Tag: equality

[10-11-23] UN and WHO call for ‘significant shift away from biomedical model of mental health’

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

UN and WHO call for ‘significant shift away from biomedical model of mental health’

WHO and UN are calling for significant shift away from the biomedical modelof mental health which encourages psychiatric diagnoses, medications, forced restraints, institutionalisation, imprisonment and other oppressive medical practices – towards a trauma-informed, social, human rights, person-centred approach to mental health

WHO and UN highlight the current ways the biomedical model of mental health harms, oppresses, controls, isolates, stigmatises and discriminates against those who have been told they have psychiatric disorders, and who have not been validated in their traumas, distress, poverty, environments, oppression, or experiences

WHO and UN recognise that women and girls, people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender are more likely to be labelled as mentally ill, and more likely to face forced sterilisations, coerced abortions, coerced contraception, and conversion therapies.

WHO and UN recognise that there are widespread human rights violations and harm being caused by current biomedical model approaches to mental health, which includes our psychiatric hospitals, services, treatments, and approaches

WHO and UN recognise that people who have been diagnosed with psychiatric disorders have been positioned as dangerous, unreliable and unstable, meaning that they are stigmatised and discriminated against in multiple systems of power (including health, criminal justice, family justice, education, employment, finances and their rights)

“Soldiers Are Everywhere, Settlers Are Everywhere, People Are Afraid to Leave Their Homes” (w/ Issa Amro)

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
The Real News Network

Every day the Palestinian civilian death toll is rising dramatically as Israel continues with its genocidal bombing and ground invasion of Gaza, and as settler and military violence towards Palestinians in the West Bank intensifies. “It’s a closure, it’s a curfew, in many places in the West Bank,” Issa Amro says. “It’s not normal life these days. Soldiers are everywhere, settlers are everywhere, people are afraid to leave their homes, they don’t go to work, they don’t go to school, they don’t go to universities.” After losing touch with Issa during the day because he was escaping from settlers who were chasing him in Hebron, we managed to reconnect over the phone and record a nine minute conversation about the hell working people in Palestine are going through right now and what their fellow workers in the US and Canada can do to stop the slaughter. Issa Amro is a Palestinian human rights defender living in Hebron, in the Occupied West Bank. He is the co-founder and former coordinator of the grassroots group Youth Against Settlements. Days prior to this recording, Issa was evicted from his home in Hebron and tortured by Israeli troops.

“Soldiers Are Everywhere, Settlers Are Everywhere, People Are Afraid to Leave Their Homes” (w/ Issa Amro)

Equal Rights to Commit War Crimes

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Under a canopy of darkness, the roar of bullets punctures the silence of the night along Israel’s borders. The Caracal Battalion, a mixed-gender combat unit of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), is engaged in an intense firefight. At the helm of this tumult is Lt.-Col. Or Ben-Yehuda, leading her troops against the relentless onslaught of Hamas terrorists. This night, they emerged victorious, reportedly eliminating nearly 100 militants, thus defying any lingering doubts regarding the capabilities of female combat soldiers.

The Caracal Battalion: A Testament to Female Combatants’ Capabilities

Previously:

Israeli forces shot their own civilians, kibbutz survivor says

We’re Seeing the Calamitous Cost of Ignoring Palestine

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

New Republic

The Biden administration thought the Palestine question could be downplayed in pursuit of other objectives. And here we are.

Twenty-six. That is the number of times Wadea Al Fayoume, a Palestinian American child living in the Chicago area, was stabbed in a murderous rampage committed by his landlord. The picture of Wadea in a birthday hat that has gone viral since the attack that killed him and severely injured his mother was taken eight days earlier, when he turned 6.

We’re Seeing the Calamitous Cost of Ignoring Palestine

The Phony War on American Culture

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The Phony War on American Culture

Consider how gender is one focus of their culture war campaign. Transgender people hardly affect our personal lives, despite the Republican campaigns to make it a voting issue. In America, only 1.3 million adults and 300,000 children identify as transgender out of a population of 332 million. Only 36 transgender athletes compete in college sports that include over half a million participants. Yet the Republican legislature in Kansas recently banned transgender girls from female high school sports, despite having only three transgender girls out of 41,00 competing in the state. Indeed, they should be respected and accommodated in some way. Yet, GOP legislators are considering a flood of bills to restrict transgender behavior, flooding email boxes with requests for donations, blasting isolated events on Fox News, and making them campaign issues.

[2019] Order From Chaos: What does a Pride parade have to do with NATO? More than you might think.

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Editor’s Note: The degree of respect for LGBTQ people has increasingly become a measure of democratic health in former Soviet states. If Russia were a place where Pride parades were allowed, its quarrels with the United States, and ours with it, would possibly diminish, writes James Kirchick. This article originally appeared in the Washington Post.

What does a Pride parade have to do with NATO? More than you might think.

Related:

Meet the true journalists: James Kirchick and Lawrence O’Donnell

*Disclaimer: The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Ms. Cat’s Chronicles.

The World Economic Forum has outed itself as anti-Palestinian

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The World Economic Forum has outed itself as anti-Palestinian

A few months later, I received a letter indefinitely suspending my membership. My request for the reasons for my suspension and an appeal has gone completely ignored. So much for the values of “stakeholder capitalism” and “cooperation in a fragmented world” that WEF publicly espouses. More like racism, abuse of power, and lack of transparency. I have learned firsthand that some YGLs are informants leaking private communications directly to the WEF’s leadership. Feels more like an authoritarian regime that spies on its constituency and loathes free speech than a global forum. As for my former YGLs, only a handful of true leaders actually protested my suspension. The silence of the remaining supposed “young global leaders” was deafening, but in retrospect, I realize that their silence is expressive of the exact type of Machiavellian leadership that the WEF seeks to foster.

Related:

WEF—Code of Conduct:

The World Economic Forum adheres to the principles of independence, impartiality, moral integrity and intellectual integrity.

[2021] Can we improve the world by remaining impartial?

What do you do when violent conflict erupts, innocent people get killed, and human rights are being violated? I believe any person with a heart and a moral compass would feel compelled to condemn the aggressors. Not doing so feels wrong on a moral level, and could raise the risk of further escalation. Are we misguided then, as an international institution, to not speak out unequivocally when conflicts emerge, and innocent people suffer? Are we “hiding” behind our impartiality?

[2022] Klaus Schwab and Børge Brende Statement on Ukraine

We therefore deeply condemn the aggression by Russia against Ukraine, the attacks and atrocities.