Fornits
Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform => Straight, Inc. and Derivatives => Topic started by: Anonymous on January 23, 2006, 10:40:00 AM
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The kids from NOVA were a bunch of spoiled rich kids "gone bad" and most of them had no qualms about stabbing each other in the back to advance themselves in the program. Fuck them all.
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Fuck em? Why? I'm interested in your/their story.
Some folks think The Riddler actually ran Straight "the right way", that it's not such a bad program or concept if done "right". And people seem pretty convinced that he's doing an outstanding job w/ these schools.
I find that extremely hard to believe. I believe, whole-heartedly, that his intentions were and are good, he's a smart and compassionate man and dedicated to his cause. But I think he's operating from a faulty premis.
So far, I've heard from a good many people who experienced Straight under his charge. Nobody seriously disputes that Riddle vastly reduced the more extreme types of abuse that pervaded the organization under Virgil. People who rode out the transition seem to rather like the guy, and who can blame them? But people who never knew Virgil or lived under his regime seem to feel differently. Their basis for comparisson is the more commonly accepted reality and the Program is, at it's core, abusive, coercive and fundamentally wrong by that objective standard, no matter who's running it or how pure their intentions.
I think Riddel is doing essentially the same thing w/ the school system. There are those two young men who tried to speak out about some of the district's policies and who received some pretty damned heavy handed, vindictive retribution for it.
So I'd like to hear more about that from NOVA vets and from The Riddeler's public school alumni. Who knows? Maybe, one day, the Riddeler himself will be willing to weigh in on these questions.If All it takes is an infinite number of monkeys with type writers, then how come there's no Shakespeare coming out of AOL?
-- Anonymous
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Fuck em? Why? I'm interested in your/their story.
Ok, fine then. Get their story & then fuck 'em.
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On 2006-01-23 07:40:00, Anonymous wrote:
"The kids from NOVA were a bunch of spoiled rich kids "gone bad" and most of them had no qualms about stabbing each other in the back to advance themselves in the program. Fuck them all. "
I agree, I hated them all, I'm sure I hate you too, and you hate me. Let's get together and fist fight sometime, I'm sure that would benefit us both equally, and I would not do it to benefit you for the interest of "healing" or any shit like that, I would do it for the purely selfish reason that it might really make me feel a lot better or at the very least kill me. The injuries from fist fighting myself are mounting, perhaps a blow from you would knock me out for good.
I think you will find wisdom and meaning in a favorite saying of mine: The only good Straightling is a dead Straightling
I'd like to play ping pong nuclear warheads with old Trolly Greeves. Hey Trolly Greeves! Wanna get together and lay down some ping pong serving and smack-backing? May the loser be engulfed in the eternal heat of a thousand nuclear warheads!!!!! DIE STRAIGHTLING DIE!!!!!!!!!!!
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A bunch of dickheads, the lot of them.
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There are quite a few that I'd personally take great pleasure in killing.
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On 2006-01-23 08:08:00, Anonymous wrote:
"Fuck em? Why? I'm interested in your/their story.
Ok, fine then. Get their story & then fuck 'em."
I must admit this is an intriguing prospect. I would think, though, that I'd fuck em first, maybe in the process of getting the story. Definitely a fun idea. But, alas, I'm bound by a solemn vow to a good old friend and can only dream. :wink: Forgive, O Lord, my little joke on Thee and I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.
--Robert Frost, American poet
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What say we start with some of the staff members from that place. We could get a list going on this thread...who did YOU hate the most?
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I really don't hate any of them. Except Leslie Murden should wipe that self-satisfied look off her face, if she still has it on, from "saving" all kinds of "addicts and alcoholics". She took part in child abuse at Straight, Inc. and possibly afterward as it seems to be her career interest. Really if I could I would ring her up and see if she ever figured anything out and if she could help us in any kind of incident/information gathering that would be necessary for the record and possibly otherwise useful. But really I would want to have some psychological back-up. It is easy to snap into the abuse/victim role you had before. I think it is a well-known psychological phenomenon. People do it with their families, so everyone kind of knows what I am talking about, and it would stand to reason that people who were in a cult have a similar problem.
I would really like to see all kinds of former staffers showing up at protests and talking to reporters about what went on. I believe it is possible that they were as hurt by Straight, or more so. You can see how it felt to Rich Bradbury and Jen Loar to wake up and realize that they had been a pawn in a terrible scene of child abuse. What a nightmare, I think we all feel guilty and ashamed enough of what we did in there on our phases. And don't try to say how great you were, or less abusive than anyone else. It was the day in day out hatred I got from other phasers, or else just the fact they didn't cop me out when I was getting abused on first phase, that really helped out a lot in my own personal damage from straight. We were all sorry sucker zombie machines, no more or less guilty. If some shithead staffer was abusing people, and you did not take your newcomers home that night and cop them all out, you are in some way responsible for subjecting those people to that abuse, if things ever got worse for one of your former newcomers. We were kids and I can easily forgive all that, I'm just saying, that's all. It gets annoying for people to say they really weren't that bad when everyone was bad and guilty, that is how Straight, Incorporated ran and stayed alive. Everyone abusing each other.
