What a Fix We've Gotten Ourselves Into Around Mass Slaughters
It has been a very difficult few days. The Newtown, Connecticut, murders hit hard, at a time when it seems as if we should be hardened to incidents of random violence.
The murders accompanying the shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords in Arizona, the murder of Sikhs in Wisconsin, the movie theatre shooting in Colorado--these and others should seemingly have prepared us. When “only” two people were killed in an Oregon shopping mall shooting last week, there was very little publicity, as a sign of the growing acceptance.
Yet the Connecticut shootings seem somehow different, worse, more horrifying, than all those other incidents, and not just because of the number of people murdered. It’s because the Connecticut murders involved mostly children, very young children.
Along with the terrible sadness, there are elements of shame, anger, and fear that many of us feel. In this latest case, we’ve witnessed a product of upper middle class suburbia, as the shooter appears to have been, do something that seemed only to happen in the most deranged societies of modern history--Nazi Germany, Rwanda, and Liberia. In those places, the youngest children weren’t off limits to premeditated violence. These are places we always assumed we were superior to.
The anger is pretty natural, as in...there must be a way to put a stop to all this craziness. People everywhere are wracking their brains to come up with solutions. Get rid of assault weapons. Stop prescribing psychotropic drugs. Tone down the video games. Refrain from disclosing the names of the murderers, so they don’t get the attention they crave.
Then there is the fear, as in, What’s next? If our culture can produce neighbors capable of the bestiality that occurred in Newtown, then what is the next rung down the ladder?
Most of us don’t want to try to answer that last question, because the possibilities just become darker and darker. But in figuring out solutions, I sense we are going to have to go deeper than we’ve been willing to go. The first step toward dealing with most difficult personal afflictions like alcoholism or drug abuse is admitting you have a problem. And we haven’t been willing to do that...yet. We blame the nutcases, crazies, as if these individuals are aberrations, not part and parcel of our existence.
We have to begin admitting collectively that we have a deeply-seated cultural and political problem in this country. It involves, just for starters, our glorification of violence, not only in our movies, crime television series, and video games, but in our criminal justice and military systems. So when well-meaning people suggest seemingly logical solutions like banning assault weapons, they gloss over the fact that the majority in this country is afraid of giving up to our government control of weapons that they increasingly see as potentially important in defending ourselves from abusive government behavior.
Just three days before the Newton attack, the New York Times reported on the shocking increase in Americans being imprisoned for non-violent offenses over the last thirty years. “The United States has the highest reported rate of incarceration of any country: about one in 100 adults, a total of nearly 2.3 million people in prison or jail,” it stated. In reporting on “growing sentiment” that strict criminal and sentencing policies “have gone too far,” the Times pointed out that, “Nationally,about one in 40 children have a parent in prison. Among black children, one in 15 have a parent in prison.”
Those people in prison not only have children, but they have extended family, friends, acquaintances, work colleagues. It’s not uncommon for upper middle class Americans today to know someone who was locked up, sometimes for seemingly minor offenses. Readers of this blog know the awful circumstances of Rawesome Food Club founder James Stewart. They know how farmers like Verson Hershberger and Alvin Schlangen have been threatened with jail.
Our jails and prisons have intentionally been turned into ever-more-violent hell holes, so individuals with clear mental illness aren't treated and others tend to come out of them more alienated than when they went in. And all those relatives, friends, and acquaintances hear the stories.
I haven’t even touched on the extra-legal immigrant prison system. Here’s what the Boston Globe said about this system four days before Newtown:
“Every day, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, detains more than 10,000 immigrants who have no criminal records and sometimes deep ties to the United States, holding them for weeks and often months in jails where they have fewer rights than criminals and little access to the outside world. It is a system that separates parents from young children, locks away the elderly during their twilight years, and sometimes puts the sick at great risk.
“Yet, that same agency has released 8,500 criminals -- including as many as 201 murderers -- to US streets over the past four years because their home countries wouldn't take them back...
“Such inconsistencies fester in a fast-growing detention system that provides little information about the people it arrests. ICE's network of detention centers -- almost all of them originally designed to house criminals -- has quadrupled in size since 1995, but ICE doesn't release even the names of detainees, purportedly because it needs to protect immigrants' privacy.”
