community-based, non-corporate, participatory media
Removing Irving's Hood
by paleface
Tuesday, Jan. 06, 2004 at 12:19 PM
Notorious Holocaust denier and British historian David IRVING is being promoted by the neo-Nazi group, the National Alliance; headquartered in West Virginia.
has been SPAMMING Indymedia with Neo-Nazi garbage in homage to David Irving,
the supreme white supremacist.
also so AFRAID to plainly state his beliefs upfront? I also wonder why someone who
admires NEO-NAZIS like David Irving lacks the courage to admit it?
Cleveland Jewish News, Aug. 25, 2002 Notorious Holocaust denier and British historian David IRVING, who lost a libel suit in April 2000 that he brought in England against Emory University Prof. Deborah Lipstadt, is coming to Cleveland again. His speech Sunday, Aug. 25, in suburban Fairview Park has apparently been organized by the neo-Nazi group, the National Alliance. Irving's appearances are usually shrouded in secrecy. But reached at the toll-free number listed on his Web site, Irving confirmed that he would speak at 6 p.m. at 22001 Brookpark Road, near the airport. The address belongs to an American Legion Hall, which has been rented by David Daams from 6 to 11 p.m. for an American Veterans History Conference, a Legion representative told the CJN. However, Daams denied that he rented the hall or arranged the meeting. Information about the conference was "only going out to a select group of people," Daams said, referring questions to Erich Gliebe, the new head of the National Alliance Gliebe, the longtime head of the Cleveland unit of the white supremacist group, was promoted to the top job after the July death of founder William Pierce. At publication time, Gliebe, who maintains a home in North Royalton, had not returned a CJN phone call. Irving, who has a home in Key West and runs a book publishing business in London, travels around the U.S. to raise money and sell his books, says Mark Pitcavage, director of fact-finding for the Anti-Defamation League.Irving will hold his fourth annual conference on "Real History" Aug. 30-Sept 2 at Greater Cincinnati Airport Marriott. Attending the conference costs a single adult $420 plus the hotel charges. The speakers scheduled at the "Real History" conference will discuss a variety of conspiracy theories about Sept. 11, Irving's Web site said. Typically, such theories charge that the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence organization, working with U.S. agents, were responsible for the World Trade Center tragedy, says Pitcavage. (Now you know who is spreading the 9-11 Conspiracy SPAM all over Indymedia!!!) Other appearing at the Cincinnati conference will talk about the Holocaust. For instance, Dr. Robert Countess will dispute a witness for Lipstadt who detailed operations at the Auschwitz gas chamber. Secrecy is important to right-wing radicals like Irving, because "extremism thrives in the darkness, where it can communicate its message with no opposing viewpoints," Pitcavage says. He described Irving as particularly "pernicious" because he is highly intelligent and communicates well. At secret meetings, "there's nobody debunking their conspiracy theories or extreme claims, no one to provide a dose of common sense," Pitcavage adds. "The ADL likes to shine a light on that, so everybody can see it for what it really is." Irving sued Lipstadt and her publisher, Penguin, because he said her book, Denying the Holocaust--the Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, damaged his reputation as a historian. In her book, Lipstadt described Irving as a "one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial." (Now you know who is spreading the Holocaust SPAM all over Indymedia!!!) Irving does not deny that the Nazis killed Jews, but he insists that only a small number were murdered and that Hitler didn't know about it. In his ruling, London High Court Judge Charles Gray found the allegations true that Irving was a "racist, an anti-Semite, an active Holocaust denier, who associates with right-wing extremists." Irving is liable for the costs of the suit--an estimated 2 million British pounds--including Lipstadt's defense costs. After losing his suit, Irving declared bankruptcy. |
kewl
by Irving
Wednesday, Jan. 07, 2004 at 4:06 AM
Wow, like all this for little old me? Just because I, like millions of others, have dismissed Richeson as the Race Baiter that she is?
Please, by all means continue. Show the world what's truly at the "heart and soul" of the Left.
