via the Guardian:
CIA agents tortured a German citizen, sodomising, shackling, and beating him, as Macedonian state police looked on, the European court of human rights said in a historic judgment released on Thursday. In a unanimous ruling, it also found Macedonia guilty of torturing, abusing, and secretly imprisoning Khaled el-Masri, a German of Lebanese origin allegedly linked to terrorist organisations. Masri was seized in Macedonia in December 2003 and handed over to a CIA "rendition team" at Skopje airport and secretly flown to Afghanistan. It is the first time the court has described CIA treatment meted out to terror suspects as torture.
"The grand chamber of the European court of human rights unanimously found that Mr el-Masri was subjected to forced disappearance, unlawful detention, extraordinary rendition outside any judicial process, and inhuman and degrading treatment," said James Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative...."Masri's treatment at Skopje airport at the hands of the CIA rendition team – being severely beaten, sodomised, shackled and hooded, and subjected to total sensory deprivation – had been carried out in the presence of state officials of [Macedonia] and within its jurisdiction," the court ruled...He said the US government must issue an apology for its "central role in a web of systematic crimes and human rights violations by the Bush-era CIA, and to pay voluntary compensation to Mr el-Masri".
Showing posts with label atrocities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label atrocities. Show all posts
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Friday, November 30, 2012
Senior U.S. military officers linked to Knights of Malta push for holy war, says Seymour Hersch
source: Foreign Policy, via Cryptogon:
“What I’m really talking about is how eight or nine neoconservative, radicals if you will, overthrew the American government. Took it over,” he said of his forthcoming book. “It’s not only that the neocons took it over but how easily they did it — how Congress disappeared, how the press became part of it, how the public acquiesced.”
Hersh then brought up the widespread looting that took place in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. “In the Cheney shop, the attitude was, ‘What’s this? What are they all worried about, the politicians and the press, they’re all worried about some looting? … Don’t they get it? We’re gonna change mosques into cathedrals. And when we get all the oil, nobody’s gonna give a damn.’”
“That’s the attitude,” he continued. “We’re gonna change mosques into cathedrals. That’s an attitude that pervades, I’m here to say, a large percentage of the Joint Special Operations Command.”
He then alleged that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC before briefly becoming the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and his successor, Vice Adm. William McRaven, as well as many within JSOC, “are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta.” Hersh may have been referring to the Sovereign Order of Malta, a Roman Catholic organization committed to “defence of the Faith and assistance to the poor and the suffering,” according to its website.
“Many of them are members of Opus Dei,” Hersh continued. “They do see what they’re doing — and this is not an atypical attitude among some military — it’s a crusade, literally. They seem themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They’re protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function.”
“They have little insignias, these coins they pass among each other, which are crusader coins,” he continued. “They have insignia that reflect the whole notion that this is a culture war. … Right now, there’s a tremendous, tremendous amount of anti-Muslim feeling in the military community.”
“What I’m really talking about is how eight or nine neoconservative, radicals if you will, overthrew the American government. Took it over,” he said of his forthcoming book. “It’s not only that the neocons took it over but how easily they did it — how Congress disappeared, how the press became part of it, how the public acquiesced.”
Hersh then brought up the widespread looting that took place in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. “In the Cheney shop, the attitude was, ‘What’s this? What are they all worried about, the politicians and the press, they’re all worried about some looting? … Don’t they get it? We’re gonna change mosques into cathedrals. And when we get all the oil, nobody’s gonna give a damn.’”
“That’s the attitude,” he continued. “We’re gonna change mosques into cathedrals. That’s an attitude that pervades, I’m here to say, a large percentage of the Joint Special Operations Command.”
He then alleged that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC before briefly becoming the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and his successor, Vice Adm. William McRaven, as well as many within JSOC, “are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta.” Hersh may have been referring to the Sovereign Order of Malta, a Roman Catholic organization committed to “defence of the Faith and assistance to the poor and the suffering,” according to its website.
“Many of them are members of Opus Dei,” Hersh continued. “They do see what they’re doing — and this is not an atypical attitude among some military — it’s a crusade, literally. They seem themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They’re protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function.”
“They have little insignias, these coins they pass among each other, which are crusader coins,” he continued. “They have insignia that reflect the whole notion that this is a culture war. … Right now, there’s a tremendous, tremendous amount of anti-Muslim feeling in the military community.”
