Veterans urge government to review

The veterans affairs minister has ordered his officials to address concerns that veterans have voiced about travel costs to see mental health professionals.

A spokesman for Steven Blaney says departmental officials have been told to follow up with veterans to ensure they’re getting the benefits and services they need.

Sunday’s ministerial edict follows complaints from former members of the military.

Former members of the Canadian military who are struggling with mental health problems say they’re being denied benefits from Veterans Affairs to cover travel costs to their psychologists and other medical professionals.

Two veterans said they’ve received notice from the department that their travel coverage to psychologists and psychiatrists would end last summer, leaving them on the hook for the payments if they wanted to continue seeing them.

Steve Bird said he was told in June that Veterans Affairs would no longer pay costs associated with his regular trips from his home in southeastern Saskatchewan to Saskatoon to see a team of health-care providers.

These men profit from wild market swings

Wednesday was a good day for Fawad Khan.

He got up shortly before 3 a.m. and headed to a bank of computers in his Mississauga basement. While his family slept, he started trading.

One screen charted the euro in real time. It looked like the seismic readout for an earthquake. Trading in this kind of market, with one’s own money, is not for the faint of heart.

At 3 a.m., Khan bought euros, expecting the currency’s value to rise. When it did, he sold. Then he bought low and sold high, again. Within an hour he was up $750 (US). For his third move, he went short, predicting the euro would fall. It did, and he made another $300. It was 4:30 a.m.

“Then I went back to sleep,” says Khan, 62, a civil engineer who made day trading his full-time job after emigrating from Pakistan in 1999.

At 1 p.m., Khan was back in the basement of his modest bungalow. He sold short again, both the euro and the S&P 500 stock index. He called it a day at 2:30 p.m. — $2,935 (US) richer after three hours of trading.

Occupy Wall Street Organizer: Protest Expands Despite Police Effort to "Silence" Demonstrators

Now in its fourth week, the Occupy Wall Street encampment has attracted thousands of demonstrators who continue to tackle the challenges of self-organizing and building a movement. As their numbers swell and the media debates who they are, the Democracy Now! team packed up our gear and headed to Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan to hear people speak for themselves. We first talk to Justin Wedes, an organizer with Occupy Wall Street. He describes how New York City police have arrested people for peacefully demonstrating and exerting their free speech rights. "The reaction has been—and I think the whole world sees it now—that every time that you try to silence peaceful protests, you just get an explosion of new support. And I think that’s what’s happened. And it really bares sort of naked the truth about who the NYPD serve and protect. And if that’s not the people… then we have a problem."

Video
Source: Democracy Now! 

Battle rages for soldiers returning home from war

KINGSTON—In the fall of 2009, Lt.-Col. Rob Martin was a veteran of two tours in Afghanistan, a senior leader in the Canadian military and an utterly broken man.

Twenty-five Canadian soldiers died during the officer’s 2008-09 tour in Kandahar, where his job was to study, track and help combat the Taliban using scraps of gathered intelligence and electronic signals. Each death was an emotional blow.

Once at home, Martin became emotionally numb toward his wife and three young children.

As deputy commander of the military unit responsible for intelligence, communications and electronic warfare, he was spending upwards of 16 hours a day at work, yet basic tasks — preparing a budget or writing strategic reports — felt like impossible assignments.

Over the course of six weeks, he shed 30 pounds and the soldier’s uniform — once worn by a tall, lean and physically fit man — now hung off a bony frame.

His mind also started to wander during his hour-long commutes to work in Ottawa. It settled on a death fantasy. “When I was driving back and forth to work I started to look at the front ends of dump trucks,” he said. “I would think, ‘It would just take a little swerve. That could be it.’”

D.C. Protests: Reports Of Pepper-Spray Incident At Air And Space Museum

WASHINGTON -- According to dispatches on Twitter, security officials at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum used pepper spray on "Stop the Machine" demonstrators protesting an exhibition on drone aircraft, which is described as a "glorification of extra-judicial executions and the military industrial complex at a public institution" on the group's Facebook page. The group reportedly made their way inside the museum, located on the National Mall near the U.S. Capitol, and dropped a three-story banner that read "No Drones, Stop the Afghan War."

The protesters have asked for donations of T-shirts, saline and towels to be brought to the first-aid tent in Freedom Plaza, the home base of the "Stop the Machine" protests.

According to an Associated Press report via WTOP:

When a security guard tried to stop the group from entering, saying they could not come in with the signs, he was apparently held by demonstrators, [Smithsonian spokesman John] Gibbons said. A second guard who arrived used pepper spray on at least one person and the crowd dispersed.