It's not the same person.
by Sam
Thursday, Jan. 08, 2004 at 4:32 AM
I don't think so, anyway. As misguided as our Irving may be, he's never (to my knowledge) posted anything blatantly racist.
I disagree
by paleskin
Thursday, Jan. 08, 2004 at 9:31 AM
Sam, please take the time to thoroughly read the lengthy thread entitled: "Proof that bigotry and stupidity are linked" by T. Feran - http://pittsburgh.indymedia.org/news/2003/12/11350.php
In this thread, Irving uses direct quotes and the entire philosophical reasoning of "ResistingDefamation.org." Founded by Bo Sears of Sunnyvale, CA. Here's is just one of his many campaign letters:
Dear Friend:
It appears that LEADERLESS young European American boys have declared an intifada against their schools. Resisting Defamation doubts that they understand why they feel so ASSAULTED and DEMEANED every day on campus and in the larger world, but they are indisputably on the march, one by one, to communicate their loathing for institutions that teach them to HATE THEMSELVES, their ANCESTORS, their HISTORIES and the diversity of their families' CULTURES.
We sent the following letter today to dozens of our local newspaper's writers and editors as a response to a "deep-think" piece last Sunday about youthful European American violence against schools, and we are forwarding it to you with the hope that some of its concepts or arguments will prove useful to you in your own community when this issue arises.
Bo Sears
for Resisting Defamation
http://www.ResistDef.org
...And here's another...
MALDISTRIBUTION OF THE "WHITE" QUOTA
Arthur,
Our mutual friend has shared with me some of your postings on the way that half the European American population is being SCREWED out of its FAIR SHARE of society's goods and services, and being insulted and disparaged during the
screwing, so I thought you would like to see, in advance, one of the entries on a web site that will be up in another 5 or 6 days at http://www.resistdef.org
The entry is about the phenomenon of subordinated "white" ethnics screwed by dominant "white" ethnics, so it ties in with your writings. If you want to circulate it, be our guest.
Bo Sears
for Resisting Defamation
Now how is it that schools that teach white kids to HATE themselves? Because they teach American History which happens to include Slavery, Segregation, and Oppression against ethnic, cultural, and sexual minorities?
What they call "Defimation" the rest of us call "The Cold Hard Truth." Now consider these lovely comments by Irving and his other psuedonyms...
intersting hypothesis
by Irving Tuesday December 30, 2003 at 05:21 PM
Would be interesting to see just who originated the study. Was it Richeson? If so, why wasn't she condemned for her blatant racism?
Oh well, as I've said, this "study" reeks of Leftist racism. The Race Baiters and the GRIEVANCE Industry is very big indeed, supported by the lowly race hustlers like durutti/paleskin. Kinda like the Mafia needs bookies on the street corners.
Durutti the Shit Shoveler�. Has a nice ring to it.
--------------------------------
"discrimination" versus "choice"
by Irving Wednesday December 31, 2003 at 05:20 PM
So what's your point this time, Leftist racist?
I don't like homosexuals. I am biased against them. Life itself is biased against them, which is why there's male and female to continue the species.
Used to be the homosexists kept to themselves. We knew what Liberace was, or Paul Lynde, or Billy deWolfe, or Agnes Moorehead. We heard the rumors about Rock Hudson. We snickered and went on about our business, because they didn't affect us and they didn't try...
...Cry "homophobe" all you want, Little Precious�. It changes nothing. Leftists are dangerous to humanity, and somebody has to call your kind for what it is.
You're goddamned right I discriminate. Leftists use that word "discrimination" as a means of tearing down the very fabric of society. How about I want to steal from you? How about I want to kill you? Is it okay that I say you're discriminating against me, against my beliefs, against my "lifestyle choice"? How about I choose murder as a lifestyle choice? Seems downright logical to me, seeing as how bug chasers are elevated into Sainthood.
--------------------------------
you lost first paragraph
by test doc Monday January 05, 2004 at 10:19 PM
Right off Crockett completely ignored the fact the Republicans were the ones who pushed Civil Rights through in 1964. Instead he/she/it tried to slyly slide Johnson's name in there, in order to rope in the stupid and the uneducated and the young.
