Positive News from the USA

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Prem Kumar
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by Prem Kumar »

Sonugn wrote:American citizen takes the meaning of 'loving animals' to a all new higher level
As a perverted hindoo (Wendy says so), i have goosebumps at this act of selfless love shown by the America citizen.
Its called Animal Husbandry
johneeG
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by johneeG »

"We want to stay white,” Ancona said. “It's not a hateful thing to want to maintain white supremacy."
From the below link:
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How the FBI Helps Terrorists Succeed



Heather Maher Feb 26 2013, 3:08 PM ET
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Why the U.S. provided at least 150 people with bombs, transportation and other means of carrying out terrorist plots.


FBI director Robert Mueller speaks during a Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism conference in Miami, Florida on June 11, 2007. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)

Since September 11, 2001, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has claimed many victories in the war on terror.

Each time a domestic terror suspect is arrested, the public is told that another horrific plot has been averted.

But after combing through thousands of pages of court documents, investigative journalist Trevor Aaronson came to a different conclusion -- that most of the men arrested could never have done what they were accused of if the FBI hadn't given them the tools to do so.

In his new book, "The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI's Manufactured War on Terrorism," Aaronson argues that the U.S. government is responsible for "hatching and financing more terrorist plots in the United States than any other group." He spoke to Heather Maher.

You began your research by asking whether the FBI is "busting terrorist plots -- or leading them?" What did you find out?

Trevor Aaronson: The FBI is looking for what they term "a lone wolf terrorist," which is someone holed up in an apartment somewhere who sympathizes with Al-Qaeda but may lack the specific means to do that. And so the FBI uses sting operations to [find] these people -- these people who may want to commit an act of terrorism, are right on that line from moving from sympathizer to operator -- and then through these sting operations, lure them out and get them involved in a terrorism plot that they're ultimately prosecuted for.

But what I found is that of these cases, we can point to a handful of real, dangerous terrorists, like Faisal Shahzad, who came close to bombing [New York's] Times Square, or Najibullah Zazi, who came close to bombing the New York City subway system. But so many more of them, more than 150 people, were these men who were caught in sting operations who never had the means and, in some cases, never had the idea for the terrorism plot, and it was the FBI that provided them with everything -- the bomb, the transportation, everything they needed to move forward in a terrorism plot that on their own, they never would have been able to do. And certainly evidence suggests that in most of these cases, they never had any specific connections to terrorism. So it's really hard to believe that they ever would have had or acquired the means to commit some sort of act of terrorism.

How do these FBI sting operations go down?

Aaronson: In a terrorism sting operation, the FBI informant or undercover agent poses as an Al-Qaeda operative or an operative of another terrorist group and says to the target, "You know, I have what you need if you want to move forward on a terrorist plot. I can provide the bomb, I can provide the transportation, everything you need I can give you." And when they move forward in that plot, when they get the bomb together, and they put it in a car, and they drive it to a location and the target of the sting operation dials the cell phone that he believes is going to detonate the bomb and kill dozens of people, he's then arrested. And so in sting operations, essentially the government becomes part of the plot and then ultimately prosecutes the target of the sting operation based on his involvement in that plot, the actions that he took as part of that plot.

You write that key to these sting operations are informants who find terror sympathizers and bring them to the FBI's attention. Who are these informants and what's in it for them?

​​Aaronson: The FBI has an unprecedented number of informants -- there's a total of 15,000 informants. And they are paid -- in some cases handsomely; $100,000 in some cases, $400,000 in a case in California - they are paid to find people who are interested in committing an act of terrorism, people who are espousing some sort of violence, who say they want to commit some sort of violent act, but may not have the means to do that, and it's their job to target them and to get them involved in these sting operations.

But the problem I found in a lot of these cases is that there's a real question of whether the informant is actually a worse criminal than the target of the sting operation could ever be. In these sting operations, the FBI has used drug dealers frequently as informants, they've used an accused murderer, in a Seattle case; they've used a child molester -- people who are just odious in every way. And they also have a direct incentive to find terrorists and see them prosecuted because they can make so much money as informants.

So when they enter mosques and they look for people who are interested in committing acts of terrorism, they know there's a lot of money riding on it for them to find that person. And as a result of that, what they're ultimately finding in most of these cases are people on the fringes of society who are economically desperate, in some cases mentally ill, and these are people who are easily susceptible to a strong-willed informant.

Is the FBI's informant program at all related to the New York City Police Department operation that paid informants to infiltrate mosques and spy on Muslims?

Aaronson: While they're not connected, there are a lot of similarities. The New York Police Department used taxi shields as leverage to recruit informants from within New York City Muslim communities. The FBI does a similar thing, but instead of using taxi shields, they use immigration. So, many of the informants who have been recruited from Muslim communities since 9/11 have been recruited under duress; that is, the FBI comes to them and says, "Unless you work with us, you may face deportation." Or, "'We know your family wants to come over from Syria, or Lebanon, and unless you work with us, that's not going to happen."

(Editor's note: The Associated Press, which broke the story of the NYPD program, reported the following:)
"Early in the intelligence division's transformation, police asked the taxi commission to run a report on all the city's Pakistani cab drivers, looking for those who got licenses fraudulently and might be susceptible to pressure to cooperate, according to former officials who were involved in or briefed on the effort."
How does the "entrapment" argument play in court? And are you the only journalist scrutinizing the FBI's approach to terrorism?

Aaronson: In all of these cases, the issue of entrapment is front and center. And so far the courts have been unwilling to agree that these are entrapment cases. We've had 11 defendants go to trial so far and formally argue entrapment, and none has been successful. At the same time, I think you're beginning to see a growing skepticism, criticism of these cases by the press. For example, when the U.S. government announces these cases, they often announce how horrific and awful the plot would have been had it moved forward, and really downplay the fact that the people accused of the crime never could have committed it on their own. And it's taken a long time, but now we're beginning to see a real criticism of these cases by the media.

Your book has been out a few weeks now. Has the FBI reacted, either directly or indirectly?

Aaronson: The only official response of sorts was a [book] review by a former [FBI] agent, Ali Soufan, who wrote a review of my book in "The Wall Street Journal" that was very critical. And Ali Soufan's response to my book is typical of the FBI's response, which is to say that there are real dangerous terrorists out there and these sting operations get them off the street.

But the problem with that is that Ali Soufan, in his review, and other agents I've talked to, consistently cite Faisal Shahzad, for example -- he's the man who came close to bombing Times Square -- or Najibullah Zazi, who came close to bombing the subway system. They cite these men as examples of real terrorists and why sting operations are so necessary, but the problem with their argument, I think, is that neither of those men was actually caught in a terrorism sting operation. To date, we have yet to find the real would-be terrorist: someone who was about to strike, who had the weapon, who had the means, who is thwarted by a sting operation.

(Editor's Note: RFE/RL requested comment from the U.S. Department of Justice. Dean Boyd, a spokesman for its national security division, said he has not read Aaronson's book, but he sent the following statement:)
First, it is important to note that undercover sting operations have been used by law enforcement for decades to combat all types of crimes, including child *****, public corruption, financial fraud, murder-for-hire, drug trafficking, and others.

Second, it should be noted that sting operations are just one of many different tools that law enforcement may use to neutralize a violent plot. Many counter-terrorism cases do not involve undercover operations. The use of this technique depends entirely on the facts and circumstances of each case and is determined during the course of the investigation. Undercover sting operations have been used, where appropriate, to thwart certain violent plots and protect the public.

Third, there are strict guidelines governing the use of undercover sting operations, which involve extensive legal reviews and senior-level approvals. Furthermore, U.S. laws provide a robust defense against entrapment. Legally, a person is entrapped when he or she is induced or persuaded by law enforcement to commit a crime that he or she had no previous intent to commit. Whenever an undercover operation is used in the counter-terrorism arena, the government works diligently to ensure that entrapment does not occur.

Fourth, there is a lengthy public record of guilty pleas and convictions in such cases. Federal courts and juries have overwhelmingly upheld the use of undercover operations in terrorism sting cases. While entrapment may routinely be cited as a defense in these cases, to date, no terrorism defendant since 9/11 has won acquittal using such a defense.

Finally, whenever an individual concocts a plan to commit violence - and is determined to follow through - law enforcement has an obligation to take action to protect the public. Allowing individuals intent on committing violence to proceed without a response is not an option, given that they may take action on their own or find others willing to assist them.
Link

Is there no conflict of interest here? If Eff Bee Eye is needed to stop criminals/terrorists and Eff Bee Eye is itself directly/indirectly training/motivating/arming/funding criminals/terrorists, then there seems to be conflict of interest, isn't it?

Suppose Eff Bee Eye funds a terrorist, arms him, motivates him and then finally nabs him. Its a nice thing for Eff Bee Eye. Unfortunately, all this is done using tax payer's money. It almost sounds like a racket to me. Because if there are no criminals or terrorists, you don't need Eff Bee Eye.
Philip
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by Philip »

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 10936.html

The truth about Spring Break: Good times, self-discovery and lots of booze

Each year, around this time, US students descend in hordes on chosen sunspots, seeking good times and self-discovery. This year, David Usborne went along, too, to see what Spring Break actually entails
his is the Nirvana moment: the precise picture they envisioned when they boarded their planes back in still-frigid Boston, Chicago or New York.

As Dutch DJ Afrojack raises a fist and the first beats pulse through their bones they too let fly, barefoot on the sand, pressed together in a miasma of sun-pinked flesh and swim-suits. Above, against a postcard Caribbean sky, black MTV cameras swoop and curve, a passing parasail adds a dash of yellow.

Call it their right, or their rite of passage, the special – and occasionally perilous – week called Spring Break when tens of thousands of young Americans flee university campuses to shed the usual rules, parental expectations and inhibitions and go a bit bonkers in the sun. It is a time for a different kind of learning, pushing the limits of their livers, testing the looser sides of their young libidos and navigating the unfamiliar far from home.

