Camilla Ingman-Fulton 04 12 11 / Mediekritik

Vilken tur för den svenska regeringen att Anna Lindh blev mördad. Att
höra Laila Freivalds lögnaktigt säga att hon inte vet och inte kan svara
på nåt som hände före hennes tid, samtidigt som hon säger att hon inte
tänker ta reda på vad som hände heller, och så lämpar hon över ansvar på
olika tjänstemän dessutom, är väl bland det värsta man hört hittills.
Och från Stor-Patron låter det hälsas att det hör till UD:s bord.
Likadant från Tomas Bodström. Att de båda senare var direkt inblandade i
beslutet har tydligen inte med saken att göra. (Snart är det säkert
SÄPO:s fel alltihop, precis som det var CIA:s fel att USA:s regim var
"felunderrättade" om Irak.)Så det måste vara jäkligt bekvämt för alla
medansvariga att Lindh mördades, så slipper de svara på frågor eller
hemska tanke, acceptera ansvar för den största skandalen på många år.

Även om Ekot haft ganska mycket om det här idag, så är det mycket de
inte tar upp och kräver svar på. Hela dagen har det fokuserats på att
regeringen ljugit för FN-kommitteen. Innebär det att man inte har plats
för de absolut viktigaste frågorna i sändningarna, eller? Är inte den
största skandalen i skandalen att Sverige tog BESLUTET att skicka dem
till Egypten och att man SAMARBETADE med och lät en specialstyrka från
USA vars jobb är att åka runt omkring på planeten och plocka upp folk
för att leverera dem till länder där de kan torteras ifred? Är det inte
DET som är det fruktansvärda? Att regeringen deltar i USA:s globalt
upprättade tortyrsystem? Och kanske t om var först med att göra det. Och
att Sverige genom de så kallade garantierna från Egypten kanske kommer
att bli det land man i framtiden kan peka på och säga "det var så det
startade, det var genom det där dokumentet som man satte startpunkten
för "legaliseringen" av deportering till tortyr". Att regeringen ljugit
för FN är förstås något att ta upp och kräva svar på, men då borde man
åtminstone ifrågasätta de två förklaringar som getts, med kritiska
följdfrågor, för det begriper ju vem som helst, att det inte var för
varken de torterades skull eller för relationerna med Egypten som var
anledningen. Det var för bevarandet av Sveriges eget rykte och möjligen
relationen med USA som var anledningen. Ja, eller så är det bara så att
Sverige, precis som USA och många andra länder, anser att FN och dess
olika organ väger fjäderlätt när det gäller den egna utrikespolitiken.
Men då bör det enorma hyckleriet naturligtvis komma upp till ytan.

Floyd har som vanligt en förmåga att formulera sig som ingen annan. Det
är förstås en liten sammanfattning av hela denna policy satt på pränt
och praktiserad. Via länken går det att komma åt de artiklar han baserar
sitt ordflöde på.
camilla  

Home Cooking

By Chris Floyd
Published: December 10, 2004
http://context.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/12/10/120.html

When the devil comes knocking on your front door, looking for a way to
spread his evil inside, he won't be sporting horns and a tail. He's
going to come dressed as your sweetest dream, clean as a whistle, pious,
sincere. He's going to speak your lingo, ape your ways -- and when he
opens up his little box of poison, it's going to look like the heaven
your mama sang about when she rocked you to sleep in your cradle.

Then one day, when the mind-fog lifts, you see him sitting at the head
of the table, the walls of the room smeared with filth, dead bodies
swelling on the blood-mucked floor, the still-living victims hog-tied
and naked, screaming for mercy as the whipcords strike. He beckons you
forward with a welcoming smile. You pause for a moment. It seems so
strange: All this horror -- it would have once made you sick, but now it
just feels like ... home. You shrug, you grin, you take your place
beside him at the feast.

In just this way, while Americans were finishing their Thanksgiving
dinners and preparing to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, a series
of stories exposed -- once again -- the torture chamber at the heart of
their feast: a government gone insane, embracing terror, atrocity and
tyranny. Yet there was no public outcry against these desecrations. Few
even noticed; fewer still cared.

