War solves nothing: A medical profession view. Wheelers Corner 82 25th Oct 2019

War has never been a conflict resolver, it has always been a conflict creator, this has been obvious over hundreds of years.
Both the first and second World wars, used  conflict not to solve problems but to take control over others for various and normally secret reasons based on the views of the powerful and controlling interests of the day.

Fear for ones individual / community / and nationalistic reasons quickly took over society. The suffering and long term harm was covered up by forcing the masses [working people] to take the leading role in the actual physical fighting. [except for Donald Trump, he grew an extra bone in his foot to avoid being conscripted which later simply disappeared]

Each state regardless of which side of the conflict, then claimed what their side, were the heroes and the other side the villains. Today because of education we know that there are heroes and villains on both sides of any conflict.

The US went to war with North Vietnam after a false so-called attack on a US Warship, Iraq was attacked after a false story of Weapons of mass destruction. Who were the villains?

Afghanistan was attacked by Russia and later by the Americans solely for political reasons, Russia or the US cared bugger all for the people. The Russian state or the American state were not under any physical threat therefor their occupation was illegal according to international law.
An up to date version of this criminal behaviour: is what the Israeli dictatorship is doing to the people of Palestine, the UN has condemned their behaviour but has done nothing to punish the Zionist Government, it seems that if your friend is the USA then your country is protected while you break international law and murder civilians men women and children.

Today in this so-called enlightened world these villain-like behaviours are still in use. So the question remains 'What do we do about it?. My view is that we make our elected leaders BAN WAR.

Now I'm not a feminist, I'm male 79 year old ex-service man, who has come to recognise that wars are no solution to human conflict, but simply a short term political appeasement to man's aggressive nature. But the clear fact is that war should be banned.

So I looked around the society in which I live. I asked myself the question 'Who are the real peace makers? And one word stood out for me! WOMEN, this doesn't mean that all women are peace makers or that all men are war makers just the majority are.

So it seem to me that the sooner we elect to parliament a hundred plus more women the quicker we can get banning war high on the agenda. Women care about saving life and the enviroment for their children, I don't doubt many men do too. Its just that women speak out and actually do something.

So I accept that the statement below from the Association  of Schools of public health in Europe Because it relates completely to New Zealand. So I ask sincerely that you read it carefully, as I'm sure you will.   

Wheeler Corner file picture.

"This from the 'The Association of Schools of Public Health in Europe' who issued this clear statement that:
"Wars and armed conflicts have devastating consequences for the physical and mental health of all people involved, for the social life within and surrounding the war-affected regions, and for the health of the environment. 
Wars destroy health infrastructure, undoing years of health advancement, and severely compromise health systems' capacity to respond to the direct and indirect health consequences of fighting". They went on to state and I quote:

"Millions of people have been internally displaced or forced to flee their countries because of armed conflict. Forced migration creates further physical and mental health problems during transit, in enforced encampment, and because of restricted ntitlement to health care in countries hosting refugees.
The disastrous effects might last for generations to come. In short, war is a man-made public health problem.
In January, 2018, following the Turkish Government's announcement of a military operation in Afrin, Syria, the Turkish Medical Association (TMA) issued a public statement, declaring that “war is a man-made public health problem”.
[The ruling Turkish dictatorship reacted and:]
Eleven TMA members (five of them from TMA's central council) were subsequently put on trial and sentenced to 20 months in prison with the charge of inciting hatred and hostility.

The Association of Schools of Public Health in Europe (ASPHER) represents 119 schools of public health in 43 countries. ASPHER recognises the unequivocal evidence that war is a man-made public health problem. ASPHER is committed to direct the attention of the public and of policy makers to the irrevocable damage armed conflicts inflict on population health. Consequently, ASPHER stands in solidarity with the convicted TMA members". Quote ends.

