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SSRIs, Mass Murder And Freudian Dreams

Elaine Meinel Supkis

All my life, I have remembered my dreams, vividly. My creativity is directly tied to this active, aware dream world. The recent rashes of mass murder by people on Prozac and other SSRI uptake medicines leads me to wonder if the distruption and intensification of the dream world and bringing this world into the 'wakening' world is causing these crimes as well as other disorders?

From Counter Punch:

A lonely, picked-on boy was given Prozac (or one of its chemical analogs) like Kip Kinkel in Oregon, like Eric Harris in Colorado This is not a scoop, America: Prozac causes horrible, bizarre flip-outs. It is a fact that has been known for 20 years and that Eli Lilly and the other manufacturers of "selective" serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) have relentlessly denied and are still trying to suppress.

On the very day after the shootings at Virginia Tech, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study challenging the "black box" warning that the Food and Drug Administration had finally attached to Prozac in October, 2004. "Antidepressants Get a Boost For Use in Teens" read the Wall St. Journal headline. "Despite Warnings on Labels, Study says Benefits Outweigh Risk of Suicidal Tendencies."

The New York Times ran its account of the new pro-Prozac study on the page facing the obituaries of students and faculty members killed at Virginia Tech! "Scales Said to Tip in Favor of Antidepressant Use in Children -A risk of suicidal thoughts is found to be more than offset." You'd think that 33 deaths would more than offset it back.

From the first day they trumpeted Prozac as a cure for all that ails us psychologically, I was very suspicious of it. Since I was born with high intelligence and then whacked by a powerful lightning bolt, my day/night world had been shattered. There was no psychiatric cure for this but I did spend a lot of energy studying whatever I could about the dream world since I was a waking person walking in that dangerous realm.

So recent confessions about how people really think while on SSRIs interests me in a hundred ways: from the Counter Punch article:

Years ago, at a meeting of the Prozac Survivors Support group, I heard Bonnie Leitsch, a flamboyant redhead from Louisville who sounded like Minnie Pearl, try to explain what Prozac did to her thinking:

"It's hard for people to understand. They say 'you must know what you're doing,' but you do not. You cannot distinguish reality. I could never tell if I was awake or asleep. That was the hardest thing for me to determine. I would lay down in bed and I would think 'Now am I dreaming this or am I awake and doing this?" My mind constantly ran, it never would stop. I could be having this conversation with you and the whole time if I was drinking coffee, I could be thinking about running it on my hand and wondering what it would feel like. Thinking irrational thoughts. And yet still able to communicate at what would appear to be a rational level. That's why I think psychiatrists and psychologists and doctors who are dealing with people on Prozac are totally oblivious to what's going on.

I spent my entire life keeping conscious track of my dream life versus my waking life. Indeed, all 'psychics' who 'see' the future have this problem: the dream world is also very magical as well as having some extremely unsettling connections with the real world in ways that are very upsetting. Namely, as far as I can tell, the dream world is also where the religious world and all our creative impulses first take shape or appear in whole.

When I was child, I dealt with this by believing that Pegasus could keep me from falling into the Outer Darkness of the inner soul and so I could sleep at night because there was some way of leaving the dream world in a hurry if necessary. Namely, some dreams have to be escaped. For example, my dreams that began inside a house, it is rapidly getting dark, I try to turn on the lights and the wires are down because of the storm outside and then I see this big oak tree....oops. Entering that dream! The one that is actually my brain replaying that event! Time to exit. Nothing good to learn there!

People suffering from depression need psychological help, namely, they have to find out why they are depressed and then deal with it! Sometimes, there is nothing physical one can do, you can't escape sorrow! Indeed, all attempts at running away from pain only makes it grow worse since it is inside the brain, not outside!

The SSRIs make one feel temporarily better only because it basically pries open the door to the Magic World of Dreams and the flow of emotions from that realm cause temporary joy. But right on the heels of this comes the nightmares who are the Kings of the Realm.

Again, I pictured this as a child as Pegasus: far from being some kindly creature, he is the bearer of lightning, the hardest horse to ride, dangerous, yet if you give him a Golden Apple he will allow you to find the Muses and the Graces who are the guardians of the arts and sciences as well as the Dream Realm: Mt. Olympus. Dr. Freud was a notorious dreamer who thought he could figure out the riddle of the Dream Sphinx who also lives on that mountain and he could then cure people by revealing to them that which they hide from themselves and he thought it was all about sex, which it is in some aspects for the brain is where sex lives, not the organs below.

So human brains are awash with hormones that trigger sexual desires and thoughts which we must suppress because we no longer go into heat but are sexual all the time which is a mess because we can't go around having sex all the time, we must suppress this so we created all sorts of rules and systems controlling sexual contact and responses in the waking life and the brain deals with all this by expressing sexual desire in the sleeping world which is why it is easy having sex suddenly at night.

From Insomnium:

By Kevin Wilson

Freud maintained the notion that the dream fundamentally acts as the guardian of sleep. When we go to bed, the curtains are drawn, the lights are turned off and in effect we are attempting to disconnect from our reality by extinguishing all external stimuli. During the night, the mind protects the sleeper from being disturbed by reacting to further external stimuli (noise, temperature, light, the need to urinate, numb arm/leg, pain, etc) as well as all internal stimuli (emotions, fears, dissatisfaction, desires, previous day's activity) by manufacturing dreams.

Freud's work was solely concerned with internal stimuli. Essentially, for a person to continue to sleep undisturbed strong negative emotions, forbidden thoughts and unconscious desires have to be disguised or censored in some form or another. Otherwise, confronted by these, the dreamer would become distressed and they would eventually wake up. Therefore the dream, if understood correctly, could lead to a greater understanding of the dreamer's subconscious.

Freud believed the dream to be composed of two parts. The manifest and the latent content. The manifest content can be thought of as what a person would remember as soon as they wake - what they would consciously describe to someone else when recalling the dream. Freud suggested that the manifest content possessed no meaning whatsoever because it was a disguised representation of the true thought underlying the dream.

Aside from this being a simple summary of Freud, the author of this article tells us one of his dreams:

The following is an extract from a dream I had on 16th January 2003:

I am walking through a building where I reach two large doors. I push them with all my force and they open onto playing fields. On the grass is an extremely large bookcase full of encyclopaedias. I stand still and watch two women, both of which are bare breasted. They are standing on top of the bookcase attempting to thread a balloon over some telephone wires. One of them calls out to me: "Thread the balloon for me while I put some clothes on." I agree although it was more difficult than I envisaged. Therefore when she returns she orders me to start again. Instead of attempting it again I run around a running track, although I become tired extremely quickly.

My interpretation: this person is very intellectual and has the capacity to think things through very carefully. But due to this, he is also very headstrong and uncreative because he uses his mind to negate his own emotions including his desire to rape or kill (we all have these desires---it is a very important part of being the species that we are). So he is inside a 'building' which is actually his own reality, his intellect, and to escape himself and find his true feelings, he has to struggle to pry open the doors and he comes out into Mt. Olympus which exists only in the dream world.

It is verdant and full of life. But he is uninterested in this. He looks for and imagines a bookcase out of doors. It is filled with all the knowledge of mankind. Attending this structure are two naked Muses amusing themselves by doing something really strange. These Muses are History and Science. The balloon they are threading through electrical wires are his emotions which he is losing control of.

The fact that it is red means it is all about the passions concerning murder and sex. He has to attend to these feelings by threading the balloon of his desires while he sends away one of the Muses to get dressed and thus, hide herself from him. Then he runs away.

Click on the site and you can read about his further, futile adventures as he struggles to prevent himself from embracing the Graces and the Muses. He is a good writer and recognizes this is an important message dream from his inner brain to his waking self. Which is why I am furious that the entire idea of exploring the dream world has been destroyed by modern psychiatrists!

Talk about throwing the red balloon away along with the baby and the bath!

