Senator Isakson: ‘We must ensure that our women veterans … get the same services that a woman would expect in the private sector in the VA health services.”

Senator Johnny Isakson (above)  is the Chair of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and his office issued the following last week (and for more on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee hearing, see C.I.'s "Iraq Snapshot" from Saturday):





FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Contact: Amanda Maddox, 202-224-7777

Isakson Reaffirms Commitment to Fulfilling our Promise to America’s Women Veterans

‘We must ensure that our women veterans … get the same services that a woman would expect in the private sector in the VA health services.”

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, today called on the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to strengthen its programs and health care for women veterans.

 

“Women play an important role in our United States military and the defense of our country,” said Isakson. “They fight in every capacity possible, they volunteer in every capacity possible, and they do a great job. We need to make sure we’re doing the same.”

 

At a committee hearing held today, Isakson noted the growing numbers of women veterans in America, pointing to the increasing need for the VA to make appropriate adjustments to its health care resources for women veterans.

 

“By the year 2020, 10.5% of our veterans will be women, by the year 2040, 16% will be women,” said Isakson. “There are 90,000 women veterans in the state of Georgia – the fifth largest women veterans’ population in the country.”

 

Citing concerns that there is a lack of gender-specific training throughout the Veterans Health Administration, Isakson questioned Dr. Patricia Hayes, Chief Consultant for Women’s Health Services, about what specific training the VA is planning to make available to ensure that healthcare providers are better able to treat women veterans, including mental health services.

 

“This weekend, I was able to visit the future site for the Savannah VA, and I also saw firsthand what the VA is doing in its planning for women’s services in their new CBOCs,” Isakson continued. “They’re doing a good job of offering mental health services, gynecological services, OBGYN services and the services that are unique to women that they need. We must ensure that our women veterans, when they sever from the military and become active members of the veterans society, that they get the same services that a woman would expect in the private sector in the VA health services.”

 

In keeping with his priorities as chairman, Isakson asked Dr. Susan McCutcheon, National Mental Health Director for Family Services, Women’s Mental Health, and Military Sexual Trauma at the Veterans Health Administration, about the measures the VA takes to ensure the privacy of and provide care for women veterans who have experienced military sexual trauma.

 

In addition, Isakson also touched on the issue of veterans’ homelessness, another one of his priorities as chairman.

 

“One in five women veterans who use VA health services have experienced military sexual trauma,” Isakson said. “Women veterans are also three times more likely to experience homelessness than non-veterans, and when a woman experiences homelessness, her children experience it with her. And it’s important that we do everything we can to fulfill that promise to women.”

 

View Isakson’s opening remarks from today’s hearing here.

 

Video of today’s hearing is available online here.

 

###

 

The Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs is chaired by U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., in the 114th Congress.

Isakson is a veteran himself – having served in the Georgia Air National Guard from 1966-1972 – and has been a member of the Senate VA Committee since he joined the Senate in 2005. Isakson’s home state of Georgia is home to more than a dozen military installations representing each branch of the military as well as more than 750,000 veterans.

Without Mayor de Blasio’s engagement, veterans’ input falls on deaf ears

Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America issued the following last week:





 Without Mayor de Blasio’s engagement, veterans’ input falls on deaf ears

PRESS CONTACT

Tel: 212-982-9699

press@iava.org

NEW YORK (April 21, 2015) - The following statement is from Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) CEO and Founder Paul Rieckhoff in anticipation of tonight’s public meeting of the New York City Mayor’s Veteran Advisory Board (VAB):

“Last week, veterans’ organizations of all generations from across the city stood united on the steps of City Hall to call on Mayor de Blasio to put forward real plans backed up by real resources to support the city’s 200,000-plus veterans. New York’s veterans fought for this city. Now, we need its mayor to fight for us. But so far, we’ve heard nothing from Mayor de Blasio in response to our unified call for his engagement on veterans’ issues. Unfortunately, this is not much of a surprise since we’ve seen little from this mayor during his 16 months in office.

