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Barney Holmes – my personal blog. Ideas, issues, discoveries. You'll find some posts related to the organisation MindFreedom here as well.

Archive for anti-war

The Insanity Sect

It’s not “mental patients” who have mental health problems, it politicians like Peter Hain.

Last night on Question Time it was the 5th November. The Fireworks in my town seemed rather low key, but the Fireworks in the BBC studio were blowing away a murderous regime. Robert Kilroy-Silk lit the fuse and the entire sick lie of the WOT, Iraq and Afghanistan went up. The game is over folks. People like Peter Haine are insane in the truest sense of the word. They repeat the same thing over and over even with the same result as they got before. They talk in contradictions, lies, and double binds.

At one strange point Haine sat there blinking in a regular-beat pattern for about 10 to 15 blinks. Wierd.

Robert Kilroy-Silk pointed out that the main threat is from domestic terrorism, committed both by white and coloured people ….

2007 1 November: Police searching for indecent images of children arrested British People’s Party local organiser Martyn Gilleard in Goole, East Riding of Yorkshire under the Terrorism Act, over explosives found in his home. He was subsequently charged with possession of material for terrorist purposes and collection of information useful to a terrorist, and also pleaded guilty to possessing 39,000 indecent images. He was jailed for 16 years.[31][32][32][33][34]

( Source )

Of course there are Islamic, Muslim and other people of various ethnic origins who sadly get involved in terrorism or resort to acts of violence. But there are “white” British people who want to do that  as well. Look at the former IRA or even the noises the BNP are making. This is extremism.

Robert Kilroy-Silk also quoted the statement by a major analyst in the USA who has stated that Al Qaeda is much less of a threat and their network has fallen apart (still trying to confirm this).

Hain looked like one of the Israeli administration. Out of touch, vengeful and violent if not actually insane. Now, I don’t say this lightly by the way. I only say this because he was showing all the symptoms. His sentences full of internal contradictions and a total unwillingness to listen or correct his behaviour. The next question moved on to something else and he actually said “I stand for Human Rights, Social Justice and Democracy”. He also said something about “Afghanistan will have Democracy for the first time in it’s history”. This guy did not go to my O Level history classes. This is exactly the mistake the Americans made after World War Two. They wanted to see “free and fair elections” in some far East European states. The soviets at the time seemed to agree. But “free and fair” meant something entirely different in their culture of the time. “Free and fair” meant everyone giving a vote for the predetermined Soviet leader of the time. Of course it was a kind if sham but it was also communism of which many people did believe in.

Afghanistan does not have democracy for a very good reason. It is made of independently administered regions. That way of living has been in there culture for millenia. Any reading Afghans please correct me if I am incorrect. I have not visited you country. But I’m not stupid and I do not easily take on board the mess of contradictions and double binds that Hain spews out. Some people would call it “lies”. I think it’s something much more serious than that. It’s insanity of the highest order. An insanity that get’s people killed for no good reason and then carries on making the same mistakes.

He is corrupt ….

Peter Hain’s campaign failed to declare £103,156 of donations, contrary to electoral law

( Source )

What was he even doing on Question Time ? We have to get our own house in order. Politicians use public money with impunity. Banks can demand huge “bailouts” (read: more triple whiskies all round). The NHS is run by a load of drug barons forcing the latest killer “medications” down the throats of our children and even making some good people believe that they are being “helped”. It’s a mess of corruption, criminality and brutality. No doubt some parts of Columbia are like this, or some of the corrupt African states. But, of course this is heresy and I would be locked up and killed for it. Great Britain is supposed to be some bastion of fair play and goodness. Well, folks it ain’t. This all stinks and people who cannot see it are walking around like the upper class in Medieval London with posies under their noses.

But there is hope. Look at the history of Latin America, or any of the “velvet” people revolutions. It’s nothing to be scared of. There does not have to be violence and entire regimes can be swept away by people power. It can be done. We are the one’s who are in control really, always have been always will be. A change is exactly that. It’s not some risk of letting “anarchy” take control as those who have much invested in government would have us believe. Most people are honest hard working individuals who are quite capable of looking after their own communities. It’s time for those people to believe in themselves.

Weapons of Mass Deception

The ABPI’s campaign orchestrates both lobbying and public relations in its overall strategy. At a briefing to the Pharmaceuticals Marketing Society in 2000, the ABPI described its “battle plan” thus: “to deploy ground troops in the form of patient support groups, symapthetic medical opinion and healthcare professionals… which will lead the debate on the informed patient issue. This will have the effect of weakening political, ideological and professional defences… Then the ABPI will follow through with high-level precision strikes on specific regulatory enclaves in both Whitehall and Brussels…”7 ( Source )

This article will develop as time goes on. We are all being deceived. The only people who know the whole truth are those cruising in their multi million dollar yachts, or laying back in their huge estates or corporate jets. This is greed of the highest order. Worthy of a new chapter in the Bible, the scale of human suffering is a disturbing genocide that was allowed to happen because history went straight into the Cold War at the end of WW2. While the world was struggling with the combined worry of nuclear annihilation the Pharma companies were there creeping their way into your life.

Now many people extol the virtues of the drugs. They speak from a place of brain damage and health problems caused by the drugs they are taking. How could they know what they are saying if they have both been deceived and have serious health problems effecting their intellect ? This is the Pharma generated myth of “patient choice”. The simulacra of freedom.

So Tony Blair promoted the benefits of the Pharma industry ( a “British success story” ) while he was looking for Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. While that war rumbles on, now we have the trouble in Gaza … not so long after Blair started work as a “Middle East Peace Envoy”.

So when you see that blinding flash of white light and you start feeling a little confused .. just remember me and my Weapon of Mass Deception air raid survival plan !

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Irreconcilable Peculiarities

I am finding it difficult to reconcile a relatively happy family life pre about 1990 with the horrors I have witnessed.

I can remember visits to Grandparents on the South coast. Playing with my Brother and Sister on the beach. Walking down the promenade to a local pier to play video games.

