Making your children crazy: obey or be medicated

How Teenage Rebellion Has Become a Mental Illness

By Bruce E. Levine, AlterNet.

For a generation now, disruptive young Americans who rebel against authority figures have been increasingly diagnosed with mental illnesses and medicated with psychiatric (psychotropic) drugs.

Disruptive young people who are medicated with Ritalin, Adderall and other amphetamines routinely report that these drugs make them "care less" about their boredom, resentments and other negative emotions, thus making them more compliant and manageable. And so-called atypical antipsychotics such as Risperdal and Zyprexa -- powerful tranquilizing drugs -- are increasingly prescribed to disruptive young Americans, even though in most cases they are not displaying any psychotic symptoms.

Many talk show hosts think I'm kidding when I mention oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). After I assure them that ODD is in fact an official mental illness -- an increasingly popular diagnosis for children and teenagers -- they often guess that ODD is simply a new term for juvenile delinquency. But that is not the case.

Young people diagnosed with ODD, by definition, are doing nothing illegal (illegal behaviors are a symptom of another mental illness called conduct disorder). In 1980, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) created oppositional defiant disorder, defining it as "a pattern of negativistic, hostile and defiant behavior." The official symptoms of ODD include "often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rules" and "often argues with adults." While ODD-diagnosed young people are obnoxious with adults they don't respect, these kids can be a delight with adults they do respect; yet many of them are medicated with psychotropic drugs.

An even more common reaction to oppressive authorities than overt defiance is some type of passive defiance.

John Holt, the late school critic, described passive-aggressive strategies employed by prisoners in concentration camps and slaves on plantations, as well as some children in classrooms. Holt pointed out that subjects may attempt to appease their rulers while still satisfying some part of their own desire for dignity "by putting on a mask, by acting much more stupid and incompetent than they really are, by denying their rulers the full use of their intelligence and ability, by declaring their minds and spirits free of their enslaved bodies."

Holt observed that by "going stupid" in a classroom, children frustrate authorities through withdrawing the most intelligent and creative parts of their minds from the scene, thus achieving some sense of potency.

Going stupid -- or passive aggression -- is one of many nondisease explanations for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Studies show that virtually all ADHD-diagnosed children will pay attention to activities that they enjoy or that they have chosen. In other words, when ADHD-labeled kids are having a good time and in control, the "disease" goes away.

There are other passive rebellions against authority that have been medicalized by mental health authorities. I have talked to many people who earlier in their lives had been diagnosed with substance abuse, depression and even schizophrenia but believe that their "symptoms" had in fact been a kind of resistance to the demands of an oppressive environment. Some of these people now call themselves psychiatric survivors.

While there are several reasons for behavioral disruptiveness and emotional difficulties, rebellion against an oppressive environment is one common reason that is routinely not even considered by many mental health professionals. Why? It is my experience that many mental health professionals are unaware of how extremely obedient they are to authorities. Acceptance into medical school and graduate school and achieving a Ph.D. or M.D. means jumping through many meaningless hoops, all of which require much behavioral, attentional and emotional compliance to authorities -- even disrespected ones. When compliant M.D.s and Ph.D.s begin seeing noncompliant patients, many of these doctors become anxious, sometimes even ashamed of their own excessive compliance, and this anxiety and shame can be fuel for diseasing normal human reactions.

Two ways of subduing defiance are to criminalize it and to pathologize it, and U.S. history is replete with examples of both. In the same era that John Adams' Sedition Act criminalized criticism of U.S. governmental policy, Dr. Benjamin Rush, the father of American psychiatry (his image adorns the APA seal), pathologized anti-authoritarianism. Rush diagnosed those rebelling against a centralized federal authority as having an "excess of the passion for liberty" that "constituted a form of insanity." He labeled this illness "anarchia."

Throughout American history, both direct and indirect resistance to authority has been diseased. In an 1851 article in the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, Louisiana physician Samuel Cartwright reported his discovery of "drapetomania," the disease that caused slaves to flee captivity. Cartwright also reported his discovery of "dysaesthesia aethiopis," the disease that caused slaves to pay insufficient attention to the master's needs. Early versions of ODD and ADHD?