“The mayor has not met with us once since he’s been in office, nor has he met with his own advisory board. He’s found time to meet with advocates for horse carriage drivers, the Russian band Pussy Riot, and even voters in Iowa. But he hasn’t met a single time with his own city’s veteran leaders. We call on him to take the first step in correcting this oversight by attending tonight’s VAB meeting.

“However, this isn’t about meetings. It’s about action. And sadly, there’s been none of that either. The mayor promised us a plan for veterans in 90 days. That was in November. Veterans Commissioner Loree Sutton was appointed to great fanfare last fall, but without resources, she’s nothing more than symbolic figure. She can’t do it alone. And the VAB can’t do it alone. Without the active input of the mayor, the advice of the the VAB and the broader veterans community will fall on deaf ears.

“Our message to Mayor de Blasio is simple: Lead the way. Show us you care. Show us that New York City wants veterans here. Mr. Mayor, the ball’s in your court.”

The first Veterans’ Advisory Board meeting of the year will be held tonight at 7:00 pm. IAVA members and representatives from the Mayor’s Office of Veterans’ Affairs and the New York
City Council Committee on Veterans will be in attendance:



NYC Family Justice Center, Manhattan
80 Centre Street, 5th Floor
Tuesday, April 21
6:30 pm doors, 7:00 pm meeting



IAVA members wishing to attend should visit: https://my.iava.org/cov_event?id=a5PC0000000CbrRMAS

Note to media: Email press@iava.org or call 212-982-9699 to speak with IAVA CEO and Founder Paul Rieckhoff or IAVA leadership.


Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (www.IAVA.org) is the leading post-9/11 veteran empowerment organization (VEO) with the most diverse and rapidly growing membership in America. Celebrating its 10th year anniversary, IAVA has repeatedly received the highest rating - four-stars - from Charity Navigator, America's largest charity evaluator.

Highlights

This piece is written by Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude, Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix, Kat of Kat's Korner, Betty of Thomas Friedman is a Great Man, Mike of Mikey Likes It!, Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz, Ruth of Ruth's Report, Marcia of SICKOFITRADLZ, Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends, Ann of Ann's Mega Dub, Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts and Wally of The Daily Jot. Unless otherwise noted, we picked all highlights.



"Haider is the new Nouri who was the new Saddam"  and "The Hawija massacre (because Barack held hands wit..." -- two most requested highlights of the week by readers of this site.



"Jane The Virgin sucks," "community 'advanced safety features'," "Where are the network news documentaries? (We really need them now),""Arrow (who did the dirty)," "The Originals," "CNN has a double standard," "The Flash," "Smash," "1 more time on revenge," "The Simpsons," "Whose making these programming decisions?," "Mistresses," "Glad the trash is leaving Comedy Central," 
"That awful Jane The Virgin" and "is revenge canceled?" -- Marcia, Rebecca, Trina, Stan, Elaine, Rebecca, Ruth and Ann cover TV.



"Carly and Lucy dishing with N-Y-T" and "Don't forget" -- Kat covers music.



"Idiot of the Week," "He should be behind bars," "Killer Barack," "The silence," "Killer on the loose,"  "More deaths in Barack Obama's Drone War,"  and "He kills hostages" and "THIS JUST IN! DRONES MEAN NEVER HAVING TO SAY YOU'RE SORRY!" -- community coverage of Barack killing 2 hostages.


"O'Malley might be the answer," "Jill Stein" and "O'Malley!" -- Ann on the horse race.


"Barry brings the bitchy, you go, girl!" and "THIS JUST IN! YEAH, HE'S A BIT OF A BITCH!," -- Cedric and Wally preview Barry's stand up.






"a confusing dream" and "Hillary comes to me in a dream" -- Rebecca and Ruth dream journal.
 

"Where are the jobs, Barack? Where are the jobs?" -- Trina wants answers.

 





"The day is coming," "A hustler hangs with other hustlers," "As they attacked MLK . . ." and "Oh that cheap liar Michael Eric Dyson" -- the community weighs in on Micheal Eric Dyson.

Truest statement of the week

And how about Stewart’s misdirection in finally dealing with the lies of another friend, suspended NBC anchor Brian Williams? Stewart’s strategy there was to rip the press for allegedly being more tenacious in covering the Williams scandal than it was in covering the government manipulation of public opinion that led up to the invasion of Iraq.
OK, so because most of the press, led by the New York Times, did an awful job in covering the Bush administration’s lies about weapons of mass destruction, does that mean we can never cover anything else aggressively again?
I’m serious, do you know what an intellectual contortion it took for Stewart to find a way that he could comment on the Williams story and hammer the press harder than his friend?
I hope the press will not intimidated by anyone in its Clinton coverage.

-- David Zurawik, "Press must not let Jon Stewart back it off intense Hillary Clinton coverage" (Baltimore Sun).

Truest statement of the week II

“I came. I saw. He died.” Said Clinton, deliberately mimicking Julius Caesar, then laughing hysterically over Ghadafy being sodomized with a knife,  then  tortured and beaten  to death. Clinton is a Psychopath.

 

Fab.

Francis A. Boyle

Law Building

504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.

Champaign, IL 61820 USA



Francis A. Boyle is an attorney and a professor of international law.  He's also the author of many books including, most recently, United Ireland, Human Rights and International Law.

Truest statement of the week III

The 48 percent of Americans that express an affinity with the Democratic Party have not yet chosen Clinton. There has been no primary election in any state. But, that does not matter because the selection process that counts occurs in the boardrooms and mansions and private clubs and getaways of the rich.


-- Glen Ford, "The Ascent of Hillary, the $.2.5 Billion 'People’s' Candidate" (Black Agenda Report).

A note to our readers

Hey --


Well we made it on a Sunday.

First, we thank all who participated this edition which includes Dallas and the following:




The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess and Ava,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Trina of Trina's Kitchen,
Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ,
Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends,
Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts,
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.


What did we come up with?

• Truest statement of the week

One for David Z of The Baltimore Sun.

• Truest statement of the week II

And another for Francis A. Boyle.

• Truest statement of the week III

And another for Glen Ford.

• Editorial: The shameful and the praise worthy

The silence on what happened to Ned Parker is deafening and alarming.  More troubling are the attempts by The Huffington Post to excuse it away and mock Parker.

• TV: When Messengers Disappoint

Ava and C.I. did another masterpiece. A lot of you enjoyed their recent straightforward TV pieces (such as "TV: The failures of The Flash" and "TV: Netflix gears up to explode the limits of the ...").  But last week's report "TV: The rise of Netflix, the fall of Hulu" was huge and it seemed like everyone read it.  This week they had promised to grab The Messengers (promised a CW friend).  They watched and said they'd be lucky to have five paragraphs but Raed Jarrar had been on Cindy Sheehan's podcast and they could mix that in.  I (Jim) asked them about The CW's season so far which led them to reveal the latest on the ratings challenged Jane The Virgin and I told them they had to include that.  And they did.  So you've got one of those epic pieces that sort of becomes a collage or a tapestry.  

• No wonder the military has so many problems with h...

This is appalling.

• Jim's World: Hulu, puh-leeze

Hulu e-mailed very unhappy over Ava and C.I.'s "TV: The rise of Netflix, the fall of Hulu" and this is my response.

• The Haider Al-Abadi Report

Covering a Thursday DC event.

• This edition's playlist

What we listened to.

• Billie Holiday cover albums forecast a new storm

Repost from Great Britain's Socialist Worker.

• Isakson, Blumenthal Call for Investigation of Outr...

Repost of press statement from two US senators.

• NYC Vets Unite at City Hall to Demand Action from ...

IAVA repost.

And that's what we have.




Peace.




-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.

Editorial: The shameful and the praise worthy

Oh, Arianna Huffington.

