War’s madmen cause then neglect global mental illness they cause

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/

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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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U. S. Representatives Lee, Kucinich comment on NATO show

U.S. Reps Lee and Kucinich
speaking to the press
file photo

Paying for this lying, Cold War relic makes no sense

Excerpt, editing by 
Carolyn Bennett

CALIFORNIA CONGRESSWOMAN BARBARA LEE minces her words

“I will remain steadfast in my efforts for an accelerated withdrawal and am heartened that a majority of Democrats and 12 Republicans in the House joined me last week in an effort to end the war [on Afghanistan] now and safely and responsibly bring our troops home.”

Enough is enough, Lee says. 

Rep. Barbara Lee, center
Rep. Lynn Woolsey, right
Stand against war on Iraq

“There is no military solution in Afghanistan.”

Approaching ten years of war have cost the deaths of “almost two thousand U.S. troops; more than $530 billion in direct costs.

“Two-thirds of Americans say the war is not worth fighting [and] it is past time for our policy to catch up with the American people.… While NATO leaders and President Obama took an important step toward ending the war, we need to bring our troops home now – not years from now.”    

OHIO CONGRESSMAN DENNIS KUCINICH

minces no words

“The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is no benevolent organization [but] a cost-sharing organization that finances aggressive military action.…”

Rep. Dennis Kucinich
Activist Cindy Sheehan
 and others

Endless unlawful war

While hiding behind the claim of providing “for ‘common defense’,” NATO “allows us to wage wars of choice under the guise of international peacekeeping”: the most recent example being the “unconstitutional war on Libya” where NATO operated “under a United Nations mandate of protecting civilians” while in reality “backing one side in a civil war and pursuing a policy of regime change.”

War on Libya’s estimated cost to the United States: $1.1 billion.

Milking the cow

Participation in NATO exacts great financial cost to the United States, Kucinich said. “We contribute the majority of funds for NATO’s common budget — including 25 percent of the military budget”; and we incur significant costs deploying U.S. forces in support of NATO missions. 

The United States “contributed more than $1.3 billion to NATO’s military budget between FY 2010 and 2012.” 

End the sham, end the show

U.S. Reps Lee and Kucinich
Left, 2nd from right

“NATO is an anachronism,” Kucinich concludes.

“Instead of trying to bolster the organization, we should begin serious discussions to dismantle it.”

Sources and notes

Oakland, California: “Barbara Lee Releases Statement on NATO Summit and Afghanistan,”

May 21, 2012, http://lee.house.gov/press-releases/barbara-lee-releases-statement-on-nato-summit-and-afghanistan/

Washington, D.C.: “NATO Talks a Sham: War in Afghanistan is Not Ending — Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) releases a statement as world leaders meet in Chicago for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit,” May 21, 2012, http://kucinich.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=296347

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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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Endless aftermath

War makers’ mendacity, war’s consequences

Re-reporting, editing, brief comment by Carolyn Bennett 

The Eisenhower Research Project derives its purpose from 34th U.S. President Dwight David Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell address in which he warns of the ‘unwarranted influence’ of the military-industrial complex and appeals for an ‘alert and knowledgeable citizenry’ as the only force capable of balancing the often contrasting demands of security and liberty in a democratic state. 

A new report by the Eisenhower Research Project based at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University has found that U.S. wars will cost its people 3.2 to 4 trillion dollars — including medical care and disability for current and future war veterans.

The first comprehensive analysis of all U.S., coalition, and civilian casualties, including U.S. contractors, this ‘Costs of War’ project “assesses many of the wars’ hidden costs, such as interest on war-related debt and veterans’ benefits.…

The U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan will cost between $3.2 and $4 trillion, including medical care and disability for current and future war veterans. This figure does not include substantial probable future interest on war-related debt.

More than 31,000 people in uniform and military contractors have died, including the Iraqi and Afghan security forces and other military forces allied with the United States.

Conservatively estimated, 137,000 civilians have died in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

The wars have created more than 7.8 million refugees among Iraqis, Afghans, and Pakistanis.

