Tag: Association fallacy

Do Critics of Biological Psychiatry Have an Alternative to a Life of “Whack-A-Mole”?

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
Economic Manuscripts: Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy

stablishment psychiatry has recently switched the biological cause of mental illness from a “chemical imbalance” to a “brain circuitry defect.” There is no more important institution in establishment psychiatry than the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and in 2022, psychiatrist Thomas Insel, NIMH director from 2002-2015, stated in his book Healing, “The idea of mental illness as a ‘chemical imbalance’ has now given way to mental illnesses as ‘connectional’ or brain circuit disorders.”

Do Critics of Biological Psychiatry Have an Alternative to a Life of “Whack-A-Mole”?

Powell’s hit piece on “Media Unlocked”

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Unlocking China’s “Media Unlocked” Propagandists

Recently, Media Unlocked unveiled its latest triumph–an interview with a former U.S. president’s brother, Neil Bush, whose George H.W. Bush Foundation For U.S.-China Relations has allegedly received millions of dollars from a group associated with CCP influence operations. Bush–apparently unconcerned that he was participating in Beijing’s propaganda campaign–helpfully sang the praise of China’s communist system, its electric vehicle industry and, incredibly, even announced that he was observing a “massive freedom movement” in today’s China.

Propagandists? Und das bist du nicht?

Now, let’s get into who’s funding the George H.W. Bush Foundation For U.S.-China Relations. Powell links to a Fox News article about its funding from the China–United States Exchange Foundation, based in Hong Kong. The Fox News article links to an Axios article (which is behind a paywall). Nowhere does Powell mention that the foundation also gets funding from the U.S. Department of State, The Rockefeller Foundation, etc.

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Anti-trans activists release database flagging hospitals providing youth gender-affirming care [State Policy Network]

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Do No Harm, a coalition of anti-trans doctors, nurses, and medical professionals, released a database of all the hospitals and medical centers in the U.S. that provide gender-affirming care for trans youth today.

Anti-trans activists release database flagging hospitals providing youth gender-affirming care

Wait until they find out about this!

Related:

Meet the influential new player on transgender health bills

The organization’s executive director, Kristina Rasmussen, previously was chief of staff to former Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, a Republican, and served as president of the Illinois Policy Institute [State Policy Network], a conservative think tank, according to her LinkedIn profile.

…

It won a $250,000 award last year called the Gregor Peterson Prize. Its previous recipients include the Center for American Liberty, led by Harmeet Dhillon, a lawyer who advised former President Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign and who is representing Cole in her lawsuit against Kaiser Permanente over gender-transition treatments she now says she regrets. The prize was announced in December at a summit held by the American Legislative Exchange Council [State Policy Network], a prominent provider of conservative model legislation.

Document: Atlas Network

How is the US Convincing the Philippines to Destroy Itself?

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

As China rises, Asia rises with it. The Southeast Asian state of the Philippines stood to rise alongside the rest of the region until relatively recently as the United States successfully convinces the Philippines to do otherwise. 

How is the US Convincing the Philippines to Destroy Itself? (archived)

Related:

PH’s PressONE is funded by several US front organizations:

The Philippine Fact-Checker Incubator was established with the financial backing of Facebook, in collaboration with VERA Files and Rappler. The incubated organizations include ABS-CBN News & Current Affairs, Manila Broadcasting Company, MindaNews, Philstar.com, PressONE.ph, and Probe Productions. They are accredited by the International Fact-Checking Network. – PFCI, Poytner.

Poynter Institute has been funded by the Gates Foundation, the Koch Network, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Omidyar Network, and Open Society Foundations.  Other sponsors are CNN, the Scripps Howard Foundations, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, TEGNA Foundation, etc..

Front Organizations

Indonesia’s feared ex-general Prabowo claims victory in presidential election + Notes

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Indonesia’s feared ex-general Prabowo claims victory in presidential election

But the likely victory of Prabowo — an ex-general who was kicked out from the army and subjected to a two-decade ban from the U.S. over human rights violations — raises fears of the world’s third-largest democracy sliding backward into authoritarian rule.

Related:

3 things you should know about Indonesia’s presidential elections

Continuity and its risks


Prabowo is expected to largely continue the policies of President Widodo, or “Jokowi,” as Indonesians call him. President Widodo is not up for reelection as he’s serving his final term.

Through his two five-year terms, Indonesia’s economy — Southeast Asia’s largest — has grown at about 5% a year. His infrastructure building, cash and food assistance to the poor and health and education policies have been popular.

Indonesia is the world’s largest producer of nickel, used in making electric vehicle batteries, and Jokowi has barred the export of raw nickel, to help Indonesia move up the value chain from mining to manufacturing.

…

Prabowo is Suharto’s son-in-law. He received training in the 1980s from the U.S. military at Fort Benning, Ga. (now Fort Moore) and Fort Bragg, N.C. (now Fort Liberty).

Indonesia’s presidential election emerges as key battleground in US-China rivalry

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[2008] When the Left Was Right

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The ghosts of 1968 are haunting Barack Obama, which is tremendously unfair, I say as his coeval, given that our cohort spent the Chicago Democratic Convention sticking baseball cards in our bicycle spokes rather than pelting Mayor Daley’s finest with porcine epithets. But guilt by association is ironclad in these days when American political discourse is controlled by hall monitors and tattletales. Obama’s friendship—acquaintance?—with Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn is about to get extended play as the Republicans contrast Obama’s Weatherfriends with their nominee’s stint in the Hanoi Hilton.

When the Left Was Right

The FBI’s Material Support for Israeli Apartheid Against Palestinians

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
Tweet from Abed A. Ayoub, the national executive director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC)

By Chip Gibbons / The Dissenter

Israel’s war on the besieged Gaza Strip has entered its sixth day. The Israeli military has launched a massive bombardment with airstrikes killing over 1,000 Palestinians.

The FBI’s Material Support for Israeli Apartheid Against Palestinians