Political Quotes – Found in “Information Clearing House Newsletter” (News You Won’t Find on CNN)

“People do not believe lies because they have to, but because they want to” – Malcolm Muggeridge
=

“Lying is done with words and also with silence.” – Adrienne Rich
=

“Can we truly expect those who aim to exploit us to be trusted to educate us?” – Eric Schaub Individualist, writer, activist, speaker Source: The Common Man
=

“No duty, however, binds us to these so-called laws, whose corrupting influence menaces what is noblest in our being…” — Benjamin Constant [Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque] (1767-1830) Swiss-born thinker, writer and French politician. Source: Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments (1810) Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, (2003), p. 401-402.
==

“Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it.” – Woodrow Wilson: (1856-1924) 28th US President Speech, 1912
=

“Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.” – Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi – (1869-1948)
=

“Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.” –Bertrand Russell
=

“To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.”: – Abraham Lincoln – (1809-1865) 16th US President
=

“The objector and the rebel who raises his voice against what he believes to be the injustice of the present and the wrongs of the past is the one who hunches the world along.” — Clarence S. Darrow -1857-1938 Source: Address to the Court, The Communist Trial, People v. Lloyd, 1920
=

“The right to defy an unconstitutional statute is basic in our scheme. Even when an ordinance requires a permit to make a speech, to deliver a sermon, to picket, to parade, or to assemble, it need not be honored when it’s invalid on its face.” – Justice Potter Stewart : (1915-1985), U. S. Supreme Court Justice Source: Walker v. Birmingham, 1967
=

“We are reluctant to admit that we owe our liberties to men of a type that today we hate and fear — unruly men, disturbers of the peace, men who resent and denounce what Whitman called ‘the insolence of elected persons’ — in a word, free men.” — Gerald W. Johnson – (1890-1980) Source: American Freedom and the Press, 1958
=

“Count it the greatest sin to prefer life to honor, and for the sake of living to lose what makes life worth having.” — Juvenal [Decimus Junius Juvenalis] (c.55-c.128 AD) Roman satirical poet
=

“The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.” — John Locke (1632-1704) English philosopher and political theorist. Considered the ideological progenitor of the American Revolution and who, by far, was the most often non-biblical writer quoted by the Founding Fathers of the USA. 1693
=

“War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.” — Major General Smedley Darling Butler (1981-1940) Major General USMC, “Old Gimlet Eye” and “Hell Devil Darling”, most highly decorated military men from the pre-World War II era. Source: from a speech in 1933
=

“The war made possible for us the solution of a whole series of problems that could never have been solved in normal times.” – Joseph Paul Goebbels (1897-1945) Nazi Propaganda Minister – Source: The Göebbels Diaries, 1942-1943
=

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison: Henry David Thoreau:
=

You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man’s freedom. You can only be free if I am free.: Clarence Darrow:
=

The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don’t agree with: Eleanor Holmes Norton:
=

When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished voluntarily by default it can never be recovered: Dorothy Thompson:
=

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will: Frederick Douglass:
=

None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free: Goethe:
=

“We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.” - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – (1807-1882) American poet
=

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it – Omar Khayyam
=

“No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.” — George Mason – (1725-1792), drafted the Virgina Declaration of Rights, ally of James Madison and George Washington.
=

“And I honor the man who is willing to sink Half his present repute for the freedom to think. And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak. Will risk t’ other half for the freedom to speak.” – James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) American author and diplomatist Source: A Fable for Critics, 1848
=

“One death is a tragedy, but a million deaths are a statistic.”- Josef Stalin – (1879-1953) Communist leader of the USSR
=

“It may be your intent to be our masters; how can it be ours to be your slaves?” – Melians – Source: Melians to Athenians, Peloponnesian War, 431 BC
=

“It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.”: – Voltaire – [François Marie Arouet] (1694-1778)
=

“By far the most dangerous foe we have to fight is apathy – indifference from whatever cause, not from a lack of knowledge, but from carelessness, from absorption in other pursuits, from a contempt bred of self satisfaction” : William Osler (Canadian Physician, 1849-1919)
=

“The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn’t the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill.” Albert Campus: The Plague, Modern Library Edition, p. 120
=

War creates peace like hate creates love: David L. Wilson
=

During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism: Howard Thurman
=

“When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe; he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.”~Thomas Paine“The Age of Reason” 1793
=

“Then what is freedom? It is the will to be responsible to ourselves.”: Friedrich Nietzsche – (1844-1900) – Source: Twilight of the Idols, 1888
=

“The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.”: Theodore Roosevelt – (1858-1919) 26th US President – Source: letter 01/10/1917
=

“If… the machine of government… is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.” Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobediance, 1849
=

“A State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands — even for beneficial purposes — will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.”: John Stuart Mill – (1806-1873) English philosopher and economist
=

“This country is not pro-American. It is United States property.”- Juan Bosch – President of the Dominican Republic Source: In 1965, the U.S. invaded the Dominican Republic to prevent the displacement of Donald Reid Cabral by Bosch’s constitutionally-elected government. New York Times, 6 June 1975
=

“It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.”- Voltaire – [François Marie Arouet] (1694-1778)
=

“I confidently trust that the American people will prove themselves … too wise not to detect the false pride or the dangerous ambitions or the selfish schemes which so often hide themselves under that deceptive cry of mock patriotism: ‘Our country, right or wrong!’ They will not fail to recognize that our dignity, our free institutions and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: ‘Our country-when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right.’”-Schurz, “The Policy of Imperialism,” Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schurz, vol. 6, pp. 119-20 (1913).
=

“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force. “ : Ayn Rand in “The Nature of Government”
=

Sam Smith: “Those who think history has left us helpless should recall the abolitionist of 1830, the feminist of 1870, the labor organizer of 1890, and the gay or lesbian writer of 1910. They, like us, did not get to choose their time in history but they, like us, did get to choose what they did with it. Knowing what we know now about how these things turned out, but also knowing how long it took, would we have been abolitionists in 1830, or feminists in 1870, and so on?”

=

“It should be no surprise that when rich men take control of the government, they pass laws that are favorable to themselves. The surprise is that those who are not rich vote for such people, even though they should know from bitter experience that the rich will continue to rip off the rest of us. Perhaps the reason is that rich men are very clever at covering up what they do.”: Andrew Greeley (Chicago Sun-Times, February 18, 2001):
=

“An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.”: Plutarch – Mestrius Plutarchus (c. 46 AD- 127 AD) was a Greek historian, biographer, and essayist.
=

An article on the site of a leading TV channels in Denmark, TV 2, looks at the increasing use of ECT, reporting that the rate of ECT-”treatments” dropped during the 1970′s, after “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” made the brain damage ECT causes known to a broader public. Since then, the rate has steadily increased again, and is today at the same level as it was before the film brought ECT in a disrepute.

In 2006 there were about 3,500 people in Denmark who received ECT-”treatment”, 450 of them involuntarily. Denmark has a population of 5 million.

The tendency of the article, of course, is slightly pro-ECT, although it tries to appear neutral. “It’s (ECT) again for both the patient and the relatives” an “expert” is quoted. “Research has apparently shown, that the brain is not damaged by the form of ECT, that is administered today, and, according to psychiatrists, an ECT-treatment can mean, that there can be an effECT on really severe depression as soon as one week after”, the article claims. – I like the “apparently” and the heap of “can”.

However, at the end of the article it is mentioned that there are some critical voices, such as LAP’s (a Danish user-organization), claiming that the side effects of ECT aren’t sufficiently investigated????????????
In the middle of the page there’s a poll-box where you can have your say:

“What do you think: Is it all right for psychiatry to make use of ECT again?“
It asks (Hvad mener du: Er det i orden igen at bruge elektrochok i psykiatrien?)

Right now, the yes (ja)-sayers are at 51%, while the nos (nej) are at 33%.

Go to the page and make the tide change!

SAY NO! CLICK NEJ!

Thanks, Marian

###
The information herein shall not be considered an endorsement of anyone discontinuing psychiatric drugs. If you are stopping taking medication it is advisable to reduce the dose gradually WITH EXTREME CAUTION, as it is difficult to predict who will have problems withdrawing. It is worth getting as much information and support as you can, and involving your doctor wherever possible. You will find withdrawal information HERE: http://www.mind.org.uk/Information/Booklets/Making+sense/Making+sense+of+coming+off+psychiatric+drugs.htm

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON WITHDRAWAL:: Get Peter Lehmann’s book, Coming off Psychiatric Drugs: Successful Withdrawal from Neuroleptics, Antidepressants, Lithium, Carbamazepine and Tranquilizers. This valuable resource comes in US, UK, and German editions.

I, Kathleen Maire Hill, present this information in my capacity as a natural person, exercising my natural rights and freedoms. This information represents my private thoughts and beliefs and has been compiled and expressed for peer-to-peer, educational experiences only.

· “Apathy is the glove into which evil slips its hand.” Bodie Thoene

· “Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.” – Gandhi

· “(Freedom) is the will to be responsible to ourselves.” Friedrich Nietzsche

· “Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” Jean-Paul Sartre

· “Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom.” Marilyn Ferguson

· “Alone with one’s conscience there are no alibis!” Tristano Ajmone

· “Ethical. existence [is] the highest manifestation of spirituality.” Albert Schweitzer

A Model Consent Form for Psychiatric Drug Treatment
by David Cohen, Ph.D., and David Jacobs, Ph.D.
http://laingsociety.org/colloquia/polofdiagnosis/modelconsent.htm

How Mercury Causes Brain Neuron Degeneration (5-minute video)
http://tinyurl.com/3y98p7

Vera Sharav

http://www.ahrp.org and http://ahrp.blogspot.com

Excerpted Whole – Commentary by Vera Sharav.

A joint study by Harvard Medical School, Yale University School of Public Health, and the University of MelbourneCenter for Medical Research published today in the Annals of Internal Medicine, confirms what critics have noted for some time:

“There is a measurable disconnect between what physicians say they think is the right thing to do and what they actually do.”

Although 96% of 1600 physicians surveyed agreed that physicians should report incompetent or impaired colleagues to relevant authorities, 45% of doctors who had direct knowledge of impaired or incompetent colleagues in their practice did not report them. And 48% of physicians who knew of a serious medical error did not report it to authorities.

Besides the disconnect between physicians’ support for reporting medical errors and the reality that nearly half do not do what they believe is right for the profession, the authors reported other areas where individual physician behavior is at odds with what they believe is best for patients and the profession, including:

Ordering unnecessary medical tests Managing conflict of interest Informing patients of conflict of interest

The survey looked at three main areas of professional norms: competence, self regulation, and moral attributes, using standards developed by the American Board of Internal Medicine and other groups under the 2002 Charter on Professionalism. It also gauged the extent to which specialty focus, practice location, and reimbursement factor into professional behaviors. Researchers examined such areas as honesty with patients, improving access to care, maintaining professional competency, protecting patient confidentiality, fulfilling professional responsibilities, and improving quality of care.

The lead author, Eric Campbell, Ph. D., (Harvard) who (with colleagues) earlier this year published A National Survey of Physician-Industry Relationships (Apr 26, 2007) acknowledges that the findings raise “serious questions about the ability of the medical profession to regulate itself.”

Indeed, since Medicine has come under the ubiquitous influence of the pharmaceutical-biotech industry, the culture of its practitioners has radically shifted. Where once medical practice was patient-centered, guided by the Hippocratic Oath, the focus of current medical practice is geared toward commercial profitability. Patient safety and patient best interest are all too often sacrificed for greater profits.

See Elder Abuse: Rx Antipsychotic Drugs

See: Professionalism in Medicine: Results of a National Survey of Physicians by Eric Campbell, Susan Regan, et al. Annals of Internal Medicine, Dec. 2007 To access a copy of the IMAP Chartbook “Professionalism Among Physicians: Results of a National Survey,” visit http://www.imapny.org .

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav veracare@ahrp.org 212-595-8974
###

The following is from – Massachusetts General Hospital and IMAP smonheit@burnesscommunications.com ]

For more information, contact: Janet Firshein and Caroline Broder at 301-652-1558 jfirshein@burnesscommunications.com and cbroder@burnesscommunications.com

First Survey of Its Kind Shows Doctors’ Individual Behavior At Odds With Their Own Ethical Standards for the Profession

(Washington DC) – The first national survey to broadly examine attitudes and behaviors related to medical professionalism finds that U. S. physicians overwhelmingly believe that incompetence and mistakes among peers should be reported. However, when face-to-face with these problems, nearly one-half fail to do just that, which can have harmful and even fatal consequences… (continues)

Full Study Information HERE: Copies of the study “Professionalism in Medicine: Results of a National Survey of Physicians,” to appear in the December 4 Annals of Internal Medicine, is embargoed until 5 p. m. ET on December 3, 2007. To obtain copies contact Susan C. Anderson at 1-800-523-1546, ext. 2653 or1-215-351-2653 or e-mailing sanderson@acponline.org sanderson@acponline.org .

###

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON WITHDRAWAL:: Get Peter Lehmann’s book, Coming off Psychiatric Drugs: Successful Withdrawal from Neuroleptics, Antidepressants, Lithium, Carbamazepine and Tranquilizers. This valuable resource comes in US, UK, and German editions.

I, Kathleen Maire Hill, present this information in my capacity as a natural person, exercising my natural rights and freedoms. This information represents my private thoughts and beliefs and has been compiled and expressed for peer-to-peer, educational experiences only.

· “Apathy is the glove into which evil slips its hand.” Bodie Thoene

· “Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.” – Gandhi

· “(Freedom) is the will to be responsible to ourselves.” Friedrich Nietzsche

· “Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” Jean-Paul Sartre

· “Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom.” Marilyn Ferguson

· “Alone with one’s conscience there are no alibis!” Tristano Ajmone

· “Ethical. existence [is] the highest manifestation of spirituality.” Albert Schweitzer

A Model Consent Form for Psychiatric Drug Treatment
by David Cohen, Ph.D., and David Jacobs, Ph.D.
http://laingsociety.org/colloquia/polofdiagnosis/modelconsent.htm

How Mercury Causes Brain Neuron Degeneration (5-minute video)
http://tinyurl.com/3y98p7

Monday 3 December at 8.30pm (London time) on BBC One

Those outside the UK can access the archived version of this after the show is run at this link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/archive/2007/default.stm

Panorama reporter Vivian White presents the evidence that in the long-term, treatment of dementia patients with anti-psychotic drugs has no benefit and can shorten patients’ lives.

Eric Hollingworth died earlier this week. He was 81-years-old and in a care home.

He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s four years ago and was being treated with anti-psychotic drugs.

He would sit slumped in a chair, comatose, unaware of his surroundings, unable to communicate or he would present strangely agitated behaviour.

On one occasion he stood up and sat down 17 times in ten minutes.

His daughter, Cheryl Byrne, is convinced it was not just the disease that reduced him to this state, but the powerful anti-psychotic drugs he was prescribed over the past three and a half years.

She says: “I never thought he was the same again after he’d been prescribed those drugs… I thought something was lost.”

” There were no benefits in behaviour and there were clearly deteriorations in some of the core symptoms”. Professor Clive Ballard

Cheryl tried to get her father off the medication and said that there were alternative ways of caring for him that would remove the need for these drugs.

(Cheryl’s) battle with doctors and care homes over his treatment even led her to film her father undercover, to try to prove her case. Her footage portrayed his state and she claimed the drugs prescribed to him helped to make him zombie-like.

Misguided

For several decades a common way to deal with the behavioural problems of people with Alzheimer’s or other dementias has been to prescribe them a class of drugs commonly known as anti-psychotics.

These drugs were originally designed to deal with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder and their associated symptoms of hallucinations or delusions.

But the sedative properties of these drugs have meant that they are often prescribed to dementia patients who show signs of aggression and agitation.

