Growing up in a labelled world

I write this in response to the paper "Framing Disease," by Robert Aronowitz, and to the associated commentaries and rejoinder, which appear in the July 2008 issue of Social Science & Medicine. I would like to relate that SSM discussion to a personal account of how labelling and exposure to someone who sought labelling affected me from a very young age...

I was raised on psychobabble. My mother, rejecting one psychiatrist after another and likely still doing so, had gone through 14 of them when last I spoke with her, which was 15 years ago. I learned at my mother's knee what 'psychiatrist' meant, and the psychological jargon of the day, such as 'nervous breakdown' and 'emotionally disturbed'. In this respect I was set up to absorb doubts about my own emotional health, particularly given that life was hell at home.

Thing is, I knew better than anyone that my mother was not sick. She was egocentric, manipulative and cruel, i.e., her personality deviated negatively from the norm. For the burgeoning field of psychiatry, this made my mother an excellent candidate. For her, being labelled played into her egocentricity, which was why she sought out psychiatrists in the first place. My mother became addicted to psychiatry.

Thus made aware, by the age of five, that a harsh childhood could result in psychological damage, I swore to myself on a particular day that my mother would not destroy me, that I would protect myself, my yet-to-be-formed identity, against damage.

I've always called this my "promise day." On that day, as my mother stood before me screaming down abuse, I looked up at her and said to myself: "You won't kill me, you won't kill me, you won't kill me."

The repetition was to pound the resolve into me, to make it stick. I understood "me" to be my identity, not my body. The "won't" represented my determination that my mother would not succeed in transforming me into her own ideal. I understood I was in a triple danger, hence the repetition of three: of being imminently threatened, of my future identity being threatened, and of my future self being the subject of psychiatrists. To be the latter was to be like my mother, something to avoid at all costs. It was my mental health I was swearing to protect, although I didn't use or know that term. (I don't think in the 50s it was in fashion yet.)

For fifty years more, I resisted mental illness labelling. Then came the 18 months around the time I wrote my story, formed WISE (a former group and national movement of low-income women), and ran the project for and published the book Policies of Exclusion, Poverty & Health: Stories from the front. My mental illness buy-in is evident from the first lines of my story, the story of Chris in the book. I regret my lapse and acceptance of the label and have since rejected it. In other words, I've come back to my senses. The bare facts of the story stand on their own; the labelling does nothing but add salve to the mental health industry.

The pressure to accept mental illness labelling was enormous, not least because a good friend, my only friend at that time, was using it and applying it to me. With so much to deal with - an escalating slide into poverty and imminent homelessness - I was in too weakened a state to keep the promise to my 5-yr-old self. It didn't help that funding for the project was more likely if the lead researcher accepted the lingo, rather than not.

I do not blame my friend. The temptation to diagnose, and in the language of current 'wisdom', is hard to resist. She was right that I was distraught almost out of my mind. But the sickness wasn't in me. It was all around me. My distraught reactions were my healthy body's desperate attempts to warn me of a looming threat, of living in circumstances that risked my survival.

§

I suspect that the unquestioned adoption of mental illness labels has grown. My story is but a single example. But it seems to me that a whole generation has grown up with mental illness labels as part of everyday discourse. Now, if one simply accepts a label, all sorts of things can happen. People living on very low income have learned that exposing ourselves to the mental health industry and accepting a label can mean the difference between getting a housing subsidy or not, between getting employment assistance or not; listen to the story of Anna. For criminals, accepting a mental illness label can mean time spent in a psychiatric hospital rather than in jail. For overworked, stressed employees it can mean dispensation for time off.

More people are reported experiencing mental illness. I interpret this as either more people are getting labelled with mental disorders or more people are experiencing distress. Given the ascendancy of the mental health industry and the power dynamics of neo-liberalism, globalization and market capitalism, likely both are at play. But rather than look to causes (over-zealous labelling; manmade sociocultural, socioeconomic and physical environmental conditions threatening people's health), we focus on the individual.

