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Washington's Blog: Are People Being Thrown Into Psychiatric Wards For Their Political Views?
#1
Sat, August 25, 2012 6:07:55 AM
Washington's Blog: Are People Being Thrown Into Psychiatric Wards For Their Political Views?
From: Global Research E-Newsletter <crgeditor@yahoo.com>

Are People Being Thrown Into Psychiatric Wards For Their Political Views?
By Washington's Blog

Global Research, August 22, 2012
Washington's Blog


URL of this article: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?c...&aid=32450


Mental Health Diagnoses Are Sometimes Politically-Motivated
Many psychologists and psychiatrists are good people, who are only trying to help their patients.

But the Nazi government substantially supported psychologists ... many of whom, in turn, espoused extermination of the people they considered to be "racially and cognitively compromised".

Soviet psychiatrists famously aided Stalin in applying fake insanity diagnoses to political dissenters. The official explanation was that no sane person would declaim the Soviet government and Communism.

American psychologists created the American program of torture which was specially-crafted to produce false confessions to justify U.S. military policy. And see this.

And authoritarian American psychologists are eager to label anyone "taking a cynical stance toward politics, mistrusting authority, endorsing democratic practices, ... and displaying an inquisitive, imaginative outlook" as worthy of a trip to the insane asylum. (Those traits may also get one labeled as a potential terrorist.)

As prominent forensic psychiatrist James Knoll psychiatry professor at SUNY-Syracuse and director of a forensic fellowship program writes in the Psychiatric Times:

When psychiatric science becomes co-opted by a political agenda, an unhealthy alliance may be created. It is science that will always be the host organism, to be taken over by political viruses.... [P]sychiatry may come to resemble a new organism entirely one that serves the ends of the criminal justice system.

Even psychologists with good intentions can erroneously label people delusional simply because they themselves make bad assumptions.

There is even a label for this the "Martha Mitchell Effect" defined as:

The process by which a psychiatrist, psychologist, or other mental health clinician mistakes the patient's perception of real events as delusional and misdiagnoses accordingly.

The authors of a paper on this phenomenon (Bell, V., Halligan, P.W., Ellis, H.D. (2003) Beliefs About Delusions. The Psychologist, 6 (8), 418-422) conclude:

Sometimes, improbable reports are erroneously assumed to be symptoms of mental illness [due to a] failure or inability to verify whether the events have actually taken place, no matter how improbable intuitively they might appear to the busy clinician.

In other words, psychologists who haven't taken the time to examine for themselves the claims of their patients will tend to label as delusional anything which they "intuitively" feel is improbable. As such, psychologists and psychiatrists are just as prone to acting out their irrational prejudices as anyone else ... unless they take the time to investigate and educate themselves.

Governments Indefinitely Detaining Citizens In Psychiatric Wards Without Due Process of Law
As such, detention in psych wards on mere "suspicion" of posing a danger without due process of law is troubling.

For example, former marine Brandon Raub was just carted off and locked in a psychiatric ward for his allegedly "anti-government" Facebook posts.

AP reports today:

Police acting under a state law that allows emergency, temporary psychiatric commitments upon the recommendation of a mental health professional took Raub to the John Randolph Medical Center in Hopewell. He was not charged with any crime.

***

Col. Thierry Dupuis, the county police chief, said Raub was taken into custody upon the recommendation of mental health crisis intervention workers. He said the action was taken under the state's emergency custody statute, which allows a magistrate to order the civil detention and psychiatric evaluation of a person who is considered potentially dangerous.

New York Police officer Adrian Schoolcraft was involuntarily hospitalizated in a psychiatric ward after he recorded videotapes of his fellow police officers engaging in corruption.

Claire Swinney of New Zealand was also held in a psychiatric ward and called "delusional" for criticizing the government. Susan Lindauer was held under the Patriot Act for a year at Carswell Air Force Base where psychiatric drugs were pushed on her after she alleged government corruption.

The Daily Mail notes:

The [British] Government has established a shadowy new national anti-terrorist unit to protect VIPs, with the power to detain suspects indefinitely using mental health laws.

***

The team's psychiatrists and psychologists then have the power to order treatment including forcibly detaining suspects in secure psychiatric units.