In Rush's lifetime, few Americans took anarchia seriously, nor was drapetomania or dysaesthesia aethiopis taken seriously in Cartwright's lifetime. But these were eras before the diseasing of defiance had a powerful financial ally in Big Pharma.

In every generation there will be authoritarians. There will also be the "bohemian bourgeois" who may enjoy anti-authoritarian books, music, and movies but don't act on them. And there will be genuine anti-authoritarians, who are so pained by exploitive hierarchies that they take action. Only occasionally in American history do these genuine anti-authoritarians actually take effective direct action that inspires others to successfully revolt, but every once in a while a Tom Paine comes along. So authoritarians take no chances, and the state-corporate partnership criminalizes anti-authoritarianism, pathologizes it, markets drugs to "cure" it and financially intimidates those who might buck the system.

It would certainly be a dream of Big Pharma and those who favor an authoritarian society if every would-be Tom Paine -- or Crazy Horse, Tecumseh, Emma Goldman or Malcolm X -- were diagnosed as a youngster with mental illness and quieted with a lifelong regimen of chill pills. The question is: Has this dream become reality?


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

Original article posted here.

Mind blowing historical tape exposing the wonderful possiblity to manipulate people's religious beliefs and the US government's role in the same

Please listen to this (and comment)



Jim Jones discussion starts at approximately minute 19

Mind blowing historical tape exposing the wonderful possiblity to manipulate people's religious beliefs and the US government's role in the same

Jim Jones discussion starts at approximately minute 19

The Shock Doctrine

Drugging kids: Film on kids on psychotropic drugs

We won't call it "Justice" regarding the barbarism of CIA mind control under MK Ultra and Artichoke, but it is a step in the right direction

Woman gets cash after CIA brainwashing ordeal

Max Harrold, CanWest News Service

MONTREAL — A Montreal woman who underwent years of debilitating brainwashing techniques in the 1950s and 1960s has ended her case against the federal government, accepting an undisclosed amount of money.

Janine Huard, 79, accepted a cheque for an amount that “will make her very comfortable,” her lawyer, Alan Stein, said Wednesday.
Stein said part of his client’s agreement was that she not disclose the amount.

The settlement opens the door for other former patients of Huard’s doctor at the time, the former director of McGill University’s Allan Memorial Institute, Ewen Cameron, to try and get compensation for their treatment by him despite the long delay.

The treatment included electroshock therapy and sleeping while wearing earphones that played repeated messages. The experiments were conducted by the Canadian government and the CIA.

“It’s a landmark decision,” Stein said, adding that he knows of about 10 former patients and 20 relatives of former patients who may now be part of a class-action suit he is preparing.

Huard entered the Allan Memorial Institute in 1957 suffering postpartum depression after the birth of her second child. Her newborn had become ill and Huard was having trouble sleeping.

But instead of helping her, Cameron used her as a guinea pig to carry out experimental brainwashing techniques that he mistakenly believed could treat depression.

Original article posted here.

This is the lunacy of my country

US planned one big nuclear blast for mankind

The US Air Force developed a top-secret plan to detonate a nuclear bomb on the moon as a display of military might at the height of the Cold War.

In an exclusive interview with The Observer, Dr Leonard Reiffel, 73, the physicist who fronted the project in the late Fifties at the US military-backed Armour Research Foundation, revealed America's extraordinary lunar plan.

'It was clear the main aim of the proposed detonation was a PR exercise and a show of one-upmanship. The Air Force wanted a mushroom cloud so large it would be visible on earth,' he said yesterday. 'The US was lagging behind in the space race.'

'The explosion would obviously be best on the dark side of the moon and the theory was that if the bomb exploded on the edge of the moon, the mushroom cloud would be illuminated by the sun.' The bomb would have been at least as large as the one used on Hiroshima at the end of World War II.

'I made it clear at the time there would be a huge cost to science of destroying a pristine lunar environment, but the US Air Force were mainly concerned about how the nuclear explosion would play on earth,' said Reiffel.

Although he believes the blast would have had little environmental impact on Earth, its crater may have ruined the face of the 'man in the moon'.

