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.

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.”

Yesterday, Jim Cook made a post on the main blog listing a number of protests that fizzled out, one of which was the National Opt Out Day. However, I believe National Opt Out Day actually worked, but not in the way it was intended to. The facts of the matter are not as well known and so the full impact of the Opt Out Day protests have been lost on most of the general public.

The TSA has made a big show about how next to nobody actually opted for a pat down. While that is true, it’s also a distortion of the facts. Nobody opted for a pat down because the TSA had turned off a number of the full body scanners on National Opt Out Day. What does this tell me? Either the TSA is so worried about making sure to have good public relations and save face, or the full body scanners aren’t needed and/or aren’t as effective as the TSA likes to tell us. It also seems that just the threat of people opting out was enough to scare the TSa into shutting things down.

Speaking of which, how effective are the full body scanners? That’s a good question and one which I have to say, it could be better. For example, the full body scanners failed to detect bomb parts hidden on one passenger’s person and in another case, Adam Savage blundered through a TSA full body scanner while carrying two twelve inch long razor blades. A lot of people like to point at Israel’s airports and wonder why we can’t be more like them. I, however, think that the Dutch have a better way of going about full body scans. It seems they have bought a number of machines (designed and made in the USA) for their airports which show contraband on a generic mannequin display and which doesn’t generate an image of the person being scanned. It seems these units also cost less than what the TSA has now.

There are a number of things we could be doing differently, but to say National Opt Out Day was a failure doesn’t do it justice.

What’s the first thing you do when you want to prepare your personal household items for a move to a new home? You wrap them in foam, and put them in a box.

So, what are we to conclude, then, about what’s happened to the town of Porthtowan, in Cornwall, England? The village woke up last Thursday to discover that the entire town was coated in sea foam.

They say that the foam came from the ocean spray. So, the obvious question is this: Who from the ocean would want to move Cornwall to a new home, and why?

There is not yet word from the press office of Mannanan Mac Lir.

In news that may be related, “sperm” whales in the Caribbean are enjoying having their “tummies” rubbed by human divers.

A couple of weeks ago, Irregular Times noted that there was a large oil spill along the Gulf Coast in Texas. What this site did not reveal, however, was the celebrity connection. Apparently, Irregular Times believes that it’s above that sort of journalism.

In this case, that snobbery caused Irregular Times to miss an amazing story – one that is only being hinted at by Houston Chronicle today in an article with the headline Sheen lingers 2 weeks after Port Arthur oil spill.

A Sheen is lingering this oil spill – but which Sheen, and why? Clearly, it’s not Martin Sheen. He’s always been responsible. Apparently, the Houston Chronicle doesn’t believe that it has enough corroborating sources to go fully public with the story yet, but we all know who it is. It’s the Sheen who’s always getting in trouble: Charlie Sheen. If there’s any Sheen who would linger around the scene of a disaster, it’s Charlie Sheen.

The question we now need to ask ourselves is: Why? All we need to do is follow the smell of oil to the next Charlie Sheen story to find the answer. On Friday, it was reported that Charlie Sheen’s SUV was found crashed at the bottom of a cliff – and it was empty. There was no sign of any blood, or struggle, on the inside. How could that have happened?

The truth seems clear: Charlie Sheen knows something about the oil spill in Texas, something that none of the rest of us have been told about. Charlie is on the trail of a truth that’s thick, dark, and oozing slime. Someone sent Charlie’s SUV flying down into a ravine as a warning that he had better back off – or else.

We don’t know for sure where Charlie Sheen is now – off in some mysterious place along the Texas Gulf Coast, hiding out, waiting for them to arrive for the final showdown, lingering until the moment of truth. We can only trust that Sheen will get to the bottom of this slick enigma, as surely as his SUV got to the bottom of that cliff.

Go, Charlie, go!

There is, underneath the surface of constitutional, secular law in the United States, a seething conspiracy to replace the current American government with a Christian theocracy.

