WWI Xmas Mutiny

It was Christmas Eve 1914 and the soldiers in the trenches, Brits, Canadians, Germans and French, muddy, covered in blood and guts, coughing up bloodied mucus of poison gas, called a truce in the War. A truce that remains a mutiny on the books of the ruling clases and their military to this day.

A new film has been made of this famous mutiny for and it will be shown to British Troops in Iraq.

Now if they sneak in the Americans to watch this that just might be the inspiration for the American all volunteer working class army to down arms and end this war.

So subersive is the legend of the Christmas Truce of 1914 that the French still refuse to allow their soldiers to see this film and refused to be part of the production effort.

Brit troops to see 1914 Xmas 'anti-war' film
During the ceasefire, German, British and French troops stopped shooting, got out of their trenches and shared cocoa and cigarettes. They sang hymns together and returned to fighting a few days later.The French army refused to participate in the making of the film, saying soldiers who participated in the Christmas truce were disobeying orders. German troops have already taken in the movie, but it will not be presented to French soldiers. The ceasefire was seen as treason by superiors on both sides.

It was of course this famous truce that gave rise to the 1960's comic Christmas song Snoopy's Christmas by the Royal Guardsmen Listen to it here.

And it was the inspiration for Dalton Trumbos classic Anti-War novel, Johnny Got His Gun.

During the summer of 1914 in a crucial battle in Mons Belgium British troops claimed to have seen St. George and a group of Longbowmen in the skies, which they claimed to have turned the battle in their favour.

This is known as the Legend of Mons, and occult horror author Arthur Machen claimed at the time that it was based on his short story called the Bowman which had been published in the popular press of the day. However historian A.J.P Taylor believed the story and recorded it in his history of WWI.

The fact that the tale and trench rumours of Angels of Mons appeared the summer before may have had a subconcious effect on the soldiers in the trenches facing the first industrialized war of mass murder.

Such was the horror of WWI and the introduction of mechanized death, mass slaughter by machine gun, huge mortars and giant Big Bertha guns that deafened you, poison gas, tanks, trench warfare, etc. the veritable impass of the No Mans Land lead to the need for a moment of humanity, human contact that became the Christmas Truce.

Shell shocked, cold, wet, facing certain death, suffering what was called Battle Fatigue, the first time it was ever recorded in war and we know now as Post Traumatic Syndrome, soldiers fled the field not in cowardice but in terror. And the officers on both sides of the trenches shot them mercilessly.

The Officer Corps of all the Armies of WWI were the last vestiges of the Aristocracy while the soldiers in the trenches were the original grunts, and like modern industrial capitalism which the war so effectively modeled itself after, they were expendable cogs in the machine.

Canadians know this well for even our officers like their men were expendable, as colonial troops, in both WWI and WWII. In the case of the later the battle of Dieppe saw the ruthless sacrifice of Canadians on the whim of Lord Mountbatten for his personal ego trip in securing a position of command.

23 Canadians were executed for desertion or cowardice in WWI. 2 were executed for murder (murder in war you ask well...) one after he suffered a head injury went nuts, the other was a case of shooting a superior officer, a Sgt. Major, the guys who were particularly brutal to their men. We would call it fragging today.Thousands more died in the trenches, including almost all the 1st Royal Newfoundland Regiment.

All those boys from the prairies, the cities, from the farms and the factories, from Saskatchewan, Iowa, Sheffield, Paris and Berlin died for the glory of Imperialism and Capitalism. When they came home there were no jobs, a depression, and no Veterans benefits. It was not such a Great War.

Happy Christmas (The War is Over)

There's nothing noble about dying. Not even if you die for honor. Not even if you die the greatest hero the world ever saw. Not even if you're so great your name will never be forgotten and who's that great? The most important thing is your life little guys. You're worth nothing dead except for speeches. Don't let them kid you any more. Pay no attention when they tap you on the shoulder and say come along we've got to fight for liberty or whatever their word is there's always a word.

Just say mister I'm sorry I got no time to die I'm too busy and then turn and run like hell. If they say coward why don't pay any attention because it's your job to live not to die. If they talk about dying for principles that are bigger than life you say mister you're a liar Nothing is bigger than life There's nothing noble in death. What s noble about lying in the ground and rotting. What's noble about never seeing the sunshine again? What's noble about having your legs and arms blown off? What's noble about being an idiot? What's noble about being blind and deaf and dumb? What's noble about being dead. Because when you're dead mister it's all over. It's the end. You're less than a dog less than a rat less than a bee or an ant less than a white maggot crawling around on a dungheap. You're dead mister and you died for nothing.

Imagine

Why aren’t brain injuries taken seriously?

Mike Bebernes Editor, Yahoo News 360•February 11, 2020
“The 360” shows you diverse perspectives on the day’s top stories and debates

What’s happening

More than 100 members of the U.S. military suffered traumatic brain injuries as a result of an Iranian missile attack on a base in Iraq that housed American troops, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.

Iran bombarded the base in early January in retaliation for an American airstrike that killed Qassem Soleimani, one of the country’s top generals. Though there were no U.S. fatalities, the number of military members who have been treated for brain injuries has gradually increased in the weeks since the attack. Last month, President Trump downplayed the injuries, saying the soldiers were experiencing “headaches,” which he didn’t consider “very serious injuries relative to other injuries.”

