[R-G] Holocaust and Insanity - And - Camp X-Ray - 'You have no rights here'

[Nick Morcinek]

I was thinking of the horror of the Spanish subway bombings today. The
suffering of children and other innocents defies any means of rational
description. 

I heard "President" Bush offer his "condolences" and "sympathy" for the
families of the dead and injured, as did his sycophant Tony Blair. How
disgusting.

What is wrong with these people...

Isn't the suffering of Arab children, and the purgatory undergone by all
victims of American, British and other Imperial aggression just as horrible
and unspeakable? Isn't the suffering and pain of the tens of millions of
brutal victims of capitalism, and its slow destruction of the Earth through
greed, exploitation and toxic poisons, just as vile? The hundreds of
millions of inevitable, preventable, agonizingly slow deaths through cancer
and lung disease?

Aren't the more than one billion souls condemned to a slow torturous death,
through starvation and treatable disease, and the unfair distribution of the
Earth's resources, equally victims of a knowing holocaust?

How can the world's ruling elites be anything but ashamed and disgusted with
themselves, knowingly perpetuating this carnage?  How can they choose to
express sympathy and empathic understanding with the consequences of one
brutality, yet condone and actively promote the equally violent and
callously brutal actions of their own?

Words fail me in my attempts to express my outrage at all of this. None of
these people seems to genuinely give a damn about the suffering of others,
or the legacy and example they will leave to their own children and
grandchildren.

Without a doubt we live in a time of madness and insanity. And, like any
other sane human being, I can only look forward, and work actively towards,
its end.

Nicholas


DAILY MIRROR, UK

- Jamal al-Harith, 37, who arrived home three days ago after two years of
confinement, is the first detainee to lift the lid on the US regime in
Cuba's Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta. The father-of-three, from Manchester, told
how he was assaulted with fists, feet and batons after refusing a mystery
injection.

He said detainees were shackled for up to 15 hours at a time in hand and leg
cuffs with metal links which cut into the skin. Their "cells" were wire
cages with concrete floors and open to the elements - giving no privacy or
protection from the rats, snakes and scorpions loose around the American
base.

He claims punishment beatings were handed out by guards known as the Extreme
Reaction Force. They waded into inmates in full riot-gear, raining blows on
them. Prisoners faced psychological torture and mind-games in attempts to
make them confess to acts they had never committed. Even petty breaches of
rules brought severe punishment.

Medical treatment was sparse and brutal and amputations of limbs were more
drastic than required, claimed Jamal. A diet of foul water and food up to 10
years out-of-date left inmates malnourished.
But Jamal's most shocking disclosure centered on the use of vice girls to
torment the most religiously devout detainees. Prisoners who had never seen
an "unveiled" woman before would be forced to watch as the hookers touched
their own naked bodies. The men would return distraught. One said an
American girl had smeared menstrual blood across his face in an act of
humiliation.

Jamal added: "The whole point of Guantanamo was to get to you
psychologically. The beatings were not as nearly as bad as the psychological
torture - bruises heal after a week - but the other stuff stays with you."

~~ Now Jamal bears the scars of Guantanamo. He stoops into a hunch as he
walks because the shackles that bound him were too short. As a punishment,
inmates would be confined so tightly they would be forced to lie in a ball
for hours. During lengthy interrogation, they would be tethered to a metal
ring on the floor.

~~ Jamal said victims of the Extreme Reaction Force were paraded in front of
cells. "It was a horrible sight and it was a frequent sight."

~~ Rice and beans was the usual diet and the water was "filthy". Jamal
added: "In Camp X-Ray it was yellow and in Delta it was black - the colour
of Coca-Cola. "We had it piped through with a tap in each 'cage' but they
would often turn the water off as punishment. "They would shut off the water
before prayers so we couldn't wash ourselves according to our religion.

~~ "They would play tricks on people by denying them things - you might be
the only person on your block who didn't get any bread. I prided myself on
never asking them for anything. I would not beg." Jamal said they were told
they had no rights. "They actually said that - 'You have no rights here'.
After a while, we stopped asking for human rights - we wanted animal rights.
In Camp X-Ray my cage was right next to a kennel housing an Alsatian dog.
"He had a wooden house with air conditioning and green grass to exercise on.
I said to the guards, 'I want his rights' and they replied, 'That dog is
member of the US army'.