Not a national holiday as such and certainly not a religious one, the annual student migration south is in fact a rolling affair that runs from late February to early April. Different colleges and universities pick different weeks in the late-winter calendar when teaching stops and their wards are released. Some may just linger, others will seek virtue, perhaps building houses for the poor. But this is what they are meant to do: get drunk, laid and sunburned.

It is a mission more easily accomplished if they travel in herds. Florida’s Panama City long ago became the favoured Florida destination after Fort Lauderdale decided that news clips of broken balconies and barf didn’t fit with the image it wanted. Another popular spot is South Padre Island on the Gulf of Mexico in Texas.

But, for sheer Spring Break cliché, nothing can compete with this afternoon’s beach party at the Grand Oasis Hotel in Cancun. It has all the ingredients. The footage being captured by MTV might one day run perfectly with the opening credits of whatever Spring Break sequel Hollywood dreams up next. At the bar, the most boisterous suck from floppy green hoses attached to funnels filled with Mexican beer. Others clasp plastic cups, or foot-long, test-tube beakers, spilling over with garishly hued cocktails.

Some came to Cancun with admonitions of danger still ringing from parents, concerned tutors and even the US State Department, which this year not only maintained a general travel advisory about drug violence in Mexico but also issued an unusual Spring Break warning to young Americans headed anywhere abroad. “Avoid underage and excessive alcohol consumption,” it offered. “‘Overdoing it’ can lead to an arrest, accident, violent crime, or death.”

For Michael Gee, 21, staying at the Krystal, one of eight Cancun hotels that cater specifically to Spring Breakers, it meant taking a formal vow of good behaviour. In his third year at the Army’s West Point, he and roughly 40 other cadets here had to sign an overseas travel clearance form promising not to dishonour their country while away. Among its requirements: keep alcohol consumption to a minimum and never be alone. “We have to make sure we have a buddy with us wherever we go and if we are separated, we have a pre-agreed place where we are going to meet,” he explains, perched at one of the Krystal’s pool-side bars. (Some drinking is allowed.)

Mostly that has meant staying close to Buddy Wendel, 20, in training to become an under-water diving combat specialist. It can be tricky. If one of the pair meets a girl and needs privacy, the other will take care of the other girl who may be with her. “He’s my wingman,” Mr Wendel says. “Actually, he’s a good wingman!”

This year, Spring Break here has been marred by one death. Last month, a young Florida student was found strangled on a dirt road north of the city of Cancun itself – far from the intensely patrolled hotel zone – apparently after getting into an altercation in a local gay bar about his drinks bill. For his part, Mr Gee, originally from Texas, admits that wrong-turns have presented themselves this week, but none he couldn’t easily avoid. “I got offered to do cocaine and I said ‘No.’ We get piss tested at West Point. I got offered sex too and I said ‘No.’”

That the US persists in warning potential tourists off Mexico angers Lupita Garcia, the local manager for Go Blue, a Boston-based travel company that specialises in student travel and particularly Spring Break. “A lot of people have the wrong idea about this,” she insists, referring to the ongoing drug war. “We have never had any incidents related to that, ever.” Her role is part travel agent, part mother hen. Every student is given a pep-talk on arrival on do’s and don’ts. The latter, of course, includes not buying drugs. She also has a team of eight who spend every night monitoring the nightclubs on Cancun’s main strip to make sure that no one gets into trouble. And mostly they don’t, she says. If they do, it’s usually drunken male students getting into fights with each other in their rooms.

“Most of my problems are with the parents, not with the kids,” she reveals. “They are always so concerned, so anxious. We have calls from parents every day, like, ‘My son was meant to have arrived three hours ago and he hasn’t called me yet. What’s happened to him?’” Every time she gets ones of those, she heads directly to the errant student’s room and gives them her personal phone to make that call while she’s watching.

Mishaps do happen but they are usually minor. Stephen Game, 27, from Glasgow, who belongs to what Ms Garcia says is a growing contingent of Britons coming to Cancun to join the fun, was disappointed to discover that he’d picked a hotel not catering to Spring Breakers. Even more surprising, the place, called Temptations, is for swingers only. That part, he has grown quite to like, though. “There are boys and girls, everything you want,” he says, putting the emphasis firmly on girls.

The misfortunes of Zach Raker, 21, an engineering student at the University of Maryland, have been slightly worse. Taking a smoke break from the crush at Coco Bongo nightclub on Wednesday night, he explains how a taxi driver swapped credit cards on him and when his father back home got a replacement one sent to him a cash machine promptly swallowed it. “It was my fault, I was really drunk,” he concedes. Both times. He hopes he has enough cash to last him the week, but he doesn’t seem quite sure.

In the morning, heads will hurt and many an eye will squint when exposed to the Mexican sun finally at around noon. But in the end, few human rituals offer a more complete picture of sheer, heedless, carefree fun than Spring Break. Take it from Mr Game, who for a moment has stepped out from the throng on the beach madly bouncing to the beat of Afrojack. “It’s bloody amazing. Amazing. I mean look at that!”
vishvak
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by vishvak »

Remember how heathen pagan unsaved savages nomads - in other words yindoo people - went all the way of struggle and court cases for literature in schools- only for Hinduism subject - and not any subject?!?!

There is a first world way in the most powerful country.
Thousands of schools across the country can use taxpayer money to cast doubt on basic science.

Now where are those running after yindoos for correcting textbooks and literature about own Hindu religion?

Guess people do perform miracle of silence right within the most powerful first world country USA. It happens in USA God only knows since when.
Sonugn
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by Sonugn »

rgsrini
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by rgsrini »

^^Sonugn,You casteist Yindoo! The true story is that their farmers in America are having a fantastic life and they get a lot of perks! Your stupid Yindian yindoo farmers are protein starved, and are committing suicides in droves . That is the real greatness of America!
rgsrini
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by rgsrini »

If I have to point out one thing where the US stands miles apart compared to the rest of the world, I have to say it is their uncompromising justice system. It is absolutely unbelievable how they are able to vend justice irrespective of ones social status, race, or education. The DAs and the police will go to any length to ensure justice and if bothers me why countries like India are so backward in this space.


72 year old Black woman experiences the warmth of US justice system

Hats of to the US of A.
Sonugn
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by Sonugn »

Quick Question:-

Which is the toughest river to cross?

Canadian visa for anyone who fails this simple test.
Sonugn
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by Sonugn »

Heart warming story from the America where a school gives great encouragement to an 8 year old girl

This is indeed a wake up call for us uppity Indians who have a space programme despite poverty and sati.
Sonugn
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by Sonugn »

Unlike Indians, the Americans learn to love human life and compassion at a tender age itself

We should not be delusional and learn to accept western values.
anmol
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by anmol »

Secret Service Warned to Behave Before Amsterdam Trip; Lawmakers 'Troubled'

‎Thu‎, ‎March‎ ‎27‎ ‎6‎:‎23‎ ‎PM



The Democratic chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee and a senior Republican senator expressed concern Wednesday over an alleged incident involving a drunken Secret Service agent in connection with President Barack Obama's overseas trip to the Netherlands.
On Sunday, the agency called three agents home from the Netherlands just before Obama's arrival for talks with foreign leaders in The Hague. One agent had been found inebriated inside a hotel, according to reports.

Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., the Homeland Security Committee chairman, said Wednesday he is "troubled by the reports regarding the behavior of a few Secret Service agents serving on the president's detail in the Netherlands," according to a statement. His office said he's asked the Secret Service for more information about the episode.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement that the incident "shows that the agency has to deal with some in its ranks who fail to respect the important job the agency is tasked with." While he said that he appreciated "swift action" by Secret Service Director Julia Pierson, the senator added that "it looks like she's still got work to do to regain the trust of the American people."

The latest embarrassing incident involving a drunken Secret Service agent comes a year into the term of a new agency director who already has been confronted with a handful of incidents since the Colombia prostitution scandal nearly two years ago. In that episode, 13 agents and officers were accused of partying with female foreign citizens at a hotel in the seaside resort of Cartagena, where they were staying before Obama's arrival.

Secret Service supervisors were watchful in advance of the president's trip, keen to avoid an awkward episode. A supervisor cautioned agents heading to dinner to stay out of trouble, The Washington Post reported.

Agents can consume alcohol only "in moderate amounts while off duty" or on temporary assignment, according to an updated Secret Service professional conduct manual obtained by The Associated Press. They also can't drink within 10 hours of reporting for duty.

A Secret Service spokesman on Wednesday declined to comment on the incident, except to say that three agents were sent home for "disciplinary reasons." White House spokesman Jay Carney, speaking to reporters traveling with the president, said Obama had been briefed on the incident and supports Pierson's zero-tolerance approach.

"The president believes, as he has said in the past, that everybody representing the United States of America overseas needs to hold himself or herself to the highest standards," Carney said.

Obama named Pierson as the agency's first female director last March in a sign he wanted to change the agency's culture and restore public confidence in its operations. Since then, Pierson has had to face some alleged misbehavior on the elite service, which is charged with protecting the president and investigating financial fraud.

In November, two Secret Service agents were removed from Obama's detail after one was allegedly discovered trying to re-enter a woman's hotel room because he left a bullet from his weapon behind. In a subsequent probe, investigators came across sexually suggestive emails that the agent and another supervisor had sent to a female subordinate, The Washington Post reported.

More recently, two counter-sniper officers suspected of drinking were involved in a March 7 car accident during a presidential visit to Miami, the Post reported Wednesday, citing several people with knowledge of the incident. The driver passed a field sobriety test and was not arrested, the newspaper reported.