But research reveals that many of these prescriptions have been misguided.

One of the world’s leading experts in dementia, Professor Clive Ballard of King’s College London, has conducted a long-term study comparing the effects of the drugs on dementia patients. He took a group of 165 people with dementia who’d already been on the drugs for some time. Half the group were taken off the drugs, while the other half were left half on.

After a year he found that the (study) group still on the drugs were significantly harmed.

His study shows that the drugs failed to produce any significant benefits and exacerbated difficulties with thinking and communication – the distressing symptoms of Alzheimer’s itself.

And, on top of all this, this class of drugs risks shortening the lives of people with dementia.

 

Professor Ballard told Panorama: “There were no benefits in behaviour and there were clearly deteriorations in some of the core symptoms of the disease, such as in their ability to think, particularly in their ability to communicate effectively.”

 

Guidelines from NICE (National Institute for Clinical Excellence) published in 2006 advised clinicians to only prescribe this class of drugs to people with dementia for limited times and after exhausting alternatives first.

However they are still prescribed on a scale that costs the NHS an estimated £80 million per year.

 

With people living longer, the number of people with dementia is set to increase by almost 40% over the next 15 years and is expected to reach one million people by 2025.

 

Panorama asks whether some of the medical profession have become addicted to prescribing anti-psychotics and whether many of these patients could be better cared for without such reliance on these powerful drugs?

Panorama: Please Look After Dad, BBC One 8.30pm, Monday 3 December 2007

Story from BBC NEWS: Published: 2007/12/02 © BBC MMVII
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/programmes/panorama/7104212.stm

###

The scandal of Alzheimers patients given neuroleptics on BBC1 today at 8.30pm London time. You can access the archive of this program after the broadcast at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/archive/2007/default.stm

These lethal drugs have no therapeutic value for this condition but are given as a chemical cosh to put these vulnerable people into “la la land” so those in charge do not have to pay much attention to their needs.

This is doubly outrageous as the average cost of a nursing home in the US today is $70,000 per year. It is £23,400 in the UK.
Vince Boehm

Scandal of the Alzheimers victims given zombie drugs
Article Excerpted Whole from Associated New Media
By EWAN FLETCHER

More than 100,000 people in Britain suffering from dementia are being prescribed drugs by doctors and care homes that at best offer few benefits and at worst are lethal, according to shocking new research.

The controversial drugs, which are often used to sedate patients, have been described as a “liquid cosh” by one expert and the study has provoked a call for stricter limitations on their use.

Professor Clive Ballard from King’s College, London, investigated the effects of anti-psychotic medication, which is given to nearly half of dementia patients in care homes at an annual cost of £80million.

Health risk: He found that those who had been given it were nearly twice as likely, over a four-year period, to die than those who were not prescribed it.

Professor Ballard said: “People who weren’t taking the anti-psychotic drugs had a 62 per cent chance of being alive by the end of the study while the people who were taking the drugs had only a 36 per cent chance of being alive.”

“For the vast majority of people there are no benefits, and considerable harm, from using these drugs. There were clearly deteriorations in some of the core symptoms, particularly their ability to communicate effectively.”

Many elderly people only mildly affected by dementia but prescribed anti-psychotic drugs are reduced to a “zombified” state by them, says the Alzheimer’s Society, which has demanded an end to their blanket use.

The study is featured in a Panorama investigation to be shown on BBC1 tomorrow.

It tells the story of Cheryl Byrne, who spent the past three years battling to have her father, Eric Hollingworth, taken off anti-psychotics.

Mr Hollingworth, who died recently aged 81, was diagnosed with dementia in 2003 and from the outset was prescribed anti-psychotics.

Upset by the rapid deterioration in his health, Cheryl resorted to secretly filming his condition.

The footage shows her father slumped in a chair looking, as she describes, “like a zombie”.

He doesn’t utter a word and gets up and down from his chair 17 times in ten minutes.

Mrs Byrne, a retired bank worker, said: “I never thought he was the same again after he’d been prescribed those drugs. Something was lost. They robbed him, physically and mentally, of what capacity he did have.”

Mr Hollingworth was given a cocktail of drugs after barricading himself in a ward.

Last night Tim Kendall, deputy director of research at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said: “I can’t see the justification for this wide range of drugs. It is a liquid cosh.”

(c) Associated New Media

###

Vera Sharav

http://www.ahrp.org and http://ahrp.blogspot.com

The $122 billion-a-year nursing-home industry’s use of drugs raises complex issues in an aging society. A front page report by Lucette Lagnado in today’s Wall Street Journal about abusive prescribing of antipsychotic drugs that are currently in vogue in America’s nursing homes should provide a topic for debate among the contenders for the US presidency–as it affects millions of Americans. The report should prompt Congress to take action before their own parents or they themselves will become victims of government-supported chemical abuse.

“You walk into facilities where you see residents slumped over in their wheelchairs, their heads are hanging, and they’re out of it, and that is unacceptable,’ says Christie Teigland, director of informatics research for the New York Association of Homes and Services for the Aging, a not-for-profit industry group. Her research, which she believes reflects national trends, shows that about one-third of dementia patients in New York’s nursing homes are on antipsychotics; some facilities have rates as high as 60% to 70%. ‘These drugs are being given way too much to this frail elderly population,’ Dr. Teigland says.”

“a woman listed in New York state health department inspection records as Resident #18. The 84-year-old Alzheimer’s patient, who lives at the Orchard Manor nursing home in Medina, N. Y., likes to wander and roll her wheelchair around her unit, according to a report filed earlier this year, and sometimes she nervously taps her foot. To address her behavior, which was considered disruptive, Resident #18 was given a powerful antipsychotic drug called Seroquel, a drug approved for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Resident #18 is not psychotic and Seroquel — like other atypical antipsychotics — carries a “black box” warning that elderly dementia patients using it face a higher risk of death.”

Justification? “She is a handful,” says Thomas Morien, administrator of Orchard Manor.

In Massapequa, N. Y, Parkview Care and Rehabilitation Center (a nursing home) was recently fined $2,000 by the state for injecting 90 doses of Haldol into a 96-year-old Alzheimer’s patient.

“The woman, identified only as Resident #2, enjoyed listening to music and getting her nails polished, according to a state report. But when agitated, she banged her hand on the table and sometimes yelled. One aide found it was possible to calm her by offering ice cream and chatting with her, the report said. But other staff gave her the drug Haldol. Between August 2006 to February of this year, she received 90 doses of injectable Haldol, the report said.

Steve Seltzer, Parkview administrator is quoted stating that resident #2 was “an especially difficult case, who reverted to her native European language, making it hard to communicate.”

One cringes at the UNCARING “care” industry and the callous disregard for human values by health care professionals–in particular those dealing with especially vulnerable populations cannot defend themselves–the elderely and children, both of whom are easy prey.

Drug manufacturers are ruthlessly targeting children and the elderly as easy markets for dumping their most hazardous, incapacitating, life-shortening toxic drugs which should never have been approved for marketing.

Who is kidding who…. how would a $2,000 fine serve as a deterrent to abusive practices for an industry that rakes in $122,000,000,000 billion ??

A punishment befitting the abusive misprescribing of antipsychotics would be to require the abusing “care” givers to be injected with the same drug at the same dose. This might, possibly, lead to their developing human empathy, or else, to seek other employment.

The problem with the medical profession today is that Big Pharma’s influence has blinded physicians even to FDA mandated warnings: Antpsychotics carry Black Box label warnings about drug-induced death in the elderly, yet doctors prescribe them as though they were jelly beans.

Unsupportable increased use of antipsychotics is documented in the US by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid:

2000—–expenditure = $2.14 billion

2003————————- $4.10 billion

2005————————- $5.40 billion

Clearly, the most effective remedy against widespread misprescribing of antipsychotic drugs for off-label uses is for Medicaid / Medicare to stop reimbursing the cost.

Last night, BBC Panorama focused on the same abusive prescribing of antipsychotics in UK nursing homes: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/7104212.stm

Just as in the US, healthcare industry–”care” givers– ignore patients’ need, relying on industry generated propaganda to justify unsupportable prescribing of toxic antipsychotics.

Panorama’s report presented the case of Eric Hollingworth an 81-years-old man who died last week in a care home. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s four years ago and was being treated with anti-psychotic drugs. His daughter, Cheryl Byrne, is convinced it was not just the disease that reduced him to this state, but the powerful anti-psychotic drugs he was prescribed over the past three and a half years.

She says: “I never thought he was the same again after he’d been prescribed those drugs… I thought something was lost.”

Cheryl tried to get her father off the medication and said that there were alternative ways of caring for him that would remove the need for these drugs. Her battle with doctors and care homes over his treatment even led her to film her father undercover, to try to prove her case. Her footage portrayed his state and she claimed the drugs prescribed to him helped to make him zombie-like.”

Her suspicion that the drugs cause her father to deteriorate is backed by evidence. The program presented evidence showing that in the long-term, anti-psychotic drugs have no benefit for the treatment of dementia patients–instead, the drugs shorten patients’ lives.

One of the world’s leading experts in dementia, Professor Clive Ballard of King’s College London, has conducted a long-term study comparing the effects of the drugs on dementia patients. He studied the drugs’ effects in a group of 165 people with dementia who’d already been on the drugs for some time. Half the group were taken off the drugs, while the other half were left half on.

After a year he found that the group still on the drugs were significantly harmed.

His study shows that the drugs failed to produce any significant benefits and exacerbated difficulties with thinking and communication – the distressing symptoms of Alzheimer’s itself. And, on top of all this, this class of drugs risks shortening the lives of people with dementia.

If the governments in the US and UK have adopted a public policy for dealing with the elderly by shortening their lives with antipsychotics, then let them disclose that policy–i. e., Euthanasia. If not, laws need to be enacted to stop the government supported abuse under the guise of “care.”

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav veracare@ahrp.org
212-595-8974

###

Prescription Abuse Seen In U. S. Nursing Homes Powerful Antipsychotics Used to Subdue Elderly; Huge Medicaid Expense By LUCETTE LAGNADO December 4, 2007; Page A1

In recent years, Medicaid has spent more money on antipsychotic drugs for Americans than on any other class of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, AIDS drugs or medicine to treat high-blood pressure.

One reason: Nursing homes across the U. S. are giving these drugs to elderly patients to quiet symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.

Nearly 30% of the total nursing-home population is receiving antipsychotic drugs, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, known as CMS. In a practice known as “off label” use of prescription drugs, patients can get these powerful medicines whether they are psychotic or not. CMS says nearly 21% of nursing-home patients who don’t have a psychosis diagnosis are on antipsychotic drugs.

Article Continues…

The information herein shall not be considered an endorsement of anyone discontinuing psychiatric drugs. If you are stopping taking medication it is advisable to reduce the dose gradually WITH EXTREME CAUTION, as it is difficult to predict who will have problems withdrawing. It is worth getting as much information and support as you can, and involving your doctor wherever possible. You will find withdrawal information HERE: http://www.mind.org.uk/Information/Booklets/Making+sense/Making+sense+of+coming+off+psychiatric+drugs.htm

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON WITHDRAWAL:: Get Peter Lehmann’s book, Coming off Psychiatric Drugs: Successful Withdrawal from Neuroleptics, Antidepressants, Lithium, Carbamazepine and Tranquilizers. This valuable resource comes in US, UK, and German editions.

I, Kathleen Maire Hill, present this information in my capacity as a natural person, exercising my natural rights and freedoms. This information represents my private thoughts and beliefs and has been compiled and expressed for peer-to-peer, educational experiences only.

· “Apathy is the glove into which evil slips its hand.” Bodie Thoene

· “Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.” – Gandhi

· “(Freedom) is the will to be responsible to ourselves.” Friedrich Nietzsche

· “Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” Jean-Paul Sartre

· “Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom.” Marilyn Ferguson

· “Alone with one’s conscience there are no alibis!” Tristano Ajmone

· “Ethical. existence [is] the highest manifestation of spirituality.” Albert Schweitzer

A Model Consent Form for Psychiatric Drug Treatment
by David Cohen, Ph.D., and David Jacobs, Ph.D.
http://laingsociety.org/colloquia/polofdiagnosis/modelconsent.htm

How Mercury Causes Brain Neuron Degeneration (5-minute video)
http://tinyurl.com/3y98p7

“The individual is supreme and finds one’s way through intuition.”

Click here for other articles on this topic

The People versus the Powerful is the oldest story in human history. At no point in history have the Powerful wielded so much control. At no point in history has the active and informed involvement of the People, all of them, been more absolutely required.

By William Rivers Pitt

02/25/03 — – The Project for the New American Century, or PNAC, is a Washington-based think tank created in 1997. Above all else, PNAC desires and demands one thing: The establishment of a global American empire to bend the will of all nations. They chafe at the idea that the United States, the last remaining superpower, does not do more by way of economic and military force to bring the rest of the world under the umbrella of a new socio-economic Pax Americana.

The fundamental essence of PNAC’s ideology can be found in a White Paper produced in September of 2000 entitled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century.” In it, PNAC outlines what is required of America to create the global empire they envision.

According to PNAC, America must:
* Reposition permanently based forces to Southern Europe, Southeast Asia and the Middle East;
* Modernize U.S. forces, including enhancing our fighter aircraft, submarine and surface fleet capabilities;
* Develop and deploy a global missile defense system, and develop a strategic dominance of space;
* Control the “International Commons” of cyberspace;
* Increase defense spending to a minimum of 3.8 percent of gross domestic product, up from the 3 percent currently spent.

Most ominously, this PNAC document described four “Core Missions” for the American military. The two central requirements are for American forces to “fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars,” and to “perform the ‘constabulary’ duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions.” Note well that PNAC does not want America to be prepared to fight simultaneous major wars. That is old school. In order to bring this plan to fruition, the military must fight these wars one way or the other to establish American dominance for all to see.

Why is this important? After all, wacky think tanks are a cottage industry in Washington, DC. They are a dime a dozen. In what way does PNAC stand above the other groups that would set American foreign policy if they could? Two events brought PNAC into the mainstream of American government: the disputed election of George W. Bush, and the attacks of September 11th. When Bush assumed the Presidency, the men who created and nurtured the imperial dreams of PNAC became the men who run the Pentagon, the Defense Department and the White House. When the Towers came down, these men saw, at long last, their chance to turn their White Papers into substantive policy.

Vice President Dick Cheney is a founding member of PNAC, along with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is the ideological father of the group. Bruce Jackson, a PNAC director, served as a Pentagon official for Ronald Reagan before leaving government service to take a leading position with the weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin.

PNAC is staffed by men who previously served with groups like Friends of the Democratic Center in Central America, which supported America’s bloody gamesmanship in Nicaragua and El Salvador, and with groups like The Committee for the Present Danger, which spent years advocating that a nuclear war with the Soviet Union was “winnable.”

PNAC has recently given birth to a new group, The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which met with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice in order to formulate a plan to “educate” the American populace about the need for war in Iraq. CLI has funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to support the Iraqi National Congress and the Iraqi heir presumptive, Ahmed Chalabi. Chalabi was sentenced in absentia by a Jordanian court in 1992 to 22 years in prison for bank fraud after the collapse of Petra Bank, which he founded in 1977. Chalabi has not set foot in Iraq since 1956, but his Enron-like business credentials apparently make him a good match for the Bush administration’s plans.

PNAC’s “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” report is the institutionalization of plans and ideologies that have been formulated for decades by the men currently running American government. The PNAC Statement of Principles is signed by Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, as well as by Eliot Abrams, Jeb Bush, Bush’s special envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad, and many others. William Kristol, famed conservative writer for the Weekly Standard, is also a co-founder of the group. The Weekly Standard is owned by Ruppert Murdoch, who also owns international media giant Fox News.

