Weekend Edition November 4-6, 2011
2
Americans have descended into a legal drug culture, while simultaneously retaining the “illegal” one – at great expense. But the government responds by denying the evidence its own agencies produce.
Last month, a funding “highlights” of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) showed how the Obama administration had decided to emphasize again its focus on law enforcement–not treatment.
For FY 2011, Obama allocated $15.5 billion, more than 3.5 percent more than last year for law enforcement. Treatment allocation barely rose.
Given the Administration’s belief in the law of supply and demand — when there’s demand, there’s a supply — Obama must have gone into a drug-induced stupor for continuing to fund the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign. $66 million goes to a so-called drug czar to supervise the production and distribution of ads (see an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9B-h_bU-uI). The ads claim smoking pot can lead to rape. But the ads don’t mention the flood of alcohol commercials on TV and radio, showing how you get babes by buying them beers and extolling the virtues of their products. But, they caution, “DRINK responsibly.” The ads don’t compare drunk driving deaths to high-on-marijuana deaths; or rape due to drinking with sexual aggression caused by marijuana highs! Alcohol wins, hands down.
The pharmaceutical companies pour out their propaganda for mood-altering drugs; some far more powerful than marijuana. Surprised? Why should Obama’s drug policy deal with reality? It’s easier to follow Bush’s priorities. Cops combined with slogans address a major social issue.
In American reality tens of millions of people use drugs – legal or illegal – for a variety of reasons. Around the country stress levels have risen. Thanks to the recession – now enjoying its fourth year – and pharmaceutical companies’ propaganda, doctors get to prescribe more downer pills. Even the ever-ridiculous New York Post related the “limp economy” to decline in sex desire. “Men’s libidos have gone the way of the Dow as struggles with economy-related stress, depression and anxiety are at an all-time high, experts say.
“With Wall Street woes worsening and job security shaky, men have bailed out of the bedroom and women are reporting a citywide sexual recession.
“The couple, who once hit the hay three to four times a week, has had a romp only once since the economy went soft.”
The Post’s “marriage therapists” and sexperts concluded that men’s libidos have fallen off following their income drop.” (Susannah Cahalan, Stefanie Cohen and Angela Montefinise, November 30, 2008)
More scientifically, the CDC reported antidepressant usage rose 400% since 1988. And doctors routinely prescribe such remedies for patients complaining of feeling depressed. These mood-altering drugs have become “the most frequently used by people ages 18-44,” according to a CDC report. (Janice Lloyd, USA TODAY, Oct. 18, 2011)
Most doctors who dispense downers don’t see their patients regularly to insure they’re not suicidal. Yet, the prescribed pills can produce drastic mood changes when patients decrease, stop taking or increase doses.
The CDC reported that more than “Eleven percent of Americans ages 12 years and older took antidepressants during the 2005-08 study period.” 12,637 participants told of their prescription-drug use and antidepressant use, and about symptoms and interactions with doctors and shrinks.
Some mental health pros in the study pointed to job losses and home foreclosures as causes for the increase in people using legal ant-depressants. Even non-shrinks know that getting laid off makes you feel lower than a cockroach. But why drugs as remedy for economic disorder?
“These drugs can be very helpful for people who need them,” says psychologist Elaine Ducharme. “People should expect to be depressed after a layoff” but, she added, “they should not be put on a drug, though, unless they have an acute problem.” (Lloyd, USA TODAY)
The popularity of the anti-depressants relates also to aggressive pharmaceutical companies’ ad campaigns citing benefits of the drugs. (See Pfizser’s Pristiq promo video: http://www.pristiq.com/pristiq_serotonin_norepinephrine.aspx)
“Marketing,” pushing a product for profit to meet a supposed human need, has become the ubiquitous center of American culture. The messages pound the brain from all media forms. Shit disguised as sugar sells. Deceit and fraud masquerade as trendy. “You need,” the ad tells you, the most important person in the world, “to buy something to improve your hair, skin, shoes, sex life, car, home or mortgage payment.”
That notion should make anyone miserable. Women between 40 to 59 fare worse. The USA story stated that 25% of those women take antidepressants. More discouraging, an October 25 NYT story reported that children now spend more time than ever watching TV– lots of ads, few books.
The country’s common value center, a reason to cohere, has devolved into shopping, watching sports on TV, occasionally mowing a lawn or washing a car
Politicians affirm love of country and support for troops. But Americans watch TV, and hope to win a lottery, instead of conversing with family and friends. They vicariously associate themselves with celebrities and game show stars. Worse, they confuse advertising-provoked desires for immediate needs.
Some of those occupying cities had used pills to assuage bad feelings after not finding jobs, or getting laid off. Noww they use energy creatively. They also watch cops, representing a declining free enterprise system (civilization), pepper-spray and beat them Where, they asked, was the country God had blessed? Or was police behavior just part of a failed, drug-policy acid trip?
Saul Landau’s WILL THE REAL TERRORIST PLEASE STAND UP plays at the University of North Carolina on November 9 and is available on dvd (cinemalibrestore.com)
Monday, November 7, 2011
उस फेडेरल गोवत देक्लारेस वर ओं थे स्टातेस - टाइम फॉर अ रेवोलुतिओं!
ASA v. Holder
ASA Sues Feds To Halt Anti-Pot Surge
by FRED GARDNER
“Keep your head down. Those feds are tough.”
—Former San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan, to every cannabis cultivator and dispensary operator who sought his advice.
In 1996, California voters overcame a lifetime of War-on-Drugs propaganda and made marijuana legal for medical use.
For many years the relationship between the federal government and the jurisdictions that decided to tax and regulate cannabis was essentially “don’t ask, don’t tell.” This discreet arrangement ended in the winter of 2010-11 when Oakland’s plan to license four huge indoor grows became national news. The U.S. Department of Justice warned Oakland officials that they faced criminal prosecution if they allowed the cultivation venture, and the city backed down. (Not fast enough for the city attorney, who left for safer pastures.) Since then, city and county officials up and down the state have been told by federal prosecutors that they risk prosecution themselves if they permit cannabis cultivation or distribution.
In 2011 the DOJ sent letters to officials in Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Rhode Island, Vermont, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Maine, and Washington threatening to prosecute those who implemented cultivation and distribution programs. The Washington legislature had recently passed a measure, supported by Gov. Christine Gregoire, that authorized dispensaries. After a warning from federal prosecutors, Gregoire decided to veto it.
California’s four U.S. Attorneys held a press conference Oct. 7 to threaten growers, dispensaries, and their landlords with long prison terms and forfeiture of their property. The prosecutors claimed they were going after “egregious” profiteers and violators of state (as well as federal) law. But less than a week later, an exemplary Mendocino County collective, Northstone Organics, was taken down by the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Northstone’s organizer, Matt Cohen, was growing 99 plants on his property in Redwood Valley, Mendocino County -each plant with a zip-tie around its stalk to indicate that it had been authorized and inspected by the sheriff’s office. Northstone’s 1,700 members in the Bay Area and Los Angeles had provided letters from physicians authorizing them to use cannabis as medicine. “If we’re not legal, nobody’s legal,” said Cohen. “We actually are a legitimate not-for-profit corporation. We worked with the county to get where we are.”
At 6 a.m. on Oct. 13 DEA agents stormed into the bedroom of Matt and Courtenay Cohen, yelling and brandishing automatic weapons. When the Cohens explained that their grow was in compliance with California law and Mendocino County ordinance 9.31, the feds scoffed and called the county program permitting cultivation “a sham.” The Cohens were handcuffed for eight hours while their house was ransacked and their plants chainsawed down and hauled off in a truck. The raid was a “smash-and-grab” -the Cohens were not arrested and it’s unlikely that they will be charged. The effects will be to deprive Northstone Organics’ members of high-quality, sungrown herb, and to make Mendocino growers question whether they want to pay for the protection of the sheriff next year. (The innovative program generated close to $300,000 for the county in 2011.) Northstone Organics -Matt Cohen’s sweet dream- is finished for the foreseeable future.
If the Drug Warriors only pursued blatant profiteers and violators of state law, the fully compliant non-profits would benefit and a regulated medical marijuana industry would thrive. They have to take down some righteous growers and distributors in order to scare others into folding -or at least not expanding. (No better example than the 2002 DEA raid on WAMM, a Santa Cruz garden grown mainly for hospice patients.)
A 10th Amendment Argument
The raid on Northstone Organics is cited in a suit that Americans for Safe Access filed in federal court Oct. 27 on behalf of ASA’s approximately 20,000 members in California “who are adversely affected by the federal government’s selective targeting of medical marijuana providers and its direct threats against California political subdivisions in an attempt to disrupt state law.”
One such patient is a 48-year-old chronic pain sufferer who first used marijuana while undergoing chemotherapy and now uses it to reduce his intake of morphine. This patient, “Due to a recent federal raid on Northstone Organics… lost his proportionate share of the medical marijuana cultivated by the cooperative and he will be impeded from obtaining his medicine because no other delivery service provides medical marijuana at the same low cost.”
The defendants are U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California, Melinda Haag. ASA is seeking an injunction “requiring defendant to cease the unconstitutional behavior of the Department of Justice and requiring it to return the marijuana seized from Northstone Organics.”
ASA contends that California has a right under the 10th Amendment —”The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”— to regulate the practice of medicine. It follows that California can legalize the medical use of marijuana (defined by physician approval) while non-medical use remains a crime. The federal government has violated the 10th Amendment, ASA argues, by “seeking to coerce and commandeer the police power and legislative and executive functions of the state of California and its political subdivisions in regard to the implementation of the State’s medical marijuana laws.”
Eureka, Arcata, Chico, El Centro, and Sacramento are listed as California cities that have been “coerced by the federal government to change their local laws regarding medical marijuana.” The threat to Eureka was typical. The City Council received a letter Aug. 15 from Melinda Haag stating that the Department of Justice was “concerned about the City of Eureka’s creation of a licensing scheme that permits large-scale industrial marijuana cultivation, processing, and distribution… If the City of Eureka were to proceed, this office would consider injunctive actions, civil fines, criminal prosecution, and the forfeiture of any property used to facilitate a violation of the Controlled Substance Act.”
History Matters
“This federal policy of coercion began at the inception of California’s medical marijuana laws in 1996,” ADA’s suit asserts, referring to a series of emergency meetings chaired by Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey in the weeks after Prop 215 passed. It’s an important point —the federal position on medical marijuana has been consistently Prohibitionist.
The feds tried to dis-implement the new law by threatening to revoke the prescription-writing license of any doctor who approved marijuana use by patients. The threat was announced by McCaffrey at a well-publicized press conference on Dec. 30, 1996. Flanked by Attorney General Janet Reno and other Clinton Administration officials, the Drug Czar dismissed medical marijuana as “Cheech and Chong medicine” and ridiculed Tod Mikuriya’s claim that it alleviated a wide range of symptoms.
Within weeks, lawyers backed by Ethan Nadelmann (whose group was then called the Lindesmith Center) filed a suit, Conant v. McCaffrey, to enjoin the feds from carrying out their threat. UCSF’s Marcus Conant, MD, was a perfect lead plaintiff because of his work with AIDS patients. Tod Mikuriya, MD, was not included among the many co-plaintiffs, although it was Tod who had helped draft Prop 215 and whom McCaffrey had threatened by name.
In March ’97 a federal judge who had been appointed by Reagan, Fern Smith, granted Conant et al their injunction on free-speech grounds —the doctor-patient conversation is protected by the 1st Amendment. When the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal upheld the injunction, Judge Kozinski wrote in a concurring opinion that the federal policy of threatening physicians violated the 10th Amendment because it “deliberately undermines the state by incapacitating the mechanism the state has chosen for separating what is legal from what is illegal under state law.”
“A minor slight,” is how Tod described not being included in Conant. He was more dismayed by the reform leaders “pulling all their resources out of California to promote the master plan,” i.e., to pass medical marijuana laws, no matter how restrictive, state-by-state, until so many have been enacted that the federal government has to accede somehow. Tod called Prop 215 “a unique research opportunity” and thought the movement’s most important task was to document the safety and medical efficacy of cannabis —a job for clinicians and epidemiologists, not campaign consultants and media messengers.
ASA Sues Feds To Halt Anti-Pot Surge
by FRED GARDNER
“Keep your head down. Those feds are tough.”
—Former San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan, to every cannabis cultivator and dispensary operator who sought his advice.
In 1996, California voters overcame a lifetime of War-on-Drugs propaganda and made marijuana legal for medical use.
Oh CalEyeForniCators - please accept my abjuect apology for every calling your pansy-candy-assed liberal mutha humpa!Today more than a million Californians have been authorized by MDs to medicate with cannabis, and certain cities and counties have passed ordinances to tax and regulate cultivation and distribution. Similar (but weaker) marijuana laws have been enacted in 15 states and Washington, D.C.
For many years the relationship between the federal government and the jurisdictions that decided to tax and regulate cannabis was essentially “don’t ask, don’t tell.” This discreet arrangement ended in the winter of 2010-11 when Oakland’s plan to license four huge indoor grows became national news. The U.S. Department of Justice warned Oakland officials that they faced criminal prosecution if they allowed the cultivation venture, and the city backed down. (Not fast enough for the city attorney, who left for safer pastures.) Since then, city and county officials up and down the state have been told by federal prosecutors that they risk prosecution themselves if they permit cannabis cultivation or distribution.
seems very much a tortured construct - it surely must be time to secede from the union
In 2011 the DOJ sent letters to officials in Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Rhode Island, Vermont, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Maine, and Washington threatening to prosecute those who implemented cultivation and distribution programs. The Washington legislature had recently passed a measure, supported by Gov. Christine Gregoire, that authorized dispensaries. After a warning from federal prosecutors, Gregoire decided to veto it.
California’s four U.S. Attorneys held a press conference Oct. 7 to threaten growers, dispensaries, and their landlords with long prison terms and forfeiture of their property. The prosecutors claimed they were going after “egregious” profiteers and violators of state (as well as federal) law. But less than a week later, an exemplary Mendocino County collective, Northstone Organics, was taken down by the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Northstone’s organizer, Matt Cohen, was growing 99 plants on his property in Redwood Valley, Mendocino County -each plant with a zip-tie around its stalk to indicate that it had been authorized and inspected by the sheriff’s office. Northstone’s 1,700 members in the Bay Area and Los Angeles had provided letters from physicians authorizing them to use cannabis as medicine. “If we’re not legal, nobody’s legal,” said Cohen. “We actually are a legitimate not-for-profit corporation. We worked with the county to get where we are.”
At 6 a.m. on Oct. 13 DEA agents stormed into the bedroom of Matt and Courtenay Cohen, yelling and brandishing automatic weapons. When the Cohens explained that their grow was in compliance with California law and Mendocino County ordinance 9.31, the feds scoffed and called the county program permitting cultivation “a sham.” The Cohens were handcuffed for eight hours while their house was ransacked and their plants chainsawed down and hauled off in a truck. The raid was a “smash-and-grab” -the Cohens were not arrested and it’s unlikely that they will be charged. The effects will be to deprive Northstone Organics’ members of high-quality, sungrown herb, and to make Mendocino growers question whether they want to pay for the protection of the sheriff next year. (The innovative program generated close to $300,000 for the county in 2011.) Northstone Organics -Matt Cohen’s sweet dream- is finished for the foreseeable future.
If the Drug Warriors only pursued blatant profiteers and violators of state law, the fully compliant non-profits would benefit and a regulated medical marijuana industry would thrive. They have to take down some righteous growers and distributors in order to scare others into folding -or at least not expanding. (No better example than the 2002 DEA raid on WAMM, a Santa Cruz garden grown mainly for hospice patients.)
A 10th Amendment Argument
The raid on Northstone Organics is cited in a suit that Americans for Safe Access filed in federal court Oct. 27 on behalf of ASA’s approximately 20,000 members in California “who are adversely affected by the federal government’s selective targeting of medical marijuana providers and its direct threats against California political subdivisions in an attempt to disrupt state law.”
One such patient is a 48-year-old chronic pain sufferer who first used marijuana while undergoing chemotherapy and now uses it to reduce his intake of morphine. This patient, “Due to a recent federal raid on Northstone Organics… lost his proportionate share of the medical marijuana cultivated by the cooperative and he will be impeded from obtaining his medicine because no other delivery service provides medical marijuana at the same low cost.”
