CINA

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Fortress Europe Six Africans were killed by the attempt to storm the border of the Spanish town of Ceuta in the North African state of Morocco. There and in the near city of Melilla Spain has military bases. In the early Thursday, CET, between 500 and 600 people from different African countries were trying to get in the Spanish areas. Because these are Spanish territories, so this territories are parts of the European Union. According to the Radio network Cadena SER six Africans were killed. Three of them my Spanish military and the others by deathly accidents, so the German daily Berliner Zeitung on Sept. 29. Especially in Morocco thousands of potential African migrants are waiting to get a possibility to get in the European Union. But because of the restrictive migrant policy, especially of the German government, it is getting from year to year more harder and very often deathly for the poor, especial from Africa, to get in the Fortress Europe. German Afghanistan occupation activity increased On Wednesday, Sept. 28, the German parliament decided to extent the occupation activity of the German army, the Bundeswehr. Among them is also the secret KSK, command special forces, active in Afghanistan. The new elected PMs of the Left party protested against the plan outside of the parliament building, the Reichstag in Berlin. But only 17 of the 54 new elected PMs participated on the protest. Of course Lafontaine and Gysi, the new leaders of the parliament fraktion of the Left party were absent too...

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About one result of the election the Germans and the world should be concerned...

The fascist National Democratic, harrharr..., Party of Germany, NPD, was in the East of Germany able to stabilize the number of their permanent voters. For example in the Southeast federal state of Saxonia, Sachsen, they got all together around 5 percent of the votes, in some regions more than 10 percent. Last year in the state, province, parliament there it was nearly the same. But even in Berlin, in several voting districts in the Eastern part, behind the Left party, Linke, Social Democrats, SPD, and the Christian, once again I have nothing to do with them, Democratic party, CDU, they were elected as the 4th strongest party. And in at least two districts in East Berlin, in Marzahn.Hellersdorf and Treptow.Koepenick behind SPD and Linke they got the 3rd place. Fascists like NPD and the with them connected so-called Free Brotherhoods, Freie Kameradschaften, want to reconstruct a national-socialist society, dictatorship. They want to drive out all migrants from German soil... Fascists like them are responsible for at least 134 murdered migrants, foreigners, disabled, homeless or just people were wearing punk or just alternative fashion since the fall of the Berlin Wall, 15 years ago. The only consequence should be after this result: Rebuilding the wall, at least 5 meters high, and putting billions of tons of concrete in!! And this would create at least thousands of work places in the West, at least for some years!!

Opportunism persists opportunism

One very famous so-called left group, actually the most of the activists dislike them, LINKSRUCK, engl. Left yank, was calling the entire time before the election for voting boycott, even many of their members, especially in West Germany, are members in the Left party. But just three days before the election they begun a campaign to call to vote for the Left party. In the 90s the groups who founded later LINKSRUCK did the same. At first they called for boycott of the election and in the last minutes before the elections they called for voting for the Social Democrats. Later we made a research and we found out that they got money from the SPD. LINKSRUCK is, or must be a sister organization of a well-known Trotskyist organisation here, aeh... I mean at home... Still I am in exile...! They are organized in the same intl. org. and they have the same theoretical background. Even the pickets are looking the same... And the behavior, such as bringing dozens or hundreds of pickets to demonstrations and giving them to other people who have nothing to do with them, is the same. Guess which org. at home I mean... Yo, just a strange world it is! PS: When I said, some days ago, voting boycott I dont mean just staying away. At least here in Germany it is possible to make a so-called active boycott. It means that you go to vote, but you are voting null, invalid. You can just cross the ballot paper, or write on it whatever you think about this b.. sh.., or you just tear it and put it in the ballot box. And so it becomes an invalid vote and no party can use it anymore. Thats it!

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A GREAT ENTERTAINMENT...

...but just for the audience on the TV in the election night, and of course... WITHOUT ANY POSITIVE RESULTS FOR THE EXPLOITED AND OPPRESSED! All political partys, no matter if the lost or won the parliamentarian, general elections yesterday, are saying now IT IS A VOTE FOR US! Mrs. Merkel, the chancellor candidate of the Christian Democratic Union, CDU, in the early evening after the polling, and not really happy: What is important now is to form a stable government, and we... quite clearly have the mandate to do that. At that time the CDU got 35.3 per cent. A short while later the present chancellor G. Schroeder from the Social Democrat party, SPD: I feel myself vindicated. I have a mandate to ensure that in the next 4 years there will be a stable government... under my leadership. At that time the SPD got 34.2 per cent. Later in the following TV discussion between the party chiefs of the SPD, the Greens and the Left party on the one side, and the CDU, the Christian, I have nothing to do with them, please believe me!!!, Social Union and the Free Democratic Party on the other side, Schroeder, SPD, became complete crazy. He said: I am the chancellor and I will be the next chancellor and I will form the next government, of course under my leadership. Perhaps he took before LSD, Cocaine or speed, no one knows... And Mrs Merkel, the CDU candidate was behaving like a beaten dog, even her party was at that time the winner... The Left party got 8.6 per cent. But what is now the meaning of this result... First of all the most of the so-called ordinary people were not able to choose between pestilence and cholera! Ha, what a surprise...! CDU will increase the social, aeh... anti-social, looting and the SPD already started it at least on the end of last year. And what is with the Left party... A left German daily, Junge Welt, wrote last Saturday: After 50 years there is the possibility that a left party comes in the parliament based on a strong non-parliamentarian movement. But they are cheating themselves, because there is no such a movement. Except you call the every Monday demonstrations against social cuts with about 150 people a movement... So finally on the end in some weeks or months SPD and CDU will form a so-called Grand Coalition, GC. But this kind of coalition is even not in the interest of the capitalist class. The president of the Federal Union of the German Industry: From the point of view of the German industry and economy I have to say we are bitter disappointed. Another so-called leading German capitalist: Now we just need a government what will start reforms ... and please not a GC! The majority of the capitalist class: A GC means stagnation for Germany. But what we need is a tax reform, reform of the social systems... and a flexible labor market! You can call it IRREGULAR WORK! But of course a GC, if it comes to the reality, will do it best. Lower taxes for the capitalists, more cuts in the social systems and more irregular jobs... this the CDU will do. And the SPD will keep calm the workers, the exploited and the people, no one needs anymore... But even this there will be not really capitalist development anymore, not really. And so the political, economic and social system will die slowly and painful, especially for the ordinary, the poor people, without any alternative for our future... ...IF WE ARE NOT ABLE TO DREATE A SELF-ORGANIZED, REALLY PROGRESSIVE; NEW ALTERNATIVE TO THIS SYSTEM OF EXLPOITATION AND OPPRESSION. It will be continued....

