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Science & Technology

ADHD-Did They Get It All Wrong?

2025-04-14

[DNYUZ] In the early 1990s, James Swanson was working as a research psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, where he specialized in the study of attention disorders. It was a touchy time for the field. The Church of Scientology had organized a nationwide protest campaign against the psychiatric profession, and Ritalin, then the leading medication prescribed to children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, was one of its main targets. Whenever Swanson and his colleagues gathered for a scientific conference, they were met by chanting protesters waving signs and airplanes overhead pulling banners that read, “Psychs, Stop Drugging Our Kids.”

It was true that prescription rates for Ritalin were on the rise. The number of American children diagnosed with A.D.H.D. more than doubled in the early 1990s, from fewer than a million patients in 1990 to more than two million in 1993, almost two-thirds of whom were prescribed Ritalin. To Swanson, at the time, that increase seemed entirely appropriate. Those two million children represented about 3 percent of the nation’s child population, and 3 percent was the rate that he and many other scientists believed was an accurate measure of A.D.H.D. among children.

Still, you didn’t have to be a Scientologist to acknowledge that there were some legitimate questions about A.D.H.D. Despite Ritalin’s rapid growth, no one knew exactly how the medication worked or whether it really was the best way to treat children’s attention issues. Anecdotally, doctors and parents would observe that when many children began taking stimulant medications like Ritalin, their behavior would improve almost overnight, but no one had measured in a careful, large-scale scientific study how common that positive response was or, for that matter, what the effects were on a child of taking Ritalin over the long term. And so Swanson and a team of researchers, with funding from the National Institute of Mental Health, began a vast, multisite randomized controlled trial comparing stimulant treatment for A.D.H.D. with nonpharmaceutical approaches like parent training and behavioral coaching.

Swanson was in charge of the site in Orange County, Calif. He recruited and selected about 100 children with A.D.H.D. symptoms, all from 7 to 9 years old. They were divided into treatment groups — some were given regular doses of Ritalin, some were given high-quality behavioral training, some were given a combination and the remainder, a comparison group, were left alone to figure out their own treatment. The same thing happened at five other sites across the continent. Known as the Multimodal Treatment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Study, or M.T.A., it was one of the largest studies ever undertaken of the long-term effects of any psychiatric medication.

The initial results of the M.T.A. study, published in 1999, underscored the case for stimulant medication. After 14 months of treatment, the children who took Ritalin every day had significantly fewer symptoms than the ones who received only behavioral training. Word went out to clinics and pediatricians’ offices around the country: Ritalin worked. This was good news not only for families with children who struggled with attention issues but also for the corporations that offered them pharmaceutical solutions. In the years after the study’s initial publication, Swanson began consulting for drug companies. He advised Shire, which manufactured Adderall, a similar stimulant medication, on how to formulate an extended-release version of its product, so that children could take just one pill each morning instead of needing to visit the school nurse’s office in the middle of the day.

Though Swanson had welcomed that initial increase in the diagnosis rate, he expected it to plateau at 3 percent. Instead, it kept rising, hitting 5.5 percent of American children in 1997, then 6.6 percent in 2000. As time passed, Swanson began to grow uneasy. He and his colleagues were continuing to follow the almost 600 children in the M.T.A. study, and by the mid-2000s, they realized that the new data they were collecting was telling a different — and less hopeful — story than the one they initially reported. It was still true that after 14 months of treatment, the children taking Ritalin behaved better than those in the other groups. But by 36 months, that advantage had faded completely, and children in every group, including the comparison group, displayed exactly the same level of symptoms. Swanson is now 80 and close to the end of his career, and when he talks about his life’s work, he sounds troubled — not just about the M.T.A. results but about the state of the A.D.H.D. field in general. “There are things about the way we do this work,” he told me, “that just are definitely wrong.”

I’ve spent the last year speaking with some of the leading A.D.H.D. researchers in the United States and abroad, and many of them, like Swanson, express concern over what they see as a disconnect between the emerging scientific understanding of A.D.H.D. and the way the condition is being treated in clinics and doctors’ offices. Edmund Sonuga-Barke, a researcher in psychiatry and neuroscience at King’s College London, described the situation in personal terms. “I’ve invested 35 years of my life trying to identify the causes of A.D.H.D., and somehow we seem to be farther away from our goal than we were when we started,” he told me. “We have a clinical definition of A.D.H.D. that is increasingly unanchored from what we’re finding in our science.”

Despite the questions these scientists have begun to raise, the growth of the diagnosis shows no signs of stopping or even slowing down. Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 11.4 percent of American children had been diagnosed with A.D.H.D., a record high. That figure includes 15.5 percent of American adolescents, 21 percent of 14-year-old boys and 23 percent of 17-year-old boys. Seven million American children have received an A.D.H.D. diagnosis, up from six million in 2016 and two million in the mid-1990s.

Now, however, some scientists have begun to argue that the traditional conception of A.D.H.D. as an unchanging, essential fact about you — something you simply have or don’t have, something wired deep in your brain — is both inaccurate and unhelpful. According to Sonuga-Barke, the British researcher, the traditional notion that there is a natural category of “people with A.D.H.D.” that clinicians can objectively measure and define “just doesn’t seem to be the case.”

A.D.H.D. is defined in the D.S.M. as a neurodevelopmental disorder, but the symptoms of A.D.H.D. can be produced by a variety of environmental causes as well. Difficulty sitting still and sustaining attention can also be symptoms of a serious head injury, fetal alcohol syndrome, childhood lead exposure, early trauma and more. There is also a high rate of overlap between the symptoms of A.D.H.D. and those of other psychiatric disorders, including depression, anxiety, dyslexia and autism. Although the D.S.M. specifies that clinicians shouldn’t diagnose children with A.D.H.D. if their symptoms are better explained by another mental disorder, more than three quarters of children diagnosed with A.D.H.D. do have another mental-health condition as well, according to the C.D.C. More than a third have a diagnosis of anxiety, and a similar fraction have a diagnosed learning disorder. Forty-four percent have been diagnosed with a behavioral disorder like oppositional defiant disorder.

This all complicates the effort to portray A.D.H.D. as a distinct, unique biological disorder. Is a patient with six symptoms really that different from one with five? If a child who experienced early trauma now can’t sit still or stay organized, should she be treated for A.D.H.D.? What about a child with an anxiety disorder who is constantly distracted by her worries? Does she have A.D.H.D., or just A.D.H.D.-like symptoms caused by her anxiety?

Sonuga-Barke goes further, arguing that the entire decades-long quest for a biomarker has been “a red herring” for the field. He understands his colleagues’ desire to find airtight evidence for the biological nature of A.D.H.D. that could help them defend the diagnosis against those who would dismiss it altogether. “In the field, we’re so frightened that people will say it doesn’t exist,” he says. “That this is just bad parenting, from the right, or this is just a product of our postindustrial society, from the left. We have to double down because we’re terrified of what will happen to the kids who can’t get the meds. We’ve seen the impact they can have on people’s lives.”

But the reality, he says, is that “there literally is no natural cutting point where you could say, ‘This person has got A.D.H.D., and this person hasn’t got it.’ Those decisions are to some extent arbitrary. That doesn’t mean that the suffering associated with A.D.H.D. is imaginary, it just means it’s on a continuum. And that is the conundrum — the empirical crisis — for A.D.H.D.”

Link

Home Front: Politix

Hollywood Heavyweights Pour Cash into Georgia Senate Runoffs

2020-11-24

[BREITBART] Georgia is ground zero in the battle for the balance of power in Washington, D.C., as control of the U.S. Senate now hinges on the outcome of the two Senate runoff races in the Peach State. With the Senate majority leadership within his reach, Sen. Chuck Schumer

...Senator-for-life from New York, renowned for his love of standing in front of cameras and microphones. Schumer has been a professional politician since 1975, when disco was in flower, which is 44.96814 years. Senate minority leader as of 2017...
(D-NY) recently declared, "Now we take Georgia, and then we change America." Nobody is happier to make Schumer’s declaration a reality than Hollywood, as many of the industry’s biggest power players are putting their money and influence behind Georgia’s Democratic Senate candidates to win that fight.

A-list stars including George Clooney, Will Smith, Joaquin Phoenix, and Leonardo DiCaprio are pouring cash into Georgia’s runoff elections, hoping to push Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock across the finish line, thereby flipping the Senate blue.

Link

Home Front: Politix

Karen Bass’s Long March from Communist Fringe to Biden’s VP Shortlist

2020-08-01

[BREITBART] The Democrat’s presumptive nominee Joe Foreign Policy Whiz Kid Biden
...I had the great honor of being arrested with our UN Ambassador on the streets of Soweto, trying to get to see him on Robbens Island...
will name his running mate as early as next week, and Congressional Black Caucus Chair Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA) is reportedly a top contender for job.The Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party, Democrat has emerged as the favorite pick of former Sen. Chris Dodd, who serves on Biden’s vice presidential search committee. According a source who spoke with Politico, Dodd has urged Biden to choose Bass because "she’s a loyal No. 2. And that’s what Biden really wants."

On the surface, Bass’s background as a former medical professional and South Los Angeles community organizer make her an attractive candidate to serve at a time when public health and racial inequality are on the top of voters’ minds.

Her resume bears the hallmarks of a rising political star, starting with her first foray into elected office 16 years ago, when she won a seat in the California State Assembly and later became the first Black woman in the country to serve as the speaker of a state legislature when she assumed the Speakership in 2008. Prior to this, Bass worked as a physician assistant and a left-wing community activist who founded a non-profit in the 1990s called the Community Coalition. She made headlines after the 1992 L.A. riots for her fight to prevent liquor stores from being rebuilt in the neighborhoods destroyed by the uprising.

In 2010, Bass won her U.S. House seat, where her voting record has been typical of a progressive member of a Democratic Party

...every time you hear the phrase white people you're listening to a Democrat...
increasingly embracing socialism.

However,
Switzerland makes more than cheese...
a deep dive into Bass’s background reveals that her influences were not just socialist, but hardcore communist.

The VP vetting process brought renewed scrutiny to comments Bass made about Cuba’s communist dictator Fidel Castro. In a statement following Castro’s death in 2016, Bass referred to him as "Comandante en Jefe" and described his death as "a great loss to the people of Cuba."

The honorific "Commandante en Jefe"—which translates to "commander in chief"—was criticized by Florida Democrats for being excessively deferential to a dictator with a long history of human rights
...which are often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless...
abuses.

In an interview with MSNBC on Sunday, Bass attempted to walk back her use of the term. "I have talked to my colleagues in the House about that, and it’s certainly something that I would not say again," Bass said. "I have always supported the Cuban people, and the relationship that Barack Obama
I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody...
and Biden had in their administration in terms of opening up relations.”

Gotcha point or a serious connection? Related: Top potential Biden VP pick Karen Bass praised Scientology in 2010

Link

Olde Tyme Religion

How Scientology is coping with COVID-19 as chairman David Miscavige declares crisis 'hysteria' and 'planetary bullbait' and Tom Cruise and John Travolta have 'special bunkers' at secretive base in California

2020-04-03

[Daily Mail, where America gets its news]

Link

-Land of the Free

Censorship Ho! Let's censor the Mormon Church off of YouTube.

2018-08-14

This was posted on facebook with the YouTube take down. I am not a Fan of the Mormon Church or other groups but this take down is telling and NOTE that Scientology Videos are still hosted by YouTube.

Facebook Link
Apparently, YouTube has now taken down the Mormon Channel. This was the media channel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. There are other LDS-related channels, but I’m told that was the one where they shared their inspirational videos and such.

I tried searching for the YouTube Mormon Channel. The link comes up but it’s dead.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdNjexbIS_NKJC4ZRwKf9ag

Before any rando idiots come piling in with their repetitive crap, yes, I understand that this is not technically a violation of the Church’s rights, that YouTube is a private platform, etc. As with Alex Jones, that’s not the point.

