Women At War video blocked

Taking a couple of days off and just checked my email. Looks like YouTube has just blocked another video. Women At War will no longer be available. Over 11,000 hits and now they block it. This is the email I received. Guess that if you have Creative Commons and do this all for free to help women with PTSD find the support and understanding they need, it doesn't matter to anyone anymore. This is just one more example of why I am so frustrated with doing these videos. If anyone wants to see the video still, it's on my web site at www.namguardianangel.com
It will stay up there until I receive word to pull it down, but they will have to explain to me what the problem is. You cannot talk to YouTube or Google and get them to explain how a video like this bothers the artist.



Dear NamGuardianAngel,

Video Disabled

A copyright owner has claimed it owns some or all of the audio content in your video Women At War and PTSD. The audio content identified in your video is In My Life by Bette Midler. We regret to inform you that your video has been blocked from playback due to a music rights issue.

Replace Your Audio with AudioSwap

Don't worry, we have plenty of music available for your use. Please visit our AudioSwap library to learn how you can easily replace the audio in your video with any track from our growing library of fully licensed songs.

Other Options

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Sincerely,
The YouTube Content Identification Team


Women At War and PTSD
We forget how many women go into combat and have since wars first began. They die. They get wounded bodies and minds. They also suffer beyond what is "normal" conditions for men because of their gender. This is for all the women who serve in the military.
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Added: December 03, 2006, 04:06 PMTime: 08:02
Views: 11,501Rating: Comments: 35Responses: 0Broadcast: Public

11,501 hits and 35 comments for a video on PTSD for women veterans at a time when women veterans need it the most and they block the video! Nice work pulling something like this but it's not the first video of mine they've done this to.

Taking a few days off

I've been going nonstop this year, except for when my brother passed away in October. I posted the other day that I'm burnt out. You really have to top that one off with bummed out as well. This has been a very hard year and I'm very happy to see it end. Between losing my job in January and trying to figure out how to get from one day to the next without a paycheck, somehow we survived. Donations didn't even cover what it cost me to operate this year, never mind traveling and becoming a Chaplain. It's just stuff I have to deal with. Don't feel sorry for me at all. It was my choice to go into this as many hours as I have been. It was my choice because as bad as my own problems are, there are far too many with bigger problems.

In all of this, just a reminder, I do what I do because I remember what it was like to have no one understanding what PTSD was like for my husband or our family. I remember searching for help and answers, as well as some kind of support for me. What I do, is because I fell in love with a Vietnam veteran 26 years ago and I know I would want someone to do the same for him if I wasn't there.

I'm very hopeful that with the new president along with the New Year, hope will be restored to our veterans, along with the rest of us. Too many conversations about President Elect Obama and having to address the disinformation out there about what he plans to do have left too many apprehensive about his administration. First and foremost, he understands the needs of veterans. He proved that when he had the choice to serve on any committee he wanted to but against advice from some of his colleagues, he said his heart was called to the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. He also understands PTSD. He made a trip to the Montana National Guard to find out what they were doing. He also promised to replicated it across the nation. Their program is fantastic. It began because of the suicide of Chris Dana.

There is a lot to be hopeful for in the coming year. We just have to keep fighting to make sure that what can be done, is done. For now the fight has gone out of me and I really need a break.

While I've received far more support this year than I ever expected from service groups, there are many more that never responded. To them I have a message.

If you really want to address the problem of PTSD and really take care of the veterans, then understand that you are not doing them any good by acting as if you are competing against others who have been doing this work a lot longer than you have. There is much you have to learn especially if you don't want to waste time doing what's already been done. All you are doing is making the mistakes that have already been made, but the veteran pay the price because ego has gotten in the way. Stop ignoring the people that can get your group to where it should be so that you can really serve the veterans instead of your own ego! Join forces, not with me, but with other groups. No group will really be a success as long as we still have veterans falling thru the cracks.

I've contacted groups over the last five years, maybe their intentions were good in the beginning, but for whatever reason, they didn't want help from me and that's a real shame. They know who they are and as far as I'm concerned they will really not be successful. They are playing games, trying to make a name for themselves instead of doing the work they claim came first. I've been doing this since before most of these "genius" wannabe's were born. It isn't just me they are ignoring. There were a lot of us ignored instead of appreciated and most of them gave up. Tragic shame considering some of them were doing this even before I was.

