U.S. News
Ed Pilkington
The Guardian
Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:11 EST
© Alexis Hutchinson/AP
Alexis Hutchinson with Kamani
A 21-year-old single mother serving with the US Army's 3rd Infantry Division is facing a possible court martial because she failed to turn up for deployment to Afghanistan, saying that she could not find anyone to care for her infant son.
Alexis Hutchinson, who serves as an army cook, was meant to have joined her division for a flight to Kabul on 5 November, but failed to show up. She was arrested and temporarily placed in custody while her 10-month-old child Kamani was put into a daycare scheme on her military base in Savannah, Georgia.
Hutchinson denies any suggestion that she was trying to avoid deployment, insisting that she was only acting out of concern for her boy. She had placed him in the care of her mother, Angelique Hughes, in Oakland, California, but after a couple of weeks Hughes found she was overburdened and unable to commit for a whole year looking after him.
Dahr Jamail
Inter Press Service
Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:48 EST
According to a soldiers' advocacy group at Fort Hood, the U.S. base where an army psychiatrist has been charged with killing 13 people and wounding 30 in a Nov. 5 rampage, the official suicide figures provided by the Army are "definitely" too low.
Chuck Luther served 12 years in the military and is a veteran of two deployments to Iraq, where he was a reconnaissance scout in the 1st Cavalry Division. The former sergeant was based at Fort Hood, where he lives today.
"I see the ugly," Luther told IPS. "I see soldiers beating their wives and trying to kill themselves all the time, and most folks don't want to look at this, including the military."
Luther, who in 2007 became the founder and director of the Soldier's Advocacy Group of Disposable Warriors, knows about these types of internal problems in the military because he has been through many of them himself.
Luther told IPS that he believes the real number of soldiers at Fort Hood committing suicide is being dramatically underreported by the military.
Henrick Karoliszyn and Jonathan Lemire
New York Daily News
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:55 EST
© DelMundo
Firefighters battle a blaze in Queens that claimed the life of Nathanial Lagree, who helped save the lives of his family.
A 75-year-old man helped his family escape his burning Queens home early Monday - but died after running back into the house for his cell phone, witnesses and FDNY sources said.
Nathaniel Lagree was found lifeless in the basement of his smoky St. Albans home a short time after the fire ignited at 6:20 a.m., FDNY officials said.
Lagree helped pry open the front door of his Zoller Road home to free his wife, Betty, and daughter, Patricia, from the choking smoke, witnesses said.
But because the cordless home phone he carried out was not working, Lagree dashed back into the dangerous home to grab his mobile phone, witnesses and the sources said.
WFTV
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:07 EST
Some Central Florida families could get a rude awakening from the Navy. Jets carrying live warheads could soon race right over Central Florida.
The military is working on plans to expand the Avon Park bombing range, where pilots would test real bombs. The possibility leaves some residents nervous.
June Felt has an excellent memory. She plays piano by ear and knows hundreds of songs, so she can easily recall every detail of the night of August 22, 1944.
"Very unusual, the sound was. I can't even describe how I felt when I heard it. I knew something bad was happening," she said.
Her hometown of Frostproof, Florida had been bombed by the United States Air Force.
"Well, they came over to apologize when they realized what they had done. And the next week, they did it again," she said.
Nick Allen
Telegraph.co.uk
Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:17 EST
Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood gunman, had sought military prosecutions against soldiers he claimed confessed "war crimes" to him during counselling sessions.
Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, last threatened to pursue prosecutions against other soldiers on Nov 2.
Two days later he went for extra target practice at a shooting range where he bought 10 targets and fired more than 200 rounds.
Jana Winter
Fox News
Sun, 08 Nov 2009 23:58 EST
The Army psychiatrist authorities say killed 13 people and wounded 29 others at the Fort Hood Army Base Thursday was a recent and frequent customer at a local strip club, employees of the club told FoxNews.com exclusively.
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan came into the Starz strip club not far from the base at least three times in the past month, the club's general manager, Matthew Jones, told FoxNews.com. Army investigators building their case against Hasan plan to interview Jones soon.
"The last time he was here, I remember checking his military ID at the door, and he paid his $15 cover and stayed for six or seven hours," Jones, 37, said.
Bob Herbert
New York Times
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:01 EST
© Unknown
President Obama's strongest supporters during the presidential campaign were the young, the black and the poor -- and they are among those who are being hammered unmercifully in this long and cruel economic downturn that the financial elites are telling us is over.
If the elites are correct, if the Great Recession really is over, then these core supporters of the president are being left far, far behind -- as are blue-collar workers of every ethnic and political persuasion. Nobody wants to talk seriously about class in America, but the elites are smiling and perusing their stock portfolios while the checklist of Americans locked in depressionlike circumstances just grows and grows: construction and manufacturing workers, young men without college degrees (especially young black and Hispanic men), teenagers, and those who were already poor when the recession began.
David Edwards and Daniel Tencer
Raw Story
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:50 EST
© Unknown
In a re-run of the phenomenon seen when President Bill Clinton took office, gun-rights advocates, libertarians, survivalists and others are forming militias as a symbol of their resistance to what they see as an administration that threatens to restrict their right to bear arms and expand government control over the lives of private citizens.
"The truth is that these groups are popping up like mushrooms after a spring rain," said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a social-justice group that has been tracking the rise of militias over the past year.
Potok's group
put out a report earlier this year raising the alarm about the resurgence of armed militias. Since then, he told CNN, the group has counted about 100 new groups formed across the country.
"There really is this terrible fear mixed with fury about the idea that President Obama is somehow leading a socialistic takeover of America," Potok said.
Eleanor Bader
RH Reality Check
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:19 EST
"Life is not a playground," says Rev. Rusty Lee Thomas in The Kingdom Leadership Institute Manual. "It is a war zone."
© Unknown
Rev. Rusty Lee Thomas, Assistant Director of Operation Save America, is worried. According to studies by the Barna Research Group, California pollsters specializing in tracking religious and spiritual attitudes, only nine percent of teenaged Christians believe in moral absolutes. What's more, Barna reports that the vast majority of kids raised Christian will abandon all or part of their faith by the time they finish high school. "Assembly of God leaders estimate between 65 and 70 percent will depart, while the Southern Baptist Council on Family Life estimates roughly 88 percent will leave," Thomas writes.
To remedy this, Thomas' Elijah Ministries has started the Kingdom Leadership Institute, a weeklong ideological boot camp for home-schooled Christians between the ages of 14 and 21. His recently released book,
The Kingdom Leadership Institute Manual, is a roadmap for their training and a fascinating -- if twisted -- look at the concerns of far right evangelicals, complete with a game plan for action.
George Bennett
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:17 EST
Dennis Kucinich
U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich lasted less than 24 hours as headliner for the Palm Beach County Democratic Party's annual fundraising dinner after some of the party's elected officials blasted the Ohio Democrat's stance on Israel and threatened to skip the event.
Kucinich, who has a history of criticizing the actions of the Israeli government and opposing congressional resolutions in support of Israel, withdrew Friday as the keynote speaker for next week's dinner after being announced Thursday.
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