- In David Goldman's magnificent article, "Dumbest
Generation Yet - Mindless Hive America", young author Ashley Anderson
writes, "Kids are told they will be writing in a 'journal' and that
no one will see it except the teacher, and they are free to write whatever
they are feeling. They could write about parents, friends, pastor, and
anyone else, and parents would never know! When I was given this assignment,
I knew my privacy was being invaded, so I wrote about how ridiculous it
was to write in a journal. It was really none of the school's business.
Strangely, I was never reprimanded or counseled. They were profiling me
and to see how and what I thought. Why else would they want to pry into
my private life?"
-
- You may find interesting, Jeff, that a colleague of mine
is having to sue an Atlanta company called TSI, Training Solutions Interactive,
because the CEO, Mr. Phil Ingram, refuses to pay her for hundreds of hours
working for him as a freelance writer on a very similar project.
- Allegedly at the behest of the Centers for Disease Control,
TSI scientist Dr. Sam Spiegel (sp?) is drafting an Orwellian program that
claims it is designed to improve American schoolchildren's health, but
actually is designed to monitor American schoolchildren's private thoughts
and feelings, and encourages the children to "report on (their) families"
and even "work hard to change (their) family's behavior and thinking"
to what is included in the program, entitled WAY, "Wellness and You".
Children are required to keep a regular journal that "only they"
will read, but encouraged to turn this journal over to their teachers and
to Dr. Spiegel and team for review and modification.
-
- My associate was alarmed by this "requirement"
and its implied invasion of children's privacy. Having produced a children's
educational television program that has current interest from PBS, she
knows how children's edu programming is made and reports that none of TSI's
WAY project team were concerned about improving health in American schoolchildren,
but more concerned with embedding their invasive program in American school
curriculum and gaining access to the children's journal content. She states
there are overt instructions in the TSI WAY program that coerce the child
viewer of it to monitor his parents, report on his parents, and then, most
strikingly, begin acting as an outside agent, modifying the behavior of
his entire family until it matches the directives outlined by the WAY program,
directives designed by one individual, Dr. Sam Spiegel, with no checks
or balances and no scientific or objective review or preview of those directives
and their potential effect on young viewers and their families.
-
- My colleague fought with TSI to keep this invasive presence
out of the WAY video segments TSI hired her to write and direct, but was
obstructed each step of the way. She claims that for questioning the validity,
child safety and Constitutionality of this program during its writing process,
she was made subject to sexual innuendoes, made subject to discriminatory
statements that attacked her race, her gender, her career experience, and
her religion (new age), repeatedly pressured by her employers, Phil Ingram
and Stuart Reese, to convert from her religion to theirs (televangelist
Christianity), and finally stonewalled creatively at every turn until she
finally resigned and demanded pay.
-
- Ingram and TSI refused to pay my associate and then Googled
her name to obtain slanderous stories about her from the internet. Raising
these falsehoods about her career as justification not to pay her, they
have begun blackmailing my friend, accessing and sharing more lies about
her from the internet unless she settles out of court and accepts less
payment than agreed upon. Of course this woman has consulted a lawyer
and will be pursuing this case vigorously.
-
- But this is the type of new element entering American
schools by force. Who is Sam Spiegel, PhD, other than a Florida scientist
who operates an electromagnet? What credentials does he have to draft
a program that monitors American children's private thoughts and feelings
under the term "wellness"? Who are Florida salesman Stuart Reese
or Virginia businessman Phil Ingram and what health and biology credentials
have they to enforce such a program? Who at the CDC has authorized this
program? Who are the "higher-ups in Washington" Ingram and Reese
claim are bankrolling this? What is their purpose? What is its objective
and what has it to do with implying to American children they must trade
their privacy for "wellness"? What is the Fundamentalist Bush-Right
Christian connection to this program? What is beginning here? Who are
TSI and what right have they to access and monitor what our children feel
and think, and especially how their parents think and live?
-
- Here is an excerpt she has provided me from the WAY manual
given her during production by TSI, authored by one "Dr. Sam Spiegel":
-
- "Some examples of questions (children) could ask
(their parents) are:
-
- Were your grandparents born in the United States?
- If not, where did they come from?
- Where are their parents from?
- Was our last name ever changed or shortened?
- What do you know about our family's ancestry?
- Do you know any stories abot people getting sick in our
family?
- Are there any diseases that run in our family?
- Do you know if our family or culture is more inclined
to any particular illnesses?
-
- It may also be helpful if they get maiden names, or the
last names of extended family members."
-
- My associate was told that this information would be
used to teach children "how race and culture affect illness".
If that were the case, what then is the purpose of obtaining one's parents'
and family members' maiden names and the last names of extended family
members, and then reporting this information in one's rubric and journal
to TSI, and then by natural implication the CDC? Who is this company and
for what purpose is it being used by the government to obtain maiden names?
-
- Another excerpt from the CDC/TSI "WAY" program:
-
- "TEACHER BACKGROUND
-
- As your students move through the Wellness & You
Program materials understanding data collection and reporting will become
increasingly important to their wellness. Students will be learning how
to properly take measurements and recording data on themselves that will
potentially be used as a means to assess their progress in improving their
wellness."
-
- Recording data on themselves? Why? Why not on a lab
animal or a virtual subject? "Potentially be used"? Why the
word "potentially"? And "used" by whom? For what
purpose? And what exactly is "wellness" as defined here? Political
wellness? Correct thought wellness? If purely physical wellness, then
why does this data need to include the following? (See bold type)
-
- FROM "WAY"
-
- "Accurate record keeping is an important part of
real-world science that translates well to the classroom. Scientists need
documentation of their observations, and so do your students. This curriculum
requires students to keep a Wellness Journal. The journal is a tool that
they can use to help them 'think like scientists', when they have to and
record all of the data they collect. Your students should understand that
it is just as important for them, as it is for scientists who collect data
and research, to keep their records complete and accurate in their journals.
Each data collection should include the following information:
-
- What they have observed.
- What they thought about those observations.
- What questions those observations generated."
-
- What does what the children think about their personal
observations matter to a program designed to get children to eat less,
exercise more? Why do this program's creators need to read what questions
children think about? I don't think I am reading anything phantasmagorical
into this group of statements; why not just ask kids what they think about
exercise? About dieting? What business is it of Training Solutions Interactive,
the CDC, Washington, or any teacher anywhere, what private thoughts and
questions unrelated to physical health come up in an American child's mind?
-
- Is that anyone's property but the child's in question?
-
- In a subsequent section, the WAY guide states, "Accurate
record-keeping is an important part of real-world science that translates
well to the classroom. This is especially true for the last segment of
this module, because the statistics they collected in the Personal Data
Charts will be used throughout the remainder of this module." Teachers
are required two pages later to "evaluate journal entries for clarity,
and completeness." Teachers are privy to these children's journals?
Why? Who else is privy?
-
- My friend claims she was told going in that this program
would be designed solely for the purpose of combating obesity and making
children in America better aware of behaviors that worsen their health
and diets. Yet when she outlined more specific methods of doing this,
such as teaching children about negative advertising that creates false
hunger and encourages poor eating habits, motivating them into thinking
exercise is fun, and identifying to children what memes are and how they
affect American eating habits, she says she was unequivocably shut down
cold and "tormented" until she resigned - a resignation vilified
by Phil Ingram and TSI, who has since viewed and treated her departure
as a bitter divorce proceeding.
-
- This program should concern any free thinking American
and especially any American parent with a child in public school. Should
your children be made subject to behavior control programs you yourself
have not previewed or authorized, that come from a company few have heard
of and are financed by high rollers in Washington, D.C. and at the CDC,
for purposes you are clearly meant not to explore or know?
-
- What riles me is that my friend is now being smeared
by TSI, for simply telling the truth and trying to protect American schoolchildren.
But she is used to being smeared. In 1997 she was accused of lying about
being underway producing a new version of the popular British science fiction
series "Doctor Who". The accusation was that she was in fact
not experienced in the motion picture and television industry, when in
fact she spent years in that industry in Los Angeles and was offered a
job writing for NBC on the landmark series "Homicide: Life In The
Streets". The accusation came initially from a Colorado woman named
Audra McHugh, who outlined the plot to smear my colleague because my colleague
being in contact with the talent agency of an actor about whom McHugh was
the web author of several man-on-man rape-filled erotic fan fiction stories.
The situation escalated rapidly as Ms. McHugh enlisted several online friends
with high-profile websites to join her in libeling my associate. Soon
the accusations were on mirror sites around the world.
-
- My associate was new to the internet, using Jason Bell's
Area 9 email address with Bell's full knowledge and permission, and after
McHugh's aggressive appearance, which caused a nervous Bell to rescind
his permission, thus preventing the web-ignorant McCoy from reading any
refuting any more emails about herself for quite some time, rendering her
unable to defend herself online from rapidly multiplying accusations of
lying about being a producer. What followed is a baffling sequence of
catastrophic events.
-
- She contacted McHugh asking why she was being maligned.
McHugh responded with threats and heightened accusations. My associate
then contacted the police, and was assigned a "Detective Price".
Price tape-recorded a conversation with McHugh and then played it back
for my friend: McHugh, a married woman, flirted with and teased the ageing
male Price, made friendly personal comments and over the course of more
than ninety minutes repositioned herself as innocent and McCoy as her harasser.
My associate was then warned to "leave McHugh alone" or risk
being cited for harassment. When this came to Atlanta Police Homicide
Chief A.J. Bielow's attention, Price was discharged from the Atlanta Police
Department and Bielow himself took authority over the case.
-
- The men who drafted my buddy into pursuing this doomed
project in the first place, Jason Bell of Kor Media Atlanta, and John Lotshaw,
a freelance graphics animator, lied when questioned about their extensive
financial and operations involvement and excommunicated my friend to protect
themselves from the increasing firestorm of controversy on the web. Finally
Jack Mayfield, the male receptionist of Jason Bell's former employer, Area
9 (which later merged with Kor Media amid multiple accusations of payment
renegement by Atlanta freelance talents), glossed the lie with full approval
from Joe Sawin, hotshot Atlanta attorney and then executive director of
Area 9. Sawin himself issued to McHugh and her allies an email about McCoy's
position and involvement at Area 9, misrepresenting as a freelancer doing
the project on her own time a producer he himself had given the keys to
Area 9's tony offices, use of stationery including choice of which, and
a woman at least two area 9 personnel, Bell and Lotshaw, had assigned to
get the Doctor Who rights and launch preproduction.
-
- McCoy, "outraged" she says, immediately resigned,
packed her desk and stormed out of Area 9 on a Friday afternoon. The subsequent
Monday, Bell and Lotshaw telephoned her at her house asking why she was
not "at work" at Area 9. McCoy accused Bell and Lotshaw of betraying
and abandoning her, and announced her resignation. Both men were furious,
and Sawin in his letter describes McCoy as having been fired and "escorted
off of (Area 9) premises", a complete (and libellous) falsehood.
-
- McHugh herself was finally shut down when Bielow threatened
her and her mirror site colleagues with an Atlanta Police Department lawsuit
for posting Price's tainted police records without the APD's written consent,
and when he and the Denver Police Department both simultaneously released
a stern warning to McHugh to immediately cease all contact with McCoy,
(the Denver Police Department had descended en masse upon McHugh's workplace,
sequestered her in a private room for hours of questioning, and determined
her, in the words of one Denver detective involved, "a wingnut"),
and finally when McHugh's employer, Winterguard International, discharged
McHugh for misusing company website and computer resources to harass my
associate and ftp McHugh's erotic fan fiction in the first instance.
-
- Winterguard International was a non-profit children's
music pageantry organization for which McHugh worked as a java script programmer
and webmaster, and its Directors were outraged by their equipment being
used to publish internet stories containing lesbianism, man-on-man rape,
masturbation and bloodshed. Audra McHugh was promptly fired for the offense.
This information is easily accessible both from Winterguard International
and on the news groups sites, where she admits herself she was fired -
but couches it in the more feelgood British colloquialism "I was sacked".
-
- The trouble with all this is that Karen McCoy, the woman
in question here, actually did come from Hollywood with the right credentials
and was actually preproducing the Doctor Who project on her own to attempt
to force the BBC into picking up and reviving the often maligned property.
She was hired and encouraged to do so in January 1997 by John Lotshaw
and Jason Bell under their d/b/a, "Tachyon Pictures" Atlanta,
at Bell's then-home in "Midtown Atlanta". This is how she was
able to use Jason Bell's personal e-mail address at Area 9, a point long
debated and disputed on line in the Doctor Who community.
-
- For her efforts for Bell and Lotshaw she was slammed
on the web and has never been able to prove her innocence. She and I are
at work now gathering bona fide Los Angeles motion picture and television
executives who are prepared to begin speaking out in her name, verifying
her experience and credentials, and putting to rest the lies once and for
all. Jason Bell, John Lotshaw, Galen Chandler and Joe Sawin silenced Karen
McCoy and subjected her to years of ridicule on the net, just for doing
the secret job Bell and Lotshaw hired her to do. These two men wanted
to expand from event planning and corporate assignments to science fiction
dramatic programming, were planning to use Area 9 as a platform Tachyon
would emerge from, and Miss McCoy's talents were the tool they intended
to use to get there. A science fiction series of John Lotshaw's creation
was to be the first project for the new company. An animated version of
Doctor Who was the second. McCoy says she has several Tachyon Pictures
contract documents to prove it. I think it's time she emerged with them.
-
- In the meantime, Jeff, I thought you would find this
story about TSI and its peculiar little "for the health of the children"
thought monitoring program interesting. I would invite your readers to
begin their own investigations of Training Solutions Interactive, Inc.,
its alternative name i4learning, Phil Ingram, Stuart Reese, Sam Spiegel
and their authorization from the Centers for Disease Control to design
such a program without the knowledge or consent of American parents or
sociologists and children's psychology groups. I also encourage your readers
to conduct their own investigation of Audra McHugh, Jason Bell, John Lotshaw,
Joe Sawin, Area 9, and Kor Media, with a view to sharing any misbehaviors
or inconsistencies of the above companies and individuals on this forum,
and assisting me in clearing the name of a person I know and of whom I
think highly. Enough is enough.
-
- TSI's "WAY" program is even more interesting
than what happened to my friend. There are more and more mysterious programs
like this being placed in public schools requesting inappropriate personal
information from children. Parents need to know, and it needs closer investigation.
-
- Heather Sheridan
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