It's the blame-the-victim approach. And the victims, rarely from other than the plebes, being immersed in this society and absorbing its messages, eventually accept the blame by adopting sickness labels and converting into feelings of shame the stigma imposed by the elite classes and adopted by society's wannabes.

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Treat depression with brain pacemakers

It's a new frontier for psychiatric illness

Brain pacemakers that promise to act as antidepressants by changing how patients' nerve circuitry fires

Only a few dozen patients with severe depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder so far have been treated in closely monitored studies. Still, the early results are promising.

In reading this article, I was reminded of a science fiction novel I recently finished. Written by Greg Bear in 1997, Slant tells of a possible, not-too-distant future, in which people become so deeply immersed in the electronic information age that civilization reaches a crisis point. Inhabitants of this future world don't know a crisis is unfolding, since it involves the very technology which keeps them submissive to the erosion of their surroundings. Most experiences with other humans are achieved not in person but electronically, by jacking oneself into the 'net. Even sex is not immune.

Which technology is it that keeps people in this future world content and accepting the status quo? It's "therapy" involving surgical adjustments to the brain. Such procedures have become the norm, to the extent that the "non-therapied" are considered the lunatics - the oddballs, malcontents, marginalized - and "normals" are as rare as the dodo. In some cases, the therapy amounts to the ultimate, permanent happy pill: no condition can make the therapied unhappy, even jailing.

A couple of days after finishing Slant, I found myself reading the article in the news, about a surgical procedure to treat depression.

I was appalled, but not surprised.

After all, isn't that where the mental health industry is leading us? Isn't 'mental illness' becoming mainstream and everyday life pathologized?

In present-day society, we have manmade sociocultural, socioeconomic, and physical environmental conditions which are causing people distress. But rather than treating these conditions, we treat (and blame) the human physiology which signals their negative effects on our wellbeing. We insist on adapting humans to their conditions, not the conditions to human need.

This illogical approach is part of governments' lifestyle and individual responsibility mantra. This mantra conveniently ignores the crucial role which the determinants of health play, those determinants being - you guessed it - manmade sociocultural, socioeconomic, and physicial environmental conditions.

One can hardly be expected to adapt if one's lifestyle options have been reduced to zero. Even the power elite seem to have realized this. But rather than taking responsibility for allowing those life-threatening conditions, even promoting them, this same power elite look to their own risk - that of losing power.

Ergo, the masses are encouraged to make a few adjustments to their brains instead, either by means of 'drug therapy' or, soon to come to a psychiatrist near you, surgery. This way they will feel hunky dory while the conditions necessary to sustain their lives fall to ruin around them.

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Jack Layton, Exploiting Poor for Political Gain

Carbon tax would hurt poor, shouts the headline.

That's Jack Layton, Leader of the NDP, criticizing the Liberals' yet undisclosed plan to introduce a carbon tax should they be elected. As Layton pontificates,

those advocating a carbon tax suggest that by making the costs for certain things more expensive, people will make different choices. But Canada is a cold place and heating your home really isn't a choice.

This speech took place at a homeless shelter. Layton was supposed to be there for a fundraiser. However, never loathe to turn away an opportunity to slur the Liberals, Layton did his disingenuous best on that score and then talked about his own environmental plan.

(Living in BC I wasn't at the event, but I do wonder how much of Layton's presentation was about the homeless shelter, whose fundraiser he was there to promote.)

Liberal Leader, Stéphane Dion, is expected to announce his environmental plan to penalize activities that contribute to global warming. As Layton would be aware, since it's public knowledge, Dion has claimed that his plan would be revenue neutral: the carbon taxes raised would be returned in the form of lower income taxes and in other tax mechanisms aimed at helping low-income people.

While it's unknown what Dion's plan will look like, I think it's likely to be similar to the scheme introduced by the BC Government.