To the general public, traumatic brain injury (TBI) is most commonly understood to be caused by a direct blow to the head like the ones football players endure. The impact from an explosion — even if it doesn’t cause bodily injury — could cause TBI. Brain injuries have been called the “signature wound” of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, where improvised explosive devices have been a persistent threat. More than 413,000 American soldiers have suffered TBI since 2000, according to the Department of Defense.

Most of those cases involved mild TBI, which can lead to headaches, cognitive impairment, mood changes and fatigue in the short term. Research has shown that even mild brain injuries can be linked to a increased long-term risk of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide.

Why there’s debate

The president’s comments echo a view, prevalent in the military and in sports, that brain injuries aren’t considered as serious as physical injuries. Part of the disconnect may stem from the nature of the injuries. A bullet wound, for example, is immediately noticeable and easily understood as life-threatening. The symptoms of head injuries, however, can take days to show up and are often difficult to define. Severe outcomes, like depression, may not manifest for months or even years and can be difficult to attribute directly to head trauma.

Some military veterans say the culture of the armed forces puts pressure on soldiers to return to action unless physically unable, which can lead to TBI symptoms going unreported. Others argue that military leadership has been too slow to respond to the issue and that the government doesn’t do enough to provide mental health services to veterans after their service is complete.

What’s next

The modern understanding of the impact of traumatic brain injuries is still relatively new. Scientists and doctors are working to develop better methods to diagnose, monitor and treat TBI. The military has instituted new procedures for managing brain injuries within its ranks in recent years. President Trump, however, appears committed to his view that TBI isn’t as serious as other injuries. “I viewed it a little bit differently than most, and I won't be changing my mind on that," he said Monday.
Perspectives

Symptoms can take time to surface

“The long-lasting effects of TBI can be delayed, and its victims can appear unchanged to the eye. Because of this, it is easy to dismiss mild TBI or concussion as a bump to the head, and the victims of TBI are often returned back to the field, the court, work or the battlefield all too soon without the necessary neuropsychological testing and subsequent treatment.”
— Neurologist Starane Shepherd, Newsweek

Veterans often see their symptoms as personality problems

“Victims of traumatic brain injury often blame themselves for their changed behavior, not realizing that blows or force to the head have caused lasting harm. … Step one is helping them understand they have injuries, not character flaws.” — Dr. Chrisanne Gordon, Columbus Dispatch

Fear of judgment prevents soldiers from seeking treatment

“A major hurdle has been to destigmatize brain injury and make people realize that injuries to the brain that can’t be seen are just as serious — and sometimes more difficult to treat — than bloody wounds to other parts of the body.” — Editorial, Washington Post

Mental health is consistently treated as less seriously than physical health

“Historically, mental health services get shortchanged in funding and support across the country, but the failure to care for the war fighters has been notably shameful. Looking back 18 years, we find that the medical campaign to treat psychological problems and brain injury has largely failed.” — Stephen N. Xenakis, USA Today

Medical science is only starting to understand brain injuries

“It's the brain — and medicine is only on the forefront of understanding what, exactly, goes on in there.” — Leah Asmelash, CNN

Many doctors still rely on ineffective treatments

"A lot of physicians will say, 'Well, you shouldn't do anything. Go into a dark room, don't strain the brain and wait until you recover.’ … And we have a national epidemic of people that are sitting in a room waiting for their headache to go away.” — Dr. Jamshid Ghajar to Military.com

TBI symptoms are often discounted

“What I know is that if you show most people an invisible wound, you’ll get invisible compassion. Wear earplugs all the time, and even your close friends will just blow it off. … Empathy requires stimulus, and in the average person’s perspective, anybody can just ‘fake’ post-traumatic stress or a TBI.” — Military veteran Bryan Box, New Republic

Brain Injuries Are Common in Battle. The Military Has No Reliable Test for Them.

WHAT THEY CALL CONCUSSION OR SERIOUS BRAIN TRAUMA WAS ONCE KNOWN AS SHELL SHOCK AND LAST CENTURY DURING THE BIG ONE WWI IT WAS AN EXECUTABLE OFFENSE ON THE BATTLEFRONT FOR COWARDICE

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=WWI

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=SHELL+SHOCK

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=BATTLE+FATIGUE

War metaphors used for COVID-19 are compelling but also dangerous

A surgical mask adorns a war memorial statue in Toronto on March 19, 2020. 

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn

Author
Costanza Musu

April 8, 2020 

As COVID-19 sweeps across the globe, many politicians and news media have adopted war metaphors to describe the challenges we are facing.

In Britain, Queen Elizabeth II delivering a rare speech on Apr. 5 said “we will meet again” evoking a Second World War song. On March 9, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte also invoked the Second World War when he used Winston Churchill’s words to talk about Italy’s “darkest hour.” President Donald Trump has described himself as a “war-time president,” fighting against an invisible enemy.

In New York, as residents face the explosion of new cases and casualties, Governor Andrew Cuomo used the war metaphor extensively during a press conference:

“The soldiers in this fight are our health care professionals. It’s the doctors, it’s the nurses, it’s the people who are working in the hospitals, it’s the aids. They are the soldiers who are fighting this battle for us.”

The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Gutiérrez embraced the comparison during his remarks at a G20 virtual summit on the COVID-19 pandemic:

“We are at war with a virus – and not winning it. …This war needs a war-time plan to fight it.”

Journalists have also been using the metaphor. A recent headline in the Globe and Mail read: “We are at war with COVID-19. We need to fight it like a war.”The ‘We Can Do It!’ poster was made to boost worker morale during the Second World War.

 (J. Howard Miller/Office for Emergency Management. War Production Board, circa 1942.)

