On Antiwar, one rumor about war put to rest by Arash Norouzi. “Everyone knows” that President Ahmadinejad of Iran threatened to wipe Israel off the map..or ever globe.
Except he never did.
A misquote gratefully snatched up and distorted by international news feeds like AP might end up being the bloodiest mistake in translation ever made.
“There is a race currently underway between different flanks of the administration to determine the future course of US-Iran policy,” writes Washington insider Steven C. Clemens on his Washington Note blog. “On one flank are the diplomats, and on the other is Vice President Cheney’s team and acolytes — who populate quite a wide swath throughout the American national security bureaucracy.” This is “worrisome” because the “person in the Bush administration who most wants a hot conflict with Iran is Vice President Cheney.”Clemens cites a Cheney aide as indicating “that Cheney himself is frustrated with President Bush and believes, much like Richard Perle, that Bush is making a disastrous mistake” by supporting the diplomatic approach to Iran apparently favored by the State Department. So Cheney plans to deploy an “end run strategy” around the president (who’s more swayed at present by Condi Rice’s “realists” than Cheney’s neocons) if his flank doesn’t prevail and Bush resists the demand of the neocons and the AIPAC lobby for a bloody showdown.
“The thinking on Cheney’s team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran’s nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles This strategycould be expected to trigger a sufficient Iranian counter-strike against US forces in the Gulfas to compel Bush to forgo the diplomatic track that the administration realists are advocating and engage in another war.”
This is the most frightening piece I’ve read some time, along with Justin Raimondo’s latest column on antiwar.com that draws upon it. Raimondo citing a recent CNN interview with Seymour Hersh links Cheney and Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams (the most powerful neocon presently in the administration) to U.S. support for the Sunni Fatah al Islam militia in Lebanon as a means to weaken Hizbollah. “George W. Bush,” he declares, “is totally out of the loop” in what Raimondo calls “the Cheney administration.”
More from Gary Leupp.
I offer this to a reader who criticized me for not examining the good parts of the immigration bill more closely.
It’s true that some good may come out of the thing. That may not really be relevant. Some good might also result if I parked myself on my neighbor’s lawn, on anarchical principles, until I acquired squatter rights. We can’t judge actions by outcomes alone. [This is simply an analogy – there is a distinction obviously between priavte property and the state; still, it’s not entirely dissimilar because immigrants also use public services – from roads to schools – that are paid for by taxes. That some illegal immigrants pay taxes is true, but not all do. And what they pay in is, from the latest Heritage report, less than what they take out. The Cato institute disputes that research, but even those who are pro-immigration suggest that the costs are higher than we have been prone to believe].
Not that I dispute the existence of squatter rights. Or claim that migrant workers don’t theoretically have every right to move to find work wherever they wished.
Actually, I fervently wish that there were no borders and no laws about migration anywhere in the globe. I personally don’t feel the state has any right to curtail commerce and migration.
But my wishes and my rights under the law as it is constituted are two different things. And since nowadays, law is the only language in which we can meaningfully converse about rights — especially with people different from us in their beliefs and culture, I want to stick to it.
Migrants are free to move, but they aren’t equally free to be subsidized by the state or to violate its laws.
Ex-post facto legislation that subsidises migrants is, I think, practically unviable. But even if it were viable, I don’t think it can be justified under laws easily.
But, you will argue, what about all those other people who break the law in other areas and are then absolved of the consequences? Why pick on vulnerable people on this issue?
I don’t disagree here. Certainly, it’s not migrant workers who have dismantled habeas corpus or undone privacy laws or circumvented the ban on torture.
But the correct response to the objection is that every extension and intrusion of government power needs to be attacked constitutionally and limited – if not entirely dismantled. It’s no defense of a wrong-headed position in one instance to point to other instances where it has prevailed.
And, to my mind, the laws governing citizenship should be observed – at least theoretically – with more zeal than others, especially in times like these, when they are vulnerable to being diluted. And that is a danger that haunts us increasingly.
I may be wrong, of course. But, we can’t justly claim the protection of the law to save us from being stripped arbitrarily of our rights as citizens, if at the same time we trivialize the law by arbitrarily investing people with those rights.
My practical position is this: the matter can be dealt with at the local level by the communities involved. There doesn’t need to be a power grab by the federal government. A small fine (not the huge one in this new bill) can be imposed on people who’ve entered illegally, but it should be proportionate to their means and not harsh. It shouldn’t be so large that it creates a perverse incentive for corruption among the government agents who would be in charge of collecting it. Legal immigrants from the same communities could help in sending back those who’ve come here illegally to prevent any abuse. The “illegals” needn’t be barred from re-entering lawfully, but I think they should re-enter the process, after those who’ve followed the law. That’s only fair.
