Terrible Cruelties Inflicted on Gitmo Guards by Inmates!

The true picture of life at Gitmo is finally emerging, and it is not a pretty one.

Recently released Pentagon memos reveal that it is actually the guards at Gitmo who are being abused, not the inmates. And the torments they suffer at the hands of their captives are beyond your worst imaginings.

One memo describes how some inmates were given a fan to keep them cool. And what did the ungrateful fiends do with it? They took it apart and converted the basket into a shield, the pole into a battering ram, and the blades into machetes. In the terrible battle that followed, the defenseless guards were seriously bruised. One even received a cut that required a bandage.

But it gets worse, much worse.

On another occasion, an inmate threw a lizard tail at a guard. Yes, that’s right. A lizard tail. The poor guard (it kills me to write this) “felt something” on his lower right back. Then he discovered lizard blood on his uniform.

The bastards do not even respect the uniform of the United States Army.

Another inmate told a female guard that if she was “Rambo, Jean Claude Van Dan, or a man,” she would be in Iraq. Then, as if those unkind words were not enough, he scratched her and spit on her. I do not even want to think how terrible the scratch must have been, or how long it must have taken her to clean herself of the spit.

On another occasion, an inmate viciously stabbed a guard with a spork. In case you are unfamiliar with this deadly weapon, here is a picture of one:


And it gets worse.

Inmates have also thrown rocks at the guards. One even grabbed a radio from a guard and threw it at him. But the worst thing they have thrown at the guards is … doo-doo.

True, the inmates have been incarcerated indefinitely without any evidence whatsoever of any kind of wrongdoing, therefore a certain amount of irritation on their part may be understandable. But nothing--nothing--justifies throwing doo-doo at the brave prison guards who serve our Homeland.

O, the inhumanity! O, the unspeakable horror of it all! It is enough to make a grown man cry. In fact, I am crying as I write this.

Gitmo Inmates Abuse guards

Gitmo Detainees Terrorize Our GIs Behind Bars

A Restful, Transcendental Musical Interlude for You

A Rumor about a Tumor

A READER WRITES: I understand they found a brain tumor on autopsy. So he was crazy, in a way. Read it in a paperback about Whitman. I don't recall the title.

Ah yes, the rumor about a tumor (quoting Kinky Friedman’s “Ballad of Charles Whitman”) …

The pathologist who performed Whitman’s autopsy said he found one in Whitman’s brain. Some speculated this may have affected his behavior. However, when Whitman’s body was exhumed a month after the autopsy, there was no evidence of a tumor. (LINK)

Whatever the cause, Whitman did have mental problems. Prior to the shootings, he sought treatment for depression at the UT student health center. He even told the therapist that he often felt the urge to go up on the Tower and shoot people. He was prescribed Valium. Doesn’t appear to have done him much good.

Most people think Whitman’s mental problems were the result of severe abuse by his father. It was this abuse, in fact, that led to his leaving home at 18 and joining the Marines.

He did well in the Marines, at first, particularly as a marksman. Then his character began to deteriorate. He was always in trouble. Eventually he was court-martialed for a variety of offenses and sentenced to 90 days hard labor.

A military background is something Whitman shares with two other Texas mass murderers:

George Hennard, who killed 24 people in the 1991 Luby's massacre in Killeen, had been dishonorably discharged from the Navy two years prior to the massacre.

Larry Gene Ashbrook, who killed seven in a Fort Worth church in 1999, had worked for the Navy. Ashbrook, interestingly, also claimed to have had contact with the CIA. A few days prior to the shootings, he wrote two letters to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram describing these contacts, also describing “psychological warfare” and being drugged by the police. The claims may sound wild, but the letters are coherent. (LINK)

Was Ashbrook mind controlled? Was Hennard? Whitman? I don’t know. It is only theory …

My MySpace Space

I’ve joined the MySpace Cult.

I noticed that a great many of my friends in the comics and conspiracy research communities are on MySpace, so I thought I’d give it a try.

You might well ask, “And if your friends all decided to jump off a mountain, would you do that too?”

No, I would not. This is not a mountain. This is MySpace. I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself. If I encounter any of those sexual predators on MySpace, I’ll know how to deal with them.

Anyway, the MySpace page has led to my getting back in touch with a few friends I hadn’t talked to in a while, so it’s been worthwhile.

It also led to making a couple of new acquaintances, one of whom is a young feller whose name happens to be Mack White. You can read his comments on my page.

It’s not the first time I’ve met another Mack White via the Internet. A year or so ago, an aspiring musician named Mack White wrote me. He had found about me when his girlfriend Googled his name and discovered my website. He said that after she saw all the weird comics and subversive political rantings, he had a lot of explaining to do.

