Guantánamo Comes to Define U.S. to Muslims -NYT

[Rose Siding]

NEW DELHI, May 20 - In one of Pakistan's most exclusive private schools for boys, the annual play this year was "Guantánamo," a docudrama based on testimonies of prisoners in Guantánamo Bay, the United States naval base in Cuba.
...
It didn't matter that the boys at the Lahore Grammar School, an elite academy that has sent many of its graduates to study in American universities, lived in a world quite removed from that known by most prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. The more they explored, the more the play resonated, the director of the school's production, Omair Rana, recalled Friday in a telephone interview. The detainees were Muslim, many were Pakistani and one had been arrested in Islamabad, the country's capital.

"It was something we all could relate to," Mr. Rana said of "Guantánamo," a play created "from spoken evidence" by Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo, a Briton and a South African, that was staged in London and in New York last year. "All that seemed very relevant, very nearby - in fact, too close for comfort."

Accounts of abuses at the actual American detention center at Guantánamo Bay, including Newsweek magazine's now-retracted article on the desecration of the Koran, ricochet around the world, instilling ideas about American power and justice, and sowing distrust of the United States. Even more than the written accounts are the images that flash on television screens throughout the Muslim world: caged men, in orange prison jumpsuits, on their knees. On Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, two satellite networks, images of the prisoners appear in station promos.

http://nytimes.com/2005/05/21/international/asia/21gitmo.html?hp&ex=1116648000&en=8af9c68aaaeb37c3&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[Triana]

1. This is exactly what I was afraid of...

...and the assinine and oh-so-obvious invasion of Iraq for oil, and abuses at abu ghraib also defines the US to Muslims and the world. So, we've created more Islamic extremeist terrorists. They're angry. Can you blame them? Good going George. You asshole. I'm not none too pleased myself.

The only blame that belongs to Newsweek and the rest of the worthless-as-shit MSM is that they failed to investigate and report the FACTS about Iraq to people before the invasion. They just trumpeted whatthefuckever Karl Rove/ Scottie McLellan told them to. They're useless.

[maddezmom]

2. Wasn't Karen Hughes brought out of retirement to work on the US's image?

:eyes:
How many protests were there today...UK, India, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, etc.?

[understandinglife]

3. It is now (2208 PDT, 20 May 2005) at the top of the NYTimes homepage.

Accusations of abuses at the American detention camp at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba permeate media in various countries. An image of a detainee was televised Friday on a program on Al Jazeera.

For many Muslims, Guantánamo stands as a confirmation of the low regard in which they believe the United States holds them. For many non-Muslims, regardless of their feelings toward the United States, it has emerged as a symbol of American hypocrisy.

"The cages, the orange suits, the shackles - it's as if they're dealing with something that's like a germ they don't want to touch," said Daoud Kuttab, director of the Institute of Modern Media at Al Quds University in Ramallah, in the West Bank. "That's the nastiness of it."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/21/international/asia/21gitmo.html?hp&ex=1116648000&en=8af9c68aaaeb37c3&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bu$h's neoconster crusade to dominate the world is exactly that. And all pretenses to spreading 'freedom and democracy' are seen as the obvious hypocrisy of a dude who is a mega war criminal and a perp of countless crimes against humanity.


Peace.


www.missionnotaccomplished.us - Be it MNA Day 3 or 8 or 15 or .... the day will come when 10s of millions of Americans and others stop their typical activities for 24 hours and urge 10 times that many to join should another MNA Day be required. On that glorious day what we once called "America" will emerge.

[maddezmom]

5. kick

[RoyGBiv]

4. We are so screwed ...

I've been saving for years so I could give my daughter a graduation present of a trip to Europe -- or wherever she wanted to go.

Now I'm afraid to give it to her, afraid that she'll be instantly tagged as Amerkun and ostracized because of it.

Maybe I'll get her a piece of land out in the middle of nowhere instead.

[Disturbed]

6. Lately I have noticed on some of the Lame Stream Media

that when they show Gitmo, it is detainees playing soccer, hanging out reading a book or chatting with a few others. A pleasant stay in Cuba, right?