The war-time imagery is compelling. It identifies an enemy (the virus), a strategy (“flatten the curve,” but also “save the economy”), the front-line warriors (health-care personnel), the home-front (people isolating at home), the traitors and deserters (people breaking the social-distancing rules).

Furthermore, it highlights the urgency that underpins drastic policy decisions like the closing of schools, the imposition of travels bans, the grinding to a halt of economies around the world. It appeals to citizens’ sense of duty and obligation to serve in their country’s hour of need.

This is certainly not the first time leaders and policy-makers have used the war metaphor to describe a threat that does not qualify as military. Think the war on poverty, on cancer, on illegal immigration, not to mention the war on drugs or on crime.

While highly appealing as a tool of political rhetoric, the war metaphor hides several pitfalls that, in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, are particularly dangerous.
Are we all soldiers now?

Using the war metaphor shuffles categorizations in insidious ways. For example, we are no longer citizens; we are now “soldiers” in a conflict. As such, politicians call for obedience rather than awareness and appeal to our patriotism, not to our solidarity.

It is under the guise of these categorizations that we have already seen, across the world, shifts towards dangerous authoritarian power-grabs, as in Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orbán seized wide-ranging emergency powers and the ability to rule by decree.

Similarly, in the Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, in the context of a national emergency bill, gained the right to punish people spreading “false information” about the outbreak, a right that could easily be used to silence political dissent.

In the United Kingdom, a country with robust democratic institutions, the Coronavirus Bill gave government ministries the power to detain and isolate people, ban public gatherings including protests and shut down ports and airports. Health Secretary Matt Hancock put it this way:


“The measures that I have outlined are unprecedented in peacetime. We will fight this virus with everything we have. We are in a war against an invisible killer and we have to do everything we can to stop it.”

In Alberta, the passing of Bill 10 gives the premier and his cabinet broad and extraordinary powers.

Moreover, defining the pandemic as war leads inevitably to the need to identify an enemy. The enemy here is the the coronavirus, but many politicians have also added qualifiers to the enemy virus.

The expression, “the China Virus,” by President Trump and other American policy-makers, has been linked to a rise of racist anti-Asian attacks in the North America.

As the virus has spread like wildfire in large cities like New York, Toronto and Montréal, another dichotomy is between big urban centres and smaller rural areas whose residents may feel at risk of exposure from city-dwellers escaping the metropolis.
A new nationalism

As we find ourselves at war we may be irresistibly drawn to an inward-looking, my-country-first attitude. Arguments over essential supplies have erupted, with countries blocking shipments of items like masks and other protective equipment or life-saving ventilators.

Inspired by Second World War efforts, a Canadian artist created posters to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. (Michael Slotwinski), CC BY-SA

Within the European Union an initial failure of solidarity has made many suggest that the pandemic might eventually claim another victim: the EU itself.

The Trump administration has attempted to prevent 3M, the world’s largest manufacturers of protective medical gear, from sending masks to Canada. The attempt was promptly followed by a not-too-subtle reference by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to the large number of Canadian doctors and nurses crossing the border to work in American hospitals.
The long run

Experts have been increasingly talking about a large time window before we can expect this crisis to be over. Laboratories around the world are racing to find a vaccine or, at least, an effective treatment to reduce casualties.

In other words, we are in this for the long run: democracies and authoritarian states, rich and poor states, Chinese, Americans, Russians and the rest of the world.

If we are “at war” for an undetermined amount of time, battle fatigue may derail all efforts. Leaders would do better to promote civil responsibility and global solidarity instead of the idea of warfare. Finding a solution to the pandemic is a shared responsibility, and the solution must be global.

It is not by cultivating the image of warriors that governments will convince people to continue to comply with health authorities: it is by appealing to civic duty, solidarity and respect for fellow human beings.

This shift in perspective is necessary, if we want to resolve not only this crisis, but other global emergencies, including climate change and the depletion of the planet which are, as the World Health Organization has indicated, inextricably linked with the spread of infectious diseases.

Costanza Musu
Associate Professor, Graduate Scool of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa
Disclosure statement
Costanza Musu receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)
Partners
University of Ottawa provides funding as a member of 

The Conversation CA.

Chronic dysentery unlikely killer of Edward the Black Prince as is commonly believed

Malaria and inflammatory bowel disease among possible causes that changed course of English history, suggests military expert

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BMJ

Whatever disease killed Edward the Black Prince—heir apparent to the English throne in the mid 1300s, and heralded as the greatest English soldier ever to have lived—is unlikely to have been chronic dysentery, as is commonly believed, writes a military expert in the journal BMJ Military Health.

But whether it was malaria; brucellosis, caused by eating unpasteurised dairy products and raw meat; inflammatory bowel disease; or complications arising from a single bout of dysentery—all possible causes—the disease changed the course of English history, says Dr James Robert Anderson of 21 Engineer Regiment.

And what happened to the Black Prince, who pretty much continuously fought wars and was exposed to violence from the age of 16, has been endlessly repeated throughout millennia, with disease, rather than battle injury, taking the heaviest toll on life during warfare, he says.

Edward of Woodstock, the Black Prince, was never seriously injured despite the number of military campaigns he led. But he had a chronic illness that waxed and waned for almost 9 years, to which he finally succumbed in 1376 at the age of 45. 

His early death changed the course of English history, because the crown passed directly to his 10 year-old son after the death of King Edward III. Young King Richard II was later deposed and murdered, sparking over a century of instability, including the Wars of the Roses and the rise of the Tudors, notes the author.

