Tag: human rights

Brian Senewiratne Collecting War Porn

I just confronted my father with collecting war porn.

I rang my parents’ home, where my father, Brian Senewiratne, has just returned after being awarded the second “Nelson Mandela Memorial Prize” by the TGTE. The TGTE is the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam, a front for the LTTE or Tamil Tigers, headed by the LTTE’s lawyer Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran who assumes the title of “Prime Minister”. Brian Senewiratne was appointed a senator by Rudrakumaran in 2010 when the organization was first formed from the American, British, European, Australian and Canadian vestiges of the Tamil Tigers international operations. The award was presented to a small audience of “Canadian Tamils” (as opposed to Tamil Canadians) in Toronto, Canada. The first time the Nelson Mandela Award was awarded (last year) it was given to the South African lawyer Yasmin Sooka, who Brian Senewiratne quotes extensively in his propaganda. He has also urged the employment of Sooka by the TGTE in a YouTube presentation he posted on his own YouTube channel in 2015.

I addressed my father before he could hang up the phone:

“I remember now. You were collecting atrocity photos on your computer during the war.”

“Oh, bugger off”. he grunted and hung up the phone.

This was the second time I have rung my parents’ house this morning. The first time I asked “Hello Amma?” and my father, who had picked up the phone but not answered it shouted to my mother, Kamalini:

“Camel, it’s that bugger again. Do you want to speak to him?”

My mother came to the phone and I told her I wanted to discuss Winston Panchacharam’s book (titled Genocide in Sri Lanka) that my father made a big show of “presenting” to Professor Ramu Manivannan at the TGTE’s award night on Saturday 15 April. I watched it on the internet and was shocked by what I saw. Since then, things have been falling into place and I realised that my father has been collecting “war porn”, short for “war pornography”.

I saw some of his collection of photos when I accessed one of his computers in 2007, but didn’t look at them in detail. They were graphic and disturbing photos of dead people and I wasn’t interested in looking at them. There were lots of them and he has several old computers. I had been asked to use the computer to access my mother’s emails for her, and didn’t realise the significance of the photos. Now I do.

I asked my mother yesterday to ask my father, who refused to speak to me on the phone (or in person) about Winston Panchacharam’s book after watching him explaining that he had all five copies of the book in existence and was “presenting” them, whenever he himself received “awards” from the TGTE to the TGTE’s inner circle – namely Usha Sriskandarajah and Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran, who he describes as “close friends” of his. They are also among the last remaining supporters of the LTTE.

My mother said she had “heard of” Panchacharam but pretended not to know anything about the book that her husband had made a show of presenting to Manivannan on Saturday. She is lying to protect him and I told her so. I told her he had claimed on Saturday to have met Nelson Mandela, which she and I know to be one of his many lies. “Maybe he did, I don’t know”. She does. She knows that if he met Nelson Mandela he would have been boasting about it, rather than boasting about meeting Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

I am sorry to people of Sri Lanka and also the Tamil community in Canada and around the world for my father’s behaviour, and not realising the full extent of his crimes earlier. I am still discovering more and will keep you posted. Please watch the video “Brian Senewiratne, the LTTE and Dr Panchacharam’s Book” on YouTube (the site of the Holistic University of Brisbane).

I have also contacted Ramu Manivannan, Usha Sri Skandarajah and Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran asking that the copies of Dr Panchacharam’s book that Brian Senewiratne gave them be forwarded to the University of Colombo, the Peradeniya University and University of Jaffna for forensic study, which I am prepared to be involved in.