In the case of British Columbia, low-income residents will be better off. Each BC resident will receive $100 in advance of the tax being implemented. Before people are out-of-pocket, they'll have to have poured about 4,200 litres of gas into their tanks. It will be the gas guzzlers whose pockets get dinged, therefore, not the pockets of the poor.

My hope is that Dion's plan will be more robust than the BC plan, with the at-pump penalty considerably heftier. However, implementing even a low-rate carbon tax would be a start. It could be increased as need - more likely, political will - dictates.

As for Layton's latest foray into sleaze politics, this financially-challenged person is tired of the man's presumption that he speaks for us all - as though the poor were one undifferentiated blob.

Having recently been Coordinator of a national group of low-income women, I can say that Mr Layton does not know what's best for us all. The experts on poverty and its solutions would be the people living the experience. The NDP - which paints itself as the champion of the poor and disenfranchised - insists on solutions which do not take into consideration the heterogeneity of persons living within Canada's lowest income group or the differences amongst us concerning our most basic needs.

For the NDP, solutions always lie in bigger government - i.e., bigger federal government, bigger provincial governments. But most low-income groups realize that electoral and democratic reform must be our top priority - so that we get to have our say, and are enabled to participate more in decision-making and influence the political process.

Democratic reform should include shifting some of the power wielded by Canada's largest governments downward, to the municipal level. In this way - provided revenues also get shifted downward - local governments, which end up facing the consequences of failed upper-tier policy, can be held answerable to their neighbours. More power and resources held in the hands of local politicians could only encourage healthier, sustainable community economic development.

It's no surprise that this proposal is one that no party, particularly the NDP, seems willing to endorse. It would require relinquishing a good part of their power.

(For the record, I'm not a Liberal supporter.)

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Meanings - Belonging, Home, Community

I filled out a survey yesterday on community meaning. For each question, respondents were to give the first answer which came to mind. Along with questions about the respondents' understanding of various concepts, including belonging, home and community, was this question, the last one:

When do you most feel a sense of community?

Here was my response:

It has been a very long time. I'm 57 yrs old now and the last time I felt a sense of community was at the age of 14. Then, I was in an environment in which to be and express who I am was permissible; it was the first time in my life I'd experienced that. Unfortunately, it lasted for only 11 months, after which I had to leave that community. When I think of belonging, I think of home, and that's the place I associate with the latter.

I went for a walk after completing that survey and began reflecting on my answers. I soon realized that underlying my sense of the meaning of belonging, home and community was a single, uncomplicated idea: acceptance.

It was nothing so robust or overt as welcoming. Just acceptance, manifested in an environment in which everyone adopts a live-and-let-live attitude and respect for difference.

In that place, I was FREE TO BE ME, without pigeonholing or labelling.

Actually, the latter isn't quite right. ALL of the residents at that place were labelled, which meant that we ended up undistinguished from one another. That is, being labelled made us all equal - at least in each other's eyes, which was all that mattered to us.

You see, that place was Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital, which doesn't exist anymore. In the 60's, that location on Lakeshore Blvd. in Toronto was a 'mental institution' or 'looney bin'. I'd more describe it as a warehouse for undesirables and strays, people who society was happy to throw away.

Now, given the horror of that place, how could I possibly recall it to mind whenever triggered to think of home or belonging or community?

It's because the patients were expected to have an emotional life and licensed to exhibit eccentric behaviour. We were permitted to be normal, as judged by our own standards.

The relief to be who we were was enormous, and the sense of freedom intoxicating. Never before or since have I felt anything like that degree of acceptance and with it, the freedom to stretch my faculties, explore who I was and who I could potentially be. It was mind expanding in the best sense of that term.

As bad as most of these institutions were, including LPH, they got some things right. For LPH, it was its failure to psychiatrically treat certain of its residents - to leave us alone. Its failure to treat summed up, in a word, acceptance of us just the way we were.

Curious about LPH? For a start, check out this site.

