Saturday, March 31, 2007

No hoods. No electric shocks. No beatings. These Iranians clearly are a very uncivilised bunch

Terry Jones
Saturday March 31, 2007
The Guardian

"I share the outrage expressed in the British press over the treatment of our naval personnel accused by Iran of illegally entering their waters. It is a disgrace. We would never dream of treating captives like this - allowing them to smoke cigarettes, for example, even though it has been proven that smoking kills. And as for compelling poor servicewoman Faye Turney to wear a black headscarf, and then allowing the picture to be posted around the world - have the Iranians no concept of civilised behaviour? For God's sake, what's wrong with putting a bag over her head? That's what we do with the Muslims we capture: we put bags over their heads, so it's hard to breathe. Then it's perfectly acceptable to take photographs of them and circulate them to the press because the captives can't be recognised and humiliated in the way these unfortunate British service people are.

It is also unacceptable that these British captives should be made to talk on television and say things that they may regret later. If the Iranians put duct tape over their mouths, like we do to our captives, they wouldn't be able to talk at all. Of course they'd probably find it even harder to breathe - especially with a bag over their head - but at least they wouldn't be humiliated.

And what's all this about allowing the captives to write letters home saying they are all right? It's time the Iranians fell into line with the rest of the civilised world: they should allow their captives the privacy of solitary confinement. That's one of the many privileges the US grants to its captives in Guantánamo Bay.

The true mark of a civilised country is that it doesn't rush into charging people whom it has arbitrarily arrested in places it's just invaded. The inmates of Guantánamo, for example, have been enjoying all the privacy they want for almost five years, and the first inmate has only just been charged. What a contrast to the disgraceful Iranian rush to parade their captives before the cameras!

What's more, it is clear that the Iranians are not giving their British prisoners any decent physical exercise. The US military make sure that their Iraqi captives enjoy PT. This takes the form of exciting "stress positions", which the captives are expected to hold for hours on end so as to improve their stomach and calf muscles. A common exercise is where they are made to stand on the balls of their feet and then squat so that their thighs are parallel to the ground. This creates intense pain and, finally, muscle failure. It's all good healthy fun and has the bonus that the captives will confess to anything to get out of it.

And this brings me to my final point. It is clear from her TV appearance that servicewoman Turney has been put under pressure. The newspapers have persuaded behavioural psychologists to examine the footage and they all conclude that she is "unhappy and stressed".

What is so appalling is the underhand way in which the Iranians have got her "unhappy and stressed". She shows no signs of electrocution or burn marks and there are no signs of beating on her face. This is unacceptable. If captives are to be put under duress, such as by forcing them into compromising sexual positions, or having electric shocks to their genitals, they should be photographed, as they were in Abu Ghraib. The photographs should then be circulated around the civilised world so that everyone can see exactly what has been going on.

As Stephen Glover pointed out in the Daily Mail, perhaps it would not be right to bomb Iran in retaliation for the humiliation of our servicemen, but clearly the Iranian people must be made to suffer - whether by beefing up sanctions, as the Mail suggests, or simply by getting President Bush to hurry up and invade, as he intends to anyway, and bring democracy and western values to the country, as he has in Iraq."

26 comments:

Moussa Bashir said...

Thanks for posting this. Excellent satire.

Lirun said...

i think your cynicism is well targeted.. but as long as you remember context is larger than that..

snurdly said...

These are only the pre-beheading stages. *s* We'll see how well-behaved Eichmannajhad gets when the situation escalates. Iran is quickly on it's way of having their citizens only being able to afford a half-gallon of gas. Hostages are Iran's forte...although this situation actually seems far worse than the 1978 hostage situation...

Rhiannon said...

Let's see what Hamas did not do, what the Palestinian militants did not do.......

Number one, they did not liquidate the corporal, which Israel routinely does, namely its political assassinations. That's a war crime under international law. Israel routinely does that. Hamas did not do that to the corporal.

Number two, they didn't kill the corporal while trying to arrest him. Israel routinely does that. If you look at July 2005, B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, they put out a very hefty report entitled "Take No Prisoners."

And the report shows Israel routinely, during so-called arrest operations, kills Palestinians, documents a case of a Palestinian who was wounded, on the ground, no weapon. Israel killed him. Hamas didn't do that to the corporal.

_________________________

Israel routinely takes Palestinians, Lebanese hostage.

In fact, Israel was the only country in the world, in 1997, which legalized hostage-taking.

