TortureGate exhibits an underlying theme to the "war on terra" - Racism

I'm sure its been said before recently, but I'm sayin it again. The "war on terra" is a racist war (as well as a religious crusade)

Irony was not missed between the dogs used on prisoners and those used on Blacks in the 50's and 60's (not going to even go into lynchings)



Here's an interesting article:

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18614

snip<
The U.S. government doesn't drop bombs on people because of their race. Washington's geopolitical agendas lead to military actions. But racial biases make the war process easier when the people being killed and maimed aren't white people. An oversize elephant in the American media's living room is a reality that few journalists talk about in public: The USA keeps waging war on countries where the victims resemble people who often experience personal and institutional racism in the United States.

In the American media coverage of the uproar after release of the Abu Ghraib photos, one of the only references to race was fleeting and dismissive, midway through a Wall Street Journal opinion piece on May 3: "So far the alleged grotesqueries are more analogous to the nightmares that occur occasionally at American prisons, when rogue and jaded guards freelance to intimidate and humiliate inmates. The crime, then, first appears not so much a product of endemic ethnic, racial, or religious hatred, as the unfortunate cargo of penal institutions, albeit exacerbated by the conditions of war, the world over."

That essay, by the Hoover Institution's Victor Davis Hanson, typifies media denial about what's happening in the hellish American cells populated so disproportionately by low-income blacks and Latinos. In the world of the Journal editorial page's convenient fantasy, guards "occasionally" choose to "freelance to intimidate and humiliate inmates." In the world of prisoners' inconvenient reality, guards frequently intimidate, humiliate – and brutalize.

Media denial lets the U.S. military – and the U.S. incarceration industry – off the hook. Yet, it's significant that a man implicated as a ringleader in the Abu Ghraib crimes, Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick, "had also worked for six years as a guard for the Virginia Department of Corrections," according to Seymour Hersh's article in the May 10 edition of The New Yorker. A special agent in the U.S. Army's Criminal Investigation Division, Scott Bobeck, testified that Sgt. Frederick and a corporal apparently "were put in charge because they were civilian prison guards and had knowledge of how things were supposed to be run."

Snip>

*People of color, most of whom were innocent (as we are now learning from the Red Cross report), being jailed and tortured abroad....

How many innocent people of color are currently jailed in this country now? How many innocent people of color are victimized by racial profiling?

How many innocent people will be disenfranchised at the voting booth in Florida this election year?

Things that make you go 'hmmmmmmm':think:

We want the same or better statistics there so we can have a vibrant prison industry there. Hmmm - a new post - thanks!

makes sense to me.

'bookem danno'

"Bull Connor of Baghdad"

figured it out yet. The graphics eminate strong teletale signs of racism. I think experts would agree.

When the pictures of this man bleeding after being bitten (despite the lies Rush tells of him not being bitten- fucker) would make it even more obvious!

govern themselves, for crying out loud? Somebody needs to put 'em in their place! And God Bless Amurrika!

/sarcasm OFF

When he started saying that shit in that press conference (and later in another place, I forget where, though I read the abysmal transcript) my jaw hit the fucking floor!!

:toast:

IMO, the reference to the dogs used on African Americans rings in this abuse as well.

The way that I read it then and the way I read it now is...

" So what,they(African Americans,Muslims) really don't count. Let the dogs have at them,they are animals themselves."

It was wrong then and it is wrong now!

It was Racist during the Civil Rights Fight it is Racist now!

African Americans, supported by many brave Whites in this country,died and went to jail for justice then, it was a WAR fought on American soil.

Speak Chavez speak!

I am alittle charged up that, not only are we "sicking the dogs upon the great unwashed infidels" , they happen to be, as Brother Shabazz would say, non-whites. So what have we here? A new prison industry, ready to have a large population of inmates to feed (i.e. - charge American taxpayers exorbinant amounts of unaccounted for dollars to incarcerate in conditions that are beyond any international law to regulate) and torture. Its like the White Man's dream come true - we are no longer beholden to any good that might have come from the 60's, now the privitization (read - mercenarization) of our military and cosequently prison industry leads us too indefinite internment of non-whites to any torture we see fit to mete out! No? Do you doubt it? Open your eyes!

And then we have the huge disparities in the economic status of our troops! How many poor black GI's are risking their necks for a country that is still debating affirmative action? And why should a kid who grew up in the projects in Chicago give a fuck what his white elitist Secretary of Defense should say - why that kid is more worried about will he make it to Tomorrow! So when that child sees these photos and those from the 50's and 60's and then these photos from this week- what do you think he(or she) will make of that?

AP - who is this man and why should I read his works?

:spank: :loveya:

:)

Orientalism

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/039474067X/ref=pd_bxgy_text_1/103-3140896-0180604?v=glance&s=books&st=*

and, at least, the introduction to Culture and Imperialism

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0679750541/qid=1084293946/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-3140896-0180604?v=glance&s=books

i can't explain it, but it breaks my heart. i see photos of our men over there in iraq, our americans, black white latino asian, tying little girl's hands behind their backs after kicking in their doors at 4 am. it IS a racist war, most wars have that element.

bush can barely hide his racism with his brown skinned people bullshit remarks that slip through his coked out skull.

i believe that bushco's agenda is the racist oppression of muslims in the middle east, with israel as a base. but, i have a lot of whacky ideas.

one thing x said that i remembered when i was a kid was something about, wherever the white man goes, death follows. and something my sisterinlaw said, someday, down the road, the white man is gonna pay.

to people at the end of leash with a German Sheppard on it?

