Hi everyone.

I've just come back from Queens Square Shopping Centre, West Bromwich. Whilst there I looked at the"CCHR" exhibition "Psychiatry an Industry of Death" and talked to the folks who were attending the exhibit.

I also spent £20.00 on the DVD "Psychiatry an Industry of Death" and a copy of "Psychiatry, Its Fraudulent and Deadly Practices, The Compendium."

However having never heard of the "Citizens Commission on Human Rights" I decided to search the terms psychiatry an industry of death and came up with Indymedia Birmingham, UK | Operation Happy Shopper and then on to your web-site from indymedia.

However I'm even more confused.

I see there is a link between the Church of Scientology and the "Citizens Commission on Human Rights".

So I started to feel that I'd been duped by a front organisation of the Church of Scientology, (other than the usual media scare stories about the Church of Scientology I really don't know a great deal about them so my feelings of being a sucker are quite inexplicable, well inasmuch as I'm exposed to constant media manipulation as anyone else I really shouldn't be surprised that I'm as scared of the bogey-man as anyone else).

I carried on reading around the subject and read some of the comments in opposition to the exhibition. I also noticed that quite a few of the posts referenced Wikipedia as a primary source.

When I read that "Whilst the name 'Citizens Commission on Human Rights' (CCHR) certainly makes it sound like they are a alturistic [sic] group looking to help people, the truth is somewhat different. The group have absolutely no interest in stopping the many human rights abuses around the world, they are an ofshoot [sic] of the 'Church' of Scientology"(http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/birmingham/2008/03/393916.html). I was nearly rushing back to West Brom to demand my money back and give them a verbal kicking for taking the piss.

However one name kept cropping up, Dr Thomas Szasz. Now I'm familiar with this name, 'cos I have a book by him, "The Manufacture of Madness" (like so many of my books it remains unread) and I thought "I didn't realise Thomas Szasz was a Scientologist." So I searched Wikipedia for Szasz's biographical details and found the following

Relationship to Citizens Commission on Human Rights
Together with the Church of Scientology, Szasz co-founded the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), in 1969, to help clean up the field of human rights abuses. He remains on CCHR's Board of Advisors as Founding Commissioner,[7] and continues to provide content for the CCHR.[8] In the keynote address at the 25th anniversary of CCHR, Szasz stated: "We should all honor CCHR because it is really the organization that for the first time in human history has organized a politically, socially, internationally significant voice to combat psychiatry. This has never been done in human history before."[9] Szasz, himself, is an atheist, without any membership or involvement in Scientology. In 2003, the following statement, authorized by Szasz, was posted to the official Szasz web site by its owner, Jeffrey Schaler, explaining Szasz's relationship to CCHR:

"Dr. Szasz co-founded CCHR in the same spirit as he had co-founded — with sociologist Erving Goffman and law professor George Alexander — The American Association for the Abolition for Involuntary Mental Hospitalization...

Scientologists have joined Szasz's battle against institutional psychiatry. Dr. Szasz welcomes the support of Jews, Christians, Muslims, and any other religious or atheist group committed to the struggle against the Therapeutic State. Sharing this battle does not mean that Dr. Szasz supports the unrelated principles and causes of any religious or non-religious organization. This is explicit and implicit in Dr. Szasz's work. Everyone and anyone is welcome to join in the struggle for individual liberty and personal responsibility — especially as these values are threatened by psychiatric ideas and interventions."[10]

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szasz#Relationship_to_Citizens_Commission_on_Human_Rights)

So I'm not really sure why this exhibition is receiving such a bad press from the folks on this board.

And why would you want to stop people, like me, from making up my own mind, by petitioning to have this exhibition banned?

Any suggestions?

Thanks JJW

1. Ask yourself why the CCHR is primarily concerned with taking on psychiatry considering:

a) they are funded, primarily, by the church of scientology.

