Christianity & Human Rights Christian Prooftexts …a rod is for the back of him that is void of understanding. Proverbs 10:13 According to Christians, lunatics were possessed by unclean spirits. To effect a cure it was therefore necessary to dislodge the offending spirit. This idea derived from gospel stories of exorcisms. And there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit; and he cried out , Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, The Holy One of God. And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him. Mark 1:23-25 Such beliefs had at least two unfortunate consequences. The first was that for many centuries no advance was made in understanding the nature of mental illness — although it is clear that Christians did understand the there was such a thing as insanity*. The second was that many thousands of men, women and children, already burdened with madness, were confined in chains and subjected to routine torture. The idea was that by making the environment sufficiently uncomfortable, the torturers might induce the possessing spirit to leave its human host. Saint Benedict beats a possessed monk, driving out the demon who possessed him. Fresco by Spinello Aretino (detail), Basilica San Miniato al Monte, Florence, Italy In some monasteries, the monks whipped their insane charges regularly every day. Although the method was spectacularly unsuccessful, no one seems to have realised the fact for many centuries. Sometimes the insane were beaten out of the parish with quarterstaffs. Sometimes they were loaded onto ships and sent off to die or become a problem for someone else. This is the origin of the various popular tales about a "ship of fools". A ship of fools. Those abord will almost certainly die - through accident, murder, starvation or shipwreck. This was an ideal way to kill the insane without feeling guilty. Christians could excuse themselves with the belief that if the insane they had forced aboard died, it must have been will. For as long as the Church controlled the insane, they endured dreadful torments. They were imprisoned, chained to a wall (or if they were lucky to a bed), flogged, starved, insulted, tortured, immersed in iced water and otherwise brutalised. It also seems safe to assume that sexual abuse would have been commonplace in view of twentieth century disclosures about monasteries, seminaries, church schools, orphanages and state mental asylums. Throughout Christendom the insane were kept in insanitary conditions in mad-houses and exposed to public ridicule. The most famous place in England for such people was the hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem ("Bedlam"), where visitors were charged a fee to see the inmates, and were allowed to provoke them and laugh at them. A few inmates came to their senses, some died of old age, some died of neglect, starvation, exposure or torture, and many died of "putrid fever" or other infectious diseases that flourished in such conditions. The idea that demons caused insanity as well as physical illnesses was not restricted to the Catholic Church. Here is Martin Luther on the subject: My opinion of lunatics is, that all idiots and insane persons are possessed by devils, though on that account they will not be damned; but I think Satan tries men in different ways, some severely, some lightly, some for a long time, some for a short one. Physicians may attribute such things to natural causes, and sometimes cure them by medicene, but they are ignorant of the power of devils. (personal letter written by Martin Luther to Wenzel Link, dated July 14, 1528) Luther goes on to say that because Jesus healeed sick people with demons, he is "forced to believe that many are made dumb, deaf, and lame by Satan's malice," and he also supposes that demons can cause other kinds of sickness and even storms or blight. The word bedlam, meaning uproar and confusion, is derived from the name of the Bethlem Royal Hospital.. The hospital became a modern psychiatric facility, but historically it was representative of the worst excesses of asylums in the era of lunacy reform. The position of master of Bedlam was a sinecure largely regarded by its occupants as means of profiting at the expense of the poor in their charge. The 1598 visitation by the Bridewell Governors had observed that the hospital was "filthely kept". Up until the seventeeth century the Board of Governors referred to the inmates as either "the poore" or "prisoners". An inspection by the Governors in 1631 reported that the patients were "likely to starve". Inmates left in their cells with their own excreta were, on occasion, liable to throw "filth & Excrem[en]t" into the hospital yard or onto passing staff and visitors. Affluent Londoners could go to see the unfortunate inmates, to laugh at them, abuse them, or watch them being tortured. Outings to see them were so commonplace as not to need explanation. Samuel Pepys' diary for 19 February 1669 for example notes that "All the afternoon I at the Office, while the young people went to see Bedlam". Nepotistic appointment practices played a significant role in allocating posts. The election of James Monro as Bethlem physician in 1728 marked the beginning of an 125-year Monro family dynasty extending through four generations of fathers and sons. In 1758 William Battie, a former Governor at Bethlem, published his Treatise on Madness which castigated Bethlem as archaic and outmoded, uncaring of its patients and founded upon a despairing medical system whose therapeutic transactions were injudicious and unnecessarily violent. Bethlem was best known for the fact that it allowed admittance for a fee to casual visitors with no connection to the hospital's inmates. This display of madness as public show has often been considered the most scandalous feature of the historical Bedlam. "Swarms of People" descended upon Bethlem during public holidays. The Governors actively sought out "people of note and quallitie" as visitors, presumably because they were prepared to pay higher fees. The practice was never officially recognised (or accounted for), and probably grew out of the ancient monastic custom of giving alms to the poor. The spectacle of Bethlem was also thought to offer moral instruction for visitors, providing a deterrent by demonstrating the dangers of immorality and vice. For proponents of lunacy reform, a Quaker-run York Retreat, founded in 1796, functioned as an exemplar of the new civilised approach. Bethlem, still embroiled in scandal over its inmate conditions, symbolised its antithesis. Hogarth's depiction of Bedlam from A Rake's Progress. The well-dressed ladies in the background are not inmates, but visitors, there to amuse themselves. The Christian Church fiercely opposed the idea that insanity might have a physical cause, since it knew for a fact that it was attributable to evil spirits, and the Bible confirmed that beating was the correct treatment: A whip for the horse, a bridle for the ass, and a rod for the fool's back. Proverbs 26:3 Insanity was recognised and accepted if the sufferer was sufficiently powerful. Charles the Mad (King Charles VI of France) for example believed himself to be made of glass and murdered a number of his own knights. Detail of Corronation of Charles VI In practice, Christian mental asylums were often used as prisons. Anyone that the Church did not like, or did not approve of, could be imprisoned without trial in an asylum, and then tortured and abused at will. Victims ranged from critics of Church excesses (including political radicals and atheists) to unmarried mothers, as well as the genuinely insane. The insane were not only a source of public entertainment, they were also an object lesson as to where immorality could lead. In France the devout Parisian bourgeoisie enjoyed Sunday excursions to Bicêtre to watch the insane perform tricks. By flicking a whip an attendant would make them dance and perform acrobatics like monkeys at a circus. For churchmen the main problem was not to reform such institutions, but to ensure that they were used to deliver the correct moral message to the spectators. "Popular Mode of Curing Insanity" Here is the Abbé Desmonceaux writing on National Benevolence in 1789 describing his idea of an asylum that could be used to illustrate the effects of immorality: The sight of these shadowy places and the guilty creatures they contain is well calculated to preserve from the same acts of just reprobation the deviations of a too licentious youth; it is thus prudent of mothers and fathers to familiarize their children at an early age with these horrible and detestable places, where shame and turpitude fetter crime, where man corrupted in his essence, often loses forever the rights he had acquired in society*. Around 1800 traditional Christian mad houses started being replaced by lunatic asylums where, at least in some institutions, attempts were made to provide medical help and effect cures. This was a break with tradition as Church run mad houses have existed only to restrain potentially dangerous people, and attempts at cures had been limited to various tortures designed to expel the demons possessing them and responsible for their afflictions. [inmates of mental asylums were spun around in specially designed rotating chairs - utterly pointless except as a form of torture] The Church lost its power in France during the French Revolution, and mad-houses soon became a thing of the past. A wide range of abuses ended as a direct result of the Declaration of the Rights of Man: "No man may be arrested or detained except in the cases determined by law and according to the forms therein prescribed…The law must permit only the penalties strictly and evidently necessary.... ". By a decree of 1790 the insane who had been confined in religious houses, houses of correction and elsewhere were to be examined by a magistrate to establish whether they really were mad. Those who were not mad were to be released and those who were mad were to be transferred to hospital*. Humane treatment of the insane was pioneered in France by Philippe Pinel. He was appointed to the asylum at Bicêtre in 1793 under the new secular government. One of his first acts was to remove the chains from the inmates. He then went on to unchain the women at the insane asylum for women in Paris. Dr. Philippe Pinel releasing male lunatics from their chains at the Bicêtre Asylum in Paris, painting by Charles Louis Lucien Müller (1815-1892) Dr. Philippe Pinel at the Salpêtrière, 1795 by Tony Robert-Fleury. It shows Pinel ordering the removal of chains from patients at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, the Paris Asylum for insane women. [A viewing room in Bedlam - note the spectators behind the windows on the right] In Britain the idea of a proper hospital or asylum, as opposed to the traditional mad-house, was introduced by William Tuke, a Quaker, who founded a retreat near York in 1794. The institution was more like a farm with a great walled garden than a prison. There were no grilles or bars on the windows, and like Pinel, Tuke removed the chains from his patients. By the early nineteenth century Parliament was investigating the Bethlehem Hospital and its traditional practices. In 1815, for one penny it was still possible each Sunday to watch the insane perform their tricks to the insults and mocking laughter of the devout*. Mask for the criminally insane. Such masks, called torture masks, have long been used during Christian times to punish criminals. James (William) Norris, Bethlem Patient, 1815. It was thie case of Norris, exposed by a newspaper, that led to the reform of Bedlam. Utica Crib - An adult-size restraint bed used in a New York insane asylum, 1882 Use of the “Utica Crib” began in the 1840s at Utica, and spread throughout the United States to other mental institutions. It was widely used to confine patients. Some cribs were made out of wood, some iron. The sides and lid were made of spindles, which allowed airflow. The Utica Crib had a lid, which could be fastened over the patient. The person restrained could not sit up, nor get out. The bottom was cushioned with layers of straw. Patient in restraint chair at the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum, Wakefield, Yorkshire, ca. 1869, ,Photographed by Henry Clarke, Wellcome Library, London (L0019069, Library reference no.: Iconographic Collection 347834) Secular ideas triumphed in the nineteenth century. Abuses were suppressed as the Churches lost their influence, and soon people were asking in wonder how it could be that previously "No one blushed to put the insane in prison"*. This is a mental patient in a Victorian mental asylum. The Christian treatment of mental patients frequently immitated the historical treatment of offenders against the Church: they were imprisoned, chained or held in painful restraints, flogged and tortured in a variety of ways, denied ordinary comforts like heat, light, company, and food and drink, and sometimes exhibitted to public ridicule. Modern psychiatric hospitals evolved slowly from Victorian lunatic asylums, becoming progressively less terrifying as they became progressively more secular, more humane and more medically based, and as their religious origins retreated ever further into the past. submit to reddit Delicious Save Share Bad News Blog Buy the Book from Amazon.com Buy the Book from Amazon.co.uk Beyond Belief: Two Thousand (2000) Years of Bad Faith in the Christian Church More Books Notes §. Inquisitors would occasionally discharge accused people as insane. One rare example