The liberal head of the Israeli High Court, Aharon Barak, he said it's legal, legitimate, under international law to take what he called bargaining chips in order to get prisoners, Israeli prisoners being held by the Lebanese.

The decision was reversed in 2000, but Israel continued to hold Lebanese hostages until 2004. So, at worst, Hamas is being accused of what Israel legalized and routinely does.

And finally, let's talk about those 9,000 Palestinians who are effectively hostages being held by Israel. 1,000 of them are administrative detainees.


Administrative detainees who are being held without any charges or trial.

And the other 8,000 are being held after military courts have convicted them, almost always on the basis of confessions which were extracted by torture.

So if we're going to look simply at the numbers, we have one hostage on the Palestinian side, and effectively we have about 9,000 on the Israeli side.


Norman Finkelstein

Rhiannon said...

Personally, I am dumbfounded at the hypocrisy shown by the world leaders on this topic. How easily we forget that in the 18 years of Israel's first war against Lebanon, it kidnapped dozens of Lebanese, many who were unarmed civilians, and held them as hostages and bargaining chips to release prisoners held by Hezbullah!!

These kidnap victims were tortured and were not allowed visits from family or the ICRC.

But why reach back to the distant past? Just a few days before Israel kidnapped civilian representatives of the Palestinian parliament, to be used as bargaining chips to release the soldier captured by Hamas. And then a few days ago, Israel kidnapped three Lebanese civilians for the same purpose.

Aron's Israel Peace Weblog
August 7, 2006

Rhiannon said...

So what does it mean when Ahmadinejad and Akef refer to the “myth of the Holocaust”, as they both certainly did:

Speaking to thousands of people in the southeastern city of Zahedan, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said: "Today, they have created a myth in the name of Holocaust and consider it to be above God, religion and the prophets." -- Holocaust a myth, says Iran president

The head of the Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition force in Egypt's parliament, has echoed Iran's president in describing the Holocaust as a myth. "Western democracy has attacked everyone who does not share the vision of the sons of Zion as far as the myth of the Holocaust is concerned," Mohamed Akef said in a statement on Thursday. -- Brotherhood chief: Holocaust a myth


"Some western governments, in particular the US, approve of the sacrilege on the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), while denial of the `Myth of Holocaust', based on which the Zionists have been exerting pressure upon other countries for the past 60 years and kill the innocent Palestinians, is considered as a crime," added the president. -- President: Real holocaust to be sought in Palestine, Iraq

They don't say the
Holocaust didn't happen;
they are suggesting
something more
complex than that.
That last quote in
particular suggests
that Ahmadinejad is
using the word “myth”
in its correct,
technical sense.

Remember: myths are stories
that groups of people
tell to express and
justify their most
fundamental beliefs about themselves, their origins,
their essential nature, etc.

Ahmadinejad is saying
that Zionism tells
the story of
the Holocaust in
exactly this way,
i.e. as a vehicle
to explain and justify
what Zionists believe
about themselves.

When he “denies”
the “myth” of the Holocaust,
he is not denying
the Holocaust,
he’s not even
discussing the Holocaust
as a historical event at all.

He is denying the
validity of the use
to which the story
of the Holocaust
is being put.
He is saying that
instead of being a story
that expresses an
underlying truth,
“the myth of the
Holocaust” expresses a
“truth” that simply
isn’t true, and that
denial of that myth is
such a big deal
in the West because
you are not meant to
question whether
the underlying claim
is really true.


So what exactly is the “myth of the Holocaust” that Akef and Ahmadinejad reject?


Well, do you remember Wissam Tayem, the Palestinian man forced by Israeli soldiers to play his violin for them at a checkpoint in the Occupied Territories?

As Chris McGreal pointed out at the time, the sight of a Palestinian being forced to play the violin for his occupiers caused quite a stir in Israel. But the main reason it made Israelis (specifically Jewish-Israelis) uncomfortable was not because they recognized that it's simply wrong to treat a human being the way Wissam Tayem was treated.

Instead, it made them uncomfortable because it challenged their image of the kind of people they are, and the kind of country they have created. In other words, it undermined the Israelis' myth of themselves.


After the incident was videotaped by Jewish women peace activists, it prompted revulsion among Israelis not normally perturbed about the treatment of Arabs.

The critics were not drawing a parallel between an Israeli roadblock and a Nazi camp.

Their concern was that Jewish suffering had been diminished by the humiliation of Mr Tayem.


