Let Me Out Of Here

I took this photo in Las Olas. 

This statue of a women in a crate, peering out, is so eerie and awesome to me. 

Reminds me so much of Medieval times when people were punished by being locked up and confined in cages or very narrow prison spaces. 

Talk about claustrophobia?

Anyway, not sure if she is being shipped out or ready to be displayed, but either way, this lady wants out, I am sure. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Let Me Out Of Here

Respect NOT Rape

BBC reports that already by age 20, 1 in 10 girls have been raped or secually assaulted. 

That equates to 120 MILLION girls globally. 

Many are then brutally murdered and shamed as we have been reading about, now with all too much frequency, in India for example, with young women being raped, killed, and then hung from trees etc. 

What is wrong with this world???

Women are our mothers, wives, and daughters--they are often amongst the most compassionate and caring of us.

This is how we treat them?

Unfortunately, rape and abuse is also a crime against many young boys. 

It is time to take a serious ethical pause and stop the violence against our children and against other adults. 

The screams and scars of those abused hang in the air as an indictment against those committing the crime as well as those that do nothing to speak out. 

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Respect NOT Rape

Panic, Technology To Rescue

Who us panic?

- ISIS is threatening the West with "dangerous new extremism"
- Syria's death toll tops 170,000 with more than 10,000 believed tortured to death. 
- Boko Haram is still abducting young girls (and boys).
- Iran says no deal on nukes. 
- Ebola is "out of control."
- China is emergent as the U.S. pivots east and space becomes militarized with anti-satellite weapons. 
- Russia is resurgent (Crimea is history to Ukraine).
- The national deficit only hints at the true extent of our unfunded liabilities from entitelements.
- The economy is bubbling over the top again, warns Robert Shiller.
- Racial and income inequality continues to divide America (case in point, Ferguson MO).
- Nearly 1 in 3 American adults has an arrest record.
- Almost half the world--3 billion people--live in poverty on less then $2.50 a day. 

Ah, if only technology could solve all our global problems--and this is a big list and not by any means comprehensive.

It's a race of the "world is exploding all over" with technology trying to make it better with more and better information, innovation, productivity, security, and cures.

Almost like the war of good over evil--we may lose the battle, but hopefully (let's pray) in the end, we will win the war. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Panic, Technology To Rescue

Time To Get Up

This person is sitting on a stool and waiting for the Metro.

The quiet and complacency of this person just sitting there was a stark contrast to the big train coming down the tracks.

I wondered if this is not a sign of our times where the world is moving large and fast in turmoil:

- With big airliners with hundreds of passengers being shot of the sky
- Thouands of rockets and dozens of murder tunnels aimed at cities full of civilians by terrorists hiding in hospitals, mosques, and playgrounds, 
- Six year old girls raped by their roller-skating instructors
- Women being stoned to death for alleged adultery. 

...but where we are sitting here quietly and contemplatively as the big train rolls over any vistages of moral decency left in humankind.

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Time To Get Up

Movement For Human Rights

IF

1) you are a dissident living in a country that suppresses basic human rights

OR

2) you are a person seeking to help others suffering under authoritarian regimes

THEN

consider signing up at Movements.org, an organization that connects people in need of human rights help with those wanting to provide assistance. 

After you create a profile, which is given a star rating depending on a vetting process, you can post requests for help or offers of services to help others. 

Available services for "advice, contacts, training, and services," include those from:

- Lawyers
- Journalists
- Technologists
- Translators
- Policy Makers

The great Soviet Jewish dissident, Natan Sharansky, who spent 10 years imprisoned in a tortuous gulag, wrote in the Wall Street Journal that Movement.org is a "transformative approach to an old problem" for collecting and trying to get information on human-rights abuses to reach the free world and to seek justice and freedom. 

While dictators looks to suppress freedom of speech and information flow, social media is combating it, and Movements was provided a grant from Google, I believe, to do just that. ;-)

Movement For Human Rights

Solidarity For All Our Children

The global Jewish community has been rocked by the abduction of 3 teenagers (ages 16, 16, and 19) by Hamas, a terrorist organization that rejects peace and is dedicated to "obliterate" Israel . 

I saw a photo someone posted on Facebook where it said that the families of these boys had empty seats at their beautiful Shabbat table, and I couldn't imagine the grief of the mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandparents, and other family and friends of these poor children.

Walking in the community around Washington, D.C., I see signs such as this with "Bring Back Our Boys" with ribbons tied to trees--and I am deeply moved by people's expression of grief and hope. 

