LETTER: 'He said/she said' scenario frustrating

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LETTER: 'He said/she said' scenario frustrating 
By Express-Times Letters to the Editor
on June 17, 2014 at 12:05 AM, updated June 17, 2014 at 12:06 AM

Reports have emerged that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl walked away from his post. It is rumored that soldiers were killed trying to rescue him. 

Reputedly, Bergdahl was discharged from the Coast Guard for "psychological reasons" before the Army recruited him and sent him to Iraq. Allegedly, the soldiers accusing him of desertion were aware of his instability before he disappeared. It is known that at least some of them are anti-Obama political operatives. 

It has been hypothesized that the prisoners exchanged for Bergdahl were going to be released anyway. Conversely, it has been propagated that the prisoners will commit more terrorism. 

But all of it is theory: speculation, reports. A "he said/she said" scenario. Hearsay. 

Neither Bergdahl nor the Guantanamo prisoners have been afforded a fair, impartial jury trial. 

While you're all out there using your imaginations, I'm imagining what it feels like to be locked in a dark cage for months and years. I'm struggling with the idea that the country that knew he was not well when it hired him to keep us all safe now wants him executed for desertion. 

In the meantime, the next generation of Swift Boat propaganda comes of age.

ERIK B. ANDERSON 

Independence Township

Concept of the Day - Deferred Obedience

From Wikipedia:

Deferred obedience: again, 'a deferred effect...a "deferred obedience" under the influence of repression'. Thus for instance Freud explored the different phases of a man's infantile attitude to his father: 'As long as his father was alive it showed itself in unmitigated rebelliousness and open discord, but immediately after his death it took the form of a neurosis based on abject submission and deferred obedience to him'. 

I believe that I have had this experience.

GWW: All those dangerous women-haters!

The head of the APA got paid.

An excerpt from Wired magazine:

I recently asked a former president of the APA how he used the DSM in his daily work. He told me his secretary had just asked him for a diagnosis on a patient he’d been seeing for a couple of months so that she could bill the insurance company. “I hadn’t really formulated it,” he told me. He consulted the DSM-IV and concluded that the patient had obsessive-compulsive disorder.

“Did it change the way you treated her?” I asked, noting that he’d worked with her for quite a while without naming what she had.

“No.”

“So what would you say was the value of the diagnosis?”

“I got paid.”

RIP Rodney Morrison

Remember the 6 Percent!

STORY OF MY LIFE! STORY OF MY LIFE! STORY OF MY LIFE! STORY OF MY LIFE! STORY OF MY LIFE!

STORY OF MY LIFE! STORY OF MY LIFE! STORY OF MY LIFE STORY OF MY LIFE! STORY OF MY LIFE! STORY OF MY LIFE! STORY OF MY LIFE! STORY OF MY LIFE! STORY OF MY LIFE! STORY OF MY LIFE! STORY OF MY LIFE STORY OF MY LIFE! STORY OF MY LIFE! STORY OF MY LIFE! STORY OF MY LIFE! STORY OF MY LIFE! STORY OF MY LIFE! STORY OF MY LIFE! STORY OF MY LIFE!

• Story Of My Life by Social Distortion

More Social Distortion music on iLike

Quote of the Day

"A family can act as gangsters, offering each other mutual protection against each other's violence. It is a reciprocal terrorism, with the offer of protection-security against the violence that each threatens the other with, and is threatened by, if anyone steps out of line."
   -R.D. Laing, The Politics of Experience.
    New York: Random House, Inc., 1967. p89

They Still Make Good Films These Days (Just Not In Hollywood) - #7

Example #7: Cropsey

I don't know what is scarier: the images of the mental patients from inside Lakewood State School, the idea that somebody must be responsible for the disappearance of seven children between 1972 and 1987, or the way all the police and family members look like they are lying twenty years later.