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Mental Health & Religion - A comparison

The more I think about it, the more the Mental Health Industry (MHI) appears to me to be no more than the secular version of the Organized Religion Industry (ORI). Indeed, the MHI is well placed to take over the de facto functions of the ORI.

Consider the following.

The MHI uses the amorphous stuff of the mind, not brain, as its guide for distinguishing mental health from mental illness.

The MHI determines mental illness not by a malady evidenced in the body; no, instead 'mental health professionals' look to people's behaviour. Conveniently, what they or society deem as abnormal, deviant, - in a word, sinful - behaviour comes to be associated with mental illness.

Conversely, mental health marks a set of behaviours which demonstrate a person as being faithful to society's standards, behaviours which conform to the precepts of good, civilized, NORMal conduct.

Conveniently, psychiatrists have positioned themselves as the most qualified to define normal behaviour. I wish I could just laugh at the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), which is the bible of the MHI, but it horrifies me too much.

Like the MHI, the ORI works its magic - its hocus pocus - on people's minds (spirits, souls). Since a person's internal life can never be known by another, the stuff of religion is, as is the case for the MHI, our behaviour: what we do, including ritualistic motions; what we say; and what we say we believe.

In other words, the ORI takes as its speciality the entire field of morality; indeed, its devotees will argue that "without faith" a person can have no morality. The MHI too has taken up morality, i.e., the NORMal. Both exude paternalism.

The ORI is big business, tax exempt, and supported by governments in a myriad of ways. The aim of the ORI is to modify people's thoughts, beliefs, and behaviour, to ensure that these conform to certain standards - standards which the ORI judges itself alone qualified to determine.

The MHI is big business, faithful to the medical model of health and therefore tax exempt. Government and the acute care system (the Healthcare Industry, minus the MHI) have worked well together - to ensure their own survival and power. In one way, the MHI is still the new kid on the block, since government has been reluctant to include 'mental illness' as a health priority. But things are looking up. With government coming around, clearly the benefits of inclusion - of the MHI - have been recognized.

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My First Podcast

With the number of available copies of Policies of Exclusion, Poverty and Health: Stories from the front rapidly diminishing, Daphne and I had begun thinking about other ways of making the book available. Three methods came to mind: a) e-book, b) audio book, and c) podcasts.

E-books can be read on most computers. Devices such as the CyBook Gen3 make a great alternative to having to sit at one's desktop. (I want one - SERIOUSLY.) They make possible a library of hundreds of books with never a cluttered, dusty bookshelf in sight. The books are neatly stored in a single, light, paperback-size device and can be read anywhere, anytime as long as battery life continues.

Audio books are typically standard MP3 files of an entire book. Most podcasts are also MP3 files and tend to be under one hour in length.

Online book stores and many public libraries make audio books and more recently, e-books, available for purchase and download.

I'd be reluctant to recreate the WISE book in a single audio file due to bandwidth issues, and converting it into an e-book would require a software upgrade. Given the currently small niche e-book market, getting the software would likely not be worth the effort. Besides, I haven't the money for it.

There are advantages to presenting a book in a series of podcasts, particularly a book of the type that Policies of Exclusion, Poverty and Health is. Therefore, it was agreed that offering the WISE book in a series of podcasts would be ideal, if it were possible. I'd create and publish one podcast per week, over 24 weeks. The first podcast would feature the Acknowledgements & Introduction, with each of the 21 stories following. The series would end with one podcast each on the reports at the end of the book: "Phase I - The Issues" (an analysis of our stories) and "Phase II - The Recommendations."

The only problem to this plan was: a) I didn't have a headset, and b) there was no room in my budget to buy one.

Enter a supporter of WISE who, two days ago, encouraged me to talk about some of the things WISE had hoped to do before its demise. Podcasting was at the top of the list. I'd no sooner begun uttering that wish when I was presented a cheque to cover the cost of a headset.

Yesterday I cashed that cheque, bought a headset, and then set about learning how to make a podcast. 

Below is my first podcast, dedicated to Sherrie Bade, without whose support this effort would not have been possible.