I remember people being kind to one another. Intelligent. Witty. Telling interesting stories and giving that warm looked after feeling that only a family and relatives can give.

So, why in a world where people obviously value their freedom and take great care to support Democracy and hope for a better world without war and conflicts … does the horrific murdering of some of the Health professions exist ? Well, I say exist. It exists to me. But, why, in the face of something that is OBVIOUSLY murder and pure torturing of actual people, do those very same people who understand what the Uinted Nations is. Or contribute to charities. Or value their own family life and children. Why can they not see it ?

This is the fracture that I deal with, that I see reflected in other people’s behaviour.

The two end’s of this thing must be reconciled !

What nudged me along in this struggle is this article published on Mindfreedom Ireland, which I republish here in it’s entirety.

~~~

Struggling Against Psychiatry’s Human Rights Violations

[AN ANTIPSYCHIATRY PERSPECTIVE]

by Don Weitz [*]

First do no harm – The Hippocratic Oath

I was once tortured for six weeks over 50 years ago — it happened in December 1951 and January 1952 when I was 21. While locked up for 15 months, I was forcibly subjected to a series of 110 sub-coma insulin shocks which psychiatrist Douglass Sharpe prescribed as a treatment for “schizophrenia”. Although Dr. Sharpe and other shrinks labeled me “schizophrenic, I never believed and still don’t believe I was “schizophrenic” or “mentally ill” and told them I was not crazy or “mentally ill”. Like many other antipsychiatry activists and other critics, I totally reject “schizophrenia” and all other psychiatric labels as valid medical terms because they don’t exist, they don’t refer to medical diseases, they’re fraudulent labels. As psychiatric critic Thomas Szasz has explained, psychiatric diagnostic labels are metaphors for dissident or non-conformist conduct, pseudo-medical terms which discredit and permanently stigmatize people.

In the early 1950s, I was just a very confused college student struggling to find himself, a common identity crisis. I was never violent and never charged with a criminal offence. Nevertheless, I lost my freedom, locked up as an involuntary patient, a psychiatric prisoner in McLean Hospital (a teaching-research facility affiliated with Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital). It should be called McLean Psychoprison. As is frequently the case, my parents colluded with the psychiatrists — they committed me.

Within 6-7 weeks of admission to McLean, psychiatrist Douglass Sharpe prescribed a series of insulin shock treatments because I was openly angry and defiant toward my parents and the world — that’s the real reason but you won’t find it written in my medical records. where I’m labeled schizophrenic with a discharge diagnosis “schizophrenia — acute undifferentiated reaction, improved”. That fraudulent diagnosis has never been changed or erased on my medical records in over 50 years.

Here’s a telling excerpt by Dr. Sharpe written in my medical records which also appears in the book Shrink Resistant:

“The patient was finally placed on sub-coma insulin and after a month of sub-coma insulin three times a day he showed tremendous improvement. There was no longer the outbursts of anger…He spends most of his time trying to figure out what the effect of insulin has on him . . .” (Burstow and Weitz, 1988; Weitz, 2004).

It took me almost 20 years to understand my forced psychiatric incarceration and forced treatment in political terms, 20 years to realize that I was not a “mental patient” but a political prisoner of psychiatry locked up against my will, no right to appeal the commitment or treatment, tortured with subcoma insulin shocks. It took me 20 years to understand that the “mental health system” is an oppressive social control system. Insulin shock was obviously a form of social control and torture – not treatment. This is also true for electroshock, psychiatric drugs, and all forced psychiatric procedures today. If a medical or psychiatric procedure is forced or administered without consent, it’s assault or torture — not treatment (Weitz, 2002).

Insulin shock was a serious violation of my human rights, it was also a radicalizing experience which permanently sensitized me to the many human rights violations which psychiatrists have committed and are still committing against hundreds of thousands of allegedly “mentally ill” people – under the guise of “safe and effective treatment”, “medication”, “ECT”, “research”, or “mental health reform”.  In the 1950s, many of us psychiatric survivors had no rights such as the right not to be treated against our will or without informed consent, the right not to be abused, mistreated, or tortured, the right not to be harmed. Nevertheless, these rights violations are happening today in virtually every psychiatric ward, in every “mental health center” or psychoprison in Canada, the United States and Europe — despite ‘progressive’ mental health legislation and despite the fact some of these rights are enshrined in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was adopted by the UN General Assembly 58 years ago on December 10, 1948 and signed by 47 nations including “free and democratic” Canada and the United States, and more recently enshrined in the UN Convention Against Torture. Everybody including all physicians, should read and discuss these human rights documents. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that psychiatrists and other doctors will respect our human rights or their own ethical guidelines.

THE RIGHT NOT TO BE TORTURED

•    “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” (United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article  5)

•    “Everyone has the right not to be subjected to any cruel and unusual treatment or punishment” (Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Section 12)

Psychiatric prisoners and survivors typically experience forced treatment or treatment without “informed consent” as cruel and inhumane punishment or torture.  Psychiatrists rarely inform their prisoners about the many serious effects or risks of their treatments and alternatives, especially non-medical community alternatives such as self-help groups, advocacy groups, crisis centers, and drop-ins run by psychiatric survivors. All this despite the fact that “informed consent” is spelled out in Ontario’s Health Care and Consent Act and the historic 1947 Nuremberg Code. For example, whenever psychiatrists and other doctors prescribe “antipsychotic medication” – powerful brain-disabling neuroleptics such as Haldol (haloperidol), Thorazine (chlorpromazine), Clozaril (clozapine), Modecate (fluphenazine), Risperdal (risperidone), and Zyprexa (olanzapine) as well as antidepressants such as Paxil and Prozac – without your consent or against your will – they are assaulting you, punishing you, violating the Nuremberg Code, violating the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, violating the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, violating The Convention Against Torture, violating your human rights. Forced drugging together with its many traumatic, health and life-threatening effects is a virtual global epidemic, an international disgrace, a crime against humanity.

