Category Archives: Things that aren’t what they seem

Prison Replaces Community Mental Health

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lunatic-asylumOld lunatic asylum

This final post concerns the third main driver of high US incarceration rates: the warehousing of the mentally ill in America’s prisons and jails. It’s the one I’m most intimately acquainted with, after campaigning for 14 years, alongside the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, to end this medieval barbarism. Federal and state lawmakers are perfectly aware that 1) this 40 year old practice constitutes a crime against humanity under international law and 2) that imprisoning the mentally ill costs taxpayers two to three times as much as community treatment. Yet our elected representatives remain unwilling or incapable of rectifying this problem.*

According to Health Affairs, 20 percent of US prison inmates have a serious mental illness and 30 to 60 percent have substance abuse problems. Between 50 and 70 percent have mild to moderate mental disorder.  Al Jazeera reports that people with severe mental illness are 10 times more likely to be in a jail or prison than in a mental health facility and 40 percent of individuals with a severe mental illness will have spent some time in their lives in either jail, prison, or community corrections.

Aside from the absolute barbarity of warehousing vulnerable mentally ill offenders with violent psychopaths, locking them up costs the taxpayer far more than providing them outpatient mental health services: adding up to $150 billion annually

I see two main factors behind the American practice of using correctional facilities to warehouse the mentally ill. Number one is the systematic defunding of America’s mental health system. Number two is the systematic defending of federal housing programs that initially provided shelter for the mentally ill when they were first released from state mental hospitals in the sixties, seventies and eighties.

The Movement to Close State Mental Hospitals

The movement to close state mental hospitals and “deinstitutionalize” the mentally ill began in 1963, after President John F. Kennedy signed the Community Mental Health Center Act. The goal of the new law was to replace institutionally based mental health treatment with community based care, by funding outpatient community mental health centers, group homes and residential facilities. In the early seventies, the discovery of effective pharmaceutical treatments for schizophrenia and manic depressive disorder facilitated this process.

As anticipated, state legislatures all over the country jumped at the opportunity to shift the cost of mental health care to the federal government. Because they provided 24/7 care, state hospitals had monstrous labor costs and lawmakers were only too happy to close them.

Unfortunately this federal funding dried up when Johnson created Medicaid for low income Americans in 1968. From this point on, the only federal mental health funding states received was from the individual entitlement of the Medicaid patients they served. Any non-Medicaid patients they treated had to be funded by private fees and charity.

Reagan Slashes Medicaid

Mental health funding deteriorated even further when Reagan replaced Medicaid funding with social service “block grants” that provided 25% less funding than the programs they replaced. Federally subsidized housing programs experienced comparable funding cuts.

Faced with steep funding cuts, states had no choice but to turn away thousands of mentally ill clients in genuine need of treatment. It was during the early eighties, under the Reagan administration, that large numbers of mentally ill Americans first made their appearance on the streets and in jails and prisons.

As funding continued to deteriorate, community mental health centers reduced costs even further by replacing labor intensive counseling and psychotherapy with “drugs-only” treatment and “case management” – and master’s degree social workers and counselors with “case workers” with no mental health training.

George W Bush Makes Further Medicaid Cuts

America’s mental health system would take a further hit in 2006 when Bush further slashed federal Medicaid funding to help finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. States responded with further service cutbacks and, as always, jails and prisons took up the slack.

America’s mental health system would enter its death spiral when the economic recession hit in 2008. A study by the National Alliance on Mental Illness reveals the states slashed an unprecedented $1.8 billion from their mental health budgets between 2009 and 2011.

Continuing a well-established trend, mentally ill patients unable to access community treatment would end up in jail or prison.

To fully appreciate the unspeakable horror of this inhumane policy, listen to this excellent BBC World Service documentary America’s New Bedlam**

*The total indifference of our elected representatives to our prison system’s crimes against humanity is well illustrated by this post on solitary confinement (which also violates international law):  Oh, Just Stop It

**Bedlam refers to the Royal Bethlem Hospital in London, the first to specialize in the treatment of the mentally ill.

photo credit: danmillerinpanama

Profits, Not Crime, Drive Incarceration Rates

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prison-call-centerInmate-run call center

This second post deals with the corporatization of US prisons and the private companies who profit from high incarceration rates.

