Vets Being Round Up Nationwide, People Everywhere Just Disappearing

ATLANTA

He was lucky, though. The NDAA hadn’t been written into law yet and he was able to take his case to arbitration. After a long court battle (which lasted well over a year) he was reinstated to his job only after it was revealed through testimony that his employer paid a psychologist to write a fraudulent report, the psychologist failed to test positive for any mental illnesses (and still deemed him unable to work), and the psychologist testified that the sole basis for releasing him was his “political beliefs.”

Brandon Raub hasn’t been so lucky. Just in case you haven’t heard of Brandon Raub, let me give you a quick rundown of his situation. Last Thursday, police accompanied by the FBI and secret service showed up at Raub’s house and took him into custody against his will—not because he broke any laws, but because he posted some controversial opinions on Facebook. Raub, a former marine who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, was not lawfully arrested and taken to jail. Instead, he was unlawfully kidnapped and placed in a mental institution where he remains today.

Many people respond to news like this with the same reaction. They immediately and instinctively ask, “well, what did Brandon Raub’s Facebook posts say?” Although I will answer this question, and do recognize that Raub’s Facebook posts are relevant, I want to point something out to you. If your very first instinct was to question the content of Raub’s posts instead of questioning the government’s actions, what does that say about you? How effective has MIAC-style propaganda been in shaping your perception? To instantaneously question what Raub said is to instantaneously question his right to say it—an unconscious declaration that you blindly and instinctively trust the government and that their actions must be justified. A far better reaction would be “why was the government reading Raub’s Facebook posts in the first place?”

Wouldn’t it stand to reason that if Raub was really having a meltdown or there was really reason to be concerned about Raub’s mental health, his family and friends would have tried to intervene, tried to get him help, and perhaps contacted the authorities as a last resort?

From all available information on this case, Raub’s family and friends have no concern whatsoever about his mental status.

It appears that the government simply took it upon themselves to spy on his Facebook posts, pretend that his Facebook posts are evidence of mental illness (based on their own propaganda), and kidnap him.

If the people who knew him best, and interacted with him daily, weren’t concerned about his mental health, how can the government be justified in taking these actions based on a handful of Facebook posts? He must have made some very serious threats to cause all kinds of harm…right? Let’s look at a few of those posts and see what makes Raub so scary. (Note: I’m going to select a few posts that seem to be the most likely candidates to cause “concern”)

August 13, 2012
Sharpen up my axe; I’m here to sever heads.

Not to make excuses for the guy, but these are song lyrics from the song “Bring Me Down” by Swollen Member. It’s very common for people to quote song lyrics on Facebook. Trust me, if I quote L.L. Cool J this does not mean that I actually want to “bomb a town…get down”. There are numerous song lyrics out there with violent content and some of them are quite quotable.

August 12, 2012
Do you know why the American people will win the civil war that is coming? Because we are Americans.

Apparently, this post is scary because Raub thinks there is a civil war of some sort looming in the future—which will pit the citizens against the government. But wait. Isn’t Janet Napolitano’s DHS buying millions of rounds of small arms ammo, training the military for domestic operations, purchasing all kinds of riot gear, training the military to operate “re-education centers”, putting drones in the skies, lining our streets with video cameras, encouraging citizens to spy on each other, and snooping on Facebook pages (like Raub’s) to be prepared for civil unrest? How is Raub’s concern that the government may fight the people in a “civil war” any different from Janet Napolitano’s concern that the government may fight the people because of “civil unrest”? I wonder if they will be knocking on the door of Big Sis anytime soon….

August 10, 2012
I’m starting the revolution. I’m done waiting.

The word “revolution” terrifies these people in government. My friend used it before they went after him and Raub used it too. In fact, there is a whole list of words that DHS scans Facebook for, and I’m guessing “revolution” is right near the top. The implication is that Raub is going to do something violent, but he never says he’s going to be violent. Our nation was founded by a revolution; the Beatles sang about revolution; we’ve affectionately labeled positive eras in history as “revolutions” (such as the industrial revolution); and Ron Paul’s peaceful Campaign for Liberty is often called the “Ron Paul Revolution”. Sure, saying you want to start the revolution may be a bit controversial, but the first amendment wasn’t written to protect tame or mundane speech.

August 9, 2012
This is the part where I tell the Federal Government to go f*** itself. This is the part where I tell Generals, training our young men to fight Americans, I am coming for you. The Veterans will be with me.

As a former marine, he probably has some insight as to the training they receive. If our military is being trained to fight us—instead of defend our constitutional rights—he has every right to be angry. Raub is not a threat because he wants the military to play the proper constitutional role.

August 5, 2012
If you are unaware of the great amount of evil perpetrated by the American Government I suggest you take your head out of the sand. The day of reckoning is almost at hand.

So, Raub thinks our government is evil. Is that not his right? I personally think all governments are evil. Governments exist for the sole purpose of controlling, restricting, and manipulating people. It’s not “crazy”. It’s a valid opinion.