PSYCHIATRIC  DRUGS – CHEMICAL LOBOTOMIES

The labels “antipsychotics” and “antidepressants” are seriously misleading. The “antipsychotics” do not combat or cure “psychosis” or “mental illness”, and “antidepressants” do not combat or cure depression or the fraudulent diagnosis “bipolar mood disorder”. Psychiatric drugs (“medication”) chemically control and disable people — sometimes permanently. Neuroleptics is a more accurate term for “antipsychotics”, it means “nerve-seizing”. These psychiatric drugs are much more powerful, debilitating and brain-disabling than the “tranquilizers” (benzodiazepines), which by the way are addictive. The neuroleptics and antidepressants frequently make people look and act apathetic, zombie-like as if they’ve been lobotomized — even at moderate or low doses. These allegedly “safe and effective medications” always produce painful and serious “side effects”, some are health-threatening and brain-damaging; others are life-threatening. Consider these common effects: muscle cramps, dizziness, blurred vision, seizures, tardive dyskinesia (a permanent neurological disorder characterized by involuntary movements caused by the neuroleptics), tardive dementia, akathisia (constant restless pacing), nightmares, psychosis, parkinsonism, neuroleptic malignant syndrome (NMS is a neurological disorder with a prevalence rate of 2%-3%, and  mortality rate of 20%-25%), and sudden death. Tardive dyskinesia (TD), tardive dementia, NMS and parkinsonism are all signs of brain damage. Although TD was discovered and reported in medical journals in the mid-1960s, the psychiatrists covered up or failed to warn patients about this horrific neurological “side effect” for about 20 years until the 1980s. After a few weeks or months on such “medication”, most patients look and act like a zombie, apathetic, indifferent to their surroundings. Dr. Peter Breggin (1997; 1991), Dr.Lars Martensson (1998), and other professional critics have documented these horrendous effects. Many psychiatric survivor-activists and other critics prefer the label “chemical lobotomy”, it succinctly describes their zombie experience. In a psychoprison or psychiatric ward, virtually everyone gets drugged – “put on meds”.  Or threatened — “take your meds, or else”.  This is also true of children who are admitted to psychiatric wards (LeFrancois, 2006).

Forced drugging compounds this abuse. Informed consent is a cruel sham since psychiatrists rarely if ever warn incarcerated involuntary and voluntary patients about common health risks and non-medical alternatives to the drugs. More often than not, psychiatrists coerce, threaten, or intimidate patients into consenting to “medication” (Burstow et al., 2005; Breggin and Cohen, 1999; Lehmann, 1998; Martensson, 1998; Whitaker, 2002). Powerful personal testimonies against the antidepressants and neuroleptics, including frequent violations of the right to informed consent, were frequently voiced by approximately twenty-five Canadian survivors during public hearings sponsored by the Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault (CAPA) and held in Toronto City Hall in April 2005 (Burstow et al, 2005).

ELECTROSHOCK — ELECTROCONVULSIVE BRAINWASHING

Electroshock (officially labeled “electroconvulsive therapy” or “ECT”) is another hi-risk, controversial, degrading and inhumane psychiatric treatment chiefly prescribed for severe “depression”, “bipolar mood disorder”, and sometimes “schizophrenia”. Since its main targets are women and the elderly, the procedure is largely sexist and ageist. in its administration. According to government statistics, including those of Ontario’s Ministry of Health, two to three times more women than men  (at least 70%) are prescribed “ECT”.  Despite denials by the Canadian Psychiatric Association and shock promoters, the scientific fact is that electroshock always causes some brain damage including permanent memory loss and other intellectual disabilities.  A recent, comprehensive confirmed that women suffer more brain damage by electroshock then men, and that elderly people suffer more damage than younger persons. (Sacheim et al, 2007; CAPA, 2007) The immediate effects of electroshock are also alarming and include epileptic or grand mal seizure, coma, physical weakness, confusion, disorientation, nausea, and a migraine-type headache which can last a day or longer. According to many critics and dissident professionals in the United States such as psychiatrist Peter Breggin and neurologist John Friedberg, electroshock is an “electrically-induced closed head injury.” According to Breggin, Friedberg and other professional critics in the United States, the so-called “improvement” or “high” that some shock survivors experience after several shocks is actually euphoria, a common sign of head injury. One doesn’t have to be a doctor, scientist or engineer to understand that approximately 200 volts — the average amount of electrical energy delivered to the brain for a half-second or longer 2-3 times a week during a course of “ECT” — will damage the brain — permanently.  It’s the electricity and seizure which do the damage and cause memory loss — not depression or any “mental disorder”. Nevertheless, the shock promoters and other psychiatrists continue claiming that the electroshock “seizure is therapeutic”. Try telling that to people with epilepsy and neurologists! More nonsense, more psychobabble.

Women shock survivors and feminist critics appropriately call electroshock “psychiatric rape” –  an appropriate term since electroshock is frequently prescribed or administered over women’s refusal or without their informed consent. The violations of informed consent and trauma that women and men shock survivors experience is systemic — this alarming fact was exposed by virtually all survivors who courageously testified during two days of public hearings in April 2005 in Toronto City Hall. In a public lecture three years ago at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Dr. Bonnie Burstow — a widely respected feminist, author, antipsychiatry activist, and chair of the Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault (CAPA) — called electroshock a ‘feminist issue’. I totally agree. I also agree with the term electroconvulsive brainwashing (ECB), an apt term coined by Leonard Roy Frank, a widely-respected shock survivor-activist, author and editor who permanently lost two years of university knowledge as a direct result of over thirty electroshocks and 50 insulin coma shocks in the early 1960s in California. Frank also calls shock a crime against humanity and wants it abolished — so do Drs. Burstow, Breggin and Friedberg, and many other critics including shock survivors and human rights activists including myself (Burstow, 2006; Frank,1978, 2006; Breggin, 1997; Weitz, 2004; Weitz et al, 2005; Breeding, 2001).