Dreams aren't merely visual images, they are feelings, and the intensity of feelings is greater than in real life because it is NAKED. And when these dreams happen, the SSRIs in the brain are at work. And if a drug causes them to flow too much, this means the emotional part of the waking mind has to constantly deal with a stream of feelings that are impossible to control or suppress. The dream world no longer has to wait until the Super Ego is asleep: it can stream information all the time!

In the dream world, there are not only no morals, there are no restrictions at all. This is why all the entities who are pictured as part of the dream world have wings, ergo; Pegasus., for example. You don't even have to be human! I write about other living creatures all the time and when I do, I 'channel' them and become one with them inside my brain so I can 'feel' what they feel. I have had amusing dreams about being killer whales, squid, bees, birds and of course many mammals as well as humans.

These are not 'other lives lived' in the sense of reincarnation (I'll admit the killer whale was fun, we hunted seals and played with each other and the sea as seen from below the water's surface is beautiful in the Arctic) but rather, my imagination using information collected from outside to transform myself so I could understand myself better and be able to write or draw things that aren't just myself but outside of myself.

Most people are so embarrassed or befuddled by their own dreams, they deliberately refuse to remember them or think about them so when the dream world collapses under medication increasing the SSRIs, they can't see what is going on since they assume they are always seeing reality.

You can't really see reality because it passes first through the brain and the brain rearranges it accordingly. For example, our eyes see everything upside down and the brain fixes this. Any time this rearrangement breaks down, people appear to be insane or if the system of inhibitions breaks down, madness can occur.

The mania for many people in America to go crazy in churches, for example, and 'speak in tongues' etc. is directly connected to the need to go insane and thus, relieve the pressure. The SSRIs do this only the people taking the drugs can actively suppress it...and sometimes fail. Most people don't like to think about themselves as a collection of ticks, assumptions and inhibitions but this is what we are and most people like to imagine they are in control but they are not, I read the news and the jarring effect of people saying the opposite of reality is amusing in a very dark way.

Just like the refusal to see obvious cause and effects because people want to live in a dream world, the inability to grasp reality is due to wishful thinking coupled with the dark inner forces, that red balloon threading the dangerous electrical wires (ah, lightning strikes again!). Namely, the dark, bloody mess that is all about sex and murder thanks to our evolution as murderous, rapacious beasts, can take over.

From Blackwell Synergy Corp:

Clinical lore and a small number of published studies report that the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) intensify dreaming. This study examines the dream effects of paroxetine and fluvoxamine in order to both increase clinical knowledge of these agents and to test an important potential method for probing the relationship between REM sleep neurobiology and dreaming in humans. Fourteen normal, paid volunteers (4 males, 10 females; mean age 27.4 year, range 22–39) free of medical or neuropsychiatric symptoms as well as of psychotropic or sleep affecting drugs completed a 31-day home-based study consisting of: 7 days drug-free baseline; 19 days on either 100 mg fluvoxamine (7 Ss) or 20 mg paroxetine (7 Ss) in divided morning and evening doses; and 5 days acute discontinuation. Upon awakening, subjects wrote dream reports, self-scored specific emotions in their reports and rated seven general dream characteristics using 5-point Likert scales. Dream reports were independently scored for bizarreness, movement and number of visual nouns by three judges. REM sleep-related measures were obtained using the Nightcap ambulatory sleep monitor. Mean dream recall frequency decreased during treatment compared with baseline. Dream report length and judge-rated bizarreness were greater during acute discontinuation compared with both baseline and treatment and this effect was a result of the fluvoxamine-treated subjects. The subjective intensity of dreaming increased during both treatment and acute discontinuation compared with baseline. Propensity to enter REM sleep was decreased during treatment compared with baseline and acute discontinuation and the intensity of REM sleep increased during acute discontinuation compared with baseline and treatment. The decrease in dream frequency during SSRI treatment may reflect serotonergic REM suppression while the augmented report length and bizarreness during acute SSRI discontinuation may reflect cholinergic rebound from serotonergic suppression.

When the chemistry of the brain was mastered somewhat, psychiatrists were reduced to handing out prescriptions, not figuring out the hidden mind. I chat often with psychiatrists because my husband was brain damaged at work so I go with him to the hospital a lot. They all admit they know the medicines are not working but it is all economical: hospitals don't want to pay for analysis, they want some medicine and then turn the insane back out into the streets again. All the psychiatrists I have known all wish they could practice their art for they understand what is going on but there is no profit margin in all this thinking and talking!

Therapists try to manually get people to function but this is limited to say the least. Namely, the Skinnerian view of humanity covers only a very small and I would say, rather less important, aspects of the human mental landscape. As far as I am concerned, many totally deranged people are running the world because we are all insane at some level. But the red balloon of our military/industrial complex and the wars we are waging and cooking up can and have killed millions, not mere dozens.

And the NASA mess: two major crimes in one year so far? The suicide/murder there yesterday is getting near zero press due to the latest mass murder but again, it was a loner who was freaking out. Bet he was on SSRI drugs too. As we explore space, we must also focus on the innermost chambers of the soul. That place where all our dreams are hatched.

Time to rewatch '2001' again. Heh.

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NJ Gov. Corzine Broke The Law

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The Govenor of New Jersey, rushing to Rutgers to suck up to the media in its latest silly feeding frenzy, was nearly killed because he thought the laws he enforces are not for him but for others. So I guess the Furies and the Fates decided to show him who is boss.

From Associated Press:

Gov. Jon S. Corzine's son said his father recognized him and responded to visitors Sunday, three days after an SUV crash left him on a ventilator with a dozen broken ribs and a severely fractured leg.

"When you talk to him, he can recognize your voice, that's my feeling," said Joshua Corzine, the eldest of two sons. "He definitely responds when you let him know who you are."

I found the entire fracas over the Imus Idiot, an old, ugly, really, really physically repulsive man who makes his living being obnoxious and playing the Stupid White Male up to the hilt, to be a waste of time.

The American media is full of clowns of all sizes and degrees of ugliness in character, mouth and visuals. They prosper here because there are plenty of people who seem to admire these sorts of creatures. Being aging children with no manners, they appeal to an audience of the same.

They said and do many stupid things, too many to count. They love stupid people like Bush, for example. They hate civilization. And corporate America advertises on their shows because stupid idiots who can't count, can't behave and can't connect the dots make great customers. Especially if the stuff being peddled is bad for oneself or is stupid or a waste of money.

For some odd reason, this particular specimen of stupidity was attacked and shoved into the streets thanks to the internet and the host of people who hang out here. I find it very ironic that a sector of the web that attacks each other over trivial disagreements by threatening to rape or murder each other (this happens on so-called 'liberal' blogs all the time!) and posters can and do use every sort of verbal insult, etc. This is the same part of the web that is attacking Imus for being a total jerk.

Indeed, the web is free speech central and I would have it no other way. If people disagree and the only sort of argument is to type in threats of rapine and other odd sexual acts, so be it. It doesn't bother me any. But for the web to to after people for acting this way in public is kind of amusing and rather hypocritical.

Indeed, I come from the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in the 1960's. If someone wants to insult people, they may. Insults are part of free speech. Goon squads enforcing speech rules leads to censorship and what happened to Imus is certainly censorship.

On the other hand, corporate America has no need to subsidize idiots like Imus. He, like myself, can post his dreadful tripe on the internet for free. If he wants to be paid, he has to please more than just morons. So on the whole, losing his advertisers is OK. But we shouldn't be happy about this: censorship has this ugly habit of expanding and covering the land! So online commentators, beware: you have fed the Beast!

The govenor of New Jersey is just plain evil: he has laws about seat belts and if you drive without one, you are given a ticket and PUNISHED. Your insurance goes way, way up. And I used to live and drive in New Jersey. And got rear-ended several times by bad drivers.

Since 1958, I have worn seat belts because my family was in a big auto accident when a drunk rear-ended the stationwagon my father was driving. No American cars had seat belts back then. So my father bought a German Volkswagen that had seat belts. So I grew up using these things all the time. I feel funny if I can't use them.

