Aspies For Freedom

I just read this article: http://apt.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/10/5/341 .
Of particular interest was this section:

Do any of you think there is any truth to this? I've highlighted the characteristics I've seen in myself.  I once started a brush fire because my impaired imagination couldn't visualize the small fire I started growing huge. [/b]

I've done that too.

"Lacking motivation to change, individuals may remain stuck in a risky pattern of behaviour."

So does this put the blame entirely on someone with AS who has offended?

Sorry, I need to be protected not blamed.  

The stalking problem usually can be avoided if the person being stalked just stop all the non-verbal hints and unclear communications of rejection that are being given.  Sometimes if the person just would plainly tell someone they are not interested and wish this person would stop phoning etc.   The stalking might not be considered stalking by someone with AS.  They might think that they had to make more effort to be friendly.  

Erotomania is a condition that is separate from Asperger's.  It is not a symptom of Asperger's.  Someone with AS might also have a love obsession problem.  Other people get this problem as well.

The article is interesting.  Particular to note that it states that only after 1971 was autism diferentiated from schizophrenia.  That is very very horrible.

"Box 4 Forensic presentations
The following criminal behaviours might indicate undiagnosed Asperger syndrome:

Obsessive harassment (stalking)
Inexplicable violence
Computer crime
Offences arising out of misjudged social relationships"

Activities such as obsessive harassment  (did not pick up social cues of rejection),
inexplicable violence (retaliation from bullying or reactions from post tramatic stress)
computer crime (well, someone should know better these days)
offences arising out of misjudged social relationships (people defrauding and setting up people with AS)
These are seen in the therapists point of view, not the person with AS.

Velvet, would that be $7 CDN or US? Weed is one of my interests.

I am fascinated by the story of marijuana. Marijuana is the female version of the plant that also produces hemp. The US constitution was written on paper made from the plant. Henry Ford designed the automobile to run on fuel derived from the plant. It is a fact that the plant can provide the world's most effective bio-mass fuel that would cause very little harm to the environment. To this day any engine can run on this fuel with very little modification. Clothes, textiles, and buildings can all be made from this plant at very little cost to the environment.  Many studies support its use as medicine. Human beings have used it for medicine, food, and textiles for thousands of years.  We even have cannabinoid receptors in our brains, and these receptors seem to provide evidence of the symbiotic relationship that humans had with plant for most of our historic existence.  The US government banned the plant in the 1930's under pressure from the oil and timber industries whose markets were threatened by the plant's commerical potential. All references to the plant were taken out of school textbooks. And the US government launched a massive campaign to demonize the plant with claims that it caused madness when smoked.  However, there is no valid scientific evidence to show that the plant causes any harm whatsoever whether it is used for fuel, textiles or smoked by humans.

"M, Drug lords and gangs are the least of equal opportunity employers. They have no labour rights and their treatment of women and disadvantage people is appalling. "

Do not take me seriously on that one.  I was being sacrastic.  People are always asking why youth get caught up in gangs and such.  Many teens who drop out of school have learning disabilities or behaviour problems.  They are not getting the help they need.  They can not see the value of education and the gang scene offers them money and prestige.  Of course the drug lords and gangs are exploiting people and causing crime.

I apologize. The only reason I jumped on that one M, is because I actually tried hanging out with the criminal type myself. To some of our people it might seem an option when all other ways of survival seem closed. But I failed dismally to fit in with those types anymore than I could the noncriminal NTs.  When I was younger I had this stupid idea that if society was not going to accept me than I would hang out with criminal types. My foray into the underworld was a BIG MISTAKE.  I never committed any crime, but I met some very nasty people.  And I learned that these people weren't nasty because they didn't have other options, they were just NASTY.  I don't see how an aspie could survive very well in that environment.

Marijuana is much safer than tobacco, but still probably contains it's share of carcinogens, as well as tar.  Most importantly Marijuana is nto PHYSICALLY adictive, as nicotine is.  For that reason alone, I think that if nicotene is legal marijuana sure as heck oughta be.  Marijuana is still probably at least a bit carcinogenic though, and not entirely safe, besides which I dont see the point of smoking it.

Read my siggy.  It applies to marijuana as much as to ASD curebies.

I think it's important to distinguish between correlation and causation in that link. Let's say that a small number of people are presumed to be allergic to X. X could be anything because there are always people who have allergies to an X whatever X might be. But just because a small percentage of the population are presumed to be allergic to X doesn't mean X is inherently bad.

Why is X so condemned? Imagine if farmers could freely grow the world's most efficient bio-mass fuel derived from "X" in their own fields. George Bush would be out of business.

Yah,  hemp got a bad reputation that is does not deserve.  It is an extremely useful crop.  Most likely if it was allowed to be grown in the United States, many farmers would be paid not to cultivate it.  

Anyway.  How did a discussion of agriculture come out of whether there are criminal tendencies of Aspies?

