Dramatic and recurring mass shootings seem to be a peculiarly American phenomenon, given the fact that every other nation that experiences such shootings appropriately passes legislation that effectively prevents repeat atrocities. Not in America, however, thanks to the National Rifle Association and the numerous well-paid weapons manufacturing lobbyists who threaten into silence and inaction most of our elected officials in DC, both Republican and Democrat, who can’t seem to resist taking the bribes.

The now infamous and roundly hated James Holmes was probably just another one of the many brain-altered, and then gun-wielding, mass murderers who shot into an innocent crowd after making impressively bizarre plans to do so. There are many similarities with the 1999 Columbine shootings that happened only a few miles away. And the first words out of the mouths of the media and ruling elites immediately after the shootings were like this obfuscating statement: “This is an act of  ‘senseless violence,’ and we will probably never understand why it happened”—meaning, of course, don’t bother speculating about the motives of the shooter. And don’t ask any unwanted probing questions, especially about Holmes’ psychiatrist and what mind-altering drugs she probably prescribed for him. “Trust us,” they are saying, “we’re the experts.”

Unfortunately, these experts are also likely to be beholden to various powers-that-be that aren’t interested in having us sheeple understand what really went down at the midnight Batman movie. And they don’t seem to be very interested in solving the problem or curing the malady that is the epidemic of American gun violence.

The assorted accomplices that are the powers-that-be are covering their behinds. They want to be sure that they will be held blameless when the final “official” report is released in a year or so. Don’t expect to be told everything we need to know that will help make sense of mass shootings any time soon. Psychiatry and BigPharma are off-limits.

Do expect to hear all sorts of irrelevant spin-off verbiage about what kind of guns and ammo were used and whether there will be an “insanity defense” or not. And, of course, the overwhelming reportage, until the trial starts, will be about the hundreds of victims’ stories, rather than about the possible motivations of the shooter.

If there is evidence that will help us naïve “consumers” of products and information and advertisements and propaganda make sense out of events, that will give us a fighting chance of preventing them in the future, don’t expect that we will be told about it—until and unless some courageous investigative journalist does the hard sleuthing work and then is allowed to report her findings. We will certainly be led to be as confused about the Batman Shooter as most of us were about the Columbine shooters.

Making futile the
attempts to de-mystify
mass murder

If the real connections that would help to de-mystify the latest mass shootings are suppressed, as expected, the gradually approaching police state agenda of the 1% will be enabled. Prepare for “domestic” spy drones over America, more conceal and carry guns among freaked-out gun-owners, metal detectors everywhere, and taxpayer-paid private security firms frisking us as we stand in line to see the next violence-inducing, fear-inducing shoot-em-up fantasy film about fictitious time-traveling “undead” monsters, or some new and laughably absurd superhero movie that will surely stimulate ideas about violence to who-knows-what mentally unsound or brain-drugged copycat wannabe who might fancy himself as a homicidal avenger of injustice (or as a competitor for the Guiness Book of World Records for non-combat mass murders).

I have been listening and watching the repetitive and sensationalistic news coverage of the Aurora shootings for many hours since the deed was officially labeled “senseless.” Senseless violence was the mantra after Columbine and any number of the scores of American school shootings or workplace shootings that followed Columbine. Virtually nobody wants to talk about the psychotropic drugs that most of those shooters were taking or withdrawing from.

We all know that there are ” sacred cows” lurking among us that are too big to raise questions about because they consider themselves too big to fail. And most of them have the economic and political power to ensure that they are not questioned. It is also well-known that many major media “journalists,” news anchors, politicians, and police departments are careful to not step on big toes in crisis situations like the Batman shootings. We are fully justified in suspecting that the “experts” are covering up something in this case. Read on.

Who are the potential
accessories to the
crimes of the
Batman Shooter?

So we need to wonder out loud who might be those “sacred cow” groups or industries that are contributing to or even benefiting from America’s recurrent mass shootings. Many of them regard themselves as being too big to expose, criticize, or otherwise implicate as accomplices, even as inadvertent accomplices. Any one of us can think of any number of potential culprits. My list includes this TOP 9 LIST (plus 3 major potential players further below):

•    the violent entertainment industry
•    the violent, and addictive videogame industry
•    the violent professional contact sports industry, where violent acts are hoped for and applauded
•    the food industry that is doing so much to malnourish vulnerable brains and bodies
•    the weapons manufacturers and their lobbyist organizations  
•    the ease in getting lethal military-style weapons (the Aurora killer reportedly got some of his guns at Gander Mountain and Pro Bass Shops)
•    our militarized culture and the media that glorifies the “legal” mass murder by “licensed to kill” soldiers in the battlefield, and then condemns them when they come home, psychologically and spiritually tormented, and commit murders, suicides, or crimes
•    Congresspersons, presidents, state governors and Supreme Court justices who indifferently vote against, refuse to pass, or refuse to enforce rational harm-reduction legislation that could do so much to prevent these mass homicides  
•    Christian church leaders who fail to teach to the potential mass murderers in their own Sunday school or confirmation classes about the Golden Rule and the other nonviolent ethical teachings of Jesus, whom they profess to follow

But in the minds of many, the big culprits are the ones that the corporate media and their paymasters are scared to death about exposing:

•    BigPharma (the multinational pharmaceutical companies) and their propaganda that shapes public attitudes and behaviors and stimulates demand for drug prescriptions from their physicians
•    the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which grants approval for many potentially lethal psychiatric drugs on virtually zero long-term safety data and woefully inadequate efficacy data
•    BigPsychiatry/BigMedicine and we obedient, quasi-enslaved physicians who are locked into those corporate entities and who have, by and large, not opened our eyes and ears to the data from the truth-seeking alternative medical, forensic, and drug research community of altruists (who are not beholden to the obscenely wealthy and powerful pharmaceutical corporations)

Much of this data, which is virtually never published in the hostile BigPharma-subsidized medical journals, shows unequivocally that most, if not all, of the five classes of potentially addictive, potentially brain-damaging psychiatric drugs are capable of causing drug-induced violence, drug-induced psychoses, drug-induced homicidality, drug-induced mania, drug-induced suicidality, drug-induced dementia, drug-induced sleep disorders, and drug-induced criminal behaviors (especially in unsuspecting adolescents, who are often told to ignore the adverse effects and just keep on taking the drugs).

