Monday, August 25, 2014
West Point
I had to look it up to find it again. I took the bus from there and I walked around the neighborhood sometimes but I had no idea where it was even located there inside the Seattle city limits. Man, that sure does take me back. Shuffling around those Seattle city streets around that place they had me living as a homeless shelter. I remember how important watching the television news was for me everyday. I remember the first few minutes I was in there after the VA hospital discharged me from the mental health unit on 27 June 2005 and I was still doped up by the psychiatrists and the way I remember it the social workers hurried me out a side door and they drove me in a car to The Theodora and in that first few minutes I walked into the television area and there are a lot of chairs there and the first thing I noted was a National Geographic magazine with the first space shuttle flight on the cover of the magazine from 1981.
I was there at The Theodora for a while and then they told me I could move to the Shoreline Homeless Veterans shelter and then they kicked me out to the Compass Center in downtown Seattle where I lived for 300 days and then the Shoreline homeless shelter let me back in but only if I agreed to take more VA hospital dope, which I did, and then I was there for a while and when I could finally choose a place to live on my own I moved to the Vermont Inn-Apartments in downtown Seattle near the Space Needle and I remember that on Christmas Day 2006 I was still in that homeless shelter in Shoreline but by New Years Eve 2006, just a few days later, I had already moved into the Vermont and I sat there on the roof-top deck and watched the spectacular fireworks from the Space Needle a couple blocks away.
http://www.royal.gov.uk/LatestNewsandDiary/Factfiles/TheDukeofEdinburgh.aspx
The official website of The British Monarchy
90 facts about The Duke of Edinburgh
A list of 90 key facts about The Duke of Edinburgh
3. The Duke had four older sisters; Margarita (1905-1981) who married Count Gotfried of Hohenlohe-Langenburg; Theodora (1906-1969) who married Prince Berthold of Baden
1998 film "U.S. Marshals" DVD video:
Chief Deputy US Marshal Sam Gerard: [ to Deputy US Marshal Newman: ] Wait for the cops!
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Google Maps
6549 35th Ave NE, Seattle, Washington, United States
Address is approximate
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: Posted by H.V.O.M at 6:25 AM Wednesday, November 10, 2010
He just walked right into it.
As I was being discharged from the VA hospital in 2005 the doctor at the VA hospital told me he would keep me there inpatient at the VA hospital if he could. That was the day Patty Murray was outside the VA hospital giving a speech to the press while the social workers at the hospital snuck me out the other entrance as they dropped me off at the Theodora senior citizens home where I stayed for a while, all drugged up by the VA hospital, until they let me move into the homeless shelter for veterans in Shoreline Washington.
[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 10 November 2010 excerpt ends]
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Google Maps
7463 35th Ave NE, Seattle, Washington, United States
Address is approximate
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Google Maps
3390 NE 68th St, Seattle, Washington, United States
Address is approximate
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Google Maps
6798 34th Ave NE, Seattle, Washington, United States
Address is approximate
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Google Maps
3454 NE 65th St, Seattle, Washington, United States
Address is approximate
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=51063
The American Presidency Project
William J. Clinton
XLII President of the United States: 1993 - 2001
Remarks to the Veterans of Foreign Wars Conference
March 6, 1995
Thank you very much, Commander Kent, for that introduction. Ladies and gentlemen, I can tell you from firsthand experience that the VFW is very lucky to have a leader as forceful and as thoughtful as Gunner Kent. I also want to acknowledge the presence here of Secretary Brown and Deputy Secretary Gober; General Sullivan; your adjutant general, Larry Rivers; Charles Durning, who rode over here with me and regaled me with experiences. How lucky we are to have him going out and setting an example, visiting our hospitalized veterans all across the United States. And I appreciate the reception you gave him. I want to recognize the president of your ladies auxiliary, Helen Harsh. I also want to recognize these young people over here from the Voice of Democracy contest, the winners there. I'm glad to see them. I thank you for your support of the young people of this country and for this project. I very much enjoyed having my picture taken with the young people just before we came out, and I got to shake hands with all of them. And they took about 10 years off my life, so I feel pretty spry standing up here. [Laughter] I want to thank whoever organized this for putting the delegates from my home State of Arkansas up here close where I can keep an eye on them during my speech. [Laughter] And they were all pretty well-behaved when I walked out. I was glad to see that. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.
