BuzzFlash Reviews
The Road to Guantanamo (DVD)
Directed by Michael Winterbottom
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The Bush Administration has assumed the power -- and now the U.S. Congress has given it the legal authority -- to declare people guilty on executive branch and military whim. Instead of being innocent until proven guilty, you are guilty merely because the Bushevik led government declares you are -- for whatever chance of fate or political objective that suits the Busheviks. It is the kind of power Joe Stalin used indiscriminately. It is the power of tyranny: the power over life and death itself.
"The Road to Guantanamo" is both a documentary and docu-drama that illustrates, through three British nationals of Pakistani origin, how random and spurious is the basis of "guilt" for the Bush Administration.
Their story of how they arrived at Guantanamo -- and how they were ultimately freed -- is as chilling as it is foreboding.
As we noted in our BuzzFlash editorial "Torture, Murder, Bush, Kissinger and The Mothers of the Disappeared in Argentina: America on the Brink of Horror," the Bush Administration has now legally been given the power to bypass judicial process and find people guilty (of who knows what)on whatever basis -- often random and baseless -- and then torture them.
Guantanamo did not kill the three British nationals in this film. The UK ultimately negotiated their freedom.
But other innocents have died; other innocents are still at Guantanamo and at U.S. and CIA facilities around the world.
We can never know who the real "guilty" are, because there is no process anymore to determine guilt.
Bush, Stalin, Hitler, Franco and Pinochet all have this in common: they have been given the power to determine who lives and who dies; who is jailed and who lives freely; who is tortured and who is not.
Like his predecessors, Bush is accountable to no one.
"The Road to Guantanamo" will not be limited to foreigners in the future. Bush has declared all who disagree with his calamitous foreign policy "tools of the terrorists."
Many of us in America may yet travel "The Road to Guantanamo." Congress has just authorized that journey.
From an Intenet viewer review:
By now, I must have seen thousands of movies, Most of them faded away during time, but there are some great movies that you will never forget.
The Road To Guantanamo is one of those movies that will linger in your memory for a long time to come.
It will leave you shocked, it will make to think about the world we live in, the society, the culture and mostly the big events happening in during our life?
The is a documentary movie, set in our past and current time and I assure you that every time you watch the news, there will be something linking to this movie for many years to come.
Update:
How much truth is in this film? Please read this peice of news article published on 19th sep 2006.
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - A Saudi has been held in solitary confinement for a year at the Guantanamo Bay prison and is now so mentally unbalanced he considers insects his friends, lawyers said in a motion filed Monday seeking the man's removal from isolation.
Shaker Aamer, a 37-year-old resident of Britain, was placed in isolated confinement Sept. 24, 2005, and has been beaten by guards, deprived of sleep and subjected to temperature extremes, according to the motion filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The treatment violates Geneva Conventions protections, Aamer's lawyers argued. The U.S. military denied he is being mistreated.
"They choked him," the lawyer said. "They bent his nose repeatedly so hard to the side he thought it would break. ... They gouged his eyes. They held his eyes open and shined a mag-lite in them for minutes on end, generating intense heat. They bent his fingers until he screamed. When he screamed, they cut off his airway, then put a mask on him so he could not cry out." (End of Internet reviewer commentary on "The Road to Guantanamo.")
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