According to “ECT” statistics for the years 2000-2002 that I obtained from the Ontario government’s Ministry of Health, electroshocking women and old people, particularly elderly women, is on the increase in Canada, it’s also on the rise in the United States. Shocking old people (some are 80-90 years old) even with consent is elder abuse, mainly because they are in poor or fragile health, more vulnerable than younger people. According to Leonard Frank who has compiled a list of ECT-related deaths, since 1942, electroshock has caused over 400 deaths as reported in English language medical journals; many more have undoubtedly been minimized, not reported, or covered up.

The struggle to abolish this psychiatric atrocity started over 30 years ago in California and organized by the legendary Coalition to Stop Electroshock, which achieved a partial victory in 1982 when over 60% of the citizens of Berkeley voted n favor of a referendum to ban electroshock. The anti-shock struggle continues in California, Texas, the UK and other European counties, and New Zealand. In Canada, I am particularly proud that several of us survivors and activists participated in this anti-shock struggle for several years (1984-1992), when the Toronto-based Ontario Coalition to Stop Electroshock and its successor Resistance Against Psychiatry (RAP) organized several major protest demonstrations in front of ‘shock mills’ such as the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry and Queen Street Mental Health Centre (since merged into the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health).  Some of us also carried out non-violent civil disobedience in the health minister’s office. A friend and I were once charged with trespass and arrested for trying to hand out copies of anti-shock information to patients on the ward during visiting hours — we launched a court appealed but lost. Although there are anti-shock campaigns in various cities, unfortunately there is no national or international movement to ban electroshock. [I confidently predict there will be] (cf. Frank, 2006).   2001 In fact, a total of five anti-shock protests were recently held in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Cork, Ireland, on Mother’s Day in 2007 and 2008.  The theme and slogan in all these protests was “Stop shocking our mothers and grandmothers”. The May 2007 protest in Toronto organized by the Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault (CAPA) attracted 140 people; it featured women shock survivors and other women speakers (see http://capa.oise.utoronto.ca; capacanada.wordpress.com).

PHYSICAL RESTRAINTS

The use of 2-point, 4-point and sometimes 5-point restraints and solitary confinement (“seclusion”) on psychiatric wards is particularly alarming and dangerous.  The many psychiatric prisoners and survivors I’ve talked with describe the restraints as cruel punishment or torture. The restraints consist of thick leather cuffs or straps which are tied around the prisoner’s ankles and wrists and anchored to the sides of the bed. As result, the prisoner can hardly move while being forced to lie flat on his/her back for hours at a time, sometimes days with only brief restraint-free periods. Since physically-restrained prisoners are also chemically restrained by the powerful neuroleptics or antidepressants, they are doubly-restrained. A common staff reason for restraining prisoners is “control” or “management” of allegedly uncontrollable or disruptive prisoner behaviour, or ‘staff shortage”.  Frequently, tying up or caging psychiatric prisoners is for the convenience of the staff. Whatever the reason, the prisoner experiences such restraint as severe punishment or torture.

To the best of my knowledge, there have been no significant restrictions in the use of physical restraints in Ontario’s psychiatric hospitals and wards. A few years ago in the early 1990s, lawyer and former Ontario systemic policy advisor Duff Waring published a journal article criticizing the overuse of restraints in Ontario’s 10 provincial psychiatric hospitals (Waring, 1991). There was no media or public concern about his article and similar ones written by a few nurses, no public outrage. There should have been. I still have a vivid memory witnessing in horror my close friend Mel trying to raise himself while being physically restrained by 4-point restraints approximately 10 years ago in the notorious Queen Street Mental Health Centre (currently merged into the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto). The nurses and attendants tied his wrists and legs because he was allegedly “uncontrollable”. About the same time, they also threw him into ‘seclusion” (solitary confinement”) for “head banging behavior” — agitation caused by one or more of the antidepressants. The ward staff kept Mel in restraints and/or seclusion for several weeks — they finally released him in 1995, two years after several of us survivors and other activists protested outside this notorious psychoprison.

Physical restraints have also caused several deaths in psychoprisons.  A few years ago, investigative reporters exposed hundreds of such deaths in a series of articles published in The Hartford Courant. (Weiss, 1998) In Ontario, there have never been media or government investigations into the use of physical restrains and ’seclusion’ (solitary confinement).

In Ontario, there was also no media criticism or public outrage over the brutal death of 26-year-old Zdravko Pukec on September 26, 1995 in Whitby Psychiatric Hospital. Pukec was a recently-arrived immigrant from Croatia, At the time of his death, Pukec was already restrained with neuroleptics and cuffs when a head nurse, with the approval of administrator Ron Ballantyne, called the Durham branch of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) for help. The police promptly stormed the ward and pepper-sprayed and forced Pukec to lie face-down on his stomach so he could barely breathe. 30 minutes later he was dead. A coroner’s inquest was a total sham. “Positional asphyxia” — not pepper spray or police assault — was listed as a major cause of death. No Whitby psychiatric staff and no OPP were seriously criticized, and no police or hospital staff has ever been charged.  A good example of psychiatric justice in Ontario.

COMMUNITY TREATMENT ORDER – ONTARIO’S LEASH LAW

Under Ontario’s neoliberal-conservative government (1995-2004), outpatient forced psychiatric drugging or “community treatment orders” (CTOs) became law in Ontario when ‘Brian’s Law’ (named after an Ottawa sportscaster killed by a person with a psychiatric history) was officially proclaimed as an amendment to the Mental Health Act on December 1, 2000 by the Harris-Tory government.  CTOs are also law in Saskatchewan and British Columbia, and will probably become law in Manitoba and Alberta. In the United States, these leash laws are called “involuntary outpatient committal” (IOC). Over 41 states have passed this draconian decree which targets many thousands of psychiatric prisoners and survivors for outpatient treatment – usually forced drugging in a clinic, doctor’s office, even in one’s own home. Under a CTO in Ontario, you can be forced to take psychiatric drugs or electroshock for up to 6 months, sometimes years since CTOs can be legally renewed indefinitely. If you refuse an ordered “medication” or fail to keep a doctor’s appointment in the community, an Assertive Community Treatment Team (ACTT) – it typically consists of a psychiatrist, psychologist, nurse and social worker – can forcibly drug you or force you back into a psychoprison, without benefit of a hearing or trial and for a longer period of incarceration.