Thursday, November 1, 2012
American bombing of Iraq left legacy of deformed babies
via The Star
Remember Falluja? That city in central Iraq was the scene of two furious attacks in 2004 by American Marines. That spring, they went on a bombing, shooting rampage to avenge the murder and mutilation of four American mercenaries. Instead of targeting the estimated 2,000 insurgents, the Marines almost levelled the city of 300,000, without conquering it. Seven months later, they attacked again with artillery and bombs in what was described as the bloodiest urban warfare involving Americans since the Vietnam War.
Remember Basra? That southern Iraqi city has been suffering since the first Gulf War, in 1991. Radioactive residue from the 800 tons of bombs and 1 million rounds of ammunition used was soon showing up in babies born with huge heads, abnormally large eyes, stunted arms, bloated stomachs and defective hearts. Later in the 1990s, Basra was hit as part of maintaining the American no fly zone on Saddam Hussein. It was attacked yet again in the 2003 American-British invasion and subsequent occupation.
Now we see that the children of Falluja and Basra are suffering a staggering rise in birth defects, primarily from the metals released by bombs, bullets and shells — the dust that gets into food, water, air, soil and crops.
A recent study by an environmental toxicologist at the University of Michigan attributes the defects to the presence of high levels of lead, mercury and other contaminants in the bodies of both parents and their afflicted children.
It substantiates what horrified doctors at Falluja General Hospital had been reporting since 2005. In September 2009, they had asked the United Nations to investigate why a quarter of the 170 babies born there that month had died within seven days and a staggering 75 per cent of the dead babies were deformed.
In 2010, the University of Ulster reported that increases in congenital birth defects, leukemia and infant mortality in Falluja were higher than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
Later that same year, Mozhgan Savabieasfahani of the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health published an epidemiological study, also showing shocking levels of birth defects in Falluja children.
Since then, she and her collaborating team of doctors in Iraq and neighbouring Iran have broadened their research in Falluja and Basra. Last month, they published their findings in the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology.
They followed 56 families from Falluja General Hospital and also thousands of records at the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Basra maternity hospital.
Between 2004 and 2006, almost half the pregnancies among those Falluja families resulted in miscarriage. Between 2007 and 2010, more than half the children born in them had some form of birth defect (compared to less than 2 per cent in 2000). Abnormalities included heart defects, malformed or missing limbs, cleft palates, swollen heads, single eyes, bloated tummies and body organs spilling out of defective abdominal walls.
Among the children with birth defects, lead levels were five times higher and mercury levels six times higher than for normal children.
In Basra, birth defects had gone up to 23 per 1,000 births by 2003, a 17-fold increase since 1994.
Mercury levels in children with defects were three times higher than among normal children. The enamel portion of the deciduous tooth from a child with birth defects showed nearly three times higher lead levels than the teeth of children from other areas. Their parents had 1.4 times higher lead levels in tooth enamel compared to parents of normal children.
If anything, the data underestimates the epidemic, says Savabieasfahani. Many parents tend to hide their children with defects and abnormalities.
The American and British governments try to deflect such damning studies by saying they were “not aware of them,” or that the findings may not be definitive.
But Savabieasfahani told me on the phone from Ann Arbor, Mich., that there’s “a clear footprint of metal in the population” in Falluja and Basra. “There is compelling evidence linking the staggering increases in Iraqi birth defects to neurotoxic metal contamination following the repeated bombardments. There is no other explanation. There has been no volcano eruption, for example.”
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization is also studying the crises not only in Falluja and Basra but also seven other “high-risk” Iraqi cities. Its report is due out next month.
These studies should be required reading for anyone who still wonders why the Arab and Muslim world remains so angry at America and its allies.
Haroon Siddiqui is the Star's editorial page editor emeritus. His column appears on Thursday and Sunday.
Remember Falluja? That city in central Iraq was the scene of two furious attacks in 2004 by American Marines. That spring, they went on a bombing, shooting rampage to avenge the murder and mutilation of four American mercenaries. Instead of targeting the estimated 2,000 insurgents, the Marines almost levelled the city of 300,000, without conquering it. Seven months later, they attacked again with artillery and bombs in what was described as the bloodiest urban warfare involving Americans since the Vietnam War.