It's not like I have an interest in rounding up former staffers, but on a person to person level, maybe they should get their lights clocked just a bit, if only for the healing to the former victim of theirs that would probably happen if the victim got the chance to clock them; just once, to humiliate them in public or give them a bloody nose or something would say to the victim that yes, they can succeed now at taking down someone who once victimized them. I neither condone nor participate in fist fighting or clocking or anything, I just like to present alternative points of view. I have less than no use for former staffers who come around and try to tell me that so and so staffer was really a good guy. It's pathetic. I think we can all agree that when those staffers were doing to us what they were doing, they were shitheads and child abusers. No doubt about it. They were suckers and soulless brainwash victims, I can take that point of view, but they were not, at that time at least, "good guys".
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And don't try to say how great you were, or less abusive than anyone else. It was the day in day out hatred I got from other phasers, or else just the fact they didn't cop me out when I was getting abused on first phase, that really helped out a lot in my own personal damage from straight. We were all sorry sucker zombie machines, no more or less guilty. If some shithead staffer was abusing people, and you did not take your newcomers home that night and cop them all out, you are in some way responsible for subjecting those people to that abuse, if things ever got worse for one of your former newcomers.
NO more or less guilty? That's certainly debatable. There were some that were much worse than others -- and I'm speaking of both phasers and staff here.
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I agree w/ every bit of what you're saying (Posted: 2006-01-23 11:40:00 in case someone's posting right about..... now!)
I do think most of the staff got fucked far harder than the rest of us. I can't really say that about the truely sadistic ones who never really bought in (Virgil). But the ones who believed in the program and who toughed out all the bullshit for the sole purpose of bringing some kindness into the mix, of eliminating the fucked up shit, of improving the program? Oh yeah. They got fucked harder than anybody.
Can you even imagine? Now, you're all grown up. You run into the grown up version of some kid who, because you thought it was good for them, you personally ordered to be bounced around the inside of a timeout room for a matter of days and nights without sleep? And now you know, you can't possibly not know at least on some level, how your very kindness and courage made you among the more exquisite tools of destruction. It would be like waking up from a nighmare here you're puverizing some bad guy in pure self defense, doing a good job of it, gloating a little then finding that you've been sleep walking and you're really well nigh half past killing someone you love.
How does one live with that? I'm glad I don't know.
But it's a cautionary tale. You're right about our collective and individual guilt, too.
But not completely. You missed one very important thing. Yeah, we all did, willingly or not, play into it. But I think we all also found ways to resist and subvert as often as we could and, once in awhile, it even worked. Those are the times I remember fondly. When, after eating and dishing more bullshit than I ever wanted to know was possible, I spent some of my cred to get Charlotte to a doctor. She had kidney problems. I knew that because her mom, herself, subverted the open meeting ground rules by telling the whole damned room how vitally important it was for her to use the bathroom frequently and thoroughly. I'm sure she got reemed a new one for that. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall. She was like a miniature version one of those old antibellum steel magnolias; about 4' nothin, polite and pettite, but as immovable as any linebacker mentally once she'd reached resolve about any damned thing.
Though they done me wrong and I them, I just can't entirely hate these people. Even those I really rather disliked then and would probably dislike even more now, I'd still like to talk to them and find out what they think of the whole thing all these years later.
I'd really like to have an occasional, purely intellectual and cordial public conversation w/ Mel Riddile over the basic methods and techniques he's used in both the Program and the school system. See, I think he's about the biggest tool of all. I don't know if it's more intellectual curiosity or a desire to try and turn him, but I really am thoroughly interested lately in finding out wtf he thought he was doing and what he makes of it all these days.
Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself
--Jimmy Carter
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Drug war POW
Straight, Sarasota
`80 - `82
Why I Live at the PO
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One thing, though. Mel Riddile doesn't get to cry foul and run away over the course language and disturbing topic matter. It is not possible for any of us to do to him the kind of real damage he had done to some of his critics merely by posting on the net or picketting his place of employment.
Talking about it is not obscene and shouldn't be threatening to a mature, intellectually honest adult. I think maybe silence on the topic probably is, though.One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation.
--Thomas Brackett Reed
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On 2006-01-23 12:28:00, Anonymous wrote:
"And don't try to say how great you were, or less abusive than anyone else. It was the day in day out hatred I got from other phasers, or else just the fact they didn't cop me out when I was getting abused on first phase, that really helped out a lot in my own personal damage from straight. We were all sorry sucker zombie machines, no more or less guilty. If some shithead staffer was abusing people, and you did not take your newcomers home that night and cop them all out, you are in some way responsible for subjecting those people to that abuse, if things ever got worse for one of your former newcomers.
