Seana Sperling

Archive for the ‘Education’ Category

FUN WITH LASERS: Interviews with Lasik and PRK Patients

In Education, World Relations on July 15, 2012 at 18:30

By Seana Sperling

I began hearing about Lasik in late 1999. I was at a party and two women were wearing dark glasses. Naturally I had to ask why and they said they had gone through Lasik surgery just two days before and their eyes were still extremely light sensitive. Aside from their fashion statement, they were ecstatic about their vision, which was close to 20/20 and practically improving by the hour.

They said they had gone to Canada because the price of surgery north of the border tends to be much cheaper. ($2000.00 or $3000.00 cheaper.) Also, Canadian doctors have been performing the operation for over eleven years while it was still relatively new in the U.S. They had also received a partner/buddy discount ($100.00 each) for doing the surgery as a pair. At first, the idea of Discount Surgery made me a little uncomfortable. Was there also some sort of free gift–compliments of Fingerhut?

A friend of mine (we’ll call him Mark) and I started gathering research on Lasik Surgery in the summer of 2000. Since Mark is a doctor, he was very thorough in his research and contributed reams of paper to my growing stack. The consensus seemed to be a high success rate with a minute risk factor. We were still apprehensive.

My main worry was of becoming blind from the operation. I was told by several staff and two different surgeons that the chances of the actual surgery causing blindness are nil, however, the very few cases of blindness that have occurred, were caused by post-operative infection. According to one of the doctors, one patient mowed his lawn a couple of days after the surgery and this resulted in an infection. (The surgeons now counter this possibility by giving all patients anti-bacterial drops as a preventative measure.)

Unfortunately, Mark had to leave to do his Residency in Michigan, so the mission was put on hiatus. Later that year, I started thinking about it again, so at my friend Joe’s birthday party I brought it up. Joe and I decided to make an appointment. The buddy-package was $975.00 each person–both eyes. I paid for additional insurance, which was about $50.00, bringing my total to $1024.00. (You pay in advance in either one or two installments by credit card.)

THE APPOINTMENT
When we went through the pre-operative appointment they checked our vision and the thickness of our corneas. (If the corneas are too thin a different procedure is required—the really scary one—see PRK.) They dilated our eyes and checked for any viruses or infections. After they finished inspecting and questioning, I was told I was a candidate for Lasik–not a great one, but a candidate. Joe was told he would walk out of the clinic with 20/20 vision. His corneas were evidently like slices of ham.

I was a little disappointed. My initial impression was that I would emerge from the clinic with perfect vision. From the consultation I found that the success rate varied, depending on the degree of the problem to be corrected. My prescription is fairly strong, minus seven in one eye and minus 5.25 in the other. In my case, the best vision they could promise me was 20/40, which is good enough to drive, but not to read, write or do detailed work. I’d be wearing glasses most of the time.

I decided against the operation and they promised to refund all of the $1024.00 I had paid. (They refund by check two weeks from the cancellation date. My refund arrived about four days late, but it was December, so I’m sure the holidays had slowed the postal system.) I opted out partially out of fear, but also because I get too frustrated if I can’t see well. The movie “Seven,” made me crazy because of the horrible lighting. What would I do if everything was, “just a little hard to see.”

Joe decided to have the surgery. I felt a mixture of jealousy and relief. I was relieved that I didn’t have to put my eyes through the stress, but a little jealous that my sight really didn’t have that much promise. I tagged along anyway.

GOING TO CANADA
When first hearing about the Clinic, I imagined several white, low-rise buildings in a rural setting where the light-sensitive patients could stumble around the grounds. The reality was a building the size of a Denny’s, buried amidst strip malls and pizza parlors. Where were the white-caned patients to stroll for their afternoon exercise?

It was around 1:00PM and the receptionist at the Clinic told us that Joe’s surgery would be over around 2:00PM or later because they were a little “behind.” We left Joe and headed to the nearby mall to kill some time. We returned about 2:15PM. As we pulled into the driveway, our hero emerged from the clinic wearing a pair of humungous, protective-eye-shades reminding me of the black and white film “The Fly.” Joe was in and out in so little time that Chris and I were half an hour late in picking him up.

JOE REVEALS THE GRUESOME PROCESS
Joe: First there was paperwork. They’re kind of mechanical with their questions, but very thorough. It’s like the same procedure we went through at the pre-operative exam. After that, they take you to a big room and lay you on a narrow table under a big machine. It kind of reminds me of a CAT Scan. It was a lot more uncomfortable than I’d expected. It’s painful when they pull your eyelids back with the spectrum, but it’s also painful when they’re doing the suction on the eyeball. It feels like your eyeball is being pinched all the way around and you have to stare at a light. Although it’s only 30 or 60 seconds an eye, it seems like an eternity. The smell of burning flesh is intense. I started getting slightly nauseated during the surgery.

The worst thing is that you have to watch it. You can’t help but watch it. There’s a flashing red light and you can see them pulling the flap back. You see them pull a piece of your eye off. Then they take something like a squeegee, and squeegee it back on. And you can’t blink. I turned down the sedative and now I’m sorry that I did. I would recommend taking it.

Afterwards, they guide you by the hand out of the room and you’re stumbling around in the dark and everything is really blurry. They put you in a dark room with other people. Of course when I got there, all four chairs were full, so I sat in an examination chair for a few minutes. Then one opened up and I sat in a comfortable leather chair. I was there for about ten minutes and then they came and shined a bright light in my eyes, which is kind of painful, but they were checking to make sure there were no folds and that everything was in place. Then they lead me out to the waiting room. It’s a very scary, freaky experience when you go in there even though they are very nice and professional.

Q: So how is your vision after surgery?

Joe: The right eye seems to be different than the left. I did experience more pain with my left eye even though they did it second. Everything is kind of hazy and my eyes are extremely light sensitive right now.

Q: What kind of pain?

Joe: You know how when you get soap in your eyes, it stings? Or when you sleep in your contacts and you wake up with them adhered to your eyes? They are itchy, like I have a hair in my eye or something. Everything seems really bright, but I have better focus now than usual.

Q: Would you have the surgery again? A Retouch? (These are sometimes necessary after a couple of years.)

Joe: Uh, well. Ask me tomorrow.

He kept talking about halos and I was wondering if he was seeing auras or something. Then I started worrying about my own aura. If someone could actually see it, what would it reveal? We returned to the mall after nightfall and in an episode of synchronicity, there was a kiosk that gave aura readings via computer. I couldn’t talk Joe or Chris into trying it though.

The next morning
Joe: I feel fine, my eyes feel really good. There was a little crusty stuff around my eyelashes, but that’s probably from the drops. My sight is better today than it is with my glasses. My eyes are a little bit dry, but no more discomfort than if I were wearing contacts. I’m not light sensitive in here, but I imagine I will be outside. It might be better or it might be that it’s not like looking through glasses or contacts because there’s no light refraction.

We were half an hour early for the follow-up in the morning and they got Joe right in.
After a few minutes, Joe walked out swinging a stainless steel coffee mug with the Clinic’s logo on it.

