Evil and Good

We as individuals have the potential for both Evil and Good. Sometimes the lines drawn between them become blurred and this is when we err and go down the path of Evil. The is a Jewish principle that a person does not act in Evil other than in folly. In that time when out lines are blurred and our mind is overcome with folly that we degrade our nature as humans. We forget the crucible that we hold ourselves to. We do things that we otherwise would make us shudder, for we have lied to ourselves in folly and the wrong is now right. Dark becomes light.

Take a look at the box office of late. The silver screen is dominated with death, horror, and even torture. The movie "Hostel" is the pinnacle of this era in Hollywood. We question how a person can commit such an act as torture, yet how many people packed the movie theaters to be entertained by a movie which is about other people getting off on watching a person tortured to death in most horrid ways?

No law against torture will get to the root in our humanity that lets it exist. Until we as humans no longer consider death a form of entertainment, the ugly face of torture will always be a part of our societies.

Cross posted on The Heretical Jew

Shhh, they're sleeping...

Welcome Crooks and Liars visitors. The Blogathon participants are all off taking a well deserved nap, but sponsorship will remain open for two more days if you would still like to pledge. Funds go to Amnesty International USA to help fight against Coalition-sponsored torture and prisoner abuse.

I'm sneaking a quick look from work right now and it looks like they've done a fantastic job. I look forward to reading through it all properly when I get back.

Congrats! We Did It!

Well, we did it! We didn't just do it either – we did it with style and finesse, managing a whopping 51 posts. Yes, we're Just. That. Cool. Next year we might have to do it left-handed, with both eyes shut and one arm tied behind our backs - you know, to make it interesting.

Taking part in this Blogathon, apart from being loads of fun, has also been really educational about what is one of the most important issues in the world today, which was one of the two main goals of the project. We've had discussions on the psychology of torture, we've had expert analysis of the politics and practicalities of torture, we've had shocking exposes, we've had pathetic name-calling, words of wisdom, poetry...the lot. We've even gone self-referential...how cool is that?

Thank you so much to everyone who volunteered their time - (in no particular order) Mash, Robbie, Ingrid, Per, Marcella, Bodda, Heretical Jew, Chuck, cyberotter...you've all been fantastic. Thanks also to our wonderful monitor, Barbara.

Of course, our second main goal was to raise money for Amnesty International USA, and so far we have officially raised an amazing $1157, all of which will go directly Amnesty USA.

Thank you so much to all our sponsors - you have done a good deed by helping us out, and it is hugely appreciated.

Don't forget that we can still get sponsors up to 48 hours after the Blogathon finishes, so keep pestering everyone you know. My advice is to poke them with a stick.

OK, well I think we did elendil proud :)

Thanks again everyone for helping out,

and now...I'm Off To Bed and I don't plan on waking till the Blogathon 2007.

Goodnight!!

not so random links

1.
Two years ago the US military invited Mr Mujahid, a former Afghan police commander accused of plotting against the United States, to prove his innocence before a special military tribunal. As was his right, Mr Mujahid called four witnesses from Afghanistan.

But months later the tribunal president returned with bad news: the witnesses could not be found. Mr Mujahid's hopes sank and he was returned to the wire-mesh cell where he remains today.

The Guardian searched for Mr Mujahid's witnesses and found them within three days. One was working for President Hamid Karzai. Another was teaching at a leading American college. The third was living in Kabul. The fourth, it turned out, was dead. Each witness said he had never been approached by the Americans to testify in Mr Mujahid's hearing.

The case illustrates the egregious flaws that have discredited Guantánamo-style justice and which led the US supreme court to declare such trials illegal.

read the complete article

2.
Moazzam Beg, 35, from Sparkbrook, Birmingham, was arrested in Pakistan last February on suspicion of links with the Taleban regime or the al-Qaeda terrorist network. Here is a talk by him on his gitmo experience and opinion on torture.

