Yes indeedy, the world according to the Pathocrats has now passed over from the outright ridiculous to the definitively insane. Take for example Saturday's three suicides at Guantanamo Bay, aka Camp Subdural Haematoma. According to official reports, two men from Saudi Arabia and one from Yemen hung themselves in their cells at Guantanamo using their bed sheets as a rope and noose. Some months ago, the three had also been part of a 75-man hunger strike but had been force-fed by U.S. military personnel, a brutal act in itself, in order to end the prisoners protest.
In thinking about this event, let's for a minute imagine that we live in a sane and rational world. In such a hypothetical world, what would be the likely general consensus about the motivation for acts such as hunger strike or suicide by prisoners? Frustration? Depression? A desperate final attempt to highlight their plight against their overwhelmingly more powerful jailers?
To help us, let's look specifically at the Guantanamo Bay inmates and their circumstances. There are some 500 people incarcerated there, most of whom were plucked some four years ago from countries around the Middle East, shackled, blindfolded and transported to Cuba. We've all seen the pathetic pictures:
Once there, they were arbitrarily designated as enemy combatants and denied any rights, even the right to a trial of any kind, and have been regularly tortured under interrogation ever since. The forms of torture used included "dietary manipulation" i.e. allowing prisoners only a minimal amount of bread and water; "environmental manipulation" i.e., reducing air conditioning in summer, lowering heat in winter"; "sleep management" i.e. preventing inmates from sleeping; "isolation" for longer than 30 days; "stress positions" i.e., shackling inmates for hours or days in painful positions, and "presence of working dogs" i.e. setting large dogs on inmates, including allowing the dogs to bite them. Some alternative methods include urinating on the Koran in front of prisoners and sexually humiliating them. A constant, of course, was good old fashioned physical abuse and beatings by interrogators.
It has been alleged that such tactics are necessary due to the fact that these men are "dangerous terrorists" who want to "harm the American people". The reality however is that, if these men are guilty of a crime, why has no evidence been brought against the vast majority of them and why have they not been accused of a crime? Lawyers attempting to act on behalf of the men say that only 10 of the more than 450 inmates have been formally charged with any crime. "They also pointed to a report by New Jersey's Seton Hall University that showed, based on the military's own documents, that 55 per cent of the prisoners are not alleged to have committed any hostile acts against the US and that 40 per cent are not accused of affiliation with al-Qa'ida.
The same documents suggested only 8 per cent of prisoners are accused of fighting for a terrorist group and that 86 per cent were captured by the Northern Alliance or Pakistani authorities at a time when the US offered large bounties for suspected terrorists".
Clive Stafford Smith, a British lawyer who represents 36 of the men said:
"From what I have seen, just a little scratching of the surface proves the allegations to be false," he said. "One client of mine was alleged to be part of a British al-Qa'ida cell - at a time when he was 11 years old and living in Saudi Arabia."It would appear then that what we have in 'Gitmo' is hundreds of innocent men who, as far as they know, are facing the rest of their lives in isolation thousands of miles from their home, denied basic rights and contact with their families or a lawyer. If you found yourself in such a situation, can you imagine that you would try, in any way possible, to bring attention to your plight? If that failed, can you imagine that in the darkest moments the thought of suicide as the only chance of freedom might arise?
Certainly then, any sane, rational reasonable person will conclude that the three suicides were undoubtedly the final acts of desperate men who had been wasting away in deep despair at their unjust imprisonment and abuse by the U.S. military and government. But, as I said at the beginning of this essay, sanity is not what we are dealing with here because, according to Navy Rear-Admiral Harry Harris the Gitmo base commander, the suicides were not the act of three desperate and tortured men, but rather a cunning strategic maneuver by a ruthless enemy who is determined to harm the U.S. in any way possible, including carelessly committing suicide in order to portray the wonderful guys at Gitmo and the US government in an unwarranted negative light.
I kid you not. Harris, clearly suffering from some sort of degenerative mental disease (or simply a compulsive liar) said that two Saudis and a Yemeni were "committed" and had killed themselves in "an act of asymmetric warfare waged against us". "They are smart. They are creative, they are committed, they have no regard for life, either ours or their own." he added. Funny how the psychopath will generally accuse his victims of the crimes of which he himself is guilty. Harris' nonsense was later backed up by General John Craddock, commander of the Miami-based Southern Command who said of the dead men: "They're determined, intelligent, committed and they continue to do everything they can to become martyrs in the jihad." All three men left suicide notes, but Gen Craddock refused to detail the contents of the notes, probably because they would have exposed him for the pathological liar that he is. Take a look at this guy:
He only has one head, no sign of any fangs or sharp claws. He looks like a normal, affable human being, right? Well, as we have been learning for several years now, appearances can be very, very deceptive. This guy has as much ability to empathise with the suffering of another human being as a can of beans. He shares this trait with the vast majority of our self-styled political leaders, and from this single fact, ladies and gentlemen, springs forth most of the world's ills.