Anyway, if you’re on MySpace and would like to join my list of friends or leave a comment, GO HERE …

A Gruesome Anniversary in Austin

We observed a gruesome anniversary here in Austin yesterday. It was 40 years ago that Charles Whitman went up to the observation deck of the University of Texas Tower and began randomly shooting passersby. Fifteen people died that day, 31 were wounded.

I have been on the UT campus now for 29 years. I came here as a student in the summer of 1977, then after graduation in 1982 began working the day job I still hold (but will retire from in the near future). During that time, with the exception of weekends, holidays, etc., the Tower has been a daily part of my life. I occasionally enter the building on an errand, I look up at the Tower's clock to see what time it is, I hear its bell toll every fifteen minutes. And usually I do not think about the sniper incident.

Then one of those even-numbered anniversary years (20, 30, and now 40) so favored by the news media will occur, and I will be reminded.

In 1986, for instance, I was working in my office when I heard a commotion in the hallway. I got up to see what it was. It was an ABC News crew preparing to interview a woman who had taken cover in that hallway 20 years earlier on August 1966. And then I was reminded yet again that the familiar paths I walk every day—running an errand, getting a cup of coffee, doing this, doing that—are the very places Whitman’s victims fell, cut down as they went about similar mundane tasks.

On the day of the shootings I was in North Texas. It was the beginning of the last month of summer vacation. I was sitting on the front porch of our house in Cleburne, listening to the news reports on my transistor radio. I had never heard of such a thing—someone going crazy and randomly shooting people for no particular reason. At least the killing of JFK three years earlier had not been random; for whatever reason, he had been singled out because he was the president. Thus, it made some sense. But shooting someone just for the sake of shooting them made no sense. It could only be understood as the crazy act of a crazy man; in other words, it was not meant to be understood.

The Tower shootings made the cover of Life magazine the following week. Featured prominently inside was a photo of Charles Whitman as a child holding a rifle. In its way, this was as damning a photo as the fake photo (also published by Life) of Oswald holding a rifle. I am not saying the photo of Whitman was faked. What I am saying is that this image helped convict guns as the real culprit in the Tower shootings: Oh look, it's a little child with a gun, a little child who will grow up to be crazy. If only he had not learned how to shoot, if only guns had not been available, then the terrible thing would not have happened ... It was powerful propaganda, that photo.

In the aftermath of the Tower shootings, President Johnson called for stricter gun control policies. Thus the national debate began. Not mentioned in the debate was the fact that, during the shootings, the police called on citizens with guns to help out. In the top floor of the building where I work, these citizens—many of them UT students—fired on the Tower, providing a much-needed distraction that allowed two policemen to slip up on Whitman and shoot him. One of these policemen, Romero Martinez, said on the Alex Jones Show yesterday that he has always felt that these citizens have never received the proper credit for their assistance that day.

The Tower shootings were followed two years later by the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy—events which, like the killing of John F. Kennedy, were explained by the government and mainstream media as the acts of “lone nuts.” Lone nuts with guns were the big threat to society, therefore the solution was to crack down on guns--that was the propaganda, and a great many people bought it (are still buying it, for that matter). In 1968, Congress passed the Gun Control Act of 1968, a word-for-word translation of the Nazi Weapons Act of 1938. Under the guise of benevolence, the government was taking the first step all police states must take: disarming the citizenry.

We now know that King and the two Kennedys were not gunned down by lone nuts. We also know that a great many other incidents have been contrived over the years to justify more and more police state legislation—the Oklahoma City bombings, for instance, which led to the Anti-Crime and Terrorism Act; also 9/11 which led to the Patriot Act. In addition, there have been questions raised about random, Tower-like shootings, such as the Columbine shootings. (LINK)

All of which causes me to wonder about Charles Whitman. Might he have been a Manchurian Candidate? To my knowledge, there has been no attempt to research this possibility, therefore we can only wonder.

The Tower, as I say, looms over my mundane tasks every day. I walk around campus, walk up and down Guadalupe Street, following in the footsteps of Whitman’s victims, yet rarely thinking about it. Nor do I think to look at the patched-up bullet hole on the building where I work. It is only this gruesome anniversary that I do so, and when I do I ponder not only the horror of that day, but its legacy: the Nazi law that became law in the United States. I ponder, and I wonder … (LINK)

NEW EDITION: THE MACK WHITE SHOW

This show celebrates the Dog Days of Summer (Arf! Arf!) with a Surfy musical mix of Reggae and Hawiian Steel Guitar in homage to the Great Tiki God. Also included: Snakey Jake and the Delta Devils singing "Who Do You Love," and the latest dream recorded on my Dream-O-Graph, "HillBilly Superman" ...