Brian Senewiratne, the LTTE (Tamil Tigers) and Dr Panchacharam’s Book

On 15 May 2018 my father, Brian Senewiratne, was awarded the second ever “Nelson Mandela Memorial Award” by the leadership of the bogus Transnational ‘Government’ of Tamil Eelam (TGTE). The TGTE is a front for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), better known as the Tamil Tiger terrorist organization.
The award is the brainchild of Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran who assumes the title of “Prime Minister” of the TGTE and was previously one of the USA-based lawyers for the LTTE. The other was Karen Parker, an American woman who calls herself a “humanitarian lawyer” but acted as the legal adviser to the terrorist organization since the 1980s. Brian Senewiratne has described both Karen Parker and Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran as “close friends”.
Two years ago Rudrakumaran awarded his friend Brian with a “Lifetime Acievement Award” for which he travelled to the USA. He was awarded a plaque signed by Rudrakumaran praising him for his “life-long commitment and invaluable and dedicated contribution rendered to the Eelam Tamil Nation in educating the Sinhala Nation and the international community – in furthering the cause of human rights, human dignity, gender justice and of the liberation of Tamil Eelam”. In return Brian Senewiratne “awarded” Usha Sriskandarajah, who presented the TGTE award back, with a copy of Winston Panchacharam’s book, titled “Genocide in Sri Lanka”. He told Sriskandarajah that it was one of only three copies of the book in existence.
Last year Rudrakumaran thought of making the most of President Mandela’s name, fame and reputation and awarded the inaugural “Nelson Mandela Memorial Award” to the South African Tamil lawyer Yasmin Sooka. Sooka had criticised the Sri Lankan government of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the so-called Darusman Report, of which she was one of three authors. Later she wrote a report from her own organzation detailing reports of torture and sexual violations by Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers in Britain, who had been captured during and after the war. She admits in the report that these reports may have been compromised by desire to prove persecution in support of their asylum claims. This is the source of the information about alleged rape and sexual violence in Sri Lanka that Brian Senewiratne has repeated, misrepresented and further exaggerated in a self-published propaganda book that he took with him to Canada. He claimed, for example that the reports were from Tamils who had returned to the island and then been tortured and sexually abused, which he knows to be false. The book quotes Yasmin Sooka’s report selecting the most disturbing details, and twisting what she has written to allege that there is an “epidemic of rape by the armed forces” in northern Sri Lanka. Last weekend, in his “acceptance speech” he promoted what he called the “second edition” of his book shouting to the Tamil Canadian audience that while they were sitting down to dinner Tamil girls are being raped in Kilinochchi (the LTTE’s previous “capital”, a small town in the north of Sri Lanka). He claimed that it was for these raped women that he had “produced” the book.
He printed a few copies of this book after failing to find even an unreputable publisher for it. The “first edition”, 130 pages long, was self-published in 2014. Since then he has had it reprinted with minor variations, including changes in the title and cover. He gets them printed by his local printer Bosco Ng in small runs of 5-10 books. After he received his “award” from his friend and biggest fan, Usha Sriskandarajah, Brian Senewiratne used his “acceptance speech” to promote his “12 DVDs” to the obvious dismay of the frowning MC, who had asked the awardees to be brief in their speeches since they were running late and it was already past 9.30 pm. He said that the DVDs were free and invited the audience to contact him in the “next day or two” and tell him if they want “1,2,3,4,5 or the whole ruddy lot”. He stressed that he was not trying to make a “fast buck”, and the videos were free (previously he complained that he wasn’t being paid enough for them and that the Tamils were “the stingiest race on earth”). He then brandished his book (which he has been flogging with updated versions since 2014) alleging an epidemic of rape by the armed forces and urging that the United Nations invoke the R2P provisions and send troops to Sri Lanka to stop “ongoing genocide of the Tamils of the North and East”.
Brian Senewiratne makes things up, always to glorify himself. He is an egotist. In his acceptance speech he claimed to have met Mandela (he actually met Desmond Tutu in 2008, in a lobbying trip arranged by the LTTE that also took him to Canada). In the speech he claims, falsely, that he met Mandela himself and that the South African legend had arranged for him to go to Robben Island to see the conditions he was kept for 25 years in. This is a blatant lie as is his claim that he told Mandela “The thing that is remarkable about you is that you are not bitter” to which Mandela replied “If I was bitter I wouldn’t be Nelson Mandela”.
Brian Senewiratne is a very bitter man. He is bitter about many things, but especially so about the Sri Lankan Armed Forces and their political leadership for defeating “his side” is the war in Sri Lanka. His side was his own personal aggrandisement and money for the poisonous propaganda he produced from his home in Brisbane, Australia. This propaganda demonised his own race, the Singhalese and the Buddhist clergy in particular as well as the Sri Lankan political and military leadership. Brian Senewiratne calls himself a “Christian” but never reads the bible or go to church. He claims that he prays while he’s in the toilet and closed the door, quoting a passage from the Bible to justify this bizarre practice (to pray in ones “closet” rather than make a show of public prayer).
The cardinal principles of Christianity include humility, sincerity, truth, charity, kindness and forgiveness, but my father is an insincere liar who has held grudges all his life. He is cruel, spiteful and malicious towards those that he doesn’t like and he dislikes anyone who opposes him. Jesus of Nazareth had harsh words for hypocrites, and my father is a glaringly hypocritical individual. He shouts about “human rights” in public but violates them at home and in secret. He is also an egotist who is ruthlessly manipulative and Machiavellian.
This short documentary is about my father’s relationship with the truth and the mystery of Winston Panchacaram’s book, titled “Genocide in Sri Lanka” and published by Panchacharam and unknown others at the now non-existent International Tamil Center in New York. In 2011 Brian Senewiratne boasted to an audience at a small human rights seminar in Darwin, Australia (James Cook University) that the book had just been published and that he had all the copies. He made a big show of presenting a copy of Panchacharam’s book to the university and drew attention to the last page which contains the rhetorical question, “IF THIS IS NOT GENOCIDE, THEN WHAT IT?” in large red and yellow capital letters on a stark black background. It is primitive propaganda, but Brian Senewiratne is unaware of how obvious it is.

Brian Senewiratne he said he had all 5 copies of this book, but it was no longer available. He then explained where each of the five copies is destined – to Usha Sri Skandarajah (who he claimed is the greatest Tamil writer alive today, to brief applause from a couple of people); Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran (boss of the TGTE); Professor Ramu Manivannan of Madras University (who wrote another book alleging genocide of Tamils called Hiding the Elephant); the Jaffna Library and – this was his applause-seeker – the last copy to be put in his bank and presented after his death to the “Library of Tamil Eelam when it is built in Kilinochchi”. He stressed that he said “when and not if”, and received the applause he was seeking, but it was very muted compared to the hysterical reception he received from the Canadian Tamils when he was the star attraction at the Tamil Pongu ceelebration in Toronto in 2008.

 

Winston Panchacharam’s Book

On November 21, 2016 Usha Sriskandarajah, who presented the “award” to my father, wrote, on the death of Winston Panchacharam:

“Author of ‘Genocide in Sri Lanka’ passes away. Today I was saddened to hear of the demise of Dr Winston Panchacharam, President, International Tamil Center – USA, the driving force behind the limited edition book: ‘Genocide in Sri Lanka’, a pictorial and coffee table book, made for private circulation, published especially for global leaders, “to act quickly and follow through to protect the dying Tamil Race in Sri Lanka.” Although I have never met Dr Panchacharam, I had the good fortune of receiving from Dr. Brian Senewiratne – one of three books left in his possession. After presenting one to me – wow – of the two copies that he has remaining, Dr Senewiratne said he will be donating one to the Jaffna Library and the other to the Tamil Eelam Library!”

She published, on her Facebook page, a photo of Brian Senewiratne’s dedication to her with “with sheer admiration and gratitude from Brian”, and a photo of him “awarding her” (on 15.5.2016) with one of his remaining three copies of the book (On 21 November 2016). However YouTube reveals that in November 2011 he donated a copy of the book, along with 10 of his propaganda DVDs to the James Cook University in Darwin, where he had been invited to give a talk on “Who’s Afraid of Human Rights”.

Eelaventhan, who is another geriatric TGTE boss (he’s 86, the same age as Brian Senewiratne), wrote an obituary for Winston Panchacharam on 20th November 2016, published on the Tamil Sangam website, in which he wrote, in bad English:

“Besides he authored the book titled “GENOCIDE IN SRI LANKA” that contains 185 pages published in the year 2010. For the point of view of many readers the contents of the book was a masterpiece. This will be cherished for generations to follow. In his introductory note he addressing “ Your excellencies-Global leaders for the protection of the vulnerable and those oppressed people by genocidal act. In his appeal for the global public opinion, Tamil Diaspora, and the dying race of Tamils in Sri Lanka. He further states that the global leaders must act quickly, and follow through, to protect the dying Tamil race in Sri Lanka. He rightly says that “Justice delayed is Justice buried” . He further adds that neglect of timely violence prevention is a sad legacy that has led to genocide in several countries; from the holocaust to the massacres in Uganda and Sudan. Millions of life has been lost. He continues in a very appealing tone that “ smoldering genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka that started insidiously over half a century ago culminated in several coordinated massacres before , during and after the civil war.”

