Iran Presidential debate - Mousavi - Ahmadinejad

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When babies attack: Labor pain is just the start

Jacqueline Stenson

While other moms were enjoying being pampered on Mother’s Day, Hilary Wheeler Miller was nursing a broken nose that she suffered after being headbutted by her 3-year-old son.

“He stood up really fast and just plowed into my nose,” says the 40-year-old mom from Littleton, Colo.

As a result of the accident, Miller’s nose is now broken in two places and she’ll need surgery later this month to straighten it.

After an emergency C-section for her son’s delivery, Miller thought the worst of baby-induced pain was behind her. But childbirth was just the start.

Miller also got a fat, black-and-blue lip when Nicholas bit her as an infant. During a later roller-skating outing, he pulled her down and she shattered her right wrist, requiring a cast for two months. Miller also has been sickened with various illnesses that her son picked up at daycare, including strep throat, three rounds of pink eye, and a severe case of bronchitis that took months to treat.

“Never once did I imagine having a child would be hazardous to my health,” she says. Today, though, there’s an “ongoing saga of danger surrounding my life now that I have a child.”

Advice books, magazines and Web sites for new parents talk at great length about the aches and pains of pregnancy and childbirth, and the subsequent sleep deprivation and exhaustion. But beyond that, parents are more likely to learn the hard way about various other owies that babies and young children can innocently inflict.

Teeny-tiny terrors
Parents who’ve been knocked around a few times by tiny tots quickly find themselves strategizing about how to deflect flailing arms and legs, flying toys and utensils, razor-sharp fingernails and fists that tighten around strands of hair like a Vise-Grip — and then pull! They search for ways to ease the pain of strained backs from endless hours of carrying around youngsters (often only on one hip, which makes matters worse) and strained necks from gazing at baby while feeding (which is widely recommended for promoting parent-infant bonding).

Courtesy of Hilary Wheeler Miller Hilary Wheeler Miller nurses her broken wrist while she watches her son, Nicholas, play in the sandbox. Nicholas broke his mom's wrist when he pulled her down during a roller-skating outing.

And when moms and dads drop their guard and take a finger to the eye, a blow to the head or a kick to the groin, they see stars — and not little twinkling ones.

Kris Cambra was in so much pain in April when her 2-year-old son, Truman, poked her in the eye, that she went to the emergency room.

“Think of having a paper cut on your eye,” says Cambra, 34, of New Bedford, Mass., who was diagnosed with a corneal abrasion.

“The doctor used an ultraviolet light to look at my eye and then she said, ‘Yep, you have a scratch on your cornea and it's shaped just like a fingernail,’" she says.

Thankfully, Cambra doesn’t have any lasting eye damage. But the experience has heightened her awareness of the need to stay on guard with her son, who she says is more physical and prone to tantrums and flailing than her daughter, 7, ever was. “You think, you outweigh them, you’re much bigger than them, so what can they really do to you?” A lot, actually.

Judy Ward, a pediatric nurse at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, says she’s heard about a range of child-induced injuries from parents who’ve called into the hospital’s Answer Line with questions about child health and behavior over the last 12 years that she’s fielded calls.

Her first bit of advice: “They probably didn’t mean it when they headbutted you.”

Neither Real Nor Free

In Iran life is like in heaven: opposition is not allowed.

A The New York Times' op-ed named the real consequences of the fraudulent elections in Iran:
If the election were truly “real and free” as Mr. Ahmadinejad insisted, the results would be accepted by the voters and the government would not have to resort to such repression.

After four years of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s failed economic policies and ceaseless confrontations with the West, many of Iran’s voters clearly were yearning for a change. Mr. Moussavi promised that change; he also promised greater personal freedoms, including for women. If Tehran refuses to recognize that yearning or respect the will of its people — most of whom are too young to remember the 1979 Islamic revolution — the government will lose even more legitimacy.
The mullahs have had a tight lock on Iran up to now. But they should not forget what happened when the shah lost his people’s trust.
The elections are another potent reminder that there can be no illusions about Iran’s government and its malign intent. That is a hard political fact.
Iran’s centrifuges are still spinning and its nuclear program is advancing at an alarming rate. That is an even harder scientific fact.
We know that some in this country and in Israel will say that this election is proof that there can be no dealing with Iran and that military action is the only choice. The last thing the United States or Israel needs is another war with a Muslim state. An attack would only feed Iran’s nuclear ambitions and spur it to take even greater efforts to hide its program.
The only choice is negotiations backed by credible incentives and tough sanctions. Even if the mullahs had allowed Mr. Moussavi to win, that would still be true.

Also on My blog Pointer's Weekly I added:
It does not effect the vision of other countries on the Islamic Republic, which is in fact a theocratic led version of communism with all the commonly known poor economic performance. All larger businesses are owned by the state. It does not need enemies to break down at last. Inflation is high and poverty is growing, making the people the more dependent from the government, until the entry of starvation is reached. Oppression absorbs a large amount of the countries resources and the resistance can only become stronger and better organized, while a weaker dictatorship will seem more threatening with its dangerous pretensions. In fact the system is already heavy on the defense.
I’m not sure that a victory of Mir Hussein Moussavi, who’s idea of reform is moderate improvements of daily life and economic repairs by better foreign relations, should have done much on the system of the Islamic Republic and now we can aspect that the resistance will become more radical, making the real change to a more different system at the end of the day.
The best strategy in my opinion will be to isolate the system, cutting down their activities abroad, without interfering in the domestic policies by force or conspiracies. By then we will see it again: Democracy is a self-help organization.

As always Rachel is fast and complete

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Robert Greenwald on The Ed Show. June 11, 2009

Director Robert Greenwald appeared on The Ed Show yesterday to discuss the civilian casualties of war, the fourth segment of Rethink Afghanistan. To my knowledge, this was the first time Brave New Foundation’s exclusive footage from an Afghan refugee camp reached mainstream news audiences. And Greenwald was right there to hammer home the message that the war in Afghanistan is militarizing what is actually a regional political problem.

It’s so crucial for more people to see this exclusive footage because it puts a human face on the war, US military airstrikes, and indiscriminate bombing. Gripping images from Afghan refugee camps remind us that Afghanistan is the third poorest country in the world–a country that, as Greenwald said, needs teachers, educators, doctors, and humanitarian aid instead of more soldiers and wartime spending.

It’s not easy for the mainstream media to report the situation on the ground in Afghanistan. The images and subject matter are deeply upsetting, and they fly in the face of policies set by a popular White House administration. What’s more, it’s literally difficult for reporters to access the real story, considering the stringer hired to film this refugee camp was arrested by the Taliban. Now that Brave New Foundation has made this footage available and it has aired on The Ed Show, however, hopefully other networks will follow MSNBC’s example.

We now see this on MSNBC, but it is also common on CNN. It's not a hidden war but it is always the same too. War is no sport or entertainment and that's not the only thing we know about it. Will it be better to leave?
You can be sure that the Taliban is back, the same day we leave Afghanistan and with them also the training camps for terrorists return. It will not stop the bombing and killing people. Why should we sent doctors and teachers to a by Taliban controlled area to become arrested and killed too? Do they allow schools and hospitals? We have recently gotten the lessons from the Swat valley. Better losing a finger than your head, isn't it? I'm not joking.
Of course the tactics have to be improved. They are working on it.