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World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS) / Child Abuse for Profit is Occurring in America
« on: April 24, 2006, 09:18:00 PM »
Breaking Down Our Kids
Child Abuse for Profit is Occurring in America
by Joshua Chiappelli
http://www.dissidentvoice.org
April 20, 2006
?No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.?
-- Article 5, U.N. Declaration of Universal Human Rights
?You wouldn?t believe the terrible things that were done to me,? says Alexia Parks? niece in An American Gulag. [1] But she continues: ?I know now it was for my own good.? Thus ends Parks? account of her struggle to help her niece after she was enrolled in several behavior modification schools. The similarity to the end of 1984 is striking: a previously headstrong individual returns from months of torture as merely a shell of their former self, having learned to love their tormentors. The difference is that Parks? story is true.
Usual definitions of torture include the use of practices such as solitary confinement, non-medical application of psychiatric drugs, unprovoked beatings, starvation, and verbal abuse as means to change a person?s behavior. Many Americans are reluctant to support the use of these techniques even on criminals, much less teenagers with behavioral problems. Unfortunately, this is exactly what is being done on a large-scale basis as ?tough-love? programs have become a booming industry. These programs come in several varieties, including boot camps, ?therapeutic? boarding schools or academies, and wilderness programs. At the cost of several thousand dollars per month (up to $40,000/year), these schools supposedly provide a climate where troubled teens can continue their regular education while receiving treatments designed to improve their behavior.
In the philosophy of these schools, reform involves two goals: to break kids down through strict discipline and routine, then to build them back up through self-examination and therapy of various sorts. Usually, only the former is accomplished. So successful is the breaking down process that former inmates of these institutions often suffer symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome, even years after being freed. Ex-students call themselves, with good cause, ?survivors?.
The Victims
A reasonable estimate is that at any given time, several thousand American teenagers are enrolled in such a program. Sometimes these teens are incorrigible delinquents, who commit petty crimes, do drugs, and make life miserable for their parents. Parents send them to ?tough love? programs out of worry that the kid is jail-bound. But just as often, parents enroll their kids in these programs because of more banal worries -- that their kid has had premarital sex, experimented with alcohol and pot, or merely because the teen is defiant and talks back. One of the common factors is that teens sent to these programs seem to suffer disproportionately from ADD, depression, anxiety, and substance abuse problems.
The ?breaking down? process can begin in the teen?s own bedroom. Some schools offer an ?escort service,? involving captors who arrive at the family?s house at night, abduct the kid (putting them in handcuffs if necessary), and flying them to the school. [2] Often, the kids aren?t warned by their parents that they have been enrolled in these programs. Once at the school, kids are isolated from outside communication; even contact with the parents is usually severed for at least several weeks. Even after contact with parents is restored, letters to or from the teen will be read, and sometimes edited, by the school?s staff, and telephone calls are monitored.
Most of these schools use a ?point? system for evaluating the progress of a student. One cannot ?graduate? until one accumulates enough points. Points are taken away as punishment for minor infractions, prolonging the teen?s stay. [3] Earning points requires submitting to the school?s philosophical understanding of what constitutes a therapeutic advance: admitting that one is flawed, has problems, deserves to be in the institute, and can only improve by being determined to change and doing as the counselors/teachers say. ?Focus? seminars are a key tool to facilitate this change at many places. In these sessions, groups of students are led by dynamic teachers who verbally abuse and humiliate individuals -- for example, by requiring that the teen admit his or her faults, followed by harsh critiques from their peers. Failure to find faults in oneself, or to make admissions of one?s wrongdoings, is answered with punishment -- which can involve taking away points, solitary confinement, or worse. Some students resort to inventing past wrongdoings to avoid punishment for not having anything to share.
Students are expected to follow a myriad of rules, and unreasonable punitive measures are doled out for even slight deviance. Rooms are to be kept spotless. Eyes aren?t to wander. Speaking or laughing out of turn is forbidden. Several survivors and their parents, writing of their experiences in on-line forums, paint a grim picture of this extreme regimen of discipline:
?I laughed once when everybody had just gotten into bed and I was grabbed from behind [by] staff by the neck and arm . . . my face was smashed into the wall and then [I was] dragged 15 feet to a confinement cell.?
?At dinner we would, like jail, have a certain time and a certain way to eat and afterwards go straight into exercise . . . I remember it making a lot of us sick but we wouldn?t say anything or we would have more punishment.?
?[My daughter] was severely punished with isolation and seclusion for a week for describing her maltreatment in a group therapy session. She was drugged with an injection of five milligrams of Haldol by force while six people held her down. During this episode she told staff that she could not breathe and nearly died from asphyxiation. After the ordeal she became unconscious and blacked out. The staff left her in this small, cold, concrete room. No one monitored her. In the morning she was lethargic and staff kicked her until she woke up. She was then faced with the horrifying side effects of a Haldol overdose -- facial contortions, drooling, inability to swallow, blindness and severe back pain.? [4]
Many survivors are beginning to share their stories in internet forums, and some are attempting to file lawsuits. But it is likely that an even greater number are remaining silent. After all, these schools employ textbook brainwashing techniques -- physical isolation, cutting off communication with peers and family, strict discipline, lack of privacy, constant indoctrination to the school?s version of reality, and punishment for not accepting this reality. Historically, these techniques have been used to successfully turn hardened soldiers into zealots for their enemies, or to gain allegiance of normal adults to cults; children, especially those who may be mentally ill, are especially susceptible. Furthermore, the impossibility of escape or ability to control one?s environment is also likely to induce learned helplessness. Beginning with Martin Seligmann?s work on dogs, psychologists have come to understand that both animals and humans can enter the state of helplessness -- characterized by depression, submissiveness, and apathy -- when they suffer stresses that they cannot predict or control. [5] This process is increasingly being understood as a factor in the development of mental illness, and helps to explain why survivors of these schools report suffering from emotional problems that they did not have before their ?treatment?.
The Culprits
A look at the group of people who own and operate these facilities does nothing to dispel the hope that all these abuse allegations are false. The founders of these schools, and architects of their behavior modification programs, are not psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, or in some cases, even college graduates. Nepotism runs deep. The World Wide Association of Specialty Programs (WWASP), based in Utah, is one of the largest corporations in this line of business, and is run by Ken Kay and Robert Lichfield. Ken Kay?s son, Jay, runs the WWASP school in Jamaica, called Tranquility Bay. [3] Robert Lichfield?s brother, Narvis, ran a WWASP associated school in Costa Rica until it was closed due to claims of abuse. [6] Lichfield?s brother-in-law owns Majestic Ranch, another Utah school. [7] Such familial ties secure a web of secrecy and denial.
Troubling as the questionable nepotistic practices may be, even more disturbing are the political alliances the schools? owners are making. Lichfield personally contributed tens of thousands of dollars to Utah Republicans in the 2002 and 2004 elections. In 2004, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that Lichfield contributed $30,000 to the gubernatorial campaign of Marty Stephens just six days after Stephens, as House Speaker of the Utah state legislature, helped kill legislation that would have established state regulation of specialty schools such as Lichfield?s. [7] Lichfield also contributed heavily to the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign. The more WWASP can shore up support in Utah?s government, the more it can avoid regulation or investigation by state officials. And the more WWASP can gain support of congressmen or others on the national political stage, the less likely it is that the federal government will take action.
WWASP has also used its financial power to go on the offensive against its critics. In 2003 they initiated a lawsuit against Parents Universal Resource Experts (PURE), a group that provides free advice on parenting, after PURE began warning parents of the allegations of abuse by WWASP schools. A jury in summer 2004 decided against WWASP in that case, but that didn?t stop the corporation from suing International Survivors Action Committee (ISAC)?s director, Shelby Earnshaw, in early 2005 for similar reasons. [8,9] Other schools are also familiar with the tactic of silencing critics through lawsuits. In April 2005, Missouri?s Thayer Learning Center filed a lawsuit against Timothy Rocha, a former employee who only worked there for two weeks before quitting and reporting incidents of child abuse at the school to police. [10]
The Therapy
For institutes that bill themselves as ?therapeutic?, there seems to be a paucity of proper medical staff at some of these schools. The website for Tranquility Bay, for instance, lists only one M.D. associated with the school: an optometrist. Spring Creek Lodge (another WWASP school) has added a disclaimer to its website admitting it has no mental health professionals on staff. [11] Some schools list no counselors, physicians, or nurses on their websites at all.