If it were just a case of these uniformed idiots and politicos simply spouting their absurdities to the wind, we might not have much cause for concern, but the frightening reality is that millions of people in America and around the world, having been reared on a diet of lies and disinformation masquerading as truth, will swallow this utter nonsense with little or no question. The important point here is that insanity is the net result of the lies that government and military officials tell, it is not the source, and it is not the officials that are rendered insane (because they lie consciously) but otherwise well-intentioned citizens who are deceived into believing these lies promoted as truth. A diet of lies taken as truth will so warp an ordinary person's perception of reality that they can be made to commit and support acts of inhumanity all the while believing they are 'doing good'. As Voltaire said: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
Is it reasonable to suggest that the contents of a person's mind, that which they believe to be true, shapes their actions in a direct way? If so, then the contents of the minds of every person on this planet, that which they understand as reality and truth, in a very direct way shapes the conditions on our planet.
For example, billions of people believe that the US government generally tells the truth and that the war on terror is a just war against real Islamic terror. This belief directly contributes to the continuance of the butchering of innocent civilians that has been the net result of the U.S. and Israeli-led war on terror. 200,000 civilians in Iraq are dead because ordinary people around the world believed a lie that was widely promoted by the American, Israeli and British governments among others.
Through their established channels (the mainstream media) governments clearly invest massive time and energy into the dissemination of information that will ensure that the public continues to hold to a certain line of belief. The only plausible reason for such effort is that, if it were not done, then government plans for our future would go seriously awry. At this point in the history of our planet, there is a shocking level of lies and disinformation presented as truth. It is all-encompassing. From politics to science to culture to religion to the food we eat, all are imbued with and often based on a lie.
If there is one saving grace it is that, having started on this course of a massive campaign of deception, and as time progresses, the lies, by necessity, must become larger and potentially more and more obvious. In the three Guantanamo suicides we have one such example, where a representative of the US government attempts to convince the world that when a tortured and despairing prisoner takes his own life, it is the U.S. government that is the victim. Truth has successfully been turned on its head, and we must wait to see if there will ever be a breaking point for the already excessively stretched boundaries of public belief.
To test the waters a little, consider the U.S. government's web page on "Identifying Misinformation", where we are told that, in rooting out lies, we must "consider the source" and that "certain websites, publications, and individuals are known for spreading false stories", with some examples included.
Juxtapose that authoritative assertion with the following article from the 29th May 2006 edition of the UK daily newspaper "The Independent" which is entitled:
Bush 'planted fake news stories on American TV'The US state department's "counter-misinformation team" then provides us with a specific example of "misinformation" from the war in Iraq. We are told that:
Federal authorities are actively investigating dozens of American television stations for broadcasting items produced by the Bush administration and major corporations, and passing them off as normal news. Some of the fake news segments talked up success in the war in Iraq, or promoted the companies' products.
Among items provided by the Bush administration to news stations was one in which an Iraqi-American in Kansas City was seen saying "Thank you Bush. Thank you USA" in response to the 2003 fall of Baghdad. The footage was actually produced by the State Department, one of 20 federal agencies that have produced and distributed such items.
In July 2005, the counter-misinformation team researched the allegation that U.S. soldiers in Iraq had killed innocent Iraqi boys playing football and then "planted" rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) next to them, to make it appear that they were insurgents.While this is not conclusive proof that the allegations that US soldiers killed and then planted weapons on unarmed Iraqi children are not true, it took much less than an hour of internet research to turn up the following account which proves that US troops have indeed planted weapons on Iraqis that they had unlawfully killed:
Using a variety of search terms in "Google," a researcher was able to find the article and photographs upon which the allegations were based. Because weapons did not appear in the initial photographs, but did appear in later photographs, some observers believed this was evidence that the weapons had been planted and that the boys who had been killed were not armed insurgents.
The researcher was also able to find weblog entries (numbered 100 and 333, on June 26 and July 15, 2005) from the commanding officer of the platoon that was involved in the incident and another member of his platoon. The weblog entries made it clear that:
* The teenaged Iraqi boys were armed insurgents;
* After the firefight between U.S. troops and the insurgents was over, the dead, wounded and captured insurgents were initially photographed separated from their weapons because the first priority was to make sure that it was impossible for any of the surviving insurgents to fire them again;
* Following medical treatment for the wounded insurgents, they were photographed with the captured weapons displayed, in line with Iraqi government requirements;
Thus, an hour or two of research on the Internet was sufficient to establish that the suspicions of the bloggers that the weapons had been planted on innocent Iraqi boys playing football were unfounded.
Marines staged Iraq killingI trust no further comment is needed, other than to say that there is a concerted, secretive campaign to fill the minds of the world's population with lies masquerading as truth. This campaign is already well developed, the infection has already spread far and wide. The only antidote is to first awaken to this fact and the fact that these lies and absurdities have been directly contributing to the atrocities being committed by the US, British and Israeli military. It is not merely that they have been committed 'in our name', but that it is our acceptance of lies as truth that have made them possible!
WASHINGTON, June 6 2006 (UPI) -- Evidence has emerged U.S. Marines deliberately killed an unarmed Iraqi civilian in April in the town of Hamdaniya, CNN reported Tuesday.
A military source with knowledge of a U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigation told the network the victim, identified by Knight Ridder as Hashim Ibrahim Awad, was dragged from his home and shot by Marines, who placed a shovel and AK-47 next to him to make it appear he was an insurgent. [...]
The source said murder charges are likely to be filed in the next few days.
The investigation is separate from two others involving an alleged massacre of 24 civilians at Haditha last November.
Reader Comments
to our Newsletter