I would like to know how Winston Panchacharam died, who his doctors were and what sort of fatal disease he had. I would also like to know the source of the photos in the book and how it was that Brian Senewiratne had all 5 copies, if the book was intended for world leaders to act with urgency to save the Tamil people from genocide. The text is likely to be disinformation if it is based on what Brian Senewiratne told Panchacharam, but the photos are important forensic evidence regarding the war in Sri Lanka. It is outrageous and very suspicious that Brian Senewiratne has acquired control of this material (the atrocity photos in the book) and is keeping it within his close circle within the LTTE-supporting TGTE. I believe that it should be in the hands of Sri Lankan police and forensics experts, and is important evidence regarding war crimes and crimes against humanity by the Tamil Tigers.

Please watch the video and leave your comments.

Old Wine in New Bottles – Remarketing ‘Depression’

Last year, I watched an interview on ABC News 24 informing us about a “new theory on the cause of depression”. This is that it is caused, not by a “chemical imbalance” but by inflammation in the nervous system (notably the brain). This is being presented as an alternative to the “serotonin theory of depression” that was used to justify the presciption of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) drugs, beginning with Prozac in 1987.

I have been watching and analysing the changing hype for many years. When I worked as a family doctor, the drug companies were claiming that depression was caused by a chemical imbalance in the neurotransmitter noradrenaline, not the indole amine serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine). This was because the market leaders in the “depression market” were the toxic and ineffective “tricyclic antidepressants” which were developed in the 1950s and were the mainstay of depression treatment till they were replaced by the SSRIs in the 1990s. Tricyclics were known to affect noradrenaline (norepinephrine) levels in the brain.

The psychiatrist interviewed by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) defended the “chemical imbalance theory” that has been such a successful marketing catchphrase for the drug companies but admitted that the SSRI’s don’t work for everyone and that “we don’t know” why some people with depression have disordered serotonin metabolism and others don’t. As usual, she explained that they needed more money for research to get the answers.

Dr Liz Scott, for that was her name, also agreed that the new theory was plausible, pointing to the fact that stress affects the immune system. She didn’t explain how stress, which usually depresses the immune system, is responsible for this inflammation, or why there is no evidence of such inflammation in the brains of depressed people who commit suicide. At the same time it is known that chronic illness of many types causes unhappiness and “depression”, including viral, bacterial and fungal infections, kidney and heart disease, cancer and chronic arthritis. Forced psychiatric treatment (especially incarceration) is an important cause of stress that Dr Liz Scott did not mention, predictably. Many other things cause unhappiness, and unhappiness has long been termed “depression” by the medical treatment industry, rejecting the older term of melancholia (thought to be due to a preponderance of black bile, one of the four humours of Galenic medicine).

In the 1960s American “experimental psychologists” of the “Behaviorist School” did a series of cruel experiments on baby chimpanzees, which demonstrated, as if there was need for it, that primates (as well as cats, dogs and even rats) pine away and become morose and depressed when they are deliberately made lonely and deprived of social activity and the comfort of others. This was heralded as a “discovery”.

Prozac was released with much hype, including a flurry of books in the “popular science” press, especially by Rupert Murdoch’s Harper-Collins publishers. These promoted Prozac for a range of medical and psychiatric conditions beyond depression, and resulted in profits of 3 billion for Eli Lilly. The other major drug companies followed suit, releasing and marketing (including bribing doctors to prescribe) a growing range of alternative SSRIs.

Eli Lilly have a long history of research into psychedelic drugs and psychoactive drugs that affect the serotonin receptors and pathways in the brain. In the 1960s they bought the rights to LSD (or ‘acid’) from the Swiss company (Sandoz) that had developed it. It was known that LSD could cause “schizophrenia-like” psychotic episodes, according to the psychiatric terminology of the time. This terminology dates back to 1909, when the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler coined the term “schizophrenia” and promoted its use for what his colleague Emil Kraepelin of the University of Heidelberg in Germany, known as the “Father of Psychiatric Classification”, had termed “dementia praecox” (adolescent dementia).

Bleuler argued that Kraepelin, in Germany was too pessimistic and that a third of his patients in the Swiss Burgholzli asylum recovered and were discharged from hospital. Kraepelin had taught, for many years, that any young person who “heard voices” was eventually destined to die of dementia (terminal mental degeneration) in a lunatic asylum.

German psychiatry became more brutal under the Nazis when patients with “schizophrenia”, “cyclical madness” (manic depression or bipolar disorder) and “personality disorder”, who had been populating the long-term mental asylum wards, were prescribed “euthanasia” – meaning “good” or “mercy killing”. Needless to say this included political enemies of the regime, since it has long been the case that enemies of the state or ruling regime get branded as mad. The same label of schizophrenia was also used in the Soviet Union to justify locking up and drugging, with chemical restraints, social and political dissidents.

In fact, chemicals do have a lot of effect on human thinking and behaviour, as the well-known effects of alcohol and drunkenness demonstates. To understand the hidden crime of “antipsychotic drugs”, and “antidepressants” one needs to know a few basics about catecholamine and indole amine neiurotransmitters and neurohormones.

Neurotransmitters are small molecules that bind to cell membranes of the nerve cells (neurones) in the brain and nervous system, stimulating or inhibiting “action potentials” or electrical impulses that pulse or vibrate in a constant, complex network through the nervous system. There are many different receptors for the same neurotransmitter – for example there are D1, D2, D3, D4 and D5 receptors in different parts of the brain. This results in the same chemical neurotransmitter having different effects depending on the type of receptor on the effector cell.

