Open Letter to Dr. Nils Melzer, Swiss Human Rights Chair at the Geneva Academy
Background
The Geneva Academy of international Humanitarian Law and Human Rights is a postgraduate joint center located in Geneva, Switzerland. The faculty includes professors from both founding institutions and guest professors from major universities. The Geneva Academy is affiliated with the University of Geneva.
Dr. Nils Melzer has been the Swiss Human Rights Chair (HR Chair) at the Geneva Academy since March 2016. As HR Chair he develops and promotes the Geneva Academy expertise in HR via policy work, cutting-edge research, expert meetings, the development of partnerships and teaching. Since November 2016, Nils Melzer has also been the UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment.
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Dear Dr. Melzer,
As UN special Rapporteur on Torture, your mandate comprises three main activities:
1) transmitting urgent appeals to States with regard to individuals reported to be at risk of torture, as well as communications on past alleged cases of torture; 2) undertaking fact-finding country visits; and, 3) submitting annual reports on activities, the mandate and methods of work to the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly.
Dr. Melzer, your first mandate as Special Rapporteur on Torture is appealing urgently on States and Nations with regard to individuals that are at risk of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. This is the case with children, being forced to wearing masks, including in class, physical distancing, home schooling, out of touch with their friends and colleagues, but forced to be repeatedly covid tested in schools with the hurtful RT-PCT test (RT-PCT = reverse transcription of the polymerase chain reaction). A case in point – though not exclusive – is Switzerland, where cantonal authorities are compelling schools to periodically test children from as young as Kindergarten to pre-college level.
Children’s mask wearing (as well as for senior adults) causes chronic headaches and fatigue because blood and brain receive insufficient oxygen which may lead to lasting damage, including memory loss. Children suffer psychological traumas. Depression and suicide rates increase exponentially.
At the same time, children are increasingly being coerced via teachers and community authorities to be vaccinated against Covid-19, even though the mRNA-type “vaccines” almost the only so-called vaccines available in Europe and the US, are not officially considered as “vaccines” by CDC, but “experimental gene therapies”; i.e., primarily the Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnsons and Johnson and a number of other GAVI-supported COVAX injections, or so-called vaccines.
These so-called vaccines – or rather gene-therapy experimental inoculations – are known to be dangerous and bear special long-term risks for children.
Dr. Melzer, this is an Urgent Appeal – to save Human Rights for children around the world from cruel and inhuman covid measures applied to them, including to adolescents and young adults – measures that have nothing but absolutely nothing to do with health protection but everything with oppression towards long-term slavery, and, yes, a systematic and massive-style depopulation.
You recently said correctly and wisely “Sadly, today, torture remains a very real part of situations of conflict and violence”. What many of the 193 UN member governments are forcing their children to go through is a form of torture, especially considering their potential – and likely long-term effects. (See again the report of Doctors for Covid Ethics here.)
You added that you won’t be able to “save the world single-handedly as a Special Rapporteur, ….. that there are hundreds of stakeholders – organizations, NGO’s, UN agencies and individual experts – who have been working on torture issues for decades. [However], a Special Rapporteur’s independence means I can pick up issues that have remained under the radar of the international community, bring them to the table and try to drive cooperation.”
Dr. Melzer, what I described before as cruel and inhuman acts against children, akin to torture, is one of those issues you mentioned. Therefore, my quest today, my Appeal to you as Human Rights Representative, is to please pick up the issue of covid-based Human Rights abuses on the world population, but particularly on children.
What the absurd covid measures do to the world is a crime, but what they are doing to children is beyond a crime; it is totally immoral, destructive for our powerless children, and for the future of these children, as well as for society as a whole as children are our societies’ future. And worse of all, these measures have nothing to do with health protection – but absolutely nothing. They are sheer tyranny to control.
Children behind masks, social distancing, locked down, remote schooling, deprived from meeting, talking and playing with their peers, friends — instead scaring them into losing their personalities, their self-assurance and self-esteem — results not only in a physical health problem, but also a psychological health issue which, over time, has untold, uncountable collateral damage, including total submissiveness for today’s children.
Our children are vulnerable – they are our future.
They need their Human Rights defended.
Dear Dr. Melzer, please speak up for them at the UN, at UNICEF, in front of the 193 UN member governments, which follow all more or less the same insane covid narrative, the same covid Human Rights abuse, and especially the same Human Rights abuse on children.
Thank you.
Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. Read other articles by Peter.
The Geneva Academy of international Humanitarian Law and Human Rights is a postgraduate joint center located in Geneva, Switzerland. The faculty includes professors from both founding institutions and guest professors from major universities. The Geneva Academy is affiliated with the University of Geneva.
Dr. Nils Melzer has been the Swiss Human Rights Chair (HR Chair) at the Geneva Academy since March 2016. As HR Chair he develops and promotes the Geneva Academy expertise in HR via policy work, cutting-edge research, expert meetings, the development of partnerships and teaching. Since November 2016, Nils Melzer has also been the UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment.
*****
Dear Dr. Melzer,
As UN special Rapporteur on Torture, your mandate comprises three main activities:
1) transmitting urgent appeals to States with regard to individuals reported to be at risk of torture, as well as communications on past alleged cases of torture;
2) undertaking fact-finding country visits; and,
3) submitting annual reports on activities, the mandate and methods of work to the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly.
Dr. Melzer, your first mandate as Special Rapporteur on Torture is appealing urgently on States and Nations with regard to individuals that are at risk of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. This is the case with children, being forced to wearing masks, including in class, physical distancing, home schooling, out of touch with their friends and colleagues, but forced to be repeatedly covid tested in schools with the hurtful RT-PCT test (RT-PCT = reverse transcription of the polymerase chain reaction). A case in point – though not exclusive – is Switzerland, where cantonal authorities are compelling schools to periodically test children from as young as Kindergarten to pre-college level.
Children’s mask wearing (as well as for senior adults) causes chronic headaches and fatigue because blood and brain receive insufficient oxygen which may lead to lasting damage, including memory loss. Children suffer psychological traumas. Depression and suicide rates increase exponentially.
At the same time, children are increasingly being coerced via teachers and community authorities to be vaccinated against Covid-19, even though the mRNA-type “vaccines” almost the only so-called vaccines available in Europe and the US, are not officially considered as “vaccines” by CDC, but “experimental gene therapies”; i.e., primarily the Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnsons and Johnson and a number of other GAVI-supported COVAX injections, or so-called vaccines.
These so-called vaccines – or rather gene-therapy experimental inoculations – are known to be dangerous and bear special long-term risks for children.1
Dr. Melzer, this is an Urgent Appeal – to save Human Rights for children around the world from cruel and inhuman covid measures applied to them, including to adolescents and young adults – measures that have nothing but absolutely nothing to do with health protection but everything with oppression towards long-term slavery, and, yes, a systematic and massive-style depopulation.
You recently said correctly and wisely “Sadly, today, torture remains a very real part of situations of conflict and violence”. What many of the 193 UN member governments are forcing their children to go through is a form of torture, especially considering their potential – and likely long-term effects. (See again the report of Doctors for Covid Ethics here.)
You added that you won’t be able to “save the world single-handedly as a Special Rapporteur, ….. that there are hundreds of stakeholders – organizations, NGO’s, UN agencies and individual experts – who have been working on torture issues for decades. [However], a Special Rapporteur’s independence means I can pick up issues that have remained under the radar of the international community, bring them to the table and try to drive cooperation.”
Dr. Melzer, what I described before as cruel and inhuman acts against children, akin to torture, is one of those issues you mentioned. Therefore, my quest today, my Appeal to you as Human Rights Representative, is to please pick up the issue of covid-based Human Rights abuses on the world population, but particularly on children.
What the absurd covid measures do to the world is a crime, but what they are doing to children is beyond a crime; it is totally immoral, destructive for our powerless children, and for the future of these children, as well as for society as a whole as children are our societies’ future. And worse of all, these measures have nothing to do with health protection – but absolutely nothing. They are sheer tyranny to control.
Children behind masks, social distancing, locked down, remote schooling, deprived from meeting, talking and playing with their peers, friends — instead scaring them into losing their personalities, their self-assurance and self-esteem — results not only in a physical health problem, but also a psychological health issue which, over time, has untold, uncountable collateral damage, including total submissiveness for today’s children.
Our children are vulnerable – they are our future.
They need their Human Rights defended.
Dear Dr. Melzer, please speak up for them at the UN, at UNICEF, in front of the 193 UN member governments, which follow all more or less the same insane covid narrative, the same covid Human Rights abuse, and especially the same Human Rights abuse on children.
This fascinating read dives into a world of new vocabulary coined to initiate conversations around race. And it seeks to discuss “the race construct” which keeps “the discomfort of race oppression out of white people’s minds and bodies”.
Author Eugene Ellis is the director and founder of the Black, African and Asian Therapy Network (BAATN). It’s the UK’s largest independent organisation of its kind. Trained as a psychotherapist, Ellis focuses on “body-orientated therapies” such as body awareness, mindfulness, and healing. Narratives in the book explore “race and mental wellbeing” through an alternative non-verbal lens which doesn’t always involve speaking.
Credit: Confer Books
Ellis told The Canary:
Since George Floyd’s killing, people with mixed families have been pressured to have [race] conversations they might not necessarily have had as a family before. A lot of people feel an ethical pull towards dismantling racism in their workplaces or institutions.
Just last week, the reaction to Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Meghan Markle showed how rife racism is in Britain.
“Being colour conscious”
Opening the discussion with everyday racism, Ellis shows how today’s political and social climate has forced race conversations to the forefront. Whether we like it not, topics of race have become unavoidable as the media has suddenly taken an interest in pursuing race-related coverage.
Ellis wrote:
Talking about race had always been hard work, but, after George Floyd’s killing, it had somehow become hard work not to.
Black Lives Matter protests took place across the world in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis police officer. Millions gathered to protest for justice, with 15-26 million people in the US alone according to the New York Times.
On 13 March, CNNreported that Floyd’s family accepted $27m after Minneapolis city council voted to settle the lawsuit.
BREAKING: Family of George Floyd settles for $27 million in a wrongful death civil lawsuit with the City of Minneapolis and the officers involved in his death, @AttorneyCrump announces. Note, this is SEPARATE from the criminal trials for the officers involved.
Chauvin has pleaded not guilty to second-degree unintentional murder and second-degree manslaughter charges. He has also pleaded not guilty to third-degree murder, which was reinstated in the case on Thursday.
For many People of Colour (POC), the global shift to support anti-racism has been a confusing time of feeling both liberated and overwhelmed. Ellis wrote:
I went through a phase of dislocation and mourning, even paranoia as these narratives played out on the world stage
Credit: Confer Books
Mindfulness
Examining the impacts of racism, the book talks about how trauma can occur “on a mental and physical level due to just existing in a racialised society”.
Mindfulness is a technique that involves a “body-mind” connection. Ellis said it can be used as a way to “almost retune your body” to lessen the fear that arises when speaking in race conversations.
And in this race conversation, he wants to include everyone’s experiences. He wrote:
I also experienced first-hand that, even though white people embody conscious and unconscious race privileges, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are free from pain and suffering.
White guilt and suffering from racism are often shunned, but Ellis said:
That’s a taboo area you can’t talk about but why? I genuinely believe that suffering is across the board. You can’t talk about it because the race construct says you can’t. For it [the race conversation] to move [forward] that aspect needs to come in.
Another concept deployed in the book is how “the race construct” influences individuals to “attend to white people’s hurt and pain before the hurt and pain in people of colour”.
“It was whiteness on display”
It’s natural that frustration weaves its way into these conversations. In comparing ‘black rage’ and ‘white rage’, Ellis wrote:
White rage steps forward when people of colour step forward to take control of their lives and their financial circumstances. It is predictable, brutal and unforgiving.
People of colour understand that if they put their foot on the accelerator of their lives, they can only get so far before they run the risk of losing their reputation, their possessions or even their lives.
The recent increase in news outlets covering topics of race has put a spotlight on racism in the US. This has also sparked people in Britain to dig deeper into racism here.
Ellis said:
The storming of the Capitol and the US elections… I was absolutely gripped by the whole thing. It was whiteness on display. It’s easy for us in the UK to say, ‘oh it’s not like that over here’. In the US racism is brash, big, bold and the UK is a little more subdued. There’s more of a conscious effort in the UK to keep it hidden.
Some institutions have put in place initiatives at certain times to speak about race. In the book, Ellis refers to the “dreaded race day”. He said:
For race or any oppression there should be conversations around that all the time. It shouldn’t be for one day; you need to reflect about it and that’s not enough time.
Mental health services have a responsibility to engage in race conversations
Mental health services that work with Black, Asian, Ethnic Minority and POC also have a responsibility to actively engage in race conversations.
An article written for the Guardian addresses the problem that Black and Ethnic Minority communities “are more likely to develop mental health conditions but less likely to access counselling – or find it fit for purpose”.
Ellis wrote about his thoughts on the problem which is “the internal discomfort of mental health professionals, and their profound feelings of not feeling safe during the race conversation”.
In the book he mentions that POC who then seek mental health services notice this discomfort. He said:
For a lot of people of colour, a big part of their mental health experiences are not necessarily [impacted by] their families but in society by political structures and systems of oppression. This needs to be included as a part of psychotherapy, training and counselling.
Then if their client wants to talk about race, they will feel that the therapist is available for it and most of the time, that’s not how it feels.
PAUSE … and breathe
If creative language, thought-provoking theories, and an honest breakdown of how we can all participate in race conversations is what you’re after, then this is the read for you. Its forward-thinking narrative aims to normalise conversations about race, highlights the significance of historical oppression, and proposes different solutions to healing from race-related trauma.
“PAUSE … and breathe” is noted throughout the chapters and is a respectful reminder to all that taking a break from race conversations is ok; in fact it’s healthy.
Confer UK and Ellis are holding a live webinar specifically for psychotherapists to talk about “racial divides in our society” on 20 March, and they’ll be running another event in June as a part of their Summer Programme 2021.
You can find other publications from this author here.
Featured image Confer Books / Thomas Allsop via Unsplash
How many of people’s mental health diagnoses are really just them struggling to function in a capitalist system that is amoral, destructive, overwhelming, overbearing, unsatisfying, and bereft of meaning?
It’s surely one of the most under-examined questions in the field of modern psychology. People in general and researchers in particular all too rarely think to take a step back from the data they are looking at and consider the large-scale framework within which that data is materializing, and to consider whether there’s anything about that particular framework which is giving rise to the particular data sets they are seeing.
How many of the mental health diagnoses given out are really just people not coping well under capitalism? It’s worth looking into. How many people end up consulting with mental health professionals because they find themselves psychologically unable to keep up with the frenetic corporate pace that’s demanded of them in order to “earn a living”? Or earlier on as children because they are unable to successfully navigate the capitalism boot camp known as school? How many people are given diagnoses, and corresponding bottles of pills, simply because they can’t march to the beat of the capitalist drum?
Beyond that, how many people are pushed into mental illness by the madness of our current system? How many people suffer from very real depression or anxiety arising from the pressure to keep churning out pieces of future landfill in meaningless jobs which serve no purpose other than to turn millionaires into billionaires? How many people simply collapse under the weight of financial insecurity, food insecurity, housing insecurity, employment and insurance insecurity, combined with the effects of desperate attempts to self-medicate the stress?
How many of these stressors are exacerbated by being psychologically pummelled with mass media propaganda day in and day out, artificially twisting your mind into the belief that this is all normal, and that if you can’t keep up, you’re the problem? Telling you that it’s fine and normal for there to be billionaires and empty investment properties while you struggle to keep a roof over your head? Telling you it’s fine and normal for wealth and resources to go toward murdering strangers overseas while you’re forced to choose between medicine and groceries?
And by the capitalism propaganda known as advertising? How is our psychological health affected by a nonstop barrage of corporate messaging informing us that we are deficient, and that there are things we lack which we must obtain in order to become whole? That we’re not beautiful enough, not skinny enough, not fashionable enough, not affluent enough, that we don’t own enough of the top-line items which only the well-off can afford?
I’d venture to say this all has a major impact on our minds. You can have anxiety without being poor, but you can’t be poor without having anxiety. Our competition-based model uses the stress of potential homelessness and death to keep all the slaves turning the gears of the machine, and that stress is now interwoven into the very fabric of our society. It’s so pervasive you have to take a step back just to see it all.
So how best to respond to this depressing situation? How best to avoid drowning in the tar pit of a soulless, nihilistic political and economic paradigm? How to find meaning under a meaningless system which squeezes your psychological wellbeing in order to power its batteries?
Well, that question is much easier to answer. You find meaning under a meaningless system by working to destroy that system.
Do whatever you need to survive, up to and including taking psychiatric medications if you need to, and with whatever remaining time and energy you have left, throw sand in the gears of the machine. Do whatever you can to upset the status quo. Engage in activism. Join a union. Start a union. Start a podcast. Start a Twitter account. Above all, work to spread awareness of what’s really going on in our world, because that’s the weakest point in the machine’s armor right now.
The loose transnational alliance of plutocrats and government agencies which comprises our real government works so hard to manufacture consent because they require the consent of the governed in order to rule; we greatly outnumber them and we can oust their rule if enough of us decide we don’t consent to it anymore. In a western society which must try to at least appear to support free speech, the best front on which to attack such a power structure is on the front of information.
They can’t kill and imprison us all, so if we all awaken to how oppressed we are and to who has been oppressing us, we can use the power of our numbers to kick them out and replace them with a healthier model. The job of the propagandists is to prevent this from happening. The job of you and me is to make it happen.
So help wake people up to the injustices of our system, as many people as you can by whatever means you have access to. Wake them up to the abuses of capitalism. To the abuses of imperialism. To the abuses of mass media propaganda. Learn as much as you can about the madness of our current system, and share what you have learned with as many people as possible.
All positive changes in human behavior arise from an increasing awareness of the underlying dynamics which give rise to them, whether you’re talking about the psychological dynamics underlying the addictive or compulsive behaviors of an individual or the power dynamics underlying the murderous and oppressive behaviors of a globe-spanning empire. If you are looking for meaning, you will find it in the spreading of that awareness.
We absolutely do have the ability to move away from this misery-generating competition-based model that is choking us all to death and replace it with one in which we collaborate with each other and with our ecosystem toward health, beauty, truth, and thriving. If there is meaning to be found in our world, it lies in that direction.
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THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS REFERENCES TO PEOPLE TAKING THEIR OWN LIVES. SOME READERS MAY FIND THIS DISTRESSING.
The BBC‘s media editor just wrote one of the worst articles on Piers Morgan’s job loss yet – because he didn’t take a critical look at the ex-Good Morning Britain (GMB) host’s comments. His article glossed over Morgan’s staggering view on Meghan Markle. And instead, the BBC media editor framed it all as part of a “culture war”.
Piers Morgan
Morgan has been the centre of attention for several days over his comments about Markle and prince Harry. On Monday 8 March, Morgan was talking about their interview with Oprah Winfrey. Manchester Evening News (MEN) reported that:
Piers said he didn’t believe that she had suicidal thoughts.
“Who did you go to? What did they say to you? I’m sorry, I don’t believe a word she says, Meghan Markle,” he said.
“I wouldn’t believe it if she read me a weather report.
“The fact that she’s fired up this onslaught against our Royal family I think is contemptible.”
His comments prompted outrage. More than 40,000 people had complained to the media regulator Ofcom as of 9 March. In the end, ITVsaid that Morgan “decided” to “leave” GMB. So, enter the BBC to do some firewalling for the disgraced hack.
BBC firewalling
Amol Rajan, the BBC‘s media editor, wrote a column on Morgan. But Rajan framed it around the idea that Morgan was at the centre of a “culture war”. He opened by saying:
There is a culture war going on, and Piers Morgan’s job on Good Morning Britain has fallen victim to it.
Rajan then said the Markle/Harry story had “turned the culture war dial to max” on GMB. And he noted:
Ultimately, the contrast between ITV’s corporate position and the personal views of their morning star has created a conflict that could not be resolved.
Talk about snivelling. Because Rajan’s dumbing-down of the situation is not far off being as bad as Morgan’s comments.
“Stunning lack of awareness”
Novara founder Aaron Bastani said on Twitter that:
Oh please BBC. A standard where broadcasters with immense reach, like @piersmorgan, are expected to not question the veracity of claims regarding suicidal thoughts is not a ‘culture war’. Most people, left or right, agree it’s wrong.
Yet not even a day later you’ve written that Piers Morgan’s sacking was due to a culture war not his ignorance and apathy towards a black pregnant woman’s mental health. Stunning lack of awareness from @amolrajanhttps://t.co/cGuJnskMuV
Indeed. But Rajan’s comments sum up the broader issues with Morgan.
Obtuse?
He was still unrepentant on Wednesday 10 March:
On Monday, I said I didn’t believe Meghan Markle in her Oprah interview. I’ve had time to reflect on this opinion, and I still don’t. If you did, OK. Freedom of speech is a hill I’m happy to die on. Thanks for all the love, and hate. I’m off to spend more time with my opinions. pic.twitter.com/bv6zpz4Roe
We all saw you throw a temper tantrum because someone pushed back on you. You literally WALKED OFF THE SET because someone else exercised their freedom of speech …. so what's good for you isn't good for anyone else? How shameful.
— Geneva: still wearing a mask (@GenevaSmith) March 10, 2021
But aside from his alleged misogyny and racism, this is not about free speech.
“Damaging”
Morgan has every right to disagree with Markle’s opinions about the Royal Family. He can also defend them all he wants. And he can do both live on TV. But what he can’t do is cast doubt on her claims about wanting to take her own life. A celebrity with a huge social media following and an international platform has a level of responsibility. Pushing a dangerous narrative about mental health is crossing a line.
He is entitled to his opinion. But not all opinions should be publicly aired. Especially when they have real-world consequences. The charity Time to Change’s director Jo Loughran summed this up:
Not feeling confident to talk about feelings, fearing the negative reactions of others, of being rejected, or worse, having your feelings belittled or disbelieved, leads so many people to bury their distress as deeply as they possibly can. But I know that this isn’t the solution; I know the damaging impact of not finding the words to articulate what’s going on for us or the confidence to externally express them, the resultant internalising of shame; that there must be something fundamentally wrong with who I am if I feel like this.
I have been in the place where ending my life seemed like an option.
A dangerous path
Rajan is almost as bad. Framing widely-condemned comments about mental health as part of a “culture war” is irresponsible. This bullshit also gives the right wing room to avoid discussing the actual issues. But ultimately, it compounds the idea that people can say whatever they want in the name of ‘free speech’ – even if their opinions literally endanger people’s lives.
If you’re concerned about someone, or need help yourself, please contact the Samaritans on 116 123 or email jo(at)samaritans.org.
Children are the world’s most valuable resource, and its best hope for the future. — John F. Kennedy (“Re: United States Committee for UNICEF, July 25, 1963.”) •
What President Kennedy said over half a century ago, is more valid today than ever. This world needs a generation that can lead us out of the mess of dystopian values that was created predominantly by a western civilization of greed. The covid crisis, man-made, served the destruction of the world economy, as well as the ensuing World Economic Forum (WEF) designed “Great Reset”. If not stopped by our youth and coming generation, Covid cum Great Reset is about to give civilization the final blow.
However, the dark forces of the Global Cabal, the Deep State, has plunged humanity, all 193 UN member states at once, into a global catastrophe of epic proportions. To break that globalist spell and to get out of the disaster still unfolding, the world needs thinking people, courageous people, informed and awakened people; people who are not afraid to swim against the stream, to stem the ever-increasing flow of misinformation and government and media lies. It takes educated people. It takes people who dare to resist.
We are experiencing today just the contrary. The minute global elite that has taken a covid-stranglehold on the world’s 7.8 billion people, is doing everything to keep our children, the generations that are supposed to lead the world and humanity into a bright future, uneducated, scared, socially unfit to communicate, to take initiatives, to lead. Today’s youth is depressed by this constant fear propaganda, by the authorities (sic) rules of confinement, not being able to see their friends, to play with them, communicate with them, to do the healthiest social activities there are – exchanging ideas with peers, acquaintances and friends.
One might think, there is a purpose behind it all. Could it be that this minute diabolical Globalist Cabal, those who are behind “The Great Reset”, co-authored by the WEF’s founder and CEO since the NGO’s creation in 1971, Klaus Schwab, could it be that these people have a plan, namely, to leave the world to a generation of uneducated, fear-indoctrinated people, who are used to and have been trained to follow orders, obey authorities and believe their very leaders’ (sic) lies and fall for their manipulations?
It doesn’t take rocket science to believe that this could, indeed, be part of the Cabal’s demonic plan: breaking our society apart. Leaving behind no natural and new leaders to shape the world according to the real needs of the people, of our children not the imposed “needs” of an egocentric dictatorial cabal.
*****
In a new book (in German), “Generation Mask – Corona: Fear and Challenge” (Generation Maske – Corona: Angst und Herausforderung), the immunologist and toxicologist Professor Stefan W. Hockertz illustrates the plight of our children in this artificially induced age of corona. He asks in particular the question: what does this pandemic – better called plandemic – do with our children and adolescents?
They are being flooded by autocratic measures they do not understand, like being forced to cover their faces by wearing masks in school, it’s like a forced-hiding of their identity from their friends and peers; being obliged to follow strict rules of social distancing – don’t get close to your friend, for the protection of your health, you need a distance to your friend, you can no longer freely communicate, and even if you could, due to the covered face, you could not read your friend’s facial expressions – which is key to any useful conversation, between kids as well as adults.
Our kids in the west are being fear-induced and permanently indoctrinated by radio, TV-broadcasts, by permanently having to listen to “case” figures, infections, hospitalizations and death rates. Never mind, that most of these figures are false or distorted, made even more meaningless by absurdly obsessive testing-testing-testing.
To crown it all off – newspapers and magazines depict pictures of coffins, not one or two, but hundreds, mass graves. They are utterly disturbing for adults, let alone for children. Fear is being weaponized and replaced by more fear, followed by depression, the perspective of no future, and often and ever more frequently ending in suicide. Children’s, adolescents’ suicides are skyrocketing.
Children who are the least vulnerable to the covid disease are forced into mass-testing, entire communities, by order of the mayor or the governor, all the way to kindergarten. Testing with hurtful nasal swaps, as often as once or twice a month, and if positive – high percentages of these PCR tests, so far, the only covid test method available in the west – are false positives.
The Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test is a technique used to “amplify” small segments of DNA. If over-amplified, the test results become positive, false positives. Maybe there is a purpose for over-amplifying – increasing the “case figures”, justifying more repression. If one kid tests positive in one of the periodic school tests, the entire class is ordered into quarantine, schooling from home, via computer, Skype, Zoom.
That’s in the wealthy west. What about in the Global South, where not everybody can afford the necessary electronic equipment for “home-schooling”? There will simply be no schooling, no learning, no interchange with classmates. No education.
Testing is traumatic, especially for young children. It is hurtful and scares a kid on several levels, physically – a swap-stick deep into the upper nose, into the sinus cavities, is hurtful and can be even traumatic for children; and psychologically, what if I’m positive? “All my school mates and teachers have to stay home because of me”; or “I could infect my parents and frail grand-parents”. Guilt is everywhere. Guilt is like fear. It makes people pliable, manipulable – takes all initiative and enthusiasm for life away.
For many kids this continuous repression makes them aggressive, frustrated and eventually so depressed, that many see no way out as they see no future in their lives. They are crying from despair, crying from fear, crying from isolation, crying for not being able to congregate with their friends, classmates and peers, and crying for seeing no way out.
What is being done to our children is inhuman. The unilateral, viciously applied repressive measures of confinement, not being able to physically go to school and mix and exchange with friends is destructive. It may leave a deep dent in the social and psychological fabric and subsequent behavior of this future post-covid generation.
No doubt, with a few exceptions, most of the 193 UN member countries applying the same oppressive rules, are aware of what they are doing. They know what and why they are doing what they are doing. They are complicity and in one way or another corrupted and perhaps coerced to adhere to the dictate from “above” or else, if they don’t follow the ruling narrative. Yet, with a minimum of integrity of our leaders, this would not be happening.
First, they destroy the world’s economy in proportions never seen in recent history, then they destroy our future generations so there are no flag-bearers of a new generation into a bright future, once we, our children’s parents, have disappeared out. Our children are being primed as slaves for a minute diabolical elite to become trans-humans for the “Great Reset”.
*****
In his book, Dr. Stefan Hockhertz articulates these concerns and worries of the children, for parents, teachers and authorities to understand them. With the objective of stemming against this catastrophically oppressive trend, Dr. Hockhertz also uses the book to uncover lies and manipulations of governments and the media. He corrects false information and outright lies, but also invites to a dialogue for bringing about more objectivity and less dictatorial rules. After all, this is not a deadly pandemic, but has developed into a plandemic – where clearly a set of different, societally harmful objectives is being played out and relentlessly pursued.
As an immunologist and toxicologist, Dr. Hockhertz also corrects the highly propagated alleged over-fatality and informs about the dangers of the “vaccines”, especially the RNA-based inoculations. He warns against these vaccines – which, in fact, are no vaccines, but rather gene-therapy injections. They have not been sufficiently researched and tested to be considered safe. To the contrary, primary inoculation results are disastrous in terms of serious side effects and death rates. And this only after less than six months into a worldwide vaccination campaign.
See also Dr. J. Bart Classen’s January 18, 2021 peer-reviewed Research Paper “COVID-19 RNA Based Vaccines and the Risk of Prion Disease”, written for the SCIVISION Publication “Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ISSN 2639-9458).
The paper points to the potential medium- to long-term disabling neurological effects, especially degenerative diseases, that may be linked to RNA-based inoculations. This would be disastrous for children. Entire generations could be wiped out, so to speak.
We must not allow this to happen. We must listen to our children’s grief. We must clear the path for a bright future for our children, for our successor generation and for the future of humanity.
• “Re: United States Committee for UNICEF July 25, 1963.” Papers of John F. Kennedy. Presidential Papers. White House Central Files. Chronological File. Series 1. President’s Outgoing Executive Correspondence, Box 11, Folder: “July 1963: 16-31,” JFKL.
Children are the world’s most valuable resource, and its best hope for the future. — John F. Kennedy (“Re: United States Committee for UNICEF, July 25, 1963.”) •
What President Kennedy said over half a century ago, is more valid today than ever. This world needs a generation that can lead us out of the mess of dystopian values that was created predominantly by a western civilization of greed. The covid crisis, man-made, served the destruction of the world economy, as well as the ensuing World Economic Forum (WEF) designed “Great Reset”. If not stopped by our youth and coming generation, Covid cum Great Reset is about to give civilization the final blow.
However, the dark forces of the Global Cabal, the Deep State, has plunged humanity, all 193 UN member states at once, into a global catastrophe of epic proportions. To break that globalist spell and to get out of the disaster still unfolding, the world needs thinking people, courageous people, informed and awakened people; people who are not afraid to swim against the stream, to stem the ever-increasing flow of misinformation and government and media lies. It takes educated people. It takes people who dare to resist.
We are experiencing today just the contrary. The minute global elite that has taken a covid-stranglehold on the world’s 7.8 billion people, is doing everything to keep our children, the generations that are supposed to lead the world and humanity into a bright future, uneducated, scared, socially unfit to communicate, to take initiatives, to lead. Today’s youth is depressed by this constant fear propaganda, by the authorities (sic) rules of confinement, not being able to see their friends, to play with them, communicate with them, to do the healthiest social activities there are – exchanging ideas with peers, acquaintances and friends.
One might think, there is a purpose behind it all. Could it be that this minute diabolical Globalist Cabal, those who are behind “The Great Reset”, co-authored by the WEF’s founder and CEO since the NGO’s creation in 1971, Klaus Schwab, could it be that these people have a plan, namely, to leave the world to a generation of uneducated, fear-indoctrinated people, who are used to and have been trained to follow orders, obey authorities and believe their very leaders’ (sic) lies and fall for their manipulations?
It doesn’t take rocket science to believe that this could, indeed, be part of the Cabal’s demonic plan: breaking our society apart. Leaving behind no natural and new leaders to shape the world according to the real needs of the people, of our children not the imposed “needs” of an egocentric dictatorial cabal.
*****
In a new book (in German), “Generation Mask – Corona: Fear and Challenge” (Generation Maske – Corona: Angst und Herausforderung), the immunologist and toxicologist Professor Stefan W. Hockertz illustrates the plight of our children in this artificially induced age of corona. He asks in particular the question: what does this pandemic – better called plandemic – do with our children and adolescents?
They are being flooded by autocratic measures they do not understand, like being forced to cover their faces by wearing masks in school, it’s like a forced-hiding of their identity from their friends and peers; being obliged to follow strict rules of social distancing – don’t get close to your friend, for the protection of your health, you need a distance to your friend, you can no longer freely communicate, and even if you could, due to the covered face, you could not read your friend’s facial expressions – which is key to any useful conversation, between kids as well as adults.
Our kids in the west are being fear-induced and permanently indoctrinated by radio, TV-broadcasts, by permanently having to listen to “case” figures, infections, hospitalizations and death rates. Never mind, that most of these figures are false or distorted, made even more meaningless by absurdly obsessive testing-testing-testing.
To crown it all off – newspapers and magazines depict pictures of coffins, not one or two, but hundreds, mass graves. They are utterly disturbing for adults, let alone for children. Fear is being weaponized and replaced by more fear, followed by depression, the perspective of no future, and often and ever more frequently ending in suicide. Children’s, adolescents’ suicides are skyrocketing.
Children who are the least vulnerable to the covid disease are forced into mass-testing, entire communities, by order of the mayor or the governor, all the way to kindergarten. Testing with hurtful nasal swaps, as often as once or twice a month, and if positive – high percentages of these PCR tests, so far, the only covid test method available in the west – are false positives.
The Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test is a technique used to “amplify” small segments of DNA. If over-amplified, the test results become positive, false positives. Maybe there is a purpose for over-amplifying – increasing the “case figures”, justifying more repression. If one kid tests positive in one of the periodic school tests, the entire class is ordered into quarantine, schooling from home, via computer, Skype, Zoom.
That’s in the wealthy west. What about in the Global South, where not everybody can afford the necessary electronic equipment for “home-schooling”? There will simply be no schooling, no learning, no interchange with classmates. No education.
Testing is traumatic, especially for young children. It is hurtful and scares a kid on several levels, physically – a swap-stick deep into the upper nose, into the sinus cavities, is hurtful and can be even traumatic for children; and psychologically, what if I’m positive? “All my school mates and teachers have to stay home because of me”; or “I could infect my parents and frail grand-parents”. Guilt is everywhere. Guilt is like fear. It makes people pliable, manipulable – takes all initiative and enthusiasm for life away.
For many kids this continuous repression makes them aggressive, frustrated and eventually so depressed, that many see no way out as they see no future in their lives. They are crying from despair, crying from fear, crying from isolation, crying for not being able to congregate with their friends, classmates and peers, and crying for seeing no way out.
What is being done to our children is inhuman. The unilateral, viciously applied repressive measures of confinement, not being able to physically go to school and mix and exchange with friends is destructive. It may leave a deep dent in the social and psychological fabric and subsequent behavior of this future post-covid generation.
No doubt, with a few exceptions, most of the 193 UN member countries applying the same oppressive rules, are aware of what they are doing. They know what and why they are doing what they are doing. They are complicity and in one way or another corrupted and perhaps coerced to adhere to the dictate from “above” or else, if they don’t follow the ruling narrative. Yet, with a minimum of integrity of our leaders, this would not be happening.
First, they destroy the world’s economy in proportions never seen in recent history, then they destroy our future generations so there are no flag-bearers of a new generation into a bright future, once we, our children’s parents, have disappeared out. Our children are being primed as slaves for a minute diabolical elite to become trans-humans for the “Great Reset”.
*****
In his book, Dr. Stefan Hockhertz articulates these concerns and worries of the children, for parents, teachers and authorities to understand them. With the objective of stemming against this catastrophically oppressive trend, Dr. Hockhertz also uses the book to uncover lies and manipulations of governments and the media. He corrects false information and outright lies, but also invites to a dialogue for bringing about more objectivity and less dictatorial rules. After all, this is not a deadly pandemic, but has developed into a plandemic – where clearly a set of different, societally harmful objectives is being played out and relentlessly pursued.
As an immunologist and toxicologist, Dr. Hockhertz also corrects the highly propagated alleged over-fatality and informs about the dangers of the “vaccines”, especially the RNA-based inoculations. He warns against these vaccines – which, in fact, are no vaccines, but rather gene-therapy injections. They have not been sufficiently researched and tested to be considered safe. To the contrary, primary inoculation results are disastrous in terms of serious side effects and death rates. And this only after less than six months into a worldwide vaccination campaign.
See also Dr. J. Bart Classen’s January 18, 2021 peer-reviewed Research Paper “COVID-19 RNA Based Vaccines and the Risk of Prion Disease”, written for the SCIVISION Publication “Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ISSN 2639-9458).
The paper points to the potential medium- to long-term disabling neurological effects, especially degenerative diseases, that may be linked to RNA-based inoculations. This would be disastrous for children. Entire generations could be wiped out, so to speak.
We must not allow this to happen. We must listen to our children’s grief. We must clear the path for a bright future for our children, for our successor generation and for the future of humanity.
• “Re: United States Committee for UNICEF July 25, 1963.” Papers of John F. Kennedy. Presidential Papers. White House Central Files. Chronological File. Series 1. President’s Outgoing Executive Correspondence, Box 11, Folder: “July 1963: 16-31,” JFKL.
Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. Read other articles by Peter.
The COVID-19 pandemic creates universal death anxiety. We cannot see or touch or smell the virus that has now killed 500,000 Americans. It is everywhere and nowhere—making its lethal, invisible contamination seem almost a supernatural force. Continue reading
The abhorrent ‘direct provision’ will end, but there is still no guarantee that people such as me will be treated as fully human
In 2000 the Irish government introduced a policy for asylum seekers called direct provision, which still holds to this day. Before then, Ireland treated asylum seekers no differently to the way Irish citizens were treated when accessing accommodation, healthcare or other support – but from that date on, they would be removed from general housing and welfare systems.
Under the new system the Irish state hired private contractors to accommodate and feed asylum seekers, who can spend years in limbo awaiting a decision on their asylum claim. The companies that accommodate asylum seekers have collectively earned more than €1bn since the system of direct provision was created – with one family business alone earning almost €140m. Alongside this, the government provides a weekly allowance to pay for clothes, toiletries and other expenses, which stands at €38.80 per adult asylum seeker and €29.80 for a child. No one in the system is legally allowed to work.
Bulelani Mfaco is the spokesperson for the Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland and writes from his shared bedroom in direct provision
‘There is a huge amount of damage you can’t see – the mental trauma’, says Syria Relief report author
More than three-quarters of Syrian refugees may be suffering serious mental health symptoms, 10 years after the start of the civil war.
A UK charity is calling for more investment in mental health services for refugees in several countries after it found symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were widespread in a survey of displaced Syrians.
Over 1,900 people have died from COVID-19 in Houston, Texas, the U.S.’s most diverse and fourth most populous city. Roughly 1.4 million people (19.7 percent of the city’s population) are without health insurance, and multiple hospitals’ ICUs have been at capacity for months. Yet, the city’s police department budget for 2021 is 10 times greater than the Houston Health Department’s budget, with the police allotted nearly $1 billion and the health department $100 million.