3.
Eric Saar, a masters student, along with Viveca Novak, a Washington correspondent for Time magazine, wrote a book about Saar's experience in guantanamo bay prisons as a Arabic linguis and intelligence analyst of US army.

"Within the course of six months in 2003, I went from being an eager volunteer - happy to use my skills to contribute to the fight against terrorism - to believing the camp represented a moral and strategic failure."

--------------------------

i wanted to change the world but found her problems too big to handle.
then i focused on changing my society; that too was too mammoth a task for the poor me.
finally i resorted to changing myself, and this itself, i realise, isnt childs play!!

[cross posted at scattered words]

If We Shouldn't Torture What Should We Do Instead?

The last line of one of the other blogathon posts is: Violence is the last resort of the incompetent.

Since there is an absolute need to gather intelligence about potential future attacks so we have at least a shot at preventing more loss of innocent life, what option do we have besides torture?

The good news is that we aren't starting from scratch.

The FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin: Criminal confessions: overcoming the challenges - interview and interrogation techniques discusses many of the legitimate concerns critics have about how confessions are obtained. This line is key:

If the investigative hunch or the supposition does not align with known facts, investigators always should follow the facts.

This article shows that with the proper training, many of the abuses and subsequent false confessions can be avoided, benefiting not only the suspect, but justice itself. But facts must always trump unproven fears. We must remember that coerced confessions are not the same as proven facts.

Washington Post: FBI Agents Allege Abuse of Detainees at Guantanamo Bay

The documents also make it clear that some personnel at Guantanamo Bay believed they were relying on authority from senior officials in Washington to conduct aggressive interrogations. One FBI agent wrote a memo referring to a presidential order that approved interrogation methods "beyond the bounds of standard FBI practice," although White House and FBI officials said yesterday that such an order does not exist.

and

An overall theme of the documents is a chasm between the interrogation techniques followed by the FBI and the more aggressive tactics used by some military interrogators. "We know what's permissible for FBI agents but are less sure what is permissible for military interrogators," one FBI official said in a lengthy e-mail on May 22, 2004. In another e-mail, dated Dec. 5, 2003, an agent complained about military tactics, including the alleged use of FBI impersonators. "These tactics have produced no intelligence of a threat neutralization nature to date and . . . have destroyed any chance of prosecuting this detainee," the agent wrote. "If this detainee is ever released or his story made public in any way, DOD interrogators will be not be held accountable because these torture techniques were done [by] the 'FBI' interrogators."

This article shows that there were established interrogation practices that didn't destroy any chance of prosecution. Rather than viewing these established techniques as too soft, we need to understand the immediate and long-term benefits of treating detainees ethically. The act of attempting to obscure the identity of the interrogators shows that those involved in the pretense knew their actions were unethical and that outside, neutral observers would agree.

They either don't know or don't care that it's a national security benefit to treat all suspects and detainees ethically.

The national security problems that existed before 9/11 weren't problems related to interrogation techniques. Because of that, no harsh interrogation technique will solve the problems that did exist before 9/11 and which needed to be corrected. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that only those trained in proper interrogation techniques should control interrogations and that prison guards should be given only the duty of guarding the prisoners.

To get better at physical and psychological torture is to get worse at protecting national security.

Each approved action should be made based on the knowledge that it will be applied to the guilty and the innocent and that all actions will eventually come to light.

Along with diligently attempting to stop violence in the planning stage, we need to work on prevention so fewer recruits will join with those who are dedicated to violence. That means dealing with complex issues like poverty and bigotry. And not just by so-called foreigners. We forget about domestic terrorism and violent crime at our own peril.

What if detainees, including all US prison inmates, were treated so humanely that they realized the anti-US propaganda had to be made up of nothing but lies?

We can win by continuously being dedicated defenders of human rights while taking all threats (internal and external to our country) seriously. Thanks to our system of checks and balances, we have a chance of legally and ethically removing those in power who don't respect the value of human life after birth.