-Lawrence of Cyberia

Lirun said...

i took the trouble to read the ensuing comments..

not going to get into an argument..

interesting points..

but i think its too narrow a view and a distasteful obsession with a weak point.. yes the holocaust was a shaping event for my nations history.. but the status of holocaust rememberance is not the source of middle east conflict - at least not to my mind// i think it diverts the audience from the more influential players.. but ive blogged enough about that..

happy passover mirvosh

Lirun said...

mirvs.. i must admit thathaving read additional fragments of your post i find the talk distasteful and the sarcasm too much..

i dont like people's misery made the centre of sarcasm.. but its your post and you're obviously free to express yourself as you see fit..

having said that i think the points are valid.. i just think the spikes diminish the effectiveness of their delivery..

Unknown said...

yes

Rhiannon said...

No... it is not a "too narrow a view" nor is it a "distasteful obsession" with a "weak point"...

However, this is:

CNN interviewing Israelis about the holocaust in the summer of 2006, particularly one man whose grandparents and/or great grandparents , he says, suffered in the holocaust.........

Meanwhile, right next door, a hell was brewing for Palestinians and Lebanese families.....courtesy of the descendents of the SHOAH - thank you very much for the blood, inhumanity, loss of limbs, eyes, and life, israelis, you poor, sad creatures of the perpetually OBSESSIVE holocaust industry of today.

A distasteful obsession? Like this one?

Shimon Perez was in a debate about the typical affairs of the Middle East. He dared to bring up the holocaust. When someone brought up how the descendents of the holocaust could behave this way concerning the israeli/Palestinian situation....quickly Perez interjected:

"Let us not talk about the past. It serves no purpose and does no good."

So...it's okay to pick and choose your arguments, it's okay to deflect away from stupidity when someone calls on it...just so long as the debate is won, or somehow diluted so that people can forget the profound POINTS that were made. Yeah, that's right, those SPIKES.

so...What you are actually saying is those "spikes" are just too hard for you too handle - just like Shimon Perez couldn't handle that nasty "spike".


Gotcha. It's all in a day's hardwork of Zionism - aka House of Mirrors - aka distortions, illusions, and manipulations.

Rhiannon said...

"i dont like people's misery made the centre of sarcasm...."

I would just LOVE for you to go to Little Green Footballs, Zionist.com, and Atlas Shrugs.....


and make the SAME COMPLAINTS.

At least the complaints would be valid.

Lirun said...

i am not a media watchdog..

mirvat is my friend and i am expressing an opinion.. rhiannon.. you werent invited dude..

besides i dont bring up the past that much in any of my posts.. i agree that dealing with the past is impractical and not entirely relevant.. its justifiability is so often determined by the future.. and who is to tell..

anyway..

je vous souhaite une bonne journee.. je suis en france pour l'instant pour me reposer un peu avec du ski et ca marche bien..

j'adore le printemps..

bisous..

ton jumeau
lirun

excuse l'ortographe.. mon francais est vraiment faible..

:)

Unknown said...

ton francais est assez bien jumeau mechant :)
have fun, we all need un peu de repos every now and then.
talk to you soon

Rhiannon said...

"i am not a media watchdog..."

Neither am I. Every now and then, God gives me a great gift, and there it is, right on the tv screen, [as I am passing by, or a friend rings me up] - and there is the israeli "diplomat" choking on his/her words, contradicting him/herself, avoiding strong points made clear to the debate - FLOUNDERING if you will, as these zionist israelis/americans often do.......

And I say, thank you God. You just gave me more arsenal for my argument with zionists and other acquaintences I chance meeting on other blogs or in regular life situations.

I say, thank you, God, for that beautiful gem.

I must ALWAYS remember to write down the channel, the people involved, the date... when this occurs. Highly important to be authentic, ya know.

"besides i dont bring up the past that much in any of my posts.."

Oooooh yes you have. When you see fit for "israel". And when it concerns Palestine, you don't see the drudging up of the past as relevant. You zionists ALL go to the same school.

You think you are original in your speech pattern, but you are not. Your words are of the "Stepford Wife" style belonging to a legion of zionists - and there are no differences to be made.

You conveniently do not go far enough. You can't just say in some pat answer about the past, present, future concerning both Palestine, "israel" to your liking. You, as others like yourself, continually do this. So you are dismissively flip now after daring to say "the context is larger than that".

I just gave you the larger context. And your wrapping praise around disdainful words in your posts doesn't work.


"rhiannon.. you werent invited dude.."

Are you serious?