The agency disputes that recent reports of misbehavior is indicative of a widespread trend. And an inspector general's report made public in December concluded there was no evidence of widespread misconduct, in line with the service's longstanding assertion that it has no tolerance for inappropriate behavior.

Pierson said in a letter to former Acting Inspector General Charles Edwards that, while the agency agreed with the report's 14 recommendations, she was concerned about how the survey was conducted and its results.
Multatuli
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by Multatuli »

Innocent man accused of 5 different robberies, loses job, spends thousands on bail and attorney, yet prosecutors say the 'system works'

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/oddnews/inn ... 15101.html

Gilford Beatty of Houston, Texas has recently endured some tribulations that no person should have to. The father of four children was arrested and charged with five different robberies. He spent six days in jail, lost his job, and had to spend $15,000 on bail and an attorney. The problem with this is that Mr.Beatty was completely innocent of all five robbery charges, as KPRC Local 2 News reports.
Shreeman
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by Shreeman »

A story:
chapter 0. The initiation.
chapter 1. The dictionary.
chapter 2. The White house takes lead in promoting the United States leadership in robotics.
chapter 3. The United States takes lead in high-technology -- haptics, robotics, and healthcare.
chapter 4. An editorial: the value of satire.
chapter 5. The Freedoms: Thou shalt not take the lord's name in vain.
chapter 6. The Law: In whom shall we place blind faith.
chapter 7. The Zeal: Where humans aim to imitate and excel upon sheep.
chapter 8. Hiatus to observe pastafarian sabbath.

and, an anecdote for the young'uns, and a FAQ-1 FAQ-2, and why it is important to you. And there is no distinction between donkeys and horses here. All stories are welcome and encouraged.

------
With no particular dates in mind, to come:
chapter 09. The essence of verification in journalism, publication, and everything; and the myth of peer-review.
chapter 10. The lure of money.
chapter 11. On the dangers of speaking out.
-----
chapter 12. And in conclusion.
chapter 13. Acknowledgements.
----------
Non sequitor;1 -- The state of the civil society:

There is presently scope only for a short note, thusly;
'A Form letter reply from the honorable ACLU looks like this' wrote: Dear ________:
Your letter to the American Civil Liberties Union has been received. Unfortunately, we are unable to offer assistance at this time. The ACLU is a private, non-profit organization and our limited resources do not allow us to function as a general provider of legal services, including providing legal advice as it relates to individual cases or locating records.  Typically, we must confine our involvement to a limited number of cases which raise new constitutional issues or which affect large numbers of people, and these are usually at the appellate level.  Our small staff is unable to do research or investigate many of the problems that come to our attention, no matter how legitimate they may be.
Even though the ACLU is not representing you, you may still have a legal claim.  You should consider contacting a private attorney or other organization in order to preserve any such claim as there are time limits that apply to bringing legal claims in court.  Your county bar association may have a lawyer referral service through which you can find a lawyer to evaluate your claim.
Below is a list of frequently asked questions with regard to the work that the ACLU typically does and why we may be unable to assist you at this time.
What are civil liberties and civil rights?
Civil liberties include freedom of speech, press, religion, and association; due process; equal protection; and privacy. Civil rights include, for example, voting rights; discrimination based on disability, race, sex, sexual orientation, religion or national origin; police reform; and workers’ rights.
How do we choose cases?
The ACLU generally files cases that affect the civil liberties or civil rights of large numbers of people, rather than those involving a dispute between individual parties. The basic questions we ask when reviewing a potential case are:
• Is this a significant civil liberties or civil rights issue?
• What effect will this case have on people in addition to our client?
• Do we have the necessary resources to take this case?
 
What cases affect others?
Lawsuits can affect a large number of people in two ways. First, we sometimes challenge a policy or practice that directly impacts many people. For instance, if the state cut Medi-Cal funding for abortions from the annual budget, thousands of poor women would be affected. Second, a lawsuit brought on behalf of one person can have a larger impact on others when it establishes or expands legal protections. For example, a lawsuit challenging the denial of health care at a clinic to one HIV+ person, if successful, could set a precedent for thousands of patients in the future.
Cases without serious factual disputes
We tend to take cases that do not involve complicated disputes of fact, and prefer cases that involve questions of law only. An example of a factual dispute is an employment discrimination case in which the employer claims he fired the employee because of poor job performance and has credible evidence to support that claim, but the employee disputes the evidence.
We often decide not to accept cases involving factual disputes because:
• if a court resolves the facts against the client, it may never reach the civil liberties or civil rights issues;
• if the decision rests upon the specific facts of a case, the case is less likely to have broad impact on many people;
• we have so few staff attorneys that it is difficult for us to devote attorney time to resolving factual disputes.
 
The ACLU generally does not accept cases in which:
• A person has been fired from a job without a good reason or just cause;
• A person is being denied benefits, such as workers’ compensation or unemployment benefits;
• Criminal cases, or complaints about a person’s attorney in a criminal case. We consider accepting criminal cases only in limited instances, such as, for example, when a person is being prosecuted for engaging in activity protected by the Constitution – such as participating in a political demonstration.
 
There are many cases of unfairness and injustice that the ACLU is simply unable to handle. We receive thousands of requests for help each year at this office alone. Therefore, we cannot accept many of the cases that fall within the guidelines discussed above.
 
Can the ACLU advise me about my case?
If we do not accept your case, the ACLU is unable to give you advice about your case, answer questions, or provide other types of assistance – for example, reviewing papers or conducting legal research to assist you. This policy allows us to direct the necessary resources to those cases we do accept.
Deadlines
All legal claims have time deadlines. The deadlines may be different depending on who violated your rights and which rights were violated. For some kinds of violations, you may need to file a claim with a government agency before you can sue, and these agencies have their own time deadlines. If you do not comply with the applicable statute of limitations, you may be legally barred from pursuing your claim in court. Contacting the ACLU to describe your problem does not mean that the ACLU represents you, and will not stop the statute of limitations from running. The ACLU cannot give you advice about the deadlines that apply to your case. To protect your rights, please consult an attorney promptly to find out what deadline may apply in your case. 
Respectfully,
Intake Coordinator
Please Do Not Reply to this Email
This is a notification-only email that cannot accept incoming replies.
ACLU has previously commented upon the same^ matter at its highest levels here and similar, but is not permitted to comment on the matter beyond the lowly intake clerk sending a form-letter with a don't bother replying address.

The hypocrisy here is amazing. A brown complaint, even if an order of magnitude worse, is not worth consideration.
----
^ We say that same matter, since it was the censorship and academic freedom that the ACLU previously highlighted as the reason for being involved in the matter specifically at the institution highlighted.
member_22733
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by member_22733 »

Shreeman wrote:The hypocrisy here is amazing. A brown complaint, even if an order of magnitude worse, is not worth consideration.
Shreemanji, This is going to be an anal-yes-is (violating thread rules): But when in doubt about such things bliss to refer to the second and third rule below:
http://news.rapgenius.com/Derrick-bell- ... -annotated

Remember that ACLU is run by whites, so is the Southern poverty law center (SPLC) and so is Black Entertainment TV (BET) :). Any white run organization, no matter how anti-racist they are, STILL follow the 5 rules of racial standing.



Mean-while in the US civil disobedience is rewarded very well. For example, if Gandhi lived in the USA of today, he would be rewarded the gift of being in heaven by now.
vishvak
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by vishvak »

But, in indirect terms, Gandhi 'not in heaven' is what many moral keepers do believe and clearly communicate to believers.
"Reality check: ....."
They argue that their scripture clearly states that all persons are in a state of sin and deserve to be separated from God forever -- unless they hear and receive a message of good news through Jesus Christ. To their minds, this leaves Gandhi and Siddhartha Gautama out in the cold, weeping and gnashing their teeth forever.
Now one may believe that some other moral keepers may publicly avoid dealing with this. The reality is quite the opposite
Here is the peculiar reality: Many, many evangelical leaders -- pastors and theologians -- secretly side with Bell, but they can't say so publicly. Privately, they concede it's ludicrous that God would incinerate those who seek divine truth according to whatever light is available to them; they leave plenty of room for Gandhi and the good Samaritan and the humble tax collector and the strong-willed Roman centurion to achieve "eternal life," whether or not they knew to "confess Jesus of Nazareth as sole lord and savior."

But these persons are ultimately cowards: They say such words privately, to assure you they are not as unreasonable as the John Pipers of the world. But they would never break publicly with a John Piper, or rebuke Piper in the way that Piper has condemned so many of those who offer a more "generous" orthodoxy. That makes Rob Bell, by comparison, a very brave Christian leader, and an all-too-rare one.
So reality is peculiar and some people are exceptionally "too rare", even so third world countries look upto the first world countries assuming the exact opposite!

Good news is that such a case and such a peculiar situation is other's problem if it is indeed one.
member_22733
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by member_22733 »

Oh yes, that half naked unwashed fakeer has caused a lot of heart burn to us pure bred whites. And ofcourse, we all know that Jesus was white.
member_22733
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by member_22733 »

Going OT here: Some bositive news about Oiropean puuuuur breds:

https://twitter.com/RajivMessage/status ... 6237029376

Graphic image warning. Maybe NSFW.
pankajs
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by pankajs »

What the Dartmouth Rape Acquittal Really Teaches Us
On Thursday, former Dartmouth student Parker Gilbert was cleared of all seven charges of rape leveled against him by a fellow student. I was at work when I heard the news, and I cried.

As a student of Dartmouth, my first reaction was that of incredulity. It was quickly replaced by rage, and then followed by fear. Last spring, Gilbert was accused of entering a fellow student's room and sexually assaulting her while she was still asleep. During the trial, the prosecution claimed Gilbert raped the 19-year-old vaginally, orally, and anally.

