Life Or Debt

Strike Debt releases a video, Life Or Debt, on the American medical debt crisis and the need for a single payer system.



Strike Debt recently bought off and forgave another 1 million dollars in medical debt on behalf of individuals who needed and used hospital emergency rooms in Indiana and Kentucky.

No More

Eddie Vedder sings No More, a song he wrote for Iraq War veteran Tomas Young.  The song was featured in the Phil Donohue documentary Body Of War viewable here in 9 parts.    



No More was also featured today on Democracy Now! in an exclusive interview with Mr. Young who has been an outspoken anti-war activist for many years since returning home to the U.S.  

Mr. Young is severely disabled from the Iraq War.  Recent medical developments surrounding his condition and treatment have led him to decide to take his own life in the next few months.

In the linked interview, he speaks about his decision, and in another interview portion here, reads a letter he has written about the Iraq War to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

Full written contents of the letter, as follows:

"The Last Letter" 
From A Dying Veteran

TO:    George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
FROM:  Tomas Young

I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those who bear those wounds. I am one of those. I am one of the gravely injured. I am paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.

I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost parents, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have done, witnessed, endured in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you are—who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, and your privilege and power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.

I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the 9/11 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the U.S. I did not join the Army to 'liberate' Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called 'democracy' in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues.  Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences. 

I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire. 

I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul. 

My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.  


*Photo credit/courtesy of The Pitch/posted by Carolyn Szczepanski/Tomas Young, 2008, in the process of undergoing more medical treatment for his injuries in the Iraq War.

When Will They Ever Learn?

A chilling report from Dahr Jamail on the Iraq War's cancer legacy.  From 1991 to 2005, the cancer rate has gone from 40 out of 100,000 people to 1,600 out of 100,000, with rates still increasing.  And,

As shocking as these statistics are, due to a lack of adequate documentation, research, and reporting of cases, the actual rate of cancer and other diseases is likely to be much higher than even these figures suggest.

"Cancer statistics are hard to come by, since only 50 per cent of the healthcare in Iraq is public," Dr Salah Haddad of the Iraqi Society for Health Administration and Promotion told Al Jazeera. "The other half of our healthcare is provided by the private sector, and that sector is deficient in their reporting of statistics. Hence, all of our statistics in Iraq must be multiplied by two. Any official numbers are likely only half of the real number."

Dr. Haddad states the increasing rates correlate to the amount of bombing carried out by U.S. forces in areas like Fallujah where health authorities are also seeing an increase in congenital malformations, sterility, and infertility.  One related study finds the highest rate of genetic damage in any population ever studied, including Hiroshima.  The steep rise in congenital birth abnormalities includes "children being born with two heads, children born with only one eye, multiple tumours, disfiguring facial and body deformities, and complex nervous system problems."

Meanwhile and below, grok these stats in an opinion piece from LaughToNotCry on the 60 billion other reasons why the Iraq War was a rotten idea.




*Photo credit/courtesy of Wikipedia/photographer: Simon Rutherford/from "Protests Against The Iraq War,"  Photograph of a protest against the war in Iraq, taken from Hungerford Bridge, in Embankment London. 15th Febuary 2003.

New "New Deal"

A discussion with economists James K. Galbraith and Leo Panitch on whether a new "New Deal" is possible.

Poetry

In the video below, from the Witness Against Torture Fast for Justice - Day 3: activist Molly Kafka reads a poem by former Guantánamo detainee, Sami Al Hajj, Humiliated in the Shackles.  Demonstrators in the video are outside the U.S. Supreme Court in January, 2013.   

Deseret News reports today that the Guantánamo prisoner hunger strike now enters its second month;  while prison officials report 21 participants, Pardiss Kebriaei, a New York lawyer representing a Yemeni detainee, states, "My client and other men have reported that most of the detainees in Camp 6 are on strike, except for a small few who are elderly or sick."  Camp 6 reportedly holds 130 of the 166 remaining detainees at Guantanamo Bay.  Witness Against Torture reports today that more than 1/2 are categorized by the U.S. government as "cleared for release."


 
More poetry reading from the Witness Against Torture Fast For Justice here at this link.  It includes a poem written by another detainee, Adnan Latif, also "cleared for release," but who nevertheless remained in captivity until his death in September 2012.  He described Guantánamo as "a piece of hell that kills everything."

On March 12th, Center for Constitutional Rights staff attorney Omar Farah told the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights

“Our clients report that most of the men at the prison are now in the fifth week of a mass hunger strike to peacefully protest worsening prison conditions, religious provocation, and the crushing reality that after 11 years in indefinite detention, there is no end in sight to their suffering. In light of the humanitarian crisis unfolding at Guantánamo, it is indefensible that the U.S. government failed to answer the Commission’s simple questions about how it plans to close the prison camp.”

 

*Photo credit/top, courtesy of Close Guantanamo/photographer: Andy Worthington/Washington D.C. protesters outside the Supreme Court on January 11, 2013, the anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo. Bottom, courtesy of peaceworkmagazine, Issue 386, June 2008.

Military Logs

A Guardian/BBC Arabic investigation sparked by the Bradley Manning/Wikileaks release of classified U.S. military logs has for the first time linked the Pentagon during the U.S. occupation of Iraq to a network of Iraqi torture centers accelerating the country's descent into full-scale civil war.  The logs detailed hundreds of incidents where U.S. soldiers came across tortured detainees in these centers run by police commandos across Iraq.

The Pentagon sent Colonel James Steele, a U.S. veteran of the "dirty wars" in Central America to oversee these detention and interrogation centers.  The Guardian has released the documentary, James Steele: America's Mystery Man In Iraq (viewable at link), exposing the U.S. role in Iraq's sectarian violence.

Below, a trailer and discussion with Maggie O'Kane, Executive Producer:

Emergency Room

Strike Debt demands a single payer medical system.  From the Physicians For A National Health Program email news, an update below on the Rolling Jubilee that bought up and abolished distressed medical debt for 44 people in upstate New York.  As of March 14th, the group announces its second debt buy on behalf of individuals who used emergency rooms in Indiana and Kentucky;  the group is also demanding that America meet this issue head-on by expanding an improved Medicare for the entire country.  

Strike Debt/Rolling Jubilee, an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street that has reportedly raised about $1 million to buy distressed medical debt (for pennies on the dollar), is planning a nationwide week of actions on March 16-23 around the issue of medical debt and medical bankruptcy, culminating in a rally in New York City on March 23. The actions will have a special focus on buying distressed medical debt in Indiana and Kentucky. Rolling Jubilee is explicitly demanding a single-payer health system as part of its call to action. You can listen to PNHP co-founder Dr. Steffie Woolhandler’s talk on a recent radio show about Strike Debt/Rolling Jubilee and the issue of medical bankruptcy here (her part begins at the 31-minute mark); you can also watch her on a HuffPo Live discussion on a related topic (her segment starts at the 2-minute mark). PNHP has also highlighted the problem of medical debt on Facebook and Twitter.

More information on the week of action here at Strike Debt's website.

Representative John Conyers recently reintroduced H.R. 676, "The Improved And Expanded Medicare For All Act" to the 113th Congress.  More information here.