And maybe the government could make the legal entry simpler and quicker, so that people wouldn’t be motivated to break the law in the first place.
Those are my thoughts, for now, so far as I’ve studied the matter. It boils down to this – don’t have a law and then not follow it.
As I said, I could be wrong….
My earlier post, reworked as an article at Dissident Voice:
Chris Cook of the University of Victoria Gorilla Radio (GO-rilla, as in, our furry friends… or cousins…..or descendants, depending on your evolutionary perspective and level of optimism about the human race) writes:
“For American readers who value and feel protected by the 1st Amendment (right to free speech), it may seem strange that a country would enshrine in law the opposite condition; but Hate Crime legislation in this country is widely supported. Canada is an ethnically, and politically diverse country, consisting of minority populations from the world over, and it was deemed fair-minded to ensure all are protected from the “tyranny of the majority.” But it’s a double-edged sword, making possible an abuse of the statutes, allowing an equally odious tyranny, the stifling of dissent and criticism by a dedicated minority.”
Cook’s problem is that one edge of this sword just fell on a web-site he edits, the Peace, Earth & Justice News (PEJ.org), “a non-profit, all-volunteer, non-hierarchical media organization” based in Victoria whose mission (as described in its Constitution) is to report on “climate change and other environmental issues, war and peace in the Middle East, Afghanistan and elsewhere, and human rights and other matters of social justice.”
PEJ has been operating since 1996 and is owned by the small (annual budget of a few hundred dollars and volunteer staff), non-profit Prometheus Institute, British Columbia, where Cook was a senior editor until February this year.
On May 17 PEJ publisher Alan Rycroft received a letter from the Canadian Human Rights Commission, signed by the deputy secretary general Richard Tardiff, claiming that PEJ had violated Canadian law by posting anti-Semitic material, according to a complaint filed with its legal department by Harry Abrams, a Victoria businessman and British Columbia representative for the League for Human Rights of B’nai Brith, Canada, which joins him in the complaint.
PEJ publishes materials from activists around the world, including some who have published on American websites like Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, and Lew Rockwell. It is an alternative paper that by definition carries news not covered in the mainstream press and those stories are naturally controversial, often criticizing the actions of powerful entities, including governments. Naturally, that includes the Canadian government. And naturally, also, the Israeli government.
As soon as PEJ received the letter, it removed from its web-site the eighteen articles that Harry Abrams alleges were anti-Semitic.
PEJ did this as a matter of courtesy to Abrams and to show goodwill, according to Joan Russow, one of the directors, pending the outcome of an inquiry by the Canadian Human Rights Commission. PEJ does not endorse articles or comments published on it, to begin with. But, PEJ is, in addition, expressly non-discriminatory. As Dr. Russow, said in a letter to Mr. Abrams on December 31, 2006:
“Anti-Semitism and other prejudicial materials are not allowed on our site – after all PEJ News exists to promote equality and freedom for all – we are the Peace, Earth & Justice News. To the best of our knowledge no anti-Semitic or hate material is on PEJ.org.”
Indeed, it was she who invited Mr. Abrams (in December 2006) to inspect the articles on the site and see if anything was anti-Semitic, including comments from the public.
The Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) whose “General Expectations of Canada” (as posted on the web, “CJC Brief to DFAIT on UN Human Rights Commission,” Feb 19, 2004 ) is not nearly as objective or non-discriminatory.
The CJC tells Canada’s Jewish citizens to take “constructive interventions against resolutions or motions” made in Canada that:
1.blame only Israel and its policies for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
2. indict Israel’s legitimate counter-terrorism measures with no reference to or condemnation of Palestinian terrorism.
3. deny or undermine Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state in the Middle East (my emphasis).
4. employ existentially threatening language such as referring to Israel as a “racist” or “apartheid” state and apply terms such as [“genocide”(?)], or “ethnic cleansing” to the conflict.
5. are based upon inaccurate media information or Palestinian Authority propaganda.
6. predetermine the outcome of direct, bilateral negotiations in keeping with UN Resolution 242 and 338 or circumvent such a process.
At the same time, Canada’s delegates must support and encourage efforts at the UNCHR that:
1. will ensure a comprehensive accounting of international human rights situations such that grievous international human rights issues are not ignored or soft-pedalled [sic] as a result of a politicized, anti-Israel agenda.