I wanted to know how Gilbert, who sent an email to the survivor following the alleged attack apologizing for his behavior, had been found innocent. I wanted to understand how, as the defense claimed, the incident had been nothing more than "clumsy, awkward, drunk college sex."

..
Time and time again, studies have shown that sexual assault goes enormously unreported. In 2013, an estimated 80 percent of assaults were never brought to the attention of law enforcement. Even more troubling is the fact that women in college are at particular risk.
A Statement by WISE and the NHCADSV on the Gilbert verdict
Today's decision in the Dartmouth rape trial of Parker Gilbert is devastating and there is no doubt that it sends a terrible message to survivors of sexual assault. Something has got to change if we can allow a man who has no relationship with the victim to violate her in her own bed and face no consequences.

..
Both sides agreed that Mr. Gilbert and the victim were at best acquaintances; both sides agreed he entered her room uninvited that night, in a highly intoxicated state, and both sides agreed that he initiated sexual contact which included vaginal penetration with the victim while she was asleep.

..
It is extremely rare for the perpetrator of a sexual assault against an adult woman to ever see the inside of a jail cell, let alone a courtroom. In 2011, the Governor’s Commission on Domestic and Sexual Violence released a report titled “The Reality of Sexual Assault in New Hampshire,” according to law enforcement data from 2006 - this report found only 3% of New Hampshire offenders were known to be convicted or pled guilty.
member_28352
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by member_28352 »

AoA Todin some positive news from Canuckistan. Doctors there gave Canadian visa to Indian code coolie and essentially told his squaw to say her last ok tata, bye bye's as it was his karma for being a casteist, slave driver over centuries. TFTA Canuckistani doctors could not believe that PSVR/SDRE code coolie could not have apparently been affected by Lyme's disease as that is a disease that only happens to TFTA Potato eaters. However casteist, Indian Yindoo doctors were able to treat this man and bring him back from coma. These Yindoo doctors, I tell you... All will suffer bad karma for not letting their fellow casteist Indian brethren die from the effects of their prarabdh karma.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city ... 934424.cms
Gus
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by Gus »

http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014 ... n-a-prison

Made In China — But Was It Made In A Prison?

by Shujie Leng

Prison labor is being harvested on a massive scale, according to professors Steve Fraser and Joshua B. Freeman.

"All told, nearly a million prisoners are now making office furniture, working in call centers, fabricating body armor, taking hotel reservations, working in slaughterhouses, or manufacturing textiles, shoes, and clothing, while getting paid somewhere between 93 cents and $4.73 per day," the professors write
...
One of Walmart's suppliers, Martori Farms, was the subject of an exposé by Truthout in which one female prisoner described her typical day working for the private company.

Currently, we are forced to work in the blazing sun for eight hours. We run out of water several times a day. We ran out of sunscreen several times a week. They don't check medical backgrounds or ages before they pull women for these jobs. Many of us cannot do it! If we stop working and sit on the bus or even just take an unauthorized break, we get a major ticket which takes away our 'good time'.

quoted text from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/1 ... 72036.html
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by Sonugn »

pankajs
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by pankajs »

I did not find any reference to this documentary. Thought should go into our collection.
------------------------------------------------>>
The Invisible War review – 'Rape in the US military is a secret epidemic'
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/ma ... e-military
Kirby Dick's brutally shocking documentary argues that rape in the US military is not an aberration, but a shameful secret epidemic. Victims are expected to suffer in silence and the issue is regarded as an occupational hazard and, by many, as a male officers' perk.

The film suggests that one in five serving female officers has been sexually assaulted – the male victim rate is unclear – and the women know that making a complaint will entail a humiliating and futile procedure in which the original experience will be made a thousand times worse: the complainant will always be disbelieved and can be subject to a Saudi-type counteraccusation of "adultery". And in its hamfisted attempts to tackle the problem, the US army has stigmatised the victims with a grotesquely insulting "Ask Her When She's Sober" poster campaign about dating, aimed at men – rather than taking action against violent serial predators who find the army a natural habitat.
As introduced on ABC News

@3:36 >> A Victim >> They (US Military) said rape is a [occupational] hazard to military service.

Full documentary in 7 parts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqaZih-7ZW8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Mnaa9oM35k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtEa8W_0XQ4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddDL8rTbHno
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgDxoNPm-U0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdQTMRWXyXg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwbPXKaYxIo
Sonugn
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by Sonugn »

Hey turd worlders, look at the freedom loving America police take into confidence the citizens

Indeed the Americans are the infallable white judges and we need to heed what they say. It is in our best interest.
Lilo
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by Lilo »

Image

Positive effects of living life king size in murica.
Vayutuvan
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by Vayutuvan »

I heard in S. America there is a saying "In America (i.e. US) they like everything big - big breasts, big cars - we export those big tasteless bananas and keep the smaller sweeter ones for ourselves". Smaller bananas actually have the same absolute amount of fructose as the bigger ones and hence are sweeter.
rgsrini
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by rgsrini »

20 moving examples of how merciful and compassionate Americans have become

Don't mind the token stories of compassion from Saudi and Canada, to make it look Universal. It is solely and truly an American phenomenon. God bless the USA!
rgsrini
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by rgsrini »

While you are at it, you may also want to know the 55 things about America that makes it so great!

Bliss to explore further to expand your protein starved vegetarian brains.
rgsrini
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by rgsrini »

I know you have heard of the great American Boeing 747. But have you heard of the newly registered 747000. Come on saar/sistas, try to keep up!
pankajs
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by pankajs »

Affluenza is a worldwide disease and as such is a valid defense under the bestest of the best and fairest of the fair US Justice system.
------------------------------------------------------------->
Du Pont heir convicted of raping daughter spared prison
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/02/justi ... e11avodtop
(CNN) -- Though Robert H. Richards IV was convicted of rape, the wealthy heir to the du Pont family fortune was spared prison by a Delaware court in 2009 because he would "not fare well" behind bars, according to court documents CNN obtained Tuesday.

Richards is a great-grandson of the chemical magnate Irenee du Pont.

He received an eight-year prison sentence in 2009 for raping his toddler daughter, but the sentencing order signed by a Delaware judge said "defendant will not fare well" in prison and the eight years were suspended.

Richards was placed on eight years' probation and ordered to get treatment and register as a sex offender, the documents show. He was also prohibited from having contact with children under 16, including his own children.
This week, after news of Richards' 2009 case came to light, many took to Twitter to criticize the judge in the case, saying that it echoed a recent Texas case in which a wealthy teenager driving drunk killed four people but received no jail time. Ethan Couch was sentenced last year to 10 years' probation.

A witness in Couch's case claimed the teenager was a victim of "affluenza" -- the product of wealthy, privileged parents who never set limits for the boy.
johneeG
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by johneeG »

The Military’s Prescription Drug Addiction
Overmedication is an epidemic in our armed forces—and claims lives far from the battlefield.
By Kelley Vlahos • October 3, 2013

Image
Photo by Staff Sgt. Andrew H. Owen, Virginia Guard Public Affairs

The pattern is relentless: young veteran, barely 30, over-medicated, and not only uncertain but grim about his future. He may still be married, but is likely divorced, possibly estranged from his children. His family frets over his physical and mental health, while taking careful note of his ups and his downs.

Then one day, he dies. The veteran may have taken his own life deliberately. In an increasing number of cases, however, he may have simply gone to sleep and never woken up following a fatal reaction to one of the drugs or cocktails of pills he was prescribed by military doctors.

As our nation has come to rely more heavily on pharmaceutical drugs to manage chronic pain and psychological health, the U.S. military has followed suit, doling out drugs on the battlefield and now back on the home front in a vast network of veterans (VA) hospitals and clinics. But as the rates of sudden death and suicide have spiked over the past decade, it’s become clearer to mental health and military advocates that this heavy reliance on prescription drugs may be partly to blame.

“You get a cocktail, and it’s usually a sleeping pill, anti-anxiety medication, an anti-depressant, and an anti-psychotic—and sometimes even a stimulant like Ritalin or Adderall,” noted Lt. Col. Charles Ruby, who retired from the Air Force and is now working as a clinical psychologist and advocate for veterans. “You have no idea what can happen,” tells TAC.

“Prescription drugs have become the catchall—‘take this and if it makes you feel better, we’ll increase the dosage’,” according to (Ret.) Brigadier Gen. Becky Halstead, a public proponent of alternative medicine following her own two-year stint on medications for chronic fibromyalgia.

We use prescription drugs because it is a quick fix. It started because our military was strained and it was just keeping more people propped up to do their jobs. But the long-term danger is we made people too dependent on it. It’s alarming to me.

Nationally, prescription drug overdoses have risen significantly. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, for example, the number of Americans who died from painkillers rose to 14,800 in 2008 from 4,000 in 1999—the vast majority being unintentional.

In 2008, Lt. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker, then the Army’s Surgeon General, raised eyebrows when he mentioned that there had been “a series, a sequence of deaths” in the new warrior transition units (WTU) military-wide. The units are supposed to help wounded and sick soldiers transition back into uniform or out of the military, but they’ve been beset with drug problems and low morale for years.

“Half of the warriors are ‘stoned’ on psychotropic drugs,” said one report about the WTU at Fort Drum, NY, in 2012. Another Army report in 2011 said 25 to 35 percent of the soldiers in these units nationwide were “addicted to drugs.” Reporters obtained an internal study in 2010 that revealed 32 soldiers and Marines in the WTUs had died from accidental overdoses since 2007.

Meanwhile, the drug Seroquel has been implicated in the deaths of several veterans whose families say were using the drug when they died in their sleep. Seroquel is the brand name for Quetiapine, and although it is supposed to be prescribed for schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder, military and VA doctors have used it for years to treat stress-induced insomnia.

