Anderson was caught joyriding with another kid in his grandmother's vehicle. For this crime, he was tossed into the Bay County Boot Camp, a facility run by Jeb Bush's Department of Juvenile Justice, where troubled young people get the full "Abu Ghraib" treatment:
The screaming guards. The pressure points. The knee takedowns. The acrid ammonia stick shoved in the face of a rubber-legged 14-year-old named Martin Lee Anderson.More:
Aaron Swartz can't forget any of it. Not because he saw it all the way most people did -- in a grainy videotape of the guards and Martin before his death -- but because Aaron was there, at Bay County Boot Camp, receiving much of the same violent treatment that still makes him shudder miles away from it all.
"They killed that boy. They didn't help him. They beat him," Aaron, also 14, told The Miami Herald...
As Aaron tells it, time at the camp was measured in fear and pain, in increments of forced exercise, wall-slams, pressure points, knee takedowns and hammer-fist punches by DIs who video-taped it all. When the boys would go to bed, he said, they could hear the DIs watching the tapes in a nearby room, cheering on their greatest hits as if watching a sporting event.Here -- as at Gitmo -- "Christian" conservatives reveal their inherent sadism and savagery. Jeb Bush directly appointed the sherrif in charge of this vile camp. Incidentally, the "doctor" who signed Anderson's autopsy report did not have a valid license.
But this isn't just a story of one juvenile facility gone bad. This camp is part of a nationwide effort by Republicans to exercise violent, cult-like control over an entire generation. As this column in the Cincinatti Beacon reveals, the "investigation" of this Floridian gulag for the young has been handed over to cronies of the Semblers, the folks who gave us the notorious Straight program.
Long-time readers will recall our previous discussions of Straight, which is an updated version of an old mind control program called "The Seed."
Melvin Sembler, founder of Straight, is an old friend of the Bush family who later became ambassador to Italy. (Some suspect that he had a hand in helping the Niger forgeries make their way toward our shores.) After some uncomfortable media attention, Straight renamed itself the Drug-Free America Foundation (DFAF); the program still tortures children and still carries the Bush family endorsement. As this must-read web site reveals, the Straight/DFAF cult -- and it is a cult -- has many, many ties to the Republican party.
Prediction: Anyone who thoroughly investigates the Florida "boot camps" will probably find a number of further links to individuals associated with the Semblers and their sick progeny.
And if you think I've overstated the case -- please follow the links. Conduct your own research. You'll soon get the whole grim picture.
Egh. The detail about these sociopaths video-taping their sadism disturbs me almost as much as the descriptions of their crimes. Think about everything that action implies: callousness, remorselessness, and an apparent belief that the abusers were no longer responsible to any known social contract.
ReplyDeleteI used to live in Florida.
ReplyDeleteIt's also important to know that culturally speaking, the Northern panhandle is really Southern Alabama. Think NASCAR, 3 military bases, with a dash of "Deliverance" thrown in. I suspect it's no accident that this boot camp was located there in Bay County, where the locals will be most likely to circle the wagons and protect the perps.
Remember, just down the highway in Pensacola was where Paul Hill, a one-time Presbyterian minister, said God led him to shoot Dr. John Britton at a Pensacola abortion clinic in July 1994.
Kim in PA