Number of US army officers fired for misconduct tripled in 3 yrs – report

RT News

US armed forces misconduct has reached worrying proportions, with drug, alcohol and sexual abuses and expulsions on the rise, documents obtained by the AP reveal.

The past three years seem to have been the hardest on army officers, as they have seen a steep, three-fold increase in departures due to misconduct and internal crimes, according to the documents. A total of 119 Army officers were forced to leave due to misconduct in 2010, which closely matched the average since 2000, but the figure more than tripled in 2013 to 387. For enlisted soldiers, the number jumped from 5,600 in 2007 to upward of 11,000 in 2013.  

This may be in part due to the army’s rapid expansion in the last decade, owing to a soaring demand for soldiers in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq. This may have led to a relaxing of standards for the purpose of retaining soldiers in ranks that needed to stay filled.

Also, a possible reason is that long, repeated exposure to combat puts both an individual strain on the soldiers and their leaders, but also changes the ethics and style of how recruitment and behavioral oversight are conducted in periods of prolonged war.

Similarly, the protracted period of conflict could have led to a greater number of soldiers with psychological problems being allowed to stay, because commanders didn’t have the time or the luxury of being more selective about who to keep and who to dismiss.

At the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions, the Army was inflated to a record 570,000, more than any other military service.

Speaking to the AP, one of the Army’s top officials, General Ray Odierno, had a slightly expanded take on the issue, believing that soldiers’ commitment and competence may also have forced commanders to overlook certain disciplinary or psychological issues in the military.

General Ray Odierno, commanding general of the Multinational Force Iraq (Reuters / Saad Shalash)

Odierno doesn’t believe that “a lack of character was tolerated in [the war] theater, but the fact of the last 10 or 12 years of repeated deployments, of the high op-tempo — we might have lost focus on this issue.”

Gambling, drinking and sexual misconduct form part of a series of high-profile scandals that have plagued the US military, leading to scathing reviews and changes in personnel regulations. One army general was demoted for lavish spending, while another had to face charges of sexual misconduct, with multiple gambling and drinking violations pinned on a number of others.

The US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Martin Dempsey, said: “It is not the war that has caused this, it is the pace, and our failure to understand that at that pace, we were neglecting the tools that manage us as a profession over time.”

General Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Reuters / Joshua Roberts)

The string of offenses also extends to some truly massive cases along the lines of Marines urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters, while some posed for pictures with their body parts. Cases like these lead Odierno to the conclusion that more attention needs to be paid to the problem, and that there is a move in the positive direction. “We are not tolerant at all of those showing a lack of character… We have to refocus ourselves so we get to where we think is the right place.”

Regarding the Navy, in the period 2004-13, one third of all misconduct cases had to do with drugs and alcohol, of which 1,400 each year were classified as “serious offences,” often involving civil or criminal trials.

American commanders believe the problem cannot be traced back to any one particular issue and are working out ways to identify all issues that lead to intense misconduct by their military.

As Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said during a recent briefing: “I don’t think there is one simple answer to the issue of ethics, values, a lapse in some of those areas… Was it a constant focus of 12 years on two long land wars, taking our emphasis off some of these other areas? I don’t know.”

Following these thoughts, Hagel announced a plan to appoint a special officer that would deal with identifying the root causes of what is happening.

US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel (Reuters / Yuri Gripas)

Speaking about how the problem extends not only to junior officers, but also to senior leaders, Odierno said that a lot of them do not realize that power is another factor – a corrupting one. “Some don’t realize it’s happening to them,” he said of its effects on character.

As part of the effort to address the problem, senior officers are facing evaluation by their juniors at the behest of the military and its new policies.

http://rt.com/usa/army-misconduct-soldiers-rise-280/

Number of US army officers fired for misconduct tripled in 3 yrs – report

Saudi says doubles number of citizens in private sector jobs

Saudi says doubles number of citizens in private sector jobs
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By Angus McDowall

RIYADH Sun Jan 19, 2014 2:13pm EST

RIYADH (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia has doubled the number of its citizens working for private companies in the 30 months since it introduced wide-ranging reforms to tackle long-term unemployment, Labour Minister Adel al-Fakeih said on Sunday.