2. highlight the crippling impact of continuing Palestinian terrorism – which has been explicitly legitimized in the CHR resolutions – on the peace process and on attempts to establish a true human rights regime in the Middle East.
3. draw attention to the deficiencies within the Palestinian Authority regarding human rights and the building of a viable civil society for the Palestinian people.”
And B’nai Brith’s positions are even more partisan than this.
Thus it is that Anita Bromberg, in-house legal counsel for B’nai Brith, Canada, has joined Mr. Abrams in the complaint against PEJ’s peace activism, because, she says, the articles “are virulently anti-Israel to the point that they meet the criteria of crossing the line of legitimate criticism of the state straight into anti-Semitism.”
What, according to the complaint, is anti-Semitic?
“The idea that Israel has no right to exist or that Israel is an apartheid state,” says Mr. Abrams. Also, any comparison of Zionists to Nazis.
Were there such articles? In the context of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the war in Lebanon, several pieces did compare Israeli policy with Nazi persecution of Jews. One, by Chris Cook, “We Should Nuke Israel,” for instance, was a parody of a column in The Toronto Sun proposing a tactical strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Cook simply replaced the word “Iran” with “Israel,” “Amadinejad” with “Olmert,” “Muslim” with “Jew” and tagged the following paragraph at the end, ironically recommending that the article be acted upon by the Human Rights Commission:
“This amazingly ignorant, hateful, and frankly criminal article has been redacted. “Israel” appears where the murderous and racist author, Michael Coren originally wrote “Iran.” Likewise other slight alterations have been performed. There is, in what remains of this country Canada, hate crime legislation. Unlike Mr. Coren’s, and his Toronto Sun publisher’s heroes in the United States, Canadian media is expected to live up to certain standards. Promoting hatred and proposing the destruction of human life fail miserably to live up to the expected, and legislated, mandates for publishers. I recommend those offended by Mr. Coren’s modest proposal write the Sun, Coren, and the CRTC. Mr. Coren can be reached here”
Now, that’s strong language admittedly. But why, we wonder, does the Canadian Human Rights Commission not also write a letter to the columnist in Toronto Sun, which proposed a real nuclear hit on Iran with a straight face. Why instead attack a column written in transparent satire in response to the former? Are the human rights of Iranians – or of Palestinians – less worthy of attention than the human rights of Israelis?
By the way, in the US, words such as “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” have been applied to the torture at Abu Ghraib in academic and law journals, such as Gonzaga University 10 Gonz. J. Int’l L. 370 (2007). If torture of prisoners in Iraq can be described in this way without American human rights activists objecting, it’s hard to see why the killing and dispossession of the civilian population in Palestine shouldn’t be called ethnic cleansing or genocide.
And, would the CHRC also rush so zealously to investigate on behalf of an organization that claimed Canada – or the U.S. – was a Christian country?
After the letter was received at PEJ and the offending articles removed, Ingmar Lee, one of PEJ’s editors posted a piece by a scholar, Shaheed Alam, one that just appeared in Counter Punch and other sites, and makes a scholarly criticism of Jewish exceptionalism as “inseparable from Israeli exceptionalism and Israeli history” (“Chosenness and Israeli Exceptionalism”) in a manner no different from and more measured that any number of dissections of American exceptionalism and some forms of Christian fundamentalism, which PEJ has also published.
The fact that it has shows clearly that PEJ was, in this instance, simply following its mission of attacking injustice wherever it finds it and defending human rights, no matter whose. Its criticism of Israel as a race-based state was simply part of its universal secular defense of human rights.
But defending universal secular human rights, which by the way, is policy in the State Department, turns out now to be the promotion of “ongoing hatred affecting persons identifiable as Jews and/or as citizens of Israel,” for in his complaint, Harry Abrams and B’nai Brith state that Abrams has “reasonable grounds for believing that I have been discriminated against.”‘
The only trouble with that statement is that the criticism in the articles is directed at the policies of the state of Israel, not at Mr. Abrams personally.
Should we conclude that Mr. Abrams sees himself as indistinguishable from the Israeli government? Or that B’nai Brith’s interest in human rights is indistinguishable from the vested interests of the Israeli government?
So far, Canada’s Globe and Mail, which published the story on May 24, has also published PEJ’s vigorous characterization of the charges as “calumnies.” But for how long?
Yesterday, Ingmar Lee was forced to resign as editor of PEJ for the bad judgment of publishing Alam’s article after the complaint was received, because the article is “slanderous to all Jews,” uses the word Zionist as a “slander,” like Nazi, and may be a “hate crime” under Canadian law (in the words of PEJ publisher, Rycroft).