Concept of the Day - Covert Incest

The term covert incest (also known as emotional incest or psychic incest) is used by some mental health professionals to describe a relationship between parents and children that is sexualized and expects a child to fulfill adult emotional roles, though without actual incest. Proponents of the concept describe the relationships as harmful and one-sided, and similar to a relationship between adult sexual partners, but without the type of physical contact, that would be considered as child sexual abuse, and describe its effects as similar to, though less severe than, that of actual incest.

More at Wikipedia...

Concept of the Day - September 29, 2010

A double bind is a dilemma in communication in which an individual (or group) receives two or more conflicting messages, with one message negating the other. This creates a situation in which a successful response to one message results in a failed response to the other, so that the person will be automatically wrong regardless of response. The nature of a double bind is that the person cannot confront the inherent dilemma, and therefore cannot resolve it or opt out of the situation.

...the essence of a double bind is two conflicting demands, each on a different logical level, neither of which can be ignored or escaped. This leaves the victim torn both ways, so that whichever demand they try to meet, the other demand cannot be met. "I must do it, but I can't do it" is a typical description of the double bind experience.

For a double bind to be effective, the victim must be unable to confront or resolve the conflict between the demand placed by the primary injunction and that of the secondary injunction. In this sense, the double bind differentiates itself from a simple contradiction to a more inexpressible internal conflict, where the victim really wants to meet the demands of the primary injunction, but fails each time through an inability to address the situation's incompatibility with the demands of the secondary injunction. Thus, victims may express feelings of extreme anxiety in such a situation, as they attempt to fulfil the demands of the primary injunction albeit with obvious contradictions in their actions.

More...

Example: Judge to young man: "Leave that woman alone!", while the man knows the woman will approach and antagonize him to get into trouble.

Concept of the Month - September 23, 2010

Double Standard

The term double standard, coined in 1912,[1] refers to any set of principles containing different provisions for one group of people than for another, typically without a good reason for having said difference.[2] A double standard may take the form of an instance in which certain applications (often of a word or phrase) are perceived as acceptable to be used by one group of people, but are considered unacceptable—taboo—when used by another group.

A double standard, thus, can be described as a sort of biased, morally unfair suspension (toward a certain group) of the principle that all are equal in their freedoms. Such double standards are seen as unjustified because they violate a basic maxim of modern legal jurisprudence: that all parties should stand equal before the law.

Example:

Know Your Rights

ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) Title II Technical Assistance Manual

II-2.2000 Physical or mental impairments. The first category of persons covered by the definition of an individual with a disability is restricted to those with "physical or mental impairments." Physical impairments include --


1) Physiological disorders or conditions;

2) Cosmetic disfigurement; or

3) Anatomical loss


affecting one or more of the following body systems: neurological; musculoskeletal; special sense organs (which would include speech organs that are not respiratory such as vocal cords, soft palate, tongue, etc.); respiratory, including speech organs; cardiovascular; reproductive; digestive; genitourinary; hemic and lymphatic; skin; and endocrine.


Specific examples of physical impairments include orthopedic, visual, speech, and hearing impairments, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, HIV disease (symptomatic or asymptomatic), tuberculosis, drug addiction, and alcoholism.

Mental impairments include mental or psychological disorders, such as mental retardation, organic brain syndrome, emotional or mental illness, and specific learning disabilities.


Simple physical characteristics such as the color of one's eyes, hair, or skin; baldness; left-handedness; or age do not constitute physical impairments. Similarly, disadvantages attributable to environmental, cultural, or economic factors are not the type of impairments covered by title II. Moreover, the definition does not include common personality traits such as poor judgment or a quick temper, where these are not symptoms of a mental or psychological disorder.


Does title II prohibit discrimination against individuals based on their sexual orientation? No. The phrase "physical or mental impairment" does not include homosexuality or bisexuality.

Where is the help?

Where is the help?
by Erik B. Anderson
06-15-2009


Do we actually have people we can go to for help in this country?
She wants me to get help.
I want to get help.
Who wants to help me?
The help that she wants me to get does not exist.
Okay, I'm looking.
[Looks to the horizon on one side] Help!
[Looks to the horizion on the other side] Help!
Well?
Where is it?
Where is the help?
Well. It's official.
I don't see any help around.
What should I do now?
Nothing, I guess.
Would it be all right with you if I asked you to leave me alone now?

