Dear Moderator

[Paul Rigby]

5 hours ago, Mark Knight said:

I've been away from the EF for a couple of weeks to try to not lose my objectivity.

For those who have advanced the idea that Ukraine joining NATO is "provocative" toward Russia, I ask:

On what occasion has NATO been an OFFENSIVE military operation in Europe, before Russia invaded Ukraine? It's a simple question, and the answer should likewise be simple. Just name a country that NATO has invaded.

 

 

NATO attacked Yugoslavia, 1994-1999

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia

The [1999] bombing caused damage to bridges, roads and railway tracks, as well as to 25,000 homes, 69 schools and 176 cultural monuments.[179] Furthemore, 19 hospitals and 20 health centers were damaged, including the University Hospital Center Dr Dragiša Mišović.[180][181] NATO bombing also resulted in the damaging of medieval monuments, such as Gračanica Monastery, the Patriarchate of Peć and the Visoki Dečani, which are on the UNESCO's World Heritage list today.[182] The Avala Tower, one of the most popular symbols of Belgrade, Serbia's capital, was destroyed during the bombing.[183]

The use of Depleted Uranium ammunition was noted by the UNEP, which cautioned about the risks for future groundwater contamination and recounted the "decontamination measures conducted by Yugoslavian, Serbian and Montenegrin authorities."[184]

NATO members aren't even safe from each other, as the recent US destruction of Germany's Nord Steam pipelines reconfirmed. In July 1974, for example, Kissinger permitted the junta ruling Greece (NATO member since 1952) to coup the leader of Cyprus, then green-lit an invasion of the same island by another NATO member, Turkey.

[James DiEugenio]

Paul:

Did HRC get her idea about bombing Libya through NATO from this?

I think its a logical assumption.

Do you know if its true? 

[Paul Bacon]

13 hours ago, John Cotter said:

I'm stepping back from this "debate" for now at least because I'm spending too much of my precious time rebutting nonsense.

Thank you.

[Paul Rigby]

8 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Paul:

Did HRC get her idea about bombing Libya through NATO from this?

I think its a logical assumption.

Do you know if its true? 

No question - yes:

Clinton-lands

The end of an era in Kosovo, Bosnia, Serbia and beyond

Nov 19th 2016

https://www.economist.com/europe/2016/11/19/clinton-lands

The liberal interventionism espoused by Hillary Clinton was forged in the American efforts to bring peace to Bosnia and Kosovo. When backing military action in Libya in 2011, Mrs Clinton invoked the memory of the massacre at Srebrenica in 1995. Balkan countries expected Mrs Clinton to continue her muscular efforts to build an international liberal order if she were elected president.

 

[Paul Rigby]

How the CIA & its assets really worked during the Maidan:

The "Snipers' Massacre" on the Maidan in Ukraine (2020)

Ivan Katchanovski

 

 

Description

This video compilation with added English-language subtitles provides a video reconstruction of the Maidan massacre of the protesters and the police in Ukraine. It contains synchronized fragments of numerous video and audio recordings of the Maidan massacre, in particular, videos of snipers in Maidan-controlled locations and their shooting the police and the Maidan protesters, and more than 80 testimonies about such snipers in the videos during the massacre itself. This video compilation visually shows that at least the absolute majority of Maidan protesters and the police were shot from Maidan-controlled buildings. This is an online Video Appendix A of papers prepared for presentation at the virtual 52nd Annual Convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies in 2020 and the 10th World Congress of the International Council for Central and East European Studies in Montreal in 2021.

 

 

[W. Niederhut]

3 hours ago, Paul Rigby said:

No question - yes:

Clinton-lands

The end of an era in Kosovo, Bosnia, Serbia and beyond

Nov 19th 2016

https://www.economist.com/europe/2016/11/19/clinton-lands

The liberal interventionism espoused by Hillary Clinton was forged in the American efforts to bring peace to Bosnia and Kosovo. When backing military action in Libya in 2011, Mrs Clinton invoked the memory of the massacre at Srebrenica in 1995. Balkan countries expected Mrs Clinton to continue her muscular efforts to build an international liberal order if she were elected president.

 

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

Edited June 18, 2023 by W. Niederhut

[Paul Rigby]

57 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

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

An excellent post. The KLA was "outed" as a CIA project in the mainstream British press by Peter Beaumont in The Observer - I dimly recollect a headline referring to the Agency's "runaway army," or some such. Langley and MI6 were plainly pursuing very different objectives in the region circa 1999-2000.

[Sandy Larsen]

1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

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

 

William,

But what about the fact that the United Nations voted for the action? And notably China, Russia, and India all abstained from voting, which certainly says something.

The action hasn't ended up well, I know, but surely the UN vote means that it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Criticism of the action now seems like Monday morning quarterbacking to me.

 

 

[Cliff Varnell]

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

William,

But what about the fact that the United Nations voted for the action? And notably China, Russia, and India all abstained from voting, which certainly says something.

The action hasn't ended up well, I know, but surely the UN vote means that it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Criticism of the action now seems like Monday morning quarterbacking to me.

Maybe this was coincidental to NATO siding with the Albanian Kosovars...

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2000/01/heroin-heroes/

The United States propped up the KLA in the Kosovo conflict. With Milosevic gone, and no one in control, the former freedom fighters are now transforming the province into a major conduit for global drug trafficking. </q>

[Cliff Varnell]

2 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

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. 