The defendants are U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California, Melinda Haag. ASA is seeking an injunction “requiring defendant to cease the unconstitutional behavior of the Department of Justice and requiring it to return the marijuana seized from Northstone Organics.”
ASA contends that California has a right under the 10th Amendment —”The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”— to regulate the practice of medicine. It follows that California can legalize the medical use of marijuana (defined by physician approval) while non-medical use remains a crime. The federal government has violated the 10th Amendment, ASA argues, by “seeking to coerce and commandeer the police power and legislative and executive functions of the state of California and its political subdivisions in regard to the implementation of the State’s medical marijuana laws.”
Eureka, Arcata, Chico, El Centro, and Sacramento are listed as California cities that have been “coerced by the federal government to change their local laws regarding medical marijuana.” The threat to Eureka was typical. The City Council received a letter Aug. 15 from Melinda Haag stating that the Department of Justice was “concerned about the City of Eureka’s creation of a licensing scheme that permits large-scale industrial marijuana cultivation, processing, and distribution… If the City of Eureka were to proceed, this office would consider injunctive actions, civil fines, criminal prosecution, and the forfeiture of any property used to facilitate a violation of the Controlled Substance Act.”
History Matters
“This federal policy of coercion began at the inception of California’s medical marijuana laws in 1996,” ADA’s suit asserts, referring to a series of emergency meetings chaired by Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey in the weeks after Prop 215 passed. It’s an important point —the federal position on medical marijuana has been consistently Prohibitionist.
The feds tried to dis-implement the new law by threatening to revoke the prescription-writing license of any doctor who approved marijuana use by patients. The threat was announced by McCaffrey at a well-publicized press conference on Dec. 30, 1996. Flanked by Attorney General Janet Reno and other Clinton Administration officials, the Drug Czar dismissed medical marijuana as “Cheech and Chong medicine” and ridiculed Tod Mikuriya’s claim that it alleviated a wide range of symptoms.
Within weeks, lawyers backed by Ethan Nadelmann (whose group was then called the Lindesmith Center) filed a suit, Conant v. McCaffrey, to enjoin the feds from carrying out their threat. UCSF’s Marcus Conant, MD, was a perfect lead plaintiff because of his work with AIDS patients. Tod Mikuriya, MD, was not included among the many co-plaintiffs, although it was Tod who had helped draft Prop 215 and whom McCaffrey had threatened by name.
In March ’97 a federal judge who had been appointed by Reagan, Fern Smith, granted Conant et al their injunction on free-speech grounds —the doctor-patient conversation is protected by the 1st Amendment. When the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal upheld the injunction, Judge Kozinski wrote in a concurring opinion that the federal policy of threatening physicians violated the 10th Amendment because it “deliberately undermines the state by incapacitating the mechanism the state has chosen for separating what is legal from what is illegal under state law.”
“A minor slight,” is how Tod described not being included in Conant. He was more dismayed by the reform leaders “pulling all their resources out of California to promote the master plan,” i.e., to pass medical marijuana laws, no matter how restrictive, state-by-state, until so many have been enacted that the federal government has to accede somehow. Tod called Prop 215 “a unique research opportunity” and thought the movement’s most important task was to document the safety and medical efficacy of cannabis —a job for clinicians and epidemiologists, not campaign consultants and media messengers.
Fred Gardner was District Attorney Hallinan’s public information officer, 2000-02. In 2003 he co-founded O’Shaughnessy’s with Tod Mikuriya, MD. He can be reached at fred@plebesite.com.
कैन a public मिद्दले- high school punish students for their online पोस्टिंग्स from their computers
Weekend Edition November 4-6, 2011
4
The Case of Kara Kowalski
Bullying, Off-Campus Student Speech and the First Amendment
by JULIE HILDEN
This past summer, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled against student Kara Kowalski on her First Amendment claim. The case arose after Kowalski was suspended by her high school based on scurrilous remarks she had made about another student on a MySpace discussion page, while she was in her own home, on her home computer.
Now, Kowalski is seeking Supreme Court review.
It seems very likely that the Supreme Court will soon grant review in a student speech case that raises the question whether a public middle school or high school can punish students for their online postings, even when they have posted the material from their computers at home, outside of school hours. But the Court probably shouldn’t take this particular case—for reasons I’ll explain below.
I’ve written about student speech twice before—here and here. I believe the issue is a very significant one, in part because high-school speech controversies may be students’ practical introduction to the First Amendment and to constitutional law generally.
If a court rules against a student in a First Amendment case, it may make her and her peers cynical about all the Constitution’s promises—or else determined to fight on even harder. Conversely, if a court rules in a student’s favor, she may become a First Amendment advocate—either formally or informally—for the rest of her life.
And even those students who aren’t directly involved in a First Amendment case may still suffer from having their off-campus speech chilled by unreasonable school speech codes, if courts take an anti-speech position.
Across the country, schools’ attorneys may carefully watch the case law on this issue, to figure out exactly how far speech codes can go. And everywhere, students’ lives, and their views of the First Amendment, may be influenced.
Kowalski’s Case: The Facts
As with many First Amendment cases, the facts of Kowalski’s case aren’t pretty. First Amendment plaintiffs are typically a rogues’ gallery, and even courts that rule in their favor usually give their blessing to the principle, not the person. And surely, no one would defend what Kowalski said here—only her right to say it.
The MySpace webpage Kowalski created was called “S.A.S.H,” which, she testified in her deposition, stood for “Students Against Sluts Herpes.” However, a classmate who accessed the site said that “S.A.S.H” actually stood for “Students Against Shay’s Herpes”—with “Shay” referring to a fellow student who was discussed at length on the webpage.
At Kowalski’s invitation, about two dozen students from her high school joined the MySpace group associated with the webpage and thus accessed the webpage. Further discussion on the webpage then seemed to confirm that “S.A.S.H.,” and thus the herpes claim, in fact referred to the student known as Shay N., and not to “Sluts.” (Last names of juveniles are typically not used in judicial opinions in order to protect their privacy.) Shay N. was also called a “slut” on the webpage.
When Shay N.’s parents learned about the webpage, they filed a harassment complaint on their daughter’s behalf with the school. Kowalski was then suspended for violating the school’s rule against creating a “hate website” and its policy against harassment, bullying, and intimidation.
Kowalski’s suspension included a five-day ban on attending school; a ninety-day ban on attending school events in which she was not a direct participant; being ousted from the cheerleading team; and being banned from crowning the next “Queen of Charm.”
Kowalski had been last year’s Queen of Charm and thus had the responsibility of crowning the new one—giving the whole case a distinct “Mean Girls” feel of popular-girls-versus-outsiders.
But even mean girls have feelings: Kowalski says that her suspension, and the isolation she felt as a result, caused her to start taking prescription antidepressants.
The Fourth Circuit’s Decision
Based on the Fourth Circuit’s opinion, it seems that there was no real argument as to whether the school’s policy was, in fact, violated here, or whether Kowalski had notice of it. (Interested readers may want to consult pages 6 and 7 of the Fourth Circuit’s opinion for details about the policy.)
Thus, the core question the Fourth Circuit addressed was whether the policy could, consistent with the First Amendment, reach outside the school and into Kowalski’s home.
The Fourth Circuit held that it could. More specifically, it held that Kowalski’s suspension was constitutional because she “used the Internet to orchestrate a targeted attack on a classmate, and did so in a manner that was sufficiently connected to the school environment as to implicate the School District’s recognized authority to discipline speech which ‘materially and substantially interfere[s] with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school and collid[es] with the rights of others.’”
(Here, the internal quotation marks frame the longstanding student speech test set forth in the Supreme Court’s 1969 decision in Tinker v. Des Moines Indep. Community Sch. Dist.)
In this case, foreseeability was especially important to the Fourth Circuit. The court, invoking Tinker, pointed out (1) that it was foreseeable that the effects of the off-campus conduct at issue (the creation and use of the MySpace page) would reach the school; and (2) that it was foreseeable that the off-campus conduct would create a substantial disruption at the school.
Surely, these two foreseeability factors ought to be present for students’ off-campus speech to be punished. But if they are present, is that enough? The Fourth Circuit thought so, in this case, but other cases are bound to be much more difficult.
Pragmatically, putting legal tests aside, I think the court saw this as an easy case because (1) the speech at issue was so clearly and specifically targeted, focusing on poor Shay N. and thus adding a bullying element to the case; (2) the webpage seems to have been accessed, by invitation, exclusively or almost exclusively by fellow students at the same school, not Internet users generally; (3) the claim about Shay N. was heinous and involved facts that, if true, were highly private, and if false, were highly defamatory; and (4) the speech at issue was not in any way informative or useful; to the contrary, the court went so far as to call it “mean-spirited and hateful.”
Why This May Not Be the Right Student Speech Case for the Supreme Court to Take
Having covered the case’s basic facts and the Fourth Circuit’s core holding, let’s now move on to the question whether this is a case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ought to grant review.
I’ll argue that it probably isn’t, for two reasons. Each reason points to a complication in the case. I’d like to see the High Court start with a simpler student speech case, and proceed on from there to more complicated scenarios.
The first complication is that there are pre-existing, longstanding, and well-defined legal remedies for the harms caused by the speech at issue.
If Shay N. does not, in fact, have herpes, then she could likely sue Kowalski for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress, based on Kowalski’s falsehood.
And if she does have herpes, she could likely sue Kowalski for intentional infliction of emotional distress or public disclosure of private facts in revealing that fact to her schoolmates.
Although the standards for intentional infliction of emotional distress are famously high, these facts might well meet them. It’s hard to think of anything more distressing to a high school student than having her whole school know that she has a socially-transmitted disease.
With these remedies already at hand, it’s not clear if there is a need for the High Court to take this kind of student speech case. Moreover, the very availability of those remedies might well alter the Court’s approach to the case. Again, my sense is that simpler is better. A simple student speech case that does not carry with it potential tort liability would be preferable for the Court to take.
By comparison, the seminal Tinker case had a simple scenario: A peaceful Vietnam War protest accomplished by the wearing of black armbands was upheld.
And, the test Tinker created in 1969 has proved itself quite workable for decades—indeed, until just recently, with the advent of social media.
A Mixture of Bullying and Speech
A second complication arises from the fact that this is a bullying case. (The Fourth Circuit panel clearly saw it as such—even citing a “Stop Bullying” website, and pointing out that school administrators are “becoming increasingly alarmed by the phenomenon [of bullying].”)
It’s not that I don’t think bullying is important; I think it’s tremendously important. But I also think that, if the first First Amendment case that the Court takes regarding off-campus, online student speech is also a bullying case, then the issues in the case may be distorted—and so may First Amendment law.
For one thing, the worth of student speech generally may seem diminished by the heinous character of the student speech at issue in a bullying case.
No wonder, then, that the unanimous Fourth Circuit panel found it easy to rule against Kowalski without setting forth any hard-and-fast rules. Indeed, the panel claimed that “we need not fully define” the “limit” to a school’s ability to punish student speech that originates “outside the schoolhouse gate.” It was enough for the panel that Kowalski’s MySpace page, in its eyes, clearly fell within that limit.
A closer case, where the student’s speech was less cruel and less targeted, would surely have pushed the Fourth Circuit to do a better job of defining the legal limit, instead of intentionally punting on the question.
And similarly, a closer case than Kowalski’s might also produce a better, more nuanced ruling from the High Court than a dramatic bullying-related case would.
The Kind of Student Speech Case That Might Be Right for the Court to Take Would Be a Simple One
A better case for the Supreme Court to take—at least from the point of view of First Amendment advocates—might be something like one I wrote about earlier where students, during a sleepover at a private home, took lascivious (but clothed) photos of themselves, and posted the photos on social-networking sites for friends to see.
4
The Case of Kara Kowalski
Bullying, Off-Campus Student Speech and the First Amendment
by JULIE HILDEN
This past summer, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled against student Kara Kowalski on her First Amendment claim. The case arose after Kowalski was suspended by her high school based on scurrilous remarks she had made about another student on a MySpace discussion page, while she was in her own home, on her home computer.
Now, Kowalski is seeking Supreme Court review.
It seems very likely that the Supreme Court will soon grant review in a student speech case that raises the question whether a public middle school or high school can punish students for their online postings, even when they have posted the material from their computers at home, outside of school hours. But the Court probably shouldn’t take this particular case—for reasons I’ll explain below.
I’ve written about student speech twice before—here and here. I believe the issue is a very significant one, in part because high-school speech controversies may be students’ practical introduction to the First Amendment and to constitutional law generally.
If a court rules against a student in a First Amendment case, it may make her and her peers cynical about all the Constitution’s promises—or else determined to fight on even harder. Conversely, if a court rules in a student’s favor, she may become a First Amendment advocate—either formally or informally—for the rest of her life.
And even those students who aren’t directly involved in a First Amendment case may still suffer from having their off-campus speech chilled by unreasonable school speech codes, if courts take an anti-speech position.
Across the country, schools’ attorneys may carefully watch the case law on this issue, to figure out exactly how far speech codes can go. And everywhere, students’ lives, and their views of the First Amendment, may be influenced.
Kowalski’s Case: The Facts
As with many First Amendment cases, the facts of Kowalski’s case aren’t pretty. First Amendment plaintiffs are typically a rogues’ gallery, and even courts that rule in their favor usually give their blessing to the principle, not the person. And surely, no one would defend what Kowalski said here—only her right to say it.
The MySpace webpage Kowalski created was called “S.A.S.H,” which, she testified in her deposition, stood for “Students Against Sluts Herpes.” However, a classmate who accessed the site said that “S.A.S.H” actually stood for “Students Against Shay’s Herpes”—with “Shay” referring to a fellow student who was discussed at length on the webpage.
At Kowalski’s invitation, about two dozen students from her high school joined the MySpace group associated with the webpage and thus accessed the webpage. Further discussion on the webpage then seemed to confirm that “S.A.S.H.,” and thus the herpes claim, in fact referred to the student known as Shay N., and not to “Sluts.” (Last names of juveniles are typically not used in judicial opinions in order to protect their privacy.) Shay N. was also called a “slut” on the webpage.
When Shay N.’s parents learned about the webpage, they filed a harassment complaint on their daughter’s behalf with the school. Kowalski was then suspended for violating the school’s rule against creating a “hate website” and its policy against harassment, bullying, and intimidation.
Kowalski’s suspension included a five-day ban on attending school; a ninety-day ban on attending school events in which she was not a direct participant; being ousted from the cheerleading team; and being banned from crowning the next “Queen of Charm.”
Kowalski had been last year’s Queen of Charm and thus had the responsibility of crowning the new one—giving the whole case a distinct “Mean Girls” feel of popular-girls-versus-outsiders.
But even mean girls have feelings: Kowalski says that her suspension, and the isolation she felt as a result, caused her to start taking prescription antidepressants.
Oh, Kowalski, you stupid fucked up bitch - you are having to suffer the consequences of your mean spirited actions and it is making you sick - the part about having to suffer the consequences ... the triggering event leading up to you taking the anti-deeps was your decision to RIP on a class mate ... welcome to the real world, you stupid, fucked up bitch.
I and the public understand
What all school children learn
Those unto whom is done evil
Do evil in return
I sure hope, you stupid fucked up bitch .. oh, by the way ... my money says ... your parents are stupid fucked up bitches also ... to raise a child who does not know better than to gang up on a classmate ... you are inured to mean-spirited evilness of your ways, and you are probably too stupid of a fucked up bitch to even learn from this experience .... you are doomed to go through life making the same mistakes .... oh, but wait, what if .... your name becomes a punch line on say, the Steve Leno or David Letterman shows --- man, did that jerk ever pull a Kowalski!
Ah, you dumb fucked up Polish bitch
Why do I have no feeling of compassion tonight?
The Fourth Circuit’s Decision
Based on the Fourth Circuit’s opinion, it seems that there was no real argument as to whether the school’s policy was, in fact, violated here, or whether Kowalski had notice of it. (Interested readers may want to consult pages 6 and 7 of the Fourth Circuit’s opinion for details about the policy.)
Thus, the core question the Fourth Circuit addressed was whether the policy could, consistent with the First Amendment, reach outside the school and into Kowalski’s home.
The Fourth Circuit held that it could. More specifically, it held that Kowalski’s suspension was constitutional because she “used the Internet to orchestrate a targeted attack on a classmate, and did so in a manner that was sufficiently connected to the school environment as to implicate the School District’s recognized authority to discipline speech which ‘materially and substantially interfere[s] with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school and collid[es] with the rights of others.’”