You posted SEWAGE, more of that REWRITING of history by Leftists. I've seen it many times when I put Bull Connor in a search. Amazing how on all those Black History sites and the like they never tell he was a Democrap.
And fuck Fortune 500 companies with no balls, who has let a Race Extortionist like that sewage Jesse Jackson to get by with what he has. And fuck Bush, Ashcroft, and every stinking Republican for letting that Race Nazi get away with what he has. And fuck you Leftist Nazis.
Fuck you, Town Crier. HOW I LOATHE SOMEONE WHO DOESN'T RESPECT HERSELF.
by the gonads
by Irving
Friday, Jan. 09, 2004 at 8:57 AM
"HOW I LOATHE SOMEONE WHO DOESN'T RESPECT HERSELF"
Interesting how you capitalized that, especially since elsewhere I said you can legislate your racist Diversity all you want, but you'll never have respect from anyone. Eats at your craw, don't it? Stupid enough to think you can force acceptance?
I also have an interesting hypothesis - paleskin thinks anyone who respects who they are and where they came from is a racist. Uh, if they're white, that is. Multiculturalism doesn't include white pride. In other words, Whitey is a target. The Race Nazis of the NeoKlan Left doesn't feel the need to be tolerant and inclusive when it comes to Caucasians.
You are blinded by your hate
by paleskin
Friday, Jan. 09, 2004 at 10:02 AM
Irving, you have yet to address the fact that the Bill of Rights legislates Diversity, and so does more than one Constituional Amendment.
Seems to me that you hate the Constitution and the ideals of "Founding Fathers" as much as you hate non-whites.
Nor should you confuse self-respect or cultural respect with the denigration of others. Being Pro-White or Pro-Black, Pro-Female, Pro-Gay, Pro-Christian, etc. does not require you to consider youself or your group as superior.
What seems to be mixed-up in your brain is that a society of diverse of opinions, colors, cultures, and faiths will somehow translate into a society in which white men will become oppressed.
I don't know if you have ever researched the statistical representation of white men in Congress or in Coporate America, but there is NO DANGER of white men being oppressed.
never
by Irving
Friday, Jan. 09, 2004 at 10:25 AM
You want to force your Diversity on the rest of us, and like a true scoundrel hides behind the Bill of Rights. You'll never be accepted or respected.
Live with it.
Irving, Blinded by hate
by paleskin
Friday, Jan. 09, 2004 at 10:59 AM
As I said before, Diversity is mandated by the Constitution.
It's not I who wrote the Bill of Rights or passed the Amendments, so your anger is undfounded and misdirected.
Live with it -- in peace.
live with in peace - by FORCE!
by Irving
Friday, Jan. 09, 2004 at 11:49 AM
True Klan members would never champion in the least, or even acknowledge, a black like Rice or Powell, et al. On the contrary, they'd heartily approve of an image that berates and ridicules Rice ("I'm Fighting for Whitey"). Yet I'm told I wear a hood, like the heretofore unacknowledged member of the United States Senate Robert Byrd, that the Leftists have never called for so much as censure? True Klan members have more in common with the genocidal PaliNazi sympathizing Leftist IMC'ers that masturbate over thoughts of innocent Israeli children's body parts being blown and strewn all over the place.
To recap, the Klu Klux Klan hates Jews, just as many of the IMC'ers do. In similar fashion, the NeoPlantation owners hate blacks who try to assert themselves in the world free of the stigmatic ball and chain of FORCED racist anti- White multiculturalism. And they'll create "studies" to reinforce the "Dangers Of Whitey", their way of crying out "please don't leave us!"
I'm more for the black man (and others) and decency and honesty and Truth than any Leftist Klansman like "paleskin" ever dared be. And I don't have to hide behind the Bill of Rights as a cover.
More and more I'm beginning to think "paleskin" is really a plant of some kind, one of those supposed "COINTELPRO" types trying to stir the pot. It must be. I don't think I'd ever come across someone otherwise so stereotypical of Leftist robots reading from a handbook, something so mind numbingly clich�.
To Irving, DIVERSITY is a dirty word
by paleskin
Friday, Jan. 09, 2004 at 12:01 PM
How sad your mind is Irving -- but you still haven't addressed the fact that you don't believe in the Consitution or the Bill of Rights.
It applies to everyone -- our DIVERSE population, not just those you like or you name.
Diversity is a dirty word to Leftists
by Irving
Friday, Jan. 09, 2004 at 1:28 PM
Just ask Rice or Powell, or Estrada or Jones.
The Bush Administration looks pretty much multi-culti to me, and is trying to go even more that way. But it brought out the Race Nazis crying "Toms" and "neanderthals". Even elicited a bullshit propaganda "study" in desperation. How about that? But the Republicans passed the Civil Rights Act, which the history revisionist Democraps won't acknowledge, so what should I expect?
As usual, Leftists do all the talking, but the Right does all the actual gruntwork.
Please respond, Little Obsessed Precious. I love seeing your blood pressure pegged. Try and win, if you must. The record of the Left speaks for itself.
Hello Irving, care to address my previous questions?
by paleskin
Friday, Jan. 09, 2004 at 1:55 PM
All of what you said doesn't pertain to anything I have said or believe, nor the authenticity of Richeson's study, nor the Consitutional mandate for DIVERSITY.
FORCED Diversity
by Irving
Friday, Jan. 09, 2004 at 2:01 PM
"When an opponent declares, 'I will not come over to your side', I calmly say 'Your child belongs to us already. What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.'"
- Adolf Hitler, 1939
James Madison Explains the Constitution to Thomas Jefferson
by paleskin
Friday, Jan. 09, 2004 at 2:10 PM
Excerpted from letter to Thomas Jefferson, October 24, 1787 (Madison 1865, I, pages 343 to 357)
You will herewith receive the result of the Convention, which continued its session till the 17th of September. I take the liberty of making some observations on the subject, which will help to make up a letter, if they should answer no other purpose.
It appeared to be the SINCERE and UNANIMOUS wish of the Convention to cherish and preserve the Union of the States. No proposition was made, no suggestion was thrown out, in favor of a partition of the Empire into two or more Confederacies.
It was generally agreed that the objects of the Union could not be secured by any system founded on the principle of a confederation of Sovereign States. A VOLUNTARY observance of the FEDERAL law by all the members could NEVER be hoped for. A compulsive one could evidently never be reduced to practice, and if it could, involved equal calamities to the innocent and guilty, the necessity of a military force, both obnoxious and dangerous, and, in general, a scene resembling much more a civil war than the administration of a regular Government.
Hence was embraced the ALTERNATIVE of a Government which, instead of operating on the States, should operate without their intervention on the individuals composing them; and hence the change in the principle and proportion of representation.
This ground-work being laid, the great objects which presented themselves were: 1. To unite a proper energy in the Executive, and a proper stability in the Legislative departments, with the essential characters of Republican Government. 2. To draw a line of demarkation which would give to the General Government every power requisite for general purposes, and leave to the States every power which might be most beneficially administered by them. 3. To provide for the different interests of different parts of the Union. 4. To adjust the clashing pretensions of the large and small States. Each of these objects was pregnant with difficulties. The whole of them together formed a task more difficult than can be well conceived by those who were not concerned in the execution of it. Adding to these considerations the NATURAL DIVERSITY of human opinions on all new and complicated subjects, it is impossible to consider the degree of concord which ultimately prevailed as less than a miracle...
...If, then, there must be DIFFERENT INTERESTS and parties in society, and a majority, when united by a common interest or passion, cannot be restrained from OPPRESSING THE MINORITY, what remedy can be found in a republican Government, where the majority must ultimately decide, but that of giving such an extent to its sphere, that no common interest or passion will be likely to unite a majority of the whole number in an unjust pursuit? In a large society, the people are broken into so many interests and parties, that a common sentiment is less likely to be felt, and the requisite concert less likely to be formed, by a majority of the whole. The same security seems requisite for the CIVIL as for the RELIGOUS RIGHTS of individuals. If the same sect form a majority, and have the power, other sects will be sure to be depressed. DIVIDE ET IMPERIA, the reprobated axiom of tyranny is, under certain qualifications, the ONLY POLICY by which a republic can be administered on JUST PRINCIPLES.
www.jmu.edu/madison/ratification/madexpcontojeff.htm
paleskins hood
by Irving
Friday, Jan. 09, 2004 at 2:27 PM
"A compulsive one could evidently never be reduced to practice, and if it could, involved equal calamities to the innocent and guilty, the necessity of a military force, both obnoxious and dangerous, and, in general, a scene resembling much more a civil war than the administration of a regular Government."
Why do you hate James Madison and the Constitution?
by paleskin
Friday, Jan. 09, 2004 at 3:09 PM
In the interest of clarity, please answer these questions based on the ascertions of James Madison, co-author of the Constitution. 1. "If, then, there must be different interests and parties in society, and a majority, when united by a common interest or passion, cannot be restrained from oppressing the minority."
2. "In a large society, the people are broken into so many interests and parties, that a common sentiment is less likely to be felt, and the requisite concert less likely to be formed, by a majority of the whole."
3. "If the same sect form a majority, and have the power, other sects will be sure to be depressed."
4. "Divide et impera, the reprobated axiom of tyranny is, under certain qualifications, the only policy by which a republic can be administered on just principles."
|
interesting
by Irv the Nirv
Friday, Jan. 09, 2004 at 5:48 PM
The founding fathers aren't much in hte eyes of liberals until needed for inane threads like this.
pulling the hood off of HomoFascists
by paleskin
Friday, Feb. 27, 2004 at 8:35 PM
Dance Mary, Dance
Armstrong Williams
February 28, 2004
One moment gay and lesbian protesters are demanding that we regard them not by their insipid sexual acts, but as complex human beings deserving of the same inalienable rights the constitution reserves for all "humans." The next moment they are labeling and dismissing any human who breaks ranks with their cause.
Exhibit A: Mary Cheney, the openly gay daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney. Amid the hubbub over the proposed gay marriage amendment, gay protesters have trained their scorn on Mary. A new website, dearmary.com, attempts to shame her for not publicly opposing the administration's support of an amendment banning same sex unions. A proposed ad on the web site features Mary's picture on a milk carton. The caption reads, "Have you seen me?" and suggests that she is a coward for not joining their cause. The site also posts thousands of emails imploring Mary to speak out for homosexual rights. Web founder and DC political consultant John Aravosis sees nothing wrong with harassing the Vice President's daughter. "The White House has no problem publicly discussing whether my family's relationships are valid and healthy, yet they refuse to discuss their own," said Aravosis to The Washington Post.
Never mind that they've completely objectified Mary. Never mind that they've distilled this complex human being into a symbol designed solely to solicit a knee-jerk reaction. Or that they've shown no respect for her right to privacy. Or that they've put her sexuality on a public stage and demanded that she sculpt it to meet their idea of proper gay etiquette-as defined not by an abiding respect for human privacy or civil rights, but by what they think a homosexual ought to do.
Get it? Mary doesn't act as gay as they feel she should so they label and dismiss her. How neat and easy and ridiculously absurd. I mean, isn't this precisely the sort of reductive stereotyping that the homosexual activists are supposed to be fighting against? I mean, isn't that their thing? Respecting a human beings freedom to make intimate decisions without heaps of third-party indignation and scorn? Apparently the ideas that are supposed to animate their cause with meaning fall by the wayside at the first chance for some decent pub.
All of which is incredibly telling. The homosexual activist aren't so much concerned with respecting an individual's right to privacy, as they are with forcing social change. If that means harassing the Vice President's daughter, so be it. If it means undermining the standards and norms of a culture they never felt a part of, even better.