The Black Prince’s illness is thought to have started after his victory at the Battle of Nájera in Spain in 1367, writes the author. A chronicle suggested that up to 80% of his army may have died from “dysentery and other diseases.” 

And most later accounts of the Black Prince’s death suggest that he died from chronic dysentery, possibly the amoebic form, which was common in medieval Europe. 

Amoebic dysentery can cause long term complications, including internal scarring (amoeboma), intestinal inflammation and ulceration (colitis), and extreme inflammation and distension of the bowel (life threatening toxic megacolon), points out the author. 

But if he really did have amoebic dysentery, with its symptoms of chronic diarrhoea, would he really have been well enough, or even welcomed aboard, a ship with a cargo of soldiers heading for battle in France in 1372, asks the author? 

Complications from surviving a single bout of dysentery are a possibility, particularly as historical records indicate that paratyphoid—similar to typhoid, but caused by a different bug—and a recently discovered cause of dysentery, was in circulation in 1367.

Complications from this could have included long term health issues, such as anaemia, kidney damage, liver abscess and/or reactive arthritis, suggests the author.

Dehydration due to lack of water during the hot Spanish campaign is another possibility. This could have caused kidney stones which would fit with a fluctuating illness lasting several years, he says. 

Another candidate is inflammatory bowel disease, which might have accounted for relapsing-remitting symptoms and gradual deterioration, suggests the author.

Brucellosis was also common in medieval Europe, and its sources (dairy products and raw meat) were often kept aside for the nobility on military campaigns, says the author. It can produce chronic symptoms of fatigue, recurrent fever, and joint and heart inflammation.

Another common disease in medieval Europe was malaria, the symptoms of which include fever, headache, myalgia (muscle aches and pains), gut problems, fatigue, chronic anaemia and susceptibility to acute infections, such as pneumonia or gastroenteritis, leading to multiorgan failure and death, he adds.

“This would fit the fluctuating nature of his illness and the decline towards the end of his life. Any anaemia would not have been helped by the purging and venesection [blood letting] treatments of the time,” he suggests.

“There are several diverse infections or inflammatory conditions that may have led to [the Black Prince’s] demise…However, chronic dysentery is probably unlikely,” he writes. 

And he concludes :“Even in modern conflicts and war zones, disease has caused enormous morbidity and loss of life, something that has remained consistent for centuries. Efforts to protect and treat deployed forces are as important now as in the 1370s.”

 

---

JOURNAL

BMJ Military Health

DOI

10.1136/military-2022-002282 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

News article

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

The death of the Black Prince: a case of disease in 1376 that changed the course of English history

Hidden Costs of Harpers War

The Harper government does not release the numbers of Canadians wounded in Kandahar.

Now most injuries not reported

A new policy has clearly emerged. Deaths are still reported but injuries are not, unless one of two scenarios exists. The first is if the injury is so severe, it may very well result in death. The second is if journalists already know about it. If a journalist happens to be in a convoy that is hit and sees the injury, they’ll obviously know about it.

Injuries are increasingly frequent these days. As many as four roadside bomb strikes happen each week. Soldiers are being injured in the process, some of them seriously. Some of them will lose limbs. Others will have their lives irreparably damaged. We won’t know. Whether we should know is another question.

So what’s changed? There is the argument that politicians — fearing a further loss of public support for this mission — don’t want to reveal the true number of injuries. Another school of thought is that the injuries have become so routine, the military doesn’t view them as a “new development” and thus not newsworthy (or publicly releasable). A final argument is that there is now so much violence, the deployed soldiers’ would prefer to reduce the publication of bad news that will further worry their families back in Canada.

As the medevac crew was launched on one medical mission after another, we repeatedly saw Canadian soldiers being loaded and unloaded.

The point is this: soldiers have died in this place, but many more have been injured. The United States, which is engaged in its own largely unpopular war in Iraq, still releases injury statistics. Canada does not.

The long term impact of this war is veterans returning with post combat syndrome. Once upon a time it was called battle fatigue, and those who suffered from it were often summarily executed in the field during WWI. We have come a long way since then. Hardly it remains a hidden injury of war and like other injuries occurring to our troops it is to be covered up from the public according to the Harpocrites.

Nearly 400 of 2,700 Canadian soldiers who have served in Kandahar province might have come home with mental health problems, according to a report by the office responsible for the health of deployed troops.

The heavy toll that the war in Afghanistan has taken on the minds and bodies of Canadian troops has been revealed in data, documents and interviews provided by the Canadian Expeditionary Force Command.

In addition to the 63 Canadian soldiers who have been killed in Afghanistan since February 2006, 243 have been wounded, according to the data.

Waiting lists are stretching from a few weeks to months for Manitoba soldiers seeking psychological help, say officials at a Winnipeg clinic.

Referrals from the Canadian Forces are up 78 per cent over last year, officials at the Operational Stress Injury Clinic in Winnipeg said Friday.

Operational Stress, sometimes known as combat stress, is the term used to describe any persistent psychological problem resulting from military service, including post-traumatic stress disorder.

SEE:

Harpers War Costs Another Canadian Life

Kandahar

Afghanistan

War



Job Protection for

Canadian Reservists

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Oceans warmer last month than any May on record
Agence France-Presse
June 7, 2023

Patrick Meinhardt / AFP/File

Sea temperatures at a depth of about 10 metres were a quarter of a degree Celsius higher than ice-free oceans in May averaged across 1991 to 2020, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).