(Here, the internal quotation marks frame the longstanding student speech test set forth in the Supreme Court’s 1969 decision in Tinker v. Des Moines Indep. Community Sch. Dist.)
In this case, foreseeability was especially important to the Fourth Circuit. The court, invoking Tinker, pointed out (1) that it was foreseeable that the effects of the off-campus conduct at issue (the creation and use of the MySpace page) would reach the school; and (2) that it was foreseeable that the off-campus conduct would create a substantial disruption at the school.
Surely, these two foreseeability factors ought to be present for students’ off-campus speech to be punished. But if they are present, is that enough? The Fourth Circuit thought so, in this case, but other cases are bound to be much more difficult.
Pragmatically, putting legal tests aside, I think the court saw this as an easy case because (1) the speech at issue was so clearly and specifically targeted, focusing on poor Shay N. and thus adding a bullying element to the case; (2) the webpage seems to have been accessed, by invitation, exclusively or almost exclusively by fellow students at the same school, not Internet users generally; (3) the claim about Shay N. was heinous and involved facts that, if true, were highly private, and if false, were highly defamatory; and (4) the speech at issue was not in any way informative or useful; to the contrary, the court went so far as to call it “mean-spirited and hateful.”
Why This May Not Be the Right Student Speech Case for the Supreme Court to Take
Having covered the case’s basic facts and the Fourth Circuit’s core holding, let’s now move on to the question whether this is a case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ought to grant review.
I’ll argue that it probably isn’t, for two reasons. Each reason points to a complication in the case. I’d like to see the High Court start with a simpler student speech case, and proceed on from there to more complicated scenarios.
The first complication is that there are pre-existing, longstanding, and well-defined legal remedies for the harms caused by the speech at issue.
If Shay N. does not, in fact, have herpes, then she could likely sue Kowalski for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress, based on Kowalski’s falsehood.
And if she does have herpes, she could likely sue Kowalski for intentional infliction of emotional distress or public disclosure of private facts in revealing that fact to her schoolmates.
Although the standards for intentional infliction of emotional distress are famously high, these facts might well meet them. It’s hard to think of anything more distressing to a high school student than having her whole school know that she has a socially-transmitted disease.
With these remedies already at hand, it’s not clear if there is a need for the High Court to take this kind of student speech case. Moreover, the very availability of those remedies might well alter the Court’s approach to the case. Again, my sense is that simpler is better. A simple student speech case that does not carry with it potential tort liability would be preferable for the Court to take.
By comparison, the seminal Tinker case had a simple scenario: A peaceful Vietnam War protest accomplished by the wearing of black armbands was upheld.
And, the test Tinker created in 1969 has proved itself quite workable for decades—indeed, until just recently, with the advent of social media.
A Mixture of Bullying and Speech
A second complication arises from the fact that this is a bullying case. (The Fourth Circuit panel clearly saw it as such—even citing a “Stop Bullying” website, and pointing out that school administrators are “becoming increasingly alarmed by the phenomenon [of bullying].”)
It’s not that I don’t think bullying is important; I think it’s tremendously important. But I also think that, if the first First Amendment case that the Court takes regarding off-campus, online student speech is also a bullying case, then the issues in the case may be distorted—and so may First Amendment law.
For one thing, the worth of student speech generally may seem diminished by the heinous character of the student speech at issue in a bullying case.
No wonder, then, that the unanimous Fourth Circuit panel found it easy to rule against Kowalski without setting forth any hard-and-fast rules. Indeed, the panel claimed that “we need not fully define” the “limit” to a school’s ability to punish student speech that originates “outside the schoolhouse gate.” It was enough for the panel that Kowalski’s MySpace page, in its eyes, clearly fell within that limit.
A closer case, where the student’s speech was less cruel and less targeted, would surely have pushed the Fourth Circuit to do a better job of defining the legal limit, instead of intentionally punting on the question.
And similarly, a closer case than Kowalski’s might also produce a better, more nuanced ruling from the High Court than a dramatic bullying-related case would.
The Kind of Student Speech Case That Might Be Right for the Court to Take Would Be a Simple One
A better case for the Supreme Court to take—at least from the point of view of First Amendment advocates—might be something like one I wrote about earlier where students, during a sleepover at a private home, took lascivious (but clothed) photos of themselves, and posted the photos on social-networking sites for friends to see.
There, students sought to express themselves off campus, and the school cracked down on them for doing so. There was no bullying. There was no victim. No civil or criminal laws seem to have been broken. And that kind of simpler, less explosive fact scenario might therefore lead to a better, clearer decision from the High Court.
Thomas Stephen स्ज़स्ज़ - फ्रॉम Wikipedia
Thomas Stephen Szasz (play /ˈsɑːs/ sahss; born April 15, 1920) is a psychiatrist and academic. Since 1990[1] he has been Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, New York. He is a well-known social critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry, and of the social control aims of medicine in modern society, as well as of scientism. His books The Myth of Mental Illness (1960) and The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement (1970) set out some of the arguments with which he is most associated.
His views on special treatment follow from classical liberal roots which are based on the principles that each person has the right to bodily and mental self-ownership and the right to be free from violence from others, although he criticized the "Free World" as well as the communist states for their use of psychiatry and "drogophobia". He believes that suicide, the practice of medicine, use and sale of drugs and sexual relations should be private, contractual, and outside of state jurisdiction.
In 1973, the American Humanist Association named him Humanist of the Year and in 1979 he was honored with an honorary doctorate[2] at Universidad Francisco Marroquín.
Life
Thomas Szasz was born to Gyula and Lily Szasz on April 15, 1920, in Budapest, Hungary. In 1938 Szasz moved to the United States, where he attended the University of Cincinnati for his Bachelor of Arts in medicine, and received his medical degree from the same university in 1944.[3] Szasz completed his residency requirement at the Cincinnati General Hospital, then worked at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis from 1951–1956, and then for the next five years was a member of its staff—taking twenty-four months out for active duty with the U.S. Navy. [4]
In 1962 Szasz received a tenured position in medicine at the State University of New York.[5] Szasz had first joined SUNY in 1956.
Szasz's views of psychiatry were influenced by the writings of Frigyes Karinthy.
[edit] The rise of Szasz's arguments
Szasz first presented his attack on "mental illness" as a legal term in 1958 in the Columbia Law Review. In his article he argued that mental illness was no more a fact bearing on a suspect's guilt than is possession by the devil.[6]
In 1961 Szasz gave testimony before a United States Senate committee in which he argued that the use of mental hospitals to incarcerate people defined as insane violated the general assumptions of patient- and doctor-relationships and turned the doctor into a warden and a keeper of a prison.[7]
[edit] Szasz's main arguments
Szasz is a critic of the influence of modern medicine on society, which he considers to be the secularisation of religion's hold on humankind. Criticizing scientism, he targets in particular psychiatry, underscoring its campaigns against masturbation at the end of the 19th century, its use of medical imagery and language to describe misbehavior, its reliance on involuntary mental hospitalization to protect society, or the use of lobotomy and other interventions to treat psychosis. To sum up his description of the political influence of medicine in modern societies imbued by faith in science, he declared:
Since theocracy is the rule of God or its priests, and democracy the rule of the people or of the majority, pharmacracy is therefore the rule of medicine or of doctors.[8]
Szasz consistently pays attention to the power of language in the establishment and maintenance of the social order, both in small interpersonal as well as wider socio-political spheres:
"The struggle for definition is veritably the struggle for life itself. In the typical Western two men fight desperately for the possession of a gun that has been thrown to the ground: whoever reaches the weapon first shoots and lives; his adversary is shot and dies. In ordinary life, the struggle is not for guns but for words; whoever first defines the situation is the victor; his adversary, the victim. For example, in the family, husband and wife, mother and child do not get along; who defines whom as troublesome or mentally sick?...[the one] who first seizes the word imposes reality on the other; [the one] who defines thus dominates and lives; and [the one] who is defined is subjugated and may be killed."[9]
His main arguments can be summarised as follows:
The myth of mental illness: "Mental illness" is an expression, a metaphor that describes an offending, disturbing, shocking, or vexing conduct, action, or pattern of behavior, such as schizophrenia, as an "illness" or "disease". Szasz wrote: "If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; If you talk to the dead, you are a schizophrenic."[9] While people behave and think in ways that are very disturbing, and that may resemble a disease process (pain, deterioration, response to various interventions), this does not mean they actually have a disease. To Szasz, disease can only mean something people "have," while behavior is what people "do". Diseases are "malfunctions of the human body, of the heart, the liver, the kidney, the brain" while "no behavior or misbehavior is a disease or can be a disease. That's not what diseases are" Szasz cites drapetomania as an example behavior which many in society did not approve of, being labeled and widely cited as a 'disease' and likewise with women who did not bow to men's will as having "hysteria"[10] Psychiatry actively obscures the difference between (mis)behavior and disease, in its quest to help or harm parties to conflicts. By calling certain people "diseased", psychiatry attempts to deny them responsibility as moral agents, in order to better control them.
People who are said (by themselves or others) to "have" a mental illness can only have, at best, a "fake disease." Diagnoses of "mental illness" or "mental disorder" (the latter expression called by Szasz a "weasel term" for mental illness) are passed off as "scientific categories" but they remain merely judgments (judgments of disdain) to support certain uses of power by psychiatric authorities. In that line of thinking, schizophrenia is not the name of a disease entity but a judgment of extreme psychiatric and social reprobation. Szasz calls schizophrenia "the sacred symbol of psychiatry" because those so labeled have long provided and continue to provide justification for psychiatric theories, treatments, abuses, and reforms. The figure of the psychotic or schizophrenic person to psychiatric experts and authorities, according to Szasz, is analogous with the figure of the heretic or blasphemer to theological experts and authorities. According to Szasz, to understand the metaphorical nature of the term "disease" in psychiatry, one must first understand its literal meaning in the rest of medicine. To be a true disease, the entity must first, somehow be capable of being approached, measured, or tested in scientific fashion. Second, to be confirmed as a disease, a condition must demonstrate pathology at the cellular or molecular level.
A genuine disease must also be found on the autopsy table (not merely in the living person) and meet pathological definition instead of being voted into existence by members of the American Psychiatric Association. "Mental illnesses" are really problems in living. They are often "like a" disease, argues Szasz, which makes the medical metaphor understandable, but in no way validates it as an accurate description or explanation. Psychiatry is a pseudo-science that parodies medicine by using medical sounding words invented especially over the last 100 years. To be clear, heart break and heart attack, or spring fever and typhoid fever belong to two completely different logical categories, and treating one as the other constitutes a category error, that is, a myth. Psychiatrists are the successors of "soul doctors", priests who dealt and deal with the spiritual conundrums, dilemmas, and vexations — the "problems in living" — that have troubled people forever.
Psychiatry's main methods are those of conversation or rhetoric, repression, and religion. To the extent that psychiatry presents these problems as "medical diseases," its methods as "medical treatments," and its clients — especially involuntary — as medically ill patients, it embodies a lie and therefore constitutes a fundamental threat to freedom and dignity. Psychiatry, supported by the State through various Mental Health Acts, has become a modern secular state religion according to Thomas Szasz. It is a vastly elaborate social control system, using both brute force and subtle indoctrination, which disguises itself under the claims of scientificity. The notion that biological psychiatry is a real science or a genuine branch of medicine has been challenged by other critics as well, such as Michel Foucault in Madness and Civilization (1961), and Erving Goffman in Asylums (1961).
Separation of psychiatry and the state: State government by enforcing the use of shock therapy has abused Psychiatry with impunity.[11] If we accept that "mental illness" is a euphemism for behaviors that are disapproved of, then the state has no right to force psychiatric "treatment" on these individuals. Similarly, the state should not be able to interfere in mental health practices between consenting adults (for example, by legally controlling the supply of psychotropic drugs or psychiatric medication). The medicalization of government produces a "therapeutic state," designating someone as "insane" or as a "drug addict".
In Ceremonial Chemistry (1973), he argued that the same persecution which has targeted witches, Jews, Gypsies or homosexuals now targets "drug addicts" and "insane" people. Szasz argued that all these categories of people were taken as scapegoats of the community in ritual ceremonies. To underscore this continuation of religion through medicine, he even takes as example obesity: instead of concentrating on junk food (ill-nutrition), physicians denounced hypernutrition. According to Szasz, despite their scientific appearance, the diets imposed were a moral substitute to the former fasts, and the social injunction not to be overweight is to be considered as a moral order, not as a scientific advice as it claims to be. As with those thought bad (insane people), those who took the wrong drugs (drug-addicts), medicine created a category for those who had the wrong weight (obeses).
Szasz argued that psychiatrics were created in the 17th century to study and control those who erred from the medical norms of social behavior; a new specialization, drogophobia, was created in the 20th century to study and control those who erred from the medical norms of drug consumption; and then, in the 1960s, another specialization, bariatrics, was created to deal with those who erred from the medical norms concerning the weight which the body should have. Thus, he underscores that in 1970, the American Society of Bariatic Physicians (from the Greek baros, weight) had 30 members, and already 450 two years later.
Presumption of competence: Just as legal systems work on the presumption that a person is innocent until proven guilty, individuals accused of crimes should not be presumed incompetent simply because a doctor or psychiatrist labels them as such. Mental incompetence should be assessed like any other form of incompetence, i.e., by purely legal and judicial means with the right of representation and appeal by the accused.
Death control: In an analogy to birth control, Szasz argues that individuals should be able to choose when to die without interference from medicine or the state, just as they are able to choose when to conceive without outside interference. He considers suicide to be among the most fundamental rights, but he opposes state-sanctioned euthanasia. In his 2006 book about Virginia Woolf he stated that she put an end to her life by a conscious and deliberate act, her suicide being an expression of her freedom of choice.[12][13]
Abolition of the insanity defense: Szasz believes that testimony about the mental competence of a defendant should not be admissible in trials. Psychiatrists testifying about the mental state of an accused person's mind have about as much business as a priest testifying about the religious state of a person's soul in our courts. Insanity was a legal tactic invented to circumvent the punishments of the Church, which, at the time included confiscation of the property of those who committed suicide, which often left widows and orphans destitute. Only an insane person would do such a thing to his widow and children, it was successfully argued. Legal mercy masquerading as medicine, said Szasz.
Abolition of involuntary hospitalization: No one should be deprived of liberty unless he is found guilty of a criminal offense. Depriving a person of liberty for what is said to be his own good is immoral. Just as a person suffering from terminal cancer may refuse treatment, so should a person be able to refuse psychiatric treatment.
Our right to drugs: Drug addiction is not a "disease" to be cured through legal drugs (Methadone instead of heroin; which forgets that heroin was created in the first place to be a substitute to morphine, which in turn was created as a substitute to opium), but a social habit. Szasz also argues in favor of a drugs free-market. He criticized the war on drugs, arguing that using drugs was in fact a victimless crime. Prohibition itself constituted the crime. He shows how the war on drugs leads states to do things that would have never been considered half a century before, such as prohibiting a person from ingesting certain substances or interfering in other countries to impede the production of certain plants (e.g. coca eradication plans, or the campaigns against opium; both are traditional plants opposed by the Western world). Although Szasz is skeptical about the merits of psychotropic medications, he favors the repeal of drug prohibition.
"Because we have a free market in food, we can buy all the bacon, eggs, and ice cream we want and can afford. If we had a free market in drugs, we could similarly buy all the barbiturates, chloral hydrate, and morphine we want and could afford." Szasz argued that the prohibition and other legal restrictions on drugs are enforced not because of their lethality, but in a ritualistic aim (he quotes Mary Douglas's studies of rituals). He also recalls that pharmakos, the Greek root of pharmacology, originally meant "scapegoat". Szasz dubbed pharmacology "pharmacomythology" because of its inclusion of social practices in its studies, in particular through the inclusion of the category of "addictiveness" in its programs. "Addictiveness" is a social category, argued Szasz, and the use of drugs should be apprehended as a social ritual rather than exclusively as the act of ingesting a chemical substance. There are many ways of ingesting a chemical substance, or drug (which comes from pharmakos), just as there are many different cultural ways of eating or drinking. Thus, some cultures prohibit certain types of substances, which they call "taboo", while they make use of others in various types of ceremonies.