The desire for these freshly empowered PNAC men to extend American hegemony by force of arms across the globe has been there since day one of the Bush administration, and is in no small part a central reason for the Florida electoral battle in 2000. Note that while many have said that Gore and Bush are ideologically identical, Mr. Gore had no ties whatsoever to the fellows at PNAC. George W. Bush had to win that election by any means necessary, and PNAC signatory Jeb Bush was in the perfect position to ensure the rise to prominence of his fellow imperialists. Desire for such action, however, is by no means translatable into workable policy. Americans enjoy their comforts, but don’t cotton to the idea of being some sort of Neo-Rome.

On September 11th, the fellows from PNAC saw a door of opportunity open wide before them, and stormed right through it.

Bush released on September 20th 2001 the “National Security Strategy of the United States of America.” It is an ideological match to PNAC’s “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” report issued a year earlier. In many places, it uses exactly the same language to describe America’s new place in the world.

Recall that PNAC demanded an increase in defense spending to at least 3.8% of GDP. Bush’s proposed budget for next year asks for $379 billion in defense spending, almost exactly 3.8% of GDP.

In August of 2002, Defense Policy Board chairman and PNAC member Richard Perle heard a policy briefing from a think tank associated with the Rand Corporation. According to the Washington Post and The Nation, the final slide of this presentation described “Iraq as the tactical pivot, Saudi Arabia as the strategic pivot, and Egypt as the prize” in a war that would purportedly be about ridding the world of Saddam Hussein’s weapons. Bush has deployed massive forces into the Mideast region, while simultaneously engaging American forces in the Philippines and playing nuclear chicken with North Korea. Somewhere in all this lurks at least one of the “major theater wars” desired by the September 2000 PNAC report.

Iraq is but the beginning, a pretense for a wider conflict. Donald Kagan, a central member of PNAC, sees America establishing permanent military bases in Iraq after the war. This is purportedly a measure to defend the peace in the Middle East, and to make sure the oil flows. The nations in that region, however, will see this for what it is: a jump-off point for American forces to invade any nation in that region they choose to. The American people, anxiously awaiting some sort of exit plan after America defeats Iraq, will see too late that no exit is planned.

All of the horses are traveling together at speed here. The defense contractors who sup on American tax revenue will be handsomely paid for arming this new American empire. The corporations that own the news media will sell this eternal war at a profit, as viewership goes through the stratosphere when there is combat to be shown. Those within the administration who believe that the defense of Israel is contingent upon laying waste to every possible aggressor in the region will have their dreams fulfilled. The PNAC men who wish for a global Pax Americana at gunpoint will see their plans unfold. Through it all, the bankrollers from the WTO and the IMF will be able to dictate financial terms to the entire planet. This last aspect of the plan is pivotal, and is best described in the newly revised version of Greg Palast’s masterpiece, “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.”

There will be adverse side effects. The siege mentality average Americans are suffering as they smother behind yards of plastic sheeting and duct tape will increase by orders of magnitude as our aggressions bring forth new terrorist attacks against the homeland. These attacks will require the implementation of the newly drafted Patriot Act II, an augmentation of the previous Act that has profoundly sharper teeth. The sun will set on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

The American economy will be ravaged by the need for increased defense spending, and by the aforementioned “constabulary” duties in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Former allies will turn on us. Germany, France and the other nations resisting this Iraq war are fully aware of this game plan. They are not acting out of cowardice or because they love Saddam Hussein, but because they mean to resist this rising American empire, lest they face economic and military serfdom at the hands of George W. Bush. Richard Perle has already stated that France is no longer an American ally.

As the eagle spreads its wings, our rhetoric and their resistance will become more agitated and dangerous.

Many people, of course, will die. They will die from war and from want, from famine and disease. At home, the social fabric will be torn in ways that make the Reagan nightmares of crack addiction, homelessness and AIDS seem tame by comparison.

This is the price to be paid for empire, and the men of PNAC who now control the fate and future of America are more than willing to pay it. For them, the benefits far outweigh the liabilities.

The plan was running smoothly until those two icebergs collided. Millions and millions of ordinary people are making it very difficult for Bush’s international allies to keep to the script. PNAC may have designs for the control of the “International Commons” of the Internet, but for now it is the staging ground for a movement that would see empire take a back seat to a wise peace, human rights, equal protection under the law, and the preponderance of a justice that will, if properly applied, do away forever with the anger and hatred that gives birth to terrorism in the first place.

Tommaso Palladini of Milan perhaps said it best as he marched with his countrymen in Rome. “You fight terrorism,” he said, “by creating more justice in the world.”

The People versus the Powerful is the oldest story in human history. At no point in history have the Powerful wielded so much control. At no point in history has the active and informed involvement of the People, all of them, been more absolutely required. The tide can be stopped, and the men who desire empire by the sword can be thwarted. It has already begun, but it must not cease. These are men of will, and they do not intend to fail.

William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times bestselling author of two books – “War On Iraq” (with Scott Ritter) available now from Context Books, and “The Greatest Sedition is Silence,” available in May 2003 from Pluto Press. He teaches high school in Boston, MA. Scott Lowery contributed research to this report.

I, Kathleen Maire Hill, present this information in my capacity as a natural person, exercising my natural rights and freedoms. This information represents my private thoughts and beliefs and has been compiled and expressed for peer-to-peer, educational experiences only.

· “Apathy is the glove into which evil slips its hand.” Bodie Thoene

· “Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.” – Gandhi

· “(Freedom) is the will to be responsible to ourselves.” Friedrich Nietzsche

· “Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” Jean-Paul Sartre

· “Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom.” Marilyn Ferguson

· “Alone with one’s conscience there are no alibis!” Tristano Ajmone

· “Ethical. existence [is] the highest manifestation of spirituality.” Albert Schweitzer

A Model Consent Form for Psychiatric Drug Treatment
by David Cohen, Ph.D., and David Jacobs, Ph.D.
http://laingsociety.org/colloquia/polofdiagnosis/modelconsent.htm

How Mercury Causes Brain Neuron Degeneration (5-minute video)
http://commons.ucalgary.ca/showcasetv/displayVideo?movieID=1000073&videoID=1000023

Bruce E. Levine, Ph.D., has been a practicing psychologist (and dissident) for decades. Dr. Levine serves on the advisory council of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, which was formed to fight against the abuses of the institutional mental health industry. He is a frequent contributor to the Huffington Post.

HERE is an excerpt from Bruce Levine’s latest book.

Article Excerpted in Full From AlterNet By Bruce E. Levine, Chelsea Green Publishing. Posted on November 26, 2007, Printed on November 26, 2007

The following is an excerpt from Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy (Chelsea Green, 2007) by Bruce E. Levine, and is reprinted here with permission from the publisher. In this book, Levine delves into the roots of depression and links our increasingly consumer-based culture and standard-practice psychiatric treatments to worsening depression, instead of solving it.

U-Turn from the Wisdom of the Ages

Throughout history many seekers, thinkers, and prophets have taught about overcoming despair. However, it would be difficult to top the greatness of Buddha, Spinoza, and Jesus. All three were rebels and heretics. All three rejected societal norms and religious orthodoxy. Buddha rebelled against both the caste system and religious rituals. Spinoza rebelled against hypocrisy in his community and certain aspects of accepted theology. Jesus rebelled against a materialistic society and religious authorities. Buddha gave up royalty and wealth, Spinoza was excommunicated and nearly assassinated, and Jesus sacrificed his life.

Buddha, Spinoza, and Jesus all came to a similar conclusion about despair — quite a different one than that reached by the modern mental health establishment. Although each described it differently, Buddha, Spinoza, and Jesus concluded that the source of our misery is avarice, material attachment, and self-absorption. While each used different language, they all provided a path away from torment and toward wellbeing.

· Buddha taught how to release oneself from narrow self-interest and craving.

· Spinoza taught how to liberate oneself from greed and other irrational passions.

· And Jesus taught, very simply, about love.

Modern mental health culture classifies depression as quite a different matter from the despair spoken of by Buddha, Spinoza, and Jesus. However, while modernity has resulted in different sources of pain, human beings and their responses to pain can hardly have changed so dramatically. And so to believe that Buddha, Spinoza, and Jesus would have dealt only with mild and moderate unhappiness and left debilitating depression for future mental health professionals to tackle seems quite unlikely.

Buddha, Spinoza, and Jesus were not alone in their understanding of the importance of moving beyond self-absorption. In more recent times, their message has been echoed by many others, including psychoanalyst and social critic Erich Fromm (1900-1980). Fromm argued that the increase in depression in modern industrial societies is connected to their economic systems. Financial success in modern industrial societies is associated with heightened awareness of financial self-interest, resulting in greater self-absorption, which can increase the likelihood for depression; while a lack of financial self-interest in such an economic system results in deprivation and misery, which increases the likelihood for depression. Thus, escaping depression in such a system means regularly taking actions based on financial self-interest while at the same time not drowning in self-absorption — no easy balancing act.

In Fromm’s culminating work, To Have or to Be? (1976), he contrasts the depressing impact of a modern consumer culture built on the having mode (greed, acquisition, possession, aggressiveness, control, deception, and alienation from one’s authentic self, others, and the natural world) versus the joyful being mode (the act of loving, sharing, and discovering, and being authentic and connected to one’s self, others, and the natural world).

Fromm’s penetrating social criticism of an alienating society resulting in increased depression was, during his lifetime, widely respected by many mental health professionals. Today, however, the mental health profession has come to be dominated by biopsychiatrists: those who see depression as a matter mainly of brain chemistry. Fromm, if alive today, may well have labeled this as “microscopic self-absorption.” And he most certainly would be sad that mental health treatment has increasingly become a component rather than a confrontation of modern consumerism.

Technology Worship and Scientific Sham

The faith of our culture is that technology is omnipotent.

On my way to getting a PhD, I learned about behavioral technologies, about cognitive technologies, and about biochemical technologies. I learned to think about depressed human beings as broken objects that needed to be fixed. After experiencing the futility of this type of approach, I learned a completely different way of thinking. I do not oppose technology per se. I merely oppose the uncritical worship of it. My concern is not unique; it echoes that of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lewis Mumford, and many others. Human beings have always had technology of sorts — some sort of tools and techniques to make their lives easier. The difference today is that technology has increasingly become the supreme value of American culture.

Technology is all about control, and the more we Americans singularly worship technology, the more we singularly worship control. Our society is increasingly dominated by megatechnologies — huge, complex technologies that most of us neither understand nor can control. Human beings pay a psychological price for any technology that controls them more than they control it; they can actually feel more powerless. And the feeling of powerlessness is highly associated with depression.

Uncritical worship of any value or belief leads to extremism and fundamentalism. Henry David Thoreau, another early critic of technology worship, lamented, “Men have become the tools of their tools.” He knew that a society that worships technology would spend little energy assessing its ultimate value, resulting in what he described as “improved means to unimproved ends.”

Beyond its attribute of control, technology has no meaning, and if people singularly worship it, they will have meaningless lives. A meaningless life, like a powerless life, is a depressing one.

The consequences of technology fundamentalism are no less comical and tragic than the consequences of antitechnology fundamentalism. The belief that technology is the solution to all of life’s problems is no less naive than to believe that technology is the source of all of life’s problems.

American mental health culture has increasingly become a technology fundamentalist one. Drugs have become a first option for many doctors, electroconvulsive therapy has made a comeback, and psychosurgery is no longer frowned upon.

Technology fundamentalists demand speed and efficiency. By the early 1990s, two-thirds of doctor visits were less than fifteen minutes, and a

2001 RAND Corporation survey revealed that the majority of physicians were diagnosing depression in less than three minutes.

In a culture that worships speed, I suppose this is considered progress, but a culture that truly respects life would view this quite differently.

In a society that worships technology, the authority of science provides any given technology with legitimacy, and so there are great incentives to convince the public that the techniques used to measure depression are scientific. However,

the technology for assessing depression lacks the basic elements of science — including objectivity and verifiability.

One of the most common depression measurement techniques used in researching the effectiveness of antidepressants and other biochemical treatments is the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD). The HRSD was the primary measure of depression in the NIMH STAR*D study, and it is routinely used in antidepressant studies evaluated by the FDA for drug approval. However, even the American Journal of Psychiatry, the American Psychiatric Association’s own journal, concluded in 2004, Evidence suggests that the Hamilton depression scale is psychometrically and conceptually flawed.” And the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology noted in 2005, “When looking closely at the construction and content of the HRSD, it is clear that this is a flawed measure.”

When legitimate scientists examine the HRSD, they immediately notice

· its biases in how depression is defined,

· the arbitrariness of a point total for qualifying a person as depressed,

· the arbitrariness of what qualifies as remission of depression, and

· the subjective nature of how responses are interpreted and evaluated.

In the HRSD, clinicians and researchers rate subjects, and the higher the point total, the more one is deemed to be suffering from depression. There are three separate items about insomnia (early, middle, and late), and one can receive up to six points for difficulty either falling or remaining asleep; however, there is only one suicide item, in which one is awarded only two points for wishing to be dead. The HRSD is heavily loaded with items that are most affected by psychotropic drugs, and thus it is not surprising that pharmaceutical-company-sponsored researchers use the HRSD in their antidepressant studies.

And it is therefore especially damning for antidepressants that even with such measurement dice loading, these drugs routinely fail to outperform placebos.

Even with depression measures that reflect the standard psychiatric view of depression more accurately than the HRSD, there are interpretation problems.

Standard depression symptoms such as depressed mood, loss of interest and pleasure, sleep difficulties (too little or too much), activity difficulties (agitation or lethargy), lack of energy, guilt and self-reproach, poor concentration, indecisiveness, and suicidality are not objectively quantifiable in a scientific sense (and weight gain or loss, a standard symptom that can be objectively measured, is routinely assessed via interview — without a scale or baseline weight). I have talked to people who, while eating a sandwich, report that they have no appetite, and I’ve talked to others claiming a good appetite who in reality have not eaten in days. People routinely deny they are suicidal when they are in fact so, and vice versa. And I’ve known people who had poor concentration because they were passionately in love, and people with excellent concentration who were considering suicide.

There can be some value in interviewing or polling people on their subjective experience of “unhappiness,” “depression,” or “number of depressive episodes” and comparing the responses of different populations. However, only someone who knows nothing about the objective nature of real science could take seriously an arbitrary point total on a subjectively interpreted questionnaire and conclude it to be a scientifically conclusive criterion for diagnosing a person as suffering from the disease of depression (or declare that another arbitrary point total is scientific evidence for remission from the disease of depression). Yet such is common practice in the mental health establishment.

A worship of technology rather than a respect for its power and limitations has also resulted in denying or ignoring phenomena that are obviously nonquantifiable. However, if one dismisses all phenomena that are not measurable, some of the most significant aspects of humanity are simply not discussed. Science cannot accurately quantify the emotional impact of a given trauma on any given person or the love required for healing that wound. And authenticity, spontaneity, compassion, and other variables involved in morale and healing are too subjective to be captured with any scientific certitude.

But rather than acknowledging the limitations of quantification, powerful nonquantifiable antidotes to depression are too often simply neglected.

The Unhappiness Taboo

There are many possible reasons for the increasing rate of depression among Americans, but I believe that one important cause is a culture that demands happiness. The pressure to be in a good mood can make people ashamed of not being in one. This “pain over pain” can then result in normal low moods becoming prolonged bouts of despair.

Why did this unhappiness taboo take hold so strongly in the United States? One possibility is a societal distortion of the right to “the pursuit of happiness,” which has come to mean the expectation of being in a good mood all the time. The irony here is that the signers of the Declaration of Independence signed their death warrant had the American Revolution failed, and it is difficult to imagine Thomas Jefferson telling them, “Don’t worry, be happy.” It was once accepted that experiencing uncomfortable feelings was often necessary to achieve an ideal.