After all, why do gay couples want the church's blessing? They could go about their business just fine without having been "wed" in a church, right? Unless there is more to it. It is political, and often economic. They want greater standing and treatment among the heterosexual majority. The best way, they believe, to achieve that end is through a union like marriage. So much the better if anti-gay institutions are destroyed as a result. They see it as another victory. But if you look behind the rhetoric about civil rights, it becomes clear that they are acting at the expense of what is best for society, and to grant them victory, would be to rip our most sacred religious and cultural ideals to shreds. This no one owes them!
you'll never hear the Left protest this
by Irving
Monday, Mar. 01, 2004 at 10:57 AM
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/core/Content/displayPrintable.jhtml;$sessionid$4OKOC1ULZVLQLQFIQMGSFF4AVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2004/02/29/wzim129.xml&site=5
'Rape is OK. It helps us to train people'
(Filed: 29/02/2004)
Hilary Andersson, of the BBC's Panorama programme, reveals how thousands of youths are being taught to rape, maim, torture and kill in Zimbabwe's terror training camps - and now Robert Mugabe intends to make the camps compulsory for all the country's young men and women
It should have been just another shopping trip for Debbie. She needed a few vegetables, so headed off into one of Bulawayo's markets. On that November morning back in 2001, she had no premonition that her life was about to be wrecked.
In the market was a large gang of Mugabe's youth militia chanting Zanu-PF slogans. They quickly spotted the tall 20-year-old and demanded that she come and join them. Debbie, terrified, turned and ran for home, but the gang chased after her through the streets.
She thought she had made it to safety, but she had been seen entering her house. If she didn't come out, the gang members shouted, they would burn it down. Debbie surrendered. She was allowed to take just one possession with her: a blanket.
Debbie was taken to one of the so-called training camps for Robert Mugabe's Green Bombers youth brigades. That night the camp boys came into her dormitory. They locked the doors, then took it in turns to rape her. "The boys turned the lights off at 10 o'clock," she said. "They told me: 'If you cry, if you make a noise, we'll beat you'."
The ordeal didn't finish there. She says she was raped again - and again, every night for the next six months. Debbie shared her blanket with an 11-year old girl called Sitembile. The little girl would scream night after night as she was raped, too.
The morning after being gang raped for the first time Debbie asked the camp commander for medical help. He told her not to complain and sent her on a 20-kilometre run. Like many of the youths she was often deprived of food for days at a time, and frequently beaten.
One day she was caught trying to escape, and was sadistically punished. She was buried to her neck in the ground. When she was dug out hours later she was made to roll in raw sewage. "The water, it was dirty," she said, "my head was rolling inside."
The commanders then forced Debbie to eat her meal with the other inmates without being allowed to wash. "The commanders, they laughed," she said.
Debbie, now 22, is understandably a deeply traumatised young woman. She fled to South Africa after speaking publicly about her experiences in Zimbabwe. As a consequence, she now lives isolated and in hiding, in fear of Mugabe's secret police. At least two Zimbabweans have been tortured, one to death, for telling the truth about the camps.
There are at least six large camps in Zimbabwe, trapping thousands of children and youths inside. The youngest are aged just 11; the oldest 30. Once inside, many of the recruits are put through a horrific training programme which, over a period of three to six months, can turn ordinary youngsters into thugs with a capacity for extreme violence.
The people of Zimbabwe are told that the camps are job training centres, where youths learn such skills as carpentry and sewing. Many youngsters believe this propaganda and actually volunteer for the camps.
Panorama spent weeks with Debbie, slowly eliciting the full horror of her ordeal. She was far from alone in her brutal treatment. In interviews conducted by Panorama and human rights groups with almost 100 former camp youths, around 50 per cent of the girls said that they were regularly raped in the camps.
Rape on such a scale helps break down the youth in the camps emotionally, which enables the camp commanders to gain physical and psychological control of their young inmates. The boys in the camps are often encouraged to rape by the commanders, who ply them with alcohol and drugs.
"Daniel", who was in a camp about 100 miles from Bulawayo and is also now in South Africa, sports a tight woollen hat, and lounges on his chair when he speaks. He smiles when he talks about raping. "I was enjoying it," he admits, "because I was only choosing the nice girls."