July 28, 2012
If you are my friend, you deserve to know the truth. This world is secretly run by a shadow organization of people who among other things enjoy raping children. Some of leaders were involved with the bombing of the twin towers. It was a sacrifice and a complete inside job. Also the Bush’s are very sick twisted problems. I believe they have a secret Castle in Colorado where they have been raping and sacrificing children for many years. Think I’m crazy? Think again.

This is by far the “kookiest” of Raub’s posts, but is it threatening? Is it cause for concern about his mental health? Is it cause to lock him up against his will? This post is nothing but an expression of Raub’s own beliefs. He’s entitled to his beliefs, and simply because they may sound a bit kooky to you doesn’t mean he has no right to hold them. Let’s be honest. Christians find the beliefs of Muslims to be “kooky”, Republicans find the beliefs of Democrats to be “kooky”, and the people who drink Bud Light because it “tastes great” think the people who drink Bud Light because it is “less filling” are a bit kooky. It’s not illegal to have kooky beliefs. My kids believe that a fat man lives at the North Pole with toy-making elves, flies all around the world stopping at every single house in one night, makes this journey in a magic sleigh pulled by magical flying reindeer, enters and exits everyone’s houses through the chimney, and gives them toys for simply being good—which he knows because he can see them at all times. This is far kookier than believing the Bushes own a secret castle and rape children, but I’m not quite ready for the FBI to round up my children and send them to the loony bin.

So there you have it: no direct threats, no suicidal talk, no loss of function, no inability to perform his daily routine, none of that pesky criteria that traditionally indicates mental illness. It would seem that the government is less concerned about real evidence of mental illness and more concerned with anti-government sentiment (which they consider to be one in the same). It’s important to pay attention to cases like this because it shows exactly what the government is trying to do, and how they plan to do it—and it all goes back to the MIAC Report.

The truth is that our government has wanted to erode our free speech for a long time. In particular, they absolutely do not want us questioning or speaking out against them. But this was a tricky situation because the people would never give up their first amendment rights. They were faced with a dilemma: how to punish speech they don’t like without it appearing to the general public that they are attacking our first amendment rights. The solution was to convince the people that anti-government speech is evidence of mental illness. So they rolled out the propaganda, and used the mainstream media to scare and condition us all. Now they shroud free speech in a cloak of mental illness, and pretend they are fighting a monster.

The decision to use “mental health concerns” as their straw man was no accident. There are several advantages to this approach. First, they can bypass the legal justice system where the burden of proof rests on them. Second, they can force you to take mind numbing drugs and subject you forced therapy (i.e. re-education) sessions in mental institutions that they can’t do in jail. Third, and most important, no label is more misunderstood, damaging, pervasive, stigmatizing, vague, or irrefutable than that of mental illness. It’s easy to convince the public that someone is crazy, all you have to do is make the accusation. The second someone is accused of being “mentally ill”, their right to be innocent until proven guilty goes right out the window. The mere accusation is enough to alter opinions, influence public perception, and spark excessive scrutiny.

As my friend told me after he was fired and trying to save his reputation, “there is nothing worse than being labeled ‘crazy’. The more you try to prove your sanity, the crazier you look.”

Thursday, August 23, 2012
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

(NaturalNews) The thought police are hard at work in America, crushing anyone who expresses ideas of liberty and freedom. The latest case involves U.S. veteran Brandon Raub, who posted text on Facebook saying, among other things, that 9/11 was an inside job, that the country is being run by an evil cabal of insiders, and that the global elite are pedophiles who rape children.

Pointing to these opinion statements, the FBI, U.S. Secret Service and local law enforcement authorities in Virginia raided his home, kidnapped the 26-year-old, and stuffed him into a psychiatric hospital where he was to be detained for any number of weeks, months or even years. Raub was not charged with a crime, was never read any Miranda rights, and was never given a hearing in front of a judge. No judge, no jury, no rights, no nothing. He was simply targeted, kidnapped, stuffed and cuffed because of his free speech posted on Facebook.

Today, a circuit court judge has ordered the Marine veteran released from the psychiatric hospital, saying that law enforcement had no grounds to hold him. This has been reported by CBS 6 News and published in BusinessInsider.com (http://www.businessinsider.com/lawyer-for-detained-marine-says-he-is-…)

Police in Chesterfield, Virginia claimed they “took custody” of Raub based on the powers granted to them under law regarding “Emergency custody” provisions. Yet state law only allows for a maximum hold time of four hours. Raub was being stuffed into a mental institution for 30 days (or longer), without trial, without any rights and without even being charged with a crime.

In fact, Raub committed no crime. He hurt no one. He simply exercised his right to express his opinions about 9/11 and the corrupt government. He made no threats to anyone and broke no laws whatsoever.

Raub’s crime, apparently, was criticizing the status quo. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with his opinions, all Americans should, at minimum, protect his right to voice his own opinions. That is the essence of free speech: to protect the speech of everyone, including those with whom you disagree.

As philosopher Noam Chomsky famously said, “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.”

Learn more

Brandon Raub and the Bonfire of Our Liberties

Dennis Behereandt
The Moral Liberal
August 23, 2012

That’s the only conclusion that can be drawn in the wake of thedetainment of former Marine Brandon J. Raub.