With all the campaigns for years and years to educate people about this one would think the top politician of a state with one of the highest insurance rates because of accidents would be pushing hard to set a good example! I bet anything, he was speeding on the Thruway, too. The sense of being above the law, the sense of entitlement is much more important than the goofy hysteria over childish, racist insults yapped by ugly, old white men who can't get their dicks up anymore.

Namely, people die constantly because they don't wear seat belts. And the govenor of New Jersey is very definitely at death's door. I hope this man not only gets ticketed for this crime but is severely punished by the judge. If I were a judge, I would be furious.

But all I can do is mouth off on my blog. And I pray we can continue doing this in the future.....

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A Little Girl Killed By Psycho Drugs

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Throwing out older psychiatry, modern doctors use nearly only chemical remedies. Coupled with often ineffective 'therapies', drugging children is spreading as adults try to control their behavior. This recently led to the death of a very small girl who was drugged much of her short life.

From the Associated Press

By DENISE LAVOIE,

Dispensing drugs to children diagnosed with mood or behavior problems is "the easiest thing to do, but it's not always the best thing to do," said Dr. Jon McClellan, medical director of the Child Study and Treatment Center in Lakewood, Wash. "At some level, I would hope that you'd also be teaching kids ways to control their behavior."

According to the medical examiner, Rebecca died of a combination of Clonidine, a blood pressure medication Rebecca had been prescribed for ADHD; Depakote, an antiseizure and mood-stabilizing drug prescribed for the little girl's bipolar disorder; a cough suppressant; and an antihistamine. The amount of Clonidine alone in Rebecca's system was enough to be fatal, the medical examiner said.

The two brand-name prescription drugs are approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in adults only, though doctors can legally prescribe them to youngsters and do so frequently.

They hand out drugs like candy these days. Adults can monitor themselves and decide if they wish to have the effects of various psychological drugs. My own husband was brain damaged at work and years ago, when he used to have convulsions, he used so powerful tranquilizers to sedate him and spent much of his first year, asleep, while his brain began to heal.

Today, he is feeling better but still takes drugs. But not the heavy sedatives: they were temporary. As an adult, he could decide for himself, if he needed to cut the pain and rest. Even so, I had to watch over him and give him advice and feed-back so he wouldn't get addicted or fall into a coma. I had to insure he was able to eat and do other things.

Several times, he had to be put in the hospital because these efforts failed.

Children are not merely smaller versions of adults, their chemistry is quite different. Because of the radical changes in our harmones and other chemical/biological processes, children and older adults are radically different from sexually active humans. Namely, from puberty to menopause, the body is subjected to quite a different regime. And the brain is the main target of many of these biological changes!

So medicines that affect the brain are altered by these biological changes which evolved along with sex. Dr. Freud noticed the strong connection of sex to mental stability. He tried to penetrate its secrets.

The cultural mileu he lived in limited his ability to define this innermost Sphinx. But today, psychology has dumped him and the whole sexual sheebang and is now purely mechanical. Only this is spotty and as research illuminates how sexual maturity changes the entire architecture of the brain, doctors treating patients seldom know all the details nor seem to care about them.

For most patients have no money. When a family is sane, it is easy to make money. A troubled family with unstable members struggles with fiscal problems and probably have no insurance. If the state is paying, they want psychiatric visits to be as short as possible. At the hospital my husband uses which is a very nice one, the average patient gets less than 15 minutes per visit per month, if that.

We won our court case and my husband's health bills are paid 100% by insurance for life---though he would far rather be healthy again!---but even then, the visits are kept to a minimum and periodically, I have to stick our lawyer on the state to force them to give him necessary health care.

In the case of this poor child in Boston, the entire system dealing with her failed because of the addiction to fixing all problems by using drugs overcame basic humanity.

From the article:

Kifuji, the psychiatrist prescribing the drugs, told police Rebecca had been her patient since August 2004, when she was 2. She said she based her diagnoses of ADHD and bipolar disorder on the family's mental health history, as described by Carolyn Riley, and Rebecca's behavior, as described by Carolyn and briefly observed by her during office visits.

How is it, a child of only 2 years, can be 'diagonosed' with ADHD based on what? Her siblings had it? Talk about bizarre. And basing it on the mother's description is also very dangerous. I have represented, in court, children falsely accused of being insane. The best way to deal with such cases is to have the mother go insane on the stand and shock the judge.

This has happened! On top of all this, the doctor who helped kill Rebecca, only saw her 'briefly'. This means for 15 minutes!

The absurdity of all this is obvious. I've had to deal with traumatized children in the past. Getting them to talk about anything at all takes a lot of time and patience. One can't simply interview them! The reimbursement of doctors so troubles the state, they have destroyed the psychiatric profession and replaced it with the pharmacist.

Worse than that, the pharmacists in this case was so alarmed, they contacted the psychiatrist and argued with her.

From the article:

Prosecutors say the Rileys intentionally tried to quiet their daughter with high doses of Clonidine. Relatives told police the Rileys called Clonidine the "happy medicine" and the "sleep medicine."

Many cruelties are done to small children to quiet them. Recently, in Russia, a patient in a hospital blew the whistle on overworked nurses caring for orphans when she was alarmed to see they were taping the children's mouths shut and tying them to their beds. In American medical centers, we gag them with drugs.

laudanum (n.):

1: narcotic consisting of a tincture of opium or any preparation in which opium is the main ingredient [syn: tincture of opium]

In the past, parents used opium to silence children's cries.

The Romantic and Victorian eras were marked by the widespread use of laudanum in Europe, and the United States. Initially a working class drug, laudanum was cheaper than a bottle of gin or wine, because it was treated as a medication for legal purposes and not taxed as an alcoholic beverage. Nurses also spoon-fed laudanum to infants.

This was outlawed when Victorian reformers realized this drug caused hallucinations and addictions leading to death. One wonders if the amazing proliferation of detailling and fanciful artwork and architecture was a result of the heavy use of opiates? It would seem logical to me for we didn't appreciate this art during the middle of the last century until the discovery of LSD and its use as a psychiatric drug.

I got my own first 'trip' from Timothy Leary, himself. It was literally an eye-opener.

This poor child looks like she was on belladonna, aka, 'Deadly Nightshade.'

From Wikipedia: Adverse reactions to atropine include ventricular fibrillation, supraventricular or ventricular tachycardia, giddiness, nausea, blurred vision, loss of balance, dilated pupils, photophobia, and possibly, notably in the elderly, confusion, hallucinations, and excitation. These latter effects are due to the fact that atropine is able to cross the blood-brain barrier. Because of the hallucinogenic properties, some have used the drug recreationally, though this is very dangerous and often unpleasant.

In overdoses, atropine is poisonous.

I took one look at the little girl's portrait and she looked like she was on quite a few hallucinagetic drugs! Her pupils are very wide and she resembles many pictures of young women in the last century, gazing dopily into the distance.

Here is a story from the Columbus Dispatch, concerning the heavy drugging of rambunctious children entering puberty.

Sunday, April 24, 2005
Encarnacion Pyle

Ohio Legal Rights Service, which is leading the charge for change, says the opposite should be done. Mental Health needs to impose far stricter rules to limit the use of medications and hold centers accountable for abuses, it says.

Both sides agree that psychiatric drugs can help kids suffering with anxiety, depression or a host of other mental illnesses. The question in these cases is whether medications are being used to treat children or as a chemical straitjacket.

Legal Rights, an independent state agency, has examined nearly 500 cases involving chemical restraints during the past five years, including:

? A 5-year-old boy who was so doped up that he couldn?t stop batting the air, complaining about imaginary bugs and smacking his lips. A doctor ordered him off all medication.

? A 10-year-old boy who was chemically restrained 69 times over 80 days. Doctors prescribed up to six drugs at a time ? and never conducted trials to determine which pills worked for what symptoms or disorders.

As someone who had good reason to feel anxious and depressed as a child, after being raped, I am also the first to say, a child needs to feel things! I am a fairly competent and decent adult because I was allowed (through neglect) to feel everything to my very bones. I suffered tremendously and bear scars from this but also, it became my strength: that which does not kill us makes us stronger. And I used to say, while in physcial pain--they did have to operate on me, twice---'If I feel pain, I am alive.'