So, according to Google, Alex Jones was the worst and had to go, and one rung below Infowars on the ladder of evil are the Mormons? Are you kidding me?

I bet they’ll walk it back and restore it, and they will claim it was an “error”, just like with the gun channels. It might depend on how much backlash there is.

I told you guys this wouldn’t end with Alex Jones.

Link

Home Front: WoT

Actor Will Smith Gives MASSIVE Donation to Black Muslims Linked to Terrorism

2016-12-25

"The Nation of Islam has deep ties to the Black Panthers, a domestic terrorist organization which openly admits its interest in murdering whites.

To remember the march, they are organizing "Justice... Or Else!" in Washington, D.C. And famous actor Will Smith, along with his wife, donated $150,000 to offset the costs of the rally.

You may love Will Smith from his famous role on the "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" and his countless box-office movie successes.

Farrakhan posted on his Facebook page, "the couple happily donated $150,000 to offset the cost of hosting the upcoming historic gathering!" He reminded his radical followers that Smith also attended the original march in 1995. He announced the donation at Tindley Temple United Methodist Church in Will Smith’s hometown of Philadelphia. He’s using the massive donation to attract other celebrity donations, as he needs approximately $2 million to make the bigoted pro-Islam rally happen this October.

Supposedly, Smith is a former Scientology member who opposes all organized religion, but that hasn’t stopped him from using his deep pockets to promote radicalized Islam.

Farrakhan has an extensive record of insane comments and racist rants about police officers. He supports violence and the type of hate that should be shunned in any civilized society."

Link

The Grand Turk

Turkey's purge: 31 detained, 40 arrested, Interior Minister resigns, and the Gulen movement was founded by CIA

2016-09-01

Turkish interior minister quits, says PM, after string of attacks

[ALMASDARNEWS] Turkey’s Interior Minister Efkan Ala has resigned, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Wednesday, after a string of bombings and attacks blamed on Islamic State and Kurdish insurgents that prompted public criticism.

The Interior Ministry portfolio has been filled by Labour Minister Suleyman Soylu, the prime minister said in a statement which was broadcast on Turkish television stations.

Turkish judge seeks asylum in Greece

[AlAhram] A 48-year-old Turkish judge has requested political asylum in Greece, claiming persecution by the government of President Tayyip Erdogan, the Athens News Agency said on Tuesday.

The Greek coast guard said only that a Turkish national had been arrested on Tuesday after being rescued along with six migrants from a boat off the Greek island of Chios. It did not give the nationality of the migrants. The coast guard and police would not comment specifically on the agency report.

Former AKP lawmaker and 30 others detained, 40 police arrested over Gülen links

[Hurriyet] A former lawmaker from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been detained over suspected links to the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FETÖ).

Given that Fethullah is the gentleman's first name, this is like talking about the dreaded Georgeists...

Lawyer İdris Şahin, a former AKP deputy from the Central Anatolian province of Çankırı and deputy chairman of the constitutional commission, was detained in an operation launched by the Çankırı police’s counter-smuggling and organized crime department. Searches were carried out in Şahin’s house and office.

Meanwhile, a total of 30 people were detained in an operation against FETÖ in the Central Anatolian province of Konya early on Aug. 31.

The Konya Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office launched an investigation over the failed seizure of the government

...perhaps that has some sort of meaning in the original Turkish, but I suspect not -- the Communists used to proclaim all sorts of nonsense during their purges, as I recall...

and a total of 90 detention warrants were issued as part of the probe.

Konya-based operations were carried out simultaneously in 22 provinces by counter-smuggling and organized crime department units. Operations were conducted at a total of 90 addresses, which resulted in 30 detentions.

Teachers and professors who were suspended after the coup bid were among the detained, as well as the Gülen movement’s suspected provincial and district “imams” and accountants. Police officers, who previously were on duty in Konya and now assigned to different provinces, were also detained in the operation.

Searches were continuing to apprehend the suspects who couldn’t be found at their addresses.

Here's hoping they've managed to escape, or at least to find secure hiding places.

Books written by U.S.-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen were found in the searches conducted at the addresses, Doğan News Agency reported.

Elsewhere, a total of 40 police officers, including high ranking officials, were arrested over links to Gülenists in the western province of İzmir on Aug. 31. The police officers were arrested for “being members of an armed terrorist organization,” Anadolu Agency reported.

Gülen movement ‘founded by CIA like the Mormons and Scientologists,’ says Turkish prosecutor

Utterly insane.

[Hurriyet] A Turkish prosecutor probing the financial links of the Fethullah Gülen movement has said the organizational structure of the group is the same as the Mormon Church and the Church of Scientology in the United States, claiming that all three groups were founded by U.S. intelligence.

The CIA organizes these sects as non-governmental organizations in order “to make changes to society,” read the indictment prepared Zafer Dur, a prosecutor in the Aegean province of İzmir.

The system that the Gülenists have built over years up in the education, heath, political, technology and culture sectors aims at the same thing as these churches, Dur said.

He claimed that it would not be possible for a primary school graduate, 75-year-old Fethullah Gülen, who has been living in the U.S. since 1999, to have built up such a large organization and infiltrated vital state organizations through his own efforts and abilities.

“Without international backing, Gülen could not have opened schools in 160 countries,” Dur added.

But his imperial majesty, the wise and all-seeing neo-Ottoman Sultan Recep I was best friends with this evil idiot for so many years. How could this be?

The prosecutor also established a link between the arrest of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s (PKK) leader in 1999 and Gülen moving to the U.S. in the same year.

“Investigative journalists have been reporting that [Gülenists] worked as contractors for foreign intelligence services such as the CIA, MI6 and BND and infiltrated into the intelligence services of other countries acting in the name of the services they worked for,” read the indictment.

Link

-Short Attention Span Theater-

Jaden Smith Finds Wisdom in Everybody Dropping Out of School

2013-09-18

[ABCNEWS.GO] Jaden Smith might be best known as the star of the remake of "The Karate Kid" and for his lifelong role as the son of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, but the 15-year-old is also starring in his own online controversy after sounding off against America's education system, calling school a brainwashing tool.
Can't argue with that statement.
Jaden tweeted to his more than 4.5 million followers Sept. 12, "School Is The Tool To Brainwash The Youth" and "If Newborn Babies Could Speak They Would Be The Most Intelligent Beings On Planet Earth."
Ummm... No, they wouldn't. They'd still be ignorant. Even more ignorant than your average 15-year-old.
Jaden, 15, is considered Hollywood royalty, being a friend of Justin Bieber and dating a sister of the Kardashians, Kylie Jenner, but some people say he is setting a bad example with his comments.
Someone would actually pay attention to the ramblings of a 15-year-old blockhead?
"He has such a huge group of fans that really look up to him," Us Weekly reporter Jennifer Peros told ABC News. "So this isn't really the example you should really be setting."
"And who do you look up to, little boy?"
"Jaden Smith."
"I fear for the Republic."
Jaden and his sister, Willow, 12, are both home schooled.
So they know lots more than you and I do.
Jaden had attended the New Village Leadership Academy, a private school his parents founded in California five years ago, until it closed its doors in June because of lack of funding.
They started it, then let it collapse?
The academy used "study-tech," a teaching method created by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, something to which Will Smith alluded on "Live with Regis and Kelly" in 2007.
Golly. It was on Live with Regis and ~~Kathy Lee~~ Kelly? It must be really neat.
There are "powerful educational concepts that we believe in," Smith said on the show.
They were developed by the founder of Scientology, after all.
But instead of revolutionizing that educational system, the younger Smith seems to be suggesting his Twitter followers abandon it. "If Everybody In The World Dropped Out Of School We Would Have A Much More Intelligent Society," Jaden tweeted on Sept. 13.
Being a fifteen-year-old dork, he confuses education and intelligence.
But his philosophical musings have been met with skepticism.
Not everybody believes that ignorance is bliss? How strange.
"This is why we don't let celebrity children make decisions on the education system," one person tweeted. Another even resents one of Smith's comments with the heading, "Stupidest tweet ever."
Actually, both of those statements can be taken as truisms.
The teen actor explained his approach to life this summer on "Good Morning America," saying, "I really try to do me and really what I want to do and please myself instead of trying to please other people."
So he's not only a dork, but a self-centered dork.
In his latest tweet, Jaden advises his followers: "Everybody Get Off Your Phones And Go Do What You Actually Wanna Do."
What if what you actually wanna do is to beat the snot out of some dorky actor's kid?
Jaden was rumored not too long ago to be seeking emancipation from his A-list parents, but his dad recently joked that off as being untrue.
"If he was emancipated, he'd have to get a job to support himself, and he's not qualified for McDonald's."