B) scientologists push their own version of psychiatric help called Auditing, which you have to pay for.

c) they aren't trying to work with the psychiatic profession to get a better understanding of the human mind and ways to treat it, instead being more concerned with spreading fear about it.

d) they are mainly (i.e. nearly entirely) staffed by scientologists

e) they were co founded by L.Ron Hubbard, the founder of scientology.

Also consider the fact that scientology has at least a severe disliking for psychiatry.

Use that as a starting point.

We don't want to stop you making up your own mind, but we do want you to get some background info from another side other than that of the Co$ before you do.

As for stopping the exhibition from being displayed, we find it to be highly offensive scare mongering which serves no purpose than to flog materials by the Co$ and pull people into it's organisation.

Hey, you found my article.


=)


Now.

In short.

Dr. Szasz may have had good intentions with the founding of the CCHR.

However,

Now; the CCHR is mostly staff by Scientologists. Chris Wrapson, elected spokesman for West Brom at least, is definately one.


Scientologists promote Dianetics courses above Psychiatry.

This is because People using Dianetics = Money for the C.o.S.


The difference lies in,

Psychiatry and Psychiatric drugs can help people.
Can we assure Body Thetan spotting does?
In some instances, it has caused the opposite.

The exhibit was petitioned innitally because it's Scientologist propaganda at its current state, regardless of who founded it.

However, on the date of the innital protest, (Mon 31st,)

We directed anyone who had not seen the exhibit to it once we had spoken to them, so they could hear their side of the story.

And in the interest of Free Knowledge to make up your own mind, I'll quote a third article on IndyMedia about the CCHR in West Bromwich. This was taken down/hidden for 'Misinformation' or something like that, I'm lead to believe.

I can assume that [name] is Chris Wrapson. He's the elected Spokesman.

So, if this 'John' does have his email address, I suppose you can send him any questions if so you desire.

(Or I guess you could send them yourself. An email address for Chris Wrapson can be found near the top of a Google Search of his name on Page 2. I shan't post it here however.)

I wouldn't have paid £20 for a DVD myself.
I'm sure it's on Youtube. ;)

There you have it in a nutshell. The CCHR aren't entirely honest about their CoS connections, who, by David Miscaviges' admission in his 2007 New Year address to the Church (google for the video), are trying to completely obliterate psychiatry.

The CCHR exists purely to obfuscate the message originators; they have used the same message for this exhibit as the CoS have in America (see the end of the Panorama: Scientology and Me documentary), the CCHR has not, to my knowledge or research, campaigned on anything other than the "abuses" of psychiatry in it's 40 year existence and is funded and mostly run by Scientologists (read the back of their information booklets).

If the CCHR were to be open about their connections with the CoS, people would be fully informed about who were involved, allowing them to make a balanced decision; since the CCHR don't want that connection to be widely known, our petition was to prevent this misinformation being exhibited dishonestly, whilst our protests outside the exhibit were there to provide the balance.

The CCHR is not interested in improving psychiatry, it is there solely to be a legitimate front for the CoS's obsessive hate of psychiatry. Thats what we take issue with.

Well I'm more interested in the likes of Thomas Szasz than the Church of Scientology.

I know nothing about the Church of Scientology and I'm not sure what the issue is with them as an organisation.

The contents of the DVD appear plausible, although I will read around the subject before making up my mind.

I'm interested in your comments

"Also consider the fact that scientology has at least a severe disliking for psychiatry."

Thomas Szasz interests me more and the following appears quite rational to me

"Szasz has been associated with the anti-psychiatry movement of the 1960s and 1970s, although he has resisted being identified as an anti-psychiatrist. He is not opposed to the practice of psychiatry if it is non-coercive. He maintains that psychiatry should be a contractual service between consenting adults with no state involvement. He favors the abolition of involuntary hospitalization for mental illness. In a 2006 documentary film called Psychiatry: An Industry of Death released on DVD Szasz stated that involuntary mental hospitalization is a crime against humanity. Szasz also believes that, if unopposed, involuntary hospitalization will expand into "pharmacratic" dictatorship."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szasz#Relationship_to_Citizens_Commission_on_Human_Rights)

My starting point is my own involvement with "psychiatry" and I can personally vouch for its inability to understand human distress. Psychiatry would rather diagnose and medicate than accept that it is not necessarily that the individual is sick but the sickness of human beings is a symptom of a sick-society.