Policies of Exclusion, Poverty and Health: Stories from the front - Episode 1

For the collection of episodes, visit my podcast site

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Associating homelessness with mental illness

Below is an excerpt from the House of Commons Hansard for Question Period, Mar 12-08. The question was a softball lobbed from a Conservative Party member to Tony Clement, Minister of Health, to allow Clement to enter into the Hansard mention of the Mental Health Commission, which was formed last summer.

Mr. Wajid Khan (Mississauga—Streetsville, CPC):
Mr. Speaker, last summer the Prime Minister and the Minister of Health announced Canada's first ever Mental Health Commission. Mental health groups from across the country gave an enthusiastic welcome to this long overdue action to help some of the most vulnerable in our society.

Those who failed Canadians sit on the benches on that side of the House. After years of struggling in the shadows under the previous government, individuals and families dealing with mental health issues can finally count on help from this federal government.

Could the Minister of Health inform the House on how this Conservative government is keeping its promise to help Canadians?

Hon. Tony Clement (Minister of Health and Minister for the Federal Economic Development Initiative for Northern Ontario, CPC):
Mr. Speaker, let me first thank the hon. member for an excellent question. I would say to the House that even in good economic times there are those at risk of being left behind, but Canadians are guided by the values of compassion, kindness and generosity. That is why we created the Mental Health Commission in the first place.

That is why the Minister of Finance, demonstrating those important values himself, announced funding in budget 2008 for the commission to establish five pilot projects across the country to help show the way on how we can help those who are homeless and suffering from mental illness.

I heard Clement's response before visiting the MHCC website and was immediately struck by Clement's associating mental illness with homelessness.

'Homelessness' would be better defined as 'houselessness'. There are those who are labelled homeless who have chosen not to be surrounded by bricks and mortar. Are they therefore mentally ill because they have chosen differently?

Then people who have not chosen houselessness may legitimately feel depressed, stressed, and anxiety-prone. But should that basic, normal survival response be labelled as mental illness? The cynical answer is Yes - for the sake of a robust mental health industry.

One of the many houseless women I met through my work with WISE described how she'd lived for 30 years. It was near the top of a mountain in the Yukon, in a tiny one-room shack whose walls and roof were of ill-fitting timber and other natural products, whose washing facilities and toilet was nature itself, and a shovel. She cooked by fire and whatever food needed storing she kept frozen in snow or dried. Nature was her food source.

Each morning this woman, Anne, stepped out from her home on the mountain and saw nature's expanse laid out before her. "I felt so rich," she told me, with a sigh and eyes warming in remembrance.

Another woman, also from the Yukon, was still houseless - and loving it. The owner of a large acreage had allowed her to set up her tent on a small section of the property. This gave her an address and with that, she was able to obtain part-time employment. The job was just a few hours per week, but that's all she wanted. It was her sole source of income and brought in $6,000 per year. According to her, with that $6K she had more than enough to live the life she wanted. She'd equipped her well-insulated tent with a cookstove and had use of the main house's bathroom facilities.

The first time I saw this woman, Barbara, she'd come to participate in our Scarlet Letter Campaign workshop. She arrived on her scooter, dressed up in full black leather and helmet. She didn't look 'poor'. Her clothing was high-quality, bought at used clothing outlets, and she carried herself with confidence.

These women take a different view of life than the larger society which surrounds them. The first - whose poems have been published and won awards - now lives in Kamloops and misses her life in the Yukon. Now she's on the system, has been diagnosed with a mental illness, etc., etc., etc. The second woman gets a kick out of baffling people. She too gets stereotyped and has been labelled mentally ill.

How these women got to their houseless state is one question, but it's not the most important one. The most important question is how they choose to continue their life. Ancillary questions are how society judges the women's choices, by what right it does so, and how it treats the women who make them.

NB: The names are fictitious.

