[Photo by Duy Nguyen.]

War is darkness – man killing man- overshadowing human consciousness of the self and the spirit – fighting soldiers driven to political indoctrination of “ennobling enmity” and wired to instigated emotional madness, forced to animalistic behavior and end-up losing the balanced material and spiritual manifestation of the nature of human originality. War means planned deaths and destruction of all that is holistic and progressively imagined by the human emancipation for the larger good of the mankind.

The Death of Daniel Somers.”  Information Clearing House, 6/24/ 2013):  “The numbers sadly tell the story: more military suicides than combat deaths in 2012, some 22 military veterans take their lives every day.”  The US Army Times (Rick Maze: “18 Veterans Commit suicide each day”: 4/26/2010), reported that 18-25 war veterans commit suicide every day and noted “Troubling new data show there are an average of 950 suicide attempts each month by veterans who are receiving some type of treatment from the Veterans Affairs Department……. Suicide attempts by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans remains a key area of concern. In fiscal 2009, there were 1,621 suicide attempts by men and 247 by women who served in Iraq or Afghanistan, with 94 men and four women dying.”

This week, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation – CBC reported the suicidal deaths of 4 Canadian soldiers – the veterans of Afghanistan War.  It is a painful story telling to common folks explains the CBC television news reporting on 12/4/2013, that some 42 Canadian war veterans have taken their lives since 2011 to 2012 and a total of 129 since the armed forces were sent to Afghanistan.  Rationality fails to substantiate the reported 158 Canadians troops lost life in US-led war in Afghanistan when Canada is not at war with Afghanistan. The poverty-stricken Afghans were not the people to ever challenge or pose any threat of violence and security to America, Canada or Europe. Often the combat soldiers and their victims do not know why and what are they fighting for?  America and its paid allies did not go to Afghanistan or Iraq for peace, freedom or democracy. They invaded to take control of the oil and gas pipelines to be managed by the American enterprises in which the warlords had vested interests. Be it the ideology or the nationalism being the focal point of human insanity as was the case of the Two World Wars, combat soldiers forced to fight against their own very nature – The Nature of Things based on which God created the human beings.

Human consciousness enjoins a synchronized balanced of material and spiritual life but killing others is an affront to continuity of the self within the interwoven compound of human life. Overwhelming materialistic powers, advanced technology and rigid expert determination often stall approaches to understand the reality of human life composed of material and spiritual balance and the imperatives of freedom of critical thought and Divine knowledge to articulate a better future. Life is not an invention of human mind or machines but God is the creator of all living things: Life, Time, Universe and Earth and its sustainable supporting system – immensity of factors constituting the scope of self-realization of human life. Could the reality of life and death be realized by human thinking, instruments and approaches?  During the 2011 London annual war memorial parade, the last surviving First World War British veteran age 111 years made it known on BBC news camera that “he did not know why he fought in the war and war made no sense to him.”  With broken hearts, wounded minds and tarnished bodies, when combat soldiers return to homeland, they confront another challenge of survival – the ripple and constantly haunting images of the inhuman cruelty of man against man. None of post war syndrome treatment (PTSD) can cure or sideline such first-hand real life experiences asking for rational answers why and what for were they fighting and killing innocent peoples?  All politicians are self-centered; they have no knowledge and understanding of the human nature as they have not fought on any real war fronts or created anything durable except amplifying the self and re-election ambitions. Greed and wickedness knows no ending. Politics is a game of pretension on stage, not a connection to reality of life-making and life-supporting endeavors.

Daniel Somers (“<ahref=”http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35403.htm” target=”_blank”>”I Am Sorry That It Has Come to This”: A Soldier’s Last Words.” Information Clearing House: 6/24/2013) was an American war veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom 2004-2005 and then again 2006-2007, was 30 years old and suffered greatly from PTSD and was diagnosed with traumatic brain injury and several other war-related conditions. On June 10, 2013, Daniel Somers wrote the following letter to his family before taking his life.

