We saw pictures from Iraq from a paper in Norway in 2003. We knew we were tormenting them then.

[madfloridian]

It was a shock to see the picture from the Norwegian paper, Dagbladet. The article is still there today, and so are the pictures. I remember that day in April when I called Senator John Warren's office and sent them a link to the website while I was on the phone. They claimed ignorance of course. I called Senator Bill Nelson's office and did the same. They knew nothing either.

It is now 2008, and we never stopped the humiliation and torture. But the proper people saw the pictures way back then. We who called never got any sense of consternation from those senators.

Here is a lead in from a blog in English that leads to the Norwegian paper.

Humiliated by US miitary publicly.


“If these pictures are accurate, this is an appalling way to treat prisoners. Such degrading treatment is a clear violation of the responsibilities of the occupying powers,” Amnesty International said today.

Amnesty International expressed concern today at the disturbing article and images portrayed in the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet which show American soldiers escorting naked Iraqi men through a park in Baghdad. The pictures reveal that someone has written the words ‘Ali Baba - Haram(i)’ (which means Ali Baba - thief) in Arabic on the prisoners’ chests.

The article quotes a US military officer as saying that this treatment is an effective method of deterring thieves from entering the park and is a method which will be used again; another US military officer is quoted as saying that US soldiers are not allowed to treat prisoners inhumanely.

..."“Whatever the reason for their detention, these men must at all times be treated humanely. The US authorities must investigate this incident and publicly release their findings.”

Article 27 of the Fourth Geneva Convention clearly states that “Protected persons are entitled in all circumstances, to respect for their persons, their honour, their family rights, their religious convictions and practices, and their manner and customs. They shall at all times be humanely treated, and shall be protected especially against all acts of violence or threats thereof and against insults and public curiosity”.

Here is the link to the Dagbladet newspaper article and other pictures.

Dagbladet newspaper article

I was so in shock that day. We posted about it here, I remember, but I can't find the links now.

We had heard rumors by April of mistreatment, but this was startling.

They can't say they did not know.

[BlooInBloo]

1. The word is "torture". Don't muddy the waters.

[madfloridian]

3. True indeed.

I was trying to say it nicely.

[WhiteTara]

5. there's nothing nice

about torture. We can never say nice words about it. Nice words minimize the act! :rant:

[polly7]

2. I thought I'd seen everything ...... sure didn't see that!

Let's see .... would I rather come in contact with a thief in a war-torn, impoverished country or sadistic, evil freaks that make policy to trot people around naked. Tough one ......

[thunder rising]

4. The Army needs a house cleaning. This stuff lowers moral since it shows the lowest form of humans

are now in charge of the squads. This happened after Vietnam as well. Bad NCOs Bad Officers and no leadership.

[madfloridian]

12. And it only got worse since then.

Even though we knew for sure our leaders knew all about it.

[mogster]

6. That paper has turned rampantly anti-Muslim since

Just as have every other media outlet in Norway, the Dagbladet paper has gone from pro-immigration to being true supporters of the rightwing Progress party.

Riots in Oslo tonight:
http://www.dagbladet.no/2009/01/11/nyheter/krigen_i_gaza/israel/innenriks/politi/4326515/

In Norway this has specific reasons, but Obama need to watch out for this, it happens when people feel the lid of fascism come off.

[madfloridian]

7. What caused it? Ownership change?

That's usually what causes such a turnabout. Thanks, I did not know that.

[mogster]

8. Ownership change and 'higher economical efficiency'

By dropping any journo ethos.
The usual murdochification. It happened between 2003 - 2006. This isn't the only one, all three major tabloids are now on high alert to threats to 'ethnic Norwegians' (a term they've invented and promotes), and are all very nationalist.