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More Videos & Photos

Am enjoying playing with my new toy. Have completed two more videos - one of Brodie and Kiltie (he's just lounging on my lap; she's playing), the other of Duncan flora with a musical background. Learning how to put movies together - assembling, trimming, cutting, adding music, etc. - is fun.

The slideshow to the left has been changed, to reflect the newest photo additions. With this version, rather than the Blogger version of slideshow, the photos in the slideshow update when I update my Picasa album. With the Blogger version, there's a lag time and the slideshow can take some time to load. 

If you click over any of the photos in the slideshow, you'll be taken to my Picasa Album and can view the larger versions. There you can also browse the other photos.

Shall load new photos to my Duncan Flora album as the fancy moves me, and add other albums. Shall also vary the albums that are featured in my blog's slideshow.

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Reflections on a life change

So yesterday, on the eve of International Women's Day, the core organizers of WISE decided that enough was enough. We declared an end to WISE's long and painful death, one which had been forecast by the cuts and changes made to Status of Women Canada by the then still "new" - and purportedly conservative - government of Stephen Harper. 

I doubt that any future government, Liberal or Conservative, will have the political will to reinstate ALL that had been right with SWC prior to the changes. They'll pick and choose, which means that groups like WISE, whose two projects had once qualified for SWC funding, will no longer be eligible.

In my first post for this blog, back in January of this year, I'd written about degrees of separation and the difficulty I'd been having in separating myself from WISE. It had begun to feel like I'd become WISE and vice versa. Perhaps this happens to most founders of nonprofits. If true, then that makes me feel somewhat better.

Anyway, here I sit today at my computer, one day after the BIG DECISION and the placenta seems only stretched, not severed. Clearly, there's some work to do! However, one thing that's going to help me overcome my WISE addiction is the acquisition, thanks to my son Greg, of a brand new camera. 



I'm 57 years old and have never owned my own camera before! Now there appears to be no stopping me. For the first time in my life, I've learned how to snap my own photos, put them into slideshows, and shoot and edit my own videos.

I am SO enjoying my new toy. It goes everywhere with me. 

Look for future blog entries to include links to my latest creations!

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Backlash

There is a long-time and prevailing view that 'mental illness' and poverty go hand-in-hand, while physical illness and poverty are not given the same association. The two distinctions - between mental health and physical health, and between poverty associated with mental impairment and poverty associated with physical impairment – point to an entrenched stigma.

First, there’s the division of health into two seemingly distinct categories. This division began many decades ago and was done not for the sake of treating people, but for the sake of research institutes and academics whose propensity toward specialization and away from generalization has grown evermore distant from messy, contextual reality - and for the sake of their acquiring billions in taxpayer funding.

The distinction has well served the interests of politicians and bureaucrats too, for woe to our public health system should mental health and physical health be reunified.

Second, accepting for the moment the distinction between mental health and physical health, common sense would tell us that physical illness or impairment can lead to hard times. Certainly those of us who live in poverty can attest to this. But try to find such an association discussed in newspaper articles, research papers, or town halls. You’ll be hard-pressed to locate a single item in the past year in which this fact of poverty has been the focus, yet you’ll find no shortage of articles on mental illness and poverty.

Third, the most common perception is that mental illness leads to poverty. Few people, including irresponsible journalists and researchers, acknowledge that the matter is more the other way round, that poverty leads to poor health.

Common perception, fed by our uninformed mainstream media, is that the vast majority of the poor are mentally ill. If by ‘mentally ill’, it is suggested that we are depressed, stressed and anxiety-prone, then yes, most of us are mentally ill. Wouldn’t you be?

We’re also in poor physical health. Clearly, the powers-that-be fear raising this point, since poverty would be seen to be what it actually is, a critical health issue. Focusing on mental health, however, seems safe because somehow ‘mental’ health has been relegated as less relevant to health. (You see why maintaining the false distinction is so important!)

Fourth, ‘mentally ill’ is used to refer more than to the depressed, stressed, and anxiety-prone if the person to which it is applied is homeless, living on the edge of homelessness, or in like financially-challenged position. It has come to be attached to those of us whose behaviour does not conform to an ever-narrowing – and never defined – norm.

