Hasta La Gadget!

On a March evening in 2002, the USS Oscar Austin began a nighttime transit through the Skagerrak, a busy shipping lane connecting Norway, Denmark and Sweden, when disaster nearly struck. 

Retired U.S. Navy Capt. John Cordle was on the bridge navigating the ship. “It was a very narrow, confusing transit at night,” Cordle told The Huffington Post. Three Navy ships were following. 

It had been a long day. Cordle had pulled an all-nighter, working various shifts. That’s when he nearly caused a drowsy driving catastrophe that could have caused several naval vessels to collide. 

“I just sort of fell asleep standing up,” he admitted. 

Retired Adm. James G. Stavridis says these situations are unacceptable ― and all too common. 

“Sleep is a key part of the requirements for resilience and good decision-making,” Stavridis said in an interview.

“As people become more and more exhausted from a lack of sleep, they are prone to making the most costly mistakes imaginable,” he wrote in a Huffington Post blog post. “When a military officer makes a bad decision in combat, terrible consequences often unfold. People die, and they are often innocent civilians who die as a result of collateral damage from an attack of some kind, or they are the men and women working for the exhausted military officer whose judgment is impaired.”

Stavridis served four years as a NATO commander and was a top adviser to the Secretary of the Navy and the Secretary of Defense. He led Deep Blue, the strategic and tactical think tank the Navy created after Sept. 11. He has won dozens of military medals and awards, and even had one named after him.  

His reputation extends far beyond the military. He’s been cited as an innovator in evolving the military and an advocate for “soft power” approaches to foreign policy. Hillary Clinton even vetted the admiral as a possible running mate, The New York Times reported. 

In a 2012 TED Talk on global security, Stavridis called for “open-source security” and said it was more important to build bridges than walls. He even once advocated for creating a new branch of the military, the U.S. Cyber Force.

Suffice it to say, Stavridis is not afraid of questioning military status quo ― especially when it’s not working. And when it comes to sleep, he fears the worst.

Sleep As A ‘Weapon’

Cordle’s brush with disaster was a wake-up call. He opened his eyes as the panicked crew scrambled to figure out what was going on. 

“For a moment there everybody lost track of where we were,” Cordle said.

One of your natural reactions is to take charge when things aren’t going so well, he explained. He gave the order to stop the ship. 

“And then I realized that I had no idea what was going on. I was so tired that I didn’t think it through,” he said. 

“I could have driven us into shallow water,” he explained. “I forgot there were ships following me that could have run into me.”

Everything turned out OK. “But in retrospect,” he said, “I let myself get so tired that I basically had a near miss.”

Waking up to the dangers of sleep deprivation for the military is a big part of the reason Stavridis said he’s been speaking up about the issue.

“For young officers facing the challenges of watchstanding or flying or combat maneuvers, it is imperative that their superiors ensure real balance in the sleep-waking cycle,” he said.

The conclusion he’s come to about sleep: “Military commanders must think of sleep as a weapon that they can deploy.”

Hitting Rock Bottom

Sleep played a role in the USS Port Royal becoming grounded in 14-to-22 feet of water off the coast of Oahu, Hawaii, in February 2009. The Navy estimated damage to the 567-foot cruiser cost around $25 million to $40 million.

Capt. John Carroll, who was in charge of the ship at the time of the grounding, was relieved of his command and reassigned after the incident. The Navy gave him nonjudicial punishment for dereliction of duty and improper hazarding of a vessel, The Honolulu Advertiser reported.

A report from the Navy Safety Investigation Board cited the misinterpretation of a navigation system, faulty equipment, an inexperienced crew and a sleep-deprived Carroll as causes that contributed to the incident.

Carroll had had just four and a half hours of sleep in the 24 hours before the ship grounded ― and just 15 hours of sleep in the three days leading up to the incident. Carroll admitted he was tired and fatigued at the time, according to the Navy report. 

A Navy officer’s schedule is inherently high-tempo and always-changing, making good, consistent sleep difficult. “By nature we have to be able to do everything 24/7,” Cordle said. “When a ship is at sea, somebody has to be up running the engines and driving the ship around the clock.”

Everyone on board a Navy vessel works on rotational shift and rest patterns ― but it’s up to the ship’s officers to figure out that schedule. It’s typical for those shifts to rotate every day.

“You never worked at the same time and you never slept at the same time,” Cordle said.

There’s a culture of toughness on a ship and not admitting when you’re tired, according to Cordle.

Staying awake for a long time is “almost a badge of honor sometimes,” Cordle added. “There’s the expectation to get the job done.”

A Cultural Problem With Sleep

Each branch of the military has its own policies around rest, but the “sleep comes later” attitude is evident on land, air and sea.

Jordan Thornburg, a physician’s assistant at Fort Riley, told HuffPost in April that 27-hour shifts were the norm when he served as an engineer officer in both Iraq and Kuwait. Lt. Col. Ingrid Lim, the lead sleep expert at the office of the Army Surgeon General said in the same article that sleep can be problematic for soldiers. “Whenever fighting happens, sleep is the first thing to go,” he said.

A 2015 Army report found that 10 percent of active duty Army soldiers have a diagnosed sleep disorder ― and almost half have a “clinically significant sleep problem.” Fatigue contributed to 628 Army accidents and 32 soldier deaths between 2011 and 2014, according to the study.

A 2006 report cited “acute and cumulative fatigue, circadian disruptions and sleep inertia” all as factors that contributed to the near crash of a 247-foot U.S. Air Force C-5 Galaxy cargo aircraft as it attempted a remote island landing. 

“Analysis of the crew work/rest cycles and transmeridian travel confirmed that fatigue was one of the more significant human performance factors in this mishap,” according to the Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine journal article.

General guidelines in Air Force medical policies suggest air personnel get seven to eight hours of sleep every 24 hours. The Air Force also requires a 12-hour off-duty shift before an airman goes on duty. 

But Stavridis said there is still a culture that allows these standards to be pushed aside when needed and overridden in combat operations, and they’re not always as rigorously enforced as they should be.

“Too often, commanders want to show their subordinates that they are somehow super-human,” he wrote. “The leaders feel that saying they will lay down for an hour nap, or need six hours of sleep will undermine the confidence of their subordinates.”

We would never allow an intoxicated soldier in our formations. … Why would we let a soldier in our formations with sleep deprivation?

For Cordle, his own near miss drove him to find ways to avoid putting himself and his crews in those situations again.

“When you’re the guy in charge, if you’re tired, a lot of times there’s nobody else to tell you what to do,” he said. “You have to have your wits about you.”

He’s worked with a team of sleep researchers and naval operations experts to help create navy watch schedules that align sailors’ natural circadian rhythms ― rather than schedules than those that go against our natural sleep-wake schedules. The team is working with the Naval Postgraduate School to help distribute more information about the sleep-optimized schedules for other Navy officers to use. 

“Everything takes time, but I see the conversations happening,” he said. “And having folks like Adm. Stavridis talk about it is very encouraging. I think a lot of the senior leaders are talking about it.”

The Army began rolling out a new force-wide wellness campaign in 2013 called the Performance Triad. The science-based program provides soldiers and their families resources to optimize three pillars of good health: nutrition, exercise and sleep.

Lt. Gen. Patricia Horoho, the Army’s surgeon general, said sleep patterns may be the most challenging behavior to change, but she’s committed to it.

“This is a culture change that we need to make,” she told Federal News Radio. “It’s going to take a while to get away from the idea that sleep is something we can give up, and start critically asking ourselves whether it’s worth the health consequences.”

“We would never allow an intoxicated soldier in our formations,” she added. “Why would we let a soldier in our formations with sleep deprivation?”

Sarah DiGiulio is The Huffington Post’s sleep reporter. You can contact her at sarah.digiulio@huffingtonpost.com.  

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CHICAGO, July 29 (Reuters) – The state of Florida, the first to report the arrival of Zika in the continental United States, has yet to invite a dedicated team of the federal government’s disease hunters to assist with the investigation on the ground, health officials told Reuters.

Coordination with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention since the state reported possible local Zika transmission on July 19 has been conducted largely at a distance, they said. That is surprising to some infectious disease experts, who say a less robust response could lead to a higher number of infections.

While Florida has a strong record of battling limited outbreaks of similar mosquito-borne viruses, including dengue and chikungunya, the risk of birth defects caused by Zika adds greater urgency to containing its spread with every available means, they say. Other states have quickly called in CDC teams to help track high-profile diseases.

“You only have a small window. This is the window” to prevent a small-scale outbreak from spreading, said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, who expressed impatience with the pace of the Florida investigation.

Florida on Friday said that four cases of Zika in the state were likely caused by mosquito, the first sign that the virus is circulating locally, though it has yet to identify mosquitoes carrying the disease.

The current Zika outbreak was first detected last year in Brazil, where it has been linked to more than 1,700 cases of the birth defect microcephaly, and has since spread rapidly through the Americas.

Florida Governor Rick Scott said the state health department was working with the CDC as it continues its Zika investigation. CDC said it is closely coordinating with Florida officials who are leading the effort. Dr Marc Fischer, a CDC epidemiologist, has gone to Florida at the state’s request.

But the state has not invited in the CDC’s wider emergency response team of experts in epidemiology, risk communication, vector control and logistics, according to Florida health department spokeswoman Mara Gambineri.

In its plans to fight Zika nationwide, CDC stressed that such teams would help local officials track and contain the virus. Similar teams were sent to Utah earlier this month to solve how a person may have become infected while caring for a Zika-infected patient, before local officials went public with the case, and quickly joined an effort to contain an Ebola case in Dallas in 2014.