Despite several public protests against CTOs organized by the survivor-led political action group People Against Psychiatric Treatment (PACT) for almost 3 years (1998-2000).  Despite continuing criticism, CTOs have not yet been challenged in court as violations of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It’s time CTO and IOC laws as well as Ontario’s Consent and Capacity Board, a quasi-appeal court which rubber-stamps virtually all psychiatrist-ordered treatments and involuntary committals, were challenged as serious human rights/civil rights violations. Appeals to this Board are useless, a waste of time since this psychiatrically biased and government-appointed tribunal rejects over 90% of patient appeals. It can be argued that CTOs violate several sections of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms — particularly section 7 which guarantees all citizens “the right to life, liberty and security of the person”; section 9 which guarantees “the right not to be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned”; section 12 which guarantees “the right not to be subjected to any cruel and unusual treatment or punishment”; and section 15(2), the equality clause which prohibits discrimination based on “mental or physical disability” and several other grounds including age, sex, colour, religion, and national or ethnic origin (Fabris, 2006; Weitz, 2000).

In the next few years, we can expect more psychiatric imperialism — more psychiatric invasions of our communities and our privacy, more CTOs and IOCs, more psychiatric abuses, more forced drugging, more electroshock, more use of physical restraints, more patient deaths and more cover-ups, more stigmatizing, more stereotyping, more biased reporting, more medical model myths and psychiatric lies promoted as “medical science” and parroted in corporate-controlled media. Violations of human rights of psychiatric prisoners and other extremely vulnerable populations will continue unless or until many more psychiatric survivors, antipsychiatry activists, other social justice activists, human rights activists, dissident health professionals, and other concerned citizens start speaking out, fighting back, demanding action and real “accountability and transparency” from provincial governments and the federal government — such as independent and public investigations of psychiatry’s numerous human rights violations.  In practical terms, this means much more grassroots organizing, lobbying, networking, direct action and public protests in our own communities, cities, provinces, states, and countries.

Let us not forget that December 10 is International Human Rights Day, the day in 1948 when the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Forty-seven nations including Canada signed the historic UN Declaration; since that time, over 100 other countries have ratified it.  Let us observe this important day by remembering and celebrating the lives of many courageous psychiatric survivors, political prisoners, colleagues and co-workers wherever they are, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters who died while struggling for their rights in psychoprisons and communities. Let us re-dedicate ourselves to the fight against psychiatry-and-state oppression and for human rights everywhere for everyone. We owe this to ourselves, to all psychiatric survivors, political prisoners and all other people struggling to be free of psychiatric and state oppression, struggling to speak truth to power, struggling to be human. Our human rights are worth fighting for, even dying for.  Every day should be Human Rights Day.

References

Breeding, J. (May 18, 2001). Testimony to New York Assembly on Forced Electroshock.

Breggin,  P.R. (1991). Toxic psychiatry. NY: St. Martin’s Press.

Breggin, P.R. (1997). Brain-Disabling treatments in psychiatry. New York: Springer Publishing Company.

Breggin, P.R. and Cohen, D. (1999). Your drug May Be Your Problem. Reading, MA: Perseus Books.

Burstow, B. and Weitz, B. (1988). Shrink resistant: The struggle against psychiatry in Canada. Vancouver: New Star Books.

Burstow, B., Cohen, L., Diamond, B.,Lichtman, E. (2005). Report of the Psychiatric Drugs Panel. Inquiry Into Psychiatry,Toronto. [online http://capa.oise.utoronto.ca]

Burstow. B. (2006). “Understanding and ending electroshock: A feminist imperative. Canadian Woman Studies, 25, 2.

Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault/CAPA (2007). “Press Statement – New Study Proves Electroshock Damages Conclusively: CAPA Calls For Action” (October 5). http://capa.oise.utoronto.ca

Fabris, E. (2006). Identity, Inmates, Insight, Capacity, Consent: Chemical Incarceration in Psychiatric Survivor Experiences of Community Treatment Orders. Master of Arts Thesis, Ontario Institute of Studies in Education, University of Toronto.

Frank, L.R. (1978). The history of shock treatment: ECT death chronology. San  Francisco, CA: Self-published.

Frank, L.R. (2006). The Electroshock Quotationary http://www.endofelectroshock.com

Funk, W. (1998). “What DifferEnCe Does iT Make?” (The Journey of a Soul Survivor). Cranbrook, B.C.: Wildflower Publishing.

Lehmann, P.(1998). Coming off psychiatric drugs. Berlin: Peter Lehmann Publishing.

LeFrancois, B.A. (2006). “They will find us and infect our bodies”: The views of adolescent inpatients taking psychiatric medication.  Radical Psychology, 5, Retrieved July 25, 2008 from http://www.radicalpsychology.org/vol5/LeFrancois.html

Martensson, L. (1998). Deprived of our humanity: The case against neuroleptic drugs. Geneva: The Voiceless Movement.

Waring, D. (1991). Use of Restraints in Ontario Psychiatric Hospitals. Journal of Law and Social Policy, 7, 251-283.

Weiss, E. M. (1998). Deadly Restraint: a Hartford Courant investigative report . The Hartford Courant, October 11-15.

Weitz, D. (2004). “Insulin Shock — a survivor’s account of psychiatric torture.”Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy, 4(3), 187-194; see also http://www.psychiatricsurvivorarchives.com

Weitz, D., Crowe C., Moodley, R., Rahim. C. (2005). Electroshock Is Not A Healing Option: Report of the Panel on Electroshock, Inquiry Into Psychiatry. Toronto, July [online: http://capa.oise.utoronto.ca]. ***

Weitz, D. (2000). Fighting Words — Community Treatment Orders and ‘Brian’s law’. Canadian Dimension, September/October.

Weitz, D. (2002). Call me antipsychiatry activist — not ‘consumer’. Ethical Human Sciences and Services, 5 (1), 71-72.

Weitz, D. (1997). Electroshocking elderly people: Another psychiatric abuse. Changes: An International Journal of Psychology and Psychotherapy,15 (2), 118-123.

Whitaker, R. (2002).  Mad in America. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing

Note: An earlier and substantially shorter version of this paper was published under the title “Notes on psychiatric torture: Human rights violations in psychiatry” in the July-August 2005 issue of New Socialist.

Biographical Note: Don Weitz is an antipsychiatry activist, insulin shock survivor, co-founder of the Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault (CAPA), and co-editor of Shrink Resistant: The Struggle Against Psychiatry in Canada.