US rates of violent and property crime have been declining steadily since 1990. Logically dropping crimes rates should produce a drop in incarceration rates. Yet until 2009, when 26 states acted to reduce prison populations, the exact opposite was true. As crime rates declined in state after state, the number of people they locked up skyrocketed.

Presently the US “enjoys” the highest incarceration rate in the world. At 500 per 100,000 population, it’s  five times higher than other developed countries.

A number of factors contribute to this disgrace. In my view, the first and most important is the enormous profit potential of American’s prison industry, resulting in major pressure on state legislatures from private for-profit prison companies and their friends at the American Legislative Exchange Council place on state legislatures. The second is a raft of tough-on-crime legislation driven by deliberate neoconservative race-based fear mongering. The third is the systematic defunding of mental health services in the US, leading to the warehousing of mentally ill patients in federal and state correctional facilities.

Profit, Not Crime, Drives Prison-Building Spree

Prison privatization, which began under Reagan in the 1980s, has turned incarceration and immigration detention into a multibillion dollar growth industry with its own trade shows, conventions, mail order catalogs and state and federal lobbyists. Unsurprisingly Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), Wackenhut and the 16 other for-profit prison companies are major campaign donors to federal and state lawmakers who advocate tough-on-crime and tough-on-immigrant policies. These are usually the same legislators who sponsor bills to replace state prisons with private for profit correctional facilities.

Who’s Making Big Bucks Off Prison Privatization?

The booming private prison industry provides numerous opportunities for banks and other corporate interests to skim off profits at taxpayer expense:
1. The Wall Street investment banks (e.g. Goldman Sachs) who issue the bonds to finance the building of state and local prisons.
2. The private companies who run prisons – Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and Wackenhut are the largest, but there are now 18 altogether. CCA also operates our federal immigration detention facilities and helped write Arizona ‘s controversial immigration law.
3. Private companies that provide food services, health care, and assorted security paraphernalia to prisons.
4. Bed brokers who, in Texas, earn $2.50 – 5.50 per man-day (for the duration of a prisoner’s sentence) by recruiting prisoners from out of state.
5. Major corporations who save on labor costs in 37 states by contracting cheap prison labor.

The list of corporations employing cheap prison labor is extensive: IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T, Wireless, Texas Instrument, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, TWA, Nordstrom’s, JC Penny, Best Western Hotels, Honda, Chevron, BP, Victoria’s Secret, Revlon, Macy’s, Pierre Cardin, Target Stores, and many more.

Virtual Slave Labor

Inmates in state penitentiaries generally receive the minimum wage ($7.25). Not all do, though. In Colorado state prisons, they get about $2 per hour. In private prisons, they receive as little as 17 cents per hour. The highest-paying private prison is CCA in Tennessee, where prisoners receive 50 cents per hour.

As Vicky Pelaez writes in Global Research, thanks to dirt cheap prison labor, manufacturing jobs that corporations previously outsourced to third world sweatshops are returning to the US. She gives the example of a company operating a maquiladora (Mexican assembly plant near the border) that closed down operations and relocated to San Quentin State Prison in California.

The virtual slave labor that occurs in state prisons also drives down wages in neighboring communities. Pelaez gives the example of a Texas factory that fired its 150 workers and contracted the services of prisoners at the private Lockhart Texas prison, who assemble circuit boards are assembled for IBM and Compaq.

BP also made profitable using of cheap prison labor in cleaning up Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Many US corporation employ prison labor to staff their call centers. According to NBC News, If you recently called your motor vehicle department or received a telemarketing call from Microsoft or Hitatchi, it’s likely the person on the other end was a prisoner.

Another great resource on the scandalous prison industrial complex are is the excellent series Nation at Risk  at Deconstructing Myths.

photo credit: The Politics of Information

To be continued.

Working Class Culture

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limbo

Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White Collar Dreams

by Alfred Lubrano

Wiley (2004)

Book Review

Limbo is based on the premise that working class Americans (regardless of ethnic background) have their own distinct culture, values, language and world view. This cultural conditioning, based on early childhood experiences, provides an instinctive approach to the world that persists throughout adulthood – regardless of advanced education or changes in social status.