According to at 2010 report by the Military Times, orders for antipsychotic medications like Seroquel and Risperdal (another anti-psychotic) jumped 200 percent between 2001 and 2009, the war’s peak. In fact, before the company was successfully sued (for paying kickbacks to doctors in a scheme to promote Seroquel for uses not approved by the FDA, otherwise known as “off label”), drug-maker AstraZeneca sold $340 million worth of it to the Armed Forces. Some 54,581 prescriptions for Seroquel were written for active duty servicemembers in 2011 alone—the vast majority as a sleep aid.

While off-label prescriptions are legal and common, critics like Harvard University research psychologist Dr. Paula Caplan, say the unknowns outweigh the benefits. When some veterans could be taking upwards of 20 to 40 different pills a day, half of them psychotropic, the results can be unpredictable. “You don’t know what effect the drug may have on them.”

At high dosages and in concert with other drugs, Seroquel, for example, has been found to cause an irregular heartbeat and a higher risk of heart attack.

“I have never been one to say I’m opposed to medication—I’m just opposed to these medications, which have a side effect of causing cardiac arrest,” said Stan White, whose son, Marine Cpl. Andrew White, 23, died from a heart attack in his sleep in 2008. He blames Seroquel for his son’s unexpected death. The young White was on a variety of medications for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), mainly a clonazepam (anti-anxiety) and a paroxetine (anti-depressant), along with Seroquel (for his nightmares he was given 1,600 milligrams a day, double the maximum dosage given for schizophrenia, his father said).

Seroquel was taken off the Pentagon’s regular formulary in 2012, but it can still be prescribed with a waiver.

Meanwhile, numerous reports show how pervasive the overmedication problem has become:

According to an investigation by the American-Statesman, the military has spent at least $2.7 billion on antidepressants, and $1.6 billion in narcotic painkillers like Oxycontin over the last decade. According to the Military Times, DoD orders for anxiety medications and sedatives like Valium and Ambien increased 170 percent from 2001 to 2009. By 2009, 1 in 6 active duty service members were on some form of psychiatric drug, including 17 percent on antidepressants.
In 2010, a significant Army report on suicide found that in 2009, 20 percent of the active duty force (106,000) had been prescribed at least one medication for pain, anxiety or depression, while prescription drugs were involved in one-third of the 160 active duty suicides that year. Of the 188 accidental/undetermined deaths from 2006 to 2009 caused by drugs and alcohol, 74 percent involved prescription medications.
According to an Institute of Medicine report in 2012, 11 percent of service members in 2008 acknowledged they were abusing prescription pills—up from 2 percent in 2002.
An American-Statesman investigation found that of the 277 Texan Iraq and Afghanistan vets for whom they could establish a cause of death between 2003 and 2011, one in five had died accidentally due to toxic prescription cocktails.
According to the Center for Public Integrity, 49,000 veterans (all wars) killed themselves from 2005 to 2011—more than double the rate of the civilian population. Some wonder how much the drugs had to do with it—many of these powerful medication popular with doctors carry warnings of increased suicidal thoughts, anxiety, insomnia, and psychosis, especially with high dosages or when stopped abruptly.

Dr. Caplan, who recently published When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home: How All of Us Can Help Veterans, is a stern critic of medication dependency. She tells TAC that pharmaceutical companies are in many ways working against raised awareness of their drugs’ risks:

[It’s been] shown through lawsuits that [drug companies] minimize and even conceal various kinds of harm from their drugs, including that they increase or can increase the risk of suicide or homicide.

DoD drug spending has ballooned from $3 billion in 2002 to $6.8 billion in 2011. Critics charge that this partly reflects a shift to the “quick fix” of drugs for treating mental health conditions and chronic pain, a mindset they say is crippling full recovery.

“It’s a very significant problem,” Tom Tarantino, a former Army Captain who served as a platoon leader in Iraq in 2006, and is now spokesman and policy associate for IAVA.

“It’s one of those things that really starts with medicine on the battlefield, and in deployment you are just trying to treat symptoms so people can keep going,” he tells TAC, describing how pills were handed out in Ziploc bags in the field. “The availability is so much easier than when you are at home. When you get home, they say ‘we’re not giving you a bag full of Oxycontin, no.”

But the medications continue. “I don’t think it’s nefarious, but I do think there is an addiction problem,” Tarantino added. The latest statistics obtained by Veterans for Common Sense indicate that over 486,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have been treated for a mental health issue at the VA. Many have other injuries, too, like traumatic brain injury (TBI) and musculoskeletal injuries—all requiring a battery of prescriptions.

“I have a very close friend who I served with. He has pretty severe post-traumatic stress and pretty severe TBI, and every time he walks into the VA to get treatment he’s given drugs. He’s a very active person so this really frustrates him,” said Tarantino.

Dr. Ruby, who recently launched Operation Speak Up, said medication dulls but does not dispel the painful memories of PTSD sufferers. His campaign hopes to establish group settings for veterans to talk about their combat stress, based on the Alcoholics Anonymous model. “Our view is that psychiatric drugs do nothing but sedate people. We believe that speaking out is a much better way to treat these people and to find a way to integrate back into their communities.”

While officials stand by the positive uses for medication, some 89 percent of VA facilities now also offer some form of complementary and alternative medicine. In addition to medication, the VA provides psychotherapy, as well as cognitive and exposure therapies for PTSD, according to its website. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has been funding yoga and acupuncture and any alternative “that showed even an iota of promise.”

To address prescription drug abuse, both agencies have upgraded procedures for monitoring prescriptions and their various interactions for individual patients. There’s been some success at reducing the use of the most addictive painkillers and anti-depressants. Buy-back efforts at hospitals prove useful—but are sporadic—for collecting thousands of unwanted, unused pills.

In June, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) introduced a bill that would allow permanent buy-backs system-wide. “There is substantial evidence that prescription drug use and abuse is a major contributing factor to military and veteran suicides,” he told TAC in a statement, “and this bill would address that problem head on.”

Kelley Beaucar Vlahos is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance reporter and TAC contributing editor.
Link
DrugFacts: Substance Abuse in the Military

Revised March 2013

Members of the armed forces are not immune to the substance use problems that affect the rest of society. Although illicit drug use is lower among U.S. military personnel than among civilians, heavy alcohol and tobacco use, and especially prescription drug abuse, are much more prevalent and are on the rise.

The stresses of deployment during wartime and the unique culture of the military account for some of these differences. Zero-tolerance policies and stigma pose difficulties in identifying and treating substance use problems in military personnel, as does lack of confidentiality that deters many who need treatment from seeking it.

Those with multiple deployments and combat exposure are at greatest risk of developing substance use problems. They are more apt to engage in new-onset heavy weekly drinking and binge drinking, to suffer alcohol- and other drug-related problems, and to have greater prescribed use of behavioral health medications. They are also more likely to start smoking or relapse to smoking.

Illicit and Prescription Drugs

According to the 2008 Department of Defense (DoD) Survey of Health Related Behaviors among Active Duty Military Personnel, just 2.3 percent of military personnel were past-month users of an illicit drug, compared with 12 percent of civilians. Among those age 18­–25 (who are most likely to use drugs), the rate among military personnel was 3.9 percent, compared with 17.2 percent among civilians.

A policy of zero tolerance for drug use among DoD personnel is likely one reason why illicit drug use has remained at a low level in the military for 2 decades. The policy was instituted in 1982 and is currently enforced by frequent random drug testing; service members face dishonorable discharge and even criminal prosecution for a positive drug test.

However, in spite of the low level of illicit drug use, abuse of prescription drugs is higher among service members than among civilians and is on the increase. In 2008, 11 percent of service members reported misusing prescription drugs, up from 2 percent in 2002 and 4 percent in 2005. Most of the prescription drugs misused by service members are opioid pain medications.

Mental Health Problems in Returning Veterans

Service members may carry the psychological and physical wounds of their military experience with them into subsequent civilian life. In one study, one in four veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan reported symptoms of a mental or cognitive disorder; one in six reported symp-toms of post-traumatic stress disor-der (PTSD). These disorders are strongly associated with substance abuse and dependence, as are other problems experienced by returning military personnel, including sleep disturbances, traumatic brain injury, and violence in relationships.

Young adult veterans are particularly likely to have substance use or other mental health problems. According to a report of veterans in 2004-2006, a quarter of 18- to 25-year-old veterans met criteria for a past-year substance use disorder, which is more than double the rate of veterans aged 26-54 and five times the rate of veterans 55 or older.

The greater availability of these medications and increases in prescriptions for them may contribute to their growing misuse by service members. Pain reliever prescriptions written by military physicians quadrupled between 2001 and 2009—to almost 3.8 million. Combat-related injuries and the strains from carrying heavy equipment during multiple deployments likely play a role in this trend.

Drinking and Smoking

Alcohol use is also higher among men and women in military service than among civilians. Almost half of active duty service members (47 percent) reported binge drinking in 2008—up from 35 percent in 1998. In 2008, 20 percent of military personnel reported binge drinking every week in the past month; the rate was considerably higher—27 percent—among those with high combat exposure.

In 2008, 30 percent of all service members were current cigarette smokers—comparable to the rate for civilians (29 percent). However, as with alcohol use, smoking rates are significantly higher among personnel who have been exposed to combat.

Suicides and Substance Use

Suicide rates in the military were traditionally lower than among civilians in the same age range, but in 2004 the suicide rate in the U.S. Army began to climb, surpassing the civilian rate in 2008. Substance use is involved in many of these suicides. The 2010 report of the Army Suicide Prevention Task Force found that 29 percent of active duty Army suicides from fiscal year (FY) 2005 to FY 2009 involved alcohol or drug use; and in 2009, prescription drugs were involved in almost one third of them.
Addressing the Problem

A 2012 report prepared for the DoD by the Institute of Medicine (IOM Report) recommended ways of addressing the problem of substance use in the military, including increasing the use of evidence-based prevention and treatment interventions and expanding access to care. The report recommends broadening insurance coverage to include effective outpatient treatments and better equipping healthcare providers to recognize and screen for substance use problems so they can refer patients to appropriate, evidence-based treatment when needed. It also recommends measures like limiting access to alcohol on bases.

