A Little Bit Special: DSPS, a sleep disorder.

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Sunday August 26, 2007 · 6:14 AM PDT

2007/08/26 · 06:14

What’s that you say, you just can’t wake up in the morning? All six of your alarm clocks go off at 5-10 minute intervals and you don’t even hit snooze, you just don’t hear them? If forced to get up, you have morning sickness? The only way to be absolutely certain you don’t oversleep, is to stay up all night?

When I was a kid, this was mostly my fault: laziness, sloth. It was also my parents’ fault: lousy parenting. It was assumed that any normal person can train her/himself to wake by 8, and no abnormality in this regard was recognized. Last week’s A Little Bit Special diary had the undertitle Growing up undiagnosed; I could as well have used that undertitle here, too!

Fortunately Circadian Rhythm Disorders are now recognized, though a majority of doctors still don’t know anything about them and the treatments offered often don’t work well.

DSPS owl

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Saturday June 30, 2007 · 8:49 PM PDT

2007/06/30 · 20:49

A pretentious title, and a long diary. As one of the 6 million Americans living abroad, my expertise is as a patient here for many years + a little web-searching. I’ve been thinking of diarying my experiences with the system in Norway; YoyogiBear beat me to it with a good diary on the Japanese system. Perhaps others will follow suit from other countries.

In short, with the exception of dental, visual and physiotherapy for adults, some prescriptions and a limited co-pay, our health care is paid for by our taxes. Hospitalization is free. All residents are covered, as are citizens of EU and certain other countries.

DSPS owl

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Wednesday April 25, 2007 · 6:28 AM PDT

2007/04/25 · 06:28

spread the word IRAQ NAM's recent diary on Death in Diyala attracted some comments on the new oil law in Iraq. From those comments/links, I’ll try to present the situation. However, I’m no expert, so comments and opinions are very welcome. The law has not yet been passed, but it appears to be well on its way. It is very controversial.

Hat tips:

Theghostofkarlafayetucker for excerpts from a RealClearPolitics interview with Condi Rice (which I’m unable to access), 19 April 2007
truong son traveler for excerpts from and link to the Asia Times Online’s article Selling Iraq by the Barrel by Emad Mekay, 02 March 2007
yours truly for link to Raed Jarrar's blog entry, 23 April 2007: The new oil law will increase violence in Iraq.

DSPS owl

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Sunday February 18, 2007 · 8:45 AM PST

2007/02/18 · 08:45

Patrick Cockburn, author of The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq, tells in The Independent (UK), 15 February 2007, more than I knew about Muqtada al-Sadr, a Shia leader in Iraq. This young cleric seems to become more important all the time.

The population of Iraq is about 25 million people, and about 60% of them are Shia. Two million of them live in the slums of East Baghdad, Sadr City, where Muqtada has his base.

The Sadrist movement, of which Muqtada is the current leader, was founded by Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr. It was he who sought to interpret Shia Islam and organise its adherents in the 1950s and 1960s in order to oppose the powerful Iraqi Communist Party and the nationalist Baath Party. He helped to establish the Shia religious party al-Dawa to counter secularism.

DSPS owl

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Saturday January 27, 2007 · 7:46 AM PST

2007/01/27 · 07:46

Juan Cole tells of the reception in Iraq of Bush's State of the Union address. His source is a report from the U.S. government's Open Source Center on TV reporting on the 24th of January. The reporting is translated from Arabic.

As one of Cole's commenters points out, not too many Iraqis may have seen the coverage, considering their lack of electricity.

If this has already been diaried, please let me know. Thanks.

DSPS owl

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Sunday January 07, 2007 · 2:38 AM PST

2007/01/07 · 02:38

This is not 'new' news, but it's been bothering me since I first read it. The American Conservative had in July 2006 an article by Joe Guthrie: Nation Breaking: A soldier discovers that training the Iraqi army is not President Bush’s priority.

In the beginning of GWBush's first term, Guthrie joined the National Guard and later the Army through ROTC. His father, who'd lived through the Vietnam era, had told him "I don’t believe that our government will ever allow our military to become involved in a war like Vietnam again. The American people would not stand for it."

Guthrie was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in 2002 and, as a newlywed, deployed to Iraq in 2004. He'd had more Arabic language and culture training than any other soldier in his battalion and had hopes of "making a difference".