Like I care.

snurdly said...

Rhiannon is always an amusing read while taking a break from my money counting...2 for me...1 for Israel...2 for me...1 for Israel...

Rhiannon said...

Thanks for the money platform. Always happy to oblige.....


..........two Israeli witnesses, subcontractors of large-scale Lebanese drug merchant Ramzi Nahara, “with long records of excellent cooperation with Israel,” testified that in one of their operations they “smuggled 250 kg. of heroin into Israel.” Ramzi Nahara himself also testified in this case. Hassid describes Nahara’s deals in detail.

Let me select only one of his feats. A single transport, detected in Israel by sheer chance by the traffic police due to a minor traffic infraction, consisted of 3,000 kg. of hashish destined for re-export to Egypt. Let me quote here an opinion of advocate Ziv with which I concur. “The state of Israel is by far the largest importer of drugs into Israel itself. The import is sponsored by the police, under the hardly credible pretext that it will help catch drug offenders.”


Many more stories of
this nature could be
adduced, but the Israeli involvement in the
drug trade warrants
some conclusions in regard
to the nature of
political realities
in the Middle East.
There are grounds to
suspect that Israeli
encouragement of the
drug trade, and consequently
also of drug consumption,
cannot be entirely explained
by the familiar excuse of acquiring intelligence,
extending influence and
reaping profits.

Part of the motivation
must be to weaken the disaffection of
Middle Eastern masses by encouraging drug addiction
and thus promoting political apathy.

The suspicion can be buttressed
if we consider the known facts about the encouragement
of Palestinian drug dealers
by the Israeli authorities.
The coddling of Palestinian
drug dealers was one of the reasons for the outbreak
of the intifada.



Lastly, massive involvement of Israeli intelligence in drug trafficking must be condoned by its American opposite numbers. Ample precedents exist for that kind of policy. However, a support for the Is-raeli drug trade is a rather safe affair. If Israeli involvement in the narcotics trade were exposed in the U.S., powerful organizations such as AIPAC would scream bloody murder.




..........A lot of American liberals, happy to denounce American intelligence for encouraging drug traffickers, would protest if Israeli intelligence were denounced for anything. For example, the invasion of Panama was said to be launched for the sake of suppressing the drug trade: yet the well-documented Israeli connections with Noriega passed almost unnoticed by the U.S. media. It can therefore be tentatively presumed that in its encouragement of drug traffic and traffickers, as in much else, Israel is secure so far as the U.S. media are concerned. This would at least partly explain why this policy works.

.......no doubt that it is the Israeli economic interest, as represented by an export of goods without customs and traffic in drugs, that determines the Israeli insistence on keeping the “Zone” under its rule.

The Israeli wars in Lebanon should be compared to the Opium Wars of the 19th century. For an effective pursuit of the trade interests described here, Israeli rule over the “Zone” is necessary, and this, in turn, guarantees the continuation of the wars in Lebanon.

Israel Shahak
http://www.bintjbeil.com/E/occupation/shahak2.html

Rhiannon said...

I will rely on a comprehensive article by Etty Hassid (“Yerushalaim,” Jerusalem Friday Paper, July 22).

She offers her conclusions at the very beginning of her article: “Even though it may be hard to believe, the state of Israel is actively engaged in drug trade, especially on its northern Lebanese borders.

The participants are on one side the Israeli army, Shabak, Mossad and the Israeli police, and on the other side, Lebanese drug merchants, Israeli Bedouins from the Negev and retired [Israeli] senior officers. The operational principle is: We will close our eyes to all the filth to which you stoop, and even give you some money, if only you provide us with intelligence of interest to us. In my article I am going to prove it or at least to substantiate it as highly probable on the basis of the trials of large-scale drug merchants.

“Since I was forced by censorship to skip some facts, let me tell you that the realities are even more ghastly than what you find here. What I do reveal is ghastly enough. It turns out that the state of Israel, which professes to wage an uncompromising struggle with the epidemic of drug addiction, is in reality the largest-scale importer of drugs in the Middle East.

It is as if we were trying with one hand to apprehend the drug users and peddlers or at least pretending to do so, while using the other hand to plunge the syringe deep into the drug addict’s veins.”

-Israel Shahak

http://www.bintjbeil.com/E/occupation/shahak2.html

Zee said...

was this post about Israel?

Unknown said...

no zee it wasn't!

Lirun said...

hehehehehehh

Rhiannon said...

How can't it not be about "israel"?