~~~

Why do parents regularly participate in the torture and death of their own children ? My Father did this. He took me to one of these Psychoprisons as Don Weitz put’s it ( I’d go further and say extermination camp) and actually said at the exact moment he was taking me through one of these locked doors … “These people will help you”.

That is what I can’t reconcile with memories pre 1990. They may as well be from a different dimension ! Yet the two obviously happen in the same continuum.

Is this the reason that this subject is barely looked at ? The reason why there aren’t regular protests and vigils outside my local Psychoprision (extermination camp) ?

ADDENUM: Why is it that I suspect that the public is far wiser than I care to imagine ? Who wouldn’t run from a meeting about “you know what” when it’s populated by a load of murdering c**t’s on the one hand, and a load of nueroleptic brain damaged people on the other who can’t think straight anymore ( LOL ! ).

And never the twain shall meet.

I emailed David Oaks of Mindfreedom about this. I’m reading a book about deception in WW2 at the moment. I asked him … why do you not have proper security measures set up in the face of an enemy that maims and murders ?

No answer.


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The Financial Crisis – A Bad Thing … Or The End Of A Nightmare ?

In The Independent. Thursday 9th October, Steve Richards writes …

“An era has ended. The orthodoxy originating in the 1980’s is broken”

( Source )

The blind faith in “free markets” and profit at any cost (a half a trillion cost in this case) is at an end.

It’s … is there a word ? Maybe it’s to early to describe all this exactly in a single word.

But it’s breathtaking how QUIET everyone has gone. Characters who have thundered away for years about “free markets” have gone very, VERY quiet. There’s barely a whisper about how all this effects developing countries. A debate about fairness of trade that has gone for decades.

My main hope is that the situation with the Pharmaceutical companies will change as well. The extreme danger’s of the drugs they use … to individuals and society, have been heavily promoted by profit making interests. It has been their blanket blackout of any kind of rational debate that has obscured the extreme dangers of these drugs to individuals and families. The Pharma companies have done this through aggressive advertising and dirty tricks, if not just plain criminal corruption … but I’ll leave that to the Courts.

My hope is that that knightmare is over. The blackout will end and it will be revealed that we’ve all been tricked into paying lots of money for drugs that actually kill people or allow them to suffer with extra diseases that can also be treated … with expensive drugs.

In the same paper I also read a piece about a statement by the new Russian Prime minister  (not not Putin) …

Russia seeks security pact

Thursday, 9 October 2008

America’s self-styled role as the world’s dominant power is undermining global security, the Russian President has claimed.

“A desire by the United States to consolidate its global domination led to it missing a historical chance… to build a truly democratic world order,” Dmitry Medvedev said of US actions since the attacks of 11 September 2001.

Mr Medvedev also suggested that US economic dominance had added to turmoil on financial markets around the world. Russia’s war with Georgia in August showed the security mechanism in Europe, based around Nato and the US, needed a major overhaul, he added. He proposed a new security pact to ban the use of force or the threat of its use, and would make clear that no single country, including Russia, would have a monopoly on providing security for the continent.

In an unusually emotional speech, Mr Medvedev said Washington passed up a historic chance for a new partnership after the 9/11 attacks, when Moscow offered to join Washington in fighting terrorism. The invasion of Iraq and Washington’s plans to station elements of a missile defence shield in eastern Europe scotched that partnership.

“After toppling the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the US started a series of unilateral actions,” he said. “As a result, a trend appeared in international relations towards creating dividing lines.” He said Western policymakers viewed Russia through an outdated Cold War mindset. About the world’s financial turmoil, Mr Medvedev said “economic egotism” was a contributing factor, a term coined to describe US policy. Russia has suffered badly from the fall in global markets.

( Source )

There’s THAT phrase … “outdated Cold War mindset”

BINGO !!!

THIS is why the situation with killer pharma drugs has been allowed to continue I suspect. We were simply distracted by the Cold War. Dealing with not blowing ourselves away with those weapons was enough to deal with. So hold on to your hats … things could start getting very interesting.


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Viva the Olympic Spirit !

The opening ceremony reduced me to blubbing I’m sad to admit. Seeing how much work China had put into this after all the endless criticism, and truly the way people and countries can work together and the pure variety of people … well, if you’d been in my sitting room you would have seen a grown man blub.

Here is a blog, by a Chinese man ? It has some good photo’s of the ceremony and some interesting comments. The BBC commentary was perilously close to the edge sometimes and was sometimes patronising, but hey … this the BBC ! I just found this one that has the best photo’s.

Let’s keep politics out of the Olympics, just like the drugs should not be in there. Both the opening speech and the oath taken for all the athletes had very strong anti doping statements. Very clear. Dope and you’re out. As it should be.

So if you did’nt see the ceremony then watch it on BBC iPlayer or wherever. It was a stunning artistic experience without a single flaw. Completely harmonious which was it’s theme. I think those were tears of joy.

DJ Barney


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Believe – You CAN think for yourself – Pharma is Poision

( Source: British Propaganda Posters of the Second World War )

The Enemy will not hesitate to take advantage ! Exercise you God given ability for Free Thinking !

You are in control !

Pharma products are poison and will KILL.

Use safe natural products as issued to all allied soldiers and we can SMASH fascism together !