Pentagon bills account for half of the budgetary costs incurred and are a fraction of the full economic cost of the wars.

Because the war has been financed almost entirely by borrowing, $185 billion in interest has already been paid on war spending, and another $1 trillion could accrue in interest alone through 2020.

Federal obligations to care for past and future veterans of these wars will range (total estimates) from $600 to $950 billion. This number is not included in most analyses of the costs of war and will not peak until mid-century.

Co-director of the Eisenhower Research Project Neta Crawford says, “There are many costs and consequences of war that cannot be quantified, and the consequences of wars do not end when the fighting stops… The Eisenhower study group has made a start at counting and estimating the costs in blood, treasure, and lost opportunities that are both immediately visible and those which are less visible and likely to grow even when the fighting winds down.”

Nevertheless, U.S. officials continue making wars on foreign lands and peoples and neglecting critical U.S. domestic needs. Democracy Now reports today on the U.S.’s continuing carnage.

HORN OF AFRICA

Somalia

“Somalia is one of the poorest countries in the world,” AlertNet reports in its country profiles. “Health indicators are also among the worst in Africa. The maternal mortality rate is around one in 100.”

U.S. Drones target “militant Islamist group” in Somalia, the Democracy Now program headlines. The United States is now using drone missiles in attacks on “at least six countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia.” U.S. President Barack Obama “has greatly ramped up the U.S. use of armed drones.”

Somalia suffers climate change effect: Drought causing displacement, mass exit of refugees into neighboring Kenya.

In the midst of U.S. drone strikes, the Save the Children group has reportedly “estimated [that] 800 Somali children cross into Kenya every day to escape the drought.” The United Nations estimates the drought has caused dire hardship for “10 million people in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda.

The United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, Mark Bowden, says, at the current rate of suffering and malnutrition, the future “level of deaths in Somalia [will likely] take us back almost 20 years and certainly be unparalleled in the recent decade.”

Developing countries or underdeveloped countries cannot develop when “rich” countries are bombing them back to antiquity.

When asking why poor people are poor and remain poor, it might be well to look at who is enormously rich, and how and why they are enormously rich.

AFGHANISTAN/PAKISTAN

Afghanistan is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world and home to a booming narcotics trade. The country struggles to recover from more than a quarter-century of conflict, with violence still raging in parts of the country. The Taliban are fighting to oust tens of thousands of foreign troops and Afghanistan’s Western-backed government.

Geo-strategic Pakistan, though receiving enormous aid, is scarred by conflict, buffeted by earthquakes and floods. Among the world’s biggest humanitarian emergencies are in Pakistan. The 2010 floods affected 20 million of its people, a fifth of the population.

PAKISTAN

Droned, post-floods, climate change

United States officials continue to intensify a drone war on Pakistan. Pakistan’s officials reportedly have “told the U.S. to stop using the Shamsi Air Base in the southwest of the country to launch drone strikes.”

PERSIAN GULF 

IRAQ

Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed since a U.S.-led invasion toppled the country’s leader, Saddam Hussein, in 2003. Many people have been displaced. Others have fled abroad. Basic services have been devastated by sanctions and war. Violence continues to hamper aid operations.

U.S.-occupation, war claimed not to be war

In the deadliest month in three years, another three U.S. soldiers died yesterday “in [military] action in southern Iraq.” This month, at least 15 U.S. soldiers have died in this country; all except of one reportedly died in combat.

The Obama administration persists in claiming the U.S. combat mission in Iraq has ended.

Sources and notes

“Costs of War” Project — Estimated cost of post-9/11 wars: 225,000 lives, up to $4 trillion,” http://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2011/06/warcosts

“U.S. Wars in Projected to Cost Nearly $4 Trillion With Hundreds of Thousands Dead — A new report is estimating the true cost of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will end up being approximately $4 trillion — far more than the Bush or Obama administrations have acknowledged. The report also estimates between 224,000 and 258,000 people have died directly from warfare, including 125,000 civilians in Iraq. Brown University professor Catherine Lutz is the co-director of the ‘Costs of War’ report,” June 30, 2011, http://www.democracynow.org/2011/6/30/headlines

Department of Defense by Spc. Tia P. Sokimson, U.S. Army/Released The cost of wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan are estimated at 225,000 lives and up to $4 trillion in U.S. spending, in a new report by scholars with the Eisenhower Research Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies.

