Aby The Liberal

Dmitri June 20th, 2007

After the dissolution of Soviet Union, the Eastern Europeans were ‘freed’ from socialism and probably never dreaming that America, with all its liberty and justice would use their lands as torture camps for foreigners. It all started when the US President Bush signed a secret executive order authorizing the CIA to kill, capture or detain suspected terrorist operatives. The secret executive was followed by US forces and CIA leading the pack of oppressive third world nations in the use of medieval torture methods like feigned drowning, feigned suffocation and other inhuman methods of torture which would shock and disgust any sane human being. The playgrounds for these activities were secret camps in Poland, Romania and other East European nations along with Iraq and Afghanistan.

The story doesn’t end here. The incidents of torture gained prominence after the 2004 abduction and torture of Osama Nasr Mostafa Hassan from Italy. It came a long way since Americans showed their real face in the world after their proclaimed victory in World War 2 - with their activities in Vietnam, Korea and Panama. Torture has been used by the American forces in Iraq and their operatives in other countries way before Mr. Hassan’s abduction case in Italy leaked the fiasco. It was also common for Israelis to use brutal torture methods on their Arab citizens and Palestinians with approval of the US. After the Medieval Ages it seems the US and its allies have patented torture in the First World and outsourced their ‘torture arts’ in the third world countries along with customer support. The horror of it all is that the US administration and a lot of Americans not only acknowledge it but gloat over it and use short sighted justifications of such inhuman acts.

The wife and son of Al Jamadi hold up a photo of his dead body with a smiling Sabrina

Manadel al-Jamadi, an Iraqi bombing suspect in detention died after a fruitless half-hour interrogation by US forces in November 2003. He was tortured to death by being suspended from a barred window by his wrists, which were bound behind his back and then beaten till he bled from his mouth and nose. The method of torture, nicknamed as Palestinian Hanging came into light after the uncovering of the Abu Gharib scandal in February 2005 with pictures of smiling US Army specialists Sabrina Harman and Charles Graner offering thumbs up. Of course the channel Al Jazeera had to pay for this revelation by having its offices bombed and journalists detained in Guantanamo Bay without a trial. The worse of all this is that the perpetrators of this inhuman act of murder were acquitted with only Harman facing prosecution of a mere sentence of six months - about the same that a common burglar gets. So much for the justice and freedom of press…

Americans often justify the torture of foreign prisoners as deserving of terrorists and rebels. But we know that in a real political world, ‘terrorism’ is a relative term. The Jews who fought back against Nazis and killed themselves to prevent capture by the Gestapo were branded as terrorists by the National Socialist Germans. Much like the Palestine of today where Israeli aggressors and occupiers brand Palestinians as terrorists by putting them in the same ranks as mercenaries like Al Qaeda. A suspect in detention or a person fighting for his/her rights is not a terrorist but a suspect or a victim respectively. Terrorism as defined in dictionaries is violence or threat of violence for an ideological or political goal. By this definition, we have the largest terrorist state in the world - USA which paves the way for the terrorists in the rest of the world to follow, in a shroud of double standards and hypocrisy.

Destabilising governments, gang rapes of ethnics, torture, mass genocide - name any human rights crime and the United States wins the first prize. And now we have the Americans proud of their nation’s capability to capture and break weak nations by military force; torture their citizens; bomb mothers, fathers, sons and daughters and then show their power by gang raping 14 year old girls before dousing them in flames. Sometimes we are left gaping in wonder, which is worse - the erstwhile Nazis or the present Americans. Somewhere under the earth, Adolf Hitler is laughing from his grave - proud that Americans have picked up where he left and carried his legacy forward…

• Media Control , Crimes , America , Humanity , Military
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Aby April 24th, 2007

I discussed a few days back about how corporates influence a lot of what is fed to the public using the powerful psychological tool called media. A similar method of control and influence of news is used by governments in some countries. To remove public doubts about the news given to them, the catchphrase ‘Freedom of Press” is used. If you have read the clauses of Freedom of Press laws in USA or Australia and compared them to that of Belgium, France or Sweden you would realise that the “Freedom of Press” laws in US or Australia is mere eyewash aimed at the gullible. China’s CPC government openly restricts press citing national interests and the public are aware of it which makes them search for alternative sources when the official sources are not so easy to digest. In US or Australia there isn’t much initiative by the people to search for facts and truth which makes them easy target for biased reporting. As long as things are in their comfort zone they do not care about how many people die around the world due to wars and conflicts created by a few despot countries.

A US Military press release in Pentagon during the 2003 Gulf War

The methods mentioned below are a few of the ones used to influence and control flow of information and news by the military

• In a war situation by US on enemy countries a process called pooling is used to control the flow of what is given out to public. In this process, a small number of journalists are given military press releases and their version of events with edited tapes which are then reported as ‘exclusive reports’. This method was extensively used in Korean and Vietnam conflicts.




• During the invasion if Iraq in 2003, reporters of US and UK were embedded. This meant they were fed, housed and transported with the coalition forces often preventing them from reporting the other side of the conflict.




• A lot of propaganda photo shoots were generated by distributing relief to a small number of peasants and children for Public Relations image building. This helped keep the public outrage low a la the style of Joseph Stalin of ex-USSR




• Apart from the strife torn West Asia, countries elsewhere in the world which try to be economically self sufficient (viz. Nicaragua or Venezuela) are given a negative light by the media




• The achievemens of the government of Cuba in health service and public support of Fidel Castro are completely ignored and Cuba is shown as an evil communist state because it decided to be self sufficient




• Independent Arabic television stations like Al Jazeera which exposed the Haditha, Abu Gharib and a few other war crimes in Iraq had their offices bombed and reporters sent to torture camps by the CIA

If you wish not to be clouded by such biased and managed media reporting and want be a true global citizen with an open mind and outlook, try to get news from alternative sources like internet, foreign channels, etc. If you live in Arab countries where media access is highly controlled and regulated, you can use proxy services. I will make a post about how to evade governmental internet filters in the near future.

• Internationalism , Media Control , America
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