Saw in a recent AP piece [in "Aurora(CO)Sentinel," Tuesday Nov. 18]
that "Obama's incoming administration is unlikely to bring criminal
charges against government officials who authorized or engaged in
harsh interrogations of suspected terrorists during the George W.
Bush presidency." [For more on these charges see Manson family
prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi's new book 'The Prosecution of George W.
Bush for Murder'.] It should be noted that some of
these "interrogation techniques" are remarkably similar to
psychiatric treatments supported by Joe Biden, Obama's VP choice.
In 'Pharmacracy', Thomas Szasz describes government practices for
which there still hasn't been full accounting:

'The "scientific control" of behavior based on the "science of
psychiatry" is a gigantic confidence game which consists of
transforming, by means of psychiatric jargon, what is perfectly
obvious into what is impenetrably mysterious. Its inevitable result
is a series of crimes against humanity, usually perpetrated by
the 'creme de la creme' of the profession. In the 1940s and 1950s,
some of the most prominent American medical institutions,
psychiatrists, and psychologists were engaged in
medical "experiments" that differed only in degree and scope from
those engaged in by Nazi physicians experimenting on the inmates of
concentration camps. Working in secret for the CIA, psychiatrists
systematically poisoned people and used electric shock treatments to
destroy their memories, ostensibly in an effort to discover methods
of "mind control." Like all psychiatric "abuses," this massive
criminal conspiracy against the public was quickly forgotten.

'As long as we have no historical-moral accounting and hence no
collective memory for psychiatry's crimes against humanity--similar
to the accounting and memory for the wrongs of Christianity
recognized by the papacy, slavery recognized by the American people,
and the Holocaust recognized by Germany and the Western world--
no 'ad hoc' criticism of psychiatric "abuses" will have any impact
on the prestige and power of psychiatry and no criticism of the
concept of mental illness will be persuasive.'

If the incoming administration is willing to overlook the CIA's
employing psychiatric violence, is it possible that Obama will go
further, using his executive power to overturn Executive Order
12333, which prohibits the CIA from conducting assassinations?

'...what reaction could be expected from the American people in the
event that they became aware that a policy such as assassination was
being pursued by their government[?] No accurate answer is
possible, but the author suspects that if such compromise should
occur, the reaction of the average citizen would be one of initial
surprise followed by acceptance of the act if its need were obvious.'

--from 'Selective Assassination as an Instrument of National Policy'
(Paladin Press)

If the public can be expected to accept assassination, it is likely
that barbarisms like lobotomy, electric shock, and chemical
castration will continue.

How did the Liberal elite come to embrace violence as a political
tool? Author Stephen Marshall ,in 'Wolves in Sheep's Clothing: The
New Liberal Menace in America,' explains:

'Faced with the loss of prestige and influence in the world and the
real threat of economic decline, a core group of highly influential
[Baby-]boomer liberals blinked. Realizing they are losing ground in
a competition that will not favor those who play by established
rules of liberal society, they have thrown in their lot with empire,
playing good cop to the neoconservatives' militarized, warmongering
bad cop. Worse, they are pimping a system that has been reduced to
a memory of its original intent. It is 'the idea' of America that
they are proposing that soldiers die for. Modern liberalism is not
based on the archaic virtues of "individual liberty" as pronounced
by its founding philosophies. Modern liberalism is now involved in
a mortal struggle for its own survival, giving way to a system that
has a tendency to exploit far more than liberate. It is the
antithesis of that proscribed by its originators. And yet they are
willing to maintain the illusion that America is bringing an
evolved, humane political and economic system without acknowledging
it's a front for the free market engine that, once implemented, will
ensure the short-term strengthening of their own economy. If the
neocons are wolves on the hunt for food and territory, then the
liberals are wolves in sheep's clothing.'

Now I understand why Dr. Szasz sometimes refers to himself as
a "Libertarian" psychiatrist!

--- In thomasszaszdiscussion@yahoogroups.com, Martin Kessler
<titaniummdk@...> wrote:
>
>
> This has been one of the most disappointing presidential
elections - a hobbesian choice. I couldn't stand either one of
them. And the VP part made the mess smell even worse. Sarah Palin -
a dinosaur, Joe Biden - instituted the office of the "Drug Czar" -
Your quote from Szasz's Pharmacracy, confirms Biden's hostility
towards free market drugs and freedom from forced (drug treatment)
religious conversion.
> Martin
>
>
>
> To: thomasszaszdiscussion@...: sangchenyeshe@...: Sun, 9 Nov 2008
22:39:04 +0000Subject: [ThomasSzaszDiscussion] two-party system
>
>
>
> 'I am not alone in regarding the two-party system as a false
stratification, a dumb-show concocted for the public as a means to
distract attention from the ruling elite.'--Adam Parfrey, from 'Cult
Rapture''"I would hopefully be a good role model. I'm in recovery,"
declares Cindy McCain, wife of Senator and former presidential
hopeful John McCain (R-Az). Mrs McCain had used controlled
substances that she had stolen while she worked as a member of
a "charity she had set up to send medical relief to the Third
World."'--Thomas Szasz, from 'Pharmacracy: Medicine and Politics in
America''...American law, medicine, and public opinion now regard
not only involuntary confinement in a mental hospital, but also
involuntary participation in a so-called drug treatment program as a
bona fide medical treatment. The following statement, in 'The
Handbook of Drug Control in the United States', edited by University
of Delaware Professor James Inciardi and U.S. Senator Joseph Biden,
Jr. (D-Del), is illustrative: "Civil commitment is frequently used
with addicts who are arrested for criminal activity; with criminal
charges pending, the addict can be coerced into treament and
retained long enough to receive the benefits of a treatment
program."'--Thomas Szasz, from 'A Lexicon of Lunacy: Metaphoric
Malady, Moral Responsibility, and Psychiatry'Wonder why Mrs. McCain
hasn't been involuntarily commited. Maybe that'll be Biden's first
order of business!
>
>
>
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
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