Every gun that is made, every
warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft
from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
. . .
The price of a single destroyer could
heal millions. (slight license with Ike)
Nevertheless, Ellen Brown recalled in a Global Research article last year, “Every year since World War II the United States has been at war
somewhere.”
Editing, commentary by Carolyn Bennett
 |
| Legitimately Mentally ill neglected |
This week UN circles commemorated “World Mental Health
Day” ─ Africa to Asia, overlooked USA and Co
Years caught in the crosshairs of foreigners’ wars in their
land, half of Afghans over the age of 15 are reportedly suffering mental illness:
“depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder.”
In Uganda’s north in almost every family, there continues to
be mental trauma twenty years after a rebellion (now ended) in which thousands
of kidnapped children were forced into military operations.
Madness among USA/NATO/UNSC powers
 |
| NATO/USA |
Legitimate mental illness is often caused then neglected by the
willful madness of foreign militaries and militarists, the makers of war.
Four hundred and fifty (450) million people worldwide suffer
mental disorders. More than 75 percent of these people live in developing
countries. Many of the mentally ill people are shut away or locked up. Few receive
treatment.
S
|
ome madmen hold positions of power and no doubt should be
locked up or at least removed from positions of power.
Veterans for Peace co-founder Tarak Kauff wrote last year
that wars and occupation corrupt the human condition and are evidence of “madness”:
war, the crime of “madmen.”
Four decades after activist Martin Luther King’s “Beyond
Vietnam” speech, Kauff wrote, “madmen” ─ madmen “dispensing death, cold to the
misery of others,” indifferent to the pain they have inflicted, “immune to
reason and conscience” ─ “still run the
asylum.”
Moreover, madmen solidify, entrench this insanity as normal.
“The system and those in power, the executors and guardians of an inhumane
system of corporate capitalism, recognize that the source of their power is a
subdued, sedated and manipulated public, a public fed lies and fantasies that
can, when needed (and for a long time), be manipulated by fear or coercion,” Kauff
said. In the long run, “the ‘mad ruling class’” relinquishes human “qualities
of love, kindness and empathy.”
F
|
urthering the status quo, madmen of war turn “humanitarian”
dispensers of pain who retreat self-satisfied to gated estates.
 |
| Somalis suffer U.S. humanitarian drone bombs |
In some parts of the world it is only during or after an
emergency that people with legitimate
mental health disorders get any treatment at all ─ and often this humanitarian
largesse is not what they need.
Dr. Mustafa Elmasri, a psychiatrist in Gaza with two decades’
experience working in conflicts and war and their painful aftermath, says “the
idea of ‘emergency relief’ is totally distorted in the psychosocial sector
because it is often only after disasters that people get help, when they needed
it before the disaster.”
In the case of Gaza, Dr. Elmasri said “emergency relief was
tagged to the war”; then the relief disappeared. During the war in Gaza, NGOs making a profit
on others’ misery swooped down. “Far too many international NGOs came in.,” he
said. “They recruited staff and trained them for a few days on some aspects of
trauma work, sent them around the place going from house to house looking for
traumatized people, sent in psychologists to debrief health and emergency staff
in single-group sessions but … single session debriefing is harmful.” Quite
naturally, he said, “Families rejected this psychological help [because] what
they really needed was help with basic needs.”
In some cases, assistance is ineffective and inappropriate, Elmasri
said. In the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, local people chased foreign NGO
staff out of villages because so many were coming in.
M
|
ilitary industrial complex joins NGO and sectarian industrial
complexes to perpetuate the madness of war, its misery, and the madmen (madwomen
of the Hillary Rodham Clinton ilk) who create and sustain a status quo of
perpetual madness.
“Those mad with power will never voluntarily relinquish nor
surrender to even the most eloquent and passionate appeals,” Veterans for Peace
activist Tarak Kauff wrote. So the citizenry must confront this machine of madmen,
refuse any longer to be passive and, as Mario Savio said in 1964─
 |
| ANSWER Coalition |
‘… Put your bodies upon the gears
and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and … make it
stop.’
Sources and notes
Quote from 34th U.S. president, Dwight David Eisenhower
Ellen Brown is an author and president of the Public Banking
Institute.
“Africa: Untreated Mental Illness the Invisible Fallout of
War and Poverty,”
(Stephen Leahy), October 10, 2012, http://allafrica.com/stories/201210110511.html
“This Madness Must Cease! Resist the War Machine March 19,
2011” (Tarak Kauff), February 5, 2011, http://www.stopthesewars.org/2011/02/05/this-madness-must-cease-resist-the-war-machine-march-19-2011/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/2012/05/veterans-peace-team-face-to-face-with-police-on-may-day/
Denied … Mental health and human rights
People
with mental disorders are some of the most neglected people in the world. In
many communities, mental illness is not considered a real medical condition,
but viewed as a weakness of character or as a punishment for immoral behavior. Even
when people with mental disorders are recognized as having a medical condition,
the treatment they receive is often less than humane.
Human
rights violations against people with mental disorders occur in communities
throughout the world – in mental health institutions, hospitals, and in the
wider community.
http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/5/11-040511/en/
http://www.who.int/features/2005/mental_health/en/index.html
Image: Harrie Timmermans /Global Initiative on Psychiatry: A
man crouches inside a mental health institution
Mental health beyond the crises, Bulletin of the World
Health Organization 2011; 89:326–327. doi:10.2471/BLT.11.040511
Dr. Mustafa Elmasri took his Medical Degree at Alexandria
University in 1983, Diploma in Psychotherapy from Tel Aviv University in 1996
and Diploma of Psychiatric Practice in 1997 from the universities of London and
Egypt’s Ain Shams.
He began his career as a doctor in Gaza in 1986 and started
working in mental health care in 1992. From 1998–2000, he worked with genocide
survivors in Cambodia; 2000–2003 with terrorized civilians in Algeria; and
2005–2006 with Darfur refugees in Chad.
Since 2008, Dr. Mustafa Elmasri has been working with the
World Health Organization to integrate mental health services into Gaza’s
primary health care. http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/5/11-040511/en/
______________________________________
Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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