MNN Taxi to the Dark Side
The following is NOT for the faint at heart!Michelle
" If you have a chance to make life better for others and fail to do so, you are wasting your time on Earth. No matter what our station in life, we are here to serve, even if that sometimes means making the greatest sacrifice of all.A warrior is challanged to assume responsibility, practice humility, and display the power of giving, and then center his or her life around a core of spirituality. I challenge todays youth to live like a warrior."
Billy Mills
TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE
- THE AXIS OF AMERICAN EVIL
MNN. Mar. 25, 2008. Was the Mohawk-Oka Crisis of 1990 a dry run for overseas terror? On July 11, 1990, the Quebec Police paramilitary forces opened fire on a group of peaceful demonstrators in the early hours of the morning. We were resisting the nearby town of Oka from illegally building a golf course on top of our burial and ceremonial site. The attack on us escalated after Prime Minister Brian Mulroney met with President George Bush. 4000 heavily armed soldiers surrounded three of our communities, Kanehsatake, Kahnawake and Akwesasne. They wanted us to fire a shot so they would have an excuse to kill us. We were on to them.
Col. Musgrave of the British Secret Service was brought over by a Canadian think tank to put a plan in motion to break us down. He was going to use tactics the Brits used against the Irish. He vowed to accomplish this in three weeks.
The corporate press stepped up its habitual demonization of us. The soldiers shouted and threatened us. The media “spinners” portrayed our men, women and children as the nasty enemy and we were less than human. This created the conditions required to get the public to accept mistreatment and violations of our rights. We were subjected to sleep deprivation by flying choppers over us all night long. Even jets were flown close over our heads. Bright lights were shone on us and into our windows. Food was cut off or left to rot or spat upon and peed into by the soldiers before it was turned over to us. Water and hydro were turned off and on. Incendiary devices were blown up around us. Snipers were everywhere.
When we finally walked out September 26th 1990, the soldiers and cops attacked, beat and threw us into buses and took us to prisons at Farnham army base. We were left on the tarmac all night long. They would not let us go to the bathroom or get medical attention for our injured. The soldiers beat their guns on the sides of the bus to stop us from sleeping, swore and shouted racial slurs at us and took out their penises and urinated at us.
This was not the aberrant behavior of a few bad apples. They tried to take our children from us to use as hostages to control us. Luckily we got them out. We were herded into barracks and forbidden to sleep or eat. Anyone who dozed off was awakened with rifle butts banged on the floor next to our heads. After two sleepless nights we were taken for interrogation. In the room were two men who shouted racial and degrading slurs and threats at us. The Quebec Police and their army trainers told us that we would spend the rest of our lives in jail.
Our men were subjected to cruelty that violated the Geneva Conventions – One of our young men was handcuffed, blind folded, told to kneel down and face a wall. A gun was put to his head and cocked repeatedly. He was told that he was alone and that no one was going to rescue him. One of our men, Ronald Cross, was beaten over and over again. He eventually died of his injuries. In the end the courts found that none of us were guilty of anything. We remain defiant against injustice and genocide.
In the film “Taxi to the Dark Side” [ Seville Pictures] Dilawar was a young Afghani, a young father in his early twenties, who came from a peanut farming community. In December 2002, while driving his new taxi, he and his three passengers fell into the hands of the U.S. forces. Five days later he was dead. He was grabbed, hooded and taken to Bagram Prison. U.S. soldiers worked at maiming him to, as they said, “Get him to talk”.
Dilawar, called a PUC, “person under control” #421, was systematically tortured until he died. One was surprised “it took so long for him to die”. The soldiers said they were told over and over again that the Afghanis were very evil people and had nothing but violent intentions.
Wiliam Assera, a lawyer, said when the prisoners were brought in they were immediately assaulted by the soldiers and dogs. They were spat at, cameras flashed at their faces, their culture was attacked and ridiculed. They were kept in isolation, deprived of sleep and always handcuffed. They were kept in the “air locks”, subjected to cavity searches and constantly screamed at and questioned. This is called the “shock of the capture”.
The “air lock” is a room surrounded by razor wire. Arms are suspended in the air in hand cuffs locked onto the ceiling grate. Soldiers beat a prisoner “that was difficult”. A knee was kicked into a pressure point on the side of the leg. Dilawar’s body showed that his legs were “pulpafide”. His body became limp. Four soldiers went into the air lock, kicked him again and jumped on his back while he was shackled. One soldier struck Dilawar’s leg so many times that he hurt himself and to switch legs. Torture became amusement just to hear him scream “Allah”. The blood clots traveled to his lungs. The death certificate stated he died by of “homicide” by “blunt force”. If he had lived, his legs would have had to be amputated. Murder is the ultimate torture.