I want to recognize two veterans of the VFW, Jimmy Gates of Alabama, who has given more than 50 years of service to this organization, and your past national commander, Bob Merrill of California. People like Bob Merrill, who piloted biplanes in World War I and devoted their lives to fighting for their fellow veterans, who have helped the VFW to make a difference in the lives of so many Americans, those are the kinds of people that I think that we ought to keep in mind when we make the decisions that are being made here in Washington about what is in the interest of the veterans of the United States.
It also gives me great pleasure to tell you that just as soon as it comes across my desk, I will sign the bill that will allow the VFW to reform its charter and expand your membership even further.
This year we mark the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. Many of you fought in that great struggle. Meeting some of the men and women who sacrificed so much for our freedom, whether I met them on the windswept beaches of Normandy, between the crowded rows of the cemetery in England or Italy, or inside the tunnels of the rock of Corregidor in the Philippines, meeting those people has been one of the greatest privileges I've had as President. America owes to them and to all of you a debt that we cannot fully repay.
With their lives before them, the World War II veterans left everything, family, loved ones, home, to fight for a just cause. From the Aleutians to Okinawa, from the Mediterranean to the North Sea, they watched so many of their friends fall. We lost more than 400,000, and 700,000 more were wounded. But still, our veterans never faltered. They gave everything so that future generations of Americans might be free. And we are all profoundly grateful.
But to honor their deeds and those of all the veterans who fought for freedom in World War I, Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, and all around the world in between, gratitude and ceremonies are not enough. We must protect the benefits you have earned, address fully the dangers imposed by modern warfare, and preserve what you fought for: the American dream at home and our leadership around the world.
I've said a lot in other places about preserving the American dream at home in this new global economy, and I won't talk a lot about it today, except just to say that it is going to be a constant struggle for us to make sure that in the next century every American has the chance to get a good education, to have a good job, to do better than their parents, to pass along the values of opportunity to their children. And I'll be saying more about that in other places. Today I want to talk a little about the tradition of America's leadership because that tradition is under siege.
If the new isolationists in our Nation have their way, America would abandon policies backed by Republicans and Democrats that have guided us for half a century, policies that won the cold war and that won us unparalleled prosperity here at home.
I know that at this time we have to spend more attention and more energy and more investment on the problems we have at home. And goodness knows, that's what I have been working to do for the last 2 years. But there are those who would back away from any of our commitments abroad. They would back away from institutions like the United Nations, which promotes stability around the world. They would have us give up our support for peacekeeping and for fragile democracies, support which enables others to share the burden with us, and which undermines the risks that we have to bear and makes us safer. They would cut deeply into our support for emerging market democracies. Even some would put our efforts to make peace in the Middle East on the chopping block.
Now, no one knows better than the veterans the grave dangers of simply withdrawing from the world. The last time isolationism held sway, during the years after World War I, Europe and Asia slid into catastrophe, and we had to fight a Second World War because we walked away from the world at the end of the First World War. Now, those of you in this room, whenever you served, wherever you served, you know what could happen if we retreat from today's turbulent world.
Yes, it is true that the cold war is over, that the nuclear threat is receding. And I'm going to do everything I can to push it back even further this year, with a whole series of ambitious and aggressive efforts to push back the nuclear threat. Yes, nations on every continent are embracing democracy and free markets. But open societies and free people still face many enemies. You know it as well as I do: the proliferation of other kinds of weapons of mass destruction; aggression by terrorists, by rogue states; threats that go across national lines, like overpopulation and environmental devastation, drug-trafficking and other organized crime activities; terrible ethnic conflicts; and as we've seen recently in Mexico, just the difficulties that poor nations are going to face when they try to embrace democracy and free-market economics and relate well to the rest of the world.
