#155

Robert Whitaker, the author and journalist discusses the controversial link between antidepressants and suicide risk. He shares a personal story about a friend who attempted suicide after being prescribed antidepressants and explains that there is evidence dating back 30 years showing that SSRI antidepressants can induce suicide in some people. Whitaker also criticizes the pharmaceutical industry for downplaying the risks and allowing these drugs to be marketed without clear warnings. The discussion then shifts to the rise of contract research organizations (CROs) in the mid-1990s and how they corrupted clinical trials, particularly in psychiatry. Whitaker argues that instead of improving mental health, we often diagnose and medicate people, such as children with ADHD, and criticizes the blind obedience to this status quo. He also discusses the importance of understanding risks and benefits in a capitalistic environment and advocates for strict regulation and oversight of corporations. Whitaker encourages individuals to become informed consumers and do their own research, and his organization, Madden America, aims to help people make informed decisions about psychiatric treatments.

Key Moments:

1. 00:00:00 Intro
2. 00:05:00 antidepressants and suicide risk
3. 00:10:00 corrupted clinical trials
4. 00:15:00 lobotomies
5. 00:20:00 Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
6. 00:25:00 cultural trust in the medical community
7. 00:30:00 Statins
8. 00:35:00 the role of capitalism in exacerbating mental health issues
9. 00:40:00 asbestos and Teflon

The user name includes 420, nice.

I think it is a human run account, they are NFT pushers though so beware.

This is a journey they posted of ordering a burger with nothing in it:

https://x.com/greg16676935420/status/1791973261632311747

Edit: fixed timestamped url 1:50 mark, missedthe & before “t=”

Six-six-six, the number of the beast

Hell and fire was spawned to be released

Timestamped: https://youtu.be/WxnN05vOuSM&t=110

This song was the band’s second single from their 1982 album. It was influenced by the 1978 horror movie Damien: Omen II, which is about the 13-year-old Antichrist. It is one of Iron Maiden’s most famous and one of heavy metal’s most recognizable songs.

Basically, this song is about a dream. It’s not about devil worship. — Steve Harris

The song starts with a quote from the Bible, read by British actor Barry Clayton; the first lines from Revelations 12:12 and the last three from Revelations 13:8. The band wanted the horror film actor Vincent Price to read this intro, but he wanted more money than they were willing to pay.

During the recording of the album, there were rumors floating about that supernatural occurrences had been going on in the studio, such as lights flipping on and off, strange noises and visions of Satan, that culminated in a car accident their producer Martin Birch was involved, the bill of which was 666 GBP. This was used as evidence that Satan and the Antichrist had a hand in making this. Many preachers and enemies of rock music were led to believe Maiden were Satanists because of the song’s title. Steve Harris replied: “They completely got the wrong end of the stick. They obviously hadn’t read the lyrics. They just wanted to believe all that rubbish about us being Satanists.”

Bruce Dickinson’s high-pitched scream at the end of the intro was a result of producer Martin Birch forcing the band to replay the intro several times. Dickinson became so fed up with the constant repeats that he emitted the scream out of frustration, and it fit so well that the band decided to keep it.

https://genius.com/Iron-maiden-the-number-of-the-beast-lyrics

Edit: grammer and format, improved a bit

The Republican or Republican-lite candidates would never give up their power to help the working class unless they were forced to.

Be it Trump or Biden, they will continue to fight for more endless wars, where the working class is sent to die for owner-class profits.

The American right has spent every day since Biden was nominated in 2020 presenting him as an incompetent, doddering old fool, incapable of discharging the responsibilities of the office. Biden’s task at the first presidential debate, on Thursday, was to dismiss those allegations as mere smears, as he did in 2020. Instead, he confirmed that he has aged dramatically over the past four years. Biden was very old to begin with, and at the debate he appeared far more visibly diminished than he has in the past.

The left has been telling the Republican-lites since the beginning; that is why there was a push for other Republican-lite candidates in the primary.

The earlier Biden resigns, the faster the Democratic Party can move to reunite behind the new nominee and concentrate its efforts on keeping Trump from returning to the White House. Harris would become the party’s presumptive nominee, enjoying the prestige and advantages of incumbency. She is also the only candidate who can legally access the financial war chest the Biden campaign has amassed. As Brian Beutler writes, “it’s impossible to identify the most prudent path forward with certainty.” There is no clear way to know if Harris is a politically riskier option than Biden. But if Biden’s mental state is as bad as it appeared at the debate, then there is no other choice.

Harris seems to be much worse in polling than 2016 Hillary Clinton…

Some Democrats fear the prospect of a Harris candidacy—perhaps even enough to wish for Biden to hang on until the election, despite the dangers. They worry that she will only exacerbate the appeal of Trump’s implicit promise to restore racial and gender hierarchies. Indeed, Trump’s brain trust designed his 2016 campaign around the belief that the recent Republican nominees John McCain and Mitt Romney had failed to mobilize demoralized white voters because they had not been overtly racist enough, and that the path to victory lay through deliberate racial polarization.

