Warning: Do not read this blog entry within one hour of eating, as it may induce severe gastro-intestinal distress, including acid reflux, nausea and/or vomiting.
If you thought that waterboarding and other acts of torture perpetrated at Guamatamo Bay and other detention centers (read: gulags and prisons) on the flimsy premise of fighting terrorism has your hair standing on end, wait until you discover exactly what happens in our own back yard.
Recently, Mother Jones published a scathing investigative report revolving around the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, Massachusetts -- an institution aptly described as "Gitmo for troubled kids." There staff members subject severely autistic, mentally retarded, schizophrenic, bipolar and emotionally disturbed children to a perverse form of behavior modification program that includes food deprivation, isolation, painful electrical shock. Worse, various states pay the center $220,000 per resident. And even as all this goes on, Matthew Isarel is laughing his sorry ass all the way to the bank, without any shame or remorse for the havoc he's wreaking on these childrens' lives.
No matter how many times people tried to shut down Dr. Matthew Isarel's little psychiatric torture chamber, you can count on Dr. Israel to find some governmental figure to help him weasel his way out. New York governor Eliot Spitzer discovered this first-hand when he tried to intervene to get his state's children removed from the facilty, but was prevented from doing so by a court order. In the meantime, the shock shop just keeps on shocking...
What does this say about us as a people, that we treat our own children like "enemy combatants?" Is any resemblance between Abu Ghraib and the Judge Rotenberg Center purely coincidental?
Pathetic, isn't it?
While we're at it, how about we send Matthew Israel on a one-way ticket to Abu Ghraib and let him experience the horrors those unfortunate enough to have done so. Maybe he'll finally get some persepective (if not humanity) for a change.
And speaking of waterboarding and other forms of torture, didn’t CNN’s wing-nut Rachel Mardsen once say that one man’s torture is another man’s CIA-sponsored swim lesson?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment