Message from Patch: A Public Health Gesture

“Few trends could so thoroughly undermine the very foundations of our free society as the acceptance by corporate officials of any social responsibility except to make as much money for their shareholders as possible.”

—Milton Friedman, architect of disaster capitalism

What are you doing about the fact that our president publicly sanctions torture?

It is public. It is public. It is in the news. It is in the libraries. The impetus to write this now came after reading these two new books:

Blackwater, by Jeremy Scahill

The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein

This is worse than avian flu. This is a recipe for extinction. We have got to stop the global value system based on the love and dominance of money and power-over, which has cancelled out country, justice, peace and care for all people and nature.

Maybe the most important economics book is: The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies by Robert Lane. If you look at our website (the one you’re on) and find my book list, you can see the books I’ve added to the library over the last 4-5 years. I’m trying to find out as much as I can about all the health needs of self, family, community, society and earth. Human survival is in question. Most all of the solutions are known, yet so few are implemented. Money and power accumulate in huge amounts for a select few. Television is the strongest facilitator of this process.

What can a nonviolent, egalitarian rebel do?

I am a physician who grew up from 1945 to the present. I remember the ubiquitous ads saying that three out of four doctors recommend Chesterfield cigarettes. Growing up, I saw doctors realize that cigarettes were killing and destroying people’s lives. I know it took doctors decades to accept the obvious, and longer to change individual and public habits. Look how long it has taken global warming to be noticed and acted upon. And global warming is only a speck of all the dangers our fragile species is facing now. How does one convince people to pay attention to what is happening in the world that damages live, yet is preventable? How can we build a politics of care? Where is the care candidate in this presidential race that doesn’t suck up to money and power-over? Whose platform is:

Eliminate nuclear weapons today?
Eradicate hunger?
Make rivers swimmable? Drinkable?

Who, that is thoughtful, cannot be embarrassed for this presidential race? Nero is fiddling.

Last night I watched a DVD, The Devil Came On Horseback. This is a powerful documentary of a U.S. Marine Captain, Brian Steidle, who went to Darfur, Sudan, as a military observer and filmed the genocide that had, by that time, killed 400,000 people. It horrified him. It changed him into a witness and he quit the military to give countless slide shows to our government and around the U.S., trying to stir up interest (conscience). You feel his heartbreak over finding out the combination of indifference and misguided aid. He thought that the photos of human horror would outrage people who would then demand protection and care. He asks, what has to be done to have a world’s value system based on compassion and generosity, a politics of care?

I am a pacifist. I will not use or sanction violence to stop violence. I can present ideas, possibilities, as a call for a revolution of loving for all people. What can I suggest that would spark citizens to take back our government away from big business and toward a servanthood of caring for all people and nature? What is repugnant enough that a person will turn off their TV and work for love?

Let’s take torture. If there is one thing that was clear in my growing up, it was that torture is wrong. I grew up in the ‘50’s on U.S. Army bases where my dad served. World War II was still in the air. My best friend’s dad was a lawyer at the Nuremberg Trials so I got an opportunity to read transcripts and see photos. In high school, an Academy Award-nominated Best Picture, Judgment at Nuremberg, spoke of the horror from a moral high ground. In college I read Robert Jay Lifton, M.D.’s The Nazi Doctors in which he tried to examine how our profession was able to sanction torture and murder. His plea is that it never happen again.

It is happening now! The U.S. Government is giving carte blanche to torture. If you are a U.S. citizen and not speaking out, you sanction torture. I list below books and DVD’s in my library on the subject.

Books

Administration of Torture, a Documentary Record from Washington to Abu Ghraib and Beyond, Jameel Jaffer and Amrit Singh, Columbia University Press, 2007. 367 pages.

Torture and Democracy, Darius Rejali, Princeton University Press, 2007. 846 pages.

The Phenomenon of Torture, Readings and Commentary, ed. William F. Schutz, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007. 386 pages.

The Torture Debate in America, Karen J. Greenberg, Columbia University Press, 2006.

Monstering: Inside America’s Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror Wars, Tara McKelvey, Avelon Books, 2007. 288 pages.

Five Years of My Life, An Innocent Man in Guantanamo, Murat Kurnaz, Palgrave Books, 2007. 250 pages.

The Torture Papers, The Road to Abu Ghraib, ed. Karen S. Greenberg and Joshua Dratel, Cambridge University Press, 2005. 1,233 pages.

The Abu Ghraib Effect, Stephen F. Eisenman, Reaktion Books, 2007. 140 pages.

The Sutras of Abu Ghraib. Note From a Conscientious Objector In Iraq, Aidan Delgado, Beacon Press, 2007.

The Trials of Abu Ghraib: Expert Witness Account of Shame and Horror. S. G. Mestrovic, Paradigm Publishers, 2005.

Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program. Stephen Grey, St. Martin’s Press, 2007. 372 pages.

The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration. Jack Goldsmith, Norton Books, 2007. 256 pages.

Botero: Abu Ghraib. With an essay by David Ebony, paintings by Fernando Botero. Prestel Books, 2006.

Films

Outlawed: Extraordinary Rendition, Torture and Disappearances in the “War On Terror.” Witness Films, 2006.

Ghosts of Abu Ghraib. Rory Kennedy, HBO 2007.

The Road to Guantanamo. Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross. Sony Pictures, 2006.

America’s Brutal Prisons, Nick London. First Run

Our president, George W. Bush, publicly flaunts his permission to torture men, women and children. He says he is above the law. His employees carry out this torture and in many cases enjoy it. It makes good photo memories. This is wrong. These are war crimes. This is so wrong, we must rebel. How is this not like Germany, 1930? Democracy happens when citizens stand up, speak out, and work for what is just for all. Where is the outrage against this torture? Are you frightened? Depressed? It is inexcusable! It is shameful that the United States sanctions torture. For decades we have taught torture and murder at The School of the Americas to thugs from all over, especially Latin America. We have trained assassins. We now have Blackwater hiring these thugs to torture and murder. We are responsible for thousands of deaths. What has to happen to a citizen to cause them to rise up against fascism?

Read:

The Anatomy of Fascism, Robert Payton

The Mass Psychology of Fascism, Wilhelm Reich, M.D.

Crowds and Power, Elias Canetti

We, the people of the United States are torturing thousands of people. I am ashamed. I apologize to the world for all the horror we have done and are currently doing. I call for the [redacted to comply with IRS political intervention policy for 501©3s] of our president for war crimes. I entreat the world, those people not hypnotized by the love of money and power-over, to enact a revolution of loving. The love of all people and nature. How? When? Who? How do we make a revolution so that no one is harmed. Please at least read:

Blackwater, Jeremy Scahill

The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein

Please understand why I am screaming so loud.

Is there another solution (except extinction) other than that we must love everybody?

“He who dares not offend cannot be honest.” - Thomas Paine

in peace,

Patch

	Stay in Touch