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Parts of the following story were published today in a German daily. The English version I found here: http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003458.html Hurricane Katrina-Our Experiences Larry Bradshaw, Lorrie Beth Slonsky Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the Walgreen's store at the corner of Royal and Iberville streets remained locked. The dairy display case was clearly visible through the widows. It was now 48 hours without electricity, running water, plumbing. The milk, yogurt, and cheeses were beginning to spoil in the 90-degree heat. The owners and managers had locked up the food, water, pampers, and prescriptions and fled the City. Outside Walgreen's windows, residents and tourists grew increasingly thirsty and hungry. The much-promised federal, state and local aid never materialized and the windows at Walgreen's gave way to the looters. There was an alternative. The cops could have broken one small window and distributed the nuts, fruit juices, and bottle water in an organized and systematic manner. But they did not. Instead they spent hours playing cat and mouse, temporarily chasing away the looters. We were finally airlifted out of New Orleans two days ago and arrived home yesterday (Saturday). We have yet to see any of the TV coverage or look at a newspaper. We are willing to guess that there were no video images or front-page pictures of European or affluent white tourists looting the Walgreen's in the French Quarter. We also suspect the media will have been inundated with "hero" images of the National Guard, the troops and the police struggling to help the "victims" of the Hurricane. What you will not see, but what we witnessed,were the real heroes and sheroes of the hurricane relief effort: the working class of New Orleans. The maintenance workers who used a fork lift to carry the sick and disabled. The engineers, who rigged, nurtured and kept the generators running. The electricians who improvised thick extension cords stretching over blocks to share the little electricity wehad in order to free cars stuck on rooftop parking lots. Nurses who took over for mechanical ventilators and spent many hours on end manually forcing air into the lungs of unconscious patients to keep them alive. Doormen who rescued folks stuck in elevators. Refinery workers who broke into boat yards, "stealing" boats to rescue their neighbors clinging to their roofs in flood waters. Mechanics who helped hot-wire any car that could be found to ferry people out of the City. And the food service workers who scoured the commercial kitchens improvising communal meals for hundreds of those stranded. Most of these workers had lost their homes, and had not heard from members of their families, yet they stayed and provided the only infrastructure for the 20% of New Orleans that was not under water. On Day 2, there were approximately 500 of us left in the hotels in the French Quarter. We were a mix of foreign tourists, conference attendees like ourselves, and locals who had checked into hotels for safety and shelter from Katrina. Some of us had cell phone contact with family and friends outside of New Orleans. We were repeatedly told that all sorts of resources including the National Guard and scores of buses were pouring in to the City. The buses and the other resources must have been invisible because none of us had seen them. We decided we had to save ourselves. So we pooled our money and came up with $25,000 to have ten buses come and take us out of the City. Those who did not have the requisite $45.00 for a ticket were subsidized by those who did have extra money. We waited for 48 hours for the buses, spending the last 12 hours standing outside, sharing the limited water, food, and clothes we had. We created a priority boarding area for the sick, elderly and new born babies. We waited late into the night for the "imminent" arrival of the buses. The buses never arrived. We later learned that the minute the arrived to the City limits, they were commandeered by the military. By day 4 our hotels had run out of fuel and water. Sanitation was dangerously abysmal. As the desperation and despair increased, street crime as well as water levels began to rise. The hotels turned us out and locked their doors, telling us that the "officials" told us to report to the convention center to wait for more buses. As we entered the center of the City, we finally encountered the National Guard. The Guards told us we would not be allowed into the Superdome as the City's primary shelter had descended into a humanitarian and health hellhole. The guards further told us that the City's only other shelter, the Convention Center, was also descending into chaos and squalor and that the police were not allowing anyone else in. Quite naturally, we asked, "If we can't go to the only 2 shelters in the City, what was our alternative?" The guards told us that that was our problem, and no they did not have extra water to give to us. This would be the start of our numerous encounters with callous and hostile "law enforcement". We walked to the police command center at Harrah's on Canal Street and were told the same thing, that we were on our own, and no they did not have water to give us. We now numbered several hundred. We held a mass meeting to decide a course of action. We agreed to camp outside the police command post. We would be plainly visible to the media and would constitute a highly visible embarrassment to the City officials. The police told us that we could not stay. Regardless, we began to settle in and set up camp. In short order, the police commander came across the street to address our group. He told us he had a solution: we should walk to the Pontchartrain Expressway and cross the greater New Orleans Bridge where the police had buses lined up to take us out of the City. The crowed cheered and began to move. We called everyone back and explained to the commander that there had been lots of misinformation and wrong information and was he sure that there were buses waiting for us. The commander turned to the crowd and stated emphatically, "I swear to you that the buses are there." We organized ourselves and the 200 of us set off for the bridge with great excitement and hope. As we marched pasted the convention center, many locals saw our determined and optimistic group and asked where we were headed. We told them about the great news. Families immediately grabbed their few belongings and quickly our numbers doubled and then doubled again. Babies in strollers now joined us, people using crutches, elderly clasping walkers and others people in wheelchairs. We marched the 2-3 miles to the freeway and up the steep incline to the Bridge. It now began to pour down rain, but it did not dampen our enthusiasm. As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander's assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move. We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City. These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans. Our small group retreated back down Highway 90 to seek shelter from the rain under an overpass. We debated our options and in the end decided to build an encampment in the middle of the Ponchartrain Expressway on the center divide, between the O'Keefe and Tchoupitoulas exits. We reasoned we would be visible to everyone, we would have some security being on an elevated freeway and we could wait and watch for the arrival of the yet to be seen buses. All day long, we saw other families, individuals and groups make the same trip up the incline in an attempt to cross the bridge, only to be turned away. Some chased away with gunfire, others simply told no, others to be verbally berated and humiliated. Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the City on foot. Meanwhile, the only two City shelters sank further into squalor and disrepair. The only way across the bridge was by vehicle. We saw workers stealing trucks, buses, moving vans, semi-trucks and any car that could be hotwired. All were packed with people trying to escape the misery New Orleans had become. Our little encampment began to blossom. Someone stole a water delivery truck and brought it up to us. Let's hear it for lootingA mile or so down the freeway, an army truck lost a couple of pallets of C-rations on a tight turn. We ferried the food back to our camp in shopping carts. Now secure with the two necessities, food and water; cooperation, community, and creativity flowered. We organized a clean up and hung garbage bags from the rebar poles. We made beds from wood pallets and cardboard. We designated a storm drain as the bathroom and the kids built an elaborate enclosure for privacy out of plastic, broken umbrellas, and other scraps. We even organized a food recycling system where individuals could swap out parts of C-rations (applesauce for babies and candies for kids!). This was a process we saw repeatedly in the aftermath of Katrina. When individuals had to fight to find food or water, it meant looking out for yourself only. You had to do whatever it took to find water for your kids or food for your parents. When these basic needs were met, people began to look out for each other, working together and constructing a community. If the relief organizations had saturated the City with food and water in the first 2 or 3 days, the desperation, the frustration and the ugliness would not have set in. Flush with the necessities, we offered food and water to passing families and individuals. Many decided to stay and join us. Our encampment grew to 80 or 90 people. From a woman with a battery powered radio we learned that the media was talking about us. Up in full view on the freeway, every relief and news organizations saw us on their way into the City. Officials were being asked what they were going to do about all those families living up on the freeway? The officials responded they were going to take care of us. Some of us got a sinking feeling. "Taking care of us" had an ominous tone to it. Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking City) was correct. Just as dusk set in, a Gretna Sheriff showed up, jumped out of his patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces, screaming, "Get off the fucking freeway". A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its blades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck with our food and water. Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated or congealed into groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of "victims" they saw "mob" or "riot". We felt safety in numbers. Our "we must stay together" was impossible because the agencies would force us into small atomized groups. In the pandemonium of having our camp raided and destroyed, we scattered once again. Reduced to a small group of 8 people, in the dark, we sought refuge in an abandoned school bus, under the freeway on Cilo Street. We were hiding from possible criminal elements but equally and definitely, we were hiding from the police and sheriffs with their martial law, curfew and shoot-to-kill policies. The next days, our group of 8 walked most of the day, made contact with New Orleans Fire Department and were eventually airlifted out by an urban search and rescue team. We were dropped off near the airport and managed to catch a ride with the National Guard. The two young guardsmen apologized for the limited response of the Louisiana guards. They explained that a large section of their unit was in Iraq and that meant they were shorthanded and were unable to complete all the tasks they were assigned. We arrived at the airport on the day a massive airlift had begun. The airport had become another Superdome. We 8 were caught in a press of humanity as flights were delayed for several hours while George Bush landed briefly at the airport for a photo op. After being evacuated on a coast guard cargo plane, we arrived in San Antonio, Texas. There the humiliation and dehumanization of the official relief effort continued. We were placed on buses and driven to a large field where we were forced to sit for hours and hours. Some of the buses did not have air-conditioners. In the dark, hundreds if us were forced to share two filthy overflowing porta-potties. Those who managed to make it out with any possessions (often a few belongings in tattered plastic bags) we were subjected to two different dog-sniffing searches. Most of us had not eaten all day because our C-rations had been confiscated at the airport because the rations set off the metal detectors. Yet, no food had been provided to the men, women, children, elderly, disabled as they sat for hours waiting to be "medically screened" to make sure we were not carrying any communicable diseases. This official treatment was in sharp contrast to the warm, heart-felt reception given to us by the ordinary Texans. We saw one airline worker give her shoes to someone who was barefoot. Strangers on the street offered us money and toiletries with words of welcome. Throughout, the official relief effort was callous, inept, and racist. There was more suffering than need be. Lives were lost that did not need to be lost.