Should you ask, let me state that WE do not consider depression, stress, or anxiety to our harsh circumstances to be indicators of illness. Rather we consider them to be indicators of our sane fight to tolerate insane conditions.

As to behaviours and attitudes that stray from the norm, we do not consider these to be indicators of mental illness, not least because we do not accept the term or the ever-growing and self-serving, self-perpetuating mental health industry. Mental illness has become a convenient way of demarcating those who conform and those who do not. Increasingly, more of us are not conforming. How else to explain the rising numbers of ‘mentally ill’?

Do not assume, because we don’t fit an ever-narrowing definition of normal or because we are not like you or do not choose as you do, that we are ill.

Do some of us behave in ways that are odd to others? Yes.

We’re different. We’re non-conformists. We dislike the status quo. We’re conscientious objectors. We’re artists. We’re nomads. We’re dreamers. We’re inventors. We’re multi-talented. We're principled. Many of us are quite brilliant.

What we have in common is a disdain or intolerance for the society that has pushed us aside - though our disdain is not just for that reason.

Yes, just as you cannot abide us, so we cannot abide you.

We no more want to be part of your society than you want to include us in it. However, all of us - you, me, they - live within boundaries enclosed by coastlines and manmade borders, so we must find ways of accommodating both the mainstream and the margins.

We homeless and other low-income persons have as much right to live in this country as any of you. Therefore, where public land goes unused, we have the right to set up our own homes, however and with whatever we see fit to construct them.

Finally, do not assume that every one of us would choose to live other than we do. At some time, some of us, before poverty became a way of life, would have chosen otherwise, and there are others among us who would choose to be wealthy. But one thing long-term abject poverty teaches is the need to reassess your own values and what matters to you. It also forces a reassessment of a society that marginalizes its own, including some of its very best.

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US 2008 Presidential Candidates

Came across a blog post today from a candidate running in Canada's upcoming federal by-election. I won't identify the candidate, since my point has a broader message.

The following was his blog entry for today, which appeared on his campaign website:

I'm running my own campaign right now, but I have to admit I spend a lot of time watching American politics. I'm a big Barack fan and am really hoping he becomes the democratic nominee. Not because of his policies, nor his record [my emphasis], but because he is the most inspiring politician I have ever heard in my lifetime.

I have to give his speechwriter credit, and his team, but really feel that he takes their words and makes them magic. What he really does is reach beyond policies and problems and offers hope and a feeling that "we" can move towards a better world. I say we, because his words make me forget about borders and boundaries and I really feel one with everyone in this world who needs hope.

http://www.dipdive.com/

This latest video, done by independently of his campaign, brought tears to my eye, it was so inspirational. I have to say the messaging is great but it really is the delivery that matters...

I really hope for an Obama/McCain line up.

I actually have a lot of respect for McCain as well, he was a champion of campaign finance reform, and one of the strongest Senators on environmental protection. I can't agree with him on some of his militarism, but at least I believe the ex-POW doesn't make decisions lightly.

The two of them will really take the US into an amazing race, and could change the course of dialog in their country for ever.

42 days until my election, and under 1 year until Bush is gone for good!

This was my response:

Was disappointed to read your Feb 4th comments on the US election. Seems to me you've taken what the US mainstream media has presented to you and done no digging of your own.

On the Democrat side, Gravel is the best remaining candidate. Clinton would be more of the same and, contrary to the hype, Obama also would be more of the same. He has just had less time to be corrupted. E.g., while he originally voted against the Iraq invasion, he later was for it and has been consistently so ever since. He has no objections to the US policing the world, has no in-principle stance against US aggression, speaks about "change" but only in platitudes, would continue the current US monetary policy which is bankrupting the nation, ...