Even when medical staff appears to be associated with these schools, they are acting at the margins of clinical legitimacy. There have been few well-conducted studies on the efficacy of these institutes. The 2001 Surgeon General?s report on Youth Violence concluded that programs of the type described above are not effective in reducing subsequent criminal activity. [12] In October 2004, a panel from the National Institutes of Health studying youth violence noted several characteristics of ineffective treatment programs, including not being based on empirically sound theory, using fear-based strategies, and being poorly supervised. [13] The Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing also strongly warned against programs that used punitive measures, restricted children?s communication with parents, and otherwise failed to adhere to proper therapeutic guidelines, in a declaration in 1998. [14]
Some parents voice a lot of support for these schools, crediting them with positive change in their children. But, as described above, the behavior modification methodology of these schools depends on brainwashing tactics and induction of learned helplessness. The docility of the young people graduating from these programs may be interpreted as progress by parents, but is more likely to be interpreted as depression or sequelae of abuse by psychiatrists. It must also be noted that parents are often lied to, or otherwise kept in the dark, about what occurs at these institutes. And what?s more, some schools have established ?focus seminars? for parents, to mirror what their children are experiencing. Karen Lile, a mother who underwent such a seminar, describes the session in an on-line essay as intensive group brainwashing. [15]
The Money
These schools appear to be quite profitable, and some are being gobbled up by large health care corporations. Provo Canyon School of Utah, subject of several lawsuits over abuses occurring at the institute, is owned by Universal Health Services, the 3rd largest health-care company in the United States. WWASP?s annual gross earnings are estimated to be at least $70 million. One group monitoring abuses at these schools, HEAL (Human Earth Animal Liberation), maintains a list on their website of 85 schools that they suspect of being abusive; clearly there are many companies that see economic potential in this field. [16]
Indeed, one of the most disgusting aspects of private ?therapeutic education? is that it exemplifies how unfettered entrepreneurship can exploit good intentions and trample rights in pursuit of profit. Could a more perfect market exist for the venture capitalist? The demand is huge, since there is no shortage of parents worried sick about the behavior of their teenage children. The profit is considerable, since proprietors can get away with charging tuitions comparable to the best colleges. Since parents often allow schools to hold children until the school deems them ready for release, all the school has to do is invent a reason why the child?s change is not complete in order to continue receiving tuition payment. Regulation can be fended off from government officials by claiming the noble cause of treating unmanageable teens, or if that doesn?t work, by hiding under the protection of religious freedom and rights of parents to determine what?s best for the kids. These schools attempt to brainwash parents, thus ensuring a reliable source of glowing testimonials. [15] And complaints from dissatisfied customers can be negated by simply labeling the aggrieved teen as ?manipulative?, or someone who refused to give the treatment a chance.
The Future
Some may defend these schools on the notion that families have the right to choose such extreme options for change. This argument ignores the fact that often the decision is made to send a child to these schools without the child?s consent, or without even the child knowing the parents are considering this option. Also, the parent?s decision may be based on misleading advertising, or a lack of valid information about the programs.
The mainstream media has been mostly silent on this issue. Perhaps the most attention these schools have received was when, on national television, Dr. Phil sent a child to Provo Canyon School. ?Tough love,? the code-phrase for ?child abuse,? appears to have a lot of entertainment value. Despite the relative lack of media attention, grassroots efforts to close these schools or gain more regulation have begun to pay off. In 2003, Congressman George Miller (D-CA) demanded that Attorney General John Ashcroft open a federal investigation into these schools. Ashcroft refused, but Miller has continued his efforts by introducing, in April 2005, a bill into Congress that would establish more oversight of these schools. The ?End Institutional Abuse Against Children Act? would supply states with funding to regulate and license residential treatment programs, and would establish federal penalties for abuse within such institutions. [17] This bill, H.R.1738, is currently in the House Education and the Workforce committee.
There are three approaches to minimizing the damage done by behavior modification institutes. The primary approach, of course, is to directly challenge the right of these schools to operate without tight government regulation. Even the mere existence of such schools is an affront to human dignity, and we must support initiatives such as Rep. Miller?s bill. As a second approach, we should educate our peers who are parents, or will be parents, of teenagers. Surely it is not an easy task to raise rebellious teens, and parents hate for others to meddle in family affairs; but parents desperate for an effective approach to reforming their children make easy prey for the misrepresentative advertising of these institutes. Finally, there is a cultural component to this fight; myths of absolute personal responsibility run deep in our nation, as does sympathy for strict discipline. Despite the mounting scientific and clinical evidence demonstrating the long-term dangers of corporal punishment, many individuals still accept the classic principle, ?spare the rod, spoil the child.?
Ending this form of institutional abuse should be an urgent issue for American progressives, since the trend is likely to grow worse. The current political climate is very favorable to privatization of education, ?tough love? or zero-tolerance stances on juvenile justice, and very hostile to anything that looks like government meddling in parents? care of their kids. It would be a sad state of affairs if preventing child abuse became a partisan issue, with those opposed to these forms of schools dismissed as ?anti-family? or encroaching on constitutional rights; but we must be prepared for that possibility, and to force this issue into national consciousness.
Joshua Chiappelli is a medical student in Philadelphia who conducts independent research on the subjects of authority and power.
REFERENCES
[1] Parks, A. 2000. An American Gulag: Secret P.O.W. Camps for Teens. Eldorado Springs, CO: The Education Exchange.
[2] Leonard, A., "School of Hard Knocks," Salon, Feb. 23, 1998.
[3] Aitkenhead, D., "The Last Resort," The Observer, June 29, 2003.
[4] Internet forum for survivors of institutional abuse.
[5] Seligman, M.E.P. Helplessness: On Depression, Development, and Death. San Francisco: (W.H. Freeman and Co, 1975).
[6] Varney, "J. Tough love school sent to timeout," Inside Costa Rica, June 26, 2003.
[7] Harrie,D. & Gehrke, "R. Teen-help operators have clout," The Salt-Lake Tribune, Sept. 21, 2004.
[8] International Survivors Action Committee.
[9] Messenger, "T. Boonville needs to think twice before getting stung by WWASP," Columbia Daily Tribune, April 13, 2005.
[10] Associated Press, "Boot Camp Files Suit Against ?Ex-Sergeant,?" Columbia Daily Tribune, April 21, 2005.
[11] Spring Creek Lodge Academy Website.
[12] Chapter 5, Youth Violence: A report of the Surgeon General. 2001.
[13] Preventing Violence and Related Health-Risking Social Behaviors in Adolescents: An NIH State-of-the-Science Conference. National Institutes of Health, October 13-15, 2004.
[14] Declaration of the Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing, Sept. 1998.
[15] Liles, K. Breaking the vow of secrecy.
[16] Human Earth Animal Liberation, http://www.heal-online.org.
[17] Representative Miller Introduces Legislation to Curb Child Abuse in Residential Treatment Programs. Press release from George Miller?s website, April 20, 2005.
Child Abuse for Profit is Occurring in America
by Joshua Chiappelli
http://www.dissidentvoice.org
April 20, 2006
?No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.?
-- Article 5, U.N. Declaration of Universal Human Rights
?You wouldn?t believe the terrible things that were done to me,? says Alexia Parks? niece in An American Gulag. [1] But she continues: ?I know now it was for my own good.? Thus ends Parks? account of her struggle to help her niece after she was enrolled in several behavior modification schools. The similarity to the end of 1984 is striking: a previously headstrong individual returns from months of torture as merely a shell of their former self, having learned to love their tormentors. The difference is that Parks? story is true.
Usual definitions of torture include the use of practices such as solitary confinement, non-medical application of psychiatric drugs, unprovoked beatings, starvation, and verbal abuse as means to change a person?s behavior. Many Americans are reluctant to support the use of these techniques even on criminals, much less teenagers with behavioral problems. Unfortunately, this is exactly what is being done on a large-scale basis as ?tough-love? programs have become a booming industry. These programs come in several varieties, including boot camps, ?therapeutic? boarding schools or academies, and wilderness programs. At the cost of several thousand dollars per month (up to $40,000/year), these schools supposedly provide a climate where troubled teens can continue their regular education while receiving treatments designed to improve their behavior.