DSPS owl

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Sunday October 29, 2006 · 4:21 PM PST

2006/10/29 · 16:21

Bush's signing statements are very troubling, and they seem to be more and more blatant.

Lobbyists write (some of) the laws and it is thought that Cheney's man Addington writes the signing statements.
Glenn Greenwald has written about them about a dozen times this year.

We have, in effect, no legislature. We can send'em all home and save a few million. Read More

Arab world is cut off from news of Iraq

DSPS owl

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Saturday September 09, 2006 · 5:30 AM PDT

2006/09/09 · 05:30

Two years ago the Iraqi government banned the prominent Arabic channel Al Jazeera from Iraq. The station does, of course, still report news from the country, but it has to rely on Reuters and others; it has no office in Iraq.

Now the Khaleej Times in the UAE reports that another major satellite channel, Al Arabiya, based in Dubai, has been banned, ostensibly for a month. This was announced on Iraqi state television by government spokesperson Ali Dabbagh who said this is "a warning for the unprofessional conduct of their correspondents in covering events in Iraq." Read More

Islamic Fascism - neither / nor

DSPS owl

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Saturday August 12, 2006 · 4:51 PM PDT

2006/08/12 · 16:51

After 9/11, Robert Pape was asked to comment. He did within his several areas of expertise and in the process came to realize that the subject of suicide bombing had not been studied sufficiently. "This is a little bit like studying lung cancer. We not only want to know who gets cancer, we want to know who doesn't get cancer," he says. He has analyzed every known case of suicide terrorism worldwide from 1980 to early 2004: 315 campaigns and 462 individuals.

Are they all Arabs? All Muslims? From large movements or small groups? What are their goals? How large a part does religion play? What do the targets have in common? Is there an aspect of nationalism which might justify use of the concept `fascism'?

One common factor is this specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw combat forces from territory that the terrorists prize. The purpose is not death but, for lack of modern weaponry, to use the person's body as a weapon of last resort.
Read More

Juan Cole on 'Subnationalism'

DSPS owl

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Monday July 31, 2006 · 9:04 AM PDT

2006/07/31 · 09:04

Today, 31 July 2006, Juan Cole has a post entitled "What is Hizbullah?". He introduces me to the concept of subnationalism, which he says he has from Anthony D. Smith, a professor at the London School of Economics. Dr. Smith says that nationalism means feeling an intense bond of solidarity to the nation and to other members of it. I can go along with that and let theoreticians argue the fine points.

Subnationalisms are mass movements. We can think of the Irish Catholics of Northern Ireland or even the Scots of the UK as "subnationalisms".

And what is Hizbullah?
Read More

A page from a (future) history book

DSPS owl

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Saturday March 04, 2006 · 1:03 PM PST

2006/03/04 · 13:03

HISTORY OF THE USA

Early 21st Century

As we have seen, the Republican party had, by the 2006 midterm elections, largely taken control of the country including the traditional press and broadcasting. One of the very few arenas in which the Democrats had any real power left that year was in the Senate Intelligence Committee, created just 30 years earlier to oversee and study intelligence activities and programs. Its rules, uniquely among Senate Committees, permitted the vice chairman to authorize an investigation, to issue a subpeona and to authorize witness interrogation. Read More

The Danish cartoons as freedom of expression

DSPS owl

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Saturday February 11, 2006 · 10:11 PM PST

2006/02/11 · 22:11

There have been several diaries about the drawings by twelve Danish cartoonists printed last fall in Jyllands-Posten in Denmark. In some cases, those who comment seem to not be on the same page, and this leads to unnecessary misunderstanding and quarrels.

In hopes of clearing up some of the confusion, I offer here parts of Jyllands-Posten's original article which accompanied the pictures and explained the reasoning for printing them, as well as some later quotes from Danish, Egyptian and Norwegian sources.

(My first diary on dkos is about Islam. Who'd a thunk it...) Read More

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A Little Bit Special: DSPS, a sleep disorder.

The Norwegian health-care system

Iraq's new oil sharing law

Who is Muqtada al-Sadr?

Iraqi TV covers the State of the Union address

Training the Iraqi Army in Mosul

The Presidential Signing Statements [Poll]

Arab world is cut off from news of Iraq

Islamic Fascism - neither / nor

Juan Cole on 'Subnationalism'

A page from a (future) history book

The Danish cartoons as freedom of expression