This all happening just weeks after another extremist Muslim group, Boko Haram, abducted over 230 Nigerian schoolgirls, and the rallying cry for "Bring Back Our Girls."

I read how the these girls are being threatened with being sold in a massive human trafficking crime against humanity and can only imagine the rape and other torture they must be enduring by their captors. 

I remember as just a child in day school seeing photos and videos from the Holy Land of what these types of terrorists did to their victims--it was horrific!

Aside from the general torture, beatings, isolation, and starvation, I saw images where they literally wrapped their prisoners in barbed wire, including their genitals--it was not just grotesque, but pure and utter evil. 

I never forgot these images of unbelievable cruelty, and wish only for the return of all these children and for the people that would take them to be brought to true justice. 

May G-d have mercy on all our children!

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Solidarity For All Our Children

Saw It Right Off

This was something amazing that really gave me pause. 

In the physical therapy center, hanging on the wall, encased in this wooden box.

A saw from the civil war that was used by the doctors of the time to amputate soldiers legs and arms. 

The saw was so ominous looking, especially with it's design of medieval-looking torture, it's raw industrial quality, and the age and rust. 

I could literally envision the utter fright on the faces of the young men upon seeing the doctor approach with this tool. 

They would give you a piece of wood to sink your teeth into, so you wouldn't bite your tongue off when they started sawing away at your limbs.

Not sure how people lived like this...not all that very long ago. 

(Source Photo: Rebecca Blumenthal)

Saw It Right Off

Pain is Relative

I've always found it a little strange when the doctor (or nurse) asks you, "On a scale of 0 to 10, how much pain are you in?"

Why?

Because pain (like many emotions) is relative to our understanding of it. 

To me, when someone says a 10 for pain, I think of someone under the most excruciating pain--like when someone, G-d forbid, is being tortured. 

However, someone else may think of 10 as just being really sick and uncomfortable. 

That's why I like this graphic that is used to level-set what each number in the scale represents. 

Using this simple graphic, our definition of pain is not purely subjective, but rather each person can look at the faces and expressions and see how they relate to them. 

Of course, the goal on the right for zero pain is a great goal, even if not always achievable. 

In a sense this is a very basic personal architecture--where you have your "as-is" on the scale and your "to-be" which is your goal. 

Then the doctor and patient work together to figure out a transition plan on how to get there (medicine, rehabilitation, healthier living, etc.). 

While pain is usually just a symptom, it is a beginning to get at the root cause of what is bothering us and needs to be fixed. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Pain is Relative

Dastardly Bastards

I sit here this morning filled with indignation for the victims of a series of brutal monsters who have committed horrific acts against children (and adults). 

Last week we had the horrible terrorist attack at the Boston Marathon which left 3 dead (including an innocent 8-year old boy), almost two hundred wounded, and13 people who lost limbs (including leg amputations below the knee of a husband and wife recently married just last August ). 

Then yesterday, in the Wall Street Journal, two more news events about:

1) The raping of a 5-year old girl (YES, five) in India--4 months after the gang rape on the bus that left a young women tortured and dead.  This 5-year old was beaten and raped and found screaming for help and in pain with devices left inside her!  The suspect a 30-something man is left on the run. 

2) The trial of a late-term abortion doctor, Kermit Gosnell, charged among other things with murdering 7 infants who SURVIVED (initially) abortions he performed.  This doctor or staff is said to routinely "gouge the infant's neck with scissors to sever the spinal cord" (a method he called "snipping").  His offices were a horror lab with "blood on the floor," urine in the air, and "fetal remains haphazardly stored throughout the clinic--in bags, milk jugs, orange-juice cartons, and even in cat-food containers."  -- This is one sick person!!

While there are many people who are good, what loose nut or evil inclination drives others to terrible inhumane acts is a question that haunts us throughout the ages. 

I remember learning in Jewish day school that some people act worse than animals, because while a wild animal kills for food or to protect themselves, people kill and torture for the sake of it. 

Leon Kass in the article on Gosnell points out from his readings that "as science [and technology] advances, morals don't necessarily improve; [and moreover] that the opposite might well be the case" as people's faith in science above all else and belief in materialism as a cure of all ills replaces belief in G-d and the true mission of our souls in life. 

What punishment can these people get that will really fit their crimes--when the children are left snipped, beaten, raped, and dead? 

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Dastardly Bastards

Rape Outrage!