NO more or less guilty? That's certainly debatable. There were some that were much worse than others -- and I'm speaking of both phasers and staff here. "
I can kind of agree with you here, there was some REALLY twisted stuff.
As for the rest of all the intimidation and control we ALL participated in to one degree or another, it bugs me to have people here saying "I wasn't all that bad" or getting down on someone who was maybe more loud and a mean yelling fifth phaser, as opposed to someone who was just hateful and manipulative with their newcomers, or even nice to their newcomers but still definitely brainwashing them. All of the "good" phasers and staff were still playing Straight's game if they were in there playing the game at all, and that game contributed to everyone's injuries in Straight. That's all.
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On 2006-01-23 13:19:00, Anonymous wrote:
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On 2006-01-23 12:28:00, Anonymous wrote:
"And don't try to say how great you were, or less abusive than anyone else. It was the day in day out hatred I got from other phasers, or else just the fact they didn't cop me out when I was getting abused on first phase, that really helped out a lot in my own personal damage from straight. We were all sorry sucker zombie machines, no more or less guilty. If some shithead staffer was abusing people, and you did not take your newcomers home that night and cop them all out, you are in some way responsible for subjecting those people to that abuse, if things ever got worse for one of your former newcomers.
NO more or less guilty? That's certainly debatable. There were some that were much worse than others -- and I'm speaking of both phasers and staff here. "
I can kind of agree with you here, there was some REALLY twisted stuff.
As for the rest of all the intimidation and control we ALL participated in to one degree or another, it bugs me to have people here saying "I wasn't all that bad" or getting down on someone who was maybe more loud and a mean yelling fifth phaser, as opposed to someone who was just hateful and manipulative with their newcomers, or even nice to their newcomers but still definitely brainwashing them. All of the "good" phasers and staff were still playing Straight's game if they were in there playing the game at all, and that game contributed to everyone's injuries in Straight. That's all.
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Gotta agree with you both, to a point.....but I firmly believe that execs like Miller Newton and board members like Sembler have much much more to answer for than even the most abusive Sr. Staff. I think anyone who accepted monetary compensation for being a Staff member is guilty above and beyond anyone who was just a phaser. True, we perpetuaated the abuse machine ourselves, but the Execs and Staff I think are much more responsible for the damage that was done. Hang 'em high, I say.
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See now, I see it from entirely the opposite angle. What difference does it make who was more or less guilty than anybody else? And how do we ever settle that argument? What would constitute emperical proof? And then, getting back to the point, what would be the point?
There's an old saying about Communism. A Communist is someone who's read Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. A Capitalis is someone who's understood them. Same difference between people people who support and, in some way, impliment the program and those who oppose it; we understand it and they don't. And coercion and punishment, even in the limited capacity we actually have to impose it (relative to theirs to dish it back), is not an effective long term behavior modifier, is it?
How can we get some of them to understand and more of the people around them to notice that they don't? The only way I know to do that is to get them to say what they really think right out before God and everybody. Just let them be their inimitable selves. Talk w/ yer feet, chilins.
No school at all is better than a bad school. Nothing else in the child's environment is capable of such systematic destruction.
--George Dennison
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On 2006-01-23 18:08:00, Eudora (fka ~ Antigen) wrote:
"See now, I see it from entirely the opposite angle. What difference does it make who was more or less guilty than anybody else? And how do we ever settle that argument? What would constitute emperical proof? And then, getting back to the point, what would be the point?
Staff were compensated financially for abusing children. They were also the be-all, end-all authority in Straight. They should be held to a higher standard of accountability, just as a concentration camp guard should be held to a higher standard than a Nazi party member who worked at a restaurant.
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On 2006-01-23 07:40:00, Anonymous wrote:
"The kids from NOVA were a bunch of spoiled rich kids "gone bad" and most of them had no qualms about stabbing each other in the back to advance themselves in the program. Fuck them all. "
They were quick to turn on their own.
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On 2006-01-23 07:40:00, Anonymous wrote:
"The kids from NOVA were a bunch of spoiled rich kids "gone bad" and most of them had no qualms about stabbing each other in the back to advance themselves in the program. Fuck them all. "
Before $tr8 I (a court-ordered, former 7-stepper, never on staff)was a stubborn social anarchist punk who stuck to my guns. I was a "bad" kid. I respected people, not authority. I never narced on anyone. I was in the Springfield, VA program(85-87). I have a substantial record of resistance. I was institutionalized in $tr8 because they couldn't break me any other way. Your description of the NOVA kids seems to describe the values of American culture in general and American style capitalism in particular.
You are right to some extent though. I am not innocent... though I was being blackmailed by the adults in the cult, and the state gov., as my very right to walk free under the sun was held hostage by them; as my very thoughts were held hostage. As I was isolated, from group even and made to suffer sleep deprivation until all my "qualms" were gone.
