Consequences of War and Militarism

1
Consequences of War and Militarism

• Martin Donohoe

2
Outline

• The history and epidemiology of war
• Nuclear weapons
• Chemical weapons
• Biological weapons

3
Outline

• Economic and environmental consequences of
  militarism and war
• Health consequences of militarism and war
• Contemporary conflicts
• Iraq, Afghanistan, War on terror
• Solutions

4
History of War

• Violent conflict ubiquitous in the animal
  kingdom
• Interspecies conflict food, territory
• Intraspecies conflict food, territory, mates
  (usually not directly fatal)
• Violence among non-human primates
• Gorilla infanticide
• Chimpanzee killing bands

5
History of war

• 10,000 yrs ago agriculture
• Stable populations, division of labor, warrior
  class
• 3500 yrs ago bronze weapons and armor
• 2200 yrs ago iron
• 1900 yrs ago - horses

6
History of war

• Ninth Century China - bombs developed
• Thirteenth Century China rockets
• Forgotten until the 19th Century
• 1783 Balloon
• Montgolfier brothers
• Prussian general JCG Heyne used for bombing

7
History of War

• 1903 Wright brothers/Kitty Hawk airplane
• 20th Century nuclear submarines, predator
  drones, weaponization of space

8
History of War

• Belief that each new invention would eliminate
  warfare
• Instead, increased casualties, killing at a
  distance

9
Epidemiology of Warfare

• Deaths in war
• 17th Century 19/million population
• 18th Century 19/million population
• 19th Century 11/million population
• 20th Century 183/million population
• Increasing casualties to civilians
• 85-90 in 20th Century (vs. 10 late 19th Century)

10
War Deaths, 1945-2000
11
Legacies of Colonial Exploitation

• Christopher Columbus log entry upon meeting the
  Arawaks of the Bahamas
• Theybrought usmanythingsThey willingly
  traded everything they ownedThey do not bear
  armsThey would make fine servantsWith fifty men
  we could subjugate them all and make them do
  whatever we want.

12
Legacies of Colonial Exploitation

• Winston Churchill (speaking in favor of RAFs
  experimental bombing of Iraqis in 1920s, which
  killed 9,000 people with 97 tons of bombs)
• I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas
  against uncivilized tribes to spread a lively
  terroragainst recalcitrant Arabs as an
  experiment

13
Legacies of Colonial Exploitation

• Cecil Rhodes (Rhodesia, Rhodes Scholarship,
  DeBeers Mining Company)
• We must find new lands from which we can easily
  obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit
  the cheap slave labour that is available from the
  natives of the colonies. The colonies would also
  provide a dumping ground for the surplus goods
  produced in our factories.

14
Contemporary Wars

• 250 wars in the 20th Century
• Incidence of war rising since 1950
• Most conflicts within poor states
• 27 separate civil wars currently underway
• 19 involve U.S.-supplied weapons

15
Wars Promoted Through Militarism

• Military buildups
• Exceptionalism
• Imperialism
• Glorification of war
• Unrealistic expectations

16
Contemporary Wars

• 72 million lives lost in 20th Century wars,
  another 52 million through genocides
• WW II first war with more battle deaths than
  deaths from other causes, such as accidents,
  disease, and infections

17
Vietnam War

• US dropped the equivalent of one 500 lb. bomb on
  every person in Vietnam
• Vietnam War 1.5 to 3 million Vietnamese
  casualties 58,000 American
• More US soldiers died of suicide after Vietnam
  than died in combat during the war

18
Consequences of War

• Deaths, injuries, psychological sequelae
• Collapse of health care system affecting those
  with acute and chronic illnesses
• Famine

19
Consequences of War

• Environmental degradation
• Refugees, migrants, internally-displaced persons
• Increasing poverty and debt
• All lead to recurrent cycles of violence

20
Evil Doctors

• When a doctor goes wrong, he is the first of
  criminals. He has nerve and he has knowledge.
• - Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson, Arthur Conan
  Doyle

21
Nazi Medicine

• Guiding philosophy Hegelian (rational utility)
• Ethics reduced morality to efficiency, economics,
  and aesthetics
• Individual worth stated in economic terms
• Propaganda (books, films) stressed obligations to
  state

