[Marxism] British Marine Culture of Sadism ... and how do they treat the "enemy"?

[Brian Shannon <Brian_Shannon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

VIDEO OF BEATEN NAKED MARINE

A criminal investigation was launched yesterday into a video apparently
showing a naked young Royal Marine being beaten unconscious by his
superior.

The Royal Military Police's special investigation branch was called in
to investigate alleged violent bullying by NCOs as part of an
initiation ceremony for newly-qualified commandos in the elite force.

The video apparently shows drunken, naked soldiers being made to fight
each other with rubber mats strapped to their arms, watched by a crowd
of their jeering peers.

They are then made to fight bare-fisted while kneeling in the mud. When
one falls, a man in a fancy dress surgeon's outfit - allegedly an NCO -
kicks him in the face, leaving him unconscious.

A marine who leaked the video to the News of the World said: "The guy
laid out was inches from being dead. Stuff like this goes on all the
time but when drink is involved it gets worse.

"They were taken to a barbecue with about 40 other marines watching.
Their superior was getting them to do stranger and stranger things,
while getting them pissed and picking on any who did not do what he
wanted. They were having to swallow raw eggs and huge chunks of lard.
The ones who could not do it were singled out and humiliated."

The marines involved were in their first few months with 42 Commando at
Bickleigh Barracks, near Plymouth, after completing their 32-week
training at Lympstone in Devon. The incident allegedly happened in May.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said yesterday: "The Royal Marines take
these allegations extremely seriously and have a zero tolerance policy
on bullying and harassment.

"An investigation has been launched and because of this we are unable
to comment on the details behind these allegations. Behaviour of this
kind will not be tolerated. Whenever there is a proven breach of this
policy we always take appropriate disciplinary action."

Military sources were shocked by the level of violence but said that
drunken initiation ceremonies were not unusual in the Royal Marines.

One said: "When they go away on exercise there will be a theme of, say,
heels and suspenders that they will get into at every opportunity."

A former Royal Marines NCO, a veteran of the Falklands and first Gulf
war, said the bullying was an extreme form of "beasting" - corrective
punishments on marines still in training.

He said: "There is a fine line between character building and
humiliation. This video seems to have crossed the line and appears to
be more gladiatorial.

"The Royal Marines pride themselves on being Britain's fighting elite
and training has always been very tough. One or two people take things
too far and that is what has happened here. We have all dished it out
and been on the receiving end of stuff which would make civilians
cringe."

He said that when the Earl of Wessex was training at Lympstone in 1983
he was ordered to wade naked through an icy river.

Another former Royal Marine said: "Silly games and nakedness were all
par for the course, but I never experienced anything that was over the
top."

Patrick Mercer, the Conservative spokesman for homeland security who
served as an Army officer for 26 years, said: "This could be deeply
damaging to recruitment.

"A lot of units think this sort of thing is terribly amusing and makes
better soldiers but I think it is abuse."

Lord Garden, the former assistant chief of defence staff and now a
Liberal Democrat peer, said: "It will be counter-productive to shrug
and say that this just happens.

"We need to investigate and find the causes. We need to look at the
level of supervision and how to prevent these things happening."

Charles Heyman, a senior defence analyst for Jane's, was sceptical
about the authenticity of the video.

"We have seen hoaxers trying to screw money out of newspapers before,"
he said.

"In years gone by this sort of thing was pretty commonplace but it has
quite rightly been stamped out in recent years."

By Catriona Davies
(Filed: 28/11/2005)

http://makeashorterlink.com/?W25262B3C


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