I really have been trying to hang on, for more than a decade now. Each day has been a testament to the extent to which I cared, suffering unspeakable horror as quietly as possible so that you could feel as though I was still here for you. In truth, I was nothing more than a prop, filling space so that my absence would not be noted. In truth, I have already been absent for a long, long time………The simple truth is this: during my first deployment, I was made to participate in things, the enormity of which is hard to describe. War crimes, crimes against humanity……….To force me to do these things and then participate in the ensuing cover up is more than any government has the right to demand. Then, the same government has turned around and abandoned me….. And for what? Bush’s religious lunacy? Cheney’s ever growing fortune and that of his corporate friends? Is this what we destroy lives for……. My body has become nothing but a cage, a source of pain and constant problems. The illness I have has caused me pain that not even the strongest medicines could dull, and there is no cure. All day, every day a screaming agony in every nerve ending in my body. It is nothing short of torture. My mind is a wasteland, filled with visions of incredible horror, unceasing depression, and crippling anxiety, even with all of the medications the doctors dare give. Simple things that everyone else takes for granted are nearly impossible for me. I can not laugh or cry…….Thus, I am left with basically nothing. Too trapped in a war to be at peace, too damaged to be at war. This is what brought me to my actual final mission. Not suicide, but a mercy killing. I know how to kill, and I know how to do it so that there is no pain whatsoever. It was quick, and I did not suffer. And above all, now I am free. I feel no more pain. I have no more nightmares or flashbacks or hallucinations.

American politicians no longer enjoy moral and intellectual leadership but claim it and act like surrogated mothers to the war-lobbyists and pundits of the major military-industrial complex. America needs a stern challenger and that is what is missing. The global warlords continue to divide and rule the mankind. The sensation of political and material power drives them to commit untold crimes against the very humanity of which they are a part within the living Universe. War is not peace and peace will not emerge out of the broken hearts and dreams of One Humanity. But contrary to the brutal perceptions and actions of the US and former Europeans imperialists, the international community is informed, mature, and enjoys the moral and intellectual capacity to know and understand the facts of life and to challenge the politically imperiled insensitivity to universal accord and unity of the mankind against brutality of the Terrorism of Wars that unites them with a common fate more than divides them by any token of adversity and separate national identities.

Politicians waging wars against the mankind are not the competent people to answer vital issues of moral and spiritual values and significance affecting the soldiers and on the growing epidemic of combat soldiers committing suicides. Fighting soldiers and the common people are the victim of delusional and vengeful hatred of the few global warlords who have vested corporate interests in the oil and gas supplies coming out of the Muslim world. All troops are indoctrinated with mythology of animosity to fight the unknown enemies. While on the war front, they lose rational consciousness by targeting and killing the innocents – men, women and children as are the instances in Afghanistan and Iraq and daily drone attacks on innocent Pakistani civilians – a cold-blooded murder game of the warriors. It is probable some governments and secret agencies  could be using drug formulas to enhance the invisible crush for fighting and enmity. Those fighting soldiers – men of conscience lose unity of the human consciousness- unity of material and spiritual balanced characteristic– fair and foul. It is a tragic conjuncture of inner revolt of human consciousness for a crime that is not part of the human nature and not visible to scientifically expert minds – the doctors who simply identify mental health issues of those suspected of syndrome to commit suicide. These are the net causalities of man’s war against man. The real reasons are hardly mentioned in expert reports. Science and machines cannot comprehend the intricate balance between material and spiritual life and inner consciousness of the self- the human. Politicians who entangle the human beings into warmongering are void of the knowledge of Unity of Human Self – an all embracing sanctity of sacred life created by God:  time, material, spiritual, thought, life and purpose of life – the ultimate source of all individual life and human unity. Politicians and concerned social scientists and military strategists perceive the broken hearts and minds of returning soldiers as they want to see it and they do not wish to see the reality as it persists.

Daniel Somers letter tells us all:  “My mind is a wasteland, filled with visions of incredible horror, unceasing depression, and crippling anxiety, even with all of the medications the doctors dare give. ….. I can not laugh or cry…….Thus, I am left with basically nothing. Too trapped in a war to be at peace, too damaged to be at war. This is what brought me to my actual final mission.”  The war-torn human consciousness needs spiritual and moral enhancement support to come out of the self-inflicted tragic and inhuman experience of killing other human beings. Politicians and society that drives soldiers to the madness of war fronts to kill others and get killed have no sense of moral responsibility to facilitation of remedial human help to console and motivate the entrenched life – the wounded inner soul of the combat soldiers. Pills alone do not remove spiritual stagnation but scholars of the Divine religious knowledge and wisdom could help the fractured human soul and body in moment of self- endured crisis for survival and sustainable future-making. All experiences are immediate and individual. Others see the prevalent reality differently with overwhelming societal and political expediency. Nazism and Fascism did not grow out of the nowhere but to a large extent were supported and propagated by the then European and North American academia, news media, businesses and politicians. During the WW2, helpless common people, Jews and Gypsies were targeted by the extremists and global warlords and now Muslims are seen as the eye of the storm. The political warriors and the military-industrial complex have not learnt anything from the pages of living history.