Writing on his Facebook page, Raub registered his discontent with the direction of the country. Some of his postings were provocative. In other postings he questioned the official story about 9/11 and alluded to a future revolution.

For this, Raub was arrested. He is now being held in a psychiatric ward against his will.

Writing for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Michael Paul Williams described the sequence of events leading to Raub’s arrest.

“The Revolution will come for me. Men will be at my door soon to pick me up to lead it,” Brandon J. Raub posted on Facebook last Tuesday.

The Marine Corps veteran from Chesterfield County punctuated that post with a wink emoticon. But two days later, federal and Chesterfield County law enforcement officials arrived at his door.

Raub, 26, was questioned and taken to John Randolph Medical Center in Hopewell, where he was being held for postings that were deemed “terrorist in nature.”

It should not need to be repeated that the First Amendment is one of the foundational protections of the rights of a free people. Traditionally, Americans have been able to define themselves as free by comparing our tradition of protected speech to regimes around the world that persecuted their citizens for speaking out.

In the 1980s, for instance, Americans uniformly deplored police states like that in East Germany at the time where citizens were under constant surveillance and lived in fear of saying anything that might be interpreted as critical of the regime. Similarly, communist China has continued to detain those who, like noted artist Ai Weiwei, are critical of the government.

These things are not supposed to happen in the United States, the “land of the free.”

The trouble is, we are increasingly not free. Consider photographers.

Florida-based photographer and journalist Carlos Miller has been documenting the growing trend of police and other officials confiscating cameras and preventing citizens from recording video and taking photos in an overzealous but widespread abridgment of the First Amendment.

Some of the dozens of examples collected by Miller include:

• Police and the Secret Service attempting to order videographer Jeff Gray to stop shooting video from a public sidewalk outside a police perimeter. “Just because the Secret Service comes to town doesn’t mean my rights don’t exist,” Gray quipped.

• Luke Rudkowski of the organization We Are Change was ordered by New York City police not to record video from a public sidewalk during an attempt to interview Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

• Carlos Miller was himself told by a security guard that he could not photograph the Miami Herald building “because it was historical….” Police were called to the scene and one of them told Miller that he was “not allowed to photograph the building simply because [the security guard] said so.”

• The City of Houston produced a video warning citizens that photographers are likely terrorists. The video states: “Cameras and recording devices have gotten so small, that most of us seem to have one with us all the time. It’s not unusual to see people taking pictures or video almost anywhere. But surveillance and information gathering is a common practice used by terrorists prior to an attack. If you see someone trying to conceal what they are doing, taking pictures of exits, security or restricted areas, if they hang around for no apparent reason, ask inappropriate questions about schedules or the facility, or if they try to avoid security when approached, make the call.”

Carlos Miller’s blog, “Photography is Not a Crime,” contains a depressingly large number of similar examples, all of which demonstrate that governments at multiple levels are increasingly hostile to the First Amendment.

We have, at this point, come to the depressing moment in American history when the American tradition of freedom appears at a crossroads. Sadly, in light of the crackdown on freedom of expression, one wonders if just quoting the Founding Fathers might make one a terrorist in the eyes of government.

For example, Brandon Raub is alleged to have said on Facebook, “Sharpen my axe; I’m here to sever heads.”

Compare to Thomas Jefferson. In 1787, the writer of the Declaration of Independence asked: “…what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.”

Clearly, Jefferson must have been a terrorist. And, indeed, the British thought him one, and that was a badge of honor for our third President.

Or, consider John Adams, our second President, who thought tyrants should be killed. “The right of a nation to kill a tyrant, in cases of necessity, can no more be doubted, than to hang a robber, or kill a flea,” he wrote. 

That’s pretty incendiary. Should we now consider the men who, respectively, were the second and third presidents of the United States to be terrorists? That’s absurd, but it appears to be the direction we are headed.

It should be noted that the worst abuses are occurring now, during the administration of Barack Obama, the man who once promised to roll back the excesses of the Bush administration and put in place the most transparent administration in history.

Just the opposite has happened. Whistleblowers are persecuted. The president personally draws up a kill list in the White House, and, in the wake of the Raub detainment, citizens apparently can be detained simply for expressing their opinions.

If this isn’t the America you remember, then it’s time to take appropriate action at the ballot box. The presidency is up for grabs in November and it would seem to be an opportune time to vote for someone other than the current occupant of the White House. But to make real headway in restoring liberty, look to Congress. Those who aid the growth of the police state, who believe that the government is the solution to any and all problems, must be replaced with Senators and Representatives dedicated to returning the nation to its constitutionally limited government scope.

Fail at this, and historians of the future may very well look back at the year 2012 as the year liberty took its last breath in America.

The Moral Liberal Associate Editor, Dennis Behreandt, is the Founder and Editor In Chief of theAmerican Daily Herald. Mr. Behreandt has written hundreds of articles on subjects ranging from natural theology to history and from science and technology to philosophy. His research interests include the period of late antiquity in European history as well as Medieval and Renaissance history.

Are People Being Thrown Into Psychiatric Wards For Their Political Views?

washingtonsblog.com
August 23, 2012

Mental Health Diagnoses Are Sometimes Politically-Motivated

Many psychologists and psychiatrists are good people, who are only trying to help their patients.