Szasz has been wrongly associated with the anti-psychiatry movement of the 1960s and 1970s. He is not opposed to the practice of psychiatry if it is non-coercive. He maintains that psychiatry should be a contractual service between consenting adults with no state involvement. In a 2006 documentary film called Psychiatry: An Industry of Death released on DVD Szasz stated that involuntary mental hospitalization is a crime against humanity. Szasz also believes that, if unopposed, involuntary hospitalization will expand into "pharmacratic" dictatorship.
[edit] Relationship to Citizens Commission on Human Rights
In 1969, Szasz and the Church of Scientology co-founded the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) with the aim of helping to "clean up"[citation needed] the field of human rights abuses. Szasz remains on CCHR's Board of Advisors as Founding Commissioner,[14] and continues to provide content for the CCHR.[15] In the keynote address at the 25th anniversary of CCHR, Szasz stated: "We should all honor CCHR because it is really the organization that for the first time in human history has organized a politically, socially, internationally significant voice to combat psychiatry. This has never been done in human history before."[16] Szasz, himself, does not have any membership or involvement in Scientology. In 2003, the following statement, authorized by Szasz, was posted to the official Szasz web site by its owner, Jeffrey Schaler, explaining Szasz's relation to CCHR:
"Dr. Szasz co-founded CCHR in the same spirit as he had co-founded — with sociologist Erving Goffman and law professor George Alexander — The American Association for the Abolition of Involuntary Mental Hospitalization...
Scientologists have joined Szasz's battle against institutional psychiatry. Dr. Szasz welcomes the support of Jews, Christians, Muslims, and any other religious or atheist group committed to the struggle against the Therapeutic State. Sharing this battle does not mean that Dr. Szasz supports the unrelated principles and causes of any religious or non-religious organization. This is explicit and implicit in Dr. Szasz's work. Everyone and anyone is welcome to join in the struggle for individual liberty and personal responsibility — especially as these values are threatened by psychiatric ideas and interventions."[17]
[edit] Criticism
Szasz's critics maintain that, contrary to his views, such illnesses are now regularly "approached, measured, or tested in scientific fashion." The list of groups that reject his opinion that mental illness is a myth include the American Medical Association (AMA), American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).
The effectiveness of medication has been used as an argument against Szasz’s idea that depression is a myth. In a debate with Szasz, Donald F. Klein, M.D explained:
“It is that elementary fact, that the antidepressants do little to normals, and are tremendously effective in the clinically depressed person, that shows us that this is an illness.” [18]
But as the New England Journal of Medicine reported on January 17, 2008, in published trials, about 60 percent of people taking the drugs report significant relief from depression, compared with roughly 40 percent of those on placebo pills. But when the less positive, unpublished trials are included, the advantage shrinks: the drugs outperform placebos, but perhaps only by a modest margin and for a brief period.[19] In the same debate Frederick K. Goodwin, M.D, asserts:
"The concept of disease in medicine really means a cluster of symptoms that people can agree about, and in the case of depression we agree 80% of the time. It is a cluster of symptoms that predicts something.” [18]
Szasz argues that only mental illnesses are defined based on consensus and symptom clusters. It has been argued this is not the case. Critics claim physical illnesses such as Kawasaki syndrome (a disorder of the heart and blood vessels)[20] and Ménière's disease (a disorder of the inner ear)[21] are similarly defined.
There is also the criticism that many physical diseases were identified and even treated with at least some success decades, centuries, or millennia before their etiology was accurately identified. Diabetes is one notable example. In the eyes of Szasz's critics, such historical facts tend to undermine his contention that mental illnesses must be "fake diseases" because their etiology in the brain is not well understood.
Writings by Szasz
Bibliography of Szasz's writings.
[edit] Books
Szasz, Thomas (1974). The Second Sin. Doubleday. ISBN 0710077572.
Szasz, Thomas (editor) (1975 (1973)). The Age of Madness: A History of Involuntary Mental Hospitalization Presented in Selected Texts. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. ISBN 0710079931.
Szasz, Thomas (1974 (1961, 1967, 1977)). The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct. Harper & Row. ISBN 0060141964.
Szasz, Thomas (1976). Heresies. Doubleday Anchor. ISBN 0305111622.
Szasz, Thomas (1975 (1984)). The Therapeutic State: Psychiatry in the Mirror of Current Events. Buffalo NY: Prometheus Books.
Szasz, Thomas (2003 (1974)). Ceremonial Chemistry: The Ritual Persecution of Drugs, Addicts, and Pushers. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815607687.
Szasz, Thomas (1989 (1963, 1965, 1968, 1972)). Law, Liberty, and Psychiatry: An Inquiry into the Social Uses of Mental Health Practices. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815602421.
Szasz, Thomas (1988 (1965, 1971)). Psychiatric Justice. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815602316.
Szasz, Thomas (1988 (1965, 1974)). The Ethics of Psychoanalysis: The Theory and Method of Autonomous Psychotherapy. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815602294.
Szasz, Thomas (1988 (1957, 1975)). Pain and Pleasure: A Study of Bodily Feelings. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815602308.
Szasz, Thomas (1988 (1976)). Schizophrenia: The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815602243.
Szasz, Thomas (1988 (1977)). The Theology of Medicine: The Political-Philosophical Foundations of Medical Ethics. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815602251.
Szasz, Thomas (1988 (1978)). The Myth of Psychotherapy: Mental Healing as Religion, Rhetoric, and Repression. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815602235.
Szasz, Thomas (1990 (1980)). Sex by Prescription: The Startling Truth about Today’s Sex Therapy. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815602502.
Szasz, Thomas (1990). The Untamed Tongue: A Dissenting Dictionary. Lasalle IL: Open Court.
Szasz, Thomas (1990 (1976)). Anti-Freud: Karl Kraus and His Criticism of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815602472. (First published in 1976 under the name: Karl Kraus and the Soul-Doctors: A Pioneer Critic and His Criticism of Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis. — Louisiana State University Press, 1976.)
Szasz, Thomas (1991 (1970)). Ideology and Insanity: Essays on the Psychiatric Dehumanization of Man. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815602561.
Szasz, Thomas (2003 (1993)). A Lexicon of Lunacy: Metaphoric Malady, Moral Responsibility, and Psychiatry. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. ISBN 1560000651.
Szasz, Thomas (1996 (1992)). Our Right to Drugs: The Case for a Free Market. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815603339.
Szasz, Thomas (1998 (1994)). Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society’s Unwanted. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815605102.
Szasz, Thomas (1996). The Meaning of Mind: Language, Morality, and Neuroscience. Westport CT: Praeger Publishers. ISBN 0275956032.
Szasz, Thomas (1997 (1987)). Insanity: The Idea and Its Consequences. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815604602.
Szasz, Thomas (1998). Psychiatric Slavery. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815605110.
Szasz, Thomas (1997 (1970)). The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815604610.
Szasz, Thomas (1999). Fatal Freedom: The Ethics and Politics of Suicide. Westport CT: Praeger Publishers. ISBN 0275966461.
Szasz, Thomas (2001). Pharmacracy: Medicine and Politics in America. Westport CT: Praeger Publishers. ISBN 0275971961.
Szasz, Thomas (2002). Liberation by Oppression: A Comparative Study of Slavery and Psychiatry. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. ISBN 0765801450.
Szasz, Thomas (2004). Words to the Wise: A Medical-Philosophical Dictionary. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. ISBN 0765802171.
Szasz, Thomas (2004). Faith in Freedom: Libertarian Principles and Psychiatric Practices. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. ISBN 0765802449.
Szasz, Thomas (2006). My Madness Saved Me: The Madness and Marriage of Virginia Woolf. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. ISBN 0765803216.
Szasz, Thomas (2007). The Medicalization of Everyday Life: Selected Essays. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 9780815608677.
Szasz, Thomas (2007). Coercion as Cure: A Critical History of Psychiatry. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. ISBN 9780765803795.
Szasz, Thomas (2008). Psychiatry: The Science of Lies. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 9780815609100.
Szasz, Thomas (2009). Antipsychiatry: Quackery Squared. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 9780815609438.
Szasz, Thomas (2011). Frank, Leonard Roy. ed. The Szasz Quotationary: The Wit and Wisdom of Thomas Szasz. Kindle Edition.
[edit] Secondary literature
Vatz, R. E. (2006). Rhetoric and psychiatry: A Szaszian perspective on a political case study. Current Psychology, 25', 173.
Schaler, Jeffrey A. (Editor). 2004. Szasz Under Fire: The Psychiatric Abolitionist Faces His Critics. Chicago: Open Court Publishers.
Powell, Jim, 2000. The Triumph of Liberty: A 2,000 Year History Told Through the Lives of Freedom's Greatest Champions. Free Press.
Vatz, R. E., and Weinberg, L. S., eds., 1983. Thomas Szasz: Primary Values and Major Contentions. Prometheus Books.
Vatz, R. E. (1973). The myth of the rhetorical situation. Philosophy and Rhetoric, 6, 154_161.
His views on special treatment follow from classical liberal roots which are based on the principles that each person has the right to bodily and mental self-ownership and the right to be free from violence from others, although he criticized the "Free World" as well as the communist states for their use of psychiatry and "drogophobia". He believes that suicide, the practice of medicine, use and sale of drugs and sexual relations should be private, contractual, and outside of state jurisdiction.
In 1973, the American Humanist Association named him Humanist of the Year and in 1979 he was honored with an honorary doctorate[2] at Universidad Francisco Marroquín.
Life
Thomas Szasz was born to Gyula and Lily Szasz on April 15, 1920, in Budapest, Hungary. In 1938 Szasz moved to the United States, where he attended the University of Cincinnati for his Bachelor of Arts in medicine, and received his medical degree from the same university in 1944.[3] Szasz completed his residency requirement at the Cincinnati General Hospital, then worked at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis from 1951–1956, and then for the next five years was a member of its staff—taking twenty-four months out for active duty with the U.S. Navy. [4]
In 1962 Szasz received a tenured position in medicine at the State University of New York.[5] Szasz had first joined SUNY in 1956.
Szasz's views of psychiatry were influenced by the writings of Frigyes Karinthy.
[edit] The rise of Szasz's arguments
Szasz first presented his attack on "mental illness" as a legal term in 1958 in the Columbia Law Review. In his article he argued that mental illness was no more a fact bearing on a suspect's guilt than is possession by the devil.[6]
In 1961 Szasz gave testimony before a United States Senate committee in which he argued that the use of mental hospitals to incarcerate people defined as insane violated the general assumptions of patient- and doctor-relationships and turned the doctor into a warden and a keeper of a prison.[7]
[edit] Szasz's main arguments
Szasz is a critic of the influence of modern medicine on society, which he considers to be the secularisation of religion's hold on humankind. Criticizing scientism, he targets in particular psychiatry, underscoring its campaigns against masturbation at the end of the 19th century, its use of medical imagery and language to describe misbehavior, its reliance on involuntary mental hospitalization to protect society, or the use of lobotomy and other interventions to treat psychosis. To sum up his description of the political influence of medicine in modern societies imbued by faith in science, he declared:
Since theocracy is the rule of God or its priests, and democracy the rule of the people or of the majority, pharmacracy is therefore the rule of medicine or of doctors.[8]
Szasz consistently pays attention to the power of language in the establishment and maintenance of the social order, both in small interpersonal as well as wider socio-political spheres:
"The struggle for definition is veritably the struggle for life itself. In the typical Western two men fight desperately for the possession of a gun that has been thrown to the ground: whoever reaches the weapon first shoots and lives; his adversary is shot and dies. In ordinary life, the struggle is not for guns but for words; whoever first defines the situation is the victor; his adversary, the victim. For example, in the family, husband and wife, mother and child do not get along; who defines whom as troublesome or mentally sick?...[the one] who first seizes the word imposes reality on the other; [the one] who defines thus dominates and lives; and [the one] who is defined is subjugated and may be killed."[9]
His main arguments can be summarised as follows:
The myth of mental illness: "Mental illness" is an expression, a metaphor that describes an offending, disturbing, shocking, or vexing conduct, action, or pattern of behavior, such as schizophrenia, as an "illness" or "disease". Szasz wrote: "If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; If you talk to the dead, you are a schizophrenic."[9] While people behave and think in ways that are very disturbing, and that may resemble a disease process (pain, deterioration, response to various interventions), this does not mean they actually have a disease. To Szasz, disease can only mean something people "have," while behavior is what people "do". Diseases are "malfunctions of the human body, of the heart, the liver, the kidney, the brain" while "no behavior or misbehavior is a disease or can be a disease. That's not what diseases are" Szasz cites drapetomania as an example behavior which many in society did not approve of, being labeled and widely cited as a 'disease' and likewise with women who did not bow to men's will as having "hysteria"[10] Psychiatry actively obscures the difference between (mis)behavior and disease, in its quest to help or harm parties to conflicts. By calling certain people "diseased", psychiatry attempts to deny them responsibility as moral agents, in order to better control them.
People who are said (by themselves or others) to "have" a mental illness can only have, at best, a "fake disease." Diagnoses of "mental illness" or "mental disorder" (the latter expression called by Szasz a "weasel term" for mental illness) are passed off as "scientific categories" but they remain merely judgments (judgments of disdain) to support certain uses of power by psychiatric authorities. In that line of thinking, schizophrenia is not the name of a disease entity but a judgment of extreme psychiatric and social reprobation. Szasz calls schizophrenia "the sacred symbol of psychiatry" because those so labeled have long provided and continue to provide justification for psychiatric theories, treatments, abuses, and reforms. The figure of the psychotic or schizophrenic person to psychiatric experts and authorities, according to Szasz, is analogous with the figure of the heretic or blasphemer to theological experts and authorities. According to Szasz, to understand the metaphorical nature of the term "disease" in psychiatry, one must first understand its literal meaning in the rest of medicine. To be a true disease, the entity must first, somehow be capable of being approached, measured, or tested in scientific fashion. Second, to be confirmed as a disease, a condition must demonstrate pathology at the cellular or molecular level.
A genuine disease must also be found on the autopsy table (not merely in the living person) and meet pathological definition instead of being voted into existence by members of the American Psychiatric Association. "Mental illnesses" are really problems in living. They are often "like a" disease, argues Szasz, which makes the medical metaphor understandable, but in no way validates it as an accurate description or explanation. Psychiatry is a pseudo-science that parodies medicine by using medical sounding words invented especially over the last 100 years. To be clear, heart break and heart attack, or spring fever and typhoid fever belong to two completely different logical categories, and treating one as the other constitutes a category error, that is, a myth. Psychiatrists are the successors of "soul doctors", priests who dealt and deal with the spiritual conundrums, dilemmas, and vexations — the "problems in living" — that have troubled people forever.
Psychiatry's main methods are those of conversation or rhetoric, repression, and religion. To the extent that psychiatry presents these problems as "medical diseases," its methods as "medical treatments," and its clients — especially involuntary — as medically ill patients, it embodies a lie and therefore constitutes a fundamental threat to freedom and dignity. Psychiatry, supported by the State through various Mental Health Acts, has become a modern secular state religion according to Thomas Szasz. It is a vastly elaborate social control system, using both brute force and subtle indoctrination, which disguises itself under the claims of scientificity. The notion that biological psychiatry is a real science or a genuine branch of medicine has been challenged by other critics as well, such as Michel Foucault in Madness and Civilization (1961), and Erving Goffman in Asylums (1961).
Separation of psychiatry and the state: State government by enforcing the use of shock therapy has abused Psychiatry with impunity.[11] If we accept that "mental illness" is a euphemism for behaviors that are disapproved of, then the state has no right to force psychiatric "treatment" on these individuals. Similarly, the state should not be able to interfere in mental health practices between consenting adults (for example, by legally controlling the supply of psychotropic drugs or psychiatric medication). The medicalization of government produces a "therapeutic state," designating someone as "insane" or as a "drug addict".
In Ceremonial Chemistry (1973), he argued that the same persecution which has targeted witches, Jews, Gypsies or homosexuals now targets "drug addicts" and "insane" people. Szasz argued that all these categories of people were taken as scapegoats of the community in ritual ceremonies. To underscore this continuation of religion through medicine, he even takes as example obesity: instead of concentrating on junk food (ill-nutrition), physicians denounced hypernutrition. According to Szasz, despite their scientific appearance, the diets imposed were a moral substitute to the former fasts, and the social injunction not to be overweight is to be considered as a moral order, not as a scientific advice as it claims to be. As with those thought bad (insane people), those who took the wrong drugs (drug-addicts), medicine created a category for those who had the wrong weight (obeses).