Joe: The doctor had me read the eye chart again and as I thought, my right eye is not as good as the left eye. My right eye is about 20/30 and the left is 20/20. The doctor looked at my eyes and said there was a little bit of swelling and hemorrhaging in each eye, but that was normal. Then he gave me my thousand dollar coffee mug and sent me on my way. It took all of two minutes.

Q: Would you do a Retouch?

Joe: Maybe I’d do a Retouch. Yeah, I probably would.

EPILOGUE:
A week later
Joe returned for another post-operative exam. (Three are required.) He said that his eyesight had been fluctuating as they told him it would, and he had 25/20 vision in his eyes individually, but combined, he had 20/20 vision and no discomfort.
A month later
At his last post-operative exam Joe’s vision was 20/15. What’s next X-ray vision?
The body can withstand a lot of pain and fortunately, the memory doesn’t retain the intensity, otherwise women would never have more than one child, people would never fall in love more than once and piercing shops would have no repeat business.

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CAVEAT — PRK Surgery
I was outside of my workplace waiting for Joe to pick me up to go to the satellite clinic for the pre-operative exam. A friend of a friend, Alexandra, walked by. She looked at the Clinic’s brochure in my hand and asked, “Are you thinking about having eye surgery?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I’m going to my pre-operative appointment in a few minutes. Do you know anything about it?”
“I’ve had it.”
I looked at her eyes. “But you’re wearing contacts.”
“That’s right.”
“What happened?”
“You don’t want to know right now.”
Just then Joe pulled up, and in my daze I crawled into the car and we sped off to the clinic.

Alexandra’s story:
In 1999 Alexandra also underwent surgery on her eyes, but she had the PRK, which is different than Lasik. The PRK is a much more radical surgery. You must go through all the same trauma except there is no flap to pull back and they must abrade the lense through the cornea. It is also more painful than Lasik and the healing process is longer. The care is also a little different. After this type of surgery, they place bandage-contact-lenses over each eye until the cornea regenerates.

Alexandra had some complications. After the surgery, her eyes were healing at an accelerated rate, so the technician decided that it would be OK to remove the bandage-contact-lenses a couple days early as this would save her a trip back to the clinic. (Generally the bandage contacts are removed after three days.)

After several days of pain and cloudy vision, Alexandra contacted the clinic. A doctor traveled halfway from Canada to meet her and replaced the contact-bandages in the bathroom of a fast food restaurant. Her eyes healed, but her vision was not 20/20. For the past two years, the clinic has tried to compensate her with several different prescriptions of contact lenses and glasses and paid for her hotel and travel expenses anytime she’s had to come back to Canada. Her vision at this point is improved, but she is still wearing glasses or contacts for the majority of the time.

PRK Surgery—A Positive Experience
In March 2000, my housemate traveled to Canada for eye surgery. Because of his thin corneas, he had to have PRK. When he returned, he looked miserable. I asked him if he would recommend PRK and he said, “No! Definitely not! It was like Nazi torture!” He said that after his surgery, he was incapacitated for the remainder of that day. Then he retired to his room. He also had some complications. After surgery, they placed the bandage-contact-lenses over his eyes. A day or so later, one of his bandage-contact-lenses started coming off. He thinks he bumped his eye while he was sleeping, disturbing the lense. Until that was corrected he experienced additional pain. The satellite clinic corrected the problem and then he was fine.

After a few days, I asked him about his sight and he said that things were hazy or fuzzy still, but that it seemed to be improving and the doctors had told him to be patient because he needed some time for his sight to adjust. Six months later, he was very happy with his vision, which is 20/20 now. He had a very strong prescription like mine but the PRK seemed to work. I asked him if he would have the surgery again and he said, “Definitely. I’ve always thought of myself as a guy who wears glasses, but now I’m a guy who doesn’t wear glasses.”

CARE: After the operation, the doctor will instruct you how to use the antibiotic drops, as well as saline drops. Plastic caps need to be taped over your eyes for sleeping so you won’t rub your eyes and these are provided by the clinic. Suggestions for discomfort: Cold compresses, dark rooms, rest, Tylenol. (Beware of caffeinated Tylenol in Canada.)

Cointelpro and the Age of the Bully

In Bullying, Civil Rights, Education, Mobbing, Politics, Surveillance on July 6, 2012 at 22:26

By Seana Sperling

In the film, Ralph Nader: An Unreasonable Man, we learn the history of Ralph Nader’s battle with Corporate America. Nader was a Consumer Protection Activist in the 1970s and exposed General Motor’s negligence in the manufacture of some of their vehicles. In retaliation, General Motors began using Cointelpro tactics to defame Nader such as having strangers follow him around everywhere (so when he told supporters of the tracking, they would think Nader was delusional). In the film, Nader also speaks of set-ups in which very beautiful women would try to befriend him. Currently, average citizens, armed with the latest technology, are engaging in the same Cointelpro tactics to harass and set up other average citizens in the twilight of our Democracy.

In 2010 there were news reports on KIRO and KOMO TV about public service organizations, ACORN and Planned Parenthood being set-up by Neo-conservatives posing as pimps and prostitutes? The Neo-cons would manipulate the ACORN worker or Planned Parenthood worker into saying something that would reflect badly on the organization. All the while the Neo-cons would be secretly filming and later air it to discredit the organization. This is called Cyber-baiting.

Norton Family Online Services describes Cyber-baiting as one or more persons deliberately harassing someone to get a reaction, which they capture on their cellphones and post on the Internet. I have dealt with set-ups for years. Almost daily, complete strangers in my neighborhood go out of their way to try to get me to react, by either calling me a lewd name, or blocking my way when I’m walking on the sidewalk or entering a building. On occasion some of the abuse has been physical such as people deliberately bumping into me, blocking my way, opening doors on me and I have been spit on twice. You might wonder why strangers would target me. Aside from the vengeance stalking that I have had to deal with for many years, you can’t be a Peace Activist during a time of war and not have some enemies. Many Educators, Writers and even some school children are experiencing the same abuse.

Bullies like cliques and if you enrage even one bully, they can recruit all of their Social Network friends to harass, defame and ridicule you. In the article, Student’s Organize Day of Bullying, www.upi.com, students created a FaceBook page called, “Annoy (Student’s name) Day,” to harass one of their fellow students. In another case, Phoebe Prince, a 15-year-old in Massachusetts was constantly tracked and harassed through her school hallways and neighborhood until she took her life in March 2010. An alarming component of Cyber-baiting is surveillance/tracking the victim via cellphone. These teens were using Cointelpro tactics.

The following articles reveal authorized Cointelpro tracking/surveillance of average citizens: From the A.C.L.U., Stop the Government From Turning Neighbor Against Neighbor and from The Register, NSA Setting up Perfect Citizen Spy System and Amerisnitch from Peace Corps Online. If you are seen as a troublemaker, whistleblower, etc. you may be placed on a Watch list. Law Enforcement in your community may alert the neighborhood that you are “under investigation” or “a person of interest” for being (choose any) a terrorist, prostitute, pedophile, dangerously insane, racist, thief or drug dealer. If someone in authority accuses you, the neighborhood bullies go on patrol. (It’s a possibility that if the Neighborhood Watch asks Law Enforcement why they don’t just arrest you, Law Enforcement may say they don’t have strong evidence with a wink to the community that maybe they can “help” get proof. The Cyber-baiting begins with cell phones in hand.)

