Free Republic

They are already calling the current pandemic-induced economic crisis, “The Great Depression of 2020.” The paradigm is, of course, the Great Depression of 1929 that substantially changed the world’s model of development, signaling the onset of State intervention in the economy (the welfare state). Analysts are also calling it “The Great Jump Backwards,” because it will push the world back in time by canceling three decades of economic development. International agencies estimate the contraction in GNP worldwide at -5.2%. The Eurozone with be the hardest hit with -9.1%. “It is the worst economic recession since 1870, a devastating blow for...

A lawyer who represents police officers has been contacted by more than 150 current officers who seek to file for disability benefits, a move taken before they leave the force. Most of the officers claim they are suffering from PTSD and that the stressful situation since the killing of George Floyd has become the last straw. “While law enforcement is a high-stress career, the last two months in Minneapolis have pushed many officers to their breaking point,” Meuser said…Among Meuser’s clients are officers who were inside the city’s 3rd Precinct police station, which was abandoned and subsequently burned during...

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Awareness Day is an opportunity to draw attention to PTSD, raise awareness for the treatments available to those affected, and recommit to supporting Americans who are burdened by this disorder.Post-traumatic stress disorder results from having experienced or witnessed a terrifying event.  The most common traumas associated with PTSD are sexual and interpersonal violence, being involved in a car accident, witnessing serious injury or the death of another person, or being in combat.  Those experiencing PTSD often struggle to control their emotions and may have unexpected outbursts, often straining supportive personal relationships and causing them to...

Tech giant Facebook will reportedly be paying a settlement of $52 million to thousands of current and former content moderators who developed PTSD after viewing and removing graphic and disturbing posts on the social media platform. NPR reports that according to a settlement agreement announced on Tuesday between tech giant Facebook and lawyers for former Facebook content moderators. Mark Zuckerberg’s company will be paying $52 million to thousands of workers affected by the content they were forced to view and remove from Facebook.

Maryland man kills wife and neighbor.

A California federal prosecutor used a gun to kill himself and a woman he married four months ago, according to reports. The parents of 45-year-old Tamara Delgado asked deputies to conduct a welfare check Sunday, CBS 13 Sacramento reported. She was found dead along with her husband, Timothy Delgado, 43. “We believe that Mr. Delgado fatally shot his wife before turning the gun on himself,” the Placer County Sheriff’s Office said Monday. The Delgados lived in Granite Bay, 25 miles north of Sacramento. Her Facebook page says they married in November. Delgado was a prosecutor in the Sacramento U.S. Attorney’s...

To close out her 2019, Lupita Hernandez stopped after every mile to plant a small flag along Interstate-10 between Houston and San Antonio. Each pause in her 200-mile run was to honor a fellow veteran battling post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), something she has dealt with since she retired from the Marines in 2004. PTSD still affects her life each day, whether personally or in Hernandez’s work in the Veteran Treatment Court in Harris County, Texas. On average, 22 veterans commit suicide everyday, and that’s a statistic that is always on her mind. “I wanted to bring awareness to the stigma...

President Trump’s decision to kill the terrorist Qassem Soleiman reveals how alienated Rep. Ilhan Omar (D. Minn.) is from America.

Four years ago, I wrote about my decision to live as a woman in The New York Times, writing that I had wanted to live “authentically as the woman that I have always been,” and had “effectively traded my white male privilege to become one of America’s most hated minorities.” Three years ago, I decided that I was neither male nor female, but nonbinary—and made headlines after an Oregon judge agreed to let me identify as a third sex, not male or female. Now, I want to live again as the man that I am. I’m one of the lucky...

William Ebeltoft shipped off to Vietnam a state championship-winning trap shooter, a quick-witted lover of parties and Schlitz beer, and able to relate as readily to gruff ranchers as he did to teens who watched him work on his motorcycle and clean his shotguns. He came home a different man. Every so often, a newspaper publishes an obituary that will break your heart. One of those ran this week, in Dickinson, N.D. (pop. 22,000) William Ebeltoft, 73, was a war hero who "died 50 years after he lost, in Vietnam, all that underpinned his life."https://t.co/44JljzDSaG — Bill Grueskin (@BGrueskin) December...

James Le Mesurier, the founder of the White Helmets, has died. He was found to have plummeted from a height to the street outside his home, and authorities are reportedly calling it a suicide. Le Mesurier has a history with British military intelligence and was fundamentally involved with an extremely shady narrative management operation geared toward manufacturing support for yet another imperialist military intervention in yet another Middle Eastern nation, so obviously any claims of suicide should be taken with a grain of salt no smaller than a Buick. But it is worth noting that according to Middle East Eye,...

Ex-Dallas police Officer Amber Guyger was "unreasonable" when she mistakenly entered her neighbor's apartment "commando-style" last year and fatally shot him, thinking he was an intruder, prosecutors said Monday during closing arguments in her murder trial. "A guilty verdict in this case does not mean you hate police. This has nothing to do with politics," prosecutor Jason Fine told the jurors. But the defense argued to jurors that at that moment, Guyger truly believed she was acting in self-defense when she thought she was at her apartment, which is one floor directly below that of neighbor Botham Jean. "It's one...

1. Davis Police Officer Natalie Corona a second-generation California cop who fulfilled childhood dream When many other little girls her age were putting on their mother’s heels and necklaces, Natalie Corona was pulling on her father’s police uniform. CON'T

[T]he U.S. government is on the hunt for effective ways to screen large populations for PTSD. In a process of elimination based on how consistently certain blood-based markers could be linked to PTSD, the researchers sieved out almost all of the candidate factors. They finally ended with a group of 27 chemical signatures that together with heart rate offered the best accuracy for identifying PTSD. Some but not all of the markers had previously been linked to the condition and include measures related to insulin levels and blood clotting. The test panel detected a person as having a positive PTSD...

A former Hezbollah leader was found dead in his apartment outside of Beirut Sunday, Lebanese media outlets reported. Sheikh Ali Hatoum, who was a senior member of the Iranian-backed Shia terrorist organization before his departure from the group two years ago, was found dead in his home in Bourj el-Barajneh, a suburb of Beirut. Citing unnamed sources, Lebanon24 reported that there was “no security action related to the killing of the [Hezbollah]” official, noting that Hatoum was no longer affiliated with the terror group. No cause of death has been reported thus far, and local officials are expected to make...

Mayor de Blasio urged troubled city cops to seek help from ThriveNYC amid the NYPD’s suicide epidemic — days after the mental-health initiative spearheaded by his wife bailed on an event for first responders, The Post has learned. “There is no feeling worse than wanting to help someone and not knowing how,” wrote de Blasio in a department-wide ­e-mail, a copy of which was obtained by The Post, in which he recounts losing his World War II-veteran dad to suicide when the future mayor was 18. “Yesterday, we lost our eighth NYPD officer to suicide this year,” wrote de Blasio...

A US police officer who was fired after shooting dead an unarmed man was temporarily rehired so he could apply for a pension, local media report. Philip Brailsford, 28, killed 26-year-old Daniel Shaver in the hallway of an Arizona hotel in early 2016. He was fired and charged with murder - but was acquitted at trial in 2017. Records show that he was briefly rehired last year so he could apply for a lifetime pension worth more than $2,500 (£2,000) a month. The move meant he could be medically retired - rather than fired - which made him eligible for...

ete Buttigieg told "Axios on HBO" that although he wasn't diagnosed with PTSD after returning from Afghanistan after a 7-month deployment in 2014, "there's a level of depression ... that I went through when I came back." Why it matters: This is a new window into Buttigieg's unusual experience of serving as a 32-year-old, then returning to resume his job as mayor of South Bend, Indiana....... Buttigieg told me the feeling lasted about a year, and that he never felt he needed medical treatment.

I was listening to the Larry O'Connor Show this afternoon on WMAL and while he was discussing the latest mass shooter atrocity at the synagogue in Poway, a caller named Todd called in and described being in shock that VA facilities had "no security checks" and after all, "veterans have PTSD" and "could bring a weapon in at any time".I tried to call in to the show to talk to Larry but he very shortly segued into Redskins football and the bored-sounding lady screener let me know that I wouldn't be on.First of all, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is the...

Food shortages, damaged homes, fear of death, loved ones leaving. The cumulative stresses of Hurricane Maria contributed to thousands of schoolchildren developing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, in Puerto Rico, according to a study published Friday. The study in JAMA Network Open found that 7.2% of the students reported “clinically significant” symptoms of PTSD. More girls tended to show signs of PTSD than boys. Researchers surveyed 96,108 public school students five to nine months after the 2017 hurricane. The cohort included youth in third through 12th grades across different regions of the island. That just speaks to how...