You have its rah rah cheerleaders, snidely and lerenby with their sneaky and alluding posts: "israel"= innocence [sic] Iran=diabolical [sic].

You can never disconnect "israel", no quicker than you can disconnect zionists on blogs from sites like these. There is a pattern.

Meanwhile, it's ALL about "israel", unless you want to talk about love, dating, school, the future, marriage, family etc.........sorry, always with the Middle East and world politics, "israel" is connected, always.

One of many examples:

"The Bush administration and the British government are under increasing pressure from the Israelis to conduct an illegal air strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, according to a number of reports in Europe’s largest newspapers......."

Israel, as usual, is counting on U.S. backing—and it is making it obvious that if there is no strike on Iran it will act on its own.

In a recent visit to the United States, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned “friend and foe alike” that Israel is prepared to “take on any country or combination of countries” to protect itself.

The Israelis refer to the “Iran Front,” The Sunday Telegraph reports. “Israel is becoming extremely concerned now with what they see as Iran’s delaying tactics,” an Israeli-Iran analyst told the newspaper. “The [Israeli] planners think negotiations are going nowhere, and Iran is becoming a major danger for Israel.

Now they are getting ready for living with a nuclear Iran or letting the military take care of it.”


http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/israel_pushing_u_s_.html

Rhiannon said...

More than happy to talk about Iran:


Friday, March 30, 2007
Felicity Arbuthnot


'Cruel, Callous, Inhumane and Unacceptable.' An Open Letter to the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, M.P.

Dear Mr. Brown,

Standing in Afghanistan, you called the Iranian holding of fifteen British sailors who it is likely strayed in to Iranian waters: 'Cruel, callous, inhumane and unacceptable.'

Breathtaking.

Compared to the behavior of the UK and US troops, their treatment in Iran is seemingly a health spa.

'Cruel, callous, inhumane and unacceptable', is the total destruction of the country you were standing in. The boiling to death of several thousand prisoners, held in metal trucks in the sweltering summer, under the watch and very possibly at the hands of our American allies (complex accounts differ.)

It is the bombing of village after village, of wedding parties and funerals, of goat herders, farmers, shepherds.

It is reducing the country to a radioactive nightmare, where families bombed out of their homes have been found living in contaminated bomb craters - and suffering all the signs of radiation poisoning, according to the Uranium Metal Research Project, bleeding from all orifices with other accompanying appalling symptoms.

'Cruel, callous, inhumane and unacceptable', is the prison at Afghanistan's Bagram airbase, where people are 'rendered', disappeared, shackled, forced to wear diapers, their eyes covered, and flown to Guantanamo Bay 'the gulag of our time', as cited by Amnesty International.


http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/2007/03/cruel-callous-inhumane-unacceptable.html

Lirun said...

rhiannon - you are the blog equivalent of flatulation.. hazy smelly and purely antisocial..

mirvat.. pity - i thought you raised a great topic and was looking forward to discussion..

Ingrid said...

Dear Mirvat, I read this one before somewhere else (forgot now where) and isn't it great? Monty Python to the rescue!
Ingrid

Anonymous said...

Flatulence. Wonderful! Thank YOU! Let's discuss flatulence....

Tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors enduring poverty in Israel ......why?

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/52067.html

In Israel the poverty line for a single person is approximately 2,000 shekels (486 dollars) a month.

Hey that is not so bad...

........that's far more than Palestinians in Gaza, whose per capita income in 2004 was a meager $600/year (by now, it's MOST LIKELY less).

http://macrocenter.rwu.edu/2004/projectproposal/proposal.htm

Well the israelis have a few options.....

1. They can start learning to live without all the lovely amenities of society - like the Palestinians and Iraqis are doing these days and of days gone by..

2. They can tell there government and military:

"Mama mama please, no more ILLEGAL INVASIONS of other countries!"

Hence, Iran.

Anonymous said...

Howza bout a bit of flatulence like this one, lepen! Quite smelly and most unabashedly anti-social:

An angry and bitter Paul Wolfowitz poured abuse and threatened retaliations on senior World Bank staff if his orders for pay rises and promotions for his partner were revealed, according to new details published last night.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/imf/story/0,,2079877,00.html

Sounding more like a cast member of the Sopranos than an international leader, in testimony by one key witness Mr Wolfowitz declares: "If they fuck with me or Shaha, I have enough on them to fuck them too."

Now is that any way for a true Israelite, Jew, God's Chosen to behave?

Tsk tsk tsk tsk.

Hee.