Another disturbing component of Cyberbullying and baiting is E-personation (posing as someone else online). In 2007 my name was linked to online articles that I had not written. One was about the Iraq War and the F-word was used liberally. Another was titled, “Everyone Loves an Abortion.” In 2006, online articles that I had written were linked to porn and gambling sites. In 2007, I found multiple blog postings stating I was a child molester, prostitute, thief, racist, crazy, etc. on www.rottenneighbor.com and more slander in 2008 on www.thestrangernewspaper.com‘s SLOG. While none of this is true, a gullible community might not question something that is in print. If it is from a popular source, some may join in to be part of the popular crowd.

We have an abundance of technology at our disposal, but as a nation our Emotional Quotient (E.Q.) lags far behind our I.Q. If people can do harm without actually seeing the blood they’ve drawn (such as from the safety of their computer or cellphone) they gleefully follow the bullies. We must recognize the signs of decline from history. The same bullying, self-righteous attitudes that appeared during Hitler’s rise to power and other Fascist takeovers are cresting in our society.

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The Rise of the Cults and the Anti-Christian—Part One

In Civil Rights, Education, Politics, Religion, Surveillance, World Relations on July 4, 2012 at 22:26

By Seana Sperling

More and more we are seeing an emphasis on conservative Christianity appearing in the media. In 2010 I heard a News Anchor say, “Scammers have preyed on the faithful.” Then they showed footage of an austere little church and went on with the report. Why not say Christians or the name of the particular church? Are Christians the only “faithful?” Flipping through local channels I have seen eight or more conservative Christian stations with lone speakers loudly proselytizing one ideology in assorted languages. Where is the Buddhist channel or the Hindu channel or even a Progressive Christian channel? Are they only available on cable? This culture of same-ness is very disturbing. This rise of conservative Christianity is beginning to dominate society and creating a cult culture.

There also seems to be an increasing divide between Progressive Christians that live in the tradition of Christ, and the Neo-conservative Christians whose rigid, cult-like fundamentalism drives them to judge and even punish others that don’t share their ideology.

How do you recognize a cult? According to Michael Shermer’s article on Christian Scientists, Is Scientology a Cult? Skeptic, May 2011, Cults may have the following characteristics:
“The leader claims to have extraordinary powers.
Members are isolated from friends and family.
In Group vs. Out Group/Us vs. Them.
Practices are highly controlled, and at advanced levels, secretive.
Group and leader are not accountable to any outside authority.
Denunciation sessions, debilitating work routines to reinforce Group-Think.
Meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues.”
Most cults are an authoritarian environment where questioning and dissent is not only discouraged, but also punished according to Shermer.

In 2000 I was telling a friend about some horrible experiences I’d had in a Seventh Day Adventist Church School I attended as a child. My friend claimed that the Adventists were a cult. This he based on a class he’d taken on cults. Even though I knew about David Koresh and the Branch Davidians, this idea had never occurred to me. When I was a part of that church no one was speaking in tongues or chanting, nor did we live in a compound.

In retrospect, some of the indicators were present. The spiritual leader of the Adventists was a Psychic named Ellen G. White, who claimed to have communed with God. It was also a very top down, authoritarian environment at home and school where I received beatings, ridicule and other psychological forms of punishment from parents and Teachers for minor things. There was an emphasis on control. (There were some nice people there too, but more often than not, the people in authority positions were bullies.)

When I reached seventh grade, I insisted on going to public school. There was no seventh grade or even other eligible students, but the Teacher and my mother spoke of planning a grade just for me. At this school multiple grades were stuffed into one room with one teacher as a monitor and we did our studies alone with our workbooks. The Teacher would grade the work and we could go to her desk with questions, but there was little in the way of actual teaching. Fortunately I loved reading and my mother took my older stepbrothers and me to the library on a regular basis. If I’d not had this resource, I would have been very behind in public school.

My first morning at the entrance to the public school a bully pushed me. It was as if she was trying to keep me from entering. I pushed her back and went inside. This could have been a set-up by the church or my mother to make me fear going to public school. Some cults seek to control every facet of their member’s lives according to Margaret T. Singer’s 1996 book, Cults in our Midst and my mother was very controlling. Even after I became an adult and had not been to church for over 12 years, Adventists would stop by my apartment uninvited, claiming that my mother had asked them to visit me. Later, even after moving to Seattle, a few took jobs at schools where I was working. They always seemed friendly, but disturbingly ubiquitous.

In the new millennium, I have seen more and more conservative Christians entering into key positions in higher education where I am still working. Some have even become Shop Stewards in my union. Chris Hedge’s book, American Fascism: The Rise of the Religious Right illustrates how The Dominionists, which are conservative Christians, seek to dominate key areas of society. According to Hedges, the Dominionists seek control of politics, education, the economy, etc. Although he does not call the Dominionists a cult, their ideology seems to be very authoritarian and controlling. (This paired with the conservative’s attack on women’s rights is very reminiscent of Margaret Atwood’s book The Handmaid’s Tale, in which, a totalitarian religious regime takes power in the U.S., the media turns into a propaganda machine for the regime and most women are enslaved.)

There seems to be a growing trend by the conservatives in shaming and destroying public services as well. According to national news reports in 2010, some neo-conservative Christians set-up/entrapped some community support organizations. According to the footage, two conservative Christians, a white woman who posed as a prostitute and a white man who posed as a pimp, secretly filmed an African-American ACORN worker who thought she was helping poor people with housing. There was also a secretly filmed set-up of Planned Parenthood by conservative Christians according to national news. What these neo-conservative Christians did was far removed from the teachings of Christ and against the law yet, there was no report of them ever being penalized.

More and more the media is reporting on bullying coming from conservative Christian church members. An article from Truthout, Persecution is Not a Right, by Vincent Warren speaks of some conservatives making absurd claims that they are being persecuted because they are not allowed to bully people. “The insistence by some U.S. Christians that they are being oppressed, when others try to keep them from bullying, discriminating against and sometimes hounding LGBT people to death.” What does bullying have to do with Christianity? I am tolerant of all types of religion, however, I am not tolerant of bullies of any ilk.

Some Christian conservatives will even bully as a group. Extremist groups like the Westboro Baptist Church disrupt funerals with their vitriol against LGBT. This group’s hate campaigns are about as far from the teachings of Christ as you can get. It seems that this group baits grieving people into fighting with them for publicity and monetary gain. According to local news reports, if the injured party reacts against the hatred and disruption, the Pastor who is also a lawyer sues on 1st Amendment Rights. KIRO 7 2011. It seems like this is either a scam or the actions of a very negative cult.

Part Two–Veiled Religious Cults

Harmful cults are not easy to detect if you are unfamiliar with their ideology. In the early 1970s when I was 11 we were living in Pocatello, Idaho for a few years. A white neighbor girl who I did not know well asked me if I wanted to go to a John Birch Society meeting with her. I had no idea what the Birchers were and asked my mother. My mother told me they were racists. Of course I had no desire to go after she told me that.