In the philosophy of these schools, reform involves two goals: to break kids down through strict discipline and routine, then to build them back up through self-examination and therapy of various sorts. Usually, only the former is accomplished. So successful is the breaking down process that former inmates of these institutions often suffer symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome, even years after being freed. Ex-students call themselves, with good cause, ?survivors?.
The Victims
A reasonable estimate is that at any given time, several thousand American teenagers are enrolled in such a program. Sometimes these teens are incorrigible delinquents, who commit petty crimes, do drugs, and make life miserable for their parents. Parents send them to ?tough love? programs out of worry that the kid is jail-bound. But just as often, parents enroll their kids in these programs because of more banal worries -- that their kid has had premarital sex, experimented with alcohol and pot, or merely because the teen is defiant and talks back. One of the common factors is that teens sent to these programs seem to suffer disproportionately from ADD, depression, anxiety, and substance abuse problems.
The ?breaking down? process can begin in the teen?s own bedroom. Some schools offer an ?escort service,? involving captors who arrive at the family?s house at night, abduct the kid (putting them in handcuffs if necessary), and flying them to the school. [2] Often, the kids aren?t warned by their parents that they have been enrolled in these programs. Once at the school, kids are isolated from outside communication; even contact with the parents is usually severed for at least several weeks. Even after contact with parents is restored, letters to or from the teen will be read, and sometimes edited, by the school?s staff, and telephone calls are monitored.
Most of these schools use a ?point? system for evaluating the progress of a student. One cannot ?graduate? until one accumulates enough points. Points are taken away as punishment for minor infractions, prolonging the teen?s stay. [3] Earning points requires submitting to the school?s philosophical understanding of what constitutes a therapeutic advance: admitting that one is flawed, has problems, deserves to be in the institute, and can only improve by being determined to change and doing as the counselors/teachers say. ?Focus? seminars are a key tool to facilitate this change at many places. In these sessions, groups of students are led by dynamic teachers who verbally abuse and humiliate individuals -- for example, by requiring that the teen admit his or her faults, followed by harsh critiques from their peers. Failure to find faults in oneself, or to make admissions of one?s wrongdoings, is answered with punishment -- which can involve taking away points, solitary confinement, or worse. Some students resort to inventing past wrongdoings to avoid punishment for not having anything to share.
Students are expected to follow a myriad of rules, and unreasonable punitive measures are doled out for even slight deviance. Rooms are to be kept spotless. Eyes aren?t to wander. Speaking or laughing out of turn is forbidden. Several survivors and their parents, writing of their experiences in on-line forums, paint a grim picture of this extreme regimen of discipline:
?I laughed once when everybody had just gotten into bed and I was grabbed from behind [by] staff by the neck and arm . . . my face was smashed into the wall and then [I was] dragged 15 feet to a confinement cell.?
?At dinner we would, like jail, have a certain time and a certain way to eat and afterwards go straight into exercise . . . I remember it making a lot of us sick but we wouldn?t say anything or we would have more punishment.?
?[My daughter] was severely punished with isolation and seclusion for a week for describing her maltreatment in a group therapy session. She was drugged with an injection of five milligrams of Haldol by force while six people held her down. During this episode she told staff that she could not breathe and nearly died from asphyxiation. After the ordeal she became unconscious and blacked out. The staff left her in this small, cold, concrete room. No one monitored her. In the morning she was lethargic and staff kicked her until she woke up. She was then faced with the horrifying side effects of a Haldol overdose -- facial contortions, drooling, inability to swallow, blindness and severe back pain.? [4]
Many survivors are beginning to share their stories in internet forums, and some are attempting to file lawsuits. But it is likely that an even greater number are remaining silent. After all, these schools employ textbook brainwashing techniques -- physical isolation, cutting off communication with peers and family, strict discipline, lack of privacy, constant indoctrination to the school?s version of reality, and punishment for not accepting this reality. Historically, these techniques have been used to successfully turn hardened soldiers into zealots for their enemies, or to gain allegiance of normal adults to cults; children, especially those who may be mentally ill, are especially susceptible. Furthermore, the impossibility of escape or ability to control one?s environment is also likely to induce learned helplessness. Beginning with Martin Seligmann?s work on dogs, psychologists have come to understand that both animals and humans can enter the state of helplessness -- characterized by depression, submissiveness, and apathy -- when they suffer stresses that they cannot predict or control. [5] This process is increasingly being understood as a factor in the development of mental illness, and helps to explain why survivors of these schools report suffering from emotional problems that they did not have before their ?treatment?.
The Culprits
A look at the group of people who own and operate these facilities does nothing to dispel the hope that all these abuse allegations are false. The founders of these schools, and architects of their behavior modification programs, are not psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, or in some cases, even college graduates. Nepotism runs deep. The World Wide Association of Specialty Programs (WWASP), based in Utah, is one of the largest corporations in this line of business, and is run by Ken Kay and Robert Lichfield. Ken Kay?s son, Jay, runs the WWASP school in Jamaica, called Tranquility Bay. [3] Robert Lichfield?s brother, Narvis, ran a WWASP associated school in Costa Rica until it was closed due to claims of abuse. [6] Lichfield?s brother-in-law owns Majestic Ranch, another Utah school. [7] Such familial ties secure a web of secrecy and denial.
Troubling as the questionable nepotistic practices may be, even more disturbing are the political alliances the schools? owners are making. Lichfield personally contributed tens of thousands of dollars to Utah Republicans in the 2002 and 2004 elections. In 2004, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that Lichfield contributed $30,000 to the gubernatorial campaign of Marty Stephens just six days after Stephens, as House Speaker of the Utah state legislature, helped kill legislation that would have established state regulation of specialty schools such as Lichfield?s. [7] Lichfield also contributed heavily to the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign. The more WWASP can shore up support in Utah?s government, the more it can avoid regulation or investigation by state officials. And the more WWASP can gain support of congressmen or others on the national political stage, the less likely it is that the federal government will take action.
WWASP has also used its financial power to go on the offensive against its critics. In 2003 they initiated a lawsuit against Parents Universal Resource Experts (PURE), a group that provides free advice on parenting, after PURE began warning parents of the allegations of abuse by WWASP schools. A jury in summer 2004 decided against WWASP in that case, but that didn?t stop the corporation from suing International Survivors Action Committee (ISAC)?s director, Shelby Earnshaw, in early 2005 for similar reasons. [8,9] Other schools are also familiar with the tactic of silencing critics through lawsuits. In April 2005, Missouri?s Thayer Learning Center filed a lawsuit against Timothy Rocha, a former employee who only worked there for two weeks before quitting and reporting incidents of child abuse at the school to police. [10]
The Therapy
For institutes that bill themselves as ?therapeutic?, there seems to be a paucity of proper medical staff at some of these schools. The website for Tranquility Bay, for instance, lists only one M.D. associated with the school: an optometrist. Spring Creek Lodge (another WWASP school) has added a disclaimer to its website admitting it has no mental health professionals on staff. [11] Some schools list no counselors, physicians, or nurses on their websites at all.
Even when medical staff appears to be associated with these schools, they are acting at the margins of clinical legitimacy. There have been few well-conducted studies on the efficacy of these institutes. The 2001 Surgeon General?s report on Youth Violence concluded that programs of the type described above are not effective in reducing subsequent criminal activity. [12] In October 2004, a panel from the National Institutes of Health studying youth violence noted several characteristics of ineffective treatment programs, including not being based on empirically sound theory, using fear-based strategies, and being poorly supervised. [13] The Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing also strongly warned against programs that used punitive measures, restricted children?s communication with parents, and otherwise failed to adhere to proper therapeutic guidelines, in a declaration in 1998. [14]
Some parents voice a lot of support for these schools, crediting them with positive change in their children. But, as described above, the behavior modification methodology of these schools depends on brainwashing tactics and induction of learned helplessness. The docility of the young people graduating from these programs may be interpreted as progress by parents, but is more likely to be interpreted as depression or sequelae of abuse by psychiatrists. It must also be noted that parents are often lied to, or otherwise kept in the dark, about what occurs at these institutes. And what?s more, some schools have established ?focus seminars? for parents, to mirror what their children are experiencing. Karen Lile, a mother who underwent such a seminar, describes the session in an on-line essay as intensive group brainwashing. [15]
The Money
These schools appear to be quite profitable, and some are being gobbled up by large health care corporations. Provo Canyon School of Utah, subject of several lawsuits over abuses occurring at the institute, is owned by Universal Health Services, the 3rd largest health-care company in the United States. WWASP?s annual gross earnings are estimated to be at least $70 million. One group monitoring abuses at these schools, HEAL (Human Earth Animal Liberation), maintains a list on their website of 85 schools that they suspect of being abusive; clearly there are many companies that see economic potential in this field. [16]
Indeed, one of the most disgusting aspects of private ?therapeutic education? is that it exemplifies how unfettered entrepreneurship can exploit good intentions and trample rights in pursuit of profit. Could a more perfect market exist for the venture capitalist? The demand is huge, since there is no shortage of parents worried sick about the behavior of their teenage children. The profit is considerable, since proprietors can get away with charging tuitions comparable to the best colleges. Since parents often allow schools to hold children until the school deems them ready for release, all the school has to do is invent a reason why the child?s change is not complete in order to continue receiving tuition payment. Regulation can be fended off from government officials by claiming the noble cause of treating unmanageable teens, or if that doesn?t work, by hiding under the protection of religious freedom and rights of parents to determine what?s best for the kids. These schools attempt to brainwash parents, thus ensuring a reliable source of glowing testimonials. [15] And complaints from dissatisfied customers can be negated by simply labeling the aggrieved teen as ?manipulative?, or someone who refused to give the treatment a chance.
