Monday, June 20, 2005

Today At GotMilk Prison Camp

This post is devoted to documenting the atrocities occurring at GotMilk Prison Camp, located on the secluded grounds of the Organic Baby Farm (itself located in a trailer park in Utah). Bagel is being held prisoner there against his will along with two other children, and torture is performed upon him daily.

For example, on this typical day he spent thirteen hours last night in his crib an isolation cell with bars. He had no human contact during that time, and his initial cries went unheeded. Finally he gave up trying to get the attention of his captors, and fell asleep. During the night he soiled himself and was forced to spend the night in his own urine and feces.

Upon awakening he was made to drink breastmilk directly from a lactating woman. He kicked and punched, but to no avail. The forced feeding was only discontinued when he bit the woman. After that he was strapped into a chair and given mushy canned oranges to eat, while his older siblings ate cereal and crunchy fresh fruit in front of him.

After feeding time he was stripped completely naked and his captors made him wash. His screams went unheeded by the world as his bottom was cruelly wiped with wipes that sting when he's rashy. All his efforts to roll over and crawl away from his torturer were stymied. She placed her legs across his arms so that he couldn't move while she did her business on his nether regions. He was carried naked through the hallway, past open windows where anyone could have seen him, had there been anyone out there to look.

He was released for a few minutes, only to be restrained again, this time to have his fingertips tortured with an instrument ominously called a "nail clipper". This metal device has, on occasion, drawn blood from his fingertips, so he never knows when it will clip just his fingernail, or when it will bite into the soft flesh beneath. Resistance was futile as the evil lady torturer ironically called "Mom" pulled his arm out to its full extent, held his hand still, and went snip, snip. (This fingernail torture is repeated at least once a week, sometimes twice a week.) He was then dressed and allowed a half hour of exercise, followed by another trip to the isolation chamber. He was sent there this time because he was crying too much. His captors said he "must be tired and ready for his morning nap."

Thankfully, Bagel's will hasn't yet broken, even though he has been treated this way for nearly a year now. But the most shameful aspect of GotMilk Prison Camp is that this sort of atrocity is perpetrated even on year-old children.

We only know about this torture at OBF because some brave journalist has bravely filled out a FOIA request and braved surly post office employees to send it in-- even licked her own stamp-- and bravely waited several long days for the government to send the prison logs back! In this way we have exposed the cover-up that OBF's owners have been conducting, with the help of both the government and a metal front door with a dry-erase markerboard stuck to it. The markerboard, we should notice, is ominously blank, and the marker is nowhere to be found, its loss blamed on the very children who are daily tortured in that horrible place. It's just another indication of how the powerful can hide their multitudinous sins and inhibit our freedom to express ourselves.

Stop, oh stop the cruel torture! Where is our decency as a nation, that we allow innocent children to be treated this way? Because they are innocent, at least until they're proven guilty in court.

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My point is, with enough rhetoric you can make anything sound like torture. I don't condone real torture, but so far nothing I've seen out of Gitmo qualifies. Maybe I'm not privy to the right information, but it seems to me that neither are many of the people condemning temperature changes and sleep deprivation as torture. And I've seen way too much preening about "speaking truth to power." It denigrates real "speaking truth to power" to pretend that you're exposing some government cover-up with the information given you by the government itself, which you got only by enduring the sort of hardships that not being able to just Google up the info entails.