When someone is convicted of a crime, the court records usually become public in most countries.  So then statistics can be compiled.  If the fact that the perputrator has AS and it is on the court record - it can become public and then part of a statistic.   However,  details about victims such as whether they are disabled or have As or a sadistic narcistic personality are not usually recorded and collected as statistics.  So if someone is collecting statistics on people with AS offending, they should also might consider collecting statistics on people with AS as being the victims.  

I am making another comparison to someone with a physical disability (again).  Recently, in the city where I live, a wheelchair bound old woman was attacked and robbed by a teenage girl.  The race or neurotype of the perpetrator was not mentioned.  There was a huge outpouring of sympathy for the victim.  News and television interviewed her.  She received a new electric wheelchair since her old one was damaged when she was attacked and knocked over.   Her old wheelchair was repaired to be donated to someone else.  She received a special coat designed for people who use wheelchairs.  She received other gifts and cash.  

Now if the victim had been some with AS.  Would it be reported in the news?  "Woman with AS has her purse stolen in violent attack by woman who deceived her."  Would she get any gifts or money or any sympathy?  Or would everyone just blame the victim?  Why was she so stupid to get herself into that situation?  No one might realize the victim was just as helpless as someone in a wheelchair in that particular situation.  

What about people with AS as victims of crime?

I have face blindness and have some difficulty working out ages, but the answer's simple: just ask the person how old they are.  Also, when younger I preferred to hang out with people who were older than me, because they seemed to be less jugdemental than my so-called "peer group".  But at the same time, I wouldn't have dated anybody significantly younger than me; dates were hard enough to find anyways!
Alison

Ted Kaczynski probably does not have AS, what he had up until he developed paranoid schizophrenia was the prestages of schizophrenia, which may look very much like an extreme version of AS. No link has been established between AS and schizophrenia and even though its possible that a person may have both (there most certainly are). It is nigh impossible to make a differential diagnosis. I've read alot about Kaczynski, as I too once believed that he may have AS (given the brilliant mathematics he did earlier in his life, his social problems and so on). But now I feel that his life and the characteristics he displays isn't AS.

Timothy McVeigh didn't have AS either, he was just a psychopath, however his accomplice, Terry Nichols, whom McVeigh more or less forced and manipulated into helping out with the Oklaholma bombing, does have AS. It is believed that Nichols having AS made him vurnerable and unable to see what McVeigh was up to (not that McVeigh told him). But he did help out with things that made it possible for McVeigh to carry out this horrible act which killed so many. Terry Nichols is currently serving life behind bars and he will never be released.

I feel that it's important that we educate ourselves about this so that we can avoid being used. There are many ways for aspies to get into trouble with the law, most commonly it's because we run into manipulative persons who'll take advantage of the fact that we can be rather clueless in the social domain.
Another way of getting into trouble can be when we focus so intensely on our special interests that we simply don't see that what we are doing may be something illegal. The most famous example being that of Kevin Mitnick, who while exploring his special interest (social engineering), hacked into several company networks (Sun Microsystems and Nokia) and looked at information he shouldn't have. He spent quite a few years in prison for that and had his entire life ruined. There was never any intent to harm anyone, but obviously these companies felt that he did. There is a myth saying that he hacked into NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command), he never did that nor could he have done so, because that system is not on any open network.
Another example is that of Alfred Nobel (Swedish inventor who invented dynamite and created the Nobel Prize). Nobel displayed alot of the characteristics of AS (special interests, poor motor function, poor social skills, hyperfocusing, visuospatial thinking and so on) at one point he took an entire bag full of dynamite and travelled northwards from London by train for a demonstration he was about to do of the effectiveness of dynamite. Perhaps needless to say, but this has a very bad ring to it, given what happened in London last summer. What he did was very much illegal even back then in the 1870s, but he was just so absorbed by his special interest that he failed to see that.
If a person with AS did something similar today, do you think the police would buy that explanation? I don't think so, he'd be convicted of planning a terrorist attack.

When I was young and dumb (etc.) and a freshman at Georgia Tech, I walked up to someone else's parked car (of a kind I'd never seen before) and started to play with the latch-knob (best description I can think of) on its door. I'd never seen one like that before, and as near as I can recall, I had no verbal thoughts about what I was doing, just a desire to fondle the gizmo and maybe discern how it worked.  A Ga. Tech security guard saw me doing that, and asked me if that was my car.  I answered, "no".

He said, (something like) "Well, leave it alone!"

I hate to think what would have happened had I done what I did in a real public area and a real policeman had seen me do that.

Fortunately for me, engineering schools are full of people like us, and the security guys there and then were familiar with weird folks.

I'd be hopeless as a witness, thanks to face-blindness.  But I *would* be able to tell the person's clothes, hairstyle, etc, as I have to pay close attention to those details in order to tell one person from another.
Alison