The IOM Report also notes that addressing substance use in the military will require increasing confidentiality and shifting a cultural climate in which drug problems are stigmatized and evoke fear in people suffering from them.

Branches of the military have already taken steps to curb prescription drug abuse. The Army, for example, has implemented changes that include limiting the duration of prescriptions for opioid pain relievers to 6 months and having a pharmacist monitor a soldier’s medications when multiple prescriptions are being used.

NIDA and other government agencies are currently funding research to better understand the causes of drug abuse and other mental health problems among military personnel, veterans, and their families and how best to prevent and treat them.
Learn More

For additional information on drug abuse in the military, see http://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/substance-abuse-in-military-life
Link
War on drugs? 110k active US troops 'on prescribed meds'

Published time: April 09, 2012 11:00
Edited time: April 09, 2012 18:40

A US Army soldier enters the Combat Stress Control Clinic of 125 BSB Charlie Medical Company of Task Force Mustang at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Shank in Logar province, eastern Afghanistan (Reuters/Umit Bektas)

A US Army soldier enters the Combat Stress Control Clinic of 125 BSB Charlie Medical Company of Task Force Mustang at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Shank in Logar province, eastern Afghanistan (Reuters/Umit Bektas)

Thousands of US soldiers are going into battle fueled by all sorts of prescription medications, be they amphetamines, antidepressants, sedatives or others. Largely unmonitored consumption of drugs can lead to aberrant behavior and mental disorders.

­Over 110,000 American service personnel took prescribed medications in 2011 to battle through everyday military routine.

The Times recently disclosed that nearly 8 per cent of active-duty American servicemen and women take sedatives and over 6 per cent are on antidepressants, a tremendous eightfold increase since 2005, when two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were in full swing.

Routine military service, combat stress, and sometimes lack of sleep force American troops to go to work medicated. It mirrors the general situation in American society that uses prescription drugs on a daily basis at levels unseen before.

In the Army, though, those who opt to modulate their lives with drugs are facing challenges of a non-civil nature that supposes an absolutely different level of responsibility. These men and women are well-armed, after all.

As a rule, troops are sent to deployment with 180-day medication supply. But soldiers can always trade favorite pills with their friends. The habit of ending a hard day with a handful of various tablets is apparently nothing extraordinary.

"We have never medicated our troops to the extent we are doing now…. And I don't believe the current increase in suicides and homicides in the military is a coincidence," said Bart Billings, a former military psychologist who hosts an annual conference on combat stress, informed The Los Angeles Times.

Painkillers of narcotic nature pose a threat of addiction to those injured who have to take them, too.

One could only guess whether the suicide rate surge in the US Army in the recent decade has any connections with army psychologists prescribing pills to personnel left, right and center. An appalling 80 per cent increase in suicides among US service personnel has been registered between 2004 and 2008.

On the other hand, when every 10th US serviceman deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, there must be a calculated risk in prescribing these medications to keep soldiers in service.

But the main problem among deployed troops remains mental fatigue of those who have been deployed several times in a row. As many as 80 per cent of on-duty personnel have gone through three or more deployments. Worn-out personnel have problems with sleep and accurate assessment of ongoing events.

The recent notorious case of Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, accused of murdering 17 civilians in a bloody rampage in Afghanistan, again raised the question of drug-related incidents in the US military.

After it was announced the defendant does not remember what he did, his attorneys requested a list of the medication the soldier was taking during his deployment in Afghanistan.
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Link
Military Suicides Not Caused By Pharma Drugs Say Pharma-funded Military Consultants
By Martha Rosenberg (about the author)

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It took academic, government and military researchers five years to say they don't really know what is causing military suicides but whatever it is--it isn't the psychoactive drugs they are prescribing and pushing. There have been more than 6,500 suicides since the Iraq and Afghanistan wars says Army Times ---one every 80 minutes according to a 2012 Veterans Affairs report. But if you're looking for names of the Pharma companies who've created the most drugged up fighting force in history, you'll have to look at the conflicts of interest of the authors of the research, which appeared in JAMA Psychiatry in March. They report at least 15 financial links to Big Pharma including to Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Ortho-McNeil Janssen Scientific Affairs, Pfizer, sanofi-aventis, Shire US and Johnson & Johnson. Reported links of some authors are conspicuously absent.



Beats us! by Martha Roseneberg

"Antidepressants increased the risk compared to placebo of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in children, adolescents, and young adults in short-term studies of major depressive disorder (MDD) and other psychiatric disorders. Anyone considering the use of PAXIL or any other antidepressant in a child, adolescent, or young adult must

balance this risk with the clinical need."

That's the "black box" warning on the antidepressant Paxil, which the VA's Iraq War Clinician Guide says is "clearly effective" for combat veterans suffering with PTSD, even though most are clearly "young adults." Paxil and other SSRI antidepressants, all of which carry suicide warnings, are recommended in the Guide as "first line medications for PTSD pharmacotherapy in men and women with military-related PTSD." Between 2001 and 2009, 73,103 prescriptions for Zoloft, 38,199 for Prozac, 17,830 for Paxil and 12,047 for Cymbalta were dispensed according to Tricare data.

Prescriptions for anticonvulsants like Topamax and Neurontin, which also carry suicide warnings, rose 56 percent in the same group, says Navy Times . And the use of antipsychotics like Zyprexa, Seroquel and Risperdal which also carry suicide warnings? Seroquel leapt by 700 percent in active duty troops from 2001 through 2009 reported the New York Times. Maybe the suicides are caused by the green beans as Dorothy Parker would have said.

The authors of the long-awaited papers turned over every stone except the ones that feather their nests. They considered military personnel's gender, race/ethnicity, age, age at enlistment, mental history, deployment history, rank, marital status and even education. But nowhere do the words "medication," antidepressant" or "prescription" appear in the new research even though "At least one in six service members is on some form of psychiatric drug," according to Military Times. An internal study of all deaths in Warrior Transition Units (WTUs) "found the biggest risk factor may be putting a soldier on numerous drugs simultaneously, a practice known as polypharmacy," wrote Marine Times in 2010.

There is money for Pharma in keeping troops and veterans drugged up. And there is money for doctors willing to live with conflicts of interest. One example is Matthew Friedman, MD, executive director of the VA's National Center for PTSD who admits receiving an AstraZeneca honorarium in an online course, Pharmacological Treatment of PTSD and Comorbid Disorders which--surprise!--promotes psychoactive drugs. AstraZeneca makes Seroquel. Friedman has also served as a Pfizer Visiting Professor. Neither relationship was reported on his section of the military suicide research in JAMA Psychiatry.

Friedman is far from the only official working for the government while taking Pharma money. VA administrators unabashedly receive money from Pharma, and even enroll veterans in their Pharma-financed clinical trials, making no effort to hide the dual loyalties. One DOD official cited in Born with a Junk Food Deficiency, recommends off-label use of psychoactive drugs in published reports while attributing military suicides to the availability of firearms and "dear John" letters from the girl back home. Right. She also appears in a Pharma-funded video despite being a government official.

While academic, government and military researchers continue to play their game of funding Whac-A-Mole, pretending they don't know the source of many suicides while profiting from them, we may never know the true toll. "The number of military suicide victims who may have been taking antidepressants or anticonvulsants is unclear," says Army Times. "The Army repeatedly has denied a Military Times Freedom of Information Act request for that data".


Martha Rosenberg is a health reporter and commentator whose work has appeared in Consumers Digest, the Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, New Orleans Times-Picayune, Los Angeles Times, Providence Journal and Newsday. She serves
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Why Are Suicides Climbing in the Military? Let's Look at the Drugs Being Prescribed

Why does the suicide rate among military personnel continue to climb--even among those who never saw combat? This week the Pentagon announced there were more suicides among active-duty members of the armed services in 2012 than combat deaths--a staggering 349. Eighty-five percent had not even seen combat, reported Bloomberg.

The suicide rate rose similarly last year and also included troops who had not faced combat. There were 38 Army suicides in July of 2012 compared with 32 suicides in July of 2011. In a 2010 Army report called Health Promotion, Risk Reduction and Suicide Prevention Report, 36 percent of the troops who killed themselves had never even deployed. The suicide rate increased by more than 150 percent in the Army and more than 50 percent in the Marine Corps between 2001 to 2009, reported Military Times in a series of in-depth articles.

One in six service members was on a psychoactive drug in 2010 and "many troops are taking more than one kind, mixing several pills in daily 'cocktails' for example, an antidepressant with an antipsychotic to prevent nightmares, plus an anti-epileptic to reduce headaches--despite minimal clinical research testing such combinations," said Military Times.

The pills and pill cocktails many troops are prescribed are clearly linked to suicidal thoughts and behavior. Antidepressants like Prozac and Paxil, antipsychotics like Seroquel and Zyprexa and anti-seizure drugs like Lyrica and Neurontin all carry clear suicide warnings and all are widely used in the military. Almost 5,000 newspaper reports link antidepressants to suicide, homicide and bizarre behavior on the website SSRIstories.com. The malaria drug Lariam is also highly correlated with suicide and its use actually increased in the Navy and Marine Corps in 2011, according to the Associated Press.

Eighty-nine percent of troops with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are now given psychoactive drugs and between 2005 and 2009, half of all TRICARE (the military health plan) prescriptions for people between 18 and 34 were for antidepressants. During the same time period, epilepsy drugs like Topamax and Neurontin, increasingly given off-label for mental conditions, increased 56 percent, reports Military Times. In 2008 , 578,000 epilepsy pills and 89,000 antipsychotics were prescribed to deploying troops.