A semantic question: Is it also a slander to refer to Nazis as “Nazis”?
Just watching – intermittently – Stanley Kramer’s Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) – with Montgomery Clift in the role of the mentally defective man questioned by Maximilian Schell (who won an Academy Award for his performance) about his sterilization under the Nazis. Clift is riveting in his scene but to my mind Schell is even better as counsel for the defense.
In the scene following, there is a dialogue about the culpability of ordinary people in the government’s actions. I don’t necessarily agree, given the power of the government to propagandize and coerce and its apparent immunity to criticism. But it still makes you think..
“There are no Nazis in Germany – the Eskimos invaded and took over the country. It wasn’t the fault of the Germans; it was the fault of those damn Eskimos…. ”
And in a later scene about the concentration camps:
“They say we killed millions of people..millions..how could it be possible? How?”
And the response:
“It’s not the killing that’s the problem..it’s the disposing of the bodies…”
And after Marlene Dietrich denies knowing anything about what was going on,
“As far as I can tell, there was no one who knew anything…”
A lot of interesting performers in the film – Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich, Burt Lancaster, Spencer Tracy, William Shatner and the son of the conductor Otto von Klemperer. (A friend writes to tell me that he is T.V.’s Colonel Klink (in Hogan’s Heroes). I’ll take his word for it…
Other quotes stand out:
“Once again it was done for love of country..”
“Maybe we didn’t know the details. But if we didn’t know, maybe it was because we didn’t want to know….”
“But if he is to be found guilty, there are others who went along who also must be found guilty”
“Why did we succeed, your honor? What about the rest of the world? Did it not know the intentions of the Third Reich, did it not read the words of Mein Kampf? Where is the responsibility of the Soviet Union….where is the responsibility of the Vatican…….where is the responsibility of Winston Churchill? Where is the responsibilty of those American industrialists who helped Hitler?Is Germany alone guilty…
the whole world is as responsible for Hitler as Germany is.
Ernst Janning said he was guilty..if he was guilty, then his guilt was the world’s guilt no less, no more.. ”
More:
“What difference does it make if a few political extremists lose their rights? What difference does it make if a few racial minorities lose their rights?”
And this, again, about the camps:
“Break the body, break the spirit, break the heart..”
But the best line may be at the end, when Burt Lancaster calls Spencer Tracy into his cell and says, “I never thought it would come to this,” and Spencer Tracy responds,
“The first time you convicted an innocent person you knew it would come to this.”
At least as important as the shooting time-line – some would say more – is the psychiatric time-line that preceded the V-Tech shooting:
Wyatt v. Aderhold (Arizona 5th circuit panel decision) in 1974 and later, O’Connor v. Donaldson (Supreme Court), were regarded as having jettisoned the parens patriae basis (the state as custodian for the mentally defective) and left only the police-powers basis (the state as defendant of the community’s safety) for the state’s interest in confining the mentally ill. Both decisions came after numerous exposes and sociological studies of the conditions of state mental hospitals and treatment had led to a trend toward de-institutionalizing mental health patients. That trend became stronger with the discovery of anti-psychotic medications in the 1950s that held out the hope for outpatient treatment for many patients.
Another step in the rise of the psychotropic drug industry came with the expansion of the definition of bipolar illness (manic-depression) in the DSM-IV Manual, the official psychiatric diagnostic manual, in 1994. Now, conditions less intense but presenting similar symptoms were included as abnormal variations requiring treatment. The result was an explosion of bipolar illness in children between 1996 and 2004. While some see this as a legitimate refinement in diagnosis, others see it is a result of the new, expanded definition. Then there are those who say there just isn’t enough known to conclude definitively one way or about how much bipolar disease there really is and whether children are being under or over medicated.
Simultaneously, the FDA backed off putting stronger warnings on the psychotropic drugs:
“The FDA held a hearing in September 1990 at which its Psychotropic Drugs Advisory Committee (most of whose members got funding from antidepressant manufacturers) considered whether SSRIs can induce violent and suicidal thoughts. They voted 9-0 not to recommend a more prominent warning and 6-3 not to recommend a warning in small type that would have read, “In a small number of patients, depressive symptoms have worsened during therapy, including the emergence of suicidal thoughts and attempts. Surveillance throughout treatment is recommended.” (Fred Gardner)
Next came the marketing plan:
“It all started in the mid-90s while George W. Bush was governor. TMAP was developed by what’s referred to as an “expert consensus” made up of a group of “experts” already known to have favorable opinions of certain drugs, chosen by drug company sponsors, Janssen Pharmaceutica, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, Astrazeneca, Pfizer, Novartis, Janssen-Ortho-McNeil, GlaxoSmithKline, Abbott, Bristol-Myers-Squibb, Wyeth-Ayerst and Forrest Laboratories.