So here's to next year. I wish all of you a Blessed New Year filled with love, hope and compassion in your hearts. I'll be back online on January 3rd.

Soldiers Deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan Wars Also Fight for Child Custody

Soldiers Deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan Wars Also Fight for Child Custody

Ann Scott Tyson


Washington Post

Dec 30, 2008
December 30, 2008, Fort Lee, Virginia - Army Sgt. Stephanie Greer was serving with a vehicle-maintenance unit in the volatile Iraqi city of Ramadi, part of President Bush's "surge" strategy to stabilize the country, when she learned of a far-off and most unexpected battle: Her estranged husband was going to fight her for custody of their daughter.

Greer had temporary custody of Mackenzie when she began her second deployment to Iraq in early 2007. Her husband was to care for the 7-year-old while Greer was overseas, but soon he challenged that arrangement in divorce proceedings. "He said I was unstable because I was deployed or training too much," she said.

As a result, throughout her 15-month combat tour, Greer had to mount from 4,000 miles away a legal campaign to keep her daughter.

"If I had not deployed, I know I never would have faced this situation," said Greer, 39. "I don't think it should be held against you, and I don't think my time away, or me deploying, affects my ability to be a mother or provide for my kids."

If she expected support in that position from the military, she was disappointed. Instead, the message she said she received from her superiors was: Deal with it.
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Lawsuit on religion in military expanded

They all serve equally. They all wear the same uniform, serve under the same commander, the same flag but we forget that while they act as a unit, a family, they are also very different. Different backgrounds, different lives and different thoughts. Along with their individuality, there is also different beliefs. They need to be treated as their faith is a private matter just as if they marry or not is a private matter. It has nothing to do with their duty or their skills. No one should ever decide the faith of someone else or force it upon them. When they do, especially when it comes to the men and women serving this nation, it deludes the reason they serve. Religious freedom should be held highly but too many find no problem with this line being crossed.

Lawsuit on religion in military expanded
By John Hanna - The Associated Press
Posted : Monday Dec 29, 2008 18:29:13 EST

TOPEKA, Kan. — A newly expanded federal lawsuit alleged Monday that the military doesn’t take complaints of religious discrimination seriously enough and allows personnel to try to convert Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan to Christianity.

The Military Religions Freedom Foundation and a Fort Riley, Kan., soldier suing Defense Secretary Robert Gates now allege that a bias toward evangelical Christianity pervades even the Army’s suicide prevention manual and the Air Force’s sponsorship of an evangelical motocross ministry.

The Defense Department said complaints about religious discrimination are relatively few and pointed to military policies against endorsing any religious view.

Spc. Dustin Chalker and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation filed their amended lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Kan. They filed the original lawsuit in September.

Chalker, a combat medic, is an atheist whose original complaints included being forced to attend military formations where Christian prayers were given. The foundation, based in Albuquerque, N.M., says it represents about 11,000 military personnel, almost all of them Christians upset about what they view as discrimination by more conservative and evangelical personnel. click link above for more

Court: DoD violated veterans hiring preferences

Court: DoD violated veterans hiring preferences
By Elise Castelli - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Dec 29, 2008 17:21:11 EST

The Defense Department violated the rights of a veteran who was seeking an entry-level, civilian auditing job when it decided to hire two nonveteran candidates instead, a federal court has ruled.

In a Dec. 24 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found that an Office of Personnel Management authority that allowed Defense to bypass traditional competitive hiring procedures for entry-level positions was invalid because the regulation conflicted with statutory requirements.

Congress required that OPM give permission to DoD to pass over a veteran or other preferred candidate for a job, but in this case Defense made that decision on its own when it passed over veteran Stephen Gingery for a job at the Defense Contract Audit Agency.

Defense used a special authority to hire candidates through the Federal Career Intern Program, which under OPM’s regulation allowed the department to decide whether to give preference to the veteran. In exercising this hiring authority, the department denied Gingery, who has a 30 percent or greater disability, his preference rights, Judge Kimberly Moore wrote in the decision.

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UPDATE
The VA released this

To view and download VA news release, please visit the following
Internet address:
http://www.va.gov/opa/pressrel



VA Ramps Up Job Search for Injured Vets

WASHINGTON (Dec. 30, 2008) - Thirty percent of employees of the
Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) are veterans - the second highest
ranking among cabinet departments after the Department of Defense -- and
nearly 8 percent of VA employees are service-connected disabled
veterans. But the VA intends to increase the number of disabled
veterans who obtain employment in its workforce.