DJ Barney

( WW2 never ended. Let’s finish what those heroes started. The men that died on D-Day. The women that tilled the fields. Don’t believe me ? )


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Ubuntu – Do You really Know what it Means ?

( Source – Bee-hind the times )

In the 1980’s my family was in a state of Ubuntu.

“.. and you’ll be blindfolded …. [in the truth of the moment] ….”

… as Gary Busey says (see this Youtube video ).

Did we know it ? Of course we did. We knew it in every cell of our body. It was so obvious that no one had to say it.

But then a move came. My Father went mad. I mean that in the traditional sense of the word. He took a foolish decision unwisely and then denied the mistake had been made. Making a rash decision with terrible consequences.

Suddenly there were no more Folk Clubs. I remember running around as a kid at these events with this wonderful feeling of community. Inside were mysterious songs and tunes, outside was the cool night and the stars. Mysterious.

My Brother was a bit of a tear away, but somehow in the rich network of relationships around us he was finding his way. Then came that move. We were uprooted from Ubuntu and left to dry out in the Sun. There were no more folk clubs in the place we had moved to. My Brother started getting into trouble. He turned to drugs. My Mother died, of a sort of broken heart really. She had been removed from Ubuntu. No more musicians arrived at our home. She watched as her children descended into terrible suffering. All the time my Father watching on as if nothing of this had any connection to the Truth of what had happened.

Suddenly, in an epiphany of insight I could understand why some countries in Africa are raped by terrible horror. This example sprang into my mind like an urgent message from God ! Community sharing of music can sweep these horrors aside. The World is kidding it’s self if it’s remains cynical about that kind of power to do good … through Ubuntu.

The divisiveness and evil of the so called … do I have to say the word ? That system that takes a traumatised person and does not find out what went wrong. It does not teach them about Ubuntu. “Support Workers” take their patients for a walk in the country that only rubs in more and more how separated they have become from everything. Their only absurd solution seems to be more and more drugs and misunderstandings. Missing the real richness of life that holds the entire sanity of societies together. How truly, horribly ironically insane those people are !

It’s time the World threw out this stupidity. This linear shut-down way of seeing the world. How easy it would be to heal the problems that slime their tawdry way through the news everyday. It takes hard work, but the answers are there. Through Ubuntu.

“It Just Works”.

I met a Taxi driver yesterday and we got talking about natural treatments. He said that his daughter had hay fever. He didn’t want to use these anti-histamines, because as he put it “they disable you”. Lack of concentration. Drowsiness.

So he did his research. He was told to start using locally produced honey. So his daughter had that on toast for three weeks. Bingo ! No more hay fever, with no trouble. “It just works”. If you wonder what was happening then her immune system was being introduced to many of the local pollen grains through the honey, if you want a Scientific explanation. But remember “It Just Works!”. Do we need to know why ?

“If it ain’t broke then don’t fix it”. I wonder if my Father sometimes wonders about what happened to us. Sadly I doubt it.

Addenum: Here is a good example for this blog entry. “Folk Club”, Colum Sands introduces live music from the 22nd Fiddler’s Green Festival in Rostrevor. Listen to the song by the South American singer and the speech he makes. Have some people become so sure that “healing the world with music” is naive that they fail to even try it and so perpetuate their own misunderstandings ? If you can’t stream the recording then contact me for a copy.


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Live Long ! Rejoice ! The Evil Emperor is Dead !

So he’s dead. The guy who started this nightmare for me and millions of others.

Extraordinarily, for what is supposed to be some kind of obscure conspiracy theory, the BBC News article mentions that he worked for the “Sandoz pharmaceutical laboratory”.

I think the BBC article says it the best…

Rock stars and the counter-culture of the 1960s picked up LSD as a wonder drug but horror stories began to emerge of users suffering permanent psychological damage.

LSD was made illegal in many countries beginning in the late 1960s.

While the Wiki news article touts his death as the sad passing of some kind of Saint like pioneer. Yuk ! ( See my comments on the Wiki News article talk page. ). An editors comments are very revealing …

“Further, I don’t think there is any need to discuss the negative consequences for those who chose to abuse LSD.”

(I hope SVT/Cobra will forgive me for quoting here).

SVT/Cobra echo’s the horrific propaganda that surrounds this subject and especially LSD. As if there is ANY “safe dose” of LSD ! I’ve known a few “LSD affectionardos” in my time, and, believe me I would not want to meet them again. One of them ended up head butting me in the face. They were misguided and VIOLENT. But they would still say “chill out man” and believe themselves to be super enlightened hippies. DUH !

LSD as a wonder drug but horror stories began to emerge of users suffering permanent psychological damage. (Source)

You would think, after the world made this AMAZING connection between a “wonder” drug and people going psychotic, broken families, suicides, and acts of violence, that it would NOTICED that the Pharmaceutical companies went on to use LSD as a basis for their endless supply of “wonder drugs” like “Prozac” and many other pharmaceuticals used for things like slimming AKA MDMA ….”E” !

WHY of WHY has this connection not been made on an official level ? I know I get wound up by the acts of violence that are blamed on the victims instead of the Pharma companies. But surely everyone does not suffer from this response ?

So maybe the passing of this “pioneer” (read: Evil Emperor) might open things up a bit and allow some clarity to emerge in the drug debate because so far few of us have our facts straight or have even done any disspassionate research.

Yours, at the edge of the Pharma Wars battlefield….

DJ Barney

Tibet: The Liberal Stupidity Revs Up Again

So Steven Spielberg withdraws from the Olympics. Now the great revolution must continue. Now it’s time for China to give in to the charms of the Liberal Agenda. All human rights abuses will be eradicated. We will live in a world of Peace … and Harmony. Anything that is complicated or needs some research doing will be swept under the carpet. Forward the great Liberal Agenda !

Tibet has always been part of China. Look at this map of the Qing Dynasty from 1644 to 1912.