But the Nazi government substantially supported psychologists … many of whom, in turn, espoused extermination of the people they considered to be “racially and cognitively compromised”.

Soviet psychiatrists famously aided Stalin in applying fake insanity diagnoses to political dissenters.  The official explanation was that no sane person would declaim the Soviet government and Communism.

American psychologists created the American program of torture which was specially-crafted to produce false confessions to justify U.S. military policy. And see this.

And authoritarian American psychologists are eager to label anyone “taking a cynical stance toward politics, mistrusting authority, endorsing democratic practices, … and displaying an inquisitive, imaginative outlook” as worthy of a trip to the insane asylum. (Those traits may also get one labeled as a potential terrorist.)

As prominent forensic psychiatrist James Knoll – psychiatry professor at SUNY-Syracuse and director of a forensic fellowship program – writes in the Psychiatric Times:

When psychiatric science becomes co-opted by a political agenda, an unhealthy alliance may be created. It is science that will always be the host organism, to be taken over by political viruses…. [P]sychiatry may come to resemble a new organism entirely — one that serves the ends of the criminal justice system.

Even psychologists with good intentions can erroneously label people delusional simply because they themselves make bad assumptions.

There is even a label for this – the “Martha Mitchell Effect” – defined as:

The process by which a psychiatrist, psychologist, or other mental health clinician mistakes the patient’s perception of real events as delusional and misdiagnoses accordingly.

The authors of a paper on this phenomenon (Bell, V., Halligan, P.W., Ellis, H.D. (2003) Beliefs About Delusions. The Psychologist, 6 (8), 418-422) conclude:

Sometimes, improbable reports are erroneously assumed to be symptoms of mental illness [due to a] failure or inability to verify whether the events have actually taken place, no matter how improbable intuitively they might appear to the busy clinician.

In other words, psychologists who haven’t taken the time to examine for themselves the claims of their patients will tend to label as delusional anything which they “intuitively” feel is improbable.  As such, psychologists and psychiatrists are just as prone to acting out their irrational prejudices as anyone else … unless they take the time to investigate and educate themselves.

Governments Indefinitely Detaining Citizens In Psychiatric Wards Without Due Process of Law

As such, detention in psych wards on mere “suspicion” of posing a danger – without due process of law – is troubling.

For example, former marine Brandon Raub was just carted off and locked in a psychiatric ward for his allegedly “anti-government” Facebook posts.

AP reports today:

Police – acting under a state law that allows emergency, temporary psychiatric commitments upon the recommendation of a mental health professional – took Raub to the John Randolph Medical Center in Hopewell. He was not charged with any crime.

***

Col. Thierry Dupuis, the county police chief, said Raub was taken into custody upon the recommendation of mental health crisis intervention workers. He said the action was taken under the state’s emergency custody statute, which allows a magistrate to order the civil detention and psychiatric evaluation of a person who is considered potentially dangerous.

New York Police officer Adrian Schoolcraft was  involuntarily hospitalizated in a psychiatric ward after he recorded videotapes of his fellow police officers engaging in corruption.

Claire Swinney of New Zealand was also held in a psychiatric ward and called “delusional” for criticizing the government.    Susan Lindauer was held under the Patriot Act for a year at Carswell Air Force Base – where psychiatric drugs were pushed on her – after she alleged government corruption.

The Daily Mail notes:

The [British] Government has established a shadowy new national anti-terrorist unit to protect VIPs, with the power to detain suspects indefinitely using mental health laws.

***

The team’s psychiatrists and psychologists then have the power to order treatment – including forcibly detaining suspects in secure psychiatric units.

Using these powers, the unit can legally detain people for an indefinite period without trial, criminal charges or even evidence of a crime being committed and with very limited rights of appeal.

Until now it has been the exclusive decision of doctors and mental health professionals to determine if someone should be forcibly detained.

But the new unit uses the police to identify suspects – increasing fears the line is being blurred between criminal investigation and doctors’ clinical decisions.

***

Scotland Yard, which runs the shadowy unit, refuses to discuss how many suspects have been forcibly hospitalised by the team because of “patient confidentiality”.

***

The purpose of the centre is “to evaluate and manage the risk posed to prominent people by…those who engage in inappropriate or threatening communications or behaviours in the context of abnormally intense preoccupations, many [Many? That means that some are not] of which arise from psychotic illness.”

Who gets to decide what “inappropriate” or “threatening” means?  What if a whistleblower has information that a member of parliament has engaged in bribes?  Would trying to reveal such information constitute “inappropriate or threatening communications or behaviours” in the context of “abnormally intense preoccupations” with that MP’s illegal actions?

Indeed, a study published in the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry found a high rate of false positives in the British identification of dangerous persons.

The Mail continues:

So-called ‘sectioning’ allows a patient to be held for up to six months before a further psychological assessment. Patients are then reviewed every year to determine if they can be released.

***

Human rights activists fear the team, whose existence has never been publicised, may be being used as a way to detain suspected terrorists without having to put evidence before the courts.

***

Last night human rights group Liberty said the secret unit represented a new threat to civil liberties.

