BREAKING NEWS
February 5, 2007
Bush, Blair in Dock at "House of Horrors" Summit
KUALA LUMPUR - About 2,000 peace activists applauded on Monday as the leaders of the United States and Britain were branded "fascist war criminals" at a conference featuring gruesome exhibits of their alleged crimes.
Outspoken former Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamad, who hosted the conference in Kuala Lumpur, won a standing ovation after opening it with a call for George W. Bush and Tony Blair to be tried by an unofficial tribunal for war crimes in Iraq.
Mahathir, a controversial figure whose own government was accused of human rights abuses bordering on torture, has been leading a campaign to highlight what he calls the human-rights abuses and hypocrisy of U.S.-led forces fighting for democracy in the Middle East. That campaign reached new heights of graphic intensity on Monday, with an exhibit of alleged war crimes by U.S. forces and their allies over the decades, from Hiroshima to Iraq.
As Mahathir spoke in the main conference room, packed with students and legions of his supporters, tape-recorded screams of tortured men and orphaned babies echoed around the War Crimes Exhibition, a house of horrors on the floor below. Visitors to the exhibition start by walking through a mock spray of white phosphorus, a chemical agent that burns flesh, before entering a torture chamber labeled "Torture methods used here were used on prisoners of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib."
Here, figures of naked men were gagged and strapped upside down to a metal-framed bed. Another was strapped to a chair, his legs and arms bristling with nails driven into his flesh, while another was bombarded with loud, incessant disco music. "Who would have imagined the cheerful music of Boney M. could be used as an instrument of pain and torture?" a label said.
Reuters |
April 2007 |
S |
M |
T |
W |
T |
F |
S |
1
|
2
|
3
|
4
|
5
|
6
|
7
|
8
|
9
|
10
|
11
|
12
|
13
|
14
|
15
|
16
|
17
|
18
|
19
|
20
|
21
|
22
|
23
|
24
|
25
|
26
|
27
|
28
|
29
|
30
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
« Previous |
Main Page
| Next »
|
Torture Plays to the Crowd and Against the U.S.
By: Pete Kendall, February 5, 2007 |
The U.S. will make a convenient scapegoat, and the man who said it first, loudest and most angrily will be remembered and rewarded.
Prechter’s Perspective |
Here’s another prime example of the mushrooming anti-Americanism that Elliott Wave International suggested as a likely result of an oncoming bear market. The welling anger with the United States is very pronounced now. As we reported here on December 13, one of the most dramatic ways to make a big splash on the international stage is make accusations against Uncle Sam. Mahathir Mohamad is just the latest in lengthing line of aspiring politicians to do so.
Torture is another thread that keeps asserting itself just as The Elliott Wave Theorist suggested it would back in the 1990s. As the October 2004 issue of The Theorist later explained it was the appearance of the book American Psycho in 1991 (and to a lesser extent the film Misery in 1990) that was the first tip off. Robert Prechter explains that traits established in the fourth wave correction of a bull market frequently foreshadow cultural changes that will become dominant in the ensuing bear market. The torment presented in Psycho “during Primary wave 4 signaled that a major theme of the next bear market would be torture. (In September 2000, as the bear market began, a mild movie version of American Psycho was released.) I said that this theme would show up in the movies, which it has.” Prechter adds, however, that “as specific as this expectation was, I was unprepared for many nuances” like Abu Ghraib and latest art show at UC Berkeley. The tortured figures of Francis Botero (shown above) just opened in the university’s art museum. Says the artist, “``All my life, I did subjects that were rather pleasant. But from the moment I started the first sketch, I felt rage.” “The monumental, often larger than life pieces show anonymous prisoners bound, beaten, forced into sexual postures, arranged in pyramids of bodies, threatened with snarling dogs. Botero said one of the functions of art is to keep dialogue alive -- to provoke thought after debate has died in living rooms and on television sets.” Or in this case, to revive those images in bigger than life form in connection with the re-emergence of a social change that is even more powerful than the initial downturn that created them.
|
Post a comment
|
|
|
|
RECENT ARTICLES |
|
April 16, 2007 Does Imus Cancellation Radio a Bear Market Signal? read more |
April 12, 2007 One Small Coffee Shop Uprising for Starbucks, a Grande Leap for Labor read more |
April 11, 2007 Dazzling Finish: Cars Bring Once-Boring Shades To Life read more |
April 10, 2007 T in T-Line Stands for Top read more |
April 5, 2007 The Fight for a Free Vermont? Must be a Big, Big Turn read more |
|
|
ARTICLE COMMENTS |
|
|
|
|