people highlights two issues among the many facing U.S. society: traumatic responses in children directly exposed to gun violence and contamination of the consciousness of young people, particularly those with serious mental health problems.

Witnessing gun violence is clearly traumatic and can lead initially to acute stress reaction and then to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). But the bigger and more socially important story is post-traumatic stress development: How do children and adolescents develop in the wake of trauma? Not surprisingly, the answer is the same: it depends.

In perhaps 85 to 90% of cases, mental health sequelae of a single traumatic incident resolve, typically within a year. That’s the good news for kids for whom gun violence is a horrible aberration, a terribly bad day in a generally safe and supportive life. The small proportion of children or adolescents who experience long-term damage from a single incident of traumatic violence tend to be those whose lives were already disrupted beforehand. Many, if not most, of these single incidents of gun violence are the shootings that make the front page, and of course they can indirectly traumatize vast numbers of young people, as images of murder accumulate in their social-media–fed consciousness. But these incidents do not account for most of the gun-violence trauma directly experienced by U.S. children and adolescents. This violence occurs in a subset of neighborhoods, where it often becomes a regular feature of daily life — multiple-incident chronic trauma rather than single-incident acute trauma.

Having served as a psychological expert witness in murder cases for 30 years, I have witnessed the challenges faced by such chronically traumatized young people. They are unlike children and adolescents who’ve had only one bad day caused by gun violence, who are typically inundated with “psychological first aid” and therapeutic interventions. Rarely do the young people in “war-zone” neighborhoods receive substantial mental health support — most essentially, trauma-informed psychotherapy — as they undergo post-traumatic stress development. They are left largely on their own, and any “therapy of reassurance” is not credible: it does no good to tell them “It’s OK, things are back to normal,” because “normal” is the problem. I often ask the young men I interview in jails and prisons how many 8-year-olds they would estimate have witnessed a shooting; the typical response is along the lines of “All? Most? 80%?” though the actual percentage is more like 10%.

Young people for whom such exposure is standard are likely to develop a range of problems from both experiencing and normalizing gun-violence–related trauma. In their 1999 analysis of trauma outcomes, Solomon and Heide reported that beyond “normal” PTSD, chronic trauma produces “poor self esteem/self concept,” “interpersonal distrust,” “feelings of shame,” and “dependency.”1 These are significant developmental issues in their own right. But I have found that when other chronic trauma (including child maltreatment in the home) occurs in the context of community violence, it also yields a much more dangerous symptom: development of a “war-zone mentality.”

Although researchers such as Sampson have reported finding resilience and even “thriving” in poor, marginalized communities in cities such as Chicago,2 a study conducted in Chicago by Bell and Jenkins revealed that in the neighborhoods where community violence flourished, 63% of elementary school children reported having witnessed a shooting.3 Their level of exposure, in other words, was the same as that in Lebanon and among Palestinian children during the peak years of political violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip — hence the characterization of these U.S. neighborhoods as war zones. Such high exposure results in a worldview in which community violence is normal. But this normalization can lead to hypersensitivity to threat and validation for preemptive assault — what I have termed the war-zone mentality.

Through this process, traumatized young people (mostly boys) become “child soldiers.” The larger context in their communities, which often includes poverty, racism, cultural support for extreme corporal punishment (beating of children), and a history of armed street gangs, disproportionately predisposes them to perpetrate gun violence themselves. They are frequently drawn to gangs, at least in part to compensate for the “poor self esteem/self concept,” “interpersonal distrust,” “feelings of shame,” and “dependency” that arise from untreated chronic trauma. What’s more, they are disproportionately likely to be facing these socially toxic communities without the benefit of strong, positive male role models, and they often report (to me and others) that they were drawn to gangs because they sought a sense of family acceptance they found lacking at home. One young man who was in jail facing murder charges told me, “Until I turned 14, I had never met anyone who had a father living in the home.”

Jivani’s 2018 analysis of violent and socially disaffected behavior in marginalized communities around the world concludes that where fathers are commonly absent, boys are at heightened risk from any socially toxic influences in their environment.4 Gun-violence trauma is crucial to the developmental path that leads to the next generation of gun violence.

When it comes to contamination of consciousness, I have had occasion to talk with one actual and two would-be school shooters. I was struck by how these psychologically and socially vulnerable boys were informed by the scripts provided by media accounts of other school shootings — particularly the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado. They studied Columbine as a kind of primer on what to do when you’re a troubled, angry, sad teenage boy in a country that gives you ready access to lethal weapons. They are not alone.

Teenagers are particularly vulnerable to something called “the audience effect”: adolescents tend to see themselves as if they were in a play and their peers were the audience (or sometimes fellow actors). This phenomenon predates Internet-based social media, but it is excruciatingly obvious today, as many mass murderers now post before they kill. Such “homicidal leakage” has long been seen with young killers. It’s part of the show — a quintessentially American show. In these adolescents’ troubled minds, if anger and sadness are the question, gun violence is the answer.

An anthropological investigation illuminates the severity of this problem. People with a diagnosis of schizophrenia are not generically more violent than other Americans, and in fact are more likely to be victims than perpetrators of violence. However, a three-country study of the content of auditory hallucinations among people diagnosed with schizophrenia found that in the United States, violent imagery permeates the thinking of people who are thought to be “out of touch with reality.”5 In Ghana, hearing voices was often perceived as having a positive conversation with God, and in India the voices were frequently critical of the hearer’s housekeeping style (“clean your house!”). Whereas 70% of the voices heard by U.S. participants told them to hurt themselves or others, only 20% did so in India and only 10% in Ghana. Thus, even people who are usually considered disconnected from reality may be “infected” by the American culture of violence.

Of course, the United States is saturated not only with violent images but also with the means to translate those images into bloody realities. The physical, cultural, and social availability of lethal weapons offers a way to implement the most violent imperatives. Twenty-five years ago, I asked a group of suburban 10-year-olds if they could get access to a gun “if they needed to,” and virtually all of them said yes. They still can.

The effects of gun violence on young people in the United States are multidimensional, but as someone who has interacted with hundreds of juvenile victims and perpetrators of gun violence, I find these two aspects particularly worrisome.
0 Replies
 
oristarA
 
  1  
Reply Wed 5 Oct, 2022 05:16 am
Mining giant Rio Tinto made a high-pro le pledge to improve the ecology of its ilmenite sites in Madagascar in cooperation with conservation scientists. Then its bottom line began to su er
By Rowan Moore Gerety
oristarA
 
  1  
Reply Wed 5 Oct, 2022 11:10 pm
@oristarA,

‘Spooky’ quantum-entanglement experiments win physics Nobel
Award goes to three experimental physicists whose pioneering research has laid the groundwork for quantum information science.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05147-5
 

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