This ability to overcome obstacles and to win the battle of life is part of the journey through life and even small children can do this. I once cared for a girl who saw her father die. Her mother didn't give her any drugs, instead, she worked out the pain by playing a game with the other girls in her group, a game she made up, herself. It was sleeping beauty being woken up by the prince, over and over, using dolls.

Everyone loved to play this and they took turns being the princess. It was part of her healing process and today, she is a happy adult, happily married. And, an actress.

Here is another story from last fall about over-drugging kids:

November 23, 2006
Proof Is Scant on Psychiatric Drug Mix for Young

By GARDINER HARRIS

Bottles of psychiatric medications fill the shelves. Stephen, 15, takes the antidepressants Zoloft and Desyrel for depression, the anticonvulsant Lamictal to moderate his moods and the stimulant Focalin XR to improve concentration. Jacob, 14, takes Focalin XR for concentration, the anticonvulsant Depakote to moderate his moods, the antipsychotic Risperdal to reduce anger and the antihypertensive Catapres to induce sleep.

Over the last three years, each boy has been prescribed 28 different psychiatric drugs.

Today, even as we put many people in prison for using or selling all sorts of drugs, we encourage legal drug use for very small children. A misguided desire to prevent them from feeling any pain or suffering, this is also due to a collective inability to raise young children. During much of our human history, children after weaning grew up in groups supervised by all the adults, especially the older ones who could no longer hunt too well or lift weights.

And the children raised each other, too. Their fights for dominance and the older ones teaching the younger ones, growing up was a group effort, there was no such thing as a nuclear family hiding behind closed doors, doing goofy, stupid, ugly things.

If a child grows up with a certain amount of adventure and happenstance, they can become fine adults if they are not viciously abused or drugged to death. But this requires all people working together and this is what our culture doesn't want. Even in Europe, 300 years ago, the Princes and Princesses lived in castles filled with people of all sorts which they had to deal with and socialize with.

There was so little privacy, the private bedchamber for the King and Queen wasn't really invented until 1700! In the 1300's, a private room for the King or Lord to meet with his top staff or wife, called the 'solar' was the only other room in most castles. Everyone ate and slept in the Great Hall.

Rebecca was born to a troubled family that had lost all point in living and simply existed, detached from not only society but reality. She was killed by a system set up to limit her impact on everyone else. Namely, the whole point was to suppress her existence and to make her disappear.

I was an annoying child with a very high IQ and most teachers didn't like me very much. I skipped grades because I was bored to death. If this were today, I probably would have been drugged. As it was, I did use drugs as a teen. What a mess that was!

It didn't fix anything. I just am who I am. As we all are, each individual, different. We have no idea what 'sanity' is and anyone who thinks they know what this is, is insane.

All I can say is, stop drugging small children. Until they can monitor their own doses and know what to do next, they should be left alone except in the very rare cases of true psychosis which prevents them from eating or drinking. And even then, only with greatest caution.

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Poisoned Food And Industrial Farming

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The health of all living things is in jeopardy thanks to modern genetic engineering and modern farming methods. Also, pet food that is supposedly many different brands, are really all made at the same factory which evidently used poisoned food from China. And scientists prove that soft drinks are really bad for the health. The FDA finally issues an artifical suntanning warning but won't close down sun tan salons.

Bees are dying all over the world thanks to modern bee-keeping and farming methods.

From Der Spiegel: By Gunther Latsch

A mysterious decimation of bee populations has German beekeepers worried, while a similar phenomenon in the United States is gradually assuming catastrophic proportions. The consequences for agriculture and the economy could be enormous.

Is the mysterous decimation of bee populations in the US and Germany a result of GM crops?

Walter Haefeker is a man who is used to painting grim scenarios. He sits on the board of directors of the German Beekeepers Association (DBIB) and is vice president of the European Professional Beekeepers Association. And because griping is part of a lobbyist's trade, it is practically his professional duty to warn that "the very existence of beekeeping is at stake."

The problem, says Haefeker, has a number of causes, one being the varroa mite, introduced from Asia, and another is the widespread practice in agriculture of spraying wildflowers with herbicides and practicing monoculture. Another possible cause, according to Haefeker, is the controversial and growing use of genetic engineering in agriculture.

World trade has meant the swift spread of all diseases. I grew up mostly in Arizona and one could not bring across any of the state's borders any fruits or vegetables. They had to be turned over to inspectors. This was to prevent the spread of diseases and insects that might destroy the crops in the home state.

Free trade has eliminated this and now vermin and diseases freely pass about the planet. A general rule of thumb is, invading organisms flourish when they enter new ecosystems. The plants and animals living in ecosystems with a certain germ, for example, evolve defences. Namely, the weak die and the ones that are not fatally affected, flourish. But if this same germ travels to a new site, 90% of the host plants or animals will die very rapidly because they have not evolved a resistance to the new organisms.

This is why all wise countries control the movement of plants and animals. Humans already make the world dangerous for us all by spreading exotic diseases. In 1969, I picked up a really virulent virus from Vietnam because I gave mouth to mouth recussitation to a sick vet who just arrived in San Francisco. It nearly killed me.

Back to the bees: I keep bees and for years, I have been unhappy with the use of Round-up and other defoliants because they make my bees ill. In NY, the government is trying foolishly to eradicate certain invasive wild flowers---it is too late, of course---so they had been spraying them with Round-up and then my bees get sick.

Once an invasive species enters, it is often too late to do anything. Many wildflowers we think are natural are actually invaders, for example.

But the genetic engineered plants that produce anti-round-up chemicals are particularily deadly. First, this is poison for bees and bees love pollen: this is how they produce their queens, just for example. Secondly, the genetic code for this resistance to the weed killing chemicals ends up in the weed, thanks partially to bees, and they grow more and more resistant as time passes.

From the article:

Politicians, until now, have shown little concern for such warnings or the woes of beekeepers. Although apiarists have been given a chance to make their case -- for example in the run-up to the German cabinet's approval of a genetic engineering policy document by Minister of Agriculture Horst Seehofer in February -- their complaints are still largely ignored.

Even when beekeepers actually go to court, as they recently did in a joint effort with the German chapter of the organic farming organization Demeter International and other groups to oppose the use of genetically modified corn plants, they can only dream of the sort of media attention environmental organizations like Greenpeace attract with their protests at test sites.

Industrial farming has many bad side effects at nearly every level. I consider these farms to be Concentration Camps for Nature. These systems create genetic weaknesses and brutalize both wild nature and domestic plants and animals. On every level, it is unnatural and destructive. But it also makes for a much bigger profit margin that can be exploited by capitalists.

Like many profit ventures, it relies on milking the system today, to hell with tomorrow. The quarterly bottom line, not the long line of history, is the focal point. But Mother Nature has distant horizons.

The pet food poisoning flap gets worse as investigators track down the cause.

From ABC news: By DAVID KERLEY

March 23, 2007 — ABC News has learned that investigators have determined that a rodent-killing chemical is the toxin in the tainted pet food that has killed several animals.

A source close to the investigation tells ABC News that the rodenticide, which the source says is illegal to use in the United States, was on wheat that was imported from China and used by Menu Foods in nearly 100 brands of dog and cat food.

Aside from the acknowledgement that we really don't have food service competition, it is all one big corporate entity run by one group of people, we also see the downside to free trade and health issues. Namely, food is floating about the planet grown and treated in all sorts of interesting ways we can't see until we eat it and die. The recent peanut flap whereby several supposedly different brands of peanut butter all came from the same contaminated vat, clearly shows the hazards to humans is just as great.

People die because of this. And if mishandling food in one place can poison many, having huge factories grind out tons of food for millions without the government supervising it all, can mean vast poisoning episodes like the recent spinach case that killed so many.

Under the GOP, government oversite has been defunded and corporate entities protected just as Montsanto genetic engineering now has the green light to do their worst. Thanks to political bribery.

