After the horrific story of soldiers abusing two Palestinian workers, and forcing one of them to drink the soldiers’ urine until he fainted, one of the soldiers stood in court and admitted to the hidden truth which even the press was shy to say, “What we did was inhuman”.
The extreme brutality which revealed a hidden face of the Israeli army was revealed during the trial of the soldiers who abused the workers and forced one of them to drink their urine.
The event took place on September, 2004 when soldiers based at a military checkpoint in Abu Dis, near Jerusalem, stopped Sameeh Rahhal, 22, from Bethlehem, and Firas al-Bakry, 22, from Hebron, and other workers.
The soldiers claimed that the workers were ‘illegally’ staying in Jerusalem and decided to “punish them”. And took them to an abandoned hotel, which the army was using as a military post.
There, at the ‘hotel’ the abuse and cruelty of the soldiers was exposed on its highest level.
Sameeh said in his testimony that soldiers forced him to choose between having his hands and legs broken or drinking the soldiers' urine.
“Soldiers at first stopped us, along with dozens of workers, then they drew a lot on our card, randomly choosing two, and released the other workers”, Sameeh said.
Sameeh and Firas were forced – in what Israeli soldiers called 'entertainment' – to choose one from three paper notes inside a box.
The “Game’ which soldiers chose to play, included three sorts of punishments; breaking hands, legs and drinking from bottles filled with the soldiers' urine.
By John Oates Published Wednesday 25th May 2005 09:50 GMT
Three Catholic priests, a police officer and a social worker are among 186 people reportedly under investigation in Italy this morning after authorities shut down a child torture website.
The website hosted pictures and videos of children between four and eight being sexually abused and tortured. Police are still investigating and are yet to press charges.
The password-protected site was online for just nine days before being closed down in July. Web monitoring organisation Telefono Arcobaleno tipped off authorities, according to AP.
The site was not indexed so wasn't picked up search engines. It was hosted on an Italian server but advertised in other countries.
The investigation is continuing and no-one has been arrested yet. Premises belonging to 159 suspects in 16 of Italy's 20 regions were searched on Tuesday. Other suspects have already been searched
AlterNet May 24, 2005 A former detainee talks openly about what he saw and heard, from abuse of prisoners to offensive treatment of the Qu'ran. And it couldn't be further from what the Bush administration is telling us.
In their first article in Newsweek since the magazine received a dressing-down by Scott McClellan, Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas quote Defense Department spokesman Lawrence Di Rita, who alleges that Guantanamo commanders changed prison rules in response to prisoner complaints about treatment of the Qu'ran. But Di Rita's claims couldn't be further from the experience of Martin Mubanga, a recently freed Guantanamo Bay detainee who spoke to U.S. media for the first time this weekend.
Mubanga, a 32-year-old Londoner who was arrested in Zambia in 2002 and taken to Guantanamo, was released without charge in January 2005, after 33 months in captivity. He says that offensive treatment of the Qu'ran was ongoing, even routine, over the three years he was a prisoner. Mubanga says complaints by inmates about the desecration of the Qu'ran fell upon deaf ears, and often resulted in severe punishment, including pepper-spraying of prisoners.
Laura Flanders' exclusive interview with Martin Mubanga was produced by Christabel Nsiah-Buadi and broadcast on The Laura Flanders Show on Air America Radio on Sunday, May 22. What follows is an edited transcript of the interview.
Laura Flanders: Did Newsweek lie about abuse of the Qu'ran? What did you see?
Martin Mubanga: From my own personal experience and from what I know of what occurs in Guantanamo Bay, this is actually an ongoing thing for the past three years, so we don't need Newsweek to corroborate or substantiate these accusations. We who have been in Guantanamo Bay know that these and other things occur in degradation of our religion.
You described a situation where your cell was searched by six or seven military police and a Qu'ran was thrown to the ground. Can you explain why that was so offensive to you?
In our religion, firstly, the Qu'ran is believed to be the word of God, who we refer to as Allah in our religion. Basically the Qu'ran is supposed to be treated with respect and most people believe that the Qu'ran should be placed in a high place in a house or only taken with respect in a certain condition of purification or ablution. It's never to be placed on a floor, on a dirty floor or to be treated or to be mishandled in any way.
What did those six or seven military police do?
At the time, there was a story going around that I was supposed to be a top-notch fighter, as they said, and they tried to provoke me in many ways to see what I could do. This was one of the methods that was used to see if I would fight and I believe that's why they chose me on this particular occasion and threw the Qu'ran on the floor.
So, they came in, they threw the Qu'ran on the floor, then what happened?
Well, as I was saying, there were two on either side of me, holding my wrists as I was kneeling down, and they had me in wristlocks. And one of the three that were searching took my Qu'ran. And instead of replacing it, to its place, he threw that on the floor... Rahul [Ahmed, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, who was returned to Britain on March 9, 2004] from Tipton witnessed this and he was in the cage next to me. And he remonstrated the soldier, the MP who did this, which they ignored. They wanted to see if they could provoke a strong reaction from me. And obviously, I was not able to do anything at that time.