This science lies behind the efforts, over many decades, to find antipsychotic drugs that did not cause stiffness, dribbling and uncontrollable writhing movements of the face and limbs (Tardive Dyskinesia) which crippled so many of the long-term inmates of mental hospitals in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, when the main drugs that were used were Largactil (Thorazine), Haldol (haloperidol), Stelazine and Modecate. Thousands were crippled and still are, by these horrible drugs – both in the communist and the capitalist nations. The main “indications” were “schizophrenia”, “mania” and “schizoaffective disorder”, though they were also used as chemical restraints in elderly people diagnosed with dementia, a particularly cruel form of elder abuse that was prevalent in the more abusive nursing homes in Australia.

It is important to realise that the neurotransmitters in the brain are in constant dynamic flux. Every emotion or action results in chemical changes. When one listens to music the chemicals in the brain change. When one does for a walk, the chemicals change. When one gets excited, or relaxes, the chemical balance changes. Some neurotransmitters increase and some decrease in activity, made more complex by the fact that different cells have different neurotransmitter receptors, affecting how they respond to them. It been demonstrated that the successful completion of tasks results in measurable increase in serotonin levels.

Chemical imbalance theories make a lot of money for companies selling chemicals (drugs/medications). Millions of dollars are spent on promoting various chemical imbalance theories and the drugs that affect these chemicals. The dopamine theory of schizophrenia and the serotonin theory of depression were used to market dopamine-blocking “antipsychotic drugs” and SSRI “antidepressants” respectively. Despite numerous people demonstrating the fallacy of the different chemical imbalance theories, opponents are up against a multi-billion-dollar industry that is profit-driven and stands to profit from repeating the theories without mentioning the opposition to them.

Don’t believe the hype.

With One Voice “Peace” (protest song)

words and music by Romesh Senewiratne-Alagaratnam Arya Chakravarti, 2004

recorded in 2006

 

WITH ONE VOICE ‘PEACE’

 

Looking at the sunshine

But kept in the dark

The weatherman said it would be fine

Another glossy, casual remark

‘Cause a new war looms and we’ve seen it all before

A new war looms and we’ve seen it all before

 

The TV talks up the conflict again

It showed the friendly soldiers and some were weeping

It slowed the lonely viewers already sleeping

Said the special correspondent ‘the soldiers are despondent’

This time the administration has acted without consent

And its time to voice some real dissent

 

‘Cause a new war looms and we’ve seen it all before

A new war looms and we’ve seen it all before

 

No longer hypnotised by lies

The masses mobilized

To stop the growth of arms in the skies

The masses have been mobilized

 

They dance and march and wave placards

The poets and the singing bards

They say with one voice “No War!”

They say with one voice “Peace!”

They say with one voice “Peace!”

 

Somebody Else’s War (Protest Song)

SOMEBODY ELSE’S WAR

words and music by Romesh Senewiratne-Alagaratnam Arya Chakravarti

 

They point ahead and their whisper in our ears

They say they’ll show their grand illusion here

Their plan to make the whole world ‘true’

The new world they were born to rule

They point ahead but they tell us to stand here

They point ahead but they tell us to stand here

 

They never try to hide

With blinkered eyes they ride

While there in every land

Are scheming men with plans

 

Fighting in somebody else’s war

What’s right what’s wrong and what’s the law

Familiar rooms and shady deals

Secret handshakes with official seals

They’re fighting in somebody’s corridor

 

So tell me why is it so that their eyes never show

A simple sign of interest, don’t tell me that they do their best

So what do you think that their next crime will be

Another bomb in the Middle East, they put it to the test

 

So battle done, wars been won

The lights come on but the dark is here to stay

And everyone can have a say

And it’s so easy now If we don’t all get blown away

Everyone can have a say

And it’s so easy now, if we don’t all get blown away.

 

Composed in 1989

Recorded in 2006

And still not blown up.

 

Debating Psychiatry with the PA Hospital

 

This is a debate from two years ago (February 2016) between me and Nigel Lewin, an English psychiatric nurse from the Princess Alexandra (PA) Hospital.

Nigel had been appointed my ‘case manager’ and I was being made a “medical case” and “mental case” by my medical colleagues at the hospital that empoyed my father from 1976, when my family migrated to Australia from Sri Lanka. I was 15 then and remember staying in a house on the grounds of the hospital when we first arrived. Later, I avoided the hospital where my father and sister worked, and had a poor opinion of it, reinforced by my father’s claims (for which he was eventually sacked) that the hospital was “in chaos”. This was in 2001 and he got me locked up at the “chaotic” hospital (in his own written opinion) in 2002. In fact, he got me locked up 5 times in 4 months, culminating in my rib and finger being broken by security guards and male “nurses” immobilising me so that I could be injected with a drug called Zuclopenthixol, a treatment for ‘schizophrenia’ and other ‘psychotic disorders’

I began my debate with Nigel by asking him what he thought about “Psychotic Disorder – Not Otherwise Specified”, the label the hospital was trying to pin on me at the time, after revising the diagnosis from one of schizophrenia. Now, under the treatment of Jumoke Banjo (from Nigeria) and Ghazala Watt (from Pakistan) the diagnosis has been changed back to “paranoid schizophrenia”. Nigel Lewin has now gone on long service leave and a new case manager, an Indian man by the name of Raghy Raman, has been appointed. Raghy has expressed the opinion that the leader of the Tamil Tigers, Vellupillai Prabakaran was an “activist” rather than a terrorist, and described me as having “elevated speech” when I debated with him about the Tamil Tigers. In response to this, the psychiatrist Ghazala Watt increased the dose of depot antipsychotic she has abusively ordered.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brian Senewiratne’s Poisonous Propaganda

Brian Senewiratne (my father) did not have formal training as a propagandist, and it shows. His propaganda is obvious to anyone familiar with discerning truth and sincerity from lies and deceit.

This series of clips is focused on Brian Senewiratne’s promotion of what he calls his “13 DVDs” which he says he has “released”. This is despite his having no film-making, editing or production experience. His motive, he claims, is to “counter the disinformation campaign of the Sri Lankan government”.

Countering Truth with Lies

The Sri Lankan government did not engage in a disinformation campaign. Brian Senewiratne did. He began this campaign in 2006 after he was invited by the expatriate Tamil organization Ilankai Tamil Sangam to speak at their Annual General Meeting in the USA. At the meeting, he suggested that what was needed was a video presentation about Sri Lanka to provide background to the conflict, and then offered to produce such a video, accepting donations from affluent Tamil friends for the promised DVDs.

