The recent public display of photographs depicting the abuse and torture of Iraq prisoners by US and British forces are indeed horrific. These kinds of abuses bring shame on any nation that permits them. However, the pretentious displays of disgust by the politicians of both these nations do not project the whole truth, nor does their perceived democratic rhetoric ensure that true human rights will prevail either in their own countries or within the sinister forces that act on their behalf abroad.
Under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948, and since signed by many countries, abuse of prisoners or citizens - whether at war or not, has been deemed a crime against humanity. That interdiction has, however, not prevented the torture and abuse of many other thousands of prisoners and dissenters, nor has it allowed most of them any form of recompense for their sufferings. Legislation has instead simply led security forces into adopting more insidious methods of torture and repression. Indeed, the United States and Britain both have a very long history of covert repression upon which they can draw from. The present abuses are at the end of a very long trail that stretches back to 1850 when in Port Arthur, Australia, Britain drove over 100 prisoners insane through the use of psychological torture methods. Indeed, Britain, France and the United States have all carried out torture during their colonial wars around the world and, in one form or another, that torture and abuse has continued unabated until the present day.
The late British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, proposed a new law that will make any form of political dissent in Britain a criminal offense (5). David Blunkett, the British Home Secretary, (now resigned) is also adding another 1.000 Special Branch agents (Secret Police) to make sure that repressive law is adhered to. Whatever, political repression within Britain is hardly new. Psychological control in British prisons has been a fact of life for many years. Political dissenters inside prison have been persecuted, tortured and otherwise ‘neutralized’ for well over a hundred years. Indeed, little or nothing in the way of political freedom has changed at all. What has changed are the methods used to cover-up repression and torture. A recent Human Rights Watch report also highlighted much abuse by guards in inside American prisons. It stated: “In recent years, U.S. prison inmates have been beaten with fists and batons, stomped on, kicked, shot, stunned with electronic devices, doused with chemical sprays, choked, and slammed face first onto concrete floors by the officers whose job it is to guard them. Inmates have ended up with broken jaws, smashed ribs, perforated eardrums, missing teeth, burn scars—not to mention psychological scars and emotional pain. Some have died.” It then continued, “Both men and women prisoners—but especially women—face staff rape and sexual abuse. Correctional officers will bribe, coerce, or violently force inmates into granting sexual favors, including oral sex or intercourse. Prison staff have laughed at and ignored the pleas of male prisoners seeking protection from rape by other inmates. (6)”
That the United Kingdom signed the Geneva Convention has in no way prevented it from degenerating into a police state, nor has it prevented anyone who dares to challenge the status que from being persecuted, tortured or even murdered by Special Branch (Britain’s Secret Police) or MI-5 agents. Having rules and regulations against this kind of abuse is one thing, being able to use them to good effect is quite another.
“By 1976 the British Ministry of Defense confirmed that 1.858 army officers and 262 senior civil servants had been trained to use psychological torture techniques for internal security purposes. And furthermore that ‘psyops’ have acquired the ability to launch political campaigns in pursuit of military objectives without reference to the political regime (1).” In an interview with The Irish Times it was stated that: “High officials in Intelligence, MI5 and MI6, consider their organizations to be above the law. (2)”
In other words the above organizations – and their agents, are answerable to nobody but the Queen of England, to whom they are sworn to serve. Indeed, as is every politician within Britain. The Queen alone has the absolute power of veto over all parliamentary decisions which undoutably makes Tony Blair’s frequent rhetoric about freedom and democracy something of a cruel charade, to say the very least. So much for free speech and accountability through the so-called elected representatives of the British people. Who, if they really desire freedom and democracy, have no other option but to become political dissidents?
Human Rights organizations within Britain have also fallen far short of what was expected of them by dissidents. Indeed, Amnesty International, Liberty and Redress do nothing whatsoever to address the widespread repression by MI-5 and the police Special Branch within Britain. These so-called human rights groups are now considered to be no more than ‘front organizations’ by serious human rights researchers most of whom steer well clear of them for obvious reasons. The media in Britain has also degenerated into being little more than a mouthpiece for their masters. None of the national newspapers reflect the true state of what is really happening in the country and censorship of all kinds is widespread. Indeed, were it not for the Internet, the real Britain would be all but unknown and the plight of the tortured and repressed would have continued to be hidden as it has been for so many years in the past.