Now, we cannot intervene everywhere; we can't be involved in solving all these problems. We shouldn't be. But we must be able to protect our own vital interests. And we must be able to work with other countries through multinational organizations to keep the world moving in the right direction. It is not an automatic. It is not given that 20 and 30 and 50 years from now we'll have more democracy, more prosperity, more peace, and less danger. It is not an accident; we have to keep working for it.
Just think about the recent history. Consider what might have happened in the last 2 years alone if we had abandoned our responsibilities. If we hadn't pushed for expanding trade, trade wars could have erupted without our leadership on the GATT World Trade Agreement, which will open great new markets to America, generate hundreds of thousands of jobs, but also give people all around the world a chance to work together in peace. Think what would have happened if we had not moved to try to help stem this crisis in Mexico, what could have happened on our borders in terms of an increase in illegal immigration and reduced ability to continue to fight the drug-trafficking that we fight every single week. Think what might have happened if we hadn't stood up in Haiti for democracy and against the military dictators. We could have had thousands and thousands more immigrants at our borders, people with no place to go because they couldn't stay home, living under oppression. Peace might not even have caught a foothold in the Middle East if we hadn't had the constant political and economic support there for the parties in the Middle East.
These events and others prove the timeless wisdom of the words Franklin Roosevelt set down in the last speech he wrote, when he said, "We have learned in the agony of war that great power involves great responsibility." President Roosevelt observed, "We as Americans do not choose to deny our responsibility, nor do we intend to abandon our determination that within the lives of our children and our children's children, there will not be a third world war."
Your devotion and the service of millions and millions of other veterans has helped to prevent that war and helped to bring an end to the cold war. You helped to stop the spread of Communist tyranny across the globe. You helped democracy and prosperity to grow for our allies in Europe and beyond. And when dictators raised their heads, you stood up and you stopped them.
We must be clear about this: In the understandable desire of millions of Americans to look first to our problems at home which are real, your legacy is being threatened, a half a century of American leadership that you worked for and that you fought for. At all costs, we must preserve America's leadership so that our children can have the future they deserve. We simply cannot be strong at home unless we are also strong abroad. There is no dividing line in this global economy. There is no dividing line when terrorism and ethnic conflicts and economic problems and organized crime and drug-trafficking spread across national lines. There is no place to walk away from.
As Commander in Chief, I have done everything in my power to protect and build on the legacy that you have left your country, to make certain that our country moves into the next century still the strongest nation in the world, still the greatest force for freedom and democracy. And that's exactly what we have to keep doing.
We will meet that goal only if first we protect and strengthen the Armed Forces. More than anything else, our Armed Forces guarantee our security and our global influence. They're the backbone of our diplomacy. They ensure our credibility.
Just take, for example, the Persian Gulf. Last year, where our troops deployed swiftly and convinced Saddam Hussein not to make the same mistake twice, we would not have been able to do that had it not been for the lessons we learned from the Gulf war, the pre-positioning of our equipment, our continued efforts to be able to move our troops quickly and rapidly around the world wherever they needed to be.
Take Haiti, for example, when the news that our forces were poised to invade convinced the generals that they had to go. If it hadn't been for the military, for the year of planning for the most truly jointly planned military operation in American history, and for the planes in the air, it would not have happened. Or in the last few weeks, when our troops showed such great professionalism in transferring Cuban refugees from Panama to Guantanamo and covering the safe withdrawal of United Nations peacekeepers from Somalia.
Time and again, the American military has demonstrated its extraordinary skills. As I pledged from the beginning of our administration, the United States will have the best equipped, best trained, best prepared military in the world. We are keeping that promise every day.
Our forces are ready to fight. But to maintain that high state of readiness and to keep our military strong, I have asked the Congress to increase defense funding by $25 billion spread over the next 6 years. We have fewer troops today, and yet we ask them to perform more and more different missions than ever before. So our combat pilots must fly as often as they need to fly to be properly trained. Our sailors must get the hands-on experience they deserve. Our ground forces must train so they can be at peak levels. And we also have to deal with the strains that all of these different missions put on the people who are in uniform today.