In 1997–98, with pharma funding, a panel was assembled to determine which drugs would be used in treating children and decided that the same drugs used on adults could be used on kids. There were no studies conducted to test the safety of giving the TMAP drugs to kids and most had never been FDA approved for use by children.” (Evelyn Pringle)
The next step was taken when Bush established the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health in April 2002 to conduct a “comprehensive study of the United States mental health service delivery system.” The commission issued its recommendations in July 2003. Bush instructed more than 25 federal agencies to develop an implementation plan based on those recommendations.
In April 2003 came the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health‘s radical recommendation is to screen the entire nation for mental illness, beginning with school children:
Schools, wrote the commission, are in a “key position” to screen the 52 million students and 6 million adults who work at the schools. The commission also recommended “Linkage [of screening] with treatment and supports” including “state-of-the-art treatments” using “specific medications for specific conditions.”
The NFC Report promoted two controversial programs the pharmaceutical industry loves : Columbia University’s TeenScreen and TMAP (Texas Medication Algorithm Project), mental health prescribing guidelines formulated under Big Pharma’s sponsorship, including Eli Lilly, Pfizer and Janssen whose products were recommended through the algorithm).
As a Mother Jones article pointed out, while previously, drug companies had sold new products to doctors through ads and articles in journals or directly through television and magazine advertising, from the mid-1990s, they began to go through a handful of state officials who govern prescribing for large public systems like state mental hospitals, prisons, and government-funded clinics.
Furthermore, the focus moved away from anti-depressants – a very broad market – to the smaller but much more lucrative (since they cost about ten times as much) anti-psychotic drugs.
Meanwhile, in a glaring conflict of interest, NFC chairman, Dr. Michael Hogan, served on the advisory committee of Janssen Pharmaceutical, and serves on the advisory council of TeenScreen, the program singled out to promote in the NFL Report.
But research was mounting that SSRIs, especially, were a significant danger –
“Lilly and the other antidepressant manufacturers made more finite, begrudging concessions in the years ahead as evidence linking SSRIs to suicide kept mounting. A turning point came in April 2004, when the British Medical Journal reported that GlaxoSmithKline had concealed data showing that Paxil more than quadrupled suicidal ideation among teenagers. A few months later the FDA acknowledged a study showing that SSRI use induced suicidal thoughts in two out of 100 adolescents and ordered a black box warning. Prozac sales dipped as a result and Lilly et al commissioned the study that JAMA published April 18, showing that SSRI use induces suicidal ideation in only one in 100. Suicidal ideation,” “Suicide gesture,” “Suicide attempt,” and other such terms do not accurately characterize the extremely bizarre flip-outs induced by SSRIs. Carefully planning to annihilate the student body fits the profile. Biting your mother 57 times. Driving your car around in circles until you smash into a tree…”
More by Fred Gardner here at “Prozac Madness.” and at “Fuel for a Killer.”
The dangers were exacerbated by the rates at which psychotropic drugs were being recommended:
“That same issue of JAMA, April 18 [2004], contained a study showing that for-profit dialysis chains give patients much higher doses of Epogen than non-profit clinics. Epogen, made by Amgen Inc., is a synthetic version of a hormone that stimulates the production of red blood cells. During dialysis it is added to the blood as toxins are removed.
The for-profit dialysis chains get a quarter of their income from the sale of Epogen -plus rebates from Amgen based on how much product they move. Investigators from the Medical Technology and Practice Patterns Institute looked at 134,000 patients treated in 2004.
Some patients at for-profit clinics were found to be getting three times more Epogen than their counterparts at non-profits. “It’s clear there is a profit incentive,” says co-author Dennis Cotter.” (NOTE BELOW**) Industry payments to Minnesota psychiatrists rose 6 fold from 2000-2005 while antipsychotics prescribed to children in the state medicaid program rose 9fold. The story focuses on Minnesota because it is the one state that requires disclosure of industry payments to psychiatrists.
The NY Times story went on: Psychiatrists who received $5000 or more from manufacturers of atypical antipsychotics on average wrote three times as many prescriptions for those drugs in children as those who received under that amount.