Reiffel would not reveal how the explosion would have taken place. But he confirmed it was 'certainly technically feasible' and that at the time an intercontinental ballistic nuclear missile would have been capable of hitting a target on the moon with an accuracy of within two miles.

Reiffel was approached by senior US Air Force officers in 1958, who asked him to 'fast-track' a project to investigate the visibility and effects of a nuclear explosion on the moon. The top-secret Project A119, was entitled 'A Study of Lunar Research Flights'.

'Had the project been made public there would have been an outcry,' said Reiffel.

Many Cold War documents are still classified in the US, but details of Project A119 emerged after a biography of celebrated US scientist and astronomer Carl Sagan was published there last year.

Sagan, who died in 1996, was famous for popularising science in the US and pioneering the study of potential life on other planets. At the Armour Foundation in Chicago - now called the Illinois Institute of Technology Research - he was hired by Reiffel to undertake mathematical modelling on the expansion of an exploding dust cloud in the space around the moon. This was key to calculating the visibility of such a cloud from the Earth.

At the time scientists still believed there might be microbial life on the moon and Sagan had suggested a nuclear explosion might be used to detect organisms.

Despite the highly classified nature of the work, Sagan's biographer, Keay Davidson, discovered that he had disclosed details of it when he applied for the prestigious Miller Institute graduate fellowship to Berkeley.

Yet, until today, the full nature of Project A119 has never been revealed. Friends of Sagan believe he never would have wilfully revealed classified information, but Reiffel has come forward to put the 'historical record straight'.

Reiffel continued: 'It was well known that the existence of this project was top secret. Had Sagan wanted to make any disclosures to any party, as his boss at the time, I would have had to take forward any such request and Air Force permission would have been extremely unlikely in those very tense times.'

In a letter to the science magazine Nature, Reiffel said: 'Fortunately for the future of lunar science, a one or two horse race to detonate a nuclear explosion never occurred. But in my opinion Sagan breached security in March, 1959.'

Reiffel produced eight reports between May 1958 and January 1959 on the feasibility of the plan, all of which were destroyed in 1987 by the foundation. Reiffel would not discuss details of these reports, believing they were still classified, but it was clear the conclusion was that the explosion would have been visible from Earth

He does not know why the plans were scrapped, but said: 'Thankfully, the thinking changed. I am horrified that such a gesture to sway public opinion was ever considered.'

Dr David Lowry, a British nuclear historian, said: 'It is obscene. To think that the first contact human beings would have had with another world would have been to explode a nuclear bomb. Had they gone ahead, we would never have had the romantic image of Neil Armstrong taking "one giant step for mankind".'

Lowry believes Project A119 has relevance today with the US proposing a missile defence system in space. He said: 'The US has always wanted to militarise space and some of the fanciful ideas currently being put forward will seem as incredible as the idea of nuking the moon in the Fifties seems today.'

A Pentagon spokesman would not confirm or deny the plans.

• antony.barnett@observer.co.uk

Original article posted herew.

Dead-eye, Delusional Dick

Richard Cheney: Cultural Psychosis in Your Face

Senator Dick Durbin (Dem, Illinois) went to the floor of the Senate last month to denounce Vice President Richard "Dick" Cheney as being “delusional”(1). Maureen Dowd quickly followed up by pointing out that "Delusional is far too mild a word to describe Dick Cheney. Delusional doesn’t begin to capture the profound, transcendental one-flew-over daftness of the man"(2).

Maureen continued by asking, "Has anyone in the history of the United States ever been so singularly wrong and misguided about such phenomenally important events and continued to insist he’s right in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary"(2)? On his very own, Cheney claims the same kind of infallibility previously self-proclaimed by the heads of church and the heads of despotic states. Cheney is a would-be tyrant in a business suit.

If delusional is too mild a word to describe Dick Cheney, then we must seek out a more appropriate term, one that better captures the essence of our Vice President. One such term is "demented" i.e., "not all there" or "out to lunch."

