who are the soldiers of the poor? shouts the activist silence screams back who fights for the rich? the poor fight and die for them when the rich go to war the poor carry the fight the soldiers of the rich are many pawns on an endless board the poor has no army only an army of ideals an army of the mind ideas are peaceful history is violent
© 2016 Michael D Emmerich
draft or dodge conscription or jail exile or war hero traitor or coward choices that define or break who is the enemy the just or unjust war justified by the church who stands aside letting death slip quietly by welcoming death in gods name it shall be done who chose this war justified by the politician arrogance greed and power forcing boys to become men to become killers for the sake of an ‘ism, as told by an idiot who has the most to lose who binds the wounds that bleed the scars that don’t heal the wounds you cannot see none but the fellow beside him neither the church or politicians in whose name their blood is discarded along with their futures whose life is to be sacrificed not mine said the politician, suckling on the teat of corporate greed not mine said the bishop, god made me do it not mine said the arms dealer, I just sell death not mine said the general, I’ve done my time not mine said the wealthy, the poor are the pawns not mine said the socialite, I’ll read it on page seven who has the most to gain At whose cost At what cost WHY? FUCK WAR!
© 2016 Michael D Emmerich
Trust none of what you hear, and less of what you see
Bruce Springsteen – Magic, 2007
trust openness honesty who to trust what to trust deception deceit seen through a veil now hidden obscured mists clouds no rainbows no pots of gold hollow men hollow words blind men blind followers fire below fire above eyes wired shut ears grown closed mouths wide open no sound no trust just white noise
© 2016 Michael D Emmerich
history written by the victorious
remembered by the soldier
forgotten by all
battered, bruised, discarded
honour cast aside
no medals for the forgotten warrior
once forgotten
memories now return
new wounds emerge
new scars
new pain and guilt
but still society forgets
wars once popular
now become an anathema
silence abounds
but the memories remain
history written in black
but remembered in blood
history written in scars
survives beyond the fading text
politicians write the history
soldiers carry the weight of that history
a wind is sweeping the land no wait, across our planet the wind blows through the halls of power no country is sacrosanct mediocrity our new political watchword on a good day! on every other day we would be considered blessed to have mediocre leaders the wind of the bigot the ignorant the illiterate autocrat blows with vigour no stone left unturned all that stand in the way bashed, broken, ripped apart theocracy takes flight the hot air of idiocy blows with venom from the open gaping vacuous mouths of our elected leaders even when they are eloquently hoisted on their own petard their praise singers and chorus lines run to the fore like court jesters of old the halls are silent laughter is absent intentions are real, deceitful wrestling power and control from the blind electorate who have realised to late the error of their ballot cross has now become a cross they cannot bear
© 2015 michael d emmerich
Politics and Medicine
“Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale”—Rudolf Virchow
Politics is defined as “organised human behaviour”, thus we can postulate that Medicine is micro managed organised human behaviour, at times right down to the molecular level. If we examine the Ebola outbreak/s (globally) and how it is being managed on a macro (politics) and micro scale (medicine) we can begin to see the cracks in the system, and hopefully then move to addressing these cracks, before they begin yawning chasms that are not repairable.
The region (Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea) has had success (we could add Nigeria and Senegal to the successes) and failures in both areas. Neither is Spain and the USA exempt from this analysis as can be noted from the various press releases (government and medical) over the past few months.
Since the first outbreaks in 1976 (Sudan and The DRC) till the current one in West Africa; care has generally been palliative and symptomatic, questions have often been asked during this period; What of a vaccine and/or other means of treating the infected patients? There was a report in the British Sunday Times (12/10/14), cited a Cambridge University zoologist as saying that “it is quite possible to design a vaccine against this disease” but reported that applications to conduct further research on Ebola were rebuffed because “nobody has been willing to spend the twenty million pounds or so needed to get vaccines through trial and production”. Globally this has been one of the failures of the pharmaceutical companies, and most probably even the WHO, for not pushing harder over the years to get this in motion.
In her 1994 book The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance Laurie Garrett: warned that there are more than 21 million people on earth “living under conditions ideal for microbial emergence.” Garrett when on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for reporting on Ebola. In 1995 Joshua Lederberg, the American molecular biologist said: “The world is just one village. Our tolerance of disease in any place is at our own peril. Are we better off today than we were a century ago? In most respects, we’re worse off. We have been neglectful of the microbes, and that is a recurring theme that is coming back to haunt us.”
Jump forward to the 23rd of September 2014, US President Obama issued an unprecedented ‘Presidential Memorandum on civil society recognising that:
Through civil society, citizens come together to hold their leaders accountable and address challenges that governments cannot tackle alone. Civil society organisations…often drive innovations and develop new ideas and approaches to solve social, economic, and political problems that governments can apply on a larger scale.
If we look at the current crises in West Africa civic leaders are what is missing, hence the inability to track and trace potential infected persons, motivate communities to change risky behaviours (handing of the deceased), agitate with government to create better health care systems, this all adds fuel to the fire of the current epidemic.
Have we listened and learnt as governments, NGO’s and Multinational Pharmacare companies since then?
Despite Medical Advances, Millions Are Dying, this is a banner from 1996, not 2014! from the WHO, which was “declaring a global crisis and warning that no country is safe from infectious diseases, the World Health Organization says in a new report that diseases such as AIDS, Ebola, Hanta, Mad Cow, tuberculosis, etc., killed more than 17 MILLION people worldwide last year”.
As Laurie Garrett wrote in her the closing section of her book, The Coming Plague, “In the end, it seems that American journalist I.F. Stone was right when he said, ‘Either we learn to live together or we die together.’ While the human race battles itself, fighting over ever more crowded turf and scarcer resources, the advantage moves to the microbes’ court. They are our predators, and they will be victorious if we, Homo sapiens, do not learn how to live in a rational global village that affords the microbes few opportunities. It’s either that or we brace ourselves for the coming plague.”
Time is short.
The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is “unquestionably the most severe acute public health emergency in modern times,” Dr. Margaret Chan, the director general of the World Health Organization, said Monday 20/10/2014). We do seem to be going in circles… circa 1995.. have we learnt nothing from history.
Sooner or later we learn to throw the past away History will teach us nothing Sting – Musician, singer-songwriter
Where have all the people gone, long time passing?
Where have all the people gone, long time ago?
Where have all the people gone?
Gone to graveyards, everyone. Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Pete Seeger – American folk singer and activist
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