Category: Causes

  • Stop! in the name of love…

    Sea of Roses
    Sea of Roses
    Valentine’s Day makes us contemplate the meaning of love

    Some people wonder how to stay with a war hero husband. Of course when your spouse is on the front you are afraid of loosing him or her.  It is easy to feel the potential loss as ever deeper and growing true love.  The fear of loosing him or her, may actually grow your commitment to be there for your spouse, and to love your spouse with all your heart and soul.  You care for and love your spouse so very, very, very much.

    Later you are so glad that they survived, so thrilled that they came home with out loosing life or limb.  You are so happy when they come home to you and your kids.

    Veterans returning home.
    Veterans returning home.

    Trouble is that if he or she is suffering from a severe case of PTSD, your life will change as well.  PTSD when expressed in a volatile and dangerous way is contagious.

    Here is a true story:

    A man, a vet came home from the war.  He was such a lovely, intelligent and charming man.  When he was conscious, that is.

    When he wasn’t conscious, he turned into a hurtful, brutal and dangerous man.

    In fact, because he was from a very good family, he was raised with the believe that a woman should be protected and cherished.  He had many sisters and was raised to be protective of them as well.  When he fell in love a deep calling rose up in him and he knew that he could be good for something, he could be a hero caring for his little woman.  Even after all the atrocities he had witnessed during his service.  He could protect that this lovely and shy girl who would be his bride.

    The lady was raised in a Christian home and as a proper women who would love and cherish her husband. She was raised to believe that a husband and wife were bonded in the commitment to make marriage not just a holy sacrament, but also to obey and honor her spouse and support him in every possible way, in sickness and in health.  And she was raised to support her husband’s growth in his career and standing in the community.  In short a lovely and very proper woman.

    And, OMG, it really worked. They started life together and enjoyed it fully, they worked hard, and bought a little home.  They planted a garden and had common hobbies. He took her to romantic dinners, and was very proud of his “little woman.”  They were very much in love and looked forward to a bright future with a lovely family.

    What she had not realizes when they had this whirlwind romance, was that somehow during their romance, he didn’t experience any of the symptoms of the PTSD he had sustained in the war.  His parents and siblings thought the young woman was a blessing in all their lives.

    Then after they married he experienced some stress at work and the PTSD that the woman knew nothing about returned. The trouble is, when you are married to a man who has PTSD, no matter how many flowers you receive, no matter how many declarations of love you received, no matter how sincere these declarations actually are, the man may turn on a dime.

    With a nightmare, with some trigger you were unfamiliar with, you might get hurt, beaten, strangled and severely physically compromised.  The emotional pain is insufferable. A proper women may try coping mechanisms that they are taught. This woman tried to cope with the danger and pain by praying.  She forgave him, she loved him, and she was determined to stand by her man.

    The praying really did help her to keep her calm, but it didn’t keep her safe.  Eventually she ended up in the hospital with a severe cut in her head, bruises all over her body, and she needed to get stitches so quickly to stop the severe bleeding, that she ended up with 27 stitches on her shaved skull without anesthesia.

    Love alone is not enough.  So if you have a good reason, a wonderful reason to love a man, a mighty and wonderful man. and he hurts you.  Stop, in the name of love!  Stop.  Stop pretending it will get better, stop thinking that it is your fault. Stop. Stop the lies that keep you bonded to such an unhealthy situation.

    Get help!!! Help is out there, and you can be free of an abuser. Even if you know that it is not his fault that he experienced such terrible hardships and pain. It is not your fault either and you don’t have to deal with it on your own.

    PTSD is recently acknowledged as a potential result of war engagement. But if you are just a kind woman who loves your man, you may need some serious help to keep you and the children safe.  Love alone will not heal this potentially dangerous condition. And, as many people found out, the constant stress and danger of living with an unpredictable, hurtful, disrespectful man, causes the spouse PTSD as well.  Unfortunately  it is contagious.

    So get help.  He needs therapy.  There are some forms of therapy that are promising.  But while he is in therapy, you and the kids may have to watch out for your own safely.  The lady in the story eventually knew that she had to leave him, so he would not turn into her murderer.  She did this after he held her at knife point of a long kitchen knife for 1 and 1/2 hours talking like a crazy man, wondering aloud if his pain would stop, if he killed her. She finally realized that it was her god given duty not to help him ruin his life entirely.  She realized that she could best help him by being away from him.