It was ironic that the girl had asked me since I’m very ethnically and even racially mixed and my best friend at the time was African-American. I suppose the Bircher thought she was recruiting another white girl since I had blonde hair. I don’t remember if I gave the Bircher a lecture on racism or not, but it was something I was doing a lot of at the time, which angered a lot of white racists in Pocatello. (Many years later, in 2002 I was in Boise for a few months and joined a Peace group. Shortly after I joined, Birchers tried to infiltrate the group. One male Bircher grinned hideously at me when he arrived. I spoke against them to the organizers, who told me we should be inclusive of all who were anti-war. I pulled away from the group at that point. Later one of the organizers confessed that they had been wrong to include the Birchers, but had not understood how wrong until a Bircher Preacher was a guest speaker at one of their meetings. In retrospect, I think the Birchers just wanted to disrupt a Peace organization.)

Recognizing a cult is also difficult when it doesn’t have the typical appearance of a cult. In the late 1970s when I was an adult I was in Boise, Idaho for a couple of years and joined a Karate class at a Community Center. At first, it seemed like a normal class where we learned various techniques and Kata (forms). There was an emphasis on meditation, which I was no good at, so I merely shut my eyes, periodically peeping out to see if meditation time was finally over. Out of the corner of my eye I would see the other students seemingly asleep or in trances and wonder why I was merely ruminating about my day.

I didn’t know many people in Boise in the 1970s so I began making friends within the class. After a month, my classmates invited me to a picnic. All were into healthy activities like gardening and tennis, none of them drank or smoked and some were even vegetarian. They were a tight-knit group and had known each other from the class for over a year. They spoke fondly and often of our Karate teacher Mr. (name withheld).

Later, Mr. (name withheld) encouraged us to read parts of the Bible in our spare time. Having been stuck in that Fundamentalist school as a child I was quite familiar with the Bible, but did some review. Mr. (name withheld) also told the class that we had negative entities and to learn to control them with meditation. At this point I was wary, but I liked my new friends.

In July Mr. (name withheld) invited the class (approximately six people) to his house one night for a potluck. He made Pineapple Upside Down Cake and the students seemed so excited about it. They went on and on about how wonderful it was. Then there was some Bible reading and someone started passing around a plate for donations. I thought, “Oh God. I’m in church.” I really wanted to leave. It was at this point that Mr. (name withheld) encouraged us to meditate more on our own and to beware of our Negative Entities.

That weekend I went tubing down the river with my aunt, cousin and one of her friends. We joked around, drank beer and I got a sunburn.

I didn’t go back to the Karate class for well over a week and when I did return Mr. (name withheld) berated me for letting my Negative Entity control me. That was it for me. I never returned. Later, I left Boise and when I did return in the late 1980’s, out of curiosity, I called about the Karate class. The guy at the Community Center Desk said, “That was a cult!” which confirmed my earlier fears. I never thought that I could possibly be wooed by a cult. I still don’t know what type it was, but it wasn’t one of the White Supremacist cults, because there was a mixture of races in that one.

Boise seemed to have a lot of cults. Some of them were well-established churches and even with their incredibly odd ideas they still had thousands of followers. There was also the rise of New Age and Paganism in Boise in the late 1980s. There was a store named The Blue Unicorn that sold crystals, books and cassettes about New Age topics, which had quite a following. Some of my friends would joke around about past lives and channeling as New Age ushered in a host of trendy topics. My Mormon Sociology teacher even offered a class that explored New Age ideas, such as Numerology, Personality Tests and Guided Imagery, which a few of my friends and I took. It was called Personal and Planetary Transformation.

I was surprised that a Mormon Teacher would offer such a class, but I knew there were unusual things about their ideology. Joseph Smith, the spiritual leader of the Latter Day Saints/The Mormons claimed to have spoken with God and most people know he and Brigham Young’s views on marriage and procreation. Also, there is a lot of secrecy around their temple marriage rituals. Are these well-established religious organizations on a parallel with The Moonies and Rajneeshies? It seems it is simpler to accuse an organization of being a cult when their origin is from another country.

The Psychologist Margaret T. Singer co-wrote Cults in Our Midst, with former cult member Janja Lalich, which provides an insiders view on the life of a cult member and the psychological aspects of a cult. The authors explore the control the cult has over its’ members, the allure of belonging to a cult, and how even quite normal people can be attracted to cults. There are also detailed cases of Singer’s patients that were exiting cults of different types and the cult’s attempts to reclaim and/or punish them.

In the final chapter, Singer writes about how she was systematically harassed and defamed by some cults because of her counseling the victims and her expert witness testimony against the cults. According to the book, on one occasion they sent in a cult member posing as a student volunteer that gathered information on Singer and all her student’s contact information. The cult impersonated Singer through letters to her students to defame her. (This seems no different than the conservative Christians that posed as pimp and prostitute to set up ACORN in 2010.) Another time the cult stalking Singer showed up dressed as Nazis claiming that Singer was a Nazi Scientist outside a lecture she was giving according to the book. PP. 341-345

How can the cults justify that kind of behavior and why would an entire group feel compelled to engage in an illegal act? This goes back to Shermer’s “Group and leader are not accountable to any outside authority,” and the idea of “Us vs. Them.” The Group-Think of the self-righteous maintains that the end justifies whatever means and that they answer to a higher power than the law of the land.

Not the Only Cults in Town

There is a vast array of cults beyond the Fundamentalist Bible types according to Margaret T. Singer’s book Cults in Our Midst. There are New Age cults, UFO cults, Political cults, Satanic cults, Psychic Phenomena cults, Karate cults, etc. Singer makes the distinction between negative and benign cults, since the group may hold some of the same traits of a cult, yet not harm anyone. Although she does not mention these, I have always thought of Sororities and Fraternities as cults of the privileged because of their elitism, competitive nature and their predilection for secrecy and odd rituals. If they are a cult, are they negative or benign?

Apart from the traditional cults, there are online bullying groups that organize only for the purpose of harassing others. Some organize through social networks to harass their enemies or someone else’s enemy or someone they have targeted because of envy. If you search Facebook for the word “Annoy,” several pages will come up in which the page owners brag about how they like to annoy others. Some students were suspended for organizing a day to harass one of their classmates, www.wbi.com Students Organize Day of Bullying. More and more stories of people of all ages killing themselves over bullying are appearing in the media.

Some people will even go after complete strangers who are perceived to be an enemy of one of their online friends. The story from: The International Herald Times, In South Korea, Online Rumors Hit Hard, By Sang-Hun Choe, illustrates how mobs of people can be recruited to go after an innocent person they have never met. Mobbing is a universal term for this group bullying phenomena we are seeing in this millennium. Are they cults? They do meet some of the requirements: Group-Think, Secrecy, Punishing the victim with harassment, Defamation of Character and Social Isolation for the imagined wrong. This group-vigilante behavior echoes the K.K.K.’s brutality against African-American Leaders in the 1960s, Nazi practices prior to WWII, Stasi practices post war and Cointelpro tactics that have been used against Peace activists since the 1960’s. The bully’s main tool is rumor and the whisper campaign.

Bullying is an extreme and destructive action, bad for the bullied and bad for the bully. The bully will never realize their full potential in life, if the only way they can maintain their high self esteem is through persecution of others. They will never truly lead or create anything of lasting value. They can only destroy and be unhappy with occasional small emotional triumphs.