He who pays the
piper, calls the tune

By ignoring this peer-reviewed complementary-alternative medical literature and only paying attention to what is advertised in the co-opted mainstream medical journals, we drug prescribers regularly—and often quite cavalierly—hand out brain- and mind-altering synthetic chemicals that BigPharma’s ubiquitous, and very attractive, sales staffs reassure us (with only skewed, insufficient data backing up their claims) are safe, curative, and non-addicting.

Therefore, considering the fact that there is a massive amount of evidence of a strong connection between American school shootings and the use of (or withdrawal from) mind-altering, brain-numbing, remorselessness-inducing psych drugs, a fair question should be “Was the Batman Shooter taking or withdrawing from any one of the hundreds of psychiatric drugs so readily prescribed these days?” (For essential background on this issue, see books by the whistle-blowing psychiatrist Peter Breggin, including Medication Madness, Toxic Psychiatry, Talking Back To Prozac or Your Drug May Be Your Problem or the websites www.ssristories.com, www.cchrint.org, www.breggin.org, www.madinamerica.com, or www.mindfreedom.org.)

But have we have heard on any radio or television station, even on PBS or NPR, even a word about the high likelihood of legal psych drug use or drug withdrawal in the case of the Batman Shooter? And have we heard anything about Dr. Lynne Fenton, Holmes’ psychiatrist? A lot of critical thinkers smell a rat. There is a cover-up in the making.

Bad advice:
“Don’t waste time
trying to figure out
what motivated
the shooter”

Interestingly, one of the survivors of the Columbine school shooter Eric Harris (who was taking the Prozac-like drug Luvox that had been prescribed by his tragically unaware Colorado psychiatrist, Dr. K. Albert) contributed to the myth-making when he advised the most recent batch of Colorado shooting victims to not “waste time trying to figure out what motivated the shooter or shooters. It’s a waste of time,” he said, “and it gives them exactly what they want.” Later in the interview, he lamented the fact that “I don’t think I’ll ever understand.” Duh.

Psychologically and spiritually, any psychologist or spiritual advisor worth his or her salt, when dealing with the psychological and spiritual consequences of trauma, will tell you that that advice is profoundly anti-therapeutic and will, at the very least, lead to delayed healing—possibly permanently delayed healing. That statement made me wonder what dependency-inducing psych drug he had been taking for the last 13 years. Perhaps he has already tried to taper off his drug, but then found out that he couldn’t tolerate the disabling, crazy-making withdrawal symptoms, and therefore he now justifies the continued use of a drug that he can’t get off of.

But he is certainly repeating what the “experts” always seem to tell us as they hide essential but “sensitive” information that might be uncomfortable for Holmes’ doctor or clinic or grad program or family member or pharmaceutical company or gun seller or legislator or secret black-ops military experimenter or other of his accomplices. Are the authorities trying to protect the various industries that rightfully need to be exposed for their part in the massacres, however indirect?

It is important for me to remind readers to check out www.ssristories.com, where they will find a collection of 4,800+ damning, mostly criminal news stories about the behavioral and psychic toxicity of antidepressants. These are documented examples of psychotropic drug-induced violence that have made it into the media (newspapers, TV, scientific journals) or were part of (only three!) FDA hearings (1991, 2004, and 2006) that allowed public testimony about the lethality of FDA-approved psych drugs.

My column last week listed dozens of drug-related acts of violence that made the news. Here are a few more examples of killers and their drugs:

Woody, age 37, committed suicide while in his fifth week of taking Zoloft. Shortly before his death, his physician suggested doubling the dose of the drug. He had seen his physician only for insomnia. He had never been depressed, nor did he have any history of any mental illness symptoms.
 
A ten-year-old boy from Houston shot and killed his father after his Prozac dosage was increased.
15-year-old Hammad Memon shot and killed a fellow middle school student.  He had been diagnosed with ADHD and depression and was taking Zoloft and “other drugs for the conditions.”
22-year-old culinary student Matti Saari shot and killed 9 students and a teacher, and wounded another student, before killing himself. Saari was taking an SSRI and a benzodiazapine.
27-year-old Steven Kazmierczak shot and killed five people and wounded 21 others before killing himself in a Northern Illinois University auditorium. According to his girlfriend, he had recently been taking Prozac, Xanax, and Ambien. Toxicology results showed that he still had trace amounts of Xanax in his system.
18-year-old Finnish gunman Pekka-Eric Auvinen had been taking antidepressants before he killed eight people and wounded a dozen more at Jokela High School, then committed suicide.
14-year-old Asa Coon of Cleveland shot and wounded four before taking his own life. Court records show Coon was on Trazodone.

16 year-old Jon Romano, taking medication for depression, fired a shotgun at a teacher in his New York high school.

Finally, to read my recent Duty to Warn column, “Many Psychoactive Drugs are Strongly Associated with Violence” see http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2012/04/05/long-term-treatment-with-antidepressant-.