Many Americans have for a long time wondered why so many peoples around the world hate them. The answer to that question is more than obvious to anyone who has studied human rights in depth. For, like Britain, America also has security services that have long considered them selves to be above the law, even though in the United States, unlike Britain, they are to some small extent answerable to the law.
Whatever, the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been involved with death squads and tortures almost from the day it was conceived. The overthrow of the legitimate governments of Guatemala, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Iran, Greece, Laos, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Haiti, Brazil, Cambodia, Bolivia, Angola, Uruguay, Indonesia, plus many other legitimate governments was organized by the CIA (4). All these governments were then replaced by dictators, often financed and maintained by the CIA, who began a reign of torture and terror that resulted in the deaths of millions of men, women and children.
Indeed, death squads, torture, disappearances and dreadful mutilations became the hallmark of the CIA throughout many countries all over the world. According to the writer Keith Parkins, “The USA, using the CIA as it’s lead agency, is widely acknowledged as the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. During the Reagan years alone, the CIA proxy army the Contras killed 8.000 Nicaraguan civilians. In Chile the bloody overthrow of the Allende regime saw 130.000 Chileans murdered, tortured and disappeared. The CIA intervention in Central America is one long litany of unspeakable bloody tragedy. (3)”
(Since I wrote this over one million people have been killed in Iraq.)
Ralph McGehee, a CIA agent for 25 years, stated:
“The CIA is not now nor has it ever been a central intelligence agency. It is the covert action arm of the President's foreign policy advisers. In that capacity it overthrows or supports foreign governments while reporting "intelligence" justifying those activities. It shapes its intelligence, even in such critical areas as Soviet nuclear weapons capability, to support presidential policy. Disinformation is a large part of its covert action responsibility, and the American people are the primary target of its lies (9).”
Indeed, The Association for Responsible Dissent estimates that by 1987, over six million people had died as a result of CIA covert operations. Few of which the American people had ever heard about. Yet torture methods and the tactics of terror are taught right here in the USA at the ‘School of the Americas’ in Fort Benning, Georgia. Truthful reporting of these terrible events was largely ignored by the mainstream American media. As a result most Americans were, and still are, totally ignorant of them. These atrocities were, however, carried out in the name of all Americans. Whether by their own bloody hands or the hands of their paid free-lancers the CIA has done more to damage the good image of America than any other security service. Surely the American people are entitled to have security services that act in the best interests of all Americans rather than the elite few who head huge multinational companies.
Had the American public been truly informed as to what their various governments had been doing over the years much repression and horror throughout the world may have been avoided? But as John Swinton, the former Chief of Staff of the New York Times, stated:
"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dare to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes. (8)"
Since his retirement Walter Cronkite, the famous TV newscaster and journalist, has also voiced similar criticism of the American Media. He has been quoted as saying: "My lips have been kind of buttoned for almost twenty years."
Another comment reads:
"Media criticism does exist in America. But by and large, it is not citizen-based criticism designed to make media a better source of information in a democracy. Instead, it is a cynical manipulation of the discourse designed to silence even the mildest dissent from the conservative, militantly pro-corporate dogma that has come to pass for news in an era when "reporters" brag about the size of their American-flag lapel pins."
Robert McChesney and John Nichols
The CIA, against American and international law, is also thought to be directly responsible for the repression and torture of American citizens inside the USA today. Indeed, many American dissenters are now being targeted simply for refusing to believe the garbage much of the US media passes off as news. Using stooges and free-lancers the CIA has –like MI-5 in the UK, is using the military microwave machine to ‘neutralize’ its targets. The CIA then uses that old standby ‘plausible deniability’ to shrug off torture allegations made against it. Yet on one Internet site alone there are hundreds of victims whose allegations of repression and torture are backed up by many doctors and other professionals who have no doubt whatsoever who is behind these present day atrocities. Indeed, some former members of the American intelligence community have confirmed our darkest fears.