Using these powers, the unit can legally detain people for an indefinite period without trial, criminal charges or even evidence of a crime being committed and with very limited rights of appeal.

Until now it has been the exclusive decision of doctors and mental health professionals to determine if someone should be forcibly detained.

But the new unit uses the police to identify suspects increasing fears the line is being blurred between criminal investigation and doctors' clinical decisions.

***

Scotland Yard, which runs the shadowy unit, refuses to discuss how many suspects have been forcibly hospitalised by the team because of "patient confidentiality".

***

The purpose of the centre is "to evaluate and manage the risk posed to prominent people by...those who engage in inappropriate or threatening communications or behaviours in the context of abnormally intense preoccupations, many [Many? That means that some are not] of which arise from psychotic illness."

Who gets to decide what "inappropriate" or "threatening" means? What if a whistleblower has information that a member of parliament has engaged in bribes? Would trying to reveal such information constitute "inappropriate or threatening communications or behaviours" in the context of "abnormally intense preoccupations" with that MP's illegal actions?

Indeed, a study published in the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry found a high rate of false positives in the British identification of dangerous persons.

The Mail continues:

So-called sectioning' allows a patient to be held for up to six months before a further psychological assessment. Patients are then reviewed every year to determine if they can be released.

***

Human rights activists fear the team, whose existence has never been publicised, may be being used as a way to detain suspected terrorists without having to put evidence before the courts.

***

Last night human rights group Liberty said the secret unit represented a new threat to civil liberties.

Policy director Gareth Crossman said: "There is a grave danger of this being used to deal with people where there is insufficient evidence for a criminal prosecution.

"This blurs the line between medical decisions and police actions. If you are going to allow doctors to take people's liberty away, they have to be independent. That credibility is undermined when the doctors are part of the same team as the police.

"This raises serious concerns. First that you have a unit that allows police investigation to lead directly to people being sectioned without any kind of criminal proceedings.

"Secondly, it is being done under the umbrella of anti-terrorism at a time when the Government is looking at ways to detain terrorists without putting them on trial."

***

The team examined thousands of cases and liaised with the FBI, the US Secret Service, the Capitol Hill Police, which protects Congressmen and Senators, and the Swedish and Norwegian secret services.

***

Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: "The Government is trying to bring in a wider definition of mental disorder and is resisting exclusions which ensure that people cannot be treated as mentally disordered on the grounds of their cultural, political or religious beliefs.

"When you hear they are also setting up something like this police unit, it raises questions about quite what their intentions are.

"The use of mental health powers of detention should be confined to the purposes of treatment. But the Government wants to be able to detain someone who is mentally disordered even when the treatment would have no benefit.

"Combined with the idea that someone could be classed as mentally ill on the grounds of their religious beliefs, it is a very worrying scenario."

Indeed, the whole "indefinite detention" process (which Americans living on American soil are subject to) can be based on circular reasoning:

The government's indefinite detention policy stripped of it's spin is literally insane, and based on circular reasoning. Stripped of p.r., this is the actual policy:

If you are an enemy combatant or a threat to national security, we will detain you indefinitely until the war is over
It is a perpetual war, which will never be over
Neither you or your lawyers have a right to see the evidence against you, nor to face your accusers
But trust us, we know you are an enemy combatant and a threat to national security
We may torture you (and try to cover up the fact that you were tortured), because you are an enemy combatant, and so basic rights of a prisoner guaranteed by the Geneva Convention don't apply to you
Since you admitted that you're a bad guy (while trying to tell us whatever you think we want to hear to make the torture stop), it proves that we should hold you in indefinite detention
See how that works?

This is an analogy. We are not accusing psych wards of using torture. However, they do often use powerful psychiatric drugs on patients ... which can elicit false confessions.

Are we going to slide into Soviet levels of psychiatric detention of political dissidents? Unless the spread of psychiatric detention without due process of law is checked, the mere belief that the government is interfering with your liberty may become grounds for locking you away.