Year-round, long-term trends have added 0.6C to the ocean's surface waters in 40 years, said C3S deputy director Samantha Burgess, noting that April had also seen a new record for heat.

Temperatures over the ocean could be further boosted in coming months "as we are seeing the El Nino signal continuing to emerge in the equatorial Pacific," she said in a statement, referring to a periodic, natural shift in ocean winds that enhances warming globally.

Above water and over land, meanwhile, Earth's surface temperature last month tied as the second hottest for May, according to C3S.

The Copernicus finding are based on computer-generated models that draw on billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations worldwide.

Oceans, which cover 70 percent of Earth's surface, have kept the planet livable as global warming caused by human activity -- mainly the burning of fossil fuels -- has accelerated.

The surface of the planet is, on average, 1.2C hotter than pre-industrial levels, a level which has already unleashed devastating climate impacts.

'Out of control'

Oceans absorb a quarter of the CO2 we spew into the atmosphere, and 90 percent of the excess heat generated by climate change.

But at a terrible price.

Widespread marine heatwaves are decimating coral reefs and the ecosystems that depend on them, including more than half-a-billion people.

The accelerated disintegration from below of giant ice sheets could lift oceans by a dozen meters, and ocean acidification is disrupting life cycles and food chains from the tropics to the poles.

Moreover, oceans -- along with forests and soil, which soak up an even larger percentage of human-generated greenhouse gases -- are showing signs of battle fatigue, and their capacity to soak up CO2 could diminish.

Copernicus also reported that temperatures in several parts of the world were higher than normal, including Canada, where wildfires over the last several weeks have so far decimated more than three million hectares (8 million acres).

There are 413 wildfires burning across the country from Pacific to Atlantic, including 249 deemed "out of control".

Earlier this month, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said there's a 60 percent chance that an El Nino will form before the end of July, and an 80 percent change by the end of November.

Most of the warmest years on record have occurred during El Ninos, and scientists are concerned that this summer and next could see record temperatures on land and in the sea.

In Antarctica, meanwhile, sea ice extent reached a monthly record low for the third time this year, with satellite data showing it was 17 percent below average in May.

© 2023 AFP

Trump's HHS secretary accidentally tells the truth: Racism is driving pandemic policy\
Alex Azar's comments were hateful — and honest, exposing the racist logic behind the entire Trump movement

CHAUNCEY DEVEGA MAY 19, 2020 SALON

Donald Trump's administration is truly a one-trick pony. Whatever narratives Trump's minions roll out, white supremacy and racism are always the baseline.

During an appearance last Sunday on CNN's "State of the Nation," Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar offered this explanation of why black people and other nonwhites are at such high risk of death from COVID-19:

Unfortunately the American population is a very diverse — it is a population with significant unhealthy co-morbidities that do make many individuals in our communities, in particular African-American, minority communities, particularly at risk here because of significant underlying disease health disparities and disease co-morbidities and that is an unfortunate legacy in our health care system that we need to address.

Azar detailed these "co-morbidities" as primarily meaning obesity, diabetes and hypertension. To state the obvious, the Trump administration has done nothing to address these and other health problems. Moreover, it is actively working to overturn the Affordable Care Act and other programs shown to improve health outcomes for the American people.

The implications of Azar's comments are clear enough, despite the superficial language of concern: Black and brown communities and individuals are somehow responsible for dying at higher rates from the coronavirus pandemic and the nation's "unfortunate" diversity is at least partly to blame. Of course, after making those comments Azar attempted, predictably, to backtrack and deflect.

Here's the shorter version of the secretary's analysis: "Dear black and brown people: COVID-19 is killing so many of you because you are fat and lazy. Deal with the problem yourselves. This is your own fault."

It may be worth observing that the obesity epidemic in America is not limited to black and brown people in urban neighborhoods. Many of Trump's supporters in red-state America suffer from these same "co-morbidities." One must wonder whether Azar will slur them as being fat and lazy, and ultimately responsible for their own severe illness or death from the coronavirus? Does the same victim-blaming logic apply to Donald Trump, a person who appears to be morbidly obese?

The coronavirus pandemic is global. Since the outbreak, it has killed more than 300,000 people and infected almost 5 million others. In the United States, more than 90,000 people have died. Some projections suggest that in June the daily death toll may approach or exceed 3,000 Americans — more people than were killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11, every single day. Scientists warn that no vaccine will likely be available for at least a year, and likely longer. Lives are being ruined. We are on the verge of a second Great Depression, or already in it. The world economy teeters at the edge of the abyss.

Government exists to confront and resolve problems greater than any one person or group of individuals could solve on their own. To blame black and brown people for dying and suffering from the coronavirus pandemic is the kind of moral logic that underpins crimes against humanity.

Alex Azar has no insight or wisdom to offer about the pandemic except to lie and recite programmed talking points intended to exonerate the Trump regime. The ultimate goal of Trump's pandemic death cult is to create a narrative where 150,000 or more deaths are framed as a victory, rather than a cataclysmic failure of presidential leadership and governance – if such words may even be applied to Trump and his cabal.

To explain and decode Azar's comments about "diversity" and black and brown people dying in this pandemic is to see, once again, the unifying logic of Donald Trump's movement and his Republican Party, news media, voters and supporters.

Truth and empirical reality do not matter to today's "conservatives" and other right-wing revanchists. As such, context is also seen as irrelevant because it is the basis for any true understanding of complex events.

Conservatism, especially the type of fake populist right-wing fascism and authoritarianism that Trump and his movement represent, rejects complexity of thought and principle.