And then there is Guantanamo, and unknown satellites, where accused terrorists are locked up, and the keys thrown away, without even a nod toward U.S. Constitution guarantees.
As I noted in my previous post, the trend is toward ever more government surveillance of ordinary citizens, as reported in last week’s Wall Street Journal.
Simply stated, we’ve placed ourselves between a rock and a hard place. Our culture’s glorification of violence nearly sanctions the deviants who carry out the slaughter of innocents, and our out-of-control legal justice system has frightened well meaning people from implementing the necessary controls on assault weapons because we can’t trust the people in charge not to abuse the controls. What a fix we’ve got ourselves into.
And I haven’t even gotten into our taboos around frankly acknowledging the realities of mental illness, and our unwillingness to invest seriously in education.
This site's mission is to provide news and analysis about food rights and raw milk. Increasingly, our access to privately available food is under attack by government and industry forces that seek to impose their choices on us. The Complete Patient seeks to provide up-to-date information and encourage the development of community to maintain traditional food acquisition options.
Biggest mass school murder you never heard of: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Bath%20School%20disaster
David,
I appreciate your post. I think we also need to address, as Wendell Berry has done, the complete breakdown of family/community and people's connections to each other (which is itself the by-product of purposeful governmental policy, both in education and economics - an agenda to weaken all institutions/societies that compete with the continued expansion of government presence and power) over the past three generations.
And we need to be honest that while this is tragic, what our government is doing overseas is then a hundred times more so (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/08/psy-lyrics-anti-us-a... and many other wonderful pieces by Glenn Greenwald and others on the tens of thousands and more who have died in the multiple conflicts our nation has created and instigated over the past 20-30 years), but because it is children overseas being killed by drone strikes and smart bombs... most American's don't care.
There is no answer apart from real community (local, multi-generational), and real community involves a rejection of and resistance towards the government's approach to economics and people and a host of other issues, which it seeks to subjugate to its own purposes (increasing its power).
But going back, as Wendell points out, while the only war forward, is going to be very difficult. People with mental issues don't need more meds, they need love and care, and their families need support.
This highlights how everything comes down to food. The only reason the US is in the Middle East is to steal the oil to keep centralized industrialism and globalization fueled, and the main reason cheap oil and globalization are "necessary" is to keep industrial ag fueled and maximally profitable.
Reject industrial agriculture and embrace Community Food, which will soon be necessary anyway as the cheap oil runs out, and our options immediately vastly expand. If we abolish the military-industrial complex and rebuild our communities, we'll abolish the worst vector of violence and murder on earth, as well as the alienation which causes individual violent outbreaks like this one.
[quote from article]:
"Consider this: Why is it that we never hear of these sorts of murderous rampages taking place in a police station? After all, if you're a murderous thug the cops are the ones who will arrest you and deliver you over to the courts where you will be tried, sentenced and then eventually imprisoned (or given the needle.) Logic dictates that you would thus assault those who would arrest and try you for your crimes, in an attempt to neuter their ability to do so.
The reason these thugs do not, as a rule, assault a police station is that they know full well that everyone in the place is armed and will resist -- that while they may through the element of surprise manage to shoot one or two people the odds are nearly 100% that doing so will lead to the immediate termination of their assault via return fire.
Before you argue otherwise let's look at the recent events, shall we? The movie theater in Colorado posted a "gun free" sign. Ditto for the mall. And, of course, under federal law schools are "gun free" zones -- the government, along with gun-banners, assert that paper (laws) "protect" against bullets."
[end of quote]
Taken from this link - - - -> http://www.market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=214954
It's a well-written article, as is David's. There are many questions to which we will never be privy to answers. I do believe, however, there was a total disconnect in *family* in this instance.
http://www.ismp.org/quarterwatch/pdfs/2011Q4.pdf
http://www.cchrint.org/2012/07/20/the-aurora-colorado-tragedy-another-se...
I'd be very surprised if psych drugs were not involved in this recent tragedy. It's hard to say what is fact in this case as the media has reported bogus "facts'.