So some of this money will be used to raise military pay and to provide better housing and child care for those who serve and the families who stand by them. We simply must improve the quality of life in the military if we want to continue to draw educated and motivated Americans who can be trained into the high professionalism that we have sometimes come almost to take for granted from the American military. Our men and women in uniform, some of them your sons and daughters, are clearly the finest fighting force in the world. And we must all be determined to keep them that way.
We must also recognize another simple truth: the troops of tomorrow will only be as good as our commitment to veterans today. The people in uniform look to us to see how we relate to you. Long after you have shed your uniforms, not just for a few months or a few years, but for your entire lives, our Nation must meet its solemn obligations to you for the service you gave.
When I sought this office, I vowed to fight for the interests of our country's veterans, and our administration has kept that pledge. The White House doors have been open to veterans as never before. Ask Commander Kent, who came to visit me recently, to discuss the case for protecting your benefits. We have consistently looked to veterans to help shape our policy for veterans. Much of your influence is due to the outstanding work of Secretary Jesse Brown. I thank him for that.
We've protected veterans' preference for Federal jobs when your national commander wrote us last year and said it was in danger. When interest rates fell, we reached out to veterans all around America to tell you about opportunities to refinance homes bought under the GI bill. We made sure that military retirees received their full cost-of-living adjustments when Congress approved them 6 months later than for civilian retirees. And of course, we have worked to improve health care for veterans. We expanded long-term care programs and established comprehensive care centers for women veterans. And we're working to process claims faster so that you can get the benefits you're owed.
Last year, we sent to Congress the only health plan that would have expanded your choices of health care, improved veterans health facilities, and given those facilities the flexibility to serve you better. We have confronted head-on the long-neglected problem of Agent Orange. We have reached out to 40,000 veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange and told them about expanded benefits now available to them. We made certain that when a U.S. delegation visited Hanoi, representatives of the VFW and other veterans groups were there to discuss the painful issues of MIA's. And we have continued to press for the fullest possible accounting for those lost while serving our Nation.
Our administration has brought the voices of veterans to the highest councils of government, protected your interests when they've been threatened, and worked hard every day to improve the services you receive. We have done this even as we have cut the Federal deficit by more than $600 billion, shrunk the Federal Government faster than at any time in modern history.
In the last 2 years, we have cut more than 150,000 positions from the Federal bureaucracy. We have cut spending in more than 300 Federal programs. And this year, while we cut the budget of almost every Federal agency, we still are able to say we are going to the mat for America's future and America's obligations to the past, for Head Start for our children, for the School Lunch Program, for nutrition for pregnant women and their children, for immunizing kids in their early years, for programs for young people who don't go to college but do need good training to get good jobs, for more affordable loans for middle class young people, for 100,000 new police on our streets, for military readiness, and, yes, for better health care for America's veterans.
Our administration is pushing for $1.3 billion more for the Department of Veterans Affairs over the next 5 years, $1 billion of that to the veterans health care system. That means care for 43,000 more veterans, 2 new hospitals, 3 new nursing homes, and other major improvements.
Sadly, some in Congress see that the need to improve your health care services is not very important. Indeed, legislation approved by the House Appropriations Committee just last week, if passed by the Congress, will cut very deeply. They seek to eliminate more than $200 million for veterans health, including money for veterans' outpatient clinics and millions of dollars for new medical equipment for veterans health services. And their cuts would also abolish a successful Department of Labor program that reintegrates homeless veterans by providing them with temporary housing and with help with job training and job placement.
Now, I believe these cuts are unwise and unnecessary. They would harm the veterans who need their nation's help the most. I pledge to you today that I will fight for those interests and for you every step of the way. But we need your help. You have to speak up.
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Google Maps
N 200th St, Shoreline, Washington, United States
Address is approximate
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Google Maps
2766 4th Ave, Seattle, Washington, United States
Address is approximate
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: 09/13/09 5:38 PM
The coin dispending machine at the checkout line at that nearby Safeway supermarket shortchanged me a nickel. I got the two quarters from it but no nickel as my receipt indicates I should have receieved. I didn't look at the dollar bills the checkout attendant handed me.