The Future
Some may defend these schools on the notion that families have the right to choose such extreme options for change. This argument ignores the fact that often the decision is made to send a child to these schools without the child?s consent, or without even the child knowing the parents are considering this option. Also, the parent?s decision may be based on misleading advertising, or a lack of valid information about the programs.
The mainstream media has been mostly silent on this issue. Perhaps the most attention these schools have received was when, on national television, Dr. Phil sent a child to Provo Canyon School. ?Tough love,? the code-phrase for ?child abuse,? appears to have a lot of entertainment value. Despite the relative lack of media attention, grassroots efforts to close these schools or gain more regulation have begun to pay off. In 2003, Congressman George Miller (D-CA) demanded that Attorney General John Ashcroft open a federal investigation into these schools. Ashcroft refused, but Miller has continued his efforts by introducing, in April 2005, a bill into Congress that would establish more oversight of these schools. The ?End Institutional Abuse Against Children Act? would supply states with funding to regulate and license residential treatment programs, and would establish federal penalties for abuse within such institutions. [17] This bill, H.R.1738, is currently in the House Education and the Workforce committee.
There are three approaches to minimizing the damage done by behavior modification institutes. The primary approach, of course, is to directly challenge the right of these schools to operate without tight government regulation. Even the mere existence of such schools is an affront to human dignity, and we must support initiatives such as Rep. Miller?s bill. As a second approach, we should educate our peers who are parents, or will be parents, of teenagers. Surely it is not an easy task to raise rebellious teens, and parents hate for others to meddle in family affairs; but parents desperate for an effective approach to reforming their children make easy prey for the misrepresentative advertising of these institutes. Finally, there is a cultural component to this fight; myths of absolute personal responsibility run deep in our nation, as does sympathy for strict discipline. Despite the mounting scientific and clinical evidence demonstrating the long-term dangers of corporal punishment, many individuals still accept the classic principle, ?spare the rod, spoil the child.?
Ending this form of institutional abuse should be an urgent issue for American progressives, since the trend is likely to grow worse. The current political climate is very favorable to privatization of education, ?tough love? or zero-tolerance stances on juvenile justice, and very hostile to anything that looks like government meddling in parents? care of their kids. It would be a sad state of affairs if preventing child abuse became a partisan issue, with those opposed to these forms of schools dismissed as ?anti-family? or encroaching on constitutional rights; but we must be prepared for that possibility, and to force this issue into national consciousness.
Joshua Chiappelli is a medical student in Philadelphia who conducts independent research on the subjects of authority and power.
REFERENCES
[1] Parks, A. 2000. An American Gulag: Secret P.O.W. Camps for Teens. Eldorado Springs, CO: The Education Exchange.
[2] Leonard, A., "School of Hard Knocks," Salon, Feb. 23, 1998.
[3] Aitkenhead, D., "The Last Resort," The Observer, June 29, 2003.
[4] Internet forum for survivors of institutional abuse.
[5] Seligman, M.E.P. Helplessness: On Depression, Development, and Death. San Francisco: (W.H. Freeman and Co, 1975).
[6] Varney, "J. Tough love school sent to timeout," Inside Costa Rica, June 26, 2003.
[7] Harrie,D. & Gehrke, "R. Teen-help operators have clout," The Salt-Lake Tribune, Sept. 21, 2004.
[8] International Survivors Action Committee.
[9] Messenger, "T. Boonville needs to think twice before getting stung by WWASP," Columbia Daily Tribune, April 13, 2005.
[10] Associated Press, "Boot Camp Files Suit Against ?Ex-Sergeant,?" Columbia Daily Tribune, April 21, 2005.
[11] Spring Creek Lodge Academy Website.
[12] Chapter 5, Youth Violence: A report of the Surgeon General. 2001.
[13] Preventing Violence and Related Health-Risking Social Behaviors in Adolescents: An NIH State-of-the-Science Conference. National Institutes of Health, October 13-15, 2004.
[14] Declaration of the Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing, Sept. 1998.
[15] Liles, K. Breaking the vow of secrecy.
[16] Human Earth Animal Liberation, http://www.heal-online.org.
[17] Representative Miller Introduces Legislation to Curb Child Abuse in Residential Treatment Programs. Press release from George Miller?s website, April 20, 2005.
When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, "Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?"
-- Quentin Crisp
18
Tacitus' Realm / The Sanitized Horrors of Guantanamo Bay
« on: February 25, 2006, 05:25:00 PM »
The U.S. has adopted the practice of force-feeding detainees who hunger strike
by Keith Barratt ("Welshman")
The United States and Iran share an expression of public opinion, one that still causes considerable distress to the majority of British:
[In 1997] the people of Hartford, Connecticut, dedicated a monument to Bobby Sands and the other Irish Republican Army hunger strikers. The monument stands in a traffic circle known as Bobby Sands Circle, at the bottom of Maple Avenue near Goodwin Park. The Iranian government named a street in Tehran after Bobby Sands. (It was formerly Winston Churchill Street.) It runs alongside the British embassy.
Readers may or may not be familiar with this part of Northern Ireland's history, involving the death through a hunger strike of the IRA detainee. Bobby Sands was 27 years old when he died, 5 May 1981, after 66 days without food. Nine other IRA prisoners died following him in the same strike. Sands and his fellow strikers were protesting their reassignment from political prisoner status back to criminal status; poltical status was won the previous year through a hunger strike. Sands was elected to Parliament several days after he began his protest. The British government's unwillingness to concede to the prisoner's demands during the second strike, which led to the death of Bobby Sands and the other detainees, resulted in much greater sympathy for the IRA from Irish nationalists and greatly strengthened the movement as well as earned recognition from people around the world. A further brief summary is given by the Cain Institute.
Before discussing the aspect of force-feeding that is taking place now in U.S. prisons, I want to step back a bit further into British history. I first became aware of the question of force-feeding through an excellent BBC docudrama many years ago about suffragettes, who employed civil disobedience in the UK from 1900 to 1920 in order to achieve the vote for women.
Many were imprisoned and used hunger strikes to further their cause. The authorities could not let these women, many of whom were connected to leading families in the country, die and become martyrs. They were forcibly fed.
The BBC did not hide what this meant in their dramatization of the events. They showed the women being bound to chairs, their heads pulled back by their hair, and the rough-handed prison warders thrusting large-diameter rubber tubes down their throats and pouring in a food mixture through a funnel.
So that you take what follows as seriously as you take all other acts now being done in our name, I ask you to sense the ugliness of the abuse, your mouth being forced open, the taste of that tube, and the abomination of the act. For surely we have become so accustomed to these atrocities that our newspapers can discuss them calmly and objectively. But you can no more be objective about these horrors than you can calmly debate in Congress where and when torture might be acceptable.