On the Night of December 16--coming home from watching a movie at the New Delhi Mall, a 23-year old woman was savagely gang-raped and her male companion, who tried to defend her, was beaten while on a bus being driven around the Indian capital for 45 minutes!

I iust want to stand with those protesting against the barbarism of the people who brutally gang-raped, tortured, and grotesquely inserted a metal rod inside her, causing her such bodily damage that even a team of eight specialists at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore that specializes in multi-organ transplants, could not save her. 

The woman had such severe internal injuries that most of her intestines had to be removed, and according to CBC News, she suffered from organ failure, a lung infection, as well as brain damage. 

After the rape, torture, and beatings, the victims were stripped and thrown off the moving bus.

It is sick and evil that the driver not only stood idly by and did nothing to help her, but has been charged as well in the actual rape!

I am deeply saddened not only by the gang rape, but also according to the Daily Times that they happen with such frequency that they are "rarely [even] reported in the Indian press." 

This is another wake up call for people of good conscience to stand against those that commit evil and to not be silent in the face of such atrocities.

The cries of this woman, and other victims of violence like her, can be heard throughout the world. 

She will not be forgotten, and to those savages may justice be done--in this world or the next by the all-mighty G-d who hears our prayers.

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Daniel Crompton)

Rape Outrage!

Pets, But Not People

I remember learning how the Nazi's in the Holocaust and WWII would take great care of their dogs, while at the same time exterminating Jews, Gypsies, gays, the disabled, as well as political opponents and prisoners of war. 

While I fully respect people who are pet owners and love their pets, it is odd how even today the love of animals and their treatment can be elevated above how we treat each other.Some recent articles about our pets that stood out:

- An article in the Wall Street Journal (2 December 2012) compares helicopter parents to now helicopter pet owners. One example given, from a pet-rescue site states: "All dogs must be constantly supervised in their yards for their safety...animals such as bats, bees, and snakes can gain access to yards" and threaten your dog. Another example provided was about a couple who wante dto adopt a dog, but had to complete an 50 question application. 

- Two days later, another article in the Wall Street Journal (4 December 2012) about people memorializing their pets by turning their ashes into diamonds. "Producing a one-carat diamond requires less than a cup of ashes or unpacked hair." And "some gems start at about $250, while pet diamonds cost about $1,400." No really!

In contrast, here were some recent articles about how we memorialize those who were gruesomely murdered and tortured by Nazis (may their name be obliterated):

- The Wall Street Journal (1 December 2012) presented an article on how "every year since 1963, the Space Medicine Association (SMA) has [disgracefully] given out the Hubertus Strughold Award to a top scientist or clinician for outstanding work in space medicine" even though, "Dr. Strughold, a former scientist for the Third Reich, was listed as one of 13 'persons, firms, or organizations implicated' in some notorious Dachau concentration camp experiments." In particular, Dr. Strughold was implicated in the "infamous hypothermia, or 'cold experiments,' in which inmates were used, and typically died as subjects [brutally] exposed to freezing conditions" such as immersion in freezing water or in vacuum chambers that simulated altitudes of nearly 20,000 feet. Yes, the concentration camp prisoners exposed to these experiments at Dr. Strughold's own instuitute, included "children 11 to 13 old [who] were taken from a nearby psychiatric facility" and subjected to oxygen deprivation experiments," yet the SMA continues to use Dr. Strughold name as worthy of an annual award--yes, beyond belief and sick indeed. 

- Bloomberg BusinessWeek (6 December 2012) describes how in India, a clothing store in Ahmedabad is named Hitler with a swastika used as the dot over the "i" in Hitler, and Mein Kampf is a bestseller. Similarly, in 2006 a cafe opened in Mumbai called Hitler's cross and a pool hall named Hitler's Den opened in Nagpur. Last year, a comedy was released called Hero Hitler in Love and there is a hit soap opera called Hitler Didi (or "Big Sister Hitler"). While the article states the "Hitler's popularity in India is not a result of anti-Semitism" but rather that Hitler weakened the British in WWII, thereby freeing their country. Nevertheless, the hero treatment for Hitler stands out in stark contrast to his life as a notorious murder of millions.

So while many admirably love their pets and seek to treat them kindly and with care, there are those who still love for the likes of Hitler, the Nazis and the murder, cruelty, and chaos they inflicted on the world. 

What is commentary on and future of a world, when people love and respect their pets more than their fellow human beings? 