—Psychiatrists received a median of $1750 each from industry from 2000 to 2005, more than any other medical specialty in Minnesota.
—The cost to the state of antipsychotic drugs used in children increased 14-fold from 2000 to 2005, from $521,000 to $7.1 million.
The Times quotes Steven Hyman, former director of NIMH: “There’s an irony that psychiatrists ask patients to have insights into themselves, but we don’t connect the wires in our own lives about how money is affecting our profession and putting our patients at risk.”
The drug industry pushed to expand its market despite strong expert dissent:
Here is Dr. Stefan Kruszewski’s criticism of TeenScreen made in an interview with the British Medical Journal:
“We can manufacture enough diagnostic labels of normal variability of mood and thought that we can continually supply medication to you. The shameful part is that there’s enough mental illness that requires careful and judicious treatment that we don’t need to find variants of normal. But when it comes to manufacturing disease, nobody does it like psychiatry.”
And about TMAP, another expert, Dr. Grace Jackson, writes,
“the algorithms have arisen from ‘Evidence Based Medicine’—a statistically based approach to studying treatment effects in populations, rather than a reality based approach to discerning treatment effectiveness in each unique individual.”
In brief, TeenScreen amounts to a dangerous intervention in the lives of 50 million children and about 6 million adults in the schools.
That is the background against which one should look at the move to expand Virginia’s mental health laws that was already in the works in October 2006.
Its goal was to “modify the criteria for placing people in emergency care by eliminating a requirement that they pose an ‘imminent’ danger to themselves or others,” precisely what is now being demanded — as a result of the V-Tech shootings
Take, for instance, the case of 13 year old Aliah Gleason, one of 19, 404 Texas teens who underwent involuntary mental health treatement in a state funded program in July-August 2004.
Falsely labeled suicidal, she was given 12 drugs including 4 SSRI’s (Zoloft, Celexa, Lexapro and Desyrel) 3 anti-psychotics (Geodon, Abilify, and Haldol) 2 anti-convulsants (Trileptal and Depakote), anti-anxiety (Ativan), anti-Parkinson’s (Cogentin). When discharged she was on 5 of them to which Risperdal was added.
In early 2005, the FDA issued a warning that antidepressants can cause both suicide and violence and mandated a black-box warning – the most serious – about side effects from panic attacks to hostility, impulsivity and mania. Further, abrupt withdrawal from antidepressants can produce suicide, aggression or psychosis.
But, with what’s at stake financially, the drug companies continue to look for ways to expand their markets.
Eli Lilly paid out $1.2 billion to 28,000 people who claimed injury by the drug Zyprexa in the ten years ( NYT, Jan. 5), but it made $4.2 billion in just one year selling the drug, taken by 20 million people world over since it was introduced in 1996. (statistics from Alliance for Human Research Protection).
That, perhaps, is the rationale for such events as the “colloquium” for national science and healthcare journalists –“Children and Mental Illness”– held at the Columbia University School of Journalism and sponsored by The Columbia University Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Carmel Hill Family Foundation which runs TeenScreen, which attracted plenty of media attention and was funded by Janssen Pharmaceutical Products, LP and McNeilConsumer and Specialty Pharmaceuticals.
In May 2007, the Texas Attorney General joined a whistleblower suit filed in 2004 against Pharma giant Johnson and Johnson that charged it with improprieties in marketing its psychotropic drug Rispertal as part of the TMAP program.
“Whereas antipsychotic drugs are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration for children; the FDA’s “black box warning” states antidepressants increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in children and adolescents with psychiatric disorders; and drug safety experts have recommended additional “black box” warnings be placed on ADHD drugs: for the increased risk of stroke and heart attack;
Whereas potential recruits are ineligible for military service if they have taken Ritalin and other stimulants to treat the unscientific “disorder” called ADHD in the previous year;
Whereas most states have laws restricting the purchase of firearms based on an adjudication of mental illnesses or disorders, and mass screening of all American children for mental disorders will increase the number of persons labeled with a mental disorder, directly infringing upon the citizenry’s right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the 2nd amendment;
“Whereas TeenScreen only partners with and seeks to immediately refer students to “mental illness” practitioners and does not refer students to medical disciplines that could test for underlying health problems such as allergies, nutrition, toxicities and physical illnesses;
Whereas child suicides are very rare and have been on a decline for years; and even according to former TeenScreen director Rob Caruano, “suicides are so rare that you’d have to screen the whole country to see a difference in mortality between screened and unscreened students………”
Ron Paul again
On May 18, U.S. House Rep. Ron Paul introduced a federal legislative bill – H.R.2387 – http://thomas.loc.gov ( “Paul, Ron” under “Browse Bills by Sponsor”).
