Our Ambassador to Italy and His Own Private Abu Ghraib

[Cell Whitman]

Torture is a Republican value. They really like it.

from Gorenfeld:

http://media.orkut.com/articles/0145.html

His Own Private Abu Ghraib

He created a system to reprogram bad kids. Delete the bad code in their personalities. Break the will of sullen stoner boys, make bad girls confess to whorish secrets and reverse-engineer the minds of heavy metal kids. And rebuild all of them into an anti-drug army. Such were the works of Melvin Sembler and the feats that STRAIGHT, the ultimate in teen drug rehab programs, attempted during the Totally Awesome Eighties.

Melvin Sembler's clinics might have seemed like a good idea at the time, when teen drug use was high and New Age thinking seemed to offer new and hopeful therapies for pressing the RESET button on human beings.

There were major problems, though. He modeled STRAIGHT after another program, creepily named "The Seed," shut down after the U.S. Congress literally issued a report in 1973 comparing it to "the highly refined 'brainwashing' techniques employed by the North Koreans." Sembler's imitation wasn't shut down until 1993 for illegal child abuse: beatings and sexual humiliation. Kids were thrown against walls. Or forced to sit in their own menstrual blood. Unless, of course, they were ready to cooperate, confess, and chant "I'm at STRAIGHT, feeling great" with the others. In that case they got to be the enforcers. Dozens of lawsuits exposed a similar picture in 12 clinics across America.

Fast forward to 2005. Sembler, 75, is the United States Ambassador to Italy. The enforcers have turned into Sembler's enemies and one man is out for payback. ...

Then there is his public cheerfulness about STRAIGHT. His Web site brags of saving 12,000 kids from drugs. George H.W. Bush awarded it one of the "thousand points of light" awards.

His influence, according to a 1993 audit by the State of Florida, kept STRAIGHT open despite the facts. Phone calls from politicians in 1989 warned health inspectors that it didn't matter what abuse they reported, the clinics would stay open. After all, they were run by a personal friend of the President. "A persistent foul odor," the St. Petersburg Times editorialized.

....

With a legacy like this, it's almost enough to make you wonder if potential ambassadors are not chosen for their awesome diplomatic skills but their generosity in giving money to political parties. Italians have taken notice; Sembler earned attention this month during a diplomatic crisis over a March 4 incident when trigger-happy American GIs shot an Italian journalist and killed her rescuer. The Christian news site Reta Della Pace has just published an article on Sembler's past, quoting STRAIGHT parent Fager as saying The Program was responsible for 40 suicides.

It's no wonder Italians are bewildered. Prison abuse scandals at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay have Europeans wondering if their once-admired ally, the U.S., is O.K. in the head. And now we're leaving the impression that it's O.K. - heroic, even - to treat young Americans like Guantanamo Bay inmates. ....


more... http://media.orkut.com/articles/0145.html

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George H.W. "I love cults" Bush does an ad for Sembler's Abu Ghraib.

http://thestraights.com/video/bush.rm

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http://cellwhitman.blogspot.com/

[mimitabby]

1. thanks for posting this

Italians are pretty sensitive about what happens to their children
and this is yet ANOTHER embarrassment...
Why the *ush admin. continues to appoint people to positions that they have no business doing
American ambassador to Italy doesn't speak italian and has a building built in ROME in HIS NAME!
vomit!

[earthboundmisfit]

2. This should be seen by Al & Randi at AAR, Ed Schultz & and Olbermann too

Before the Sgrena-Calipari incident is allowed to fade away, this needs to be addressed by those who will bring it to further light - this is yet one more example of the sickos we have at the helm! Every day there is more evidence that all Bush administrations have been saturated with dangerous nutjobs. And the most shameful thing is that any of them have ever, EVER been put in charge of CHILDREN.
:puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke:
(Note that on Monday our embassy blocked Italian investigation of the rental car involved - more here):
http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-740304.php

[Cell Whitman]

3. please do forward, this isn't like the "Times" this article is in

People could miss it. Gorenfeld does very good work, as you know. Please do move this article along anyway ya can.
.

This is the face we show the world. sheesh.

[blm]

4. Yeah....another "Ugly American" face. Just what we need.

Thanks for sharing your grabs with us, Cell. It is always an education when you post.

[DoYouEverWonder]

5. The family values party

strikes again. :puke:

Typical friend of Bush. This sick fucker should be in the same place has that Couey fellow. They both are cut out of the same mold.

[Cell Whitman]

6. new here bump...

Maybe I should have posted this in the news article section?

We've got a kid torturer for our Ambassador to Italy. A freak.