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MOB THINK

In Civil Rights, Education, Politics, Surveillance on July 4, 2012 at 22:21

By Seana Sperling

It’s become commonplace to accuse a Teacher of being a pedophile, racist or something equally heinous, however there appears to be little or no accountability for the accusers. The people making the allegation should at least have to take a Polygraph test, because an accusation is as good as an indictment in our hypercritical society. There is no accountability because of our reactionary, Amber Alert mindset and the fact that people are eager to believe the worst about others. This is a fertile seed for the destruction of our democracy.

I imagine this would suit the current regime very well. They have been gaslighting the public and using negative campaigns for a long time to control the political arena. Suppose our government would use something as simple as gossip to achieve their agenda. It’s been done before. The SS vilified the Jews, Gypsies, Gays and Lesbians, anyone that didn’t fit into their Aryan ideal. They united the Germans by rallying against/mobbing minorities. History repeated itself during the Cultural Revolution in china and students were manipulated into violence against their Teachers. The Soviets used community spies and the spread of propaganda to keep their Scholars and Writers in line. How do you get rid of the Activists and Writers, the dissenters—spread rumors.

We are immersed in an age of mob mentality once again and gossip has become a national pastime. Look at our penchant for Reality T.V. We like to see people behave badly, so we can group-judge them over coffee the next day. In the 80’s people would discuss evening soap stars in the same manner, but now people prefer to take pot shots at real people. I’ve heard people denigrating some of the contestants of Survivor, American Idol and America’s Top Model as if they were intimate enemies. Is this a natural evolution of fads and tastes or was this carefully manufactured? We have been duped before and Manufacturing Consent, by Noam Chomsky illustrates the patterns and methods used to manipulate our desires.

Other people’s business, A.K.A. spying has also become the hip thing to do nowadays. There are films like, Spy Kids, Civic Duty and Disturbia, where the participants in the spying feel they have an important cause, which permits them to abuse another’s Civil Rights. What if the government is following in Mao and Stalin’s footsteps and creating little units of people to spy on Activists, Writers and Teachers. Of course they would need some propaganda to recruit their spies. Let’s see. Shall we say Mr. Something or other is a drug dealer or a pedophile?

Neighborhood Watch groups could be persuaded to orchestrate surveillance. A little man with a real or fake badge goes around the neighborhood with a file on the Teacher that lives on the block. A photoshopped image of the target could be the cement that unites the team. Like the game Telephone, the propaganda can get even more distorted as the stories fly through blogging. The group discusses what to do in the situation and a decision is made to keep an eye on the person. There could be a decision to drive the person out of the neighborhood with noise campaigns or street harassment. How much proof would a Watch group need to begin surveillance? Would they need any or would a slanderous statement suffice?

I used to think Community Policing was a good thing, however, as with everything, good ideas can be corrupted over time and Neighborhood Watch groups can turn into angry mobs given the right motivation. Secondary School Teachers are especially vulnerable as they are grooming the young for adulthood and if the Teacher questions our government or especially the misdeeds of our multi-national corporations, they can risk angering people that are opposed to free speech. There are a lot of them out there, especially if they are getting huge tax breaks from a corrupt system. Welcome to the United States of Industry.

We need to think independently and not go along with the mob. Question everything you see, read and hear. This is a lesson hard-learned by ex-Soviets and one we need to heed. Our gullibility and greed for gossip could be our downfall.

It shouldn’t be career ruining for Midwestern Teacher to tell her class, “I honk for Peace.”

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The Mobbing of President Obama

In African American, Bullying, Civil Rights, Education, Mobbing, Politics on July 4, 2012 at 22:17

By Seana Sperling

We have our first President of color in the White House and I have never seen such a backlash against a President before. It is a virulent hate campaign instigated by the Neo-Conservative Rightwing and unfortunately some on the Left are joining the ranks. This is Mobbing—a ganging up by the many against the one and I’m not joining the mob.

President Obama may not be perfect, but he is doing many good things. Protecting women’s reproductive rights—good idea. GLBT can serve openly in the Military—good idea. (Even though I’m heterosexual and a little bit thick, even I have noticed the unfairness that GLBT people have had to endure, well, forever.) A Universal Healthcare program—good idea. (Although I would prefer the Single Payer system, the new healthcare program is a start.) Troops are being pulled from Iraq–finally. Even the bail out of the big auto companies seems to have been wise as more people are re-employed at the plants now and the companies are paying back their debt. There are many more good things that President Obama has done, but the reactionaries are always in attack mode.

First we had the Birthers, “Show us your Birth Certificate Obama!” It made for great comedy, but seriously folks, actions like that demonstrate the hate and racism that is still feeding on our society. Then we had the controversy over “Death Panels,” when the Universal Healthcare Plan was announced. The Neo-Conservative Republicans gaslighted their constituency into thinking that it was going to be a scene straight out of Soylent Green and that all the seniors were in danger. “Quick. Hide Granny! The Death Panels are comin’!”

Some in the news media are critical of President Obama’s every breath and try to rally the ranks by blaming this administration for the economic crisis, unemployment and the two wars that began long before President Obama took office. They try to pass this propaganda off as news. Real news is based on facts and is supported by looking at both sides of the story. If a story is completely slanted, we should view this as editorial/opinion and not a news story. Synonyms for propaganda are misinformation, half-truths and party line. In this election year these synonyms are very appropriate.

There is also the alarming trend of the growing lack of decorum in the media towards the President and the Leftwing in general. Some commentators will actually scream at interview subjects that disagree with their Neo-conservative views. For example, Shepherd Smith verbally attacked Naomi Wolf in the 2008 interview on FOX News. The commentators that are engaging in these tantrums and the spread of propaganda indicate the decline of real Journalism. Even more disturbing is the fact that some in society consider these commentators role models, which justifies the spread of more incivility to every household, school, workplace, church, temple, etc. creating the impression that it is acceptable to disparage, spread rumors and out right lie about this administration and the Leftwing.

I am not saying we shouldn’t be critical when our Leaders are involved in things that do not promote the ideals of the country. (The real ideals as outlined in The Constitution and The Bill of Rights, not the mythological rules imposed on us by any religion.) I am certainly no fan of the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act), which I view as worse than the Patriot Act and will only cause more Civil Rights abuses, but I am saying that President Obama is under attack more than any other President and we need to examine the reason behind this. Hmmm. What could it be?

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Un-America

In African American, Bullying, Civil Rights, Education, Latino, Mobbing, Native American, Politics, Roma, Surveillance on July 4, 2012 at 22:15

By Seana Sperling

Under the tentacles of the punitive and judgmental Bush regime, our tolerance for cruelty and selfishness grew exponentially. Our Constitution has been turned into a puree of abandoned quotes with a crucifix on top; cliff-noted to suit the needs of the Religious Right. This distortion of our rights has enabled us to become very un-American; the manifestation of the bully nations we used to criticize. Unfortunately today’s technology has made this easier to perpetuate and there is no crisis of conscience when the “righteous” are prescribing punishment via their laptops and cell phones.