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So, yesterday I was on the rally in Berlin for to show solidarity with the victims of the nature and political catastrophe in the Southeast of the U.S. Only few people joined the rally which was held in the near of the U.S. embassy. But actually it was not the fault of the organizers – they just had 3 days time to inform the people.

Anyway, one speech of a Afro-american citizen from Detroit was very impressive. He life in Germany since long time, before this, in the 60s he was serving the U.S. Army in Germany and after that he was sent to Vietnam. Now he’s active in the anti-war and social movement in Germany.

 

 

I recorded and typed the speech. And here it comes (everything in parenthesis comes from me):

 

Dear Friends

 

I’m personally effected by this tragedy. My 93 year old cousin, Mrs. Odille Kenner Williams, was just recently rescued from a nursing home there. I have a multitude of relatives in New Orleans and neighboring communities.

 

My entire family comes from Louisiana. My father and mother came North during the Second World War to seek work in Detroit and escape the vicious system of racism which was everyday experience of Black people living there (in the Southeast) as direct descendants of slaves. My grandmother was a slave. That may come as a shock to some of you, but I’m that close to the history of institutional slavery in America. Millions of Black during and after WW II migrated to other parts of the U.S. with the one thing in the mind: freedom. Yes, while people were fighting against the Axis Powers (the German, Italian and Japanese fascists, militarists) here in Europe and elsewhere Black people in America were fighting for the right to Human dignity and real freedom (– and they’re still fighting for it).

 

My mother often told my brother and me that she didn’t want us to grow up in that environment of intimidation, racism and lynch justice. There were no more than refugees, strangers in their own country of birth. So she left her family and started a new life in Detroit, 1700 Kilometers away from the place called home. Torn from family and friends.

 

What we see happening in Louisiana, Mississippi and Georgia is symptomatic of what’s wrong with America. When the authorities ordered the population to evacuate New Orleans they made no preparations to evacuate those who could not respond to the call. The poor, the sick, the imprisoned, the less fortunate.

 

Many of there victims living below the poverty level, whatever that means. The overwhelming majority of there people in this situation are Black. They were deserted, left to fend for themselves. Lied to by the people who were supposed to assist them in times of danger and emergency.

 

The U.S. has a history of oppression and disregard for people’s human rights and up until now they’ve been able to maneuver and more less hide their treachery. Abu Ghraeeb (the infamous prison in Iraq) is not unique.

These pictures of people’s suffering don’t lie! They lay bare the hypocrisy of the system built on exploitation of the world and ist own citizens. They have no shame! The U.S. is the UNITED STATES OF SHAME!

 

People here (in Germany) ask, “What we can do?”. Donate... Find out what’s really goes on! DEMAND YOUT GOVERNMENT STOP SUPPERTING THE CRIMINAL UNDERTAKINGS OF THE BUSH REGIME! Stop this insane war on the Iraqi people!

 

[Right now people are preparing to vote (in Germany), thinking that will somehow changes their lives. The real issues are being ignored. The Chancellor likes to pass himself and his party off as the peace party that couldn’t further from the truth. They speak with a forked tongue! They have blood on their hands too, they support the war by giving the USA back door support. The U.S. conducts many of its military adventures from German soil.]

 

...

 

Some may ask what do that have to do with the present situation in America and the people’s suffering. A great deal. Billions of Dollars and valuable resources have been wasted on this terrible war (on Iraq), money and resources that could have helped those people in need right now. The government is already crying about not having any idea about how they’re going to pay for all this.

 

When you wage war you don t worry about the costs because you count yourself as the winner, and “to the victor goes the spoils”.

 

They ve miscalculated at every turn and we, all of us have to suffer.

Freedom, we re only free to follow their orders and plans (or not!). Nothing more nothing less!

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United States of Shame

 

by Maureen Dowd, 2005, Sept. 3, NYT

 

 

Stuff happens.

And when you combine limited government with incompetent government, lethal stuff happens.

America is once more plunged into a snake pit of anarchy, death, looting, raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels and criminally negligent government planning. But this time it's happening in America.