Biden: I was right about Libya

https://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/joe-biden-libya-wrong-224595

Biden replied that he had “argued strongly” within the White House “against going ... to Libya,” a stance that put him at odds with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, now the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee, whom the vice president endorsed earlier this month after she crossed the threshold of necessary delegates.

[Sandy Larsen]

2 hours ago, Cliff Varnell said:

Biden: I was right about Libya

https://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/joe-biden-libya-wrong-224595

Biden replied that he had “argued strongly” within the White House “against going ... to Libya,” a stance that put him at odds with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, now the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee, whom the vice president endorsed earlier this month after she crossed the threshold of necessary delegates.

 

"Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan."
     -- John F. Kennedy

 

[John Cotter]

On 6/17/2023 at 11:43 PM, W. Niederhut said:

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

William,

Thomas Szasz was a professor of psychiatry. Therefore, he was at least one grade above you in the academic hierarchy (if you were a professor, you would certainly have told us about it).

By your “logic”, you should defer to Szasz as your academic superior. Instead, you condemn him as a heretic, presumably because your livelihood depended on it. As someone once said, it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

Dr Terry Lynch is another eminent medical expert who has debunked mainstream psychiatry in his books such as Beyond Prozac and Depression Delusion which have been praised by other eminent medical experts.

Your “phenomenology” seems somewhat selective. The Rosenhan experiment showed how psychiatric hospital staff could be so institutionalised as to be unable to see what was in front of their eyes.

You enumerate various “psychiatric disorders” as if their existence were as uncontroversial as that, say, of a broken leg or a stab wound. However, to take just one of these disorders, schizophrenia, on page 174 of his book Beyond Prozac Dr Terry Lynch quotes the Oxford Textbook of Psychiatry as follows:

“Of all the major psychiatric syndromes, schizophrenia is much the most difficult to define and describe. The main reason for this difficulty is that over the past 100 years, many widely divergent concepts of schizophrenia have been held in different countries and by different psychiatrists. Radical differences of opinion persist to the present day.”

This is just one illustration of the fraudulent and pernicious nature of mainstream psychiatry – fraudulent because it masquerades as science when in fact it’s patent nonsense; and pernicious because, despite its fraudulent nature, society has conferred on psychiatry the power to incarcerate and otherwise abuse people in all kinds of ways.

In his book The Manufacture of Madness Thomas Szasz rightly compares institutional psychiatry to witch hunting. He writes “…there is no behaviour or person that a modern psychiatrist cannot plausibly diagnose as abnormal or ill”.

Institutional psychiatry is a form of scapegoating, in that people who suffer mental distress as a result of societal, familial, sexual or workplace abuse are further abused by being stigmatised and dehumanised as “mentally ill”, thus effectively blamed for the abuse and mistreated accordingly.

Szasz quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson in this respect: “Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.” As Kierkegaard said, we are herd animals first and foremost, and therefore for most people conformity is the ultimate value. Institutional psychiatry, like religion, is one of the main weapons of authoritarianism.

As explained in the following extract, Dr Gabor Maté has also written about this:

In an extended interview, acclaimed physician and author Dr. Gabor Maté discusses his new book, just out, called “The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture.” “The very values of a society are traumatizing for a lot of people,” says Maté, who argues in his book that “psychological trauma, woundedness, underlies much of what we call disease.” He says healing requires a reconnection between the mind and the body, which can be achieved through cultivating a sense of community, meaning, belonging and purpose. Maté also discusses how the healthcare system has harmfully promoted the “mechanization of birth,” how the lack of social services for parents has led to “a massive abandonment of infants,” and how capitalism has fueled addiction and the rise of youth suicide rates.

https://www.democracynow.org/2022/9/16/myth_normal_gabor_mate_trauma_mental#:~:text=In%20an%20extended%20interview%2C%20acclaimed%20physician%20and%20author,woundedness%2C%20underlies%20much%20of%20what%20we%20call%20disease.%E2%80%9D

And to return specifically to the JFK assassination, Thomas Szasz wrote the following:

“When we call men like Ezra Pound or Lee Harvey Oswald mad, we establish, by ascription, a characteristic of that person which overshadows with transcendent badness the individual whom it is supposed to describe. Once the characterization is accepted, it negates the individual’s other human – especially good – qualities. He is thus degraded and dehumanised. We then no longer worry about him as a person with rights and talents. If he is a poet, we can dismiss him as an artist; if he is an accused criminal, we can ignore his guilt or innocence; and if he is a suspected presidential assassin, murdered in jail, we can simplify a hopelessly unresolved event with far-reaching political and international implications by attributing everything about it to the madness of a single, virtually unknown, individual. In short, psychiatric heresy, like religious heresy, is a functional concept. It is useful for the society that employs it; were it not so, the concept would never have evolved and would not continue to receive popular support.”

Edited June 19, 2023 by John Cotter

[John Cotter]

22 hours ago, Paul Bacon said:

Thank you.

How's it going?

[John Cotter]

On 6/18/2023 at 12:08 AM, Cliff Varnell said:

Hysterical to the end.

You seem to have a hysteria problem. Perhaps you should consult Dr Niederhut.

[W. Niederhut]

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.