Marcella

Torture FAQ

What is torture?

"Torture is any act by which severe pain, whether physical or psychological, is intentionally inflicted on a person as a means of intimidation, deterrence, revenge, punishment, or information gathering. It can be used as an interrogation tactic to extract confessions.

"Torture is almost universally considered to be an extreme violation of human rights, as stated by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Signatories of the Third Geneva Convention and Fourth Geneva Convention agree not to torture protected persons (enemy civilians and POWs) in armed conflicts, and signatories of the UN Convention Against Torture agree not to intentionally inflict severe pain or suffering on anyone, to obtain information or a confession, to punish them, or to coerce them or a third person. (Though, Amnesty International estimates that around two out of three countries do not consistently abide by the spirit of such treaties.)” [1]


What are the torture techniques?

There are innumerable ways to torutre someone, most notable of which can be:
- Solitary confinement
- Electric shock
- Sexual (e.g. Rape) or porno torture
- Extreme physcial abuse like burning, beating etc
- Forced witnessing or participation of the torture of others
- Depriving food and drink
- Subjecting to abuse by ferocious trained dogs or other animals
- Psychological and psychiatric torture


Effects of torture.

The consequences of torture are multidimensional and interconnected; no part of the survivor's life is untouched. Physical sufferings may diminish over time, but the psychological burn is deep rooted and the torture victim has to live on with it for the rest of his/her life. Psychological effects include, but ar not limited to: nightmares, flashbacks, fear and suspicion of others, esp. law enforcing authorities.

It also becomes very difficult for the survivor to blend back into his family and the society, esp. when family, friends and the people around look at them differently. At times even getting a job might be difficult. All these further distances the survivor with the world around him.

To survive torture and to live with its effects is a triumph of the human will-- the very thing torture is aimed to destroy. This must be acknowledged and appreciated.


So, what can i do?

The United States has trained, funded, and otherwise supported governments that engage in torture (for example, Indonesia, Turkey, Guatemala, Israel, Columbia, China, etc...).

As a start, you can ask your representatives in Congress to:

- Declare public support for the Code of Conduct on Arms Transfers Act of 1997 (S 1067) to prohibit military assistance and arms transfers to governments which do not adequately protect human rights or are engaged in acts of armed aggression.

- Declare public support for the Human Rights Information Act (S 1220 and HR 2635) which would declassify U.S. documents dealing with human rights abuses around the globe.

Further, you can also support organizations dedicated to the eradication of torture around the world, by all possible means, financially, morally and by being involved in person.

[1] wikipedia

[cross posted at scattered words]

Psychology and U.S. psychologists in torture and war in the Middle East

Abstract:

The involvement of U.S. psychologists and their
influence on torture in Cuba, Afghanistan and
Iraq provides previously unrevealed evidence
of U.S. torture and military tactical policy, and
points to probable military goals the U.S. Administration
has denied. What is revealed is that
current torture has been designed and used, not
so much for interrogation as the Administration
and the media insist, but for control by terror.
Further, Iraqi civilian deaths may be deliberate
and for the same purpose. That is, discovery of
involvement of the U.S. psychological professions
is a clue to torture, and perhaps killing, as policy,
not accident.

Click on abstract for more of the article.
Ingrid, Blogger Round Table

In Tyrannis

From wall to wall - four paces
from door to window - six and a half,
but the windows much to high
and much to0 far from my pallet,
to see the least
just grey sky.
Maybe, it's seven -
they took my watch
and all my clothes -
and put me in prison wear.

I do not know what they want,
why all this asking,
these never ending interrogations.
I don't know anyhow what's it about.
I do not know what they want...
It can't be more than a few hours,
when they fetched me tonight
and brought me here -
at gun point -
the way you catch a murderer.

I stopped crying
and my hands do hurt,
a I poured out this soup
and smashed the bowl.
They cut my hair
and beat my one by one,
because I knew nothing to say;
they took my blanket -
it's freezing cold at night.