Link

Britain

Feel free to insult me: campaigners

2012-05-17

Calls to scrap Public Order Act in UK

An unlikely coalition of lawmakers and activists came together in Britain on Wednesday to urge people to "feel free to insult me" in a campaign for the repeal of a law banning public insults.

Groups including the Christian Institute, the National Secular Society and a noted gay rights campaigner, led by a lawmaker from the ruling Conservative Party, called for the relevant section of the Public Order Act to be scrapped.

They said it has been used to arrest a teenage boy who held a placard reading "Scientology is a dangerous cult" and a student who joked that a police officer's horse was "gay," though both were eventually released without charge.

The wording, which bars people from using "insulting words or behaviour" in the hearing of someone likely "to be caused harassment, alarm or distress," has also been used against protesters and street preachers.

Conservative lawmaker David Davis said the ban, known as Section 5, was having a "terrible, chilling effect on democracy," while a poll commissioned by the campaign said 62 percent of lawmakers would support its repeal.

But 17 percent thought repealing it would undermine the ability of the police to protect the public, and one in five thought it would penalise minorities.

"We've sunk our differences to defend free speech," gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell wrote in the Times newspaper. He said he was arrested and charged under Section 5 in 1994 when he protested against the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir.

"Members of this Islamist group had endorsed the killing of Jews, gays, apostates and women who have sex outside marriage," he wrote.

"I displayed placards that documented the persecution of gay people by Islamist fanatics...

"I fought the charges and won, but not before spending many hours in police cells and standing trial."

He added that great thinkers such as Galileo and Darwin had caused "great offence and distress in their time."

The Public Order Act became law in 1986 in the wake of the miners' strikes across Britain, a key standoff between trade unions and authorities.

The campaigners said Wednesday that separate British laws protect people against discrimination, incitement and violence.

Link

-Short Attention Span Theater-

Farrakhan: Mideast uprisings will come to US

2011-02-28

Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan predicted on Sunday that America faces imminent uprisings that mirror those in the Middle East.
Americans demanding freedom, prosperity and democracy?
"What you are looking at in Tunisia, in Egypt ... Libya, in Bahrain ... what you see happening there ... you'd better prepare because it will be coming to your door," Farrakhan said in a booming voice, thousands of followers cheering in his wake.

Farrakhan also called on President Barack Obama to allow protesters to march, urging the president not to attack innocent people when they do.

The keynote address, titled "God will send saviours," capped a weekend of workshops focused on health, preparing for natural disasters and unidentified flying objects. The Nation of Islam believes in a UFO called "the wheel" or "the Mother Plane."

Farrakhan has described a 1985 religious experience in which he ascended into a flying saucer and heard the voice of Elijah Muhammad predicting historical events that came to pass.

For about four hours, Farrakhan spoke and jumped from topic to topic, citing religious texts.
Among other insane rants, he even praised Scientology and its founder L. Ron Hubbard.

