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Living Internet...,
Threat to Stray Cats...,
Protest to Psychiatrists...,
Serbs
Dear Vagabond,
You've written about the Internet itself several times -- Living Internet, February 97 and some readers have discussed it. In your yearly August anniversary article I'd expect to see it discussed too. You have left something out and it's been nagging at me, I guess because for me it's one of the greatest steps forward in our lives -- everybody now has access to medical information. I sometimes see or read feature interviews with medical doctors on the effect the internet has had on their practice. They are all pretty careful not to say anything insulting about their newly powerful patients who ask why the doctor isn't trying this or that treatment. Last week I saw a full page ad in the New York Times for something called MedCast -- I think it's an internet service that Doctor's can subscribe to so that they are up to date.
This rang some bells and I began thinking about 'the old days.' In the 60s I worked in a university medical library. My job was to code information from daily incoming medical journals from all over the world. Each day we printed out a list of journals and abstracts. I don't remember how much detailed information was on this list but I remember how much respect the librariarians had for those doctors who regularly consulted the new journals. This was the first time I realized that graduating from medical school was only a first step and that some of us might have doctors who didn't know what was new! I thought our catalogue was wonderful and once perfected more doctors would be able to keep up with new discoveries and treatments.
In the late 70s I read about a woman with Multiple Sclerosis who subdued some of her major symptoms through periodic treatments in an oxygen chamber (I think that's what it was). She had suffered for some time before she heard about this treatment. I was shocked. I thought, if this treatment helps some people why didn't her doctor just tell her about it? If her doctor didn't know about it then that's outrageous. I wondered what had happened to that project at the medical library.
Last week, in Dear Abby's column a woman wrote that she'd been to four doctors and none had suggested that if she lost some weight her blood pressure might return to normal. She was treated with drugs instead. Abby's response was that the lady shouldn't blame the doctors but herself for her choice of doctors! Well, I guess there are a many shades of grey here -- maybe the doctors didn't think she was overweight, who knows? -- but the lady did her own research and lowered her own blood pressure without drugs.
And then it comes down to this -- a friend of mine had a Cancer scare. I went to the Web and asked for information. Several people came up with suggestions. We were not alone with our worries until the next visit to the busy doctor. We were connected with the world and got intelligent straightforward advice and information that helped in making a decision -- including pointers to alternative treatments, which we didn't pursue.
Take my letter as my appreciation of the Internet -- because I think it is going to do a job that that library program tackled in the Sixties.
Corinne
The web is the most free of all the media; those who don't have access to other media due to certain editorial policies, for example (see Vagabond Communication Page, issue May 97) can still spread information through personal home pages. Of course it isn't the NYT, but drops of water can hollow out rocks. WMRecent headlines in Toronto papers echo calls for extermination of stray cats -- after the cats will it be the turn of racoons, skunks, opposums, birds that soil our buildings, wild weeds ...? Then we'll have arrived at the Brave New World where the only living urban creatures besides humans will be castrated overfed pets, birds in cages and roses behind fences. When the 'urban jungle' disappears we'll have an invasion of rats whose existence we are very little aware of at the moment, and to kill those rats we'll use poisons that will poison the earth and the atmosphere. Human control freaks and destroyers know no limits.
Nikolette J.
nikole@idirect.ca
Nikolette -- glad to have your voice in this issue. WM
hi a quick note while surfing, i'm into getting a NVDA (non violent direct action mental health (ex or otherwise group together here in the uk) do [you] know of any contact groups that might help.
nvda has worked wonders for my empowerment. i am no longer afraid! try getting the pager numbers of doctors and page them uplifting messages.
we have to break through to these tossers. they are part of the real pyschosis, their separation from the reality of the web of life of planet earth, that is allowing them to abuse us, animals, and the planet.
as survivors we can unite and stop the abuses. get some positive, empowering images of pyschiatric survivors into the media.get revenge, in a peaceful, therefore stronger way!
beware abusers!
bran
bran -- Can you write a few more lines about the activities of the organization which, as I understand it, you created.
What do you mean by "uplifting pager messages" to doctors? I understand that you want to know more about organizations similar to yours. I hope your letter on the Communication Page brings some response. Good luck to you. WM
Dear William,
Here is something I condensed from what I sent you and posted on the SM Open Forum. Would it be a problem to print "used" thoughts? Anyway, what follows is the text, if you wanna use it.
Jared -- you are the writer and if you want to send similar text to various sources it's up to you. WM
***
First of all, I'm not a Serb, I'm a third generation American of Russian & Polish Jewish ancestry.
But I can barely sleep I am so angry about what the U.S. has done and is doing to a) slander and b)abuse the Serbs and dismember Yugoslavia.
I was very active around Vietnam. When we started organizing to get the U.S. out of there in '64 I was a student at Harvard. We used to get attacked (physically) by students. But by 1969 we closed Harvard - in a strike of 14,000 students opposed to the War in Vietnam and Harvard administration complicity in that war. By the early '70s the U.S. Army had ceased to be reliable inn battle, to say the least.
So I have seen the American people go from being pro- to being anti-U.S.policy before. It will happen vis a vis Yugoslavia, I promise you.
As the teach-in on Iraq showed (you remember, the one CNN put on the air by mistake, where Albright and Cohen stood like zombies, unable to answer the simples criticisms coherently)the apologists for U.S. foreign policy are quite vulnerable. They have to go all-out slandering the Serbian people because they don't yet have an automatic smear to replace COMMUNISM. (They didn't have to slander the Vietnamese resistance - they just had to say "they're commies" and that told Americans how to react...)
After Vietnam, many of us went "to sleep." Got self-absorbed. But this attack on Serbia is waking people up. Even me. It's happening all over the world.
This is a very important point. You people have been abused and insulted. But this attack is bigger than Serbia, bigger than Yugoslavia. It has to be opposed world-wide. It is only the beginning of a gigantic struggle.
With the Soviets knocked down, the U.S. elite made a decision in '89-'90 to go for world domination. To this end they attacked Iraq and forced the dismemberment of Yugoslavia. Nobody expected this - though we of course should have. Nobody was prepared. But now more and more people are getting a clear picture of the new situation: the U.S. wants world control; a large part of the European elite is in competition with them over who gets the spoils.
This is imperialism, plain and simple and to fight it you need an anti- imperialist movement world wide. What does that mean?
Different things for different people.
For people in the U.S. - those of us who understand have to get to work. Some of us did it before. We and a lot of new people (quite a few have been born in the last 30 years, haven't they...)can do it again. Wake people up. Expose the ridiculously flimsy but hypnotically repeated media lies. Defend the Serbs a) because we care about justice b)because you were among the great anti-Nazi heroes of WWII c) because the failure to defend you would put us in the position of Germans in 1945 and d) because defense of you is defense of whatever is decent and worthwhile in the U.S.
For Yugoslavians - I urge you to resist defeatism and/or extreme nationalism. The Albanians in Kosovo who support the fascist KLA are not bad because they're Muslim, they're bad because they are pawns of imperialism. Precisley because the U.S. strategy relies on building hate and using artifically fanned racial antagonism as a basis for intervention, isn't it especially critical that we oppose racial antagonism?
It's wonderful that Byelorussia supports the Serbs. But aren't the Muslims in Iraq also your natural allies? Aren't the Palestinians? Isn';t it a good thing that Ghaddafi has agreed to provide 500,000 tons of Oil?
I have a lot more to say - but I'd like to hear people's responses to these thoughts.
Respectfully,
Jared
JaredI@aol.com
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William Markiewicz