was Guillaume Postel born in 1510 a scholar of Arabic who was found to be heretical but harmlessly insane for his eccentric religious beliefs. §. Cited by Foucault, Madness and Civilization, p 207. §. Foucault, Madness and Civilization, pp 236-7. §. Foucault, Madness and Civilization, pp 68-9. §. Foucault, Madness and Civilization, p 221. …a rod is for the back of him that is void of understanding. Proverbs 10:13 According to Christians, lunatics were possessed by unclean spirits. To effect a cure it was therefore necessary to dislodge the offending spirit. This idea derived from gospel stories of exorcisms. And there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit; and he cried out , Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, The Holy One of God. And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him. Mark 1:23-25 Such beliefs had at least two unfortunate consequences. The first was that for many centuries no advance was made in understanding the nature of mental illness — although it is clear that Christians did understand the there was such a thing as insanity*. The second was that many thousands of men, women and children, already burdened with madness, were confined in chains and subjected to routine torture. The idea was that by making the environment sufficiently uncomfortable, the torturers might induce the possessing spirit to leave its human host. Saint Benedict beats a possessed monk, driving out the demon who possessed him. Fresco by Spinello Aretino (detail), Basilica San Miniato al Monte, Florence, Italy In some monasteries, the monks whipped their insane charges regularly every day. Although the method was spectacularly unsuccessful, no one seems to have realised the fact for many centuries. Sometimes the insane were beaten out of the parish with quarterstaffs. Sometimes they were loaded onto ships and sent off to die or become a problem for someone else. This is the origin of the various popular tales about a "ship of fools". A ship of fools. Those abord will almost certainly die - through accident, murder, starvation or shipwreck. This was an ideal way to kill the insane without feeling guilty. Christians could excuse themselves with the belief that if the insane they had forced aboard died, it must have been will. For as long as the Church controlled the insane, they endured dreadful torments. They were imprisoned, chained to a wall (or if they were lucky to a bed), flogged, starved, insulted, tortured, immersed in iced water and otherwise brutalised. It also seems safe to assume that sexual abuse would have been commonplace in view of twentieth century disclosures about monasteries, seminaries, church schools, orphanages and state mental asylums. Throughout Christendom the insane were kept in insanitary conditions in mad-houses and exposed to public ridicule. The most famous place in England for such people was the hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem ("Bedlam"), where visitors were charged a fee to see the inmates, and were allowed to provoke them and laugh at them. A few inmates came to their senses, some died of old age, some died of neglect, starvation, exposure or torture, and many died of "putrid fever" or other infectious diseases that flourished in such conditions. The idea that demons caused insanity as well as physical illnesses was not restricted to the Catholic Church. Here is Martin Luther on the subject: My opinion of lunatics is, that all idiots and insane persons are possessed by devils, though on that account they will not be damned; but I think Satan tries men in different ways, some severely, some lightly, some for a long time, some for a short one. Physicians may attribute such things to natural causes, and sometimes cure them by medicene, but they are ignorant of the power of devils. (personal letter written by Martin Luther to Wenzel Link, dated July 14, 1528) Luther goes on to say that because Jesus healeed sick people with demons, he is "forced to believe that many are made dumb, deaf, and lame by Satan's malice," and he also supposes that demons can cause other kinds of sickness and even storms or blight. The word bedlam, meaning uproar and confusion, is derived from the name of the Bethlem Royal Hospital.. The hospital became a modern psychiatric facility, but historically it was representative of the worst excesses of asylums in the era of lunacy reform. The position of master of Bedlam was a sinecure largely regarded by its occupants as means of profiting at the expense of the poor in their charge. The 1598 visitation by the Bridewell Governors had observed that the hospital was "filthely kept". Up until the seventeeth century the Board of Governors referred to the inmates as either "the poore" or "prisoners". An inspection by the Governors in 1631 reported that the patients were "likely to starve". Inmates left in their cells with their own excreta were, on occasion, liable to throw "filth & Excrem[en]t" into the hospital yard or onto passing staff and visitors. Affluent Londoners could go to see the unfortunate inmates, to laugh at them, abuse them, or watch them being tortured. Outings to see them were so commonplace as not to need explanation. Samuel Pepys' diary for 19 February 1669 for example notes that "All the afternoon I at the Office, while the young people went to see Bedlam". Nepotistic appointment practices played a significant role in allocating posts. The election of James Monro as Bethlem physician in 1728 marked the beginning of an 125-year Monro family dynasty extending through four generations of fathers and sons. In 1758 William Battie, a former Governor at Bethlem, published his Treatise on Madness which castigated Bethlem as archaic and outmoded, uncaring of its patients and founded upon a despairing medical system whose therapeutic transactions were injudicious and unnecessarily violent. Bethlem was best known for the fact that it allowed admittance for a fee to casual visitors with no connection to the hospital's inmates. This display of madness as public show has often been considered the most scandalous feature of the historical Bedlam. "Swarms of People" descended upon Bethlem during public holidays. The Governors actively sought out "people of note and quallitie" as visitors, presumably because they were prepared to pay higher fees. The practice was never officially recognised (or accounted for), and probably grew out of the ancient monastic custom of giving alms to the poor. The spectacle of Bethlem was also thought to offer moral instruction for visitors, providing a deterrent by demonstrating the dangers of immorality and vice. For proponents of lunacy reform, a Quaker-run York Retreat, founded in 1796, functioned as an exemplar of the new civilised approach. Bethlem, still embroiled in scandal over its inmate conditions, symbolised its antithesis. Hogarth's depiction of Bedlam from A Rake's Progress. The well-dressed ladies in the background are not inmates, but visitors, there to amuse themselves. The Christian Church fiercely opposed the idea that insanity might have a physical cause, since it knew for a fact that it was attributable to evil spirits, and the Bible confirmed that beating was the correct treatment: A whip for the horse, a bridle for the ass, and a rod for the fool's back. Proverbs 26:3 Insanity was recognised and accepted if the sufferer was sufficiently powerful. Charles the Mad (King Charles VI of France) for example believed himself to be made of glass and murdered a number of his own knights. Detail of Corronation of Charles VI In practice, Christian mental asylums were often used as prisons. Anyone that the Church did not like, or did not approve of, could be imprisoned without trial in an asylum, and then tortured and abused at will. Victims ranged from critics of Church excesses (including political radicals and atheists) to unmarried mothers, as well as the genuinely insane. The insane were not only a source of public entertainment, they were also an object lesson as to where immorality could lead. In France the devout Parisian bourgeoisie enjoyed Sunday excursions to Bicêtre to watch the insane perform tricks. By flicking a whip an attendant would make them dance and perform acrobatics like monkeys at a circus. For churchmen the main problem was not to reform such institutions, but to ensure that they were used to deliver the correct moral message to the spectators. "Popular Mode of Curing Insanity" Here is the Abbé Desmonceaux writing on National Benevolence in 1789 describing his idea of an asylum that could be used to illustrate the effects of immorality: The sight of these shadowy places and the guilty creatures they contain is well calculated to preserve from the same acts of just reprobation the deviations of a too licentious youth; it is thus prudent of mothers and fathers to familiarize their children at an early age with these horrible and detestable places, where shame and turpitude fetter crime, where man corrupted in his essence, often loses forever the rights he had acquired in society*. Around 1800 traditional Christian mad houses started being replaced by lunatic asylums where, at least in some institutions, attempts were made to provide medical help and effect cures. This was a break with tradition as Church run mad houses have existed only to restrain potentially dangerous people, and attempts at cures had been limited to various tortures designed to expel the demons possessing them and responsible for their afflictions. [inmates of mental asylums were spun around in specially designed rotating chairs - utterly pointless except as a form of torture] The Church lost its power in France during the French Revolution, and mad-houses soon became a thing of the past. A wide range of abuses ended as a direct result of the Declaration of the Rights of Man: "No man may be arrested or detained except in the cases determined by law and according to the forms therein prescribed…The law must permit only the penalties strictly and evidently necessary.... ". By a decree of 1790 the insane who had been confined in religious houses, houses of correction and elsewhere were to be examined by a magistrate to establish whether they really were mad. Those who were not mad were to be released and those who were mad were to be transferred to hospital*. Humane treatment of the insane was pioneered in France by Philippe Pinel. He was appointed to the asylum at Bicêtre in 1793 under the new secular government. One of his first acts was to remove the chains from the inmates. He then went on to unchain the women at the insane asylum for women in Paris. Dr. Philippe Pinel releasing male lunatics from their chains at the Bicêtre Asylum in Paris, painting by Charles Louis Lucien Müller (1815-1892) Dr. Philippe Pinel at the Salpêtrière, 1795 by Tony Robert-Fleury. It shows Pinel ordering the removal of chains from patients at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, the Paris Asylum for insane women. [A viewing room in Bedlam - note the spectators behind the windows on the right] In Britain the idea of a proper hospital or asylum, as opposed to the traditional mad-house, was introduced by William Tuke, a Quaker, who founded a retreat near York in 1794. The institution was more like a farm with a great walled garden than a prison. There were no grilles or bars on the windows, and like Pinel, Tuke removed the chains from his patients. By the early nineteenth century Parliament was investigating the Bethlehem Hospital and its traditional practices. In 1815, for one penny it was still possible each Sunday to watch the insane perform their tricks to the insults and mocking laughter of the devout*. Mask for the criminally insane. Such masks, called torture masks, have long been used during Christian times to punish criminals. James (William) Norris, Bethlem Patient, 1815. It was thie case of Norris, exposed by a newspaper, that led to the reform of Bedlam. Utica Crib - An adult-size restraint bed used in a New York insane asylum, 1882 Use of the “Utica Crib” began in the 1840s at Utica, and spread throughout the United States to other mental institutions. It was widely used to confine patients. Some cribs were made out of wood, some iron. The sides and lid were made of spindles, which allowed airflow. The Utica Crib had a lid, which could be fastened over the patient. The person restrained could not sit up, nor get out. The bottom was cushioned with layers of straw. Patient in restraint chair at the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum, Wakefield, Yorkshire, ca. 1869, ,Photographed by Henry Clarke, Wellcome Library, London (L0019069, Library reference no.: Iconographic Collection 347834) Secular ideas triumphed in the nineteenth century. Abuses were suppressed as the Churches lost their influence, and soon people were asking in wonder how it could be that previously "No one blushed to put the insane in prison"*. This is a mental patient in a Victorian mental asylum. The Christian treatment of mental patients frequently immitated the historical treatment of offenders against the Church: they were imprisoned, chained or held in painful restraints, flogged and tortured in a variety of ways, denied ordinary comforts like heat, light, company, and food and drink, and sometimes exhibitted to public ridicule. Modern psychiatric hospitals evolved slowly from Victorian lunatic asylums, becoming progressively less terrifying as they became progressively more secular, more humane and more medically based, and as their religious origins retreated ever further into the past.