Remember Basra? That southern Iraqi city has been suffering since the first Gulf War, in 1991. Radioactive residue from the 800 tons of bombs and 1 million rounds of ammunition used was soon showing up in babies born with huge heads, abnormally large eyes, stunted arms, bloated stomachs and defective hearts. Later in the 1990s, Basra was hit as part of maintaining the American no fly zone on Saddam Hussein. It was attacked yet again in the 2003 American-British invasion and subsequent occupation.
Now we see that the children of Falluja and Basra are suffering a staggering rise in birth defects, primarily from the metals released by bombs, bullets and shells — the dust that gets into food, water, air, soil and crops.
A recent study by an environmental toxicologist at the University of Michigan attributes the defects to the presence of high levels of lead, mercury and other contaminants in the bodies of both parents and their afflicted children.
It substantiates what horrified doctors at Falluja General Hospital had been reporting since 2005. In September 2009, they had asked the United Nations to investigate why a quarter of the 170 babies born there that month had died within seven days and a staggering 75 per cent of the dead babies were deformed.
In 2010, the University of Ulster reported that increases in congenital birth defects, leukemia and infant mortality in Falluja were higher than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
Later that same year, Mozhgan Savabieasfahani of the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health published an epidemiological study, also showing shocking levels of birth defects in Falluja children.
Since then, she and her collaborating team of doctors in Iraq and neighbouring Iran have broadened their research in Falluja and Basra. Last month, they published their findings in the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology.
They followed 56 families from Falluja General Hospital and also thousands of records at the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Basra maternity hospital.
Between 2004 and 2006, almost half the pregnancies among those Falluja families resulted in miscarriage. Between 2007 and 2010, more than half the children born in them had some form of birth defect (compared to less than 2 per cent in 2000). Abnormalities included heart defects, malformed or missing limbs, cleft palates, swollen heads, single eyes, bloated tummies and body organs spilling out of defective abdominal walls.
Among the children with birth defects, lead levels were five times higher and mercury levels six times higher than for normal children.
In Basra, birth defects had gone up to 23 per 1,000 births by 2003, a 17-fold increase since 1994.
Mercury levels in children with defects were three times higher than among normal children. The enamel portion of the deciduous tooth from a child with birth defects showed nearly three times higher lead levels than the teeth of children from other areas. Their parents had 1.4 times higher lead levels in tooth enamel compared to parents of normal children.
If anything, the data underestimates the epidemic, says Savabieasfahani. Many parents tend to hide their children with defects and abnormalities.
The American and British governments try to deflect such damning studies by saying they were “not aware of them,” or that the findings may not be definitive.
But Savabieasfahani told me on the phone from Ann Arbor, Mich., that there’s “a clear footprint of metal in the population” in Falluja and Basra. “There is compelling evidence linking the staggering increases in Iraqi birth defects to neurotoxic metal contamination following the repeated bombardments. There is no other explanation. There has been no volcano eruption, for example.”
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization is also studying the crises not only in Falluja and Basra but also seven other “high-risk” Iraqi cities. Its report is due out next month.
These studies should be required reading for anyone who still wonders why the Arab and Muslim world remains so angry at America and its allies.
Haroon Siddiqui is the Star's editorial page editor emeritus. His column appears on Thursday and Sunday.
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Congressional Probe Reveals Cover-Up of “Auschwitz-Like” Conditions at U.S.-Funded Afghan Hospital
While this blog often strays into the territory of "high weirdness", it's always important to stay grounded, remembering that a government which routinely engages in the kind of atrocities described below will not hesitate to experiment on and torture its own citizens. So, although it may be fascinating to look into some of the more sensational elements of the MK Ultra project, never forget what the programs are truly about at their core: a grievous assault on the most basic human rights which should be extended to all peoples, everywhere. In my opinion, it is imperative to emphasize the commonalities between trauma-based mind control and the routine abuses that make up everyday military-police state maneuverings, in order so that the relevance of mind control research is made apparent to average people who may not be too interested in some of the more sensational elements of MK Ultra such as remote viewing. Naomi Klein's book, The Shock Doctrine, describes in meticulous detail how MK Ultra psychiatrists working as CIA consultants discovered that fear-based psychological conditioning could be employed en masse to entire societies, with terrible real world results typically beginning with economic austerity and ending in a drastic reduction in life expectancy for affected countries.