One can even make a reasonably good case for referring to Cheney as a "DickWad," simply because he is a Dick and his neoconservative world view is a wad. In Dick's case, we are talking about a world view that knows nothing of human rights and nothing of democracy, a world view that only goes back a few decades to the emergence of "neoconservatism" in the U.S.

In the 1960s, Leo Strauss, a political "scientist" at the University of Chicago, provided a world view, but not within the context of American democracy and progress toward honoring human rights. He provided a world view within the context of Abrahamic religion as a millennial justification for despotism(3).

A refuge from Nazi Germany, Strauss did not see the turmoil of the 1960s as an exercise in freedom of expression. He did not see the turmoil as a matter of public outrage with corporate capitalism's efforts to define and control America at the expense of family and community values. Strauss believed that America had lost its traditional values based in religion.

The emergence of "neoconservatism" was based on Strauss's reunification of religion with the American political world to produce a world view 180 degrees removed from American democracy, a world view with which only a minority of Americans would be inclined to agree. That is why very few Americans even know about Leo Strauss and neoconservatism.

"Cheney was one of the original neocon signers of the Project for a New American Century -- a blueprint published in 1997 for the United State to dominate the Middle East politically and militarily in the aftermath of the Cold War"(4). Cheney's administration relies on the loyalty of religious people to provide blind support in the absence of factual knowledge.

In other words, Cheney suffers, not from a "collective psychosis"(5) because very few people would actually believe the neoconservative world view, if given a choice, because it is based in the maintenance of despotism. Cheney suffers from his own "cultural psychosis" by virtue of the Abrahamic roots of neoconservatism that have nothing whatsoever to do with human rights and democracy.

This would be true for all people who embrace the cultural despotism of the past in order to maintain the currently perverted status quo, e.g., those who place the values of Old Testament Romanism and crony capitalism above the values of Jefferson's democracy - which happen to embrace the values of nascent Christianity as the source of compassion-based human rights.

Following 9/11, it is apparent that Cheney assumed virtual control over the Bush presidency. "It's like there was almost nothing too trivial for the vice president to handle," said New York University professor Paul Light. "The details suggest Cheney was almost a deputy president with a shadow operation. He had his own source of advice. He had his own source of access. He was making his own decisions"(5). While Bush has claimed "compassionate" conservatism (a contradiction of terms) as his mantra, Cheney has promoted "neo" conservatism (overt despotism).

Before the empowerment of the Bush administration by the U.S. Supreme Court, Dick Cheney was asked to nominate individuals for consideration as George W. Bush's vice-presidential running mate. Cheney selflessly nominated himself in an act reminiscent of self-proclaimed enlightenment. For his self-righteousness alone, Cheney deserves impeachment, while Bush ought just be put out to pasture at minimum wage.

Cheney sees himself, at the least, as being infallible in belief, word and action, and he believes that he is justified in imposing his neocon beliefs, words and actions upon the American people and upon the people of the world, no matter how tiny-minded and incorrect his views may be, no matter how many lies it takes to maintain that world view.

This is psychosis by definition, most especially within the context of Jefferson's democracy where the people properly serve as "the decider". Infallibility is an impossible claim from all human points of view. By implicitly making that claim, Cheney makes himself into his own tin "god," a god that people can increasingly see right through to where no one but Dick Cheney is standing.

Dick's popularity with the people runs even lower than does the popularity of the president for whom he serves as decision-maker. Cheney certainly knew up front that George W. Bush had a remarkably limited grasp of the world and how it works. Given his CEO experience in the war industry, it is clear that Cheney knows an opportunity when he sees one.

Cheney selflessly assumed that only he could provide the kind of knowledge base that would take the Bush administration to global dominion and glory, all in the name of a thoroughly corrupt crony capitalism, the kind of corporate capitalism that made Cheney and Halliburton rich and still continues to do so.

Dick has well established his reputation for being an isolated and secretive political manipulator and a liar in denial. But, Dick is not just a liar, he is a damned liar because he employs lies to defend his belief in personal infallibility, i.e., to defend that which is indefensible. Cheney refers to ideas which oppose his policies as being "hogwash" - as he continues to dispense utter neoconservative bullshit.