Yet what follows is classified not as torture but as prisoner welfare. Constance Lytton was force-fed in October 1909. Her book Prison and Prisoners included an account of her experiences:
Two of the wardresses took hold of my arms, one held my head and one my feet. The doctor leant on my knees as he stooped over my chest to get at my mouth. I shut my mouth and clenched my teethâ?¦. The doctor seemed annoyed at my resistance and he broke into a temper as he pried my teeth with the steel implement. The pain was intense and at last I must have given way, for he got the gap between my teeth, when he proceeded to turn it until my jaws were fastened wide apart. Then he put down my throat a tube, which seemed to me much too wide and something like four feet in length. I choked the moment it touched my throat. Then the food was poured in quickly; it made me sick a few seconds after it was down. I was sick all over the doctor and wardresses. As the doctor left he gave me a slap on the cheek. Presently the wardresses left me. Before long I heard the sounds of the forced feeding in the next cell to mine. It was almost more than I could bear, it was Elsie Howley. When the ghastly process was over and all quiet. I tapped on the wall and called out at the top of my voice, "No Surrender," and then came the answer in Elsie's voice, "No Surrender."
As is happening now in Guantánamo Bay, nasal insertion was also employed. Mary Leigh, a member of the WSPU, was forced-fed in September 1909:
On Saturday afternoon the wardress forced me onto the bed and two doctors came in. While I was held down a nasal tube was inserted. It is two yards long, with a funnel at the end; there is a glass junction in the middle to see if the liquid is passing. The end is put up the right and left nostril on alternative days. The sensation is most painful ? the drums of the ears seem to be bursting and there is a horrible pain in the throat and the breast. The tube is pushed down 20 inches. I am on the bed pinned down by wardresses, one doctor holds the funnel end, and the other doctor forces the other end up the nostrils. The one holding the funnel end pours the liquid down about a pint of milk, egg and milk is sometimes used.
Emmeline Pankhurst, who was then in her fifties, endured 10 hunger strikes. Kitty Marion underwent at least 200 force-feedings in prison while on hunger strike. Emmeline Pankhurst's sister, Mary Clarke, was taken ill at her home in Brighton soon after release from prison and died of a broken blood vessel, probably as a result of being forced-fed in Holloway Prison.
In Parliament James Keir Hardie, one of the founders of the Labour Party, said:
In reply to a question of mine today, Mr. Masterman, speaking on behalf of the Home Secretary, admitted that some of the nine prisoners now in Winston Green Gaol, Birmingham, had been subjected to "hospital treatment", and admitted that this euphemism meant administering food by force. The process employed was the insertion of a tube down the throat into the stomach and pumping the food down. To do this, I am advised, a gag has to be used to keep the mouth open.
That there is difference of opinion concerning the horrible brutality of this proceeding! Women worn and weak by hunger, are seized upon, held down by brute force, gagged, a tube inserted down the throat, and food poured or pumped into the stomach. Let British men think over the spectacle.
In 1913 the British Government sought a better way to treat such prisoners. The Prisoner's (Temporary Discharge of Ill Health) Act came into force. Suffragettes were now allowed to go on hunger strike, but as soon as they became ill they were released. Once the women had recovered, the police rearrested them and returned them to prison where they completed their sentences. This successful means of dealing with hunger strikes became known as the Cat and Mouse Act.
Now step forward in time to the 1970s and '80s. Prisoners detained for terrorism in Northern Ireland undertook hunger strikes in support of demands that were unacceptable to British public opinion. In words so terribly familiar today, the Cat and Mouse Act could not be employed, on the grounds that alleged IRA gunmen could not be let loose on the streets. At the same time, the British government could not countenance creating martyrs by letting them die.
Debate on force-feeding came to a head in the UK in the 1970s when two Irish prisoners, Dolours and Marian Price, legally challenged the Home Office's right to force-feed in any case other than where refusal of food arose from a medical or psychiatric condition. It caused a furor, and the prison policy of involuntary feeding that earlier IRA prisoners had experienced was overturned. In 1981 the wishes of hunger strikers were respected and doctors supervised death-fasts in Northern Ireland. The death of Bobby Sands came as a result. The policy was subsequently refined, so that when prisoners became too weak to communicate effectively, the prisoner's priest met with family members so that a final decision on intervention could be taken.
The hunger strikes came to an end, in part because of the realization that each of the families of the strikers would ask for medical intervention whenever the strikers lapsed into unconsciousness. At the same time, on 6 October 1981 James Prior, then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, announced a series of measures that went a long way toward meeting many aspects of the prisoners' five demands.
The relevance of this history to Guantánamo Bay will become clear.
The New York Times of February 9, 2006, includes this information:
United States military authorities have taken tougher measures to force-feed detainees engaged in hunger strikes at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after concluding that some were determined to commit suicide to protest their indefinite confinement, military officials have said.
In recent weeks, the officials said, guards have begun strapping recalcitrant detainees into "restraint chairs," sometimes for hours a day, to feed them through tubes and prevent them from deliberately vomiting afterward.
Some officials said the new actions reflected concern at Guantanamo and the Pentagon that the protests were becoming difficult to control and that the death of one or more prisoners could intensify international criticism of the detention center.
Colonel Martin said force-feeding was carried out 'in a humane and compassionate manner'
by Keith Barratt ("Welshman")
The United States and Iran share an expression of public opinion, one that still causes considerable distress to the majority of British:
[In 1997] the people of Hartford, Connecticut, dedicated a monument to Bobby Sands and the other Irish Republican Army hunger strikers. The monument stands in a traffic circle known as Bobby Sands Circle, at the bottom of Maple Avenue near Goodwin Park. The Iranian government named a street in Tehran after Bobby Sands. (It was formerly Winston Churchill Street.) It runs alongside the British embassy.
Readers may or may not be familiar with this part of Northern Ireland's history, involving the death through a hunger strike of the IRA detainee. Bobby Sands was 27 years old when he died, 5 May 1981, after 66 days without food. Nine other IRA prisoners died following him in the same strike. Sands and his fellow strikers were protesting their reassignment from political prisoner status back to criminal status; poltical status was won the previous year through a hunger strike. Sands was elected to Parliament several days after he began his protest. The British government's unwillingness to concede to the prisoner's demands during the second strike, which led to the death of Bobby Sands and the other detainees, resulted in much greater sympathy for the IRA from Irish nationalists and greatly strengthened the movement as well as earned recognition from people around the world. A further brief summary is given by the Cain Institute.
Before discussing the aspect of force-feeding that is taking place now in U.S. prisons, I want to step back a bit further into British history. I first became aware of the question of force-feeding through an excellent BBC docudrama many years ago about suffragettes, who employed civil disobedience in the UK from 1900 to 1920 in order to achieve the vote for women.
Many were imprisoned and used hunger strikes to further their cause. The authorities could not let these women, many of whom were connected to leading families in the country, die and become martyrs. They were forcibly fed.
The BBC did not hide what this meant in their dramatization of the events. They showed the women being bound to chairs, their heads pulled back by their hair, and the rough-handed prison warders thrusting large-diameter rubber tubes down their throats and pouring in a food mixture through a funnel.
So that you take what follows as seriously as you take all other acts now being done in our name, I ask you to sense the ugliness of the abuse, your mouth being forced open, the taste of that tube, and the abomination of the act. For surely we have become so accustomed to these atrocities that our newspapers can discuss them calmly and objectively. But you can no more be objective about these horrors than you can calmly debate in Congress where and when torture might be acceptable.
Yet what follows is classified not as torture but as prisoner welfare. Constance Lytton was force-fed in October 1909. Her book Prison and Prisoners included an account of her experiences:
Two of the wardresses took hold of my arms, one held my head and one my feet. The doctor leant on my knees as he stooped over my chest to get at my mouth. I shut my mouth and clenched my teethâ?¦. The doctor seemed annoyed at my resistance and he broke into a temper as he pried my teeth with the steel implement. The pain was intense and at last I must have given way, for he got the gap between my teeth, when he proceeded to turn it until my jaws were fastened wide apart. Then he put down my throat a tube, which seemed to me much too wide and something like four feet in length. I choked the moment it touched my throat. Then the food was poured in quickly; it made me sick a few seconds after it was down. I was sick all over the doctor and wardresses. As the doctor left he gave me a slap on the cheek. Presently the wardresses left me. Before long I heard the sounds of the forced feeding in the next cell to mine. It was almost more than I could bear, it was Elsie Howley. When the ghastly process was over and all quiet. I tapped on the wall and called out at the top of my voice, "No Surrender," and then came the answer in Elsie's voice, "No Surrender."