Lubrano coins a new word in Limbo: “straddler.” It describes a professional of working class origin, who owing to profound cultural differences, never totally fits in with middle class colleagues. As this perfectly describes me in relation to the medical profession, it’s a subject very dear to my heart.

For the most part, middle class Americans are totally unaware that working class people have their own distinct culture. Although many liberal academics and professionals happily weigh in on America’s scandalous wealth inequality, the concept of social class is much more difficult for them. They unconsciously cling to the myth that class differences have vanished in the US – that all Americans have an equal opportunity to become billionaires if they work hard enough.

America’s Loss of Class Identity

Meanwhile, thanks to a steady diet of pro-corporate propaganda, low income Americans have lost any sense of working class identity or solidarity. They, too, cling to the myth that all Americans are “middle class.” This is unsurprising, given that TV is often their sole source of information and entertainment. The average American watches an average of 5 hours of TV a day, with the heaviest viewers coming from low income households

Based on income,* more than 70% of Americans qualify as working class. Yet nearly all the characters we see in TV dramas and sitcom are unquestionably “middle class.”**  Recession-themed programming (where people are thrown out of their homes, work three jobs, wait in line at the food bank or struggle to see a doctor) are virtually unheard of. Instead we get reality TV, cooking and renovation shows, dystopian fiction with or without vampires.

The issue of working class culture received little attention until World War II, Korean and Vietnam veterans began attending university on the GI bill and Kennedy and Johnson established federal student loan programs to allow other working class Americans access to tertiary education. Kennedy’s Health Professions Student Loans program made it possible for me to attend medical school.

Despite being immensely grateful for the opportunity to attend university, the realization that we have nothing in common with our mainly middle class peers can be extremely alienating. In my own case, post graduate psychiatric training was particularly difficult. My middle class peers often complained I made them uncomfortable. They had absolutely no awareness that we dressed, thought and talked differently due to differing backgrounds. Instead they insisted I had “personality problems” and in one instanced suggested I take medication. change.

World’s of Pain

Sociologist Lillian Breslow Rubin published one of the first definitive studies of working class culture in her 1976 classic: Worlds of Pain: Life in the Working-Class Family.

Limbo differs from Worlds of Pain in being more descriptive and less scientifically oriented. Personally I prefer Limbo, which Lubrano bases on personal experience and 50 interviews with self-identified “straddlers.” I especially appreciate his effort to describe the value system that characterizes working class culture.

He starts his book with an analysis of fundamental working class values that distinguish them from the middle class:

1. A powerful work ethic (unlike the middle class, which places higher value on getting something for nothing).
2. A strong, unambivalent respect for parents that persists into adulthood.
3. Strong ties to extended family..
4. A forthright approach to interpersonal communication devoid of hidden agendas.
5. Intense personal loyalty.
6. Firm limit setting for children.
7. A preference for common sense problem solving as opposed to book learning.
8. Comfort in openly displaying affection and anger.

*Based on 60% working poor and 10-15% unemployed.

**I can count working class TV series on one hand and most are pre-1980: Jackie Gleason’s The Honeymooners, Amos and Andy, Roseanne, Cheers  All in the Family and possibly Two Broke Girls. I don’t really watch TV that much, and I’m sure people can think of others.

Is Left-Right Collaboration Possible?

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unstoppable-large

  Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State.

Ralph Nader (2014)

Book Review

A long time consumer advocate, Nader has spent most of his career battling the corporate takeover of government and US society. Although most analysts place him to the left of the Democratic Party, he frequently allies himself with libertarians and populist conservatives in specific campaigns. He now maintains the only way to restore accountable Constitutional government is by forming what he calls right-left convergences.

Traditional Labels Meaningless

Nader begins by defining “right” and “left,” as both have ceased to have any real meaning. He devotes an entire chapter to dispelling the common myths people from opposite ends of the political spectrum have about each other. He begins by discussing the philosophical architects responsible for the basic principles that underpin conservatism and libertarianism, with special emphasis on Adam Smith, Ludvig Van Mises, Frank Meyer, Russell Kirk and Peter Viereck. He goes on to trace links between contemporary conservatism and the 19th century populist movement in which farmers fought big banks and big railroads. This movement, commonly referred to as the “populist” or “decentralist” movement, would eventually evolve into Goldwater and Reagan conservatism. Nader maintains that many contemporary Republicans who call themselves “conservative” are really corporatists or corporate statists – working primarily for the benefit of the corporations who put them into office.

