01) Could This Be the Worst Solitary Confinement Unit in the Nation?
Thanks to feinmann0!
“Dr. Craig Haney has investigated the psychological effects of prison conditions for more than 40 years, and has spent time in dozens of supermax prisons and solitary confinement units. But the conditions in the Georgia Diagnostic & Classification Prison’s solitary confinement facility, the Special Management Unit (SMU)—where incarcerated men swallow hacksaw blades and their own feces and urine in desperation, and the air is filled with “a cacophony of prisoner screams and cries for help”—may be the most atrocious he has ever encountered.
“It is one of the harshest and most draconian such facilities I have seen in operation, anywhere in the country,” Haney wrote in an expert report after touring the SMU and conducting anonymous interviews with individuals confined there. Made public in full earlier this month, Haney’s report was originally submitted this May as evidence in an ongoing class-action lawsuit. The suit was originally filed pro se in February 2015 by Timothy Gumm, who was later joined by plaintiffs Robert Watkins and Johnny Mack Brown.
The plaintiffs claim that they and others in the 192-bed unit have been subjected to cruel and unusual punishment and denied due process by current and former officials at the Georgia Department of Corrections (DOC), Georgia Diagnostic & Classification Prison, and the SMU. Within just one year of Gumm’s initial filing, a striking 11 cases with similar fact patterns and claims were submitted to the same U.S. District Court. The men in the SMU are now represented by the Southern Center for Human Rights with pro bono support from the Atlanta-based firm Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton.”
01) Alex Jones Banned By Facebook/Apple/Youtube/Spotify
“Alex Jones has been banned by nearly all major content distribution platforms. Regardless of how one feels about him, this isn’t a good thing, and here’s why.”
Jimmy…I love you…but, you are dead wrong on this…
Alex Jones has a very long…very deep history…going back to the early nineties…when he was only on talk radio…You should have heard him, back then…
…He was carried by the same station, that aired the likes of the Westboro Baptist Church [Fred Phelps], and various right wing fringe people, like Bo Gritz…and he fit right in…
This recent development of calling himself a “performance artist”, was a stunt to keep from losing all custody of his children…It is not based off of his factual history.
What I’m not liking here:
We have this guy [Alex Jones], who’s spent decades building a business off of the degradation of others…and acting as a menace…He’s appealed to a certain demographic and found a way, to make a profitable business out of this atrocious behavior…
…Eventually, he came to places like YouTube, and other popular internet services…bringing his profitable business [and the traffic it garners] with him…and so many of these services were content to turn a blind eye, even when he regularly violates their terms of service…probably because these private companies/corporations were still financially benefiting from the association…
There’s something you need to understand, though…
…These companies still enforce their terms of service with an iron fist, towards anyone who is small, unknown and unestablished…If they can squash you before there are “too many” public eyes on you, they do it without hesitation…
…The larger people/businesses/channels get treated in a very different manner…It is a double set of standards, where the large, established entities get to do pretty much what they want, with impunity….while the rest of us get served up a cold and dry dose of rule consequences…from both the justified, and the shitty “rules”…
The huge entities are treated like they are untouchables…then finally face a fate similar to what we “small” people would face…and people suddenly want to start pretending that these larger channels are “victims”…when reality is…they are directly facing the same consequence, that the overwhelming rest of us would face…even when we do far, far less.
What is a company like YouTube expected to do…when this brewing liability starts to become something they cant ignore anymore?
At some point…companies that associate with businesses like InfoWars, will become targets in the sorts of lawsuits, which InfoWars is beginning to seriously attract…This has one hell of a lot, to do with what is taking place.
This is not a heroic move, on the part of these companies…It’s self preservation.
I’d take the “free speech” sentiments better, if there were consistency behind them:
I’m an old, old YouTuber, myself…Nobody you’d be at all likely to know…But I do have a fairly deep history, being around YouTube…even having a rather active channel, about ten years ago…
…But, MAPs like myself, live in a perpetually isolated state, on services like YouTube…where they’ll bend over backwards, to concoct excuses to claim, that we “violated the terms of service”…and give zero opportunity, to work with them through the alleged issue of conflict…
You know what I would have liked to have seen?…
…anybody…any-freaking-body, at all…stepping up, and protesting on my behalf…both during the several months, while I was being stalked and harassed by a notorious sociopath on YouTube…and after YouTube decided to abruptly terminate my account [for no stated reason, at all]…
My “crime”?…challenging stereotypes about MAPs…and treating issues we face in our lives, with the seriousness and integrity they deserve…
…and, standing up against protected groups of sociopaths, on YouTube…
There’s nothing new about protected people on YouTube:
Ugly reality is…services like YouTube are a sort of “good ol boys” club…
They turn a blind eye, if they imagine something is in the companies better interest…even when terms of service are being habitually violated…
…They don’t really even give a shit, about their own terms of service…Those only exist to give a convenient cover, when they want to start grossly discriminating against marginalized groups of people.
I have several YouTube accounts…I cant really use any of them, for what I would choose to use them…because they’d be subjectively terminated…and I’d have to deal with all sorts of harassment and abuse, and having to dance around the obstacles thrown at me, to delay the inevitable…
I cant even have a channel, where my base message is something as mild as “MAPs are human, too”…
…while simultaneously, over the last decade…I’ve been forced to watch YouTube build a system, which enfranchises some of the nastiest, most abusive, online sociopath trolls…and hands over to them the opportunity to make money, off of abusing and terrorizing other people…using YouTube’s own platform…
I welcome the crackdowns, that have finally arrived:
YouTube is treacherous, for what it has done…and it’s high time, it started cleaning up the mess it has created, mismanaged, and allowed to run rampant.
No…Alex Jones and company are not victims, here…
This is something that should have happened, years and years ago.
01) Right-Wing SJWs Freakout Over She-Ra Reboot (with Sargon & The Quartering!)
“Hey shodomites! The outrage of the century is upon us: The She-Ra 2018 Reboot has no boobs! Creationist Cat joins Sargon of Akkad, The Quartering, some Rebel Media/Pizzagate girl & Cortez to make sense of what the dreaded SJWs have done to our beloved She-Ra!!!”
We don’t talk about She-Ra:
Heavenly Sinful Parodies is not a series intended for my own commentary…but, this is an interesting issue…and I’m feeling compelled to tap out a few words…
I had no idea She-Ra was being rebooted:
He-Man and She-Ra were not great, on some levels…but they were amazing in the niche they filled…There wasn’t anything else out there, quite like them. They were, essentially, Final Fantasy in cartoon, before Final Fantasy…just nowhere near as deep [by modern standards…they might hang well, with the early Final Fantasy games].
I almost universally remember watching this, at my aunt and uncle’s home, in the early/mid eighties.
Not only were our immediate families really close [relationship wise, and we only lived a few city blocks apart]…but after my parents divorced, mom and I took up visiting quite frequently after school…My older cousin always watched the after school cartoons…and He-Man always played during that time.
I can certainly look back at it critically, and recognize there’s a lot bad about it…But you know what?…I loved the show, as a boy…At that time, it didn’t need to be anything else, other than what it was.
I remember when She-Ra came about…
…Certain things make better sense, now…It may seem strange, that I wasn’t especially drawn to this show.
I remember this little guy…and being left with the impression, that he seemed like he belonged in a show, for very little children [the kind where they recite the ABC’s and 123’s, and talked about colors]…He seemed out of place, in my mind…
…He was kind of cute, though…I just never could bring myself to like this strange character, at the time.
I still watched a number of She-Ra episodes…If the show was on…that’s what was getting watched…I just thought it paled in comparison to He-Man.
Being a homosexual MAP…one might imagine that She-Ra would have resonated with me…
…gay culture never really much did, though…
…I find myself feeling comfortable in it…but I never personally identified with it, or felt like making myself assimilate to it.
“Conservative media is ramping up its battle with Facebook after the platform banned Alex Jones’s Infowars website from its platform.
Conservative sites questioned whether Jones was being signaled out because of his politics, and whether Apple and other tech companies that have also dropped Jones were abusing their power.
The Drudge Report’s banner headline for most of Monday was “Apple regulates hate.” It also included a link high on its site to the conservative Gateway Pundit site that said: “Are Tech Giants Working Together to Censor Conservatives?”
Infowars editor-at-large Paul Joseph Watson criticized Facebook’s decision as political censorship.”
“This is a co-ordinated move ahead of the mid-terms to help Democrats. This is political censorship. This is culture war,” Watson tweeted.
Prominent right-wing internet figure Laura Loomer also decried the bans.
“Infowars played a big role in helping @realDonaldTrump get elected. BIG TECH is currently trying to influence elections by banning Conservatives. I’m actually depressed,” she tweeted.
01) The Rise And Fall of Scrappy Doo (Ep3) – Inside A Mind
“Scooby Doo has been running strong for nearly 50 years! But, there was a time where they were almost cancelled and taken off the air for good. Scooby Doo could’ve been very different to what it is now, had it not got an extra 6 years on the TV back in the early 80’s. The introduction of Scrappy Doo saved the show, but if that’s the case… How has he become one of the most hated cartoon characters out there to date? Let’s take a look back into the history of Scooby Doo and find out where it all went wrong for this little puppy.”
I used to call him “Crappy”…which likely makes my side of this fence clear…
As a character…it was not only loud and obnoxious…but it completely changed the tone of this, previously wonderful, show.
Thing about the original Scooby Doo…is that it was filling a niche, and doing things you couldn’t find anywhere else in the cartoon world…It was a great kids show…Then it got turned on it’s head, and became something I could no longer stand to watch.
I couldn’t figure out, why they were intentionally destroying the show…
But I get it today, of course…with the original writers leaving…and nobody being able to successfully emulate what they’d done…they opted for a cheap, easy shift in direction…and started appealing to a different child audience…
…Those of us who [as kids] loved what the original series introduced and established, were abandoned by the series.
I guess…tapping into that audience, which liked the far less sophisticated Scooby Doo, helped save the franchise…
…Though, I’d argue…the franchise really did die, after the second season…What came after, was…
“YouTube, Apple and Facebook have removed main outlets for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his Infowars website, citing repeated violations of policies against hate speech and glorifying violence. Infowars responded by accusing the companies of censorship.
The streaming service Spotify also expanded a ban imposed last week on some of Jones’ content, saying Monday that “The Alex Jones Show has lost access to the Spotify platform.”
On Sunday, Apple and iTunes deleted five podcasts related to Infowars and Jones. The other bans then piled up in quick succession.
“Apple does not tolerate hate speech,” the company said in a statement. “We believe in representing a wide range of views, so long as people are respectful to those with differing opinions.”
YouTube and Facebook had previously warned Jones and Infowars that they were accumulating “strikes” by violating the services’ community standards.”
I’m literally just finding out about this total ban…
…I don’t support censorship…not even for a-holes like Alex Jones, Paul Joseph Watson, or any of the other bozos who work for InfoWars…
…But let’s get real, here…Alex and company got away with obscene levels of abuse and violations on YouTube, for years…
…The only shocking thing here, is that YouTube actually took any action, at all…
…I was starting to believe, that InfoWars was “untouchable” on YouTube, as they were clearly treated by grossly different standards from the rest of us.
…Of course…YouTube deserves zero accolades for this…as it was certain to be a self protecting move…They don’t want anything to do, with the plethora of possible law suits, compliments of hosting InfoWars content.
…The last thing YouTube has, is a spine and a set of balls…and forget about integrity…
Really, though…I cannot blame YouTube, in cases like this one…Probably the best thing YouTube even can do for itself, is totally sever ties with InfoWars.
Where it comes to people on YouTube, who actually deserve this…YouTube actually got it right…for once…
YouTube, Facebook and Apple shut down Alex Jones channels:
“A supporter of President Donald Trump threatened “to shoot” CNN reporters Brian Stelter and Don Lemon during an on-air call with C-SPAN on Friday.
The caller’s threat comes amid repeated attacks on the media from Trump, who has described the press as “the enemy of the people” and “fake news.”
The caller, identified by C-SPAN host Greta Brawner as “Don from State College, Pennsylvania,” had phoned into her show Friday to express support for Trump’s criticism of the media.
“It all started when Trump got elected,” the caller said before falsely accusing the reporters of labeling all Trump supporters as racist. “[Stelter and Lemon] don’t even know us. They don’t even know these Americans out here and they’re calling us racist because we voted for Trump.”
“They started the war. If I see ’em, I’m going to shoot ’em. Bye,” he added before abruptly ending the call.
01) Could This Be the Worst Solitary Confinement Unit in the Nation?