Christianity & Human Rights Christian Prooftexts …a rod is for the back of him that is void of understanding. Proverbs 10:13 According to Christians, lunatics were possessed by unclean spirits. To effect a cure it was therefore necessary to dislodge the offending spirit. This idea derived from gospel stories of exorcisms. And there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit; and he cried out , Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, The Holy One of God. And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him. Mark 1:23-25 Such beliefs had at least two unfortunate consequences. The first was that for many centuries no advance was made in understanding the nature of mental illness — although it is clear that Christians did understand the there was such a thing as insanity*. The second was that many thousands of men, women and children, already burdened with madness, were confined in chains and subjected to routine torture. The idea was that by making the environment sufficiently uncomfortable, the torturers might induce the possessing spirit to leave its human host. Saint Benedict beats a possessed monk, driving out the demon who possessed him. Fresco by Spinello Aretino (detail), Basilica San Miniato al Monte, Florence, Italy In some monasteries, the monks whipped their insane charges regularly every day. Although the method was spectacularly unsuccessful, no one seems to have realised the fact for many centuries. Sometimes the insane were beaten out of the parish with quarterstaffs. Sometimes they were loaded onto ships and sent off to die or become a problem for someone else. This is the origin of the various popular tales about a "ship of fools". A ship of fools. Those abord will almost certainly die - through accident, murder, starvation or shipwreck. This was an ideal way to kill the insane without feeling guilty. Christians could excuse themselves with the belief that if the insane they had forced aboard died, it must have been will. For as long as the Church controlled the insane, they endured dreadful torments. They were imprisoned, chained to a wall (or if they were lucky to a bed), flogged, starved, insulted, tortured, immersed in iced water and otherwise brutalised. It also seems safe to assume that sexual abuse would have been commonplace in view of twentieth century disclosures about monasteries, seminaries, church schools, orphanages and state mental asylums. Throughout Christendom the insane were kept in insanitary conditions in mad-houses and exposed to public ridicule. The most famous place in England for such people was the hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem ("Bedlam"), where visitors were charged a fee to see the inmates, and were allowed to provoke them and laugh at them. A few inmates came to their senses, some died of old age, some died of neglect, starvation, exposure or torture, and many died of "putrid fever" or other infectious diseases that flourished in such conditions. The idea that demons caused insanity as well as physical illnesses was not restricted to the Catholic Church. Here is Martin Luther on the subject: My opinion of lunatics is, that all idiots and insane persons are possessed by devils, though on that account they will not be damned; but I think Satan tries men in different ways, some severely, some lightly, some for a long time, some for a short one. Physicians may attribute such things to natural causes, and sometimes cure them by medicene, but they are ignorant of the power of devils. (personal letter written by Martin Luther to Wenzel Link, dated July 14, 1528) Luther goes on to say that because Jesus healeed sick people with demons, he is "forced to believe that many are made dumb, deaf, and lame by Satan's malice," and he also supposes that demons can cause other kinds of sickness and even storms or blight. The word bedlam, meaning uproar and confusion, is derived from the name of the Bethlem Royal Hospital.. The hospital became a modern psychiatric facility, but historically it was representative of the worst excesses of asylums in the era of lunacy reform. The position of master of Bedlam was a sinecure largely regarded by its occupants as means of profiting at the expense of the poor in their charge. The 1598 visitation by the Bridewell Governors had observed that the hospital was "filthely kept". Up until the seventeeth century the Board of Governors referred to the inmates as either "the poore" or "prisoners". An inspection by the Governors in 1631 reported that the patients were "likely to starve". Inmates left in their cells with their own excreta were, on occasion, liable to throw "filth & Excrem[en]t" into the hospital yard or onto passing staff and visitors. Affluent Londoners could go to see the unfortunate inmates, to laugh at them, abuse them, or watch them being tortured. Outings to see them were so commonplace as not to need explanation. Samuel Pepys' diary for 19 February 1669 for example notes that "All the afternoon I at the Office, while the young people went to see Bedlam". Nepotistic appointment practices played a significant role in allocating posts. The election of James Monro as Bethlem physician in 1728 marked the beginning of an 125-year Monro family dynasty extending through four generations of fathers and sons. In 1758 William Battie, a former Governor at Bethlem, published his Treatise on Madness which castigated Bethlem as archaic and outmoded, uncaring of its patients and founded upon a despairing medical system whose therapeutic transactions were injudicious and unnecessarily violent. Bethlem was best known for the fact that it allowed admittance for a fee to casual visitors with no connection to the hospital's inmates. This display of madness as public show has often been considered the most scandalous feature of the historical Bedlam. "Swarms of People" descended upon Bethlem during public holidays. The Governors actively sought out "people of note and quallitie" as visitors, presumably because they were prepared to pay higher fees. The practice was never officially recognised (or accounted for), and probably grew out of the ancient monastic custom of giving alms to the poor. The spectacle of Bethlem was also thought to offer moral instruction for visitors, providing a deterrent by demonstrating the dangers of immorality and vice. For proponents of lunacy reform, a Quaker-run York Retreat, founded in 1796, functioned as an exemplar of the new civilised approach. Bethlem, still embroiled in scandal over its inmate conditions, symbolised its antithesis. Hogarth's depiction of Bedlam from A Rake's Progress. The well-dressed ladies in the background are not inmates, but visitors, there to amuse themselves. The Christian Church fiercely opposed the idea that insanity might have a physical cause, since it knew for a fact that it was attributable to evil spirits, and the Bible confirmed that beating was the correct treatment: A whip for the horse, a bridle for the ass, and a rod for the fool's back. Proverbs 26:3 Insanity was recognised and accepted if the sufferer was sufficiently powerful. Charles the Mad (King Charles VI of France) for example believed himself to be made of glass and murdered a number of his own knights. Detail of Corronation of Charles VI In practice, Christian mental asylums were often used as prisons. Anyone that the Church did not like, or did not approve of, could be imprisoned without trial in an asylum, and then tortured and abused at will. Victims ranged from critics of Church excesses (including political radicals and atheists) to unmarried mothers, as well as the genuinely insane. The insane were not only a source of public entertainment, they were also an object lesson as to where immorality could lead. In France the devout Parisian bourgeoisie enjoyed Sunday excursions to Bicêtre to watch the insane perform tricks. By flicking a whip an attendant would make them dance and perform acrobatics like monkeys at a circus. For churchmen the main problem was not to reform such institutions, but to ensure that they were used to deliver the correct moral message to the spectators. "Popular Mode of Curing Insanity" Here is the Abbé Desmonceaux writing on National Benevolence in 1789 describing his idea of an asylum that could be used to illustrate the effects of immorality: The sight of these shadowy places and the guilty creatures they contain is well calculated to preserve from the same acts of just reprobation the deviations of a too licentious youth; it is thus prudent of mothers and fathers to familiarize their children at an early age with these horrible and detestable places, where shame and turpitude fetter crime, where man corrupted in his essence, often loses forever the rights he had acquired in society*. Around 1800 traditional Christian mad houses started being replaced by lunatic asylums where, at least in some institutions, attempts were made to provide medical help and effect cures. This was a break with tradition as Church run mad houses have existed only to restrain potentially dangerous people, and attempts at cures had been limited to various tortures designed to expel the demons possessing them and responsible for their afflictions. [inmates of mental asylums were spun around in specially designed rotating chairs - utterly pointless except as a form of torture] The Church lost its power in France during the French Revolution, and mad-houses soon became a thing of the past. A wide range of abuses ended as a direct result of the Declaration of the Rights of Man: "No man may be arrested or detained except in the cases determined by law and according to the forms therein prescribed…The law must permit only the penalties strictly and evidently necessary.... ". By a decree of 1790 the insane who had been confined in religious houses, houses of correction and elsewhere were to be examined by a magistrate to establish whether they really were mad. Those who were not mad were to be released and those who were mad were to be transferred to hospital*. Humane treatment of the insane was pioneered in France by Philippe Pinel. He was appointed to the asylum at Bicêtre in 1793 under the new secular government. One of his first acts was to remove the chains from the inmates. He then went on to unchain the women at the insane asylum for women in Paris. Dr. Philippe Pinel releasing male lunatics from their chains at the Bicêtre Asylum in Paris, painting by Charles Louis Lucien Müller (1815-1892) Dr. Philippe Pinel at the Salpêtrière, 1795 by Tony Robert-Fleury. It shows Pinel ordering the removal of chains from patients at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, the Paris Asylum for insane women. [A viewing room in Bedlam - note the spectators behind the windows on the right] In Britain the idea of a proper hospital or asylum, as opposed to the traditional mad-house, was introduced by William Tuke, a Quaker, who founded a retreat near York in 1794. The institution was more like a farm with a great walled garden than a prison. There were no grilles or bars on the windows, and like Pinel, Tuke removed the chains from his patients. By the early nineteenth century Parliament was investigating the Bethlehem Hospital and its traditional practices. In 1815, for one penny it was still possible each Sunday to watch the insane perform their tricks to the insults and mocking laughter of the devout*. Mask for the criminally insane. Such masks, called torture masks, have long been used during Christian times to punish criminals. James (William) Norris, Bethlem Patient, 1815. It was thie case of Norris, exposed by a newspaper, that led to the reform of Bedlam. Utica Crib - An adult-size restraint bed used in a New York insane asylum, 1882 Use of the “Utica Crib” began in the 1840s at Utica, and spread throughout the United States to other mental institutions. It was widely used to confine patients. Some cribs were made out of wood, some iron. The sides and lid were made of spindles, which allowed airflow. The Utica Crib had a lid, which could be fastened over the patient. The person restrained could not sit up, nor get out. The bottom was cushioned with layers of straw. Patient in restraint chair at the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum, Wakefield, Yorkshire, ca. 1869, ,Photographed by Henry Clarke, Wellcome Library, London (L0019069, Library reference no.: Iconographic Collection 347834) Secular ideas triumphed in the nineteenth century. Abuses were suppressed as the Churches lost their influence, and soon people were asking in wonder how it could be that previously "No one blushed to put the insane in prison"*. This is a mental patient in a Victorian mental asylum. The Christian treatment of mental patients frequently immitated the historical treatment of offenders against the Church: they were imprisoned, chained or held in painful restraints, flogged and tortured in a variety of ways, denied ordinary comforts like heat, light, company, and food and drink, and sometimes exhibitted to public ridicule. Modern psychiatric hospitals evolved slowly from Victorian lunatic asylums, becoming progressively less terrifying as they became progressively more secular, more humane and more medically based, and as their religious origins retreated ever further into the past. submit to reddit Delicious Save Share Bad News Blog Buy the Book from Amazon.com Buy the Book from Amazon.co.uk Beyond Belief: Two Thousand (2000) Years of Bad Faith in the Christian Church More Books Notes §. Inquisitors would occasionally discharge accused people as insane. One rare example was Guillaume Postel born in 1510 a scholar of Arabic who was found to be heretical but harmlessly insane for his eccentric religious beliefs. §. Cited by Foucault, Madness and Civilization, p 207. §. Foucault, Madness and Civilization, pp 236-7. §. Foucault, Madness and Civilization, pp 68-9. §. Foucault, Madness and Civilization, p 221. …a rod is for the back of him that is void of understanding. Proverbs 10:13 According to Christians, lunatics were possessed by unclean spirits. To effect a cure it was therefore necessary to dislodge the offending spirit. This idea derived from gospel stories of exorcisms. And there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit; and he cried out , Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, The Holy One of God. And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him. Mark 1:23-25 Such beliefs had at least two unfortunate consequences. The first was that for many centuries no advance was made in understanding the nature of mental illness — although it is clear that Christians did understand the there was such a thing as insanity*. The second was that many thousands of men, women and children, already burdened with madness, were confined in chains and subjected to routine torture. The idea was that by making the environment sufficiently uncomfortable, the torturers might induce the possessing spirit to leave its human host. Saint Benedict beats a possessed monk, driving out the demon who possessed him. Fresco by Spinello Aretino (detail), Basilica San Miniato al Monte, Florence, Italy In some monasteries, the monks whipped their insane charges regularly every day. Although the method was spectacularly unsuccessful, no one seems to have realised the fact for many centuries. Sometimes the insane were beaten out of the parish with quarterstaffs. Sometimes they were loaded onto ships and sent off to die or become a problem for someone else. This is the origin of the various popular tales about a "ship of fools". A ship of fools. Those abord will almost certainly die - through accident, murder, starvation or shipwreck. This was an ideal way to kill the insane without feeling guilty. Christians could excuse themselves with the belief that if the insane they had forced aboard died, it must have been will. For as long as the Church controlled the insane, they endured dreadful torments. They were imprisoned, chained to a wall (or if they were lucky to a bed), flogged, starved, insulted, tortured, immersed in iced water and otherwise brutalised. It also seems safe to assume that sexual abuse would have been commonplace in view of twentieth century disclosures about monasteries, seminaries, church schools, orphanages and state mental asylums. Throughout Christendom the insane were kept in insanitary conditions in mad-houses and exposed to public ridicule. The most famous place in England for such people was the hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem ("Bedlam"), where visitors were charged a fee to see the inmates, and were allowed to provoke them and laugh at them. A few inmates came to their senses, some died of old age, some died of neglect, starvation, exposure or torture, and many died of "putrid fever" or other infectious diseases that flourished in such conditions. The idea that demons caused insanity as well as physical illnesses was not restricted to the Catholic Church. Here is Martin Luther on the subject: My opinion of lunatics is, that all idiots and insane persons are possessed by devils, though on that account they will not be damned; but I think Satan tries men in different ways, some severely, some lightly, some for a long time, some for a short one. Physicians may attribute such things to natural causes, and sometimes cure them by medicene, but they are ignorant of the power of devils. (personal letter written by Martin Luther to Wenzel Link, dated July 14, 1528) Luther goes on to say that because Jesus healeed sick people with demons, he is "forced to believe that many are made dumb, deaf, and lame by Satan's malice," and he also supposes that demons can cause other kinds of sickness and even storms or blight. The word bedlam, meaning uproar and confusion, is derived from the name of the Bethlem Royal Hospital.. The hospital became a modern psychiatric facility, but historically it was representative of the worst excesses of asylums in the era of lunacy reform. The position of master of Bedlam was a sinecure largely regarded by its occupants as means of profiting at the expense of the poor in their charge. The 1598 visitation by the Bridewell Governors had observed that the hospital was "filthely kept". Up until the seventeeth century the Board of Governors referred to the inmates as either "the poore" or "prisoners". An inspection by the Governors in 1631 reported that the patients were "likely to starve". Inmates left in their cells with their own excreta were, on occasion, liable to throw "filth & Excrem[en]t" into the hospital yard or onto passing staff and visitors. Affluent Londoners could go to see the unfortunate inmates, to laugh at them, abuse them, or watch them being tortured. Outings to see them were so commonplace as not to need explanation. Samuel Pepys' diary for 19 February 1669 for example notes that "All the afternoon I at the Office, while the young people went to see Bedlam". Nepotistic appointment practices played a significant role in allocating posts. The election of James Monro as Bethlem physician in 1728 marked the beginning of an 125-year Monro family dynasty extending through four generations of fathers and sons. In 1758 William Battie, a former Governor at Bethlem, published his Treatise on Madness which castigated Bethlem as archaic and outmoded, uncaring of its patients and founded upon a despairing medical system whose therapeutic transactions were injudicious and unnecessarily violent. Bethlem was best known for the fact that it allowed admittance for a fee to casual visitors with no connection to the hospital's inmates. This display of madness as public show has often been considered the most scandalous feature of the historical Bedlam. "Swarms of People" descended upon Bethlem during public holidays. The Governors actively sought out "people of note and quallitie" as visitors, presumably because they were prepared to pay higher fees. The practice was never officially recognised (or accounted for), and probably grew out of the ancient monastic custom of giving alms to the poor. The spectacle of Bethlem was also thought to offer moral instruction for visitors, providing a deterrent by demonstrating the dangers of immorality and vice. For proponents of lunacy reform, a Quaker-run York Retreat, founded in 1796, functioned as an exemplar of the new civilised approach. Bethlem, still embroiled in scandal over its inmate conditions, symbolised its antithesis. Hogarth's depiction of Bedlam from A Rake's Progress. The well-dressed ladies in the background are not inmates, but visitors, there to amuse themselves. The Christian Church fiercely opposed the idea that insanity might have a physical cause, since it knew for a fact that it was attributable to evil spirits, and the Bible confirmed that beating was the correct treatment: A whip for the horse, a bridle for the ass, and a rod for the fool's back. Proverbs 26:3 Insanity was recognised and accepted if the sufferer was sufficiently powerful. Charles the Mad (King Charles VI of France) for example believed himself to be made of glass and murdered a number of his own knights. Detail of Corronation of Charles VI In practice, Christian mental asylums were often used as prisons. Anyone that the Church did not like, or did not approve of, could be imprisoned without trial in an asylum, and then tortured and abused at will. Victims ranged from critics of Church excesses (including political radicals and atheists) to unmarried mothers, as well as the genuinely insane. The insane were not only a source of public entertainment, they were also an object lesson as to where immorality could lead. In France the devout Parisian bourgeoisie enjoyed Sunday excursions to Bicêtre to watch the insane perform tricks. By flicking a whip an attendant would make them dance and perform acrobatics like monkeys at a circus. For churchmen the main problem was not to reform such institutions, but to ensure that they were used to deliver the correct moral message to the spectators. "Popular Mode of Curing Insanity" Here is the Abbé Desmonceaux writing on National Benevolence in 1789 describing his idea of an asylum that could be used to illustrate the effects of immorality: The sight of these shadowy places and the guilty creatures they contain is well calculated to preserve from the same acts of just reprobation the deviations of a too licentious youth; it is thus prudent of mothers and fathers to familiarize their children at an early age with these horrible and detestable places, where shame and turpitude fetter crime, where man corrupted in his essence, often loses forever the rights he had acquired in society*. Around 1800 traditional Christian mad houses started being replaced by lunatic asylums where, at least in some institutions, attempts were made to provide medical help and effect cures. This was a break with tradition as Church run mad houses have existed only to restrain potentially dangerous people, and attempts at cures had been limited to various tortures designed to expel the demons possessing them and responsible for their afflictions. [inmates of mental asylums were spun around in specially designed rotating chairs - utterly pointless except as a form of torture] The Church lost its power in France during the French Revolution, and mad-houses soon became a thing of the past. A wide range of abuses ended as a direct result of the Declaration of the Rights of Man: "No man may be arrested or detained except in the cases determined by law and according to the forms therein prescribed…The law must permit only the penalties strictly and evidently necessary.... ". By a decree of 1790 the insane who had been confined in religious houses, houses of correction and elsewhere were to be examined by a magistrate to establish whether they really were mad. Those who were not mad were to be released and those who were mad were to be transferred to hospital*. Humane treatment of the insane was pioneered in France by Philippe Pinel. He was appointed to the asylum at Bicêtre in 1793 under the new secular government. One of his first acts was to remove the chains from the inmates. He then went on to unchain the women at the insane asylum for women in Paris. Dr. Philippe Pinel releasing male lunatics from their chains at the Bicêtre Asylum in Paris, painting by Charles Louis Lucien Müller (1815-1892) Dr. Philippe Pinel at the Salpêtrière, 1795 by Tony Robert-Fleury. It shows Pinel ordering the removal of chains from patients at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, the Paris Asylum for insane women. [A viewing room in Bedlam - note the spectators behind the windows on the right] In Britain the idea of a proper hospital or asylum, as opposed to the traditional mad-house, was introduced by William Tuke, a Quaker, who founded a retreat near York in 1794. The institution was more like a farm with a great walled garden than a prison. There were no grilles or bars on the windows, and like Pinel, Tuke removed the chains from his patients. By the early nineteenth century Parliament was investigating the Bethlehem Hospital and its traditional practices. In 1815, for one penny it was still possible each Sunday to watch the insane perform their tricks to the insults and mocking laughter of the devout*. Mask for the criminally insane. Such masks, called torture masks, have long been used during Christian times to punish criminals. James (William) Norris, Bethlem Patient, 1815. It was thie case of Norris, exposed by a newspaper, that led to the reform of Bedlam. Utica Crib - An adult-size restraint bed used in a New York insane asylum, 1882 Use of the “Utica Crib” began in the 1840s at Utica, and spread throughout the United States to other mental institutions. It was widely used to confine patients. Some cribs were made out of wood, some iron. The sides and lid were made of spindles, which allowed airflow. The Utica Crib had a lid, which could be fastened over the patient. The person restrained could not sit up, nor get out. The bottom was cushioned with layers of straw. Patient in restraint chair at the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum, Wakefield, Yorkshire, ca. 1869, ,Photographed by Henry Clarke, Wellcome Library, London (L0019069, Library reference no.: Iconographic Collection 347834) Secular ideas triumphed in the nineteenth century. Abuses were suppressed as the Churches lost their influence, and soon people were asking in wonder how it could be that previously "No one blushed to put the insane in prison"*. This is a mental patient in a Victorian mental asylum. The Christian treatment of mental patients frequently immitated the historical treatment of offenders against the Church: they were imprisoned, chained or held in painful restraints, flogged and tortured in a variety of ways, denied ordinary comforts like heat, light, company, and food and drink, and sometimes exhibitted to public ridicule. Modern psychiatric hospitals evolved slowly from Victorian lunatic asylums, becoming progressively less terrifying as they became progressively more secular, more humane and more medically based, and as their religious origins retreated ever further into the past.