Under the topic “Mobbing,” there are a variety of stories on the Internet about cowardly group behavior, bullying behavior, where mobs of people verbally attack public figures or even private citizens. Online and offline summer of 2011, the mobbers went after Dominic Strauss Khan, former head of the IMF (International Monetary Fund) based on a sexual assault accusation and this was before the trial took place. What happened to, “Innocent until proven guilty?”(Coincidentally, he had appeared in a 2010 film that revealed the exploitation of derivatives in the housing market that lead to the current economic crisis, Inside Job.) Finally, after being harassed and defamed all summer Khan was acquitted, but the damage had already been done to his career and private life.

Mobbing is nothing new and throughout history there have been self-righteous mobs that go after individuals. Couple our current judgmental populace with today’s technology and you get hoards of people, from all walks of life, even the so-called pious, vilifying and passing judgment on complete strangers in Internet chat rooms. Oddly in the land of liberty, this has become very popular and entire communities are constructed around mobbing. Nothing brings people together like a good old-fashioned witch-hunt.

Like the KKK’s penchant for disguise, the mobber’s identities remain cloaked in anonymity as they destroy their victims from the privacy of their PCs or cell phones. How easy to slander and threaten others when there is little chance of getting caught. They think up cutesy monikers, such as Frank Sinatra’s Reanimated Corpse or Nonymouse and flatter themselves that they are writers, exercising Freedom of Speech or vigilantes punishing an evil person.

Not only do the Blog Mobs rip the victim to shreds on the Internet, some will post all of the victim’s personal information online and then try to rally the other bloggers to track/stalk, and report the victim’s every move to the group. (Organized stalking/tracking—Google: Texas Fred and see what he instigates against supposed sex offenders.)

Stalking and especially group stalking is a horrendous civil rights abuse—it violates a citizen’s right to privacy as laid out in the constitution. Also, slander and inciting hatred towards a citizen violates even more constitutional rights.

Some of these bully groups try to damage every facet of the person’s life by contacting their employer, neighbors and family with false reports that the person is crazy, a racist, pedophile, thief, sexual deviant, under investigation, etc. The accusations the Blog Mobs use to rally the masses are generally so reprehensible and embarrassing to discuss that the accused may never even hear what they are being accused of. Also, if you ask one of the bloggers if they have actually asked the accused if it is true, they just say, “Oh, they’ll just deny it anyway.” Ah, due process of law in action.

Some blog mobs have even used set-ups, complete with photo shoots to make the victim seem like an undesirable. This is later posted on You Tube or My Space or any number of sites. The slander creates conflicts where the victim constantly has to defend themself and thus create more enemies. I know from personal experience about the set ups. In 2006, I would walk through the park on my way home from work. On two occasions, I saw a middle-aged African-American man running ahead in the distance and looking back at me with a look of fear on his face. Then I’d see some twenty-something with their little camera phone, filming the scene. Scenes like this happened a variety of times and I had no idea what was going on until I came across other articles, that shed light on the set ups, which are referred to as “street theater.” There would also be set ups in the workplace where one coworker would try to manipulate trouble between myself and another colleague. I stopped taking the bait finally in 2007, but the attempts are still made anyway. (This is a facet of Workplace Mobbing.)

This cowardly behavior of Mobbing has been popularized and encouraged by mainstream media. In 2007 on Channel Five News, I heard Jean Enerson rally the troops, by saying, “Bloggers tracking pedophiles,” after a story about Jack McClellan, a person who was suspected of being a possible pedophile. Every week the reporters would proudly claim that this man had been driven out of another community. (America—Home of the brave.) I have no idea why this person was appearing almost weekly on the news and why he was perceived as such a threat as he hadn’t been convicted of anything. I do know that Texas Fred (who appeared on FOX news for his vigilante work) was encouraging blog mobs to stalk this man and run him out of various towns. I have little sympathy for real pedophiles, however as one that has been falsely accused of this egregious act on a site called www.rottenneighbor.com I say get some real evidence before you begin to stalk and torture people. Also, do some fact checking and let the accused defend himself. Don’t just take sound bytes from this guy that make him look bonkers.

Since anyone can be accused of being a pedophile and the community reacts with absolutely no proof, innocent Teachers and other’s lives are being destroyed every day. I see these amped up reports on the news almost weekly. Where is our Due Process? Where are the true Journalists that know that News needs to be fact-based and fact checked and not have a lead sentence such as, “A Harper Valley Gymnastics Teacher is being accused of Child Rape,” then cut to a shot of the person’s house and neighborhood. Of course the person’s neighbors will recognize the house and this person is instantly stigmatized.

A 2006 International Times article, illustrates the frenzy of an online mob and the damage they can do to an innocent person. According to the article, the victim was first accused of being responsible for his ex-girlfriend’s suicide. Then the stories began to build. The bloggers alleged she was pregnant and he was trying to force her to abort his child. The mob went crazy, posting all of his personal information on the internet, calling his workplace with demands that the company fire him, forcing him out of his college where he had night classes. Next the mob was reporting his every move–even what he was wearing on specific days. None of the rumors had any basis in fact, but Vigilante Bloggers don’t need any facts. From: The International Herald Times: In Seoul Korea, Online Rumors Can Hit Hard. By Sang-Hun Choe (This type of mob behavior is called Organized Stalking.)

As mentioned above, I have had my own experience with internet smears and organized stalking. In December 2007, I found my full name on a website named www.rottenneighbor.com. These anonymous posts claimed that I was everything from a redneck prostitute to a child molester. They ranged from character assassination to the ridiculous, “She will steal your husband.” I contacted the Webmaster from the site and by the next day all the posts were removed, but the webmaster never responded to my emails. (I began contacting State legal agencies and Human Rights Commissions, but they offered no help.)

In May 2008, I put up a few flyers in my neighborhood offering a reward for information about the Internet smears. A few days later, I received a call from Channel Five Reporter Chris Daniels asking for a comment about the reward and new slander posted on The Stranger Newspaper’s SLOG. I had no idea about this new twist and was shocked when I found 48 postings accusing me of being crazy and a crack “whore,” among other things. (These blogs had been posted shortly after I had hung my flyers and even a photo of one of my flyers was on the site.) I emailed Dan Savage, since I’d met him when I interviewed for a job there in 2002. Tim Keck, the Publisher (or is that just Unseen Hand Productions that controls this media) responded instead and said that he didn’t see anything wrong with the posts. When I checked the SLOG again, the more serious postings, that I was a crack whore and the one suggesting that I be “put down,” had been removed and replaced with the statement, “way too mean.” I had printed the originals however.

Next I discovered I was on a Watch List when I was detained at the U.S./Canadian border in 2007. Why? I don’t know exactly and every FOIA request I submit is denied or dismissed. John C. Inglis from the NSA went so far as to write, “While your appeal clearly states your concern of not knowing whether or not NSA maintains intelligence information on you, I must emphasize that NSA can neither confirm nor deny alleged intelligence activities or targets due to the classified nature of this agency’s signals intelligence mission.“ If my name can appear on a Watch List and since I have done nothing to deserve such a thing, then anyone can be vilified and harassed in this manner.

The CIA has always used slander campaigns against individuals they consider a threat—Activists, writers—so-called Enemy Combatants—Google: Abby Hoffman and Cointelpro. General Motors did the same thing to Ralph Nader—Watch the DVD: Ralph Nader: An Unreasonable Man. Now it appears they can even do it to average people like me. I guess anyone that stands up or stands out could be a target. Am I just an example to scare the other nobodies?

