Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

Got your attention yet? Hope so. Remember a while back when I made that post about how IrregularTimes is fixating on just a handful of topics and letting a lot of other important things fall by the wayside? Well, this is another of those things, but I can’t rightly fault the staff here for failing to catch wind of it before now. But this is something that I really, honestly, truly wish would be added to the List of Things To Cover Until Doomsday. This is regarding the systematic torture of United States children. But no, it’s not by the government.

It’s at the request of the parents.

Confused? Appalled? I don’t blame you, I was too when I first heard about this. But I want to give (most of) the parents the benefit of the doubt and say they’re well-meaning, if naive. See, what happens is, for whatever reason, they’ll find out about these schools for “troubled teenagers” run by a group calling themselves the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs (WWASP) and go their their website. They’ll read, see nothing wrong, then take a quiz to see if there are warning signs that their kids are in danger of becoming out of control. Through a series of loaded questions which a “yes” answer would, for the average parents, just say “typical teenager” the website says your kid is at risk and to send them there to get help.

Also, send them there if the kid is/might be gay and/or bisexual. See, these schools are run by fundamentalist Mormons.

As I said, for the most part, the websites will sell you a story of a fairly easy going place rather than the reality which is that it’s little more than a concentration camp (yay for Godwins!) on the far side of the River Styx. The warning bells should be going off when they tell you (either through the phone, in person, or on the fucking website) that your child will lie to you about what is going on at that school. When anyone, even a school or corporation, has to poison the well with regards of what is going on there, you should know something is up.

And if that isn’t enough, the “emergency teen escort service” (no, it’s not a door-to-door brothel) that will wisk your child away from their bed at 2 or 3 in the morning should. These are people who’ll enter the home in the early hours, terrorize the kids, kidnap them and transport them to one of the WWASP’s schools either in the USA or overseas. Here, I could sit and type all these things out, but I want to share a story from someone who’d gone to one of these place. A wonderful little school called Cross Creek.

From Reddit.

On May 10th of 2007 at around 2:30 in the morning two strangers barged into my bedroom. I started screaming and crying, as in my mind I was sure that these two strangers had broken into my house and were going to abduct me, rape me, kill me, or in some way harm me. They immediately told me that if I did not shut up that they would handcuff me. I was not being in any way violent or threatening. I was reacting in fear for my life by being vocal and hoping that someone would come to help. I had no idea what was going on. I stopped screaming, still in fear for my life. They started going through my closet digging out clothes as I was only in a night gown. They still had not explained what was going on. I asked, frightened, what the wanted from me, trying to see if I could in some way appease them and get them to leave. They then explained that they were going to take me to a school. It took me a second to understand what they meant by this, as this was an extremely bizarre way to introduce a child to a new school. It then occurred to me that this was what my mother had arranged for my brother several years ago when she had him shipped away to Cross Creek. The two strangers were from Teen Escort Service, a for-profit company that transports teenagers, usually by force, to WWASP (World Wide Association of Specialty Programs) facilities.

I was extremely upset and cried the entire trip, but I obeyed all of their orders. Even though I was being cooperative they said it was their policy to put a belt around the bust of the child and hold the belt so that there would be no chance of attempting to run. It was so humiliating to be led around like a fucking dog around the airport. It was also extremely uncomfortable to have this strange older male putting his hand so close to my breast. I never understood how any of this was legal but definitely knew that none of it was ethical. To this day I feel extremely angered, disturbed, and violated by this entire experience. In addition to this they “forgot” all of the psychiatric medication I had been on at my house. It’s not that I am for psychiatric meds, but it certainly did not feel healthy or normal to go from taking this medication regularly, to just not having it and stopping with out tapering off of it.

