Healthcare

The Cleveland Plain Dealer staff , has published a six part series of reports in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on the still lasting effects of the defoliants we used in our destruction of Vietnam. Reports from Vietnam as well as about the daughter of a brother Vietnam Veteran.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 25, 2011) — For troubled war veterans, a friendly bartender can be the source of more than just drinks and a sympathetic ear.

A pilot study suggests that some bartenders may be in a good position to identify veterans in need of mental health services and help connect them to the appropriate agency.

Researchers at Ohio State University surveyed 71 bartenders employed at Veterans of Foreign Wars posts in Ohio.

The results showed that bartenders felt very close to their customers and that these customers shared their problems freely with them, said Keith Anderson, lead author of the study and assistant professor of social work at Ohio State.

By Kevin Zeese

Members of the corporate political duopoly switched seats and sat next to each other making it even harder to tell the corporate welfare party from the crony capitalist party. Sadly, the spokespersons for both failed to learn the lessons of history and as a result the American economy will continue to falter with U.S. militarism continuing to expand.

Listening to the saccharin rhetoric of President Obama one would think the nation’s economy was flourishing and the military was winning wars. The truth, that the economy is still in collapse and the military is stuck in war quagmires all piling up record debt, was hard to see through his veil of words.

Via OpEdNews

Retired Capt USAF, Myles Spicer, USAF 1954-57 retired from reserves, lays out the long over due 'Support' for those we send into occupations theaters and then forget about. The so called (T)'s {oh the fun with the 'purple heart bandages' as the wars raged}, once long ago (R)'s and even conservative, won't like this, they want but don't want to pay for, and not just war, as most of them were the ones that remained silent for over a decade, still ongoing silence, as to Real Support but very loud as to support of the failed policies and related lies and costs.

The impelling case to impose a "war tax"

Military Families’ Emotional State Showing Signs of Strain

Research highlights opportunities for improved and targeted support

By Dave Lindorff

 
"The wranglers over creeds and dogmas are perhaps the most persistent of all agitators; the bedrock idea being that a wrong exists which must be found and exterminated."

-- Eugene Debs

"Get it straight, I'm not a humanitarian, I'm a hell-raiser."

--Mother Jones

A new year and a new political party in power in the House of Representatives provide a new opportunity to keep pushing for a single payer/Medicare for all national health program. For Americans suffering through the increasing cost of health insurance and its decreasing coverage, the health care crisis continues and the health debate has not ended.

And does Anyone hear these patriotic constitution readers, or any of their supporters, even mention their wars of choice or the veterans and families of?!?!

Army efforts don't stem Fort Hood suicides

6 January 2010 - The Army's largest post saw a record-high number of soldiers kill themselves in 2010 despite a mental health effort aimed at reversing the trend.

The Army says 22 soldiers have either killed themselves or are suspected of doing so last year at its post at Fort Hood in Texas, twice the number from 2009.

That is a rate of 47 deaths per 100,000, compared with a 20-per-100,000 rate among civilians in the same age group and a 22-per-100,000 rate Army-wide.

By Dave Lindorff

Democracy: de-moc-ra-cy, government by the people; the common people of a community, as distinguished from any privileged class

According to the latest poll conducted by CBS "60 Minutes" and the magazine Vanity Fair, 61 percent of Americans want to raise taxes on the wealthy as the primary way to cut the budget. The same poll finds that the second most popular first choice for cutting the nation's budget deficit, at 20 percent, is cutting the military budget. That is, 81 percent of us--four out of five--would cut the deficit by taxing the rich and/or slashing military spending.

Only four percent of those polled favored cutting Medicare, the government-run program that provides health care for the elderly and disabled, and only three percent favored cutting Social Security.

January 3, 2011 - After a long year of watching the slow death of her husband, Army Sgt. William McKenna, Dina McKenna decided the final goodbye should be dignified without painful lingering.

