| Wednesday,
The Dante's Inferno Test has sent you to Purgatory!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:
(Think I am going to tell you
that?)
Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test
========================================
I wrote this small essay for another place:
On False Memories
I have long known, and sometimes demonstrated, that it is possible to
implant genuine memories in people, of events that not only never happened,
but never could have happened.
Therapists have done this regularly in developing cases against child
molesters, to the point where it is clear that at least some of those cases
are based on malice and the lawyers: a child in a custody suit will suddenly
remember being molested by one parent. That happened to a prominent L A
politician many years ago, and while he was never prosecuted, the scandal
finished him off as a political candidate: all that over false memories. How
much of this is deliberate and how much happens inadvertently isn't always
clear, but therapists are generally trained to "believe the child" and also
that "where there's smoke there's fire." Only sometimes there is neither
smoke nor fire nor a dragon.
The MacMartin case here was worse, with GROUPS of children remembering
graves being opened, and horses killed and buried on the school grounds, to
the point where archeologists were called in to dig up the old school
playground. They found a turtle shell. As the defense lawyer (who ended up
owning the school and everything the family accused had ever owned) said,
"when they find a dead horse let me know." Yet the children "remembered" the
incidents with the dead horses as vividly as they remembered being sexually
assaulted.
The original accusation was made by a women the police knew to be a bit
dotty -- she had made plenty of accusations of all kinds in the past -- but
then a child therapist was brought in. She found all kinds of memories in
children who previously hadn't had any complaints about the school, and
hadn't reported any incidents to their parents. Her boyfriend was a local TV
off-prime-time anchor who found a big story. People were jailed, the school
was destroyed, people's lives were ruined -- over "memories" that just
couldn't be. (Forest Lawn would know if some priests took school children
there and exhumed a body; or you'd think so, wouldn't you? But it was taken
to the Grand Jury even so.)
There are dozens of other cases of implanted memories. You can probably
implant them in yourself; it's certainly easy enough to do with your
children. Tell them about "the time when you are about 5 and got lost in the
Mall, and the mall cop found you and gave you an ice cream cone" and in a
few hours you will know the flavor of the cone and the color of the uniform
and whether the mall cop carried a weapon.
And you can convince trauma victims of chilling flashback memories --
that never happened.
The implications for the law ought to be clear.
===================
Elizabeth Loftus has done extensive studies of this, see her books on
repressed memories, e.g.
The Myth of Repressed Memory
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/
detail/-/0312141238/qid=1070998344//
ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i2_xgl14/002-4207883
-6869619?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
==========================
Appointments and other business today.
Tyranny or Incompetence?
Disturbing news of acts by US authorities that, if true -- and I have no
way of knowing -- can only be described as imperial tyranny of a
particularly arrogant variety. A Canadian employed in the US deported to
Syria, a place he had not been for 20 years, without any charges being filed
or ever being told why, in this morning's LA Times. The story is improbable
but one assumes there must be something behind it. If it is true we have US
agents acting like the KGB or Gestapo for no discernible reason.
Democratic empires can be arrogant and faithless. Athens' behavior toward
Platea is a case in point. Large police bureaucracies tend to act in the
same ways no matter what the sponsoring government may be like at the top.
Eternal vigilance has always been the price of liberty.
Free Speech Areas when the President visits an American city? People
herded away so the President can avoid seeing protest signs he doesn't like?
Is this the new crime of maiestas?
Ave. Ave Imperator.
Perhaps I am just upset, perhaps I am a victim of biased news, perhaps
anything: but I do not want to hear that the United States of America is
keeping people who have not been informed of the charges against them and
who have no prospect of ever being released. Prisoner of War camps to intern
hostiles, conditions like Stalag 17: those are not pleasant but they are
acceptable. Charging people with war crimes is acceptable. Shooting them out
of hand for being on a battlefield in arms without uniforms: that is harsh,
but acceptable. Imprisoning them in a base under US control and saying they
are beyond the reach of the courts because the base is technically under the
sovereignty of a foreign government : that is the kind of legal quibbling
this nation can do without.
If this is the price of a New World Order, perhaps we ought to reconsider
the costs and gains.
Particularly when the real danger is Saudi Wahabbi agents in the heart of
East Europe.
Who rules to the East commands the heartland. Who rules the heartland
commands the world island. Who rules the world island commands the world.
Out-dated, and Mackinder probably knew it when he said it; after all the
USSR ruled East Europe and the heartland, and couldn't command the world.
But one does not lightly let those who hate the West operate freely in the
Balkans -- and that is what is happening, and the Wahabbi agents are
protected by US and European soldiers.
What is going one here? Canadians resident legally in the US deported to
Syria while US troops defend Wahabbi agents in Kossovo? This is not merely
empire it is incompetent empire.
Or am I merely dyspeptic and raving this morning?
(See mail)
====================================
Home after a lot of adventures. More work tomorrow.
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