You never looked more like the hilarious and pointed spoof Tracey Ullman does of you then last week when you posted an attack on journalist Ned Parker who had to leave Iraq due to threats.

We found it interesting that Huffington Post -- which relies so heavily on comments to its articles -- closed down any comments to the attack as soon as it was posted.

Blogs and kisses, dahling, blogs and kisses.

In the real world, Ned Parker was attacked for doing what a journalist is supposed to do.

He discussed that Thursday morning  on Morning Edition (NPR -- link is audio, text and transcript) with host Steve Inskeep:

Steve Inskeep: What happened that instead began to make this a story about you?

Ned Parker: Well our team, on the day that Tikrit was liberated, they called me during the day and said, "We've witnessed an execution by federal police of a detainee in the street."  And it was a mob mentality.  And they could only stay a few moments because it was such a crazed scene I think our people feared for their own safety.  So when they came home that evening, we had a huge debate about do we report this, is this too sensationalist?  It's one incident.  But when we looked at the whole picture, we also saw a body being dragged by a group of Shi'ite paramilitaries.  We had   photos of this which we published  And there had been looting and arson of areas that surround Tikrit.  So we felt that we had to report what happened there, that if we didn't, we wouldn't be meeting our obligation to report fairly and impartially about the critical issue right now: What happens when security forces enter an area that has been under Islamic State control, that is Sunni and then has predominately Shia security paramilitary forces enter.

Steve Inskeep: This is the most basic job of a war correspondent: Go look at a war and report exactly what you see.

Ned Parker: Mm-hmm.  Right.  And this was a test case for the government.  The Iraqi government and the US government have spoken about the importance of post-conflict stabilization operations in Iraq.

Steve Inskeep: What happened after you published the story?

Ned Parker: It was picked up everywhere.  I think it was seen because of what our correspondents witnessed -- this execution which was horrific -- where they watched two federal policemen basically trying to saw off the head of a suspected Islamic State fighter to cheers from federal police, our story became really the example of what went wrong in Tikrit.  And it was published on April 3rd.  The night of April 5th on Facebook, on a site associated with Shi'ite paramilitary groups and political forces, a picture of myself went up calling for Iraqis to expell me. It quickly received over 100 shares and comments including, "Better to kill him than to expel him."

Steve Inskeep:  Did it blow over?



Ned Parker: No.  It only got worse.  I-I did go out and try to have meetings with some people, different prominent Iraqis, about it.  And then on Wednesday night [April 8th]  the channel of Asaib al-Haq -- which is a prominent Shi'ite political party and paramilitary group, my face is the backdrop as the anchor talks and he actually waives also a print out of my face and talks about how I should be expelled from the country and then proceeds to read a letter from an Iraqi living in the United States who also again calls for me to be expelled and describes Reuters as trampling on the dignity of Iraq and Shi'ite paramilitary groups and after that there's no way I could have stayed in the country -- both for myself and for my staff.  My presence was polarizing the situation.  So I left the next day.

The attack Arianna published on the weekend was first tried out Thursday by Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi when he spoke at a DC event.

While Arianna disgraced herself, we've yet again come to applaud Steve Inskeep and we also applaud Liz Sly of the Washington Post.

Liz Sly ‏@LizSly Apr 13

.@FailyLukman After what happened to @nedmparker1 can you guarantee journalists won't be harassed/threatened by govt allies? #AskIraq

17 retweets 10 favorites

And we applaud Sam Dagher who's covered Iraq for The New York Times, The Wall St. Journal and The Christian Science Monitor.

1. Sam Dagher ‏@samdagher Apr 12

   The brave story about looting & lynching in #Tikrit by @nedmparker1 & others that provoked threats from #Iraq militia http://reut.rs/1FqOJg6

We applaud United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and The Committee to Protect Journalists for speaking out.

We note Barack Obama said nothing publicly -- and this despite meeting with Haider al-Abadi last week.