Why are black Americans and other nonwhites dying at disproportionately high rates during the coronavirus pandemic, as compared to white people? Social inequality.

For most of the country's history through to the present, black Americans and other nonwhites have been denied access to quality health care. They are also more likely to be uninsured or underinsured. What social psychologists describe as "racial battle fatigue" also makes nonwhites more vulnerable to the coronavirus and other serious illnesses.

Food deserts and environmental racism also contribute to the co-morbidities that make black and brown people more vulnerable to this pandemic — and to many other forms of illness and disease.

Wealth and income disparities as well as the structure of the labor market combine to make nonwhites more likely to die from the coronavirus pandemic.


As a strategy, the Trump administration and the Republican Party have enacted and pursued policies that make these racial disparities much worse and have therefore made the human cost of the coronavirus much higher for nonwhite people.

White supremacy and racism are central to the Trump regime. Trump's political movement is tied together and motivated by racial animus and hostility towards nonwhite people, as well as Muslims and other groups deemed not to be "real Americans."

Trump's response to the coronavirus pandemic is a way to channel such values. Dr. Justin Frank, retired George Washington University psychiatrist and author of "Trump on the Couch," explained this to me in a recent email:

Learning that a disproportionate number of black- and brown-skinned people are dying from the virus makes it easier for him to open up the economy, precisely because they wouldn't vote for him, are of no use to him, and are already objects of his malevolence. Just think about the Central Park Five or his derogatory comments about African countries. Donald Trump is his fathers's son, beloved by the Ku Klux Klan.

Azar's comments about "diversity" and the pandemic directly channel white supremacist talking points. For neo-Nazis, the "alt-right" and other white supremacists, "diversity" is a weakness. Diversity is "anti-white," they argue, and as such anti-American.

White supremacists claim that nonwhite immigrants are inherently dirty or criminal, and are vectors for the "white genocide" which is being caused by America's changing racial demographics and globalization. These views are now routinely mainstreamed on Fox News and in other parts of the right-wing echo chamber.

Since the ideology of white supremacy is based on a foundational lie that "white" people" are somehow superior to other groups, claims that "diversity" leads to weaker societies is not true. For one thing, race itself is a social construct with no biological basis; contrary to the fantasies of many right-wing "thinkers," human beings cannot be bred like dogs.

In reality, the particular challenges of "assimilation" or "national identity" often faced by "multiracial" or "diverse" societies result from the angry and paranoid response of white supremacists and other nativists to those people they deem to be undesirable outsiders.

In the United States, that dynamic manifests by how it does not have the robust social democracy and health care system found in many European nations. White Americans and their leaders have historically been more invested in preserving the psychological wages of whiteness than in working together with nonwhite Americans to make a better society that would benefit everyone.

"Big government" is considered to be evil. In reality, "big government" is exactly what is needed to confront a global pandemic. As political scientists and other researchers have shown, the language of "big government" from the 19th century forward has been negatively associated with the idea that black people and other minority groups take money and other resources away from "deserving" white Americans.

The U.S. government has been hollowed out through that logic, leaving it unable to effectively respond to the coronavirus pandemic. This is another example of the various ways in which racism and white supremacy hurt white people.

How will the history of America in the time of Trump's pandemic be written?

Donald Trump's personal fixer, Attorney General William Barr, told Fox News during a recent interview that "history is written by the winners."

Perhaps in the Newspeak pseudo-history of the future it will be written that Donald Trump saved the United States by personally defeating a real-yet-somehow-fake plague, an "invisible enemy" that was brought upon America by the Asians, the blacks, the Hispanics, Native Americans, the Jews, Barack Obama, the Democrats and the "fake news" reporters and journalists.

Truth is always one of the first victims of fascism. In that regard, American fascism is in no way exceptional.

Chauncey DeVega is a politics staff writer for Salon. His essays can also be found at Chaunceydevega.com. He also hosts a weekly podcast, The Chauncey DeVega Show. Chauncey can be followed on Twitter and Facebook.

“Punch-drunk slugnuts” and the language of violence: Tracing the impact of sports slang on modern perceptions of neurodegenerative disease

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS JOURNALS

Throughout the twentieth century, being “punch drunk” was a commonly encountered condition—one denoted by an equally pervasive term. Similar turns of phrase, like “slugnutty” and “punchy,” persisted for decades in books, newspapers, and magazines. Even today, “punch-drunk,” “goofy,” and “slaphappy” can be found scattered across different media.

This slang originated among working-class populations in the United States and Britain to mock the diminished mental and physical capacity of an individual who had received too many blows to the head. “Punch-drunk slugnuts” exhibited mental decline, grogginess, irritability, and slurred speech.

In “Punch-Drunk Slugnuts: Violence and the Vernacular History of Disease,” published in Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society, Stephen T. Casper, professor of history at Clarkson University, illustrates how slurs and insults characteristic of a violent interwar culture served as descriptors of debilitating head trauma, and how this language was incorporated into medicine. Casper examines the role slang terms—many associated with the world of contact sports—played in conceptualizing and treating brain injuries and resulting neurological illnesses. Given widespread observation of head trauma and its effects, colloquialisms allowed the illness to be recognizable. At the same time, they inhibited its conceptualization as a serious disease requiring medical intervention.

Casper’s analysis draws on various sources containing vernacular terms to describe damage from repetitive brain injuries, including interviews from the Folklore Project by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), literary descriptions, journalistic pieces, court documents, autobiographical accounts, and medical texts.

