Articles

In a PBS documentary, ECT is Bad for “Curing” Homosexuality, but Great for Depression!

Mad in America October 2nd, 2021

A new documentary about gay activists’ defeat of the APA ends with a disclaimer that ECT is “effective for severe depression.” Bruce Levine spoke with the filmmakers.

Upcoming PBS Doc “Cured” About Gay Liberation from Psychiatry…and Much More

CounterPunch September 24th, 2021

Not that long ago, there was no public outcry directed at governments that had declared homosexuality a crime, churches that had declared homosexuality a sin, and psychiatry—the focus of Cured—that had declared homosexuality a sickness.

U.S. Authorities Pay No Price for Acknowledged Lying: What’s the Impact on Us?

CounterPunch+ March 28th, 2021

Presidents and other U.S. authorities have always been liars—just ask Native Americans. While lying to Native Americans has never been politically costly for U.S. presidents, getting caught lying by the entire American public was once politically damaging.

Politics & Science: Rahm Emanuel, Mike Pence, Homosexuality, Pandemics, Masks, Vaccines

CounterPunch February 19th, 2021

Aside from their icy-mobster visages, Rahm Emanuel and Mike Pence have something else in common. Both, as members of presidential administrations, tried to rewrite Centers for Disease Control (CDC) pandemic guidance for political purposes. The reason why one was successful and the other was not has nothing to do with courageous CDC scientists threatening to […]

COVID-19 Slaughter, CDC Tragedy, and One U.S. Authority without Blood on His Hands

CounterPunch+ January 10th, 2021

It is easy for progressives to blame the staggering calamity of U.S. COVID-19 deaths solely on Trump. Yes, Donald Trump is a self-serving liar, and his vice president, Mike Pence, as chair of the President’s Coronavirus Task Force and Trump henchman, has blocked life-saving guidance from scientific authorities. There is smoking-gun evidence (some of which […]

“The Zyprexa Papers”: A Legal System for Drug Companies and Lawyers . . . Not the Public

CounterPunch September 4th, 2020

On November 28, 2006, attorney Jim Gottstein received a phone call that would change his life. It would propel Gottstein into a legal war against the giant pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, who would retaliate against him for his release of Lilly’s own documents about its drug Zyprexa. A U.S. District Court would rule that Gottstein […]

Lesser of Two Evils: Chomsky vs. Greenwald . . . and the Ignored Factor

CounterPunch June 19th, 2020

Noam Chomsky believes that it is so imperative that Trump be defeated that he will vote for Biden, while Glenn Greenwald challenges the political strategy of the lesser-of-two-evils dictum. It is difficult to imagine anyone more intellectually commanding than Chomsky, but Greenwald is no inferior. Chomsky and Greenwald are unbroken, rational warriors who apply contrasting […]

If Trump is a Pathological Liar, What Type of Liar is Biden?

CounterPunch May 1st, 2020

Bernie Sanders has routinely called Trump a “pathological liar.” The term pathological liar, a controversial one for psychiatrists, in common usage coveys someone who is an extraordinarily unrestrained liar. And so, Bernie knows that it is in no way radical to use this term to describe the unrelentingly self-serving Trump who unhesitatingly lies if he […]

Who Could Have Gotten Deserters from Trump’s Three Armies . . . and from Mine?

CounterPunch March 13th, 2020

Taking US national politics too seriously can make you hopelessly stupid, hopelessly cynical, or hopelessly suicidal. Let’s see. We had a former Black Panther, Congressman Bobby Rush, endorsing search-and-frisk Bloomberg; while Mike Will Get It Done was making AP headlines: “Bloomberg Once Blamed End of ‘Redlining’ for 2008 Collapse.” We have evangelicals adulterating my I-71 […]

 “Sublime Madness”: Anarchists, Psychiatric Survivors, Emma Goldman & Harriet Tubman

CounterPunch February 14th, 2020

 “Sublime Madness”: Anarchists, Psychiatric Survivors, Emma Goldman & Harriet Tubman   When the state becomes chillingly evil—enacting a Fugitive Slave Act to criminalize those helping to free slaves, or financing prisons and wars for the benefit of sociopathic profiteers—and when dissent is impotent and defiance is required, we need the sublimely mad. For his 2013 piece […]