The US Left represents too many different tendencies – liberals, progressives, socialist, anarchists – to agree on a single overarching political philosophy.

Although Nader doesn’t mention it, many prominent figures identified with the so-called Non-Communist Left have been discredited by accepting major funding from CIA pass-through foundations.1

Issues Ripe for Collaboration and Potential Obstacles

Nader identifies 25 potential issues that are ripe for collaboration between existing left and right-leaning movements (see below).2

He feels the biggest potential obstacle to potential is the knee-jerk ideological reaction of major party activists. It’s often hard to move Democratic Party loyalists past the tired knee-jerk reaction that conservatives are too narrow-minded, dogmatic and self-interested to be worthwhile coalition partners. Meanwhile many conservatives have the mistaken belief that all leftists are covert socialists who are only interested in big government, more welfare spending, more business regulation, more debt and and higher taxes.

Nader bemoans the tendency of ideologues from both ends of the political spectrum to get so focused in dogma and abstractions that they can’t lose sight of the constitutional crisis in front of them.

This is partly why left-right convergences tend to me more effective at the local level, where people are already shoulder-to-shoulder confronting the practicalities they face everyday. This is certainly consistent with what Susan Clark and Woden Teachout describe in Slow Democracy, their book on local direct democracy. It also reflects the the experience of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), which unites activists across the political spectrum in outlawing fracking, toxic sludge, factory farms and water bottling plants.

Examples of Successful Left-Right Collaboration

Unstoppable goes on to provide numerous examples of high profile right-left alignments in Congress (see below). 3

The main value of the book, in my view, is to remind us of the political power of strange bedfellow alliances and to discourage knee-jerk reactions to collaborating with people of different ideological persuasions. Since Unstoppable went to print, a left-right congressional convergence prevented Obama from going to war against Syria, and left-right convergences in Washington and Oregon passed ballot initiatives legalizing marijuana.

1Frances Stonor Saunders discusses this at length in her 1999 book Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War.

2Personally, I think Nader’s list is too long. I myself would prioritize 6, 12, 14 and 22, as I already see evidence of left-right collaboration on these specific issues:

  1. Requiring annual auditing of the defense budget and that ALL government budgets (including the CIA and NSA) be disclosed.
  2. Ending corporate welfare and bailouts.
  3. Promoting efficiency in government contracting and government spending.
  4. Adjusting the minimum wage to inflation.
  5. Introducing specific tax reform as well as pushing to regain uncollected taxes.
  6. Breaking up the “Too Big to Fail” banks.
  7. Expanding contributions to charity, using these funds to increase jobs and draw on available “dead money” (i.e. recycle wealth from millionaires and billionaires).
  8. Legislating to allow taxpayers the standing to sue all government and “immune” corporations.
  9. Expanding direct democracy by introducing ballot initiatives in the states that don’t have them and simplifying recall processes.
  10. Pushing community self-reliance.
  11. Clearing away obstacles to a competitive electoral process.
  12. Restoring civil liberties.
  13. Enhance civic skills and experience for students.
  14. Ending unconstitutional wars and enforcing Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, which gives Congress the exclusive authority to declare war.
  15. Revising trade agreements to protect US sovereignty and ending fast track approval for treaties.
  16. Protecting children from commericialism and the physical and mental harm it causes.
  17. Ending corporate personhood.
  18. Controlling more of the commons than we already own.
  19. Getting tough on corporate crime.
  20. Ramping up investor power by strengthening investor-protection laws.
  21. Opposing the patenting of life forms.
  22. Ending the ineffective war on drugs.
  23. Pushing for environmentalism.
  24. Reforming health care.
  25. Creating convergent institutions.