All beginnings have an end. Throughout history warlords were subject to time and place, not for ever. Hitler and Mussolini were democratically elected but drove the humanity to terrible consequences of their own insanity. The contemporary warlords need to see the mirror and the urgency of a Navigational Change, if they have the moral and intellectual capacity to THINK and ACT and to spare the mankind from further catastrophic tragedies.  Can America revitalize its originality of thinking, moral and intellectual values and people’s interests-based system of political governance for a peaceful co-existence and future-making in relation to the global humanity?

With 17 trillion dollars in budgetary deficit, approximately three millions Iraqi civilians massacred by the US led bogus wars on terrorism, 20,000 or more American killed and many times more wounded, and almost one million Afghan civilians killed and displaced, and millions of wounded American and disabled veterans causality of the two bogus wars on Muslims are surviving on mere food stamps and neglected drug addicted corridors; continued daily US drone attacks on innocent Pakistani civilians, 18-25 US war veterans daily committing suicides, insane politicians acting in egoistic behaviors, leaders without lead in the society point-out to more dreadful things to happen to America – it could soon be replaced by another morally and economically competent nation or group of small nations in global politics. Strangely enough in a knowledge-based age, American politicians are not mindful of this historical and unstoppable phenomenon of change. The living Universe and American politics appear to be set on a direct clash course. America does not appear to be on a path of harmony with the rest of the global community. In situations of adversity and crises, competent leaders extend moral and intellectual security to the people and represent hope and optimism for a navigational change and future-making, not egoistic political agenda and shutdown of the government and irrational behaviors to the interests of the people who elected them to govern. On the 10^th anniversary of the Iraqi genocide, there were no statements issued by the Obama administration or apologies by British politicians. Tom Engelhardt (“The 12th Anniversary of American Cowardice What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You.” Information Clearing House: 3.28.2013), sums up the paradox of contemporary global warfare and how the history shall judge the warlords?

We should already know more than enough to be horrified by the state of our American world.  It should disturb us deeply that a government of, by, and for the war-makers, intelligence operatives, bureaucrats, privatizing mercenary corporations, surveillers, torturers, and assassins is thriving in Washington.  As for the people — that’s us — in these last years, we largely weren’t there, even as the very idea of a government of, by, and for us bit the dust, and our leaders felt increasingly unconstrained when committing acts of shame in our name. So perhaps the last overlooked anniversary of these years might be the 12th anniversary of American cowardice.  You can choose the exact date yourself; anytime this fall will do.  At that moment, Americans should feel free to celebrate a time when, for our “safety,” and in a state of anger and paralyzing fear, we gave up the democratic ghost.

Among the many truths in that still-to-be-written secret history of our American world would be this: we the people have no idea just how, in these years, we’ve hurt ourselves.

Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in global security, peace and conflict resolution with keen interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest: Global Peace and Conflict Management: Man and Humanity in Search of New Thinking. Lambert Publishing Germany, May 2012.

It’s not a trade-off..between freedom and democracy. We can (and should) have both.—Thomas Drake

The real question is: Who benefits? Not the masses. But certainly the corporate powers that rule the nation. 

We ask, who are the true defenders of the the people’s rights, the Constitution, and ultimately what we call democracy in America? The Thomas Drakes, the Snowdens, the Agees, or those who continue to push the nation toward secrecy and a police state under the pretext of national security?

Cyrano’s Journal

Even confused, often corrupt, bumbling Italy has a much better healthcare service than America, and a much less savage capitalism.

I just returned from my national health doctor and the next door pharmacy. The doctor graciously dressed an inflamed, very deep cut on my right hand and gave me a prescription for an antibiotic to avoid infection. Total time, five minutes. Cost: zero. 

An Italian health service card. That’s all you need. Italy ranks 2nd in the world in quality, right after France.

Then I went to the pharmacy where a beautiful pharmacist filled my National Health Service prescription. Total time: five minutes. Cost: euro 2.71, a little over $3.00, of patient participation which in my case will be reimbursed by a private journalist insurance.