While the discrepancy in Houston’s budgeting priorities is particularly dramatic, a Truthout analysis found that all 10 of the U.S.’s largest cities will spend more on policing than public health during Fiscal Year 2021. Combined, these 10 cities’ policing budgets are 3.6 times greater than public health department budgets. Public health departments are generally tasked with aiding vaccine distribution, combating foodborne illnesses, homelessness and environmental toxins, and supporting addiction treatment, among other health-promoting activities.
City
Police Budget
Public Health / Health Budget
New York City
$5,700,000,000
$901,000,000
Los Angeles
$1,857,330,549
$1,200,000,000
Chicago
$1,600,246,503
$57,344,506
Houston
$965,146,748.00
$94,302,696
Phoenix
$745,289,020
$470,028,800
Philly
$757,235,715
$668,653,786
San Antonio
$518,490,301
$45,816,390
San Diego
$568,243,558
$182,070,000
Dallas
$539,053,187
$117,000,000
San Jose
$471,530,192
$127,503,405
$13,722,565,773
$3,863,719,583
The discrepancy between public health and policing budgets is underestimated. Phoenix, Arizona, for example, does not have its own health department. In this case, Truthout included the state’s entire health budget in its analysis. Still, Arizona’s health budget is just two-thirds of Phoenix’s police department budget. For the several cities without public health departments sectioned off in their budgets, Truthout counted the entire health department budget.
Additionally, police budgets don’t always reflect the full extent of a department’s power or presence. For instance, the Los Angeles Public Library reimburses the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) for millions of dollars in services, which is not reflected in the LAPD’s $1.9 billion budget. On the other side of the country, rather than cut the New York City Police Department’s (NYPD’s) budget following the Black liberation uprising of 2020, New York City transferred funds for school resource officers — school police — to the Department of Education budget, an act of subterfuge. Further, Truthout’s analysis does not include the billions spent on confining people in jails, prisons or on electronic monitoring.
Other studies have uncovered similar trends. Kaiser Health News found that “nearly two-thirds of Americans live in counties that spend more than twice as much on policing as they spend on nonhospital healthcare, which includes public health.” A new, in-depth report released by the Center for Community Alternatives found that New York State spent $18.2 billion on the carceral system in 2019, including policing, jails, prisons, prosecutors, parole and probation, compared to $6.2 billion on mental health services, public health, youth programs and services, recreation and elder services combined.
Policing and public health operate under antithetical frameworks. In an article published in the American Journal of Public Health, the authors explained, “A public health approach neither accepts harm as a given nor accepts punishment as prevention. Rather, a public health approach divests from a punishment framework and invests in a prevention framework, centering community-based and community-led efforts to public safety and well-being.” Although in the U.S., even health and social work systems are often bound up with the prison-industrial complex. At their best, public health practitioners target the structural inequities that may be responsible for criminalized behaviors. For example, a true public health approach to substance use would emphasize decriminalization, harm reduction and empathetic treatment, while a policing approach criminalizes marginalized groups who use illegal substances, disappears people and often tortures them with solitary confinement.
The United States government writ large has always prioritized the carceral system over public health, but this dynamic reached new heights during the ‘80s and ‘90s. The Federal 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, co-authored by Joe Biden and signed by then-President Bill Clinton, allocated $12 billion in state subsidies for prison construction, prioritizing states with the harshest sentencing laws.
Moreover, already underfunded public health departments have been increasingly under threat over the past decade. A dearth of funding set the stage for mass death from COVID-19 and, in some states, is contributing to snail-paced vaccine distribution. Georgia’s COVID data task force was disassembled due to a lack of funds, and the state slashed its Fiscal Year 2022 public health budget by $7 million. Meanwhile, district and county health departments in Alabama were operating at 65 percent capacity in 2019 relative to 2010. Some county health departments in North Carolina offer such low salaries that they are unable to fill vacancies for public health nursing positions. State budgets have been supplanted with federal COVID-19 funds, but the rollout has been slow and, in some cases, insufficient.
End Police Violence Collective (EPV), a group that writes about and generates support for the abolition of police and prisons in the public health field, has joined the chorus of rebellion-inspired voices who argue for the reallocation of funds from policing to social services, and ultimately for abolition. Omid Bagheri Garakani, a member of EPV, told Truthout that the collective formed in the process of developing and organizing a statement that addressed law enforcement violence as a public health issue for the American Public Health Association (APHA), which was permanently adopted in 2018. Last October, EPV and other activists drafted, garnered support for, and published an abolitionist statement for the APHA that emphasized decarceration during the pandemic. “While the health harms of incarceration in U.S. jails, prisons, and detention centers have long been a public health crisis,” the statement reads, “their coupling with the ongoing pandemic have made them simultaneously hyper-visible and unprecedentedly exacerbated.”
In response, signatories recommend:
Urgently reducing the incarcerated population
Divesting from carceral systems and investing in the societal determinants of health (e.g., housing, employment)
Committing to non-carceral measures for accountability, safety and well-being
Restoring voting rights to formerly and currently incarcerated people
Funding research to evaluate policy determinants of exposure to the carceral system and proposed alternatives.
By mid-2020, for the first time since 2003, the U.S. prison population dipped below 2 million. A Vera Institute report found that a decline in local jail populations was initially responsible for the decrease, but many jails have since refilled. Prison populations declined in the summer and fall modestly. Still, the report says, “the decrease was neither substantial nor sustained enough to be considered an adequate response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and incarceration in the United States remains a global aberration.
Rather than putting faith in public officials to shift money away from prisons and policing, some advocates –– including the Movement for Black Lives — offer participatory budgeting (PB), a model for community control over money with roots in Brazil, as a more robust route toward decarceration and defunding of police. “For PB to be truly equitable,” writes The Center for Popular Democracy, “it must center the voices of those most impacted, thus giving marginalized communities power over the pots of money that most affect their lives.”
The idea has been implemented in some U.S. cities, but on a relatively trivial scale. The “Measure U Committee” in Sacramento, California, recommended that the city allocate $15 million of its $1.3 billion budget toward participatory budgeting. On February 9, Sacramento City Council announced it would set aside $1 million, with one council member citing his belief in “representative democracy” as justification for the meager rationing.
Black liberation uprisings in Seattle, Washington, pushed the City Council to cut its police budget by 18 percent and to allocate $30 million of its $6.5 billion budget toward participatory budgeting. A 1,000-page report submitted to Seattle City Council from the Black Brilliance Research Project’s needs assessment focused on housing, mental health, youth, crisis and wellness, and economic development. A voting process is scheduled for mid-July to mid-August 2021.
Bagheri Garakani similarly emphasizes community empowerment as a pathway toward abolition, noting that the current public health system sometimes stands as a barrier. “Put simply, people most harmed by health harms and state violence must be shaping the ways we build and dismantle systems,” he told Truthout. “The system of public health is often complicit in the harm we are seeing — both with the pandemic and beyond.”
For example, HIV-related criminal prosecutions may rely on medical records provided by the public health department. Furthermore, Bagheri Garakani said, public health practitioners are often complicit by supporting community policing strategies.
“True community-based public health practice,” however, “will shift power to those who are closest to the problem and subsequently closer to the solution,” he said. “Throughout the pandemic, the enormous mutual aid efforts we’ve seen grow in communities across the country and the world are proof that communities know what is best and what is needed for our own health.”
CORRECTION: This article was updated to reflect the Los Angeles public health budget is $1,200,000,000, not $57,344,506.
A December 2017 statement from the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights notes that, while the US manages to spend “more [money] on national defence than China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, United Kingdom, India, France, and Japan combined”, US infant mortality rates were, as of 2013, “the highest in the developed world”.
The Special Rapporteur provides a barrage of other details from his own visit to the US, during which he was able to observe the country’s “bid to become the most unequal society in the world” – with some 40 million people living in poverty – as well as assess “soaring death rates and family and community destruction wrought by prescription and other drug addiction”.
Capitalism, it seems, is a deadly business indeed.
A demonstrator from the Occupy Wall Street campaign seen with a dollar taped over his mouth as he stands near the financial district of New York September 30, 2011. (Lucas Jackson/Reuters)
How the Cookie Crumbles
She’s 80, comes from Ayr, Scotland, lives in a sea town along the Oregon Coast. She is caretaker for her 55-year-old nephew. Her heart-failed husband, liver shot through, dialysis weekly, is another of her charges.
Imagine, she and her family ran a small chain of shops — clocks, another locksmith, another fish and chips. That was in Bonnie Scotland.
Her sister married a bloke in the US Air Force, and she shipped out with him. Pregnant. Child Drew, early on, in Tucson at Davis Monthan Air Force Base, he was diagnosed with Downs Syndrome. Life for her changed, and then her sister promised if anything happened to this sister, Aunt Regina would take care of Drew. That was a long long time ago.
Regina’s sister and her sister’s husband immolated in a crash coming back from El Paso. Boy Drew left with a younger sister — the boy age 20, sis 16.
For 35 years, our Regina and her Bob raised the boy. Drew is now 55, and part of my job is to support him in his job at a grocery store. He’s been there more than 15 years, and he makes $12.01 an hour.
Forget that economic injustice for a moment. Listen to how the crumbling cookie goes in predatory capitalism — Regina has not been back to the old country in 20 years. She has two knees that are shot. She needs two replacements, but she is the caretaker for the chronically-sick husband. Drew lives with them, getting his two-times a week work at the grocery store as a bagger.
He’s got the infectious personality, and he also has some “issues” glomming onto female staff. Regina was not told that adults with Downs Syndrome many times have lost the synoptic connections tied to urgency for urination and defecation.
Sweet drinks he gulps down, like a lost man in the Sahara. He scarfs down or wolfs down his food.
Like anyone, Drew wants to be in a relationship, married, on some piece of property with a horse, dogs and big garden. He works eight hours a week, and receives under $800 in social security payments.
The state pays Aunt Regina for his care. Her biggest worry is Drew losing his job because of the bathroom accidents or the sexual harassment.
Regina is kind but firm, and her bedside manner isn’t from the latest holistic and enlightened training around people who live with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
“I tell Drew, that if he messes up one more time, the grocery store will fire him. The job is more than pocket change for him. He gets out, has responsibilities, is growing some from the integrated employment, and, mind you this is a big AND, I get him out of the house for a few hours a week so I can gain some sense of sanity. I don’t know if he has to be put into a state institution.”
Luck of the draw, luck of the gene expression, luck of the accidental car mortalities, luck luck luck.
That’s the way the cookie crumbles, and in capitalism, we are not judged by how we treat our aged, infirm, vulnerable, youth, sick, disabled, poor. The worse we treat “them,” the more “they” have to struggle, the more daily fear “they” have of failing, faltering, flipping out mentally, the more successful those Capitalists and those Investors and those Finance Wizards and those Upper Economic Class are!
Redistribution of wealth for “them” is taking every last penny from “them,” us. Working people at $12.01 an hour after 15 years in a national/international chain.
A mentality that posits that “they” meant to do that, defecate in their pants, or, oh, “they” know better, and, oh, “they” are gaming the system and pulling the wool over your bleeding heart social services worker heads.
Heartless in a Time of Plague
Our Scottish Regina is worried about what will happen to Drew once she kicks the bucket, or when she is no longer physically capable of carrying on and running a household with a very demanding Drew and a very failing Bob, her 86-year-old husband.
We talk about the old country’s National Health Service. We talk about the failures of a society that has been ripped open time and time again by the purulent investors — another word for making money anyway they can.
Gutting medical care, gutting entitlement programs, gutting progressive taxation, gutting the measures for health and safety for and by the public. Where oh where will Drew go once his aunt and uncle pass on?
Think of every dollar and penny pinched, and then think of how much we the taxpayer shell out for every nanosecond of the crimes of corporations eating at the belly of communities, and every penny taken in light speed for everything run by the imposters, the misanthropes.
Every million$ here, every billion$ there. Grifters and grabbers. How much did the first Billionaire’s “impeachment” cost us? How much does an Alex Jones or Tom Brady or Michelle Obama get paid for their insipid bolstering of their self-referential mythology? Each speech? Each rot gut book penned?
Every rivet sunk into a Hellfire missile, every pound of fuel used in US Military Terrorism Toys, every nanosecond million made through illegal and unethical investing through algorithm?
That Moon shot by India, or that Mars rover by Japan, or Israel gunning for more surveillance. How much is every human lifetime worth, if we are lumped together in that big pile of “other” and “non-human”?
That heartless cookie crumbling capitalism is rotten to the core. The joke is, though, by the filthy rich, the Art of War Friedman’s and Bezos and all the Google middling’s and upper crust, that if all the billions were taken from the filthy rich, and dumped into the majority on planet earth — the poor, the uneducated, the misbegotten, the terminal, the dysfunctional, the Jerry Springer protagonists and antagonists, in five years all that and more would be back in the hands of the Star Chamber 1,000 or 2,000 Multi-Billionaires.
“We’d just get it all back, because the masses are inherently stupid, know nothing about the value of a dollar, would buy all the junk and shit and whoring dreams we create to sell. We’d have all that so-called ‘redistributed’ wealth back in our hands.”