340px-tibet-claims.jpg

I can hear the squeals now … “You’re justifying the deaths of the people dying in the current rebellion!”. “Justifying the deaths of” … where have a I heard that before ? Anyway. What kind of World do some people live in ? China, at least seems to have some kind of legitimate claim to Tibet … do your research ! This, of course, does not justify any kind of killing. China must respect their “minorities”, just like some African countries should, or Russian, or East European.

Here are some quotes from the Tibet Wikipedia article

“In the battle for supremacy in central Asia between Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia, a British force under soldier Francis Younghusband eventually invaded Tibet, cut down its warriors with the Maxim gun and occupied Lhasa in 1904. [4] [5] The invasion led to a peace treaty between Britain and Tibet, a document that some Tibetan historians see as recognition their remote mountain home as an independent entity. Imperial China was outraged by the invasion but could do nothing to stop it and waged a diplomatic battle to protect its own claims over Tibet.[5]

So there’s an episode from the West’s glorious past.

In 1949-1950, soon after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, Chairman Mao Tse-tung ordered the ‘liberation’ of Tibet by the People’s Liberation Army. Many Tibetan nobles and working people co-operated with the PRC government.[5] However clashes broke out over land reform and the Buddhist religion. In 1959, the Dalai Lama fled to India.”

“Liberated” in quotes, of course. But didn’t they ? I’m aware I’m expressing some kind of heresy here, but I’m just seeing it from the Chinese point of view. Is this kind of free thinking allowed in the West any more ? Or do we just pay it lip service ?

“The CIA funded a secret guerrilla war until President Richard Nixon decided to make up with Mao in 1969. Famines, followed by Chinese violence during the cultural revolution, intensified resistance to no avail.[5]

Nixon in China ? More of Americas glorious past.

“The Dalai Lama himself has long since abandoned calls for independence and now seeks genuine autonomy and respect for Tibetan’s human rights. [5] [6] The move was seen to be unpopular with many Tibetans in exile.[6]

So at least someone knows what’s going on. Thanks God for that ! Or should that be Buddha.

In Liberal Land, endless hand wringing over human right’s is coupled with a belief that an Olympics will suddenly solve a thousand year old problem. Then people wonder why they get horribly disappointed and blame it all on “Human Behaviour”, or “The Evil in the World”. Look, I, for one, will be beaming if there are changes in China and proper rights are extended to the Tibetan people, but many people seem to be practising a sort of wish fulfilment mentality. If they believe strongly enough then things will get solved in the end. Ummm … do your research.

DJ Barney

The Eco Fascists Have Arrived

Imagine the scene. Your name is Hans Meier. The year is 2020. Your successful new company allows you to buy the latest German built innovation with competing models from France and America all vying for your attention. You accelerate to the recommended speed and start the nav computer calculating your flight window into low Earth orbit. In a few seconds you confirm the flight and as you lift off the tarmac the wheels are pulled up snugly into their bays. The windscreen is replaced with the flight HUD and you begin your ascent to the recently opened orbital hotel. It has been up there for a few years but had to complete all the safety requirements before accepting traffic. As you wonder at the view of Earth, the nav computer requests docking clearance and you look forward to exploring the new orbital hotel that you’ve heard so much about.

Enough future wow’ness to have you guffawing in your cornflakes ? .. Maybe. We live in this world now though. Maybe 2020 is an optimistic date for such a scenario, but search the internet and you’ll find a number of flight capable cars in production now. International air traffic authorities are working on a system to allow the safe passage of such small scale (as in small vehicles) traffic.

flyingcar.jpg

So why is Al Gore being the ultimate kill joy ? Germany is currently resisting calls for a speed limit on German autobahns after calls from the Social Democrat party … inspired by a speech by Al Gore (according to The Independent , here in the UK, anyway). For a start I don’t think it’s even proven that speed limits reduce pollution. Patch a few scenarios through some traffic simulation software and B does not always follow from A.

But here we see the pattern from, not just Al Gore, but from many other environmentalists. “Don’t do that”… “Dont do this”…”Guilt, guilt, guilt!”. Marching around like a load of tin pot dictators who have completely misunderstood human behaviour. People rarely respond to the negative. What about what we CAN do AND be environmental ? These people seem to be determined to depress us into the ice age, er, sorry, I mean the warm age… or do I ?

I still think an international effort should be setup to look at a replacement for oil/petrol and the petrol engine.There are good signs. Hybrid cars. Electric Cars. Alternative fuels, but it seems scattered and faddish if you ask me.

Tell people what CAN happen if we take the precautionary principle and keep things clean. We have a rapidly developing Space Age. The Shuttle. A magnificent Space Station in orbit. Rarely do I hear ecologists harping on about these extraordinary human achievements. Sometimes I wonder, if secretly. they want to shut the whole game down, planetary exploration probes and everything ! As readers here will know I threw my ecologist magazine across the room the other day. Just today I noticed this leaflet had fallen out of it…

“IS THIS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO READ THE TRUTH?”

Warning: The Government is clamping down on freedom of speech so fast that Vernon Coleman’s book, Living In A Fascist Country may be the last chance you’ll ever get to read the truth about what is happening – and why.”

It contains such gems as …

“Sending Tanks To Heathrow: How And Why Politicians Have Learned To Use Fear As A Weapon.”

I won’t go on. Every statement in it is loaded with fear and paranoia. Playing on people’s worries about identity cards or the War in Iraq. Sure, there are problems, but this lovely leaflet that dropped out of my Ecologist just epitomises their whole attitude for me. Capitalism is the Ultimate Sin. The Space Age is the Ultimate Capitalistic Excess. These people live in the Ice Age ! When they read this they will no doubt think I’ve turned into some right wing purple Wart Hog. Oh grow up ! I hope you get to this sentence: while simultaneously supporting Capitalism (and yes it does have it’s dark side) I want to see endangered species protected. All species. I want to see us take steps to protect our atmosphere and help the impoverished of the world (that dark side of Capitalism). I DON’T want to see Ecologists throw up a new enemy of the people where there isn’t one. I want them to see what drives people and how that can be worked with to make the world a better place.

DJ Barney

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