    The shock of loosing her helped him.  He got therapy for PTSD and after 10 more painful years, he slowly got better.  He told her that he was glad for both of them that she had left when she did.  By leaving him she helped him to stop the negative spiral he was on.  The loss of her and her love woke him up to the fact that he had a serious problem. Before she left him, he thought “she was the problem.”  He thought if she was kinder, or more strong willed, or funnier or not as afraid of him, or not as angry, he would not have had to punish her all the time.

    He told her that he strongly believed he may actually have killed her eventually, if she didn’t leave him.   A study in 2015 showed that 94 percent of women killed by men were murdered by someone they knew. Of the victims who knew their offenders, 62 percent were wives or other intimate acquaintances of their killers.

    On average, nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States. During one year, this equates to more than 10 million women and men.1

    1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men have been victims of [some form of] physical violence by an intimate partner within their lifetime.  More

    Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is get away from someone you love.   For the rest of us, who are in a wonderful and happy relationships that works or can be nurtured into working, we may wish to support those who are not so lucky.  Support the National Coalition Against Family Violence

  • Good Guy Billionaire: Who is Priscilla Chan Zuckerberg?

    Priscilla Chan Zuckerberg
    Priscilla Chan Zuckerberg

    Ms. Priscilla Chan is a former grade school teacher and a recent medical school graduate training to become a pediatrician.  She has a strong commitment to health and put’s her wealth toward the common good. Her parents came as refugees to seek a better life.  Now she is one of the top Billionaires who is committed to make life better for everyone.

    In an interview with Today, Priscilla Chan recalled: “If you’re the first generation to go to college, sometimes you don’t realize your potential until others point it out.”  For her, those individuals were her public school teachers, whom she credits for “getting me excited about learning.”   Priscilla spoke Cantonese growing up, learned English in school and life, and studied Spanish to server her patients better.

    Her commitment to health is genuine and unsurpassed.  She met her husband Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard where they were first class mates and later they dated.  They dated for 10 years before deciding to get married to form their family.

    She and her husband donated $600 Million dollars through her charity organization CZI to create a Biohub together with University of California at San Francisco, Stanford University and University of California at Berkeley, which will be headquartered next to UCSF’s Mission Bay
    campus in San Francisco.

    She is an amazing woman who is one of the best examples of what America genuinely stands for.  Immigrants who seek a better life and in turn make life for the rest of Americans a better place.  Thank you Ms. Chan Zuckerberg for sharing your big heart, brilliant mind, and wealth for the greater good.

  • Cyber Warfare attacks by Russians are happening all over the US

    Down the Rabbit Hole we go.
    Down the Rabbit Hole we go.
    The US Government released a report and recommends that all citizens and companies take pre-cautions.

    The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recommends that network administrators review the IP addresses, file hashes, and Yara signature provided and add the IPs to their watchlist to determine whether malicious activity has been observed within their organizations. The review of network perimeter net flow or firewall logs will assist in determining whether your network has experienced suspicious activity. When reviewing network perimeter logs for the IP addresses, organizations may find numerous instances of these IPs attempting to connect to their systems. Upon reviewing the traffic from these IPs, some traffic may correspond to malicious activity, and some may correspond to legitimate activity. Some traffic that may appear legitimate is actually malicious, such as vulnerability scanning or browsing of legitimate public facing services (e.g., HTTP, HTTPS, FTP). Connections from these IPs may be performing vulnerability scans attempting to identify websites that are vulnerable to cross-site scripting (XSS) or Structured Query Language (SQL) injection attacks. If scanning identified vulnerable sites, attempts to exploit the vulnerabilities may be experienced.

    Commit to Cybersecurity Best Practices

    A commitment to good cybersecurity and best practices is critical to protecting networks and systems.

    Here are some questions you may want to ask your organization to help prevent and mitigate against attacks.

    1. Backups: Do we backup all critical information? Are the backups stored offline? Have we tested our ability to revert to backups during an incident?

