One thing to keep in mind is that building in the Everglades was a deliberate choice. The administration wanted a punitive, dangerous camp. The shoddy, temporary facilities (at far above permanent-facility per-bed costs) exacerbate the conditions. Mosquitoes apparently have free rein. [2/17]
well, with all the kickbacks going to the fascist overlords it is no wonder the per-bed cost is exorbitant. that may well be the real reason for rounding up "illegals" another grift
“Punitive”. I have only one question: are all detained people convicted?
No.
Another thing to know is that mosquitoes are brutal in Florida. The state has a long history of lethal illnesses spread by mosquitoes. No one in government is unaware of the constant battle and treatments that have worked to keep mosquitoes at bay in an incredibly inhospitable climate. [3/17]
A very hospitable climate for mosquitoes — hot and wet, plenty os standing water.
Mosquitoes have likewise long had a starring role in concentration camps around the world, starting with the first reconcentrados in Cuba in the 1890s. Forcing families out of the countryside and behind barbed wire was *meant* to punish civilians by depriving them of food and shelter. [4/17]
With reconcentrados surrounded by standing water in overcrowded and unsanitary settings, mosquito-borne malaria became a leading cause of death. Encephalitis deaths were also common. More than 100,000 civilians died in squalid conditions in these camps, from hunger and disease. [5/17]
bsky.app/profile/sine...
That was quite the series. Is there a second season? There should be.
cruel and unusual punishment?
In the Philippines soon afterward, the U.S. set up its first overseas concentration camps. Mosquito-borne malaria surged among detainees. As one soldier wrote: "Now this little spot of black sogginess is a reconcentrado pen, with a dead-line outside, beyond which everything living is shot..." [6/17]
Surprising no mention of Japanese POW camps in WW2?
"Upon arrival I found 30 cases of small-pox and average fresh ones of five a day, which practically have to be turned out to die. At nightfall clouds of huge vampire bats softly swirl out on their orgies over the dead. Mosquitoes work in relays, and keep up their pestering, day and night." [7/17]
I know this is tangential, but can I pls point out that (1) bats do not occur in Cuba (though a now extinct species did during the Quaternary), (2) vampire bats do not scavenge on or take blood meals from dead animals and (3) this is an inadvertent example of the long history of vilification of 🦇s.
Yeah, my first thought was that the bats were out hunting the mosquitos, but a visitor from more temperate areas might have a visceral reaction to clouds of bats pursuing clouds of mosquitos.
Plus I don’t know about 🦇s hunting in clouds. The main time they form dense groups is when they are emerging from and (less so) returning to their roosts. And temperate zone 🦇s form the densest groupings of mammals on 🌍. 🦇s are 😎 !
It's possible some degree of unknowing negligence with specific regard to mosquitoes reigned when Spain imposed reconcentración on Cuba, as scientists were just establishing a direct link between mosquitoes and malaria in those years. But in the 1920s, the USSR would weaponize the insect. [8/17]
Both Emma Goldman and Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote about the mosquito torture of the early Gulag, in which people were forced to stay outside naked, to allow mosquitoes to feed on them unimpeded. Here's Goldman denouncing the Bolsheviks in 1925. [9/17]
Jesus fuckin Christ, man. Humans are EVIL. And now, it's repeat on steroids. I don't want to pay for this.
Mosquitoes as deliberate torture caught on elsewhere. In Cuba when UMAP camps were imposed under Castro, "Jehovah Witnesses were subject to all manner of cruel treatment: beaten; deprived of food, water... tied up naked outside and left for the mosquitoes and sun." [10/17]
I call it Genocide by Mother Nature for plausible deniability. The fkg monsters are euphoric about torturing the people who provide their food. All of them are psychopaths.👹
Not a concentration camp, but 1715 to 1733 the survivors of Spains Treasure Fleet shipwrecks would bury the children up to their necks in the sand at dusk so they would be able to sleep the mosquitoes were that bad. This is by the ocean, not a swamp.
DeSantis is has defended torture.
Yes! He was infamous and mocked at Guantanamo. He has always shown himself as a bully, an authoritarian, an uninformed ideologue and as a grasping “wanna be” willing to do whatever it takes to be more popular, more powerful and more wealthy. He has actually done more harm to Florida than I expected.
