Under Regimes Of White Supremacy And Kleptocracy, Suicide Rates Are Skyrocketing -- Even Among Elites

Lorie Meacham

Follow · June 6 · 

I don't care how you try to spin it. Children are not criminals. They don't belong in cages. Period.

When Europeans landed in North America with their heads full of white supremacy and colonialism, it was the beginning of a long demise. For them and for everyone unfortunate enough to be in their path to conquest.

NEW- CLARIFICATION OF WHAT TRUMP WANTS INSURANCE COMPANIES TO BE ABLE TO DENY OR UP-CHARGE FOR:

-Asthma inhaler
-Mild anxiety
-Alcoholism
-Toe fungus
-Being 50
-High blood pressure
-Birth control

Individual coverage for cancer, diabetes, a transplant, epilepsy wouldn’t exist https://t.co/CRFEYwEP45

— Andy Slavitt (@ASlavitt) June 8, 2018

The places where white supremacy and unregulated capitalism have brought us are dismal. 

Dismal for everyone. This is the part elites don't get: a society ruled by racist kleptocrats is not worth living in. The suicide rate in the U.S. has risen dramatically in the last two decades, and elites are far from immune from this particular disease of despair.

From the Center for Disease Control:

If you need help for yourself or someone else, please contact the

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

Talk: 1-800-273-TALK (8255)

Chat: www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org

Emulating my shero Cecile Pineda, here's a rose among thorns from Maureen Ostensen of Maine's Smilin' Trees Disarmament Farm. May it give you hope for the future!

Frances [high school daughter] participated in a forum for Democratic candidates for governor.  Each student wrote questions for one candidate, and Frances wrote the questions for Mark Dion.  She asked him how he voted on the tax break for BIW and why.  He responded that he is one of five Democrats who voted against the tax break calling it corporate ransom.  He said there is no need to take money from the tax payers in Maine to give a tax break to a corporation whose CEO earned in excess of (I think he said $20 million).

With this statement he received almost a standing ovation from a large crowd of pretty affluent Democrats. 

I wanted to share this with you, as I was impressed at how well the crowd understood the issue.  I do not think there would have been that kind of recognition had you [Bruce Gagnon] not made such a valiant effort to publicize the issue.

I have to believe there are pockets of support for a more human approach to weapons and war out there who are beginning to make connections to BIW.

My note: BIW refers to Bath Iron Works which is a subsidiary of super wealthy weapons manufacturer General Dynamics.

Imperial Death Throes: Requiring Veterans To Swear They Won't Commit Suicide

By my own schedule I should be writing a post about closing the U.S. military bases right near North Korea's border with their southern region, partitioned by the U.S. and U.S.S.R. in 1945 and not yet reunited. (Such a post would be part of a series about the need to close bases left behind in other vanquished enemy's territories e.g. Germany and in Okinawa, Japan.)

This is a map of all the U.S. bases in South Korea, and all the North Korean and Russian bases near U.S. borders.
Source: U.S. Department of "Defense"

And the story of untapped mineral wealth in North Korea (and, incidentally, occupied Afghanistan) is also one probably worth telling.

Then there are the nuclear taunts by two lunatic demagogues with bad hair on opposite sides of planet -- alarming many of my normally complacent neighbors, some so badly that they have forgotten to use spellcheck.

 Waterville Morning Sentinel, Aug. 9, 2017

But I write this blog to keep my head from exploding, not yours.

The most explosive news I stumbled across in my research about U.S. military bases in Korea was an item from Stars and Stripes headlined "Plans to institute military oath against suicide could backfire, some experts say."

Source: stopsoldiersuicide.org

Most of us are aware by now that suicide is the leading cause of death among U.S. troops, either active duty or, especially, veterans. Since war is increasingly waged by flying killer robots the actual boots on the ground continue to diminish in number, bringing down the likelihood of dying in combat. 

The moral injuries that lead to suicidal thoughts and actions? Those roll ever onward.

There were 22 veteran suicides each day at last reckoning. That number counts completed suicides, and does not include those attempted but not completed. Some studies show 30% of veterans report having suicidal ideation.

I was surprised to learn that an ill-advised oath against suicide was included in the National "Defense" Authorization Act passed by the House of Representatives on July 14.

A legless veteran who is a Republican from Florida, Rep. Brian Mast, is the lead promoter of the "Oath of Exit" which reads:

“I, ________, recognizing that my oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, has involved me and my fellow members in experiences that few persons, other than our peers, can understand, do solemnly swear (or affirm) to continue to be the keeper of my brothers- and sisters-in-arms and protector of the United States and the Constitution; to preserve the values I have learned; to maintain my body and my mind; and to not bring harm to myself without speaking to my fellow veterans first. I take this oath freely and without purpose of evasion, so help me God.”

We'll leave aside the question of why a mandatory oath would include reference to a religious entity when we are alleged to have separation of church and state (a rapidly eroding concept as the current regime's cabinet holds weekly Bible study sessions on the taxpayers' dime). 

The bottom line is that mental health experts say suicide oaths, popular ten years ago, don't work.

In fact, they can be counterproductive because they deter folks with suicidal ideation from seeking help; they can't admit they want to end it all because they made a promise not to think like that.

I firmly believe that friends don't let friends enlist in the first place, but my heart aches for the youngsters that are lured into military life by means of billions in advertising and marketing schemes that pervade 21st century life in the USA. Even grown men and women succumb to their blandishments, because they want a new truck, or to take care of their aging mom, or to see the world, or to be able to afford college.

Very little information about what they are really signing up for is actually shared. Eight years of life killing and destroying other people's homes at the behest of commanders like the demagogue with bad hair in the White House, for a pittance.

"Hairswap" by Redditor GallowBoob 

There are many signs that we're nearing the end of the horrific age of American Empire.

Endless wars that no one else wants to even know about take their toll on the 1% of the population that actually wages them. Empty b.s. like "thank you for your service" just increases the mental anguish and feelings of isolation, according to many. The disillusionment that sets in as veterans struggle with feelings of guilt, futility and, in many cases, actual poverty don't seem to fulfill the shiny promise of serving their country that was hyped by the recruiters.

Requiring military personnel to swear they won't kill themselves seems like a sign of the death throes of an empire.

Glorifying Drones And Recruiting New Operators Propaganda Effort Has Many Helpers

One of thousands of squares commemorating war victims in the Drone Quilt Project.
Art by Leeza Vinogradov

I'll admit here that I gave up on National "Public" Radio some years ago, around the time they began running promos for their agribusiness and other corporate sponsors. NPR's coverage of the Iraq war was so carefully tailored to show the view through approved windows that I began to lose respect for their journalistic integrity. More like the New York Times and The New Yorker magazine, really, puffing Obama while panning Republicans, signalling their fealty to the other corporate war party.

This week I invited others concerned about the rampant killing of civilians by flying killer robots to contact NPR objecting to their recent interview with drone contractor and author Brett Velicovich. 

Self-billed as a drone warrior, Velicovich continues to profit from using flying killer robots to attack others who couldn't possibly fight back as the "warrior" attacking them is remote and often thousands of miles away. Such courage! Such valor! (Such bullshit.)

The propaganda in favor of weaponized drones is pervasive and well funded. Veterans for Peace past president Leah Bolger posted this item to a no-drones listserv I'm on:

The Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum is having a huge 8 month exhibit on drones.  They asked to display the Drones Quilt Project and I had reserved 6 quilts for them, but at the last minute they said they didn't have any room.  I talked to the curator -- Nick Mottern talked to him, Chris Antal talked to him -- but they wouldn't change their minds.  They said they were just exhibiting the history of drones (all kinds) and that they only had a couple of pictures of Predators, and that they didn't glorify them.  But then I noticed that they had scheduled this: 

BOOK LAUNCH Drone Warrior: An Elite Soldier's Inside Account of the Hunt for America's Most Dangerous Enemies By Brett Velicovich and Christopher S. Stewart 

Tuesday, June 27 (during Members Night) Lutnick Theater, $10 general admission; Free for members 

For nearly a decade, Brett Velicovich used drones to take down the world’s deadliest terrorists. He shared his harrowing experiences with Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Christopher S. Stewart. Hear them discuss their captivating book.

The Drones Quilt Project expanded on their coverage of this propaganda effort in a post noting that the museum with no room to display an art project based on civilian victims of U.S. militarized drones did manage to find space for Lady Gaga's drone dress.

Lady Gaga flies onstage via drones

Would you be surprised to know that the New York Times review of the museum exhibit mentioned the victims of drones exactly once, in the headline? "Drones Kill, Yes, But They Also Rescue, Research, and Entertain" was their sanitizing contribution to the practically non-existent national debate on the ethics of endless warfare via remote control bombing by robots.

Data compiled by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism

Currently, the corporate media would have us very, very scared that the demogogue with bad hair has his finger on the red button of nuclear destruction. News outlets like the NYT thought it was great when Obama ramped up the budget for nuclear weapon research and development, just as they thought it was great when he became the president with ten times more drone blood on his hands than his predecessor.

A tiny bit of corporate media attention is given to the PTSD that drone operators -- presumably operators less tough than warrior Velicovich -- suffer from after viewing the "bug splat" of civilians who died when they pushed their buttons.

This is how the manufactured consent for endless wars at taxpayer expense is maintained: by controlling the information available to the public.