How 'bout some fuckin' creds for bein' a target of the Beast even ??
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Well, staff (peer staff, I mean) were not compensated very well. As I remember it, going all the way back to the Seed, group staff lived in communal apartments, drove shitty little broke down economy cars, wore torn, worn out clothing, etc. They were there, scurrying around trying to cover their asses in a state of perpetual hypervigilance just like phasers for 10, 12, 20 hours a day sometimes. The ticket to keeping a cult cohesive is to keep the inductees, especially the enforcement cadre, too busy, too paranoid and too stressed out to think clearly.
Some of the parents, for a time, were in pretty nearly the same state. Yes, there's money involved, huge piles of it. And there are those cretans into the mix who really are rollin' in it, gloating. But most of the staff got as pooched as any of us, probably more.
When I talked to Charles Pendergrass (Pendergrast?) I thought I was going to maybe get some clues, some details about my own history and Program history. Instead, well you can check that thread if you want to. But I would talk to him again if I thought he'd be willing to speak his mind. I don't care anymore whether these people are sorry, whether they're fer us or again us. I want them to speak their minds publicly on the topic of the Program. I know that most of them won't be willing to do that. But some will.
There's a former staffer reading and, very occasionally, posting here lately. Nice guy. I remember him that way at the time and he seems so now. But totally clueless about what he was involved in. If he and folks like him would speak their minds, I think it would help make a little more clear to most people just what we were all involved in.
Here's the thing. I don't think there exists any small, or even mid-sized, cadre of complicit evil doers who we can just identify, indict and punish. Even if we did, it would only make them martyrs in the eyes of the truely devout. So, for all the casualties, it would probably backfire.
And check this, cuz you know it's true. Even the ones who did and do get off on the sadism and the money, well karma is a very real force of nature. Those poor bastards sold their souls and they are damned in this life and undto the 5th generation, I'm convinced of it.
Pirate (and all the good ppl who came up fed and nurtured in the very holy mecca of the prison-industrial complex) ya'll are a bit spooky sometimes. Sorry, I know I'm one to talk on that point. I had the spooky kid quality long before the Program, it's just hereditary in my case, I think. But I think you're perspective on what is and is not American culture is somewhat sullied by virtue of that influence. A whole lot of Americans are skeered these days, very like the way some of us complied, played along and humored the lunatics till we could see a clear path to gone for good. But their hearts are not w/ the fascists. And I do believe there's a sea change afoot, whereby good Americans up and down and all the way accross the political, social and economic spectrum are starting to see the danger.
How 'bout some fuckin' creds for bein' a target of the Beast even ??
Much cred, much love for you my brother! You are the American ideal. Not tryin to suggest that you or I or we should suffer the damnation we've felt the urge to heap on the mindfuckers. Just sayin' leave vengence to the gods or nature or whatever you believe in and let's us kind and decent souls set about enlightening our good fellow travelers to the slight of mind, the dirty tricks and the impending perril.
They need to be schooled so as to see the mindfuckers for what they are before they fall for the same scam our rents did.
The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good.
George Washington
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On 2006-01-27 09:36:00, Eudora wrote:
"Well, staff (peer staff, I mean) were not compensated very well. As I remember it, going all the way back to the Seed, group staff lived in communal apartments, drove shitty little broke down economy cars, wore torn, worn out clothing, etc. They were there, scurrying around trying to cover their asses in a state of perpetual hypervigilance just like phasers for 10, 12, 20 hours a day sometimes. The ticket to keeping a cult cohesive is to keep the inductees, especially the enforcement cadre, too busy, too paranoid and too stressed out to think clearly.
You give "staff" way too much credit. I was an "abuser/staff". I was not on a power trip, and i quit after I was strong armed into doing something I disagreed with (had nothing to do with doing anyting to the "clients"). I think I made less than $6 an hour, it was a job that helped me feel liike I was giving something back. We spent more time on "homes" than anything else. I sometimes thought up the rap topic on the way to the stool... I had no plots to keep anyone down or promote a cult lifestyle.
If you remember most of the staff were early twenty-somethings. We were more worried about getting layed, making car payments on our shitty cars, getting to work on time, and trying to figure out what the fuck we were going to do w/ the rest of our lives. Hell it was the 80's and there were more people and actors in drug rehab than out.
The people that were sadists were that way because that is the way they were and probably still are. Now they just berate other people below themselves (e.g. cashiers at McD's or something).
I have been reading this site for awhile now and I am always asounded by the supernatual air you give staff. They were people like anyone else, some good some bad. believe me I was also on the other end of the bad people and they were assholes just like the thousands I have met since then.
Go ahead and start the crucifixion as seems to be normal.