The unhappiness taboo has dominated the United States since it became a nation primarily of consumers rather than citizens, a gradual process that accelerated with the ascent of advertising in the beginning of the 1900s, and which dramatically spiked with the consumer boom following World War II. The belief that people should be either happy or trying to be happier is a fundamental principle of modern consumerism — the never-ending search for products and services to bring happiness and prevent unhappiness.

In a culture of consumerism, people are forever trying to buy happiness, and sellers are expected to appear happy so as to inspire confidence in what they are offering. There are few businesses that are not in some sense selling happiness or the relief from unhappiness — and thus there is enormous pressure to maintain the appearance of happiness.

The perversion of the pursuit of happiness to mean that it is our duty to be chronically upbeat has, according to psychologist and journalist Lesley Hazleton, resulted in the labeling of anxiety and depression first as weakness and now as illness. In 1984 she published The Right to Feel Bad, which confronts this unhappiness taboo: “Feeling good is no longer simply a right, but a social and personal duty. … How are we to see depression as a legitimate emotion? How are we to avoid calling ourselves sick or wrong when we feel it? How are we to reclaim it from the clutches of those who claim that anything but feeling good is bad? … Seeing depression as pathological — that is, as illness — is a useful way of invalidating it. … If we were allowed to be depressed — if we could allow ourselves to be so — we might find it much easier to tolerate.”

Hazleton convincingly argues that depression is a normal human reaction, and if we cannot accept it, we become ashamed and alienated from ourselves, and this is what makes depression so lethal.

Is it the stigma of depressive illness that we need to eliminate, or rather the stigma of being depressed? Instead of viewing being depressed as weakness or illness, we Americans might better decrease depression by understanding it as a normal human reaction — to be taken as seriously as all other dimensions of our humanity, but neither shamed nor pathologized. When people label a natural component of their existence as “sick,” they run the risk of alienating themselves from a part of who they are, making that component far more problematic than it naturally is.

By contrast, when we accept the whole of our humanity, we are often rewarded with greater joy — and almost always receive increased wisdom about life.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

The information herein shall not be considered an endorsement of anyone discontinuing psychiatric drugs. If you are stopping taking medication it is advisable to reduce the dose gradually WITH EXTREME CAUTION, as it is difficult to predict who will have problems withdrawing. It is worth getting as much information and support as you can, and involving your doctor wherever possible. You will find withdrawal information HERE: http://www.mind.org.uk/Information/Booklets/Making+sense/Making+sense+of+coming+off+psychiatric+drugs.htm

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON WITHDRAWAL:: Get Peter Lehmann’s book, Coming off Psychiatric Drugs: Successful Withdrawal from Neuroleptics, Antidepressants, Lithium, Carbamazepine and Tranquilizers. This valuable resource comes in US, UK, and German editions.

I, Kathleen Maire Hill, present this information in my capacity as a natural person, exercising my natural rights and freedoms. This information represents my private thoughts and beliefs and has been compiled and expressed for peer-to-peer, educational experiences only.

· “Apathy is the glove into which evil slips its hand.” Bodie Thoene

· “Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.” – Gandhi

· “(Freedom) is the will to be responsible to ourselves.” Friedrich Nietzsche

· “Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” Jean-Paul Sartre

· “Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom.” Marilyn Ferguson

· “Alone with one’s conscience there are no alibis!” Tristano Ajmone

· “Ethical. existence [is] the highest manifestation of spirituality.” Albert Schweitzer

A Model Consent Form for Psychiatric Drug Treatment
by David Cohen, Ph.D., and David Jacobs, Ph.D.
http://laingsociety.org/colloquia/polofdiagnosis/modelconsent.htm

How Mercury Causes Brain Neuron Degeneration (5-minute video)
http://commons.ucalgary.ca/showcasetv/displayVideo?movieID=1000073&videoID=1000023

Gwen Olsen, was a fifteen year veteran of the pharmaceutical industry and author of “Confessions of an Rx Drug Pusher”. She worked for such industry giants as Johnson & Johnson, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Abbott Laboratories. Gwen told an FDA panel she had a change of heart after her 20-year-old niece Megan committed suicide following a withdrawal reaction from the antidepressant Paxil. She said her niece first tried to hang herself from a ceiling fan. When the fan broke, Olsen said, she doused herself in oil and set herself alight.Gwen currently wears many hats as a public speaker, child advocate, mental health activist and wellness consultant. She lives with her family in Austin, Texas.

(Excerpted Whole From: NewsTarget, Monday, November 26, 2007 by: Gwen Olsen

Can you believe the audacity of some renegade school board member in Virginia who dared to send fliers home to parents informing them of nutritional alternatives to prescription ADHD medication? What is this world coming to when parents are allowed to receive fair, balanced information and make informed decisions for their children’s health? Ms. Elizabeth Daniels has clearly taken her roll as a community educator too far!

• See story in The Virginian-Pilot

Well, not to worry. Big Pharma was having none of that and immediately sent in their paid-for-supporters and front groups such as CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) to demand equal advertising time . . . or flier distribution rights, in order to counter this damning information and present their position that ADHD is a serious disease that requires treatment. Problem is CHADD’s fliers will contain propaganda paid for by drug manufacturers and distributed strictly for corporate financial gain, but parents will be none the wiser.

So, in the interest of fair balance let’s examine the actual facts of this case:

1. ADHD has never been proven to be a neuro-developmental disease by any of the currently acceptable scientific standards. There is a lack of empirical evidence (meaning it cannot be repeated, tested, measured, or verified) that ADHD is a disease by definition. Therefore, to make such a claim is fraudulent.

1. Since there is no medical test of scientific validity with which to diagnose ADHD, it is a diagnosis made solely by a third-party’s observation of maladaptive behaviors and is entirely subjective. On the other hand, nutritional deficiency testing, testing for heavy metal toxicity, food allergy tests, and other infectious disease tests can be scientifically and medically verified. There are a number of top-notch, FDA approved labs across the country currently performing tests of this nature. The problem presented here for Big Pharma is that these tests suggest there are therapies which can eliminate ADHD symptoms without drugs.

What is clear to me, a fifteen-year-veteran of the pharmaceutical industry who can easily recognize their re-positioning and mis-information tactics, is that Pharma is scrambling to do damage control for their multi-billion dollar psycho-pharmacologics business that has been under scrutiny by Congress, the general public and, reluctantly, even FDA regulators of late.

1. • The Drug Enforcement Administration classified methylphenidate in 1971 as a Schedule II substance (indicating this drug has significant risk of abuse and addiction with limited medicinal value).
   • The black box warnings were added only last year to methylphenidate products such as Ritalin and Concerta, as well as to the ADHD drugs Adderall and Strattera, for their potential to cause serious psychiatric and cardiovascular problems, including psychosis, heart attack, stroke, and sudden death. These label warnings had been fought by their manufacturers for years.
   • In addition to the above, Strattera, an SNRI (select norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor) drug, also contains warnings for severe liver damage as well as suicidal ideation.

There is consistent clinical data showing that as many as 40% of children fail to tolerate or respond well to stimulant therapy. The prestigious MTA study conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health found that long-term outcomes for medicated children demonstrate diminishing returns over time and behavioral improvements dissipate when treatment is withdrawn.

In addition, stimulant drugs are known to cause jitteriness, tremors, loss of appetite, suppression of growth, insomnia, nausea, abdominal pain, dizziness, headache, blood pressure and pulse changes, depression, sadness, over stimulation of the brain, aggression, anxiety, psychosis and tachycardia in children.

Even more distressing is the fact that much of the current psychotropic business for ADHD and depression is being funneled into the newer atypical antipsychotics and promoted “off label” for these indications. Dangerous drugs such as Zyprexa, Alibify, Geodon, and Seroquel are prescribed to children without any indication that these drugs are safe or effective for children with ADHD symptoms. However, these newer products have a longer shelf life as branded drugs – many of the SSRIs and ADHD stimulants are available in generics or about to go off patent – and represent a much more lucrative prescription long term for the industry.

The atypicals haven’t gotten quite the amount of negative press yet that some of the other psychotropics have. Despite the fact that antipsychotic medications are known to cause permanent disfiguring tics and dyskinesias, akathisia, mania, neuroleptic malignant syndrome, weight gain, increased cholesterol, and diabetes.

None of these drugs are currently approved for use in children, although several manufacturers have submitted requests for bi-polar illness indications in children and adolescents. According to a report by CBS Evening News, there has been a 500% increase recently in the prescribing of antipsychotics for children!

No good article about psychiatric drug controversy would be complete without stating the contributions made by the Church of Scientology. In this one, Daniels said she hadn’t received any complaints from parents about the fliers, only concerns that the information was taken from the Citizens Commission on Human Rights Web site which has ties to Scientology. Wonder specifically who stated that concern? Was it the CHADD representative, perhaps, who has vested financial interests with the manufacturers of stimulants?

Leave it to those pesky Scientologists to suggest some crazy notion that parents deserve to be informed about the dangerous effects stimulant drugs have on their children! Sorry, but this issue has nothing to do with religion or politics. This is definitely just another Pharma diversion tactic – and a lame one at that – in an attempt to divert attention away from the dangers of their drugs and refocus the issue on political, Scientology propaganda.

Consider this fact, CHADD’s annual report for 2004-2005 lists total pharmaceutical donation support through unrestricted educational grants as comprising 22% of their total revenue. That represents $1,019,448 of contributions in one year alone. I think the propaganda that parents should be most concerned about is the covert advertising information presented by someone who has this level of financial interest in promoting dangerous drug therapy to children. Of course, that conflict-of-interest information was not revealed in the Virginian-Pilot article.

• When will parents finally comprehend that our children are considered a human commodity by the pharmaceutical industry?
• Or, when will they understand the financial significance of the fact that the child psychiatric market is potentially the most lucrative expansion market that the industry has today, bar none?
• Or when will Americans realize that this is an industry where human death and suffering is relegated to statistics and bar charts depicted in patient years, not body counts?

Perhaps it will be in the discovery process of one of the many lawsuits filed on behalf of a loved one lost to a psychotropic drug reaction. Or, maybe it will be in the desperate search for answers in a crisis situation when they reach out to others on the World Wide Web. But there is one thing I do know from my extensive experience in the industry, to Pharma it’s just another day at the office – just another cost of doing business!

The information herein shall not be considered an endorsement of anyone discontinuing psychiatric drugs. If you are stopping taking medication it is advisable to reduce the dose gradually WITH EXTREME CAUTION, as it is difficult to predict who will have problems withdrawing. It is worth getting as much information and support as you can, and involving your doctor wherever possible. You will find withdrawal information HERE: http://www.mind.org.uk/Information/Booklets/Making+sense/Making+sense+of+coming+off+psychiatric+drugs.htm

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON WITHDRAWAL:: Get Peter Lehmann’s book, Coming off Psychiatric Drugs: Successful Withdrawal from Neuroleptics, Antidepressants, Lithium, Carbamazepine and Tranquilizers. This valuable resource comes in US, UK, and German editions.

I, Kathleen Maire Hill, present this information in my capacity as a natural person, exercising my natural rights and freedoms. This information represents my private thoughts and beliefs and has been compiled and expressed for peer-to-peer, educational experiences only.

· “Apathy is the glove into which evil slips its hand.” Bodie Thoene

· “Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.” – Gandhi

· “(Freedom) is the will to be responsible to ourselves.” Friedrich Nietzsche

· “Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” Jean-Paul Sartre

· “Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom.” Marilyn Ferguson

· “Alone with one’s conscience there are no alibis!” Tristano Ajmone

· “Ethical. existence [is] the highest manifestation of spirituality.” Albert Schweitzer

A Model Consent Form for Psychiatric Drug Treatment
by David Cohen, Ph.D., and David Jacobs, Ph.D.
http://laingsociety.org/colloquia/polofdiagnosis/modelconsent.htm

How Mercury Causes Brain Neuron Degeneration (5-minute video)
http://commons.ucalgary.ca/showcasetv/displayVideo?movieID=1000073&videoID=1000023

Bruce E. Levine, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist with 30 years experience and author of Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2007).

Bruce E. Levine Website http://www.brucelevine.net/

Bruce E. Levine Blogger http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-e-levine

Why I Don’t Disease Depression, by Bruce Levine, Posted November 27, 2007

If forced to choose between labeling immobilizing depression as either a character weakness or a disease, it’s understandable that disease would be the preference. But there is a third choice, one that normalizes depression and which — for people such as myself — feels more respectful and better reduces suffering.

I regularly do battle with right-wing talk show hosts who mock depression sufferers as crybabies. Fundamentalist pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstrap yappers are often heartless and uninformed, and I tell them just that. However, fundamentalist depression diseasers also need to be confronted.

“I have written a polemic, an insistent argument for the proposition that depression is a disease,” is how psychiatrist Peter Kramer describes his Against Depression (2005). Kramer argues that depression must be a disease because of how devastating it is. He is certainly correct that depression can result not only in suicide but can ruin careers, destroy families, and stress the body so as to jeopardize physical health. However, such nondiseases as war and poverty also have a devastating impact; and there is a long list of noncontroversial illnesses, including the common cold, that do not have a devastating impact.

Kramer’s other disease arguments are just as shaky. According to Kramer, biological markers — the sine qua non of disease — for depression have been discovered. He tells us that brain scanning techniques focusing on the size of the hippocampus and amygdala can differentiate the depressed from the nondepressed. However, five months after Against Depression was published, The New York Times (“Can Brain Scans See Depression?” October 18, 2005) concluded: “After almost 30 years, researchers have not developed any standardized tool for diagnosing or treating psychiatric disorders based on imaging studies.”

Kramer also proclaims, “Deplete serotonin, and depression is unmasked.” But researchers have depleted serotonin, and it did not cause depression in nondepressed subjects nor did it worsen the depressive symptoms of those already depressed. By 1998 The American Medical Association Essential Guide to Depression had reported that there is no clear link between levels of serotonin and depression, “as some depressed people have too much serotonin.”

Finally, Kramer tells us about the defective genes of depressives, “By the mid-1990s, scientists had identified genes that might lead to both conditions, neuroticism and depression.” Kramer leans heavily on behavioral geneticist Kenneth Kendler; however, two months after the publication of Against Depression, Kendler reviewed the evidence for “gene action in psychiatric disorders” in the American Journal of Psychiatry (July 2005), where he concluded: “Although we may wish it to be true, we do not have and are not likely to ever discover ‘genes for’ psychiatric illness.”

While symptoms of depression can be caused by a variety of medical conditions (for example, anemia and hypothyroidism), such medical conditions, according to the American Psychiatric Association, actually rule out the psychiatric disease of “depression.” What psychiatrists call depression has not in fact been linked to any biochemical markers.

Depression is neither a character defect nor biochemical defect but rather a strategy to shut down overwhelming pain. Used in excess, it can lead to immobilization and greater pain.

Depression is by no means the only strategy people use to shut down overwhelming pain. People use alcohol, marijuana, television, food, gambling, and worse. A depressed Sigmund Freud, pained by failure, used cocaine, then turned his friends on to it, but ultimately discovered its adverse affects and rejected it. Joseph Goebbels, even more pained by failure than Freud, shut down his pain by embracing fascism; but, unlike Freud, Goebbels couldn’t have cared less about the adverse effects of his strategy.

Labeling depression as a disease gives some people relief, but such labeling creates grief for others. I have met many people who have been failed by antidepressants and electroshock. They talk about the adverse physiological effects of their treatments, but they also talk about something else. By becoming compliant patients to a medical authority, they describe losing control over their lives. Depression is an experience of helplessness and hopelessness, and for these people, accepting depression as a disease makes them feel even more helpless and hopeless.