W. drove his budget-cutting Chevy to the levee, and it wasn't dry. Bye, bye, American lives. "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," he told Diane Sawyer.

Shirt-sleeves rolled up, W. finally landed in Hell yesterday and chuckled about his wild boozing days in "the great city" of N'Awlins. He was clearly moved. "You know, I'm going to fly out of here in a minute," he said on the runway at the New Orleans International Airport, "but I want you to know that I'm not going to forget what I've seen." Out of the cameras' range, and avoided by W., was a convoy of thousands of sick and dying people, some sprawled on the floor or dumped on baggage carousels at a makeshift M*A*S*H unit inside the terminal.

Why does this self-styled "can do" president always lapse into such lame "who could have known?" excuses.

Who on earth could have known that Osama bin Laden wanted to attack us by flying planes into buildings? Any official who bothered to read the trellis of pre-9/11 intelligence briefs.

Who on earth could have known that an American invasion of Iraq would spawn a brutal insurgency, terrorist recruiting boom and possible civil war? Any official who bothered to read the C.I.A.'s prewar reports.

Who on earth could have known that New Orleans's sinking levees were at risk from a strong hurricane? Anybody who bothered to read the endless warnings over the years about the Big Easy's uneasy fishbowl.

In June 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, fretted to The Times-Picayune in New Orleans: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

Not only was the money depleted by the Bush folly in Iraq; 30 percent of the National Guard and about half its equipment are in Iraq.

Ron Fournier of The Associated Press reported that the Army Corps of Engineers asked for $105 million for hurricane and flood programs in New Orleans last year. The White House carved it to about $40 million. But President Bush and Congress agreed to a $286.4 billion pork-filled highway bill with 6,000 pet projects, including a $231 million bridge for a small, uninhabited Alaskan island.

Just last year, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials practiced how they would respond to a fake hurricane that caused floods and stranded New Orleans residents. Imagine the feeble FEMA's response to Katrina if they had not prepared.

Michael Brown, the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA - a job he trained for by running something called the International Arabian Horse Association - admitted he didn't know until Thursday that there were 15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina in the New Orleans Convention Center.

Was he sacked instantly? No, our tone-deaf president hailed him in Mobile, Ala., yesterday: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

It would be one thing if President Bush and his inner circle - Dick Cheney was vacationing in Wyoming; Condi Rice was shoe shopping at Ferragamo's on Fifth Avenue and attended "Spamalot" before bloggers chased her back to Washington; and Andy Card was off in Maine - lacked empathy but could get the job done. But it is a chilling lack of empathy combined with a stunning lack of efficiency that could make this administration implode.

When the president and vice president rashly shook off our allies and our respect for international law to pursue a war built on lies, when they sanctioned torture, they shook the faith of the world in American ideals.

When they were deaf for so long to the horrific misery and cries for help of the victims in New Orleans - most of them poor and black, like those stuck at the back of the evacuation line yesterday while 700 guests and employees of the Hyatt Hotel were bused out first - they shook the faith of all Americans in American ideals. And made us ashamed.

Who are we if we can't take care of our own?

 

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Today G. W. (Double U - what the U’s are standing for? Uneducated? Underexposed?) Bush is visiting Germany after the “world ruler” held court in Brussels (NATO headquarter/EU center). Everyone who wanted to meet him, like the French president, had to come to there. Tomorrow after the short visit in Germany he will fly to Bratislava/Slovakia, where he will meet the Russian president Putin. By the way, it’s just a humiliation for Putin. In the German city Mainz, not far away from Frankfurt/Main, the chancellor Schroeder at the time is meeting with his American guest. Since the early morning hours nothing is going anymore in the region between the cities Frankfurt, Wiesbaden and Mainz, one of the main busy areas in the western part of Germany. Nearly all highways (Autobahnen) are closed. The river Rhine is closed for the ship traffic. In Frankfurt ­ there is the main airport in Germany and the second large in Europe ­ many flights (estimated more than 100 flights) are cancelled. The train traffic is also massive affected. The Opel’s (GM) main car factory in Ruesselsheim, like many other factories in the region, must close today, because the workers can’t reach their work places. In Mainz itself, the entire inner city is closed area. Nearly all shops and department stores are closed, schools too. The people who are living there are not allowed to open the windows, to use their balconies and “of course” all traffic ­ private and public ­ is banned. And also (of course) all demonstrations against the Bush’s policy are banned from the inner city. And who will pay the enormous costs for that? Of course neither Bush nor Schroeder will pay from their own pockets ­ the German ordinary tax payers have to pay for this massive intervention in their “freedom”. This is just DEMOCRACY IN ACTION! Thanx a lot for this lesson! We will know to learn from it! Last news: in Mainz right now about 15.000 people are protesting against Bush (according to indymedia Germany, 02.23, 6:23pm, MET).