As for McCain, you couldn't have picked a worse candidate of the four GOP candidates remaining. McCain is even more dangerous than Bush. He's a warmonger with a mean racist streak (there's ample evidence of this, in videos of him speaking). He would have the US in perpetual war and attacking Iran within months of his inauguration. Like Obama, he would continue to spend money the US doesn't have by increasing military spending, all the while hastening the country to bankruptcy.

Just think about this fact: The candidate who has received more donations from active military personnel and veterans than ALL THE OTHER CANDIDATES COMBINED is not Obama or Clinton or Gravel or McCain or Romney or Huckabee.

So who is it?

I'll leave that to you to work out. Just don't trust the MSM to make it easy for you.

---------------

What troubles me most about this candidate's response is his naivety. Is he so clueless that he buys into the rhetoric? Or is it as it seems, that he is persuaded of the quality of Obama not because of his policies or record - items pointing to the substance of the man -, but because of his ability to spellbind an audience? That is, the attraction is to Obama's qualities as a politician, not to his qualities, if any, as a statesman.

Listen closely to the video of Obama. You'll hear nothing concrete coming out of his mouth.

Obama speaks of Change. What change, specifically?

Obama says, "We can repair this world." Who is this WE? The US? Why should Americans suppose themselves to be responsible to repair this world? - granted that US foreign intervention has done much to foul it up.

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Tuning in, tuning out

Over the past few years, I've found myself checking the weekly or daily news less and less, sometimes skipping whole days. For example, I used to read the local papers, but since they've become no more than a means to deliver junk mail into my home, I no longer do. 

I haven't a TV.

The decision to cancel my cable TV service was primarily to save money, but also was a response to the idiocy of programs having become shorter and shorter to accommodate the commercials: "We now interrupt our regular commercials to bring you this program." I was fed up with paying to have people trying to sell me things.

A year later, thinking that I might be missing some good shows and for a treat, I took my cable provider's three-month try-before-you-buy offer - but cancelled it after only one month. There were more commercials than before.

I don't buy newspaper or magazine subscriptions either. 

So where do I get my news? 

From the Internet.

Most days, I'll scan the headlines, and those are enough to sour me even more. The "news" in fact is old. Only the names and places change.

Then there's the fact that 'news' reporting has become more about the spewing of propaganda than anything truly newsworthy,  I've been tracking mainstream media for years and comparing what news these outlets deliver to what actual news is out there. The bias, particularly in the US but also growing in Canada, is obvious. It's also scary. 

In the US, for example, the propaganda machine is in hyperdrive. Consider the reporting of the 2008 presidential race. What is happening there, in terms of what is being filtered out for American consumption on TV and in the major papers truly frightens me.

The presidential race is going to come down to a contest between two American Empire loyalists, both of whom are far too cozy with lobbyists and big money. It will come down to a competition between which of these two candidates promises to expand an already bloated Washington the least, while expanding the empire through further use of bombs and bribes. In the meantime, the one remaining candidate who has more integrity than all the candidates put together, is anti-war, anti-empire, and truly anti-big government - and whose record in Congress can prove it - continues to be the victim of a concerted, blatant media blackout.

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Degrees of Separation

Have tried to get this blog going before, but life got in the way.

My name is Chrystal Ocean and I am the Founder and Coordinator of (the now defunct) WISE, a Canadian group of low-income people. I mention WISE because the work I do through it has become virtually inseparable from who I am. Whether that's good, I don't know. But that's the way it is.

How much of my own philosophy, which I'll be using this blog to explore, has affected the development of WISE is difficult to say. Because I'm the web developer for the WISE website and have, to date, written all its content, then the style of thought will be seen to be similar between that site and this one. However, I'll be writing in this blog my personal musings which should not be imputed to those of WISE.

In other words, this exercise is partly to help me identify where the line separating myself from my work is and what degree of separation I've been able to manage. It is largely, however, about forcing myself to do something I've always been uncomfortable doing: acknowledging that my opinion, on its own and without the protection of an artificial construct, might be worth sharing with others.

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