The prime reason for George Bush’s utter refusal to become a member of the International Criminal Court is easy to understand. Should America become a member he knows full well that at some future date many present and past members of the CIA, not to mention the National Security Agency, would be held fully accountable for the horrors they have perpetrated throughout the world. And that is something only a very honest President would permit. To do so would expose to the entire world the true nature of American foreign policy during the last fifty years or so at the very least, and underscore the involvement of the American Presidents who permitted it. It would also expose the manipulation of public opinion by the American media and the gullibility of Americans for so readily believing the many lies and distortions told to them by Congress and their so-called free press. What governments say they are doing – and what they really are doing, are quite often two very different things.
Now seems a good time to look back on a speech given many years ago by a true American patriot.
The following is an excerpt of a speech, delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, former Commandant of the United States Marine Corps:
“War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.
I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and in nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns six percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.
I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to defend some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things that we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss"—Super nationalistic Capitalism.
It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of our country's most agile military force—the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from a Second Lieutenant to Major General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high-class muscleman for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I suspected I was just a part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all members of the military profession, I never had an original thought until I left the service. My mental facilities remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service,
I helped make Mexico—especially Tampico—safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, and promotions. Looking back on it, I feel that I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents. (7)”
Things haven’t changed so much as we might have expected since then, have they? However, as Harry C Bauer said, “What is right with America is a willingness to discuss what’s wrong with America.”
The American media has finally shown courage in widely exposing the CIA horrors in Iraq. That truth has been much appreciated by good Americans everywhere. Let the media now be more courageous still and start to expose what is happening right here inside America today, and Britain. America may then become a country the entire world can look up to, and respect.
By Dr Les Dove
"The technique of infamy is to invent two lies and to get people arguing heatedly over which one of them is true."
Ezra Pound.
"Liberty is lost to most men when the cost of resistance to tyranny is deemed higher than the cost of submission"
Stuart Crane
Internet: http://drlesdove.vox.com
http://www.lesdove.blogspot.com
E-Mail: lesdove@inbox.com
REFERENCES:
(1) Bloch. J. Fitzgerald. P. British Intelligence and Covert Action.” Junction Books. London. UK 1983. P.29
(2) Bloch. J. Fitzgerald. P. ‘British Intelligence and Covert Action.’ Junction Books. London. 1983. UK. P.54
(3) Parkins. K. ‘Intelligence Services Unaccountable and Out of Control.’ Internet source.
(4) Killing Hope: ‘U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II.’ Monroe, Maine. Common Courage Press, 1995. USA. The Sunday Herald. UK.
(5) Human Rights Watch. Prisoner Abuse: How Different are U.S. Prisons? By Jamie Fellner, Esq
(6) From GIDRA, a California Asian paper. 4221 Germantown Avenue/Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
(7) Swinton. J. 1953. In a toast before the New York Press Club.
(8) McGehee. R. Deadly Deceits. Book, published in 1983. McGehee account of the CIA in his book Deadly Deceits
See Also: http://www.bilderberg-mirror.org.uk
EXPLANATION OF TARGETING INDIVIDUALS FOR “PSYCH-TORTURE” (Video)
http://www.fdrs.org/psychological_warfare_videos.html
'The War on Democracy' (Video)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18236.htm
THE GREAT DECEPTION
http://www.fdrs.org/psychological_warfare_videos.html
THE TROJAN HORSE
http://www.fdrs.org/psychological_warfare_videos.html
MI6 Are The Lords Of The Global Drug Trade
http://rinf.com/alt-news/breaking-news/mi6-are-the-lords-of-the-global-drug-trade
Greeks name MI6 chief over 'torture of terror suspects'
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article782697.ece
http://www.serendipity.li/cia/death_squads.htm
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn05082004.html
Huge 9/11 cover-up. Should George W. Bush be tried for treason?
http://www.patriotsquestion911.com
How Britain created Ulster's murder gangs
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=4615
Was 9/11 an inside job?