Szasz argued that psychiatrics were created in the 17th century to study and control those who erred from the medical norms of social behavior; a new specialization, drogophobia, was created in the 20th century to study and control those who erred from the medical norms of drug consumption; and then, in the 1960s, another specialization, bariatrics, was created to deal with those who erred from the medical norms concerning the weight which the body should have. Thus, he underscores that in 1970, the American Society of Bariatic Physicians (from the Greek baros, weight) had 30 members, and already 450 two years later.
Presumption of competence: Just as legal systems work on the presumption that a person is innocent until proven guilty, individuals accused of crimes should not be presumed incompetent simply because a doctor or psychiatrist labels them as such. Mental incompetence should be assessed like any other form of incompetence, i.e., by purely legal and judicial means with the right of representation and appeal by the accused.
Death control: In an analogy to birth control, Szasz argues that individuals should be able to choose when to die without interference from medicine or the state, just as they are able to choose when to conceive without outside interference. He considers suicide to be among the most fundamental rights, but he opposes state-sanctioned euthanasia. In his 2006 book about Virginia Woolf he stated that she put an end to her life by a conscious and deliberate act, her suicide being an expression of her freedom of choice.[12][13]
Abolition of the insanity defense: Szasz believes that testimony about the mental competence of a defendant should not be admissible in trials. Psychiatrists testifying about the mental state of an accused person's mind have about as much business as a priest testifying about the religious state of a person's soul in our courts. Insanity was a legal tactic invented to circumvent the punishments of the Church, which, at the time included confiscation of the property of those who committed suicide, which often left widows and orphans destitute. Only an insane person would do such a thing to his widow and children, it was successfully argued. Legal mercy masquerading as medicine, said Szasz.
Abolition of involuntary hospitalization: No one should be deprived of liberty unless he is found guilty of a criminal offense. Depriving a person of liberty for what is said to be his own good is immoral. Just as a person suffering from terminal cancer may refuse treatment, so should a person be able to refuse psychiatric treatment.
Our right to drugs: Drug addiction is not a "disease" to be cured through legal drugs (Methadone instead of heroin; which forgets that heroin was created in the first place to be a substitute to morphine, which in turn was created as a substitute to opium), but a social habit. Szasz also argues in favor of a drugs free-market. He criticized the war on drugs, arguing that using drugs was in fact a victimless crime. Prohibition itself constituted the crime. He shows how the war on drugs leads states to do things that would have never been considered half a century before, such as prohibiting a person from ingesting certain substances or interfering in other countries to impede the production of certain plants (e.g. coca eradication plans, or the campaigns against opium; both are traditional plants opposed by the Western world). Although Szasz is skeptical about the merits of psychotropic medications, he favors the repeal of drug prohibition.
"Because we have a free market in food, we can buy all the bacon, eggs, and ice cream we want and can afford. If we had a free market in drugs, we could similarly buy all the barbiturates, chloral hydrate, and morphine we want and could afford." Szasz argued that the prohibition and other legal restrictions on drugs are enforced not because of their lethality, but in a ritualistic aim (he quotes Mary Douglas's studies of rituals). He also recalls that pharmakos, the Greek root of pharmacology, originally meant "scapegoat". Szasz dubbed pharmacology "pharmacomythology" because of its inclusion of social practices in its studies, in particular through the inclusion of the category of "addictiveness" in its programs. "Addictiveness" is a social category, argued Szasz, and the use of drugs should be apprehended as a social ritual rather than exclusively as the act of ingesting a chemical substance. There are many ways of ingesting a chemical substance, or drug (which comes from pharmakos), just as there are many different cultural ways of eating or drinking. Thus, some cultures prohibit certain types of substances, which they call "taboo", while they make use of others in various types of ceremonies.
Szasz has been wrongly associated with the anti-psychiatry movement of the 1960s and 1970s. He is not opposed to the practice of psychiatry if it is non-coercive. He maintains that psychiatry should be a contractual service between consenting adults with no state involvement. In a 2006 documentary film called Psychiatry: An Industry of Death released on DVD Szasz stated that involuntary mental hospitalization is a crime against humanity. Szasz also believes that, if unopposed, involuntary hospitalization will expand into "pharmacratic" dictatorship.
[edit] Relationship to Citizens Commission on Human Rights
In 1969, Szasz and the Church of Scientology co-founded the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) with the aim of helping to "clean up"[citation needed] the field of human rights abuses. Szasz remains on CCHR's Board of Advisors as Founding Commissioner,[14] and continues to provide content for the CCHR.[15] In the keynote address at the 25th anniversary of CCHR, Szasz stated: "We should all honor CCHR because it is really the organization that for the first time in human history has organized a politically, socially, internationally significant voice to combat psychiatry. This has never been done in human history before."[16] Szasz, himself, does not have any membership or involvement in Scientology. In 2003, the following statement, authorized by Szasz, was posted to the official Szasz web site by its owner, Jeffrey Schaler, explaining Szasz's relation to CCHR:
"Dr. Szasz co-founded CCHR in the same spirit as he had co-founded — with sociologist Erving Goffman and law professor George Alexander — The American Association for the Abolition of Involuntary Mental Hospitalization...
Scientologists have joined Szasz's battle against institutional psychiatry. Dr. Szasz welcomes the support of Jews, Christians, Muslims, and any other religious or atheist group committed to the struggle against the Therapeutic State. Sharing this battle does not mean that Dr. Szasz supports the unrelated principles and causes of any religious or non-religious organization. This is explicit and implicit in Dr. Szasz's work. Everyone and anyone is welcome to join in the struggle for individual liberty and personal responsibility — especially as these values are threatened by psychiatric ideas and interventions."[17]
[edit] Criticism
Szasz's critics maintain that, contrary to his views, such illnesses are now regularly "approached, measured, or tested in scientific fashion." The list of groups that reject his opinion that mental illness is a myth include the American Medical Association (AMA), American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).
The effectiveness of medication has been used as an argument against Szasz’s idea that depression is a myth. In a debate with Szasz, Donald F. Klein, M.D explained:
“It is that elementary fact, that the antidepressants do little to normals, and are tremendously effective in the clinically depressed person, that shows us that this is an illness.” [18]
But as the New England Journal of Medicine reported on January 17, 2008, in published trials, about 60 percent of people taking the drugs report significant relief from depression, compared with roughly 40 percent of those on placebo pills. But when the less positive, unpublished trials are included, the advantage shrinks: the drugs outperform placebos, but perhaps only by a modest margin and for a brief period.[19] In the same debate Frederick K. Goodwin, M.D, asserts:
"The concept of disease in medicine really means a cluster of symptoms that people can agree about, and in the case of depression we agree 80% of the time. It is a cluster of symptoms that predicts something.” [18]
Szasz argues that only mental illnesses are defined based on consensus and symptom clusters. It has been argued this is not the case. Critics claim physical illnesses such as Kawasaki syndrome (a disorder of the heart and blood vessels)[20] and Ménière's disease (a disorder of the inner ear)[21] are similarly defined.
There is also the criticism that many physical diseases were identified and even treated with at least some success decades, centuries, or millennia before their etiology was accurately identified. Diabetes is one notable example. In the eyes of Szasz's critics, such historical facts tend to undermine his contention that mental illnesses must be "fake diseases" because their etiology in the brain is not well understood.
Writings by Szasz
Bibliography of Szasz's writings.
[edit] Books
Szasz, Thomas (1974). The Second Sin. Doubleday. ISBN 0710077572.
Szasz, Thomas (editor) (1975 (1973)). The Age of Madness: A History of Involuntary Mental Hospitalization Presented in Selected Texts. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. ISBN 0710079931.
Szasz, Thomas (1974 (1961, 1967, 1977)). The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct. Harper & Row. ISBN 0060141964.
Szasz, Thomas (1976). Heresies. Doubleday Anchor. ISBN 0305111622.
Szasz, Thomas (1975 (1984)). The Therapeutic State: Psychiatry in the Mirror of Current Events. Buffalo NY: Prometheus Books.
Szasz, Thomas (2003 (1974)). Ceremonial Chemistry: The Ritual Persecution of Drugs, Addicts, and Pushers. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815607687.
Szasz, Thomas (1989 (1963, 1965, 1968, 1972)). Law, Liberty, and Psychiatry: An Inquiry into the Social Uses of Mental Health Practices. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815602421.
Szasz, Thomas (1988 (1965, 1971)). Psychiatric Justice. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815602316.
Szasz, Thomas (1988 (1965, 1974)). The Ethics of Psychoanalysis: The Theory and Method of Autonomous Psychotherapy. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815602294.
Szasz, Thomas (1988 (1957, 1975)). Pain and Pleasure: A Study of Bodily Feelings. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815602308.
Szasz, Thomas (1988 (1976)). Schizophrenia: The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815602243.
Szasz, Thomas (1988 (1977)). The Theology of Medicine: The Political-Philosophical Foundations of Medical Ethics. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815602251.
Szasz, Thomas (1988 (1978)). The Myth of Psychotherapy: Mental Healing as Religion, Rhetoric, and Repression. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815602235.
Szasz, Thomas (1990 (1980)). Sex by Prescription: The Startling Truth about Today’s Sex Therapy. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815602502.
Szasz, Thomas (1990). The Untamed Tongue: A Dissenting Dictionary. Lasalle IL: Open Court.
Szasz, Thomas (1990 (1976)). Anti-Freud: Karl Kraus and His Criticism of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815602472. (First published in 1976 under the name: Karl Kraus and the Soul-Doctors: A Pioneer Critic and His Criticism of Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis. — Louisiana State University Press, 1976.)
Szasz, Thomas (1991 (1970)). Ideology and Insanity: Essays on the Psychiatric Dehumanization of Man. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815602561.
Szasz, Thomas (2003 (1993)). A Lexicon of Lunacy: Metaphoric Malady, Moral Responsibility, and Psychiatry. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. ISBN 1560000651.
Szasz, Thomas (1996 (1992)). Our Right to Drugs: The Case for a Free Market. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815603339.
Szasz, Thomas (1998 (1994)). Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society’s Unwanted. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815605102.
Szasz, Thomas (1996). The Meaning of Mind: Language, Morality, and Neuroscience. Westport CT: Praeger Publishers. ISBN 0275956032.
Szasz, Thomas (1997 (1987)). Insanity: The Idea and Its Consequences. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815604602.
Szasz, Thomas (1998). Psychiatric Slavery. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815605110.
Szasz, Thomas (1997 (1970)). The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815604610.
Szasz, Thomas (1999). Fatal Freedom: The Ethics and Politics of Suicide. Westport CT: Praeger Publishers. ISBN 0275966461.
Szasz, Thomas (2001). Pharmacracy: Medicine and Politics in America. Westport CT: Praeger Publishers. ISBN 0275971961.
Szasz, Thomas (2002). Liberation by Oppression: A Comparative Study of Slavery and Psychiatry. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. ISBN 0765801450.
Szasz, Thomas (2004). Words to the Wise: A Medical-Philosophical Dictionary. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. ISBN 0765802171.
Szasz, Thomas (2004). Faith in Freedom: Libertarian Principles and Psychiatric Practices. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. ISBN 0765802449.
Szasz, Thomas (2006). My Madness Saved Me: The Madness and Marriage of Virginia Woolf. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. ISBN 0765803216.
Szasz, Thomas (2007). The Medicalization of Everyday Life: Selected Essays. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 9780815608677.
Szasz, Thomas (2007). Coercion as Cure: A Critical History of Psychiatry. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. ISBN 9780765803795.
Szasz, Thomas (2008). Psychiatry: The Science of Lies. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 9780815609100.
Szasz, Thomas (2009). Antipsychiatry: Quackery Squared. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 9780815609438.
Szasz, Thomas (2011). Frank, Leonard Roy. ed. The Szasz Quotationary: The Wit and Wisdom of Thomas Szasz. Kindle Edition.
[edit] Secondary literature
Vatz, R. E. (2006). Rhetoric and psychiatry: A Szaszian perspective on a political case study. Current Psychology, 25', 173.
Schaler, Jeffrey A. (Editor). 2004. Szasz Under Fire: The Psychiatric Abolitionist Faces His Critics. Chicago: Open Court Publishers.
Powell, Jim, 2000. The Triumph of Liberty: A 2,000 Year History Told Through the Lives of Freedom's Greatest Champions. Free Press.
Vatz, R. E., and Weinberg, L. S., eds., 1983. Thomas Szasz: Primary Values and Major Contentions. Prometheus Books.
Vatz, R. E. (1973). The myth of the rhetorical situation. Philosophy and Rhetoric, 6, 154_161.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
माय ओह माय - थे थौघ्त पोलिसे सुरे क्नोव हाउ तो लिमिट फ्री स्पीच - एंड, इन थिस इन्स्तांस, एन्तिरेली अच्चुराते स्पीच, लीस्ट-विसे अस रेपोर्तेद इन here
Caddie’s racial slur could follow him Down Under
By DOUG FERGUSON, AP Golf Writer
SHANGHAI (AP)—Golf’s top two tour chiefs and Adam Scott feel the same way about the racial remark that caddie Steve Williams used to disparage Tiger Woods.
There’s no place for racism in sport or anywhere else. It was right for Williams to apologize, and that was enough for them to consider the case closed without taking action. Time to move on.
In this case, it could be moving from Shanghai to Sydney—and it figures to be open for discussion.
Even as PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem and European Tour chief executive George O’Grady issued a statement, Scott was grilled anew Sunday after the final round of the HSBC Champions on whether Williams will stay on his bag.
Adam Scott of Australia, right, passes his club to former caddie of Tiger Woods , Steve Williams of New Zealand on the 4th green during the final of the HSBC Champions golf tournament in Shanghai, China Sunday, Nov. 6, 2011. (AP Photo)
Adam Scott of Australia, right…
AP - Nov 6, 1:29 am EDT
Golf Gallery
“Absolutely,” Scott said.
Williams was roasted at a caddies award party for the exuberant TV interview he gave on the 18th green of the Bridgestone Invitational right after Scott won. Asked about the interview, he replied, “It was my aim to shove it up that black
The Bridgestone was two weeks after Woods had fired Williams.
The comment, while said at a private gathering in which all comments were considered off the record, quickly spread after a caddie shared what was said to a group of British reporters who were not there and not bound by the agreement.
It was all the talk the next two days of the HSBC Champions, especially when Scott stayed in contention, and even as Martin Kaymer birdied nine of his last 12 holes for a 63 to win by three shots.
Finchem and O’Grady said they spoke for the International Federation of PGA Tours that it “feels strongly there is no place for any form of racism in ours or any other sport.”
“We consider the remarks of Steve Williams, as reported, entirely unacceptable in whatever context,” the statement said. “We are aware that he has apologized fully and we trust we will not hear remarks ever gain. Based on this, we consider the matter closed, and we will have no further comment.”
Scott was shown a copy of the statement after signing his card and said he felt comfortable with it.
“I don’t think anyone condones racism in sport or anything,” Scott said.
Scott, who closed with a 73 Sunday and tied for 11th at the HSBC Champions, now heads to Sydney for the Australian Open. Woods also is playing golf’s fourth-oldest championship, and a press conference was scheduled for Tuesday morning. Organizers had planned long ago to put Woods and Scott in the same group for the opening two rounds, along with Jason Day.
The following week is the Presidents Cup at Royal Melbourne, where Scott and Woods—or is that Williams and Woods?—could face each other in any of the four days of competition.
Scott tried to deflect speculation that he could be walking into a frenzy Down Under.
“Hopefully, it’s just for my good play rather than anything else. I don’t think there’s a story going forward,” he said, adding that “the matter has been put to bed and I’ve got nothing more to talk about it with anyone. So I’m moving on.”
Scott and his camp urged Williams to apologize, and the caddie posted a statement on his website the morning after the party that said, “I now realize how my comments could be construed as racist. However, I assure you that was not my intent. I sincerely apologize to Tiger and anyone else I’ve offended.”
Scott has said that while Williams’ comments made it out of the room, context did not go with them. And toward the end of his interview Sunday, the Australian star bristled when a reporter asked if he was condoning a racist remark by not doing anything to Williams.
Scott stared for a moment, his lips slightly pursed.
“Look, I don’t think digging for a story out of me on this is a good idea,” he said. “I had Steve issue an apology. What more should I do? I don’t know if you were there in the evening.”
The reporter shook his head.
“So I don’t think you have a leg to stand on when it comes to commenting,” Scott said.
Kaymer was among several players at the caddies party—as was Scott—and said that Williams “could have used different words.” But the German said he had paid close attention to all the activity that followed, from Williams’ apology to the tours’ statement to Scott’s intention to keep Williams as his caddie.
“I hope it doesn’t have too much effect on Adam, because Adam is a very lovely guy,” Kaymer said. “He’s a great player and I hope it doesn’t affect him too much. But if it was right or wrong, obviously to be racist, it’s never good. It should not be on the golf course or anywhere else. But I don’t really know if he really meant it like this.”
By DOUG FERGUSON, AP Golf Writer
SHANGHAI (AP)—Golf’s top two tour chiefs and Adam Scott feel the same way about the racial remark that caddie Steve Williams used to disparage Tiger Woods.
There’s no place for racism in sport or anywhere else. It was right for Williams to apologize, and that was enough for them to consider the case closed without taking action. Time to move on.
In this case, it could be moving from Shanghai to Sydney—and it figures to be open for discussion.
Even as PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem and European Tour chief executive George O’Grady issued a statement, Scott was grilled anew Sunday after the final round of the HSBC Champions on whether Williams will stay on his bag.
Adam Scott of Australia, right, passes his club to former caddie of Tiger Woods , Steve Williams of New Zealand on the 4th green during the final of the HSBC Champions golf tournament in Shanghai, China Sunday, Nov. 6, 2011. (AP Photo)
Adam Scott of Australia, right…
AP - Nov 6, 1:29 am EDT
Golf Gallery
“Absolutely,” Scott said.
Williams was roasted at a caddies award party for the exuberant TV interview he gave on the 18th green of the Bridgestone Invitational right after Scott won. Asked about the interview, he replied, “It was my aim to shove it up that black
The Bridgestone was two weeks after Woods had fired Williams.
The comment, while said at a private gathering in which all comments were considered off the record, quickly spread after a caddie shared what was said to a group of British reporters who were not there and not bound by the agreement.
It was all the talk the next two days of the HSBC Champions, especially when Scott stayed in contention, and even as Martin Kaymer birdied nine of his last 12 holes for a 63 to win by three shots.
Finchem and O’Grady said they spoke for the International Federation of PGA Tours that it “feels strongly there is no place for any form of racism in ours or any other sport.”
“We consider the remarks of Steve Williams, as reported, entirely unacceptable in whatever context,” the statement said. “We are aware that he has apologized fully and we trust we will not hear remarks ever gain. Based on this, we consider the matter closed, and we will have no further comment.”
Scott was shown a copy of the statement after signing his card and said he felt comfortable with it.
“I don’t think anyone condones racism in sport or anything,” Scott said.
Scott, who closed with a 73 Sunday and tied for 11th at the HSBC Champions, now heads to Sydney for the Australian Open. Woods also is playing golf’s fourth-oldest championship, and a press conference was scheduled for Tuesday morning. Organizers had planned long ago to put Woods and Scott in the same group for the opening two rounds, along with Jason Day.
The following week is the Presidents Cup at Royal Melbourne, where Scott and Woods—or is that Williams and Woods?—could face each other in any of the four days of competition.
Scott tried to deflect speculation that he could be walking into a frenzy Down Under.
“Hopefully, it’s just for my good play rather than anything else. I don’t think there’s a story going forward,” he said, adding that “the matter has been put to bed and I’ve got nothing more to talk about it with anyone. So I’m moving on.”
Scott and his camp urged Williams to apologize, and the caddie posted a statement on his website the morning after the party that said, “I now realize how my comments could be construed as racist. However, I assure you that was not my intent. I sincerely apologize to Tiger and anyone else I’ve offended.”
Scott has said that while Williams’ comments made it out of the room, context did not go with them. And toward the end of his interview Sunday, the Australian star bristled when a reporter asked if he was condoning a racist remark by not doing anything to Williams.
Scott stared for a moment, his lips slightly pursed.
“Look, I don’t think digging for a story out of me on this is a good idea,” he said. “I had Steve issue an apology. What more should I do? I don’t know if you were there in the evening.”
The reporter shook his head.
“So I don’t think you have a leg to stand on when it comes to commenting,” Scott said.
Kaymer was among several players at the caddies party—as was Scott—and said that Williams “could have used different words.” But the German said he had paid close attention to all the activity that followed, from Williams’ apology to the tours’ statement to Scott’s intention to keep Williams as his caddie.
“I hope it doesn’t have too much effect on Adam, because Adam is a very lovely guy,” Kaymer said. “He’s a great player and I hope it doesn’t affect him too much. But if it was right or wrong, obviously to be racist, it’s never good. It should not be on the golf course or anywhere else. But I don’t really know if he really meant it like this.”
रे-पोस्टिंग सम स्तुफ्फ फ्रॉम माय न्फ्ल प्रेदिक्टोर ब्लॉग ठाट नो ओने एवर read
Because more people read this blog than any of my other blogs, I'm going to update y'all on my NFL probability model (I think only 3 people ever looked at the blog)
WAY back in July, I published this information:
What I most like about this particular probability model is that the DETROIT LIONS are rated a top-tier team, even though they finished with a 6-10 record. They make it to the top tier by virtue of winning their last four games in a row!!!
Tier 1 teams: win 70% of their games
Tier 2 teams: win 50% of their games
Tier 3 teams: win 25% of their games
Home Team NFL wins 55% of the time
T1 - T2 wins 80% of the time
T1 - T3 wins 80% of the time
T2 - T3 wins 70% of the time
Tier I teams: NYJ BAL PIT NEP
GBP ATL CHI DET NOS
Tier III teams: BUF CIN DEN CLE AZC CAR
** For whatever intuitive reasons, I think these records these teams have accumulated (and it is upon the REACORD, the wins, that I base my analysis - after all, it's whether or not you WIN that determines if you'll win again; not some fancy statistics drawn rather mundanely from a pool of still water. HOWEVER - Coughlin, the NYG coach is a tremendous tactician, and a proven winner, as is his QB, Eli Manning - when you have a great head coach in consonance with a great QB -- miracles can happen!
WAY back in July, I published this information:
What I most like about this particular probability model is that the DETROIT LIONS are rated a top-tier team, even though they finished with a 6-10 record. They make it to the top tier by virtue of winning their last four games in a row!!!
Tier 1 teams: win 70% of their games
Tier 2 teams: win 50% of their games
Tier 3 teams: win 25% of their games
Home Team NFL wins 55% of the time
T1 - T2 wins 80% of the time
T1 - T3 wins 80% of the time
T2 - T3 wins 70% of the time
Tier I teams: NYJ BAL PIT NEP
GBP ATL CHI DET NOS
Tier III teams: BUF CIN DEN CLE AZC CAR
REVISED TIER RANKINGS - BASED ON A NEW SEASON !! AND NOT SOME CRAPPY< SUCKIE OLD DATA
TIER I TEAMS: Green Bay, Detroit, San Fransisco, Baltimore, Cincinnati**,
Pittsburgh, New York**, New Orleans, Houston
TIER III TEAMS: Indiannapolis, St Louis, Arizona, Jacksonville, Seattle,
Miami*, Minnesota*, Carolina*, Washington
* Poised to move into Tier II - MN has had the lead at the half of four games, all of which they lost; they are inconsistent, and the quarterback situation has not been optimal -- I love the coaching troika of Lesley Frazier, Mike Singletary, Al Harris -- disclosure -- Mike singletary's sister-in-law lives right across the street from us and I've met him personally, and find him a rather remarkable and compelling human being - a true God-loving, Holy Man of God. I've also met Al Harris, and we BOTH thought, last year, that Detroit would be the sleeper team - note - I picked Detroit to be a top tier team as far back as last July!
** For whatever intuitive reasons, I think these records these teams have accumulated (and it is upon the REACORD, the wins, that I base my analysis - after all, it's whether or not you WIN that determines if you'll win again; not some fancy statistics drawn rather mundanely from a pool of still water. HOWEVER - Coughlin, the NYG coach is a tremendous tactician, and a proven winner, as is his QB, Eli Manning - when you have a great head coach in consonance with a great QB -- miracles can happen!
फ़ार्लेस न्फ्ल फूत्बल्ल फोरेकास्ट्स फॉर वीक 10
Won't get updated data for a while -- but, statistically speaking, this is all pretty relevant stuff:
OAK-SDC -2.6 0.83 3.5 -6.93 SDC +7
HOU-TBB` 8.78 -5.75 3.5 11.03 HOU +11
STL-CLE -15 -6.38 3.5 -12.12 CLE +12
PIT-CIN 4.63 6.86 3.5 -5.73 PIT +6
WAS-MIA -3.88 -3.88 3.5 -3.5 MIA +3.5
TN-CAR -0.86 -2.5 3.5 -1.86 CAR +2
AZ-PHI -5.71 3.86 3.5 -13.07 PHI +13
DEN-KC -9.57 -10.4 3.5 -2.67 KC +2.5
JAX-IND -8.13 -17.22 3.5 5.59 JAX +6.5
BUF-DAL 6 0.5 3.5 2 BUF +2
NO-ATL 8.88 2.38 3.5 3 NOS +3
DAL-CHI 0.5 2.86 3.5 -5.86 CHI +6
NEP-NYJ 6 4.89 3.5 -2.39 NYJ +2.5
MN-GB -3.38 12.71 3.5 -19.59 GB +19.5
OAK-SDC -2.6 0.83 3.5 -6.93 SDC +7
HOU-TBB` 8.78 -5.75 3.5 11.03 HOU +11
STL-CLE -15 -6.38 3.5 -12.12 CLE +12
PIT-CIN 4.63 6.86 3.5 -5.73 PIT +6
WAS-MIA -3.88 -3.88 3.5 -3.5 MIA +3.5
TN-CAR -0.86 -2.5 3.5 -1.86 CAR +2
AZ-PHI -5.71 3.86 3.5 -13.07 PHI +13
DEN-KC -9.57 -10.4 3.5 -2.67 KC +2.5
JAX-IND -8.13 -17.22 3.5 5.59 JAX +6.5
BUF-DAL 6 0.5 3.5 2 BUF +2
NO-ATL 8.88 2.38 3.5 3 NOS +3
DAL-CHI 0.5 2.86 3.5 -5.86 CHI +6
NEP-NYJ 6 4.89 3.5 -2.39 NYJ +2.5
MN-GB -3.38 12.71 3.5 -19.59 GB +19.5
गोल्फ इस माय game
Not sure if I've ever mentioned it on this blog, but GOLF is MY game, taught to me by my father, from a very young age. My dad was the head professional at Streator Country Club, a 9-hole course, with two sets of tees to make it a more interesting 18 holes, with a swimming pool, practice range, bar, grill, etc. All the ammenities of a "regualr" country club, but, for poorer folk, which, every one was back in the day, in Streator, IL.
I played on the high school team, the only reason for not getting cut as a freshman was that my dad was the coach - roflmao - AND - there was a huge storm that rendered Barrington Hills Country Club unplayable, so, the grounds superintendent appealed to my dad for help. Dad called the golf team and ordered them to show up on Saturday to pick up tree limbs, etc. When the appointed time arrived, there were just three of us - Dad, me, and a real good guy who eventually would work full time on the grounds crew at some country club somewhere, and lose his arm in a horrible accident, related to his gourns crew duties. Okay. Not enough man / boy power (I was in 8th grade, not even eligible to play high school golf.
Now, my father can get REAL pissed off, filled with righteous anger and indignation, and called the parents of all the players to advise them that UNLESS their kid came out to help pick up the course, they would not be permitted to even try out for the time.
Paul Delaware's mom said, "But Ralph, we pay money to have other people do it."
"Mrs. Delarware, if your boys don't come out, they will not play golf for me."
The boys came out, the course got picked up, and the next year, out of gratitude, the grounds keeper let dad play 65 kids on Mondays for practice and qualifying rounds. I was 65th. Over at Biltmore Country Club, Jim Michael, who had been on the golf team and wrestling team with my dad at Western Illinois University also let the kids play, all 65 of them; Thunderbird (now Makray Memorial, and the best of the many fine local courses) also let the full squad practice, and we practiced there Tuesdays through Fridays.
ANYWAYs - it's always good for me when I see a Kraut (German, person of Teutonic heritage) do well on any of the tours and win an event, and thus, we get the following story from the Asian tour. (At least the fucken huns APOLOGIZED for Hitler, the murder of 6,000,000 Jews and 600,000 gypsies. On that day when America apologizes for its genocidal practices against:
The native Americans
Haiti
the Phillipihnes
the innicents ofo Hiroshima and Nagasaki - NO - those bombs were NOT necessary to win WWII - the Ruskies had already won it when they trapped Hitler's army deep inside the bowels of Mother Russia, and the Japs didn't have enough of the required resources for the armaments and transport requirements of invasions, the Koreans, the Vietnamese, the Cubans, the Guatamaleans, the Iraqis, the Afghanistans, etc, etc, etc,
Yes, until THAT / THOSE moments of truth-telling, forgiveness-asking, and soul-searching regret AT DOING THE WRONG THING - at waging war and committing murder, or crimes against humanity, UNTIL that moment of national supplication for foregiveness comes, it will be but infrequently that I am proud to be governed by the incomeptent, corrupt, venal, politicians (who keep "THE SYSTEM" running) and financial / media / academic elites, who think that the only power worthy of exercising is that which can be shown bullets a'-blazin' and bomgs a'-droppin', not until that moment of national reconcilliation, and the sending of every living President, Henry Kissinger, Dick Cheney, Condeleeza Rice, Hillary Clinton, Rupert Murdoch, Charles Krauthammer, and a few hundred others I could probably name if I had but the time, are sent in chains on a plane to the Hague for trial for the perpetration of crimes against humanity, will I ever truly be proud to be anything but an ordinary American, who, like so many ordinary Americans, routinely performs random acts of kindness to strangers, and who ultimately, for reasons sometimes more pure and other times for reasons less pure, does do the right thing.
Big comeback, big finish lead Kaymer to win HSBC
By DOUG FERGUSON, AP Golf Writer 7 hours, 29 minutes ago
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SHANGHAI (AP)—Martin Kaymer was five shots behind and going nowhere Sunday, making nothing but pars when he needed much more to give himself a chance in the HSBC Champions.
From a deep bunker in front of the seventh green, he holed the sand shot for a birdie, and suddenly the game felt easy.
Very easy.
That was the start of an amazing finish for Kaymer, who ran off nine birdies over the last 12 holes to blow past Fredrik Jacobson and a host of stars on his way to a 9-under 63 and a three-shot victory at Sheshan International.
“I didn’t miss a lot of golf shots,” Kaymer said.
It’s a wonder he didn’t birdie them all. He missed a 3-foot birdie putt on the ninth, and failed to birdie the par-5 14th and the 16th hole that plays about 288 yards and can be reached with a 3-wood.
No matter.
Kaymer wound up setting two World Golf Championship records that showed just how well the “Germanator” played on a cool, overcast day in Shanghai. It was the largest comeback (five shots) in the final round, and his 63 was the lowest final round by a winner since this series began in 1999.
“I just played really good golf, and I’m glad that it came together,” Kaymer said. “Because the last few weeks, I played good golf but it has not happened yet. And this week, it was nice that it happened here, the World Golf Championship event.”
Kaymer, the PGA champion at Whistling Straits last year, became the 10th player to have won a major and a WGC event.
His standard of golf was so high that it nearly shifted attention away from caddie Steve Williams and the racial comment he made about Tiger Woods earlier in the week at a caddies award party.
That still lingered, however. PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem and European Tour chief executive George O’Grady issued a statement on behalf of the six major tours that there was “no place for any form of racism is ours or any other sport” and that Williams’ comment was “unacceptable in whatever context.”
Even so, the tours said Williams’ apology for his racial slur against Woods that they considered the matter closed and declined further comment.
Adam Scott, who has employed Williams since Woods fired the caddie, closed with a 73 and tied for 11th. Scott said he was comfortable with the tours’ statement, which matched his own feelings, and that he “absolutely” would keep Williams on the bag.
Kaymer, who finished at 20-under 268 and earned $1.2 million, moved to second on the European Tour money list and to No. 4 in the world ranking. He still has golf left this year, although it sure gave him a different outlook.
He opened his season with an eight-shot win over a strong field at Abu Dhabi, and five weeks later went to No. 1 in the world. But he struggled with his sudden popularity and the demands that came along with it, and Kaymer hasn’t looked the same.