"I am proud of this effort," said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Dr.
James B. Peake. "VA knows the true quality of our men and women, and we
should be a leader in employing them."

Peake said all severely injured veterans of the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan will be contacted by VA's Veterans Employment Coordination
Service to determine their interest in -- and qualifications for -- VA
jobs. So far, that office has identified 2,300 severely injured
veterans of those wars, of whom 600 expressed interest in VA employment.

The coordination service was established a year ago to recruit veterans
into VA, especially those seriously injured in the current wars. It has
nine regional coordinators working with local facility human resources
offices across the country not only to reach out to potential job
candidates but to ensure that local managers know about special
authorities available to hire veterans. For example, qualified disabled
veterans rated by the Defense Department or VA as having a 30 percent or
more service-connected disability can be hired non-competitively.

"Our team is spreading the message that VA is hiring, and we want to
hire disabled veterans," said Dennis O. May, director of VA's Veterans
Employment Coordination Service.

VA coordinators participate in military career fairs and transition
briefings, and partner with veterans organizations, the Department of
Labor's Veterans Employment and Training Service, as well as VA's
Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment Service, the Marine Corps'
Wounded Warrior Regiment and the Army's Warrior Transition Units.

Ex-aides say Bush never recovered from Katrina

I remember trying to simply get people to open their eyes about President Bush. People I normally would have gotten along with fine, were so defensive of Bush they would not open their ears, or even think about what was being said. Most of them were normally reasonable people until 9-11, then it was almost as if they regarded Bush as America. No matter what he did, they defended him, even if it meant they would have to suffer for it. Most of us did suffer for what he did and what he did not do. The people of New Orleans suffering was too much for even the media to tolerate.

Ex-aides say Bush never recovered from Katrina
Monday, December 29, 2008


(12-29) 18:41 PST WASHINGTON, (AP) --

Hurricane Katrina not only pulverized the Gulf Coast in 2005, it knocked the bully pulpit out from under President George W. Bush, according to two former advisers who spoke candidly about the political impact of the government's poor handling of the natural disaster.


"Katrina to me was the tipping point," said Matthew Dowd, Bush's pollster and chief strategist for the 2004 presidential campaign. "The president broke his bond with the public. Once that bond was broken, he no longer had the capacity to talk to the American public. State of the Union addresses? It didn't matter. Legislative initiatives? It didn't matter. P.R.? It didn't matter. Travel? It didn't matter."

Dan Bartlett, former White House communications director and later counselor to the president, said: "Politically, it was the final nail in the coffin."
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Online Prozac sale leads to trial after suicide

Online Prozac sale leads to trial after suicide
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

Monday, December 29, 2008


(12-29) 17:50 PST SAN FRANCSICO -- In August 2005, John McKay, a 19-year-old Stanford student and former high school debate champion, committed suicide by rolling up the windows in a car at his mother's Menlo Park home and piping in exhaust fumes.

In the next few weeks, a Colorado doctor who had prescribed a generic form of Prozac for McKay after receiving his request over the Internet, without ever seeing or examining him, will go on trial in Redwood City on possibly precedent-setting charges of practicing medicine in California without a license.

A conviction of Dr. Christian Hageseth, 67, "would send a clear message to those individuals who are blindly writing prescriptions to patients they know nothing about," said the youth's father, David McKay, a former Stanford professor now living in Colorado. They would have to ask themselves, he said, "whether quick and easy money is worth the risk of a criminal conviction and permanent loss of their medical license."

Hageseth's lawyer, Carleton Briggs, sees the issue differently. The case may determine, he said, whether California can reach across state lines to prosecute practitioners of "telemedicine," an increasingly common source of health care.

"A lot of medication is prescribed over the Internet," Briggs said. "Can California regulate it in this fashion? ... No out-of-state telemedicine provider has ever been jailed for practicing medicine in California."

So far, though, courts have rejected Briggs' attempts to get the charge dismissed, including a civil suit claiming the prosecution is an unconstitutional attempt by California to regulate interstate commerce. A San Mateo County Superior Court judge threw the suit out Dec. 17, but Briggs said he'll raise the issue in an appeal if Hageseth is convicted.
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Workman's comp comes two days too late to save a life

Suicide Victim's Estate Sues Over Insurance Claim
By Joe Wojtas
Published on 12/29/2008

Stonington — Derek Berube of Pawcatuck had begun his apprenticeship as a custom sailmaker at Halsey-Lidgard Sailmakers in Old Mystic in 2005 when a sail tack came loose and embedded in his left eye.