Policy makers fear a failure to create a productive local workforce will leave the kingdom vulnerable to any future fall in oil revenue.

Despite the lack of any significant protests during the 2011 Arab uprisings, they were uncomfortably aware that unemployment contributed to unrest in neighbouring countries and worry about the long-term risk of political instability.

“At this point in time the employment in the private sector is about 1.5 million. This is 101 percent more than it was 30 months ago,” the minister said at a conference in Riyadh.

Although the official employment rate is around 12 percent, economists estimate only 30-40 percent of working-age Saudis hold jobs or actively seek work.

Most Saudis in jobs are employed by the government, but it cannot support such a large wage bill in the long term, and the International Monetary Fund has warned that the private sector must meet future job demand.

Most private-sector jobs are held by the 10 million expatriates in the kingdom.

In 2011, after decades of ineffective localization policies, Riyadh imposed stricter penalties for failing to meet quotas for hiring Saudi citizens.

In 2012 it also introduced a levy of 2,400 riyals ($ 640) a year on every foreigner a company employed over the number of its Saudi workers.

Fakeih later told reporters that the increase of 750,000 jobs over the past 30 months only included those who had remained in the workforce, but that around 500,000 others had taken jobs and then left.

He added that since the reforms were introduced, the average starting salary for Saudis had risen and that graduates of technical training colleges now found a job on average five months after qualifying, as opposed to 13 months in 2011.

EXPATRIATE CRACKDOWN

Some companies, particularly in labour-intensive industries such as construction, have complained that the reforms have caused bottlenecks in important projects and cut profits by increasing the wage bill. Expatriates are typically paid less than Saudis.

Others have said they struggle to find qualified Saudis to replace expatriates despite high government spending on university scholarship programs and technical training colleges. They have also complained that employment rules make it too hard to fire Saudis.

Young Saudi job-seekers often say they are reluctant to look for work in private companies, because government agencies offer better pay, benefits and job security.

Last week Riyadh announced it was introducing unemployment insurance for Saudis who lost their jobs for “reasons beyond their control” and who had been in work for more than a year. The policy was designed to encourage more young Saudis to look for jobs in the private sector.

On Sunday Fakeih said the introduction of unemployment insurance was also designed to “make it easier” for the government to relax employment rules and give companies more flexibility to fire workers who did not perform well.

Fakeih also said a crackdown last year on foreigners breaking visa regulations by working for companies that did not sponsor their work permit was necessary to close loopholes that allowed employers to dodge hiring quotas.

Previous attempts to localize the Saudi labour market have foundered because companies could hire lower-cost foreigners who were registered to other sponsors.

But more than 1 million expatriates left the kingdom between March and November during an amnesty for foreign workers to leave without paying fines for visa violations or to switch their sponsorship to a new employer.

(Reporting By Angus McDowall; Additional reporting by Marwa Rashad; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

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Reuters: Business News

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Number of US Prison Inmates Serving Life Sentences Hits New Record

A report released by The Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit criminal justice advocacy group, reveals that the number of prisoners serving life sentences in the US state and federal prisons reached a new record of close to 160,000 in 2012. Of these, 49,000 are serving life without possibility of parole, an increase of 22.2 percent since 2008.

The study’s findings place in relief figures being promoted by the federal government indicating a reduction in the overall number of prisoners in federal and state facilities, from 1.62 million to 1.57 million between 2009 and 2012.

Ashley Nellis, senior research analyst with the Sentencing Project, argues that the rise in prisoners serving life sentences has to do with political posturing over “tough on crime” measures. “Unfortunately, lifers are typically excluded from most sentencing reform conversations because there’s this sense that it’s not going to sell, politically or with the public,” Nellis says. “Legislators are saying, ‘We have to throw somebody under the bus.’”

At 40,362 California holds a quarter of lifers, followed by Florida (12,549) and New York (10,245), Texas (9,031), Georgia (7,938), Ohio (6,075), Michigan (5,137), Pennsylvania (5,104) and Louisiana (4,657).

Sources:

David Krajicek, “Hard Time: Prisons Are Packed With More Lifers Than Ever,”, WhoWhatWhy.com, September 18, 2013, http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/09/18/hard-time-prisons-are-packed-with-more-lifers-than-ever/.

Ashley Nellis, “Life Goes On: The Historic Rise in Life Sentences in America,” The Sentencing Project, September 2013, http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/inc_Life Goes On 2013.pdf.

Student Researcher: Isabella Diaz (Florida Atlantic University)

Faculty Evaluator: James F. Tracy (Florida Atlantic University)

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Number of US Prison Inmates Serving Life Sentences Hits New Record

Warning: Enrolling in Obamacare allows government to link your IP address with your name, social security number, bank accounts and web surfing habits

(NaturalNews) We have already established that Healthcare.gov is not a functioning database application that allows people to shop for competing health plans. It is actually a government-run Trojan Horse that suckers people into creating accounts where they hand over:

• Name and address
• Email address and password
• Social security number
• Private bank account details
• Employer details and other information

During the enrollment process, your computer also hands over your IP address which is then tied to your social security number.

This IP address is then handed over to the NSA thanks to its new mega-black-hole data center in Utah, where your IP is cross-referenced with all website visits, including:

• “Anti-government” websites
• Porn sites
• Gambling sites
• File sharing sites
• “Terrorism” support sites
• Encryption service sites like Hushmail
• Chat rooms, message boards and more

Armed with this information, the NSA can then link your seemingly-anonymous online chats, comments and posts with your social security number. Linguistic algorithms can “score” your online posts to create red flags that call for additional investigations of anyone using words like “liberty” or “patriot.”

This information can then be turned over to law enforcement, as is found in the fine print of the Maryland Obamacare exchange, which states:

…we may share information provided in your application with the appropriate authorities for law enforcement and audit activities.

Thus, by enrolling in Obamacare, you are voluntarily surveilling yourself and handing over the data to the government while also AGREEING to terms of self-incrimination.

Ponder the implications of this for a moment…

Obamacare is the meta-level con of tricking Americans into thinking they’re signing up for free health insurance when, in reality, the website primarily exists to scrape personal financial details, passwords, emails and social security numbers from Americans who will later be targeted by the government itself.

All the emails registered with Healthcare.gov, for example, will likely be used by the Obama administration to spam people with political propaganda or contrived “terror alerts” that use fear to concentrate more power in the hands of government.

All the financial data will be turned over to the IRS for criminal investigations of Americans who are suspected of under-reporting their incomes (or supporting “patriot” groups with financial donations).

All the passwords used on Healthcare.gov will be turned over to the NSA and matched up with individual IP addresses so that NSA operatives can hack into private bank accounts, encrypted email accounts and other private data, based on the assumption that most users use identical passwords across all the websites they commonly access. (A person’s password under Obamacare probably has a 50% chance of also working for their online banking. And since the NSA has your social security number, it’s a no-brainer to match up your online surfing habits with your phone number, home address, investment holdings, tax returns, international travel history and so on.)

In essence, Obamacare allows the government to gather a goldmine of private data that can be exploited to target, punish, incriminate, blackmail or steal from any desired target.

As this is a federal government that believes it now has total power to do anything it wants without limit, there are no boundaries of what it might do with this data. Remember, Obama is the president who literally maintains “kill lists” of Americans to have terminated. This is openly admitted and confirmed. The Obama administration also believes it can bypass Congress and simply create new law by executive order, concentrating all power into its own hands with no regard for the separation of power upon which this nation was founded.