The Air and Space Museum is closed for the rest of the day, according to its website.

Unemployed Seek Protection Against Job Bias

WASHINGTON — After two years on the unemployment rolls, Selena Forte thought she'd found a temporary job at a delivery company that matched her qualifications.

But Forte, a 55-year-old from Cleveland, says a recruiter for an employment agency told her she would not be considered for the job because she had been out of work too long. She had lost her job driving a bus.

"They didn't even want to hear about my experience," said Forte. "It didn't make sense. You're always told just go out there and get a job."

Forte, scraping by now as a part time substitute school bus driver, is part of a growing number of unemployed or underemployed Americans who complain they are being screened out of job openings for the very reason they're looking for work in the first place. Some companies and job agencies prefer applicants who already have jobs, or haven't been jobless too long.

Nancy Pelosi Weighs In On Wall Street Protests, Pushes Back On Eric Cantor's 'Growing Mobs' Criticism

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said she agrees with protesters from Wall Street to Washington who are saying most of the country isn't getting a fair shake from the financial and political establishments.

"I support the message to the establishment, whether it's Wall Street or the political establishment, that things have to change," she said.

Republicans are largely criticizing the message from demonstrators as divisive. Asked to respond, the California Democrat said on ABC's "This Week" that the GOP didn't object to the Tea Party's in-your-face protests against members of Congress in last year's elections.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor recently said he was concerned about the "growing mobs" and criticized those who support them. He said condoning the demonstrations amounted to supporting the "pitting of Americans against Americans."

HuffPost's Zach Carter reports:

"I didn't hear him say anything when the Tea Party was out actually spitting on members of Congress," Pelosi said, referring to a 2010 event on Capitol Hill in which a Tea Party protester spit on Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.).

The loosely-affiliated movement amassed on Wall Street and in Washington in recent weeks is protesting the power of the financial and political sectors.

Origin
Source: Huffington 

Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann Dodge Question On Robert Jeffress Calling Mormonism 'A Cult'

(AP/The Huffington Post) WASHINGTON — Two Republican presidential candidates refused to say on Sunday whether they believe Mitt Romney, a Mormon, is a Christian.

Former Godfather's Pizza CEO Herman Cain declined to address the matter, saying he didn't want to get involved in brewing controversy over Romney's religion on CNN's "State of the Union."

"He's a Mormon, that much I know," Cain said. "I am not going to do an analysis of Mormonism versus Christianity for the sake of answering that. I'm not getting into that."

Elaborating on his posture toward the issue he said, "If that's what it looks like, that I'm dodging it, it's because it is not going to help us boost this economy. You know that's my number one priority."

Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann also opted against answering the question, saying she considers the issue unimportant to the Republican presidential campaign.

"This is so inconsequential as far as this campaign is concerned," she said. "To make this a big issue is ridiculous right now, because every day I'm on the street talking to people. This is not what people are talking about."

Revealed, the decade-old book that lit the fire under Occupy Wall Street

Behind every revolution lurks a set of heavy tomes. The frenzy of men and women of action is often fuelled by the carefully worked out thoughts of philosophers. The French Revolution can be traced back to Rousseau, international communism to Karl Marx's patient dissection of the vices of capitalism, and the rise of the 1960s New Left was partly kindled by writers like Herbert Marcuse.

The past six months saw a cluster of demonstrations and occupations across Europe. Those protests, along with the uprisings of the Arab Spring, helped inspire the burgeoning Occupy Wall Street movement, which in turn is prompting solidarity actions across the continent, including Toronto and Vancouver next weekend. So who qualifies as today's Marx or Marcuse?

The one book that both predicted and helped shape the current wave of radicalism is Empire, a dense and controversial study of globalization by the Italian political philosopher and activist Antonio Negri and the American literary theorist Michael Hardt.

War On The EPA: Republican Bills Would Erase Decades Of Protection

WASHINGTON -- America's environmental protections are under a sweeping, concerted assault in Congress that could effectively roll back the federal government's ability to safeguard air and water more than 100 years, Democrats and advocates say.

The headlines have not been dramatic, and the individual attacks on relatively obscure rules seldom generate much attention beyond those who are most intently focused on environmental regulation.

But taken together, the separate moves -- led by House Republicans -- add up to a stunning campaign against governmental regulatory authority that is now surprisingly close to succeeding.

In just the year since the GOP took control of the House, there have been at least 159 votes held against environmental protections -- including 83 targeting the Environmental Protection Agency -- on the House floor alone, according to a list compiled by Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

"Republicans have made an assault on all environmental issues," said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the committee. "This is, without doubt, the most anti-environmental Congress in history."