Guantánamo Bay hunger strike prompts arrival of medical back-up

US military confirms presence of 40-strong team as 21 of 100 detainees refusing food are approved for force-feeding

Matt Williams in New York
guardian.co.uk, Monday 29 April 2013

[A US military guard carries shackles at the US detention center in Guantánamo Bay.

Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images]

 

A 40-strong medical back-up team has arrived at Guantánamo Bay, as the number of inmates taking part in a hunger strike continues to rise, the US military has confirmed. By Monday, 100 detainees were refusing food, with 21 having been approved for force-feeding.

Authorities said that the “influx” of medical reinforcements had been weeks in the planning. But the news will fuel speculation that the condition of hunger-striking prisoners at Guantánamo Bay is deteriorating. Shaker Aamer, the last British resident being kept at the centre, told his lawyer earlier this month that authorities will soon see fatalities as a result of the current action.

“I cannot give you numbers and names, but people are dying here,” said Aamer, who is refusing food.

The action is a protest against conditions at the centre, as well as the indefinite nature of the remaining prisoners’ confinement. Aamer has been cleared for release twice, but is still behind bars after 11 years. He has never been charged or faced trial but the US refuses to allow him to return to the UK, despite official protests by the British government.

Of the 166 detainees left at Guantánamo, almost two-thirds are on hunger-strike. Five of those approved by guards to be subjected to force-feeding are in hospital.

Thirteen Ways the US Government Tracks Us

Tuesday, April 10, 20

by Bill Quigley

The national security state grew exponentially following 9/11, and now includes nearly 4,000 organizations across the country, employing technologies, old and new. Americans have been enlisted to track each other. “The Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative stores the profiles of tens of thousands of Americans and legal residents who are not accused of any crime but who are alleged to have acted suspiciously.”

“There are 3,984 federal, state and local organizations working on domestic counterterrorism.”

Privacy is eroding fast as technology offers government increasing ways to track and spy on citizens. The Washington Post reported there are 3,984 federal, state and local organizations working on domestic counterterrorism. Most collect information on people in the US. Here are thirteen examples of how some of the biggest government agencies and programs track people.

One. The National Security Agency (NSA) collects hundreds of millions of emails, texts and phone calls every day and has the ability to collect and sift through billions more. WIRED just reported NSA is building an immense new data center which will intercept, analyze and store even more electronic communications from satellites and cables across the nation and the world. Though NSA is not supposed to focus on US citizens, it does.

Two. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) National Security Branch Analysis Center (NSAC) has more than 1.5 billion government and private sector records about US citizens collected from commercial databases, government information, and criminal probes.

SF Bayview Community Activist repeatedly arrested for protesting police abuse

DeBray Carpenter aka Fly Benzo, community activist and hip-hop artist, is again facing trumped-up charges for his outspoken opposition to the SFPD’s harassment, stalking, framing and brutality against the targeted Black community in the San Francisco’s Bayview District.  This time, he was assaulted by police for videotaping their military occupation tactics, and then they threw the book of trumped-up lies at him.  His next hearing will be in the San Francisco Hall of Injustice on Wednesday, November 16.

It’s Really Real TV: FLY Benzo – “War On Terror” // #BlackPOWER #DropTheCHARGES

FLY Benzo’s “War On Terror” Music Video… Filmed, Directed and Edited by Phil Jackson.. Black Power… United We Stand… Divided We Fall… STOP THE VIOLENCE.. START THE HEALIN’!!

Gaddafi And Western Hypocrisy

By Reza Pankhurst,  Countercurrents.org

21 October, 2011

David Cameron’s statement regarding the killing of Moammar al-Gaddafi  will go down as another piece of brash hypocrisy, which would be breathtaking if it was not so expected from the British premier. He mentioned that he was “proud of the role that Britain has played” in the uprising – intending of course the support given by NATO once it was clear that the Libyan people had risen up against the man en masse.

However he neglected to mention some of the other roles that Britain previously played with the Gaddafi regime which have undoubtedly had an effect on the events:

· Many of the weapons used by Libyan dictator’s regime were in fact purchased from Britain. According to the AP: “Britain sold Libya about $55 million worth of military and paramilitary equipment in the year ending Sept. 30, 2010, according to Foreign Office statistics. Among the items: sniper rifles, bulletproof vehicles, crowd control ammunition, and tear gas”

· The notorious Khamis brigade troops (Libya’s elite forces under the direct command of one of the Gaddafi son’s) contracted an £85 million command and control system from General Dynamics UK – one of the deals cut with the personal backing of the then British PM Tony Blair .