Instead of labeling depression as weakness or illness, we might better decrease depression by understanding it as a normal, albeit painful, human reaction. When we label a part of ourselves as either “weak” or “sick,” we alienate ourselves from a part of who we are, and this can create even more pain. In contrast, when we accept the whole of our humanity, we are more likely to be freed up to resolve and heal the source of our pains.

The information herein shall not be considered an endorsement of anyone discontinuing psychiatric drugs. If you are stopping taking medication it is advisable to reduce the dose gradually WITH EXTREME CAUTION, as it is difficult to predict who will have problems withdrawing. It is worth getting as much information and support as you can, and involving your doctor wherever possible. You will find withdrawal information HERE: http://www.mind.org.uk/Information/Booklets/Making+sense/Making+sense+of+coming+off+psychiatric+drugs.htm

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON WITHDRAWAL:: Get Peter Lehmann’s book, Coming off Psychiatric Drugs: Successful Withdrawal from Neuroleptics, Antidepressants, Lithium, Carbamazepine and Tranquilizers. This valuable resource comes in US, UK, and German editions.

I, Kathleen Maire Hill, present this information in my capacity as a natural person, exercising my natural rights and freedoms. This information represents my private thoughts and beliefs and has been compiled and expressed for peer-to-peer, educational experiences only.

· “Apathy is the glove into which evil slips its hand.” Bodie Thoene

· “Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.” – Gandhi

· “(Freedom) is the will to be responsible to ourselves.” Friedrich Nietzsche

· “Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” Jean-Paul Sartre

· “Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom.” Marilyn Ferguson

· “Alone with one’s conscience there are no alibis!” Tristano Ajmone

· “Ethical. existence [is] the highest manifestation of spirituality.” Albert Schweitzer

A Model Consent Form for Psychiatric Drug Treatment
by David Cohen, Ph.D., and David Jacobs, Ph.D.
http://laingsociety.org/colloquia/polofdiagnosis/modelconsent.htm

How Mercury Causes Brain Neuron Degeneration (5-minute video)
http://commons.ucalgary.ca/showcasetv/displayVideo?movieID=1000073&videoID=1000023

Sepp Hasslberger (a man for all seasons)

Sepp’s interests are in all things that affect the human condition worldwide.
These interests include the Economy, the Environment, Epidemics, Human Potential, Legislation, Pharma, Science, Society, the Media, technology and war crimes.

Excerpted Whole From Article in Health Supreme, November 23, 2007; View November 25, 2007
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2007/11/23/adhd_psychiatric_drugs_bring_brave_new_world.htm

“Only a large-scale popular movement toward decentralization and self-help can arrest the present tendency toward statism… A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and schoolteachers.” – Aldous Huxley – (1894-1963) Forword to ‘Brave New World’, 1932
Brave New World - Image from HuxleyNet.

Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or ADHD is said to be a developmental disorder. All but unknown as little as two decades ago, word has it that now about 5 % of children suffer from it. Whatever the cause, the rise of ADHD has been explosive, and it seems that schools, rather than doctors, may be a driving force behind the diagnosis.

Officially, there is no cure for ADHD, yet children, once diagnosed, are prescribed all manner of psychotropic drugs – Ritalin, Adderall, Concerta, Strattera, Methylphenidate – to quiet them down and ‘make them pay attention’. We are down on illegal drug use, even to the point of putting people in prison for smoking a joint. Yet here we are pushing mind altering drugs on millions of children. The side effects of the drugs prescribed – amphetamine and methylphenidate and even antipsychotic drugs like Risperdal, Zoloft and Zyprexa – are horrendous. Violence and suicide are often associated with their use.

Let’s take a look at the diagnosis itself. We’re talking about children who, in school, don’t give close attention to details and make mistakes in their schoolwork. They don’t listen well, don’t follow instructions, are unwilling and are easily distracted or “forgetful”. They are unable to sit still, are fidgety, “can’t play quietly” and worst of all, they talk a lot. Disruptively blurting out answers before the teacher even finishes asking the question, they tend to interrupt others. In other words, those kids are a nuisance to teachers. Does that, by the way, bring back any memories of your own time in school?

Rather than being a sign of illness however, this kind of behavior tells us something about the dismal state of today’s educational system! We are indoctrinating children with useless knowledge, trying to make good robots out of them. Since we still believe having a job should be the only way for people to make a living, we extend education to keep kids out of the job market for as long as possible. The brighter ones rebel at that. They are telling us: “let me go out and learn something”. They are bored by what schools have to offer. They want to learn and do something useful, have adventure and feel they are part of society.

Most kids know computers better than their teachers. No wonder they are impatient. Home schooling may be an alternative for some, but not all countries allow it. What we do need, it seems, is a re-tooling of the educational system to support critical thinking, creativity, as well as the capacity to evaluate data and make decisions. There is nothing like learning something you want to learn. Active learning seems to fit the bill.

- – -

TMAP and TeenScreen

A program in US schools called TeenScreen, billed as a suicide prevention tool and mental health screening program, seeks to find those kids that don’t fit the brave scheme. According to TeenScreenTruth, the test has an 84 to 94 % likelyhood of falsely labeling any kid taking it as either suicidal or mentally ill.

Once labeled, the most likely thing is a drug regime, and apparently only the latest, most expensive and at the same time most damaging drugs are good enough. A pharmaceutical company initiated program called TMAP has established a reference list of the drugs to be used. The Texas Medication Algorithm Program, pioneered in Texas and later extended to other states in the US, tells school psychiatrists and psychologists what drugs are to be used.

Many parents say no, but a great many accept the teacher-initiated diagnosis and agree to medicate their kids. Thus the brightest, most rebellious children are sacrificed on the altar of pharmacology in ritual appeasement of the gods of a brave new world.

See also:

ADHD drugs could stunt growth DRUGS used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have no long term effectiveness and could stunt your child’s growth.

Stop drugging our children The workings of the human mind are still almost as much of a mystery to psychiatrists as they are to the general public, so it is hardly surprising that the treatment of psychological problems is often controversial. But handing out drugs like Smarties to thousands of children with behavioural difficulties is reckless beyond words. An estimated 8,000 young people are being given anti-psychotics, according to a BBC Panorama report, even though they are linked to numerous side-effects. Although sometimes used for conditions such as schizophrenia, many are prescribed simply because a child has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder – even though there is debate over whether this exists or is simply a fancy way to describe bad behaviour.

Vital Information About Ritalin, Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder and the Politics Behind the ADHD/Ritalin Movement Our society has institutionalized drug abuse among our children. Worse yet, we abuse our children with drugs rather than making the effort to find better ways to meet their needs. In the long run, we are giving our children a very bad lesson–that drugs are the answer to emotional problems. We are encouraging a generation of youngsters to grow up relying on psychiatric drugs rather than on themselves and other human resources.

High on life: the biggest health care fraud in history? Had I been born a decade or so later, I doubt I’d be writing this today. Rather than spending almost 20 years inventing new ways to terrorise a succession of teachers, lecturers and employers – fuelling other forms of creativity, including writing, in the process – I’d have been given a massive dose of Ritalin and left in a corner to rot.

Mental Screening Dragnet Targets “every fifth-grader and ninth grader” TeenScreen’s developer, Dr. David Shaffer, chairman child psychiatry, Columbia University, tested his screening questionnaire on 1,729 New York City high school students. Of these, 475 students tested “positive” – as being suicidal. When the students were retested, the predictive accuracy of TeenScreen was only 16%.

Houston TX – Drug Makers Accused Of Misleading Health Department
The Texas whistleblower lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson promises to topple the house of cards upon which the public mental health system rests. The suit by Allen Jones, formerly assistant Inspector General in Pennsylvania, and the Texas Attorney General charges Johnson & Johnson with concocting TMAP (Texas Medication Algorithm Project) a marketing scheme to increase sales of its antipsychotic drug, Risperdal.

The suit will unravel the fraudulent TMAP prescribing guidelines that were promulgated by a consensus panel of psychiatrists from the University of Texas, and promoted with the help of public officials–all of who were paid by J & J (and other Big Pharma companies). TMAP is a prescription drug scheme ensuring that the most expensive psychotropic drugs would be used, the exorbitant cost paid for by taxpayers.

The information herein shall not be considered an endorsement of anyone discontinuing psychiatric drugs. If you are stopping taking medication it is advisable to reduce the dose gradually WITH EXTREME CAUTION, as it is difficult to predict who will have problems withdrawing. It is worth getting as much information and support as you can, and involving your doctor wherever possible. You will find withdrawal information HERE: http://www.mind.org.uk/Information/Booklets/Making+sense/Making+sense+of+coming+off+psychiatric+drugs.htm

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON WITHDRAWAL:: Get Peter Lehmann’s book, Coming off Psychiatric Drugs: Successful Withdrawal from Neuroleptics, Antidepressants, Lithium, Carbamazepine and Tranquilizers. This valuable resource comes in US, UK, and German editions.

I, Kathleen Maire Hill, present this information in my capacity as a natural person, exercising my natural rights and freedoms. This information represents my private thoughts and beliefs and has been compiled and expressed for peer-to-peer educational experiences only.

· “Apathy is the glove into which evil slips its hand.” Bodie Thoene

· “Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.” – Gandhi

· “(Freedom) is the will to be responsible to ourselves.” Friedrich Nietzsche

· “Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” Jean-Paul Sartre

· “Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom.” Marilyn Ferguson

· “Alone with one’s conscience there are no alibis!” Tristano Ajmone

· “Ethical. existence [is] the highest manifestation of spirituality.” Albert Schweitzer

A Model Consent Form for Psychiatric Drug Treatment
by David Cohen, Ph.D., and David Jacobs, Ph.D.
http://laingsociety.org/colloquia/polofdiagnosis/modelconsent.htm

How Mercury Causes Brain Neuron Degeneration (5-minute video)
http://commons.ucalgary.ca/showcasetv/displayVideo?movieID=1000073&videoID=1000023

Vera Sharav

http://www.ahrp.org and http://ahrp.blogspot.com 

The Arkansas State Attorney General has filed a lawsuit against Janssen and Johnson & Johnson charging the company had “engaged in a direct, illegal, nationwide program of promotion of the use of Risperdal for non-medically necessary uses.” [1] http://www.furiousseasons.com/legal%20documents/arrisperdalsuit.pdf

A similar suit against Janssen / J & J was filed by the Texas State Attorney General in Dec. 2006. http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2006/12/houston-tx-drug-makers-accused-of.html

It is illegal–a criminal offense–for a company to promote drugs for unapproved, off-label uses.

How, then, does one explain the pharmaceutical companies’ widespread promotion of the most toxic patented drugs–i.e. ‘atypical antipsychotics’–for off-label uses for even for nursery school children and the fragile elderly–even with FDA’s knowledge that these drugs are cutting short lives?

(1) One explanation is the financial incentives drug manufacturers provide to mental health providers–especially to psychiatrists who receive substantial kickbacks for prescribing and recommending to other psychiatrists to prescribe these drugs. http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2007/11/children-need-protection.html

(2) The other explanation puts the responsibility squarely in the lap of FDA officials who knew before issuing a marketing license for Risperdal that the drug had failed to demonstrate either safety or a benefit greater than the old neuroleptics (a.k.a. antipsychotics) whose well known adverse effects led doctors for the most part, to restrict their use to adult schizophrenia patients.
http://books.google.com/books?id=4T8sKI4cx_wC&pg=PA276&lpg=PA276&dq=mad+in+a
merica+risperdal&source=web&ots=9Iz6-u5-z_&sig=YAgJO9N3PP-93_1Onpk6zz2V4yU

The Arkansas suit alleges, among other things, that Janssen /J&J put Risperdal, a drug it knew to be defective, on the market in 1994–even though it knew the drug was defective and after the company had, in the AG’s account, cooked and jury-rigged results of pre-marketing clinical trials to make it look as though the drug had fewer extra-pyramidal side effects (EPS) than older anti-psychotics when in fact it had virtually the same EPS profile as older drugs.

FDA’s complicity in giving industry a license to market defective drugs that kill while sales rise to blockbuster profit makers is demonstrated by its actions:

1. FDA approved Risperdal and Zyprexa despite emergent safety issues during premarketing clinical trials, and despite lack of evidence of any improved efficacy compared to the old neuroleptics. [2] [3]

2. An independent analysis of FDA’s MedWatch adverse event reports, 1998-2005, found: [4] http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/167/16/1752
FDA received 3,277 death reports involving the antipsychotic, Clozaril, 1,093 death reports involving Risperdal, and 1,005 death reports involving Zyprexa.

Yet, these drugs continue to kill, while the anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx (rofecoxib) was withdrawn from the market after 932 deaths were reported to MedWatch.

3. Adding insult to injury, following public furor over the revelations about these drugs’ concealed hazards–for example, The New York Times reports about the evidence contained in Eli Lilly documents of the company’s illegal marketing strategy for its antipsychotic drug, Zyprexa (olanzapine), FDA has subsequently lent the government seal of approval for use of these toxic killer drugs for use in children.
http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2007/08/fda-approval-of-risperdal-for-children.html

FDA officials did so without an advisory committee, without a public hearing, and without disclosing the data to justify the exposure of children to high risk of severe debilitating drug-induced diseases—including diabetes, metabolic syndrome with attendant cardiovascular abnormalities.

One suspects the FDA approved these drugs for children so as to shield manufacturers and psychiatrists who prescribed these drugs widely off-label, which renders them liable.

* Indeed, at least 30 other state attorneys general are investigating the illegal marketing of antipsychotics for unapproved (off-label) uses before FDA’s recent hasty approval for pediatric use.

References:

1. The complaint in State of Arkansas v. Janssen Pharmaceutic, Inc., Jannsen L.P. & Johnson & Johnson, Inc. is posted at Furious Seasons: http://www.furiousseasons.com/legal%20documents/arrisperdalsuit.pdf

2. See: Discussion Re: FDA approval of Risperdal (risperidone) in 1994 with reference to memoranda by Paul Leber, then Director of FDA Neuropsychopharmacology:
http://books.google.com/books?id=4T8sKI4cx_wC&pg=PA275&lpg=PA275&dq=leber+
risperdal+approval&source=web&ots=9Iz6-u0-FW&sig=RD13Lj1EUJatYprqYggMG7pjfPM#PPA276,M1

3. Leber P. Director. FDA Neuropsychopharmacology. Memorandum Re: NDA 20-592 Zyprexa (olanzapine). August 18, 1996.

4. Serious Adverse Drug Events Reported to the Food and Drug Administration, 1998-2005 Thomas J. Moore, AB; Michael R. Cohen, RPh, MS, ScD; Curt D. Furberg, MD, PhD Arch Intern Med. 2007;167:1752-1759.

* See Nov 21 commentary by Phillip Dawdy, Furious Seasons: http://www.furiousseasons.com/

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
veracare@ahrp.org
212-595-8974
###

CNN.comhttp://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200711210636DOWJONESDJON LINE000498_FORTUNE5.htm
Arkansas AG Suing JNJ Over Anti-Psychotic Drug Marketing, Dow Jones, November 21, 2007

The information herein shall not be considered an endorsement of anyone discontinuing psychiatric drugs. If you are stopping taking medication it is advisable to reduce the dose gradually WITH EXTREME CAUTION, as it is difficult to predict who will have problems withdrawing. It is worth getting as much information and support as you can, and involving your doctor wherever possible. You will find withdrawal information HERE: http://www.mind.org.uk/Information/Booklets/Making+sense/Making+sense+of+coming+off+psychiatric+drugs.htm

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON WITHDRAWAL:: Get Peter Lehmann’s book, Coming off Psychiatric Drugs: Successful Withdrawal from Neuroleptics, Antidepressants, Lithium, Carbamazepine and Tranquilizers. This valuable resource comes in US, UK, and German editions.

I, Kathleen Maire Hill, present this information in my capacity as a natural person, exercising my natural rights and freedoms. This information represents my private thoughts and beliefs and has been compiled and expressed for peer-to-peer educational purposes only.