Policy director Gareth Crossman said: “There is a grave danger of this being used to deal with people where there is insufficient evidence for a criminal prosecution.

“This blurs the line between medical decisions and police actions. If you are going to allow doctors to take people’s liberty away, they have to be independent. That credibility is undermined when the doctors are part of the same team as the police.

“This raises serious concerns. First that you have a unit that allows police investigation to lead directly to people being sectioned without any kind of criminal proceedings.

“Secondly, it is being done under the umbrella of anti-terrorism at a time when the Government is looking at ways to detain terrorists without putting them on trial.”

***

The team examined thousands of cases and liaised with the FBI, the US Secret Service, the Capitol Hill Police, which protects Congressmen and Senators, and the Swedish and Norwegian secret services.

***

Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: “The Government is trying to bring in a wider definition of mental disorder and is resisting exclusions which ensure that people cannot be treated as mentally disordered on the grounds of their cultural, political or religious beliefs.

“When you hear they are also setting up something like this police unit, it raises questions about quite what their intentions are.

“The use of mental health powers of detention should be confined to the purposes of treatment. But the Government wants to be able to detain someone who is mentally disordered even when the treatment would have no benefit.

“Combined with the idea that someone could be classed as mentally ill on the grounds of their religious beliefs, it is a very worrying scenario.”

Indeed, the whole “indefinite detention” process (which Americans living on American soil are subject to) can be based on circular reasoning:

The government’s indefinite detention policy – stripped of it’s spin – is literally insane, and based on circular reasoning. Stripped of p.r., this is the actual policy:

• If you are an enemy combatant or a threat to national security, we will detain you indefinitely until the war is over

• It is a perpetual war, which will never be over

• Neither you or your lawyers have a right to see the evidence against you, nor to face your accusers

• But trust us, we know you are an enemy combatant and a threat to national security

• We may torture you (and try to cover up the fact that you were tortured), because you are an enemy combatant, and so basic rights of a prisoner guaranteed by the Geneva Convention don’t apply to you

• Since you admitted that you’re a bad guy (while trying to tell us whatever you think we want to hear to make the torture stop), it proves that we should hold you in indefinite detention

See how that works?

This is an analogy.  We are not accusing psych wards of using torture.  However, they do often use powerful psychiatric drugs on patients … which can elicit false confessions.

Are we going to slide into Soviet levels of psychiatric detention of political dissidents?   Unless the spread of psychiatric detention without due process of law is checked, the mere belief that the government is interfering with your liberty may become grounds for locking you away.

Update: The stories of psychiatric commitment of political activists in China are horrendous .

1st Amendment Violated as Facebook Assists Police in Pre-Crime Investigations

By Susanne Posel
theintelhub.com
August 22, 2012

On August 16th former US Marine Brandon Raub was arrested for posting his opinion about the US government on his Facebook page .

Raub is currently being held in a psychiatric ward.

In a statement by Raub, he explains : “I’m currently in John Randolph in the psychiatric ward being held against my will. They were concerned about me calling for the arrest of government officials.”

Raub’s lawyers say that he will be held for “up to 30 days’ further confinement in a VA psych ward” after “government officials again pointed to Raub’s Facebook posts as the sole reason for their concern and for his continued incarceration.”

While Raub was taken forcefully, put into handcuffs and taken by the FBI to be questioned, both the FBI and Secret Service deny that Raub was arrested or detained by them.

Facebook comments were recently cited as evidence in a court case concerning cyber bullying where comments on a personal page were ruled by a US Federal court as information that can be lawfully obtained by the police to be used against a defendant.

William Pauley, US District Court Judge, stated that because the defendant made violent threats in his posts which are deemed public information that they are allowable as evidence against him by prosecutors.

On April 24th, District Judge Raymond Jackson ruled that by clicking a “like” button on Facebook, that this affiliation is public domain and not protected by the 1st Amendment. Jackson wrote : “Simply liking a Facebook page is insufficient.

It is not the kind of substantive statement that has previously warranted constitutional protection,” and continues to say that, “Facebook posts can be a matter of public concern; however the Court does not believe Plaintiffs Carter and McCoy have alleged sufficient speech to garner First Amendment protection.”

The Electric Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit with the US Department of Defense (DoD) because the federal agency refused to admit their relationship with social networks with regard to surveillance and law enforcement investigations.

Government officials scan Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and YouTube for evidence of criminal activities, activists and possible suspects who may have not committed a crime just yet. And these agencies named in the lawsuit refused to cooperate with the EFF in explaining how gathering this information would impact “citizen’s privacy rights and associated legal protections.”

Hoping to dupe Americans into posting on their Facebook page, the CIA gathers information while inviting people to register and read information about the “employment opportunities.”

While government agencies are using Facebook to data mine on Americans, it has been suggested in the social meme that without a Facebook page, a person’s mental stability is questionable.

Now, having a profile or not is the barometer of whether or not a person is “suspicious” or not. Some psychologists are even suggesting that not having a Facebook profile means that you are a psychopath.

The link between the Batman shooter and the Norwegian mass murderer was their lack of Facebook profiles. In fact, this may “be the first sign that you are a mass murderer.”