Treatment of the Insane

Christianity & Human Rights Christian Prooftexts …a rod is for the back of him that is void of understanding. Proverbs 10:13 According to Christians, lunatics were possessed by unclean spirits. To effect a cure it was therefore necessary to dislodge the offending spirit. This idea derived from gospel stories of exorcisms. And there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit; and he cried out , Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, The Holy One of God. And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him. Mark 1:23-25 Such beliefs had at least two unfortunate consequences. The first was that for many centuries no advance was made in understanding the nature of mental illness — although it is clear that Christians did understand the there was such a thing as insanity*. The second was that many thousands of men, women and children, already burdened with madness, were confined in chains and subjected to routine torture. The idea was that by making the environment sufficiently uncomfortable, the torturers might induce the possessing spirit to leave its human host. Saint Benedict beats a possessed monk, driving out the demon who possessed him. Fresco by Spinello Aretino (detail), Basilica San Miniato al Monte, Florence, Italy In some monasteries, the monks whipped their insane charges regularly every day. Although the method was spectacularly unsuccessful, no one seems to have realised the fact for many centuries. Sometimes the insane were beaten out of the parish with quarterstaffs. Sometimes they were loaded onto ships and sent off to die or become a problem for someone else. This is the origin of the various popular tales about a "ship of fools". A ship of fools. Those abord will almost certainly die - through accident, murder, starvation or shipwreck. This was an ideal way to kill the insane without feeling guilty. Christians could excuse themselves with the belief that if the insane they had forced aboard died, it must have been will. For as long as the Church controlled the insane, they endured dreadful torments. They were imprisoned, chained to a wall (or if they were lucky to a bed), flogged, starved, insulted, tortured, immersed in iced water and otherwise brutalised. It also seems safe to assume that sexual abuse would have been commonplace in view of twentieth century disclosures about monasteries, seminaries, church schools, orphanages and state mental asylums. Throughout Christendom the insane were kept in insanitary conditions in mad-houses and exposed to public ridicule. The most famous place in England for such people was the hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem ("Bedlam"), where visitors were charged a fee to see the inmates, and were allowed to provoke them and laugh at them. A few inmates came to their senses, some died of old age, some died of neglect, starvation, exposure or torture, and many died of "putrid fever" or other infectious diseases that flourished in such conditions. The idea that demons caused insanity as well as physical illnesses was not restricted to the Catholic Church. Here is Martin Luther on the subject: My opinion of lunatics is, that all idiots and insane persons are possessed by devils, though on that account they will not be damned; but I think Satan tries men in different ways, some severely, some lightly, some for a long time, some for a short one. Physicians may attribute such things to natural causes, and sometimes cure them by medicene, but they are ignorant of the power of devils. (personal letter written by Martin Luther to Wenzel Link, dated July 14, 1528) Luther goes on to say that because Jesus healeed sick people with demons, he is "forced to believe that many are made dumb, deaf, and lame by Satan's malice," and he also supposes that demons can cause other kinds of sickness and even storms or blight. The word bedlam, meaning uproar and confusion, is derived from the name of the Bethlem Royal Hospital.. The hospital became a modern psychiatric facility, but historically it was representative of the worst excesses of asylums in the era of lunacy reform. The position of master of Bedlam was a sinecure largely regarded by its occupants as means of profiting at the expense of the poor in their charge. The 1598 visitation by the Bridewell Governors had observed that the hospital was "filthely kept". Up until the seventeeth century the Board of Governors referred to the inmates as either "the poore" or "prisoners". An inspection by the Governors in 1631 reported that the patients were "likely to starve". Inmates left in their cells with their own excreta were, on occasion, liable to throw "filth & Excrem[en]t" into the hospital yard or onto passing staff and visitors. Affluent Londoners could go to see the unfortunate inmates, to laugh at them, abuse them, or watch them being tortured. Outings to see them were so commonplace as not to need explanation. Samuel Pepys' diary for 19 February 1669 for example notes that "All the afternoon I at the Office, while the young people went to see Bedlam". Nepotistic appointment practices played a significant role in allocating posts. The election of James Monro as Bethlem physician in 1728 marked the beginning of an 125-year Monro family dynasty extending through four generations of fathers and sons. In 1758 William Battie, a former Governor at Bethlem, published his Treatise on Madness which castigated Bethlem as archaic and outmoded, uncaring of its patients and founded upon a despairing medical system whose therapeutic transactions were injudicious and unnecessarily violent. Bethlem was best known for the fact that it allowed admittance for a fee to casual visitors with no connection to the hospital's inmates. This display of madness as public show has often been considered the most scandalous feature of the historical Bedlam. "Swarms of People" descended upon Bethlem during public holidays. The Governors actively sought out "people of note and quallitie" as visitors, presumably because they were prepared to pay higher fees. The practice was never officially recognised (or accounted for), and probably grew out of the ancient monastic custom of giving alms to the poor. The spectacle of Bethlem was also thought to offer moral instruction for visitors, providing a deterrent by demonstrating the dangers of immorality and vice. For proponents of lunacy reform, a Quaker-run York Retreat, founded in 1796, functioned as an exemplar of the new civilised approach. Bethlem, still embroiled in scandal over its inmate conditions, symbolised its antithesis. Hogarth's depiction of Bedlam from A Rake's Progress. The well-dressed ladies in the background are not inmates, but visitors, there to amuse themselves. The Christian Church fiercely opposed the idea that insanity might have a physical cause, since it knew for a fact that it was attributable to evil spirits, and the Bible confirmed that beating was the correct treatment: A whip for the horse, a bridle for the ass, and a rod for the fool's back. Proverbs 26:3 Insanity was recognised and accepted if the sufferer was sufficiently powerful. Charles the Mad (King Charles VI of France) for example believed himself to be made of glass and murdered a number of his own knights. Detail of Corronation of Charles VI In practice, Christian mental asylums were often used as prisons. Anyone that the Church did not like, or did not approve of, could be imprisoned without trial in an asylum, and then tortured and abused at will. Victims ranged from critics of Church excesses (including political radicals and atheists) to unmarried mothers, as well as the genuinely insane. The insane were not only a source of public entertainment, they were also an object lesson as to where immorality could lead. In France the devout Parisian bourgeoisie enjoyed Sunday excursions to Bicêtre to watch the insane perform tricks. By flicking a whip an attendant would make them dance and perform acrobatics like monkeys at a circus. For churchmen the main problem was not to reform such institutions, but to ensure that they were used to deliver the correct moral message to the spectators. "Popular Mode of Curing Insanity" Here is the Abbé Desmonceaux writing on National Benevolence in 1789 describing his idea of an asylum that could be used to illustrate the effects of immorality: The sight of these shadowy places and the guilty creatures they contain is well calculated to preserve from the same acts of just reprobation the deviations of a too licentious youth; it is thus prudent of mothers and fathers to familiarize their children at an early age with these horrible and detestable places, where shame and turpitude fetter crime, where man corrupted in his essence, often loses forever the rights he had acquired in society*. Around 1800 traditional Christian mad houses started being replaced by lunatic asylums where, at least in some institutions, attempts were made to provide medical help and effect cures. This was a break with tradition as Church run mad houses have existed only to restrain potentially dangerous people, and attempts at cures had been limited to various tortures designed to expel the demons possessing them and responsible for their afflictions. [inmates of mental asylums were spun around in specially designed rotating chairs - utterly pointless except as a form of torture] The Church lost its power in France during the French Revolution, and mad-houses soon became a thing of the past. A wide range of abuses ended as a direct result of the Declaration of the Rights of Man: "No man may be arrested or detained except in the cases determined by law and according to the forms therein prescribed…The law must permit only the penalties strictly and evidently necessary.... ". By a decree of 1790 the insane who had been confined in religious houses, houses of correction and elsewhere were to be examined by a magistrate to establish whether they really were mad. Those who were not mad were to be released and those who were mad were to be transferred to hospital*. Humane treatment of the insane was pioneered in France by Philippe Pinel. He was appointed to the asylum at Bicêtre in 1793 under the new secular government. One of his first acts was to remove the chains from the inmates. He then went on to unchain the women at the insane asylum for women in Paris. Dr. Philippe Pinel releasing male lunatics from their chains at the Bicêtre Asylum in Paris, painting by Charles Louis Lucien Müller (1815-1892) Dr. Philippe Pinel at the Salpêtrière, 1795 by Tony Robert-Fleury. It shows Pinel ordering the removal of chains from patients at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, the Paris Asylum for insane women. [A viewing room in Bedlam - note the spectators behind the windows on the right] In Britain the idea of a proper hospital or asylum, as opposed to the traditional mad-house, was introduced by William Tuke, a Quaker, who founded a retreat near York in 1794. The institution was more like a farm with a great walled garden than a prison. There were no grilles or bars on the windows, and like Pinel, Tuke removed the chains from his patients. By the early nineteenth century Parliament was investigating the Bethlehem Hospital and its traditional practices. In 1815, for one penny it was still possible each Sunday to watch the insane perform their tricks to the insults and mocking laughter of the devout*. Mask for the criminally insane. Such masks, called torture masks, have long been used during Christian times to punish criminals. James (William) Norris, Bethlem Patient, 1815. It was thie case of Norris, exposed by a newspaper, that led to the reform of Bedlam. Utica Crib - An adult-size restraint bed used in a New York insane asylum, 1882 Use of the “Utica Crib” began in the 1840s at Utica, and spread throughout the United States to other mental institutions. It was widely used to confine patients. Some cribs were made out of wood, some iron. The sides and lid were made of spindles, which allowed airflow. The Utica Crib had a lid, which could be fastened over the patient. The person restrained could not sit up, nor get out. The bottom was cushioned with layers of straw. Patient in restraint chair at the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum, Wakefield, Yorkshire, ca. 1869, ,Photographed by Henry Clarke, Wellcome Library, London (L0019069, Library reference no.: Iconographic Collection 347834) Secular ideas triumphed in the nineteenth century. Abuses were suppressed as the Churches lost their influence, and soon people were asking in wonder how it could be that previously "No one blushed to put the insane in prison"*. This is a mental patient in a Victorian mental asylum. The Christian treatment of mental patients frequently immitated the historical treatment of offenders against the Church: they were imprisoned, chained or held in painful restraints, flogged and tortured in a variety of ways, denied ordinary comforts like heat, light, company, and food and drink, and sometimes exhibitted to public ridicule. Modern psychiatric hospitals evolved slowly from Victorian lunatic asylums, becoming progressively less terrifying as they became progressively more secular, more humane and more medically based, and as their religious origins retreated ever further into the past. submit to reddit Delicious Save Share Bad News Blog Buy the Book from Amazon.com Buy the Book from Amazon.co.uk Beyond Belief: Two Thousand (2000) Years of Bad Faith in the Christian Church More Books Notes §. Inquisitors would occasionally discharge accused people as insane. One