The U.S-funded Afghan hospital below is an extreme example of the end result of this process, which is enabled by the kind of war profiteering where citizens go without basic necessities such as clean water and health care while private contractors in charge of "reconstruction" make off with billions. In this situation, neoliberal disaster capitalism policies have left Afghan patients with life-threatening medical conditions, languishing in a hospital without heat, water, antibiotics or basic hygiene. According to Democracy Now, the same general in charge of the hospital, William Caldwell, is also assigned to oversee domestic US Army emergency operations, specifically in the case of martial law, which is another reason to take this story very seriously. Many images in the video are not suitable for sensitive viewers. Via :Democracy Now
A congressional investigation has revealed a top U.S. general in Afghanistan sought to stall an investigation into abuse at a U.S.-funded hospital in Kabul that kept patients in “Auschwitz-like” conditions. Army whistleblowers revealed photographs taken in 2010, which show severely neglected, starving patients at Dawood Hospital, considered the crown jewel of the Afghan medical system where the country’s military personnel are treated. The photos show severely emaciated patients, some suffering from gangrene and maggot-infested wounds. The general accused of the cover-up is Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, one of the nation’s highest-ranking commanders in Afghanistan, who served as the commander of the $11.2-billion-a-year Afghan training program. We speak to Michael Hastings, contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine and a reporter for BuzzFeed, which has been following the story closely. more...
The U.S-funded Afghan hospital below is an extreme example of the end result of this process, which is enabled by the kind of war profiteering where citizens go without basic necessities such as clean water and health care while private contractors in charge of "reconstruction" make off with billions. In this situation, neoliberal disaster capitalism policies have left Afghan patients with life-threatening medical conditions, languishing in a hospital without heat, water, antibiotics or basic hygiene. According to Democracy Now, the same general in charge of the hospital, William Caldwell, is also assigned to oversee domestic US Army emergency operations, specifically in the case of martial law, which is another reason to take this story very seriously. Many images in the video are not suitable for sensitive viewers. Via :Democracy Now
A congressional investigation has revealed a top U.S. general in Afghanistan sought to stall an investigation into abuse at a U.S.-funded hospital in Kabul that kept patients in “Auschwitz-like” conditions. Army whistleblowers revealed photographs taken in 2010, which show severely neglected, starving patients at Dawood Hospital, considered the crown jewel of the Afghan medical system where the country’s military personnel are treated. The photos show severely emaciated patients, some suffering from gangrene and maggot-infested wounds. The general accused of the cover-up is Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, one of the nation’s highest-ranking commanders in Afghanistan, who served as the commander of the $11.2-billion-a-year Afghan training program. We speak to Michael Hastings, contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine and a reporter for BuzzFeed, which has been following the story closely. more...
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Dutch Roman Catholic Church castrated 10 boys
source: The Telegraph, via Cryptogon
At least 10 teenage boys or young men under the age of 21 were surgically castrated “to get rid of homosexuality” while in the care of the Dutch Roman Catholic Church in the 1950s.
Evidence of the castrations has emerged amid controversy that it was not included in the findings of an official investigation into sexual abuse within the church last year.
The NRC Handelsblad newspaper identified Henk Heithuis who was castrated in 1956, while a minor, after reporting priests to the police for abusing him in a Catholic boarding home.
Joep Dohmen, the investigative journalist who uncovered the Heithuis case, also found evidence of at least nine other castrations. “These cases are anonymous and can no longer be traced,” he said. “There will be many more. But the question is whether those boys, now old men, will want to tell their story.”
Mr Heithuis died in a car crash in 1958, two years after being castrated at the age of 20, while under the age of majority, which was then 21.
In 1956 he had accused Catholic clergy of sexually abusing him in his Church run care home.
At least 10 teenage boys or young men under the age of 21 were surgically castrated “to get rid of homosexuality” while in the care of the Dutch Roman Catholic Church in the 1950s.
Evidence of the castrations has emerged amid controversy that it was not included in the findings of an official investigation into sexual abuse within the church last year.
The NRC Handelsblad newspaper identified Henk Heithuis who was castrated in 1956, while a minor, after reporting priests to the police for abusing him in a Catholic boarding home.
Joep Dohmen, the investigative journalist who uncovered the Heithuis case, also found evidence of at least nine other castrations. “These cases are anonymous and can no longer be traced,” he said. “There will be many more. But the question is whether those boys, now old men, will want to tell their story.”
