Wait, this isn’t from the Onion? Fuck.
2 Comments Published by Quin June 26th, 2008 in Punkass!, Brilliant Ideas, Military bullshit, Rights? What rights?, TortureYet another set of relics from the post-satire age:
As the keychain says, truly “It don’t GITMO better than this.”
Welcome to “Taliban Towers” at Guantanamo Bay, the most ghoulishly distasteful tourist destination on the planet. As these astonishing mementoes show, the US authorities are promoting the world’s most notorious prison camp as a cheap hideaway for American sunseekers — a revelation that has drawn international anger and condemnation.
Just yards from the shelves of specially branded mugs and cuddly toys, nearly 300 “enemy combatants” lie sweltering in a waking nightmare.
It is six years since foreign prisoners, many captured in Afghanistan, were first taken to this US-occupied corner of Cuba. Yet even now, no charges have been brought against them.
While the detainees lie incarcerated, visitors can windsurf, take boat trips and go fishing for grouper, tuna, red snapper and swordfish.
Hey, in all fairness, if you want to take your family out for a little dunk in the water, does it really matter if there’s a few detainees getting their own “dunk in the water” a few hundred feet away? Where is the line where it’s magically OKAY to start having fun? One mile away? 50 miles? (Don’t say 500 miles, or you’re already to Miami.)
The vacation comes at a knock-down price: just $42 (£20) per night for a suite of air-conditioned rooms, including a kitchen, bathroom, living room and bedrooms.But it is the souvenirs that have led to the greatest criticism. One T-shirt from the gift shop is decorated with a guard tower and barbed wire. It reads: “The Taliban Towers at Guantanamo Bay, the Caribbean’s Newest 5-star Resort.”
Another praises “the proud protectors of freedom”. A third displays a garish picture of an iguana and states: “Greetings from paradise GTMO resort and spa fun in the Cuban sun.”
A child-sized shirt says: “Someone who loves me got me this T-shirt in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.”
“Love is… a T-shirt from America’s favorite dungeon.”
I hope that Mohammed Akhtiar, Nusrat Khan, Nazar Chaman Gul, and all of the other detainees who have managed to make it out of there alive so far were given complimentary shirts on their way out.
(Via Chris Floyd.)
I guess it’s nice to know I still had the capacity to be shocked and disappointed in humanity.
Be kinda nice if there was another way to find that out.
Another little piece of me just died.
I’m sorry to hear that. Well, there’s no more affordable place to recover your spirits than the Taliban Towers resort in sunny Guantanamo Bay — home of the world’s sexiest chest-hair and bikini-clad dolphins!