3 Among many others:
• The left-right coalition that stopped the Clinch River Breeder Reactor in 1983
• The left-right coalition that passed the False Claims Amendment Act in 1986 to protect whistleblowers who uncovered fraud in government contracts. The passage of the McCain (R)–Feingold (D) Act to reform campaign financing in 2003.
• The left-right coalition Ron Paul formed with sympathetic Democrats to introduce a bill to legalize industrial hemp in 2005.
• The bill Ron Wyden (D) and Rand Paul (R) introduced to legalize industrial hemp in 2013.
• The bill Ron Wyden (D) and Lisa Murkowski introducing requiring the reporting of donations over $1,000 to any group engaged in federal political activity.

 

The Corporate/CIA Role in the Rise of Fundamentalism

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thy will be done

Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil

By Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett

1995 Harper Collins

I recently picked up this book again – after reading it when it first came out nearly 20 years ago. Charlotte Dennett, one of the authors, got a of media attention prior to Obama’s election in 2008, due to her her efforts to bring murder charges against George W. Bush.

Thy Will Be Done lays out the systematic economic colonization of the Amazon Basin by US corporate interests (led by Nelson Rockefeller) and the CIA – and their unscrupulous use of fundamentalist missionaries and Bible translators to indoctrinate and displace indigenous tribes who stood in the way of clear cutting for agriculture and oil and mineral extraction.

As CIA-liaison during the Eisenhower administration, Rockefeller developed close and enduring relationships at the CIA. This would lead to an ongoing collaboration in opening up Central and South America – and Southeast Asia – to U.S. corporate interests.

In addition to examining the Rockefeller/CIA campaign to introduce fundamentalist Christianity to the native tribes of Central and South America, this 960-page book also catalogs, in extensive detail, the full range of illegal CIA activities (and direct or indirect involvement of Rockefeller and the Rockefeller Foundation) under Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter.

The book also chronicles the CIA role in installing brutal genocidal dictatorships in Guatemala and El Salvador.

The material presented is from presidential libraries, declassified documents and Congressional. It’s meticulously referenced and features a comprehensive index.

 

How Big Money Controls the White House

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prezpuppetry_DV

Presidential Puppetry: Obama, Romney and Their Masters

by Andrew Kreig (Eagle View Books 2013)

Book Review

Presidential Puppetry is a comprehensive expose of the wealthy corporate interests who are the real power behind the federal government. Kreig orients his book around Obama and Romney, the major presidential candidates in the 2012 elections. However in discussing Mitt Romney’s hidden ties to the financial oligarchy, he also explores the Bush family’s Wall Street connections, the history and structure of the Mormon Church (especially as it relates to corporate America) and Karl Rove’s role in orchestrating Republican dirty tricks and voting fraud. Presidential Puppetry is meticulously researched and sourced, with a 17 page bibliography and 110 pages of footnotes and references.

Kreig, a lawyer and respected Washington DC journalist, takes the 2012 presidential debates as his point of departure, noting the deliberate secrecy of both candidates around their personal background. This deliberate secrecy should have been a campaign issue. Yet neither raised it in the debates – there seemed to be a gentleman’s agreement not to do so. Kreig is also scathingly critical of the mainstream media’s failure to challenge either the secrecy or corrupt corporate influences it concealed.

Obama Was Groomed

For his part, Obama refused to release any of his university transcripts, as well as having his passport records secretly scrubbed at the State Department. According to Kreig, this refusal to release educational records is unprecedented, especially for a candidate with virtually no public record of their political background or views. Kreig believes there are two reasons for Obama’s secrecy about his records from Occidental College, Columbia University and Harvard Law School. The first was to conceal his early links to the CIA, via a CIA front organization he worked for called Business International Corporation (BIC). The second was to hide his early “grooming” for political office by Zbigniew Brzesinski and possibly other members of Bilderberg, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Trilateral Commission. All three are secretive round table groups that allow wealthy financial elites access to major public officials.

By tracing the background of the Bush, Carter, Clinton and Reagan presidencies, Kreig makes a very compelling case that the ruling elite selects and grooms individuals it offers up to us as presidential candidates. What’s more, of our past five presidents, only George W Bush has no documented history of working for US intelligence. Krieg alleges Reagan secretly passed information to the FBI about Hollywood leftists, Bush senior performed various services for the CIA as founder and director of Zapata Oil Company, and Clinton informed on anti-Vietnam War protestors as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford.

