Anti-war
revere | November 22, 2006I like Representative Charlie Rangel, the feisty New York Democrat, but he's dead wrong on reinstating the military draft. It would be the worst thing that could happen.
Rangel has twice sponsored legislation to reintroduce the draft on the grounds that an all-volunteer army puts disproportionate burdens on the poor. Rangel believes, and I've heard many of my own generation say, if there were a draft we wouldn't be fighting in Iraq. There is the implication that the opposition to the Vietnam War on college campuses was driven almost entirely by the danger of being drafted. It wasn't. I was…
revere | November 11, 2006Today is called Veterans Day in the United States, but everywhere else it is Remembrance Day. When we were young it celebrated the end of shooting and was still Armistice Day. Now it celebrates the melancholy fact that young people have again picked up guns, not that they were at last able to put them down on the Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month in 1918.
The change came during the Cold War. In 1954 we forgot Remembrance Day. Veterans Day does not honor fallen soldiers. That's Memorial Day. Veterans Day is about those who survive their service. Given how we treat them…
revere | October 14, 2006We have been asked on many occasions why a public health blog spends so much time discussing war. The implication is that war is "off-topic." There are many reasons why we disagree. Here is one.
A Coroner in Oxford, England has officially ruled that a British journalist who died in Iraq in 2003 was unlawfully killed by American forces.
Oxfordshire Assistant Deputy Coroner Andrew Walker said he'll be writing the director of public prosecutions to seek to bring the perpetrators to justice.
"Terry Lloyd died following a gunshot wound to the head. The evidence this bullet was fired by the…
revere | October 12, 2006One of the headlines made by Bob Woodward's new book on the Bush administration, State of Denial, is that the violence in Iraq is much worse than we have been told. Told by the Bush administration, anyway. In fact we have been on notice for two years that the level of violence in Iraq is horrendus. In 2004 researchers at Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, Columbia and in Iraq produced the best evidence up to that time of the death toll from the 2003 US invasion. The study was published in the British medical journal, The Lancet. Its publication was expedited so it could appear…
revere | October 6, 2006We've not said anything about the North Korean nuclear issue before but we are doing so now, joining with Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) in expressing our concern over the spread of nuclear weapons and the apparent failure of the Bush administration to address it effectively. PSR was the deserved recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize for their decades long effort to end the threat of nuclear holocaust.
The North Korean threat highlights the issue once again. Nuclear weapons in the hands of any nation is a danger to all of us. The United States recognized this when it signed the…
revere | September 28, 2006I'm with Lindsay of Majikthise (and many others) on this one in telling Senator Reid that Republican legislation that would allow torture and allow George Bush to define the Geneva Convention to suit himself is beyond the pale. Even worse, the same legislation essentially abrogates habeas corpus, a writ for which is "a judicial mandate to a prison official ordering that an inmate be brought to the court so it can be determined whether or not that person is imprisoned lawfully and whether or not he should be released from custody." (LectLaw).
Here's what Lindsay said:
Senate Minority Leader…
revere | September 25, 2006DemFromCT has a great post on The Next Hurrah (TNH) (cross-posted on the frontpage of DailyKos) about the new intelligence assessment that reports the obvious (instead of the false):
An intelligence assessment that the war in Iraq increased Islamic radicalism, worsening the terror threat, set off a sharp debate today among American political officials over credit and blame for the war and the broader fight against terrorism. (New York Times via TNH)
This isn't really news, because anyone with more than a couple of neurons in working order (and not using them just to breathe and defecate) can…
revere | September 22, 2006Trying to pick the most dysfunctional federal agency in the Bush administration is like trying to pick Bush's most vile idea. Where do you start? Since I've had some inside experience with it, I'll volunteer the Department of Veterans Affairs (the VA).