Medical professionals studying brain injuries and neurodegenerative disease established connections between their observations and slang circulating in the public sphere. Beginning with Harrison Martland’s essay “Punch Drunk” in 1928, subsequent clinical research included slang terms. Use of this vernacular, in turn, led to the classification of neurological disease induced by repetitive head trauma as “chronic traumatic encephalopathy.” However, the colloquialisms’ myriad connotations allowed for ambiguity in diagnosing the disorder and prevented it from achieving medical legitimacy.

Tracing the history of this vernacular economy reveals a culture that stigmatized sufferers and normalized male violence.

Sports presented a venue where brain injuries were visible, but attempts to medicalize trauma symptoms were challenged. Head trauma was a regular occurrence in high-contact sports, like football and boxing, but the everyday nature of injury was used to downplay its severity. Popular conceptualizations of sports at the time, especially boxing, were predicated on the relationship between masculinity, honor, and violence. Athletes were expected to withstand pain, embody stoicism, and inflict violence as a measure of masculinity. Inability to do so was viewed as a deficiency in one’s manhood. “Punchy” individuals who lost their athletic prowess were objects of derision and fell in social standing. Rather than acknowledge that repeated trauma caused deterioration, society employed racist, classist, and eugenic rationales, casting “punch-drunk slugnuts” as inherently inferior, as subpar fighters, and as dull-witted well before their injuries.

Accepting the affliction as a disease and treating these individuals, Casper argues, would have constituted a critique of mainstream culture and placed blame on its violent practices.

While highlighting the history of impact-related neurodegenerative disease and its lexicon, Casper also elaborates on “a disease population experience that fought against its own discovery” and how tendencies to dismiss the effects of recurrent head trauma continue today. 

“Having originated from culture, been contested by culture, and remade by culture, the disease’s treatment demanded an impossible unmaking of culture. From its rough linguistic and anthropological origins to the uncovering of its biological specificity, the history of this disease traces our chronology of normal violence as entertainment, reveals its legacies in donated brains, and, above all, foretells tragic futures.”

---

JOURNAL

Isis

DOI

10.1086/719720 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Content analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Punch-Drunk Slugnuts: Violence and the Vernacular History of Disease

Stephen T. Casper discloses that he is retained by plaintiffs as an expert witness in medical history in pending concussion litigation involving American football, hockey, soccer, and rugby. He is a member of the Repercussions Group. He receives honoraria for lectures, as well as book royalties from the University of Manchester Press and Rochester University Press.

Why aren’t brain injuries taken seriously?

WWI helmets protect against shock waves

WHAT THEY CALL CONCUSSION OR SERIOUS BRAIN TRAUMA WAS ONCE KNOWN AS SHELL SHOCK AND LAST CENTURY DURING THE BIG ONE WWI IT WAS AN EXECUTABLE OFFENSE ON THE BATTLEFRONT FOR COWARDICE

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=WWI

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=SHELL+SHOCK

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=BATTLE+FATIGUE

George Floyd video adds to trauma: 'When is the last time you saw a white person killed online?'

Analysis: African Americans face harmful mental health effects every time high-profile incidents of racism and police brutality go viral, especially when little changes in the aftermath.

Alia E. Dastagir
USA TODAY

Headline after headline, the same story: a black American dead.

George Floyd, after a police officer knelt on his neck. Ahmaud Arbery, while on a jog in Georgia. Breonna Taylor, while police raided her Louisville, Kentucky, home.

And the ones before: Eric Garner, who couldn't breathe. Philando Castile, in the car with his girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter. Trayvon Martin, only a boy.

Scores of killings answered with acquittals. Now, as a pandemic rages, African Americans in communities across the country disproportionally devastated by COVID-19 are forced to bear witness to more deaths of black Americans.

The costs of these deaths ripple. When people of color experience racism, when they repeatedly witness racism, there is a profound emotional toll.


"The persistent pandemic is racism. That's the pandemic. Recent deaths of individuals of color and the deleterious impact of COVID-19 on communities of color stems all the way from 1776," said Alisha Moreland-Capuia, executive director of Oregon Health & Science University's Avel Gordly Center for Healing, which focuses on culturally sensitive care for the African American community.

"The emotional and psychological impact of racism means acutely, every day, being reminded that you are not enough, being reminded that you are not seen, being reminded that you are not valued, being reminded that you are not a citizen, being reminded that humanity is not something that applies to you."

'Stop killing black people':George Floyd's death sparks protests

Column:Video of George Floyd is shocking but not surprising

Research shows racism has harmful mental and physical effects. They can result from a person experiencing racism directly – as a bird-watcher did when a white woman in New York's Central Park told police he was threatening her life when he asked her to leash her dog – or vicariously, such as someone watching the video of Floyd's suffering.

Racism is associated with a host of psychological consequences, including depression, anxiety, and other serious, sometimes debilitating mental conditions including post-traumatic stress disorder and substance use disorders, mental health experts say.

High-profile incidents of racism and police brutality, especially when accompanied by viral videos, are triggering for people of color who see how little changes in their aftermath.

"Racism is traumatic for people of color," said Monnica Williams, a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Ottawa in Canada, who studies African American mental health. "Everything that you have to carry around anyway as a black person in America, to add onto it having to watch people in your community who've done nothing killed at the hands of people in power who will probably suffer few, if any, consequences. I think there's no better word to describe it than traumatizing."


Four Minneapolis police officers were fired after Floyd's death, but no criminal charges have been filed.

