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Topics - Antigen

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16
Tacitus' Realm / Welcome to AT&T's Internet
« on: December 21, 2010, 08:03:41 AM »
Quote from: "For Huffington Post, Timothy Karr"
For the first time in history of telecommunications law the FCC has given its stamp of approval to online discrimination.

Instead of a rule to protect Internet users' freedom to choose, the Commission has opened the door for broadband payola - letting phone and cable companies charge steep tolls to favor the content and services of a select group of corporate partners, relegating everyone else to the cyber-equivalent of a winding dirt road.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/timothy-k ... 99435.html
 

17
Tacitus' Realm / Targeted Google Ads
« on: December 09, 2010, 12:54:56 PM »
Ok kiddies, time to deal with this. I've been playing around with my Google AdSese toys and decided to put a couple of ads out there to try and raise some operating funds. Right now, the only one on Fornits is in the rotation for only this forum. Should be safe enough from industry players' ads showing up, eh? Nother likely candidate would be Let It Bleed, which proceeds would go to Froderick. Frod, send me the code and I'll make that happen.

For now, my ad will only show PSAs till I can verify my address w/ Google and all that good shiat.

18
Straight, Inc. and Derivatives / Need a little help in Cinci
« on: November 16, 2010, 06:32:48 PM »
Dear folks,
   I ain't talkin' outa school here cause Depro asked me to put in a word. Please take it easy on this gal right now. She's having one hell of a hard time.   If anyone can take a day to stand by a dear friend, now would be the time. She needs specialized medical treatment right now and is low on friends.If you can believe it, she's not able to stand up for herself in the medical establishment.  I can't see making that trip this week as I'm in NJ right now waiting for a break in the weather and turnin a buck. So please, if anyone can go stand by her and make sure she gets the service she needs get ahold of her and solid up your plans to do that.

All the best,
Ginger

19
Straight, Inc. and Derivatives / Need a little help in Cinci
« on: November 16, 2010, 06:32:42 PM »
Dear folks,
   I ain't talkin' outa school here cause Depro asked me to put in a word. Please take it easy on this gal right now. She's having one hell of a hard time.   If anyone can take a day to stand by a dear friend, now would be the time. She needs specialized medical treatment right now and is low on friends.If you can believe it, she's not able to stand up for herself in the medical establishment.  I can't see making that trip this week as I'm in NJ right now waiting for a break in the weather and turnin a buck. So please, if anyone can go stand by her and make sure she gets the service she needs get ahold of her and solid up your plans to do that.

All the best,
Ginger

20
Open Free for All / Best job I ever lost
« on: October 24, 2010, 11:46:55 AM »
Didn't make much money at it. And it brought me T&R flash-backs for a long time. But after all that, it was sooooo Zen! Just mow the lawns, sweep the floors, take care of the folks who came into my space. My boss, the man who initially hired me, is a wise old fool. He just worked and enjoyed working and so never had to do a lot of bossing. Who in half a right mind will let their boss out-work them?

I heard recently that he's given over the bossing business for just plain working and much happier at it too.

22
Open Free for All / You're special
« on: August 31, 2010, 11:23:12 AM »

23
Straight, Inc. and Derivatives / Rich
« on: August 12, 2010, 09:17:40 PM »
Anybody heard from him lately?

24
Open Free for All / Forced treatment = Stalinist reeducation
« on: April 17, 2010, 09:59:12 PM »
Quote from: "Fark"
Served your time time in prison? Good for you. Don't believe in God? Fark you, you're going back  
http://www.sacbee.com/2010/04/17/268528 ... t-who.html

25
Elan School / Forum rules, banning, my fuckup, etc.
« on: March 27, 2010, 05:37:13 PM »
Ok, I fucked up. Last night I got a request from a moderator to enforce a ban. Honest to God, I've never done that before and Psy's busy so I skipped a step. Meanwhile, turns out that the other mod on that forum doesn't agree with the decision anyway, mostly on procedural grounds. So good thing I fucked up, eh?

Since then I've been reading recent threads and going over PMs relating to this brawl and talking with people who have been paying a lot more attention to this than I have till now.

It's gotten to the point, once again, where the current brawl has overshadowed other conversation and takes up so many pages that, in practical terms, a person with a life can't catch up and participate or even weed through the bullshit to get at the meat.

So I've decided to step in and moderate. Just this once.  :suicide:

Personally, I'm much inclined to go back to the old rules. It's not my intention to decide for participants and passive readers what you may or may not read or write. It's also not my job to protect anyone from other people's responses to your saying whatever the hell you want. My object is to keep these forums functional. But I did agree to let Inculcated and Ursus lay down and enforce rules. And a fair number of participants seem to like the idea. So it wouldn't be fair to just change that unilaterally change it up without trying.  

This is a formal public warning and request to all participants. Please steer clear of the personal attacks. Everybody. Both ways. If you feel personally attacked try and let it roll off and address the substance of the conversation (if you can find any). Consider that the definition of the term "personal attack" is mostly perceptual. Mostly. Some things are quite overt.

Now I'm going to try privately to get everyone to understand one another well enough to keep talking together.