When anonymous bloggers (who could be NSA or LEIU) can so easily manipulate the public into going after innocent people, then that public can also be manipulated into a totalitarian system–A system where they do not question authority for fear of reprisal. If the government vilifies and isolates all the activists, then the weak will follow the crowd.

Sadly it’s not just the Religious Right that is involved in this (although these are the more serious offenders). Since self-righteousness has replaced common sense, Democrats will vilify other Democrats (Just look how divided the party was in 2004.). Scholars go after each other. (Look at the high percentage of Workplace Mobbing in Academia). Feminists attack other feminists and the rightwing fascists just sit back and laugh at all the mayhem they have caused. They create chaos to implement the destruction of our constitution, our unions and especially our unity. The 1960’s battles were won by many groups pulling together and we are currently very divided. This type of isolation only endangers us. We need to put aside our differences and search for our commonalities.

Throughout the ages Jewish and Roma people, activists, scholars, etc. have been vilified so terribly that entire communities turned on them. Some were driven out of cities, placed into camps and millions were murdered. During the Spanish Inquisition, Village Healers were burned as witches. During the Cultural Revolution, students were manipulated into going after the Scholars because of Mao’s wish to purge any intellectual threat. Stalin did much the same. During WWII, American citizens of Japanese descent were vilified and placed into camps; their homes and goods confiscated. During McCarthyism, suspected Communists were blacklisted, forced out of homes and employment and one couple was even put to death. Currently, in the “land of the Free,” liberal Teachers, Writers, Activists and Whistleblowers are treated as the new threat and can be placed on Watch Lists and harassed by their communities. Read: The End of America, By Naomi Wolf and You Have No Rights By Matthew Rothschild who refers to this as the New McCarthyism.

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A Modified Chicken in Every Pot

In Climate Change, Economy, Education, Politics, World Relations on July 4, 2012 at 22:09

By Seana Sperling (written in 2001)
If you are what you eat, then this morning I was transformed into organic Soy Milk, genetically altered Raisin Flakes and a banana. GMO, the genetically modified organism, is found in everything from cornflakes to that processed snack you can’t put down. And, how about that banana? In the produce aisle in most stores there is usually a modest section labeled “Organic,” but there are mounds of unlabeled produce that surround it. Today you don’t know what you’re buying, but you can assume that if it’s not labeled “Organic,” it is genetically engineered.
For those that aren’t familiar with genetic engineering, this is one example of the process: Scientists take a trout gene and splice it to the genetic code of a tomato plant. These scientists work for big companies like Monsanto. This enhancement will increase size and shelf life, so that retailers don’t end up with over-ripe or spoiled produce. Initially, scientists were attempting to develop hardy, inexpensive plants that could feed the world, however, Corporate America latched on to this worthy intention and distorted it. This has resulted in untested products being thrust on us without our knowledge or permission.
According to Trudy Bialic, Editor/Manager of Public Affairs for PCC Natural Markets in Seattle, “There is no policy on the labeling of genetically modified food. “GMO food is never labeled.” Bialic said. “If the biotech industry believes it’s so great, why wouldn’t they want to shout it out loud and clear, “Genetically Engineered!” Without mandatory labels identifying foods containing GMOs, it’s impossible to know what we’re eating and to make informed choices. Two-thirds of all processed foods are estimated to contain GMOs and we have a right to know,” said Bialic. We do have a right to know. So why are majority of us remaining idle while our cold cereal becomes something fit only for the Bionic Woman?
In the early 1990s, chefs in San Francisco began protesting the lack of labeling of genetically engineered food or “Frankenfood,” as they were calling it. This drew some mainstream media attention for a while, but as the ratings dropped, so did the reports. The proliferation of gene alteration in mainstream agriculture is an important issue, however, it’s not one that gets a lot of publicity.
Many people seem to think that we no longer have any control over Corporate America since the FDA doesn’t regulate GMOs. The truth is, we are losing control. According to Bialic, “There’s been a revolving door between the government and the biotech industry ever since the U.S. policy on GE (genetically engineered) foods was written.” She said the former Food and Drug Administration Deputy Commissioner, Michael R. Taylor had written the FDA’s 1992 policy on Transgenic food. Taylor had worked for Monsanto for seven years before being employed by the FDA and he returned to Monsanto after finishing his appointment with the Food and Drug Administration, Bialic said.
I left several messages for the FDA in Seattle. When they finally responded on my answering machine, I was given a wrong number (someone’s residence) to call for further information. I was in Boise in April 2002 and I tried calling that branch of the FDA during my stay. I was thrilled to hear a human answer since I was so used to automated menus. The man (unidentified) I spoke with told me that there weren’t any requirements for labeling genetically engineered food, but that they really hadn’t run into many problems in that area. “Genetic alteration of food isn’t all that bad,” he continued, “There was a situation with enhancing corn products, but that was later used only as animal feed.”

From: “USDA Toughens Rules on Biotech Crops,” By PHILIP BRASHER, Des Moines Register Washington Bureau, 06/14/2002

“The biotechnology industry was rocked in 2000 when anti-biotech activists discovered StarLink corn in taco shells and other products. StarLink, one of several varieties of corn developed to produce its own pesticide, had never been approved for human consumption because of concerns about its potential to cause allergic reactions. The discovery prompted massive food recalls, forced processing plants to shut down, and reduced U.S. corn exports.”

Scary as this may sound, the biotech industry has cultivated even more dangerous creations. Some food supplements have been modified with disastrous results.

“Already a genetically engineered food supplement, GE tryptophan, has killed 37 people and permanently disabled 1535 others.” From: Unnatural Harvest: How Corporate Science is Secretly Altering our Food, by Ingeborg Boyens

Even with the inherent dangers of GMOs the mainstream media either ignores the issue or creates propaganda to support it. There was a commercial in 2000/2001 about a genetically engineered product called “Golden Rice.” The commercial claimed that it would benefit the future of children in the world because it was rich in Beta Carotene. According to studies from the Environmental News Network, a vitamin supplement is cheaper and much more effective for this deficiency. Children would practically have to eat their weight in Golden Rice daily for the same benefit, according to the study. Not all commercials are propaganda, however, and General Mills is telling it like it is with their appropriately named Frankenberry Cereal.
I didn’t notice the change in food until about 1993 when I returned from Peace Corps. I had been in the ex-Soviet Union where fruit and vegetables were not always plentiful, but were definitely not enhanced. There was a lack of pesticides there, which was evident in the wormholes in the apples and bug-infested greens. What they lacked in beauty they made up for with great flavor, especially the tomatoes. They would go bad within a few days as opposed to their U.S. counterparts that could languish in the fridge for two weeks.
A student of mine from France said he was always surprised when he went into the supermarkets in the U. S. because of the remarkable size and beauty of the produce. However, he compares it with plastic fruit because of its lack of smell and flavor.
At this point scientists are still unsure of the long term effect that genetically altered food will have on our bodies, our planet or other animal life. A trout gene linked with the DNA of a tomato plant is an amalgamated animal. In reality, it is a new species. At least they didn’t cross it with a Piranha gene. There are warnings and taboos in many religious tomes about this type of amalgamation. Even though I’m not religious, I’m a little wary of creating new species or pathogens. Besides, I like to eat the four food groups separately.