    2. Risk Analysis: Have we conducted a cybersecurity risk analysis of the organization?

    3. Staff Training: Have we trained staff on cybersecurity best practices? 4. Vulnerability Scanning & Patching: Have we implemented regular scans of our network and systems and appropriate patching of known system vulnerabilities?

    5. Application Whitelisting: Do we allow only approved programs to run on our networks? 6. Incident Response: Do we have an incident response plan and have we practiced it?

    7. Business Continuity: Are we able to sustain business operations without access to certain systems? For how long? Have we tested this?

    8. Penetration Testing: Have we attempted to hack into our own systems to test the security of our systems and our ability to defend against attacks?

    For the full document with more valuable advice:  Click

  • Death of our Democracy: The Carolinas show us how right wing tendencies will ruin us unless we stop their March toward a Dictatorship.

    The Picture of a Racist
    The Picture of a Racist

    “Somebody had to do it,” Roof said of the slayings. He added that “black people are killing white people everyday… What I did is so minuscule compared to what they do to white people every day.”  He researched Charleston, scouted the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and then acted alone. Yes this time there is a guilty verdict by the jury of the avowed white supremacist, Dylann Roof, on his federal hate crimes on 33 charges of federal hate crimes resulting in death, obstruction of religion and firearms violations.

    Meanwhile in North Carolina, Pat McCrory, a renowned right-wing GOP governor rolls back laws and passes laws that will prevent his democratic follower from ruling the state.  The Right Wing agenda is to wall in and to fortify their absolute power legally.  He and his fellow lawmakers, who control the General Assembly, introduced measures to end the governor’s control over election board’s requiring State Senate approval of any new governor’s cabinet members and to strip his power to appoint University of North Carolina trustees.  This is right-wing agenda in action to ease their white supremacist agenda.  If you can’t strip the people of their right to vote, we all know they tried.

    A press release in November 2016 states:

    "NCGOP leaders will discuss final Get Out The Vote efforts and encouraging Republican gains in final Early Voting numbers when compared to 2012. Republicans historically vote in far greater numbers on Election Day itself, these great strides in Early Voting when compared to 2012 show evidence of underestimated statewide ground game and deep volunteer base. Chairman Robin Hayes: “I am encouraged by the excitement and work ethic of our volunteers and the numbers don't lie—the Republican ground game is showing that motivated statewide volunteers and extensive ground game are better indicators of electoral success than the number of candidate-specific offices one has.

    Despite this effort and one before to change local laws that the federal court deemed illegal, North Carolina GOP Gov. Pat McCrory, who signed the 2013 voter-ID law which a federal court rolled back this year for illegally suppressing African-American votes, claimed in November 2016 that massive voter fraud in his state swung the 2016 election against him, as McCrory’s campaign continues to challenge Democrat Roy Cooper’s thin lead two weeks after Election Day.

    The example of voter suppression is right here.  Despite that it is perfectly legal to vote if you are temporarily absent.  If a piece of mail with an out-of-state address is not returned before the vote that vote does not qualify.  If there is another person with the same or similar name at an out-of-state address on Facebook, your vote no longer counts in North Carolina.  If you put your vote into the voting box, instead of giving it to a racist woman who deems you as rude, your vote no longer counts.  If there is a dead person of the same name in another county, your vote no longer counts. Check out this real document with these types of feeble attempts to change the voting results.

    Now despite this arduous effort to control and influence the North Carolina voting results, the Democrat Roy Cooper won the election as governor.  Now the White Supremacist Offensive goes on the full on offensive.  The current General Assembly held an emergency meeting and stripped Governor Rye Copper of the powers to govern.  It affects and takes away his ability to govern the State Board of Elections, State Ethics Commission, State Board of Education and the regulation functions of the Secretary of State, and the choice to appoint the head of the Industrial Commission.  It is a well-known fact that the Koch Brothers aim to make North Carolina a model state of the private takeover of a government.

    Rep. Nelson Dollar, a Republican from Cary, disputed the portrayal by opponents of the GOP strategy to cut the governor’s authority as a “coup.”  It is a coup and it is only the first of many in States that have a strong element of white supremacists.

    We can learn a lot from North Carolina about how a Democracy can be demolished with a few strokes of the pen by white supremacist lawmakers.  Perhaps it is high time to read  For Whom the Bell Tolls again.