rare example was Guillaume Postel born in 1510 a scholar of Arabic who was found to be heretical but harmlessly insane for his eccentric religious beliefs. §. Cited by Foucault, Madness and Civilization, p 207. §. Foucault, Madness and Civilization, pp 236-7. §. Foucault, Madness and Civilization, pp 68-9. §. Foucault, Madness and Civilization, p 221. …a rod is for the back of him that is void of understanding. Proverbs 10:13 According to Christians, lunatics were possessed by unclean spirits. To effect a cure it was therefore necessary to dislodge the offending spirit. This idea derived from gospel stories of exorcisms. And there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit; and he cried out , Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, The Holy One of God. And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him. Mark 1:23-25 Such beliefs had at least two unfortunate consequences. The first was that for many centuries no advance was made in understanding the nature of mental illness — although it is clear that Christians did understand the there was such a thing as insanity*. The second was that many thousands of men, women and children, already burdened with madness, were confined in chains and subjected to routine torture. The idea was that by making the environment sufficiently uncomfortable, the torturers might induce the possessing spirit to leave its human host. Saint Benedict beats a possessed monk, driving out the demon who possessed him. Fresco by Spinello Aretino (detail), Basilica San Miniato al Monte, Florence, Italy In some monasteries, the monks whipped their insane charges regularly every day. Although the method was spectacularly unsuccessful, no one seems to have realised the fact for many centuries. Sometimes the insane were beaten out of the parish with quarterstaffs. Sometimes they were loaded onto ships and sent off to die or become a problem for someone else. This is the origin of the various popular tales about a "ship of fools". A ship of fools. Those abord will almost certainly die - through accident, murder, starvation or shipwreck. This was an ideal way to kill the insane without feeling guilty. Christians could excuse themselves with the belief that if the insane they had forced aboard died, it must have been will. For as long as the Church controlled the insane, they endured dreadful torments. They were imprisoned, chained to a wall (or if they were lucky to a bed), flogged, starved, insulted, tortured, immersed in iced water and otherwise brutalised. It also seems safe to assume that sexual abuse would have been commonplace in view of twentieth century disclosures about monasteries, seminaries, church schools, orphanages and state mental asylums. Throughout Christendom the insane were kept in insanitary conditions in mad-houses and exposed to public ridicule. The most famous place in England for such people was the hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem ("Bedlam"), where visitors were charged a fee to see the inmates, and were allowed to provoke them and laugh at them. A few inmates came to their senses, some died of old age, some died of neglect, starvation, exposure or torture, and many died of "putrid fever" or other infectious diseases that flourished in such conditions. The idea that demons caused insanity as well as physical illnesses was not restricted to the Catholic Church. Here is Martin Luther on the subject: My opinion of lunatics is, that all idiots and insane persons are possessed by devils, though on that account they will not be damned; but I think Satan tries men in different ways, some severely, some lightly, some for a long time, some for a short one. Physicians may attribute such things to natural causes, and sometimes cure them by medicene, but they are ignorant of the power of devils. (personal letter written by Martin Luther to Wenzel Link, dated July 14, 1528) Luther goes on to say that because Jesus healeed sick people with demons, he is "forced to believe that many are made dumb, deaf, and lame by Satan's malice," and he also supposes that demons can cause other kinds of sickness and even storms or blight. The word bedlam, meaning uproar and confusion, is derived from the name of the Bethlem Royal Hospital.. The hospital became a modern psychiatric facility, but historically it was representative of the worst excesses of asylums in the era of lunacy reform. The position of master of Bedlam was a sinecure largely regarded by its occupants as means of profiting at the expense of the poor in their charge. The 1598 visitation by the Bridewell Governors had observed that the hospital was "filthely kept". Up until the seventeeth century the Board of Governors referred to the inmates as either "the poore" or "prisoners". An inspection by the Governors in 1631 reported that the patients were "likely to starve". Inmates left in their cells with their own excreta were, on occasion, liable to throw "filth & Excrem[en]t" into the hospital yard or onto passing staff and visitors. Affluent Londoners could go to see the unfortunate inmates, to laugh at them, abuse them, or watch them being tortured. Outings to see them were so commonplace as not to need explanation. Samuel Pepys' diary for 19 February 1669 for example notes that "All the afternoon I at the Office, while the young people went to see Bedlam". Nepotistic appointment practices played a significant role in allocating posts. The election of James Monro as Bethlem physician in 1728 marked the beginning of an 125-year Monro family dynasty extending through four generations of fathers and sons. In 1758 William Battie, a former Governor at Bethlem, published his Treatise on Madness which castigated Bethlem as archaic and outmoded, uncaring of its patients and founded upon a despairing medical system whose therapeutic transactions were injudicious and unnecessarily violent. Bethlem was best known for the fact that it allowed admittance for a fee to casual visitors with no connection to the hospital's inmates. This display of madness as public show has often been considered the most scandalous feature of the historical Bedlam. "Swarms of People" descended upon Bethlem during public holidays. The Governors actively sought out "people of note and quallitie" as visitors, presumably because they were prepared to pay higher fees. The practice was never officially recognised (or accounted for), and probably grew out of the ancient monastic custom of giving alms to the poor. The spectacle of Bethlem was also thought to offer moral instruction for visitors, providing a deterrent by demonstrating the dangers of immorality and vice. For proponents of lunacy reform, a Quaker-run York Retreat, founded in 1796, functioned as an exemplar of the new civilised approach. Bethlem, still embroiled in scandal over its inmate conditions, symbolised its antithesis. Hogarth's depiction of Bedlam from A Rake's Progress. The well-dressed ladies in the background are not inmates, but visitors, there to amuse themselves. The Christian Church fiercely opposed the idea that insanity might have a physical cause, since it knew for a fact that it was attributable to evil spirits, and the Bible confirmed that beating was the correct treatment: A whip for the horse, a bridle for the ass, and a rod for the fool's back. Proverbs 26:3 Insanity was recognised and accepted if the sufferer was sufficiently powerful. Charles the Mad (King Charles VI of France) for example believed himself to be made of glass and murdered a number of his own knights. Detail of Corronation of Charles VI In practice, Christian mental asylums were often used as prisons. Anyone that the Church did not like, or did not approve of, could be imprisoned without trial in an asylum, and then tortured and abused at will. Victims ranged from critics of Church excesses (including political radicals and atheists) to unmarried mothers, as well as the genuinely insane. The insane were not only a source of public entertainment, they were also an object lesson as to where immorality could lead. In France the devout Parisian bourgeoisie enjoyed Sunday excursions to Bicêtre to watch the insane perform tricks. By flicking a whip an attendant would make them dance and perform acrobatics like monkeys at a circus. For churchmen the main problem was not to reform such institutions, but to ensure that they were used to deliver the correct moral message to the spectators. "Popular Mode of Curing Insanity" Here is the Abbé Desmonceaux writing on National Benevolence in 1789 describing his idea of an asylum that could be used to illustrate the effects of immorality: The sight of these shadowy places and the guilty creatures they contain is well calculated to preserve from the same acts of just reprobation the deviations of a too licentious youth; it is thus prudent of mothers and fathers to familiarize their children at an early age with these horrible and detestable places, where shame and turpitude fetter crime, where man corrupted in his essence, often loses forever the rights he had acquired in society*. Around 1800 traditional Christian mad houses started being replaced by lunatic asylums where, at least in some institutions, attempts were made to provide medical help and effect cures. This was a break with tradition as Church run mad houses have existed only to restrain potentially dangerous people, and attempts at cures had been limited to various tortures designed to expel the demons possessing them and responsible for their afflictions. [inmates of mental asylums were spun around in specially designed rotating chairs - utterly pointless except as a form of torture] The Church lost its power in France during the French Revolution, and mad-houses soon became a thing of the past. A wide range of abuses ended as a direct result of the Declaration of the Rights of Man: "No man may be arrested or detained except in the cases determined by law and according to the forms therein prescribed…The law must permit only the penalties strictly and evidently necessary.... ". By a decree of 1790 the insane who had been confined in religious houses, houses of correction and elsewhere were to be examined by a magistrate to establish whether they really were mad. Those who were not mad were to be released and those who were mad were to be transferred to hospital*. Humane treatment of the insane was pioneered in France by Philippe Pinel. He was appointed to the asylum at Bicêtre in 1793 under the new secular government. One of his first acts was to remove the chains from the inmates. He then went on to unchain the women at the insane asylum for women in Paris. Dr. Philippe Pinel releasing male lunatics from their chains at the Bicêtre Asylum in Paris, painting by Charles Louis Lucien Müller (1815-1892) Dr. Philippe Pinel at the Salpêtrière, 1795 by Tony Robert-Fleury. It shows Pinel ordering the removal of chains from patients at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, the Paris Asylum for insane women. [A viewing room in Bedlam - note the spectators behind the windows on the right] In Britain the idea of a proper hospital or asylum, as opposed to the traditional mad-house, was introduced by William Tuke, a Quaker, who founded a retreat near York in 1794. The institution was more like a farm with a great walled garden than a prison. There were no grilles or bars on the windows, and like Pinel, Tuke removed the chains from his patients. By the early nineteenth century Parliament was investigating the Bethlehem Hospital and its traditional practices. In 1815, for one penny it was still possible each Sunday to watch the insane perform their tricks to the insults and mocking laughter of the devout*. Mask for the criminally insane. Such masks, called torture masks, have long been used during Christian times to punish criminals. James (William) Norris, Bethlem Patient, 1815. It was thie case of Norris, exposed by a newspaper, that led to the reform of Bedlam. Utica Crib - An adult-size restraint bed used in a New York insane asylum, 1882 Use of the “Utica Crib” began in the 1840s at Utica, and spread throughout the United States to other mental institutions. It was widely used to confine patients. Some cribs were made out of wood, some iron. The sides and lid were made of spindles, which allowed airflow. The Utica Crib had a lid, which could be fastened over the patient. The person restrained could not sit up, nor get out. The bottom was cushioned with layers of straw. Patient in restraint chair at the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum, Wakefield, Yorkshire, ca. 1869, ,Photographed by Henry Clarke, Wellcome Library, London (L0019069, Library reference no.: Iconographic Collection 347834) Secular ideas triumphed in the nineteenth century. Abuses were suppressed as the Churches lost their influence, and soon people were asking in wonder how it could be that previously "No one blushed to put the insane in prison"*. This is a mental patient in a Victorian mental asylum. The Christian treatment of mental patients frequently immitated the historical treatment of offenders against the Church: they were imprisoned, chained or held in painful restraints, flogged and tortured in a variety of ways, denied ordinary comforts like heat, light, company, and food and drink, and sometimes exhibitted to public ridicule. Modern psychiatric hospitals evolved slowly from Victorian lunatic asylums, becoming progressively less terrifying as they became progressively more secular, more humane and more medically based, and as their religious origins retreated ever further into the past.