You take away the guns, then only the criminals will have them. Currently, the majority who have assault weapons (depending on your definition of assault weapon) are the street gangs and preppers. The Brown Bess musket/muzzel loaders were assault weapons as was the carbines, etc. How about the Bowie knife? One of the guns used in Conn was a AR15 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AR-15
Of the law abiding citizens who own the assault weapons, Perhaps they should be asked: why they feel the need for that type of gun? Obviously they are in great fear of something(s).
Was it in the 80s or 90s they shut most state mental health facilities? Just turned them all loose on the streets. I've worked around a few mental patients. Most are harmless, some made the hair on my neck stand up. When you add RX and/or street drugs/booze into the equation things can become volatile with no apparent trigger.
It is doubtful that society will be changing anytime soon. In the mean time, we have a need to protect ourselves.
D Smith, I hadn't heard of that disaster.
Sylvia,
Perhaps they should be asked: why they feel the need for that type of gun? Obviously they are in great fear of something(s).
I don't think you would get one consistent answer, but in my experience, there are a few core reasons, for instance, among my neighbors or for some of my friends who live in the Northwest where gun ownership is the norm.
First, some just enjoy shooting larger caliber firearms (my neighbors, for instance... it is a bit loud at times, but that is part of living in the country, and at least everyone is generally invited to come shoot with them). So for many it is a social activity. Look up the Knob Creek annual machine gun shooting event and you get a feel for the social aspects of shooting and the enjoyment some people get from it.
Second, because at the end of the day, the most dangerous people with guns are not individual or even small groups of people, but governments/states. Estimates range well over 200,000,000 people have been murdered by governments in the 1900-1999 time frame alone - one of the first steps almost always enacted before these atrocities is the disarming of the general populace. http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM and http://www.market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=214954
Third, because a large and growing segment of the American population does believe things are really going over a cliff, and that big change is in for the future and want to be able to protect themselves and their loved ones. When you see what is happening in Detroit and other cities that are falling into bankruptcy and their leaders are telling people, "you won't have police or fire or trash anymore... you need to fend for yourselves..." that is a bit of a wake up call for many.
Unfortunately, they may discover that faith in guns will get you as about as far as faith in government - you can't eat ammo and when you sleep, so does your firearm.
As so many point out, we need to restrengthen local food and economic production and communities and resiliency and the basic skills that helped see our ancestors through all sorts of trials and tribulations, so that if the District of Criminals does manage to push the entire nation down the sewer, something better can crawl back out once the crap is out to sea.
JohnM,
I would not expect a consistent answer to asking why they feel they need assault weapons. The reasons are as varied as the people themselves. My husband and kids went to the gun range often. My husband collected period weapons. My kids grew up in a house with various guns. One has trophies for skeet shooting, the other hunts. Many veterans have "souvenirs" from the various wars they've been in. The first gun I shot was a .44 magnum. (I do prefer the bow, less noise).
I've no doubt that many have numerous types of guns/weapons for fear of a renegade govt, increasing crime, or just pain anarchy. When there are no jobs/or jobs that are not supportive then crime, including violent crime goes up.
http://www.roman-colosseum.info/roman-empire/causes-for-the-fall-of-the-... <~~ This site gives a list of causes on why the Roman Empire fell. I do believe it is rarely ever one issue that causes problems, it appears to be an accumulation of issues that throws a stick in the wheel. If we don't learn from history, we will certainly repeat it. I do see a correlation in this list and the happenings of our govt and the world.
Perhaps the preppers are right in preparing for potential disaster. I just cannot fathom letting the world know what they have in storage, whether arms or foods. They made themselves perfect targets.
I don't think there's anything wrong with being prepared, but some people do take it to extremes. I can lots of foods but I don't do it as a prepper, I do it because it's the only way to preserve the bounty of seasonal goodies. And we own generators because we live in a part of the country which typically has nasty winters, although the past 10 years has made a liar of me more than once in that regard!
If the gubment is going to ban guns because they are "assault weapons" they will also need to ban kitchen knives and yard equipment. In reality, almost anything can be used as a weapon. A baseball bat, for instance. So the idea of "banning" something is absurd. Jack the Ripper, whether a male or a female, used a knife to do the deed but England didn't / couldn't ban knives and they knew it.