About 5 or ten minutes earlier I had walked in there and filled out a form for their discount card which I then used at the checkout.
I don't think I have even been into that Safeway more than 1 other time this year.
[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 13 September 2009 excerpt ends]
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: 09/12/09 9:11 PM
http://www.cswap.com/1998/Armageddon/cap/en/25fps/a/00_02
Armageddon
:02:29
Okay, Pete, we got that coupling
on the board here now.
:02:32
We'll give you the go-ahead
from down here when it's in alignment.
:02:36
Sounds good.
Give me ten seconds.
:02:38
[ Sighs ]
:02:41
His heart rate's racing.
Hey, Pete.
:02:43
- It's Truman.
- Hey.
:02:45
- How you doing up there, hoss?
- Pretty good.
:02:47
Listen, Pete, we got an eye on your meds
here. I'll give you a buffalo nickel...
:02:50
if you'll calm down
just a little bit.
:02:52
- Can you do that for me ?
- Whatever you say.
:02:55
Okay, now, we got plenty of time,
buddy, so don't you worry.
:03:02
Looking good here.
:03:04
He'll be all right.
:03:06
- Go ahead, Atlantis.
- Roger that, Houston.
:03:08
Suggest we start
reeling Pete in.
[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 12 September 2009 excerpt ends]
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: 09/13/09 7:15 PM
That one guy with the leg brace poking out from under his jeans as he leaned against the bicycle must have, I am thinking now, had his head bowed downed so that a person on my other side would capture the words printed on his cap in the same frame when I walked by him. Just after I walked by him, he looked up, or so it seemed from my peripheral vision.
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: 09/13/09 7:17 PM
That was in front of that hamburger place just before the Safeway I was walking to. I can't remember the name. Dick's?
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: 09/13/09 7:19 PM
Looking at the map, he was on Republican Street and in the street next to the sidewalk I walked on and he was facing the hamburger place and the writing on his cap would have been fully visible to anyone inside with a camera.
[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 13 September 2009 excerpt ends]
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: 10/07/09 8:23 PM
I have also noted that zombie check out clerks at Safeway, for instance, find my purchases entertaining.
[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 07 October 2009 excerpt ends]
Somewhere are my handwritten notes about this event but I can't find it now in my storage closet. I stopped in Federal Way for lunch at Country Buffet, or whatever its name is, near the large metro bus transit center, where the zombies continued their constant chatter around me, and then right away I got sick. A cold or the flu, I don't recall precise details other than the certainty that was the first time I got sick since I had first moved into that Pioneer Square gulag in downtown Seattle. So that was only the second time in at least 8 years I had been sick. I was going to wait to find my handwritten notes to make the rest of this post, a post I was planning to make as a separate note, but the hell with it. Too hot to rummage around outside on the patio with the goddamned zombies watching everything I do outside and inside my apartment. Stupid goddamned zombie bastards.
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: 12/14/09 3:37 PM
There is a McDonald's next to that Greenwood funeral cemetary that is just down the road from my Crowne Point apartment. It is part of a gas station and convienence store named Extra Mile. Across the street from the McDonalds and the cemetary is the Renton Technical college. My apartment complex is situated in between that cemetary and that protected wildlife marsh area. Almost directly across the road, but not quite directly across the road from the wildlife protected marsh area, is an apartment complex named Windsor apartments. I thought about looking there at first but that seemed too contrived for me. I thought the same with Crowne Point but when I started looking at the map, it was the proximity to the supermarket, which is a short walk, that was compelling. The Windsor apartments are even more compelling though, I thought after walking around out there, because it has the Safeway on one side and the QFC on the other side, which would be even less a walking distance than it is now for me to the Safeway and then the QFC is even past the Windsor apartments.
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: 12/14/09 4:12 PM
Looks to be about 300 dollars more per month so that doesn't look to be an option. I thought I might try to move down there when my lease at Crowne Point expires next year.