 

snip

He was deployed in 2003 and was awarded several awards and medals during two tours in Iraq. It was there he breathed fumes from burning garbage pits outside of the military bases - leading to his fatal cancer, his wife believes.

By Linda Milazzo

When will we change the course of corporate media? When will sane Americans take media to task? Can't we end this media madness before the fabric of our society irreversibly tears?

Across America people suffer end-of-life illness. They agonize in pain. They agonize in fear. They're in drug induced stupors. Modest people soil themselves in front of friends and family. They avert their eyes in shame. They lose and regain consciousness. They welcome the unconscious moments that shield them from feelings of helplessness and burdening those they love.

This is no way to live. This is no way to die.

Throughout the recent debate on the health care bill, the media - in particular cable TV and talk radio - inflamed the rhetoric on the bill; on the bill's size, its number of pages, its fiscal impact, its social impact, excluding abortion, surviving death panels...

DEATH PANELS?!

by Linda Milazzo

Registered Nurse Estella Chavez (photo by Linda Milazzo)

Billions have been spent on these Wars of choice! With those Billions spent Billions were made by many, new multi-millionaires with connections were produced as well as a high priced merc private army and more. Directly and indirectly over the decade of these ongoing conflicts!

With the Wars came Tax Cuts that were recently extended, especially for the Wealthy who received the bulk of added to the write offs they already received for business, investment and personal!

During the last decade, the recent political campaigns, the so called debate on tax cut extensions nor in public comments, did anyone, the politicians, those wealthy, the power brokers, wall street, talking heads, media, the so called outraged tea party .........., Demand the Country 'Sacrifice' as those who serve and are sent, as well as their families, do and are the only ones, many now as veterans of for the rest of their lives! And the wars continue!

New Program Speeds Approval for Vietnam Veterans

WASHINGTON – December 17, 2010 - The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has decided more than 28,000 claims in the first six weeks of processing disability compensation applications from Vietnam Veterans with diseases related to exposure to the herbicide Agent Orange.

“With new technology and ongoing improvements, we are quickly removing roadblocks to processing benefits,” said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki. “We are also conducting significant outreach to Vietnam Veterans to encourage them to submit their completed application for this long-awaited benefit.”

AFGHANISTAN: Humanitarian situation likely to worsen in 2011 – aid agencies

Photo: Akmal Dawi/ IRIN Wounded in conflict at an ICRC hospital in Kabul

KABUL, 15 December 2010 (IRIN) - The war in Afghanistan shows no sign of abating and conflict-related misery such as internal displacement, lack of access to essential health services and civilian casualties, is set to rise in 2011, aid agencies and analysts warn.

“We are growing increasingly concerned about the conflict, which is into its ninth year. It’s spreading and intensifying and we’re [likely] to see another year of conflict with dramatic consequences for civilians,” Reto Stocker, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) office in Afghanistan, said on 15 December.

Here's the opinion: PDF.

Difficulty for Obamabots here is that it actually makes some sense.

What the F**K is wrong with this country? Wait, never mind I've been watching it collapse for the last thirty of my comin on 62 years of my life, Questions Answered!

I just got finished watching Meet The Press and the way over the top extremely highly paid 'experts?' mumbling about the tax cuts and who hates who and why.

I didn't hear One mention of these Wars our soldiers are still in nor the countries need to Finally not only 'Sacrifice, after ten years, but Pay Back What Is Owed For Waging Them, not a mention as to the Veterans Of nor their Families, the Only Ones That Have Done Any Sacrificing as these tax cuts came with the start of these Wars of Choice.

It came on just as I was putting together a post for my site on a just released report on Family Care Givers of Veterans, and boy there is so much more then just this!

By Dave Lindorff

With a grown daughter and a wife, far be it from me to minimize the issue of rape, but to borrow from the Bard, in the case of the “rape” case being alleged against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, currently being held in a British jail without bail pending an extradition request from Stockholm: “Something is rotten in Sweden.”