· “Apathy is the glove into which evil slips its hand.” Bodie Thoene

· “Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.” Gandhi

· “(Freedom) is the will to be responsible to ourselves.” Friedrich Nietzsche

· “Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” Jean-Paul Sartre

· “Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom.” Marilyn Ferguson

· “Alone with one’s conscience there are no alibis!” Tristano Ajmone

· “Ethical. existence [is] the highest manifestation of spirituality.” Albert Schweitzer

A Model Consent Form for Psychiatric Drug Treatment
by David Cohen, Ph.D., and David Jacobs, Ph.D.
http://laingsociety.org/colloquia/polofdiagnosis/modelconsent.htm

How Mercury Causes Brain Neuron Degeneration (5-minute video)

http://commons.ucalgary.ca/showcasetv/displayVideo?movieID=1000073&videoID=1000023

OTTAWA – The skyrocketing infrastructure deficit is a threat to the health and safety of Canadians, NDP Leader Jack Layton and NDP Infrastructure Critic David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre) said today.

“The Harper government will have to explain to everyday Canadians why he chose a 14 billion dollar corporate tax cut over adequate funding for our cities,” said Layton. “After years of Liberal negligence, the infrastructure deficit is now $123 billion. Cities have started to increase property taxes to provide a basic service to their people, and once again, average Canadians are footing the bill.”

The NDP is calling on Harper’s Conservatives to invest long term funding for municipalities and make a real commitment to address the infrastructure deficit.

“It’s about our drinking water facilities, our sewage systems, the safety of our roads and bridges,” said Christopherson. “They are all crumbling and municipalities can’t keep up with the repairs. Why should homeowners have to pay up to 30% more for property taxes because of this government’s bad decisions, while their cities crumble?”

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) unveiled its in-depth report that showed the cost to repair and upgrade Canada’s infrastructure has doubled since 2003, to $123 billion.

“Canadians have basic expectations that the cities they live and work in are safe,” said Christopherson. “But municipal governments cannot fix the current problems on their own and it’s up to the federal government to step up and fix its Liberal-supported mini-budget blunder and start investing in our communities.”

###

Published on NDP (http://www.ndp.ca)
Created 2007-11-22

NDP statement on National Housing Day (November 22, 2007)

“When the UN’s special rapporteur on adequate housing, Miloon Kothari, recently condemned Canada for its lack of action to address Canada’s housing crisis, all Canadians have every reason to believe their federal government has let them down,” said NDP Leader Jack Layton.

“There are currently 1.5 million Canadians without adequate affordable housing. Report after report show it’s the most vulnerable who struggle to pay for a roof over their heads; new immigrants, lone parent families, the elderly, Aboriginals and young adults are the hardest hit by the lack of affordable housing,” said NDP Housing Critic Bill Siksay.

“Canadians were let down by the Liberals who slashed affordable housing funding in the mid-1990s and now by the Conservatives who have stubbornly refused to put Canada back on the right track when it comes to providing Canadians with quality affordable housing,” said NDP Poverty Critic Tony Martin. “It’s shameful that on National Housing day, Canada doesn’t have a national housing strategy.

“Only the NDP has called for a national housing strategy that will truly address the root problems of homelessness and affordability in this country.”

###

Published on NDP (http://www.ndp.ca)
Created 2007-11-21

Parliament supports historic NDP Child Care Act

OTTAWA – Following years of false starts, empty promises, and inaction from Liberal and Conservative governments, Parliament took a historic step and voted to support working and middle-class families by moving the NDP’s Early Learning and Child Care Act to third reading.

“Today, all opposition parties joined with us to move one step closer to building the foundation for a truly national, non-profit, affordable and high-quality child care program,” said NDP MP Denise Savoie (Victoria). “This minority parliament can leave a strong legacy for all our children by taking these positive steps to support working and middle class families and combat child poverty.”

If passed, Bill C-303 would ensure that federal investments in child care would be made only in high quality, affordable, accessible, and non-profit early learning and child care services. The Bill would also require accountability from provinces on how the money is spent.

“With big box child care at our doorsteps, this bill is timely and important. We need to make sure that foreign multinational corporations don’t profit off the backs of average Canadian parents,” said NDP Child Care Critic Olivia Chow (Trinity-Spadina).

Reports indicate that 40% of the revenue of ABC Learning Centres, the multinational that has begun its expansion in Canada, comes from public tax dollars.

“Across Canada, parents are struggling to find affordable child care spaces and quality centres for their children,” said Savoie. “We’re putting the priorities of middle class and working families first and addressing their needs with practical solutions like this child care act.”

The NDP Child Care bill will return to Parliament for a third reading vote in February 2008.

“Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” Jean-Paul Sartre

“Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom.” Marilyn Ferguson

“Ethical. existence [is] the highest manifestation of spirituality.” ALBERT SCHWEITZER (German physician and theologian, 1875-1965), The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, 1929, trans. by William Montgomery, 1931

A Model Consent Form for Psychiatric Drug Treatment
by David Cohen, Ph.D., and David Jacobs, Ph.D.
http://laingsociety.org/colloquia/polofdiagnosis/modelconsent.htm

How Mercury Causes Brain Neuron Degeneration (5-minute video)

Vince Boehm reports that, “In 2005 (the latest year data are available), total (U.S.)

• national health expenditures rose 6.9 percent — two times the rate of inflation (1).

· was $2 TRILLION or $6,700 per person (1).

· represented 16 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP).

· is expected to increase at similar levels for the next decade reaching $4 TRILLION in 2015, or 20 percent of GDP (2).”

1. Catlin, A, C. Cowan, S. Heffler, et al, “National Health Spending in 2005.” Health Affairs 26:1 (2006): 142-153.
2. Borger, C., et al., “Health Spending Projections Through 2015: Changes on the Horizon,” Health Affairs Web Exclusive W61: 22 February 2006

###

Vera Sharav

http://www.ahrp.org and http://ahrp.blogspot.com

A report in today’s New York Times (see below) is a reminder of the humanitarian good that medicine can achieve–if healthcare is extricated from the corporate stranglehold that has undermined rather than improved the healthcare of Americans. America ranks #1 in its per capita expenditure on healthcare: $5.274. (This $5,274 is much lower than the 2005 figure cited above [1]. If Catlin’s figures are correct (above), and the rate of increase is constant at 6.9% the true figure for 2007 should be $7656! – Vince)

The US has slipped to 42nd place in international rankings of life expectancy. Americans have an average life expectancy of 77.9 years. http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/08/13/life.expectancy.ap/index.html

Two decades ago, the US was in 11th place. The downgrade is partially due to the fact that more countries are included in the survey, but most to blame for putting the US behind most industrialized nations are rising health insurance costs, skyrocketing obesity rates, high infant mortality, and racial disparities.

(Andorra, a tiny country between France and Spain, had the longest life expectancy, at 83.5 years. We are still far ahead of Swaziland. Vince)

“Something’s wrong here when the country that spends the most on health care is not able to keep up with other countries.” http://www.newser.com/story/5726.html

Independent researchers say America’s poor showing compared to other industrialized democracies results, in part, because of widespread obesity and a lack of health insurance. Indeed, 43 million, 600,000 people were uninsured during the entire year of 2006, and 54 million, 500,000 Americans were uninsured some of the time in 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/washington/26insure.html

Cuba ranks #102 in its per capita expenditure on healthcare: $236. Cubans life expectancy is 77.08.

Yet, Cuba has not only provided free medical care to its own citizens, but beginning in July 2004, Cuba embarked on a program dubbed, Operation Miracle: more than 750,000 people from Latin America have received free treatment for eye conditions like cataracts and glaucoma.

In addition to its humanitarian benefit, an added advantage of the program is that the hospital has been training new eye doctors at an astounding rate of 2,100 this year, half of them surgeons. The hospital’s budget has been increased tenfold and its equipment upgraded. It now has 34 operating theaters with state-of-the-art equipment, including two outfitted for advanced laser surgery techniques. Just this year, Dr. Reynaldo Rios Casas, the director of the Institute of Ophthalmology said, they have performed 394 cornea transplants at the hospital: “Our specialists have an incredible amount of experience. What specialist in the world can do dozens of cornea transplants a year?”

“The campaign against vision loss serves as a poignant advertisement for the benefits of Cuban socialism, as well as an ingenious way to export one of the few things the Cuban state-run economy produces in abundance – doctors.”

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav veracare@ahrp.org 212-595-8974

###

THE NEW YORK TIMES November 20, 2007
A Health System’s ‘Miracles’ Come With Hidden Costs By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/world/americas/20havana.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

The information herein shall not be considered an endorsement of anyone discontinuing psychiatric drugs. If you are stopping taking medication it is advisable to reduce the dose gradually WITH EXTREME CAUTION, as it is difficult to predict who will have problems withdrawing. It is worth getting as much information and support as you can, and involving your doctor wherever possible. You will find withdrawal information HERE: http://www.mind.org.uk/Information/Booklets/Making+sense/Making+sense+of+coming+off+psychiatric+drugs.htm

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON WITHDRAWAL:: Get Peter Lehmann’s book, Coming off Psychiatric Drugs: Successful Withdrawal from Neuroleptics, Antidepressants, Lithium, Carbamazepine and Tranquilizers. This valuable resource comes in US, UK, and German editions.

I, Kathleen Maire Hill, present this information in my capacity as a natural person, exercising my natural rights and freedoms. This information represents my private thoughts and beliefs and has been compiled and expressed for peer-to-peer educational purposes only.

“Apathy is the glove into which evil slips its hand.” Bodie Thoene

“Life is the experience of living.” Kathleen Hill

“(Freedom) is the will to be responsible to ourselves.”
Friedrich Nietzsche – (1844-1900) – Source: Twilight of the Idols, 1888

“Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” Jean-Paul Sartre

“Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom.” Marilyn Ferguson

“Alone with one’s conscience there are no alibis!” Tristano Ajmone, President OISM

“Ethical. existence [is] the highest manifestation of spirituality.” ALBERT SCHWEITZER (German physician and theologian, 1875-1965), The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, 1929, trans. by William Montgomery, 1931

A Model Consent Form for Psychiatric Drug Treatment
by David Cohen, Ph.D., and David Jacobs, Ph.D.
http://laingsociety.org/colloquia/polofdiagnosis/modelconsent.htm

How Mercury Causes Brain Neuron Degeneration (5-minute video)

As Gandhi said – First they ignore us, then they laugh at us, and then they attack us. Then we win.

H. R. 1955

AN ACT

“To prevent homegrown terrorism, and for other purposes.”

“Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007”

IN THE SENATE (S.1959) OF THE UNITED STATES

October 24, 2007

Received; read twice and referred to the

Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

HERE: http://thomas.loc.gov/home/gpoxmlc110/h1955_rfs.xml

The U.S. Congress Legislates Genocide Of The Mind

By Jeff Knaebel

11/17/07 “ICH” — – Introduction.

There are two mutually exclusive means of livelihood.

One is to work and earn from production and exchange. This has been called the “economic means.”

The second is to seize the labor product of others through force and violence. This has been called the “political means.”

Sociologist Franz Oppenheimer defined the State as the Organization of the Political Means. It is the systemization of the predatory process within a given territory.

· “There are two distinct classes of men… those who pay taxes, and those who receive and live upon taxes.” ~ Thomas Paine

· “The State enjoys a monopoly not only on the lawful use of violence, but on the power to define the extent of its authority.” ~ Butler Shaffer, 17 March 2006

· “You get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it.” ~ Isabel Paterson, New York Herald Tribune

“Thought Crimes,” HR 1955 Passed With 404 Votes.

Submit, Ye Citizens, Silently to State Murder.

The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed HR 1955, titled the

Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007.
The full text is available at http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-1955. It was passed with 404 votes in favor.

A close reading within an historical context – keeping especially in mind the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and Presidential Executive Orders (a list of Presidential Executive Signing Orders) pursuant to which the government has engaged in massive surveillance of its own citizens, as well as detentions, extraordinary renditions, assassinations, and torture – leads me to the following conclusions:

· This is a “Thought Crime” bill of the type so often discussed in an Orwellian context.

· It specifically targets the civilian population of the United States.

· It defines “Violent Radicalization” as promoting any belief system that the government considers to be EXTREMIST. (as with “force”, left undefined)

· “Homegrown Terrorism” and “Violent Radicalization” are defined as thought crimes.

· Since the bill does not provide a specific definition of extremist belief system, it will be whatever the government at any given time deems it to be.

A few extracts of the Bill are presented below to show you its tone or “flavor.”

“(2) VIOLENT RADICALIZATION- The term `violent radicalization’ means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system… to advance political, religious, or social change.”

SECTION 899B. FINDINGS.

“(3) The INTERNET has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens.”

 

 

“(6) The potential rise of self radicalized, unaffiliated terrorists domestically cannot be easily prevented through traditional Federal intelligence or law enforcement efforts, and requires the incorporation of State and local solutions.” (centralization of power-over)

Section 899D of the bill establishes a Center for the Study of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism in the United States. This will be an institution affiliated with the Department of Homeland Security. It will study and determine how to detain thought criminals. (Inquisition/Inquisitors)

THIS LEGISLATION ENDS THE POSSIBILITY OF A CULTURE OF REASON.

It is an attempt at legislative lobotomy of conscience. It aims to eviscerate ethical sensibilities of an entire culture.

Having usurped the power of war and peace, life and death, the Corporatocracy now bludgeons even the thought of speaking for conscience. This is State murder of the mind. It is just too awesomely obscene for words. It exceeds not only the scope of my vocabulary, but my imagination as well.

The minions and hired agents of politicians are free to murder, rape and pillage on government hire using our money, but to imagine alternatives to them and the degraded, psychopathic political “leaders” who design and perpetrate these atrocities is legislated as a thought crime!

This is the legislated, politically promulgated end of man as a thinking, self-directed being. Surely this must be the outer limit of “positive law,” that is, statutory laws passed by “Lawmakers.”

It further entrenches the Power Elite as separate from and above their “subjects.” It clearly demonstrates the paranoid delusions of the Establishment, pursuant to which it legislates a massive defense mechanism to protect itself from the populace that it subjugates.

I use these terms deliberately, because the so-called freedom of the vote has turned out to be a big con game. It is only the “freedom” to choose one set of thieves over the other. The blue suits or the red suits… all of them manufactured suits of the corporations.

Following in the train of this legislation will doubtless be internal travel documents, body tracking by subcutaneous RFID chips, neighborhood snoops and spies, rewards granted for turning in politically incorrect thought criminals, mass civilian detention centers – in short, the whole totalitarian control mechanism that we associate with the SS, KGB and other code words of criminal regimes. There will be “re-programming / rehabilitation” centers to correct errant free thinkers.

The infrastructure for this – especially mental conditioning – is essentially already in place. We have become accustomed to birth certificate (the government’s initial warehouse receipt), driving license, social security number, business and professional licensing, the Corporate Warfare State control of media, and recently announced, Google’s navigation to your house by keying telephone number into the web. Take note that the Department of Homeland Security already has more than 750,000 persons on its watch list.

For a glimpse of past as prologue, read Solzhenitsyn.

Who Will Be Thought Police and Under What Standards?

Who will define radical thought, and by what standards? For example, how about the reported millions who believe that 911 was an inside job, citing a mass of evidence from eye witnesses, physicists, engineers, and recorded statements such as “We pulled it,” essentially a confession by the building’s owner of the planned demolition of Building 7?

Will the writings of John Perkins in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and The Secret History of the American Empire be thought crimes? Will this very essay be a thought crime?