[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 14 December 2009 excerpt ends]
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20140820/ebola-25e5b485bb.html
excite news
Unrest grows in Liberian slum sealed to halt Ebola
Aug 20, 10:50 AM (ET)
By JONATHAN PAYE-LAYLEH and ABBAS DULLEH
MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — Liberian security forces sealed off a seaside slum in the capital Wednesday in the latest effort to stop the spread of Ebola, setting off protests by angry residents.
A resident of the West Point district said by phone that security forces were firing into the air to disperse crowds angry over the quarantine measures.
People could be seen gathering at roadblocks just outside the West Point area to complain that they had been cut off from their homes. The restrictions made it difficult to get a full picture of what was happening in the sealed-off neighborhood.
Fear and tension have been building in Monrovia for days and West Point has been one of the flash points. Many residents feel the government has not done enough to protect them from the spread of Ebola.
West Point residents raided an Ebola screening center over the weekend, accusing officials of bringing sick people from all over Monrovia into their neighborhood. In many areas of the capital, meanwhile, dead bodies have lain in the streets for hours, sometimes days, even though residents asked that the corpses be picked up by Health Ministry workers wearing protective gear.
The Ebola outbreak, which began in December, has killed at least 1,229 people in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria.
Liberia has the highest death toll, and its number of cases is rising the fastest. In response, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf ordered West Point sealed off and imposed a nighttime curfew, saying authorities have not been able to curtail the spread of Ebola in the face of defiance of their recommendations.
Sirleaf also ordered gathering places like movie theaters and night clubs shut and put Dolo Town, 30 miles (50 kilometers) south of the capital, under quarantine as well.
"These measures are meant to save lives," she said in an address Tuesday night.
On Wednesday, riot police and soldiers created roadblocks out of piles of scrap wood and barbed wire to prevent anyone from entering or leaving West Point, which occupies a peninsula where the Mesurado River meets the Atlantic Ocean.
Few roads go into the area, and a major road runs along the base of the isthmus, serving as a barrier between the neighborhood and the rest of Monrovia. Ferries to the area have been halted, and a coast guard boat was patrolling the waters around the peninsula.
At least 50,000 people live on the half-mile-long (kilometer-long) point, which is one of the poorest and most densely populated neighborhoods of the capital. Sanitation is poor even in the best of times, and defecation in the streets and beaches is a major problem.
Mistrust of authorities is rampant in this poorly served area, where many people live without electricity or access to clean water.
A woman who called into a local radio station's breakfast program said she was blocked in traffic because there was a protest in West Point by disgruntled youths opposed to the quarantine. Others protested just outside the quarantine area at a roadblock to complain that they had been cut off from their homes.
One resident said that police were firing into the air to try to break up the crowds. He spoke on condition of anonymity to protect his safety.
While whole counties and districts in Sierra Leone and Liberia have been put under quarantine and internal travel restrictions have limited the movement of people in Guinea, the West Point quarantine was the first time such restrictions have been put in place in a capital city.
The current Ebola outbreak is the most severe in Liberia and Sierra Leone, but the U.N. health agency said that there were encouraging signs that the tide was beginning to turn in Guinea. There is also hope that Nigeria has managed to contain the disease to about a dozen cases
Nigeria's health minister, Onyebuchi Chukwu, said Tuesday that a fifth person had died of the disease in that country. All of Nigeria's reported cases so far have been people who had direct contact with a Liberian-American man who was already infected when he arrived in the country on an airliner.
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: From: West Pointe
To: Kerry Burgess
Sent: Friday, September 9, 2011 12:04 PM
Subject: Re: West Pointe Apartments
Good Morning Kerry,
Yes It is still available. What time do you think you would be dropping by just so I can make sure I am available. Our application fee is $38 per adult so if you would like to bring that with you we can get you started. I look forward to meeting you on Tuesday!
