Who are the Real Terrorists?
... Europe and the US are the major manufacturers and exporters of torture
equipment. The US particularly enjoys a brisk trade in torture technology.
A chilling report for the European Parliament titled "An Appraisal of
Technologies of Political Control" (1998), lists the police torture exports
licensed by the US Commerce Department 1991-1993. Interestingly enough (and
I'm not surpirsed) Yugoslavia was one of the very few countries of the world
that did not appear as a customer on the list of 110 countries.(but I bet
almost all the UN nations did)
Every tin-pot dictatorship in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and
Europe was on the list, along with most of the more 'respectable' nations,
including Australia. So much for humanitarian principles. US companies
freely advertise thumbcuffs, thumbscrews, leg irons and shackles, whips,
electroshock devices, suspension equipment, immobilisation guns, shock
batons and even 'specially designed implements of torture'. And as noted,
they don't care where they go.
Business is business.
But that's old fashioned stuff. Research in torture technology and crowd
control is booming in US nuclear laboratories such as Oak Ridge, Lawrence
Livermore and Los Alamos. Thanks to their research, the world's police
forces already have available for 'crowd control' such devices as:
ultra-sound generators which cause disorientation, vomiting, involuntary
defecation, and disturbance of the ear thus causing loss of balance.
Apparently the system which uses two speakers can target individuals in a
crowd. Handy to nab the ring-leaders.
And that's just for starters. Among the exciting new toys for the world's
police are:-
human capture nets which can be laced with chemical irritants, or even
electrified to pack an extra punch. foam-spreading gun with the fun name of
"lick 'em and stick 'em technology" which glues people's hands and feet to
the footpath.
foams with pepper spray;
blinding laser weapons;
microwave and acoustic disabling systems.
R & D in the US and Europe is directed towards developing more efficient
'mark-free' interrogation and torture techniques and technologies. These
'technologies' have been developed for crowd control, but Amnesty
International is not alone in claiming they are being used for torture. In
any case, nothing better illustrates the tyrannical nature of most
governments than the fact they plan to use such crowd control systems on
their own citizens.
And they do. Under the guise of prison discipline, the US tortures its own
citizens according to the previously mentioned report which documented the
use of the Remote Electronically Activated Control Technology (REACT)
stunbelt on US prisoners. The belt can be activated from 300 feet away and
inflicts a 50,000 volt shock for 8 seconds. The high-pulsed current enters
the prisoner's left kidney and travels along the blood channels and nerve
pathways.
As targeted prisoners lose control of bladder and bowel functions, the
makers proudly promote the belt for its "total psychological supremacy" of
prisoners. Indeed. The prospect of being made to involuntarily defecate and
urinate in public is not something most people would risk....
As of 1996, sixteen US state correctional agencies had obtained these
appalling and degrading devices. Stun Tech of Cleveland Ohio wants the belts
introduced into the chain gangs of Alabama, Florida and Louisiana. Yes,
Virginia, the 'humanitarian' US has re-introduced chain gangs too. There's
not much in the mainstream media about that either.
Because of its massive incarceration rate, the US increasingly 'warehouses'
its prisoners in huge complexes. With the privatisation of prisons, cost
constraints are paramount and simple control has increasingly replaced any
idea of rehabilitation. Judge Thelton E. Henderson reported that prison
officers at the huge Pelican Bay prison in California - with a population of
3,000 inmates - routinely assaulted prisoners in their cells with batons
and high voltage taser guns. As well, they chained them in 'fetal
restraints' - wrists bound to ankles - for 22 hours a day. This happened as
recently as 1995. This brutality was even encouraged by the prison
management as effective in maintaining discipline.
US prisons also use drugs for immobilising inmates - and for testing. In the
trade this is called 'liquid cosh'. The drugs range from tranquillisers and
anti-depressants to powerful hypnotics and drugs which produce fear and pain
which are used in 'aversion therapy' to induce behaviour modification. The
report noted that US prisons are the "new laboratories for developing the
next generation of drugs for social reprogramming". The pharmacology labs
of the universities and the military produce "scores of new psychoactive
drugs each year".
The EU parliament has expressed concerns that with the increasing
privatisation of prisons in Britain and Europe, such alien 'management'
techniques will replace the Europeans' more benign approach. They fear that
big US consortiums will take over the running of prisons worldwide, and that
subsequently there will be very little government scrutiny of their
operations...
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