26
Open Free for All / Behind Liz Cheney's group, a weird legacy of torture
« on: February 25, 2010, 09:34:29 PM »
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/20 ... print.html

Behind Liz Cheney's group, a weird legacy of torture
Financing Cheney's pro-torture front is Melvin Sembler, who once enabled "enhanced interrogation" of American teens

By Joe Conason

Feb. 10, 2010 |

The arrest of an Army sergeant (and Iraq veteran) who allegedly waterboarded his 4-year-old daughter for failing to recite the alphabet is sickening. Yet it may be the kind of news we must come to expect if, as a society, the United States determines that torture is an acceptable method of securing information and inducing obedience. Physical abuse of children is nothing new, of course,  in certain right-wing quarters, as Max Blumenthal reminded us by exposing the pedagogical sadism of Focus on the Family in Republican Gomorrah.

For a sergeant who tortures his child, however, the relevant model probably comes from somewhere high in the chain of command. At the center of today’s propaganda promoting the torture state are former Vice President Dick Cheney, his family and many of his friends, working through an organization called Keeping America Safe that is run by his daughter Liz Cheney. The financier behind that outfit is one Melvin Sembler, a curious character whose résumé indicates that he is all too familiar with the "enhanced interrogation" of children.

Sembler is best known as a Florida shopping center magnate and Republican fundraiser whose success in amassing funds for the Bush family won him two ambassadorial appointments. Such patronage is a sordid aspect of national politics, but seems trivial when compared with the truly dark side of Sembler’s biography. Long before he achieved prominence in national politics, he was the driving force in the "boot camp" movement that popularized the use of psychological and physical abuse of "troubled" children and teenagers.

His own creation was a federally funded outfit known as Straight, Inc., which eventually fell apart amid multiple lawsuits and accusations of torture by teenagers abused in its secretive facilities.

The  best reporting on Straight’s frightening history in recent years has appeared in Reason, the libertarian magazine, under the byline of Maia Szalavitz. Some of the techniques that eventually brought Sembler’s organization to the attention of law enforcement authorities will be eerily familiar to anyone who remembers what happened at Abu Ghraib:  humiliating punishments, broken bones, starvation, sleep deprivation, stress positions, verbal assaults, eight-hour sessions of questioning, and so on.

According to Szalavitz, "Straight’s national clinical director ... admitted to authorities in 1982 that he had kept teenagers awake for 72-hour periods, put them on peanut butter-only diets, and forced them to crawl through each other’s legs to be hit in a 'spanking machine' ...  Straight ultimately paid out millions of dollars in dozens of lawsuits related to abuse and even kidnapping and false imprisonment of adults."

Eventually Straight  crumbled amid those multimillion-dollar settlements,  newspaper exposés and government probes, thanks to the activism of Richard Bradbury, a young man whose experience resembles the stories of innocent Iraqis who were caught up in the torture machine over there.

Again according to Szalavitz, Bradbury "was forcibly enrolled in the program in 1983, when he was 17. His sister had had a drug problem, and Straight demanded that he be screened for one as well. After an eight-hour interrogation in a tiny room, Bradbury, who was not an addict, was nonetheless held. He later described beatings and continuous verbal assaults, which for him centered on sexual abuse he’d suffered as a young boy. Staffers and other participants called him a 'faggot,' told him he'd led his abusers on, and forced him to admit 'his part' in the abuse."

Of course Sembler, like his pal Cheney, will never admit that anything went wrong with his grisly enterprise. When last heard from, as ambassador to Italy, he still listed his affiliation with Straight on his  official State Department profile as a matter of personal pride. Just another exemplar of Cheney family values.

-- By Joe Conason

27
Open Free for All / Re: I am but only me
« on: January 29, 2010, 03:28:43 PM »
Nice pic! You look like shit after 8 kids..... Not really, just trying to oblige. LOL

Here, tit for tat.

28
The Troubled Teen Industry / American Greed
« on: January 22, 2010, 10:20:40 PM »
Just saw an ad for this new series. I wonder if we could get the producers to take an interest in the troubled parent industry scam?

http://www.cnbc.com/id/18057119

29
Elan School / War on Art
« on: January 15, 2010, 04:41:50 PM »
Ladies, gentlemen and all them others,
   First, let me apologize for my extended absence. Sometimes life just takes you somewhere and you don't have the time to get around to the things you want to do. I also want to express my awe and sincere respect for the energy and stone cold stubbornness it has taken to keep this thing afloat through all the turmoil. Course, Psy has done an awsome job of admining through troubled times and Kelly before him and let's not forget all those who have kicked cash, service and good vibes too. I think what this thing is may actually be a community after all.

  Just lately, more than a few community members have been complaining about the perennial attacks on Art. At first I just thought it was the same ol'e same ol'e momentary frustration that occasionally amounts to a complaint or three, few demands and little, if anything else. Having looked over the New Elan Site thread and, in so doing, reeled my mind up with all the old history I no longer think this is just another momentary emotional outburst on the part of those complaining.