You comment

"they aren't trying to work with the psychiatic profession to get a better understanding of the human mind and ways to treat it, instead being more concerned with spreading fear about it."

Well the DVD certainly makes some stark claims; but surely nothing that can't be refuted if it is incorrect?

Although I would agree it's rather dramatic in tone and strays into areas of individual wrong-doing to build a case against the whole-profession is a form of scare-mongering.

However other areas covered such as Scientific Racism, Eugenics, the DSM and the creation of more and more categories of mental illness to justify medicating human-beings in the interests of the pharmaceutical companies needs serious attention and serious resistance from anyone committed to human freedom.



Thanks
JJW

Eugenics,

Now.

Surely Eugenics follows/was inspired moreso by Darwinism rather than Psychiatry.

My personal opinion.

[edit]

Eugenics is a social philosophy...

The modern field and term were first formulated by Sir Francis Galton in 1883,[2] drawing on the recent work of his cousin Charles Darwin.

Sir Francis Galton F.R.S. (16 February 1822 – 17 January 1911), half-cousin of Charles Darwin, was an English Victorian polymath, anthropologist, eugenicist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, psychometrician, and statistician. He was knighted in 1909.

Racial hygiene (often labeled a form of "scientific racism") is the selection, by a government, of the putatively most physical, intellectual and moral persons to raise the next generation (selective breeding) and a close alignment of public health with eugenics. In the past, this has been done by using deportation, segregation, compulsory sterilization, and even genocide of persons or groups with various mental disabilities, ethnicities, handicaps, criminal backgrounds, religious affiliations, etc.

It was the German eugenicist Alfred Ploetz who introduced the term Rassenhygiene in his "Racial hygiene basics" (Grundlinien einer Rassenhygiene) in 1895.

Alfred Ploetz (August 22, 1860 – March 20, 1940) was a German physician, biologist, eugenicist known for introducing together with Wilhelm Schallmayer the concept of racial hygiene (Rassenhygiene) in Germany. "Rassenhygiene" ist another name for eugenics.

From their own website

"CCHR was founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and the internationally acclaimed author, Dr. Thomas Szasz"

http://www.cchr.org/about_cchr/

Now, you can research the Co$ quite easily and I suggest doing so before you carry on into the CCHR.

What we want people to do.

Yeah, it is quite plausible and rational. But what about the rest?

Would you call the Industry of Death exhibit rational?
Have you read the leaflets?
Have you read the disclaimers inside the rear flap??



Psychiatry caused the Holocaust? What about the 13th century York and London Jewish massacres?

Who put out and paid for this DVD?

http://www.scientology.org/news-media/brie.../hr/051221.html

Note who sponsers the group.

Care to explain?

Yeah, you need to compare that to other sources of information from both sides.

That's more to do with the far right supporters in the medical profession than medicine and psychiatry. It's just racists trying to use science to back them up.

Unless you're looking at race specific problems such as sickle cell anemia, race doesn't come into it and the GMC will happily deal with racism as with any other form of Mal Practice.

You do realise that eugnics can includes pedigree animal breeding don't you?

That's like saying that using anti-bacterial hand wash is committing genocide (which comes into eugenics as well). Yeah it's arguable, but then using domestos is getting rid of the germs you don't want to breed, whilst drinking Yakult supposedly increases the ones you do.

Eugenics has been around since people began breeding animals for specific use. That would be pretty much when we gained the ability to farm livestock and tame wolves/dogs. If psychiatry is responsible for that I'd be surprised. It's just using words that sound big and impressive to make people listen.

As for the Holocaust, anti-jewish sentiment was rife on the German/Austro-Hungarian Empire side at the end of WW1, no intervention was needed to get people to believe this. The racism was already there, one man acted on it.

Read what you've posted there. Sure you meant to post that?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEDwq7EC4HQ&NR=1