W. Niederhut

Learn the definition of "spam," John. This isn't spam. It's a direct rebuttal of your inaccurate, inappropriate t-r-o-l-l-ing (above) on this thread.

Jim, What is your recollection of the events leading up to the breakdown in Biden and Blinken's efforts to forestall Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine last year? Do you condone Putin's illegal invasion and war crimes in Ukraine? Also, do you condone Putin's illegal 2014 annexation of the Crimea? Peace is an admirable ideal, but when was JFK ever confronted with an illegal invasion of an independent, sovereign nation by a totalitarian police state? As a matter of fact, JFK vowed to defend West Berlin from Soviet annexation, didn't he?

I predicted awhile ago that Rupert Murdoch and the other right wing Republican media moguls who are currently fluffing RFK, Jr. will abruptly turn on him if he ever becomes the Democratic nominee. They'll suddenly start running stories about RFK, Jr.'s heroin addiction, ex-wife's suicide, etc. They are chiefly interested in regaining GOP control of the White House and Congress-- to maintain low corporate and income tax rates, and GOP plutocratic control of the SCOTUS and judicial system. IMO, they are simply using RFK, Jr. to sabotage Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.

Indeed, Cliff, and the other awkward truth about NATO expansion is how eager the nations of the former Soviet Bloc have been to join NATO and the EU. Their interest in joining the prosperous democracies of the EU is inconsistent with the Russia Today narrative decrying U.S. oppression and "full spectrum dominance." Who are the "oppressors" in Europe today, other than Putin and Lukashenko?

John, Please take a break from your moronic ad hominem t-r-o-l-l-i-n-g here. Your highly offensive, personal insults about my 40-year career of hard work with the mentally ill should qualify you for a long overdue suspension from this forum, IMO. It's, frankly, pathetic. And what do your inaccurate, personal insults have to do with JFK, or with related world events? "No human dialogue between the hospital psychiatrist and his committed patient?" "The mental patient is a living corpse?" I think my former patients would pointedly disagree. Which "hospital psychiatrist" are they referring to with this insipid generalization? Meanwhile, you dodged my question about whether you, yourself, had ever spent any time with mentally ill people on psychiatric wards, to inform your self-professed "expert" opinions about the medical sub-specialty of psychiatry. And what have the self-promoting gadflies, Szasz and Rosenhan, taught you about actual psychiatric phenomenology?

Micah, Have you considered seeking treatment for your severe case of Dunning Kruger Syndrome? 🙄

John, Did you ever tell us whether you would choose to live in the oppressed U.S. "vassal state" of South Korea, or the "peaceful, multi-polar," Putin-allied nation of North Korea?

John, I thought you were taking a welcome break from posting your inane insults on this forum. 🙄 As for Thomas Szasz, one of my old associates here at the University of Colorado, Dr. Robert Freedman, always referred Szasz as an anti-psychiatric "gadfly." (Bob Freedman eventually became our department Chairman and editor of the prestigious American Journal of Psychiatry.) There has long been a popular genre of pseudo-intellectual, anti-psychiatric literature out there-- some of which has been funded and promoted by the Scientology movement. Alternatively, it has been promoted by people selling snake oil. Most of it is predicated on the prevalent denial of mental illnesses-- people who believe, rather oddly, that the human brain is not subject to the same potential physiological fallibilities (congenital and/or acquired) as every other organ in the body. As for your oft-referenced Rosenhans joke-- what did it teach you about the phenomenology of mental disorders, other than the fact that people can pretend to suffer from auditory hallucinations? Big deal. Do you, therefore, infer that some mentally ill people do not experience hallucinations? Your ignorance of psychiatry reminds me of RFK, Jr.'s ignorance of virology and immunology. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Ron, I'm buying Bud Light, on principle, this summer-- although it sounds like the brand has taken a major hit from the MAGA boycotters.

Geez, Odisio, have you read, or understood, any of our detailed commentaries here on these multiple, redundant "JFK Peace Speech" threads-- including your own threads-- contrasting JFK's June 26, 1963 Berlin Speech with his idealistic, olive branch Peace Speech earlier that month? All you have done is to repeat the same tropes, like a broken record. Do you understand the relationship between the two JFK speeches-- the Peace Speech and the subsequent Berlin Speech? Peace is a terrific global ideal, as delineated by JFK in June of 1963-- but it is difficult to achieve for liberal democracies facing militant, totalitarian police states with imperialist ambitions-- e.g., N-a-z-i Germany, the Soviet Union post-WWII, Putin's fascist police state today, North Korea, et.al. The prosperous, free, U.S.-allied democracies of the G-20 today can't maintain world peace by simply wishing for it, and doing nothing, when sovereign nations like Ukraine are invaded and annexed by fascist police states like Putin's Russian Federation. That's why JFK flew to Berlin in June of 1963, after his Peace Speech, and pledge to defend freedom and democracy in Europe from Russian totalitarianism. Is democracy worth defending from totalitarianism, (e.g., fascism and communism) in your opinion? The last time I checked, your "peaceful, multi-polar," anti-American heroes are mostly dictators-- Putin, Lukashenko, Kim Jung Un, Xi, et.al. Was Winston Churchill correct when he said, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the other forms of government?" Would you choose to live in one of your anti-American, "peaceful, multi-polar" dictatorships-- Russia, Belarus, North Korea, et.al.-- or in one of your oppressive, U.S.-aligned democracies like South Korea, Japan, Canada, and the free nations in the EU?