The title is: “To prohibit the use of Federal funds for any universal mandatory mental health screening program”.
On May 23, a bill granting the FDA powers to monitor drug safety was pared back during private meetings. And efforts to curb conflicts of interest among FDA advisers and allow consumers to buy cheaper drugs
from other countries were defeated in close votes.
* A measure that blocked an effort to allow drug importation passed, 49-40. The 49 senators who voted against drug importation received about 5 million from industry executives and political action committees
since 2001 – nearly three quarters of the industry donations to current members of the Senate, according to a USA TODAY analysis of data compiled by two non-partisan groups, Center for Responsive Politics and
PoliticalMoneyLine.
* Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said he demanded removal of language that would have allowed the FDA to ban advertising of high-risk drugs for two years because it would restrict free speech. Roberts has raised $18,000 from drug interests so far this year, records show, and $66,000 since 2001. His spokeswoman, Sarah Little, said he “takes great pains to keep fundraising and official actions separate.”
**Note : I wonder if it is simply the ‘for-profit’ motive on its own that is the cause. Without the state, would we have the incentives of third-party pay, for instance, which distort markets forces? I think not. A genuinely competitive market would also do away with unfair monopoly-like conditions preventing the entry of lower-cost and alternative providers — which would help correct the problem. For the same reason, although I personally think the ideal should be private regulatory bodies in a free market, the immense lobbying power of pharmaceutical companies at this point means that what few regulatory restraints remain cannot be abandoned but must be shored up.
What is undisputed, however, is the need to slowly bleed the Federal government of money, power and influence and return power and autonomy to local and state bodies as far as possible.
“The Constitution would be a major improvement over what we have today. But we need to realize that the Constitution itself represented a major increase in government power over the Articles of Confederation, which would have served us quite well had it not been overthrown. I’m not impressed by the bunch that foisted the Constitution on us. They were really up to no good. We’ve all but forgotten that most everyone opposed it at the time. It only squeaked through once the Bill of Rights was tacked on. The Bill of Rights isn’t perfect, but it at least had the advantage of spelling out what the government could not do. In a rather ingenious twist, even that has been perverted: it is now seen as a mandate for the federal government to tell lower orders of government what they cannot do, meaning that it ends up being a force for centralization. This is such a tragedy. If Patrick Henry could see what became of it, I’m sure he never would have tolerated it. The same might be true of Hamilton, for that matter. So long as we are talking about founding documents, the one that really deserves more attention is the Declaration of Independence. Now here is an inspiring document that shows us where we should go in the future!”
AP had this report, May 23, on the panel’s readiness to go to court to get V-Tech’s Cook Counseling Center to cough up V-Tech shooter Cho Seung Hui’s counseling records, now apparently shielded by Federal privacy laws:
“We’re going to get what we need, one way or the other,” Massengill said. If that fails, “we’ll have to go to the courts.”
University officials say federal privacy laws bar them from sharing the records.
Cho killed 32 people in two campus buildings before committing suicide in a classroom on April 16.
A year and a half earlier, he had been found “mentally ill and in need of hospitalization,” according to court papers. A judge ordered him into involuntary outpatient treatment, but there is no indication that he complied.
University counsel Kay Heidbreder said the laws, even for someone who is deceased, mean the records cannot be shared even among departments at the university.
As it is constituted, the panel cannot issue subpoenas to compel testimony and obtain documents. Delacey Skinner — a spokeswoman for Gov. Timothy Kaine, who convened the panel — said the governor has assured members the attorney general will help them get information.”
My Comment:
So, it’s federal laws which have actually kept this thing under wraps in the first place. Another instance where federalization has been a negative. Yet, people want more and more of it. If that is not an instance of pure brainwashing, I don’t know what is. It’s obvious that the problem is the federal government. The answer to the problem, by definition, cannot be more federal government.
And meanwhile, the press kept everyone distracted with chatter about gun control. Not a word yet about the medication supposedly found or at least observed by room-mates. Nothing about the toxicology report (yes, what about that?)