I returned home after about 45 minutes in total, with the antibiotic and my hand well-dressed and re-bandaged and my spirits bolstered.

Now, I must go backwards a week to describe my accident that took me to the doctor and pharmacy today. Last week I had a tremendous fall in the semi-darkness in the parking lot of my usual supermarket. I stumbled over something and fell headlong among some cement blocks and other mysterious objects and woke up flat on my face with a brutal pain in my forehead.

The Italian National Health Service was instituted in 1978.

I finally managed to climb to my feet just as a lady stopped her car nearby, rushed toward me asking if I needed help and gave me a handful of Kleenex to wipe the blood off my forehead, at which point however I realized the blood was flowing from my hand. I supposed the wound came from a piece of broken glass; I was in a dark part of the parking lot where I shouldn’t have been in the first place in order to throw from a low wall to a trash bin a bag of trash from home that I had forgotten to dump in the proper place.

At that point I staggered into the supermarket where I know most of the employees. Several of them rushed toward me aghast. And what a sight I was! Dazed and covered in blood, the knob on my forehead already huge, and most likely a wild expression on my face. they rushed me into a room where the manager delicately washed my face and told me I had to get to a hospital. I adamantly refused that offer while the fish market manager began wrapping my hand with something and another person pressed an ice pack on the swelling and expanding bump on my forehead. As I gradually returned to the real world, I agreed that they could call a first aid ambulance which could then either medicate me on the spot or take me to an ER.

Meanwhile I staggered around the market, in my blood-stained head bandana and hand, still unaware of my damaged rib cage and right leg, stubbornly buying what I had come for, milk and bread, and especially the wine.

Within about five minutes the ambulance arrived just as I’d finished paying with a card at a check-out counter. The first aid people dressed in orange and black slickers rushed me and the wine out the door to the ambulance, sat me inside where a male nurse proceeded to medicate me. He cleaned and dressed my right hand, said I needed stitches—but maybe not—then wrapped a wide swath of gauze around my head so that I looked like a war bombing victim, while a second ambulance man continued to converse with me about this and that. I realized later his job was to make sure I didn’t have a concussion. While the nurse wrote up a long form with data from my national health card, the other continued talking and the female driver turned up the pop music and the service radio crackled and the people whose cars were blocked by the ambulance waited patiently and, to my surprise, uncomplaining. Total intervention time for the first-aid ambulance, I would guess, 45 minutes. Cost to me: zero.

[pullquote]World Health Organization‘s ranking, as the 2nd best in the world after France,^[3] and according to the CIA World factbook, Italy has the world’s 10th highest life expectancy.^[4] Thanks to its good healthcare system, the life expectancy at birth in Italy was 80.9 years in 2004, which is two years above the OECD average.^{[2](Wikipedia)}[/pullquote]

After the nurse escorted me to me car and placed my shopping bag on a seat, reassured himself that I was in condition to drive, I went back into the supermarket to thank everyone and was met by waves and smiles and a left hand shake with the manager.

Now even though the Italian National Health Service might not be considered the best in Europe, today it is for me. Once back home this morning from doctor and pharmacy, I raced to the computer to record this experience. In Italy’s continual economic emergency the first places budgetary leaders look to make cuts are in the national health program and social security but it resists.

The National Health Services of Germany, France, Switzerland are considered among the best, though every European country offers excellent services, from Scandinavia to Malta, from Great Britain (despite recent cutbacks still among the best) to Russia and Bulgaria. The countries I have lived in, including Mexico and Argentina offer national health services, as do I’m certain all Latin American countries. The health service in Canada has long been considered among the best in the world. Rich Latin Americans even fly to Cuba for delicate heart surgery. The black hole in the world of national health services is the USA, reputedly the world’s richest country which spends proportionately much much more for far worse health protection than any other world country.

•

Italians as a rule are convinced that their national health service is the best, the elimination of which could literally cause a revolution. Most certainly no politician could ever be elected to any office in Italy based on a program of elimination of Italy’s single payer National Health Service. In fact, most political programs include protection and improvement of the national health service. The thing about a single payer (that is the state) health service is that once in place, it becomes the right it truly is and no people will ever willingly surrender that right.