That’s what made this win so important.
“It was an OK year,” he said. “But now it’s a good year.”
Jacobson was steady until a three-putt bogey from across the green on the par-5 eighth. But after Kaymer ran off four straight birdies on the back nine to catch him and pull ahead, Jacobson answered with a pair of birdies to stay with him.
The Swede just couldn’t hold on. He realized Kaymer had made a birdie on the 17th to go one ahead, and not only did Jacobson fail to match him, he pulled his tee shot into the left rough on the 17th and took bogey. That put him three shots behind when Kaymer made one last birdie on the 18th, and Jacobson at that point was content to lay up on the par-5 18th and keep second place to himself.
“I felt I was very much in it,” said Jacobson, who closed with a 71. “Obviously, 17 was a bit of a swing after I hit my tee shot. I knew if I was going to have a shot at it, I probably had to get up-and-down to have a realistic chance.”
Graeme McDowell finished with two birdies for a 67 to finish alone in third, quite a turnaround from last week in the Andalucia Masters when he failed to break 80 in the last two rounds at Valderrama.
Rory McIlroy made a short birdie on the par-5 18th that gave him a 69 and proved significant. It put him in a three-way tie for fourth, allowing him to move past Lee Westwood to No. 2 in the world.
Westwood, playing in the same group as McIlroy, shot 40 on the front nine and closed with a 74 to tie for 13th with Ian Poulter and Xin-jun Zhang of China, who inspired the gallery by holing a pitch for eagle on the 16th hole to salvage a 72.
Kaymer has experience going low. Sunday in Shanghai reminded him of his first year as a pro when he played a mini-tour in Germany. After a par-bogey start, he played his last 16 holes in 14 under to shoot a 59.
Europe now occupies the first four positions in the world ranking, starting with Luke Donald at No. 1.
Even though he wasn’t at Sheshan International—his wife is expecting their second child—Donald came out a big winner.
PGA champion Keegan Bradley had a 72-72 weekend, keeping him from a third win this year that could have changed players’ minds about their vote for PGA Tour player of the year. And with McIlroy failing to win, it kept Donald with a $1.4 million lead in Europe as he tries to become the first player to win money titles on the PGA and European tours.
I played on the high school team, the only reason for not getting cut as a freshman was that my dad was the coach - roflmao - AND - there was a huge storm that rendered Barrington Hills Country Club unplayable, so, the grounds superintendent appealed to my dad for help. Dad called the golf team and ordered them to show up on Saturday to pick up tree limbs, etc. When the appointed time arrived, there were just three of us - Dad, me, and a real good guy who eventually would work full time on the grounds crew at some country club somewhere, and lose his arm in a horrible accident, related to his gourns crew duties. Okay. Not enough man / boy power (I was in 8th grade, not even eligible to play high school golf.
Now, my father can get REAL pissed off, filled with righteous anger and indignation, and called the parents of all the players to advise them that UNLESS their kid came out to help pick up the course, they would not be permitted to even try out for the time.
Paul Delaware's mom said, "But Ralph, we pay money to have other people do it."
"Mrs. Delarware, if your boys don't come out, they will not play golf for me."
The boys came out, the course got picked up, and the next year, out of gratitude, the grounds keeper let dad play 65 kids on Mondays for practice and qualifying rounds. I was 65th. Over at Biltmore Country Club, Jim Michael, who had been on the golf team and wrestling team with my dad at Western Illinois University also let the kids play, all 65 of them; Thunderbird (now Makray Memorial, and the best of the many fine local courses) also let the full squad practice, and we practiced there Tuesdays through Fridays.
ANYWAYs - it's always good for me when I see a Kraut (German, person of Teutonic heritage) do well on any of the tours and win an event, and thus, we get the following story from the Asian tour. (At least the fucken huns APOLOGIZED for Hitler, the murder of 6,000,000 Jews and 600,000 gypsies. On that day when America apologizes for its genocidal practices against:
The native Americans
Haiti
the Phillipihnes
the innicents ofo Hiroshima and Nagasaki - NO - those bombs were NOT necessary to win WWII - the Ruskies had already won it when they trapped Hitler's army deep inside the bowels of Mother Russia, and the Japs didn't have enough of the required resources for the armaments and transport requirements of invasions, the Koreans, the Vietnamese, the Cubans, the Guatamaleans, the Iraqis, the Afghanistans, etc, etc, etc,
Yes, until THAT / THOSE moments of truth-telling, forgiveness-asking, and soul-searching regret AT DOING THE WRONG THING - at waging war and committing murder, or crimes against humanity, UNTIL that moment of national supplication for foregiveness comes, it will be but infrequently that I am proud to be governed by the incomeptent, corrupt, venal, politicians (who keep "THE SYSTEM" running) and financial / media / academic elites, who think that the only power worthy of exercising is that which can be shown bullets a'-blazin' and bomgs a'-droppin', not until that moment of national reconcilliation, and the sending of every living President, Henry Kissinger, Dick Cheney, Condeleeza Rice, Hillary Clinton, Rupert Murdoch, Charles Krauthammer, and a few hundred others I could probably name if I had but the time, are sent in chains on a plane to the Hague for trial for the perpetration of crimes against humanity, will I ever truly be proud to be anything but an ordinary American, who, like so many ordinary Americans, routinely performs random acts of kindness to strangers, and who ultimately, for reasons sometimes more pure and other times for reasons less pure, does do the right thing.
Big comeback, big finish lead Kaymer to win HSBC
By DOUG FERGUSON, AP Golf Writer 7 hours, 29 minutes ago
Printable View
Return to Original
tweet
SHANGHAI (AP)—Martin Kaymer was five shots behind and going nowhere Sunday, making nothing but pars when he needed much more to give himself a chance in the HSBC Champions.
From a deep bunker in front of the seventh green, he holed the sand shot for a birdie, and suddenly the game felt easy.
Very easy.
That was the start of an amazing finish for Kaymer, who ran off nine birdies over the last 12 holes to blow past Fredrik Jacobson and a host of stars on his way to a 9-under 63 and a three-shot victory at Sheshan International.
“I didn’t miss a lot of golf shots,” Kaymer said.
It’s a wonder he didn’t birdie them all. He missed a 3-foot birdie putt on the ninth, and failed to birdie the par-5 14th and the 16th hole that plays about 288 yards and can be reached with a 3-wood.
No matter.
Kaymer wound up setting two World Golf Championship records that showed just how well the “Germanator” played on a cool, overcast day in Shanghai. It was the largest comeback (five shots) in the final round, and his 63 was the lowest final round by a winner since this series began in 1999.
“I just played really good golf, and I’m glad that it came together,” Kaymer said. “Because the last few weeks, I played good golf but it has not happened yet. And this week, it was nice that it happened here, the World Golf Championship event.”
Kaymer, the PGA champion at Whistling Straits last year, became the 10th player to have won a major and a WGC event.
His standard of golf was so high that it nearly shifted attention away from caddie Steve Williams and the racial comment he made about Tiger Woods earlier in the week at a caddies award party.
That still lingered, however. PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem and European Tour chief executive George O’Grady issued a statement on behalf of the six major tours that there was “no place for any form of racism is ours or any other sport” and that Williams’ comment was “unacceptable in whatever context.”
Even so, the tours said Williams’ apology for his racial slur against Woods that they considered the matter closed and declined further comment.
Adam Scott, who has employed Williams since Woods fired the caddie, closed with a 73 and tied for 11th. Scott said he was comfortable with the tours’ statement, which matched his own feelings, and that he “absolutely” would keep Williams on the bag.
Kaymer, who finished at 20-under 268 and earned $1.2 million, moved to second on the European Tour money list and to No. 4 in the world ranking. He still has golf left this year, although it sure gave him a different outlook.
He opened his season with an eight-shot win over a strong field at Abu Dhabi, and five weeks later went to No. 1 in the world. But he struggled with his sudden popularity and the demands that came along with it, and Kaymer hasn’t looked the same.
That’s what made this win so important.
“It was an OK year,” he said. “But now it’s a good year.”
Jacobson was steady until a three-putt bogey from across the green on the par-5 eighth. But after Kaymer ran off four straight birdies on the back nine to catch him and pull ahead, Jacobson answered with a pair of birdies to stay with him.
The Swede just couldn’t hold on. He realized Kaymer had made a birdie on the 17th to go one ahead, and not only did Jacobson fail to match him, he pulled his tee shot into the left rough on the 17th and took bogey. That put him three shots behind when Kaymer made one last birdie on the 18th, and Jacobson at that point was content to lay up on the par-5 18th and keep second place to himself.
“I felt I was very much in it,” said Jacobson, who closed with a 71. “Obviously, 17 was a bit of a swing after I hit my tee shot. I knew if I was going to have a shot at it, I probably had to get up-and-down to have a realistic chance.”
Graeme McDowell finished with two birdies for a 67 to finish alone in third, quite a turnaround from last week in the Andalucia Masters when he failed to break 80 in the last two rounds at Valderrama.
Rory McIlroy made a short birdie on the par-5 18th that gave him a 69 and proved significant. It put him in a three-way tie for fourth, allowing him to move past Lee Westwood to No. 2 in the world.
Westwood, playing in the same group as McIlroy, shot 40 on the front nine and closed with a 74 to tie for 13th with Ian Poulter and Xin-jun Zhang of China, who inspired the gallery by holing a pitch for eagle on the 16th hole to salvage a 72.
Kaymer has experience going low. Sunday in Shanghai reminded him of his first year as a pro when he played a mini-tour in Germany. After a par-bogey start, he played his last 16 holes in 14 under to shoot a 59.
Europe now occupies the first four positions in the world ranking, starting with Luke Donald at No. 1.
Even though he wasn’t at Sheshan International—his wife is expecting their second child—Donald came out a big winner.
PGA champion Keegan Bradley had a 72-72 weekend, keeping him from a third win this year that could have changed players’ minds about their vote for PGA Tour player of the year. And with McIlroy failing to win, it kept Donald with a $1.4 million lead in Europe as he tries to become the first player to win money titles on the PGA and European tours.
न्फ्ल फोरेकास्ट्स - वीक #9
MARKGANZERSNFLPREDICTOR.BLOGSPOT.COM is a web site I developed to forecast American professional results, on a weekly basis, with the aid of a probability model and some statistical techniques.
Because this has been a VERY busy time of year for me, I've only forecasted three weeks out of the nine. Here are my picks for week #9
SEA @ DAL -- Dallas +8
ATL @ IND -- ATL +12
NYJ @ BUFF -- Buffalo by 4
CLE @ HOUS -- Hous by 11
SF49 @ WAS -- SAF49ers by 11
TBB @ NOS -- NOS by 1/2 points
MIA @ KC -- KCC BY 4.5
CIN @ TN -- CIN BY 4.5
DEN @ CAR -- CAR by 8
NYG @ NEP -- NEP BY 6
STL @ AZC -- AZC by 10
GBP @ SDC -- GBP BY 6.5
BAL @ PIT -- BAL by 7
CHI @ PHI -- PHI by 3
The model is only of academic interest, UNLESS, you are a bettor (as opposed to a gambler). A bettor is one who week in and week out makes cold, rational, calculating bets. For example, based on this analysis, the three surest victories (if one were to bet only victories, and ignore what the published spreads are) are:
Atlanta (by 12)
Houson (by 11)
San Francisco (by 11)
Arizona (by 10)
Dallas (by 8)
Caroline (by 8)
Baltimore (by 7)
Green Bay (by 6.5)
New England (by 6)
Cincinnati (by 4.5)
Kansas City (by 4.5)
Buffalo (by 4)
Philadelphia (by 3)
New Orleans (by 0.5)
NOTE: The spreads I've shown here are the "crude" model data for each time, but unadjusted for the "17 points slaughter rule" which says that for assessing "adjusted" margins of victory, all victories in excess of 17 points are to be treated as 17 point victories.
FURTHER NOTE: I've imputed "home field advantage" as being worth 3 1/2 points. Further work and analysis are needed in this arena.
FINAL NOTE: The "crude" margins of victory I've used for this analysis are about TWO POINTS PER GAME GREATER than those shown here, a mildly arbitrary choice to "adjust" for "the slaughter rule," noted above.
Because this has been a VERY busy time of year for me, I've only forecasted three weeks out of the nine. Here are my picks for week #9
SEA @ DAL -- Dallas +8
ATL @ IND -- ATL +12
NYJ @ BUFF -- Buffalo by 4
CLE @ HOUS -- Hous by 11
SF49 @ WAS -- SAF49ers by 11
TBB @ NOS -- NOS by 1/2 points
MIA @ KC -- KCC BY 4.5
CIN @ TN -- CIN BY 4.5
DEN @ CAR -- CAR by 8
NYG @ NEP -- NEP BY 6
STL @ AZC -- AZC by 10
GBP @ SDC -- GBP BY 6.5
BAL @ PIT -- BAL by 7
CHI @ PHI -- PHI by 3
The model is only of academic interest, UNLESS, you are a bettor (as opposed to a gambler). A bettor is one who week in and week out makes cold, rational, calculating bets. For example, based on this analysis, the three surest victories (if one were to bet only victories, and ignore what the published spreads are) are:
Atlanta (by 12)
Houson (by 11)
San Francisco (by 11)
Arizona (by 10)
Dallas (by 8)
Caroline (by 8)
Baltimore (by 7)
Green Bay (by 6.5)
New England (by 6)
Cincinnati (by 4.5)
Kansas City (by 4.5)
Buffalo (by 4)
Philadelphia (by 3)
New Orleans (by 0.5)
NOTE: The spreads I've shown here are the "crude" model data for each time, but unadjusted for the "17 points slaughter rule" which says that for assessing "adjusted" margins of victory, all victories in excess of 17 points are to be treated as 17 point victories.
FURTHER NOTE: I've imputed "home field advantage" as being worth 3 1/2 points. Further work and analysis are needed in this arena.
FINAL NOTE: The "crude" margins of victory I've used for this analysis are about TWO POINTS PER GAME GREATER than those shown here, a mildly arbitrary choice to "adjust" for "the slaughter rule," noted above.
Friday, November 4, 2011
The Anointed One; the Chosen One; the Kenyan Kandidate
Y'all should venture into the world of Black intellectuals - specifically The Black Commentator http://www.blackcommentator.com/login.php
One of that brilliant weekly e-zines weekly contributors wrote a piece entitled "Barack Obama is no black man"
Another of its weekly contributors posed this question to me: "What 27-year old man shows up in the City of Chicago, gets a million plus dollar job in a law firm, gets to teach at the U of C, marries into one of Chicago's more prominent black families (the most prominent one with a marriage-aged daughter readily available), gets picked to run for the Illinois State Senate, gets to deliver the key note address at the 2004 Democratic National convention?"
Who ever heard of this guy before? Where did he come from? HE WAS THE ANNOITED ONE, THE CHOSEN ONE, AND THE CHOOSING WAS DONE LONG, LONG, TIME AGO.
Hiding in plain sight, really, until you think about it.
Interesting parentage: Harvard-educated Kenyan father,
Lily-white mother
Is it even barely possible
that at some time in the not so distant past
one of the Harvard-educated (an oxymoron, to be sure)
CIA operatives hit upon a plan
A plan for a "post-racial" America
Led by the face of a person of colour
Although, SPECIFICALLY AND ESSENTIALLY, not TOO dark!
And while that face would be a thing of beauty
And his brain could be trained to mouth all the right platitudes
With the conviction of a black Baptist Minister
Awash with the Holy Spirit
Who could have hatched such a plan?