That myth is coupled with another one, where the rich and the rest of us, having collectively, as much as the 1,000 or millionth richest? Christian Parenti lays it out simply and clearly here:
The 85 richest in the world probably include the four members of the Walton family (owners of Wal-Mart, among the top ten superrich in the USA) who together are worth over $100 billion. Rich families like the DuPonts have controlling interests in giant corporations like General Motors, Coca-Cola, and United Brands. They own about forty manorial estates and private museums in Delaware alone and have set up 31 tax-exempt foundations. The superrich in America and in many other countries find ways, legal and illegal, to shelter much of their wealth in secret accounts. We don’t really know how very rich the very rich really are.
Regarding the poorest portion of the world population—whom I would call the valiant, struggling “better half”—what mass configuration of wealth could we possibly be talking about? The aggregate wealth possessed by the 85 super-richest individuals, and the aggregate wealth owned by the world’s 3.5 billion poorest, are of different dimensions and different natures. Can we really compare private jets, mansions, landed estates, super luxury vacation retreats, luxury apartments, luxury condos, and luxury cars, not to mention hundreds of billions of dollars in equities, bonds, commercial properties, art works, antiques, etc.—can we really compare all that enormous wealth against some millions of used cars, used furniture, and used television sets, many of which are ready to break down? Of what resale value if any, are such minor durable-use commodities? especially in communities of high unemployment, dismal health and housing conditions, no running water, no decent sanitation facilities, etc. We don’t really know how poor the very poor really are.
The books and discourse and deep discussions and analyses have already been posited and published, and yet, we are in 2021, and the school system, the media system, the propaganda machines of government-military-resource extraction-big ag/med/pharma/AI/finance continue to cobble truth, censor the reality of the penury system that is consumer-corporate-criminal-corrupt Capitalism.
Here, a hodgepodge of readings ramifying the thesis in this essay of mine —
Chris Hedges and Richard Wolff: Capitalism Does Not Work for the Majority of the People
Make No Mistake: The Rule Of The Rich Has Been A Deadly Epoch For Humanity
Michael Parenti: Does Capitalism Work? (2002)
The 1% Pathology and the Myth of Capitalism
Capitalism: The Systematic Poverty and Exploitation of Human Beings by Finian Cunningham
Michael Parenti: These Countries Are Not Underdeveloped, They Are Overexploited (1986)
Luxury Eco-Communism: A Wonderful World is Possible
The Growing Disparity In Living Conditions and Its Consequences by Rainer Shea
Covid-19 and the Health Crisis in Latin America by Yanis Iqbal
The Start Of The Great Meltdown For Industrial Civilization by Rainer Shea
MFTN: Poverty Will Kill More Of Us Than Terrorism
The Rich Are Only Rich If We Let Them Be by Dariel Garner
Mystery: How Wealth Creates Poverty in the World by Michael Parenti
The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger + How Economic Inequality Harms Societies
Wealth Belongs To All Of Us – Not Just To The Rich by Dariel Garner
We Are So Poor Because They Are So Rich by Dariel Garner
It all comes back to the rackets — war, banking, big ag, law, prisons, military, computing, finance, insuring, retail, lending, investing, for-profit medicine, education, utilities.
The rackets of putting garnishments on all of our wages. The punishment rackets of fines, foreclosures, levies, taxes, fees, surcharges, add-ons, user fees, disposal fees, tolls, late fees, interest fees, penalties, wage attachments, wage theft, any-government-revenue/policing/judicial entity having the legal right to crack into any savings or checking or real estate holding they want to….And steal!
Imagine that freedom, uh? My Drew or my Don, they work for pittances, and they have their measly wages garnished if they make too much above the allowable social security benefit level. Imagine all of the flimflam, all those middle and peripheral and shadowy and underhanded people and agencies each taking a gram of flesh until that human life has been pecked away.
Stuck in a closet somewhere. Huddled around a TV, surrounded by the deadly products of a food industry responsible for billions dead. Food (sic) more deadly than cancer sticks, AKA cigarettes.
Think hard how those children-who-come-to-me-as-adults as their social services manager, wanting me to help them find jobs in a dog-eat-dog culture, where the cookie isn’t just crumbling, but rather smashed into smithereens by the capitalists. All those poisons in food, all the polluting, toxin-laced, dam-building, river-tainting, air-staining processes that bring us better living with plastics-fastfood-shelf lives of a decade. Better living through chemistry, pharmaceutics, chronic illness, disease management, pain regulating.
Then, we cannot discuss the possibilities of a society with more and more allergies, more and more chronic illnesses, more and more learning disabilities, more and more developmental disabilities, more and more intellectual disabilities, more and more trauma and PTSD and generalized anxiety and physiological premature weathering.
And poverty does more than just kills. Poverty eats at the soul, drives people to unsafe harbors like consumerism, disposability, obsessions, addictions, inattentiveness, collective Stockholm Syndrome, perversions, empty calories-entertainment-thinking.
There are numbers just for one aspect of our consumer-retail-exploitative societies competing in a trans-national gallery of dirty capitalism — 4.2 million premature deaths annually? Five million? More? Exposure to air pollution caused over 7.0 million deaths and 103.1 million disability-adjusted life years lost in one year.
Attributed to dirty (polluted) air. Not dirty water. Not dirty food. Not dirty drugs. Not smoking. Not boozing. Not war.
The study uses existing data from IHME on global burden of diseases (Mortality and Disability Adjusted Life Years) related to air pollution such as Trachea, Bronchus and Lung cancer, COPD, Ischemic heart disease and Stroke. This study shows that air pollution is one of the major environmental risk factors for the global burden of disease in 1990-2015 and has remained relatively stable for the past 25 years. By region, the largest burden of disease related to air pollution is found in Western Pacific and South-East Asia, reflecting the heavy industry and air pollution hotspots within the developing nations of these regions. Moreover, the rates of Disability Adjusted Life Years increased because of increase in pollution, especially in South-East Asia region, African region, and Eastern Mediterranean region where populations are both growing and ageing.
I’ve written about this for years — how there is so much disconnect in Criminal Capitalism, where the marketing ploys and psychological tricks force babies and then toddlers and then kindergarteners and then grade schoolers and then more and more millions of growing minds to adapt to counterintuitive thinking, to accept death, slow or otherwise, as part of the social contract. Dog-eat-dog, predation, big fish/small pond, and the roots of America after decimating Turtle Island, one smoke and mirror show after another snake oil sales pitch.
Which sane or humane person would accept a PayDay loan scam? Which humane person would accept forced arbitration clauses? Which caring human would not endorse clean, well-run, full coverage public transportation? Which caring mother would not demand prenatal care, and medicine and clinics on demand? Where is the logic of old men and old women (look at the senate, the congress, the administration) running the lives of the unborn, newborn and youth into the ground.
Even the thirty-somethings in Brooks Brothers suits look, sound, smell, and espouse OLD. I don’t mean old and wise, or elder thinkers, or experienced and well traveled. I mean old in decayed.
If the world is saved, it will be saved by people with changed minds, people with a new vision. It will not be saved by people with old minds and new programs. It will not be saved by people with the old vision but a new program.
The Takers accumulate knowledge about what works well for things. The Leavers accumulate knowledge about what works well for people.
— Daniel Quinn, Ishmael
These flimflam artists, these liars and cheaters and pontificators and media monsters, they are antithetical to a good governance, good society, good people.
They not only do not know the stories of Drew and his Aunt Regina and Uncle Bob, but they have no forward-thinking solutions to the aging old foster parents and the still healthy middle-aged Drew. With all his beauty. With all his kindness. With all his adept knowledge of how to get on, get along, get his day going. Drew, born in the cookie crumbles crap shoot. Regina, who was on her way back to the UK, Scotland, when she answered the call to take care of Drew and his sister.
This story is repeated a million times a month, worldwide. The penalty for living, for being human, for being not one of them (rich, powerful, greed-wielding) and for stopping their lives to do the right thing.
You wake up one day and believe you have a worthy life. You wake up and take account of what good you have done. You wake up and look in the mirror and wonder what it is you actually dreamt, thought, spoke, cared for, read, built, protected, grew, sheltered, did, held sacred, envisioned, husbanded, parented, fostered, ate, drank, created.
Did any of that living have purpose, or some connection to the humanity that is the real culture of Homo Sapiens, mother culture?
Daily, I have a million intersections with culture and cultures — Big D for deaf or small d for disabled? Brain-injured at birth, or hit by a truck at age 11. Traumatic Brain Injury from an early childhood beating, or massive psychological trauma from a rape at age 20. Born with any number of diagnosed maladies, or any expression of “being born on the autism spectrum.” Fragile X or fetal alcohol affective disorder. Or Downs Syndrome.
The luck of the draw is one enormous field of chance, and the outcomes are not just tied to the abilities — emotional, spiritual, economic, personal — of those you call family, but how the society at large and each community gauge the value of life, the value placed on those whose luck of the draw came up short in some areas.
But the world is fragile, and those on some neuro typical scale and those atypically neuro, can we build our culture together, and heal and protect and shelter and engender and facilitate and teach and learn from?
There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact in which they are the lords of the world, they will ACT like lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now.
5Mins Read California-based company Coa is betting that you will soon want to join a gym for your mental health, a safe place and space for you to partake in online emotional fitness classes and to help cope with the increasing loneliness epidemic that the global pandemic has brought on for millions of people, not to mention […]
As TFTP reported last week, Christian Joseph Hall, 19, was in the midst of a mental health crisis. He positioned himself on top of an overpass on I-80 leading to police closing off the road and engaging with him. Moments after police arrived, however, Hall would be dead. Video would prove he had his hands in the air and had surrendered when cops opened fire. Hall has now become one of over 1,400 people in a mental health crisis to lose their lives to police since 2015.
As TFTP has pointed out, even cops who voluntarily attend Crisis Intervention Training (CIT), have shown that they are quick to the trigger when dealing with the mentally ill.
The social and economic destruction engulfing the U.S. and dozens of other countries remains out of everyone’s control and more chaos, instability, and insecurity now mark the global landscape.
The ruling elite have repeatedly shown their inability to tackle any serious problems effectively. They are at a loss for how to deal with current problems and refuse to consider any alternative to their obsolete economic system. The best they can do is recycle old ideas to maintain their class power and privilege. Their efforts to block the New focus mainly on promoting disinformation about “new and better forms of capitalism,” including oxymorons like “inclusive capitalism,” “responsible capitalism,” and “ethical capitalism.”
Since the outbreak of the “COVID Pandemic” in March 2020 every week has been a roller coaster for humanity. The economy and society keep lurching from one crisis to another while incoherence and stress keep amplifying. It is said that 1 in 6 Americans went into therapy for the first time in 2020.
Unemployment, under-employment, inequality, mental depression, anxiety, suicide, environmental decay, inflation, debt, health care costs, education, and poverty are worsening everywhere. Thousands of businesses that have been around for years keep disappearing left and right.
Top-down actions in response to the “COVID Pandemic” have made so many things worse for so many people. Many are wondering which is worse: the covid-19 virus or the top-down response to the pandemic. Governments everywhere have steadfastly refused to mobilize the people to solve the many problems that are worsening. The moral climate is low and more people are worried about the future.
An atmosphere has been created whereby people are supposed to feel like the exhausting “COVID Pandemic” will last forever and we can all forget about getting back to any normal healthy non-digital relations, activities, and interactions. No society in history has worn face masks for an entire year. We are told over and over again that there is no returning to anything called “normal.” Moving everything online and repeatedly asserting that this is great, “cool,” and wonderful is proving to be unsatisfactory and unfulfilling. People want and need real, direct, non-digital connections and interactions with other human beings. Life behind a screen is not life.
Even with all the restrictions and shutdowns the virus, according to the mainstream media, continues to wreak havoc at home and abroad. It is almost like none of the severe restrictions on people’s freedoms made any difference. People have had to endure this humiliation while also not being permitted any role in deciding the aim, operation, and direction of the economy or any of the affairs of society; they are left out of the equation every step of the way and not even asked for superficial “input” that always goes unheeded anyway. Existing governance arrangements are simply not working to empower people or affirm their rights. The people’s interests and will are blocked at every turn by an outdated political setup that advances only the narrow interests of the rich.
Despite intense pressure to blindly rely on the rich and their political representatives to “figure things out,” this is not working. Nor does it help that the mainstream media approaches multiple crises and issues with endless double-talk, disconnected facts, catchy sound-bites, dramatic exaggerations, angry voices, political axe-grinding, and lots of confusion. Coherence and a human-centered outlook are avoided at all costs. People are constantly left disoriented. Jumping arbitrarily and rapidly from one thing to another in the most unconscious way is presented as useful analysis and information. This is why sorting out basic information has become a full-time job for everyone. People are understandably worn-out and overwhelmed. Disinformation overload degrades mental, emotional, and physical health.
The world has become an uglier and gloomier place—all in the name of “improving health.” It is no surprise that a recent Gallup Poll shows that the majority of Americans are extremely dissatisfied with government, the economy, the culture, and the moral climate.
In this hazardous unstable context, there are two ever-present key pieces of disinformation operating side by side. Both are designed to deprive working people of any say, initiative, outlook, or power.
First there is the “once everyone is vaccinated things will be much better” disinformation. This ignores the fact that capitalist crises have endogenous causes not exogenous causes and that the economic crisis started well before the “COVID Pandemic.” More than 150 years of recessions, depressions, booms, busts, instability, chaos, and anarchy have not been caused by external phenomena like bacteria, germs, and viruses but by the internal logic and operation of capital itself. A so-called “free market” economy by its very nature and logic ensures “winners” and “losers,” “booms” and “busts.” It is called a “dog-eat-dog” fend-for-yourself competitive world for a reason. The modern idea that humans are born to society and have rights by virtue of their being is alien to “free market” ideology.