Coca Cola should be banned.

From Live Science: Robin Lloyd

Root beer could be the safest soft drink for your teeth, new research suggests, but many other popular diet and sugared sodas are nearly as corrosive to dental enamel as battery acid.

Prolonged exposure to soft drinks can lead to significant enamel loss, even though many people consider soft drinks to be harmless or just worry about their sugar content and the potential for putting on pounds, the study says.

The erosive potential of colas is 10 times that of fruit juices in just the first three minutes of drinking, a study last year showed. The latest research, published in Academy of General Dentistry (AGD) journal General Dentistry, reports that drinking any type of soft drink hurts teeth due to the citric acid and/or phosphoric acid in the beverages.

When I was a little girl in Texas back in 1955, I was given a bottle of coke to drink. I spat it out and said, 'What is this? Battery acid?' Heh. Actually, I just spat it out. I thought the boy who gave it to me was pulling my leg. But he wasn't. I can't drink that stuff because I am allergic to caffine but even so, it still tastes like battery acid.

It not only rots the teeth, it is made with corn syrup and this is very conductive towards creating obesity in bees, cows and humans. The misuse of this sugar is throughout our factory food system, if one reads labels on food boxes, it comes quite clear, just how much of this dangerous sweetner we injest.

The bottling industry is furious with this study and hotly denies they are responsible for the deterioration in human populations' health even though the amount of soft drinks consumed has skyrocketted compared to say, milk consumption. Not to mention my favorite drink, tea.

Then there is the health hazards of those cosmetic suicide suntanning machines that are proliferating across the country.

From the FDA:

Public health experts and medical professionals are continuing to warn people about the dangers of ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun, tanning beds, and sun lamps. Two types of ultraviolet radiation are Ultra violet A (UVA) and Ultraviolet B (UVB). UVB has long been associated with sunburn while UVA has been recognized as a deeper penetrating radiation.

Although it's been known for some time that too much UV radiation can be harmful, new information may now make these warnings even more important. Some scientists have suggested recently that there may be an association between UVA radiation and malignant melanoma, the most serious type of skin cancer.

My previous husband was diagnosed with melanoma when he was still in his twenties. He is one of the first survivors of that dreadful disease, thanks to modern medical technologies. But it was in his eye, not his skin, thank goodness.

In the skin, it rapidly spreads and then kills the victim. Even with modern technology, it still shortens the life. Instead of just warning people, they are killing themselves when they use these machines, the FDA should be outlawing these parlors.

I regularily warn heavy smokers, they are shortening their lives. This doesn't work until the Grim Reaper stands right over them. Then they wish they didn't fall for the addiction. But it is too late. Going to the funerals of people who died too young because they consumed products the government certifies as safe is very depressing.

We have sent millions of people to prison because illegal drugs are supposed to be bad for the health. So why aren't we sending the executives of all these corporations to prison? If the point is to protect the people, they deserve to serve their time. Or be executed like in China. I wonder if the guy who shipped that contaminated feed to the USA is going to be punished?

It all depends on political connections. Which is why our own system allows using the excuse of fund raising for an election to be the open door for all bribes.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Washington Politicos Love Laser Cosmetic Surgery

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The New York Times has this chipper, happy article about how our Congress critters and pundits and everyone who goes on TV gets all this cosmetic surgical care so they can look pretty. Meanwhile, our soldiers rot in wretched conditions, 44 million Americans have no health insurance and Iraq's health system has completely collapsed, killing many thousands.

So welcome to the Land of Marie Antoinettes!

In Washington, no one embodies this convergence of politics, looks and media status more than Dr. Tina S. Alster, dermatologist to the powerful.

Designer-clad, immaculately blond, conversant in foreign and domestic politics and an habitué of the Beltway social circuit, Dr. Alster has a roster of patients she will not name because of doctor-patient confidentiality. But she is not averse to describing them in general terms.

“I certainly see members of Congress and the White House, heads of state and royalty,” Dr. Alster said in her new office on K Street. “I also have a lot of ambassadors.”

Dr. Alster, 47, is an expert in using lasers, which can treat any perceived blemish, be it wrinkle, sunspot, pimple, pore, scar or birthmark. With this kind of specialty, she is tailor-made for the digital era of Webcast presidential announcements.

Beauty is skin deep but depraved indifference to the sufferings of millions requires a hard heart and an ugly refusal to look into the mirror of the soul. It is obvious the preening pundits, TV personalities and politicians are all narcisstic nitwits. Even as we head towards fiscal hell, even as these same creatures who are getting their pretty faces dolled up, I hear these same people screaming that we can't afford health care for the masses.

All over TV, we see the buffed up faces of pretty boys and girls, smooth featured, smooth tongued rich people telling us, we can't afford health care. For seven years, these same preening peacocks told us our soldiers were getting superb health care afte being wounded.

Media crews followed armies of carefully groomed, perfectly coiffed politicians who did various photo ops at Walter Reed. Then suddenly, when Bush's popularity had tanked and the vast majority of Americans want this stupid war to end, reporters discovered the truth that was always there!

VA care is terrible.

By Lt. Col. Charlie Brown, USAF, Ret, Guest Columnist

Wednesday, March 21, 2007 8:49 AM PDT

Beneath the troubling revelations about the deplorable state of affairs at Walter Reed Army Medical Center lies something even uglier: a pattern of chronic neglect of veterans and their families by Washington politicians who will stand in front of any group of soldiers during an election year, but will stand behind none of them when it counts the most.

The Walter Reed scandal is only the tip of the iceberg.

Skyrocketing rates of homelessness, incarceration, substance abuse, suicide and divorce that have long plagued the veteran community - frequently the result of lasting psychological scars like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - are a national disgrace. And with more than one-third of recently returning vets showing symptoms of PTSD, experts already predict these disturbing trends will get worse in the decades to come.

The poor soldiers who have their faces blown off, are missing limbs, etc, don't look pretty. They don't worry about a wrinkle or a bag under the eye, many of them have bags attached to their bodies lower down where they are missing parts of their male anatomy. They don't worry about warts, they worry about limbs.

The press scandal is just a tool. Namely, since it reveals something anyone could have put into the news stream at any time, this being normal circumstances, the fact that all the media is suddenly noticing this is due to their collective desire to get rid of Bush now that he is unpopular and the war is unpopular.

But all those smiling, pretty faces lied for six years about conditions. And they will begin to lie again as soon as they select a new President for us.

Millions of Americans have no health care at all.

Alicia suffers from Multiple Sclerosis and is uninsured. She has two children (ages 10 & 12) who take care of her at home. She is confined to a wheelchair and can't afford home care.

44 million Americans are uninsured, and eight out of ten of these are workers or their dependents. Why is being uninsured a problem?

The heartlessness of these public figures who are all striving to look like Ken and Barbie never ceases to astonish me. One would think these monsters would donate their money they use to prettify themselves, to help the helpless! Or maybe they can raise taxes on those billionaires. America has over 400 of these guys who can fork over a lot of loot.

Then there is Iraq: no health care at all at this point.

By John Leyne
BBC News, Amman

Iraq's remaining doctors face a lack of basic medical equipment
The ordeal continues for victims of Iraq's violence when they are taken to hospital.

Most of the best medical staff have left after being targeted by insurgents. Many have fled the country just in the last few months.

Drugs and equipment are almost non-existent. The notorious militias target patients inside hospitals, and doctors inside the health ministry.

All this in a country that used to pride itself on the best medical services in the Middle East.

We destroyed everything there. The people who brought this destruction down upon the helpless people of Iraq (well, they are not so helpless) was that stupid army of box-toxed, wrinkle smoothing, hair replacing, dental rebuilding ruling elites in Washington, DC.

This is why they all look so expressionless: pitiless faces staring from hard, cold eyes. We are supposed to find this beautiful and want to hand over our fates to this Stepford Political class. And they will graciously smile as they kick us to the curb with their pretty Pravda pointy shoes.