Romney’s Cayman Island Tax Shelters

Romney’s big secret was his tax returns. It’s standard for presidential candidates to release ten years of returns. What the Republican candidate sought to conceal, according to Kreig, was systematic tax avoidance that included a Swiss bank account and tax shelters in the Cayman Islands. Both the Democrats and the corporate media failed in their duty to the public by refusing to bring any of this to light.

Broken Campaign Promises and a Trail of Bodies

Kreig goes on to examine Obama’s first term in light of his hidden history. The American people thought they were voting for a progressive community organizer but ended up with someone even more pro-Wall Street and pro-war than his Republican predecessor.

The most disturbing aspect of the book relates to cases Kreig details in which both Republican and Democratic insiders have tried to expose corporate interference with specific federal office holders. Largely owing to the refusal of the corporate media to support these whistleblowers, many have ended up dead under suspicious circumstances or in prison on trumped up charges.

Kreig tries to finish on an optimistic note by reminding us of all the brave independent journalists (on whose work Presidential Puppetry is based) whose investigative work is beginning to give us a true picture of how our so-called democracy really works. He encourages people (I assume he means whistleblowers) to send him tips (i.e. leaks) via his Justice Integrity Project website.

A recent post there is a moving tribute to the late John Judge, past president of the Coalition on Political Assassinations. The latter archives and promotes scholarly research offering alternatives to official accounts of the JFK assassination and other high profile political deaths, including those of Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Originally published in Dissident Voice

The US and Israel Quietly Break Up Iraq

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oil tanker

US Court Orders Kurdish Oil Seized

While the world is distracted with Israeli atrocities in Gaza, the US and Israel are quietly breaking up Iraq. According to Reuters UK, a federal court in Texas has ordered US Marshals to seize a $100 million cargo of Kurdish oil on a tanker off the coast of Galveston, Texas – but only if the tanker enters US territorial waters.

Attorneys for the government of Iraq laid claim to the oil in a lawsuit they filed on July 28. Since May, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has shipped five million-barrel tankers of oil from the Turkish port of Ceyhan in defiance of Iraqi law, which mandates that Baghdad has sole authority over Iraq’s natural resources. One cargo of Kurdish crude was delivered to the United States in May to an unidentified buyer.

Four other tanker loads of Kurdish oil have been delivered to Israel.

The recent inability of the Iraqi government to defend its northern territories from the Islamic State (aka ISIS aka ISIL) has emboldened the KRG to assert control over the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. With the complicity of the Turkish government, they have been marketing the oil on their own behalf. Because Kurdistan is land-locked the oil must be shipped via pipeline to Turkey.

Obama’s Contradictory Position on Kurdish Autonomy

This is one rare instance in which the US and Israel appear to be on opposite sides (or do they?). According to the Wall Street Journal, the Obama administration publicly opposes direct oil sales by Kurdistan, fearing this could contribute to the break-up of Iraq.

Yet, repeating a common pattern, the official position contradicts growing evidence that the CIA is training and arming ISIS militants.

Israel, meanwhile, is eager to expand trade with Kurdistan. According to unnamed Israeli officials, they see it as an opportunity to expand Israel’s limited diplomatic network in the Middle East, while simultaneously shoring up the country’s energy security.

photo credit: judy_and_ed via photopin cc

A Classic Kiwi Mocumentary About Propaganda

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Propaganda

Slavko Martinov 2012

Korean with English subtitles

Film Review

The video below by Slavko Martinov is a sterling example of New Zealand satire. This is utterly classic Kiwi humor, deliberately biting, edgy and over-the-top. In fact, they may have pushed the envelope a bit too far in this one.

The premise of the satire is that the film is a “leaked” propaganda film by The Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea).

Reminiscent of the Yes Men and their impersonation of corporate criminals, this satiric depiction of pro-corporate propaganda in western society is so uncanny that New Zealand’s South Korean community still believe the filmmakers are North Korean spies.

Here Slavko Martinov discusses his motivation for producing this mockumentary and the unexpected reaction it has received:

Is Schizophrenia an Inflammatory Illness?