Teresa
Warm Regards,
West Pointe Apartments
2111 SW 352nd St Federal Way, WA 98023
[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 09 September 2011 excerpt ends]
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/21/world/africa/ebola-outbreak-liberia-quarantine.html
The New York Times
Clashes Erupt as Liberia Sets an Ebola Quarantine
By NORIMITSU ONISHI AUG. 20, 2014
MONROVIA, Liberia — Soldiers and police officers in riot gear blocked the roads. Even the waterfront was cordoned off, with the coast guard stopping residents from setting out in canoes. The entire neighborhood, a sprawling slum with tens of thousands of people, awoke Wednesday morning to find that it was under strict quarantine in the government’s halting fight against Ebola.
The reaction was swift and violent. Angry young men hurled rocks and stormed barbed-wire barricades, trying to break out. Soldiers repelled the surging crowd with live rounds, driving back hundreds of young men.
One teenager in the crowd, Shakie Kamara, 15, lay on the ground near the barricade, his right leg apparently wounded by a bullet from the melee. “Help me,” he pleaded, barefoot and wearing a green Philadelphia Eagles T-shirt.
“This is messed up,” said Lt. Col. Abraham Kromah, the head of operations for the national police, looking at the teenager and complaining about the crowd. “They injured one of my police officers. That’s not cool. It’s a group of criminals that did this. Look at this child. God in heaven help us.”
The clashes were a dangerous new chapter in West Africa’s five-month-old fight against the deadliest Ebola outbreak on record. The virus continues to spread, yet the total number of cases reported in the affected nations — Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone — is already higher than in all other Ebola outbreaks combined since 1976, when the disease was first identified, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday.
So far, the outbreak has mostly been concentrated in rural areas, but the disease has also spread to major cities like the Guinean capital Conakry, and especially here in Monrovia, the Liberian capital. Fighting Ebola in an urban area — particularly in a neighborhood like this one, known as West Point, an extremely poor and often violent place that still bears deep scars from Liberia’s 14 years of civil war — presents challenges that the government and international aid organizations have only started grappling with.
The risks that Ebola will spread quickly, and the difficulties in containing it, are multiplied in a dense urban environment, especially one where the health system has largely collapsed and residents appear increasingly distrustful of the government’s approach to the crisis, experts say.
At least 1,350 people are estimated to have died in the current outbreak of Ebola, the first of its kind in West Africa. The deaths are rising most rapidly in Liberia, which now has the highest death toll, estimated to be at least 576.
“Being the first time to get this problem, they didn’t know what they were dealing with,” Dr. David Kaggwa, a Ugandan physician working for the World Health Organization here, said of the Liberian government. “They didn’t know how to respond to it. By the time they realized, it was way out of control.”
In a cholera ward at the John F. Kennedy Medical Center that he helped transform into an Ebola ward, Dr. Kaggwa said that his own nation’s long history with Ebola was limited to rural outbreaks.
“This is our first experience in a capital city, and all the indications are that it spreads faster in a city because people are living closer together,” he said.
Beyond the threat of Ebola itself, experts warn that there has been a broader collapse of the public health system here, resulting in a range of life-threatening illnesses and conditions that are being left untreated. Many hospitals closed after health workers died, and the facilities that remain open have become overwhelmed.
“The emergency within the emergency is the collapse of the health care system,” said Dr. Joanne Liu, the president of Doctors Without Borders, who recently surveyed Liberia and other affected nations. “People don’t have access to basic health care,” she said, including malaria treatment for children, medical care for pregnant women and other common but essential needs.
Dr. Liu said that her team had come across six instances of pregnant women who had been wandering around Monrovia for hours, looking for a facility that could help deliver their babies. “They couldn’t find one,” she said. By the time her team had attended to the women, she added, the babies had died.
“All the health care facilities are basically closed in Monrovia,” she added. “There may be some marginal activities, but basically there’s nothing really working right now.”
Sheldon Yett, the director in Liberia for Unicef, said the group had deployed volunteers to West Point and other poor areas to educate residents about Ebola. “The fact that it is really firmly entrenched now in the capital city makes it a real game changer for us,” he said.