22
Nazi Medicine

• An arm of state policy
• Focus on racial purity
• from eugenic sterilization (370,000)
• to involuntary euthanasia (70,000)
• to large-scale genocide (over 6 million)

23
Nazi Medicine

• Doctoring the nation more important than
  doctoring individuals
• Focus on preventive medicine and public health
  anti-tobacco and anti-alcohol campaigns,
  environmental toxins, organic farming
• To improve Aryan stock
• Nazi soldiers given anabolic steroids to increase
  aggresiveness

24
Nazi Physicians

• 52,000 physicians joined National Socialist Party
• Jews ostracized replaced by young Aryans
• 5 of non-Aryans committed suicide 25 murdered

25
Nazi Physicians

• Economic hard times, physicians salaries rise,
  academic perks
• Blutkitt (blood cement)
• Rare resistance
• Catholics
• Marxists
• Dutch

26
Nazi Physician-Researchers(Torturers)

• Dr. Sigmund Rascher - coagulation/amputation
  studies hypothermia experiments
• Dr. Karl Gebhart heteroplastic transplantation
  experiments
• c.f. Stalins attempts to create interspecies
  (half-men/half-apes) super-warriors
• Drs. Karl Clausberg and Viktor Brack
  X-irradiation/sterilization

27
Nazi Physician-Researchers

• Drs. Joachim Mrugowsky, Erwin Ding-Schuler, and
  Waldemar Hoven IV phenol and gasoline executions
• Dr. Friedrich Wegener (formerly Wegeners
  Granulomatosis, now ANCA-associated
  granulomatous vasculitis ) German pathologist,
  Nazi party member, autopsied a prisoner with
  oxygen injected into his bloodstream in an
  embolism study may have participated in
  experiments on concentration camp inmates

28
Nazi Physician-Researchers

• Dr Hans Conrad Reiter (formerly Reiters
  Syndrome, now reactive arthritis) senior Nazi
  official
• Dr. Joseph Mengele Septicemia/twin vivisection
  studies
• Dr. Hans Eppinger - father of modern hepatology

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Indirect Participants

• Prof. J Hallevorden Look here now, boys, if you
  are going to kill all these people at least take
  the brains out so that the material could be
  utilized the more (brains) the better.I
  accepted these brains of course. Where they came
  from and how they came to me was really none of
  my business.

30
Doctors and Resistance

• German invasion of Poland (1939)
• Drs Eugene Lazowski and Stanislaw Matulewicz
  created a fake typhus epidemic, using a harmless
  bacterium to innoculate non-Jews, knowing that
  infected Jews would be summarily executed
• Germans fooled, quarantined area, many Jews
  escaped death

31
Nuremberg Doctors Trial

• 23 German physicians tried
• 16 found guilty
• 7 hanged (incl. Gebhardt, Brack, Hoven, and
  Mrugowsky)
• Rascher died before trial Mengele fled for
  Argentina (remains verified 1985) Hallevorden
  committed suicide before trial

32
Nuremberg Code

• Voluntary consent is absolutely essential
• Avoidance of unnecessary physical and mental
  suffering
• Option to quit/responsibility to terminate
• Other safeguards

33
Declaration of Geneva

• I will not permit considerations of religion,
  nationality, race, party politics or social
  standing to intervene between my duty and my
  patient
• I will not use my medical knowledge contrary to
  the laws of humanity.
• It is unethical for physicians to employ
  scientific knowledge to imperil health or destroy
  life.

34
Post-WW II

• Over 700 Nazi rocket scientists and their
  families brought to the U.S. (including Werner
  von Braun) to help build nuclear missile program
• Operation Paperclip
• Japanese scientists brought to Fort Detrick, MD,
  to help establish U.S. biological/chemical
  weapons program

35
Doctors as Terrorists

• Pediatrician George Habash founder of Popular
  Front for the Liberation of Palestine
• Behind aircraft hijackings of Black September
• Dr. Fathi Shiqaqi founder of Palestinian
  Islamic Jihad

36
Doctors as Terrorists

• Ayman Al-Zawahiri - 2 in Al Qaeda
• Ikuo Hayashi chief of circulatory medicine at a
  leading Japanese hospital
• Pleaded guilty to planting sarin gas on Tokyo
  subway

