Military suicides

On Wednesday, McClatchy Newspapers published an article by Les Blumenthal about the Veterans' Administration's lies concerning the number of veterans who have attempted suicide. Here is a summary of the article:

* Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., says the VA was lying when it put the number of suicide attempts at fewer than 800 a year. She cites internal emails that put the number at 12,000 a year.

* She added that the VA's mental health programs are being overwhelmed by Iraq and Afghanistan vets.

* The senator "pointed to a RAND Corp. study released last week that found that 320,000 troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from traumatic brain injuries and 300,000 troops suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression. Of those with PTSD or depression, Murray said, only half have sought treatment, and only half of those have received treatment that was 'minimally' adequate."

* Murray added that, as with Vietnam-era vets, some of the more violent symptoms might not show up for 50 years.

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What else have George Bush and Dick Cheney wrought? And how can John McCain allow that this might last 100 years?

Notes on the papal visit

Brief, sundry thoughts on Pope Benedict's visit to the US:

* There was considerable fear that he would not say very much about the coast to coast devastation caused by priest sex abusers. Instead he spoke about the scandal several times, beginning on the plane before his arrival and using expressions like "deep shame" and "betrayal." Then he met face to face with six victims, apparently bringing them a considerable amount of healing.

* Even though Pope Benedict is known to be against the Iraq war, he avoided the subject all week. Commentators have said this was part of a decision to avoid addressing US politics, especially in this pre-election season. But he clearly addressed abortion. When it comes to all of the big issues, politics and morality can hardly be disconnected. Silence on this insane war and occupation was an immense disappointment to me.

* It is surely impossible to figure out, even approximately, the number of people profoundly moved by the papal visit either in person or via television. Just for today's New York Mass, almost 60,000 people completely filled Yankee Stadium, and thousands more had tried to obtain tickets. CNN dedicated hours to coverage of the entire visit. People's enthusiasm was simply huge. But I find a certain puzzlement here. Statistics have long shown that US Catholics beg to differ with the pope on key issues. One survey reports that 97% of Catholic women in the US have used contraception. (Disagreement by US Catholics on"artificial birth control" has been 80% or higher since Pope Paul VI's decree against it in 1968.) Much more surprising statistics: When I googled Catholic disagreement with the church's teaching on abortion, I found reference to studies claiming 58%, 61%, and 75% of US Catholics in disagreement.

* A final note: Pope John XXIII convened the Second Vatican Council to bring "aggiornamento" (Italian for bringing up to date) to the church. After John's death, Pope Paul VI implemented the many modernizing decisions of the Council. He also tried to move the church away from much of the medieval pomp that had prevailed for centuries. As I recall from pictures, all of the cardinals and bishops at Paul's funeral wore simple white vestments. But with the election of Pope John Paul II, I noticed that the gold and lace and brocade were back again. That return to the past has continued, and it struck me in seeing TV coverage of this week's visit that the old symbolism is now thoroughly part and parcel of the institutional church. To some this will seem trivial, but I think it says a lot about how the church defines itself. Sometimes I think I see the ghost of Emperor Constantine back in our midst.

Ever deeper into hell

With the recent DC appearance of General David Petraeus, it is no surprise that puppeteers Bush and Cheney are keeping their Iraq show going. Their "surge" was supposed to be a short-term increase in troop numbers followed by a decrease. But it is now exceedingly clear that those numbers are not going to go down while The Decider is in power. And if "Hundred Years" McCain wins in November, God help us all.

As I type this, the total number of US troop deaths in Iraq is 4,033. The "official" number of US troops wounded is 29,628, but serious estimates run up to 100,000. The UPI reports that as many as one in ten soldiers from the "war on terror" (mostly Iraq) treated at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany had mental problems. That's about 1,000 troops. Retired general William Odom says this war/occupation is "brutalizing our troops."

It is impossible to know the precise number of Iraqi deaths, but the number is surely in the hundreds of thousands. (Justforeignpolicy.org estimates the number to be 1,197,469.)

The cost of this Iraq debacle in dollars is at this hour $510,915,919,333.

Bush and Cheney, you and your Neo-con cronies have created a veritable hell on Earth. We can only wonder how much deeper you can dig it in the next 276 days.

Anti-modernists & Neo-cons

Eduardo Porter, in an article in the New York Times yesterday, wrote this about modernization in the Roman Catholic Church::

"Many traditionalists attribute the church’s decline to the weakening of its strictures. They believe it was damaged by the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, which tried to bring the church closer to the people, proclaimed religious freedom, embraced people of other Christian faiths and acknowledged truth in other religions."

This attitude is not new. The maintaining of medieval rigidity was propagated even inside the Vatican during the Council (1962-1965) (Some of us still have vivid recollections of folks like Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani.) Up until the council (actually until 1967), Catholic clergy had to take an "Oath Against Modernism," and the "Syllabus of Errors" proclaimed by Pope Pius IX in 1864 remained in force.

Today the ongoing movement in the church to restore the "good old days" before Vatican II is stronger than many people realize.

Sigh... My country largely co-opted by the Neo-cons, my church widely co-opted by the Restorationists. I do not believe Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth would go along with either of these surges. No way.

Worse and worse for migrants

After a dozen years of the southern border blockade of migrant workers (who basically had been welcomed to the US for decades), the deaths continue. The merciless desert heat has not even begun, but the death toll for this fiscal year (Oct. 1) is already over 50. And on top of that ongoing tragedy, we now have "Operation Streamline," which began on January 14. Tucson's Derechos Humanos office reports:

"Under an 'expedited' procedure, which undermines the principles that are the foundation of the U.S. criminal justice system, immigrants are now 'processed' through a criminal prosecution and sentenced all within one day, with court proceedings taking approximately one minute per person. Though the program began with 40 immigrants per day, it has been increased to 60 per day with a goal of reaching 100 per day within the next few weeks. As a result, hundreds of immigrants have endured unacceptable conditions while in detention, from lack of sleep, proper bedding, adequate food, water, and medical care, and emerge with a criminal conviction that will preclude them from future ability to return to the U.S., even though many have their families here. Many are receiving sentences ranging from time-served to 180 days in the for-profit prison, Correction Corporation of America (CCA)."

I fear this whole miserable borderlands tragedy will only continue to worsen until well after the November elections.