When he got back to Australia he investigated how much it would cost to make the videos professionally, writing to the Tamil expatiates that it would have cost $4,000 each which would have “sent him to the wall”. Instead, he decided to make the videos unprofessionally, himself, using his own video camera and the assistance of his elderly wife to turn the camera on and off while he spoke to the camera.

The videos took the form of “lectures” to an empty room in the dark, in which he pointed to, and read off,  slides projected onto their living room wall. Into these monologues he had one of his ex-students insert photos and later short videos from the LTTE (Tamil Tiger) propaganda archives.

Brian Senewiratne made several versions of the video between 2006 and 2009, to which he gave what he thought would be catchy titles: “The New Killing Fields of Asia”, “The Future of the Tamils at Stake”, “Sri Lanka: Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, Violation of International Law” etc. The New Killing Fields of Asia was an obvious attempt to capitalise on the success of the Hollywood movie “The Killing Fields” (about the genocide of Cambodians by their leader Pol Pot in the 1970s) and to associate the word “genocide” with the Sri Lankan war. The “13 DVDs” also included recordings of speeches he gave to LTTE-supporting audiences between 2006 and 2009.

After his side lost the war, he has continued promoting these DVDs and even in 2018 he has urged the Tamil expatriates that one of the things they needed to do to achieve “peace and justice” in Sri Lanka is to distribute his writings and DVDs.

Despite maintaining for several decades that he had no political agenda or anything to gain from his involvement in the “Tamil struggle” (despite declaring his ambition, in 2008, to be made the Foundation Professor of Medicine in a new University of Tamil Eelam if the LTTE won the war), after the war was ended with the defeat of the LTTE, Brian Senewiratne accepted a political position as the “sole Sinhala senator” in the LTTE-supporting ‘Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam’ (TGTE), headed by the New York-based refugee lawyer Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran. Rudrakumaran, who has assumed the title of ‘Prime Minister’ of the TGTE, was the LTTE’s lawyer until their defeat in May 2009. He formed the TGTE in 2010, and appointed Brian Senewiratne as one of several ‘senators’, a pseudo-political position he has accepted till the present day.

There are many disturbing things that Brian Senewiratne says in these speeches, but perhaps the most disturbing is his anecdote about how he gives his propaganda DVDs to his patients, and the example of “Mr Brown”, who came to see him with hypertension and diabetes. According to his boastful telling of the anecdote to a Tamil audience in Australia (in 2009) he grills the patients afterwards, expecting them to know where Mullaitivu is. He then tells “Mr Brown” that if he wants his diabetes treated “properly” he had to watch the DVDs, boasting that all his patients, and “50,000 people in the area” (whom he stresses are “White” and therefore more likely to be listened to) can “give a talk on Tamil rights, any time of the day”. Needless to say, brainwashing patients with political disinformation is not what the Medicare system is intended for. He admits that he knows this is against the law, also showing no insight into the fact that his DVDs could be expected to worsen the high blood pressure of his patient, ‘Mr Brown”, by causing stress, which can also worsen diabetes.

I would be interested in the professional opinion of any forensic psychiatrists and psychologists with an interest in counter-terrorism and de-radicalisation analysing these speeches.

 

Psychoimmunology, the Nocebo Effect and Psychiatry

©2018 Romesh Senewiratne-Alagaratnam (MD)

In the 5th century BC, the Athenian general and historian Thucydides wrote about how people who lost hope after contracting the plague were more likely to die from the deadly disease. His was the first description of what is now called psychoimmunology – the effect of the mind on the immune system. Another common manifestation of psychoimmunology is the well-known placebo effect, where belief in a treatment results in greater efficacy of the treatment, even if there is no active ingredient in the said treatment. The nocebo effect is the opposite of the placebo effect – when negative effects of an inert treatment occur due to expectations of harm.

The immune system is always subconsciously active, fighting off potential infections and cancers. It can also be over-active, as in allergic reactions, or become misdirected against the body’s own tissues, causing a wide range of autoimmune diseases. It is a common observation that mental stress can aggravate allergies and autoimmune diseases as well as cause depressed immunity.

The term ‘psychoimmunology’ was coined by George Solomon at UCLA in 1964. In 1975 Robert Ader and Nicholas Cohen coined the term ‘psychoneuroimmunology’ (PNI), emphasising the role of the brain and nervous system (neuro) in the processes by which the mind influences the immune system. This was initially viewed with scepticism since medical orthodoxy taught that the immune system was independent of the nervous system (despite knowledge of the placebo effect). There was less focus on how the immune system affects the brain and mind, although at times it obviously does (such as various types of inflammation of the brain). One of Ader’s interesting experiments was one where he conditioned rats to become immunosuppressed by pairing an immunosuppressive drug with saccharin. He found that he was able to stimulate immunosuppression by merely exposing the rats to saccharin after they had been conditioned to link saccharin with the immunosuppressive effects of the drug Cytoxan.

The placebo effect, and its converse, known as the ‘nocebo effect’ illustrate the effect of the mind on the immune system. How these effects arise and what neurological and physiological processes underpin them are partly unanswered questions, but are likely to involve many parts of the brain, especially those areas that affect emotional reactions (such as the amygdala and nucleus accumbens) and the hypothalamus, which affects the endocrine system via the pituitary and pineal glands as well as the autonomic nervous system. The role of the endocrine system in these effects is emphasised by the new term “psychoneuroendoimmunology” (PNEI).

An interesting thing about the placebo effect is that it operates even when the subject knows that it is a placebo. It has also been found that the colour and size of placebo tablets have a bearing on their effectiveness. Red tablets have been found to be more energising, while blue tablets are more calming. This indicates the role of the visual system on the placebo effect. Effective placebos are not just tablets, however. Injections of saline and ‘sham’ surgery have also been shown to be effective placebos. It has also been found that placebos are effective even when the subject knows that they are placebos and have no active ingredients in them. However, belief that an active drug is in the placebo makes the effect more powerful.

The converse effect, the nocebo effect, is the phenomenon by which a drug or treatment that is expected to cause disease does so. For example people become immunosuppressed, nauseated and lose hair if they think the placebo drug they have been given is a cancer chemotherapy drug (and they have been warned about possible side-effects). This indicates the possible negative, as well as possible positive effects, of suggestions.

Studies have shown that depressed mood is associated with impaired immunity and that a good mood promotes health of the immune system. The problem is that improved mood, especially if sudden and accompanied by insights and reduced need for sleep, is liable to be pathologised as hypomania or mania (and ‘elevated’, rather than improved, mood) and treated by dopamine-blocking drugs and lithium, often after locking the person up (which predictably causes the mood to come down). To complicate matters further, it has been reliably reported that people in a good mood (and those who are mentally relaxed) require less sleep. It is also known that meditation can lead to both insights and less need for sleep.

It is generally accepted that the amygdala, an almond-shaped nucleus located deep in the temporal lobes, plays an important role in the placebo and nocebo effects. The amygdala is activated by fear, alarm and anger responses. These emotions activate the hypothalamus and the sympathetic nervous system causing what the Harvard physiologist Walter Cannon termed the “fight or flight reflex”. Activation of the amygdala causes a cascade of hormonal changes via the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, causing stimulation of the heart, bronchodilation in the lungs, sweating and diversion of the blood flow away from the gut and towards the muscles (in preparation for fight or flight). Though the sympathetic nervous system is known to be involved in “flight and fight” (fear and anger) responses, this branch of the autonomic nervous system is also involved in positive excitement and healthy activation. As well as this, it innervates the pineal gland, where it regulates the synthesis of melatonin from serotonin (during the night).

The body’s response to stress, both physical and mental, is to secrete the hormone cortisol (from the adrenal glands) under influence of adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH) from the pituitary. The ACTH is secreted in response to corticotrophin-releasing hormone from the hypothalamus, a structure at the base of the brain that is neurally connected with the amygdala and other emotion-related parts of the brain. In addition, neuropeptides such as Substance P, which have pro-inflammatory effects, are secreted by the brain and by immune cells such as macrophages and other white cells. The cortisol affects white cells in complex ways, including increasing some populations and decreasing others, causing apoptosis of some cells and chemotaxis of others. It has a generally suppressive effect on the immune system, for which it is often used therapeutically.

While this stress response is essential for escaping from danger, it is thought that in modern society there is often a chronic overstimulation of the stress pathways, leading to increased illness from a range of stress-related maladies (including heart disease, hypertension, autoimmune disease, headaches, peptic ulceration and irritable bowel syndrome).

The sympathetic nervous system is counterbalanced by the parasympathetic nervous system (associated with “rest and digest” physiology according to Cannon). This branch of the autonomic nervous system is associated with a range of physiological activities associated with healing and regeneration. Many stress-reduction techniques (including biofeedback and meditation) aim to increase parasympathetic activity over sympathetic activity in the autonomic nervous system, with the objective of increasing healing and regeneration.

The possible role of the pineal has not been discussed much, but the pineal’s main hormone, melatonin, is known to have effects on the secretion of pituitary hormones, and is thought to have effects on the immune system. In addition, melatonin is known to be a powerful antioxidant. Antioxidants counter oxidative stress and have positive effects on the immune system (and ageing) as well as beneficial effects on the cardiovascular system and nervous system. It is known that conversion of serotonin to melatonin in the pineal (which occurs mainly at night) occurs under the influence of sympathetic activation and the SNS neurotransmitter noradrenaline (norepinephrine).

There has been considerable study on the effects of neurotransmitters and neurohormones, cytokines and endorphins on the immune system. These studies illustrate the complexity of the brain’s effects on the immune system (especially the activity of white blood cells or leukocytes) and the effects of the immune system on the brain and mind (in such diseases as Multiple Sclerosis, AIDS, Parkinson’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease). Though complex and incompletely understood, it is clear that loss of hope and pessimism have negative effects on the immune system, as well as other physiological systems.

 

Implications for Psychiatry

 

The detrimental effect of loss of hope, written about by Thucydides 2500 years ago, has serious implications for doctors, especially psychiatrists. Psychiatry is a notoriously pessimistic area of medicine. Hundreds of “mental disorders” have been named, all incurable according to psychiatric orthodoxy. If the signs and symptoms of the “disorder” are no longer evident, the patient is said to have gone into remission, rather than cured. Labels of “personality disorder”, once applied, are never removed and all personality disorders are, according to psychiatric orthodoxy, permanent. This can be expected to depress the mood and the immune system. In addition there is an increasing tendency to regard the normal as abnormal. Excitement, for example, is seen as hypomania and normal sadness as “depression”, while a range of New Age beliefs and alternative science (and political) beliefs are regarded as signs of “schizophrenia”. This leads to self-fulfilling prophesies and partly explains the appalling life expectancy of people once they have been given a label of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

In the case of bipolar disorder (manic depression) a single episode of mania or hypomania is taught in psychiatric texts to herald a life-long condition of “mood disorder” requiring long-term mood stabilizing drugs like lithium. These drugs have terrible side-effects and shorten the life, explaining why a diagnosis of bipolar disorder is accompanied by a ten to twenty year shorter lifespan, on average. A diagnosis of schizophrenia shortens the life by 15 to 20 years, on average, and again is treated with long-term antipsychotic drugs that are known to shorten the life and make people lethargic, obese and prone to diabetes and heart disease in addition to causing neurotoxicity in the form of Parkinson’s Syndrome and Tardive Dyskinesia (a permanent condition characterised by involuntary spasms, grimaces and writhing movements that is caused by antipsychotic drugs). Lithium is notorious for causing kidney and thyroid failure.

Though the suicide rate is much higher in people given these diagnoses, most of the morbidity and mortality is not due to suicide. Besides, self-harm and suicide can be partly attributed to the pessimistic diagnosis (resulting in loss of hope), and social stigmatization resulting in loneliness, poverty and other social problems. These commonly lead to loss of motivation and depression, with negative effects on the immune system. The main cause of the shortened life span when on antipsychotic drugs is due the long-term effect of blocking essential neurotransmitters, causing metabolic problems and heart disease. They can also cause irreversible brain damage in the form of cognitive decline, cerebral atrophy and tardive dyskinesia. Though they can be effective in treating hallucinations, they should not be used for behaviour control or as chemical restraints, as they frequently are, especially in the elderly. Delusions are better treated by debate than drugs. The diagnosis of delusions can also be problematic in that the belief system of the interviewer is pitted against, and assumed to be superior, to that of the patient.