“The Eisenhower Research Project is a new, nonpartisan, nonprofit, scholarly initiative that derives its purpose from President Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell address, in which he warned of the ‘unwarranted influence’ of the military-industrial complex and appealed for an ‘alert and knowledgeable citizenry’ as the only force able to balance the often contrasting demands of security and liberty in the democratic state.”

Catherine Lutz, the Thomas J. Watson Jr. Family Professor of Anthropology and International Studies at Brown University, co-directs the Eisenhower Research Project with Neta Crawford, a 1985 Brown graduate and professor of political science at Boston University.

The Costs of War has released its findings online, at www.costsofwar.org, to spur public discussion about America at war. Editors: Brown University has a fiber link television studio available for domestic and international live and taped interviews, and maintains an ISDN line for radio interviews. For more information, call (401) 863-2476.

Democracy Now headlines, June 30, 2011, http://www.democracynow.org/2011/6/30/headlines

Country profiles at AlertNet

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/country-profiles/somalia/

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/country-profiles/afghanistan/

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/country-profiles/pakistan/

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/country-profiles/iraq/

U.S.-OCCUPIED, at WAR
MIDDLE EAST NEAR EAST COUNTRIES

The Middle or Near East consists of the lands around the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. These lands extend from Morocco to the Arabian Peninsula and Iran, sometimes beyond. 

Some of the first modern Western geographers and historians who tended to divide the Orient into three regions gave the region the name Near East. In their three-region designations, the Near East applied to the region nearest Europe, extending from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf; the Middle East, extending from the Persian Gulf to Southeast Asia; and the Far East, encompassing the regions facing the Pacific Ocean.

The change in usage from Near to Middle East began evolving before World War II and extended through the war. The term Middle East was given to the British military command in Egypt.

So defined, the Middle East consisted of the states or territories of —

Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon
Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Jordan
Egypt, The Sudan, Libya and
Various states of Arabia proper (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, and the Trucial States, or Trucial Oman [now United Arab Emirates]

 Subsequent events have tended, in loose usage, to enlarge the number of lands included in the definition, among them —

Three North African countries: Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco“closely connected in sentiment and foreign policy with the Arab states”  

Afghanistan and Pakistan, because of geographic factors, state official and others take into account in connection with affairs of the Middle East. 

Greece occasionally is included in the compass of the Middle East because the Middle Eastern (then Near Eastern) question in its modern form first became apparent when the Greeks in 1821 rebelled to assert their independence from the Ottoman Empire). Turkey and Greece, together with the predominantly Arabic-speaking lands around the eastern end of the Mediterranean, were also formerly known as the Levant.

Historically the countries along the eastern Mediterranean shores were called the Levant. Common use of the term is associated with Venetian and other trading ventures and the establishment of commerce with cities such as Tyre and Sidon as a result of the Crusades. It was applied to the coastlands of Asia Minor and Syria, sometimes extending from Greece to Egypt. It was also used for Anatolia and as a synonym for the Middle or Near East. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the term High Levant referred to the Far East. The name Levant States was given to the French mandate of Syria and Lebanon after World War I, and the term is sometimes still used for those two countries, which became independent in 1946. Levant (from the French lever, ‘to rise,’ as in sunrise, meaning the east.

Use of the term Middle East remains unsettled, and some agencies (notably the United States State Department and certain bodies of the United Nations) still employ the term Near East.

Middle East. (2011). Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Deluxe Edition.  Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica

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Bennett's books 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]; The Book Den, Ltd.: BookDenLtd@frontiernet.net [Danville, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, 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]; LONGS’ Cards and Books: http://longscardsandbooks.com/ [Penn Yan, NY]
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