LYCANPEDIA

leftish:

via rt.com

The alleged Afghan massacre shooter Sgt. Robert Bales, who was charged with 17 counts of murder and six counts of attempted murder, may have been under the influence of a drug which is known to cause severe psychiatric side effects.

Mefloquine, the anti-malaria drug and also known as Lariam,has been associated in several suicides and murders, as well as deaths in the US military. Grim psychiatric side effects which include problems with psychotic behavior, paranoia and delusions are some of the complications that arise from the use of Mefloquine.

“Some deployed service members may be prescribed mefloquine for malaria prophylaxis without appropriate documentation in their medical records and without proper screening for contraindications,” the order says.

Although Army and Pentagon officials would not disclose if Bales took the drug due to confidentiality guidelines, media inquiries were referred to Army officials who have yet to comment on the matter.

The drug which has received a significant amount of scrutiny for the past decade was nearly dropped by the US military back in 2009 in which the known dangers were to blame. The military heavily advised against giving soldiers who had suffered a traumatic brain injury the prescription.

In 2010 Bales suffered a traumatic brain injury while on his third tour of combat in Iraq and according to past reports; repeated combat tours escalate the dangers of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Karilyn Bales, the wife of the alleged murderer, on an interview NBC’s Matt Lauer said the recent happenings were “unbelievable.”

Karilyn added on the Today Show, “I have no idea what happened, but he would not – he loves children. He would not do that.”

But according to the former Army psychiatrists the scenario was highly possible.

Elspeth Cameron Ritchie, who was the top advocate for mental health at the Office of Army Surgeon General, wrote in this weeks’ TIME “Battleland” blog, declaring the drug is still being used in Afghanistan and is highly possible Bales was exposed to mefloquine.

“One obvious question to consider is whether he was on mefloquine,” Ritchie wrote.

In 2004, the United Press International created a report which recorded the intake of the medicine by six elite Army Special Forces soldiers, the use of the drug eventually lead to all of them committing suicide which is a rare occurrence among among Special Forces soldiers.

In a separate case Special Forces soldiers have explained the side effects mefloquine takes on your mental health.

“You’re ready to take that plunge into hurting someone or hurting and killing yourself, and it comes on unbelievably quickly,” said one Special Forces soldier identified with permanent brain damage from Lariam.

“It’s just a sudden thought, it’s the right thing to do. You’ll get a mental picture, and it’s in full color.”

The UPI report also revealed how mefloquine use was involved in half of the suicides among troops in Iraq in 2003. The reported also stated that the suicide rate dropped by 50 percent after the Army stopped implementing the drug.

The first case where mefloquine’s effectiveness was questioned was when Staff Sgt. Georg-Andreas Pogany was charged with cowardice after he suffered an incapacitating panic attack in Iraq in 2003 after witnessing the body of a crushed Iraqi. According to Pogany, he sought help but was rejected and eventually charged with cowardice, but the Army dropped the charges after medical professionals determined the individual suffered from Lariam toxicity. Pogany had taken his third pill right before his panic attack.

Also in 2002 three elite soldiers who were taking the medicine returned to the US and ended up killing their wives then later took their own lives.

theamericanbear:

jonathan-cunningham:

The [14 year old] teen told abc27 News she thought she was going to die when the men burst into the room, put pillow cases over some of the people’s heads and led them into a van.

“They pulled my chair out from underneath me and then they told me to get on the ground,” she said. “I was the first person to go into the van. I had my hands behind my back they said ‘just do as I say and you won’t be hurt’.”

The teens were taken to the pastor’s house, where it appeared he was being assaulted. Eventually, she said the adults in charge revealed it was a staged event.

“They heard me crying,” she said. “Why not right then and there tell us it was a joke, when you see me crying?”

Pastor John Lanza said the lesson was a surprise “to secure the shock value of it and make it much more real.”

They sent a real police officer with a real, brandished firearm to kidnap children and terrify them into compliance. They are currently ‘under investigation’, though why they are not currently under arrest is a mystery to me.

Also from the piece:

Church officials said the exercise has been done before and they would not shy away from doing it again, but would tell parents first. They added that they never had any indication that the teen was in such distress.

“I’m pretty sure she was laughing at some point and having fun with the other students,” youth pastor Andrew Jordan said. “I can’t confirm that, but that’s what I’ve heard from friends of hers that were there.”

I always laugh when I’m kidnapped.

“No other state has a law like this. Not only is it a ‘Stand Your Ground’ law — in the olden days under common law you had a duty to retreat. ‘Stand Your Ground’ says, no, you don’t have to. Florida goes one step farther. ‘Stand Your Ground’ is self defense — defense at trial. It would go to…

Specifically, language virtually identical to Florida’s law is featured in a template supplied to legislators in other states by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-backed organization that has managed to keep a low profile even as it exerts vast influence (only recently, thanks to yeoman work by the Center for Media and Democracy, has a clear picture of ALEC’s activities emerged). And if there is any silver lining to Trayvon Martin’s killing, it is that it might finally place a spotlight on what ALEC is doing to our society — and our democracy.

What is ALEC? Despite claims that it’s nonpartisan, it’s very much a movement-conservative organization, funded by the usual suspects: the Kochs, Exxon Mobil, and so on. Unlike other such groups, however, it doesn’t just influence laws, it literally writes them, supplying fully drafted bills to state legislators. In Virginia, for example, more than 50 ALEC-written bills have been introduced, many almost word for word. And these bills often become law.

Many ALEC-drafted bills pursue standard conservative goals: union-busting, undermining environmental protection, tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy. ALEC seems, however, to have a special interest in privatization — that is, on turning the provision of public services, from schools to prisons, over to for-profit corporations. And some of the most prominent beneficiaries of privatization, such as the online education company K12 Inc. and the prison operator Corrections Corporation of America, are, not surprisingly, very much involved with the organization.

What this tells us, in turn, is that ALEC’s claim to stand for limited government and free markets is deeply misleading. To a large extent the organization seeks not limited government but privatized government, in which corporations get their profits from taxpayer dollars, dollars steered their way by friendly politicians. In short, ALEC isn’t so much about promoting free markets as it is about expanding crony capitalism.

[…]

Think about that: we seem to be turning into a country where crony capitalism doesn’t just waste taxpayer money but warps criminal justice, in which growing incarceration reflects not the need to protect law-abiding citizens but the profits corporations can reap from a larger prison population.

Now, ALEC isn’t single-handedly responsible for the corporatization of our political life; its influence is as much a symptom as a cause. But shining a light on ALEC and its supporters — a roster that includes many companies, from AT&T and Coca-Cola to UPS, that have so far managed to avoid being publicly associated with the hard-right agenda — is one good way to highlight what’s going on. And that kind of knowledge is what we need to start taking our country back.

dumbthingswhitepplsay:abaldwin360:

RICHMOND HEIGHTS • Anna Brown wasn’t leaving the emergency room quietly.

She yelled from a wheelchair at St. Mary’s Health Center security personnel and Richmond Heights police officers that her legs hurt so badly she couldn’t stand.

She had already…