America is so far behind the 8 ball it's ridiculous. We are as backwards a nation as ever existed.
Yes, the Nat Geo Doomsday preppers show... that was just insanity. Obviously, also manipulated... but to go on that kind of show doesn't make any sense given what they believe/think about what is to come.
I agree with David's comments on the prison system. I read once that the gassing of Jews was never mentioned at the Nuremberg trials and that most of the people tried were American citizens.
Also Jeffrey Dahmer was a product of our judicial system.
"It is important to remember that America has always had schools and guns. Even before the country was officially created.
From its inception to the present, generally the gun laws have grown increasingly more restrictive.
However, there was a time when Americans could legally own automatic guns and high powered military rifles.
Given the above, it would be expected that the number of shootings would be found primarily during the loose gun law periods. But it isn't. Instead, 102 of the 112 shootings (91 percent) have occurred in the last 20 years."
http://www.ignitepoint.com/?articleid=560625
"...virtually all of those responsible in the last two decades for mass shootings in the U.S. were taking some form of medication. For some it was Ritalin, for some it was anti-depressants, for others anti-psychotics and for some a combination of many drugs."
"Just a couple of the many side-effects of the drugs many of the mass shooters have taken are suicidal and homicidal tendencies or both."
"How much worse does this medication problem have to get before we take it more seriously and require better physician care management and warnings,"
http://www.howtolearn.com/2012/12/did-medication-cause-yet-another-schoo...
And most of these people are being treated for non-existent conditions.
I wish more people would ask this question: Why would a person WANT to do this kind of thing? I found some clues in Gordon Neufeld's book "Hold On To Your Kids".
I wish with all my heart that the answer is the availability of guns, but this doesn't explain why in the past when there were fewer restrictions and probably most families possessed some sort of firearm, there don't seem to have been massacres like this. I'm not saying there was no violence-simply that there were not people (especially children) regularly walking into schools murdering others.
Anyone who feels ashamed of supporting the right to own a gun should check out all the other violence currently inflicted upon youngsters in school. Beatings, attempted stranglings, knifings, etc. Am I the only one here who just learned about "happy slapping"?
If I'm to be blamed for my position on guns, then that's as logical as saying schools should be outlawed since not only do so many incidents of violence occur there, but so many perps are products of that system.
Yes, this was a devastating tragedy that will be felt for many years to come. I think my dear friend in Canada summed it up quite perfectly on one of my Facebook postings. She states: "Oh Deb, it is unbelievable what those little children went through. How does a young man, a child himself, develop such unmitigated rage against his mother !!!!! We have such disparate groups in Western society; all vying for attention, yet...increasingly...our children are left on cold cement floors, in shallow graves......, and parents are left with the unimaginable torture of waiting to see their child one last time. I am a firm believer in that we all need to stop this current culture of entitlement , of self-gain, and change our focus to helping the children of this world. If we did, I am positive there would be less children turning into monsters, and less parents suffering the unimaginable torture of waiting till a crime scene is processed in order to touch, and look upon the little child they sent off to school in the morning."
“...91 percent of all school shootings in this country have occurred in the last 20 years."
"...virtually all of those responsible in the last two decades for mass shootings in the U.S. were taking some form of medication. For some it was Ritalin, for some it was anti-depressants, for others anti-psychotics and for some a combination of many drugs."
"Just a couple of the many side-effects of the drugs many of the mass shooters have taken are suicidal and homicidal tendencies or both." How many of these drugs even existed 20 years ago? This has got to be the only logical explanation. Stress and diet alone could never explain this level of carnage.
And most of these kids are being treated for a non-existent condition. I think we can all agree on that.
I think most parents would choose not to give their kids the columbine drugs if given the choice but they could at least put them on suicide watch if they were informed of the drugs likely side-effects. Is there anyone denying that this is a normal side effect of these drugs?
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/11-amazing-facts-about-the-mcdonald-s-mcri...
" reported by Time magazine, a closer inspection of McDonald's own ingredient list reveals that the pork sandwich contains a total of 70 ingredients. This includes azodicarbonamide, a flour-bleaching agent often used in the production of foamed plastics."