Last week, the minions of George W. Bush announced, in open court, that
he has the power to seize anyone on earth -- even "little old ladies in
Switzerland" -- and imprison them forever if he so chooses, The New York
Times reports. The minions said that anyone Bush declared "an enemy
combatant" -- even if they never took up arms against America, even if
they didn't know their actions were related to terrorism in any way --
could be abducted from any nation, friend or foe, or in the Homeland
itself, and held indefinitely, "at the president's discretion," stripped
of all rights under the U.S. Constitution or the Geneva Conventions.

Assistant Attorney General Brian Boyle said Bush's captives were
entitled only to a single hearing, alone before a military tribunal,
without legal counsel or access to the evidence against them -- evidence
which Boyle cheerfully admitted could be obtained by torture in foreign
countries, The Associated Press reports. Overturning centuries of
Anglo-American jurisprudence, Boyle said there were no restrictions
whatsoever on using torture evidence, as long as the president or his
military agents arbitrarily decide it is "credible."

Days earlier, The Sunday Times tracked down the "private" planes of CIA
front companies that Bush uses to carry victims of his lawless
abductions to torture chambers in Jordan, Egypt, Libya and Uzbekistan,
where "credible" evidence can be obtained with fists, cattle prods,
rape, drugs and starvation. For example, witnesses told of hooded
American agents grabbing captives in Sweden, stripping them, jamming
drugs up their rectums, putting them in diapers and chains, and bundling
them off to Egypt's hellhole prisons -- whose tortures have already
produced generations of violent extremists.

But outsourcing is only one aspect of Bush's Torture, Incorporated; he
has plenty of domestic production as well. Last week, the Pentagon
released a report -- completed long before the election -- confessing
that the "aberrations" of Abu Ghraib were in fact part of a broad system
of state terror spread throughout Iraq, the Washington Post reports.
Elite squads of "Special Operations" officers and CIA agents beat and
abused prisoners across the country, the Pentagon said, while regular
troops committed "technically illegal acts" by rounding up thousands of
innocent people at random and holding them for months in crowded
prisons, where they were often turned over to those same "elite" squads
for "special handling." Some of this blood-soaked "intelligence" was
"sent directly to the White House," interrogators noted. The report also
admitted that American forces had taken innocent people hostage --
especially "female family members" -- in an effort to pressure wanted
men to surrender: a clear war crime, as if such things mattered anymore.

Meanwhile, the International Red Cross revealed that Bush has even
perverted the healing professions at his concentration camp in
Guantanamo Bay, using doctors and nurses to help "set the conditions for
interrogation" by withholding medical treatment and using their
diagnostic skills to determine captives' "vulnerabilities" to various
physical and psychological torments -- "a flagrant violation of medical
ethics," said the Red Cross. Its investigators also found that the
Guantanamo regime -- "an intentional system of cruel, unusual and
degrading treatment, and a form of torture" -- was growing worse over
time, Salon.com reports.

In such a moral sink, it was hardly even news that more photos of
prisoner abuse -- taken months before the Abu Ghraib atrocities -- were
uncovered last weekend, Reuters reports. This time it was "elite" teams
of Navy SEALs mugging for the cameras with bloodied captives -- some
with guns to their heads. Nor did anyone blink when Bush military brass
announced plans last week to create forced labor camps for all male
citizens in "liberated" Fallujah, the Boston Globe reports.

This Satan's Rout of blood and abandon comes directly from the White
House, where Bush's legal counsel, Al Gonzales, engineered memos
"justifying" torture and exalting unrestricted presidential power,
beyond the reach of any law, foreign or domestic. As a reward for this
violent outrage of American honor, Gonzales -- sweet-talking, pious and
sincere, just like his boss -- will soon become the chief law officer of
the land.

And the American people, what do they do about all the horror being
wrought in their name? They shrug. They grin. They sit down to the
feast.

http://context.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/12/03/120.html

http://context.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/11/26/120.html