Charming.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Health Care In Crisis: Only Low Paying Jobs Increasing

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The list of 'growth jobs' was just released and it is a terrible tale: low level health assistants are the leading edge in job growth! The loss of industrial jobs runs alongside the degradation of health care as imperial powers demand cheaper and cheaper hospitals. England's health care is in crisis and the USA is moving in the same direction.

Health care jobs are fastest growing but only at the lowest possible pay levels.

The Fastest Growing Jobs in the U.S.
Forbes.com
By Hannah Clark

No doctors or nurses made the list, which is compiled every two years and was last released in late 2005. But the ranks of medical assistants, dental assistants and physical therapist aides should all see growth of more than 30% by 2014. That's because the health care industry is "shifting responsibilities toward lower-wage, lower-skilled professions to combat escalating health care costs," says Hugo Sellert, a research manager at Monster Worldwide .

Number one on the list: Home health aides, with estimated growth of 56% in their numbers over the next eight years.

The top jobs are increasingly the lowest level service jobs. This 'dumbing down' of all job classifications is part and parcel of the classic 'internal rot' that plagues all empires. The USA has near-infinite sums that can be lavished on failing wars but the sums spent on medical care is rapidly being supressed. They cannot allow 'excessive' spending on health anymore.

We have a huge 'industry' called 'health insurance' which its sole function is to generate paperwork and to direct health spending. It is a collossal enterprise that produces exactly nothing. The profit magin of this fake industry rests upon not giving services as much as possible. Originally, they claimed they would do this by helping people stay healthy and strong via preventative medicine but now it has devolved into simply trying to rig a game so as few people can access the health services as possible.

For the last 40 years, nurses have tried to unionize and their unions have been brutally suppressed.

Anthony Pesce (Contact)
Published: Monday, July 10, 2006

The University of California has filed charges against a nurses’ union, alleging the union was using unfair negotiating tactics during ongoing contract bargaining sessions.

After the UC and California Nurses Association were unable to agree on three points during contract negotiations last year, both parties agreed to a special negotiation session that would allow them to sign a new contract in December of 2005 and begin negotiations in April.

The State has to crush the pay scales of nurses. Once upon a time, nurses attended patients fully. Now they are replaced by often near-illiterate cheap labor who often don't speak the language of the patients they are serving. When real nurses moved patients around and bustled about them, they also noted their condition, etc.

Now, nurses only come when they have to perform some action such as administering medicines. Even that is being removed. So untrained people are now the first line of defense. As the population ages, these people will be the ones administering to the elderly.

When I was still a student in high school, I said, 'When we are old, they will put us two to a bed and then not feed us.' This was a recognition of the baby boom's sad future fate. Fewer boomers had children than the previous generation and of these, fewer had many children. And the only thing standing between little care and good care is one's own children.

We have to look to other previous empires to see our own future. This is pretty simple. The United Kingdom ruled the Seven Seas and ruled vast former empires like India and China. Wealthy Brits lived in fabulous palaces and the lower classes spread across the planet to places like North America and Australia, often as semi- or full slaves.

Liverpool being a typical example of how this empire grew by importing/exporting slave labor.

The street in Liverpool, home town of the Fab Four, is named after James Penny, a slave trader and investor in 11 voyages that took 500 to 600 captives at a time to the New World.

Penny was among the many who enriched themselves and their city on human trafficking until the slave trade was abolished 200 years ago. Their ships carried millions of human beings from West Africa to the plantations of the Americas in a triangular trade that also brought profitable cargoes of sugar, tobacco and rum to England.

Liverpool's rise, says local historian Ray Costello, is summed up in the carving on a bank facade: two black children supporting a figure of the Roman god Neptune, representing Liverpool.

Today, the sector with the fastest future job growth is a proto-slave job classification. Namely, the humble carriers of human waste products and changing dirty sheets requires having cheap labor that can't complain too much or unionize. If it ceases being cheap, it fails to grow. So we are basically reverting to a pre-industrial slave society.

During much of the history of English Imperial World Domination, most Brits lived lives barely better than slaves under the lash.

Doctors have refused to help NHS trusts cut their spending, leading to a massive cumulative deficit of more than £1bn, a committee of MPs says today.

The reluctance of the medical profession to consider the cost when proposing treatment is singled out by the Public Accounts Committee as a key reason for the poor financial performance of the NHS. The report's emphasis on the role of doctors signals rationing of care may be inevitable if the NHS is to balance its books.

Hospital consultants control vast resources and their decisions can plunge a trust into deficit or help it claw its way back. Spending on the NHS has increased faster over the past five years than at any time in its history and is projected to rise to £92.6bn in 2007-08. But one in three NHS trusts is overspent, and some are so heavily in debt they have little hope of extricating themselves without outside help.

England is ahead of us on the scale of decline: we are still trying to depress the wages of nurses and poorly-trained, poverty-stricken aides. In England, they want to cut the wages of doctors! Of course, this will cause a mass exodus of good surgeons and medical staff.

England doesn't have a parasitical insurance complex squatting on top, sucking down massive amounts of loot, but they can't afford the system they have today. Even as Blair spends money on foreign military adventures, playing at imperial warrior, the Purse is telling the people they must cease asking for health care and live with fetid, decaying hospitals that are so dirty, they actively spread diseases.

Which reminds me of the scandal of Walter Reed Hospital here in the heart of the USA's world-girdling empire. The sick and injured soldiers pouring in daily from distant battles where they are fighting the peasants of many lands, are not cared for. Where money is lavished on some of the most insane projects of imperial projections of power, at home, there isn't a dime left over for medical care.

As I tell people who want me to wreck my health for something or another, 'I live in my body. It is the only place I live in.' So it is with health care: we see what is going on in the Third World where diseases are spreading and mutating in ways that will impact on us. And medical spending isn't slowing down this health-care collapse, it is spent on the wrong things.

It should be spent on public health as well as individual health. Namely, getting a great heart surgery doesn't do much good if a plague sweeps away nearly everyone suddenly. Clinging to imperial pretensions while letting the health care system collapse is a Miss Haversham life choice: to wear the rags of world domination while sitting at a table set with petrified food overrun by mice and bugs.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Right Wing Compassion On Display: US Courts Tell Sick Woman To Die

Elaine Meinel Supkis

I knew during the whole scream-fest surrounding the poor brain-dead woman was fake because the GOP and their minions really don't care if people die. They love to kill, in fact. Today, the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals just told a very ill woman she has to go to prison because she used herbs that are LEGAL in California.

This is our inane, stupid, ugly, interfering with people's private lives laws about drug use.

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- A California woman whose doctor says marijuana is the only medicine keeping her alive is not immune from federal prosecution on drug charges, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The nation of pill-poppers is the same place condemning people suffering from severe nausea to die ugly, painful deaths because an herb used to kill pain and help the appetite also makes you happy. And we know you can't grow plants that kill pain and make you happy, can we? Nope.

The grim monsters pretending to 'care' about us don't. Over and over again, they clearly show they hate us and wish us dead. Preferably, painfully.

There are no hells deep enough or hot enough for these cruel judges, prosecutors and lawmakers. California passed laws that were quite popular, allowing people who need this medicine to take it under strict state supervision. The Supreme Court, packed with anti-human, anti-consitutional creeps who keep ripping it apart and who ignore the important 'All men were created equal...and pursuit of happiness' stuff in our Declaration of Independence and here we are, torturing sick women to death so we can be certain no one else will have any fun, god forfend.

At the same time, we can drink anything we want except if it is forbidden by these demented Puritans who are as pure as coal slurry.

My heart goes out to this victim of the state. May all the people doing this horror to her feel her pain when they pass the Gates of Death and encounter the Guardian with the Scales.

Raich, 41, began sobbing when she was told of the decision and said she would continue using the drug.

"I'm sure not going to let them kill me," she said. "Oh my God."

Pegasus.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Repressed Memories And The Invention Of Childhood

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The belief that trauma can cause amnesia is a recent medical revelation. Some researchers have gone the opposite way, claiming it isn't real, it is fake because people didn't understand it 200 years ago. I will examine this tangled mess further.