If the body becomes ill....then the mind will follow.
@ Sylvia: Good Lord! 70 ingredients?? And to think that McDonald's was heralded as some star player when they decided to discontinue the use of pink slime. Ha! I doubt anyone noticed.
It looks like system politicians (Democrats and Republicans both) are gleefully seizing upon this as the pretext they were waiting for to start rolling back gun rights. Both parties have long regretted how firmly the 2nd amendment is fused into the popular consciousness, as much as that's helped the Republicans politically. They of course would like to disarm the people.
As a rule, wherever you see anyone reacting to an acute event with frantic calls for how "we have to do something now!"*, he's either a criminal seeking to stampede others in order to exploit the disaster, or one of the sheep being stampeded.
*The calls are always for something which would allegedly treat the symptom, but never for fixing the structural cause. That's proof right there of the scam.
Just like with food, and why the sterilization ideology is so much preferred by the power structure over the terrain theory of disease causation. The former supports targeted assaults on any disfavored group like real milk producers. The latter calls into question all of industrial ag and how it pollutes and diseases the gene pool and the environment.
While Clinton and others spoke of the obvious pain and suffering inflicted by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, no one addressed the most important question: What actually caused the two high school students to turn into cold-blooded killers? Yet, without addressing the cause of the tragedy, how can we possibly expect to prevent similar tragedies in the future?
The Columbine shooting and many other nightmarish killings have now been scientifically linked by experts to a freakish sleep disorder caused by the growing use of anti-depressant medications that affect the level of serotonin in the brain.
Dr. Ann Blake Tracy, executive director of the International Coalition for Drug Awareness and author of Prozac: Panacea or Pandora? - Our Serotonin Nightmare is an expert consultant in cases like Columbine in which anti-depressant medications are involved. Tracy says the Columbine killers' brains were awash in serotonin, the chemical which causes violence and aggression and triggers a sleep-walking disorder in which a person literally acts out their worst nightmare.
Shortly before the Columbine shooting, Eric Harris had been rejected by Marine Corps recruiters because he was under a doctor's care and had been prescribed an anti-depressant medication. Harris was taking Luvox, an anti-depressant commonly used to treat patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Luvox is in a class of drugs called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI). Other SSRIs include Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft. An estimated 10 million Americans take anti-depressant medications.
Mark Taylor, the first student shot at Columbine, brought a lawsuit against Solvay, the international pharmaceutical company that produces Luvox. Taylor's 2001 lawsuit said Luvox had caused Harris to become manic, psychotic, and homicidal/suicidal and had brought about "emotional blunting,'' or a lack of inhibition. Tayor's lawsuit also faulted Solvay for failing to warn of the "risks and dangers'' associated with the drug.
In early 1998, according to Taylor's lawsuit, Harris had taken Zoloft for two months, but soon became "obsessional." Harris became obsessed with homicidal and suicidal thoughts "within weeks" after he began taking Zoloft, according to Dr. Tracy. Due to his obsession with killing, Harris was switched to Luvox, which was in his system at the time of the shooting, according to his autopsy. The change from Zoloft to Luvox is like switching from Pepsi to Coke, Dr. Tracy said.
http://www.erichufschmid.net/Columbine/Columbine-Bollyn.html
There is something that didn’t sit right with me about the Presidents statement. It’s hard to take someone seriously whose war on terror allows for “collateral damage”, where thousands of children are killed on an ongoing basis.
I agree with Silvia, “If the body becomes ill....then the mind will follow” and vice versa if the mind becomes ill the body will follow. I also agree with rawmilkmike, that drugs can or could have played a role with such hostile and deadly events. That being said however limiting access to drugs, (or guns for that matter) doesn’t explain why, as John points out, “well over 200,000,000 people have been murdered by governments in the 1900-1999 time frame”.
David ask a very pertinent question, “If our culture can produce neighbors capable of the bestiality that occurred in Newtown, then what is the next rung down the ladder?” Indeed, “most of us don’t want to try to answer that last question, because the possibilities just become darker and darker”.