Here's the museum's self-description to provide the flavor of this sort of propaganda effort:

New York City’s Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum Complex is an educational and cultural non-profit institution centered on the aircraft carrier Intrepid. The mission of the Museum is to promote the awareness and understanding of history, science and service through its collections, exhibitions and programming in order to honor our heroes, educate the public and inspire our youth. [emphasis mine] Join us for a dynamic, interactive and educational journey for all ages.

"Inspire our youth" is code for military recruiting. Or maybe it's code for recruiting youth in poverty, and inspiring youth in the upper classes to pursue higher education with an eye to contributing to the high tech killing. If successful, they could write a book and go on tour to display their courage.

Recruiting in Chicago got a big boost last week when Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama's former chief of staff, announced that no one would get their high school diploma until they were either signed up for a school or other program, employed -- or joined the military.

This strikes me as grounds for a whopping law suit and I expect the kickass Chicago Teachers Union will be one of those bringing legal action on behalf of the students. 

Managing information is one thing, but losing a relative to PTSD or suicide is another. The most fascinating actual news of the week was this article in Mondoweiss reporting on a study that linked combat deaths of U.S. military personnel to swing states that voted for the demagogue with bad hair in the last election. Because that candidate falsely represented himself as a non-interventionist, researchers Douglas Kriner and Francis Shen examined voting patterns and published "Battlefield Casualties and Ballot Box Defeat: Did the Bush-Obama Wars Cost Clinton the White House?"

In other words, running as a pro-war candidate may have alienated voters poor enough to actually know someone who came home in a box.

Now that the U.S. has robots to do some of the killing, the percentage of active duty military is extremely small, like 1% of the population. This helps corporate media and other propaganda organs to hype war as glorious. 

Source: PTSDInsight "The Veteran Suicide Crisis"

Tell that to the kids in my family whose veteran dad recently killed himself with a gun in their bathroom after suffering for years from combat-induced PTSD.

With Suicide And Overdose Deaths On The Rise, Is America Great Again?

My extended family absorbed two pieces of bad news yesterday. One father of three shot himself in the heart after struggling with the PTSD that follows veterans home from battle; his twelve year old daughter heard the gun shot but could not open the locked bathroom door. His pain may have ended, but hers is unimaginable.

But my country will continue to spend hundred of millions each year to convince its children that the military is a great job opportunity!

Closer to home, a young father died of an overdose. He had just earned his GED. He left behind a pregnant wife and a couple of small children. Maine now loses a person every day to opioid abuse. That's a statistical average. Some days we lose more than one.

These are the wages of poverty among generations that have known nothing but expensive, distant wars.

The wages of stop loss and head injuries and repeated redeployments that render U.S. soldiers unfit for continuing to live.

The wages of high poverty and low health care and a society that treats addicts like criminals rather than people suffering from a deadly illness.


It's no wonder people fall for the words of a demagogue with bad hair promising to make their country great again.

Instead, our country is now invading Syria and threatening Iran and Qatar and China and Russia and occupying Iraq and Afghanistan and...We're massing troops on the border of too many countries and we're the biggest weapons dealer the world has ever known. Our own people are gunned down in the streets by police, and struck down at home by drugs meant to ease their pain. Or they take a gun in hand and end the pain once and for all.

My love goes out to everyone suffering under the rule of the wealthy. Whatever mistakes we make, we deserve to live and to see our children grow up, to hold our grandchildren on our laps and whisper how important they are.

I share this piece by the German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht in the spirit of healing our deadly devotion to wealth and the violence it requires to maintain it. (Thanks to Bruce Gagnon for sharing it to his blog yesterday with the title "Forgive Us, We Were Fools.")

To those born later

By Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)

I.
Truly I live in dark times!
Frank speech is naïve. A smooth forehead
Suggests insensitivity. The man who laughs
Has simply not yet heard
The terrible news.

What kind of times are these, when
To talk about trees is almost a crime
Because it implies silence about so many horrors?
When the man over there calmly crossing the street
Is already perhaps beyond the reach of his friends
Who are in need?

It’s true that I still earn my daily bread
But, believe me, that’s only an accident. Nothing
I do gives me the right to eat my fill.
By chance I've been spared. (If my luck breaks, I'm lost.)

They say to me: Eat and drink! Be glad you have it!
But how can I eat and drink if I snatch what I eat
From the starving
And my glass of water belongs to someone dying of thirst?
And yet I eat and drink.

I would also like to be wise.
In the old books it says what wisdom is:
To shun the strife of the world and to live out
Your brief time without fear
Also to get along without violence
To return good for evil
Not to fulfill your desires but to forget them
Is accounted wise.
All this I cannot do.
Truly, I live in dark times.

II.
I came to the cities in a time of disorder
When hunger reigned.
I came among men in a time of revolt
And I rebelled with them.
So passed my time
Given to me on earth.

I ate my food between battles
I lay down to sleep among murderers
I practiced love carelessly
And I had little patience for nature’s beauty.
So passed my time
Given to me on earth.

All roads led into the mire in my time.
My tongue betrayed me to the butchers.
There was little I could do. But those in power
Sat safer without me: that was my hope.
So passed my time
Given to me on earth.

Our forces were slight. Our goal
Lay far in the distance
Clearly visible, though I myself
Was unlikely to reach it.
So passed my time
Given to me on earth.

III.
You who will emerge from the flood
In which we have gone under
Bring to mind
When you speak of our failings
Bring to mind also the dark times
That you have escaped.
Changing countries more often than our shoes,
We went through the class wars, despairing
When there was only injustice, no outrage.
And yet we realized:
Hatred, even of meanness
Contorts the features.
Anger, even against injustice
Makes the voice hoarse. O,
We who wanted to prepare the ground for friendship
Could not ourselves be friendly.
But you, when the time comes at last
When man is helper to man
Think of us
With forbearance.         

                                                          

[1940] 

We are all Mother Courage now, scrambling to make a living off the war machine while trying (and failing) to keep it from consuming our children.

Military Suicide Epidemic: 16 Veterans, Every Day

This morning I am looking at a disturbing effort by military wives to write words on their bare skin and then share photographs of themselves in order to remove the stigma of seeking help for PTSD. I saw it on a creepy website called iVillage that has a lot of Michelle Obama in your face -- as in, you cannot get her pop-up ad to stop obscuring the bottom of the page you are trying to view.

Another example of the creepiness: if you click on the photo of the bare backed woman hoping to see more ("Related Photos") it insists on taking you to a photo essay called "Hottest Military Dads." :-p

But Battling Bare is attempting to address a real problem that affects us all, not just veterans, and not just veterans' loved ones. Their facebook page led me to this poster, which I shared:

Also to Rachel Maddow's story on a Veterans Administration building in danger of collapsing from the weight of a backlog of 37,000 file folders pertaining to unprocessed claims by about a million veterans. Claims that have been waiting for months or even years to be addressed.

I very seldom share, or even view, programs that contain ads for corporate sponsors (and these on MSNBC are truly odious -- Bank of America's credit card, BP on how great the Gulf is now) but I will make an exception in this case because the story is so important:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Remember, a soldier who dies by suicide is a soldier whose family will no longer be receiving payments from the Pentagon. Unless the family sues alleging that the government failed to respond to legitimate claims for care that was never received. Good luck with that.

A woman stopped Sunday at our ongoing vigil on the bridge in Skowhegan, Maine. Her partner had hollered out the window as he drove by, wanting to know who were we: independent? I nodded yes and his face brightened. Not for Obama? Nope. Romney either? No again.

The woman told us she was newly a grandmother. Her two week-old grandson's daddy had been deployed four times to Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Army had plans to send him back for the 5th deployment. "He doesn't want to go," she told me. "He used to be enthusiastic and he loved his country. But he doesn't believe in these wars anymore."

I'll end with an excellent Democracy Now! segment on the epidemic of soldier suicides -- more die by their own hand than are killed in combat, and that is the way of death for 16 veterans PER DAY. From suicide prevention educator Kevin Hines: "...sometimes you go to a base that has one psychiatrist per 5,000 to 10,000 servicemen and women."

Driving around waiting to get blown up

1st PHOTO: Leslie Smith, 30, talks to a veteran contemplating suicide during a shift at the Department of Veterans Affairs suicide prevention hot line in Canandaigua, N.Y. Ashley Gilbertson/VII Network, for The New York Times

2nd PHOTO: U.S. Soldiers with the 101st Airborne Division work to save a comrade after an Improvised Explosive Device exploded just outside Combat Outpost Nolen in the Arghandab Valley north of Kandahar July 30, 2010. One soldier lost a leg in the blast and another was wounded in the face by shrapnel. REUTERS/Bob Strong


Just finished reading a piece on the hundreds of calls veterans made to a suicide support line in one month. Just after reading about a bi-partisan (false dichotomy alert any time you see that word) call to build up the U.S. Navy, which mentioned that Secty. of "Defense" Gates "focused his effort on winning the wars we are in today. But we cannot do that at the expense of preparing for the future..."

I guess it's okay if we do it at the expense of the mental health of the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan who, when asked to describe what their mission is, respond: "Driving around waiting to get blown up."

Then my morale was refreshed by a fascinating article on military intelligence from a former classmate of Bradley Manning. It's not that his article didn't have horrific details about our tax $$ at work in Iraq, because it does. But it was refreshing because it cut through the Obama administration's b.s. about how wikileaks reporters have "blood on their hands" by revealing Afghan informant names from years gone by. Definitely worth a read. I sent author Evan Knappenberger a note that he deserved an A+ on his paper -- even if it was turned in a few years late.