Despite the fact that millions have been vaccinated at home and abroad, poverty, inequality, unemployment, debt, and other problems continue to worsen. Businesses continue to suffer and disappear. Hospitality, leisure, recreation, and other sectors have been decimated in many countries. Air travel is dramatically lower. So are car sales. It is not enough to say, “Yes, the next few months will be rough and lousy economically speaking but we will get there with more vaccinations. Just be patient, it will all eventually work out.” This is not what is actually unfolding. The all-sided crisis we find ourselves in started before the “COVID Pandemic” and continues unabated. Such a view also makes a mockery of economic science and the people’s desire to decide the affairs of society and establish much better arrangements that exclude narrow private interests and do not rely on police powers.
In the coming months millions more will be vaccinated but economic decline and decay will continue. Both the rate and amount of profit have been falling for years. And owners of capital are not going to invest in anything when there is no profit to be had and when it is easier instead to balloon fictitious capital and pretend everything is a stock market video game. The lack of vaccinations did not cause the economic collapse the word is currently suffering through, nor will more vaccinations reverse economic decline and decay. The “COVID Pandemic” has largely made some people vastly richer and millions more much poorer. The “COVID Pandemic” has significantly increased inequality. Unfortunately, the so-called “Great Reset” agenda of the World Economic Forum and Pope Francis’s recent call for a “Copernican Revolution” in the economy will make things worse for millions more because they will perpetuate the existing moribund economic system. Such agendas are designed to fool the gullible, block working class consciousness and action, and keep the initiative in the hands of the global oligarchy.
The same applies to so-called “stimulus packages.” Various versions of these top-down monetary and fiscal programs have been launched in different countries, and while they have assuaged some problems for people, they have not been adequate or fixed any underlying problems. They have not prevented poverty or mass unemployment. Economies remain mired in crisis. In most cases “stimulus packages” have made things worse by increasing the amount of debt that many generations will have to repay. This is in addition to the many other forms of debt Americans suffer from and rent payments that will one day have to be paid.
Many are also wondering why trillions of dollars can be printed and instantly turned over to the banks and corporations with no discussion but the same cannot be done for social programs, public enterprises, and the people. Why, for example, can all not get free healthcare or have taxes eliminated? Why can’t various forms of personal debt be wiped out instantly? If the government can print money for “them” why can’t they print money for “us”? Who is government supposed to serve? Billionaires?
Nether the CARES Act of 2020 nor the stimulus package passed in December 2020 nor the one President Biden is pushing for in March 2021 will be adequate or solve any major problems. Many felt that the $600 stimulus checks that went out in December 2020 were pathetic and insulting.
The problem lies with a socialized productive economy run by everyone but owned and controlled by a tiny handful of competing private interests determined to maximize profit as fast as possible regardless of the damage to the social and natural environment. There is no way for the economy to benefit all individuals and serve the general interests of society so long as it is dominated by a handful of billionaires. The social wealth produced by workers cannot benefit workers and the society if workers themselves do not control the wealth they produce and have first claim to.
The outlook, agenda, and reference points of the rich must be rejected and replaced by a human-centered aim, agenda, direction, and outlook. The current trajectory is untenable and unsustainable. The situation is dangerous in many ways, but perhaps one good thing to come out of the accelerated pace of chaos, anarchy, and instability are the contradictions that are presenting new opportunities for action with analysis that favors working people.
Helena, Montana — When the pandemic hit, health officials in Montana’s Beaverhead County had barely begun to fill a hole left by the 2017 closure of the local public assistance office, mental health clinic, chemical dependency center and job placement office after the state’s last budget shortfall.
Now, those health officials worry more cuts are coming, even as they brace for a spike in demand for substance abuse and mental health services. That would be no small challenge in a poor farming and ranching region where stigma often prevents people from admitting they need help, said Katherine Buckley-Patton, who chairs the county’s Mental Health Local Advisory Council.
“I find it very challenging to find the words that will not make one of my hard-nosed cowboys turn around and walk away,” Buckley-Patton said. “They’re lonely, they’re isolated, they’re depressed, but they’re not going to call a suicide hotline.”
States across the U.S. are still stinging after businesses closed and millions of people lost jobs due to covid-related shutdowns and restrictions. Meanwhile, the pandemic has led to a dramatic increase in the number of people who say their mental health has suffered, rising from 1 in 3 people in March to more than half of people polled by KFF in July. (KHN is an editorially independent program of KFF.)
The full extent of the mental health crisis and the demand for behavioral health services may not be known until after the pandemic is over, mental health experts said. That could add costs that budget writers haven’t anticipated.
“It usually takes a while before people feel comfortable seeking care from a specialty behavioral health organization,” said Chuck Ingoglia, president and CEO of the nonprofit National Council for Behavioral Health in Washington, D.C. “We are not likely to see the results of that either in terms of people seeking care — or suicide rates going up — until we’re on the other side of the pandemic.”
Last year, states slashed agency budgets, froze pay, furloughed workers, borrowed money and tapped into rainy day funds to make ends meet. Health programs, often among the most expensive part of a state’s budget, were targeted for cuts in several states even as health officials led efforts to stem the spread of the coronavirus.
This year, the outlook doesn’t seem quite so bleak due in part to relief packages passed by Congress last spring and in December that buoyed state economies. Another major advantage was that income increased or held steady for people with well-paying jobs and investment income, which boosted states’ tax revenues even as millions of lower-income workers were laid off.
“It has turned out to be not as bad as it might have been in terms of state budgets,” said Mike Leachman, vice president for state fiscal policy for the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
But many states still face cash shortfalls that will be made worse if additional federal aid doesn’t come, Leachman said. President Joe Biden has pledged to push through Congress a $1.9 trillion relief package that includes aid to states, while congressional Republicans are proposing a package worth about a third of that amount. States are banking on federal help.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, predicted his state would have to plug a $15 billion deficit with spending cuts and tax increases if a fresh round of aid doesn’t materialize. Some states, such as New Jersey, borrowed to make their budgets whole, and they’re going to have to start paying that money back. Tourism states such as Hawaii and energy-producing states such as Alaska, Wyoming continue to face grim economic outlooks with oil, gas and coal prices down and tourists cutting back on travel, Leachman said.
Even states with a relatively rosy economic outlook are being cautious. In Colorado, for example, Democratic Gov. Jared Polis proposed a budget that restores the cuts made last year to Medicaid and substance abuse programs. But health providers are doubtful the legislature will approve any significant spending increases in this economy.
“Everybody right now is just trying to protect and make sure we don’t have additional cuts,” said Doyle Forrestal, CEO of the Colorado Behavioral Healthcare Council.
That’s also what Buckley-Patton wants for Montana’s Beaverhead County, where most of the 9,400 residents live in poverty or earn low incomes.
She led the county’s effort to recover from the loss in 2017 of a wide range of behavioral health services, along with offices to help poor people receive Medicaid health services, plus cash and food assistance.
Through persuasive grant writing and donations coaxed from elected officials, Buckley-Patton and her team secured office space, equipment and a part-time employee for a resource center that’s open once a week in the county in the southwestern corner of the state, she said. They also convinced the state health department to send two people every other week on a 120-mile round trip from the Butte office to help county residents with their Medicaid and public assistance applications.
But now Buckley-Patton worries even those modest gains will be threatened in this year’s budget. Montana is one of the few states with a budget on a two-year cycle, so this is the first time lawmakers have had to craft a spending plan since the pandemic began.
Revenue forecasts predict healthy tax collections over the next two years.
In January, at the start of the legislative session, the panel in charge of building the state health department’s budget proposed starting with nearly $1 billion in cuts. The panel’s chairperson, Republican Rep. Matt Regier, pledged to add back programs and services on their merits during the months-long budget process.
It’s a strategy Buckley-Patton worries will lead to a net loss of funding for Beaverhead County, which covers more land than Connecticut.
“I have grave concerns about this legislative session,” she said. “We’re not digging out of the hole; we’re only going deeper.”
Republicans, who are in control of the Montana House, Senate and governor’s office for the first time in 16 years, are considering reducing the income tax level for the state’s top earners. Such a measure that could affect state revenue in an uncertain economy has some observers concerned, particularly when an increased need for health services is expected.
“Are legislators committed to building back up that budget in a way that works for communities and for health providers, or are we going to see tax cuts that reduce revenue that put us yet again in another really tight budget?” asked Heather O’Loughlin, co-director of the Montana Budget and Policy Center.
Mary Windecker, executive director of the Behavioral Health Alliance of Montana, said that health providers across the state are still clawing back from more than $100 million in budget cuts in 2017, and that she worries more cuts are on the horizon.
But one bright spot, she said, is a proposal by new Gov. Greg Gianforte, a Republican, to create a fund that would put $23 million a year toward community substance abuse prevention and treatment programs. It would be partially funded by tax revenue the state will receive from recreational marijuana, which voters approved in November, with sales to begin next year.
Windecker cautioned, though, that mental health and substance use are linked, and the governor and lawmakers should plan with that in mind.
“In the public’s mind, there’s drug addicts and there’s the mentally ill,” she said. “Quite often, the same people who have a substance use disorder are using it to treat a mental health issue that is underlying that substance use. So, you can never split the two out.”
[Correction: This article was updated at 4:45 p.m. ET on Feb. 6 to correct the value of President Joe Biden’s proposed relief package.]
Mental health systems in England and Wales face a string of problems, not least of which is privatisation. As part of our #ourlivesourstories series, The Canary has spoken to a number of experts who told us that there are many issues blocking supportive and accessible care.
Like many countries across the world, the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic has made problems with mental health in England and Wales much worse. But the NHS’s mental health services were already underfunded and overstretched.
However, funding isn’t the only problem. The actual services themselves have been criticisedatgreat length. The implications are grave – if patients feel dismissed and isolated, how is that any marker of a good standard of care? How can patients be supported practically? Why aren’t they being supported?
To answer some of these questions, The Canary spoke to a number of collectives that address these very areas.
Come together
Recovery in the Bin (RITB) is an activist collective which questions what the concept ‘recovery’ means in mental health circles. An RITB member told The Canary that the group began as a response to people who felt “exiled” from the system:
It’s about whatever works for you. We support the survivor. We support self-definition, and self-define what your recovery is. Not the system’s version of recovery which, by and large, is “get a job.”
Self-definition, as the RITB member argues, would allow patients to decide what recovery looks like for them. And it comes with the proviso that each patient will have different needs.
Further, their understanding of what recovery looks like for people with mental health issues questions where definitions come from:
So many of these definitions are still tied up with the ideas of professionals, and in turn with the neoliberalisation of academic research – who gets funded to do what research? That’s a very powerful, political process. What gets funded really decides what gets thought about.
The RITB member’s argument here connects academic funding grants to the question of power. If certain academics get funding grants to work on a particular area, it follows that other areas miss out, which in turn impacts patients:
The people using the service are almost the last people listened to.
Timely and respectful
For people who feel mainstream mental health services have isolated or mistreated them, RITB’s socialmedia provides spaces to find community. The RITB member also said that while they agreed privatisation was a problem in mental health services in England, they were concerned about the extent of issues with standard of care:
I would say that we don’t have a working mental health system in England. By that I mean that a system should mean that wherever you are, whatever your situation, you can be seen in a timely way, and in a respectful way that helps you. We do not have that in England, at all.
Patients who don’t feel respected and heard therefore face significant barriers to accessing any version of recovery.
More barriers
The RITB member told The Canary that another member had a particularly difficult experience while trying to get mental health support:
One of our members had to leave a treatment scheme – he’s a person of colour, and he complained about racist assumptions from care providers and the management. Of course, the minute he left and said he had these issues with structural racism, that was completely pathologised… and said “that’s because you’re a loony, and we’re not racist.” People have had psychologists tell them that they don’t believe racism exists.
This member, who was disbelieved and dismissed, has a story that likely speaks to many people.
The Royal College of Psychiatrists released a statement in 2018 which stated:
We recognise that racism and racial discrimination is one of many factors which can have a significant, negative impact on a person’s life chances and mental health.
There are also other collectives that address how oppression impacts quality of life.
We really wanted to work with people that were putting culturally sensitive work at the forefront of our practice, and intersectionality. We found that when we were in training, it was a module – diversity was a module. It was about bringing it into the fabric of our work, our practice, our thinking, our ethos. Even with the therapists working in the practice, they keep that in mind with their work as well.
Evidently, Aashna’s counsellors are encouraged to continue to develop Aashna’s approach to clients.
Racism in mental health services
Raja-Helm went on to explain, as with the case of the RITB member who experienced racism from service providers, that understandings of oppression are very important:
If you are Black, Asian, or from another ethnic group that is non-white, chances are high that you’ve experienced some form of prejudice, or racism, or oppression within the UK. We call this racial trauma, and the way it can impact one is that its trauma: it lives and sits in your body, and it can be activated, and the work is to find a way to digest that trauma.
Concepts like ‘racial trauma’ contribute to a framework that allows clients to be seen by their therapists. Raja-Helm continues:
If the therapist isn’t equipped to hold that significant difference because of their own journey and development, it means the client can often feel abandoned, and they leave the therapy because it’s not supporting them. What we’re trying to facilitate at Aashna is a space where [clients] feel represented, as do the therapists, as soon as they walk in through the door.