There are a lot of things that have been understood only recently, of course.

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 26, 2007; Page A08

But when researchers recently mounted an exhaustive effort to find examples of trauma-related amnesia in literary works before the 19th century, they drew a blank. If repressed memories are one way the brain deals with painful memories, why would there be no literary examples of the phenomenon that are more than 200 years old?

In an unusual study, a group of psychiatrists and literary scholars, led by Harrison Pope of Harvard Medical School, recently argued that the psychiatric disorder known as dissociative amnesia (often called "repressed memory") is a "culture-bound syndrome" -- a creation of Western culture sometime in the 19th century.

There are several elements here: one is memory. Everyone thinks their own memory is correct and yet there are always disputes as to what is actually real and what is fantasy. Most people can't remember any dreams so they can't tell if a memory is a dream or actual factual reality. One can assemble information and data that reveals one's past events such as births and which schools one attended and other raw data.

Remembering events is always trickier. Many times, one remembers stories about events: collective family mythologies and such. Early on, I would write about various interesting 'events' within my own family and of course, by framing them, setting them down as words and adding some personal blather to them, I made stories become living things rather than a few ragged shreds of memories.

Creating and maintaining a roster of stories is important, I think, because it is part of one's own self and most people live more or less in the present with no past and no future, a sens of being in the here and now ruling their existence. This is radically different from writers, poets and artists of all kinds.

The main thing about childhood memories is, no human culture values them at all except for Western civilization starting with a specific time, the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and the simultaneous Romatic Rebellion.

In France, the famous philosopher, Rousseau, decided that the child made the man and the natural sensibilities of youth should be encouraged and protected, not stamped out.

Diderot encouraged Rousseau to write and in 1750 he won first prize in an essay competition organized by the Académie de Dijon - Discours sur les sciences et les arts. 'Why should we build our own happiness on the opinions of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?' (1750: 29). In this essay we see a familiar theme: that humans are by nature good - and it is society's institutions that corrupt them (Smith and Smith 1994: 184). The essay earned him considerable fame and he reacted against it. He seems to have fallen out with a number of his friends and the (high-society) people with whom he was expected to mix. This was a period of reappraisal. On a visit to Geneva reconverted to Calvinism (and gained Genevan citizenship). There was also a fairly public infatuation with Mme d'Houderot that with his other erratic behaviour, led some of his friends to consider him insane.

Rousseau's mental health was a matter of some concern for the rest of his life. There were significant periods when he found it difficult to be in the company of others, when he believed himself to be the focus of hostility and duplicity (a feeling probably compounded by the fact that there was some truth in this). He frequently acted 'oddly' with sudden changes of mood. These 'oscillations' led to situations where he falsely accused others and behaved with scant respect for their humanity. There was something about what, and the way, he wrote and how he acted with others that contributed to his being on the receiving end of strong, and sometimes malicious, attacks by people like Voltaire. The 'oscillations' could also open up 'another universe' in which he could see the world in a different, and illuminating, way (see Grimsley 1969).

The new history of Childhood which changed from being an annoying state of being to be rushed through as fast as possible, to an enchanted palace where the real person was formed and lived forever, was a real social revolution. Since the dawn of civilization, children scarcely mattered. The earliest biographers glossed over the nativity of their subjects for it was of little interest.

Only a few sketchy points were made for magical reasons: Julius Caesar had a strange birth, the founders of Rome were raised by a wolf, Oedipus was exposed as a baby by his kingly father, etc. The Bible is one of the few books which have various stories about the childhoods of characters such as Moses or Jesus but even these were mostly about the divinity of their unusual births and then skipping off to adulthood almost immediately, they focus mostly on adult actions with no psychology about the odd and bizarre births.

Indeed, outside of Oedipus, the births really had little to do with later adult actions, the heroes being 'normal' and not warped by their strange beginnings.

The 18th century saw the invention of the novel, launched by people like Daniel Defoe. These romantic novels all focused on adult problems and foibles. Children were characters but attempts at understanding their psychology barely existed. Children were still dressed like little adults once they left the cradle and the breast. But as social revolutions like the one in the USA and France swept the world, a quieter revolution changed children from little, imperfect adults into a new social class. It is no wonder this caused a huge revolution in how schools were run.

Dickens was the very first to delve deeply into the psychology of childhood and who understood things from a child's perspective. To this day, his novels stand out as important revelations concerning the inner working of a child's mind. His ability to remember his own very traumatic childhood was due lack of embarrassment. Namely, thanks to the ongoing revolution in understanding children and reforming schools, people were taking children more seriously and trying to understand them better rather than letting them fester in the domestic chambers until tamed and ready for adult needs.

The romanticizing of childhood ran alongside abusively working children to death in the new capitalist economy. Dickens, to his great credit, fought this tooth and nail and was one of the great reformers fighting for the right of children to have a childhood. The attitude about children and their memories was simple: they would 'grow out of' whatever traumas life inflicted on them. Dickens begged to differ. This is similar to the attitude that animals can't think or remember so they don't feel pain (a very bizarre idea indeed!).

Dickens led the way but it was Mark Twain who wrote the first novel which was about children and only their childhoods, not just as a preface for a story about an adult.

Throughout his life Clemens occasionally had recurring, emotional and profoundly touching dreams which he wrote were real. He recounted these dreams in the short story My Platonic Sweetheart. The dreams were about a young woman in the dream plane of existence, whom he loved, and who loved him in return. In all the dreams, regardless of Clemens' waking age, they both appeared to be about 15 years old. The dreams appeared to have a timeless continuity, that is, even though several waking years might have passed between meetings, in the dream world there seemed to have passed little time. Their physical appearance was different each time, the names they called each other were different, and in a couple of the dreams she died, but none of this seemed to be the slightest impediment to their continuing loving relationship each time they met.

Like Dickens or Rousseau, Mark Twain had a very active dream life. Most adults can't remember dreams but many children can and perhaps this murky inner world is the key difference between adult and the child. I can remember many of my dreams to this day. This might even be a personal defect. I will note that through history, the great dreamers who all built the new psychological matrix we live in today, were all a bit nutty, too. One problem with dreams is they can confuse a person terribly for a dream is every bit as vivid as a waking memory as far as the brain is concerned.

Because of our deep psychological environment is built into the brain and evolved with the brain, balancing it with daily life is difficult. Many people who think they are sane are not because there is no sanity, we are all crazy due to our brains and our basic psychology. The solution most cultures have for this is to ignore it all and muddle along anyway. Trauma was basically ignored or even mocked. It is like living in Iraq today: the madness of life can only be accepted or one can go on the rampage and kill.

Dr. Freud took all this to the highest plane.

In his 40s, Freud himself suffered from many cases of psychosomatic diseases as well as many kinds of fears, and during this period he applied many of his theories on himself, including psychoanalysis and dream interpretation. Through this self-analysis he managed to discover the cause of his psychical suffering.

He decided that all humans were basically born set up to suffer sexual and psychological trauma which is why he concentrated on the dream world. Not because this was 'real memories' but because it would show his patients how their innermost minds were responsible for them remembering things and the ancient prism set up by evolution warped things and they could deal with this creatively by talking, writing and making pictures, etc.

This revolution fueled great art works which still illuminate the cultural heavens. We live in the afterglow. And right on the heels of this, the tormented psychopath, Hitler, rose to power and acted out one of the most insane episodes in the history of Europe. Many people want to probe his childhood to understand why he grew up the way he became. But that is unnecessary. What happened when he was an adult is what really shaped him in the bitter end.

He turned his own WWI trauma into a WWII nightmare.

I am the victim of 'repressed memory'. Namely, I was really raped as a child and to this day, I can barely remember any details at all, when I accidentally retraced my steps to the door of the man who did this, he did confess to me. This didn't 'fix' anything in my psyche, it simply justified what people told me over the years (the doctors, etc). The wound this caused me isn't all that important next to all the stupid things that happen domestically that makes life annoying. I do notice that people can and will be hostile or nasty just because they are in a bad mood, stressed out or that is their personality. There is no medicine for this and probing the past won't fix it.