Even before the government imposed a blanket quarantine on West Point — a strategy governments in the region are using in a desperate bid to contain the outbreak — the neighborhood was seething.
Last week, Health Ministry officials quietly turned a primary school in West Point into a holding center for Ebola patients without informing the residents. Over the weekend, hundreds of residents invaded the center, enraged that outsiders were also being transferred there. Their community, they believed, was becoming a dumping ground for Ebola patients. Residents stormed through, running off with a generator and supplies like mattresses, some soaked with the blood of patients who were believed to have Ebola.
“I can tell you they were uncountable,” said Isaac Toe, 25, a hygienist who was working at the center at the time of the invasion. “The entire West Point community broke in — men, women, children, boys and girls.”
Christiana Williams, 52, who lives behind the center, said that locals were bewildered when they learned that the neighborhood school had been turned overnight into an Ebola holding center. Through the weekend, she said she heard cries from inside the center.
“ ‘We’re not eating,’ ” Ms. Williams recalled hearing. “ ‘They’re just spraying us.’ ‘We’re getting weak.’ ”About 17 patients who were thought to have Ebola left the center for a couple of days before they were brought to the John F. Kennedy Medical Center here, raising concerns that the disease would continue to spread.
“There’s enough blame to go around,” said Lewis Brown, the information minister, acknowledging that the residents were caught by surprise.
Health officials had no choice but to transfer patients from outside West Point to the holding center because it was the only one of its kind in the city, Mr. Brown said, adding that the government is planning to open similar centers elsewhere.
On Tuesday, hours before the quarantine was declared, community leaders said that despite improvements since the end of the war in 2003 — the creation of public toilets, the paving of the main road — West Point remained a crucible for Liberia’s postwar problems. Crime keeps rising, and so has the use of crack cocaine, called coco or Italian White.
Sprawling across a peninsula just north of the city center, much of West Point is made up of shanties separated by alleys wide enough for only one person. After the war, its population swelled as rural Liberians gravitated here looking for work. Anywhere from 60,000 to 120,000 people are believed to live in West Point.
A deep distrust of the government has fueled rumors that the authorities have made up the Ebola crisis to squeeze money out of international donors.
“We have a lot of Doubting Thomases,” Philip Bropleh, 45, an electrician and community leader, said of people, including politicians, who have said that the government has invented the crisis. “Because of all these things, it allowed Ebola to run into Monrovia.”
On Tuesday night, after most people had gone to sleep, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf announced the imposition of the quarantine in West Point as well as a nationwide curfew. Early Wednesday morning, crowds tried to break through the barricade near an electrical station.
During a lull, many residents complained that they could not leave West Point for work.
“There is nowhere to go for our daily bread,” said Davidette Wilson, 27, who sells goods at a large market just outside West Point.
Making matters worse, the quarantine immediately led to a surge in prices of goods sold inside West Point, residents said. A cup of rice, usually the equivalent of 30 cents, was now going for 90 cents, they said.
Peter Tarr, 22, one of the many former child soldiers in West Point, eked out a living by begging in the city’s wealthier areas. “Where can I go to beg now?” said Mr. Tarr, who lost his right arm in the war.
By midmorning, a crowd began gathering again in front of the entrance near the electrical station.
“You fight Ebola with arms?” David Anan, 34, shouted at the heavily armed soldiers.
Minutes later, hundreds of stone-hurling young men tried to storm through the barricade once again.
In all, residents tried to break through the barricade three times on Wednesday, Col. Prince Johnson, the army’s brigade commander, said Wednesday evening by phone. His soldiers had fired in the air, he said, but he would not comment on whether they had also fired into the crowd, including at the teenage boy. Heavy rains starting around noon helped quell West Point’s fury.
“Things have quieted down,” he said.
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I, Robot (2004)
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Detective Del Spooner: [sneezes] ... Sorry, I'm allergic to bullshit.
- posted by H.V.O.M - Kerry Wayne Burgess 7:03 PM Pacific Time Spokane Valley Washington USA Monday 25 August 2014