Trapwire , the most impressive pre-crime surveillance software corporation with clients from Wal-Mart to the White House, is but one of many types of Big Brother network grids that have incrementally begun to invade our lives.

Alexander Keith, director of the National Security Agency (NSA) described at a yearly Def Con computer hacking conference that the internet is “at great risk from exploitation, disruption and destruction.” He went on to voice his “concern that it’s going to flow into destructive attacks that could have consequences for our critical national infrastructure and the Internet itself.”

Basically, Keith is concerned because the internet is currently not controlled by federal agencies. When the NSA needs more hackers , they recruit out of colleges and universities across the US under the official Centers of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations.

By using college students, the NSA is amassing an “elite team of computer geniuses” that will be trained in all methodology of hacking based on their exceptional cyber intelligence, military capabilities and ability to enhance law enforcement’s expansion of spying on Americans.

The Department of Justice (DoJ) has requested the authority to criminally prosecute those who lie on Facebook and other social media as a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

According to Richard Downing, the DoJ deputy computer crime chief, the law must provide for “prosecutions based upon a violation of terms of service or similar contractual agreement with an employer or provider.”

A felony can be committed by the user of a social media site by exceeding the authorized access; meaning any infraction of the website’s term of service. Put in other words , “If a person assumes a fictitious identity at a party, there is no federal crime.

Yet if they assume that same identity on a social network that prohibits pseudonyms, there may again be a CFAA violation. This is a gross misuse of the law.”

The NSA has transformed itself into the largest and most comprehensive intelligence agency with the expressed purpose of collecting data on American citizens.

Emails, cell phone calls, text messages, Google searches, parking receipts, and all other forms of information are collected and stored for future use. Social media sites like Facebook readily give over information to federal agencies that conduct such surveillance.

And like we have seen with the case of US Marine veteran Brandon Raub, it can be used against you.

Susanne Posel is the Chief Editor of Occupy Corporatism Our alternative news site is dedicated to reporting the news as it actually happens; not as it is spun by the corporate-funded mainstream media. You can find us on our Facebook page.

In Defense of “9/11 Truth” Speech: Put Us All In A Psych Ward

Saman Mohammadi
Infowars.com
August 22, 2012

“Many sociologists and mental health professionals say that those who believe the official version without any questioning are the ones suffering from psychological defense mechanisms.” – Washington’s Blog, “Former Marine Indefinitely Detained In Psychiatric Ward Over 9/11 Facebook Posts.”

“They call me mad, while they are all mad themselves.” – Plautus.

“Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage.” – Ray Bradbury.

When did telling the truth become a sign of madness in America? Was it on September 12, 2001? How about November 23, 1963?

Who can remember now? It seems like forever ago.

The ghost of legendary American poet and heroic patriot Ezra Pound would argue it happened before the 1950s.

Pound was mislabeled “insane” for his political speech by the fascist U.S. government after the conclusion of WWII and subsequently thrown in the mental prison called, “St. Elizabeths Hospital.” Ironically, this same insane asylum now houses the Department of Homeland Security.

Pound was called crazy because he made unpopular statements about the U.S. government and its drive to war. A few generations later, the U.S. government is still using the same totalitarian tactic to silence dissent. It is a convenient way to bypass the law. As this article from 1997 about the legal and political use of mental health hospitals states, “Most importantly, the “mentally abnormal” person is denied due process of law.”

By the way, equating dissent with mental illness is not new. Plus, the Chinese government does it too, so it is hardly an American phenomenon. But there is no doubt that the U.S. government is the global leader of falsely using the label of “mental illness” against dissidents to control the population and kill free speech.

In America, madness is taken to another level. Government bosses and corporate fat cats are running wild with the “mentall illness” label. They target the individual when he/she is still in the womb. Here is an excerpt from Evelyn Pringle’s article called, “The Psychiatric Drugging of Infants and Toddlers”:

“The United States has become the psychiatric drugging capital of the world for kids with children being medicated at a younger and younger age. Medicaid records in some states show infants less than a year old on drugs for mental disorders.”

A new victim of the totalitarian tactic of utilizing the discourse of mental illness to crush democratic opinion is ex-Marine Brandon Raub, who is currently detained in a psychiatric facility because he posted about 9/11 truth on his Facebook page.

I am not defending the violent nature of his statements, but the integrity of 9/11 truth and the right to tell unpopular truths. Raub took a brave stance for the victims of 9/11 and for his beloved country. The totalitarian freaks in power only know one way to silent him: dismiss him as crazy.

If it is crazy to love your country, love individual freedom, and love the truth then are we not all guilty of being crazy? If loving your country and loving humanity is a mentally ill act then put us all in a psych ward.

Hundreds of millions of people worldwide do not believe in the official conspiracy theory about the 9/11 events. Are we all crazy?

This is absurd.

I’ve got an idea. The totalitarian freaks should put the 9/11 truth-tellers in St. Elizabeths Hospital and clear the space by putting the2,527 DHS employees who have been convicted of crimes in jail. It’s a win-win from a cost-benefit perspective.