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After several unsuccessful attempts to get an analysis of the post-election situation and a possible future by our contact persons in Iraq, I have chosen following not un-interesting view of the (possible) next developments between the Euphrat and Tigris. The Shi'ites' Faustian pact By Pepe Escobar (Asia Times, Feb 10) In Najaf, the holy Shi'ite city, the grand ayatollahs are busy advancing a religious agenda: Ali al-Sistani, Mohammad Ishaq al-Fayad, Bashir al-Najafi and Mohammad Said Hakim compose the al-marja' iyyah (source of infallible authority on all religious matters). They are unanimous: the Shi'ite religious parties, the big winners in the elections, must implement Sharia (Islamic) law - and in fact this is one of the parties' top priorities. This does not mean that Sistani wants - or needs - to control an Iraqi theocracy: it means that the Shi'ite religious parties themselves - led by secular people - will give birth to an Iraqi Islamic republic. Sistani's representatives have been stressing in the past few days that what matters for the grand ayatollah is equal rights for all. According to his senior aide, Mohammad al-Haboubi, the top priority in the writing of the future Iraqi constitution is "the preservation of the rights of all citizens, majority or minority, so they are all equal in the eyes of the law". Most Shi'ite scholars insist the Americans must stay away from the writing of the new constitution. Whether the Americans like it or not, Sharia law will prevail over civil law. What's left is a matter of degree: how deep will Sharia in Iraq rule over everything - apart from stating that women may not shake hands with men, music is allowed only "if it is not for enjoyment" and daughters inherit less than sons? Sistani will have the last word as far as who will be the new Iraqi prime minister, not to mention the turbulent process of drafting the permanent constitution. He will refuse to allow the Kurds a veto power over the constitution - something they already have thanks to an administrative law passed by the Americans. Baghdad sources confirm that a key reason for Sistani to "bless" the Shi'ite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) was that he was assured a primordial role in drafting the constitution. Moreover, Sistani himself is infinitely more popular and respected than the two main Shi'ite parties, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the Da'wa Party. For the majority of Sunnis and even for some secular Shi'ites, they are Iranian agents: during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the SCIRI was on Iran's side, ie against Saddam. Without Sistani's "blessing", these parties would never have been voted for en masse on January 30. What about all that oil? Abdel Mahdi, currently the finance minister and a member of the SCIRI, remains a strong contender for prime minister, alongside Ibrahim al-Jafaari of Da'wa. On December 22, Mahdi - with US Under Secretary of State Alan Larson by his side - told the National Press Club in Washington in so many words, and to the delight of corporate US oil majors, that a new oil law would privatize Iraq's oil industry. The new law would allow investment in both downstream and "maybe even upstream" operations, meaning foreigners could become de facto owners of Iraqi oilfields. No wonder Mahdi has been touted by US corporate media as the next best candidate for prime minister after "the Americans' man", former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) asset and current Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. Apart from an item by Inter Press Service at the time, Antonia Juhasz, a Foreign Policy in Focus scholar currently writing a book about the economic invasion of Iraq, has been the only one to sound alarm bells: Is it possible that Washington has made a deal - oil for power - with the SCIRI? This is the fine print that President George W Bush's freedom rhetoric does not cover. Iraq may have a new "elected" National Assembly and a new Iraqi constitution may be written in the next few months. But the fact is that during 2005 the US remains in total control. Follow the money: US$24 billion funded by American taxpayers toward the reconstruction, plus all the rules that have been passed by the US that control Iraq's economy, plus the military occupation. Both the billions of dollars and the maze of rules are controlled by auditors sitting in every Iraqi ministry for five years, all of them appointed (and controlled) by the Americans. The only thing that the Bush administration does not control in Iraq is unlimited, no-holds-barred access to oil - which anyone familiar with Vice President Dick Cheney's world view knows to be the key reason for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. The whole point of an indefinite, muscular US military presence in Iraq (14 military bases, more than 100,000 troops, the massive embassy in Baghdad, the CIA-trained "Salvador option" death squads) would be to protect US corporate interests in the oil industry. But the possibility of a law privatizing Iraq's oil coming to pass under a UIA-dominated government is less than zero - for two main reasons. In terms of Iraqi nationalism, this would spell political suicide to either the SCIRI or the Da'wa Party: most Shi'ites who voted in the elections, following Sistani's dictum, thought they were voting for the US to leave, for good. And in geopolitical terms, all the Shi'ite religious parties have close connections with Iran, which, encircled by the US from the east (Afghanistan) and west (Iraq), would find innumerable creative ways to turn the Americans' lives into a living hell. One of the key - if not the key - challenges for the new Iraqi government will be a US demand to negotiate a SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement), the agreement that stipulates the legal status of US garrisons. A cursory look at a world map will teach Iraqis to be extremely careful not to fall into a trap. There are insistent rumors in Baghdad that a SOFA will not be negotiated in 2005: the responsibility will fall to the permanent government that will be elected next December. This is one more indication of the irrelevance of the new elected government. The Pentagon anyway has already determined it will keep 120,000 troops in Iraq into at least 2007, even if a withdrawal is demanded tomorrow. Predictably, the Shi'ites don't want the US military to leave - at least for now. Ibrahim al-Jafaari, the Da'wa Party leader and strong contender for one of the three top posts, has repeatedly said this would lead to a bloodbath. But both Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the SCIRI's No 1, and interim President Ghazi al-Yawer, a Sunni, agree: the US military must begin a substantial withdrawal by the end of 2005. Shi'ite firebrand Muqtada al-Sadr is just waiting to pounce. It's increasingly possible that the Sadrists who contested the elections may capture something like 7% of the seats in the new assembly. They've already said they will demand an immediate timetable for total US withdrawal. Muqtada wants the Americans out and he wants them out now. That's also exactly what disgruntled, religious Sunnis want. This spells a possible alliance between the Shi'ite urban proletariat and middle-class religious Sunnis - one more nail in the coffin of the myth propagated by the Bush administration that the resistance