The conspiracy has been announced by Republican Congressman Paul Broun from Georgia, who proclaimed on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives:

“I pray, Lord: You are sovereign and completely in control of all things, and I acknowledge Your awesome power and authority. All things are in Your control, and nothing is too small or too great to bring before You.”

A member of Congress is part of the theocratic conspiracy, and has announced his intention to make Christian religion sovereign over the government of the USA, and “completely in control of all things”. An aspiring American ayatollah, Paul Broun, may expect to be made part of the Grand Christian Rulership Council under which we will all be forced to submit to his “awesome power and authority”.

Oops. I meant to say God’s awesome power and authority. Paul Broun doesn’t represent God in Congress, does he?

The name Democratic Underground is a great idea. If only the DemocraticUnderground.com web site would follow through with the underground approach that its name suggests.

The people over there pretend to have a lot of guts. They dish out the abuse when it comes to attacking George W. Bush. One person there blasted Bush’s decision to ignore Cindy Sheehan, saying of Bush, “He didn’t have the balls to even talk to Cindy Sheehan!”

Ooh, but what does the Democratic Underground do when the Democrats start to support George W. Bush? What happens when it’s Nancy Pelosi who refuses to debate Cindy Sheehan?

Well, then the Democratic Underground just whistles and looks the other way, pretending there isn’t a problem. Or, worse, they censor dissent, kicking people off their web site for daring to criticize Nancy Pelosi and praise Cindy Sheehan.

That’s what they did to the following video: They banned it from being shown on DemocraticUnderground.com. Open discussion of politics isn’t allowed there. It’s just a place for Democratic dittoheads to parrot the party line. How pathetic.

Democratic Underground? Please! They’re more like Democratic Overground.

The war’s dragging on, people are dying, Oklahoma has been under a heat advisory for almost over a week solid now, the government is gleefully stripping away our rights on both sides of the isle, and all the other outrages I may have missed have largely been unreported. So I have to ask this question;

Why is it, with all the things Americans should know and be aware of both within our borders and regarding the world at large, that when I turn on CNN I don’t see an article about any of that but a story running about how a 73-year old geezer is the most popular porn star in Japan.

Seriously, CNN, what the fuck?! Why is this news?

A startling development in the coastal waters of the Southeastern United States calls into question the amnesty for illegal immigrants that is being planned under the secretive North American Union. The big-government Center for Coastal Fisheries and Habitat Research warns us that lionfish, a large predatory animal with strongly poisonous spines, has invaded our territorial waters, and is waiting, hidden underwater, sometimes within clear sight of land.

They refer to the Indo-Pacific lionfish as “a non–native predatory fish first reported off the North Carolina coast in 2000. Since then, the number and geographic distribution of lionfish within the northwestern Atlantic has increased dramatically. Lionfish now inhabit coral reef, hardbottom, and artificial structures.”

Hold on a second, there! What are these lionfish doing inhabiting artificial structures? Did the lionfish make these structures, or did someone make the structures for the lionfish?

If someone made these artificial structures for the lionfish, which I believe to be the obvious logical answer, then we need to ask ourselves the following: Who would profit from providing subsidized housing for illegal immigrants?

It all reminds me a little bit too much of factory farming – only worse. In the case of the Indo-Pacific lionfish invading the coastal waters of the Southeastern United States, what’s being farmed is not fish for food, but fish for poison!

Someone call Lou Dobbs – but don’t think for a second that this is just about the lionfish stealing American jobs. It goes much further than that.

Take a look at the map. These are Indo-Pacific lionfish, so they can reasonably be expected to have moved up the Pacific coast of the United States by now. Perhaps there have been sleeper cells there for generations. That’s on one side of us. Now they’re up and down the East Coast of the United States. It’s almost as if they’re fixated on the USA in particular. They’ve got us in their sights, so to speak.

Communities of illegal immigrants hiding underwater in artificial structures set up by nobody knows who, right up and down our nation’s borders, armed with neurotoxins. In biological evolution, nobody develops a weapon like that unless they intend to use it. When will they attack us with these biological weapons?

I can’t tell you for sure, but I’ve seen these lionfish up close, and I can tell you one thing – they don’t want to talk.