I was walking the streets of Fremantle the other day, and I saw this ad go past me several times:
It was attached to the back of this truck:
By the amount of airtime the ad was being given, I figured that whoever was putting on the show really wanted people to see it. Human rights – must be Amnesty International or someone similar right?
Sure enough – a little while later I saw a few protesters being interviewed by police. Guys – if you want to draw attention to yourselves then wearing masks is a great way of doing so. It reminded me of the 2000 World bank protests where tens of thousands of people inarticulately yelled for change. (For a more articulate version read the latest by Stiglitz)
They were protesting something or other outside the town hall. So after buying a tiny cooker for my trip, I decided to go in. Above the door was the sign that explained all:
In case I didn’t get the message, here’s the first thing I saw as I walked in:
Those evil psychiatrists. Now I happen to believe that ADD and the related drugs is prescribed far too often in many places, so I went despite the obvious kook warning signs. I did have a growing suspicion as to what sort of organization was behind this.
The exhibition consisted entirely of pasteboard displays and video screens.
Lots of them.
It all went seriously downhill after Godwins Law was invoked. I skipped reading and was out of there really quickly.
So I had to know – who was behind all of this? The last screen I passed showed was the one above with the Japanese gentleman. Was he the founder? And what of the spooky logo? The organsation is called CCHR
What was in it for the people doing this free display? Where was the value being created? Certainly they were not getting anything from merchandise sales – on offer were Industry of Death Books, T-Shirts and anti Psychiatry and Hitler-memorabilia:
So where was the money flow? What was the purpose of all of this? Who was gaining? Who were these people?
The protesters outside, now free from the police, gave the game away completely:
Yup. The scientologists do not enjoy a great reputation in Fremantle it seems. CCHR, it says in Wikipedia, is an “advocacy group established in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and psychiatrist Thomas Szasz”.
Case closed.
Lance Wiggs 
Curiously we have protesters wearing the same masks in Auckland, protesting against Scientology. Pity we can’t get Scientology classified as a terrorist organization :-)
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I have no idea what they were on about but anyone who has that much money to throw at ‘educating’ the public with their beliefs is a little scary.
Were their any real life Scientologists there? I reckon it would be kinda cool to discuss life with them, in a weird frustrating sort of way.
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Natalie:
It would be very frustrating I imagine to engage with Scientologists in any way.
Bryan
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Why is it Germany classifies them as a cult but the US government has it’s head buried in the ground?
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Good lawyers and lobbyists I think hipmonkey, and a freedom of speech thing.
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The masks are from the movie “V for Vendetta”.
Worth a look.
The various anti-capitalism protests (London 1999, Seattle 1999, Genoa 2001, Melbourne 2002) have gone mainstream – Hollywood even.
To quote Subcomandante Marcos – “Ya basta”…
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Have to say I don’t have any love for whack jobs of any religious stripe but the idea that psychiatry is questionable is a good one. Can’t think of anything else that Tom and I are on the same side of the fence on but drugging children is something we should be highly suspicious of considering how much money the drug companies are making from it.
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i don’t see it relevant that children are being caught in their system where the goal is only money, the adults just as the children are being hurt and confused by the psychiatric doctors, and are for certain doing almost only harm and nothing good for anyone.
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So now we know the writer is a psych based person. Look closer before the civilization you are part of becomes just like nazi germany. It most of the way there now..you have no rights, the people that control things are the psychiatrists, and you can be taken at any time and put completely out of action.
You also missed the fact that the number of people dying as a result of psychiatry and its “remedies” is at an all time high. Wait till one of your kids or relatives is one of the statistics then you will complain long and loudly but too late.
You just keep backing this stuff and you will get it history dictates that.
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Hey @lew, WTF does “psych based person” mean? Don’t we *all* have some form of psychology going on in our heads?
I presume you are a Scientologist, and as such, are blissfully unaware of how daft you sound to ordinary people – let alone the sort of people who read Lance’s blog. Hint: the stuff you read in all those books they sell you? It ain’t real. You are a member of a cult that exists solely to make money out of you and people like you. I recommend you seek unbiased advice and help from friends and family outside the “Church”…while you still have some.
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I have a degree in nursing and have worked in a neurology ward and I can tell you that we know very little about the brain. I can also tell you that there is no definition for sanity in the medical dictionary. Given this I don’t believe in psychiatry and I know for a fact that there is no blood test or scan to diagnose a mental illness and confirm a chemical imbalance. Often when a person is assumed to have a mental illness their physical symptoms are ignored and this is dangerous, in fact I know of a case where a woman was admitted to hospital behaving erratically and doctors thought she had a mental illness; they booked an ambulance to take her to a psychiatric hospital and didn’t do any physical tests on this woman. Fortunately a nurse did a set of obs and found the woman’s temp was high. It turned out the woman had meningitis and had she been transferred to the psychiatric hospital she would have certainly died. Instead she was given medical treatment and made a full recovery. But this is not an isolated incident, many people have been misdiagnosed and died because of the medical professions attitude toward mental illness. This shows that they have very little understanding of mental illness, yet they claim to be experts in the area.
According to psychiatry experts almost every human emotion can be seen as a mental illness. I do not believe this and don’t think any one else does as we are not so ignorant that we thing of ourselves as robots; but this is what psychiatrists want us to believe. They want us to take pills if we are sad, happy, drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes, argue with our parents, unable to sleep, etc. The fact is that all the dugs they prescribe have dangerous side effects and these side effects are listed in the MIMS, but patients are seldom told about the serious side effects of these drugs. Why because the doctors are given lots of money by drug companied for prescribing these drugs. Unfortunately many people’s lives have been destroyed because of psychotropic drugs and the public are kept in the dark about this.
Imagine if you were prescribed a vitamin tablet that made you suicidal, homicidal, caused drug induced Parkinsonism, etc; you would be outraged and rightfully so, however you are not so outraged when you hear that a depressed person was given an antidepressant that caused these symptoms because you are convinced that its part of their mental illness. Now imagine that you are having trouble sleeping and you go to your doctor, s/he tells you that you are depressed and prescribes Prozac; about a week later you kill some one and are now in jail. You had no history of violence, had never broken the law, but all that changed after you were given Prozac a drug that is known to make people suicidal and homicidal. How would you feel then? Would you want the drug company to take responsibility and doctors to stop prescribing that drug? Normal people would, unfortunately these drugs are still out there even though they have sent many people off the rails and you probably won’t accept the truth about the dangers of these drugs until you are directly affected by them. This is what I don’t understand because you would be outraged if it was a vitamin tablet but not when it is an antidepressant.
Doctors should be giving out drugs that help people, not drugs that make the person sicker and this is why we should be outraged about psychotropic drugs. They have terrible side effects and if this was any other drug it would have been it banned. We all need to stand together and fight for safe effective drugs and we should have the right to demand that dangerous psychotropic drugs be banned. Furthermore we also have the right to feel as we are not robots and even though we may not like being sad, angry, anxious, etc. there is no logical reason to think that these emotions are an illness. Emotions tell us things about our selves, they help us identify who we are buy enabling us to feel happy when something pleases us and sad when thing upset us. If you learn to pay attention to your emotions you can tune in to your personality and learn who you really are. But perhaps you are afraid to do this as our society doesn’t really encourage individualism.
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