Tuesday, July 15, 2014

July 15, 2014
By Carol Rosenberg
crosenberg@MiamiHerald.com
 
In the first known rebellion (click here) against Guantánamo’s force-feeding policy, a Navy medical officer recently refused to continue managing tube-feedings of prison hunger strikers and was reassigned to “alternative duties.” 

A prison camp spokesman, Navy Capt. Tom Gresback, would not provide precise details but said Monday night that the episode had “no impact to medical support operations at the base.”

“There was a recent instance of a medical provider not willing to carry out the enteral feeding of a detainee,” he said in an email. “The matter is in the hands of the individual’s leadership.” 

Word of the refusal reached the outside world last week in a call from prisoner Abu Wael Dhiab to attorney Cori Crider of the London-based legal defense group Reprieve. Dhiab, a hunger striker, described how a nurse in the Navy medical corps abruptly refused to “force-feed us” sometime before the Fourth of July — and disappeared from detention center duty.

Crider called the male nurse the first known U.S. military conscience objector of the 18-month-long hunger strike in the prison camps, and said his dissent took “real courage ... none of us should underestimate how hard that has been.”
Dhiab, 43, is challenging Guantánamo force-feeding policy in federal court. A Syrian who was cleared for transfer from Guantánamo in 2010 but who can’t be repatriated because of unrest in his homeland, has been an on-again, off-again hunger striker to protest his indefinite detention....

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/07/15/4237720/navy-nurse-refuses-to-force-feed.html#storylink=cpy

There is plenty to worry about in West Africa other than civil distrubances.

July 16, 2014
DAKAR/HAVANA - The death toll (click here) from the world's worst ever Ebola outbreak in West Africa has risen to 603 since February, with at least 68 deaths reported from three countries in the region in the last week alone, the World Health Organisation said on Tuesday.
WHO said there were 85 new cases between July 8-12, highlighting continued high levels of transmission. International and local medics were struggling to get access to communities as many people feared outsiders were spreading rather than fighting Ebola.


"It's very difficult for us to get into communities where there is hostility to outsiders," WHO spokesman Dan Epstein told a news briefing in Geneva. "We still face rumours, and suspicion and hostility ... People are isolated, they're afraid, they're scared."
Sierra Leone recorded the highest number of deaths, which include confirmed, probable and suspect cases of Ebola, with 52. Liberia reported 13 and Guinea 3, according to the WHO figures....

34.2111° N, 77.7986° W

July 15, 2014
2315.17z
UNISYS Goes East Satellite (click here for 12 hour loop - thank you)

Five and a half hours of thunder with some rain at times, occasional lightning. The lightning usually came in twos with fire engines being heard afterward.

The thunder would crescendo and then abate to nearly nothing, then it would begin again.

The truce never had a chance and now Israel believes it is more justified than ever.

It was never a proper ceasefire. The Palestinians never abated and there are questions to any agreement being recognized by them at all.

I was sorry to hear about a death in Israel, but, I was also sorry to hear how families are being lost in Palestine. The Palestinians believe in their battle as much as Israel believes in its.

Israel will "continue and intensify" air strikes on Gaza after a ceasefire proposed by Egypt failed, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned.
The deal was accepted by Israel but Hamas, which controls Gaza, has not responded officially to the initiative. Its military wing rejected it.
Palestinian officials say Israeli raids have now killed 194 people. On Tuesday, Israel reported its first fatality.
Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen reports.