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Well, let me be the first to Why I Live at the PO (http://art-bin.com/art/or_weltypostoff.html)
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On 2006-01-27 19:27:00, Eudora wrote:
What did you think I meant by "They were there, scurrying around trying to cover their asses in a state of perpetual hypervigilance just like phasers for 10, 12, 20 hours a day sometimes."
I don't know if you know me but I have been doing fine. Thanks.
I guess I thought that we were surrying around trying to cover for the bad thing we were doing. To this day I don't feel guilty about what I did there. I learned what a true asshole was, which has been important to me later in life. I learned that people who abuse power are of low character and should be avoided at all costs. I saw how important it was to treat people w/ respect. I see people treat each other worse almost every day than most were treated in the program.
Believe me my program was full of all kinds of mindfucks as well. I use it -> "well at least it is not as bad as when I was in st8 and..."
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On 2006-01-27 20:00:00, Anonymous wrote:
I saw how important it was to treat people w/ respect. I see people treat each other worse almost every day than most were treated in the program.
Oh, you must have found the website from the flyer in the Why I Live at the PO (http://art-bin.com/art/or_weltypostoff.html)
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Don't know the Therapeutic Coffee Shop
Come out with what? I was sitting right next to you (figuatively speaking), i went through the same shit. But what was different was that before the program I was the typical kid going to parties experimenting w/ drugs etc. I had no clue where I was going but figuered I would be successful, just because.
Fade into Str8 and all my "rights" were taken. I was stripped searched (by the same sex), I could feel we were all embarassed by this. I was accused of(but never admitted to) acts that were not my doing and others that were not my intention. I was set back for both, and started over for another, it was miserable. I look back at it and it was probably the worst part of my life.
Then one day a staff member got a wild hair up his ass and made us all go to NOVA and take placement tests to get into school. i got my HS diploma, went to college and got a bunch of degrees. I am happy with my life. I am who I wanted to be. No, I am not sober and I like it like that.
The perspective of the staff member that I can remember: Get to work on time- God I remember busting my ass around 495 to get to the building on time (I think we had to punch in). Then you may have a rap that you were scheduled for. OK quick think of a topic, "how are you like an orange and are peeling away the tough exterior of your past and getting to the soft inside of your pesesnt..." blah blah. mainly an excuse to talk in the acceptable manner. Yes, they were destoying the past for the present. But I have my past back, you? Then back to the staff room in the back or out to smoke a cig. Answer to COC letters. Always the big homes board was looming. It was on the wall to the left as you walked into the office. I was always a pain in the ass to get that thing complete, it was like a puzzle. There was always some parent that had refused to take kids other than their own, others that couldn't go to certain houses etc. I was in a few therapy planning sessions but they were nuts and bolts as well. Client "A" misbehaves, we have tools 1,2,3,... to use, what can we do. Yeah it is breaking people down but I think they were coming from the perspective of jail/PI and this is the way they did things. As an aside I have been in detention as an adult for traffic stuff and had the same crap done to me. Then there was Fri nite rap. I think they picked peple that were going to be confrontational anyway to run that rap. I was chosen I think once. I yelled at this kid to start taking and get on with it because I actually cared about him. I was working from the above perspective. I thought all he had to do was just get through all this shit and you would be free, enter the "it's only 1/75th of your total life" argument. I also did a few open meetings. I was soo nervous that all I could think about was the basics. Mom feeling those are actions etc.
Wow, that was a weird walk through the past I hop it helps. When I look back at the staff part of it as a whole I look at it as a job 1st and then as a continuation of my own therapy at the time (now i would term it as experience). Do I think it was good or bad? There was good and bad in it (the job and my program). I was never physically abused, I was hurt plenty. I am happy now.
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Well, I don't know if you ever get your past back or not. But I did build myself a fine life. No degrees or anything, but happily and uneventfully married for close to 20 years, couple of kids, one fully grown.
But it's the future I'm interested in. I want my kids and grandkids to live in a country where that kind of interminate imprisonment w/o due process or any appeal or contact w/ the outside world is unacceptable. And I ain't leavin' this one, it's mine, by birthright.
I'm guessing you were in Virginia when Riddile was in charge. I've heard tell it was far less militant then. But I don't think I want to accept "not as bad as Virgil" as equivalent to "damned good enough." I think it's just fundamentally wrong to use force and deception to change someone's very mind against their will.
Cops; you wake `em up you gotta dance with `em. They lead.
-- Jack McNulty
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Oh, check out that link. That explains the Therapeutic Coffee Shop. It's funny if you read it in just the right voice.
Also, you said "Come out with what? I was sitting right next to you (figuatively speaking)" Yeah, that's sort of my point.
And "As an aside I have been in detention as an adult for traffic stuff and had the same crap done to me."
Yeah, me too. Only overnight, though. And I spent a couple of months in juvenile detention, too. You know some insane judge in Florida had me extradicted from Georgia just a couple of months before my 18th birthday for the "crime" of being a chronic runaway in Florida! That was a spooky, scary time. If they had gotten me back in there in Sarasota in late `82, they would have beat the piss out of me. I had split from 5th phase pre-training and sought help from HRS. Thank god that didn't happen!