against the occupation is dominated by "terrorists". Significantly, Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi, the leader of the powerful Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), has said he is in close contact with the Sadrists. An extraordinary new development in Baghdad is that now the AMS is floating a clear proposal: we accept the new elected government as legitimate, as long as it sets a definitive timetable for US withdrawal. Although this is what the overwhelming majority of Iraqis want, nobody - no Shi'ite party, no Kurdish party, not even Sistani himself - is contemplating it at this stage. Baghdad sources tell Asia Times Online that the AMS would even issue a fatwa (religious edict) calling for the end of the resistance if the new government sets a date for US withdrawal in writing - with the United Nations as a watchdog. If true, that would certainly be the only way to lead the Baghdad sniper to retire his rifle. What you want is not what you get UIA spokesmen are saying that the Shi'ite alliance will capture half of the seats in the 275-member parliament, or a little less than 140 seats. They would need 182 to govern by themselves, without a coalition. The Kurds believe they will get about 65 seats: this only happened because the Sunni vote ranged from weak to non-existent. (Election results were due on Thursday, but were delayed over the re-examination of some ballot boxes.) The consensus in rumor-filled Baghdad is that really bad news would mean the Shi'ites capturing 140 seats, the Kurds from 75 to 85 seats, and Allawi's list the rest. Sunnis in Baghdad are very gloomy: it looks like the bad-news scenario - a Shi'ite/Kurd landslide - is about to happen, with Kurds bragging they may have captured as many as 75 seats. The UIA may be Shi'ite-dominated, but it contains more than 20 groups, movements and political parties - Christians, Turkomans, even Sunnis and Kurds, including the Badr Organization (the former Badr Brigades, trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards), the Hezbollah Movement in Iraq and the Islamic Union for Iraqi Turkomans. The only Iraqi government that would have a minimum of stability would be a UIA/Kurdish alliance. It's very unlikely to happen, and even if it did it would send even moderate Sunni Arabs into open guerrilla mode. The Shi'ite religious parties in the UIA want Sharia law. The White House is relying on the Kurds to veto Sharia law. The relatively secular Kurds are obsessed with loose federalism and a fully fledged, autonomous Kurdistan province. They want nothing less than the presidency for Patriotic Union of Kurdistan leader Jalal Talabani. The current foreign minister, the affable Kurd Hoshyar Zebari, says that the only way to placate the Sunnis would be to offer them one of the key three posts - president, prime minister or Speaker of the National Assembly. It may not be enough. Sunni Arabs know the Kurds supported the war and occupation of Iraq and have been a de facto US protectorate for more than a decade. Sunni Arabs also know that the only indigenous allies the Americans have at the moment are the Kurdish tribes: the Kurdish 36th Command Battalion, for instance, helped the marines to attack Sunni Arab Fallujah. Many Sunnis, even moderate, consider the Kurds traitors. What the Kurdish tribal chiefs really want is the ultimate prize: they want independence (it could even be some kind of US-Israeli protectorate) and they want Kirkuk's oil. All of this, for them, is non-negotiable. Supposing Turkey - a key North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally dreaming of being accepted by the European Union - buries the Kurdish dream, and the Americans cannot deliver, it's fair to assume that even the Kurds will abandon the Americans. Meanwhile, in a Najaf still under piles of rubble there's widespread fear that in the end the same former CIA asset Allawi will continue to be prime minister. Allawi has been controlling Iraqi security for more than six months now. His new Iraqi National Guard is a remix of Saddam's security - and not by any coincidence infested with Saddam's men: after all, Allawi is also a former Ba'athist. As the Bush administration needs a ruthless Iraqi police state to fight not only the resistance but all kinds of emerging protests against the appalling living conditions throughout the country, Allawi is indeed "the Americans' man", as he is known in Baghdad. His tough-guy profile will be his main argument to convince the UIA he should remain as premier. But Baghdad sources tell Asia Times Online that this is all cosmetic anyway: only the terminally naive may believe that the Washington-Green Zone axis is not controlling the selection of the top three posts. No surrender The Bush administration script is well known: Iraq was "liberated" from "tyranny" and the "insurgents" are fighting democracy - of which the elections were the first manifestation. These are the facts: Iraq was conquered, not liberated; the new government will not have any say in economic and oil issues; and the resistance fights the occupying power, not democracy. Sistani sold the elections to the pious Shi'ite masses as the first step toward the end of the occupation. In the next few months his promise will be subjected to a groundbreaking reality test. Shi'ites at the polls unmistakably said that they were voting to expel the Americans, not to legitimize them. If the Kurds get too much power, if the Shi'ite list disintegrates, if the US keeps building its sprawling military bases - which means they will be in Iraq for the long run, supported by puppet governments - the Sunni resistance will definitely become a national, Sunni-Shi'ite resistance. As for "terrorism", according to Baghdad sources, an overwhelming number of moderate, secular Sunnis and Shi'ites are convinced that "arch terrorist" Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is being exploited in a CIA black-ops designed to exacerbate ethnic tensions. Many Israeli and American intellectuals and officials are already busy preparing global public opinion, calling for an independent Kurdistan. One of the top-flight propagandists is ambassador Peter Galbraith, one of the negotiators of the Dayton accords and currently a professor at the National War College. Independence is what the Kurdish leadership wants. Kurds hate the idea of Iraq: the Iraqi flag is practically forbidden in some remote mountainous areas. Kurds refuse to hand the control of their borders to Arab troops from Baghdad. Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger is enthusiastically calling for a Kurdistan, a Sunni center and a Shi'ite south. Why not three weak countries instead of one strong, united Iraq? It's divide and conquer all over again. The key reason for the war was control of Iraqi oil, supported by the installation of strategic US military bases. The key question now is which Iraqis will embrace the agenda of the Bush administration. Secular, moderate Sunni observers in Baghdad simply cannot believe the Shi'ite leadership will maintain public support for the rest of the year without telling the Americans to leave. Moreover, the majority of Iraqis - those who voted and especially those who didn't - are not willing to surrender their oil, their economy and their land to corporate America. The popular resistance, on a national level, tends only to increase. Shi'ites - from Sistani to the SCIRI - better not enter into a Faustian pact.