37
Doctors as Terrorists

• Radovan Karadzic (psychiatrist) on trial for
  war crimes against Bosnian Croats and Muslims
• Dr Bilal Abdullah convicted in bungled Heathrow
  Airport car bombing (2007)
• Psychiatrist Major Nidal Hasan awaiting trial
  for Fort Hood shootings (2009)

38
War on Terror

• Doctors involved in torture, extraordinary
  renditions
• Investigations, outcry, but no real consequences

39
Atomic Weapons - History

• Hiroshima, August 6, 1945
• The day that humanity started taking its final
  exam Buckminster Fuller
• 15 kiloton bomb, 140,000 deaths
• Nagasaki, August 9, 1945
• 22 kiloton bomb, 70,000 casualties

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The Hiroshima Bomb
41
Atomic Explosion
42
Atomic Weapons Other Victims

• Hundreds of thousands of hibakusha atomic bomb
  survivors
• 1054 U.S. nuclear tests since 1940s, 331 in
  atmosphere

43
Atomic Weapons Other Victims

• 80,000 cancers (15,000 fatal) in US citizens as a
  result of fallout from atmospheric testing
• NCI/CDC
• Thousands of illnesses and deaths, higher CA risk
  in 600,000 former employees
• - DOE

44
Atomic Weapons Today

• Approximately 23,360 nuclear weapons at 11 sites
  in 14 countries (1/2 active or operationally-deplo
  yed)
• Down from over 71,000 at height of Cold War
• 5,200 active U.S. warheads today (more than ½ on
  hair-trigger alert) 8,000 in Russia
• Several thousand megatons (100,000 Hiroshimas)

45
Atomic Weapons Today

• Vastly redundant arsenal
• 150-200 weapons adequate to destroy all major
  urban centers in Russia

46
Atomic Weapons Today

• Accidental intermediate-sized launch of weapons
  from a single Russian submarine would immediately
  kill 6.8 million Americans in 8 cities

47
Nuclear Weapons Oops!

• Pentagon 32 nuclear weapons accidents since 1950
• GAO 233
• Since 1950, 10 nuclear weapons lost and never
  recovered
• All laying on seabed, potentially leaking
  radioactivity

48
Effects of a Nuclear Explosion

• Immediate
• Vaporized by thermal radiation
• Crushed by blast wave
• Burned and suffocated by firestorm

49
Effects of a Nuclear Explosion

• Intermediate
• Suffering, painful deaths
• Health care personnel/resources overwhelmed
• Famine
• Refugees
• Devastated transportation infrastructure

50
Effects of a Nuclear Explosion

• Late effects
• Cancer
• Psychological trauma (PTSD, anxiety, depression)
• nuclear winter (mass starvation due to disruption
  of agricultural, transportation, industrial and
  health care systems)

51
Effects of a 20 megaton nuclear explosion

• Ground zero - 2 miles
• Within 1/100 second fireball hotter than sun
  everything vaporized
• 2 - 4 miles
• 25 psi pressures 650 mph winds
• Buildings ripped apart and leveled

52
Effects of a 20 megaton nuclear explosion

• 4 - 10 miles
• 7 10 psi 200 mph winds
• Sheet metal melts concrete buildings heavily
  damaged (all others leveled)
• 16 miles
• 100 mph winds, firestorm, T 1400 C
• 100 mortality

53
Effects of a 20 megaton nuclear explosion

• 21 miles
• 2 psi 100 mph winds
• Shattered glass, flying debri
• 29 miles
• 3 burns over all exposed skin
• 40 miles
• Retinal burns blind all who witness explosion

54
Effects of a 20 megaton nuclear explosion over
Boston (1998 analysis)

• Death toll
• 1,000,000 within minutes
• 1,800,000 survivors
• 1,100,000 fatally injured
• 500,000 with major injuries
• 200,000 without injuries

55
Types of Injuries

• Burns
• Blindings
• Deafenings
• PTX
• Fxs
• Shrapnel wounds

56
Radiation Sickness

• Very high dose cerebral edema, N/V/D, speech
  and gait difficulties, convulsions, coma, death
  within 1-2 days
• Medium doses N/V/D ? resolves ? recurrent
  hematemesis, bloody D ? majority die
• Low doses BM failure, infections, bleeding,
  sores, death