As is common with tyrants, the Obama administration truly believes the People have no right to privacy, no right to due process, no right to representation in government and no right to determine your own engagement in commerce. This is why Obama is playing such hardball to shove Obamacare down everybody’s throats: the government desperately needs to gather all this surveillance data so that it can leverage it to blackmail members of the U.S. Supreme Court, the Senate, the House, and even federal judges. Blackmail is essential to maintaining power in a corrupt society. And Healthcare.gov is the portal for scraping passwords, IP addresses and even financial details from anyone gullible enough to actually hand this over to government (i.e. democrats).

As far as I’m concerned, the IRS can fine me all they want. I’m never voluntarily enrolling in Obamacare, even if you put a gun to my head like Obama is doing to the entire nation right now with this insane, contrived government shutdown that treats our own veterans like dirt.

All dignity is now gone from the Obama administration. Zero credibility remains. The government has all but openly declared war on the People and is actively using tricks like Healthcare.gov to coerce people into incriminating themselves. The Obama administration is out of control and a grave danger to society. It must be lawfully stopped from damaging America any further.

Now is the time to seriously discuss impeachment, not just of the President but of every U.S. Senator and House member who voted for this unconstitutional, “Trojan Horse” health care system that’s destroying America’s economy and wasting an unprecedented amount of time, money and effort. End Obamacare now and restore dignity and justice to America.

About the author:
Mike Adams (aka the “Health Ranger“) is the founding editor of NaturalNews.com, the internet’s No. 1 natural health news website, now reaching 7 million unique readers a month.

With a background in science and software technology, Adams is the original founder of the email newsletter technology company known as Arial Software. Using his technical experience combined with his love for natural health, Adams developed and deployed the content management system currently driving NaturalNews.com. He also engineered the high-level statistical algorithms that power SCIENCE.naturalnews.com, a massive research resource now featuring over 10 million scientific studies.

In addition to being the co-star of the popular GAIAM TV series called Secrets to Health, Adams is also the (non-paid) executive director of the non-profit Consumer Wellness Center (CWC), an organization that redirects 100% of its donations receipts to grant programs that teach children and women how to grow their own food or vastly improve their nutrition. Click here to see some of the CWC success stories.

In 2013, Adams created the Natural News Forensic Food Laboratory, a research lab that analyzes common foods and supplements, reporting the results to the public. He is well known for his incredibly popular consumer activism video blowing the lid on fake blueberries used throughout the food supply. He has also exposed “strange fibers” found in Chicken McNuggets, fake academic credentials of so-called health “gurus,” dangerous “detox” products imported as battery acid and sold for oral consumption, fake acai berry scams, the California raw milk raids, the vaccine research fraud revealed by industry whistleblowers and many other topics.

Adams has also helped defend the rights of home gardeners and protect the medical freedom rights of parents. Adams is widely recognized to have made a remarkable global impact on issues like GMOs, vaccines, nutrition therapies, human consciousness.

In addition to his activism, Adams is an accomplished musician who has released ten popular songs covering a variety of activism topics.

Click here to read a more detailed bio on Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, at HealthRanger.com.

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Warning: Enrolling in Obamacare allows government to link your IP address with your name, social security number, bank accounts and web surfing habits

A Record-High Number of Young People Are Still Living With Their Parents: Why?

Flickr image: Scarleth White

Another month, another record number of young people living at home long after their teenage years are over.

This time, it’s the Wall Street Journal reporting that, despite the improved economy pulling unemployment down for the last three years, the share of young adults living with their parents is still rising. Still! More than a third of Americans between 18 and 31 are currently living with their parents, according to the Current Population Survey.

Seriously. What’s going on here, if it’s not just the economy?

We can begin to find the answers in the new mammoth Pew Research Report, released just this month, which found a record 21.6 million “Millennials” living at home. The answer boils down to three variables, which I’ll sum up as: economics, bachelor’s degrees, and bachelors.

We have to start with economics. The share of young people living in the basement was basically unchanged for four decades before the recession. Then the recession hit, and millions of young people who would have otherwise had jobs didn’t. 

Last year, Millennials without a job were 55 percent more likely to be living with their folks than employed young people.