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Martin Mubanga went on holiday to Zambia, but ended up spending 33 months in Guantanamo Bay, some of the time in the feared Camp Echo. Free at last and still protesting his innocence, he tells the full story to David Rose Sunday February 6, 2005 The Observer (U.K.) Martin Mubanga can date the low point of his 33 months at Guantanamo Bay: 15 June, 2004. That sweltering Cuban morning, he was taken from the cellblock he was sharing with speakers of the Afghan language Pashto, none of whom knew English, for what had become his almost daily interrogation. As usual, his hands were shackled in rigid, metal cuffs attached to a body belt; another set of chains ran to his ankles, severely restricting his ability to move his legs. Trussed in this fashion, he was lying on the interrogation booth floor. The seemingly interminable questioning had already lasted for hours. 'I needed the toilet,' Mubanga said, 'and I asked the interrogator to let me go. But he just said, "you'll go when I say so". I told him he had five minutes to get me to the toilet or I was going to go on the floor. He left the room. Finally, I squirmed across the floor and did it in the corner, trying to minimise the mess. I suppose he was watching through a one-way mirror or the CCTV camera. He comes back with a mop and dips it in the pool of urine. Then he starts covering me with my own waste, like he's using a big paintbrush, working methodically, beginning with my feet and ankles and working his way up my legs. All the while he's racially abusing me, cussing me: "Oh, the poor little negro, the poor little nigger." He seemed to think it was funny.' A few days later, Mubanga said, the same interrogator began to question him in one of the camp's 'hot rooms', where the heating was turned up to almost 100F. 'When you went for interrogation, you never knew whether they were going to take you to a booth where the air conditioning was turned up to the max, so it was really cold, or a hot room,' Mubanga said. 'This made life very difficult, because you only had two T-shirts in your cell, and if you wore just one in a cold room you'd be freezing, but wearing two in a hot room was almost unbearable. The thing was, once you were in there in your chains, it was impossible to take one off.' After several hours of questioning, Mubanga felt severely dehydrated and begged for a bottle of water. Once again he was lying on the floor: the interrogation booth chair had been removed. As he tried to drink and cool himself by spraying a little water around his face and hair, Mubanga said, the interrogator turned violent: 'The guy started kneeling on me, and I was wriggling backwards to get away from him, trying to get in the line of sight of the CCTV camera so someone might see what was going on. Of course, he didn't want to let me do that, so he stood on my hair. It was painful, but I tried to keep moving. Then he stood on the leg chain, so my shackles dug in really deeply, cutting into my legs. But I just took the pain. I'm looking at him, the pain's getting worse but I wouldn't scream out. I just kept looking at him. From that day on, I refused to talk to any interrogator. I said nothing at all for the next seven months.' Mubanga, 32, born in Zambia but brought up in London from the age of three, was describing his ordeal in an exclusive interview at a secret location in southern England last Friday - the first by any of the four men who returned to Britain from Guant?namo at the end of last month. A lifelong Arsenal supporter, amateur boxer and former motorbike courier, he became Camp Delta's poet, dealing with his experiences in a series of vivid, rap-style rhymes, reminiscent of the prison blues from the American Deep South. Mubanga is a tall man, with a build that remains athletic despite the years when the longest walk he took was the 10 yards from his cell to one of Guant?namo's tiny recreation yards. As he struggles to deal with the shock of his sudden and unexpected release, his words fall from his lips in a rapid, articulate torrent. For many months after Mubanga was seized in Zambia with the help of British intelligence and sent to Guant?namo, the American authorities maintained that he was a dangerous 'enemy combatant', an undercover al-Qaeda operative who had travelled from Afghanistan on a false passport and appeared to be on a mission to reconnoitre Jewish organisations in New York. But documents obtained by The Observer now reveal that by the end of last October the Pentagon's own legal staff had grave doubts about his status, and had overturned a ruling that he was a terrorist by Guant?namo's Combatant Status Review Tribunal. Like the other three men who were released last month, Moazzam Begg, Feroz Abbasi and Richard Belmar, Mubanga was held for one night at Paddington Green police station on his return to Britain and questioned. He was released unconditionally, the police having concluded within just a few hours that there was no evidence to sustain charges of terrorism. His allegations about his treatment at Guant?namo echo similar claims by other freed detainees, and information from American official sources. In December, US civil rights groups obtained more than 4,000 pages of documents under the Freedom of Information Act about the abusive treatment of detainees. They included memos by FBI men who visited Guant?namo, the US internment camp set up on American territory on the island of Cuba in early 2002 which still houses over 500 'enemy combatants' despite attracting international criticism, and reported their concerns to their superiors. On Friday, another memo by the US military's Southern Command was leaked to the Associated Press. It described videotapes of assaults on prisoners by Guant?namo's 'Instant Reaction Force' or 'IRF', a riot squad deployed against prisoners deemed to have broken the camp's rules. One video showed guards punching detainees and forcing a dozen to strip from the waist down. Another showed a guard kneeing a detainee in the head. Mubanga said that in his final months at Guant?namo - just as the military lawyers were having doubts whether he really was a terrorist - the IRF was used against him three times. Mubanga was born on 24 September, 1972, and emigrated to Britain with his mother, brother and two elder sisters three years later, when his father died. He was 15, a pupil at St George's school near his home in Kingsbury, north-west London, when his mother died from malaria. Soon afterwards he left school with just two GCSEs. After an abortive attempt at a college course in engineering, he began to get into trouble, and at 19 was convicted of trying to steal a car and sent to Feltham Young Offenders' Institution. It was there that he began to take an interest in Islam. In 1995 he spent six months in Bosnia, working with a charity with Muslim victims of the Serbs' ethnic cleansing. Mubanga left Britain for Pakistan in October 2000, where he says he was planning to study Islam and Arabic. After a spell in Peshawar he entered Afghanistan and attended two madrasahs (Islamic schools) in Kabul and Kandahar. Mubanga had a flight back to Britain booked for 26 September, 2001, from Karachi, and says he had planned to return to Pakistan by bus. But after the terrorist attacks of 11 September, the bus stopped running. Hiding in Kandahar while the American bombing campaign began, he says he discovered that his British passport and his will were missing. 'I don't know if they were lost or stolen. I just realised one day they were gone.' With the war still in its early stages, before the fall of Kabul, he found a middleman willing to take him back to Pakistan. Mubanga had dual nationality and says he then phoned his family in England to ask them to post his Zambian passport to him in Pakistan. Before returning to Britain, he decided to visit relatives in Zambia. In February 2002 he flew to South Africa. After a week in Johannesburg, he took a bus to Lusaka, where he was reunited with his older sister, who was also visiting from the UK. (She has asked us not to publish her full name.) It was then that Mubanga's sister was phoned from London by her boyfriend, and informed that the Sunday Times had published a story on 2 March claiming that a man called Martin Mubanga had been in custody for at least two months after being captured by coalition forces fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. Here, Mubanga thought, was the answer to what had happened to his passport. He travelled north from Lusaka to visit an aunt near the town of Kitwe. There, a few days after the article was published, he was arrested by the Zambian security service. Mubanga's solicitor, Louise Christian, suggested that by this time the authorities must have realised they did not have Martin Mubanga in Afghanistan, and would easily have discovered that the real one had recently flown from Karachi to Africa. Yet after the first two nights, Mubanga said, he was not held at a conventional police station or prison, but in a series of guarded motel rooms in and around Lusaka. There he says he was interrogated for hours at a time each day, at first by the Zambians. He recalls they asked him whether he wished to be Zambian or British. 'I chose British. I thought that might be safer. It seems that may have been a mistake.' Within a few days, new interrogators arrived: an American female defence official and a British man. He said he was from MI6 and called himself Martin. 'Martin tried to bond with me by saying he supported Arsenal like me. It was pretty transparent. You didn't have to talk to him long to realise he hadn't spent very much time on the North Bank.' On the third or fourth day, 'agent Martin' produced Mubanga's British passport, his will and two further documents, which, he claimed, had been found with the passport in a cave in Afghanistan. One was a list of Jewish organisations in New York, which, he suggested, Mubanga had been ordered to reconnoitre on behalf of al-Qaeda. The second was a handwritten military instruction manual, which he accused Mubanga of writing. Mubanga protested he had not seen them before, and that he had never been to any Afghan cave, pointing out that his own untidy hand was nothing like the manual's neat script. There was no proof that he had any connection to either document, but this remained the most serious accusation the Americans made against him. At the same time, Mubanga said, both the American woman and 'Martin' tried to recruit him as an agent, asking him to settle in South Africa or, if that was too far, in Leeds. 