I need to cut them a little slack, of course. They are underfunded. There are two reasons for this. One is that the Bush neocons don't really care about soldiers after they have served their purpose, so they don't ask for enough money, by design. The other reason is that they also don't ask for enough money by virtue of stupidity. It seems that…
revere | September 18, 2006Found in Fark with the tag, Ironic. Appearances to the contrary, it is not from The Onion:
BRITISH arms manufacturer BAE Systems is designing "environmentally friendly" weapons, including "reduced lead" bullets, "reduced smoke" grenades and rockets with fewer toxins, The Sunday Times said.
Other initiatives include developing armoured vehicles with lower carbon emissions, safer and more sustainable artillery and even recycling or composting waste explosives, the newspaper added.
"Weapons are going to be used and when they are, we try to make them as safe for the user as possible, to limit the…
revere | September 8, 2006In late July the American Psychological Association went in the same direction, but only a fraction of the distance, as the American Psychiatric Association and the American Medical Association by adopting a resolution prohibiting its members from engaging in or offering training in torture and establishes an ethical obligation for association members to report acts of torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. (Chronicle of Higher Education)
This sounds like a strong statement but it fell short of both the APA and AMA policies, which do not allow participation in…
revere | August 12, 2006There can be no doubt that the combatants in the battle between Hezbollah and Israel engulfing southern Lebanon have lost all moral credibility. Both sides are waging a war without any regard for innocent human life, except insofar as it is regard for the public relations problems it causes.
The conflict across the border between Lebanon and Israel has now displaced up to 1 million people in Lebanon, of which nearly 700 000 are living in temporary accommodations, and another 220 000 are in Syria, Jordan, Cyprus and the Gulf area. Addressing the vital needs of the displaced and other affected…
revere | August 7, 2006It's a region where three major religions and various ethnic groups compete and pursue ancient grievances. It's a bad place for a war because things can easily spin out of control. The incident that sparked it all, the killing of two people by a terrorist, happened earlier in the summer but by the end of July it had started a war, with exhilaration and foreboding on both sides. There was regret over loss of life, yes, but it was balanced by the conviction the war would be short and just. All the previous wars, going back over 40 years were short, after all. More importantly, there was the…
revere | July 31, 2006A reminder it's not just bombs and bullets in Lebanon:
BEIRUT. July 29 (Interfax) - The World Health Organization (WHO) fears an eminent humanitarian disaster in Lebanon, and the quality of drinking water is among its greatest concerns in the current situation, a WHO official in Beirut told Interfax Saturday.
"There is also the threat of epidemics, as there could be people under the ruins," the WHO official said.
"All this, as well as the terrible sanitary conditions in the refugee camps, could further provoke outbreaks of various epidemics," he said.
The WHO is…
revere | July 23, 2006Last week's Sermonette was about the joy of the apocalyptics that the Middle East conflagration signaled the End Times. This week we turn to Robert Frost's version, and address it with all due respect to our fellow human beings in Israel and Palestine:
Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Robert Frost (1874-1963). From Harper's magazine, December 1920
revere | July 7, 2006Todays' theme is education. Be sure to enter the Science Education Caption Contest in today's other post. This one is not about science education. It's about peddling soft-core pornography to pre-teens in a popular children's magazine, Cobblestones.
What began as an attempt to educate middle-school students about the military has set off a string of complaints from parents and teachers that new learning materials designed by a New Hampshire publisher for 9- to 14-year-olds amount to little more than an early recruiting pitch for the Army.
The latest issue of Cobblestone magazine, distributed…
revere | June 24, 2006In August of last year we wrote a post, Festering wounds of Iraq. It was about an antibiotic resistant organism, Acinetobacter baumannii, proving very troublesome in wound infections in soldiers. A. baumannii resides in the soil and is a problem world-wide, not just an Iraqi problem. But it is also a problem specifically related to the war in Iraq. Wound infections with this organism are more likely to occur at the time of injury under battle conditions or to be acquired in emergency treatment settings. Preventing this infection in stateside hospitals has also been a challenge. Without the…