GLOBAL RESEARCH | PO Box 55019 | 11 Notre-Dame Ouest | Montreal | QC | H2Y 4A7 | Canada

Adele
Reply
#2
My earlier post in ROMNEY in answer to a question asking for definition of Fascism

Please note items #2 and #3 below under Fourteen Defining Characteristics of Fascism.
____________________________________________________________________
References on Fascism

THE ANATOMY OF FASCISM by Robert Paxton, and other writings by Paxton on Fascism

and

http://rense.com/general37/char.htm
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rense.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fourteen Defining
Characteristics Of Fascism
By Dr. Lawrence Britt
Source Free Inquiry.co
5-28-3


Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread
domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

From Liberty Forum
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#3
Sat, August 25, 2012 12:18:43 PM
Update: Marine vet kidnapped by FBI released
From: Brasscheck TV <news@brasschecktv.com>

The good news is that former Marine and
Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran, Brandon
Raub, who was detained, arrested, and
institutionalized by the FBI without charges
has been released.

The bad news is this sort of thing is wide
spread and most just 'disappear' without
representation.

Here's the latest...

Video: 6:30 minutes long

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/11953.html

Goodman Green
- Brasscheck

P.S. Please share Brasscheck TV e-mails and
videos with friends and colleagues.

That's how we grow. Thanks.

================================
Brasscheck TV
2380 California St.
San Francisco, CA 94115
Reply
#4
Marine Veteran Brandon Raub's Attorney says he is getting calls from veterans and people all over the country reporting psychiatric detention for political speech.

Last Thursday, decorated former US Marine Brandon Raub, who served two tour of duties in Iraq and Afghanistan, was detained by the FBI and local authorities for posting controversial anti-government political comments on the social media site Facebook.
Although 26 year-old Brandon Raub was forcefully detained against his will for his political views he was not charged with any criminal misconduct a hallmark of the NAZI gestapo which used the tactic of indefinite psychiatric detention to crush political dissent.
Constitutional attorney John Whitehead representing Raub discussed how the US government violated his client's first amendment rights with RT yesterday.
He also made an appearance on GBTV with Glen Beck in which he made even more shocking revelations.
Whitehead tells Beck that he is getting calls from military veterans all over the country subjected to the same Nazi style psychiatric detention for their political views.
More alarming, is when Beck asked if people of left-wing ideology specifically members of Occupy Wall Street are being detained Whitehead responded saying he can't say for sure because people all over the country are just disappearing.
He also reveals that while Raub was in psychiatric detention one of the psychiatrists that he was seeing threatened to "brainwash" him and force him to take medication.
Watch the entire interview:
[URL="http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2012/08/24/vets-nationwide-people-disappearing-174701/"]Embedded video link here
[/URL]
http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2012/08...ng-174701/
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx

"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.

“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
Reply
#5

Martha Mitchell effect

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[/url][url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Mitchell_effect#p-search]
The Martha Mitchell effect is the process by which a psychiatrist, psychologist, or other mental health clinician mistakes the patient's perception of real events as delusional and misdiagnoses accordingly.

[edit]According to Bell et al., "Sometimes, improbable reports are erroneously assumed to be symptoms of mental illness," due to a "failure or inability to verify whether the events have actually taken place, no matter how improbable intuitively they might appear to the busy clinician."[SUP][1][/SUP] They note that typical examples of such situations, may includeBig Grinescription

  • Pursuit by practitioners of organized crime
  • Surveillance by law enforcement officers
  • Infidelity by a spouse
  • Physical issues
Quoting psychotherapist Joseph Berke, the authors note that "even paranoids have enemies." Any patient, they explain, can be misdiagnosed by clinicians, especially patients with a history of paranoid delusions.

[edit]Origin

Psychologist Brendan Maher named the effect after Martha Beall Mitchell.[SUP][2][/SUP] Mrs. Mitchell was the wife of John Mitchell, Attorney-General in the Nixon administration. When she alleged that White House officials were engaged in illegal activities, her claims were attributed to mental illness. Ultimately, however, the facts of the Watergate scandal vindicated her and garnered the label, "TheCassandra of Watergate". However, many of her allegations remain unproven and fanciful, such as her claim that she had been drugged and put under guard during a visit to California, after her husband had been summoned back to Washington, in order to prevent her from leaving the hotel or making phone calls to the news media.[SUP][3][/SUP]
After the Watergate break-in, Martha Mitchell began contacting reporters when her husband's role in the scandal became known, for which she became known as "the Mouth of the South". Nixon later told interviewer David Frost (in September 1977 on Frost on America) that Martha was a distraction to John Mitchell such that no one was minding the store, and "If it hadn't been for Martha Mitchell, there'd have been no Watergate."