To maximise the potential of the body’s own healing mechanisms, and those mediated by the mind, is imperative that people reject labels of incurable mental illness and realise that just because they have been mentally unhealthy in the past does not mean they need to be mentally unhealthy in the future. It is also imperative that doctors and other health workers realise that implanting pessimism in the minds of their patients is a recipe for inducing chronic illness.

Considering ‘Insight’

©2018 Romesh Senewiratne-Alagaratnam (MD)

Being insightful is considered a virtue. It is similar to being thoughtful, but insight implies intuitive knowledge and perception of truth. There has been much study of insight in psychology in recent years, mainly looking at the phenomenon from the perspective of problem solving. It has been found that insight is promoted by good mood and sleep, which help solve problems. An insight is described as an “aha moment”, “penny-drop moment”, “eureka moment” or epiphany.

However, ‘insight and judgment’ mean something quite different in psychiatry – in this medical specialty, insight specifically means willingness to accept that you are, and have been, mentally ill. This is problematic and constitutes a widely used circular argument – that refusal to agree you are mentally ill is itself evidence of mental illness. It means that mentally healthy people who are mistakenly admitted as psychiatric patients harm their chances of discharge if they maintain that they are not mentally ill.

 

The Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), widely used in evaluating antipsychotic drugs for schizophrenia, is explicit about this. Section G12, titled “Lack of Judgment and Insight” states that ‘extreme’ (grade 7) lack of insight is to be recorded due to:

“Emphatic denial of past and present psychiatric illness. Current hospitalization and treatment are given a delusional interpretation (e.g., as punishment for misdeeds, as persecution by tormentors etc.), and the patient may thus refuse to cooperate with the therapists, medication or other aspects of treatment.”

 

Good judgment involves the ability to make sound decisions, based on knowledge of what is true and what is false. It is insulting to accuse someone of poor judgment, and uncalled for if the accusation is based on reasonable refutation of an incurable mental illness label. People can make sound judgments about many things, but not be convinced that they are mentally ill, especially if the illness is claimed to be due to unmeasurable chemical imbalances in their brains that are of uncertain origin, the dominant paradigm in psychiatry.

 

This item in the PANSS is one of 16 items taken from the older Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS), which was developed in the USA in the 1960s and used to evaluate “general psychopathology”, as well as to evaluate psychoactive drugs. The PANSS also includes 7 “positive symptoms” and 7 “negative symptoms” for a total of 30 items that are evaluated. This results in a score from 30 to 210. “Improving” scores on the PANSS constitute the main claims for efficacy of the newer antipsychotic drugs; the older drugs were evaluated by the BPRS and other scales, usually when compared to the “benchmark drugs” chlorpromazine and haloperidol, rather than placebo.

 

A glaring problem with the PANSS and BPRS is the fact that known side-effects of dopamine-blocking drugs, such as “flattened affect” are described as signs of schizophrenia, rather than the treatment of the condition. Other signs such as hostility and uncooperativeness can be explained as legitimate objection to being called mad (or insane), by whatever name.

Predictably, people with some mental illness diagnoses resist the label of “illness” more than others. People with phobias, anxiety and depression often come to see doctors for help and so do people with auditory hallucinations (usually diagnosed as schizophrenia or schizo-affective disorder). In these people the diagnosis of illness can be a relief, and they accept drug treatment without objection. In other cases, patients resist the label of illness vehemently, especially when they are said to have elevated mood (diagnosed as hypomania and mania) or delusions.

It is not surprising that many people accused of having an elevated mood resist the judgement. The BPRS grades “moderately severe” elevated mood (rating 5 on a scale from 1 to 7) as:

“Reports excessive or unrealistic feelings of well-being, confidence or optimism inappropriate to circumstances, much of the time. May describe feeling ‘on top of the world’, ‘like everything is falling into place’ or ‘better than ever before’. OR several instances of marked elevated mood with euphoria”.

Needless to say, people who feel on top of the world, better than ever before, or for whom everything is falling into place, are often not inclined to think they are mentally ill, and with good reason. Likewise people with an increase in goal-directed activities, increased zest for life those who see connections they didn’t see before and have insights. Ironically, the process of coming to conclusions through insight, especially if they are unique or ‘idiosyncratic’, is itself viewed as a sign of mental illness.

The Young Mania Rating Scale (YMRS) rates elevated mood on a scale from 1 to 5, with grade 3 being:

“Definite subjective elevation; optimistic, self-confident, cheerful, inappropriate to content.”

The key to the diagnosis is the subjective evaluation of what is “inappropriate to content” or “inappropriate to circumstances”. This is done by the interviewer, and depends on his or her own belief system, judgement and understanding of the patient’s circumstances.

Persecution by Tormentors and Punishment for Misdeeds

 

The belief that one is persecuted is not necessarily delusional. Many people, over the ages, have been persecuted, for various reasons including their race, their ‘caste’ and their beliefs. People are sometimes tormented by the families, or by their peers (for example victims of bullies at school or work). Siblings sometimes torment each other, and so do cousins and other relatives. Sometimes it is neighbours who do the tormenting. People often gang up against people who are stigmatised as strange, mad, crazy or odd and this can amount to persecution. Children are often punished for disobedience and it is not unreasonable for people to regard their imprisonment as mental patients a punishment. This is not helped by a punitive culture in the mental health systems of many nations.

 

There are many dysfunctional families, and family dysfunction comes in many forms. Some families are very competitive and sibling rivalry, as well as competition between parents and children, can be a problem. Some parents, especially fathers, are very authoritarian and demand obedience from their children. Disobedient children are labelled as “difficult” and taken to doctors for diagnosis and treatment. Here the power imbalance is obvious. The child has little power to resist being labelled as the “problem”, however much the doctors protest that they can’t help their behaviour because they have a chemical imbalance in their brains. When the children misbehave it is inevitable that the adults and siblings blame the “illness” and ask if they are complying with taking their their tablets.