[zanne]

8. Sew a maple leaf on her jacket...

I'm serious about this. Way back in the old days of the 70's, I went to England on a student exchange with a group of people. Some of them wore the maple leaf, and that was back when they only viewed us with suspicion.

[RoyGBiv]

17. Hehe ...

I might suggest that.

Of course, she's going to have to work on the Southern accent of hers. I'm not sure the "no, I'm a Canadian, really" ruse would get past "Howdy." :-)

[grytpype]

7. DAMN NEWSWEEK!

This is all their fault. The world hates us because of Newsweek.

[priller]

9. Just like the gulags defined the Soviets in our eyes

and the concentration camps defined the Nazis. Wow, what stellar company we are in!

Before the Iraq war I told many people that one day the US would come to be as despised in the eyes of the world as the old Soviet Union was. People told me I was going overboard back then.

[gulliver]

10. And I'll bet most of the detainees are small fry or innocent.

What are the odds that the crew who swore there were WMDs and let Abu Ghraib happen got the right bunch of "dangerous terrorists" captured and Gitmo'ed? I'll bet Guantanamo is really just another Bush screw-up. It has all the earmarks.

Certainly it is an epic screw-up on the public relations front. If it is meant to be a threat, it is fatuous.

[Frederik]

16. There haven't been many convictions

or even trials. I suggested this on a right-wing site, and they went nuts: "What the fuck are you talking about? They took up ARMS against American troops!!!"

Duh...

[Briar]

11. Not just to muslims n/t

[ckramer]

12. You do know what GWB means?

Guantánamo War Boosh

[rodeodance]

13. Guantánamo Comes to Define U.S. to Muslims

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/21/international/asia/21gitmo.html?hp&ex=1116734400&en=a7ee3f336b4069f3&ei=5094&partner=homepage

May 21, 2005
Guantánamo Comes to Define U.S. to Muslims

By SOMINI SENGUPTA and SALMAN MASOOD
NEW DELHI, May 20 - In one of Pakistan's most exclusive private schools for boys, the annual play this year was "Guantánamo," a docudrama based on testimonies of prisoners in Guantánamo Bay, the United States naval base in Cuba.

The cast was made up of students between 16 and 18 years old, each playing the role of a prisoner being held on suspicion of terrorism. To deepen their understanding of their characters, the boys pored through articles in Pakistani newspapers, studied the international press and surfed Web sites, including one that described itself as a nonsectarian Islamic human rights portal and is called cageprisoners.com.

It didn't matter that the boys at the Lahore Grammar School, an elite academy that has sent many of its graduates to study in American universities, lived in a world quite removed from that known by most prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. The more they explored, the more the play resonated, the director of the school's production, Omair Rana, recalled Friday in a telephone interview. The detainees were Muslim, many were Pakistani and one had been arrested in Islamabad, the country's capital.

.................
Accounts of abuses at the actual American detention center at Guantánamo Bay, including Newsweek magazine's now-retracted article on the desecration of the Koran, ricochet around the world, instilling ideas about American power and justice, and sowing distrust of the United States. Even more than the written accounts are the images that flash on television screens throughout the Muslim world: caged men, in orange prison jumpsuits, on their knees. On Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, two satellite networks, images of the prisoners appear in station promos.
...............

[Briar]

14. I am baffled by this article

I admit. Does the NYT think this is news, or that only biased people (muslims) with incorrect throught processes hold these views, or something?

Guantanamo is (as the woman quoted at the end says) a place where the US locks up and tortures muslims on the grounds that they are terrorists. It's an extra-legal place where the Geneva Conventions are laughed at, the Red Cross are excluded and lied to, and terrible things are done to defenceless people.

There is absolutely no justification for it. Why doesn't the NYT ask people in London, Oslo, Sydney, Johannesburg, all over the world what they think about Guantanamo and the country which runs it? They will get the same answer. The truth. Why isn't the NYT leading a campaign of civilised Americans to close it?

[Toots]

15. Hey this is who we are..This is the Great america in all it's Glory

We are showing those people a thing or two about "messing with the US" as the bumper sticker goes. The only flowers Americans get from them are Poppies, and I am quite sure this Administration gets their cut off the heroin supplied. I guess them Liberals learned a thing or two about how the "Adults" handle matters...

[struggle4progress]

18. kick