But there are really important differences between jail and the Program. When you go to jail, whether the virdict is perfect or not, you did get convicted of something and had a right to a trial. You know when you're getting out. You can send and receive letters with your friends. Your parents don't show up once a week to tell you you deserve everything you're getting and not welcome home till you agree.
Now, again, I don't think there are insidious evil bad guys in this story to be identified and shot at dawn. I think the system, the plan, the concept upon which the program is built is more than just a little faulty, it's downright insidious. No school at all is better than a bad school. Nothing else in the child's environment is capable of such systematic destruction.
--George Dennison
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Thanks for the easy conversation. Great to hear you are doing well. I had not thought much about Str8 'till I ran into this site. Though I often wondered what happened to all those people.
I think I did get my past back in the form of not feeling bad about it anymore. The time I did 'shrooms and talked about how bad I felt for doing them was B.S., but back then I convinced myself it was a bad time. Now I know I HAD A BLAST! I guess my point is that the past is what you believe it is. They took it away for a year or so but I got it back the rest of the time.
The future is ours as well. I hope I can make better decisions than my parents did because we will have different tools related to our experience. My parents were not as familiar with what sort of options were out there and we never actually sat and talked like we do now. They had other parents telling them this was the right thing to do. And as I said before drug rehab seemed to be a fad back then. We just ended up in a very weird one. But the fact is that we live in a society that will use force to change your mind. Just try not paying taxes for a few years because you don't believe in it and see who shows up at your door.
You wrote "Now, again, I don't think there are insidious evil bad guys in this story to be identified and shot at dawn. I think the system, the plan, the concept upon which the program is built is more than just a little faulty, it's downright insidious."
I don't understand the use of insidious. Do you think Str8 is trying to entice us into their way of life? Well I ain't buyin' what they're sellin' anymore. I have free will and am not afraid to use it. Well, within reason.
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Thanks for the easy conversation. Great to hear you are doing well. I had not thought much about Str8 'till I ran into this site. Though I often wondered what happened to all those people.
I think I did get my past back in the form of not feeling bad about it anymore. The time I did 'shrooms and talked about how bad I felt for doing them was B.S., but back then I convinced myself it was a bad time. Now I know I HAD A BLAST! I guess my point is that the past is what you believe it is. They took it away for a year or so but I got it back the rest of the time.
The future is ours as well. I hope I can make better decisions than my parents did because we will have different tools related to our experience. My parents were not as familiar with what sort of options were out there and we never actually sat and talked like we do now. They had other parents telling them this was the right thing to do. And as I said before drug rehab seemed to be a fad back then. We just ended up in a very weird one. But the fact is that we live in a society that will use force to change your mind. Just try not paying taxes for a few years because you don't believe in it and see who shows up at your door.
You wrote "Now, again, I don't think there are insidious evil bad guys in this story to be identified and shot at dawn. I think the system, the plan, the concept upon which the program is built is more than just a little faulty, it's downright insidious."
I don't understand the use of insidious. Do you think Str8 is trying to entice us into their way of life? Well I ain't buyin' what they're sellin' anymore. I have free will and am not afraid to use it. Well, within reason.
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To former staff: Did you have a green car?
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On 2006-01-28 01:23:00, Anonymous wrote:
"Thanks for the easy conversation.
No, thank you! I'm sure it's a whole lot easier for me. There aren't pages and pages of discussion on here about how best to hunt down and kill all the phasers. Really, I think that's largely misattribution.
Great to hear you are doing well. I had not thought much about Str8 'till I ran into this site. Though I often wondered what happened to all those people.
Thanks. So, how'd you come accross this stuff?
I think I did get my past back in the form of not feeling bad about it anymore. The time I did 'shrooms and talked about how bad I felt for doing them was B.S., but back then I convinced myself it was a bad time. Now I know I HAD A BLAST! I guess my point is that the past is what you believe it is. They took it away for a year or so but I got it back the rest of the time.
Oh, in that sense, yeah. I never lost it. But I had an edge. My family had been in the Seed for 10 years already. The whole thing didn't have the disorienting shock value for me that it did for most of ya'll. But I'm sorry to say, some people never have recovered their past in that sense. I didn't realize it at the time, I thought everbody was just ducking and covering to get through the next year or months just like I was. But, evidently, some people really bought in permanently.
The fucked up thing about that is that, all good intentions aside, it sure seems like more people bought into the "I was a fuckup" aspect of the whole thing than anything about hard work, honesty and living well.
The future is ours as well. I hope I can make better decisions than my parents did because we will have different tools related to our experience. My parents were not as familiar with what sort of options were out there and we never actually sat and talked like we do now. They had other parents telling them this was the right thing to do. And as I said before drug rehab seemed to be a fad back then. We just ended up in a very weird one.