Seriously, though, you know there is a systemic undermining of the individual’s well-being by the mental health profession and the government when babies are being labeled mentally ill and drugged. There is clearly an anti-human agenda at work here. And the crazy thing about it is that if you point out this crazy situation you are called crazy and either drugged or jailed.

For collective sanity to prevail, we must say no to the totalitarian use of psychiatric drugs and psychiatric prisons for social and political control.

Supporters Fear Facebook Marine Being ‘Disappeared’

Brandon Raub forcibly transferred to psychiatric facility 3 hours away from legal team, family

By Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Supporters of Brandon Raub – the man kidnapped by police and committed to a mental institution for his political posts on Facebook – fear the former Marine is being ‘disappeared’ by authorities after he was forcibly transferred to a psychiatric facility more than three hours away from his family and legal team.

Raub, a former veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, was involuntarily detained for psychiatric questioning last week by authorities in Virginia’s Chesterfield County for leaving anti-establishment messages on Facebook which questioned the official story behind 9/11 and referred to corruption within the U.S. government.

The FBI claims Raub’s posts were “terrorist in nature.”

Raub is being held against his will despite not being charged with any crime under a state law that allows people to be temporarily committed for a period of 30 days.

Lawyers working for the Rutherford Institute attempted to file an emergency motion to prevent Raub from being transferred to a psychiatric institution more than three hours away from his friends, family, and legal team, but the motion was denied by Special Justice Walter Douglass Stokes.

“(Raub) is being transferred from John Randolph Psychiatric Medical Hospital in Hopewell to the Veterans Hospital in Salem, Va., on the other side of the state,” reports the Rutherford Institute website.

After speaking with Brandon’s brother, Brent Raub, supporter Brian Smith shared concerns amongst those following the case that the former Marine is being ‘disappeared’ by the government as controversy surrounding the incident continues to snowball.

“It would seem that in the government’s infinite wisdom, especially in this time of obscenely massive deficits, that they are going to send him to a Veteran’s Administration Medical Center. That doesn’t sound too bad now does it? How about this then. The hospital that they are sending him to is NOT the one about eight miles away from his home in Richmond. But is instead on the other side of the Commonwealth of Virginia in Roanoke!” writes Smith.

“One question…. Why? This makes absolutely no sense when you consider that since he was “arrested” or “committed” in Chesterfield, that this is the Court of record, and the Court that is SUPPOSED to hear his case at every motion and hearing! Why are they trying to take him so far away from his home. It’s almost like they are trying to make him disappear. Oh, no. Not our benevolent nanny state government. Never.”

Smith added that if more people don’t come to Raub’s aid in publicizing his mistreatment, authorities are more likely to “make him disappear or to “zombify Brandon”.

Lawyers are continuing their efforts to secure Raub’s release on the basis that his speech is protected under the First Amendment and that his detention was conducted unlawfully.

“This is not how justice in America is supposed to work—with Americans being arrested for doing nothing more than exercising their First Amendment rights, forced to undergo psychological evaluations, detained against their will and isolated from their family, friends and attorneys.

This is a scary new chapter in our history,” said John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute. “Brandon Raub is no different from the majority of Americans who use their private Facebook pages to post a variety of content, ranging from song lyrics and political hyperbole to trash talking their neighbors, friends and government leaders.”

Critics have pointed to Raub’s treatment as an example of how the government is targeting free speech by labeling those who question authority as mentally ill, similar to how secret police in the former Soviet union sent dissidents to psikhushkas to isolate them, discredit their ideas and politically brainwash them.

Raub’s calm and rational response to being kidnapped and committed discredits claims by the government that he represents a danger.

Commenting from hospital, Raub said, “It’s ironic, I was considering re-enlisting, I’ve really enjoyed the six years I spent as a reserve and the two and a half years I spent on active duty.”

“I’ve been very open with the things I’ve had to say on my wall on Facebook. It’s interesting to me that the Government is watching Facebook in the first place. That ought to raise some eyebrows and cause some good American citizens some concern,” he added.

Facebook pages in support of Raub have surged in popularity as the case serves to re-iterate the painful reminder that America is fast turning into a police state where people who express anti-establishment opinions are treated as thought criminals and domestic extremists.

*********************

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show and Infowars Nightly News.

Former Marine Indefinitely Detained In Psychiatric Ward Over 9/11 Facebook Posts

Washington’s Blog
Aug 21, 2012

Former marine Brandon Raub was carted off by the Feds and locked in a psychiatric ward for his Facebook posts questioning the government’s version of 9/11.

Raub isn’t the first person who has suffered this fate.  Claire Swinney was also held in a psychiatric ward and called “delusional” for claiming government liability for 9/11.   Others have been committed for the same reason over the last decade.

Surely the Feds are right … that kind of talk is crazy, right?

Maybe.  But many of the 9/11 Commissioners themselves don’t buy what the government says about 9/11, they say that the government has covered up the state sponsorship of the 9/11 hijackers, and Al Qaeda flying planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon was entirely foreseeable .

Indeed, while they obviously haven’t said that the government was involved, 9/11 Commissioners have said we need further investigation and that the American people should question 9/11.  Does that mean they should they be committed to the same psych ward which Mr. Raub and Ms. Swinney enjoyed?  Of course not.

Some people believe that 9/11 was wholly unforeseeable.  Others believe that government personnel were criminally negligent in letting 9/11 happen, and then obstructed justice to cover it up.  See this, this,this, this, and this.   Still others believe that rogue government personnel allowed 9/11 to happen, or even played a role in the attacks themselves.

Whatever one believes about 9/11, isn’t our society built on freedom of speech? And if someone has kooky theories, won’t the scientific method and free debate defeat the baseless theories? Isn’t that what modern society is all about?

Raub’s attorney – the head of the non-partisan civil rights law firm The Rutherford Institute – points outthat Raub is being indefinitely detained, and says:

For government officials to not only arrest Brandon Raub for doing nothing more than exercising his First Amendment rights but to actually force him to undergo psychological evaluations and detain him against his will goes against every constitutional principle this country was founded upon. This should be a wake-up call to Americans that the police state is here.”

What Do Mental Health Professionals Say About Those Who Question 9/11?

Many sociologists and mental health professionals say that those who believe the official version without any questioning are the ones suffering from psychological defense mechanisms.
Sociologists say that fear of terrorism has made people blindly accept false justifications for war – including the false claim that Saddam had a hand in 9/11 (when even the 9/11 Commission says he didn’t).

 

And the following mental health professionals say that questioning the government’s cut-and-dried version of 9/11 is the sane thing to do:

• Associate Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Lester Grinspoon, MD

• Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Duke University Medical Center, as well as Radiology, at Duke University Medical Center D. Lawrence Burk, Jr., MD

• Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor of Psychology and Associate Dean of the Graduate School at Rutgers University Barry R. Komisaruk

• Distinguished Professor in the Department of Mental Health Law and Policy, Professor of Medicine in the Department of Internal Medicine and Distinguished Professor of Global Health in the College of Public Health, University of South Florida, Michael D. Knox

• Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey Laura Schafer

• Professor of Psychology, Rutgers University Alan Gilchrist

• Professor Emeritus, Psychology and Neuroscience, Beckman Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Michael Gabriel

• Former Chief Mental Health Coordinator and Director of Manpower Development and Training, Massachusetts Department of Mental Health, and Lecturer in Psychology, Boston University Herbert Hoffman

• Professor of Psychology, University of Chicago and Northwestern University Jack Sawyer

• Professor of Psychology at University of New Hampshire William Woodward

• Professor of Psychology at University of Essex Philip Cozzolino

• Professor of Psychology at Goddard College Catherine Lowther

• Professor Emeritus of Psychology at California Institute of Integral Studies Ralph Metzner

• Professor of Psychology at Rhodes University Mike Earl-Taylor

• Professor of Psychology at Oxford University Graham Harris

• Professor Emeritus, Psychology, University of Marburg Gert Sommer

• Professor of Psychology, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Ralph Hood

• Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Jefferson Medical College. Former Major, U.S. Army Medical Corps, Vietnam Veteran 7 years service, Jon Bjornson, MD

• Ph.D. Clinical Neuropsychologist Richard Welser

• Trauma specialist Danielle Duperret, Ph.D.

• Psychiatrist Carol S. Wolman, MD

• Psychiatrist E. Martin Schotz

• Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Nebraska and licensed Psychologist Ronald Feintech

• PhD in clinical psychology from Texas Tech Michael Green

• PhD in educational psychology Brent Igo

• PhD psychologist Paul Johansson

• PhD psychologist Gail Maudal

• PhD psychologist Robert Hopper

• Ph.D Psychologist Dorothy Lorig

• Psychologist Robert Griffin

There are many other mental health professionals who agree.

Why Are Some Psychologists So Dogmatic?

Russian psychiatrists famously aided Stalin in applying fake insanity diagnoses to political dissenters.

Similarly, American apologists for the powers-that-be are eager to label anyone “taking a cynical stance toward politics, mistrusting authority, endorsing democratic practices, … and displaying an inquisitive, imaginative outlook” as worthy of a trip to the insane asylum. (Those traits may also get one labeled as a potential terrorist.)

But most mental health professionals who assume that those who question 9/11 are crazy are simply victims of the the “Martha Mitchell Effect”:

The process by which a psychiatrist, psychologist, or other mental health clinician mistakes the patient’s perception of real events as delusional and misdiagnoses accordingly.

The authors of a paper on this phenomenon (Bell, V., Halligan, P.W., Ellis, H.D. (2003) Beliefs About Delusions. The Psychologist, 6 (8), 418-422) conclude:

Sometimes, improbable reports are erroneously assumed to be symptoms of mental illness [due to a] failure or inability to verify whether the events have actually taken place, no matter how improbable intuitively they might appear to the busy clinician.

In other words, psychologists who haven’t taken the time to examine for themselves the claims of their patients will tend to label as delusional anything which they “intuitively” feel is improbable.

As such, psychologists and psychiatrists are just as prone to acting out their irrational prejudices as anyone else … unless they take the time to investigate and educate themselves.

Postscript:  We do not condone violence.  Virtually all those who question the government’s version of 9/11 are peaceful, non-violent folks.