By TIM GOLDEN NY Times 20/05/2005 Even as the young Afghan man was dying before them, his American jailers continued to torment him.
The prisoner, a slight, 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar, was hauled from his cell at the detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, at around 2 a.m. to answer questions about a rocket attack on an American base. When he arrived in the interrogation room, an interpreter who was present said, his legs were bouncing uncontrollably in the plastic chair and his hands were numb. He had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days.
Mr. Dilawar asked for a drink of water, and one of the two interrogators, Specialist Joshua R. Claus, 21, picked up a large plastic bottle. But first he punched a hole in the bottom, the interpreter said, so as the prisoner fumbled weakly with the cap, the water poured out over his orange prison scrubs. The soldier then grabbed the bottle back and began squirting the water forcefully into Mr. Dilawar's face.
"Come on, drink!" the interpreter said Specialist Claus had shouted, as the prisoner gagged on the spray. "Drink!"
At the interrogators' behest, a guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.
"Leave him up," one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying.
Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen. It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.
I feel like I am watching a very bad movie. How is this film going to end.
Riverbend She stood in the crowded room as her drove of minions stood around her...?A huddling mass trying to draw closer to her aura of evil. The lights flashed against her fangs as her cruel lips curled into a grimace. It was meant to be a smile but it wouldn't reach her cold, lifeless eyes? It was a leer- the leer of the undead before a feeding...
The above was not a scene from Buffy the Vampire Slayer- it was just Condi Rice in Iraq a day ago. At home, we fondly refer to her as The Vampire. She's such a contrast to Bush- he simply looks stupid. She, on the other hand, looks utterly evil.
The last two weeks have been violent. The number of explosions in Baghdad alone is frightening. There have also been several assassinations- bodies being found here and there. It's somewhat disturbing to know that corpses are turning up in the most unexpected places. Many people will tell you it's not wise to eat river fish anymore because they have been nourished on the human remains being dumped into the river. That thought alone has given me more than one sleepless night. It is almost as if Baghdad has turned into a giant graveyard.
The latest corpses were those of some Sunni and Shia clerics- several of them well-known. People are being patient and there is a general consensus that these killings are being done to provoke civil war. Also worrisome is the fact that we are hearing of people being rounded up by security forces (Iraqi) and then being found dead days later- apparently when the new Iraqi government recently decided to reinstate the death penalty, they had something else in mind.
But back to the explosions. One of the larger blasts was in an area called Ma'moun, which is a middle class area located in west Baghdad. It?s a relatively calm residential area with shops that provide the basics and a bit more. It happened in the morning, as the shops were opening up for their daily business and it occurred right in front of a butchers shop. Immediately after, we heard that a man living in a house in front of the blast site was hauled off by the Americans because it was said that after the bomb went off, he sniped an Iraqi National Guardsman.
I didn?t think much about the story- nothing about it stood out: an explosion and a sniper- hardly an anomaly. The interesting news started circulating a couple of days later. People from the area claim that the man was taken away not because he shot anyone, but because he knew too much about the bomb. Rumor has it that he saw an American patrol passing through the area and pausing at the bomb site minutes before the explosion. Soon after they drove away, the bomb went off and chaos ensued. He ran out of his house screaming to the neighbors and bystanders that the Americans had either planted the bomb or seen the bomb and done nothing about it. He was promptly taken away.
The bombs are mysterious. Some of them explode in the midst of National Guard and near American troops or Iraqi Police and others explode near mosques, churches, and shops or in the middle of sougs. One thing that surprises us about the news reports of these bombs is that they are inevitably linked to suicide bombers. The reality is that some of these bombs are not suicide bombs- they are car bombs that are either being remotely detonated or maybe time bombs. All we know is that the techniques differ and apparently so do the intentions. Some will tell you they are resistance. Some say Chalabi and his thugs are responsible for a number of them. Others blame Iran and the SCIRI militia Badir.
In any case, they are terrifying. If you're close enough, the first sound is a that of an earsplitting blast and the sounds that follow are of a rain of glass, shrapnel and other sharp things. Then the wails begin- the shrill mechanical wails of an occasional ambulance combined with the wail of car alarms from neighboring vehicles? and finally the wail of people trying to sort out their dead and dying from the debris. Full article at Signs Of The Times
By Kirwan kirwanstudios@earthlink.net 5-13-5 This was a long time coming, but apparently it could not be proven until another "incident" occurred. So thanks to two completely incompetent "pilots" who strayed into the no-fly zone over the White House two days ago - it is now official! According to the White House spokesman, the president was not notified of the potential "threat" because "The situation didn't require a presidential decision." That - it turns out is a true statement!
The duties of the Commander in Chief were modified on June 1, 2001 internally, by traitors, who sought to undercut the chain of command and remove Bush from any responsibility whatsoever - in the event of an attack of this kind upon this nation.
"Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction CJCSI 3610.01A (dated 1 June 2001) was issued to provide "guidance to the Deputy Director for Operations (DDO), National Military Command Center (NMCC), and operational commanders in the event of an aircraft piracy (hijacking) or request for destruction of derelict airborne objects." This new instruction superseded CJCSI 3610.01 of 31 July 1997."