A small but active group here in Palmerston North known as Peace Action Manawatu, I believe supports, the ASPHER statement.
Now PAM is made up of individuals who believe strongly that war is an activity that should be outlawed.
I have sought the views of a few of the members of PAM [Dr Fred Hirst, Rev Andy Hickman] on this issue and I share them with you for your consideration, in an earlier issue of a Wheeler's Corner blog: https://wheelerscornernz.blogspot.com/2019/10/local-body-elections-good-bad-and-ugly.html [Item 2] I reported on the successful effort in achieving the cancellation of the Weapons EXO planned for 2019. Which proved that collective action [non violent] can achieve important goals.

What happened in Turkey to those eleven members of their TMA proves without doubt that dictators listen to no one other their dictator friends like Donald Trump and care little for human life and the practice of medical practitioners.

Others have a view of war: Here are a couple" The first from PAM activist Rev Andy Hickman:

Rev Andy Hickman.

Let's just name the reality! That although most of the world's leaders spout that they do not want to engage in war, they in fact indulge in ways that profit from war.
Here are some facts:
$1.7 TRILLION was the Global Military Expenditure in 2017
 68 MILLION refugees, asylum-seekers, displaced persons at present
 53% of refugees are unaccompanied children
 14,465 nuclear warheads currently active
 40% of corruption in international trade relates to arms trade
 43,000 people killed or injured by explosives in 2017. 74% were civilians.
 Yemen death toll for August 2018 was 981 civilians, 300 of those children.
 Lockheed Martin ($US 5.3 billion profit last year) sells to whoever pays including the US-backed Saudi-led coalition airstrikes on Yemen citizens.
MAS Zengrange (Lower Hutt NZ company who made $2.7 million profit in 2014) manufactures trigger devices for cluster bombs sold to Saudi Arabia.
Meanwhile, half of NZ-ers live in cold houses and avoid going to the doctors. One-third of NZ-ers skip meals.
[Primary data source SIPRI arms industry database. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute]
Ka whakatikatika e ia i õ tãtou waewae ki te huarahi o te rangimãrie. - Ruka 1:79
May God guide our feet into the way of peace.
Rev Andy Hickman,  Thanks Andy:

 

Dr Fred Hirst.

Dr Fred Hirst [PAM activist] added this further information:

• environmental impact of war is accelerating anthropogenic climate change due to the strong correlation between military expenditure and GHG emissions:
• Scorched earth'
• Deforestation including use of defoliants and herbicides
• Air, soil and water pollution
• Environmental and ecosystem degradation with loss of agricultural and forested land (fauna/flora)
• Chemicals, toxins, nuclear and other environmental hazards including undetonated armaments (cluster bombs and land mines)
• Fossil fuel use and fires (US military forces have highest fossil fuel consumption of any 'defence force' and are high generators of toxin and solvent pollution)
• Displacement of over 65m people, including refugees, currently (equivalent to population of UK)
• due to conflict often to gain access to scarce or valuable resources (land, fossil fuels, minerals, water, etc) and from increasingly severe and frequent destructive climate change consequences causing flood, drought, cyclones, fires and sea level rise.
• Those most at risk and disproportionately represented as casualties of conflict and climate change are women, children, elderly and indigenous people, and those living in poverty and socio-economic deprivation.

Thank you Fred, your words prove the magnitude of harm that clearly relates to war like behaviour, before, during and after war like conflict.

Well this has been a long Wheelers Corner this week, but the subject matter is vital to the continuation of human life both now and in the future.

This is why I am so concerned, and it has led to me to use social media via my blog site to get the message out to as many human beings as I can. So its vital that you understand the reasons why I feel the way I do: Here is a pen picture of what drove me in the direction of peace rather than war: This word picture was compiled by Valerie Morse an Auckland peace activist in 2018: 

The Unlikely Peacenik

"When most of us imagine what a peace activist looks like, we usually conjure up some version of a hippie stereotype: tie-dyed clothes, long dreadlocks, peace signs and a penchant for smoking the green stuff. It is not often that we think of ex-soldiers as those at the forefront of the peace movement, but Palmerston North resident Peter Wheeler is exactly that.