Both the increase in the overall suicide rate in the US (rising to 36,000 a year after falling in the 1990s according to USA Today) and in the military coincide with the debut of direct-to-consumer drug advertising in the late 1990s. They are also correlated with the FDA's approval of many drugs with suicide links and a population that is increasingly taking psychoactive drugs for minor problems and symptoms. Several powerful military psychiatrists and administrators are also consultants to Big Pharma who shamelessly enroll veterans in drug studies and promote the pills that drug companies pay them to promote. Who can say conflict of interest?

When concerns about the rise in the general suicide rate in the US surfaced last fall, US Surgeon General Regina Benjamin announced federal grants for suicide hotlines, more mental health workers, better depression screening and Facebook tracking of suicidal messages. Nowhere, did she mention examining the role of suicide-linked drugs on, ahem, suicide. The Pentagon is apparently in similar denial.


More information about overmedication of troops and suicide-linked drugs is found in Martha Rosenberg's recently publishedBorn With a Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks and Hacks Pimp The Public Health.
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Military suicides linked to dramatic increases in prescribed psychiatric drugs


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October 14, 2012

Dr. Bart Billings, Ph.D., retired Army Colonel, former military psychologist, and founder and director of the military-wide Human Assistance Rapid Response Team (HARRT) program, is convinced suicides among troops are a direct result of psychiatric drug prescriptions. He refers to psychiatric drugs as a “chemical lobotomy” being given to soldiers. "The psychiatrists have no clue about what they’re doing, and it’s psychiatry that runs mental health in Department of Defense (DoD) and Veterans Affairs. DoD has to stop trusting them," according to Dr. Billings.

In the first installment of a four-part series for the mental health watchdog Citizens Commission on Human Rights, award-winning investigative journalist Kelly Patricia O’Meara examines the statistics relating to psychiatric drug use and military suicides, including:

The 150% increase in military suicides from 2001 to 2009 and the 76 percent increase in psychiatric drug prescriptions over the same time period.

The Department of Defense admission that nearly one-third of suicides in the military occurred among those who had never seen combat duty.

The mass prescribing of the drug Seroquel to troops, a powerful antipsychotic drug approved by the FDA for “Schizophrenia” and “bipolar disorder” and how in just the last year, the military wrote more than fifty-four thousand Seroquel prescriptions off-label – for “disorders” not even approved by the FDA.

The FDA’s Medication Guide for Seroquel which lists “Risk of Suicidal Thoughts or Actions,” as one of Seroquel’s “serious side effects.”

O'Meara writes, "Based on data released by those responsible for the health and well-being of the troops, it seems that pharmacology has replaced compassion. The days of talk therapy, a kind of willingness to stand in the warrior’s boots by listening to his experiences, has been replaced by the quick pop-a-pill fix.

But these pharmacological potions may be producing unintended consequences, and evidence is piling up that the ever-increasing use of dangerous psychiatric medications may be fueling the funeral pyre of military suicides and other unexplained deaths.”
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Psychiatric Drugs and War: A Suicide Mission

The first in a four-part series by investigative journalist Kelly Patricia O’Meara written for the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) a psychiatric watchdog organization. The series will explore the epidemic of suicides in the military and the correlation to dramatic increases in psychiatric drug prescriptions to treat the emotional scars of battle. The first installment looks at the statistical data, military suicides and unexplained deaths among the troops tied to prescription drugs.
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by Kelly Patricia O’Meara
October 11, 2012

Imagine for a moment that a soldier is ordered to proceed through a clearly identified mine field, having received assurance from his commanding officer that it’s okay to proceed because the odds are not everyone is blown to bits. Most would consider this nothing short of a suicide mission.

The strained and war-weary men and women serving in the military today, on or off the battlefield, are faced with the equivalent of such a scenario when it comes to treating their emotional scars. Anxiety, sleeplessness, nightmares, stress and depression is affecting the troops serving in America’s longest war no less than those who’ve served in previous wars.

One glaring difference, though, lies in the “treatment” soldiers are receiving. Based on data released by those responsible for the health and well-being of the troops, it seems that pharmacology has replaced compassion. The days of talk therapy, a kind of willingness to stand in the warrior’s boots by listening to his experiences, has been replaced by the quick pop-a-pill fix.

But these pharmacological potions may be producing unintended consequences, and evidence is piling up that the ever-increasing use of dangerous psychiatric medications may be fueling the funeral pyre of military suicides and other unexplained deaths.

From 2001 to 2009, the Army’s suicide rate increased more than 150 percent while orders for psychiatric drugs rose 76 percent over the same period

According to recent data released by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), in the first 155 days of this year, 154 soldiers committed suicide—about one per day—compared to the 139 soldiers who died in combat in the same period. This is an incredible 18 percent increase from the previous year and an unbelievable 25 percent increase from the year before.

More disturbing, though, is that the increased suicides are occurring at a time when, with the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, U.S. combat forces are at significantly reduced numbers and, according to the DoD data, nearly one-third of the suicides in the military occurred among those who had never seen combat duty.

These data suggest that the “epidemic” of suicides in the military is not exclusive to those suffering from the physical and emotional strain of combat, so one has to ask what is responsible for the increased suicides…what is the common denominator among military personnel that may assist the top brass in combating this seemingly elusive and unidentifiable foe? The following data may offer insight.

From 2001 to 2009, the Army’s suicide rate increased more than 150 percent while orders for psychiatric drugs rose 76 percent over the same period and according to Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center, mental health disorders were the leading cause of hospitalization of active-duty service members in 2007, 2009 and 2011, with nearly $2 billion being spent on psychiatric drugs since 2001.

Despite the enormous increase in expenditures for psychiatric drugs and the growing number of mental health professionals recruited to care for the troops, “mental illness” remains the leading cause of hospitalization for active-duty troops. With so many resources being thrown at this life or death issue, both human and financial, why isn’t anyone getting better? More to the point, why are the troops taking their lives at record levels?

Dr. Bart Billings, Ph.D., retired Army Colonel, former military psychologist, founder and director of the military-wide Human Assistance Rapid Response Team (HARRT) program

Dr. Bart Billings, Ph.D., a retired Army Colonel and former military psychologist and founder and director of the military-wide Human Assistance Rapid Response Team (HARRT) program, has no doubt that the cause of the suicides among the troops is the direct result of the use of psychiatric drugs.

“I’m 100 percent convinced,” says Dr. Billings, “I’ve seen it and talked to hundreds of these guys. These medications really interfere with the brain’s ability to normalize itself and adjust. It’s hard to make a choice on how to recover if your brain isn’t operating the way it should be.”

“It’s kind of like working with someone who is drunk,” explains Dr. Billings, “you’re not going to get very far. It would be like me spinning you around fifty times and then asking you to walk a straight line. It’s not going to happen. These medications are a chemical lobotomy.”

So what are the medications Dr. Billings is referring to as a “chemical lobotomy” and peddled to the troops as magic mental health bullets? According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, during the last decade, nearly $850 million has been spent on Seroquel, an antipsychotic, prescribed to the troops for sleep disorders at a rate of 6.6 million prescriptions.

Seroquel was approved by the FDA for the treatment of Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, yet, the military wrote more than fifty-four thousand Seroquel prescriptions last year, with 99 percent of those prescriptions written off-label—for disorders not approved by the FDA.

More astounding, though, is that the FDA’s approved Medication Guide for Seroquel lists “Risk of Suicidal Thoughts or Actions,” as one of Seroquel’s “serious side effects.” Anyone with four stars on the old epaulette might want to add this piece of information to the “good clue” column.

And, while suicidal thoughts and actions are at the top of the list of risks associated with Seroquel, there are others just as frightening, including, but not limited to: hallucinations, worsening mental or mood changes (e.g., aggressiveness, agitation, anxiety, depression, exaggerated feeling of well-being, hostility, irritability and panic attacks).

The question that comes to mind after reading this abbreviated risk list, and command may find it prudent to inquire, is how would a soldier know if these reactions are his (because of his alleged disorder) or actually are being caused by the mind-altering drug? More importantly, how would anyone (least of all a psychiatrist) be able to make this determination, given there is no science behind any psychiatric diagnosis. At this point, it doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibilities that military brass may politely be muttering a few simple “WTFs.”

Given the direction of mental health care over the last decade, it doesn’t take a battle field commission to figure out who’s giving the orders. Dr. Billings is all too aware of the military’s apparent surrender to psychiatry’s pharmacological assault. Despite the growing interest among military brass and lawmakers, Dr. Billings doesn’t have high hopes for answers unless major changes occur within the military mental health complex.

“The psychiatrists have no clue about what they’re doing,” says Dr. Billings, “and it’s psychiatry that runs mental health in DoD and the VA. DoD has to stop trusting them.”

Dr. Billings reasons that “any organization in the world whose leadership continually fails and loses money, in this case lives, would fire them. Why hasn’t psychiatry been fired? They are responsible for mental health (in the military) and have done nothing to stop these suicides.”

“If I was a platoon leader,” says Dr. Billings, “and I took my platoon out and I came back with 50 percent casualties and all the other platoon leaders are coming back with five percent casualties, I’d be fired—I’d be looking at court martial for negligence. They aren’t doing that to psychiatry. I’ve been trying to convince people that psychiatrists are nothing but legal drug dealers, and they’re dealing drugs that don’t work and actually kill people.”

The data regarding the increased drugging of military personnel and their families seems to support Dr. Billings’ conclusions. The atypical antipsychotic drugs, such as Seroquel (which has been implicated in a number of deaths of combat veterans and of late is being referred to as “Serokill”) and Risperdal, showed the most dramatic increase—a jump of more than 200 percent—with annual spending quadrupling between 2001 to 2011 from $4 million to $16 million.