We have been created with an ability to think and reason along with a conscience, and a free will. Without these combined qualities we would be no more then animals ourselves and subject without choice to purely animal instincts. Yet despite our God given qualities above and our ability to demonstrate selfless acts of courage, man is capable of a calculated cruelty and violence far exceeding any animal. What is it that drives man to such sadistic extremes?
Simply put, any philosophy or belief that caters to our ego, will nurture arrogance and inflame self-centered callous tendencies. No philosophy is immune from this including a divinely driven one.
The way people think of themselves in relation to God, to other human beings and to society as a whole is influenced by many factors, which have been the subject of debate for thousands of years. Evolutionary thinking has the potential to exacerbated negative human characteristics that have existed ever since the fall of mankind. To be more exact, it caters to and inflames our egocentric nature.
Not only do certain individuals use the theory pointing to its perceived scientific validity to justify Eugenic, Aryan and racist ideals, they believe it to be true! Students are being taught in the schools today that macro-evolution (natural selection through chance mutation which results in survival of the fittest) the bases for the above ideals, is a scientific fact with God and his creation being reduced to a myth. Rather then teaching children to have a humble faith in God; the education system caters to their ego with an illusion.
If one “ceases to believe in God” according to GK Chesterton “he does not believe in nothing. He believes in anything”. Pseudo science is being used as a tool to justify our need to reject God and scripture or, to redefine Him and scripture, as is the case with theistic evolution.
The Wikipedia free online encyclopedia states, “on the fifth anniversary of Columbine, the FBI's lead Columbine investigator and other top psychiatrists went public with their conclusions in a’ Slate’ story entitled ‘The Depressive and the Psychopath’.[24] They diagnosed Harris as a clinical psycopath and Klebold as a depressive, and saw that the plan was masterminded by Harris. He had a messianic-level superiority complex, and hoped to illustrate his massive superiority to the world.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre
On the day of the massacre, Harris wore a white T-shirt with the words "Natural selection" printed in black and Klebold wore a black T-shirt which had the word "WRATH" printed in red.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Harris_and_Dylan_Klebold
Yes prescription drugs indeed influenced their actions however it was no coincident that the attack occurred on Hitler's birthday.
Consider this statement by Adolf Hitler, If Nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with the stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such a case all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile. Mein Kampf (1939) p.240.
And again in Hitler's Secret Conversations October 24, 1941 he states. “The present teaching in schools permits the following absurdity: at 10 a.m. the pupils attend a lesson in the catechism, at which the creation of the world is presented to them in accordance with the teachings of the Bible; and at 11 a.m. they attend a lesson in natural science, at which they are taught the theory of evolution. Yet the two doctrines are in complete contradiction. As a child, I suffered from this contradiction, and ran my head against a wall. Often I complained to one or another of my teachers against what I had been taught an hour before -- and I remember I drove them to despair.”
Julian Huxley, a proponent of the philosophy of Eugenics, a biologist, humanist and founding director of UNESCO states, “Darwinism removed the whole idea of God as the creator of organisms from the sphere of rational discussion. Darwin pointed out that no supernatural designer was needed; since natural selection could account for any known form of life, there was no room for a supernatural agency in its evolution
In a letter to Capt. Bernard Acworth, 1951 C.S. Lewis states, “What inclines me now to think you may be right in regarding [evolution] as the central and radical lie in the whole web of falsehood that now governs our lives is not so much your arguments against it as the fanatical and twisted attitudes of its defenders”.
We are not the product of a mindless universe.
It is only through Christ’s example and teachings that we can attain or nurture the humility necessary to overcome our vices. Humility comes with the acceptance of our true nature.
Ken
Yes our brains are filled with lots of gobbledygook but that gook was there long before our kids started shooting up their schools. It's the drugs proscribed by our out of control medical system that have allowed the manifestation of these twisted juvenile thoughts into actions.
11 powerful minutes.
Good stuff here, lots of names and faces I recognize after years of being in the "alternative" circle.
http://youtube.googleapis.com/v/UhO0Pul_FcE
There is no way to stop the BigPHRMA machine. No way on earth. They simply put money into the hands of whoever can do them the most good. As I said before, it's not about health and it's certainly not about care. Psychiatrists, the drug industry and corporate structures like monsanto and dow chemical are all on the same level. Evil.
