We stood and watched............

I've noted before some of the loathsome practices used against detainees in Guantanamo and elsewhere...more come to light almost daily.the man who was hung from the ceiling and beaten by all who passed.. bobbing a man's head in a bucket of excrement.... shackling prisoners' wrists to their ankles for days on end ...so called "temperature control and dietary modification" ie keeping them in sweltering hot conditions then switching to body numbing freezing cells...starving them...feeding weevil infested food......it's evil...no other word will do.... evil.
We quibble...well Rumsfeld does...can this be torture..? No electrodes...no scalpels...but a relentless use of pain and suffering to make people do what their tormentors want of them. And relentless means just that...years and years for the folks in Guantanamo........ their minds are steadily being destroyed in the name of freedom and democracy.......
Read the stuff about how visiting Senators happily watched interrogations which were using approved practices...like reading Harry Potter to an Afghan muslim prisoner for two hours non stop until he turned his head and screamed for peace........sounds stupid...sounds like Monty f*cking Python... but imagine it...imagine some oaf reading you the Koran or whatever in Arabic hour after hour right in your face...and you've been there years and years....It is brainwashing ...the attempt to completely turn your mind....scramble your brain....now say it isn't torture. How we loved it when the Chinese did it in Korea.
Try to imagine ....what if the Arab world were actually stronger militarily than the west..... suppose the Arabs invaded Canada...or Australia to bring about regime change..........suppose our white Christian brothers and sisters were being tortured on some island hell-hole off the coast of Iran or Saudi Arabia.....maybe in order to maintain law and order it might be necessary to bomb a city or two...blow up a hospital ..kill babies...maim old folks...all accidentally of course.... suppose the Arab leaders claimed it was all a bit sad but necessary...that the torturers were a few rotten apples...that things happen in war... and suppose you realised that in reality they didn't give a f*cking s**it for the inferior white trash they were torturing...... that they felt they had the right to do what the hell they liked and walk over anyone who got in the way....... I guess you'd feel bad..I guess you'd feel impotent......... I guess you just might even think about fighting back.....you couldn't defeat them and save your brothers and sisters in open battle... they had all the guns.... so maybe just maybe...some of you...maybe only a few..but some...would consider making explosives and maybe strapping them onto yourself and going looking for a chance to strike back......... another unspeakable evil...but a big suprise..? I think not.

Lady Agatha Maberley

I would just like to say that I am not the prankster from Fakenham who is writing to the Sydney Morning Herald under the above assumed name..........although wish I had thought of it first...

They have eyes and see not....

I'm just back from visiting a friend in hospital. I managed to smuggle out the February 1st issue of Woman's Weekly. Like most men, I just love women's magazines. If a magazine looks really ancient and unloved...I've been known to surreptitiously rip out a recipe or two or the web address of a sufferers association or support group....usually the ones that the resident agony aunt recommends disappointed women to accidentally leave where their embarrassed husbands might find them. However, on this occasion it was something much sadder and more shocking.
I stumbled across an interview with Sue Townsend, author of Adrian Mole and other best sellers.
It came as a complete suprise to learn that, due to complications related to diabetes, she was gradually going blind. The piece was uplifting in many ways. She told of her love for her husband, his role in her success and how she now dictated her work to him.....but this is a woman who has worked with the most difficult, so-called, hard-to-help people in Britain.
She said:

I am still very aware of the injustice in the world and I don't believe in God. I have worked with a lot of very tough people-I've worked in prisons and with maladjusted boys, small children, offenders, you name it--and I've never met one person who was irredeemable, who was not "worth saving" . I have never come across any unkindness in any of those situations. People are good, on the whole. That's what I do believe, very much.

Her new book is called Adrian Mole and The Weapons of Mass Destruction....should be well worth a look...