Shit List 06/08/09 - Something Rotten
Aug. 6th, 2009 09:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crazyjaneIt's that time again. A bit of a mixed bag, this one, but all come with a healthy dose of WTF. And nausea.
First, we go to China. Ever had someone bitching at you that you spend too much time on Teh Ebil Interwebs? Ever been called an internet addict? Spare a thought for this poor kid, a fifteen-year-old boy who was beaten to death in an apparent attempt to 'cure' him of internet addiction. (Not that there are any details on what actually constitutes addiction, but we'll move on.)
Deng Senshan was sent to a rehab boot camp by his parents, who no doubt thought that their son would benefit from the advertised 'close management with training teachers'. The material asserted that their methods were 'tough' but in no way constituted torture. It seems that the word 'torture', in this case, is subject to the same elastic definitions it gets in the US. The 'close management' Deng received consisted of solitary confinement and relentless beating to punish him from running too slowly. Hours later, the 'teachers' took him to the emergency room, where he arrived with a weak heartbeat and unable to breathe. He was also, reportedly, covered in blood and bruises.
The good news is that there is a police investigation into this murder. The bad news is that the camp is still operating, and there are no details (yes) on how many other kids were forced to suffer the same kind of horror as Deng.
These 'boot camps' are nothing more than training grounds for professional sadists. Whether it's internet 'addiction', 'uncontrollable' behaviour, drugs, so-called 'de-gaying' or an unplanned pregnancy doesn't seem to matter. The methods are the same. They might dress it up as 'rehab', as 'saving kids from themselves', but what it comes down to is that these kids - who may have real need for help - are beaten, humiliated and starved. They are subjected to mental and physical anguish for weeks on end, and they can't get away, because their parents have put them there. If they run, and are picked up by police, they'll be sent right back - and punished for escaping. Some of the luckiest ones even get to do it in front of a television camera.
It's past time these camps were closed down once and for all. I don't care if you have a Bible to back you up or some piece of paper saying you're 'qualified'. You don't torture kids. You just don't.
Next, to Zambia, where a news editor has been put on trial for distributing pornographic images. These images, sent to many politicians and groups around the country, were so shocking that the Zambian President, Rupert Banda, thought it necessary to comment publicly on the disgusting nature of it all.
The images? Pictures of a woman giving birth without medical help.
Yeah, you read that right. The editor, Chansa Kabwela, was attempting to highlight the effects of a nurses' strike on ordinary people. The woman in the pictures was in clear distress - the baby was breech - yet she was turned away from two hospitals. By the time a doctor could be found who would treat her, the baby had suffocated. Oh, and the photographs in question? Were taken as the woman struggled out in the grounds of a hospital that had turned her away.
Apparently, this is obscene. Apparently, this actually aroused the senior private secretary who first opened the letter. The image of that suffering woman, her baby dying for lack of a few moments' attention, her plight recorded in a desperate attempt to show somebody, anybody, just how bad things were becoming, gave this man a hard-on. And this is, somehow, the fault of the image. For which the woman who sent it to him must pay.
Pardon me while I wait for the nausea to pass.
Kabwela faces up to five years in jail if she is convicted. In a country where the President publicly condemns her attempts to shame people into action as 'obscene', I don't like her chances.
Naturally, there will be no investigation into the kind of mind that would find those pictures pornographic.
I can't write about this one anymore. I'm too utterly disgusted.
Finally, 64 years ago today a nuclear bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
Over 140,000 died in the first few days afterwards, many in the first explosion. Others died from radiation burns, flash burns or other trauma. Since then, thousands of others have died from radiation sickness, leukaemia and various cancers. Most of these people were just ordinary folks going about their business.
Their city was selected for several reasons. The most sickening is that there would be a 'great psychological effect' on the Japanese people. And there was valuable research data to be gained. After all, Hiroshima had been specifically excluded from conventional bombing in order to keep it 'pristine', so that the effects of a nuclear weapon could be thoroughly studied.
The follow-up bombing of Nagasaki, with a plutonium bomb whimsically nicknamed 'Fat Man' after Winston Churchill, killed over 80,000. Some of the handful of survivors of Hiroshima had made their slow, painful way to Nagasaki in an attempt to gain some kind of refuge and treatment (with over 90% of medical personnel in Hiroshima having been wiped out). Many of those were killed by this second bomb, or burned to death when the largely wooden structures of their sanctuaries were literally vaporised.
The spin, of course, is that using these unbelievably horrific devices brought about a swift end to the war. That's a pretty safe thing to say, really. After all, it's not like we can return to a save point and reload the game, is it?