As is happening now in Guantánamo Bay, nasal insertion was also employed. Mary Leigh, a member of the WSPU, was forced-fed in September 1909:
On Saturday afternoon the wardress forced me onto the bed and two doctors came in. While I was held down a nasal tube was inserted. It is two yards long, with a funnel at the end; there is a glass junction in the middle to see if the liquid is passing. The end is put up the right and left nostril on alternative days. The sensation is most painful ? the drums of the ears seem to be bursting and there is a horrible pain in the throat and the breast. The tube is pushed down 20 inches. I am on the bed pinned down by wardresses, one doctor holds the funnel end, and the other doctor forces the other end up the nostrils. The one holding the funnel end pours the liquid down about a pint of milk, egg and milk is sometimes used.
Emmeline Pankhurst, who was then in her fifties, endured 10 hunger strikes. Kitty Marion underwent at least 200 force-feedings in prison while on hunger strike. Emmeline Pankhurst's sister, Mary Clarke, was taken ill at her home in Brighton soon after release from prison and died of a broken blood vessel, probably as a result of being forced-fed in Holloway Prison.
In Parliament James Keir Hardie, one of the founders of the Labour Party, said:
In reply to a question of mine today, Mr. Masterman, speaking on behalf of the Home Secretary, admitted that some of the nine prisoners now in Winston Green Gaol, Birmingham, had been subjected to "hospital treatment", and admitted that this euphemism meant administering food by force. The process employed was the insertion of a tube down the throat into the stomach and pumping the food down. To do this, I am advised, a gag has to be used to keep the mouth open.
That there is difference of opinion concerning the horrible brutality of this proceeding! Women worn and weak by hunger, are seized upon, held down by brute force, gagged, a tube inserted down the throat, and food poured or pumped into the stomach. Let British men think over the spectacle.
In 1913 the British Government sought a better way to treat such prisoners. The Prisoner's (Temporary Discharge of Ill Health) Act came into force. Suffragettes were now allowed to go on hunger strike, but as soon as they became ill they were released. Once the women had recovered, the police rearrested them and returned them to prison where they completed their sentences. This successful means of dealing with hunger strikes became known as the Cat and Mouse Act.
Now step forward in time to the 1970s and '80s. Prisoners detained for terrorism in Northern Ireland undertook hunger strikes in support of demands that were unacceptable to British public opinion. In words so terribly familiar today, the Cat and Mouse Act could not be employed, on the grounds that alleged IRA gunmen could not be let loose on the streets. At the same time, the British government could not countenance creating martyrs by letting them die.
Debate on force-feeding came to a head in the UK in the 1970s when two Irish prisoners, Dolours and Marian Price, legally challenged the Home Office's right to force-feed in any case other than where refusal of food arose from a medical or psychiatric condition. It caused a furor, and the prison policy of involuntary feeding that earlier IRA prisoners had experienced was overturned. In 1981 the wishes of hunger strikers were respected and doctors supervised death-fasts in Northern Ireland. The death of Bobby Sands came as a result. The policy was subsequently refined, so that when prisoners became too weak to communicate effectively, the prisoner's priest met with family members so that a final decision on intervention could be taken.
The hunger strikes came to an end, in part because of the realization that each of the families of the strikers would ask for medical intervention whenever the strikers lapsed into unconsciousness. At the same time, on 6 October 1981 James Prior, then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, announced a series of measures that went a long way toward meeting many aspects of the prisoners' five demands.
The relevance of this history to Guantánamo Bay will become clear.
The New York Times of February 9, 2006, includes this information:
United States military authorities have taken tougher measures to force-feed detainees engaged in hunger strikes at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after concluding that some were determined to commit suicide to protest their indefinite confinement, military officials have said.
In recent weeks, the officials said, guards have begun strapping recalcitrant detainees into "restraint chairs," sometimes for hours a day, to feed them through tubes and prevent them from deliberately vomiting afterward.
Some officials said the new actions reflected concern at Guantanamo and the Pentagon that the protests were becoming difficult to control and that the death of one or more prisoners could intensify international criticism of the detention center.
Colonel Martin said force-feeding was carried out 'in a humane and compassionate manner'
19
Open Free for All / Israel shuns Pat Robertson
« on: January 11, 2006, 01:09:00 PM »
Tourism Ministry calls off deal with Robertson following comments by U.S. Evangelical leader claiming Sharon illness due to 'God'
Associated Press
Israel won't do business with Pat Robertson after the U.S. Christian Evangelist said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's massive stroke was divine punishment for Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, an official said Wednesday, placing a USD 50 million deal with the Christian leader in doubt.
Robertson, a Christian broadcaster, is leading a group of evangelicals who have collected money to build a Christian Heritage Center in Israel's northern Galilee region, where tradition says Jesus lived and taught.
Israel was to provide the land and infrastructure for the project, saying it would bring millions of tourism dollars into the country. But the project now is in doubt in light of Robertson's comments, said Ido Hartuv, spokesman for Tourism Minister Avraham Hirschson.
"We will not do business with him, only with other evangelicals who don't back these comments," Hartuv said. "We will do business with other evangelical leaders, friends of Israel, but not with him."
A day after Sharon's stroke on Jan. 4, Robertson suggested it was punishment for "dividing God's land," a reference to Israel's August pullout from the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements.
"God considers this land to be his," Robertson said on his TV program "The 700 Club." "You read the Bible and he says 'this is my land,' and for any prime minister of Israel who decides he is going to carve it up and give it away, God says, 'No, this is mine."'
'Unacceptable'
Robertson's comments infuriated Israel, and drew condemnation from other Christian leaders and even U.S. President George W. Bush. "We can't accept this kind of statement," Hartuv said.
The ministry's decision was first reported in Wednesday's edition of The Jerusalem Post.
Robertson's Christian Heritage Center was to be tucked away in 35 acres (14 hectares) of rolling Galilee hills, near key Christian sites such as Capernaum, the Mount of the Beatitudes, where tradition says Jesus delivered the Sermon of the Mount, and Tabgha - on the shores of the Sea of Galilee - where Christians believe Jesus performed the miracle of the loaves and fish.
Israel was considering leasing the land to the Christians for free. Hirschson predicted it would annually draw up to 1 million pilgrims who would spend USD 1.5 billion in Israel and support about 40,000 jobs.
Hirschson, however, is one of Sharon's biggest supporters, and a member of the centrist Kadima party recently founded by the prime minister.
Hartuv left the door open to continuing the project, but only with people who don't back Robertson's statements. "We want to see who in the group supports his (Robertson's) statements. Those who support the statements cannot do business with us. Those that publicly support Ariel Sharon's recovery... are welcome to do business with us," Hartuv said. "
source http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340 ... 41,00.html
Associated Press
Israel won't do business with Pat Robertson after the U.S. Christian Evangelist said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's massive stroke was divine punishment for Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, an official said Wednesday, placing a USD 50 million deal with the Christian leader in doubt.
Robertson, a Christian broadcaster, is leading a group of evangelicals who have collected money to build a Christian Heritage Center in Israel's northern Galilee region, where tradition says Jesus lived and taught.
Israel was to provide the land and infrastructure for the project, saying it would bring millions of tourism dollars into the country. But the project now is in doubt in light of Robertson's comments, said Ido Hartuv, spokesman for Tourism Minister Avraham Hirschson.
"We will not do business with him, only with other evangelicals who don't back these comments," Hartuv said. "We will do business with other evangelical leaders, friends of Israel, but not with him."
A day after Sharon's stroke on Jan. 4, Robertson suggested it was punishment for "dividing God's land," a reference to Israel's August pullout from the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements.
"God considers this land to be his," Robertson said on his TV program "The 700 Club." "You read the Bible and he says 'this is my land,' and for any prime minister of Israel who decides he is going to carve it up and give it away, God says, 'No, this is mine."'
'Unacceptable'
Robertson's comments infuriated Israel, and drew condemnation from other Christian leaders and even U.S. President George W. Bush. "We can't accept this kind of statement," Hartuv said.
The ministry's decision was first reported in Wednesday's edition of The Jerusalem Post.
Robertson's Christian Heritage Center was to be tucked away in 35 acres (14 hectares) of rolling Galilee hills, near key Christian sites such as Capernaum, the Mount of the Beatitudes, where tradition says Jesus delivered the Sermon of the Mount, and Tabgha - on the shores of the Sea of Galilee - where Christians believe Jesus performed the miracle of the loaves and fish.
Israel was considering leasing the land to the Christians for free. Hirschson predicted it would annually draw up to 1 million pilgrims who would spend USD 1.5 billion in Israel and support about 40,000 jobs.
Hirschson, however, is one of Sharon's biggest supporters, and a member of the centrist Kadima party recently founded by the prime minister.
Hartuv left the door open to continuing the project, but only with people who don't back Robertson's statements. "We want to see who in the group supports his (Robertson's) statements. Those who support the statements cannot do business with us. Those that publicly support Ariel Sharon's recovery... are welcome to do business with us," Hartuv said. "
source http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340 ... 41,00.html
In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn?t speak up because I wasn?t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn?t speak up because I wasn?t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn?t speak up because I wasn?t a trade unionist. Then they came for Catholics, and I didn?t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up."
--Protestant minister Martin Neimoller
20
Open Free for All / Raiding the Icebox
« on: January 10, 2006, 03:20:00 PM »
Raiding the Icebox
Behind Its Warm Front, the United States Made Cold Calculations to Subdue Canada
By Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 30, 2005; C01
Invading Canada won't be like invading Iraq: When we invade Canada, nobody will be able to grumble that we didn't have a plan.
The United States government does have a plan to invade Canada. It's a 94-page document called "Joint Army and Navy Basic War Plan -- Red," with the word SECRET stamped on the cover. It's a bold plan, a bodacious plan, a step-by-step plan to invade, seize and annex our neighbor to the north. It goes like this:
First, we send a joint Army-Navy overseas force to capture the port city of Halifax, cutting the Canadians off from their British allies.
Then we seize Canadian power plants near Niagara Falls, so they freeze in the dark.
Then the U.S. Army invades on three fronts -- marching from Vermont to take Montreal and Quebec, charging out of North Dakota to grab the railroad center at Winnipeg, and storming out of the Midwest to capture the strategic nickel mines of Ontario.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy seizes the Great Lakes and blockades Canada's Atlantic and Pacific ports.
At that point, it's only a matter of time before we bring these Molson-swigging, maple-mongering Zamboni drivers to their knees! Or, as the official planners wrote, stating their objective in bold capital letters: "ULTIMATELY TO GAIN COMPLETE CONTROL."
* * *
for the rest
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 12_pf.html
http://invadecanada.us/
:lol:
Behind Its Warm Front, the United States Made Cold Calculations to Subdue Canada
By Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 30, 2005; C01
Invading Canada won't be like invading Iraq: When we invade Canada, nobody will be able to grumble that we didn't have a plan.
The United States government does have a plan to invade Canada. It's a 94-page document called "Joint Army and Navy Basic War Plan -- Red," with the word SECRET stamped on the cover. It's a bold plan, a bodacious plan, a step-by-step plan to invade, seize and annex our neighbor to the north. It goes like this:
First, we send a joint Army-Navy overseas force to capture the port city of Halifax, cutting the Canadians off from their British allies.
Then we seize Canadian power plants near Niagara Falls, so they freeze in the dark.
Then the U.S. Army invades on three fronts -- marching from Vermont to take Montreal and Quebec, charging out of North Dakota to grab the railroad center at Winnipeg, and storming out of the Midwest to capture the strategic nickel mines of Ontario.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy seizes the Great Lakes and blockades Canada's Atlantic and Pacific ports.
At that point, it's only a matter of time before we bring these Molson-swigging, maple-mongering Zamboni drivers to their knees! Or, as the official planners wrote, stating their objective in bold capital letters: "ULTIMATELY TO GAIN COMPLETE CONTROL."
* * *
for the rest
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 12_pf.html
http://invadecanada.us/
:lol:
No synonym for God is so perfect as Beauty. Whether as seen carving the lines of the mountains with glaciers, or gathering matter into stars, or planning the movements of water, or gardening - still all is Beauty!
-- John Muir
21
Open Free for All / Create an e-annoyance, go to jail
« on: January 09, 2006, 02:30:00 PM »
Annoying someone via the Internet is now a federal crime.
It's no joke. Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity.
In other words, it's OK to flame someone on a mailing list or in a blog as long as you do it under your real name. Thank Congress for small favors, I guess.
This ridiculous prohibition, which would likely imperil much of Usenet, is buried in the so-called Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act. Criminal penalties include stiff fines and two years in prison.
"The use of the word 'annoy' is particularly problematic," says Marv Johnson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "What's annoying to one person may not be annoying to someone else."
Buried deep in the new law is Sec. 113, an innocuously titled bit called "Preventing Cyberstalking." It rewrites existing telephone harassment law to prohibit anyone from using the Internet "without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy."
To grease the rails for this idea, Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, and the section's other sponsors slipped it into an unrelated, must-pass bill to fund the Department of Justice. The plan: to make it politically infeasible for politicians to oppose the measure.
The tactic worked. The bill cleared the House of Representatives by voice vote, and the Senate unanimously approved it Dec. 16.
There's an interesting side note. An earlier version that the House approved in September had radically different wording. It was reasonable by comparison, and criminalized only using an "interactive computer service" to cause someone "substantial emotional harm."
That kind of prohibition might make sense. But why should merely annoying someone be illegal?
There are perfectly legitimate reasons to set up a Web site or write something incendiary without telling everyone exactly who you are.
Think about it: A woman fired by a manager who demanded sexual favors wants to blog about it without divulging her full name. An aspiring pundit hopes to set up the next Suck.com. A frustrated citizen wants to send e-mail describing corruption in local government without worrying about reprisals.
In each of those three cases, someone's probably going to be annoyed. That's enough to make the action a crime. (The Justice Department won't file charges in every case, of course, but trusting prosecutorial discretion is hardly reassuring.)
Clinton Fein, a San Francisco resident who runs the Annoy.com site, says a feature permitting visitors to send obnoxious and profane postcards through e-mail could be imperiled.
"Who decides what's annoying? That's the ultimate question," Fein said. He added: "If you send an annoying message via the United States Post Office, do you have to reveal your identity?"
Fein once sued to overturn part of the Communications Decency Act that outlawed transmitting indecent material "with intent to annoy." But the courts ruled the law applied only to obscene material, so Annoy.com didn't have to worry.
"I'm certainly not going to close the site down," Fein said on Friday. "I would fight it on First Amendment grounds."
He's right. Our esteemed politicians can't seem to grasp this simple point, but the First Amendment protects our right to write something that annoys someone else.
It even shields our right to do it anonymously. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas defended this principle magnificently in a 1995 case involving an Ohio woman who was punished for distributing anonymous political pamphlets.
If President Bush truly believed in the principle of limited government (it is in his official bio), he'd realize that the law he signed cannot be squared with the Constitution he swore to uphold.
And then he'd repeat what President Clinton did a decade ago when he felt compelled to sign a massive telecommunications law. Clinton realized that the section of the law punishing abortion-related material on the Internet was unconstitutional, and he directed the Justice Department not to enforce it.
Bush has the chance to show his respect for what he calls Americans' personal freedoms. Now we'll see if the president rises to the occasion.
source: http://news.com.com/Create+an+e-annoyan ... 22491.html
[ This Message was edited by: Exit Plan on 2006-01-09 11:31 ]
It's no joke. Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity.
In other words, it's OK to flame someone on a mailing list or in a blog as long as you do it under your real name. Thank Congress for small favors, I guess.
This ridiculous prohibition, which would likely imperil much of Usenet, is buried in the so-called Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act. Criminal penalties include stiff fines and two years in prison.
"The use of the word 'annoy' is particularly problematic," says Marv Johnson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "What's annoying to one person may not be annoying to someone else."
Buried deep in the new law is Sec. 113, an innocuously titled bit called "Preventing Cyberstalking." It rewrites existing telephone harassment law to prohibit anyone from using the Internet "without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy."
To grease the rails for this idea, Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, and the section's other sponsors slipped it into an unrelated, must-pass bill to fund the Department of Justice. The plan: to make it politically infeasible for politicians to oppose the measure.
The tactic worked. The bill cleared the House of Representatives by voice vote, and the Senate unanimously approved it Dec. 16.
There's an interesting side note. An earlier version that the House approved in September had radically different wording. It was reasonable by comparison, and criminalized only using an "interactive computer service" to cause someone "substantial emotional harm."
That kind of prohibition might make sense. But why should merely annoying someone be illegal?
There are perfectly legitimate reasons to set up a Web site or write something incendiary without telling everyone exactly who you are.