This means that the president of the United States of America, from that day forward, was no longer responsible for attacks of this nature - upon the USA. Executive decisions, in this regard are now to be made by Donald Rumsfeld the US Secretary of Defense. The AWOL pretender in the White House has no real responsibility now - for protecting this country from attacks like 911 - and he did not have that responsibility on September eleventh 2001. All that has happened since those attacks has been nothing but the continuation of a massively criminal act. Bush was never intended to be allowed to be the man who could make decisions - so he was removed from the loop - thereby rendering his position as the president: Meaningless!
when Bush asked Ariel Sharon to pull his tanks out of Jenin in 2002, he received 100,000 angry emails from Christian fundamentalists, and never mentioned the matter again.
Stations Of The Cross
How evangelical Christians are creating an alternative universe of faith-based news By Mariah Blake
It's the first Tuesday of April. In Washington, D.C., the magnolia trees are blooming, tourists crowd the sidewalk cafés, and Congress has just returned from its spring recess. CBN News has chosen this time to unveil its new and greatly expanded Washington bureau in the Dupont Circle area, where many major networks have their local headquarters; the three-story brick fortress that houses the Washington operations of CBS News is less than a block away.
CBN's new digs are abuzz with activity. The Republican Senator Trent Lott came by for an interview earlier in the day, as did Jim Towey, who directs the White House office of faith-based initiatives. Now Lee Webb, the CBN anchor in from Virginia, sits behind the desk in one of the studios preparing to deliver the network's first half-hour nightly newscast from this gleaming set. Behind him is a floor-to-ceiling world map illuminated in violet and indigo and a screen emblazoned with CBN's logo. At his side, just beyond the camera's view, sits a squat pedestal that holds a battered American Standard Bible. Webb lowers his head and folds his hands. "Father, we are grateful for today's program," he says. "We pray for your blessing. We ask that what we're about to do will bring honor to you." Then the cameras roll.
To many people - especially in blue-state America - God, news, and politics may seem an odd cocktail. But it's this mix that fuels much of CBN's programming.
CBN's flagship program, the 700 Club with Pat Robertson, is familiar to many Americans. But few outside the evangelical community know how large the network is - it employs more than 1,000 people and has facilities in three U.S. cities as well as Ukraine, the Philippines, India, and Israel - or how diverse its programming. And CBN, or Christian Broadcasting Network, is just one star in a vast and growing Christian media universe, which has sprung up largely under the mainstream's radar. Conservative evangelicals control at least six national television networks, each reaching tens of millions of homes, and virtually all of the nation's more than 2,000 religious radio stations. Thanks to Christian radio's rapid growth, religious stations now outnumber every other format except country music and news-talk. If they want to dwell solely in this alternative universe, believers can now choose to have only Christian programs piped into their homes. Sky Angel, one of the nation's three direct-broadcast satellite networks, carries thirty-six channels of Christian radio and television - and nothing else
genocide again, well it has never really gone away now has it.
“it would represent something to my knowledge unique in history. It is common for great powers to try to fight wars by proxy, getting smaller powers to fight for their interests. This would be the first instance I know where a great power (in fact, a superpower) would do the fighting as the proxy of a small client state.”
By Kristoffer Larsson Some weeks ago I happened to watch Oliver Stone’s great production Born the Fourth of July for the second time. In the movie, Ron Kovic (played by the handsome as always Tom Cruise) signs up for the army. He wants to go to Vietnam to fight Communism. “Better dead then red” is his motto. He leaves for Vietnam as a well-trained, young, brave American standing up for democracy fully prepared to die in order to fight the Communist threat wherever it arises. When he comes back from Vietnam, he is paralyzed from the waist and down. But he’s not meet by his fellow citizens as a hero. Instead he is met by demonstrators in his own age setting American flags on fire. He doesn’t understand why. Expressing his hatred for the demonstrators when at the Bronx Veteran Hospital, he soon comes to realize the black nurses have quite another view of the war. As a male nurse explains to him, “Vietnam is the White man’s war, the rich man’s war.” Later, as many other Americans in Vietnam, Kovic came to realize that war was not about democracy at all. Young Americans like himself were sent there to oppress a people fighting for their own freedom.
Some decades later, the world’s biggest war-machine is now under way with genocide once again, this time in Iraq. The mass slaughtering is implemented by young boys who aren’t really sure why they’re there, but it’s ordered by the White House on behalf of a ruthless, powerful elite. It was no surprise that Iraq didn’t possess any weapons of mass destruction. After all the U.S. is not stupid enough to attack a state that actually so does – it could be dangerous! But although we for sure know that this war indeed was not a “preemptive war” or about “liberating” Iraq, the “war for oil”-theory - adopted by the greater majority in the anti-war movement - loses ground by the day. One ought to at least question if oil was the main reason for going to war. Oil tastes good, but the Americans want cheap oil, not expensive. The occupation of Iraq cost the American tax payers more then 5.8 Billion dollars a month. [1] Thus, it would have been cheaper to support dictators in the region instead of overthrowing them – with the result of almost no oil at all. But this is not a White man’s war. Nor is it the oil companies’ war. No, this is a Zionist war.
