Skip to main content

Posts

A Barrier to Social Justice

Extract from Robert Whitaker & Lisa Cosgrove's 'Psychiatry Under the Influence' “As Kriss observed in his article [in which he reviews the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM) as if it were a work of fiction], the DSM locates problems within the biology of the individual. This, in turn, is an understanding that encourages society to ignore social factors that may create mental difficulties for so many. If depression, anxiety, and other psychiatric symptoms arise from neurotransmitters that are out of whack, then society–much like the individual patient–is not prompted to consider the social context for the distress. Perhaps the best example of this is how foster children are regularly treated today. Such children can be understood to have drawn the short straw in the lottery of life, born into a dysfunctional family situation, where abuse of many kinds may be rampant. Yet, such children today often diagnosed with a mental disorder. Societ...
Post a Comment
Read more
Recent posts

Motivations

The blackboard in the public square owned by the Hobart City Council where I've written hundreds of quotes from various books, mostly abut economic inequality, tax evasion and corruption People have asked what motivates me to do what I do. I have read a lot of books on a very dry topic. That's not something someone like me usually does as a hobby. I get bored very quickly if I don't have a powerful motivation to drive me. So, what does it take to produce a person who behaves in this way? Well you take a reasonably well educated young lad and set him out on his own at 17. You give him the impression that if he works hard, is an honest, loyal employee, one day it will be rewarded. At every corner this fairly talented young man is given every reason to feel as if he is under-performing (by the spoiled brat children of business owners and the like. You know, the one's that get the promotions). When he looses a job, you make sure the support systems are geared also to inculc...
Post a Comment
Read more

Former Finance Minister in PwC Scandal

  "As Finance Minister, from 2013 to 2020, Cormann oversaw — and was a fierce defender of — an explosion in taxpayer funds being directed to the “Big Four”, for jobs previously undertaken by the public service." I've noticed that a lot of people missed the news about the PwC scandal, so to understand the gravity of this news, it needs to be put into context. Here is the ABC's great expose "Shadow State" to get you up-to-date. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pduOqZPnqVc&t=1081s So, now that you know what the PwC scandal is, how is the former treasurer implicated? Follow the link below. https://theklaxon.com.au/oecd-boss-in-pwc-scandal/
Post a Comment
Read more

Blackboard Quotes On Charity Fraud

Source: William De Maria, 'Trouble in the Land of Giving: Charity, Fraud, Welfare and the State' You can find 'Trouble in the Land of Giving' available for loan from the Hobart Lending Library. https://librariestas.ent.sirsidynix.net.au/client/en_AU/library/search/detailnonmodal/ent:$002f$002fSD_ILS$002f0$002fSD_ILS:1429611/one
Post a Comment
Read more

Are Steven Pinker's Numbers Cooked?

Steven Pinker is a favourite for bougie lefties looking for reassurance that everything's ok Steven Pinker makes a pretty strong argument using statistics to demonstrate that mankind has been making steady progress on social ills like violence over time. David Graeber questions the validity of these statistics and asked if there were any available statistics that "prove" a different narrative. Pinker accused David of simply ignoring the empirical data based on ideology (something David accuses Pinker of doing, or at least selecting statistics that fit his narrative). I thought about this for awhile, and in the shower just now it hit me...there ARE statistics that paint a very different picture, they come from the emerging field of economic inequality. We are getting more data every year thanks to an explosion in research on the topic. So what does the research show so far? In Wilkinson and Pickett's 'The Inner Level' they track a range of social ills from vio...
Post a Comment
Read more