By Joe Quinn (about the author)
Despite all the talk over the past 15 years or so about the US and coalition forces being engaged in various 'wars', there haven't actually been any. To have a war you need two sizable armies representing two opposing nation states both with the capability to wage war on each other. I'd be impressed if anyone can point to the US or any Western nation being involved in such a conflict over the past 15 years, anywhere in the world.
During those last 15 years however, a very different type of war has been waged. It has been a much more subtle, stealthy and insidious war, and the mind of every Western citizen with two active neurons to rub together has been the target.
Do you know who Dr. Aafia Siddiqui is? She's a American-educated Pakistani cognitive neuroscientist and mother of three children, but she hasn't seen her children for seven years. Aafia and her children were abducted in Pakistan in 2003 by US and Pakistani intelligence agents and incarcerated on trumped up 'terrorism' charges.
During her long 'rendition' she was held in various locations, including the infamous US Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan, where she was regularly tortured, raped and ultimately shot and wounded.
In September this year she was brought to the US for trial and sentenced to 86 years in one of the most brutal institutions in the USA, the Federal Medical Facility in Carswell, Texas. British journalist Yvonne Ridley, who has been campaigning on Aaifia's behalf explains what life is like in Carswell:
In the last 10 years...
Countless young women - more than 100 - have died under "questionable circumstances" with families unable to obtain autopsy reports
Numerous cases of sex abuse, including sodomy and rape, were carried out by prison chaplain Vincent Bassie Inametti whose reign of terror lasted eight years until he was finally convicted in 2008
Rampant sex abuse of prisoners was reported by prison doctor Roger Guthrie who was fired for whistle-blowing
Prison doctor was convicted of sexually abusing inmates while another doctor was allowed to leave without charges after being caught sexually abusing a woman patient
Gross medical negligence has been reported including lack of care for several cancer patients - one went untreated for a year and died
Serial sexual predator and prison guard Michael Miller was convicted of raping a detainee
Forced psychotropic medication on reluctant detainees
Infestation of ants went unchecked even when one patient in a coma was covered by the biting creatures as was the corpse of another.
To quote one local newspaper, The Fort Worth Weekly, time served in Carswell "can be a death sentence for women prisoners".
In a different report about Carswell earlier this year the same newspaper said: "It has a troubling history of medical misconduct and sexual abuse of prisoners. Inametti is the eighth man to be convicted of or fired for sexual abuse, including rape, of female prisoners at the facility since 1997. But women there say that sexual abuse is much more rampant than that; the eight cases only became known when women overcame their fears of retribution and reported their attackers."
And renowned lawyer Elizabeth Fink said in a statement: "One of my clients was transferred to Carswell to receive chemotherapy. She did not receive it for one full year after the therapy was prescribed. She died of classic Kaposi's Sarcoma, a cancer with a low mortality rate - when treated."
There is a string of court cases outstanding against the institution from those who have survived the Carswell experience and there are families of those who died in custody who are still fighting for justice, demanding to know the truth.
The catalogue of crimes against the female detainees reads like something from a third world country and such an institution would have certainly been closed down by now or overhauled if it existed in Europe.
So what's the point? The point is this.
Today the purported 'al-Qaeda number 2' Ayman al-Zawahri, aka the Mr Magoo of the decidedly cartoonish world of Islamic terrorism "vowed revenge" for the imprisonment of Aaifa. You see, it wasn't enough for the Pentagon, the CIA and assorted military intelligence groups to brutalize Aaiifa for seven years, in the same way they have destroyed the lives of so many other innocents who have been served as grist for the phony terror mill. It wasn't enough for them to then throw her into a hellhole for the rest of her natural life on trumped up charges. In true pathological style, once they nail the coffin shut they can't help but try to defile the gravestone too. So they publish a phony message from 'al-Qaeda' on some 'Islamic web site' in support of Aafia and in that way ensure that the world believes all the lies they have told about her.
That's the level of deceit and subtle (or not-so-subtle, depending on how informed you are) propaganda that we are subjected to.
Meanwhile, there is the ongoing case of Iranian woman Sakineh Ashtiani, who, I am sure, many more people are aware of, chiefly due to the massive media coverage her case has been receiving over the last 6 months. Indeed, since June of this year the public has been treated to repeated alarmist claims that Sakineh was to be imminently 'stoned to death' on charges of adultery and, according to the Iranians' murder. There are groups in several different Western nations dedicated to saving her from this terrible fate, despite the fact that stoning was dropped from the Iranian penal code long ago.
I am in no way making light of Sakineh's predicament, whatever the exact nature of it may be, but that is the point, we have no way of knowing for sure. What we do know for sure is that the demonization of Iran has been a major priority for the American and Israeli governments for several years now, and the negative propaganda comes in many shapes and sizes. From bogus
Iranian 'defector' scientists, to
out-right lies to
re-arranging international boundaries , there are no lengths to which these psychopathic leaders will not go to pull the normal people of world into their deviant destructive game. To our leaders, it's all about 'winning hearts and minds' and while bogus stories of deadly Iranian nukes can paralyze our critical thinking abilities, repetitive harrowing speculative reports about an Iranian woman about to stoned target our hearts.
All I would ask is that you think before you allow yourself to be caught up in the drama. The mainstream media that repeats the stories about Sakineh has proven that they have no interest in real justice or freedom. If they did, they would have dedicated as much time to printing the truth about the despicable ill-treatment and injustice meted out to Aafia by the US government as they have to loudly decrying the potential 'stoning' of Sakineh and the 'evils of the Iranian regime'. But the Truth concerns neither our governments nor the mainstream media that serves them. We are expected to subconsciously read between the lines and allow a story about the alleged injustice against a single Iranian woman to co-opt us into the 'bomb Iran' camp and overwrite the untold stories of the hundreds of thousands of Muslim, Arab and Iraqi men, women and children that have been murdered and maimed by the forces of freedom and democracy over the past 15 years.
Whether we like it or not, our ability to think for ourselves and retain our integrity and sense of right and wrong is the prize in this very real and subtle war where winner takes all. At this late stage, we are faced with a stark choice; either we start paying attention to the world around us and the way in which the global elite operate, or we give up now and resign ourselves to the loser's place on the dung heap of history and the inevitable destruction of everything we hold dear.
www.sott.net
Joe Quinn is an author, editor and researcher and has been a contributing editor for Sott.net since 2002. He holds a an MA in international Business Studies and a first degree in Spanish Literature and Information Management and has a professional (
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