'They wanted me to go where no one would know me, I suppose so I could be undercover. I refused.' After three weeks of these sessions, the American told him one morning: 'I'm sorry to have to tell you this, as I think you're a decent guy, but in 10 or 15 minutes we're going to the airport and they're taking you to Guant?namo Bay.' Mubanga knew what this meant. 'Like everyone else I'd seen the pictures of the prisoners in their goggles and jumpsuits, kneeling in chains in the dust. They took me to a military airstrip, stripped me, did an anal search and then put me in a big nappy which they seemed to think was funny. They put on the blindfold, the hood and the earmuffs and chained me to a bed in the plane. We stopped somewhere, but in all the flight took about 24 hours.' Mubanga arrived in Guant?namo at the beginning of May. For the first two months he was held with other English-speaking prisoners, including one of the three men from Tipton in the west Midlands released last March. 'He was planning to write a letter to Tony Blair complaining about our plight, and I suggested he put in a bit saying that Blair had said he would never talk to terrorists yet had negotiated with the IRA. Of course they [the Americans] read it. It seemed to make them mad, because for the next 18 months I was kept in cell blocks where the only people around me apart from the guards spoke only Arabic. I always thought one of the main things they were trying to do was break you mentally, make you go crazy. So I thought, either I sink or I swim. I decided to swim and that meant learning Arabic.' In the months that followed, he became proficient in this language. Early last year, his spirits lifted dramatically when rumours swept the camp that six or seven British detainees - including Mubanga - were about to go home. He was transferred to a new block with the other British detainees, but when it came to getting on the plane Mubanga was left behind. Then the Americans moved him again - to a block where all the other prisoners spoke neither English nor Arabic, but only the Afghan lan guage Pashtu. 'I ended up feeling really abandoned, left behind. They were playing games with me.' As he recalled this dark time, for a moment Mubanga's eyes brimmed with tears. 'In my interrogations for a while after that they used to taunt me saying: "Those other boys have gone home. Do you think you know why you're staying here?" They wanted to make me think I would be there forever.' It seems that one reason Mubanga was not sent home last year but interrogated with new vigour was that the Australian detainee, David Hicks, had made false allegations - since withdrawn - about him under the stress of his own interrogation. Mubanga began to suffer still harsher conditions. In the terse, military abbreviations of Guant?namo, he was put repeatedly on 'Cl' (comfort item) loss, so that books, his cup, board games and anything else which might help pass the time were removed. Later, he endured 'BI (basic item) loss', when his thin mattress, trousers, shirts, towel, blankets, and flipflops were also taken away, leaving him naked except for boxer shorts in an empty metal box. 'You had to be calm, bottle up any anger you might feel, show you were prepared to be docile. If you did that, slowly you'd get your items back: first your flipflops, the next day your mattress, the next day your trousers, after that your blanket and shirts.' Last autumn he was held in isolation in the punishment 'Quebec block', where blankets would be removed between 6am and 11pm. There, communication with other prisoners was almost impossible. It was in this period that he fell victim to the IRF for small acts of defiance, such as refusing to come in from his 15 minutes of recreation. Each time the squad forced him to the floor, knelt on him, and trussed him tightly so he could not resist. Yet even as they intensified the harshness of his conditions, the Americans were beginning to recognise officially that Martin Mubanga might not be a member of al-Qaeda at all. In October his Combatant Status Review Tribunal, a panel of military officers which examines the evidence against detainees without any legal training or advice, decided he was an unlawful combatant, and should therefore continue to be detained at Guant?namo indefinitely. But at the end of October, James Crisfield Jnr, an American military lawyer, found this decision deeply flawed. His report, which has been obtained by The Observer, shows that Mubanga had asked for his sister, aunt and brother to testify in his defence. They could prove, he said, that he had not travelled to Zambia on false documents for a terrorist mission. The tribunal officers claimed that these defence witnesses were 'not reasonably available' and that their testimony would be irrelevant. Crisfield disagreed, stating: 'Under the circumstances, the detainee's reasons for travelling to various countries was relevant. If the detainee's motive for travelling was to do something other than join or support al-Qaeda, that evidence could have sometendency... to make it less likely that the detainee joined or supported al-Qaeda.' In Crisfield's opinion, the tribunal hearing was 'not sufficient', and he ordered that attempts be made to contact Mubanga's family. There is no way to independently verify Mubanga's account of why he travelled to Afghanistan. But after almost three years of rigorous and sometimes brutal interrogation, no evidence has been adduced that he was guilty of any involvement in terrorism. For the last month before his release, Mubanga was taken to the supermaximum-security part of Guant?namo known as Camp Echo. 'There, you were in an individual bungalow without even a gap in the door, so even if you shouted out you couldn't talk to anyone. There was a camera in the room and they'd write down what you did every 15 minutes. If you went to the toilet, they'd write it down. 'I think it was one last attempt to get me to go crazy. One guy went back to Camp Delta after six months in Camp Echo. He'd lost his mind completely.' Mubanga remains deeply concerned about some of the prisoners he met in Guant?namo. One is a former al-Jazeera reporter arrested in Afghanistan whom he saw being assaulted brutally by the IRF, leaving him with black eyes which took weeks to go down. 'There's also a lot of people there who think they'll be killed if they ever went back to their own coun tries. They're in limbo. As far as they're concerned, it's open season for the American government.' Yet Mubanga, though traumatised by his ordeal, believes he stayed sane partly because of his growing religious faith, and partly because of his rapping. He has a provisional title for the album he'd like to record: Detainee . He also has a stage name - 10,007, his Guant?namo prisoner number. The content of his work is strongly political. There were times, Mubanga said, 'that I wanted to explode. And when I did, I tried to remember Allah, not to use aggression in that way. I never fought any of the guards, I never spat at them, or like some prisoners did, threw a packet of faeces. A lot of the time you go on to autopilot and you just have to tell yourself you're still here, it is happening, it is real. The golden rule a lot of us had is, if you don't feel tired, don't force yourself to sleep, stay active. That's why I made myself learn Arabic. 'For three years, I was locked in a room where I couldn't walk as far as this chair that I'm sitting in to that window, and now suddenly I'm back in London. It's hard to adjust: all my friends have got engaged, their lives have moved on. Yet though it's so different, I still know London from my time as a courier. Last week a friend gave me a lift and I was giving him directions and I pinched myself: one week earlier I had been in Guant?namo.' As he tries to rebuild his life, Mubanga has three wishes.The first is to record his Guant?namo raps, the second to acquire an Arsenal season ticket for the 2005-06 season. The third may be more difficult. When he was 18 to 19, he had a girlfriend in Acton called Angela. They had planned to move in together, he said, but that summer his older sister took him to Zambia because he was getting into trouble, saying he would be away two weeks. When they arrived, she told Mubanga they were going to stay seven months. 'I wrote to Angie, I really loved her. And when I got back the first thing I did was go round to her house. Her dad opened the door and he says: "Are you Martin?" I thought maybe he was going to hit me because he'd read my letters or because I'd broken her heart, but instead he started weeping, saying she'd gone to Kent and he didn't know where she was.' Mubanga said he tried to track her unsuccessfully via friends, and although he realises she may now be married, he hopes that if she's not, she might read this article and get in contact. He insisted he doesn't feel bitter: 'I've lost three years of my life, because I was a Muslim. If I hadn't become a Muslim and carried on doing bad things, maybe I'd have spent that three years in a regular prison. The authorities wanted to break me but they strengthened me. They've made me what I am - even if I'm not quite sure yet who that person is.' Mubanga the poet Martin Mubanga became Camp Delta's poet and wrote a series of vivid rap-style rhymes. Here are the choruses of two of them. Dem labelled me a terrorist Calling me a thug. Dem labelled me a terrorist Calling me a slug... But I never did join bin Laden's crew anyway And now me know to be a Muslim is a hard core ting... And I got no love for the American government Dey can go suck and I don't mean peppermint. Now hear da bombs drop As de Muslim babies, dem a die, Now hear de bombs drop As de Muslim mothers dem a cry Now hear de bombs drop As de Muslim soldiers dem a fly Why? Because dey no want fe die.

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The Iraqi so called transforming government don`t keep their promise to respect the basic human rights, Sarah Leah Whitson (Human Rights Watch) said. Today the German magazine Der Spiegel reported, that the U.S. based human right group was questioning 90 former Iraqi prisoners. 72 of them said they were regularely tortured in prisons runned by the Iraqi authorities.