The 60s suggests that when you're using tactics like that, it's not freedom you're bringing, it's freedom that you're stopping.

The Iraqis didn't want Hussein, but they also don't want the US there either. When you have to resort to tactics like this, you're fighting a loosing battle against history.

Exactly the right phrase.
When I hear * talk about all this freedom that he is bringing to Iraq,now I see it clearly...it's really freedom the USunderBush is STOPPING.

How Long, Not Long.. do we in this world have to live under the oppression of GWB?

My prayer is " How Long, Not Long"

Anybody referring to "terrorists" in regards to Iraq is a fucking nazi racist.

This is a new crusade - PERIOD!!!!!!!

Dave Chapelle has a bit about somebody saying something to him so overtly old-school bust-out racist that he wasn't even mad, but more just amazed; like, 'WOW. That was really racist!" (Almost admiring)

That's how I feel about the current US view that Arabs are subhuman drones that in combination make up a science-fiction style "hive mind." All Arabs are equally responsible for every damn thing any Arab person has ever done. Amazing.

:kick:

Same reason people were attacked and killed (and still are) right here on our soil post 9/11.

In the war of labels, the dictionary maker kills more than the arms
manufacturer.

the evil Bush and his minions connected, in the minds of the people, Saddam to the 9-11 attack to the point where some 60% believed it, and some still do--as Karen Hughes recently did by implying the women who marched in the million woman marchwere terrorists, so here, the stupid ignorant Bush, also has made a connection, a religious connection to Islam, crusades, swords, appearing with halos around his head, and in churches where King and crowns hover over his head--oh yes--he is perpetrating anything that is hateful and barbaric. There is not one thing about him that is compassionate.

These Muslims are brown skinned people and in this country especially,a copuntry well known for it's racist attitudes towards blacks and other minorites, is connected to blacks--ie Muhammed Ali, and other blacks who have adopted names that identify them as being followers of Islam--

I agree--this war has perpetrated everything that has been relatively dormant under Clinton having to do with hatred toward any one race or gender--they love the hate and kill atmosphere--because they are fascists and they are evil.

He sighed so heavily and said, "The Iraqis are lower than "beaners" to some of those poor kids from my neck of the woods. Turn 'em loose with a wink and a nod and who wouldn't expect this?"

Ignoring this would be a continuation of the denial by a large segment of the White community that there is a race problem at home.

Sorry to shamelessly bump my own thread

America is TERRIFIED of this discussion. The "war" on "drugs" is racist domestic policy which feeds a LUCRATIVE prison biz. Horrifying conditions therein are well known. The "war" on "terror" is simply the export product.

For those who don't yet get it, y'all need to get a handle on this stuff, real quick. America looking like a nut case run amok need to be restrained for own and public-at-large safety. It is inconceivable to me that anyone who repudiates racism in his heart can support this atrocity. The world is watching how much of a fuss you're willing to kick up. Please read and connect the dots.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/10/1417258

terror is nothing more than the attempt to establish and maintain world wide white supremacy. People get confused because america has blacks, latinos, chinese, etc., but the system, is white supremacy.

I don't think he ever actually received approval.

No matter how evil we said Russia was or any part of the USSR, we never dropped a bomb on them and would never contemplate doing it. The excuse we used was that it might set off a nuclear war (gimme a break) we and they were never going to drop a nuclear bomb on each other...why would they? If we actually believed that Saddam had nuclear weapons or other WMDs, it sure didn't stop us from bombing the hell out of Iraq, did it?

Is just one of many, many, many examples. It's happening right now, today! We didn't nuke Germany in WWII (we did fire-bomb Dresden killing more people then Hiroshima) but the message is clear - we wage race wars

I guess the world will just have to get used to us...we are in control.

God, it is truly inspiring to read the posts on this thread. I have been thinking this for so long, looking at the pictures from Iraq and recognizing that there is no way even in my wildest imagination to substitute white faces for the brown ones in the photos of the victims. White America wouldn't stand for it, and BushCo wouldn't have ever tried it. This travesty could not have taken place in a country populated primarily by Caucasians. No way.

The fact that this "they got what they deserved" attitude toward the prisoners is aired on our national media without being framed in outrage and a warning to viewers ("The opinions you are about to hear may be upsetting to some viewers...") indicates how accepting we are as a nation of overt racism. When you consider that this attitude is being evinced by some of our elected leaders (not the chimp, I mean guys who actually won fair and square), it's easy to start seeing why the Nazi parallels are so often drawn. Iraq may have vast, alluring oil reserves, it may tempt the US as an ideal location for military bases in the region, but at the end of the day, we wouldn't have attacked it if its population were white. I'm not saying that a culture of white supremacism caused us to invade, but it certainly allowed us to.

Is there any nation which shames itself as often and as thoroughly as the USA?

Where the Iraqi hostage is on the ground bleeding.

These fascist atrocities are sickening. The guards involved should be let loose in al-Fallujah, as they have much to answer for.