As the English Statesman, Edmund Burke, said, "The only thing needed for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Glenda Wiburn)

Pets, But Not People

Finding Chicken Little

I was taken aback today to see this young lady walking her dog with a rubber chicken hanging off the back of her pants. 

The chicken was hanging by one leg and swinging back and forth--twisting and turning.  

I imagined that if this chicken was alive, it would be begging for mercy tied to the back like that.

Anyway, I'm not sure if this is a joke or a play toy for the dog, but it just seemed like a unique photo.

How would you caption this picture (and please keep it politically correct)?

Finding Chicken Little

Solitary Social Creatures

We've all had the feeling of being alone, abandoned, and feeling down and out. 

As social animals, we crave being with others--even the biggest introverts out there have got to have social interaction. 

Sometimes, when young people live alone--before finding their significant others or old people live alone--after losing their significant others, there is a deep pain of being isolated in the world...almost as if there is no meaning itself in being alive.

Yet, others seem to adjust in a way to living alone, as long as they can reach out and get social interaction in other ways--family, friends, colleagues, classmates, at clubs, religious institutions, and more.  

Either way--"No man is an island," as John Donne wrote in 2003. 

Being alone is torture. 

No really.

The Wilson Quarterly (Spring 2012) in an article entitled "The Torture of Solitary," by Stephanie E. Griest is about the purpose and effects of solitary confinement as rehabilitation and as a punishment. 

Coming out of the Middle Ages, where physical torture was common--dungeons instead of jails, cages instead of cells, racks and rippers instead of rehabilitation and yard recess--the Philadelphia Quakers in the 18th century, had the idea that solitary confinement was humanitarian.

They believed that "what these prisoners needs...was a spiritual renovation. Give a man ample time and quiet space to reflect upon his misdeeds, and he will recover his bond with G-d.  He will grieve. He will repent. He will walk away a rehabilitated man."

And so prisons (like the 1829 Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia) were built with entirely isolated cellblocks and prisoners were engulfed in silence and aloneness.  

Any rejection of the mental torture of isolation through any form of communication--such as pipe clanging or shouting through flushing toilet pipes--could lead to yet again physical tortures--such as "strapped inmates into chairs for days at a stretch, until their legs ballooned" or even putting their tongues in "iron gags."

The article concludes from the effects of solitary that "the physical pain of these tortures--common in many prisons at the time-paled beside the mental anguish of solitude."

From the horror-mangled looks on the faces of the prisoners, Dickens wrote: "I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain, to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body."

I cannot imagine the pain and horror of these tortures by design--physical and mental. In all cases, the scars of the flesh and soul are probably indescribable and outright haunting to even the imagination. 

Eventually the horrible effects of solitary and the high-cost of prison cells housing individual inmates, resulted in Eastern State Penitentiary being converted into a museum in 1971 with the "The crucible of good intention" finally shuttered.

From the Supreme Court, Justice Samuel Miller, we read:

"A considerable number of prisoners fell, even after a short confinement, into a semi-fatuous condition from which it was next to impossible to arouse them, and others became violently insane; others, still committed suicide; while those who stood the ordeal better were not generally reformed, and in most cases did not recover sufficient mental activity to be of any subsequent service to the community."

"In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court nearly declared the punishment unconstitutional;" it is now used mostly for "short-term punishment for exceedingly bad behavior."

Currently, there are more than 60 prisons across the country with solitary cells housing up to 25,000 prisoners. 

This is a puzzle--what do you do with offenders that are too dangerous to be with others, but as human beings too fragile to be alone?

What is striking to me is how something as "simple" as putting someone by themselves and incommunicado can drive them literally nuts!

Almost like we cannot bear to be by ourselves--what is it about ourselves that we must turn away from, be distracted from, and causes such inner horror?

Our minds and bodies need to be active to be healthy, this includes being social--being alone and bored in solitary has been shown to cause people to hallucinate, go insane, and even kill themselves.

Yet still people recoil from other people--emotionally, they may be turned off or nauseated by them; physically, they may fight, separate, or divorce and end up for a time by themselves again--people make the decision that it is better to cut your familiar loses, then go down with a ship filled with corrosive and abusive others.

I imagine Buddhists meditating in the mountains or in an open field--alone and yet at peace--but this is self-imposed and temporary and more like a "time out" in life. 

Then I see humans languishing in dungeons and in solitary confinement--physically and mentally tortured--they scream out in the void--and I see G-d reaching out to finally take them from their immense suffering to be reborn and try their lives again.

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Deisel Demon)

Solitary Social Creatures