defence.pk Rand report prescribed US provocations against Russia, predicted Russia might retaliate in Ukraine The SC 14-17 minutes Pakistan Defence Please support us by disabling AdBlocker on our website. Home Forums World Affairs Forum World Affairs Rand report prescribed US provocations against Russia, predicted Russia might retaliate in Ukraine Thread starter The SC Start date May 14, 2022 The SC #1 The Rand Corporation, one of the main think tanks that the US DoD relies upon to draw its assessments, had anticipated the result of the US long-lasting policy of antagonizing Russia: Pushing Moscow to retaliate. 1652541044914.png According to a 2019 Rand report titled “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia”, the US goal is to undermine Russia just as it did the Soviet Union in the cold war. Rather than “trying to stay ahead” or trying to improve the US domestically or in international relations, the emphasis is on efforts and actions to undermine the designated adversary Russia. Rand is a quasi-US governmental think tank that receives three-quarters of its funding from the US military. The report lists anti-Russia measures divided into the following areas: economic, geopolitical, ideological/informational, and military. They are assessed according to the perceived risks, benefits, and “likelihood of success”. The report notes that Russia has “deep-seated” anxieties about western interference and potential military attack. These anxieties are deemed to be a vulnerability to exploit. There is no mention of the cause of the Russian anxieties: they have been invaded multiple times and had 27 million deaths in WW2. Significance of Ukraine​ Ukraine is important to Russia. The two countries share much common heritage and a long common border. One of the most important leaders of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, was Ukrainian. During WW2, Ukraine was one of Hitler’s invasion routes and there was a small but active number of Ukrainian collaborators with Nazi Germany. The distance from the capital of Ukraine, Kiev, to Moscow is less than 500 miles. For these same reasons of geography and history, Ukraine is a major component of a US/NATO effort to undermine Russia. Current Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, said that over 20 years the US invested $5 billion in the project to turn Ukraine. The culmination was a violent coup in February 2014. Since 2015, the US has been training ultra-nationalist and Neo-Nazi militias. This has been documented in articles such as “U.S. House admits Nazi role in Ukraine” (Robert Parry, 2015), “The US is arming and assisting neo-nazis in Ukraine while the House debates prohibition.”(Max Blumenthal, 2018), “Neo Nazis and the far-right are on the march in Ukraine” (Lev Golinken in 2019) and “The CIA may be breeding Nazi terror in Ukraine” (Branko Marcetic Jan. 2022). Rand suggested provocations​ Prior to 2018, the US only provided “defensive” military weaponry to Ukraine. The Rand report assesses that providing lethal (offensive) military aid to Ukraine will have a high risk but also a high benefit. Accordingly, US lethal weaponry skyrocketed from near zero to $250M in 2019, to $303M in 2020, to $350M in 2021. Total military aid is much higher. A few weeks ago, “The Hill” reported, “The U.S. has contributed more than $1 billion to help Ukraine’s military over the past year”. The Rand report lists many techniques and “measures” to provoke and threaten Russia. Some of the steps include: Repositioning bombers within easy striking range of key Russian strategic targets Deploying additional tactical nuclear weapons to locations in Europe and Asia Increasing the US and allied naval force posture and presence in Russia’s operating areas (Black Sea) Holding NATO war exercises on Russia’s borders Withdrawing from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty These and many other provocations suggested by Rand have, in fact, been implemented. For example, NATO conducted massive war exercises dubbed “Defender 2021” right up to Russia’s border. NATO has started “patrolling” the Black Sea and engaging in provocative intrusions into Crimean waters. The US has withdrawn from the INF Treaty. Since 2008, when NATO “welcomed” the membership aspirations of Ukraine and Georgia, Russia has said this would cross a red line and threaten its security. In recent years NATO has provided advisers, training, and ever-increasing amounts of military hardware. While Ukraine is not a formal member of NATO, it has increasingly been treated like one. The full Rand report says “While NATO’s requirement for unanimity makes it unlikely that Ukraine could gain membership in the foreseeable future, Washington’s pushing this possibility could boost Ukrainian resolve while leading Russia to redouble its efforts to forestall such a development.” The alternative, which could have prevented or at least forestalled the current Russian intervention in Ukraine, would have been to declare Ukraine ineligible for NATO. But this would have been contrary to the US intention of deliberately stressing, provoking, and threatening Russia. Ukraine as US client​ In November 2021, the US and Ukraine signed a Charter on Strategic Partnership. This agreement confirmed Ukrainian aspirations to join NATO and rejection of the Crimean peoples decision to reunify with Russia following the 2014 Kiev coup. The agreement signaled a consolidation of Washington’s economic, political and military influence. December 2021 Russia's red lines followed by military action​ In December 2021, Russia proposed a treaty with the US and NATO. The central Russian proposal was a written agreement that Ukraine would not join the NATO military alliance. When the proposed treaty was rebuffed by Washington, it seems the die was cast. On February 21, Putin delivered a speech detailing their grievances. On February 24, Putin delivered another speech announcing the justification and objectives of the military intervention to “demilitarize” and “denazify” Ukraine. As Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov later said, “This is not about Ukraine. This is the end result of a policy that the West has carried out since the early 1990’s.” Afghanistan again?​ As earlier indicated, the Rand report assesses the costs and benefits of various US actions. It is considered a “benefit” if increased US assistance to Ukraine results in the loss of Russian blood and resources. Speculating on the possibility of Russian troop presence in Ukraine, the report suggests that it could become “quite controversial at home, as it did when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.” (p 99 of full report) That historical reference is significant. Beginning in 1979, the US and Saudi Arabia funded and trained sectarian foreign fighters to invade and destabilize the progressive Afghan government. The goals were to overthrow the socialist inclined government and lure the Soviet Union into supporting the destabilized government. It achieved these Machiavellian goals at the cost of millions of Afghan citizens whose country has never been the same. It appears that Ukrainian citizens are similarly being manipulated to serve US goals. A “disadvantageous peace settlement”​ The Rand report says, “Increasing U.S. military aid would certainly drive up the Russian costs, but doing so could also increase the loss of Ukrainian lives and territory or result in a disadvantageous peace settlement.” But who would a peace settlement be “disadvantageous” for? Ukrainian lives and territory are currently being lost. Over fourteen thousand Ukrainian lives have been lost in the eastern Donbass region since the 2014 coup. A peace settlement that guaranteed basic rights for all Ukrainians and state neutrality in the rivalry of big powers, would be advantageous to most Ukrainians. It is only the US foreign policy establishment including the US military media industrial complex and Ukrainian ultra-nationalists who would be “disadvantaged”. Since Ukraine is a multi-ethnic state, it would seem best to accept that reality and find a compromise national solution that facilitates all Ukrainians. Being a client of a distant foreign power is not in Ukraine’s national best interest. The Rand report shows how US policy focuses on actions to hurt Russia and manipulates third party countries (Ukraine) toward that task. ​ https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/blog/rand-report-prescribed-us-provocations-against-russia-predic​ ​ ​ The US plan to fight Russia REVEALED in 2019 Report from the RAND Corporation​ Please support us by disabling AdBlocker on our website. kankan326 #2 US set up a trap Russia have to jump in. #3 US set up a trap Russia have to jump in. Putin a former KGB agent should have saw that. Best thing to do is pull out of the trap. kankan326 #4 Putin a former KGB agent should have saw that. Best thing to do is pull out of the trap. KGB or what doesn't matter in this case. The root reason of Russia's tragedy is its bad economy. Poor countries are not liked by their neighbours. Especially when a rich country throws money to their neighbours. The only way to defeat US and its gang group NATO is making your country richer and more developed in science. #5 KGB or what doesn't matter in this case. The root reason of Russia's tragedy is its bad economy. Poor countries are not liked their neighbours. The only way to defeat US and its gang group NATO is making your country richer and more developed in science. Sure they can try that path. But the best path in this trap is to pull out of it. kankan326 #6 Sure they can try that path. But the best path in this trap is to pull out of it. Russia is a nation that doesn't care of shedding blood, as long as its emeny also is losing blood. When will the $40 billion aid arrives in Ukraine? #7 Russia is a nation that doesn't care of shedding blood, as long as its emeny also is losing blood. When will the $40 billion aid arrives in Ukraine? Pretty soon. If Russia didn't care about shedding blood, they wouldn't have retreated from Afghanistan during the 1980s eh? kankan326 #8 Pretty soon. If Russia didn't care about shedding blood, they wouldn't have retreated from Afghanistan during the 1980s eh? Afghanistan is not so important for Russia. Ukraine is too close to Russia's heart. Only two foreign armies reached this deep to Russia since Russia was established. Napoleon's army and Hitler's army. Russians suffered big loss for both. Princeps Senatus #10 Afghanistan is not so important for Russia. Ukraine is too close to Russia's heart. Only two foreign armies reached this deep to Russia since Russia was established. Napoleon's army and Hitler's army. Russians suffered big loss for both. Afghanistan was next to Russia at the time and pretty important enough to get involved. Ukrainians also suffered fighting of Hitler's Army themselves besides the Russians. So lets see who gives up. kankan326 #11 Afghanistan was next to Russia at the time and pretty important enough to get involved. Ukrainians also suffered fighting of Hitler's Army themselves besides the Russians. So lets see who gives up. Only if Russia still has super power ambition and wants warm water sea port, Afghanistan is important for it. Otherwise it's nothing. Those Ukrainians who fought Hitler's Army were mainly Eastern Ukainians, who are fighting Ukraine government army with Russians now. The Western Ukainians joined in Hitler's army. #12 Only if Russia still has super power ambition and wants warm water sea port, Afgha Those Ukrainians who fought Hitler's Army were mainly Eastern Ukainians, who are fighting Ukraine government army with Russians now. The Western Ukainians joined in Hitler's army.

