Tag: Mental Illness

American Shooter: The Intersection of Alienation and Desperation Under Capitalism

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)1 Comment

American Shooter: The Intersection of Alienation and Desperation Under Capitalism

Universal Healthcare and Easy Access Mental Health Services

59% of gun deaths are suicides. Getting healthcare in the United States is nigh impossible for many people whether it be the cost of services, lack of insurance, or the stigmatization that comes from seeking medically necessary mental health services. We need to make concerted efforts to ensure that anyone who needs healthcare can walk into a facility and get the help they need with no questions asked nor strings attached. Whether it is nationalizing healthcare or instituting dual power healthcare structures we need to get this done and we need to do it now. Getting people the healthcare they need drastically reduces rates of mental illness while also reducing the rates of economically motivated crime which is sometimes violent in nature.

In May 2002, The Secret Service published a report that examined school shootings. Among much else, they found that the majority of school shooters had difficulty coping with loss and personal failures, attempted suicide, felt persecuted, and exhibited alarming behaviors toward those around them. All of these are signs to immediately provide accessible healthcare, particularly mental healthcare. We need to be proactive about getting people the help they need. Simply scapegoating mental health issues as the conservative gun lobby does is about as helpful as thoughts and prayers. We need to directly address mental healthcare and build the systems that prevent violence.

Stable Food and Housing

Violence is quite often a symptom of economic distress. Ensuring the stable material conditions of a community not only reduces the incentive to commit economically motivated violent crime, but it also reduces interpersonal violent crime. We need to build communities that have affordable housing and accessible food. The fastest and easiest way to work towards both is to ban R1 zoning because this form of zoning creates food deserts, makes communities car dependent, and skyrockets the cost of housing. This is not to say that we should not be working on dual power structures in housing. We also need free lunch and breakfast programs run by local radicals and community-powered housing programs.

Source: Socialist Rifle Association

NATO Claims ‘Immunity’ to Serbian Lawsuits on Use of Depleted Uranium in 1999 Bombings

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

NATO Claims ‘Immunity’ to Serbian Lawsuits on Use of Depleted Uranium in 1999 Bombings

Related:

The Rational Destruction of Yugoslavia:

We have yet to understand the full effect of NATO’s aggression. Serbia is one of the greatest sources of underground waters in Europe, and the contamination from U.S. depleted uranium and other explosives is being felt in the whole surrounding area all the way to the Black Sea. In Pancevo alone, huge amounts of ammonia were released into the air when NATO bombed the fertilizer factory. In that same city, a petrochemical plant was bombed seven times. After 20,000 tons of crude oil were burnt up in only one bombardment of an oil refinery, a massive cloud of smoke hung in the air for ten days. Some 1,400 tons of ethylene dichloride spilled into the Danube, the source of drinking water for ten million people. Meanwhile, concentrations of vinyl chloride were released into the atmosphere at more than 10,000 times the permitted level. In some areas, people have broken out in red blotches and blisters, and health officials predict sharp increases in cancer rates in the years ahead.

National parks and reservations that make Yugoslavia among thirteen of the world’s richest bio-diversity countries were bombed. The depleted uranium missiles that NATO used through many parts of the country have a half-life of 4.5 billion years. It is the same depleted uranium that now delivers cancer, birth defects, and premature death upon the people of Iraq. In Novi Sad, I was told that crops were dying because of the contamination. And power transformers could not be repaired because U.N. sanctions prohibited the importation of replacement parts. The people I spoke to were facing famine and cold in the winter ahead.

With words that might make us question his humanity, the NATO commander, U.S. General Wesley Clark boasted that the aim of the air war was to “demolish, destroy, devastate, degrade, and ultimately eliminate the essential infrastructure” of Yugoslavia. Even if Serbian atrocities had been committed, and I have no doubt that some were, where is the sense of proportionality? Paramilitary killings in Kosovo (which occurred mostly after the aerial war began) are no justification for bombing fifteen cities in hundreds of around-the-clock raids for over two months, spewing hundreds of thousands of tons of highly toxic and carcinogenic chemicals into the water, air, and soil, killing thousands of Serbs, Albanians, Roma, Turks, and others, and destroying bridges, residential areas, and over two hundred hospitals, clinics, schools, and churches, along with the productive capital of an entire nation.

— Michael Parenti

Mass Shootings: The Vicious Cycle Fueled By America’s Toxic Cult of Violence

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

“Mass shootings have become routine in the United States and speak to a society that relies on violence to feed the coffers of the merchants of death. Given the profits made by arms manufacturers, the defense industry, gun dealers and the lobbyists who represent them in Congress, it comes as no surprise that the culture of violence cannot be abstracted from either the culture of business or the corruption of politics.”—Professor Henry A. Giroux

Mass Shootings: The Vicious Cycle Fueled By America’s Toxic Cult of Violence

Related:

YouTube: John Whitehead interviewed by Judge Napolitano

Documents expose how Hollywood promotes war on behalf of the Pentagon, CIA and NSA

Smart War Disinformation and the U.S. Military State

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Smart War Disinformation and the U.S. Military State

Should the elimination of citizens’ right to free speech by the government proceed, backed up by the threat of punishment, then no dissenter anywhere will be able to challenge official narratives without risking the fate suffered by U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki. A formerly moderate Muslim cleric who spoke out publicly against the crimes of September 11, 2001, al-Awlaki was executed in 2011 without indictment or trial, having been put on the drone killers’ hit list when he began speaking out against the U.S. government’s own war crimes.

How to Make Russia Bleed

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

How to Make Russia Bleed

The only way to move Moscow from its disastrous policy, in the 1980s and today, has been to bleed it. Ratchet up the cost to the Russian people, economically, politically, and, yes, in body bags holding Russian troops (not civilians). In addition to sanctions and other measures the Biden administration has enacted, we need to increase the pain to Moscow on the ground by stepping up economic warfare, psychological operations, and robust covert military support to the Ukrainian insurgency.

Omicron- A Case of Mass Psychosis & Other Insane News

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

A 3 week old Polish piece. Omicron a Case of Mass Psychosis

A few days ago, the general director of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, stated that the introduction of travel restrictions by several countries was an “irrational response” to the omicron variant of the coronavirus.

Omicron- A Case of Mass Psychosis & Other Insane News

Articles behind paywalls:

‘Dodgy data’ used in push for tighter Covid restrictions

Lockdown vested interests hate omicron good news