Re: Children and the Net

In message <199408021705.NAA22137@bb.com> "L. Todd Masco" writes:
> Am I the only one that's struck by the similarity between the propaganda
>  about the Waco massacre and the propaganda preceding the Persion Gulf
>  massacre?
...
> [Not obviously C'punk related, but it really is: we must understand the
>  propaganda machine that the US government has working for it if we
>  hope to oppose them successfully on crypto issues]

It's a much more general phenomenon that that.  Two or three years ago,
two doctors working for the National Health Service in the northeast of
England began applying new diagnostic techniques routinely while examining
children.  They found that some children had been sexually abused and the
children were taken into care.	They began widening the use of the
techniques and more children were taken into care with formal charges
against parents etc being prepared by the police.  The number of people
involved expanded rapidly until it became clear that the two doctors
were claiming that at least 20% (and climbing) of the population were
sexually abusing their children.  At this point credibility disappeared,
support vanished, and the doctors were moved to new jobs.

At the high point, children who fell off their bikes were being snatched
out of emergency units, checked for "signs of sexual abuse", and usually
found to have them.  Then they were transferred to social workers who
used extremely suggestive interrogation techniques which confirmed the
doctors' [wacky] diagnoses.  The doctors and social workers claimed to
have the interests of the children in mind, and they looked sincere.
But at some point the insanity of what they were doing became utterly
apparent.  They took children away from their parents because they were
being abused.  The children were put into foster homes.  The doctors
examined them again and found that they were still being abused.  So the
children were moved again.  It became apparent that soon all of the
children in the North East were going to have to be put into care, and
most of the adults were going to be charged with child abuse.  The
people at the center of the affair never saw that they were wrong.

At more or less the same time, social workers raided an island off the
Scottish coast and took most of the children, claiming that the
islanders were engaging in devil worship.  The same type of aggressive
interviewing techniques were used -- suggestive demonstrations,
questions repeated on into the night until the 'right' answer was
supplied, sweets and other rewards given for telling the right story.
Although a commission later found that the charges were without
substance, many of the children still have not been returned.

It's not just the US government.  Personally I believe that some
fraction of the population is authoritarian in temperament and some
fraction is credulous, and that these attributes are uncorrelated and
distributed at random.	The credulous authoritarian types can be very
dangerous.  They like uniforms.

--

Jim Dixon

jdd@aiki.demon.co.uk (Jim Dixon) writes:

 > It's a much more general phenomenon that that.  Two or
 > three years ago, two doctors working for the National Health
 > Service in the northeast of England began applying new
 > diagnostic techniques routinely while examining children.
 > They found that some children had been sexually abused and
 > the children were taken into care.

The same thing happened in the United States a number of years
back.  Sex abuse "experts" began taking note of microscopic
abrasions and other signs of wear and tear on the genitals of
children who had been sexually abused.  They found that almost
all children who had been sexually abused showed such signs and
wrote lengthy papers on the subject.  They also appeared in court
with impressive diagrams and pointers and expounded at length
about the new "scientific evidence of abuse."

"So and so", they would proclaim, "showed a thickening of the
skin" or "a small scratch" which obviously proved something
sexual and inappropriate had taken place.  Lots of people went
straight to jail.

Then the scientists happened to examine a population of children
who had not been sexually abused and to their horror, they showed
the same statistical incidence of such findings as the "abused"
children did.  Mostly from normal self-exploration and play with
other kids their own age.  There was gigantic embarassment all
around and the scientists retreated.

Looks like England is going through the same learning curve.

 > The people at the center of the affair never saw that they
 > were wrong.

Well, there is a certain professional humiliation factor to be
contended with here. :)

 > It's not just the US government.

Most of the really goofy stuff along these lines seems to happen
in the US and Great Britain.  Other countries participate
occasionally, like Italy.  The Scandinavian countries and the
Netherlands seem mostly immune.

 > Personally I believe that some fraction of the population is
 > authoritarian in temperament and some fraction is credulous,
 > and that these attributes are uncorrelated and distributed
 > at random. The credulous authoritarian types can be very
 > dangerous.  They like uniforms.

Back during the "Gays in the Miliary" flamefest, someone wrote a
very funny parody suggesting that membership in the Republican
party was genetically determined.

I personally believe there is a large correlation between
genetically determined personality traits and an attraction to
right wing political thought.

All right wing memes seem to have as their underlying
reproductive mechanism the following schema...

      A.  Doomed are those who do not embrace System "X"
      B.  Anything I do to cause others to embrace
          System "X" is justified.

The classic Christian case is of course Pascal's Wager, where
avoiding any finite probability of eternal damnation outweighs
the benefits of agnosticism not only for oneself, but for the
rest of humanity as well.

It would seem quite likely that such anxiety-producing logic
would thrive best in a mind that is already predisposed to some
degree of nervous excitement and insecurity.

-- 
     Mike Duvos         $    PGP 2.6 Public Key available     $
     mpd@netcom.com     $    via Finger.                      $

After spending a great leingth of time talking about the child abuse
mania that is poluting out culture,
On Tue, 2 Aug 1994, Mike Duvos wrote:
> I personally believe there is a large correlation between
> genetically determined personality traits and an attraction to
> right wing political thought.

Funny, most  the people I know here that procalim this the loudest are 
LEFT wing people talking right wing mormons.

Berzerk.