What about Operation Northwoods, pursuant to which the Joint Chiefs of the United States planned for innocent people to be shot on American streets, for boats carrying passengers to be sunk on the high seas, for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched within the country, and for other depraved acts conceived in the minds of government-hired psychopaths? Previously top secret documents about this were released on 18 November 1997 and can be researched at www.wikipedia.org. Evidently, members of the Establishment will be permitted to engage in thought crime.

Soon enough, we will all be killing each other, and the statement of Mohandas Gandhi will be borne out: “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”

Will thinking about cleansing the national soul of our atrocities – of Iraq, Guantanamo, Abu Gharib, the advanced plans underway to nuke Iran, the crimes of Blackwater murders, the government’s domestic coercion and violence – be “Thought Crimes?”

Will it be thought crime to conceive of a domestic Truth and Reconciliation Commission pursuant to which high government officials are brought to book for crimes against humanity?

Will it be “radicalization” to think of alternatives to a government of, by, and for the Corporatocracy, which accumulates its vast wealth through the blood money of endless war? What about imagination-consideration of a non-coercive society of free individuals acting in voluntary cooperation, what is commonly referred to as anarchy?

Would Thomas Jefferson be liable for saying, “Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it …”

Will it be radical to conceive of preventing the Cheney-Bush cabal from launching WWIII and the incineration of earth through a false flag operation against Iran?

Would the likes of Mohandas Gandhi be jailed for saying, as he did, “Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the State becomes lawless and corrupt.”

WE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ACTIONS OF OUR GOVERNMENT

BECAUSE WE PAY FOR IT

It has taken me too many years – and too much income tax – to come to the awful realization that these “public servants” are only hired mouthpieces and puppets of the Money Powers who operate behind the scenes to orchestrate war, to coordinate the Military Industrial Complex, the Homeland Security Complex, the NGO Help-The-Poor Complex, the “Third World Corporate Development” Complex. In short, the Exploitation Complex.

The roaring inside me is about the self-disgust at living by the whims of Nice Government Men and their intellectual and financial pimps – men who, for just one example, can force starvation upon Indian farmers by their money printing press maneuvers to save their own hides from the overreach of blind greed. Men like those in Goldman Sachs who have the power to bail out their own companies and pay billions in bonuses while manipulating currencies such that basic food staples become priced out of reach of the rural Indian poor.

Let our excuse for the sorry state in which we find ourselves be not ignorance, for history is quite clear to those who would study. I quote founding father James Madison, “History records that money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible, to maintain their control over governments, by controlling money and its issuance.”

A more honest excuse would be our own greed and laziness. The quick buck. Buy now, pay later. If you want to stop the war, quit taxes.

Statement of Conscientious Objection

HR 1955 as recently passed by the House of Representatives is in effect a Thought Crime Prevention Bill. This action simply stops my mind. It cannot be absorbed. This ultimate Police State freezes my imagination.

This newest version of draconian legislation on thought control is where Jeff Knaebel says enough is enough.

Speaking truth to Power, I say – I am not your puppet. I declare my self-ownership. Come and get me if you wish. If you wish to own my body, you will have to imprison it. I am breaking the paper chains by which I have allowed you to enslave me.

You see, it is all a mind game. The government is powerless before our non-cooperation. Of course, although an abstraction, it is a heavily armed abstraction. I suggest that nonviolent civil disobedience has proven to be the most effective method of regaining control of our lives. There would be significant loss of life, but much less than with an armed struggle. It has succeeded many times, in many places.

Our thoughts arise from within us, not from or through someone else. It is not possible for someone else to come between us and our minds.

Is murder an act that involves the human conscience? Can any other hear the voice of my inner conscience? Then, how can any such other claim the power to “represent” me in choosing to kill? How can such other “represent” me in determining which of my thoughts is criminal?

To say, or even to imply, that these people “represent” me cannot be described as an obscenity. It is an absurdity. Really, I should laugh. Instead it generates a roaring inside me – the inner roar of a man who would be free.

Earlier Voices of Dissent

The following draws upon three writers of the mid 19^th Century – Wendell Phillips, Lysander Spooner and Herbert Spencer.

Spooner. The right of rebelling against what I think a bad government is as much my right as it is anyone’s. It is nothing but tyranny to require of me an oath to support the constitution, as a condition for my being allowed the ordinary privilege of getting my living in the way I choose.

Phillips. The act of voting serves to delegate authority to an agent, and what one does by an agent, he does himself. Every voter, therefore, is bound to see, before voting, whether he could himself honestly swear to support the constitution.

Spooner. There can be no law but natural law. No human enactments can overturn the natural and inalienable rights to life, liberty and property. Legitimate governments must rest on consent. This contract cannot lawfully authorize government to destroy or take from men their natural rights, for natural rights are inalienable, and can no more be surrendered to government – which is but an association of individuals – than to a single individual. A majority, however large, cannot agree to a contract that violates the natural rights of any person whatsoever. Such a contract is unlawful void, and has no moral sanction.

Spooner. The right forcibly to resist unjust law is inalienable. The constant fear of an uprising by the people is the only thing that keeps rulers from becoming tyrannical. The right and physical power of the people to resist injustice are the only real securities that any people can have for their liberties.

Spooner. The whole American revolution turned upon, and in theory established, the right of each and every man, at his discretion, to release himself from the support of the government under which he lived. This principle was asserted as a natural right of all men, at all times, and under all circumstances.

Spooner. A man’s natural rights are his own, against the whole world. Any infringement of them is a crime, whether committed by one man or by millions – whether committed by one man calling himself a robber (or any other name indicating his true character), or by millions calling themselves a government.

THIS IS MY PLACE OF “LIVE FREE OR DIE.”

One cannot deal with this except to speak out and be willing to put his life on the line. One must resist this legislation and this government, or else surrender his humanity and become a dead thing.

This is the place where the soles of my feet meet the path of Liberty. This is where Jeff Knaebel refuses to renew his “permission to live” identification documents pursuant to which Big Brother tracks him like an owned domestic animal. Any situation in which I am not free to leave means that my presence is by coercion or threat of coercion.

If one cannot leave some “place” except by permission of the “owners” (passport), then he is a slave. To learn more about issues of expatriation and “man without a country,” visit my website at www.statelessfreedom.org. I have chosen loneliness, insecurity, and occasional bouts of fear over the guilt of blood on my hands from payment of taxes to finance murder.

My body is not the property of the U.S. Government. I will challenge the U.S. Government for ownership of my body, with my body itself. My mind will be forever free. I was never the property even of my biological father, leave aside the absurdly stupid abstract concept of Nations — bounded by arbitrary lines drawn on maps — across which opposing armies of blood relations gun down the other.

I did not ask for US citizenship, and I will not accept its rules even if forced upon me. Suppose my birth under the system of Pol Pot or Idi Amin and their killing fields. Does this birth require me to uphold a regime of murder? Then, why would my birth in USA require me to uphold the murdering regime of Cheney-Bush?

Any situation in which I am not free to leave means that my presence is by coercion or threat of coercion. If I cannot leave some “place” except by permission of the “owners” (passport), then I am a slave.

The US State does not own the land called America, and it does not own anybody who was born there or lives there.

No bureaucrat has the right to define who I am — and the murder of which other person I may be forced to finance — by his stamp upon some arbitrary piece of paper. I served the USA in Vietnam during that unconscionable war. I was too young, ignorant and public school brainwashed to know better. And even at that, had they not a grip on me by paper chain of birth certificate, SSN and draft card, I would never have served.

I belong to none, other than Almighty Creation.

I claim my freedom to respect the lives of others, as I would be respected. Freedom to do no harm, and to eschew violence. Freedom to express compassion in action. Freedom to support life. Freedom not to finance murder.

No other can hear the voice of my conscience, let alone “represent” it, or speak for it. My conscience will be muffled by no person and by no law. Nor will I ever knowingly aggress against another.

Right to Ignore the State

Herbert Spencer. Right to Ignore the State: Even in its most equitable form, it is impossible for government to dissociate itself from evil. Unless the right to ignore the state is recognized, its acts must be essentially criminal.

The State is an organization that controls territory through force of arms. It claims ownership of all property and even ownership of its citizen’s lives.

The laws of States are not about ethics, but about the application of political power to control their subjects and to make them perform in ways which serve political interests.

It is self evident that if I ignore the State, relinquishing its protection and refusing to pay for its support, I in no way infringe upon the liberty of others, for I am passive and not aggressive. It is equally self evident that one cannot be compelled to continue support of a political corporation without breach of moral law, seeing that citizenship involves payment of taxes, which is a taking of property against the person’s will, and thus an infringement upon his rights.

A person cannot be coerced into political combination without breach of the law of equal freedom. However, he can withdraw from it without committing any such breach, and he has therefore a right to withdraw.

An obvious implication is that the ethics of government, originally identical with the ethics of war, must remain akin to them, and can diverge only as warlike activities and preparations become less. – End Spencer –

No contract can be entered by a fresh young child. If my father is a thief, I don’t have to obey.

I entered no contract with the United States after reaching the age of majority because I would not knowingly enter into a contract with murderers. I obeyed due to coercion.

THE RIGHT OF NONVIOLENCE IS A UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHT

This Requires Conscientious Objection To Mandatory Citizenship

Great minds writing in great Universal Charters of mankind have said violence arises in the mind of man, and that men have right to life and liberty.

Yet, mankind continues to institutionalize the most bestial and degraded aspects of his nature through State promulgation of the three great poisons of greed, hatred and delusion.

These great charters drawn by great men do not grant a man the right not to finance the murdering State. This shows to me that these great men were part of the Political Establishment.

To grant citizens the Universal Right not to finance war would put them out of business.

I would not choose to live in a violent neighborhood where local thugs and criminals were ruling the neighborhood by force and terrorizing the populace. I would not choose to associate myself with murderers. Yet, in the present system of the institutionalized Corporate Warfare State, we have mass murderers, thieves and criminals in charge of the future of all life on earth who are claiming to represent me.

“The idea of creating systems designed to threaten, coerce, and kill, and to imbue such agencies with principled legitimacy [a façade of moral legitimacy], and not expect them to lead to wars, genocides and other tyrannical practices, expresses an innocence we can no longer affords to indulge.” ~ Butler Shaffer, June 2003.

The great job of Man on this earth is to alleviate suffering. How does financing the organized crime of the State help?

How did we get here? Break the frame. Get out of the box. Don’t be bound by the frame the dark forces have made.

It Is Man’s Duty To Love.

Imagination is more powerful than knowledge or thinking. By imagination we can create a new world. But, we must let go of the greed which hold us bound in shackles. We must move to the freedom of love.

It now must be of the “tough love” variety. We must see clearly and face bravely the reality of what we continue to create for ourselves. We must take up tough ethical positions.

We have proved again and again, over spans of millennia, that any kind of violent revolution will only turn the wheel of violence another revolution, around and around.

If we will but cease to destroy, we may live. We cannot negotiate with melting glaciers. Perhaps we can negotiate with the storms of insatiable greed and desire raging within our own minds. Perhaps we can come out of our addiction to more, more and faster, faster.

What is the money calculation of love? There is no solution at the level of political economy. Former questions in the realms of philosophy and abstract ethics have now become questions of survival. We must reach for a higher psycho-spiritual level.

To issue from the workshops of Nature, a thing must be worthy of Nature’s loving care and most painstaking art, exercised with the patience of billions of years of biological evolution. Should it not be worthy of my respect, at least? In fact, it is worthy of my love, and I would not destroy it, nor would I finance a government to destroy it.

“All works of life are significant – yea, marvelous, surpassing and inimitable. Life busies itself not with useless trifles. Men’s fevers are transmutable. The fever of war may be transmuted into a fever of peace. The fever of hoarding wealth may be transmuted into a fever of hoarding love. Such is the alchemy of the Spirit.” ~ Mirdad

The revolution we must undertake to save ourselves is a revolution within our own minds toward loving kindness, truth, and respect for life.

I maintain that it is the right of any individual person to reject and renounce a government which violates his moral conscience. I maintain that it is my personal right, in this very body, here and now, to ignore the State, and to refuse participation in its actions which violate humanity and life itself. I also declare that the same is my intention insofar as refusal to pay direct tax to any nation-state. There can be no treason if one’s first loyalty is to humanity and to life itself. Human life is above Nation-State. Personal conscience and individual moral sovereignty is above State sovereignty. How can the question of treason arise when one refuses to murder innocent women and children? He who claims self ownership can never commit treason because the State cannot own him. He is not the property of the State.

“Once it is conceded that any man or body of men have any right to make laws of their own invention – and compel other men to obey them – then every vestige of man’s natural and rightful liberty is denied.” ~ Lysander Spooner

I have not entered into a contract granting the United States Government any authority over my life whatsoever.

To those who would accept a legislated statutory slavery, I say — may your shackles bind you without too much pain. May you go quietly into oblivion, and may you not burden me with the memory that you ever stood a watch with me on Spaceship Earth.

(If you are interested in further exploration of personal statelessness, stop by and visit www.statelessfreedom.org .)

Jeff Knaebel [send him mail] is an expatriate American domiciled in India since 1995. He formerly practiced as a registered professional engineer, having been trained at Cornell Univ. and the Colorado School of Mines.

I, Kathleen Maire Hill, present this information in my capacity as a natural person, exercising my natural rights and freedoms. This information represents my private thoughts and beliefs (accept for where the term “man” means both genders, all age groups, throughout human evolutionary time and has been compiled and expressed for peer-to-peer educational experiences only.

Senate Bill S.1959 to Criminalize Thoughts, Blogs, Books and Free Speech Across America

See ALSO: Philip Giraldi at the Huffington Post, Declan McCullagh at CNET’s News.com, Kathryn Smith at OpEdNews.com, and of course Alex Jones at PrisonPlanet.com

This bill is the beginning of the end of Free Speech in America. If it passes, all the information sources you know and trust could be shut down and their authors imprisoned. NewsTarget could be taken offline and I could be arrested as a “terrorist.” Jeff Rense at www.Rense.com could be labeled a “terrorist” and arrested. Byron Richards, Len Horowitz, Paul Craig Roberts, Greg Palast, Ron Paul and even Al Gore could all be arrested, silenced and incarcerated. This is not an exaggeration. It is a literal reading of the law, which you can check yourself here: http://thomas.loc.gov/home/gpoxmlc110/h1955_rfs.xml

The bill states:

‘…ideologically based violence’ means the use, planned use, or threatened use of FORCE or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual’s political, religious, or social beliefs…

Note that this means the “planned use of force to promote a political or social belief” would be considered an act of terrorism. This all hinges on the definition of “force,” of course. Based on the loose use of logic in Washington these days, and the slippery interpretation of the meaning of words, “force” could mean:

• A grassroots campaign to barrage Congress with faxes
• A non-violent street protest
• A letter-writing campaign that deluges the Senate with too much mail
• A sit-in protest that blocks access to a business or organization
• A grassroots e-mail campaign that overloads the e-mail servers of any government department or agency

You get the idea. “Force” could be defined as practically anything. And since the “planned use of force“ would be considered a criminal act of terrorism, anyone who simply thinks about a grassroots action campaign would be engaged in terrorist acts… The United States is on the fast track to fascism, and the Congress is working right alongside this nation’s traitorous leaders to criminalize any thoughts, words or speeches that disagree with current government policies regarding war, terrorism, domestic surveillance and civil liberties. Simply speaking out against the war on Iraq could soon be labeled a crime.

Must-see video: Naomi Wolf’s lecture on 10 steps to fascism

There’s a video lecture you simply MUST watch. It’s by Naomi Wolf, author of The End of America. She covers this topic with great elegance and a deep understanding of history.

See her video on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjALf12PAWc

Click here to see her book on Amazon.com.

… This S.1959 legislation, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, represents one of the ten steps to achieve a fascist state!

It is designed to squash all opposition to the State’s ongoing march towards blatant fascism, where secret police and secret prisons dominate the law enforcement landscape, stripping U.S. citizens of all civil liberties and Constitutional protections.