[edit]See also

[edit]References

  • ^ Bell, V., Halligan, P.W., Ellis, H.D. (August 2003). "Beliefs About Delusions". The Psychologist 16 (8): 418422. JI 0.325.
  • ^ Maher, B.A. (1988) "Anomalous experience and delusional thinking: The logic of explanations." In T. Oltmanns and B. Maher (eds)Delusional Beliefs. New York: Wiley Interscience
  • ^ Reeves, Richard President Nixon: Alone in the White House, p. 511.
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx

"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.

“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
Reply
#6
Magda Hassan Wrote:Marine Veteran Brandon Raub's Attorney says he is getting calls from veterans and people all over the country reporting psychiatric detention for political speech.

Last Thursday, decorated former US Marine Brandon Raub, who served two tour of duties in Iraq and Afghanistan, was detained by the FBI and local authorities for posting controversial anti-government political comments on the social media site Facebook.
Although 26 year-old Brandon Raub was forcefully detained against his will for his political views he was not charged with any criminal misconduct a hallmark of the NAZI gestapo which used the tactic of indefinite psychiatric detention to crush political dissent.
Constitutional attorney John Whitehead representing Raub discussed how the US government violated his client's first amendment rights with RT yesterday.
He also made an appearance on GBTV with Glen Beck in which he made even more shocking revelations.
Whitehead tells Beck that he is getting calls from military veterans all over the country subjected to the same Nazi style psychiatric detention for their political views.
More alarming, is when Beck asked if people of left-wing ideology specifically members of Occupy Wall Street are being detained Whitehead responded saying he can't say for sure because people all over the country are just disappearing.
He also reveals that while Raub was in psychiatric detention one of the psychiatrists that he was seeing threatened to "brainwash" him and force him to take medication.
Watch the entire interview:
[URL="http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2012/08/24/vets-nationwide-people-disappearing-174701/"]Embedded video link here
[/URL]
http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2012/08...ng-174701/

Frightening stuff...BUT nothing new! Long ago now [25 years or so] ago I interviewed a NSA employee who had been taken into a psychiatric hospital and dosed with Thorazine and similar for trying to speak out that the NSA was THEN spying on everyone in the USA and World. He was a destroyed man, barely having escaped with his mind....and look what happened with the truth he tried to tell....it grew and GREW and G R E W!!!
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
Reply
#7
Magda Hassan Wrote:Marine Veteran Brandon Raub's Attorney says he is getting calls from veterans and people all over the country reporting psychiatric detention for political speech.

Last Thursday, decorated former US Marine Brandon Raub, who served two tour of duties in Iraq and Afghanistan, was detained by the FBI and local authorities for posting controversial anti-government political comments on the social media site Facebook.
Although 26 year-old Brandon Raub was forcefully detained against his will for his political views he was not charged with any criminal misconduct a hallmark of the NAZI gestapo which used the tactic of indefinite psychiatric detention to crush political dissent.
Constitutional attorney John Whitehead representing Raub discussed how the US government violated his client's first amendment rights with RT yesterday.
He also made an appearance on GBTV with Glen Beck in which he made even more shocking revelations.
Whitehead tells Beck that he is getting calls from military veterans all over the country subjected to the same Nazi style psychiatric detention for their political views.
More alarming, is when Beck asked if people of left-wing ideology specifically members of Occupy Wall Street are being detained Whitehead responded saying he can't say for sure because people all over the country are just disappearing.
He also reveals that while Raub was in psychiatric detention one of the psychiatrists that he was seeing threatened to "brainwash" him and force him to take medication.
Watch the entire interview:
[URL="http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2012/08/24/vets-nationwide-people-disappearing-174701/"]Embedded video link here
[/URL]
http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2012/08...ng-174701/

I would like to know how we can learn if this is indeed true, that people are disappearing. And if true how would Raub know this?
Strange days indeed.
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