57
Effects on health professionals

• 70 killed or fatally wounded
• 15 injured
• lt 1000 survive

58
Effects on health care system

• Most major hospitals destroyed
• EMS system debilitated
• No X-ray machines, electricity, water,
  antibiotics or other meds, blood/plasma, bandages
• 2000 burn unit beds in US (100 per major city)
  essentially destroyed

59
Effects on Health Care System

• 1500 patients/doctor
• 10 min/pt
• 4 hours sleep/noc
• 2 weeks to see all injured

60
Ultimate Outcomes

• Boston (pop. 2.8 million in 1998)
• gt 2.5 million dead after one month
• More than 6x as many Americans as died in WW II

61
Nuclear Terrorism

• Attack on nuclear power plant or other nuclear
  installation
• Dirty bomb
• Potential tens to hundreds of thousands of
  deaths, billions of dollars of damage, chaos
• Numerous radiation sources left over from Cold
  War in post-Soviet countries
• Security lax
• Need to secure supplies of radioactive,
  bomb-making isotopes

62
Chemical Weapons

• 428 BC Athenians and Spartans burned wax, pitch
  and sulfur
• DaVinci arsenic and sulfur shells
• WW I
• Italians vs. Ethiopians
• Japanese vs. Chinese
• Germans vs. Allies
• 91,000 deaths and 1.3 million injuries

63
Chemical Weapons

• Egypt vs. South Yemen (1963-7)
• Iran/Iraq War (1980s)
• Gulf War (versus Kurds, ? Others)
• Gulf War Syndrome
• 1995 Tokyo subway attack by Aum Shrinko cult
  using sarin
• 12 dead, 5000 injured or incapacitated

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Types of Chemical Weapons

• Nerve gasses / paralytics
• E.g., sarin, VX
• Blistering agents
• E.g., sulphur mustard
• Pulmonary toxicants
• E.g., chlorine, phosgene

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Chemical WeaponsVietnam and Napalm
66
Chemical WeaponsVietnam and Napalm
67
Chemical WeaponsVietnam and Napalm
68
Chemical Weapons

• 1972 Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention
  prohibits development, production, and
  stockpiling
• US and Russian still have significant stockpiles

69
Other Chemical Weapons

• Tear gas
• Pepper spray
• Calmatives mind-altering or sleep-inducing
  weapons (benzo-, SSRI-, and anesthetic
  derivatives)
• Cramp-inducing agents
• Stink bombs

70
Biological Weapons - History

• Sixth Century BC Assyrians poison wells with rye
  ergot
• 300 BC Greeks pollute wells
• Later Romans and Persians, Classical, Medieval
  and Renaissance periods, US Civil War (General
  Johnson at Vicksburg)
• 14th Century Tatars catapulting plague-infested
  corpses

71
Biological Weapons - History

• Sir Jeffrey Amherst (French and Indian Wars -
  smallpox) You would do well to try to inoculate
  the Indians, by means of blankets, to extirpate
  this execrable race
• WW I Cholera, plague, glanders, anthrax

72
Biological Weapons WW II

• Unit 731, Manchuria, Shiro Ishii
• British Operation Vegetarian (anthrax cakes /
  Germany)

73
Biological Weapons Today

• 17 countries possess ( Al Qaeda?)
• US role in supplying other nations
• e.g., 1985-1989 US companies sold to Iraq
• Bacillus anthracis, Clostridium botulinum,
  Histoplasma capsulatum, Brucella melitensis,
  Clostsridium perfringens, Clostridium tetani, and
  E. coli
• Despite evidence of use of chemical weapons
  against Kurds

74
Biological Weapons Today

• 1972 Biological Weapons Protocol signed by 158
  nations
• Lacks adequate enforcement mechanisms
• US has rejected enforcement (wary of foreign
  inspectors discovering military secrets and/or
  trade secrets of biotechnology and pharmaceutical
  companies)

75
Biological Weapons - Agents

• Anthrax Brucellosis Cholera
• Glanders Pneumonic plague
• Tularemia Q Fever Smallpox
• Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis
• Viral Hemorrhagic Fevers (e.g., Ebola)
• Botulism Staph enterotoxin B
• Ricin Mycxotoxins

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Anthrax The Band
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Other WMDs

• Small arms
• Land mines
• Cluster bombs
• Multiple non-lethal wmds (weapons of mass
  disruption) proposed and under development

78
Health Care System Preparedness for Weapons of
Mass Destruction

• Congressional panel estimates gt 50 chance of
  terrorist act involving WMDs by 2013
• ERs/hospital systems inadequately prepared
• Funds low

79
Costs of Militarization

• US over ½ of discretionary tax dollars spent on
  the military
• US military budget represents 43 of total world
  military budget (1.5 trillion in 2009)
• Increased spending on nuclear weapons
• Inadequate spending to prevent the spread of
  chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons

80
2009 Federal Budget2.65 trillion
81
Missile Defense ShieldThe Militarization of Space

• Star Wars program proceeding, despite
• Astronomical cost est. 100 billion
• Strong opposition by scientific community
• Spectacular failures in 2/4 tests, despite highly
  structured conditions
• Abandonment of ABM Treaty by Bush administration

82
Missile Defense ShieldThe Militarization of Space

• Shield or very porous umbrella
• Easily overwhelmed and fooled by inexpensive
  decoys
• No protection against internal accidents or
  terrorists bringing weapon onto US soil or dirty
  bomb
• Proposed use of moon for spy observatories and
  weapons

83
Dwight Eisenhower

• The problem in defense spending is to figure out
  how far you should go without destroying from
  within that which you are trying to protect from
  without

84
Meanwhile...Social Injustices Abound

• 51 million Americans lack health insurance
• 25 of US children live in poverty
• Homelessness, public educational system a
  shambles, increasing jail populations, AIDS, etc.
• Mass extinction, global warming
• 2.5 billion people worldwide live in abject
  poverty (earn less than 500 per year, lack
  access to clean drinking water)

85
Environmental Consequences of Militarization

• Worlds single largest polluter
• 8 of global air pollution
• 2-11 of raw material use
• Almost all high and low level radioactive waste

86
The US Military

• Owns an amount of land equal to North Korea or
  Kentucky (25 million acres)
• Much of it polluted
• Cleanup cost estimates in the hundreds of billions

87
Health Costs of Militarization

• 3 hours of world arms spending annual WHO
  budget
• ½ day of world arms spending immunization for
  all the worlds children
• 3 days of US arms spending amount spent on
  health, education and welfare programs for US
  children in one year

88
Health Costs of Militarization

• 3 weeks of world arms spending primary health
  care for all in poor countries, including safe
  drinking water and full immunizations
• Brain drain 2/3 of US scientists work in
  military-industrial complex

89
Skewed Priorities

• The world spends 1.6 trillion/year on military
  goods and services
• For 25 of this, we could
• Eliminate starvation and malnutrition
• Provide shelter for all
• Eliminate illiteracy
• Provide clean and safe water
• Prevent soil erosion

90
Skewed Priorities

• Prevent global warming
• Stop deforestation
• Aid all refugees
• Retire developing nations debt
• Provide clean, safe energy (through efficiency
  and renewables)

91
Skewed Priorities

• Prevent acid rain
• Fix the ozone hole
• Stabilize world population
• Provide basic universal health care and AIDS
  control
• Eliminate nuclear weapons and land mines

92
Dwight Eisenhower

• Every gun that is made, every rocket fired,
  signifies in the final sense a theft from those
  who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold
  and not clothed

93
Dwight Eisenhower

• This world is not spending money alone. It is
  spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of
  its scientists, the hopes of its children. This
  is not a way of life at all, in any true sense.
  Under the cloud of threatening war, it is
  humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

94
Martin Luther King

• A nation that continues year after year to
  spend more money on military defense than on
  programs of social uplift is approaching
  spiritual death.

95
Military Spending

• US ½ of discretionary tax dollars spent on the
  military
• US military budget represents 34 of total world
  military budget (1.5 trillion in 2009)
• Iraq War costs could reach 2-3 trillion

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Arms Exports
99
Arms Imports
100
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101
Economic Cost of War, U.S.
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103
US Foreign Aid

• US ranks 21st in the world in foreign aid as a
  percentage of GDP (0.7, versus UN recommended
  0.15)
• Foreign Aid
• 1/3 military
• 1/3 economic
• 1/3 food and development
• US worlds second largest arms exporter

104
Top Pentagon Prime Contractors Fiscal Year 2009

• Lockheed Martin Corp.
• Northrop Grumman Corp.
• Boeing Corp.
• Raytheon Corp.
• General Dynamics Corp.
• KBR, Inc.

105
September 11, 2001
106
World Trade Center Bombing

• 3300 fatalities - foreign nationals outnumbered
  Americans
• Environmental health consequences unknown
• 300-400 tons asbestos
• 130,000 gallons of transformer oil contaminated
  with PCBS
• Lead, sulfuric acid, silicon
• Fine dust particles

107
September 11, 2001

• Pentagon 286 casualties
• Pennsylvania approximately 100 casualties

108
The War on Terror(The War on Afghanistan, Iraq,
and ?)

• May last 50 or more years Dick Cheney

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110
What goes around comes around

• 1980s CIA arms Afghan rebels with hundreds of
  Stinger missiles
• Late 2002 Terrorists using a similar
  Russian-made version of Stinger almost bring down
  Israeli passenger airline over Kenya
• CIA trying to buy back, but most unaccounted for
• Can shoot down a plane at up 6000-8000 feet
• 24 diverted to Iran

111
Before Gulf War I

• US sells weapons to Iraq/Hussein
• Including components to produce WMDs
• Rumsfeld visits Baghdad to promote US weapons
  sales
• US minimally perturbed when Hussein gasses 4000
  Kurds, torpedoes US naval vessel

112
Gulf War I

• 105,000 military and 110,000 civilian deaths
  (almost all Iraqis)
• Over 2.25 million refugees
• 2/3 of US casualties from friendly fire
• Cost 61 billion
• US pays only 1/6 of cost (most from Saudi Arabia,
  Kuwait, Germany and Japan)
• Environmental devastation
• 48 billion in claims to UN

113
Kuwaiti Oil Fires
114
Gulf War II

• Approximately 4,500 U.S. military deaths, over
  40,000 injuries (2010)
• Traumatic brain injuries common
• Over 100,000 civilian deaths (Iraq)
• Over 2,400 civilian deaths (Afghanistan, 2009
  alone)
• Massive humanitarian crisis

115
Gulf War II

• Financial cost of war to U.S. 2-3 trillion
  (est.)
• Includes fighting, rebuilding, veterans health
  care, economic losses, etc.
• In addition, global travel industry expected to
  lose over 500 billion
• Costs to Iraq and Afghanistan
• Distraction from North Korea, other threats
• Shock and awe battle plan targeting
  infrastructure explicitly prohibited by the
  Geneva Conventions

116
Gulf War II - Iraq

• 96 of of the 9.1 billion allocated to the
  Development Fund for Iraq unaccounted for
• Special Inspector General for Iraq
  Reconstruction, 2010
• Ongoing audit of another 53 billion fund
  ongoing, but has already uncovered numerous
  instances of waste, fraud, and abuse

117
US Nuclear Weapons PoliciesUnder GW Bush

• Nuclear Posture Review expands scope of use of
  nuclear weapons, including first-strike against
  non-nuclear states
• Withdrawal from ABM Treaty
• Boycotted Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
  Conference
• Budgeted money to resume nuclear testing and
  development
• Possible use of nuclear-powered predator drones

118
U.S. Nuclear Policy Under Obama

• New START treaty signed by Obama, Putin
• Approved by US Senate
• Awaiting ratification by Russian Federation
  Assembly
• Will decrease warheads by 2/3

119
Phillip Berrigan

• Nuclear weapons are the scourge of the earth to
  mine for them, manufacture them, deploy them, use
  them, is a curse against God, the human family,
  and the earth itself.

120
Disturbing TrendsThe Patriot Bill

• Passed with minimal debate, most Congresspersons
  acknowledge not reading
• Increased governmental and corporate secrecy
  polluters subject to decreased public scrutiny
• Erosion of civil liberties deportations,
  accused held without charge/access to legal
  counsel
• 70,000 individuals on governments list of
  suspected terrorists

121
Disturbing TrendsThe Homeland Security Agency

• The HSA absorbs two dozen agencies, 170,000
  employees, 38 billion budget
• TIPS program (citizen spying program)
• Total Information Awareness System (Poindexter)
• Paranoia alert levels, duct tape and plastic
  sheeting

122
Special Interest Provisions in the Homeland
Security Law

• Vaccine liability protection (incl. existing
  thimersol lawsuits) Eli Lilly
• US corporations setting up offshore business
  fronts to avoid paying taxes allowed to contract
  with HSD
• US government prohibited from publicly releasing
  information related to vulnerabilities incl.
  safety of nuclear reactors, environmental toxins,
  etc

123
Special Interest Provisions in the Homeland
Security Law

• Immunity from liability for manufacturers of
  anti-terrorism products and technologies
• Army investigations show 60-90 of soldiers CBW
  protective gear malfunctions
• Liability protection for airport screening
  companies
• Secret advisory meetings with industry permitted,
  even if meeting not related to national security
• C.f. Cheneys Energy Commission

124
Disturbing TrendsCensorship and Propaganda

• No Child Left Behind Education Act contains
  amendment requiring that all public schools allow
  recruiters in their buildings and provide
  military with contact numbers and addresses for
  all students
• Parents can opt out
• 21st Century McCarthyism
• Wickileaks

125
Disturbing Trends

• Hate crimes, intolerance
• Media jingoism
• Army to ignore FDA safety standards in
  experiments on soldiers (legacy of 20th Century
  crimes)

126
Disturbing Trends

• Federal Budget
• 2000 surplus 5.6 trillion
• 2003 deficit 2.1 trillion
• 2010 deficit 1.3 trillion

127
The US Rogue Nation

• History Native Americans, slavery, current
  excesses, disparities and injustices
• Minimum 277 troop deployments by the US in its
  225 year history

128
The US Rogue Nation

• Since the end of WWII, the US has bombed
• China, Korea, Indonesia, Cuba, Guatemala, Congo,
  Peru, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Nicaragua, El
  Salvador, Grenada, Libya, Panama, Afghanistan,
  Sudan, Yugoslavia, and Iraq

129
The US Rogue Nation

• Conservative estimate 8 million killed
• US invasions/bombings often largely at behest of
  corporate interests

130
The US Rogue Nation

• In 2009, the US spent about 2,210 per US citizen
  on defense
• vs. a few dollars per capita on peacekeeping
  efforts
• The US maintains military bases in 69 sovereign
  nations around the world

131
The US Rogue Nation

• Continued funding of the Western Hemisphere
  Institute for Security Cooperation
• Formerly the School of the Americas
• Over 60,000 graduates, including many of the
  worst human rights abusers in Latin America
  (e.g., Manuel Noriega, Omar Torrijos, and the
  assassins of Archbishop Oscar Romero)
• School of the Americas Watch, arrests

132
International Non-Cooperation/Isolationism

• Failure to sign or approve
• Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change
• Convention on the Prohibition of Anti-Personnel
  Land Mines
• Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

133
International Non-Cooperation/Isolationism

• Failure to sign or approve
• Convention on the Rights of the Child
• Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination
  Against Women Convention on Economic, Social and
  Cultural Rights
• Convention for the Suppression of Traffic in
  Persons

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International Non-Cooperation/Isolationism

• Failure to sign or approve
• Protocol 1, Article 55 of the Geneva Conventions,
  which bans methods or means of warfare which are
  intended, or may be expected, to cause
  widespread, long-term and severe damage to the
  natural environment
• The Basel Convention on the Control of
  Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes
  (designed to control dumping of hazardous wastes
  from the industrialized world in developing
  countries)

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The US Rogue Nation

• Death Penalty
• US executes more of its citizens than any other
  country except China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia
• Until recently, the US was the only country to
  execute both juveniles and the mentally ill
• Failure to follow World Court Decisions
• Failure to recognize International Criminal Court
• Largest debtor to the UN (only 40 of dues paid)

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Solutions

• Physician activism (PSR, IPPNW, etc.)
• Increased education public, medical and public
  health students
• Tolerance and appreciation of diversity
• Conservation measures
• Assist victims of war (PHR, MSF, etc.)

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Thomas Jefferson

• Nothing can keep (government) right but (the
  peoples) vigilant and distrustful
  superintendence

138
The role of the doctor in society

• World Health Organization
• The role of the physician in the preservation
  and promotion of peace is the most significant
  factor for the attainment of health for all.

139
Contact Information

• Public Health and Social Justice Website
• http//www.phsj.org
• martindonohoe_at_phsj.org