[mogster]

9. A couple of examples on headlines today

App. 130 person were bought in tonight after the demo's (which had a certain violent streak, no doubt about that):

Aftenposten:
«WAS USED AS LIVING SHIELDS»
Children should prevent the demo from being violent.
Strong reactions because they were sent at the front of the demo in Oslo - and had to be rescued by police.
http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/article2859987.ece
(Text is from frontpage, this is top article as I write)

Dagbladet:
There are similarities between the riots in Paris, the Middle East and Oslo
http://www.dagbladet.no/2009/01/11/nyheter/krigen_i_gaza/israel/innenriks/politi/4326515/

Now, Norway has a tradition of meddling in the M-E conflict, as you might know. Many humanitarian orgs are present in Gaza, and the demo's are a direct result of the Israeli invation and the concurrent support from the rightwing Progress party to the Israeli invasion. Please note some points about the above referred texts:

Aftenposten:
It's very common to bring your children to a demo in Norway. It generates a more conciliatory mood, it makes people (including the police) take it more easy, it brightens up your message and last but not least, it is more democratic as children have a right to have their say too. What happened here was exactly that, only that police and government had decided that this was unbearable because their message would then be stronger - and muslims don't do peaceful demo's anyway, do they? So it was declared a violent demo beforehand, and when the march started police grabbed the children to get a free reign of _their_ way of handling demo's: by provoking as much violence as possible and then collect the reward.
And in the media propaganda afterwards, this give a nice echo to the common myth in Norway about muslims since 2003; the violent takeover of the Norwegian society by Islam, the religion. The children aren't really children, but child soldiers used by Hamas to make their act look better.

Dagbladet:
There are strong similarities between Fox News, Drudge Report and Dagbladet, I can't say more than that. The use of the word 'riots' to describe what happens in Gaza should give you a clue.

[madfloridian]

10. That's really unfortunate.

I think Fox has done horrible propaganda, and Drudge as well. The "value" of media is like that is that people are overall not aware that they are propaganda outlets.

For curiosity, the story I posted from April 2003...I could of course not read the text. Was it written in an honest manner? Or otherwise?

Thanks for your info about that newspaper...I think media that spreads corporate and ideological propagands is here to stay, unfortunately.

[mogster]

11. Honest, I think

At least I thought so when reading it the first time. And I use a lot of material from Dagbladet in research and has no prob with their reporting prior to app. summer 2003. It was the year of the invasion in Iraq and much changed here then. One of the most marked changes in the media occurred in February 2004, when BBC was replaced with CNN in 350.000 Norw. homes due to a so-called 'channel democracy' in the cable provider UPC. They just replaced BBC with CNN as default choice in 24 hrs foreign news, and of course nobody sent in enough votes in this strange media experiment to really make an effort to change the default choice. But the result was marked, credibility wise. UPC was a pan-European company, so maybe this really happened all over Europe? I sent a letter to the BBC and tipped them off but have no idea whether they investigated it or not. UPC was then owned by US media mogul Malone through Liberty media, a real competitor to Murdoch both in bias and (lack of) quality.
And of course, in 2006 the Norwegian media company Edda Media was aquired by Mecom Group, in plain speaking a subsidiary of the British intelligence MI6. Google 'John Cuckney', Maggie Thatchers old 'plumber' and you'll find that Mecom's boss David Montgomery and Cuckney is so close you'd need a razor blade to come between them. They had refurbished the MI6 ecomomy with the remains of the Daily Mirror pension money after Rober Maxwells death in 1991, a death that opened the Brit media market to Murdoch and made him ready for big expansion.
If you look at the Norwegian media you'll find a sum of rot, decay, corruption and lies that will match what happened to the US media, but the takeover took place only in the period from 2003 - 2006, we could maybe extend the time to 1997 - 2006 if you'll look at how tabloid trash replaced real news.

[madfloridian]

13. I have many old US media articles saved and archived on my computer.

Our media is not much more honest now, but in 2002 and 2003 they were shameless totally. We were ecstatic when we heard even one truth on TV.

The media spoon fed us the Bush propaganda to go to war.