Know Your Rights

The importance of the role of counsel in alerting the court to the possibility of a defendant's incompetence has long 315*315 been recognized. State v. Lambert, 275 N.J. Super. 125, 129, 645 A.2d 1189 (App.Div. 1994) (citing Drope v. Missouri, 420 U.S. 162, 177 n. 13, 95 S.Ct. 896, 906 n. 13, 43 L.Ed.2d 103, 116 n. 13 (1975)). In fact, defense counsel is ordinarily "in far better position than the trial judge to assay the salient facts concerning the defendant's ability to stand trial and assist in his own defense." State v. Lucas, 30 N.J. 37, 74, 152 A.2d 50 (1959). Likewise, defense counsel is in a better position to alert the court when a mentally ill defendant is competent to stand trial, yet not competent to proceed pro se. When a bona fide doubt is raised as to the competence of a mentally ill defendant to proceed pro se, counsel should be appointed to aid in the competency determination, as well as to assist the defendant in trying the case.

Where a defendant demonstrates a history of psychiatric problems and a current thought disorder, creating a reasonable basis to question his or her competency to stand trial or to raise a defense centering on mental condition, the court is obligated to conduct a further inquiry either by appointing counsel or directing that a psychiatric examination be conducted. Under such circumstances, it is irrelevant that a defendant is not facing a "consequence of magnitude" and is therefore ordinarily not entitled to appointment of counsel. A municipal court should not permit a clearly mentally ill defendant charged with a disorderly persons offense to proceed pro se, even absent the possibility of imposing "consequences of magnitude." Such a defendant should be assigned an attorney, even if by providing counsel he or she is given greater protection than that afforded to a defendant without a psychiatric disability.

More...

Know Your Rights

It is settled that, if evidence available to a trial judge raises a bona fide doubt regarding a defendant's ability to understand and participate in the proceedings against him, the judge has an obligation to order an examination to assess his competency, even if the defendant does not request such an exam. Drope v. Missouri, [466 U.S. 984 , 986] 420 U.S. 162 (1975); Pate v. Robinson, 383 U.S. 375 (1966).

PORTER v. MCKASKLE , 466 U.S. 984 (1984)

Know Your Rights

A mentally ill defendant has needs beyond those of other citizens. Just as a deaf defendant would be provided with a sign-language interpreter, N.J.S.A. 34:1-69.10, or a non-English speaking defendant with a foreign language interpreter, State v. Kounelis, 258 N.J. Super. 420, 609 A.2d 1310 (App.Div. 1992), certif. denied 133 N.J. 429, 627 A.2d 1136 (1993)[4], the mentally ill defendant should be provided with counsel to allow full access to the courts.


State v. Ehrenberg, 664 A. 2d 1301 - NJ: Superior Court, Law Div., Bergen 1994

Show compassion for troubled person - LTTE

Letter to the Editor - Express-Times Newspaper  - Tuesday, October 13, 2009

I've been thinking a lot about the man who was arrested for taking a bath in public in Belvidere. He had been living in his car outside the Warren County Courthouse for several months after he lost his house. Finally, The Express-Times reported he had had enough and tried to get the filth off of himself in public because he thought he had nowhere else to go.

I met this man over the summer, just a few weeks before the incident. So I read the article with interest. He had a sign on his car window that said he was running for Warren County surrogate because he didn't like the way Susan Dickey had handled his case after the last of his parents died. He had a genuine tin-foil helmet in his backseat.

I am not writing to continue the ridicule that this man has surely received since his face appeared on the front page of the paper under the headline, "Naked man arrested." I am sorry if this letter has that effect on him. The real intent of this letter is to encourage readers to be more compassionate to him. I certainly hope his accusations are false, but if some of them are true, I hope the officials who made the mistakes will read this and do their jobs in an exemplary manner in the future. With the economy going the way it is going, one thing is certain: We are going to encounter more cases such as this.

ERIK B. ANDERSON
Independence Township