But the simple fact remains that if one believes Biden cannot campaign or debate successfully, then he cannot run the country presently. The Constitution contemplates a scenario in which someone would need to take the place of a president who is so diminished, and that someone is the vice president. Biden should step aside from both the campaign and the presidency, and allow Harris to take her best shot at saving the country from those who would destroy it.

MMP’s removal of Azov is significant in that it could be used to guide U.S. foreign policy. Though MMP was created and has operated with funding from the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, the papers written by its researchers are cited in academic research, reports and testimony to Congress, government–funded institutions and initiatives, and federal agencies. The website functions as an authoritative source for information on militant and extremist groups, and their interactions and connections over time. At the very least, Azov’s removal means MMP’s list no longer contradicts the State Department’s decision allowing U.S. military assistance to the group, and therefore cannot be used to criticize it.

Founded in March 2014 as a volunteer unit to fight pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Donbass region, Azov was subsequently incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard, and gained international attention for its role in re-taking the southeastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol from separatist forces in June 2014. During this engagement, Azov also received scrutiny for its neo-Nazi iconography, in particular an inverted Wolfsangel superimposed over a Black Sun (the former an ancient runic symbol appropriated by the Nazis, per the ADL, the latter “based on a design commissioned by SS leader Heinrich Himmler, and overwhelmingly used by neo-Nazi and esoteric National Socialist movements,” according to the MMP’s now-removed Azov Battalion profile).

Azov came to renewed prominence following Russia’s February 2022 invasion due to its high-profile defense of Mariupol that spring. The destructive battle, during which large swaths of Mariupol’s residential infrastructure were damaged or destroyed, ended in a drawn-out siege of the Azovstal steel plant, beneath which surviving Azov and Ukrainian servicemembers retreated until their May 2022 surrender. The battle for Azovstal garnered substantial international media attention due in part to Azov’s use of Starlink terminals to publish videos about the conditions of the Ukrainian defenders.

This is false. As reported by The Nation, many of Azov’s current leaders, including Commander Denys Prokopenko and Deputy Commander Sviatoslav Palamar, have years-old ties to far-right groups, and the brigade continues to don Nazi symbols on the battlefield and social media. Indeed, Azov has never stopped using the Wolfsangel symbol, which is still part of its official logo and featured on its X/Twitter page. Azov’s founder, Andriy Biletsky, a blatant white supremacist who reportedly said Ukraine’s national mission was to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen [subhumans],” remains closely connected to the unit despite his supposed departure in fall 2014. In his 2022 book From the Fires of War: Ukraine’s Azov Movement and the Global Far Right, author and journalist Michael Colborne argues Azov has not divorced itself from the far right, writing that “[d]espite unconvincing efforts to separate the two, it’s clear that the Azov Regiment is part of the broader Azov movement and should not be treated as something distinct from it.”

MMP’s removal of Azov’s profile came a little over a month before the State Department’s decision to lift the longstanding ban on the provision of American weapons to the brigade. The State Department, which originally banned arming Azov due to concerns over its far-right extremism, rescinded this policy because the brigade recently “passed Leahy vetting as carried out by the U.S. Department of State,” as reported by the Washington Post on June 10. While a Congressional ban on military assistance to the “Azov Battalion” remains in place under appropriations laws, the State Department said it didn’t believe the congressional ban applied to the group as it exists today, per the Post.

“Leahy vetting” is in reference to the Leahy Law, which prohibits the United States from funding “foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights,” per a State Department fact sheet. In reality, not only is the State Department’s original concern around Azov’s ideological extremism still germane, but the force’s human rights record has remained checkered since its founding as a non-state volunteer militia in 2014. Indeed, Azov has been credibly accused of torture, forced disappearances, and extrajudicial killing, all of which are “gross violations of human rights” that would disqualify a military unit from receiving U.S. military aid, according to the State Department’s interpretation of the Leahy Law. Many of Azov’s alleged human rights abuses, which also include the use of civilian infrastructure for military purposes and looting of civilian homes, occurred after the unit was formally integrated into the Ukrainian National Guard in late 2014.

Stanford launched MMP in 2009 and operated the project until 2012 using funding from the Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation. In 2019, MMP received funding from the Department of Homeland Security, per the project’s website. The academics behind MMP also have deep ties to American defense.

Government censorship will cause TikTok’s services in the US to shut down, which will result in most users moving to another social media platform.

I think most people already use multiple platforms, so the only difference will be the time they put into their new main social media.

It is due to breaking the only rule this community has:

Here ya go: