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Documentaries Thread
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The Taliban took my baby away, they took her away from me!
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The Dead Sea Scrolls are ancient manuscripts found in the Holy Land in the 1940s and 1950s. Since their discovery, the scrolls have provided valuable insight into the Word of God, as well as historical information about Bible times that was not known until they were found.
This article will look at their discovery and their history since then — exploring where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, who found them, and why they were hidden for two millennia. We’ll then look inside the Dead Sea Scrolls — learning about which books of the Bible the scrolls hold and how many manuscripts there are, who penned the scrolls and in what language they were written in, and how they have been translated. Finally, we’ll find out where the Dead Sea Scrolls are today, before looking at the great importance these priceless biblical documents have for both Christians and Jews, as they have shed so much light on the Bible—God’s Word that is the cornerstone for our shared faith. The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in a series of 12 caves near the northern shore of the Dead Sea in what was then Jordan. Found between 1946 and 1956, the first scrolls were discovered by local shepherds, with more being unearthed later by archaeologists.
The first scrolls were found by accident in 1946 by a trio of Bedouins tending their livestock in the wilderness. One of the shepherds noticed an opening in the rock, and his cousin then stumbled into the cave, where he found seven scrolls. The Bedouin took the scrolls back to show his family, and after a while they were sold to a dealer in Bethlehem. The manuscripts changed hands over the next year before landing in the possession of John C. Trever, a Bible scholar and archaeologist from the United States. Trever realized that the scrolls were similar to the “Nash Papyrus”—until then, the oldest known biblical manuscript in existence—making this a very important archaeological find.
Israel’s War of Independence in 1948 led to these first scrolls being moved to Beirut, Lebanon, to keep them safe while the Holy Land erupted in fighting. That year, the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR)—where Trever worked—announced the official discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. But the discovery had only just begun. The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in the Judean Desert near the northern shore of the Dead Sea in what was then controlled by Jordan and is now the West Bank. The area of Qumran had already been of interest to archaeologists for a century, as European explorers first unearthed an ancient cemetery in the 1850s, and in following years also deduced the site had once held a fort.
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This one's coming out on the 17th
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Checking this one out now
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Offshore oil drilling
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On January 6th, 1972, inside a small Staten Island diner, a former physician from Willowbrook State School met secretly with a reporter. After describing the horrible conditions he had been fired for trying to improve at the state-run institution, he handed the reporter a key to one of the buildings.
That reporter was Geraldo Rivera. With that clandestine key, he would lead a film crew unannounced into Building #6 at Willowbrook, where they would capture the appalling abuses, filth, and overcrowding inflicted upon its residents. This year, 2022, marks the 50th anniversary of when Rivera’s television exposé shocked the nation with that horrifying, raw footage. It sparked public outrage, a lawsuit was filed against the state of New York, and Willowbook eventually was shut down. But it took over twenty years.
As an author who endeavors to cast light on social injustices of the past within my novels, I’ve written previously about institutional abuse. Even still, when I began research for my latest novel, The Lost Girls of WiIllowbrook, I had no idea I was about to discover one of the most horrifying pieces of New York City history. Until then, my knowledge of the institution’s dark past didn’t extend much further than urban legends and rumors, such as supposed satanic rituals held in the tunnels below Willowbrook, human experiments, a former janitor who murdered local children, and a boogeyman-like figured called Cropsey. Some of these turned out to be true and made it into this novel in ways that surprised even me.
The disgraceful, haunting truth of Willowbrook’s legends would also have surprised Sage Winters, the main character in The Lost Girls of Willowbrook. Like other local kids, she’s grown up hearing stories about Cropsey and being told that kids who misbehaved would be shipped off to Willowbrook. When doctors mistake Sage for her missing twin sister and lock her up, she becomes trapped in a dangerous, overcrowded ward with hundreds of other girls and young women, struggling to avoid tranquilizers, straightjackets, and isolation, desperate to prove her true identify and find her sister. She learns firsthand that the reality of Willowbrook is worse than anything she could have imagined.
Located on Staten Island in New York City from 1947-1987, Willowbrook State School was technically a state-run institution for children with intellectual abilities. In truth, it was a warehouse for adults and children with mental or physical disabilities committed by parents who either didn’t want them or didn’t know how to care for them. Many sent their children to Willowbrook after being encouraged by doctors to relinquish their disabled children “for the sake of the family” with no idea that they were condemning them to a life of agony, neglect, and abuse by those charged with their care. And any parent who fought to protect their children was labeled a “trouble maker” by the administration, then subjected to threats and manipulation to ensure they didn’t rock the boat.
Far from a school, Willowbrook was overcrowded, underfunded, and understaffed to such a degree that residents rarely received even basic care, let alone any education, mental stimulation, or instruction in social skills or hygiene. Fewer than 20% of the children living there attended classes at any one time, and those who did generally were residents of the experiment ward. Uninformed parents of those victims had no idea the forms they signed to bypass a long admittance waiting list or in exchange for a “better” quality of life in fact provided consent for their children to participate in Defense Department-funded medical research on hepatitis, measles, and other diseases. Years later, vaccinologist Maurice Hilleman would describe the hepatitis studies performed at the institution as “the most unethical medical experiments ever performed on children in the United States.”
Out of public sight and completely closed off, the 375-acre compound became an underground city with its own hierarchy and society, where employees bought and sold everything from drugs to jewelry to meat. There was disease, violence, theft, drug and alcohol use, and other forms of crime. There was harm done by physicians who failed to do their medical duty. There was violence done by staff to residents, including rape, beatings, psychological torture, overuse of powerful drugs, and murder. There was violence by staff against other staff members for a variety of reasons, including personal vendettas, paybacks for snitching, drug dealing disputes, and mental illness. There was also violence among the residents themselves, including beatings, torture, rape, and murder.
Despite its maximum stated capacity of 4,000, Willowbrook housed over 6,000 intellectually and physically disabled children and adults by the year 1965, making it the largest state-run mental institution of its kind in the U.S. There was only one nurse per ward and over two hundred residents living in houses built for fewer than one hundred.
An estimated 12,000 residents died at Willowbrook from 1950-1980, approximately 400 a year. Many who came to Willowbrook lived a short, brutal existence. They died because of neglect, violence, lack of nutrition, and medical mismanagement or experimentation. Some simply disappeared or even committed suicide.
I’m not implying that all doctors, nurses and staff were uncaring or incompetent; as in most institutions, some people did very good things and some terrible things. There were reports of employees using their own money to buy necessities for the residents, including clothes, soap, deodorant, etc. There were also wonderful doctors who truly cared for the residents, such as Michael Wilkins, MD, who risked everything to work with Geraldo Rivera on exposing conditions, and William Bronston, MD, who also worked at Willowbrook and went on to lead the exposure and class action lawsuit against the institution. He later co-authored A History and Sociology of Willowbrook State School and in 2021, as I was finishing The Lost Girls of Willowbrook, he published Public Hostage, Public Ransom: Ending Institutional America, an in-depth account of his work against Willowbrook and institutionalization as a whole.
Sadly, anyone who tried to improve conditions at Willowbrook fought an impossible mission. Bronston wrote that other doctors organized against him, and he was moved to another building as punishment simply for requesting painkillers, soap, sheets, surgery thread for sutures (instead of upholstery thread), and non-rotten food for the residents under his care.
Geraldo Rivera’s Peabody Award-winning exposé “Willowbrook: The Last Great Disgrace,” aired on national television in February 1972, bringing widespread mainstream awareness of the institution’s overcrowding, deplorable conditions, and physical and sexual abuse of residents. On March 17, 1972, Dr. Bronston and a group of parents filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court.
In 1975, the Willowbrook Consent Decree was signed, committing New York State to improve community placement for the now designated “Willowbrook Class.” Under the terms of the agreement, Willowbrook was given until 1981 to reduce its number of residents from 6,000 to no more than 250. The cornerstone of the consent decree was the state “would be required to spend two million dollars to create two-hundred places for Willowbrook transferees in hostels, halfway houses, group houses, and sheltered workshops.” In 1983, the state of New York announced plans to close Willowbrook, which in 1974 had been renamed the Staten Island Developmental Center. By the end of March 1986, the number of residents housed there had dwindled to 250, and the last residents left the grounds on September 17, 1987.
Willowbrook is a tragic story—one I could only begin to touch on in my novel—but it’s a story that must not be forgotten. Even though the institution was eventually shut down, the fight for disability rights is still ongoing. What happened there should serve as a reminder to be more protective of the most vulnerable among us, and that every human being has the right to learn and grow, and more importantly, to be treated with kindness, respect, and compassion.
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This one's a shocker.. hired Isrealis killers depictions are chilling
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On August 3, 1949, after a damaging three-year battle to win both players and fans, the rival Basketball Association of America (BAA) and National Basketball League (NBL) merge to form the National Basketball Association (NBA).
The BAA incorporated in 1946, challenging the hegemony of the nine-year old NBL. The BAA established itself in bigger cities than the NBL, which existed only in small Midwestern cities like Fort Wayne, Sheboygan and Akron. While the NBL held its games in small gymnasiums, the upstart BAA played its games in large major-market arenas such as the Boston Garden and New York City’s Madison Square Garden. By the 1948-49 season, the BAA had begun to attract some of the country’s best players, and four NBL franchises—Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, Minneapolis and Rochester—moved to the BAA, bringing their star players with them. George Mikan, the biggest attraction in either league who by himself could virtually assure a team’s success, defected to the new league with the Minneapolis Lakers.
On August 3, 1949, representatives from the two leagues met at the BAA offices in New York’s Empire State Building to finalize the merger. Maurice Podoloff, head of the BAA since its inception, was elected head of the new league. The new NBA was made up of 17 teams that represented both small towns and large cities across the country. Through the 1950s, though, the number of teams dwindled, along with fan support, and by the 1954-55 season, only eight teams remained. That year, the league transformed the game with the creation of the 24-second clock, making play faster-paced and more fun to watch. Fans returned, and the league, now financially solvent, expanded throughout the 1960s and '70s. Today, the NBA attracts players—and millions of fans—from countries around the world.
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think i seen this before but too lazy to find anything else.. pretty good and insightful. about 3/4 through it
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*You won't believe this fucking place! Got nothing better to do? Watch this. A better quality version can be found with a little browsing around.
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this was on youtube when i woke up.. kinda watched it lol
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