Whatever made people think that spraying chemicals onto vegetables and crops was NOT going to harm us? Whatever made people think that taking an Rx chemical concoction for ANYTHING psychological was going to help us more than just talking to our family members (or someone, anyone who would listen)?? We've lost touch very badly and it shows.
Took the words right out of my mouth D.
D Smith, that re-enforces my belief that psych drugs are worst than street drugs.
Oh yes, worse by a long shot. One of the reasons I think so is because the drug companies are no longer liable for damages caused by their concoctions. Can you believe our DOJ actually gave those companies carte blanch to use (and kill) people as guinea pigs? Basically, that is exactly what they did. Except that they've also unleashed a chain reaction of suicide/homicide because no one can predict how any one person will react to these drugs. Whatever made BigPHRMA think that one pill in a sequestered (controlled) dose would work the same on you as it does on me? We're two entirely different beings. Our weight is different, our LIVES are different, so how on earth can one standardized dose be the same for all? It can't, as we've witnessed with these disasters, and will continue to witness until BigPHRMA finds its conscience - and I wouldn't hold my breath for that one.
The only thing we the people can do is say no to their junk and try to educate family and friends to talk to almost anyone but a psychiatrist if they need help.
One more thing - this is where the idea of Traditional Chinese Medicine has it all over the western version of care. In TCM, if you have a group of 10 people and six of them are ill, the Chinese don't look at the six people who are ill, they look at the four people who are well and find out why they stayed well. Maybe following that idea would be a good place to start with mental conditions, which could easily be malnourishment or lack of minerals or any number of simple fixes. But no one looks anymore. They run for a doctor who pulls out a prescription pad . . .
This is why I recently made the decision to change careers and stop being part of the pHARMa machine, gave up the easy money and assorted other fringe benefits: I have a conscience, and I'm at peace with scraping by instead of having lots of disposable income.
When I hear about efforts to raise funds to cure cancer, I usually just laugh... pardon my cynicism but, money is NEVER going to fix that problem. Prevention is the only true answer, not cure. Stop ingesting and supporting the factory food system, sterilization, radiation, etc. Go back to what your great grandparents knew and passed down. NEVER believe anything you see advertised on TV or computer ads. Grow your own food as much as you can, or know the farmer that you buy from.
I was just explaining to my son a few days ago that much of what ails our world is based on inane vanity. We Americans have a love of possession bordering on obsession: Bigger houses, cars, lawns and lots of other useless measuring sticks. Absurd, when it comes to our true basic physical, social or emotional needs. But how do we get the population to realize that?
Right on Ora.
All these kids needed was a healthy lunch and a few minutes on the playground instead they were feed to the wolves.
Boy. You coulda tipped me over with a feather when I saw this. http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/texas-school-guardian-plan-allows-te...
Whaddaya know - a person of authority with some live brain cells!
Here's another good idea. http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/dogs-sandy-hook-students-smile-2259...
Awwwwww!
Goldens are so lovable. We just lost ours last month to cancer. She was my traveling companion.
@ Sylvia: Jeepers, I missed this post I guess. I'm sorry to hear about your dog. It's hard to lose a critter isn't it? We had a cocker who lived to be 18 and that was difficult to handle. But he died in his sleep so it was peaceful for all, thank heaven. Are you going to replace your Golden? For some people a replacement makes the loss easier, for some it doesn't. We are all really different, aren't we?!
Thanks D Smith. She was 11yrs old and had major health issues starting at age 2. The previous golden lived very healthy for 15yrs. yes, I will be getting another dog, it feels strange not having one around. The vet told us that @ 50-60% of the goldens and boxers have a high incidence of cancer. We didn't know that, guess we were lucky with the 1st golden. Deciding what breed has been a challenge.
After the one we have now is gone I really don't want another one because we're just getting too old! Besides when I retire I think we're going to move into an apartment. Now that we don't have children living at home anymore, the yard work just gets to be monumental. We will likely move our greenhouse to our son's home and I'll ding around in there year round, but other than that I'm sick of trying to keep up and keep things green.