Daniel, who was a young leader in the camp, treated the girls as his slaves, ordering them to wash his clothes, and bring him food and drink as he pleased.
A former official with the Ministry of Youth, Gender and Employment Creation that oversees the camps, explained the government's thinking.
"You are moulding somebody to listen to you, so if it means rapes have to take place in order for that person to take instructions from you, then it's OK," he said. He was so horrified that he left his job with the ministry in disgust.
Rape is just one of the ways camp commanders are able to turn their charges into unquestioning automata. The training methods vary from camp to camp, but the pattern is consistent.
Every day the inmates are woken at 3 or 4am and forced into a regime of tough exercise. Those who can't keep up are beaten with rubber whips.
For two or three hours a day they are also taught the history of Zimbabwe. One of the training manuals that is used in the classes is a collection of Robert Mugabe's speeches. The children say that they are afraid to question the teachings.
"They have to take out the stuff which you have in your mind and then put in new stuff," said one man who had been through the camps. The youths are taught that opponents of Mugabe's Zanu-PF party must be dealt with harshly.
The brutality in the camps prepares the youths for the more advanced lessons in how to torture and kill government opponents. Most of the youths Panorama interviewed said that they were taught how to kill. Debbie was given lessons in using shoe laces for strangling, and stabbing people in the head with a knife.
The "star pupils" are selected for training in the techniques of torture. Youths testified to being taught how to torture with electricity, or by hanging victims upside down and lowering their heads into buckets of water below until they nearly drown.
Even while they are still "in training" many youths are sent out on missions to beat up opponents of Mugabe's government. Some, Debbie was one, are also sent out to kidnap fresh recruits into the camp.
A few are forced to attack and maim members of their own families if their relatives are suspected of being opposed to Mugabe. One 24-year-old woman, "Promise", said that she was forced to beat her own uncle. During the attack his back was broken and he is now crippled. "Now sometime I have nightmares about it and I end up screaming," said Promise.
The camps are situated in remote areas and there is little chance for escape. Any disobedience or breaking of the rules means instant punishment. The camp commanders themselves are former soldiers and war veterans. It took months of discussions to persuade one of them to speak to Panorama anonymously. He admitted that youths in his camp had been sent to kill two opponents of the government two years ago.
"My superiors instructed me that the people must be eliminated," he said matter-of-factly.
A youth ministry official who has now fled to South Africa said that he attended meetings at the Ministry of Youth at which killings and hit lists were openly discussed.
"Somebody would just say: 'We went on Saturday to this other area, and we beat up people. Ah, by the way, one of the guys died," he said. "It was like describing the result of a match between Manchester United and Arsenal."
As a means of keeping Mugabe in power and of subduing the opposition, the youth militias have been highly successful over the past three years. They were used to beat and intimidate thousands of supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change during the elections of 2002. Since then, they have been used to "police" food queues, making sure that government supporters get first access to the desperately needed maize.
An estimated 50,000 youths have already passed through the camps, but Mugabe wants more. His next goal is to win the parliamentary elections in 2005, so is in the process of making it compulsory for every Zimbabwean youth to undergo training.
"These guys are going to be used by the ruling party," said the one camp commander who would speak to us. "Our main concern is that we keep this opposition party out of power."
If Mugabe has his way, an entire generation of young people will be forcibly brutalised and corrupted.
Most of those who have fled his camps are deeply traumatised by their experiences. They feel tainted for having maimed, tortured and killed. It is a burden they find almost impossible to shake off.
Debbie is HIV positive as a result of her rape. She also became pregnant and now has a one-year-old daughter, Nunus. She knows that she is likely to die from Aids long before Nunus is fully grown - it is a sadness that so overwhelms her that she has tried to kill herself.
Rape rooms
by Turnkey
Tuesday, Mar. 02, 2004 at 2:21 AM
While we're discussing Hussein's 'rape rooms', let's not forget the ten Allegheny County Jail guards who were arrested for raping inmates.
I guess it's OK if they're 'Umarican'?
![[masthead]](/images/masthead_140.png)