From the moment I arrived at Cross Creek, I was treated as though I was broken, dirty, and inhuman. During my stay I saw many others treated this way. I had never spoken to R., the program director, before and my first experience with him was horrible. He asked me why I was there, and I told him all of the things I’d done that I could think of that could possibly be perceived as “bad”. He yelled at me, saying that I was lying and that I didn’t love or care about my parents. I was shocked and confused, unsure of what I had done to deserve this treatment from someone I had just met. To this day, the only thing I can think of that I possibly could have left out was my attraction to other females. In one of the Parent-Child seminars we were made to attend, my mother shared with me that this was one of the biggest “issues” that caused her to send me to Cross Creek. Not the drugs, not the sex (she told me she had no knowledge of me being sexually active prior to being forced to disclose it to her), not the issues with school, but just the fact that there was a possibility that one day I might fall in love with a female. Sorry for not realizing what a horrible, broken child this made me, R.

Shortly after I arrived, my “HOPE buddy” (the student they assign to “mentor” you and teach you the rules in your first few weeks) started asking me about my past, why I was there, and what issues I needed to work on. I talked briefly about my experimentation with soft drugs, my issues with depression (something I’m pretty sure most teenagers experience), and the abusive relationship I had been in with my first girlfriend. As soon as I said the words “girl” and “relationship” in the same sentence she said “STOP! STOP! We can’t talk about that.” I was filled with shame regarding my sexuality simply from the fact that I was not even allowed to talk about homosexuality in any way shape or form. Shortly after this incident I started talking to the therapist they assigned me to there about this abusive relationship I had experienced, and how it bothered me that I was not allowed to talk about a part of me that I have no control over. His response was that I DID have a choice over whether or not I was attracted to females and that I should just deal with these thoughts of same sex attraction. His opinion was that this was probably a result of some anger I had toward men, particularly my dad and that I probably just wanted to be with females because they were “safer” (even though I had been with an abusive female before!!!) He also said that ultimately this was probably just a phase and a result of my crazy teenage hormones. He believed that if I tried hard enough and ignored these thoughts and feelings one day I might marry a nice boy.

I had no interest in having a relationship with anyone there, but when other girls formed relationships with each other, the repercussions were pretty extreme. I understood why it was not allowed, as relationships are generally distracting no matter the gender of either partner, but the way people were treated was pretty unnecessary in my opinion. It usually involved lots of yelling, ostracizing, and shaming. I remember one R. meeting where two girls were being confronted about this and R. was yelling about how stupid they were being and how no one would be able to trust them now. He went on to say that he had “nothing against homosexuality, but it was not the way God intended things.” and that the Bible definitely did not condone it. These “God” and bible references were used on a regular basis, along with religious videos, praying, etc. even though Cross Creek claimed that they were not in any way religious. The rule book and protocol also appeared to be directly based off of the Mormon religion (no caffeine etc.) The program reprimanded children for telling their parents about this religious influence and regularly tried to hide it from parents. I am in no way against people having their own beliefs and following what ever religion is right for them, however I think that it’s completely and totally immoral to lie to parents about what they are getting. More on this later.

The queer shaming was present in nearly every aspect of the program, including the language used. We were not allowed to use curse words such as “shit”, or “bitch”, but I never saw anyone reprimanded for saying “fag” or “faggot.” This fostered an environment in which teasing and bullying for all sorts of things were fully tolerated. I even remember a facilitator in a seminar trying to trigger a girl by calling her a “dyke.” And no, before you say something, I really don’t care about breaking confidentiality of seminars at this point because I am fed up. What these people said and did broke me down and created so much shame inside of me.

In addition to shaming people on basis of sexual orientation, they taught children that sex was evil and damaging outside of marriage, another blatantly religious notion. We were forced to regularly watch videos involving horror stories of abortions gone wrong, shown gruesome pictures of STDs that had been left unattended for long periods of time, and told that if we had sex before marriage we would likely die or get some horrible ailment. Rather than promoting safer sex methods, we were shown that abstinence was the only option that would not result in death or unwanted pregnancy.

Rigid gender roles were also a big part of the Cross Creek way of life. Many of the rules were extremely gender based. Boys were allowed to crack their backs and knuckles, though girls were not because it was “unladylike”. Boys got meal portions double the size of girls. Boys were allowed to use more curse words than girls were. The list goes on.