http://www.rense.com/Datapages/ess911.htm
Mind the Gap
http://www.officialconfusion.com/77/mindthegap/Google/mindthegap.html
Mind-Control Torture in the UK
http://www.five.org.uk/evidence/mc/mc.htm
British Royal Fascists
http://rain.prohosting.com/imoffi/hermajesty.htm
Mind Control By The British
http://educate-yourself.org/mc/mcmwmindcontrolbybritish10jul01.shtml
An Inside Look at How U.S. Interrogators Destroyed the Mind of Jose Padilla (These torture methods are also used in the United Kingdom)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18200.htm
Total Population Control
http://educate-yourself.org/mc/mctotalcontrol12jul02.shtml
MICROWAVE MIND CONTROL
http://www.ivanfraser.com/articles/conspiracies/mw_mindcontrol.html
40 Bush lies!
http://www.citypages.com/databank/24/1182/article11417.asp
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/index.html
Did Tony Blair order the London bombings?
http://www.rense.com/Datapages/londonbmb.htm
Police State III: Total Enslavement
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-448659287463550973&q=label%3A%22behold+a+pale+horse%22
America’s Tomorrow
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11403.htm
When Will Americans Have Had Enough
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P682rGIhZwI&mode=related&search
The Home Page of Wade Frazier (Good Info – Read it all)
http://www.ahealedplanet.net/home.htm
Unconstitutional - The War on Our Civil Liberties
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3105519703637733227
FEMA Camp Footage (Concentrations Camps in USA)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P-hvPJPTi4&mode=related&search
America Plays Into The 'Two Party' Sham Yet Again.
http://www.rense.com/general74/aam.htm
http://www.mindjustice.org
Human Rights Violations (Video)
http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2006/12/30/human_rights_violations_what.htm
The six million people the CIA has helped to kill are people of the Mitumba Mountains of the Congo, the jungles of Southeast Asia, and the hills of northern Nicaragua. They are people without ICBMs or armies or navies, incapable of doing physical damage to the United States the 22,000 killed in Nicaragua, for example, are not Russians; they are not Cuban soldiers or advisors; they are not even mostly Sandinistas. A majority are rag-poor peasants, including large numbers of women and children.
John Stockwell, former CIA official and author
"The crimes of the U.S. throughout the world have been systematic, constant, clinical, remorseless, and fully documented but nobody talks about them. "
Harold Pinter
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen, but by him who resists it."
John Hay, 1872.
"A society whose citizens refuse to see and investigate the facts, who refuse to believe that their government and their media will routinely lie to them and fabricate a reality contrary to verifiable facts, is a society that chooses and deserves the Police State Dictatorship it's going to get."
Ian Williams Goddard
“Today real news is hidden from view, fake news is given prominence, truth is suppressed and fiction is promoted. Government and those in power are protected while those deemed enemy of the state are smeared. Myths and fables are granted attention while truths and realities are made to disappear, forever sent to the locked vaults of hidden fact where they will never see the light of day. The role of the fascist media is to protect the fascists, to smear those exposing truths, to ignore movements seeking truth to criminality, to enable the activities of the Bush cabal and to grant life to the manipulative mechanisms of the state. Its role is to keep the masses obedient, ignorant and subservient to the state, made unaware that every day their rights and freedoms evaporate, that every day they resemble the servants of the past and the serfs of the future.”
Manuel Valenzuela
“Certainly the security services and MI5 and so on have this superfluous building on Vauxhall Bridge costing millions of pounds and nowhere to go - so what do they do? They concentrate on animal rights, and they have a special unit (Special Branch) handing over information, which is supposed to be collected for specific purposes, mainly for the purposes of ensuring that there aren't any criminal offences being perpetrated. And what this case has demonstrated has been the criticism that has been made over the last 25 years by politicians and others working in the field of civil liberties, that at the end of the day it isn't about subverting the state, it isn't about criminal offences, it's all about keeping dossiers on everybody and ensuring that those who are seen to be intellectual and political threats are silenced.”
Mike Mansfield, during an interview. He is a UK leading defense barrister.
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