Kohli also went on to stress the importance of training. And she warned that in instances where therapists dismiss racism as a stressor for mental health issues:
Those therapists are actually afraid to talk about these subjects. These are really sensitive topics, and for them to discount it, is really not thinking about their own process in it, and their own prejudices. They’ve not been trained in it, and that’s the thing, they’re not being trained into thinking about these really delicate topics and how to work with it properly, and sensitively.
What does that training look like?
In order to answer the question of what this training could look like, The Canary spoke to Dr Beverley Costa, founder of the Pásalo Project, who’s also a senior practitioner fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. The Pásalo Project focuses on the role interpreters can play for patients speaking languages other than English who require talking therapies.
Costa explained that she often carries out training for psychotherapists. Moreover, she encourages reflection on seeing clients fully:
We are having a lot of big philosophical discussions about oppression… and that’s incredibly important. The bit missing for me is that the people who are not doing the seeing are not being equipped with the tools themselves to be able to see marginalised people. And you could say, well, they just need to step up and make more of an effort. But I think there’s just a void there. And my experience is in training is that trainers just leave trainees with that void to get on with it themselves.
Both RITB and Aashna expressed the need for therapists that think critically. And Costa’s outline of being in the training room lays out the power dynamics involved in both therapy and training.
Costa continued:
I think one of the most important things is to create an environment where there is the minimal amount of shame, where mistakes are welcomed as gifts to the group for us all to learn from.
Materiality
As the impact of poverty, inequality, and racism on declining mental health becomes more apparent, each of these collectives – RITB, Aashna, and the Pásalo Project – show the importance of therapists that continually develop their approaches. Continual training is necessary to address the weight that oppression, in all its many forms, can bear on patients.
Funding for mental health services is important – but it’s just the tip of the iceberg. The actual services on offer, as each of the individuals we spoke to stated, need to meet patient needs. If patients need a radical overhaul of what recovery means, that must happen. If patients discuss the role various oppressions have on mental health, therapists must have the training to address that. And if treatment needs to be unique to each individual, then services must meet that need too. Otherwise, the current mental health crisis won’t be going away any time soon.
The BBC has shown contempt for Children’s Mental Health Week. Because during one of its flagship news programmes, it repeated a piece of Tory propaganda. It did so without question – giving viewers the impression the government is spending £2bn on young people’s mental health. This seems completely untrue.
The BBC: ‘look what the government is doing!’
This year’s Children’s Mental Health Week is running from 1-7 February. Smack-bang in the middle of this, BBC News at Six did a segment on the topic. It was in relation to education during the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. During host George Alagiah’s introduction to it, he claimed the Department of Health and Social Care (DoHSC) told the BBC that it was:
providing an extra £2bn to help young people.
During #MentalHealthAwareness week @BBCNews force poor @georgealagiah to read an autocue in relation to #CAMHS that says the Dept of Health is investing "£2bn" in young people; omitting the fact this is for JOBS, not young people's mental health.
The full segment did not mention the £2bn figure again. Funny that – because it’s hard to figure out where £2bn funding for young people’s mental health might have come from.
Hang on…
So what money has been spent on children’s mental health?
In November, chancellor Rishi Sunak said an extra £500m was going into mental health services overall. Prior to this, in May, the government also put £5m into mental health care via Public Health England. So, during the pandemic, the government has spent just over half a billion on mental health services. While some of this money has been pledged to young people’s services, the amount isn’t specified, and these figures are for mental health support across all ages.
Over recent years, there have been additional schemes, like the £750m fund for charities, and it’s given some of this to groups like Childline and Adoption UK. But the government did not ringfence any of this money for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). In 2015, the Tory government said it would spend an additional £1.4bn on CAMHS up until the end of 2020. It also added another £3.3m in 2019. But this is ‘old’ money, not current funding – and it adds up to £1.7bn, not £2bn.
All this comes after the Tory / Lib Dem coalition government cut CAMHS funding by £50m. But fast-forward to December 2020, and as Pulsereported, CAMHS was still in chaos. So, the pandemic and the government’s wilful lack of extra CAMHS support will have just made the situation worse.
Another option…
But there is another option that the DoHSC might have been referring to. And while it was funding for young people, it wasn’t funding for children’s mental health services.
This Is Moneyreported that in July 2020, Sunak announced a new jobs scheme. Called Kickstart, it’s supposed to help young people to find work. This Is Money noted that the idea was:
to get young people on Universal Credit, who have lost jobs and opportunities because of coronavirus, back to work.
So, how much is the government spending on the Kickstart scheme? Yes, you guessed it: £2bn.
This has been the only government spending on young people during the pandemic that amounts to £2bn.
Untruths during Children’s Mental Health Week
The Canary asked the BBC Press Office for comment. We wanted to know why it did not explain the £2bn figure may not have been for mental health. But we also asked if it knew about government spending that we didn’t. A spokesperson said:
We are confident that our report was a fair and accurate reflection of events.
So, did the DoHSC mislead the BBC? If so, did the BBC not bother to fact-check its claim. Or maybe there’s a secret pot of £2bn somewhere in the DoHSC that only it and the BBC know about. A further possibility is that the DoHSC is referring to money pledged before the pandemic, all the way back to 2015; money that had nothing to do with the current crisis in CAMHS, and had already run out by the end of last year.
Either way, for the BBC to claim that the DoHSC is unquestionably spending £2bn on young people in the context of mental health is highly misleading. It’s also disrespectful during a week supposed to be dedicated to supporting children’s mental health. Given the public service broadcaster’s long history of spinningfor government, we shouldn’t really be surprised.
Mental health services are “nowhere near” to meeting the needs of hundreds of thousands of children struggling through the coronavirus pandemic, the Children’s Commissioner has warned.
Anne Longfield said there have been some improvements but a lack of ambition from the government is hindering progress.
It is the commissioner’s fourth annual report on the state of children’s mental health services in England.
She said the research, which largely covers the year up to March 2020, reveals a system without the “necessary capacity or flexibility” to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.
The “cocktail of risks and stresses” associated with the outbreak, affecting education, friendships and home life, appears to have taken a “very heavy toll” on some children, she added.
A large NHS study in July 2020 found that one in six children have a probable mental health condition, up from one in nine in 2017.
Longfield said the current lockdown and school closures are causing more damage to some children’s well-being which could last “potentially for years to come”.
She said the government must set out how schools can reopen in the coming weeks, adding: “In the longer term, the Government’s ‘building back better’ plans must include a rocket boost in funding for children’s mental health, to expand services and eliminate the postcode lottery.
“As an absolute minimum, all schools should be provided with an NHS-funded counsellor, either in school or online.
“We have seen how the NHS has risen to the scale of the Covid crisis for adults. We owe children, who are suffering the secondary consequences of the pandemic, a mental health service that provides the help and support they need.”
Longfield said provision before the pandemic struck was already insufficient, access was improving but not fast enough, and spending, while rising, was “highly variable” and inadequate.
In the year before the pandemic, referrals to children’s mental health services increased by 35% while the number of children accessing treatment increased by just 4%.
The Government plans to roll out NHS-led counselling in schools to 20-25% of areas by 2023 (PA)
She said a postcode lottery remains around local areas’ spending, waiting times, access, and how many children are referred to services and go on to receive support.
But she said improving NHS specialist services is just part of the solution, and is calling for a broader system making use of schools and the voluntary sector.
The Government’s plan to roll out NHS-led counselling in schools to 20-25% of areas by 2023 is not ambitious enough, she believes.
She added: “The sad truth is that, in spite of progress, services are still nowhere near meeting the level of need and hundreds of thousands of children are being left without help as a result.”
She noted that some local areas are improving above and beyond what central government has expected of them, to deliver “vastly improved” services for children.
A Government spokesman said: “This has been an exceptionally difficult year and we are absolutely committed to supporting the mental wellbeing of children and young people who have been uniquely impacted by this pandemic.
“Early intervention and treatment is vital, and we are providing an extra £2.3 billion to help an additional 345,000 children and young people access NHS-funded services or school and college-based support.
“Alongside this, we are training a new dedicated mental health workforce to support children in schools and colleges across the country, as well as giving staff the resources to teach what good mental and physical health looks like.”
But Imran Hussain, director of policy and campaigns at Action for Children, said the government must “wake up” to a mental health crisis threatening to “engulf” a generation.
He said: “Nearly a year of lockdowns, fear and anxiety, disruption to education and uncertainty about the future has added to the already shocking numbers of young people who have nowhere to turn for professional help.
“We know from our services young people are struggling at home without their usual support networks, having to cope with the pressures of remote learning, family health fears, loneliness and pressure in the home – all the while being bombarded by social media and depressing headlines.
“The Government must commit to adequate funding and specialist services to tackle the surge in demand caused by the pandemic and stop a generation of children from suffering in silence.”
Jo Holmes, children, young people and families lead at the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, said: “There’s a worryingly large group of children who are missing out on vital mental health support when they need it the most.
“They’ve been let down by the Government because of its lack of ambition and failure to invest thoroughly in targeted support.
“The Government has to look broader than solely NHS services when it comes to working therapeutically with children and young people struggling with their mental health.”
The Royal College of Psychiatrists added that a whole generation could be “lost to a lifetime of poverty and mental illness” unless the Government places children and young people at the heart of their policy-making.
The federal execution of a woman who was mentally ill was the act of a morally bankrupt administration
In the early hours of Wednesday morning, Lisa Montgomery became the first woman to be put to death by the United States government for almost seven decades. At the Indiana penitentiary where she was executed by lethal injection, there are no facilities for female prisoners. So during prolonged legal wrangling over her fate, Montgomery was cruelly placed in a holding cell in the execution-chamber building itself.
Her crime was horrific. In 2004, Montgomery strangled a young woman, Bobbie Jo Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant. She then cut a baby girl from her womb, and attempted to pass her off as her own. The pain and suffering of Ms Stinnett’s family can barely be imagined. But the political context of this week’s execution, and overwhelming evidence of Montgomery’s longstanding mental illness, suggests a gross miscarriage of justice has taken place.
History, while not always a telling guide, can be useful. But in moments of flushed confidence, it is not consulted and Cleo is forgotten. A crisp new dawn can negate a glance to the past. Having received the unexpected news that Julian Assange’s extradition to the United States for charges of breaching the Espionage Act of 1917 and computer intrusion had been blocked by Justice Vanessa Baraitser, his legal team and supporters were confident. All that was left was to apply for bail, see Assange safely to the arms of his family, and await the next move by wounded US authorities.
Former UK ambassador Craig Murray, human rights activist and veteran reporter on the Assange case, was initially buoyant in his column. “I fully expect Julian will be released on bail this week, pending a possible US appeal against the blocking of his extradition.” He further got “the strong impression that Baraitser was minded to grant bail and wanted the decision to be fireproof.”
That fireproofing never came. On Wednesday, January 6, the application for bail by Assange’s legal team was rejected. Counsel for the US government, Clair Dobbin, built the prosecution’s case around the strong possibility that the publisher might flee the clutches of UK authorities even as the US was gathering its wits for an appeal to the High Court. “His history shows he will go to any lengths to get away.”
Forums would welcome this disreputable character: Mexico, for instance, had offered to “protect Assange with political asylum.” The defence might well say that he would not flee due to poor health, but could they be sure? A “flight risk” had little to do with mental wellbeing. Remember, she pressed, what he did during the Swedish proceedings, how he “ruthlessly” breached the trust of those who fronted the bail money. Those who had offered surety for him, such as the Duchess of Beaufort, Tracy Worcester, had also failed in ensuring that Assange presented in court in 2012. Beware, warned Dobbin, of sinister networks of operatives he could call upon to aid him vanish. WikiLeaks had, after all, facilitated the escape of Edward Snowden.
Dobbin’s tone and manner – gloomy and Presbyterian, as Murray described it – was all judgment. She insisted to the court that, “any idea that moral or principled reasons would bear on Mr Assange’s conscience turned out to be ill-founded indeed.” And she had much to go on, as Baraitser’s own judgment had essentially accepted virtually everything the prosecution had submitted bar grounds of mental health and the risk posed to him in US prison facilities.
As for the basis of whether an appeal would succeed, Dobbin was convinced the prosecution were on to something. The judge, she respectfully submitted, had erred on a point of law in applying the incorrect test on the prison conditions awaiting Assange. The test was not whether measures taken by US prison authorities would make suicide impossible; the only issue was for authorities to put measures in place to lessen its prospects. Reprising her role in attacking various defence witnesses who had put together a picture of grotesque danger awaiting Assange, including the ADX supermax prison in Colorado, Dobbin was convinced that the US system stood the test.
Sidestepping the defence evidence on this, more thorough than anything supplied by the likes of US Assistant US Attorney Gordon Kromberg during the trial, Dobbin argued that no thorough assessment of the facilities for treatment and prison conditions had taken place.
Baraitser proved accommodating to Dobbin’s whipping submission. “Notwithstanding the package offered by the defence, I am satisfied he might abscond.” Having discharged Assange, she promptly repudiated her own ruling in a fit of Dickensian jurisprudence. “The history of this case is well known… Assange skipped bail and remained in the Ecuadorian Embassy to avoid extradition to the US.” Assange would remain in Belmarsh prison pending the US appeal.