It is just part of being a human with a big, fat brain. This is our wonder and our greatest annoyance. This is why I call humans, 'the Insane Ape.'

Culture of Life News Main Page

New UN Warning Sign Appropriate For New World Order

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Zeitgeist: the human mind inadvertently clicks onto ideas and images. Today, we are in a Skull and Bones nightmare New World Order so the new UN warning sign is perfect.

This is too funny.

VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog introduced on Thursday a new radiation warning symbol showing emanating waves, a skull and crossbones, and a running person.

It will supplement the existing three-cornered trefoil symbol which "has no intuitive meaning and little recognition beyond those educated in its significance", the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement.

I took one look and laughed. If any Skull and Bones person approaches, run like hell. This includes Kerry who goofed off during the election vis a vis his brother, Bush, and then threw in the towel without a blink of the eye.

The one flaw in this UN warning sign is not making the Eye of the Pyramid perfect. They hide it inside the old atomic warning symbol but they couldn't resist using the many arms of the Solar God reaching down to the Skull and Bones and the fleeing human.

I suggest these signs be posted all over DC as well as New Haven. And the rest of the world better pay attention too: these clowns are killing people far and wide. Do not shake their hands! Do not talk to them! Do not touch them!

They are nuclear waste.

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Barbaro's Bones Disintigrated Because Of Dangerous Drugs

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The dead race horse, Barbaro, was killed by drugs. Lasix is a human medication that racing moguls inject into healthy horses in order to make them lose water fast. This drug also leeches out potasium and other minerals we use to keep our bones healthy. So no we have an epidemic of young horses shattering their legs.

Buried at the very end of this NYT article about the differences between European and American racing is this startling revelation:

By GINA RARICK
Published: February 4, 2007

There’s another big difference between the United States and much of the rest of the racing world: medication. Horses racing in America are allowed to be injected with various drugs on race day, the most common being Lasix, a powerful diuretic, and phenylbutazone, an anti-inflammatory medication. Many trainers use whatever medications are permitted whether or not they believe a horse needs it. If they don’t, the thinking goes, they will be giving an advantage to a competitor.

Brian Stewart, head of veterinary regulation for the Hong Kong Jockey Club, said that while it was impossible to scientifically link drugs to injuries, “we believe medication adds a risk factor, not only to injury, but to inconsistent racing performance.”

Hong Kong has a zero-tolerance policy on any medication in a horse’s system on race day.

Indeed. I recall very few instances of horses suddenly disintigrating on the race track until the last 15 years. It is now epidemic. It isn't old race horses doing this, it is very young ones. The main thing is, drugging horses or athletes is, to me, a criminal act: the drugging of a young horse in order to ride it deliberately to death, was clothed by the media and by hysterical, childish young (mostly) girls into this totally fake story of a brave little horse that incidentally ran itself into the ground in a heroic attempt at winning a race for its masters and owners.

Aside from the obvious connection to slavery, this dovetails with the activities of our 'allies' in the Gulf states who kidnap or buy little boys who are totally, in every regard, slaves, and then use them as jockeys who are injured, starved, drugged and killed. This made virtually zero news in America even as our media yelled nonstop about Darfur. The European press made a big deal about this slavery and forced our despotic allies to stop the practice just only a month ago.

Being a cruel Roman-style empire, we really don't care about other humans. Despite fighting a Civil War over the issue of slavery, the whole nation settled down to mistreating and abusing the children of the freed slaves and it took many years and a lot of very brave people to bring a tiny bit of justice for them.

The attitude that slaves love their masters and will put their lives in danger for the pleasure of their masters and racing is all about pleasure akin to sex, is part and parcel of the story-telling of empires. So the media conned little girls into crying real tears for a horse whose owners murdered it by injecting a potent and utterly dangerous drug into the poor horse to give it diahrea.

Indeed, drugged, abused horses win more races than ones that are treated fairly and honestly.

Hinchcliff 's team analysed the race records of 22,589 thoroughbreds, the researchers found that 74 percent (16,761) of the horses were given furosemide prior to a race. These horses raced faster, were 1.4 times more likely to win a race, 1.2 times more likely to finish in the top three and earned an average of $416.00 more than the horses not receiving the drug. While 85 percent of the horses in the study had received furosemide at some point in their lives, about 74 percent of thoroughbreds are likely to be running on the drug during a race, Gross said.

The trade name for furosemide is Lasix and it is according to one team member, "frequently used by humans for its diuretic effects" (the editor wonders if this may be an oblique reference to jockeys)? In any case the diuretic effect may cause enhanced racing performance, and other studies found that horses on furosemide lost about 20 pounds of their pre-race body weight through urination. And if weight can affect performance, a horse that's lost 20 pounds would theoretically have a racing advantage.

OK. What happens when one is flushed quickly of all nutrients? First, this damages the body which is why creatures can and do die from germs that cause diuretic effects. Like Cholera, just for example. Many human organizations forbid the use of a long list of drugs on athletes because they have bad side effects. And if they give a person 'that winning edge' this forces everyone to follow the same practices which is why steroids, for example, are forbidden.

Here is the standard cautions for Lasix:

Brand Name: Lasix
Generic Name: furosemide
FDA Drug Classification: loop diuretic

Action: Diuretics are given to help reduce the amount of fluid (water) in the body. They work by acting on the kidneys to increase the amount of urine passed.

Adverse Effects: -Increased loss of potassium from the body. Increase foods with high potassium content such as bananas or citrus fruits (or juices).
-Dizziness, lightheadedness or fainting may occur.

There it is, in a nutshell: the horses flush out important minerals and their bones get weaker and weaker and you can bet, the trainers and slave owners of these beasts pump that drug into them during the entire Triple Crown mess. This is probably why there has not been a Triple Crown winner since the slave owners who menace these poor horses voted to allow drugging. It isn't just Lasix, they use steroids off-season as well as a galaxy of performance drugs!

The number of damaged race horses in America is an epidemic today.

Around 800 racehorses die each year from fatal injuries suffered on US racetracks. An additional number of approximately 3,566 sustain injuries so bad that they cannot finish their races. Several breeding and horse handling abuses contribute to the great risk of death and injury that horses face.

Breeders often race horses as young as two. These horses lack fully developed bone structure, and are more likely to suffer injury.

We recently had a baseball scandal whereby the top players were forced to admit they cheated and used drugs to enhance their abilities. They did this dangerous practice despite knowing the hazards. There used to be this bizarre game show (I was asked to participate in it long ago but turned them down) called 'American Gladiators'. The show had a team of two men and two women who looked like escapees from the East German swim team. People were supposed to duel with them but the show's team nearly always won simply because they were swilled in steroids.

Then things fell apart. Murders and suicides shut down that horrible, abusive show. Too late for the poor women involved. Communist nations abused drugs in order to win. Race horse owners abuse drugs and kill their horses because winning makes them rich, especially with the breeding fees afterwards. Professional athletes abuse drugs seeking victory no matter what. Football players are given a host of drugs because they badly abuse their bodies and a fair number of them if not most, die younger than they might have if they had a less dangerous profession.

Money and power lie at the root of this drug abuse. The Olypmic Committee has tried to prevent this from happening to the point of taking unannounced urine and blood samples off-season to stop the rampant abuse of steroids in training. The fact that race horse owners give those high-strung horses steroids is horrifying. Angry horses are very dangerous and more than one trainer, even famous ones, has been killed by raging, out of control horses on steriods.

The US military and DARPA researchers strive to develop a drug that could act like steroids and speed all at once and allow soldiers to run, fight, be aggressive and so on for hours on end. Of course, this kills them and drives them insane. Which is why, each time, this has to be discontinued. The natural limits of our endurance have to be respected. If someone drives themselves past that point on their own volition, so be it. But forcing people to do this is dead wrong.

Now on to the business of capturing Killer Whales and making them perform tricks in tourist traps...

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