defence.pk Rand report prescribed US provocations against Russia, predicted Russia might retaliate in Ukraine The SC 14-17 minutes Pakistan Defence Please support us by disabling AdBlocker on our website. Home Forums World Affairs Forum World Affairs Rand report prescribed US provocations against Russia, predicted Russia might retaliate in Ukraine Thread starter The SC Start date May 14, 2022 The SC #1 The Rand Corporation, one of the main think tanks that the US DoD relies upon to draw its assessments, had anticipated the result of the US long-lasting policy of antagonizing Russia: Pushing Moscow to retaliate. 1652541044914.png According to a 2019 Rand report titled “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia”, the US goal is to undermine Russia just as it did the Soviet Union in the cold war. Rather than “trying to stay ahead” or trying to improve the US domestically or in international relations, the emphasis is on efforts and actions to undermine the designated adversary Russia. Rand is a quasi-US governmental think tank that receives three-quarters of its funding from the US military. The report lists anti-Russia measures divided into the following areas: economic, geopolitical, ideological/informational, and military. They are assessed according to the perceived risks, benefits, and “likelihood of success”. The report notes that Russia has “deep-seated” anxieties about western interference and potential military attack. These anxieties are deemed to be a vulnerability to exploit. There is no mention of the cause of the Russian anxieties: they have been invaded multiple times and had 27 million deaths in WW2. Significance of Ukraine​ Ukraine is important to Russia. The two countries share much common heritage and a long common border. One of the most important leaders of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, was Ukrainian. During WW2, Ukraine was one of Hitler’s invasion routes and there was a small but active number of Ukrainian collaborators with Nazi Germany. The distance from the capital of Ukraine, Kiev, to Moscow is less than 500 miles. For these same reasons of geography and history, Ukraine is a major component of a US/NATO effort to undermine Russia. Current Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, said that over 20 years the US invested $5 billion in the project to turn Ukraine. The culmination was a violent coup in February 2014. Since 2015, the US has been training ultra-nationalist and Neo-Nazi militias. This has been documented in articles such as “U.S. House admits Nazi role in Ukraine” (Robert Parry, 2015), “The US is arming and assisting neo-nazis in Ukraine while the House debates prohibition.”(Max Blumenthal, 2018), “Neo Nazis and the far-right are on the march in Ukraine” (Lev Golinken in 2019) and “The CIA may be breeding Nazi terror in Ukraine” (Branko Marcetic Jan. 2022). Rand suggested provocations​ Prior to 2018, the US only provided “defensive” military weaponry to Ukraine. The Rand report assesses that providing lethal (offensive) military aid to Ukraine will have a high risk but also a high benefit. Accordingly, US lethal weaponry skyrocketed from near zero to $250M in 2019, to $303M in 2020, to $350M in 2021. Total military aid is much higher. A few weeks ago, “The Hill” reported, “The U.S. has contributed more than $1 billion to help Ukraine’s military over the past year”. The Rand report lists many techniques and “measures” to provoke and threaten Russia. Some of the steps include: Repositioning bombers within easy striking range of key Russian strategic targets Deploying additional tactical nuclear weapons to locations in Europe and Asia Increasing the US and allied naval force posture and presence in Russia’s operating areas (Black Sea) Holding NATO war exercises on Russia’s borders Withdrawing from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty These and many other provocations suggested by Rand have, in fact, been implemented. For example, NATO conducted massive war exercises dubbed “Defender 2021” right up to Russia’s border. NATO has started “patrolling” the Black Sea and engaging in provocative intrusions into Crimean waters. The US has withdrawn from the INF Treaty. Since 2008, when NATO “welcomed” the membership aspirations of Ukraine and Georgia, Russia has said this would cross a red line and threaten its security. In recent years NATO has provided advisers, training, and ever-increasing amounts of military hardware. While Ukraine is not a formal member of NATO, it has increasingly been treated like one. The full Rand report says “While NATO’s requirement for unanimity makes it unlikely that Ukraine could gain membership in the foreseeable future, Washington’s pushing this possibility could boost Ukrainian resolve while leading Russia to redouble its efforts to forestall such a development.” The alternative, which could have prevented or at least forestalled the current Russian intervention in Ukraine, would have been to declare Ukraine ineligible for NATO. But this would have been contrary to the US intention of deliberately stressing, provoking, and threatening Russia. Ukraine as US client​ In November 2021, the US and Ukraine signed a Charter on Strategic Partnership. This agreement confirmed Ukrainian aspirations to join NATO and rejection of the Crimean peoples decision to reunify with Russia following the 2014 Kiev coup. The agreement signaled a consolidation of Washington’s economic, political and military influence. December 2021 Russia's red lines followed by military action​ In December 2021, Russia proposed a treaty with the US and NATO. The central Russian proposal was a written agreement that Ukraine would not join the NATO military alliance. When the proposed treaty was rebuffed by Washington, it seems the die was cast. On February 21, Putin delivered a speech detailing their grievances. On February 24, Putin delivered another speech announcing the justification and objectives of the military intervention to “demilitarize” and “denazify” Ukraine. As Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov later said, “This is not about Ukraine. This is the end result of a policy that the West has carried out since the early 1990’s.” Afghanistan again?​ As earlier indicated, the Rand report assesses the costs and benefits of various US actions. It is considered a “benefit” if increased US assistance to Ukraine results in the loss of Russian blood and resources. Speculating on the possibility of Russian troop presence in Ukraine, the report suggests that it could become “quite controversial at home, as it did when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.” (p 99 of full report) That historical reference is significant. Beginning in 1979, the US and Saudi Arabia funded and trained sectarian foreign fighters to invade and destabilize the progressive Afghan government. The goals were to overthrow the socialist inclined government and lure the Soviet Union into supporting the destabilized government. It achieved these Machiavellian goals at the cost of millions of Afghan citizens whose country has never been the same. It appears that Ukrainian citizens are similarly being manipulated to serve US goals. A “disadvantageous peace settlement”​ The Rand report says, “Increasing U.S. military aid would certainly drive up the Russian costs, but doing so could also increase the loss of Ukrainian lives and territory or result in a disadvantageous peace settlement.” But who would a peace settlement be “disadvantageous” for? Ukrainian lives and territory are currently being lost. Over fourteen thousand Ukrainian lives have been lost in the eastern Donbass region since the 2014 coup. A peace settlement that guaranteed basic rights for all Ukrainians and state neutrality in the rivalry of big powers, would be advantageous to most Ukrainians. It is only the US foreign policy establishment including the US military media industrial complex and Ukrainian ultra-nationalists who would be “disadvantaged”. Since Ukraine is a multi-ethnic state, it would seem best to accept that reality and find a compromise national solution that facilitates all Ukrainians. Being a client of a distant foreign power is not in Ukraine’s national best interest. The Rand report shows how US policy focuses on actions to hurt Russia and manipulates third party countries (Ukraine) toward that task. ​ https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/blog/rand-report-prescribed-us-provocations-against-russia-predic​ ​ ​ The US plan to fight Russia REVEALED in 2019 Report from the RAND Corporation​ Please support us by disabling AdBlocker on our website. kankan326 #2 US set up a trap Russia have to jump in. #3 US set up a trap Russia have to jump in. Putin a former KGB agent should have saw that. Best thing to do is pull out of the trap. kankan326 #4 Putin a former KGB agent should have saw that. Best thing to do is pull out of the trap. KGB or what doesn't matter in this case. The root reason of Russia's tragedy is its bad economy. Poor countries are not liked by their neighbours. Especially when a rich country throws money to their neighbours. The only way to defeat US and its gang group NATO is making your country richer and more developed in science. #5 KGB or what doesn't matter in this case. The root reason of Russia's tragedy is its bad economy. Poor countries are not liked their neighbours. The only way to defeat US and its gang group NATO is making your country richer and more developed in science. Sure they can try that path. But the best path in this trap is to pull out of it. kankan326 #6 Sure they can try that path. But the best path in this trap is to pull out of it. Russia is a nation that doesn't care of shedding blood, as long as its emeny also is losing blood. When will the $40 billion aid arrives in Ukraine? #7 Russia is a nation that doesn't care of shedding blood, as long as its emeny also is losing blood. When will the $40 billion aid arrives in Ukraine? Pretty soon. If Russia didn't care about shedding blood, they wouldn't have retreated from Afghanistan during the 1980s eh? kankan326 #8 Pretty soon. If Russia didn't care about shedding blood, they wouldn't have retreated from Afghanistan during the 1980s eh? Afghanistan is not so important for Russia. Ukraine is too close to Russia's heart. Only two foreign armies reached this deep to Russia since Russia was established. Napoleon's army and Hitler's army. Russians suffered big loss for both. Princeps Senatus #10 Afghanistan is not so important for Russia. Ukraine is too close to Russia's heart. Only two foreign armies reached this deep to Russia since Russia was established. Napoleon's army and Hitler's army. Russians suffered big loss for both. Afghanistan was next to Russia at the time and pretty important enough to get involved. Ukrainians also suffered fighting of Hitler's Army themselves besides the Russians. So lets see who gives up. kankan326 #11 Afghanistan was next to Russia at the time and pretty important enough to get involved. Ukrainians also suffered fighting of Hitler's Army themselves besides the Russians. So lets see who gives up. Only if Russia still has super power ambition and wants warm water sea port, Afghanistan is important for it. Otherwise it's nothing. Those Ukrainians who fought Hitler's Army were mainly Eastern Ukainians, who are fighting Ukraine government army with Russians now. The Western Ukainians joined in Hitler's army. #12 Only if Russia still has super power ambition and wants warm water sea port, Afghanistan is important for it. Otherwise it's nothing. Those Ukrainians who fought Hitler's Army were mainly Eastern Ukainians, who are fighting Ukraine government army with Russians now. The Western Ukainians joined in Hitler's army. Russians have in the past few years still have superpower ambitions from Syria to Georgia to Chechnya to Ukraine and Poland and the Baltics and so on. Ukrainians who fought who during WW2 doesn't apply in this war, it really doesn't since you see Kharkiv, Mariopul, and Sumy and other cities in Eastern countries fighting hard against the Russians. Even in Kherson where you have protests, and the majority of them are Russian speaking. 925boy #13 [ KGB or what doesn't matter in this case. The root reason of Russia's tragedy is its bad economy. Poor countries are not liked by their neighbours. Especially when a rich country throws money to their neighbours. The only way to defeat US and its gang group NATO is making your country richer and more developed in science. Poor Afghanistan beat rich US , so i dont understand your logic. US also doesnt believe it will win a war against "poorer" iran either. As a matter of fact, its the reverse these days - whichever is poorer, will win, especially if the richer one is US-aligned. kankan326 #14 Russians have in the past few years still have superpower ambitions from Syria to Georgia to Chechnya to Ukraine and Poland and the Baltics and so on. Ukrainians who fought who during WW2 doesn't apply in this war, it really doesn't since you see Kharkiv, Mariopul, and Sumy and other cities in Eastern countries fighting hard against the Russians. Even in Kherson where you have protests, and the majority of them are Russian speaking. No. Russia has lost its ambition of world superpower. Otherwise it would not have asked US if it could join in NATO. All the wars Russia engaged in after cold war are more like to keep its territory and influence left by Soviet Union. Nothing about expansion. The Ukraine civil war has lasted for 8 years. Most Ukrainian government troops are deployed in east Ukraine. Of course fierce battles happened in east Ukrainian Poor Afghanistan beat rich US , so i dont understand your logic. US also doesnt believe it will win a war against "poorer" iran either. As a matter of fact, its the reverse these days - whichever is poorer, will win, especially if the richer one is US-aligned. I was not talking about war. I was saying why Russia is facing such plight and has no other choice but has to rsort to war. Last edited: May 15, 2022 Please support us by disabling AdBlocker on our website. Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Total: 1, Members: 0, Guests: 1) Similar threads Home Forums World Affairs Forum World Affairs Please support us by disabling AdBlocker on our website.