The 21-year-old Berube was temporarily blinded and needed two surgeries to restore some of his sight. He was left with two-thirds of the vision in the eye and a blind spot in the center of it.

Because of the surgery, Berube's physician stopped the immunosuppressive medication he took to control his Crohn's disease. The Crohn's symptoms returned and Berube had to spend 19 days in the hospital where portions of his small intestine and bowels were removed. He also had a temporary ileostomy, a surgical procedure in which a portion of small intestine is connected to an external pouch.

The temporary blindness left Berube, who graduated with high honors from the American School for the Deaf in 2001, unable to read lips, which was his primary means of communication.

These factors caused him to suffer from severe depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. He filed a workers' compensation claim, but the insurer, Hartford Fire Insurance Co., better known as The Hartford, denied his claim. On June 5, 2007, Berube committed suicide at his home. He was 24 years old.

Two days later the state Workers' Compensation Commission found that Berube was entitled to workers' compensation and that the insurance company had unreasonably contested his claim of psychological injury.

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Jennifer Ellis-Seitz, Florida reporter missing at sea

Details emerge about Winter Haven woman who went overboard on cruise ship
Sun Sentinel and Orlando Sentinel Staff Reports
4:22 PM EST, December 29, 2008

MIAMI - The family of the Winter Haven woman who fell off a cruise ship last week suspects she committed suicide.

A statement released today by Jennifer Ellis-Seitz's family shows she had "emotional issues" in the past."She was excited about starting a new job and her future career with a local newspaper. She and her husband had been talking about starting their family," her family wrote in the statement. But the family "suspects that Jennifer chose an unfortunate ending to her life. She was a beautiful and caring person and will be truly missed by all who love her."The U.S. Coast Guard suspended its search this afternoon for the 36-year-old woman who plunged off the 15-deck cruise ship and into the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday night.

Petty Officer 3rd Class Nick Ameen said search efforts for Ellis-Seitz were hampered by the gap between her fall from the Miami-based Norwegian Pearl and the start of the Coast Guard's rescue effort. U.S. Coast Guard officials said they were told about the woman's disappearance more than 11 hours after she had fallen from the deck of the cruise ship.

Videotape surveillance captured Ellis-Seitz falling overboard about 8 p.m. Thursday, as the vessel sailed 15 miles east of Cancun, Mexico. Her husband, Raymond Seitz, didn't report her missing until 5 a.m. the following day, a Coast Guard official said.

Ameen said that videotape has been "crucial'' to the Coast Guard efforts because its time and date stamp allows the Coast Guard to pinpoint the ship's exact location of where she went overboard.

FBI agents are analyzing the tape to determine whether Ellis-Seitz accidentally fell of the ship, jumped or was pushed.

Ellis-Seitz had worked as a reporter for several Florida newspapers, including the Ledger, Tampa Tribune and Florida Today, according to a biography on her personal Web site.

She runs NewsHound Communications, which does writing, editing, proofreading, training and advertising, The Tampa Tribune said.
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Stress seen hitting female police most

Stress seen hitting female police most
Buffalo News - NY, United States
UB study also notes tension affects males
By Aaron Besecker
NEWS STAFF REPORTER

Female police officers suffer more from the stress of their jobs than their male counterparts, though male officers aren’t getting off easy, according to research led by the University at Buffalo.

One out of every four female officers assigned to a shift has thought about suicide, according to a study led by UB research associate professor John M. Violanti. Women also report greater instances of post traumatic stress disorder and symptoms of depression, a recent study has found.

At the same time, male officers report suicidal thoughts at nearly the same rate as female officers and, like women, show more symptoms of depression than is seen in the general population.

The work is part of an ongoing study into the health effects of stress on police officers, something Violanti has been looking at for more than a decade.

His experience as a state trooper gives Violanti an insight into the heads of officers and the mental and physical hardships of the job.

“Sometimes it’s more dangerous than being shot at,” Violanti said, “because stress can kill you, too.”

Researchers are in the fourth year of a five-year study looking at how stress relates to disease.

So far, more than 430 Buffalo police officers have participated.
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