Roger, We probably all agree that the U.S. military industrial complex post JFK's assassination has been an international humanitarian disaster-- in Southeast Asia, Latin America, Afghanistan, and the Middle East. But how does your concept of a putative "peaceful multi-polar world" order jive with Putin's brutal invasion of Ukraine, in accordance with Aleksander Dugin's blueprint for the Geopolitical Future of Russia? Putin sent tactical nukes to his puppet dictator Lukashenko in Belarus this week-- a nation that has brutally repressed democratic protesters in recent years. Is this an example of your new "peaceful multi-polar" world? Other Putin allies in your "peaceful multi-polar" world include the NOKO dictator Kim Jong Un and his nuclear missiles, and the Iranian Imams who have recently been executing human rights protesters. In contrast to the prosperous democracies of the G-20 nations, most of your "peaceful multi-polar" heroes appear to be dictators-- Putin, Xi, et.al.

IMO, Obama's misguided participation in the U.S./NATO intervention in Libya had more to do with the Neocon Project for a New American Century (PNAC) -- the Wolfowitz/Feith post-9/11 strategy to de-stabilize Israel's Muslim neighbors. It wasn't about the Balkans, per se, where the Clinton administration had collaborated with the Saudis and NATO in the 1990s against the communist rump state in Belgrade. U.S. participation (with Muslims) against the communist rump-state in Belgrade was more akin to our use of Fundamentalist Muslims (including former CIA asset Osama Bin Laden) against the Soviets in Afghanistan. As for the Bosnian Muslim and Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) wars against the Yugoslav communist rump-state in Belgrade, most Americans still don't know that Osama Bin Laden and his CIA-trained "Al Qaeda" Mujaheddin (from the Soviet/Afghan War) were involved with the Izetbegovic government and the KLA in those wars against Belgrade. In fact, Bin Laden and his "Al Qaeda" Mujaheddin were using Bosnian passports in the 1990s. In a sense, the NATO bombing of Serbia was a late 20th century replay of the German/Austrian/Turkish alliance against the Serbs in WWI and WWII, when Hitler leveled Belgrade. (The N-a-z-i-s even had Muslim SS regiments fighting against the Serbs in Yugoslavia in WWII, alongside their fascist Croatian Ustase allies.) American War College analyst John Schindler claims that Izetbegovic was also backed by both the Iranians and Saudis in his efforts to re-establish an Islamic state at Sarajevo in the 1990s-- while posing as an enlightened secularist for the Western media.* Meanwhile, most Americans didn't even know that the Kosovo Albanian militants (KLA) were Muslims. I realized this when our local newspaper was taking up a collection to buy Christmas presents for Albanian Muslim refugees from Kosovo during the nascent civil war. And the U.S. media also blacked out coverage of the destruction of Serbian Orthodox Christian churches and monasteries in Pristina by the Islamic KLA at the time. The only photos of the bombed Orthodox churches that I ever saw were published by the media in France. * Amazon.com: Unholy Terror: Bosnia, Al-Qa'ida, and the Rise of Global Jihad: 8601415795486: Books

Addendum: Oops... I just posted my travelogue response (above) for John Cotter, before seeing Kirk's interesting commentary about his current trip to Vietnam. My bad, Kirk. Great post, and thanks for sharing.

John, I'm responding to your latest post and questions in red (below.) John Cotter wrote: William, Despite my answering your question, you falsely accuse me of dodging it – while in the same post implying that I had answered it! You seem very confused. I must have missed your answer, John. Did you opt for life in North Korea or South Korea? Has your career in the authoritarian pseudo-science of mainstream psychiatry impaired your capacity to engage rationally with someone who disagrees with you and your capacity for self-reflection? The infamous Rosenhan experiment and Thomas Szasz’s classic critique of institutional psychiatry, The Manufacture of Madness, come to mind. "Authoritarian pseudo-science?" Thomas Szasz? Surely, you jest. Your "knowledge" of the clinical science of psychiatry is, apparently, sophomoric, in the worst sense of the word. It is based on evidence-free "theorizing" about "madness." Thomas Szasz's mythology is only taken seriously by people who have never encountered or studied the actual phenomenology of psychiatric disorders-- schizophrenia, manic depression, delusional disorders, severe OCD, etc. Have you spent any time with severely mentally ill patients on psychiatric wards, John? There's nothing "mythical" about their psychoses. There is another question which seems apposite. Have you ever lived and worked in a country other than the USA for a significant period of time? Not sure what is relevant about your question, but I'll respond. What the hell? I've traveled fairly widely in the world-- especially in my younger years. Never lived abroad (as opposed to traveling), other than the summer of 1973, when I lived with a Mexican family and studied Spanish in Saltillo, Mexico. And I have spent time in Mexico almost every winter for most of the past 30 years. In fact, I always wanted to retire in Mexico, before the drug cartels took over Quintana Roo. I once hiked to the top of the main pyramid at Chichen Itza, 30 years ago, before it was closed to the public. I once met Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew at the Phanar in Istanbul. I have traveled in the U.K., Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Estonia, and, especially, Slovenia (where my mother's parents were born.) I once rowed out to the island chapel on Lake Bled. (see photo below) I once attended a Ceilidh in Dunvegan on the Isle of Skye. As for your island of Hibernia, I've been to the James Joyce castle in Sandy Cove and Trinity College in Dublin. I even stayed at the "Boarding House" in Dublin that was the site of James Joyce's story, The Boarding House, in Dubliners. Below: Lake Bled, Slovenia

YouTube scholar, Paul Rigby, continues to whitewash the history of Putin's crimes against the Ukrainian and Russian people, and the far more egregious crimes of Putin's hero, Joseph Stalin, against both. Does Paul Rigby know anything about Stalin's mass murder of the Kulaks? (As Solzhenitsyn described in some detail, a "kulak" was often defined as anyone who managed to acquire a cow or two more than his neighbors in Soviet Russia.) Do people know that Putin's grandfather, Spyridon Putin, was Stalin's chef, and that Putin's father, Vladimir, served in one of Stalin's notorious NKVD Destruction Brigades on the Russian Front in WWII? Those were the scoundrels who sent Soviet Artillery Captain Alexander Solzhenitsyn to the Gulag for 9 years for posting a joke about Stalin in a private letter from the Russian Front. Rigby needs to put aside his YouTube propaganda and do some bona fide historical research about Stalin's crimes against humanity, before, during, and after WWII. Does Rigby know about Stalin's 1939 pact with Hitler (Molotov-Ribbentrop) to partition Poland? It's truly a pity to see this kind of Soviet propaganda on the forum, especially in light of longstanding Western denial about Stalin's historic crimes against humanity. This denial has mainly been a result of our alliance with Stalin in the war against the N-a-z-i empire, and a singular focus in the U.S. and Hollywood on the historic crimes of the N-a-z-i-s. Stalin killed millions. A Stanford historian answers the question, was it genocide?

Well, not surprisingly, John Cotter has continued to dodge my question this week, while posting more Cotter-esque gibberish, including his shocking claim that Ireland is a "vassal state of the US empire"-- obviously, another hapless victim of US "full spectrum dominance," like Japan and Western Europe in the post WWII era. So, I take it that our forum's two Putin-adoring pen pals, John Cotter and Paul Rigby, would prefer to avoid living in "brutal US terror states" like South Korea or West Germany -- opting to live, instead, in Putin-aligned proletarian paradises like North Korea and Belarus. De gustibus non est disputandum... 🙄 South Korea-- A brutal American terror state North Korea-- Beyond the Pale of American Full Spectrum Dominance

Steve, The Republican Party in 2023 is like an alcoholic family that can't talk about the fact that their Orange Daddy has a drinking problem. They're living a lie and denying reality, while trying to maintain a rule of silence, and anathematizing anyone who dares to tell the truth. It's a pathetic spectacle, and antithetical to constructive governance.

Oh, I see. Are NEJM and the scientific community also part of the alleged "DNC hit team" that has criticized RFK, Jr.'s anti-vax disinformation? Meanwhile, Larry, is your Fox/Tucker Carlson contact the producer (McCaskill?) who just got sacked for pushing the ridiculous "Biden is a Wannabe Dictator" trope on Faux News?

I think I'll skip Joe Rogan, and stick with studying the virology and immunology data, thanks.

Ah, yes, Sukiyaki! To this day, the song evokes profound, 60 year-old nostalgic emotion for me, as music is wont to do. The guy who used to MC the Friday Night Dance at the Tincup, Colorado Townhall in the early 60s used to play this 45 rpm record through the PA system.

How Russia's false biolab story was echoed by the U.S. far right : NPR

I have long wondered where John Cotter gets his strangely anti-democratic concepts about modern history and politics. Is Russia Today active in Hibernia? 🙄 And I'm still waiting for John to answer my question about whether he would choose to live in North Korea or be exposed to the horrors of American "full spectrum dominance" (and "American democracy imposed at gunpoint") in South Korea. Thus far, John has ignored the question, while posting non sequiturs about Irish fables. As for Ireland, I'm also waiting for John to clarify his reductio ad absurdum about supporting Irish independence from the British empire, (at gunpoint) while disparaging Ukrainians for fighting to maintain their independence and sovereignty from Putin's totalitarian police state. Apparently, John believes that the Irish are entitled to freedom and self-determination, while Ukrainians aren't.

Yes, it's interesting to watch Rupert Murdoch's right wing propaganda empire boost RFK, Jr.'s campaign against Biden, during the same week that they telecasted a ludicrous trope about Biden being a "Wannabe Dictator." Geez... 🙄