A piece on a site called Alliance for Human Research asks the same questions. It cites Dr. Anna Blake Tracy, author and executive director of the International Coalition for Drug Awareness, who finds high-profile shootings almost invariably tied up with antidepressants and cites numbers of incidents in support:
“Other famous cases include the 1998 deaths of actor Phil Hartman and his wife, a murder/suicide committed by her (Zoloft); the 1999 home and office killing spree by Atlanta day trader Mark Barton (Prozac); the 1998 shooting deaths of four co-workers by Connecticut lottery accountant Matthew Beck, who then killed himself (Luvox); and the 1994 New York City subway bombing by Edward Leary, which injured 48 (Prozac).”
She goes on,
“Most people don’t know LSD once was prescribed as a wonder drug. Most people don’t know that PCP was considered to have a large margin of safety in humans. Most people don’t know ecstasy was prescribed and sold for five years to treat depression. Few know that history of drugs, and I think that’s our biggest problem. We’re just not educated enough to have concerns.”
She notes hundreds of similar cases.
But I found one particular incident especially interesting from the point of view of the Cho shooting:
“In February 2004 in Polk Township, Pa., Samantha Hirt, hours after taking a pill for manic depression, set fire in a bedroom where her two toddlers were playing, closed the door and sat on a sofa watching television while the fire spread, killing both children. Effexor.”
Remember that arson case on Cho’s record that didn’t make it into a police file? Why ever not? Did some drug company think it wouldn’t be good PR for their product?
More in my next post.
Another reason to vote independently:
“But (someone protests), can’t you at least admit that the Democrats are better than the Republicans? And if you love the country, or care about the world, aren’t you obligated to support the lesser of two evils, even if it’s only slightly less evil?
To which I reply: What’s really evil is being forced to choose between people on the one hand who support the war, and accuse anyone who questions it of “helping the terrorists” — and people on the other who oppose the war, criticize the war, pledge to the end the war, and then vote to keep it going.
Or being asked to choose between the village idiot and someone who’s consistently outsmarted by him….”
Read more by David Vest…
In an earlier post, I attributed to Oakeshott some words that actually came from a commentator, Ivo Mosley in a paper on Oakeshott’s “A Dark Age Devoted to Barbaric Affluence”. Apologies. I have modified the old post and reposted here.
(Sigh) a nice quote too.
The sentiments were Oakeshott’s certainly but the text was the commentator’s. I mention it because several readers wrote in asking for the source.I would like to go back and verify from the original text what Oakeshott’s exact words actually were.
Mosley again, in the same piece:
“Words such as ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’ and ‘rights’ have long histories and their meanings have shifted over time. Further, when unscrupulous operators use them to rally supporters in some great cause, such words become hazy promises of better things to come. The warm glow of anticipation may be as deceptive as the witches’ promises to Macbeth…”
My Comment:
Macbeth is good here. We really should begin to recognize the difference between words used with a proper humility toward life and experience and words used like Blackwater mercenaries sent out to do our bidding – beating up innocent reality, plundering whatever meaning we want out of it and then setting off on some other fool task.
Those thoughts are in my head today, again, because of some rather silly criticism that one or two readers sent in last week. I suppose when you have one critic calling you an apologist for Islamism and the other telling you you are a closet Zionist, you must be doing something right.
“If you would be an alternative guru ala Chomsky, you must believe in ‘the people’; if you would be a free-market guru, you must worship the golden calves of affluence and corporate power; if you would be a progressive liberal, you must genuflect to the moos of rationalism and science.”
Which is exactly what I was trying to say about my Falwell obit in a previous post. Because I don’t support a theocracy or a theocrat, I don’t necessarily scoff at every assumption of the religious, either.
And though I may defend the rights of the people against the corporatocracy, it does not follow that ‘the people’ (and we are all people) aren’t also damned fools at times and as greedy, wrong-headed and unethical as their rulers.
Which is why I can appreciate many socialist insights, but I’ll stop short of making a golden calf out of the masses or the mass mind, thanks.
And by the way, I don’t think the mass is something out there, as in a derisive term like “unwashed masses.” The poor are no more likely to be herd-like than the rich or the well- educated. Look at the lemming-like behavior of hedge funds in the capital markets, for instance. Or merger mania or the rise in private equity or the art market. The ‘herd’ is in us as well as outside.
There is a never ending supply of wisdom in Oakeshott..
A good description of him:
” [Oakeshott] is a traditionalist with few traditional beliefs, an ‘idealist’ who is more skeptical than many positivists, a lover of liberty who repudiates liberalism, an individualist who prefers Hegel to Locke, a philosopher who disapproves of philosophisme, a romantic perhaps (if Hume could possibly be called one), and a marvellous stylist.”
Hume I buy, but I don’t know about that Hegel reference.