Stephen Nazi Miller as well
In Chinese concentration camps, mosquitoes were also used to administer punishments that would not violate official rules against assaulting camp prisoners. There are several examples, but here's part of the testimony Liu Xinhu gave before Congress in 1995. [11/17]
Australia outsourced immigration detention in 2001 to the nation of Nauru and to Manus in PNG, to create a punitive disincentive around migration. Manus had staggering malaria rates, and the mosquito-borne dengue outbreak at the detention facility in Nauru in 2014 was entirely foreseeable: [12/17]
www.tiktok.com/@prisontrans... We are searching for voices that can speak up for the rights of prisoners. Could you repost the video or write a post with tags like#forced labor/modern slavery on your tiktok, or other platform, like X, BlueSky or facebook?
Its torture. Same as waterboarding. Inhumane and barbaric.
post-9/11 is where we truly got off course people defending *torture* should have been a five-alarm fire
I wish I had any faith that these monsters would face any kind of consequences for their actions
Guess Stephen Miller keeps up on the Techniques of Torture literature Putin, Orban and Bukele provide…
IIRC mosquitoes tormented Dostoevsky in the 1840s prison camps too
My father mentioned this. Siberian mosquitos were apparently huge and feared.
This quote is from a book about a camp that was in the White Sea.
>> A snippet from the NYT, which reads, "In Kholmogory, prisoners are subjected to the "mosquito torture": that is, the victim is stripped naked and, at a signal from the gang, placed in the yard, where swarms of mosquitos immediately attack him. << IIRC, a buried concept, head free, also existed?
Malaria: brought to the New World with enslaved Africans, it quickly became such a huge killer of white colonists that they had to constantly ship in fresh ones
Who undoubtedly knew many things due to similar inhumanity practiced on plantations throughout the Caribbean and West Indies.
📌 Alligator concentration camp
Is it wrong to hope the employees get a good case of Malaria, West Nile, or some other mosquito borne disease? They chose to be there. They chose the cruelty. What's fair is fair🤷♀️
That area is a hellhole.
Is this true even in the Everglades?
Quite true. I grew up in SC where they're almost as bad, and THERE they're like flying hypodermics
i got chased back into the house last night by mosquitoes before they carried me off, we've actually been getting lots of rain in floriduh now, always do, i'm sure that's why they hurried to open it Now, it will flood every day between 4-6.. the afternoon thunderstorm you can set the clock by
I am used to gardening early in the morning and late afternoon to avoid the brutal heat. Now that the squadrons of voracious mosquitoes wait at dusk, it's only mornings. They are like prehistoric monsters.
i water at around 10 so shit is watered right before the blazing sun burns it up
Me too. Rain has been spotty so far. It may be black and storming half a mile away, then skirt right around my butterfly garden.
i live near 75, it will rain a mile either side of it but no where else, the sea breeze blows to there and the heat of the road causes it to rain right there, it's fucked up one of the only places it can rain in the backyard and not the front
Same here. The Everglades are about a mile from me. Major storms are so close, and yet so far.
i was cleaning a sea trout in record time before they carried it and me away. i was ready to light a fire to keep them away, all the rain lately they're out in force like a swarm of lovebugs
Americas Concentration Camp.
America's *newest* concentration camp. Not its first.
dengue fever
This Florida internment center (Let's ditch the cutesy name "Alligator Alcatraz") captures what's destructive about Trump's agenda: brutal treatment of human beings; denial of civil rights; degradation of the environment; violation of treaties with the indigenous peoples: www.ehn.org/florida-trib...
And there will be no efforts to evacuate them during hurricanes. This is absolutely a choice.
Also, wasn’t the governor a supervisor of torture at Guantanamo? so he was completely on board with an internment camp in his state.
yes...we still don't know the whole story on that I read today that desantis used money that was supposed to be used for weather emergencies for this prison....
The Trump team are racists and sadists, and when a person is a sadistic racist, the worst qualities humans have will be expressed. It’s outrageous torture and human rights abuse, and it stains my country.
I worked in a large hospital in an affluent Florida city with an aggressive mosquito suppression program. Still saw all kinds of tropical and semitropical mosquito borne diseases every summer.
The administration deserves to end up there