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madness of adam and eve

The Madness of Adam and Even: How Schizophrenia Shaped Humanity

by David Horrobin (2001 Bantam Press)

Book Review

The Madness of Adam and Eve advances a dual hypothesis: 1) that schizophrenia is a whole body disorder, rather than a “brain disease, as promoted by Big Pharma and the psychiatric fraternity and 2) that schizophrenia stems from the same series of genetic mutations that led to the appearance of the human species (homo sapiens) 100,000 years ago.

The specific biochemical “error” Horrobin credits for causing schizophrenia is a defect in the metabolism of arachidonic acid (AA), a fatty acid that facilitates smooth signal transmission between nerve endings. Horobin believes a genetic mutation around 100,000 years ago caused a massive increase in AA production, enabling a giant increase in dendritic connections between neurons. This, in turn, resulted in a sudden explosion in human intellectual capacity, as well as the sudden appearance of art, music and organized religion.

Horribin also maintains that schizophrenia was a relatively mild illness in hunter gatherer societies, owing to a diet rich in the omega 3 fatty acids essential for optiminal brain function. With the major dietary changes that accompanied the agricultural and industrial revolution, schizophrenia has become much more severe. The switch from omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids to saturated animal fat was by far the most significant, as saturated fats can suppress the uptake and utilization of omega 3 fatty acids.

Horrobin’s hypothesis is born out by WHO research revealing that schizophrenia is more severe in the industrialized west, studies showing that schizophrenics improve when given large doses of the omega 3 fatty acid EPA, and the failure of schizophrenics to experience a “niacin blush”* when exposed to megadoses of niacin.

Aimed at a lay audience, The Madness of Adam and Eve doesn’t always distinguish clearly between theory and established fact. While Horribin’s ideas make an important contribution to the understanding of mental illness, his overemphasis on genetic determinism in the origin of mental illness is clearly dated. In 2002, the field of epigenetics** was still in its infancy and there was limited understanding of the role of noxious prenatal influences on gene expression and the development of chronic physical and mental illnesses. Nor was the role of harmful intestinal bacteria and endotoxin-related inflammation recognized in the etiology of autism, schizophrenia and depression.

His portrayal of the intellectual inferiority of Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthal man) is also obsolete. More recent archeological evidence suggests that Neanderthal man was the intellectual equal of homo sapiens.

*A niacin flush is sudden reddening and burning of the skin caused when niacin promotes conversion of AA to the inflammatory peptide prostaglandin. Several researchers have proposed using a niacin skin test as a research tool in studying schizophrenia.

**Epignetics is the study of hormonal and other prenatal influence that affect the expression of genes as specific protein enzymes.

When Horrobin died in 2003, the British Medical Journal wrote a particularly nasty obituary describing him as “the greatest snake oil salesman of his age.” A decade of research into the beneficial role of omega 3 oil in the treatment of depression (particularly post natal depression, bipolar illness, schizophrenia and premenstrual syndrome) has clearly vindicated him. The supplementation of prescription psychotropics with omega 3 oils is now standard psychiatric practice. 

Research into his theory that schizophrenia is a whole body inflammatory illness, rather than a brain disease, is also advancing. More recent studies focus on inflammation caused by endotoxin-producing by gram negative intestinal bacteria. Thus far schizophrenics’ demonstrated impairment in prostaglandin synthesis has failed to translate into viable treatment options.

There have been numerous studies suggesting a beneficial effect of non steroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAID) medication (such as ibuprofen and naprosyn) in the treatment of schizophrenia. Unfortunately NSAIDs, like psychotropics, have numerous serious side effects, including peptic ulcer disease and reduced kidney function.

 

The Taboo Against Animal Fat

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red meat

(The first of two posts about the damaging effect of the western diet on intestinal bacteria and human health.)

As a traditionally trained physician, I watch with horror and dismay as for-profit corporations intrude ever deeper into so-called evidence based medicine. I have written at length about the role of Big Pharma in corrupting good medical practice to promote the sale of prescription pharmaceuticals – and their bottom line (see Menopause: Made in the USA and Drug Companies: Killing Kids for Profit). The role of Food Inc in the dietary recommendations doctors (and government) make to patients and the public at large are even more insidious and damaging.