It’s hardly a secret that these powerful mind-altering drugs cause the very symptoms that they are reported to treat, as the psychiatric drugs now being prescribed to soldiers long have been scrutinized for their possible serious adverse reactions and has been public record for nearly a decade.

In 2007 the Food and Drug Administration, FDA, updated its 2004 black-box warnings, the federal agency’s most serious warnings, on all of the antidepressants on the market—all of which are part of the military and VA formulary. The FDA warning reads in part “Suicidality and Antidepressant Drugs: Antidepressants increased the risk compared to placebo of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in children, adolescents, and young adults in short-term studies of major depressive disorder (MDD) and other psychiatric disorders….”

The FDA’s warnings about the potential for increased suicidal thoughts and behavior associated with antidepressants and antipsychotics (the apparent backbone of psychiatry’s military pharmacological arsenal), leads one to wonder why, according to the Army’s highest-ranking psychiatrist, Brig. Gen. Loree Sutton, seventeen percent of the active-duty force and 6 percent of deployed troops are on antidepressants.

More distressing, though, is these data do not represent the number of troops who are prescribed cocktails of psychiatric mind-altering drugs, which many believe is an alarming number, literally receiving multiples of prescriptions. Such deadly elixirs only add to the soldiers’ inability to identify which, of the many, mind-altering drugs may be responsible for their behavior, postponing recovery or, worse, causing greater harm and even death.

It makes sense that the Pentagon’s top brass would want to assess all available intelligence before deciding on the appropriate plan of attack. After all, the future readiness of this nation’s military is at stake. But simple truths can no longer be ignored. The military and VA have dramatically increased the numbers of mental health professionals, at the same time there has been a dramatic increase in psychiatric drug prescriptions among the troops, funding for both is skyrocketing and, still, the mental health of our nation’s warriors continues to deteriorate.

Until military command can acknowledge that they may have been out maneuvered by the psychiatric community, the nation’s soldiers will be forced to navigate a dangerous and deadly treatment mine field one terrifying step at a time.

O’Meara was the first investigative journalist to expose the link between school shootings and psychiatric drugs in her 1999 cover story, Guns & Doses – CLICK IMAGE to read article

Kelly Patricia O’Meara is an award-winning investigative reporter for the Washington Times, Insight Magazine, penning dozens of articles exposing the fraud of psychiatric diagnosis and the dangers of the psychiatric drugs – including her ground-breaking 1999 cover story, Guns & Doses, exposing the link between psychiatric drugs and acts of senseless violence. She is also the author of the highly acclaimed book, Psyched Out: How Psychiatry Sells Mental Illness and Pushes Pills that Kill. Prior to working as an investigative journalist, O’Meara spent sixteen years on Capitol Hill as a congressional staffer to four Members of Congress. She holds a B.S. in Political Science from the University of Maryland.
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25 disturbing facts about psych drugs, soldiers and suicides

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Mike Adams
NaturalNews
March 14, 2013

We are living in an age of upside-downs, where right is wrong, fiction is truth and war is peace. Those who fight the wars are subjected to their own house of mirrors via pharmaceutical “treatments.” Instead of providing U.S. soldiers and veterans with actual health care, the government throws pills at them and calls it “therapy.”

Stimulants, antidepressants, anti-psychotics, sedatives and pain meds are the new “fuel” for America’s front-line forces. While the idea of sending medicated soldiers into battle was unthinkable just three decades ago, today it’s the status quo. And the cost in human lives has never been more tragic.

Here are 25 disturbing facts about psych drugs, soldiers and suicides. They are disturbing because everybody seems to be pretending there is no link between psychiatric drugs and soldier suicides. So soldiers and veterans keep dying while the Pentagon (and the VA) keep pretending they don’t know why. (Sources are listed at the bottom of this article.)

1) 33% of the U.S. Army is on prescription medications, and nearly a quarter of those are on psychotropic drugs

2) In 2010, the Pentagon spent $280 million on psychiatric drugs. That number has since risen.

3) There are now over 8,000 suicides each year by U.S. soldiers and veterans; that’s over 22 a day

4) 33% of those suicides are attributed to medication side effects

5) That means medications are killing more U.S. soldiers and veterans than Al-Qaeda

6) 500% more soldiers abuse prescription drugs than illegal street drugs

7) Under the Obama administration, the number of veterans waiting for VA care has risen from 11,000 in 2009 to 245,000 today

8) More active duty soldiers die from suicide than from combat: 349 dead last year

9) The number of prescriptions for Ritalin and Adderall written for active-duty soldiers has increased 1,000% in the last five years

10) For every active-duty service member who dies in battle, 25 veterans die by suicide

11) Only 1 percent of Americans have served in the Middle East, but veterans of combat there make up 20% of all suicides in the United States

12) The suicide rate of active-duty soldiers in the Civil War was only 9 – 15 per 100,000 soldiers. The suicide rate of active-duty U.S. soldiers in the Middle East is 23 per 100,000. And casualty rates were far higher in the Civil War, meaning the Civil War was more psychologically traumatic.

13) In the Korean War, the suicide rate among active-duty military soldiers was only 11 per 100,000

14) To date, the Pentagon has spent more than a billion dollars on psychiatric drugs, making it one of the largest customers of Big Pharma

15) In 2010, over 213,000 active-duty military personnel were taking medications considered “high risk” by the Pentagon

16) In the years since the Iraq War began, twice as many soldiers of the Texas Army National Guard have died of suicide than in combat

17) Defense Secretary Leon Panetta calls military suicides an “epidemic”

18) Of all the branches of the military, the Army has the highest number of suicides each year, almost 400% more than the Marines

19) Most active-duty soldiers who take psychiatric medications consume a combination of three to five prescriptions

20) The use of prescription medications by active-duty soldiers is largely unregulated. Soldiers are given a bottle of meds and sent into combat. If they run out of meds, they are given a refill, no questions asked.

21) The mainstream media says the answer to lowing suicides of veterans is to take away their guns so that they cannot shoot themselves. This is the logical equivalent to trying to fix your car’s engine by removing the “check engine” light.

22) The Pentagon is initiating new research (in 2013) to try to figure out why psychiatric medications cause soldiers to commit suicide. The research involves tracking brain activity by attaching electrodes to the skull.

23) One-third of military suicides are committed by soldiers who have never seen combat

24) In the last year, the military wrote over 54,000 prescriptions for Seroquel to soldiers, and all those prescriptions were “off label,” meaning the intended use has never been approved by the FDA as safe or effective.

25) Dr. Bart Billings, a retired Army Colonel and former military psychologist, refers to psychiatric drugs as a “chemical lobotomy” for soldiers.

This article was posted: Thursday, March 14, 2013 at 6:36 am
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kancha
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by kancha »

Are there any studies on soldiers of other nations suffering from mental health issues due to the Iraq / Afg war? Or is it just the US military that is suffering disproportionately?
UlanBatori
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by UlanBatori »

American prosecutors' spouses take personal interest in cases
SPARTANBURG, S.C. (AP) — A judge sentenced a South Carolina woman to 20 years in prison Friday for killing her 6-week-old daughter with what prosecutors say was an overdose of morphine delivered through her breast milk....

Greene's lawyer said she was only trying to stop debilitating pain from a car crash more than a decade before and relied on her own judgment and medical research on the Internet instead of the advice of doctors and is still overwhelmed with grief from the loss of her child.

The 20-year sentence was the minimum after a Spartanburg County jury found Greene guilty of homicide by child abuse Friday. She could have faced up to life behind bars. Greene will have to serve 16 years before she is eligible for parole.....
Barnette doesn't want his prosecution to stop women from breastfeeding. He took this case personally because his wife had a miscarriage in 1989. She is a nurse and personally reviewed the case.
ramana
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by ramana »

At same time there was case in SF Bay Area where some poor person on crack cocaine had somehow ended up killing her infant baby. The judge let her off for the immense suffering at loss of her child.

Looks like above SC judge let his wife influence unduly. What has miscarrige got to do with this current case?
pankajs
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Re: Positive News from the USA

Post by pankajs »

Salon.com ‏@Salon 5m

A notoriously brutal police officer knocks a woman out -- now *she* is going on trial for "assaulting" the cop http://slnm.us/5M1I6E5
I didn’t know Cecily McMillan two years ago, when I glimpsed her convulsing on the street, obscured from view by a cluster of NYPD officers and a confusion of Occupy protesters. Word spread swiftly through the downtown Manhattan intersection: The young woman had been assaulted by the cops; her body went into seizure, her brain unconscious, her ribs cracked.

...
Along with every sometime occupier I know, though, I believe that McMillan’s current predicament is a vile indictment (or a sad example) of the criminal justice system at work. While the NYPD’s predilection for mass arrests during Occupy’s height clogged up the district courts with hundreds of misdemeanor and infraction cases, McMillan’s assault heaped a far more terrifying and arduous fate on the 25-year-old. Monday marks the beginning of a trial in which she faces felony charges for second-degree assault on officer Grantley Bovell, who had grabbed the activist’s chest from behind and prompted her seizure. McMillan’s breast was visibly bruised, as photographs evidenced; she had instinctively swung backward having been grabbed from behind by the cop. Accidentally knocking Bovell’s temple as he dragged her backward, McMillan earned herself charges that carry up to a seven-year prison sentence.

For the first time in some time, I saw McMillan last month. The weight of a potential prison sentence and exhaustion from two years of trial delays weighed heavily on the 25-year-old. Her eyes were quick to well up; “It’s been hell,” she intimated. As writer and artist Molly Crabapple observed listening to McMillan address supporters after a pretrial hearing, “Cecily tried to hide the tremor in her voice.”
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