Ken Davis said that the prisoners were roughed up by vicious dogs. He would not say where the orders came from. Was it Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense in 2004?
Cap. Carolyn Wood ran Bagram Prison. She felt pressure to produce intelligence. She later graduated to Abu Graib in Iraq and got a medal for her work. “There’s just a few bad apples”, was declared over and over again. Eric Lanmer brushed it off as people being in “crazy situations and doing crazy things.”
It is ominous that Wood was trying to be more butch than the boys. Lindy England, the young girl that posed smiling with the naked humiliated degraded prisoners, some on dog leashes, was one of the most vulnerable in this male dominated field. Other smiling young men and women posed with dead bodies.
The U.S. soldiers were in Afghanistan and Iraq illegally. Colin Powell, Chief of Staff, needed legal arguments. They decided the President could do what he wants in the name of security.
John Yoo of the Justice Department developed assault protocols. It was a war on Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, supported by the Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, and Vice President Dick Cheney. John Yoo said these extreme tortures could include death. The U.S. wanted to discard the constitution but could not. So they put a different interpretation on it. President Bush was able to pardon himself but not the soldiers.
Vice President Dick Cheney encouraged the soldier to be more aggressive in dealing with interrogation because “these people are mean, nasty, dirty people”. [Was he describing himself?]
In Guantanamo Bay Prison in Cuba, one of the reason the U.S. holds onto this site is that they think that Cuban and U.S. laws don’t apply because it’s offshore. John Yoo said that the military has ultimate say over prisoners there. President Bush reminded the public that, “These terrorists are learning the meaning of American “justice”.
December 2001 Al Katami, supposedly the 20th plane hijacker, was taken to Guantanamo Bay. Gonzales and Yoo visited Cuba to figure out why he kept resisting their torture no matter how severe. Nothing worked. Sleep and sensory deprivation, severe isolation, attack dogs, invasions by females, forced to wear women’s underwear, strip searches, enemas, forced to wear U.S. flag hat, restrained from going to the bathroom. Dark, light, cold, heat! All his sensory receptors were attacked. His heart slowed down and he had to be hospitalized. Hypnosis, shock and LSD were not used. This was the entire arsenal that the CIA developed over the past 50 years in conjunction with researchers in Montreal.
Guantanamo Bay was turned into a torture research center. They pretended to be investigating Arab male sexual humiliation techniques and phobias. Torture was called “degradation”. Shackled for long periods of time every which way! Standing on a box, hooded and with [simulated] electrodes attached to the body! Forced to stand covered in shit with arms up and straight out as if hanging on a cross.
Brilliant top scientists were hired such as Donald O. Hebb of McGill University. He bragged he could reduce people to a pulp in 48 hours through isolation, goggles, earmuffs and so on. The U.S. got very excited about this. Hebb told them the price was destroying their sanity.
The soldiers said they need written instructions and training on how to beat, assault and potentially kill prisoners so they can break human rights and Geneva Conventions regulations and not be held responsible.
Professor Doug Cassel even described such threats as crushing the testicles of the prisoner’s infant son.
This story is about how the greed of a few can break people and pull down a whole society. These tactics are the remnants of colonialism that trashes people. The Americans have abandoned social wisdom. Old colonial and imperial paradigms are breaking down, though being pushed hard as a last ditch stand, especially using violence to enforce their ways.
One tactic is to declare a state of emergency to get around abiding by international law. They then give themselves the right to interpret the Geneva conventions as they see fit, calling it a legal interpretation.
It is well known that the information gotten through torture is not reliable. When the generals took over Greece, they learned that nine out of 10 soldiers would rather die than torture their people. The generals used the ones that enjoyed torturing to destroy a democratic government. Is the U.S. looking for a class of people that is willing to torture their own people?
The U.S. had set up a system in Afghanistan and Iraq where the war lords recruited subjects for thousands of dollars a piece. 83,000 were detained without a single hearing, violating the rule of law. Habeas corpus goes back to Roman law.
Less than 5% of those picked up by the U.S. had any information. The other 95% were innocent by-standers picked up by soldiers to serve as practice specimens for the American military’s cruel and macabre experimentation on torture methods. Senior officers observed those who were adept and could be used when martial law was imposed.
“Curve Ball” was tortured and eventually said there was a connection between Sadaam Hussein and Al Qaeda, which turned out to untrue.