The current taboo against saturated animal fats is a case in point. For the past thirty years, doctors and government agencies have been lecturing us that diets high in saturated animal fats (found in red meat, whole milk, eggs, butter and lard) cause high cholesterol levels, heart disease and stroke. They have persisted in this three decade campaign against animal fat – despite the total absence of scientific research supporting a link between fat intake and high cholesterol levels – or heart disease and and stroke. In fact, growing evidence suggests just the opposite: diets low in saturated fats and high in sugar and refined carbohydrate promote obesity, type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol levels, high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke.

In other words, government and the medical fraternity have it backwards. Worse still, it appears that their purely theoretical (based on no evidence) phobia against animal fat may be the single most important factor in the current epidemic of obesity and type 2 diabetes.

An Unproven Hypothesis

The current taboo against animal fats is based on a hypothesis first promoted forty years ago when I was in medical school. The theory works like this:  consumption of foods high in cholesterol and saturated fats promotes high levels of blood cholesterol, which lead to calcified plaque formation in arteries, which restrict blood flow to the heart and brain, as well as increasing blood pressure by making blood vessels less elastic.

There’s a credible body of research linking high cholesterol levels to plaque formation and the latter to high blood pressure, heart attack and stroke. However there’s no research whatsoever linking diets high in animal fats and cholesterol to high blood cholesterol levels.

In March, Annals of Internal Medicine published a metanalysis of 72 scientific studies on the effect of different fats on heart disease. The authors conclude there is insufficient research evidence to support guidelines discouraging consumption of saturated animal fats.

The Work of Weston A Price

A growing body of evidence suggests that diets low in saturated fats are, in fact, harmful to human health. Many of these studies were inspired by the work of dentist Weston A. Price in the 1930s. Puzzled that Maori, Australian aboriginals and other indigenous groups experienced no tooth decay prior to adopting a western diet, Price studied their dietary habits. To his surprise, he discovered it wasn’t the direct effect of sugar on tooth enamel that caused cavities. His patients developed tooth decay because diets high in sugar and refined carbohydrates were deficient in basic nutrients essential for human health. When he helped them alter their diets, his patients not only avoided further tooth decay but healed existing cavities.

One of Price’s discoveries was that animal fats* provide essential fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E and K) that play a vital role in the absorption of other nutrients essential for hormonal and neurological function and protection against chronic diseases, such as cancer and heart disease.

The Role of Intestinal Bacteria

More recent studies have elucidated the mechanism by which diets high in sugar and refined carbohydrate predispose to both high cholesterol levels and obesity. Some of this research is summarized in an April 2013 article in Mother Jones Are Happy But Bacteria Key to Weight Loss?

The article explains how high sugar and refined carbohydrate diets, coupled with massive antibiotic overuse in medicine and factory farming**, promote the growth of gram negative, endotoxin-producing intestinal bacteria. When endotoxin is absorbed into the bloodstream, it sets up a wide ranging inflammatory response that can manifest a variety of effects, including arthritis, eczema, psoriasis and neuropsychological syndromes such as autism, Asperger’s disorder, schizophrenia and ADHD. A number of studies suggest that high cholesterol levels are also an inflammatory response to this endotoxin. Others link endotoxin to inflammatory damage in the brain’s appetite center. An impaired appetite center will cause people and animals to eat indefinitely without ever feeling full.

The Mother Jones article also describes several studies in which obese patients lost weight by simply suppressing endotoxin-producing bacteria – by taking probiotics and eating fermented foods containing beneficial bacteria.

*The contamination of animal fats and dairy products, even when produced organically, with fat-soluble pesticides and other industrial toxins makes choosing “safe” saturated fats somewhat problematic. Classified as endocrine disruptors, many of these toxins mimic estrogen, which promotes the development and growth of breast cancer. For this reason, I prefer coconut oil as my saturated fat of choice.

**Factory farmed animals are routinely fed antibiotics to hasten and maximize growth.

To be continued.

photo credit: {Guerrilla Futures | Jason Tester} via photopin cc