The adults in this situation include parents and other family members as well as teachers. Some teachers are inclined to suspect their students of having “attention deficit disorder” when they are not interested in their lessons, and become visibly bored, restless and fidgety. Teachers provide a large number of the referrals for ADD and ADHD. It is rarely asked as to whether the teacher is to blame for being boring and failing to engage the student. This requires introspection, which is sometimes lacking in any profession, including teaching.

Apart from scape-goating a particular family member, there are problems with looking for a chemical solution or “magic bullet” to life’s difficulties. This can form a pattern of behaviour in the child and in their carers and family. When they are down, rather than looking for activities and experiences that will bring them back up, the tendency is to take an antidepressant. When they are anxious, instead of listening to music or going for a walk, or any of a wide range of actions that can lessen anxiety, they look for a benzodiazepine.

It is also a problem when children are medicated for what is basically disobedience. The drugs that are used for ADHD are stimulants, related to amphetamines, known on the street as ‘speed’. Though they can improve concentration and keep you awake when you are tired, it has been known for over a century that amphetamines are addictive, and can also cause psychosis. Despite this they were widely used as weight loss drugs and “pep pills” in the 1960s and were again promoted in the 1990s for the newly-named “mental disorder” known as ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). In the 1980s it was said that only 1 in 200 children had ADD; this rocketed up to 1 in 20 with the new label, with a corresponding explosion in prescriptions for stimulant drugs. This was in the 1990s, and was a precursor to the explosion in addiction to amphetamines a decade later. Many of the youth who are addicted to metamphetamine (‘ice’) were initially diagnosed as having ADHD and given stimulant drugs.

 

Family abuse occurs at all ages. Children and the elderly are especially vulnerable and can easily be pathologised for being “difficult”. Rebellious adolescents are also vulnerable to being given a disease label for their behaviour, as well as young people who reject the religious beliefs of their parents and embrace other philosophies and religions.

 

The concept of insight should be considered holistically. There is a difference between insight (introspection) and insights (epiphanies). One aspect of introspection is to be able to look critically at our own mistakes, flaws, vices and poor judgements in the past. It requires us to challenge our indoctrination from various sources as we grew up. The process of growing up and learning from our environment (including family and school) inevitably results in some false beliefs and delusions. Some of our beliefs are not congruous with reality, and it is a challenge, throughout life, to rid ourselves of such delusions. Sometimes, when one realises ones previous error, especially about long-held beliefs, it comes as an insight. Such insights are often pleasant, and can be exciting. They can elevate the mood.

Seeing connections you didn’t notice before and making new associations can also be exciting and elevate the mood. Elevating the mood itself has the effect of increasing insights and insightful thinking. How many potentially beneficial insights have been suppressed or destroyed by the practice of regarding “gaining insight” as a synonym for accepting that you are mentally ill?

 

 

Evidence against the PA Hospital

At 9.00 am this morning the Indian psychiatric nurse, Raghuvan ‘Raghy’ Raman, who thinks the Tamil Tigers were ‘activists’ rather than terrorists, rang me from the PA Hospital. He told me “your injection is due, what time can I come around?”. He didn’t ask me how I was; if he did I would have told him.

At 11.30 he turned up alone with a bag containing a 100 mg injection of Invega Sustenna (paliperidone) ordered by the Pakistan-trained psychiatrist Ghazala Watt for a cost to the taxpayer (at the Chempro chemists in Buranda, opposite the hospital) of $414.09. The script was written by a Dr A Neligan, who I have never heard of, and is probably Ghazala Watt’s registrar.

Paliperidone is a treatment for schizophrenia and other psychotic ‘disorders’, but I am not in the least bit psychotic or mentally disordered. Ghazala Watt, though, has repeated the diagnosis of a Nigerian psychiatrist named Jumoke ‘Jumi’ Banjo, who kept me locked up on three occasions in late 2016 and early 2017, following complaints to the hospital by my hostile father and next-door-neighbour.

Banjo is a graduate of Ibadan University in Nigeria, and had not been in Australia long. I graduated in medicine many years before either of these psychiatrists, and am senior to them in years as well as experience.

What I wanted to discuss with Raghy Raman on camera was the grossly negligent, inaccurate and defamatory report recently ‘written’ by Ghazala Watt. One of the two modifications she has made to the report claims that “elevated speech” was evidenced by the ‘treating team’, and hence she was increasing the dose of antipsychotic from 75 to 100 mg. After he had asked for the video camera to be turned off and I complied, we discussed this and he admitted it was he who said I had “elevated speech”.

My voice gets louder when I am angry or trying to make a point. I was both. There is also no such thing as “elevated speech” in psychiatric texts – only ‘elevated mood’ and ‘pressure of speech’. Pressure of speech and elevated mood are evidence of mania, rather than schizophrenia, and I do not display either. I am justifiably angry at being misdiagnosed as “mentally ill” and assaulted with injections that are making my physical health deteriorate and are the ONLY CAUSE of my mental distress.

But I am a tough guy, and these people have injected me with even bigger doses in the past, of even worse drugs. And I have survived, though according to the statistics, at 57 I am nearing the end of my expected life, as a mental patient in Australia.

The report of Ghazala Watt was more a character assassination than a legitimate medical report. The bulk of the report was already on the PA Hospital computer, and she changed only two paragraphs, retaining all the misinformation that previous psychiatrists and psychiatry registrars had written for previous MHRT tribunals. She has not even changed the opening statement of the report that I am a “52 yo male”. I am, in fact, a 57-year-old physician and graduate of the University of Queensland, who has four times as many LinkedIn contacts as her, and 10 times as many Facebook friends. Yet she has retained in the report, in the section on Social Networks (there is no section for professional networks) that I have no social support apart from my mother. This is presumably an effort to paint me as a socially withdrawn and inept “schizophrenic”. My appeal to the MHRT is to be heard in a week’s time. In the meantime I’ll try and continue working.

I have many forensic psychologists and forensic psychiatrists among my LinkedIn contacts. I would appreciate their assessments of Ghazala Watt and Raghy Raman from the evidence I have provided, My own assessment is that they are grossly incompetent and systematic violators of human rights in Australia, for which their superiors are also legally responsible.