But when you look at the shift since 2007 in the graph below, something might seem funny to you. Sure, the recession figures are high, but pre-recession figures are high, too. One in two 18-24-year olds were living at home before the crash? And one in seven late-twentysomethings?

Why were so many young adults apparently living at home when unemployment was about 4 percent?

It comes down to a very sneaky definition of “home.” In the Current Population Survey that provides these figures, “college students in dormitories are counted as living in the parental home.” Dormitories! This might strike you as absurd — and it certainly strikes me as questionable – but it’s Labor Day Weekend, and I’m not going to waste it fighting with the folks at CPS, so there it is. Dorms = your parents’ place, according to the government.

This is a huge deal for the Millennials-living-at-home figures, because college enrollment increased significantly during the recession — 39% of 18- to 24-year-olds were enrolled in college in 2012, compared with from 35% in 2007 — and college enrollees are much more likely to be living at home (er, in dorms) than students who skip college, drop out, or finish early.

So a huge part of the explanation for the ostensible boom of stay-at-home kids is actually good news: more bachelor’s degrees.

Finally: More bachelors. Unmarried young people are six-times more likely to be living at their parents’ place than married couples (understandably). In the last 50 years, the share of twentysomethings who are married utterly collapsed before 2007. The recession made marriage even less attractive to many young people.

Higher unemployment, more people going to college, and more single people explain most of the change. But research found that there was even an increase within all three groups, as well. Maybe they were all affecting each other. Or perhaps a fourth factor — general unease about the future? a gradual normalization of twentysomethings living with their parents? — is at play.

But the most important takeaway is that, although the Great Recession was nothing but a tragedy, the rise in young people living at home isn’t quite as tragic. It’s partially a reflection of more young people going to school and saving money before starting a family of their own.

Master Feed : The Atlantic

A Record-High Number of Young People Are Still Living With Their Parents: Why?

The number mental health advocates want you to talk about

Untreated mental illness costs the U.S. $ 105 billion in lost productivity each year, according to Mental Health America, an advocacy group.

What’s more, the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare says people with untreated mental illness are four to six times more likely to be incarcerated and are more likely to hit emergency rooms for acute care.

So the folks at Mental Health America are encouraging people as part of Mental Health Month to complete a three-minute online screening.

“It’s a mental health checkup you can take online, make sure that you’re in good mental health,” Steve Vetzner, media relations director at Mental Health America tells me. “If there are any problems you can take it to your physician.”

From there, Vetzner says, a doctor will probably administer more tests.

The three-minute screening flags mood and anxiety disorders such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

“Since May is Mental Health Month, it’s the perfect time for people to get screened, get their score – and then share that information privately with their health care provider,” according to the Mental Health America website.

Here’s how it works. Users fill out a 27-item checklist. They can then email results of the screening to a physician, but it’s only meant to be a first step toward a real diagnosis.

The site is also encouraging users to let their social networks know: ” Everyone has a number.  #WhatsYourNumber.  It only takes three minutes to find out,” they ask on a Tumblr page. 

“The M3 is not designed to diagnose illness on its own. Rather, it is meant to elicit symptoms that may indicate a mood or anxiety disorder,” say the creators of the test, M3, on their website. “By providing parallel educational material for patients and their physicians the M3 encourages treatment compliance and long-range follow-up of progress.”

The screening is supposed to help primary care doctors play psychiatrist–or at least tease out some general mental health info on a patient. “So we want to provide them with a tool that’s going to sort of do a good-enough job of doing what a psychiatrist does,” says Dr. Gerald Hurowitz, chief medical officer of M3Clinician, maker of the screening, in a YouTube video.

Hurowitz goes on to say, “Yes it captures more cases, but it also more realistically recreates what a psychiatrist would do when they see a patient. And it makes the primary care doctor that much more effective.”

The screening is free online and as an app on mobile devices. There’s also a clinician version that doctors can use to monitor a patient’s progress during treatment.

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The number mental health advocates want you to talk about