Mr Heithuis died in a car crash in 1958, two years after being castrated at the age of 20, while under the age of majority, which was then 21.
In 1956 he had accused Catholic clergy of sexually abusing him in his Church run care home.
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Call of Apathy: Violent Young Men and Our Place in War
The following account was written by an anonymous soldier with combat experience:
source:Mediumdifficulty
Disclaimer: I am not an academic. I have no education past the age of 16, so my writing may be rough. What I do have is an entire adulthood of military service, which I terminated recently when I decided I wanted more money for doing the same job.
I am a private military contractor, and I have an issue with the depiction of war in videogames — or more specifically, the soldiers in those games. When I say soldier, let me be clear that I am talking about the Infantryman and the Special Forces operator, as I have next to no knowledge about anything outside of this relatively small percentile of service personnel. Unfortunately, the vast majority of games featuring the military focus on these frontline combat troops in “realistic” action. And that’s where we get problems.
Imagine a war game where you could only move at a slow walking pace...This war game has a prone button like Call of Duty, but your character takes 2-3 seconds to change position. Every time you press it, the animation gets slower because your character becomes more and more tired. Every mission is set in the same level. They each take 12 hours to complete. Sometimes, absolutely nothing happens. Other times, your lead guy gets blown up and you spend the next hour or so casevac’ing [ed note: casualty evacuating] him while under fire.
Other missions involve you being under fire for the entire patrol. You never see the enemy, just fire at the long grass in front of you as you crawl slowly to some cover. If you get up, you will be cut down within seconds, so this process takes hours. When you reach the enemy compound, if the enemy haven’t run away, dropped their weapons, and are pretending to be farmers, or if you haven’t called in enough ordnance to flatten Mexico, you will kill them in the most horrible way imaginable. That is your incentive.
Only a violent sociopath would play this game.
We do it for real, time and time again, with no other motivation but pay, leave, and the chance to brutalise whomever we deem the “enemy”...In military videogames, you tend to get “good guy” characters that are the rough and ready types. The situation may be chaotic, but they crack on with the task in hand to the best of their ability, never let anyone down, and may or may not die in a dramatic fashion. Good, wholesome stuff.
Then there are the Tier 1 types: a more modern iteration that exists thanks to games like Modern Warfare and Medal of Honour. These stone-cold killers speak in clipped monotones, uttering the odd cool one-liner to show that although they are still human, they will never be anything but utterly professional. Both kinds of soldiers end up wrapped up in something bigger than themselves, their missions are always of utmost importance, and every action they take is ultimately justified...Good enough for entertainment, but should war be sterilised and glorified in this way? Here is the crux of my beef with the military videogame genre: None of the stereotypes exist.
...Let me give you an example. I was in Iraq in 2007. Over a 3-month period, we saw some of the bloodiest fighting since the invasion, losing more than ten men and killing hundreds of insurgents. A reporter for a very well-known men’s lifestyle magazine visited us to learn about our experiences. About halfway through his escort, an officer from the military media centre tells him that he is not allowed to speak to us anymore. He has to use stories taken from a non-combat unit earlier that day. It turned out that the officer was appalled at the jovial nature of our recollections; the story in which a vehicle commander sawed two men in half with a mounted machinegun because they were on their phones “dicking” us made him balk in particular....This is one of countless ways the military carefully shapes the public opinion of the troops. It’s a shameless PR exercise....There’s a reason the new guy always gets put on point and nobody really cares when he gets blown up, that so many incidents of collateral damage go unreported, that failed missions are spun into something positive like gathering “valuable intel,” and why only roughly 20% of combat troops ever get PTSD – when if you think about it, it should affect everyone that ever sees combat. It’s because the vast majority of us are straight up sociopaths.
Heroes are a myth. Every incident I can recall in war that created a hero was either an accident or ended up with said hero in a body bag....Here is a real scenario that should be put into a game: A friend of mine came under fire inside a compound. He followed up the shooter, who disappeared into an escape tunnel. My friend followed standard procedure and threw a grenade into the tunnel entrance before following up. When entering the tunnel, he found only the bodies of a woman and a small child, whom the terrorist had used to cover his escape.When I spoke about it to my friend years later, he recalled how pissed he was at losing the insurgent, and how bad he felt afterwards about it. He’d had his professional pride tarnished. I asked him if he ever thought about the woman and her kid and he just looked at me blankly. He didn’t even remember they were there.
This is a serious issue that needs to be addressed in videogames. How would you feel if you accidentally killed an innocent child in a game? If the words “MISSION FAILED” appeared, but then disappeared after a few seconds, leaving you to continue as normal with no repercussions. Any normal person would feel guilty, but that’s my point. Combat troops are not normal people....War is the most horrific, sickening thing mankind can inflict upon itself, fought by and large by uneducated maniacs that have no other place in the world. Videogames have the attention of the youth and can educate as well as entertain. The real horrors need to be made very public to keep the next generation from turning out like us...The world needs to be made aware of my kind: the silent majority of fighters, those that do not care about politics, religion, ethics, or anything else other than war for war’s sake...One last thought: My psychologist estimated that roughly 80% of infantrymen have an undiagnosed violent personality disorder. more:
source:Mediumdifficulty
Disclaimer: I am not an academic. I have no education past the age of 16, so my writing may be rough. What I do have is an entire adulthood of military service, which I terminated recently when I decided I wanted more money for doing the same job.
I am a private military contractor, and I have an issue with the depiction of war in videogames — or more specifically, the soldiers in those games. When I say soldier, let me be clear that I am talking about the Infantryman and the Special Forces operator, as I have next to no knowledge about anything outside of this relatively small percentile of service personnel. Unfortunately, the vast majority of games featuring the military focus on these frontline combat troops in “realistic” action. And that’s where we get problems.
Imagine a war game where you could only move at a slow walking pace...This war game has a prone button like Call of Duty, but your character takes 2-3 seconds to change position. Every time you press it, the animation gets slower because your character becomes more and more tired. Every mission is set in the same level. They each take 12 hours to complete. Sometimes, absolutely nothing happens. Other times, your lead guy gets blown up and you spend the next hour or so casevac’ing [ed note: casualty evacuating] him while under fire.
Other missions involve you being under fire for the entire patrol. You never see the enemy, just fire at the long grass in front of you as you crawl slowly to some cover. If you get up, you will be cut down within seconds, so this process takes hours. When you reach the enemy compound, if the enemy haven’t run away, dropped their weapons, and are pretending to be farmers, or if you haven’t called in enough ordnance to flatten Mexico, you will kill them in the most horrible way imaginable. That is your incentive.
Only a violent sociopath would play this game.
We do it for real, time and time again, with no other motivation but pay, leave, and the chance to brutalise whomever we deem the “enemy”...In military videogames, you tend to get “good guy” characters that are the rough and ready types. The situation may be chaotic, but they crack on with the task in hand to the best of their ability, never let anyone down, and may or may not die in a dramatic fashion. Good, wholesome stuff.
Then there are the Tier 1 types: a more modern iteration that exists thanks to games like Modern Warfare and Medal of Honour. These stone-cold killers speak in clipped monotones, uttering the odd cool one-liner to show that although they are still human, they will never be anything but utterly professional. Both kinds of soldiers end up wrapped up in something bigger than themselves, their missions are always of utmost importance, and every action they take is ultimately justified...Good enough for entertainment, but should war be sterilised and glorified in this way? Here is the crux of my beef with the military videogame genre: None of the stereotypes exist.
...Let me give you an example. I was in Iraq in 2007. Over a 3-month period, we saw some of the bloodiest fighting since the invasion, losing more than ten men and killing hundreds of insurgents. A reporter for a very well-known men’s lifestyle magazine visited us to learn about our experiences. About halfway through his escort, an officer from the military media centre tells him that he is not allowed to speak to us anymore. He has to use stories taken from a non-combat unit earlier that day. It turned out that the officer was appalled at the jovial nature of our recollections; the story in which a vehicle commander sawed two men in half with a mounted machinegun because they were on their phones “dicking” us made him balk in particular....This is one of countless ways the military carefully shapes the public opinion of the troops. It’s a shameless PR exercise....There’s a reason the new guy always gets put on point and nobody really cares when he gets blown up, that so many incidents of collateral damage go unreported, that failed missions are spun into something positive like gathering “valuable intel,” and why only roughly 20% of combat troops ever get PTSD – when if you think about it, it should affect everyone that ever sees combat. It’s because the vast majority of us are straight up sociopaths.