From: The British Medical Journal April 17, 1999, David Freed:

Many lectins (a carbohydrate binding protein found in most plants, especially cereals, potatoes and beans) are powerful allergens and prohevein, the principal allergen of rubber latex is one. It has been engineered into transgenic tomatoes for its fungistatic properties, so we can expect an outbreak of tomato allergy in the near future among latex sensitive people.

Unfortunately, even our organic farms can become infected with genetically altered seeds. Crosswinds carrying seeds from Frankenfarms ensure that someday all crops will become tainted. There was a case several years ago when an organic farm in the U.S. attempted to sell corn flakes to a country in Europe. This country refused to buy because they found that the product was made from genetically altered corn. (Many countries in Europe are very conscientious about analyzing any imported food.) This alerted organic farms to the problem of cross-pollination. The bee carries a little pollen from the Frankenfarm over to their neighbors. Also, what will contact with this mutated pollen do to the bee? Is Attack of the Killer Bees prophetic? What about the recent disappearance of the Honey Bee?
Several years ago some friends and I were passing through the California/Oregon border and officials stopped us and asked if we had any fruit or vegetables. California is very careful about checking for possible new plant-life or pests coming in to destroy their vulnerable fruit crops. Nobody’s looking at the big picture.

*Thanks to Trudy Bialic for her comments and research.

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Mob Rule in the Community

In African American, Bullying, Civil Rights, Education, Latino, Mobbing, Native American, Peace, Politics, Roma, Surveillance, World Relations on July 4, 2012 at 22:05

By Seana Sperling

There has been a growing paranoia in this country that has people watching for terrorists, drug dealers, thieves, etc. via Community Policing via Neighborhood Watch groups. These Watch groups are viewed as a necessary and positive thing and many people I have spoken to on this subject agree. However, when I asked people in the Capitol Hill neighborhood how much proof they would need to believe that a certain neighbor was a drug dealer, prostitute, thief, pedophile, nazi, etc. most paused. A few were very honest and said they would probably react rather than seeking proof.

I have been guilty of reacting. In the late 1980’s I was in Idaho working at a record store. One day a coworker of mine whispered to me that a person who had entered the store was a nazi. Without any proof, I instantly hated this person and gave him my best glare. I didn’t question it. Frankly, I didn’t know this coworker very well, but I believed her on this hot button issue because I was in Idaho. Reactions like this lead to Community Mobbing (a ganging up by a group against an individual).

In another case, two of my friends were driving around Lynnwood, WA looking for housing in May 2007. According to my friends they saw a white van with the word Rapist spray-painted across the entire side. My friends were shocked and we all commented later that whether it were true or not, the damage had been done. In this age of propaganda an accusation works as well as a verdict and I can only suppose that there was some reaction from the neighborhood.

The week of June 15, 2007, The Stranger Newspaper ran a short piece in the I, Anonymous column, titled, “He’s No Pedophile and You Know It.” It was about a Teacher who had been falsely accused by a jilted girlfriend. Teachers are especially vulnerable to this type of accusation because of the influence they have over the young. As stated in the piece, this Teacher’s career is over even if he is cleared of all charges. Was the jilted girlfriend ever given a lie detector test? For that matter, what about the mainstream TV Media that showed up on the doorstep for an impromptu interview with the accused? (The TV media has been used constantly in these witch-hunts and there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of evidence or fact checking. Since most people believe whatever they see on the nightly news, I’m sure his community is at least regarding him with suspicion.)

Sadly, this is happening globally. With such advances in technology comes convenience, but also new problems can arise, such as anonymous slander on the Internet (cyber mobbing). A satellite of The New York Times, The Herald Times, ran an article about Community Mobbing in China. A man suspected that his wife was having an affair with a University student they had met at a gaming party just because she had exchanged some emails with the student. Even though the husband had no real evidence and the wife denied it, he wrote a lengthy blog on a widely read message board accusing the student of adultery. In response, hundreds of people were recruited and began to stalk and harass the poor student who ended up dropping out of school and hiding at home with his family. From: Mob Rule on China’s Internet: The Keyboard as Weapon. Howard French, The Herald Times, 06/01/2006.

If rumor and innuendo via message boards can provoke such community harassment, then what do we do when we have “proof,” i.e. a photograph, video, a voice-over tape-recording? In this age of PhotoShop, digital imagery, cell phone cameras, etc. much can be distorted. While a picture is worth a thousand words, a photo-shopped image might be worth one life ruining statement and no one questions the accuser. There is no accountability or lie detector test required especially if it is posted anonymously.

It’s quite possible that one vengeance stalker could recruit an entire community with a digitally enhanced image or video of their victim. The Community would then view the targeted victim as an undesirable, someone that needed to be driven out, punished or at the very least watched. Police condone surveillance of suspected wrongdoers by Neighborhood Watch groups and there is no legislation yet for this kind of vigilantism.

Community Policing can turn into Community Mobbing very swiftly. Innocent people can be slandered, then bullied and harassed with little or no proof of their guilt. According to the article: Mob Rule on China’s Internet, there were responses on that message board demanding that everyone, including every store worker or business person harass the student.

I’ve experienced ongoing harassment in a variety of forms over the past few years. In December of 2007, I found multiple postings accusing me of everything from prostitution to racism on a site called rottenneighbor.com under my full name. I immediately contacted the webmaster through the site and alerted him to the slander. The posts were gone the following day, but the webmaster didn’t acknowledge my request for information on the postings. The most recent smear was a series of libelous blogs on the May 27, 2008 The Stranger Newspaper’s SLOG message board under the title, Modern Warfare. I only discovered this particular smear because Chris Daniels, one of the reporters at King 5 called me to ask about it. I wrote to Dan Savage, asking why The Stranger would want to make any kind of “warfare,” against me. Tim Keck responded on Savage’s behalf, writing that he didn’t t think the postings were that bad and the worst of the blogs had been redacted. (The blogs saying I should be “Put down, “ or accusing me of being a crack whore. I printed the originals out however.) These are only a couple of episodes in a long and consistent history of smears.

There is nothing new about Mobbing and the KKK, the Nazi’s and other groups used this to eliminate people they felt were a threat. During McCarthyism, similar tactics were used to destroy people that had been accused of being Communists. Slander campaigns, harassment at work, blacklists, and surveillance were employed. Throughout history activists, educators and writers have suffered the same abuses and there is still no accountability for a whisper or surveillance campaign.

In 2002, Ashcroft unveiled Bush’s plan for community action groups, originally charged with watching for terrorist activity, community action groups are watching for any real or imagined infraction and will mete out punishment vigilante style to anyone that comes under suspicion. In this era of citizen informants (Do an internet search for Amerisnitch.) anyone could spread slander to these citizen groups who then would feel entitled to gang up on the individual. Two or more enemies could then corroborate the lies. The targeted victim is then thrust into situation after situation where they have to defend themselves, thus creating more and more enemies. In my case some of the anonymous bloggers claimed to know me therefore confirming the smear.

The most serious issue to me is that a seemingly liberal community like Seattle would organize around this type of fascist behavior. Consider a quote by William S. Burrows, “A Police State needs no Police.”