Peter said his dad had served in World War II, and he joined the NZ Infantry Regiment in 1960 because he says the military was familiar to him, and he “wanted to leave home, but not leave people.”

He was deployed to Malaya, a journey he said was “fascinating for a young man,” and ended up going to Jungle Training school, which turned out to be as he describes it, “sniper school”. Members of the 1^st NZIR were deployed to Vietnam in 1969, and Peter remembers that there was dissent within the military about New Zealand participating in that war.

“They asked me would I volunteer to go. I had by that time decided I wouldn’t, because I was opposed to it – particularly our role in it.”

But the Army didn’t take his refusal well, he said, “What that cost me in real terms was an immediate exile, in my case to Dunedin, and my promotions suddenly came to a halt.”

After 19 years in the Army, Peter ended up working for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Papua New Guinea, an experience, he says that taught him a number of things about himself and the world. “It made me see what many people in the world think about having white, European people come into their country, get all the key jobs and tell everyone what to do. It really opened my eyes about how other people were forced to live.”

The strength of these experiences taught him that, “war today is not about helping people. That’s just garbage. What we’re doing it for – like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – is for what we get out of them. The people we call our ‘enemies’ today, were once, not so long ago, allies of the US. The US armed and equipped many of those people. They didn’t do it to help those people, but to fight someone else.”

Peter says that you can’t have a “war on terrorism”, instead he says, what you need is “peace plan for terrorism.” He notes that, “terrorism is the outcome of failings in the political and economic sphere.”

Peter is one of the few ex-soldiers in New Zealand speaking up against war. In the US, there are a large number of soldiers, many of them still on active duty, who have joined up with anti-war organisations like Veterans for Peace and the Iraq Veterans Against the War.

The strategy of these groups is to mobilise the military community to withdraw its support for the wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and oppose other US wars.

These soldiers speak in communities, to the media and also speak with young people in classrooms about the realities of military service. They support all those resisting the war, including Conscientious Objectors and others facing military prosecution for their refusal to fight. They also advocate for full funding for the Veterans Administration.

“We could learn a lot from these kinds of organisations as we have a lot of the same kind of issues in New Zealand albeit on a smaller scale” says Peter.

In his view, fighting wars is really about protecting those with money and power. He is also highly critical of military spending on new weapons like the 9000 new firearms for the Army and the weapons upgrade of the frigates, saying that much of what the NZ military doing is really about following Donald Trump’s demands for more weapons spending by America’s friends and allies.

“The United States under Trump is pushing weapon sales big time across the world and it clearly has New Zealand in its sights...our very own Minister of Defence appears to be a great fan of present US behavior.”

Peter’s view is backed up by some facts on the ground: since taking office last year, the government has committed $2.3 billion to new P8 aircraft from US weapons dealer Boeing, another $103 million for a new Navy boat, and $23 million for a new US-centric military ‘command and control’ system.

The aircraft purchase has been criticised by some as a clear case of buying for the “Five Eyes” rather than for NZ’s own needs, a reference to the five nation intelligence alliance comprised of the US, UK, Australia, Canada and NZ.

Now Peter has turned his peace activism on the annual Defence Industry Association expo that has moved to Palmerston North.

“What concerns me most is the propaganda of it all. This is an organisation that is set up to sell weapons. They do this by saying that they are protecting our ‘security.’ They are not. They are endangering it.”

He says that the equation is pretty simple: if you sell weapons to the military, they will want to use them. That incentivises waging war, and these companies then profit from war and killing.

Peter has now joined up with local group Peace Action Manawatū who are organising actions against the Weapons Expo including a Peace March on the first day, which falls on Halloween this year. “Weapons dealers and war are about the scariest things in the world,” says Peter.

“I will be doing everything a 77-year-old can do to stop this thing from going ahead. I hope that this year there will be more veterans on the front lines with me against these war profiteers. We are some of the ones who have seen and felt up close what war is really about, and its horror, pure and simple.” Thank you Valerie.

I'd like to thank you for reaching the end of this long blog, and never forget you are among the most important people in the world...I would value you sharing this with your friends.