“Should we need additional assistance, we will reach out,” Gambineri said in an email. She did not reply to questions about why the state decided not to bring in a CDC team.

CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said the agency has several teams ready for when states request help with Zika, including Florida.

“If invited, we’ve got a team ready to go,” he said. 

FUNDING BLAME GAME

Florida health officials publicly disclosed the first case of suspected local transmission on July 19.

They have since been testing hundreds of area residents to identify other possible infections, in some cases knocking on doors asking people to provide urine samples, and studying local mosquito populations to see if they are carrying the virus.

The state has warned residents to protect themselves against mosquito bites, and distributed Zika prevention kits for pregnant women at local doctors’ offices.

Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert from the University of Minnesota, said the two counties involved in the Florida probe – Miami-Dade County and Broward County – have extensive mosquito control experience. But he was surprised that the state had not yet sought CDC’s help in quickly gathering information about where people were when they were bitten.

“When cases like this occur, it’s critical that there be rapid epidemiological investigations to determine the likely location where the mosquito exposure occurred,” Osterholm said. “Only with that can you identify the breeding sites and eliminate them.”

As Zika’s arrival in the United States loomed in recent months, Republican and Democratic leaders have blamed each other for holding up funding to fight it. President Barack Obama’s administration asked Congress for $1.9 billion to fund a Zika response. Republican lawmakers proposed much smaller sums, and talks with their Democratic counterparts stalled before Congress adjourned for the summer.

Scott, a Republican, said on Friday he had asked top officials in the Obama administration, including CDC Director Tom Frieden, for more resources to fight Zika. He has allocated$26 million from the state’s budget.

On July 20, the White House said that Obama had called the Florida governor to discuss the possibility that Zika was circulating in the state, and promised an extra $5.6 million in federal funding in addition to about $2 million provided by CDC.

The statement praised Florida’s record of responding to mosquito-borne outbreaks and its close coordination with federal partners, including the CDC.

“Florida does what Florida does,” said one public health expert familiar with the investigation. “If I were health commissioner, I would have asked for their (CDC’s) help immediately.”

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Bernard Orr)

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After back-to-back Republican and Democratic conventions, the stage is set for a 100-day mad dash to the November presidential contest. There were telling differences between the two events.

To begin with, the conventions revealed the state of play within each party. Both Republicans and Democrats confronted insurgencies with dramatically different outcomes. On the Republican side, one of the insurgent candidates, Donald Trump, vanquished the establishment leaving the party in some disarray. Many national GOP leaders boycotted the convention and refused to endorse Trump. Those who endorsed the victor did so either because they felt they had no choice or because they retained a vague hope that should he win, their congressional leaders would be able to limit the damage that might occur in an unrestrained Trump presidency. Adding to the fractiousness of the GOP’s situation, significant components of another insurgent group, prominent leaders of the religious right, also refused to endorse the nominee creating negative press with a walkout on the first day followed by a prime time rejection by Ted Cruz on day three.

The Democrats fared somewhat better since their establishment candidate, Hillary Clinton, won. Because Clinton embraced a good number of her opponent’s progressive proposals, Bernie Sanders’ felt comfortable enough to give her a full-throated endorsement on the convention’s opening night. This display of unity appeared to be enough to mollify many of Sanders’ supporters, though a number of movement activists who had embraced the Sanders’ cause left the convention unsatisfied. Nevertheless, the Democrats concluded their four-day meeting with the appearance of greater unity than had been found at the GOP gathering.

There was another key difference between the two parties’ quadrennial events. Modern conventions have been largely stripped of their political functions, reducing them to over-produced infomercials. While Trump had promised a “blockbuster”, the Republican convention was a lack-luster affair bringing together a strange collection of minor “celebrities” and drew headlines for a series of unforced errors.

On the first day, there was a contentious rules fight leading to a mass walk-out. This opening sour note was later eclipsed by revelations that the initially well-reviewed speech by Trump’s wife had been, in part, plagiarized from a speech given by Michelle Obama, 8 years earlier. On the next night, Trump inexplicably decided to call into one of the networks to complain about an unrelated issue in the midst of an emotional speech by the mother of a victim of the embassy attack in Benghazi. Then, of course, there was the pay back speech by Ted Cruz. With most GOP luminaries not in attendance, the key Trump endorsement speeches were given by his children.

In contrast, the Democrats’ event was well produced and, despite moments of tension and controversy, was a nearly flawless affair. Clinton was able to receive validation and support from President Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, Vice-President Biden, her main opponent Senator Sanders, leading progressive Senator Elizabeth Warren, and most of the Democratic party’s Senators and Members of Congress. In addition, there was a host of major celebrities who performed at or addressed the event.