  Of course, all of it could be fiction. One never knows. But if half of what I'm finding out is well founded, boy you guys are some sick, sick bastards. I mean that sincerely. Whether you're doing it purely for sadistic pleasure or to obfuscate and prevent effecitve discussion of Elan, either way you're assholes!

  Now, please allow me to explain why I'm not going to edit, censor or ban any of it without a legit, legally binding, air-tight court order.

My first stop on this journey was, of course, http://www.elansurvivorsgroup.com/ Oh, the irony!   [attachment=0:2qa08dnp]formerlyfreewebs.jpg[/attachment:2qa08dnp]

This speaks to the legal reasons why I won't moderate. Formerly Freewebs, like most hosting providers, does moderate their content. As such, I guess they can't call themselves free any longer, wouldn't be honest. That's fine. I'm not trying to get webs to do as I do. They're about something entirely different that what we're doing over here. Wish I could make the money they're making, but there's just no commercial value to this content that I can find. If you think of someone who could benefit from advertising here without changing the above stated policy, PLEASE do not hesitate to give them my number!

On the question of ethics, what's fair is fair. If I chose to intervene on behalf of someone I happen to like, agree with or believe to be innocent then I would have to give equal consideration to them others. Meaningful criticism of the troubled parent industry and public sector gulags would very quickly become impossible because no one would be allowed to say anything unless they could prove it. I happen to believe that our argument can stand on it's own without my tipping the scales to prop it up.

For tactical reasons, folks, this is the primary purpose of Fornits right from the git go! We all have stories that are difficult to prove because they occurred behind closed doors with the only eye witnesses being slandered minors (in most cases) held by force and/or coercion and unable to communicate with the outside world. How in the hell can we find one another to corroborate our stories so that we can prove them if we can't tell those stories unless and until they're proven?

Removing that control on communication yanks the linchpin out of an important protection that these cults have enjoyed for generations.

Now what about the intellectual integrity of discussion and all that? Well, my dear fellow program vets, survivors and supporters, proud or properly shameful. I think it's evident to any outsider reading much content here that we are nearly all pretty fucked up cup cakes! Sorry, you just can't get an insider's view of something as horrible as brainwashing without risking injury from some of the mental shrapnel that so often comes poking out at the worst possible moment.

I've watched this pattern play out in real life and on these forums for decades now. Specifically, I've watched what seem to be the same individuals work the same scam using several different people as targets. Art's just the only one who keeps checking in once in awhile, or maybe they're hounding him irl a little more than the others. I don't know. But they keep after him.

I sincerely do believe that the attacks on Art are entirely baseless. This has been going on for YEARS now. What could possibly drive such devotion to making some stranger on the net miserable? Some think it's just cause Art gets so upset and, just like ill behaved grade school bullies, that makes it fun. But these are the same people hounding this guy over years, across many web sites, even funding and producing their own Art bashing sites from time to time. Could be that these people are just that completely damaged by their Elan experience. But it seems, by far and away, more likely that they're doing this for a specific purpose. Nothing personal against Art in particular. But he'll do cause he responds and that's all they need. But the purpose I believe drives this is to interrupt and prevent any meaningful discussion about Elan. I think they're true believers protecting their cult. It's an effective red herring maneuver. That would be the simplest explanation that fits all the facts.

Any way, though, that only works if you let it. So please, folks, there is a LOT of valuable content in this forum. You just have to look for it. And thanks to Dan for bumping good threads and to Felice for hunkering on this stinking pile of drek no matter what. You is one tough biatch, biatch!

30
Public Sector Gulags / New York State shutting state facilities?
« on: January 15, 2010, 07:49:16 AM »
This is starting to start sounding like some sense.

Report Finds Problems Plague State-run Juvenile Detention Centers
by Cindy Rodriguez
Download MP3 | Embed HTML

NEW YORK, NY December 14, 2009 —A report by a state task force recommended today that Gov. David Paterson close or significantly downsize state run juvenile detention facilities. A draft copy of the report obtained by WNYC, says the facilities are damaging young people and wasting taxpayer dollars.

Jeremy Travis, President of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, headed the task force and says the state must shift from a punitive approach to one that's therapeutic.

The report says 1,600 youth enter the facilities annually, costing the state about $200,000 a year per child. Travis says those resources should be reinvested in services for youth.

"This is a big challenge that we are laying at the doorstep of the state of New York here," he says. "Other states have made the shift and we have every confidence that New York State can make this transformation as well."

Upstate lawmakers and unions that represent facility employees adamantly oppose closing them down, and warn that sending troubled kids back into communities poses a public safety hazard.

The report comes as the state continues to negotiate an overhaul of facilities with the Department of Justice. A two year investigation by the DOJ revealed serious abuse of kids at four upstate facilities.

According to a court memo, the state agency overseeing detention facilities has already urged family court judges not to send kids to facilities unless they pose a danger. The memo outlines a serious lack of services to deal with mental health problems, substance abuse and educational needs.

The DOJ has investigated 100 youth facilities across 16 states and its currently monitoring 65 of them.

The report says 53 percent of kids in detention facilities are there for misdemeanor offenses, including shoplifting and assault.
http://www.wnyc.org/news/articles/146177

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