Water boarding is called “extraordinary rendition”. The victims will tell the interrogators whatever they want to hear. The Vice President defended water boarding, “We don’t do torture. Not as we define it”.
The FBI distanced themselves from the Secretary of Defense. They said the best way to get information is by breaking down barriers. Experience, talent and patience are needed to get worthwhile information. “You are finished. Is there something I can do for your kids?”
They attacked human dignity and the sanctity of the individual. Cruelty is the official policy, “We have to get tough”, they tell us. If we are going to stop this, we have to be informed and act together.
Col. Musgrave of the British Secret Service was brought over by a Canadian think tank to put a plan in motion to break us down. He was going to use tactics the Brits used against the Irish. He vowed to accomplish this in three weeks.
The corporate press stepped up its habitual demonization of us. The soldiers shouted and threatened us. The media “spinners” portrayed our men, women and children as the nasty enemy and we were less than human. This created the conditions required to get the public to accept mistreatment and violations of our rights. We were subjected to sleep deprivation by flying choppers over us all night long. Even jets were flown close over our heads. Bright lights were shone on us and into our windows. Food was cut off or left to rot or spat upon and peed into by the soldiers before it was turned over to us. Water and hydro were turned off and on. Incendiary devices were blown up around us. Snipers were everywhere.
When we finally walked out September 26th 1990, the soldiers and cops attacked, beat and threw us into buses and took us to prisons at Farnham army base. We were left on the tarmac all night long. They would not let us go to the bathroom or get medical attention for our injured. The soldiers beat their guns on the sides of the bus to stop us from sleeping, swore and shouted racial slurs at us and took out their penises and urinated at us.
This was not the aberrant behavior of a few bad apples. They tried to take our children from us to use as hostages to control us. Luckily we got them out. We were herded into barracks and forbidden to sleep or eat. Anyone who dozed off was awakened with rifle butts banged on the floor next to our heads. After two sleepless nights we were taken for interrogation. In the room were two men who shouted racial and degrading slurs and threats at us. The Quebec Police and their army trainers told us that we would spend the rest of our lives in jail.
Our men were subjected to cruelty that violated the Geneva Conventions – One of our young men was handcuffed, blind folded, told to kneel down and face a wall. A gun was put to his head and cocked repeatedly. He was told that he was alone and that no one was going to rescue him. One of our men, Ronald Cross, was beaten over and over again. He eventually died of his injuries. In the end the courts found that none of us were guilty of anything. We remain defiant against injustice and genocide.
In the film “Taxi to the Dark Side” [ Seville Pictures] Dilawar was a young Afghani, a young father in his early twenties, who came from a peanut farming community. In December 2002, while driving his new taxi, he and his three passengers fell into the hands of the U.S. forces. Five days later he was dead. He was grabbed, hooded and taken to Bagram Prison. U.S. soldiers worked at maiming him to, as they said, “Get him to talk”.
Dilawar, called a PUC, “person under control” #421, was systematically tortured until he died. One was surprised “it took so long for him to die”. The soldiers said they were told over and over again that the Afghanis were very evil people and had nothing but violent intentions.
Wiliam Assera, a lawyer, said when the prisoners were brought in they were immediately assaulted by the soldiers and dogs. They were spat at, cameras flashed at their faces, their culture was attacked and ridiculed. They were kept in isolation, deprived of sleep and always handcuffed. They were kept in the “air locks”, subjected to cavity searches and constantly screamed at and questioned. This is called the “shock of the capture”.
The “air lock” is a room surrounded by razor wire. Arms are suspended in the air in hand cuffs locked onto the ceiling grate. Soldiers beat a prisoner “that was difficult”. A knee was kicked into a pressure point on the side of the leg. Dilawar’s body showed that his legs were “pulpafide”. His body became limp. Four soldiers went into the air lock, kicked him again and jumped on his back while he was shackled. One soldier struck Dilawar’s leg so many times that he hurt himself and to switch legs. Torture became amusement just to hear him scream “Allah”. The blood clots traveled to his lungs. The death certificate stated he died by of “homicide” by “blunt force”. If he had lived, his legs would have had to be amputated. Murder is the ultimate torture.
Ken Davis said that the prisoners were roughed up by vicious dogs. He would not say where the orders came from. Was it Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense in 2004?
Cap. Carolyn Wood ran Bagram Prison. She felt pressure to produce intelligence. She later graduated to Abu Graib in Iraq and got a medal for her work. “There’s just a few bad apples”, was declared over and over again. Eric Lanmer brushed it off as people being in “crazy situations and doing crazy things.”