In her Monday judgment, Baraitser had acknowledged the signs of potential suicide shown by Assange during his stay in Belmarsh. The prison adjudication report confirmed that, on May 5, 2019 “during a routine search of the cell solely occupied by Mr Assange, inside a cupboard and concealed under some underwear, a prison officer found ‘half a razor blade’.” Baraitser even went so far as to accept, based on the assessment of defence witness Professor Michael Kopelman, that the finding of the razor was not merely a “disciplinary infraction” but one of the “very many factors indicating Mr Assange’s depression and risk of suicide.”
On Wednesday, her tune was indifferent to the consequences of sending Assange back to a maximum security prison stocked with Britain’s most notorious inmates. Continuing her long spell of denial on the seriousness of COVID-19 in the UK prison system, she swatted the submission by defence counsel Edward Fitzgerald QC that there had been 59 cases specific to Belmarsh before Christmas and that the prison remained locked down. Dobbin demurred on this point, showing an email sent by prison authorities at 10.49 pm the previous night claiming that only 3 positive tests for COVID for Belmarsh had been returned.
The result is that Assange continues to be punished, facing brutal carceral conditions while he awaits the next move by US prosecutors, despite having already served his sentence of skipping bail. As a dejected Murray wrote, “Julian is living his life in conditions both torturous and tortuous.”
Amidst the banal cruelties of Wednesday’s proceedings came a smidgen of hope for Assange. G. Zachary Terwilliger, the US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia handling the prosecution, had to admit to being uncertain about what a Biden administration would do. Speaking to NPR, Terwilliger suggested that any decision taken on Assange would “come down to resources and where you’re going to focus your energies.” But he is not waiting to find out: a position at the law firm Vinson & Elkins awaits.
The UK, having adopted a position as Washington’s proxy jailor, is not about to quit its sordid role. Assange’s wellbeing and health continue to be jeopardised by his stay in Britain’s most notorious prison, where determined despair, as Baraitser herself has acknowledged, can take their toll.
This is a saying our country is familiar with. It’s a mentality that built American society the way it is today. Unfortunately, it’s not the only problematic sentiment our society is familiar with either.
Our society is full of platitudes, bromides all too often used to gloss over and even to excuse the profound economic injustices that continue to plague our modern world. The stark reality is that many people commend America as the land of promise and plenty, yet millions of people are struggling with extreme poverty. Now not only are the impoverished paying the price with their physical health but with their mental health as well.
But what, exactly, is the connection between poverty and mental illness? And what can be done to break this devastating cycle?
The First Pandemic
Long before the outbreak of COVID-19 shattered the national and global economy, the US was plagued by another, more enduring, and more pervasive pandemic: the pandemic of poverty. According to a 2017 article published by the National Institutes of Health, an estimated 1.5 million families in America, including 16 million children, were living in deep or extreme poverty, which is typically defined as living on $2 or less per day.
But poverty is far more than just a social or economic problem, and its health effects extend far beyond the physical health impacts related to malnutrition or lack of adequate healthcare. The greatest health risks associated with poverty may not be physical at all.
Research increasingly suggests that, regardless of the physical toll associated with poverty, the mental toll is even greater. Worse, perhaps, is that these impacts may outlast any change in an individual’s or a family’s socioeconomic status.
Children who grow up in poor homes are at greater risk for adult-onset mental illness, for example, as well as for disruptive behavioral disorders (DHD) during childhood. These disorders, combined with persistent financial struggles, put these children at an increased risk of dropping out of school prematurely. By dropping out and discontinuing the opportunity for a furthered education, the cycle of poverty and mental illness only continues. As this cycle continues to spin, many people below the poverty line end up suffering from mental health issues due to the trauma they’ve experienced.
Poverty, Mental Illness, and Addiction
Studies increasingly show that poverty is linked both to behavioral disorders in children and to anxiety, depression, or post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD) in adults and children alike. According to the National Survey of Drug Use and Health, more than 2.5 million adults living below the poverty line in the US have also suffered from some form of serious mental illness (SMI), including psychiatric, emotional, and/or behavioral disorders.
Studies indicate that the most prevalent of these disorders are substance use disorders (SUD). Those contending with the extreme and persistent financial stress may turn to substances to cope, leading to SUD in those who may be predisposed to addiction. This can be especially problematic for those that also suffer from homelessness.
Poverty as Mental Illness
The connection between mental illness and poverty is, perhaps, most apparent in the crisis of homelessness. Studies suggest that a significant proportion of the unhoused also suffer from undiagnosed or insufficiently treated mental illness.
The question remains, however, of whether homelessness is a symptom of mental illness or a cause. Indeed, for far too many years, homelessness, and poverty in general, has been pathologized. By viewing extreme poverty as a form or a manifestation of illness, we get to lay the “blame” on the supposed illness, and subsequently point the finger at those in whom the “illness” lies, as the source of the suffering.
In doing so, we individualize poverty and mental illness, rather than looking deeper. This pathologizing of poverty makes it easier to deflect from its true causes. To refuse to acknowledge the problem as a social one but as an individual one instead makes it easier to sustain the economic and social inequities that sustain the dividing lines between the haves and the have nots.
Although there is still far more work to be done to get at root causes, significant social support services do exist to help those facing food and housing insecurity establish a firmer financial footing. That includes not only financial aid but also vocational, employment, and education resources. In addition, mental health assistance has become more available to those under the poverty line.
Practicing Self-Care
As profound as the connection between mental illness and poverty may be, help is out there. If you are suffering from addiction, for example, you can access quality telehealth services, many of which are now covered by Medicare and Medicaid.
Likewise, if you are experiencing depression or anxiety, you can also access on-demand counseling and other free and low-cost mental health services over the phone and online. In addition to seeking quality healthcare, simply understanding your emotional triggers and creating a plan to manage them can help to prevent a mental health spiral, no matter what your financial situation may be.
The Takeaway
The connection between poverty and mental illness is a significant one. All too often, the two link in a vicious cycle that seems almost impossible to escape. The pandemic of poverty is both pervasive and systemic, but that does not mean that the poor are doomed to suffer both financially and psychologically. From housing and education support to mental healthcare and addiction counseling, help is available to help you break the chain.
Beau Peters is a freelance writer based out of Portland, OR. He has a particular interest in covering workers’ rights, social justice, and workplace issues and solutions. Read other articles by Beau.
The vacant building that once housed the Riverside Academy in Wichita, Kansas, was covered in haunting graffiti: “Burn this place.” “Youth were abused here … systematically.” “This is a bad place.” The facility, run by the for-profit company Sequel Youth & Family Services, promised to help kids with behavioral problems. But state officials had cited the facility dozens of times for problems including excessive force by staff, poor supervision and neglect.
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The specter of plague haunts our world, and it brings with it not only the ghouls of disease and death but vast economic and social uncertainty of a sort only the most elderly among us remembers (the Great Depression and World War II). My father is 90 and when I called him a child of the depression once, he pointed out to me that as someone born in 1929, he really didn’t come to political consciousness until the Depression had ended. He was too young to fight in the war, though he joined the army three years after it ended. So you’d really have to be 95 or older to have fully experienced those world-shaking events.
As I write, the United States is (somewhat belatedly) trying out social distancing as a way of attempting to forestall the worst consequences of the novel coronavirus, attempting to avoid the catastrophe that has befallen Italy, e.g. Friends of mine have spoken of anxiety attacks, general unease, fear of the unknown.
It is not going to be easy to get through the coming year (or God forbid, year and a half). We will do it. In this essay, I won’t address the governmental and social steps that will be necessary. I’m instead going to talk about care of the self and how to maintain well-being during this calamity. For the past few years I’ve been devouring the literature on Positive Psychology, and it led me to teach a course this semester on the History of Happiness and the care of the self. In that course, we look at the Greeks, modern Buddhism, and Sufism, as well as Positive Psychology itself. This movement was founded by Professor Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania. There are now several peer-reviewed journals devoted to this research, and to my mind, researchers have discovered unexpected contributors to subjective well-being which, however, would mostly have come as no surprise to the wisdom traditions such as Buddhism and Sufism.
So here is what I have learned about well-being or happiness (Seligman prefers the term “well-being” but the publishers rather like books on happiness, so they’ve titled his that way).
1. Gratitude.
Being grateful and expressing gratitude has been found to be highly correlated with feelings of well-being and happiness, and practices of gratitude can increase those feelings significantly. Say someone did something nice for you, and you thanked the person perfunctorily. If you now go back and sit the person down and explain what an important impact on your life their thoughtfulness had, it increases your feelings of well-being and those of the person thanked. Remembering something for which you are grateful increases happiness and reduces stress and depression. Some people keep a regular gratitude journal, which may increase feelings of well-being. Kiralee Schache et al. argued in a 2018 article in The British Journal of Health Psychology that there are actually physical benefits of gratitude. We need all the positive health effects we can get.
So for those who are social distancing and feeling a little lonely and a lot anxious, one action this literature suggests we might take is to call up people who’ve done nice things for us and just tell them how grateful we are and what it meant to us. All of us have reasons to be grateful even in the midst of our current predicament. We after all have been given a lot of positive things even if we now face a dire challenge. It is important not to lose sight of everything we have to be grateful for even as some things are taken from us.
“A rainbow is a prism that sends shards of multicolored light in various directions. It lifts our spirits and makes us think of what is possible. Hope is the same – a personal rainbow of the mind.”
Being hopeful or optimistic sometimes gets a bad rap as not sufficiently hard-nosed. As Alan Carr notes, Voltaire famously made fun of Leibniz’s assertion that we live in the best of all possible worlds (arguably, science and cosmology suggest that Leibniz was right– even slight changes in the history of the earth, or in the paramaters of the laws governing the universe, would have made human life impossible). Voltaire invented in his Candide the buffoonish character of Professor Pangloss, who tried to be optimistic about the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. But psychologists are finding that pessimism is bad for you in all sorts of ways.
Optimists are more likely to solve problems because they believe that if they just keep slugging away, they can solve the problem. Pessimists give up. Optimists tend to have a positive self-image and to think well of others, which helps them make friends. Hope is not unrealistic, it is a recognition that what obstacles exist can be overcome. Elaine Houston notes that Hope is positively correlated with feelings of well-being, with success in athletics and academics, Certainly as a society, and for most individuals, this challenge is one we have every hope of successfully defeating. Carr explains that we can train ourselves to be more optimistic through the three D’s. We can distract ourselves from being overly preoccupied with the negative by focusing on something positive. We can create some distance from pessimistic thoughts by reminding ourselves that they are only part of the picture, and there are hopeful signs as well. And we can dispute with our most pessimistic thoughts, pointing to the positive.
Hope fends off chronic anxiety of the sort many of us are starting to feel now. Chronic anxiety and constant triggering of fight or flight responses produce the hormone glucocorticoid, which over time depletes norepinephrine, one of three neurotransmitters associated with feelings of happiness and well-being (along with serotonin and dopamine). In other words, being depressed and hopeless produces hormones that create a downward spiral– after a while we simply cannot have that feeling of alertness and freshness that norepinephrine should give us, because anxiety hormones have depleted it. (See Rick Hanson, et al., The Buddha’s Brain.).
A recent study in the Journal of Positive Psychology (Tamlin, Conner, DeYoung & Paul, 2016) indicates that engaging in a creative activity just once a day can lead to a more positive state of mind. Researchers at the University of Otago constructed a study to understand if creativity impacts one’s emotional well-being, based on the growing belief that there is a connection between creativity and emotional functioning. To test this hypothesis, they evaluated the responses of 658 young adults; each day the participants documented how much time they spent on creative endeavors as well as the positive and negative emotional changes they perceived.
After 13 days, the researchers reviewed the participants’ responses and discovered an “upward spiral for well-being and creativity” in those individuals who engaged in daily creative pastimes.
Some people in the current crisis will be working overtime, and God bless the health care providers and food producers and others on the front lines.
Others may have less to do than normal and find themselves at loose ends. Along with gratitude and hope, the literature high recommends creative endeavors.
Watching television has been shown to make you depressed. Drinking alcohol is also a downer. Listening to music, on the other hand, lifts mood and affect. My guess is that it is because when we listen to music we become its co-creators, whereas television-watching is passive (and a lot of television connives at producing fight or flight and anxiety responses).
But best of all is to make something of your own. Everyone has favorite creative hobbies, whether knitting or writing poetry or cooking or carpentry and home improvement or painting. Now is the time to get back out that canvass or to go back to work on that short story.
I have made some suggestions for how to write short quatrains after the Persian form here. In fact, I have a translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam coming out on April 29.
Keep well, everyone. Gratitude, hope and creativity are some of the ways we can get through this. God bless.
A Taser is supposed to help police resolve a situation without using their guns. But in police departments across America, Tasers aren’t always living up to their promise, sometimes with lethal results.
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A Taser is supposed to help police resolve a situation without using their guns. But in police departments across America, Tasers aren’t always living up to their promise, sometimes with lethal results.
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A controversial theory about child abuse is swaying family court judges to award custody to parents accused of harming kids. We trace the origins of “parental alienation.”
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Children refusing to eat, talk, or even drink water. A surreal mental illness sweeps across families stuck in an Australian immigrant detention camp on a tiny island nation in the South Pacific.
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