Link

Home Front: Culture Wars

Elitist scorn only helps the Tea Party

2010-09-29

Stanley Fish, NYT

...Democrats will be helping them by saying scathing and dismissive things about the Tea Party and its candidates. The Greek mythological figure Antaeus won victory after victory because his opponents repeatedly threw him to the ground, not realizing that it was the earth (in the figure of his mother, Gaia) that nourished him and gave him renewed strength. The Tea Party's strength comes from the down-to-earth rhetoric it responds to and proclaims, and whenever high-brow critics heap the dirt of scorn and derision upon the party, its powers increase.
See also Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars IV ("If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine."); Br'er Rabbit, Uncle Remus Tales ("Please don't throw me in that briar patch over there!").
Commentators who explain smugly that O'Donnell's position on masturbation (that it is a selfish, solitary act) is contradicted by her Ayn Rand-like attack on collectivism, or who wax self-righteous about Paladino's comparing Sheldon Silver to Hitler and promising to wield a baseball bat in Albany, or who laugh at Sharron Angle for being in favor of Scientology (she denies it) and against fluoridation and the Department of Education, are doing these candidates a huge favor. They are saying, in effect, these people are stupid, they're jokes; and the implication (sometimes explicitly stated) is that anyone who takes them the least bit seriously doesn't get the joke and is stupid, too.

We the people hear this and know who is being talked about, and react with anger: "Don't presume to tell me what to think and whom to vote for just because you have more degrees than I do. I don't know much about these people but if you guys are against them, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt."

And if they don't exactly say that, the recently unveiled "Pledge to America" says it for them in its money quote: "An arrogant out-of-touch government of self-appointed elites make decisions, issue mandates, and enact laws without accepting or requesting the input of the many." The many grow and become more robust every time a self-satisfied voice from the political or media establishment dumps on their spokespersons....

Link

Britain

Teenager, 15, facing prosecution for holding a sign labelling Scientology 'a cult'

2008-05-21

A 15-year-old facing prosecution for holding up a placard which branded Scientology a "cult" has appealed for help to fight possible charges.

The unnamed teenager was served the summons by City of London police after taking part in a peaceful demonstration opposite the Church's London headquarters, on May 10.

Demonstrators from the anti-Scientology group, Anonymous were outside the church's £23m headquarters near St Paul's cathedral when the boy was "strongly advised" by police to get rid of the sign which said: "Scientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous cult".

A policewoman later read him section five of the Public Order Act and "strongly advised" him to remove the sign. The section prohibits signs which have representations or words which are threatening, abusive or insulting. But the teenager refused, and a file is now being passed to the Crown Prosecution Service for possible legal action.

Writing on an anti-Scientology website, the teenager says: "I need precedents, legal advice, definitions and defences.

"I intend to make a big folder with all the defence you can give me, and in case this does get through to court, I will be well prepared.

"Also, what's the likelihood I'll need a lawyer? If I do have to get one, it'll have to come out of my pocket money."

Ian Haworth from the Cult Information Centre said he would avoid labelling any organisation a "cult", but said bringing the issue into criminal rather than civil law would be "very serious". He added: "If it wasn't so serious it would be farcical.

"I'm very upset by what appears to have happened. I hope the CPS realise that this is an error and that nothing happens to this young man."

Liberty director, Shami Chakrabarti, told the Guardian: "This barmy prosecution makes a mockery of Britain's free speech traditions.

"After criminalising the use of the word 'cult', perhaps the next step is to ban the words 'war' and 'tax' from peaceful demonstrations?"

The teenager is seen in a video on YouTube quoting Mr Justice Latey as having said in a court judgment in 1984 that Scientology was a "cult" and was "corrupt, sinister and dangerous".

However, a spokeswoman for City Police said they had received complaints about the use of the words "cult" and "scientology kills" and warned protestors their signs breached the Public Order Act.

Chief Supt Rob Bastable said: "City of London Police upholds the right to demonstrate lawfully.

"But we have to balance that with the right of all sections of community not to be alarmed, harassed or distressed as a result of other people's behaviour."

The force came under fire in 2006 for accepting thousands of pounds of hospitality from the Church of Scientology. However a police spokeswoman said this was done in accordance with the force's regulations.

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