It is ominous that Wood was trying to be more butch than the boys. Lindy England, the young girl that posed smiling with the naked humiliated degraded prisoners, some on dog leashes, was one of the most vulnerable in this male dominated field. Other smiling young men and women posed with dead bodies.
The U.S. soldiers were in Afghanistan and Iraq illegally. Colin Powell, Chief of Staff, needed legal arguments. They decided the President could do what he wants in the name of security.
John Yoo of the Justice Department developed assault protocols. It was a war on Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, supported by the Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, and Vice President Dick Cheney. John Yoo said these extreme tortures could include death. The U.S. wanted to discard the constitution but could not. So they put a different interpretation on it. President Bush was able to pardon himself but not the soldiers.
Vice President Dick Cheney encouraged the soldier to be more aggressive in dealing with interrogation because “these people are mean, nasty, dirty people”. [Was he describing himself?]
In Guantanamo Bay Prison in Cuba, one of the reason the U.S. holds onto this site is that they think that Cuban and U.S. laws don’t apply because it’s offshore. John Yoo said that the military has ultimate say over prisoners there. President Bush reminded the public that, “These terrorists are learning the meaning of American “justice”.
December 2001 Al Katami, supposedly the 20th plane hijacker, was taken to Guantanamo Bay. Gonzales and Yoo visited Cuba to figure out why he kept resisting their torture no matter how severe. Nothing worked. Sleep and sensory deprivation, severe isolation, attack dogs, invasions by females, forced to wear women’s underwear, strip searches, enemas, forced to wear U.S. flag hat, restrained from going to the bathroom. Dark, light, cold, heat! All his sensory receptors were attacked. His heart slowed down and he had to be hospitalized. Hypnosis, shock and LSD were not used. This was the entire arsenal that the CIA developed over the past 50 years in conjunction with researchers in Montreal.
Guantanamo Bay was turned into a torture research center. They pretended to be investigating Arab male sexual humiliation techniques and phobias. Torture was called “degradation”. Shackled for long periods of time every which way! Standing on a box, hooded and with [simulated] electrodes attached to the body! Forced to stand covered in shit with arms up and straight out as if hanging on a cross.
Brilliant top scientists were hired such as Donald O. Hebb of McGill University. He bragged he could reduce people to a pulp in 48 hours through isolation, goggles, earmuffs and so on. The U.S. got very excited about this. Hebb told them the price was destroying their sanity.
The soldiers said they need written instructions and training on how to beat, assault and potentially kill prisoners so they can break human rights and Geneva Conventions regulations and not be held responsible.
Professor Doug Cassel even described such threats as crushing the testicles of the prisoner’s infant son.
This story is about how the greed of a few can break people and pull down a whole society. These tactics are the remnants of colonialism that trashes people. The Americans have abandoned social wisdom. Old colonial and imperial paradigms are breaking down, though being pushed hard as a last ditch stand, especially using violence to enforce their ways.
One tactic is to declare a state of emergency to get around abiding by international law. They then give themselves the right to interpret the Geneva conventions as they see fit, calling it a legal interpretation.
It is well known that the information gotten through torture is not reliable. When the generals took over Greece, they learned that nine out of 10 soldiers would rather die than torture their people. The generals used the ones that enjoyed torturing to destroy a democratic government. Is the U.S. looking for a class of people that is willing to torture their own people?
The U.S. had set up a system in Afghanistan and Iraq where the war lords recruited subjects for thousands of dollars a piece. 83,000 were detained without a single hearing, violating the rule of law. Habeas corpus goes back to Roman law.
Less than 5% of those picked up by the U.S. had any information. The other 95% were innocent by-standers picked up by soldiers to serve as practice specimens for the American military’s cruel and macabre experimentation on torture methods. Senior officers observed those who were adept and could be used when martial law was imposed.
“Curve Ball” was tortured and eventually said there was a connection between Sadaam Hussein and Al Qaeda, which turned out to untrue.
Water boarding is called “extraordinary rendition”. The victims will tell the interrogators whatever they want to hear. The Vice President defended water boarding, “We don’t do torture. Not as we define it”.
The FBI distanced themselves from the Secretary of Defense. They said the best way to get information is by breaking down barriers. Experience, talent and patience are needed to get worthwhile information. “You are finished. Is there something I can do for your kids?”
They attacked human dignity and the sanctity of the individual. Cruelty is the official policy, “We have to get tough”, they tell us. If we are going to stop this, we have to be informed and act together.
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