There was, and is, no excuse for these abominations. None.
That's it. Everybody out of the pool.
First, we go to China. Ever had someone bitching at you that you spend too much time on Teh Ebil Interwebs? Ever been called an internet addict? Spare a thought for this poor kid, a fifteen-year-old boy who was beaten to death in an apparent attempt to 'cure' him of internet addiction. (Not that there are any details on what actually constitutes addiction, but we'll move on.)
Deng Senshan was sent to a rehab boot camp by his parents, who no doubt thought that their son would benefit from the advertised 'close management with training teachers'. The material asserted that their methods were 'tough' but in no way constituted torture. It seems that the word 'torture', in this case, is subject to the same elastic definitions it gets in the US. The 'close management' Deng received consisted of solitary confinement and relentless beating to punish him from running too slowly. Hours later, the 'teachers' took him to the emergency room, where he arrived with a weak heartbeat and unable to breathe. He was also, reportedly, covered in blood and bruises.
The good news is that there is a police investigation into this murder. The bad news is that the camp is still operating, and there are no details (yes) on how many other kids were forced to suffer the same kind of horror as Deng.
These 'boot camps' are nothing more than training grounds for professional sadists. Whether it's internet 'addiction', 'uncontrollable' behaviour, drugs, so-called 'de-gaying' or an unplanned pregnancy doesn't seem to matter. The methods are the same. They might dress it up as 'rehab', as 'saving kids from themselves', but what it comes down to is that these kids - who may have real need for help - are beaten, humiliated and starved. They are subjected to mental and physical anguish for weeks on end, and they can't get away, because their parents have put them there. If they run, and are picked up by police, they'll be sent right back - and punished for escaping. Some of the luckiest ones even get to do it in front of a television camera.
It's past time these camps were closed down once and for all. I don't care if you have a Bible to back you up or some piece of paper saying you're 'qualified'. You don't torture kids. You just don't.
Next, to Zambia, where a news editor has been put on trial for distributing pornographic images. These images, sent to many politicians and groups around the country, were so shocking that the Zambian President, Rupert Banda, thought it necessary to comment publicly on the disgusting nature of it all.
The images? Pictures of a woman giving birth without medical help.
Yeah, you read that right. The editor, Chansa Kabwela, was attempting to highlight the effects of a nurses' strike on ordinary people. The woman in the pictures was in clear distress - the baby was breech - yet she was turned away from two hospitals. By the time a doctor could be found who would treat her, the baby had suffocated. Oh, and the photographs in question? Were taken as the woman struggled out in the grounds of a hospital that had turned her away.
Apparently, this is obscene. Apparently, this actually aroused the senior private secretary who first opened the letter. The image of that suffering woman, her baby dying for lack of a few moments' attention, her plight recorded in a desperate attempt to show somebody, anybody, just how bad things were becoming, gave this man a hard-on. And this is, somehow, the fault of the image. For which the woman who sent it to him must pay.
Pardon me while I wait for the nausea to pass.
Kabwela faces up to five years in jail if she is convicted. In a country where the President publicly condemns her attempts to shame people into action as 'obscene', I don't like her chances.
Naturally, there will be no investigation into the kind of mind that would find those pictures pornographic.
I can't write about this one anymore. I'm too utterly disgusted.
Finally, 64 years ago today a nuclear bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
Over 140,000 died in the first few days afterwards, many in the first explosion. Others died from radiation burns, flash burns or other trauma. Since then, thousands of others have died from radiation sickness, leukaemia and various cancers. Most of these people were just ordinary folks going about their business.
Their city was selected for several reasons. The most sickening is that there would be a 'great psychological effect' on the Japanese people. And there was valuable research data to be gained. After all, Hiroshima had been specifically excluded from conventional bombing in order to keep it 'pristine', so that the effects of a nuclear weapon could be thoroughly studied.
The follow-up bombing of Nagasaki, with a plutonium bomb whimsically nicknamed 'Fat Man' after Winston Churchill, killed over 80,000. Some of the handful of survivors of Hiroshima had made their slow, painful way to Nagasaki in an attempt to gain some kind of refuge and treatment (with over 90% of medical personnel in Hiroshima having been wiped out). Many of those were killed by this second bomb, or burned to death when the largely wooden structures of their sanctuaries were literally vaporised.
The spin, of course, is that using these unbelievably horrific devices brought about a swift end to the war. That's a pretty safe thing to say, really. After all, it's not like we can return to a save point and reload the game, is it?
There was, and is, no excuse for these abominations. None.
That's it. Everybody out of the pool.