Over the past half century of capitalism, the U.S. has become dedicated to bullshit, to the extent that many people know little else. Everyone is needing to sell something, everyone employs spin to aid in making the sale, to the extent that many Americans have no grasp whatsoever of what is meant by concepts like "honesty" and "truth". Such concepts are irrelevant to neoconservate crony capitalism, bullshit being what has paved the neocon way to power and control(6).

The pro-Bush segment of American society, about one fourth of Americans at present, right along with the right wing media, finds itself associated with a smaller and smaller segment of the American population. They will continue to believe nonsense until they find themselves entirely alone in psychosis, with no one willing to listen anymore.

Ultimately, Bush will come to realize that his President of Vice has led him on a self-righteous, egomaniacal path to the ruination of the Republican party, the ruination of crony capitalism, the ruination of Old Testament religion, and the ruination of Bush's own presidency. Ultimately, Bush will come to realize that the infallible Dick Cheney is most admirably fallible and that his presidential legacy is in the crapper(7).

In pursuing his neoconservative desire to politically and militarily dominate the Middle East and its oil reserves, Cheney has recently pointed out that Iranian leaders have provided arms to the Shia insurgents in Iraq. He entirely ignores that Saudi citizens, our closest allies in the Middle East, have likewise provided arms to the Sunni insurgents. Half the story is all that Cheney can afford to know.

Cheney will leave the Bush administration with the sorriest legacy of any presidency in the history of the U.S. The Bush administration will be the last administration dominated by the CEO mind set, the last administration devoted to crony capitalism and the last administration devoted to Old Testament Roman religion. The Bush administration will be the last administation devoted to war mongering.

It is clearly Cheney's goal, as Jon Stuart has noted, to nourish democracy by first destroying it. His infallible policies will certainly and inadvertently nourish a Middle Eastern meltdown followed by a global revolution in the interest of human rights, earth rights and democracy. For this to happen, the perverted form of "democracy" (i.e., religious crony capitalism) to which Cheney subscribes will have to destroy itself, a highly probable outcome, as religion's "end of times" is a prophetic outcome.

Are you looking for a sign of something truly miraculous in the world and in the works? If you are looking for the anti-Christ, look no further than Dick Cheney. If you are looking for the return of the Christ, look no further than yourself. The people must work to eliminate despotism and honor human rights on a global basis.

America's revolutionary Founders could clearly see with God-given human light. When we all see with that light and when we all shout the truth together, the walls of Jericho will most certainly come tumbling down. The power has always resided in the people. That would be why the Christ and Jefferson sought to empower each of as an advocate of the people.

Original article posted here.

Readings

1) Dana Bash, Durbin calls Cheney comments "delusional", CNN, January 25, 2007.
(http://www.cnn.com/POLITICS/blogs/politicalticker/2007/01/durbin-calls-cheney-comments.html)

2) Maureen Dowd, Daffy Does Doom, Information Clearing House, January 27, 2007.
(http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article16266.htm)

3) Dr. Gerry Lower, Leo Strauss and Jefferson's Impending Death, Jefferson's Eyes, Turtle Island Press, 2003.
(http://www.jeffersonseyes.com)

4) Helen Thomas, Cheney vice president of irrelevancy, Seattle PI, February 12, 2007. (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/303115_helenthomas.html)

5) Scott Shuster, Dick Cheney: The Pure Evil Behind the President, OpEd News, February 2, 2007. (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article16266.htm)

6) Tom Raum, Libby trial sheds light on White House, AP, February 11, 2007. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070211/ap_on_go_pr_wh/libby_and_cheney_s_world)

7) Paul Siegel, Bush is Dreaming and Won't Wake Up, Common Dreams, February 11, 2007.
(http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0211-21.htm)

[Author's note to readers who do not like the term, "nascent (before Rome) Christianity": In contrast to Jefferson and Franklin who knew the Christ was entirely human, as are we all, you people would throw the baby right out with the washwater, right along with the concept of human rights. In doing so, you show your sad ignorance of our Revolutionary Founders and their spiritual belief system, i.e., Deism, and you make yourselves as much a part of the problem in America as is the right wing.]