As I wrote earlier in this publication, the alleged sexual crimes that Assange is currently being sought for by a Swedish prosecutor are:

1. Allegedly failing to halt an act of consensual sexual intercourse when his sex partner and host, Anna Ardin, claims she somehow became aware that the condom he was using had “split” and,

In the muddy of my mind, the Minutemen are singing “Warfare” lyrics:

Falling down the road
Steeper as it goes
Friend or foe
Nobody knows

In the muddy of my mind the Minutemen are singing “The Big Stick” lyrics: “We learn and believe there is justice for us all and we lie to ourselves with a big stick up our ass.”

On Monday, six US troops, serving in Afghanistan, died after receiving friend-foe fire from an Afghan police officer during a training exercise. Friend or foe (?) must be among the many complexities servicemen, women, and their families ponder.

This wasn’t unique, isn’t an aberration. Similar incidents have occurred. Last December, five British soldiers were killed by an Afghan police officer.

All week, I intended to write about Nancy Grace and her Veterans Day tribute to our “fallen,” that euphemism for the war-torn dead. I would begin and, suddenly, see her surname with fallen and be Galatians 5: 4’d to “ye are fallen from grace.” I blame it on childhood years of Baptist brainwashing.

It’s just that my mind has been a smorgasbord of images and messages, lately. There’s Bush’s self-masturbatory, ghostwritten diary, along with email pleas for efforts in futility, war and more war, income disparity, and all the people who lead lives of either quiet or screaming desperation.

Soon after W began pushing his memoir, a flurry of requests for petition signing, demanding an investigation of Bush Administration

Care for Prisoners Will Improve Public Health, Researchers Say

ScienceDaily (Nov. 18, 2010) — In a comprehensive global survey, researchers in Texas and England have concluded that improving the mental and physical health of inmates will improve public health.

In their article, "The health of prisoners," Seena Fazel of the University of Oxford and Jacques Baillargeon of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, write that caring for the mental and physical health of prisoners has a direct and important impact on public health that should be recognized. Their findings, to be published Online First in the British medical journal The Lancet on Nov. 19, are based on a survey of available literature on prisoner health across the world (with most data from high-income countries*).

"Prisoners act as reservoirs of infection and chronic disease, increasing the public health burden of poor communities," they write. "Most prisoners return to their communities with their physical and psychiatric morbidity occasionally untreated and sometimes worsened."

By Conn Hallinan, November 12, 2010

Back in the 1960s, peace activists sported a bumper sticker that read: “War is not good for children and other living creatures.” In a way, that sums up Barry S. Levy and Victor W. Sidel’s War and Public Health, where 46 experts on everything from epidemiology to international law weigh in on the authors’ central premise: “War and militarism have catastrophic effects on human health and well being.”

Levy and Sidel, both former presidents of the American Public Health Association, and distinguished researchers and practitioners in their fields, make the point that wars ultimately always come home. Young women and men are the most obvious casualties, shattered in body and mind on the battlefield. But war’s devastation includes the terrible things wrought by organized violence on the populations and infrastructures where wars are fought.

READ THE REST AT FPIF

{Click on banner to view the trailer, film clips and more}

Veterans Day 2010: "Caring for the invisible wounds"

{This video is some twenty two minutes long so you might want to visit the stories at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette and view each separately, links below, as you have the time}

November 10, 2010 - Don Bankosh stands next to the bathroom door in his bedroom and points to large holes he punched into it during a fit of rage several years ago.

He could have replaced the door. Instead, he keeps it damaged so he won't forget that day and others like it.

It is a daily reminder of his shame at that outburst, a warning to hold at bay the anger, fear, guilt and other effects of the post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, he acquired after nearly two decades as an Army helicopter medevac soldier rendering aid to casualties.

Thus begins a New York Times article on bringing babies into schools for the benefit of the children -- and the teachers.