Well, not exactly that either. That's what I thought, though, for most of the last 20 years or so. It turns out that Straight, Inc. branched off into public policy under the name Drug Free America Foundation. There's a whole littany of corporate entities tasked w/ insinuation program philosophy into various aspects of public policy. At the same time, there was another branch of the TOUGHLOVE hategroup busy as beavers building another line of teen gulags. Some of them were and are far weirder and more deadly than Straight ever was. Google Larkin Rose (http://www.paynoincometax.com/) are doing and formally challenge those laws. So far, both guys have been required to appear at hearings and answer various kinds of corespondence, but not once has IRS ordered the half dozen tax payors standing nearest them to tackle them to the ground and sit on them till they quit bitchin'.
You wrote "Now, again, I don't think there are insidious evil bad guys in this story to be identified and shot at dawn. I think the system, the plan, the concept upon which the program is built is more than just a little faulty, it's downright insidious."
I don't understand the use of insidious. Do you think Str8 is trying to entice us into their way of life? Well I ain't buyin' what they're sellin' anymore. I have free will and am not afraid to use it. Well, within reason.
"
Hmm, come to think of it, it was a bad usage. In sort, yes. "The Program" in the form of Drug Free America Foundation, Community Coalitions, to some extend MADD and the TOUGHLOVE parent movement (still alive and... well, strong though they never were 'well') certainly are trying. It's not even a secret backroom plot, just read their mission statements and other public statements. Here's a classic example of Calvina Fay trying (and, thankfully, failing) to bring a misbehaving doctor/professor into line.
Multijurisdictional Counterdrug Task Force Training (http://www.mctft.com/about_us/advisory_committee.shtml) at St. Pete College. Know how I found that? Well, when I started looking into the Program (like looking for boogiemen under my bed) I found a whole slew of names that were familiar to me from following drug policy. So I started following hunches. This one struck. This organization was set up under the Nixon admin w/ GHW as former (I think) head of CIA as point man.
Honest to God, I really did think Straight must have gone the way of the Seed. I figured they probably still operated somewhat under the table somewhere, but it wasn't like in the old days when judges and cops had kids in the program and there was no escape. If that had been the case when I did go looking, well it would never have been a topic worthy of this much discussion and muck raking. But I was wrong. It's worth discussing. If you think these people and their ideas don't effect you today, check into your kids' DARE program. Not only will you find Betty Sembler, again, in the admin of that organization, but if you poke around asking questions, you'll get the hard eye and, maybe even some more substantial retribution. You KNOW these fuckers don't apreciate constructive criticism.
Anyway, that's my apologia. I don't think there's a way to discuss the Program w/o unsettling some people and shattering some illusions. But these are some dangerous illusions. Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men's shadows and look at a white woman twice.
--Hearst newspapers nationwide, 1934
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::bump::
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid
of the dark. The real tragedy of life is
when men are afraid of the light.
--Plato
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Mel Riddler, not a name that I've heard in a long long time. Yea, came up from FL on the Mayflower group to VA and Mel ran the program while I was there. As I recall, he was not a sadistic person, but one trying hard to understand his charge and help- all be it, probably misguided. But look who he had as Sr. Staff and execs?? They were not little angles, and I had many disagreements with what they were doing. Got hit, sat on for endless hours where I couldn't feel my arms or legs, spit on, etc etc. Know it happened to a lot of us. However, I was probably one of those folks that needed to be physically and mentally abused for it all to sink in and possibly help. Now, some may think it was brain washing, but its been almost 23 years and things are fine now. I see a lot of posts in this from folks that seem to have never passed beyond the 'terrible' things that happened to them at STR8. Get over it and out of your shit- especially if it was over 20 years ago. Hell, most of you aught to be approaching 35-40 now and should have a life! If you think about it, not a whole lot of folks in life are stuck in your shit, they are moving on with life, as you should.
I guess now, with three kids of my own, I'm just trying to ensure they don't have to go through what I did in STR8 either in Sarasota or Springfield. Screwed up times in the early '80, but oh, what great and wild times they were. A phase of life that I went through, some good and some completely F---ed up. But, just a phase, no more...
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i sold mel a cellular telephone in tysons one time. he looked scared and misplaced.
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I read the links and what I come away with is that most of the stuff they have come up w/ is failing. steve cartisano is bankrupt and even the splinter groups he starts up fail. He can't even get a job in the field. This seems approriate. Yes, a child died but this is no different from any other job where life is involved. You get to drive the bus 'till you get in a crash.
The other two fighting the IRS and the complaint against the MD are both cases that look like they have not been decided yet. This is part of the ongoing back and forth on this issue. Who knows, this fad may change back again later. Just like the ground swell against the MJ laws in this country. Many state laws have changed to allow MJ, but federal law trumps. This is something people were spedings years in jail for possessing 20 years ago.
