So what would you call a large military-run prison camp area, where the Red Cross isn’t allowed in, and where the prisoners identities are kept hidden, and they also have no access to lawyers or any legal or outside help? This is the reality of the US-run Guantanamo Bay Military Base Prison.
Now, added to this frightening state of affairs, consider that executions are being planned in this prison camp – again with the prisoners allowed no outside help or legal aid.
So fifty years after the Nazi’s extermination camps – the first official US death camp is about to be created, where prisoners can be brought – with no one allowed to know their names – and, in secret, be tried, executed and buried. Read about The First US Death Camp.
Gear change: Imagine if a climber had reached the top of Mount Everest and announced they’d “done it for white people”. There’d be justifiable uproar. Instead, last week, a climber reached the top of the highest mountain on Earth, and became the first person in history to use Everest to make a racial statement.
Am I the only one who sees that there’s something sick and intrinsically wrong with this? Local media seems to have rolled over and played His Masters Voice uniformly in patronisingly allowing this rather bizarre precedent to go unchallenged – which itself seems like an indication of paternalist reverse-racism in action. (I’m sure readers will put me right if I’m wrong, but it’s something that someone needs to be pointed out, just for the sake of ethics and honesty in journalism.)
I figure having ethics requires that the same rules be applied to everyone, irrespective of attempts to use that over-whored phrase about “historical inequalities” to overlook stupid or unacceptable behaviour.
Having popped that little bubble, let’s continue in a similar vein this week. Read this interesting and creepy look at South Africa from an overseas correspondent – that conveys a glimpse of South Africa that doesn’t fit with the current flag-waving view. Read The Dangers of South Africa’s Mirage.
Another gear change – and I found an interesting quote from Mussolini that you won’t have read in your history books: “Fascism should rightly be called corporatism as it is a merger of state and corporate power.” Gee, sounds like just about every modern democracy you can think of.
In the US, a man was running a website filled with happily nasty anti-Bush pictures and thoughts. You’d assume this wasn’t illegal – but read what happened the day the SS burst into his home, without a warrant: SS Raid Website Owners Home. (Oh, the SS, by the way, stands for Secret Service.)
Next, to see what the site contained, we have to use the Google caching method which has stored the site as it was (seeing as the man has closed portions of the site) Go browse the totally tasteless (but quite legal) Google Cache of Forced Entry. And to see the site as it is now, go to: Forced Entry.
Over in Iraq, the real face of the Bush Administration is being unveiled – now that the media has mostly moved onto other things. The US have set up camps near the Baghdad Airport, where at least 3 000 Iraqis are being held without access to the Red Cross or any legal or humanitarian groups. These soldiers and civilians are being gagged, bound, hooded and beaten continually. Read about it at: Iraq Concentration Camps: Iraq Concentration Camps.
As to what is happening to the people being detained and imprisoned by the US and UK forces, read this disturbing news story about a one-hour-photolab technician who got handed a roll of film for processing, by a UK soldier, which showed Iraqi prisoners being tortured and sexually molested: Iraq Torture and Rape at PhotoLab and British Soldier’s Torture Pix.
Current stats by the way, put the civilian death toll from the Iraq invasion at between 5 000 to 10 000 dead. Consider this report which cross-references the various monitoring agencies stats: Civilian Death Toll.
For those of you lucky ones with the bandwidth, you’ll find a whole range of very interesting documentaries online to download, dealing with subjects ranging from the current banking system – through to full-length features on repression and police-state tactics. Alternative points of view are useful to absorb, so that you can make up your own mind. So if you have the bandwidth, grab as many of these goodies as possible and spread them around – seeing as they’re not the sort of thing you’ll ever find in local shops: Online Assorted Documentaries.
And staying with the downloadable goodies – National Public Radio (NPR) has a range of very interesting shows, which kick the pants off anything local. Take a look at the shows on offer at All Things Considered. And for all you Buffy fans out there, did you know that there are academic courses you can take dealing with aspects of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer TV show? Listen to this great NPR show dealing with Media Studies on Buffy. As always, it’s worth doing a pause at one of the nodes for TV production which doesn’t go through the official filters, and if local universities media departments or production houses got out of their ruts, we could have a local equivalent of Freespeech TV.
The US is moving closer towards electronic voting, which smells like the worst kind of story about a never-able-to-be-voted-out-regime. For an overview to bring you up to speed, start off at the Salon article Hacking Democracy. Then having got the basics, now try If You Want To Win An Election, Just Control The Voting Machines.
and Votescam in the Electronic Age.
It’s not all bad news though, there’s a growing list of US cities who have adopted resolutions condemning and/or refusing to institute the Patriot Act, realising that it’s wildly anti-democratic: List of US Cities.
You’ve seen the tacky ads on TV for non-stick cookware – how much cooking would you do if you knew that some of these non-stick products have been shown in testing, to produce a chemical analogue of nerve gas? Consider the information at this next site and perhaps find alternative utensils for cooking, after reading Teflon Non-Stick Nerve Gas.
More bubble-popping, and this time its the turn of The Beatles to receive the rewriting and airbrushing of history. Recall the cover of The Beatles’ Abbey Road record? Well, it’s been made into a poster for the US market – however that cigarette in Paul McCartney’s hand just wouldn’t be acceptable in this modern age of no-smoking. So the cigarette has been quietly removed, so as not to offend the exhaust-fume-breathing self-deluding non-smokers. Take a look at BBC Report on Beatles Cigarette Air-Brushing. Then see the before-and-after posters:.
A New York Times writer got fired recently, for having farmed out writing jobs to others who effectively wrote the stories, and then the stories would be published under his name. Given that he specialised in writing good ole homespun slice-of-American-life type of articles, and that he’d previously won a Pulitzer Prize for his writing – its a good example of ‘how are the mighty fallen’ in action. Read the initial article NY Writer Gets Fired . And for a taste of, presumably his own writing – which got him the Pulitzer Prize, browse through Pulitzer prize-Winning Articles.
Until the next time, if someone doesnt pop my bubbles.
Ian Fraser is a playwright, author, comedian, conspiracy nut, old-time radio collector and self-confessed data-junkie. Winner of numerous Vita and Amstel Awards, he’s been an Internet addict and games-fanatic since around 1995, when the Internet began to make much more sense than theatre.