Williams' niece, who is in Germany, tried to reach her this week after watching the footage of Floyd.

"She was so upset she couldn't sleep," Williams said.
Racial violence is 'repetitive trauma'

The video that spread on social media this week shows officer Derek Chauvin driving his knee into Floyd's neck as he repeatedly says, "I can't breathe."


This isn't the first time those words reverberated through this nation's conscience.

In 2014, Eric Garner was placed in a chokehold by white New York police officer Daniel Pantaleo after being arrested on suspicion of illegally selling loose cigarettes. His dying words were, "I can't breathe."

Pantaleo was fired in 2019, five years after Garner's death.

These incidents influence the experience of being black in America – how dangerous it is to drive, jog, stand on a corner, or even sit at home. They underscore no space is safe.

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"I can only describe the continued viewing of racial violence, torture, murder and disregard for the humanity of black bodies as repetitive trauma," said Danielle Jackson, a psychiatry resident and board member of the American Psychiatric Association's Caucus of Black Psychiatrists. "Perpetrators of racial violence may have changed uniforms, speech, and coded message, but the message remains the same, 'you – black person – are other, you are less than.'"


Police kill more than 300 black Americans – at least a quarter unarmed – each year in the U.S., according to a 2018 study in The Lancet, which found these killings have spillover effects on the mental health of black Americans not directly affected.

Research shows black Americans are 20% more likely to report serious psychological distress than non-Hispanic white Americans. In a study on black youth suicide, researchers found suicide attempts rose by 73% between 1991-2017 for black adolescents and listed exposure to racism as a factor.

Roberto Montenegro, an assistant professor in child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Washington School of Medicine who studies the biological effects of discrimination, says living in a world where your body is a threat is painful and taxing.

People of color, he said, must engage in extra processing demands to try and assure safety. This leads to states of hypervigilance, arousal and avoidance, which can manifest physically as hypertension and insomnia.

It's called "racial battle fatigue," a term used to explain the psychological stress responses – frustration, shock, anger, disappointment, resentment, anxiety, helplessness, hopelessness, and fear – experienced by people of color in historically white spaces.


Montenegro says he has been frustrated and hurt by repeated racial blows, especially at work.

"I have had nurses, doctors, and other staff tell me that I was intimidating, too assertive, and didn't smile enough, and that this made them – white women – feel unsafe to approach me," he said. "They would not say this to a white doctor."
Video footage shocks. At what cost?

Videos of police brutality fuel outrage and galvanize movements. They also linger, long after the protests quiet.

Some mental health experts argue the explosive footage that accompanies many of these violent deaths are vital to raising public consciousness, even if they are disturbing.

"It powerfully shapes our discourse, much like the images of African American youth in the South who were being sprayed with powerful water hoses and bitten by police dogs when they protested during the Civil Rights Movement," said Brian Smedley, chief of psychology in the public interest at the American Psychological Association. "As disturbing as these images are, as tragic as it is for individuals who've lost their lives, or who have been abused in these circumstances, the reality is that their victimization is not in vain."

Others worry social media's amplification is a step too far, treading into gratuity.

Williams says she would rather not see videos l‪ike Floyd's propagated to such a degree. It can be re-traumatizing for people of color, she argues, and in some ways, its viral spread is yet another act of dehumanization.

"These are human beings and they deserve dignity, and the fact that you can just go online and ... watch a black person be killed – when is the last time you saw a white person killed online?"
Deaths upon deaths

People of color are witnessing these brutal deaths amid a global pandemic that is hitting African American and Latino communities especially hard. Many front-line jobs are disproportionately held by people of color. Also, people of color are more likely than white adults to report significant stressors in their life as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, including getting coronavirus (71% vs. 59%, respectively), basic needs (61% vs. 47%), and access to health care services (59% vs. 46%), according to the American Psychological Association's "Stress in America" report published in May.


'People are really suffering':Black and Latino communities help their own amid coronavirus crisis

"People of color already carry the burden of structural racism in our history and in our bodies," Montenegro said. "COVID has highlighted how power, privilege, and access to means and resources are distributed disproportionately."

Arline Geronimus, a professor of health behavior and health education at the University of Michigan, uses the term "weathering" to describe the way chronic stressors – which can include interpersonal microaggressions and institutionalized racism – erode bodies. These erosions can lead to chronic conditions among people of color which, Smedley said, make them more vulnerable to COVID-19.
No one should have to 'cope' with racism. So how do you?

Approximately 30% of African American adults with mental illness get treatment each year, below the U.S. average of 43%, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Many African Americans mistrust the health system, and socioeconomic factors can limit access to treatment.

But even mental health professionals recognize there are limits to what the system can do in the face of institutionalized racism. Williams said she's tired of talking about how to cope.

"So many people of color have to sit on their anger and stuff it down, and we know that that's taking a horrible physical and emotional toll on our communities," she said. "The most constructive thing that we can do is take that anger and rage and demand social change. Because going to get your nails done, or taking seven deep breaths, or what have you, that's not going to be enough."


Moreland-Capuia is exhausted by the outrage cycle: the performative responses, the social media flurries, the mainstream media, especially. A lot of well-meaning people post about these deaths, she said, but when it's time to do the work to save black lives, she often feels alone.

"Who is going to be with us to do the real work that's going to be required to help us adhere to that promise ... which is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?" she asked. "If we do not treat, manage, and effectively contain the disease of racism, the emotional and psychological toll will not only continue to kill black people, it will consume us all."

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Opinion: Why is coronavirus killing so many black Americans? Because they are poor

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