DARE is a failure, http://civilliberty.about.com/gi/dynami ... FDARE.html (http://civilliberty.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=civilliberty&zu=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.alcoholfacts.org%2FDARE.html) and will not be around much longer.
I guess my point is echoed in the earliler comment. Yeh, Str8 sucked but it worked out for me. I don't know what would have happened to me if I hadn't gone through but I was not heading in a real successful direction. Nothing ever fits everyoneand obviously Str8 was not the best place for some, but many survived.
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What do you think has caused Steve Cartisano's austensible failure? People like you saying fuck it, I survived? Or people who are raising hell about these things?
And, btw, you're probably wrong about Steve. He's on the lamb, last I heard. So are the Roaches, after having been shut down in the Czech Republic for torture and human rights abuses. For all we know, they've got their little Jim Jones camp somewhere down in Nicaragua or something. Bear in mind that Steve and Ollie North were buds back in the day, just like Mel and the Büsh boys.
Dare is not going away either. They've just redesigned, cloned out under new names and onward the Straightlings march. For the first time, we're finally starting to see some serious incredulity toward TOUGHLOVE and the drug war. Neither are the Area Drug Taskforces, unless we demand a logical, objective dialog on what they're not accomplishing and the damage they're doing in the process.
Psycho6, I flatly reject the notion that a little beating and torture were good for you. I'm fine too, after all these years. But a good many of us are really not fine. But my old druggie friends who didn't get "treatment"? They all seem to be doing alright.
When you say you're trying to keep your kids from going through it, what do you mean? You mean you'd actually put your own kids through that? What would prompt you to do something like that?
Revelation indeed had no weight with me.
--Benjamin Franklin, American Founding Father, author, and inventor
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Hence the name "Psycho6". Sounds like your just fine alright, heh. Maybe they hit you one too many times. Or maybe you hit/abused others, and this is how you justify it.
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Psycho6 et al, you may want to look at this site:
http://www.kathymoya.com/FICA/index.html (http://www.kathymoya.com/FICA/index.html)
Some of you will probably recognize the author of it. She also sat there in those chairs with ya'll. If you think the toughlove hategroup has just fallen apart due to obvious mental incontinence, you're sadly mistaken. In fact, the troubled parent industry is a billion dollar industry in this country today.
Here's a very interesting topic that makes the point.
Another WWASP death . Note especially the tone and illogical arguments coming out of the Program supporters in this thread. Sound familiar?
A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say at the age of eighteen.
--Oscar Wilde
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What is the solution?
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Rampant talking out in group.
The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
-- John Adams, (1772)
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Hey Eudora,
Wanna pick up some of this conversation on a PM? I'll try.
B.
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i think everyone here has said a lot of good stuff.i don't believe pycho6 means he's place his kids in a straight like place.....i think he means the same thing i mean when i lecture my daughter on drugs .....some of us forget that the courts can hump the shit out of kids and its out of the kids parents hands.....all a kid today has to do is be found with a fucking beer in his or her hand and it's "bend over time"! i know i don't want that for my kid.....as far as staff went....i think some got off on the power trip that straight gave them....i think some wanted to get away from the treatment of being a phaser but found out that they were way way more scrutinised than when they were on thier phases and by the very ppl they were most afraid of! some really had the best intentions to help and give back....
joey glaze was a complete asshole...he should've never been in a position of authority! neither should jim sailor or dean minstretta have been in that position either....honestly,i wish i had been in virginia most if not all of my time in straight......i was only in virginia for a very short time....maybe 2-3 months.....all the rest of my time in that place were in st.pete....st.pete was very hard on me and the original virginia staff were mostly my druggie friends! after i was started over on 5th phase{for nothing},i think the staff in virginia felt bad about it and just wanted to see me finish......when my start over was going on,they were all on thier phases in pre-training to be staff or on trainee and were powerless to defend me.....i.e.>scared to get a humping for sticking up for me.by the time i finally finished in there,the damage to me was a done deal....i just didn't know it for a long long time!i defied that place in everyway i could without being kicked out!my coming in with long hair,army jackets and tye dyes etc was my way of sticking it to them....
my way of protesting the place.i stayed sober because i wanted to,not because i was completly afraid i'd be put back in......and if i had done drugs or screwed up,i wouldn't have been able to
go in and show everyone that was still in there that once you finished,you could still do the things they said you couldn't ever do!looking back,its hard to believe i got away with that....i guess my druggie friends {staff} were silently behind me,cheering me on.....no one but leslie murden ever tried to keep me from coming into group.when she did,i just laughed at her and went in anyways.....things under mel riddle were a start towards a less harsh straight.if miller newton had still been in charge or better yet,if i had tried that kind of shit in st.pete under miller,i might have been FORCED BACK IN FOR A REFRESHER........i'm sure of that.....still straight is straight....it sucked no matter how it was run......hippie