The Democrats were also able to dodge a few potentially disruptive bullets caused by concerns among Sanders’ supporters that the establishment had unfairly tipped the scales of the election in favor of Clinton. The Clinton team did this by agreeing with Sanders to form a commission to write new rules for party operations and for the next election and by forcing the party’s controversial chair to resign in advance of the convention.

The Sanders and Clinton campaigns did compromise on the party platform with Clinton accepting more progressive positions that had been put forward by Sanders. Nevertheless some movement activists who had embraced the Sanders’ campaign remained unsettled by concerns like: the absence of strong and clear opposition to unfair trade agreements; a commitment to no more war and universal health care for all; and a firmer position in defense of Palestinian rights. This resulted in a few demonstrations inside the convention and larger protests outside the hall. But while these efforts served as reminders of work that remains to be done, none ultimately disrupted the thematic orchestration of the Clinton convention.

A final major differences between the two conventions were in the themes they conveyed. Trumps’ insurgency has been predicated on the personality of Trump, hatred of all things Clinton, and the frustration, fear, and anger of those who have felt they are losing ground in today’s economy and changing world. They resent the “other”–Mexicans, Muslims, and groups whom they feel benefit from affirmative action programs. They fear crime, terrorism, loss of American power and prestige, and changes in the world and society that have feeling left out and adrift. Sensing this, Trump and his convention preyed on this anger and fear–focusing it on the person of Hillary Clinton.    

The convention was an angry affair with former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani ranting about crime and Clinton, and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie leading a shocking anti-Clinton floor chant of “lock her up”. For his part, Trump’s acceptance speech was well-crafted and well-delivered. But it was an anger-filled dark litany of the nation’s ills. It was a far-reaching indictment of all that is wrong with America with his solution being to elect him with the vague assurance that he alone knows how to get it right.

Clinton, on the other hand, developed a more positive message. She acknowledged that problems exist, to be sure, but she proposed specific fixes that involved bipartisan compromise, and communities working together with government to create and expand opportunities and improve the quality of life for all. It was an upbeat message conveyed not only by Clinton but by a stream of speakers–citizens from every walk of life who told of their struggles and how action had been to taken to address their needs.      

As political and policy events, the Democrats’ convention had the clear advantage. Both parties spent considerable time in attacking the others’ nominee. But Democrats were better at telling their story, presenting their candidate and their programs, and creating optimism that they had made progress in the last 8 years and would continue to make positive change in the years to come.

If anything, the two conventions established was that just as the primary season has been raucous and contentious, the general election promises more of the same. It will be an election like no other.  

Follow @AAIUSA for more.  

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For my generation of American gay men, the AIDS epidemic was a second Vietnam War. It reached us as a rumor and soon revealed itself as a killing field. Just as the war had divided the country, so did AIDS. From initial public reports in 1981, through the end of the Reagan presidency in 1989, many people at risk saw the threat as threefold: from the disease itself, from rampant homophobia and from a government that simultaneously withheld help and initiated campaigns of fear.

In those years, combating the enemy was a D.I.Y. mix of community organizing, medical volunteerism and direct action. Art was very much in the picture, because artists were hard hit by the epidemic, but also because art is (or can be) strategically useful. It can broadcast or insinuate messages into the larger culture, embody complex truths, absorb fear, preserve memory.

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Turkey’s army killed 35 Kurdish militants after they attempted to storm a base in the southeastern Hakkari province early on Saturday, military officials said.

The overnight attack came hours after clashes in Hakkari’s Cukurca district between soldiers and militants from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that left eight soldiers dead, the officials said.

The militants attempted to take the base in three different groups, but were spotted by aerial reconnaissance. An air operation was launched, killing 23 of them, the officials said.

Four more were then killed in a ground operation, they said. The remaining eight were killed in clashes in Hakkari’s Cukurca district.

Friday’s clashes in Cukurca also left 25 soldiers wounded, the officials said.

Turkey’s military – NATO’s second-largest – is grappling with the insurgency in the mainly Kurdish southeast as its senior ranks undergo a major shake-up in following a July 15-16 coup attempt.

On Thursday, Turkey announced an overhaul of the armed forces, with 99 colonels promoted to the rank of general or admiral and nearly 1,700 military personnel given dishonourable discharges over their alleged roles in the coup.

About 40 percent of all generals and admirals in the military have been dismissed since the coup.

In the southeast, the military has frequently carried out air strikes after a 2 1/2-year ceasefire and peace process between the government and the PKK broke down last summer.

Thousands of militants and hundreds of civilians and soldiers have been killed since then. Some cities in the predominantly Kurdish southeast have been engulfed in the worst violence since the 1990s.

More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict since the PKK – designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union – began its insurgency in 1984.

(Reporting by Seyhmus Cakan and Humeyra Pamuk; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Larry King)

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