Think about it: A woman fired by a manager who demanded sexual favors wants to blog about it without divulging her full name. An aspiring pundit hopes to set up the next Suck.com. A frustrated citizen wants to send e-mail describing corruption in local government without worrying about reprisals.
In each of those three cases, someone's probably going to be annoyed. That's enough to make the action a crime. (The Justice Department won't file charges in every case, of course, but trusting prosecutorial discretion is hardly reassuring.)
Clinton Fein, a San Francisco resident who runs the Annoy.com site, says a feature permitting visitors to send obnoxious and profane postcards through e-mail could be imperiled.
"Who decides what's annoying? That's the ultimate question," Fein said. He added: "If you send an annoying message via the United States Post Office, do you have to reveal your identity?"
Fein once sued to overturn part of the Communications Decency Act that outlawed transmitting indecent material "with intent to annoy." But the courts ruled the law applied only to obscene material, so Annoy.com didn't have to worry.
"I'm certainly not going to close the site down," Fein said on Friday. "I would fight it on First Amendment grounds."
He's right. Our esteemed politicians can't seem to grasp this simple point, but the First Amendment protects our right to write something that annoys someone else.
It even shields our right to do it anonymously. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas defended this principle magnificently in a 1995 case involving an Ohio woman who was punished for distributing anonymous political pamphlets.
If President Bush truly believed in the principle of limited government (it is in his official bio), he'd realize that the law he signed cannot be squared with the Constitution he swore to uphold.
And then he'd repeat what President Clinton did a decade ago when he felt compelled to sign a massive telecommunications law. Clinton realized that the section of the law punishing abortion-related material on the Internet was unconstitutional, and he directed the Justice Department not to enforce it.
Bush has the chance to show his respect for what he calls Americans' personal freedoms. Now we'll see if the president rises to the occasion.
source: http://news.com.com/Create+an+e-annoyan ... 22491.html
In all history, there is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare. Only one who knows the disastrous effects of a long war can realize the supreme importance of rapidity in bringing it to a close. It is only one who is thoroughly acquainted with the evils of war who can thoroughly understand the profitable way of carrying it on.
--Sun Tzu (author of The Art of War
[ This Message was edited by: Exit Plan on 2006-01-09 11:31 ]
22
Tacitus' Realm / Computer chips get under skin of enthusiasts
« on: January 08, 2006, 07:46:00 AM »
Source
By Jamie McGeever Fri Jan 6, 9:41 AM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Forgetting computer passwords is an everyday source of frustration, but a solution may literally be at hand -- in the form of computer chip implants.
With a wave of his hand, Amal Graafstra, a 29-year-old entrepreneur based in Vancouver, Canada, opens his front door. With another, he logs onto his computer.
Tiny radio frequency identification (RFID) computer chips inserted into Graafstra's hands make it all possible.
"I just don't want to be without access to the things that I need to get access to. In the worst case scenario, if I'm in the alley naked, I want to still be able to get in (my house)," Graafstra said in an interview in New York, where he is promoting the technology. "RFID is for me."
The computer chips, which cost about $2, interact with a device installed in computers and other electronics. The chips are activated when they come within 3 inches of a so-called reader, which scans the data on the chips. The "reader" devices are available for as little as $50.
Information about where to buy the chips and readers is available online at the "tagged" forum, (http://tagged.kaos.gen.nz/) where enthusiasts of the technology chat and share information.
Graafstra said at least 20 of his tech-savvy pals have RFID implants.
"I can't feel it at all. It doesn't impede me. It doesn't hurt at all. I almost can't tell it's there," agreed Jennifer Tomblin, a 23-year-old marketing student and Graafstra's girlfriend.
'ABRACADABRA'
Mikey Sklar, a 28-year-old Brooklyn resident, said, "It does give you some sort of power of 'Abracadabra,' of making doors open and passwords enter just by a wave of your hand."
The RFID chip in Sklar's hand, which is smaller than a grain of rice and can last up to 100 years, was injected by a surgeon in Los Angeles.
Tattoo artists and veterinarians also could insert the chips into people, he said. For years, veterinarians have been injecting similar chips into pets so the animals can be returned to their owners if they are lost.
Graafstra was drawn to RFID tagging to make life easier in this technological age, but Sklar said he was more intrigued by the technology's potential in a broader sense.
In the future, technological advances will allow people to store, transmit and access encrypted personal information in an increasing number of wireless ways, Sklar said.
Wary of privacy issues, Sklar said he is developing a fabric "shield" to protect such chips from being read by strangers seeking to steal personal information or identities.
One advantage of the RFID chip, Graafstra said, is that it cannot get lost or stolen. And the chip can always be removed from a person's body.
"It's kind of a gadget thing, and it's not so impressive to have it on your key chain as it is to have it in you," Sklar said. "But it's not for everyone."
Sklar's girlfriend, Wendy Tremayne, has yet to be convinced. She said she probably would not inject the computer chip into her body unless she thought it was a "necessity."
"If it becomes more convenient, I may," said the 38-year-old artist and yoga teacher. "(But) I'd rather have an organic life."
By Jamie McGeever Fri Jan 6, 9:41 AM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Forgetting computer passwords is an everyday source of frustration, but a solution may literally be at hand -- in the form of computer chip implants.
With a wave of his hand, Amal Graafstra, a 29-year-old entrepreneur based in Vancouver, Canada, opens his front door. With another, he logs onto his computer.
Tiny radio frequency identification (RFID) computer chips inserted into Graafstra's hands make it all possible.
"I just don't want to be without access to the things that I need to get access to. In the worst case scenario, if I'm in the alley naked, I want to still be able to get in (my house)," Graafstra said in an interview in New York, where he is promoting the technology. "RFID is for me."
The computer chips, which cost about $2, interact with a device installed in computers and other electronics. The chips are activated when they come within 3 inches of a so-called reader, which scans the data on the chips. The "reader" devices are available for as little as $50.
Information about where to buy the chips and readers is available online at the "tagged" forum, (http://tagged.kaos.gen.nz/) where enthusiasts of the technology chat and share information.
Graafstra said at least 20 of his tech-savvy pals have RFID implants.
"I can't feel it at all. It doesn't impede me. It doesn't hurt at all. I almost can't tell it's there," agreed Jennifer Tomblin, a 23-year-old marketing student and Graafstra's girlfriend.
'ABRACADABRA'
Mikey Sklar, a 28-year-old Brooklyn resident, said, "It does give you some sort of power of 'Abracadabra,' of making doors open and passwords enter just by a wave of your hand."
The RFID chip in Sklar's hand, which is smaller than a grain of rice and can last up to 100 years, was injected by a surgeon in Los Angeles.
Tattoo artists and veterinarians also could insert the chips into people, he said. For years, veterinarians have been injecting similar chips into pets so the animals can be returned to their owners if they are lost.
Graafstra was drawn to RFID tagging to make life easier in this technological age, but Sklar said he was more intrigued by the technology's potential in a broader sense.
In the future, technological advances will allow people to store, transmit and access encrypted personal information in an increasing number of wireless ways, Sklar said.
Wary of privacy issues, Sklar said he is developing a fabric "shield" to protect such chips from being read by strangers seeking to steal personal information or identities.
One advantage of the RFID chip, Graafstra said, is that it cannot get lost or stolen. And the chip can always be removed from a person's body.
"It's kind of a gadget thing, and it's not so impressive to have it on your key chain as it is to have it in you," Sklar said. "But it's not for everyone."
Sklar's girlfriend, Wendy Tremayne, has yet to be convinced. She said she probably would not inject the computer chip into her body unless she thought it was a "necessity."
"If it becomes more convenient, I may," said the 38-year-old artist and yoga teacher. "(But) I'd rather have an organic life."
Our country right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right.[ This Message was edited by: Exit Plan on 2006-01-08 06:35 ]
--Carl Schurz, German-born U.S. general and U.S. senator
23
World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS) / ..
« on: January 06, 2006, 11:10:00 PM »
..
25
World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS) / Photo tour of Spring Creek Lodge
« on: April 22, 2005, 05:19:00 PM »
WWASP's marketing materials are full of pictures of beautiful landscapes, and camp-like structures. Very few of the pictures contain pictures of students, for good reason. They would show groups of dishoveled, pissed off looking kids in tight formation lines, obviously not wanting to have their picture taken. The only photos with people are carefully staged, this is obvious. more bs.
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