· Not only did the British arm the forces of the Gaddafi regime, they also trained them. The Khamis brigade troops were also trained by the SAS as well as being armed by British companies.

Cameron also stated that today was “a day to remember all of Colonel Gaddafi’s victims”. However, he neglected to mention those victims who were kidnapped and rendered to the Gaddafi regime by the British intelligence service such as Sami al Saadi who is now suing the British government for not only being complicit in his rendition and torture, but actually actively organizing it as highlighted by documents unearthed in Libya.

When the US was out-sourcing torture jobs to Qaddafi

“When Qaddafi Was Our Friend“

With Muammar Qaddafi’s ignominious disappearance to who knows where, fast on the heels of President Obama’s proclamation that “Qaddafi’s rule is over,” it is easy to think of the United States as the dictator’s stubborn, persistent, and ultimately triumphant foe.

One remembers Reagan’s efforts to confront Qaddafi decades ago: the 1986 missile strikes, the skirmishes in the Gulf of Sidra, the labeling of Libya’s leader as the “mad dog of the Middle East,” and of Libya as a rogue state.

But the line that one is tempted to draw between U.S./Libyan relations then and U.S./Libyan relations now isn’t straight.  While Qaddafi is now despised as an enemy, for much of the past decade he was treated as a friend.

The Politics Of Revenge And Submission

When some people "get what they deserve," what does victory look like?

By Phil Rockstroh

05 May, 2011

Countercurrents.org

Osama bin Laden is dead. And so is the U.S. republic. We had to destroy our freedoms in order to save them. What is left to save from the next rampaging dragon when the knights, sworn to kill the monster, destroy everything in their path in the pursuit of him? One killer is dead. Now what are we going to do with all the killers in our midst who killed him.

Since 9/11/2001, due to the lust for revenge of the people of the U.S., hundreds of thousands of innocent Islamic people are dead. These human beings were killed in our name. Be very careful when you proclaim: “I’m glad ‘we’ got bin Laden. He deserved it.” Be very grateful most of us don’t get what we deserve.

Two “Reigns of Terror” — on Osama bin Laden

[A few hours ago US President Obama announced the triumphant execution of Osama bin Laden, who began his career as a creature of the US opposing the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and who later became the iconic malevolent terrorist of 9/11 and the imperialist’s effective motivating anti-Christ invoked to stampede support for xenophobic and imperialist war moves over the last decade.  Imperialism will miss him; as a stock excuse for imperialist war against people who never had anything to do with al Qaeda or bin Laden, he has been of great use.  The US has waged its “War of Terror” on the people in the name of the “War on Terror.”  But revolutionary people will not miss him in the least.  The absence of his disorienting and murderous al Qaeda, and of the stock media deceptions to paint revolutionaries with a “terrorist” or “al Qaeda” brush, will clear the air for the struggle against imperialism.  Osama bin Laden did not distinguish between the people of the US and the US government, and he projected not a revolutionary class struggle or a revolutionary struggle against all oppression, but a flip-side of the imperialist’s “clash of civilizations.”  This is the key to recognizing his, and al Qaeda’s,  counter-revolutionary and murderous nature.  Too many revolutionaries have been silenced or distorted or shoved into the shadow of bin Laden by Goebbels-like media.  It is time for revolutionaries to speak out, and clearly.  In this

Prominent author, Mark Twain was a leader of the American Anti-Imperialist League

spirit we remember, and print below, a timely passage from Mark Twain on “two Reigns of Terror,” in which his words, directed at the French revolution, have resonance today in considering “Osama bin Laden’s terrorism” vs. “US imperialism’s terrorism.”   — Frontlines ed.]

from A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR’S COURT (published 1889)
by MARK TWAIN (Samuel L. Clemens)

“There were two ‘Reigns of Terror,’ if we would but remember it
and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other
in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had
lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand
persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are
all for the ‘horrors’ of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror,
so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe,
compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror–that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.”

page 54.