I remember when they moved the girls from Center 1 to Pro 1 (these are all names of the dorms we stayed in.) The boys had been living in Pro 1, and when they moved the girls in the dorms were extremely messy. Rather than having the boys come back and clean up this mess, they made the girls clean all day. This was completely, and totally humiliating. What a great way to build confidence and teach girls how to be independent and stand up for themselves.

This is just part one of three parts, the rest of which can be read by following the links. Some of the replies are from others who have gone to one of these places or who knew someone who’d gone to one. The one thing that’s always the same from the latter group is how the people they knew were never the same as they were before they went.

SkyOne news also did a short little article on these places. It’s short, just around ten minutes of your time, but it’s worth a watch.

Teen Rendention

The things that go on in these places are nothing short of psychical and mental torture, and it’s all perfectly legal because the USA still hasn’t signed on to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

As I’m sure everyone knows already. It seems it was done during a raid on a house in Pakistan with the aid of the Pakistan government. And no US personnel were hurt during the raid, which is something of a bonus.

CNN has the story.

All told, it’s an interesting bit of news to wake up to.

The conspiracy theorists who just aren’t able to accept the fact that Barack Obama was indeed born in Hawaii are latching themselves onto a new claim they say “proves” a hoax. Here’s their new claim:

Obama born in hospital that did not exist yet

This I just found and it seems to be a smoking gun. There are all kinds of reports about fraud coming out, but this is a blatant error that frauders would easily miss!

“I just checked the official web site for Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital and according to the information there, the name of the hospital at the time of his birth should have been Kauikeolani Children’s Hospital. According to the web site the name didn’t change to Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital until Kauikeolani “Children’s Hospital merged with Kapi‘olani Maternity Home in 1978. So how could his official long form birth certificate that was generated in 1961 have the name of the hospital that wasn’t created until 1978?”

Wow. Look at all those hyperlinks! With so many “sources,” it must be true!

Or not. The first thing you should do if you want to see if it’s true is to check those links. Two of them connect to wikipedia articles defining the words “website” and “birth certificate.” A third link connects to a wikinvest encyclopedia article describing what a “hospital” is and does. Only one link connects to any information about Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital — and that link is to the Wikipedia page for that hospital. As we all know, crowdsourced Wikipedia pages often contain incorrect information.

Let’s check for some independent sources on this. How about a search through the world’s largest book archive, Google Books?

Here’s a result from 1955, American journal of obstetrics and gynecology, Volume 69:

Here are a few excerpts from Social service in Hawaii, a book by Margaret Mary Louise Catton that was published in 1959, two years before Barack Obama was born:

Here’s a reference to Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in a Digest of court cases from 1934:

There’s even a court reference there if you want to look it up.

Clearly, Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital existed long before Barack Obama was born. No “hoax.”

A couple nights ago when pointing out that IrregularTimes.com seems to be focusing so much on just a handful of topics like Americans Elect (good lord, look at all those entries) that we seem to be missing other topics of interest. Well, here is one of those topics that seems to have been missed.

Michigan Republican Senator Bruce “Douchebag” Casswell has introduced a proposal that would ban children in foster care from using their state clothing allowance to buy cloths from any place other than thrift stores. What is Senator Douchebag’s reasoning?

“I never had anything new,” Caswell says.

He gave some more reasoning, but when all is said and done, this is what it boils down to. I’ve seen this with so many parents that it makes me want to weep. Instead of wanting better for their kids they figure “I didn’t have it that good, why should they?” Only, with Senator Douchebag, instead of doing this to his kids, he’s doing this to the most downtrodden kids we have; those who for whatever reason have biological parents who have given them up. These kids have next to nothing and now Senator Douchebag wants to give them even less. And note, he’s trying to justify his douchebag move by claiming it’ll save the state money, only, it won’t. These kids are getting a state clothing allowance; the only way he’d be able to honestly say it’d save the state money is if he cut the amount the kids were getting. Telling them they can only shop in thrift stores won’t do dick because the same amount of money is being spent, regardless of where they go to spend it.

All he’s doing is telling these kids; “we can’t give you a stable home to call your own with a family who wants you aside from your Foster Parents who you can be taken away from at any time, and now we’re not even going to let you have nice cloths.”