It targets anyone who speaks or even thinks thoughts against the U.S. federal government.

With this bill, the U.S. government is officially labelling the People of the United States as criminals…

Take Action NOW HERE http://www.newstarget.com/022308.html

###

About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health researcher and author with a strong interest in personal health, the environment and the power of nature to help us all heal He has authored more than 1,500 articles and dozens of reports, guides and interviews on natural health topics, reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and improving personal health around the world. Adams is an honest, independent journalist and accepts no money or commissions on the third-party products he writes about or the companies he promotes. In 2007, Adams launched EcoLEDs, a maker of super bright LED light bulbs that are 1000% more energy efficient than incandescent lights. He also launched an online retailer of environmentally-friendly products (BetterLifeGoods.com) and uses a portion of its profits to help fund non-profit endeavors. He’s also a successful software entrepreneur, having founded a well known email marketing software company whose technology currently powers the NewsTarget email newsletters. Adams is currently the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit, and practices nature photography, Capoeira, Pilates and organic gardening. Known on the ‘net as ‘the Health Ranger,’ Adams shares his ethics, mission statements and personal health statistics at www.HealthRanger.org

Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act Raises Fears of New Government Crackdown on Dissent

Amy Goodman (DemocracyNow.org) Interview with Kamau Karl Franklin, Center for Constitutional Rights (ccrjustice.org) and Jessica Lee, journalist for the Indypendent.

The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act was passed in an overwhelming 400 to 6 House vote last month under what is called the “Suspension of the Rules”, which is a provision the House uses to pass bills very quickly and these are usually bills deemed UNcontroversial and do not need more debate.. Critics say it could herald a new government crackdown on dissident activity under the guise of fighting terrorism.

· When you look at what is going on in Olympia, with individuals sitting down and blocking war shipments. When you look at Code Pink going into Congress and disrupting activities. Could this be included in this definition?

· So in the past if someone got charged for blocking the street, there were charged with disorderly conduct, or obstruction of governmental administration. … So its the broad base, the breadth, the scope of the inquiry, which is really threatening for potential activists, people concerned with social justice issues and civil libertarians, something people should really be concerned about.

· I see groups as folks that are come out against the globalization, anti-globalization activists, social justice activists, animal rights activists. I think the breadth is [extounding] in terms of what can be covered. I don’t think there’s any limits placed on who can be targeted by this particular act. I think certain groups have already been singled out, like folks that are fighting against some of the globalization measures that are happening.

· … the breadth of it is not focused in on supposed terrorists who are threatening the United States, but folks who have real concerns about where this country is heading, folks who express dissent in various different ways including demonstrations and marches.

? Interested in saving America’s future from tyrants?

Join the American Freedom Campaign, founded by Naomi Wolf.

Maryland Health Officials Who Coerce Vaccinations Qualify as “Terrorists” Under New Senate Legislation

Excerpted in Part from NewsTarget UPDATE Friday, November 30, 2007 by: Mike Adams—Further to — Senate Bill 1959 to Criminalize Thoughts, Blogs, Books and Free Speech Across America

With the help of two state judges and the head of the local school board, Maryland’s Attorney General Glenn Ivey conspired to terrorize parents with threats of having them taken from their homes at gunpoint (being arrested) and forcibly separated from their families by throwing them in jail for up to 30 days if they refused to have their children vaccinated with drugs that contain the toxic heavy metal mercury.

There is absolutely no question that under the new legislation that’s about to pass the Senate, called the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, Glenn Ivey’s actions would qualify as acts of terrorism. (See our previous report on this topic at http://www.newstarget.com/022308.html ) Even more interestingly, Glenn Ivey merely thinking about threatening parents who don’t get their children vaccinated would, all by itself, be considered a terrorist “thoughtcrime” act.

Glenn Ivey, of course, will never be prosecuted as a terrorist under this law.

In a fascist police state, the laws are never applied to the criminals running the State. Laws are selectively applied only to the citizenry, not the officials, bureaucrats and law enforcement personnel who are protecting the power structure. This is, in fact, a key sign of an unjust society: The King’s laws never apply to the King! (Only to the peasants…)

Ignoring the rule of law

Essentially, it means there are two tiers of law.

• At the bottom, there are all the laws that apply to the people, which include this anti-terrorism legislation. (The “Un-deserving”)
  
• At the top, none of those laws apply to the people running the State. (The “Deserving”)

Maryland‘s Attorney General will never be charged as a terrorist, even if his actions clearly qualify him as one under U.S. law. President Bush will unfortunately never be charged as a murderer, even though his war actions clearly qualify him as a mass murderer (if you kill just one person, it’s called murder, but if you kill a hundred thousand, it’s called war).

How about the international laws against the use of weapons of mass destruction? Once again, the United States is openly engaged in the use of such weapons — depleted uranium shells being used right now in Iraq and Afghanistan. Note that there is absolutely no international trial, no charges, and no outcry from any western nation over the use of this WMD that will irradiate the Iraqi landscape for generations to come.

How laws are applied in a police state

Police state societies do not respect the rule of law. They simply invent laws as they go along, then selectively apply them to whoever they want. For example, here in the United States, it is illegal for the President to declare an act of war. Only Congress can declare an act of war, yet Congress never declared war against Iran or Afghanistan. Bush sort of declared war, but only against a concept — terrorism — and not an enemy state.

We can do this the easy way or the hard way…

What’s clear about all this in the United States today is that the U.S. government believes it has the right to use terrorist tactics on the People in order to achieve its political goals. The gunpoint medicine policy of forced vaccinations in Maryland is a recent outgrowth of this dangerous belief. It is the kind of belief that lets you know right away just how quickly this country is headed towards police state fascism. Apparently, pointing guns in the faces of the People (or threatening to do so) is increasingly one of the ways in which Government gets its way.

In fact, Maryland’s Attorney General used these exact words when describing his gunpoint medicine policy of forced vaccinations: “We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way…”

Interested in saving America’s future from tyrants? Join the American Freedom Campaign, founded by Naomi Wolf http://www.AmericanFreedomCampaign.org

About the author: Mike Adams is a holistic nutritionist with a mission to teach personal and planetary health to the public He has authored more than 1,500 articles and dozens of reports, guides and interviews on natural health topics, impacting the lives of millions of readers around the world who are experiencing phenomenal health benefits from reading his articles. Adams is an independent journalist with strong ethics who does not get paid to write articles about any product or company. In 2007, Adams launched EcoLEDs, a maker of super bright LED light bulbs that are 1000% more energy efficient than incandescent lights. He also founded an environmentally-friendly online retailer called BetterLifeGoods.com that uses retail profits to help support consumer advocacy programs. He’s also the founder and CEO of a well known email mail merge software developer whose software, ‘Email Marketing Director,’ currently runs the NewsTarget email subscriptions. Adams volunteers his time to serve as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and practices nature photography, Capoeira, Pilates and organic gardening. He’s also author of numerous health books published by Truth Publishing and is the creator of several consumer-oriented grassroots campaigns, including the Spam. Don’t Buy It! campaign, and the free downloadable Honest Food Guide. He also created the free reference sites HerbReference.com and HealingFoodReference.com. Adams believes in free speech, free access to nutritional supplements and the ending of corporate control over medicines, genes and seeds.

###

The Dictatress of the World 
Excerpted in part from: Losing and Restoring the Republic
By Jacob G. Hornberger, Information Clearing House    

Who can deny that today, having abandoned the limited-government foreign policy of our ancestors, the United States has indeed become the dictatress of the world? What other nation has a government with the omnipotent power to go into nearly any nation on earth, kidnap any of its citizens, and send them to monstrous foreign regimes for the express purpose of torture and perhaps even extrajudicial execution?

No one can deny that we live in a country in which the president wields the omnipotent power to take the entire nation into war on his own initiative. That is, our ruler wields the power to ignore the constitutional restraint that requires him to secure a congressional declaration of war before waging war. He has the power to execute “signing statements” indicating the power to ignore any law enacted by Congress. He has the power to order his federal agencies to spy on the American people, even secretly and surreptitiously monitoring their telephone calls and email. The discomforting reality is that in his role as a military “commander in chief” in the never-ending “war on terror,” the president now has the power to ignore all constitutional restraints on his power.

Moreover, in what would constitute one of the most monumental legal revolutions in American history, the president, operating in conjunction with the CIA and the U.S. military, now claims the omnipotent power to take any American into custody as an “enemy combatant,” deny him due process of law and trial by jury, torture him, and detain him for the rest of his life.

As the commander in chief in the never-ending “war on terror,” the president essentially wields the same omnipotent powers as such military rulers as Napoleon and Santa Anna.

I, Kathleen Maire Hill, present this information in my capacity as a natural person, exercising my natural rights and freedoms. This information represents my private thoughts and beliefs and has been compiled and expressed for peer-to-peer educational experiences only.

“Apathy is the glove into which evil slips its hand.” Bodie Thoene

“Life is the experience of living.” Kathleen Hill

“(Freedom) is the will to be responsible to ourselves.”
Friedrich Nietzsche – (1844-1900) – Source: Twilight of the Idols, 1888

“Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” Jean-Paul Sartre

“Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom.” Marilyn Ferguson

“Alone with one’s conscience there are no alibis!” Tristano Ajmone, President OISM

“Ethical. existence [is] the highest manifestation of spirituality.” ALBERT SCHWEITZER (German physician and theologian, 1875-1965), The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, 1929, trans. by William Montgomery, 1931

A Model Consent Form for Psychiatric Drug Treatment
by David Cohen, Ph.D., and David Jacobs, Ph.D.
http://laingsociety.org/colloquia/polofdiagnosis/modelconsent.htm

How Mercury Causes Brain Neuron Degeneration (5-minute video)
http://tinyurl.com/3y98p7

As Gandhi said – First they ignore us, then they laugh at us, and then they attack us.
Then we win.

Excerpted From AHRP.org by Vera Sharav http://www.ahrp.org and http://ahrp.blogspot.com

FYI “We did a beautiful experiment, but it definitely was a disappointment.” That’s how the lead scientist described Merck’s failed HIV vaccine trial.

Bloomberg News reports (below): “The Merck setback means that 25 years into the AIDS epidemic doctors are still far from having a protective vaccine. An international team of scientists has been recruited to determine precisely what went wrong.”

Meanwhile, leading researchers are re-examining their vaccine strategies, said David Ho, who has studied HIV since the epidemic began. “It’s a giant step backwards,” Ho, scientific director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York, said in a telephone interview.

“It calls into question all the vaccines using related strategies that have been leading the field.”

TIME Magazine: “I don’t think anyone imagined the results would be so definitively negative so quickly,” says Dr. Gary Nabel, director of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institutes of Health.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1681526,00.html

The New York Times (below), ever more cautious about reporting a major medical research failure, tried to deflect the news: “the researchers said not enough data existed to determine the meaning of the findings about the vaccine, which is made by Merck. The increased risk was principally among a group of people who had pre-existing levels of immunity to a common cold virus known as adenovirus type 5, which was modified to become a critical part of the vaccine. Researchers emphasized that the vaccine itself could not cause AIDS. one theory is that the cold virus may have activated the immune system in some way to make certain recipients more susceptible to becoming H. I. V.-infected when they were exposed to the AIDS virus.”

However, the data is significant 49 in the vaccinated group compared with 33 in the placebo group became infected. Further analysis showed that the imbalance was much more apparent among those who had the highest level of pre-existing immunity to the cold virus used in the vaccine. Among 778 male volunteers who had a high level of pre-existing adenovirus immunity, 21 of those receiving the vaccine developed H. I. V. infections compared with 9 in the placebo group.

The trials were conducted in the United States, Peru, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Australia and South Africa.
See also: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1681526,00.html

TIME Nov. 07, 2007 Assessing a Failed AIDS Vaccine By ALICE PARK
Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav veracare@ahrp.org 212-595-8974

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aQIXYJAthREU&refer=home#
Merck AIDS Failure Hurts Global HIV Vaccine Research (Update1)
By John Lauerman Nov. 15 (Bloomberg) – To contact the reporter on this story: John Lauerman in Boston at jlauerman@bloomberg.net . Last Updated: November 15, 2007 10:12 EST

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/08/health/08hiv.html
THE NEW YORK TIMES November 8, 2007
In Tests, AIDS Vaccine Seemed to Increase Risk By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN and ANDREW POLLACK

The information herein shall not be considered an endorsement of anyone discontinuing psychiatric drugs. If you are stopping taking medication it is advisable to reduce the dose gradually WITH EXTREME CAUTION, as it is difficult to predict who will have problems withdrawing. It is worth getting as much information and support as you can, and involving your doctor wherever possible. You will find withdrawal information here: http://www.mind.org.uk/Information/Booklets/Making+sense/Making+sense+of+coming+off+psychiatric+drugs.htm

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON WITHDRAWAL: Get Peter Lehmann’s book, Coming off Psychiatric Drugs: Successful Withdrawal from Neuroleptics, Antidepressants, Lithium, Carbamazepine and Tranquilizers. This valuable resource comes in US, UK, and German editions.

I, Kathleen Maire Hill, present this information in my capacity as a natural person, exercising my natural rights and freedoms. This information represents my private thoughts and beliefs and has been compiled and expressed for peer-to-peer educational purposes only.

“Apathy is the glove into which evil slips its hand.” Bodie Thoene

“Life is the experience of living.” Kathleen Hill

“(Freedom) is the will to be responsible to ourselves.”
Friedrich Nietzsche – (1844-1900) – Source: Twilight of the Idols, 1888

“Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” Jean-Paul Sartre

“Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom.” Marilyn Ferguson

“Alone with one’s conscience there are no alibis!” Tristano Ajmone, President OISM

“Ethical. existence [is] the highest manifestation of spirituality.” ALBERT SCHWEITZER (German physician and theologian, 1875-1965), The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, 1929, trans. by William Montgomery, 1931

A Model Consent Form for Psychiatric Drug Treatment
by David Cohen, Ph.D., and David Jacobs, Ph.D.
http://laingsociety.org/colloquia/polofdiagnosis/modelconsent.htm

How Mercury Causes Brain Neuron Degeneration (5-minute video)

Published on NDP (http://www.ndp.ca) Created 2007-11-14 14:08

OTTAWA – Today, NDP Leader Jack Layton and NDP Infrastructure Critic David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre) called on the Harper government to put in place a real plan to invest in Canadian cities. The need for such a plan is urgent as the direct consequences of Harper’s unbalanced mini-budget mount.

Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion recently indicated that property taxes in her city will have to be increased, blaming the lack of investment in the mini-budget announced by the Harper government last month. Layton and Mayor McCallion spoke earlier today about the failings of the Harper mini-budget and, in particular, that its focus on corporate tax cuts does nothing to address long-term infrastructure deficits.

“Mayor Hazel McCallion’s dilemma is just one example of what hundreds of mayors across Canada are facing. The Harper government had an opportunity to close the prosperity gap facing our cities but chose not to. The situation facing our cities today is urgent,” said Layton.

Mississauga City Council was forced to bring in a five per cent operating tax increase in order to pay for much-needed infrastructure.

“Working and middle class families are directly affected because Harper’s mini-budget put the big corporations first,” said Layton. “Now homeowners’ pocketbooks are being hit to pay for Harper’s bad decisions.”

Christopherson doesn’t understand where the Harper government’s priorities are. “Harper gives 14 billion in corporate tax cuts but our cities scramble. The NDP would have taken a balanced approached,” he said. “Why should homeowners pay the price for Harper’s corporate tax cuts to the banks? We need investments in our communities, and we need investments now.”

© 2007 New Democratic Party, all rights reserved. Authorized by the registered agent for Canada’s NDP. http://www.ndp.ca/page/5890