How do you like to see men be spoken to in such a term as "Crawl Mothafucker, Crawl Mothafucker" while men are naked and on their knees or be dragged like a dog while being zapped by a teaser or have their flesh be handed to a search dog for dinner or be raped by a prison guard. Oh, how about youth being pounded brutally by guards as if they are a punching bag, inmate dying after being shackled, confined in a solitary confinement smelling their own urine. How about your flesh being burning by chemicals or sprayed with paper-spray targeting your faces and genitals or how about being gassed until you chock with your own saliva.
That is exactly what is happening here in the United States and no one is talking about it with all the evidence we have.
Torture 1:
I am sick and tired of some folks in this community always screaming foul and vilifying the current administrations' inaction regarding Bush's torture crimes as if what has been going on in secret US prisons around the world is the only episode of torture we are aware of.
There is no type of torture that is acceptable but I am certain that the Obama administration is methodically working to prosecute torture enablers of the Bush Whitehouse as they did their homework and went after the 485 arrested for mortgage fraud. I am a believer that a good case as complicated as prosecuting torture takes time to build a flawless convincing evidence/case but in the end we will see prosecution.
However, to go back to my frustration, as humans, how could we let something like this happen everyday in our back yard and refuse to see the torture/modern day enslavement go with out a voice of concern here in the United States, here in this blog, while we scream foul for lack of prosecution by the AG for the torture that took place by the Bush Administration. The tactics used in this prison walls are the same tactics used by the Bush Administration or at time even worse.
Truly, there is really something that is fucked up here. Where is the fucking outrage? What does it take to galvanize Americans to pay close attention? We have the evidence, we know the shit that is going on in our prisons, we know Torture is real but where is the screaming and yelling? I call the silence a double standard. A double standard that is applied each and every day on the poor, the minority, the have nots and those that are systemically oppressed. Keep watching, it is a fucking shame!
Torture 2:
Your ass belongs to the Florida Department of Corrections. You will do what we say you do...you will sleep, you will eat, You will go to the bath, you will shit...you are now the property of the State of Florida. Don't forget that!! [It sure sounds like whoever is saying these things feels they can own you, they can do anything and get away with it...don't it?]
.
Q. if an inmate were to go and say I just had my ribs broken, my nose broken, what happens, is it covered up?
A. Basically, Yes
Q. How?
A. Oh, it is easy to cover it up. You cover it up by falsifying documents.
Q. What do you do?
A. Hummm, well, somebody else did it to em, they put another inmate in a confinement and say he did it.
As you can see it in the video with one of the correction officer testifying, Frank Valdez was brutally murdered for sharing the horror and abuse that goes on in prison to the outside world. That is murder by an institution that is suppose to protect you. Valdez wrote
in the white space at the bottom of 2 Corinthians, Chapter 13, beside the verse that reads, "For we can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth." "I was keeping track of all the assaults happening in the institution,"
This was the tribute poem for Frank:
A friend was slain today
Beat to death in a cage
The newspapers say it's okay
he was slated to die anyway
Turn the page
My friend had the decency
to be sorry for what he'd done
to accept his fate
for his haste with a gun
My friends name was frank
he touched my heart extended his hand
he slept, ate and drank
like every other man
He has feelings, hopes & dreams
They died with him
Amongst his keepers angry screams
We'' teach you, We'll make you pay
Hey society
aren't you proud of them today ?
Read the rest of the poem here
We sure seem to have eyes when torture happens to other people thousands of miles away except when it happens here in our home land. In fact, we think it is quite alright to pretend as if we don't see it at all. See no evil, hear no evil mantra has been pretty much the conventional wisdom of some so called advocates for torture who chastise this POTUS in this community have settled for. (Kudos to those that speak about home grown torture in the CIK community).
Why? Why is it that we don't give a shit. Is it because it does not server us to belittle our President? I see very little attention being given to an honest reporting of torture in the USA here and some great discussion for solution here compared to a bullshit misinformation diary about our Government Prosecuting ACORN.
Watch many evidence of torture in the U.S.A. and ask yourself a question...is this acceptable to you?
Yes, it is ugly and no body seems to care.
As has been noted in the diary of CIK, Torture at Home,
The United States has a long list of standard police, prison and jail practices that rise to the level of torture. Included in this list are: racial profiling; excessive use of force – including use of dogs, kicking and beatings of restrained suspects with fists, batons, and flashlights; excessive use of dangerous chokeholds, "hog-ties", and dangerous restraints - including four point restraints, the "hitching post" and the restraint chair - that have resulted in multiple deaths;; excessive use of teasers and chemical sprays; excessive use of deadly force; shackling of pregnant inmates; use of nudity, strip searches and sexual humiliation and assault as a source of social control; abuse of transgender prisoners; failure to curtail sexual assaults on both male and female inmates by other inmates and guards; denial of medical care or treatment; confinement of the mentally ill; medical experimentation on inmates; excessive use of "super max" and isolation confinement and brutal methods of execution, including lethal injection which fails to meet the standards set forth by the American Veterinary Association
So, when we go out there to ridicule the President for why he has not yet prosecuted Bush's Torture, I hope you will also remember the torture we seem to not want to see exists. I can give you many reason why the POTUS may not look back to prosecute Bush's torture just right now. Some would say, our President doesn't care about bringing the previous administration to justice. I personally don't think that is accurate. I personally don't want to see BushCo prosecution for the next two years sucking the progress we can make and has already made. It does not mean we should not do it but if we do it, it will definitely suck whatever political capital we have left to do much of anything. It is a political strategy non of us will have to make. I am just glad this administration has stopped torture practices. As long as torture is not a current practice, I would rather have the POTUS focus on doing the investigation and fact gathering now and prosecute in the second term because I know prosecuting BushCo is going to be a circus that will be sucking the political will to do much of anything.
NOTE: Criminals must be punished for the pain they inflect on others and for breaking the law even thought some discriminatory laws like "The War on Drugs",is designed to be a pipeline to mass incarceration to systematically oppress a specific sector of society. However, torturing criminals is not a punishment any human being deserves nor is it something that should be chastised as an entertainment in our cruel society.