Heroes are a myth. Every incident I can recall in war that created a hero was either an accident or ended up with said hero in a body bag....Here is a real scenario that should be put into a game: A friend of mine came under fire inside a compound. He followed up the shooter, who disappeared into an escape tunnel. My friend followed standard procedure and threw a grenade into the tunnel entrance before following up. When entering the tunnel, he found only the bodies of a woman and a small child, whom the terrorist had used to cover his escape.When I spoke about it to my friend years later, he recalled how pissed he was at losing the insurgent, and how bad he felt afterwards about it. He’d had his professional pride tarnished. I asked him if he ever thought about the woman and her kid and he just looked at me blankly. He didn’t even remember they were there.
This is a serious issue that needs to be addressed in videogames. How would you feel if you accidentally killed an innocent child in a game? If the words “MISSION FAILED” appeared, but then disappeared after a few seconds, leaving you to continue as normal with no repercussions. Any normal person would feel guilty, but that’s my point. Combat troops are not normal people....War is the most horrific, sickening thing mankind can inflict upon itself, fought by and large by uneducated maniacs that have no other place in the world. Videogames have the attention of the youth and can educate as well as entertain. The real horrors need to be made very public to keep the next generation from turning out like us...The world needs to be made aware of my kind: the silent majority of fighters, those that do not care about politics, religion, ethics, or anything else other than war for war’s sake...One last thought: My psychologist estimated that roughly 80% of infantrymen have an undiagnosed violent personality disorder. more:
Friday, March 2, 2012
Human Medical Experimentation at Edgewood Arsenal
source: CNN via Cryptogon
The moment 18-year-old Army Pvt. Tim Josephs arrived at Edgewood Arsenal in 1968, he knew there was something different about the place.
“It just did not look like a military base, more like a hospital,” recalled Josephs, a Pittsburgh native. Josephs had volunteered for a two-month assignment at Edgewood, in Maryland, lured by three-day weekends closer to home.
“It was like a plum assignment,” Josephs said. “The idea was they would test new Army field jackets, clothing, weapons and things of that nature, but no mention of drugs or chemicals.”
But when he went to fill out paperwork the morning after his arrival, the base personnel were wearing white lab coats, and Josephs said he had second thoughts. An officer took him aside.
“He said, ‘You volunteered for this. You’re going to do it. If you don’t, you’re going to jail. You’re going to Vietnam either way — before or after,’” Josephs said recently.
From 1955 to 1975, military researchers at Edgewood were using not only animals but human subjects to test a witches’ brew of drugs and chemicals. They ranged from potentially lethal nerve gases like VX and sarin to incapacitating agents like BZ.
The military also tested tear gas, barbiturates, tranquilizers, narcotics and hallucinogens like LSD...Days before his Edgewood duty ended, in February 1968, Josephs was hospitalized for days with Parkinson's-like tremors, symptoms he said have followed him on and off throughout his adult life...In his mid-50s, Josephs was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, a progressive neurological condition that forced him to retire early. Medications cost $2,000 a month, which he was paying for out of pocket.
The moment 18-year-old Army Pvt. Tim Josephs arrived at Edgewood Arsenal in 1968, he knew there was something different about the place.
“It just did not look like a military base, more like a hospital,” recalled Josephs, a Pittsburgh native. Josephs had volunteered for a two-month assignment at Edgewood, in Maryland, lured by three-day weekends closer to home.
“It was like a plum assignment,” Josephs said. “The idea was they would test new Army field jackets, clothing, weapons and things of that nature, but no mention of drugs or chemicals.”
But when he went to fill out paperwork the morning after his arrival, the base personnel were wearing white lab coats, and Josephs said he had second thoughts. An officer took him aside.
“He said, ‘You volunteered for this. You’re going to do it. If you don’t, you’re going to jail. You’re going to Vietnam either way — before or after,’” Josephs said recently.
From 1955 to 1975, military researchers at Edgewood were using not only animals but human subjects to test a witches’ brew of drugs and chemicals. They ranged from potentially lethal nerve gases like VX and sarin to incapacitating agents like BZ.
The military also tested tear gas, barbiturates, tranquilizers, narcotics and hallucinogens like LSD...Days before his Edgewood duty ended, in February 1968, Josephs was hospitalized for days with Parkinson's-like tremors, symptoms he said have followed him on and off throughout his adult life...In his mid-50s, Josephs was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, a progressive neurological condition that forced him to retire early. Medications cost $2,000 a month, which he was paying for out of pocket.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)