All random, the events as they transpired, so you say
So you think
But I say
"Henry Kissinger"
He, the "good Kraut" (the war criminal who dares not set foot
on the soil of many nations of this earth, for he would risk
immediate arrest and deportation to the Hague, where he would
be tried as a war criminal, and could look forward to a guilty
convinction, and the spending of the measure of his days
in solitary confinement
Yes, Henry Kissinger could have conceived just such a plan
James Baker III, who effectively operated at POTUS from the
moment Ronald Reagan was shot ... Baker would have seen
immediately just how much America loves an actor - although
for the Gipper, it might merely have been that they loved
his avuncular ways (having forgotten, or perhaps never known
that he was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party --
Only in America
YES - SAINT RONALD REAGAN
Who showed unto "the powers that be"
The corporate and wealth elites of this nations
and their lap dogs, permitted to sit and eat from the same table -
the media elites (who tend not to make anywhere near the money
(and the academic elites - who assuredly do not make anywhere near the money
But, in fact are absolutely essential cogs in the machine
The machine the grinds up and spits out human beings
But keeps the $$$GRAVY TRAIN$$$ rollin' in green
Although limits the stops that train makes
To destinations only of certain zip codes
and even within those certain zip codes
only to MUCH smaller neighborhoods
To have a pleasing face
On a President of the United States
Who could read his lines
And hit his marks
THAT - is corporate America's wet dream
And THAT is precisely what they's got
AND precisely what they'll get again and again and again and again
UNLESS - as I do surely believe
The system is so god-damned broke that it is beyond all repair
While the world waits
To watch and see
If America (the American Material Way of Life)
Ends not with a bang (it is to be feared that we WILL go down, gunz a blazin'
but with a whimper (we will go down, gunz a blazin' all the while askin'
WHY DO THEY HATE US SO?
WHY DO THEY HATE OUR FREEDOMS?
Ask the wrong question
And you will get the wrong answer
Time after time after time after time after time after time after time after time ...
One of that brilliant weekly e-zines weekly contributors wrote a piece entitled "Barack Obama is no black man"
Another of its weekly contributors posed this question to me: "What 27-year old man shows up in the City of Chicago, gets a million plus dollar job in a law firm, gets to teach at the U of C, marries into one of Chicago's more prominent black families (the most prominent one with a marriage-aged daughter readily available), gets picked to run for the Illinois State Senate, gets to deliver the key note address at the 2004 Democratic National convention?"
Who ever heard of this guy before? Where did he come from? HE WAS THE ANNOITED ONE, THE CHOSEN ONE, AND THE CHOOSING WAS DONE LONG, LONG, TIME AGO.
Hiding in plain sight, really, until you think about it.
Interesting parentage: Harvard-educated Kenyan father,
Lily-white mother
Is it even barely possible
that at some time in the not so distant past
one of the Harvard-educated (an oxymoron, to be sure)
CIA operatives hit upon a plan
A plan for a "post-racial" America
Led by the face of a person of colour
Although, SPECIFICALLY AND ESSENTIALLY, not TOO dark!
And while that face would be a thing of beauty
And his brain could be trained to mouth all the right platitudes
With the conviction of a black Baptist Minister
Awash with the Holy Spirit
Who could have hatched such a plan?
All random, the events as they transpired, so you say
So you think
But I say
"Henry Kissinger"
He, the "good Kraut" (the war criminal who dares not set foot
on the soil of many nations of this earth, for he would risk
immediate arrest and deportation to the Hague, where he would
be tried as a war criminal, and could look forward to a guilty
convinction, and the spending of the measure of his days
in solitary confinement
Yes, Henry Kissinger could have conceived just such a plan
James Baker III, who effectively operated at POTUS from the
moment Ronald Reagan was shot ... Baker would have seen
immediately just how much America loves an actor - although
for the Gipper, it might merely have been that they loved
his avuncular ways (having forgotten, or perhaps never known
that he was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party --
Only in America
YES - SAINT RONALD REAGAN
Who showed unto "the powers that be"
The corporate and wealth elites of this nations
and their lap dogs, permitted to sit and eat from the same table -
the media elites (who tend not to make anywhere near the money
(and the academic elites - who assuredly do not make anywhere near the money
But, in fact are absolutely essential cogs in the machine
The machine the grinds up and spits out human beings
But keeps the $$$GRAVY TRAIN$$$ rollin' in green
Although limits the stops that train makes
To destinations only of certain zip codes
and even within those certain zip codes
only to MUCH smaller neighborhoods
To have a pleasing face
On a President of the United States
Who could read his lines
And hit his marks
THAT - is corporate America's wet dream
And THAT is precisely what they's got
AND precisely what they'll get again and again and again and again
UNLESS - as I do surely believe
The system is so god-damned broke that it is beyond all repair
While the world waits
To watch and see
If America (the American Material Way of Life)
Ends not with a bang (it is to be feared that we WILL go down, gunz a blazin'
but with a whimper (we will go down, gunz a blazin' all the while askin'
WHY DO THEY HATE US SO?
WHY DO THEY HATE OUR FREEDOMS?
Ask the wrong question
And you will get the wrong answer
Time after time after time after time after time after time after time after time ...
Ramsey Clark, writing in the 1990's
There have never been people at any time in history who so clearly and abundantly possessed the potential to meet all of their problems and provide for all of their needs as do Americans today. We do not release half the energies of our people. Through technology we can build new cities – clean, ample and beautiful. We can educate, employ and fulfill all of our people. Tragically neglected processes of criminal justice can enlarge both security for society and liberty for the individual. We can find justice. The question is one of will.
It is the crimes of poor and powerless people that most enrage and frighten the affluent, comfortable and advantaged majority. Riots, muggings, robbery and rape are loathsome not only because they are inherently irrational and inhuman, but because they and their causes are so foreign to the experience of people with power that they are incomprehensible. It is the inhumane and irrational condition of the poor that finally causes some among them to commit crimes.
Society cannot hope to control violent and irrational antisocial conduct while cunning predatory crime by people in power continues unabated. Any nation that wishes to prevent crime must be conscious of the whole range of criminal activity.
White collar crime is the most corrosive of all crimes. The trusted prove untrustworthy; the advantaged, dishonest. It shows the capability of people with better opportunities for creating a decent life for themselves to take property belonging to others. As no other crime, it questions our moral fiber.
When police crime occurs, it too brutalizes. Where police protection is purchased, it corrupts. Anyone who experiences such things or believes that they happen will have little confidence in the law or its enforcement. Where can he turn? If he lives in a world of brutality he will be brutal. If he lives in a world of corruption, he will be corrupt. Police, however professional, can never hold the respect of the people when they must endeavor to enforce laws the public will not obey.
Of the many faces of crime, the most tragic is never recognized by many. Millions fall victim to the cruelest of all crimes which takes its toll in miserable, empty and wasted lives. It is the crime of power over impotence – the crime of a society that does not insure equal protection under the laws. It is a crime against people who have no rights – the crime of a society which seeks to maintain order without law. From it grows most crime of violence and much property crime.
If the law is to be enforced – and rights fulfilled for the poor – we must end poverty. Until we do, there will be no protection under the law. To permit conditions that breed antisocial conduct to continue is our greatest crime. We pay dearly for it.
It is the crimes of poor and powerless people that most enrage and frighten the affluent, comfortable and advantaged majority. Riots, muggings, robbery and rape are loathsome not only because they are inherently irrational and inhuman, but because they and their causes are so foreign to the experience of people with power that they are incomprehensible. It is the inhumane and irrational condition of the poor that finally causes some among them to commit crimes.
Society cannot hope to control violent and irrational antisocial conduct while cunning predatory crime by people in power continues unabated. Any nation that wishes to prevent crime must be conscious of the whole range of criminal activity.
White collar crime is the most corrosive of all crimes. The trusted prove untrustworthy; the advantaged, dishonest. It shows the capability of people with better opportunities for creating a decent life for themselves to take property belonging to others. As no other crime, it questions our moral fiber.
When police crime occurs, it too brutalizes. Where police protection is purchased, it corrupts. Anyone who experiences such things or believes that they happen will have little confidence in the law or its enforcement. Where can he turn? If he lives in a world of brutality he will be brutal. If he lives in a world of corruption, he will be corrupt. Police, however professional, can never hold the respect of the people when they must endeavor to enforce laws the public will not obey.
Of the many faces of crime, the most tragic is never recognized by many. Millions fall victim to the cruelest of all crimes which takes its toll in miserable, empty and wasted lives. It is the crime of power over impotence – the crime of a society that does not insure equal protection under the laws. It is a crime against people who have no rights – the crime of a society which seeks to maintain order without law. From it grows most crime of violence and much property crime.
If the law is to be enforced – and rights fulfilled for the poor – we must end poverty. Until we do, there will be no protection under the law. To permit conditions that breed antisocial conduct to continue is our greatest crime. We pay dearly for it.
Question for y'all:
Is there any relevance today in what Clark wrote then?
Is America still a land with an abundance of physical / mineral resources?
Are we nation of forgivers?
Of people who lift up those who need uplifting - the hungry? the poor? the homeless? the widow? the orphan? the pregnant teen-aged mother? the single working mother of three or more children? do we visit the prisoner? do we provide our prisoners with something to do upon release that might give them the hope of fitting into and becoming a productive member of society? do we educate ALL of our children, and not just the sons and the daughters of the incurably well off and wealthy and the comfortably well off living for the most part in those lily white (with a scattering of Asian, East Indian, and Middle-Eastern families who have risked everything coming to America to make money - because for some - and ESPECIALLY THE WELL-EDUCATED, this is a land where money can be made; where if your business fails, you can reinvent yourself, file for bankruptcy and start another one, where the law enforcement agents are paid sufficiently well that they need not resort to petty bribery to feed their families (trust me, my Muslim brothers ALL love being in this country and not having to deal with such petty corruptions - they call it the greatest country on earty - I am not so optimistic.
When, as in Iceland, a critical mass of people STOP PAYING TAXES - THEN this takes off
Published on Thursday, November 3, 2011 by The Guardian/UK
Ordinary Greeks Are Taking Matters Into Their Own Hands
Grassroots refusal to put up with austerity is quickly gaining momentum, as people give up on mainstream politics
by Hara Kouki and Antonis Vradis
In early October, a peculiar news item barely made its way into the back pages of Greek national press: in the northern city of Veria, a small group of people had started reconnecting the electricity supply of households disconnected from the national grid due to bill non-payment. This kind of solidarity action seemed rather abnormal.
Then again, it is difficult to define what constitutes normality in the country nowadays – the upper echelon of political power is in an unprecedented turmoil, and Tuesday's referendum announcement by prime minister George Papandreou, followed by him reportedly preparing to step down, has thrown his political allies and foes into a tailspin. Parliamentary opposition parties are calling for a "national unity" government, snap elections, or a succession of the two; the entire mainstream political spectrum in the country seems to have entered a delirious state of panic. In a stunningly surreal scene, eurozone leaders and global markets are nervously waiting for people in Greece to cast a vote.
And yet, at this precise moment, Greek people are realising they are left with what they had at the outset – that is, absolutely nothing to hope for from the mainstream political scene.
Take Yannis, a 43 year-old man working in a bank in Athens, who doesn't want to return home because it is going to be cold again. The heating will be off, as nobody in the block can afford the heating prices. His 16-year old daughter, Sophia, does not want to go to school, as she finds little meaning in preparing for her exams: why would she want to enter university knowing full well she will never find a job in Greece, anyway? Or take Eleftheria's father, a 72-year old pensioner leaving in the village of Kymi, who called her today while she was returning home and hesitantly asked her for money to buy his medicine that the state fund no longer covers for. His pension was recently cut by 50%. "But, please," he pleaded, "do not tell your mother." Back in the city, Eleftheria's streets are lined with garbage which has been lying there for more than three weeks.
Thousands of workers are to be put on reduced pay schemes across the country and hundreds are being fired on a daily basis. The government has raised already existing taxes and introduced a variety of new ones across the board, while slashing salaries and pensions in both the public and private sector. Official unemployment rose by more than 35% year-to-year and now stands at just under 20%; homelessness is on an enormous increase across the country, while tax on food consumption has shot up from 13 to 23%. At the same time, public transport is being dismantled and hospitals across the country barely function. For the first time, there were no books to be distributed in public schools and universities are in utter disarray. The "bloated" public sector has been portrayed as responsible for all the misery the country has to endure. At the same time, social services have been intentionally abandoned, making it easier for enraged citizens to accept the privatisation of the public sector in return.
People here feel the country is gradually sinking, carrying them down a path dug in arbitrariness and injustice. Yet at this very moment – when it is not only the rules of the game that are challenged but the game itself – they seem to feel empowered to act in ways that would not have appeared feasible in the past: they physically attack politicians, mock and cancel military-inspired national public parades and humiliate army officials attending them, participate in neighbourhood assemblies and mass demonstrations (irrespective of the amount of tear gas thrown against them by the police), create grassroots trade unions to demand their labour rights, occupy workplaces, disrupt public services and protest in violent, impulsive, unpredictable ways.
In these peculiar times, when there is nothing to lose for so many, everything becomes possible. In the northern Athens suburb of Nea Ionia, the municipality is now actively calling for locals to shun the new tax, offering instructions to avoid its payment on its official website and promising legal support and even volunteers to reconnect potentially disconnected supplies. Grassroots refusal to put up with austerity is quickly gaining momentum, regardless of everyday politics of fear and emergency, or never-ending market crashes. In return, the realisation is sinking in that a possibility for tangible change only lies in people changing their understandings, their habits, the ways in which they do politics: while asked to cast a vote, Greek society sees a major role recast.
Ordinary Greeks Are Taking Matters Into Their Own Hands
Grassroots refusal to put up with austerity is quickly gaining momentum, as people give up on mainstream politics
by Hara Kouki and Antonis Vradis
In early October, a peculiar news item barely made its way into the back pages of Greek national press: in the northern city of Veria, a small group of people had started reconnecting the electricity supply of households disconnected from the national grid due to bill non-payment. This kind of solidarity action seemed rather abnormal.
Then again, it is difficult to define what constitutes normality in the country nowadays – the upper echelon of political power is in an unprecedented turmoil, and Tuesday's referendum announcement by prime minister George Papandreou, followed by him reportedly preparing to step down, has thrown his political allies and foes into a tailspin. Parliamentary opposition parties are calling for a "national unity" government, snap elections, or a succession of the two; the entire mainstream political spectrum in the country seems to have entered a delirious state of panic. In a stunningly surreal scene, eurozone leaders and global markets are nervously waiting for people in Greece to cast a vote.
And yet, at this precise moment, Greek people are realising they are left with what they had at the outset – that is, absolutely nothing to hope for from the mainstream political scene.
Take Yannis, a 43 year-old man working in a bank in Athens, who doesn't want to return home because it is going to be cold again. The heating will be off, as nobody in the block can afford the heating prices. His 16-year old daughter, Sophia, does not want to go to school, as she finds little meaning in preparing for her exams: why would she want to enter university knowing full well she will never find a job in Greece, anyway? Or take Eleftheria's father, a 72-year old pensioner leaving in the village of Kymi, who called her today while she was returning home and hesitantly asked her for money to buy his medicine that the state fund no longer covers for. His pension was recently cut by 50%. "But, please," he pleaded, "do not tell your mother." Back in the city, Eleftheria's streets are lined with garbage which has been lying there for more than three weeks.
Thousands of workers are to be put on reduced pay schemes across the country and hundreds are being fired on a daily basis. The government has raised already existing taxes and introduced a variety of new ones across the board, while slashing salaries and pensions in both the public and private sector. Official unemployment rose by more than 35% year-to-year and now stands at just under 20%; homelessness is on an enormous increase across the country, while tax on food consumption has shot up from 13 to 23%. At the same time, public transport is being dismantled and hospitals across the country barely function. For the first time, there were no books to be distributed in public schools and universities are in utter disarray. The "bloated" public sector has been portrayed as responsible for all the misery the country has to endure. At the same time, social services have been intentionally abandoned, making it easier for enraged citizens to accept the privatisation of the public sector in return.
People here feel the country is gradually sinking, carrying them down a path dug in arbitrariness and injustice. Yet at this very moment – when it is not only the rules of the game that are challenged but the game itself – they seem to feel empowered to act in ways that would not have appeared feasible in the past: they physically attack politicians, mock and cancel military-inspired national public parades and humiliate army officials attending them, participate in neighbourhood assemblies and mass demonstrations (irrespective of the amount of tear gas thrown against them by the police), create grassroots trade unions to demand their labour rights, occupy workplaces, disrupt public services and protest in violent, impulsive, unpredictable ways.
In these peculiar times, when there is nothing to lose for so many, everything becomes possible. In the northern Athens suburb of Nea Ionia, the municipality is now actively calling for locals to shun the new tax, offering instructions to avoid its payment on its official website and promising legal support and even volunteers to reconnect potentially disconnected supplies. Grassroots refusal to put up with austerity is quickly gaining momentum, regardless of everyday politics of fear and emergency, or never-ending market crashes. In return, the realisation is sinking in that a possibility for tangible change only lies in people changing their understandings, their habits, the ways in which they do politics: while asked to cast a vote, Greek society sees a major role recast.
© 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited
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