Misinformed and ignorant people in the USA into whose DNA disastrous negative opinions about single payer national health services have been inculcated by crassly greedy and evil political leaders and pharmaceutical and insurance companies will raise the usual objections. But anyone who has lived a life in places where largely free health care is assured takes it for granted that the state guarantees the protection of the health of all its peoples.

Longtime Rome resident Gaither Stewart is TGP’s European correspondent. The author of many novels and essays, his latest is The Fifth Sun, with a plot spanning Italy and Mexico.  The book was published by Punto Press.

By Chris Hedges

Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges discussed “the psychology of the super rich: their sense of entitlement, the dehumanization of workers, and mistaken belief that their wealth will insulate them from the coming storms” with The Real News Network’s senior editor, Paul Jay.

ABOUT CHRIS HEDGES

Chris Hedges spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years.

Hedges was part of the team of reporters at The New York Times awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism. He also received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism in 2002. The Los Angeles Press Club honored Hedges’ original columns in Truthdig by naming the author the Online Journalist of the Year in 2009, and granted him the Best Online Column award in 2010 for his Truthdig essay “One Day We’ll All Be Terrorists.”

By Bernie Sanders

Summary of S. 1782, The American Health Security Act of 2013

The American Health Security Act of 2013 (S. 1782) provides every American with affordable and comprehensive health care services through the establishment of a national American Health Security Program (the Program) that requires each participating state to set up and administer a state single payer health program. The Program provides universal health care coverage for the comprehensive services required under S. 1782 and incorporates Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program and TRICARE (the Department of Defense health care program), but maintains health care programs under the Veterans Affairs Administration. Private health insurance sold by for-profit companies could only exist to provide supplemental coverage.

The cornerstones of the Program will be fixed, annual, and global budgets, public accountability, measures of quality based on outcomes data designed by providers and patients, a national data-collection system with uniform reporting by all providers, and a progressive financing system. It will provide universal coverage, benefits emphasizing primary and preventive care, and free choice of providers. Inpatient services, long term care, a broad range of services for mental illness and substance abuse, and care coordination services will also be covered.

A seven-member national board (the Board) appointed by the President will establish a national health budget specifying the total federal and state expenditures to be made for covered health care services. The Board will work together with similar boards in each of the fifty states and the District of Columbia to administer the Program.

A Quality Council will develop and disseminate practice guidelines based on outcomes research and will profile health care professionals’ patterns of practice to identify outliers. It will also develop standards of quality, performance measures, and medical review criteria and develop minimum competence criteria. A new Office of Primary Care and Prevention Research will be created within the Office of the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The Program is designed to provide patient-centered care supported through adequate reimbursement for professionals, a wealth of evidence-based information, peer support, and financial incentives for better patient outcomes. The Program seeks to ensure medical decisions are made by patients and their health care providers.

The Program amends the tax code to create the American Health Security Trust Fund and appropriates to the Fund specified tax revenues, current health program receipts, and tax credits and subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. While the final structure of the financing component is still under consideration and is subject to change, the tax revenues in the draft include a new health care income tax, an employer payroll tax, a surcharge on high income individuals, and a tax on securities transactions.

The federal government would collect and distribute all funds to the states for the operation of the state programs to pay for the covered services. Budget increases would be limited to the rate of growth of the gross domestic product. Each state’s budget for administrative expenses would be capped at three percent.

Each state would have the choice to administer its own program or have the federal Board administer it. The state program could negotiate with providers and consult with its advisory boards to allocate funds. The state program could also contract with private companies to provide administrative functions, as Medicare currently does through its administrative regions. State programs could negotiate with providers to pay outpatient facilities and individual practitioners on a capitated, salaried, or other prospective basis or on a fee-for service basis according to a rate schedule. Rates would be designed to incentivize primary and preventive care while maintaining a global budget, bringing provider, patients, and all stakeholders to the table to best determine value and reimbursement.

Finally, the Program also relieves businesses from the heavy administrative burdens of providing health care coverage, puts all businesses on an even playing field in terms of healthcare coverage, and increases the competitiveness of American companies in the global marketplace. Every other industrialized nation has been able to use the power of a public authority to provide universal health care. The American Health Security Act of 2013 seeks to do just that for all Americans and their 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bernie Sanders is the independent U.S. Senator from Vermont. He is the longest serving independent member of Congress in American history. He is a member of the Senate’s Budget, Veterans, Environment, Energy, and H.E.L.P. (Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions) committees.

Reprinted from  healthcare-now.org