This is a post aimed at the IrregularTimes.com blog writers; Jim Cook, JClifford, Peregrin Wood, ect.

You all know I am a long time poster and an even longer time reader. I have nothing but respect for the news you bring and the corrections of falsehoods you can give, but what I have noticed lately is a case of Tunnel Vision. The sum of the articles I’ve been seeing have been aimed at just a few subjects such as the war in Libya, No Labels, Americans Elect, and the Military Commissions Act. Now, I won’t debate the merits of these subjects, they’re important and need to be covered by someone. But they should not be covered at the expense of so many other important stories on both a national and a local level.

An example of a neglected story would be the rise of Emergency Financial Managers. The Daily Kos covered a story involving the arrests of teen mothers and children after they conducted a sit-in in protest of Michigan’s Emergency Financial Manager closing down their highly successful school. Emergency Financial Managers have broad, unilateral powers, including the ability to dismiss elected officials, sell off public assets (like schools) to private interests and dis-incorporate entire cities. And aside from The Daily Kos, the only other person I’ve seen covering this story is Rachel Maddow.

Another example of a neglected story, one I’m really amazed you guys didn’t jump all over, is the Florida Senate Judiciary Committee approving (right along party lines of 5 – 2) SRJ 1218, a bill that actually funds Churches with state money. With such a blatant display of contempt for the First Amendment, how could IrregularTimes not pick this up and at least give it a glance?

Or, how about the story of how America has fallen so low that it is now cheaper for Ikea to build their cheap Swedish crap here in the USA than it is to build it in Sweden? That isn’t so bad, but what is bad is how Ikea is abusing it’s employees by forcing them to work overtime, ordering them to go to meetings where they’re “discouraged” from unionizing as well as other abusive policies.

And let’s not forget Texas establishing “Traditional Values Centers” because they’ve gotta protect their precious, innocent Gawd-fearing Christian students from the evil baby killing LGBT students.

And if you want to turn your gaze back to Florida, you’ll see the Governor cutting funding for the mentally disabled.

Or, if you want to pay attention to the national stage, how about the Supreme Court shielding prosecutors who convict innocent people, even if it’s proven that the prosecutor knew in advance that he was innocent, and even if that prosecutor hid or destroyed evidence of that suspect’s innocence?

As I said before, I love this website and have nothing but respect for it. But please, focus on some of these other stories that get little attention but have big consequences.

Behold the mighty asterisk:

“FedEx Home Delivery serves 100 percent of residential addresses even on Saturdays (at no additional charge) and evenings, and is supported by a money-back guarantee.*”

* “Saturday is not a service day for all areas.”

Overheard this evening, really and truly…

He: Wait, quiet. Can you hear that? Is that a trombone?
She: No, dear, I think it’s a chain saw.

Say what you like about the ANSWER Coalition, but you’ve got to admit their activists are dogged in organizing and unafraid to confront members of either major American political party. In San Francisco on April 20, ANSWER is working with other organizations to mount a protest against the war policies of Barack Obama. When a conservative friend of yours works up a smirk and asks where all the anti-war protests are now that Obama is President, send ‘em to the ANSWER website.

The government of Syria has started to slaughter civilians who are protesting against the autocratic regime there. Dozens, maybe hundreds, are dead.

When will the United States military start bombing there to protect civilians, as it has done in Libya?

The primary justification for Barack Obama’s rush into war with less than 24 hours of notice to the American people and no opportunity for debate, much less a declaration of war, from the U.S. Congress, was that imposing a no fly zone would protect Libyan civilians from the government run by Moammar Qaddafi.

Yet, after almost a week of bombing by American-led military forces, we now have reports of massive civilian deaths, including the use of government snipers against civilians in the Libyan city of Misrata.

It appears that the escalation of the civil war in Libya by the United States has not been an adequate tool of protection of civilians. Given that, what is the rationale for the United States remain at war?

Will Barack Obama now suggest an escalation of the war, given the failure so far, or will the war simply be a failure?