DH would like to have another Akita (we had one years ago) but I'm more interested in downsizing, not adding another chore to the list. I love dogs but most apartments don't allow animals for a good reason. Lots of people are allergic.
Wonder if it'll catch on?
I hope so. Dogs are being used in various roles to help people nowadays. I'm glad it's not cats because I'm allergic to cats! Plus, I simply don't like cats, but I like dogs and horses. Horses are also being used to help children with Down's and other things, too.
Hey Sylvia, I thought you might like to read this. It's informative, questioning and not very long to read. He always has good, thought-provoking articles. I follow his blog regularly. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2012/12/19/agenda-driven-news/
D Smith, Some things just make you go hmmm. It amazes me that the Bushmaster moved on its own from the car to the class rooms. I guess we'll never know the truth of this story.
@ Sylvia: Yeah, I think they're purposely trying to keep us confused (usual modus operandi in this country, it seems). One account said he just walked right through the front door, another account said he had to break a window to get in, another account said he wasn't alone in this - - - yada yada yada. I'm not sure the american public ever really knows what the bleep is going on with anything. I don't trust the MSM though, that much I DO know. We get what Rupert Murdoch wants us to get and that's about it.
the maxim in public speaking is : don't leave a rhetorical question hanging, because, for sure, someone will answer it ... probably not in a way you want
Mr Gumpert, you say .... " Most of us don’t want to try to answer that last question, because the possibilities just become darker and darker. But in figuring out solutions, I sense we are going to have to go deeper than we’ve been willing to go. The first step toward dealing with most difficult personal afflictions like alcoholism or drug abuse is admitting you have a problem. And we haven’t been willing to do that...yet. We blame the nutcases, crazies, as if these individuals are aberrations, not part and parcel of our existence.
"We have to begin admitting collectively that we have a deeply-seated cultural and political problem in this country."
all too obviously : you're right, in general. But when guys like me offer the opinion that the deeply-seated cultural problem in this society is race-based, the reaction is one gigantic collective swoon. Patsies like that monster who did the ( latest) shooting, are fuelled by an underlying hatred, far, far greater than what one single human being is capable of. Where does that evil arise? I dare you-all to face the darker possibility ... that Ham-merica is ruled by people who hate us. And that he was programmed to do what he did. And that this episode is part of their agenda of race-traitors in high places, to destroy the white race, in which maintaining the monopoly on force - gun control - is an essential.
look at the statistics on shootings / suicides related to anti-depressant drugs ... don't tell me the body-count is a sheer accident. Forget the propaganda of the "lone nut" ... gird up the loins of your mind + accept the logical, "darker" answer - that such atrocities take intelligent design /executive action from the highest levels
@ Sylvia: Here's another article I thought might interest you about this incident.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-sandy-hook-school-massacre-unanswered-q...
Lotsa questions remain, and there's just myriad information which doesn't fit together, at all.
When someone says, "uh" often, they loose credibility. He didn't sound like he really knew what all was going on.
Had it been my child, I would have insisted on a physical visual, not a picture. How insensitive of them.
I think he forgot his "scripted" role. Heh . . . :-)
After hearing his disjointed comments I wouldn't believe a single thing he said about anything. The one good thing is that his poor acting ability might have given something away. Inadvertantly or not, who's to say. But everyone is looking much more closely at this thing now, and that's all right with me. There's just too many things that didn't make sense. The gubment has a big puzzle to put back together here.
http://www.lohud.com/interactive/article/20121223/NEWS01/121221011/Map-W...
Geesh, now all the crooks know where to find free guns.
And, by the process of elimination (if they're smart enough) crooks can figure out who doesn't have a gun to protect themselves - and where they live. Yeah, this is just par for our country. Give the crooks a map with specific instructions. Geezalou.
Is there a journalist employed anywhere in the USA who can keep a secret? No more discreet reporting for this country, no sir. Blab all as fast as possible, and what you don't know for certain you make up. Win a 50 cent gold statue to place on the mantel. I guess it must be worth it.
I wish the gal from the paper (who was interviewed at the bottom of the article) would have gone on to explain WHY she thought it was "important" to publish this information. More isn't always better, sometimes it's just more.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2012/12/201212273021610203.html