Today I ate their grub,
kohlrabi and mouldy bred,
After this morning's interrogation
I found my window dark -
not to distinguish day from night;
no sound will reach me through these walls -
my breath is all I hear.
Around the naked bulb above
a fly is buzzing

Steps, I can sometimes hear, outside,
when they come to get me,
to put me in front of a microphone
and ask me a thousand times the very same -
and bring me back, into my cell.
And then, the steps will go away
and be back after hours -
or maybe just after minutes
and all starts again...

Then they blindfold my eyes
and lead me across the corridor
to listen to an audio tape.
I cannot distinguish my voice
from theirs, not anymore...
I've lost all feeling for time.
What a bad luck that fly had
to get into this cell with me

And they stepped on my glasses
and laughed out loud and loathsomely
When they cut off - with vices -
my wedding ring,
'cause I couldn't strip it off.
I will confess - no matter what
to finally end this agony.
I crave for the soup, now,
and they will bring my blanket
yes, I will simply sign.
yes, I will simply sign

by Reinhard Mey, German Singer-Songwriter

Please call me by my true name

by Thich Nhat Hanh

Do not say that I will depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive
Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch
to be a tiny bird, with wings still so fragile
learning to sing in my new nest
to be a caterpillar in the heart of flower
to be a jewel hiding itself in stone

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope,
the rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time to eat the
mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear water of the pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who,
approaching in silence, feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the 12 year old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to my people,
dying slowly in a forced labour camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life.
My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills up the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and my laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.

Amnesty International USA Critical of U.S. Human Rights Record

While Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is worried about the criminalization of acts of torture carried out by members of the Bush administration, Amnesty International USA's Senior Deputy Executive Director Curt Goering took the United States to task over its human rights record. In his own words:

"How many times does the United States need to hear that it is promoting some of the most shameful practices in the world today? How many times does the
U.S. government need to be reminded how far its human rights practices have
strayed from international norms? It now must adopt the Committee's sensible
recommendations post-haste, and finally begin to restore its commitment to respect human rights."

Since the "War on Terror" began over four years ago, the United States has appeared in front of the UN Human Rights Committee twice --once after September 11, 2001 and on July 17-18, 2006. At this past meeting, the Committee expressed their concern over their practices in dealing with detainees as well as their incorrect interpretation of the Geneva Convention in relation to detainees held outside the United States. What has the Bush administration done? They're busy trying to find a legal way to circumvent the Geneva Convention so they can continue to commit crimes against humanity in the name of protecting our freedoms.

The UN Human Rights Committee expressed concerns over a wide range of U.S. practices, including the following:

"...secret and incommunicado detentions, the use of interrogation methods that violate the prohibition on torture and on cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, the policies of "rendition", police brutality, the shackling of pregnant inmates during labor and delivery, and the use of electro-shock weapons such as TASERs."

It's organizations like Amnesty International USA that need your support because they are committed to protect human rights. Without them, Human Rights Watch, or OneWorld United States, the Bush administration would be committing these acts without the world suspecting anything.

We must commit to standing up against these atrocities in our country's name. Our elected officials have failed us. Not only do they rubber-stamp everything the Bush administration and the Republican-led Congress enacts, but they lack the courage --and possibly their moral compass-- to speak out when they clearly know the difference between what is right and wrong.

You Know The United States Is In Deep Trouble...

...when China is also reprimanded by organizations like Amnesty International for their human rights record but responds by making positive changes.

What has China done? First, they overhauled their police regulations in order to protect the rights of criminal suspects. These new guidelines make clear whether or not officials are committing acts of torture when extracting a confession. In the past, the rules were so vague that it was nearly impossible to determine whether or not an investigation was warranted.

Second, China has made all death penalty appeals to open hearings in the Supreme People’s Court and reduced the minimum age for executions to 18. This will reduce the number of executions in China. Of the 2,184 executions carried out last year, China performed at least 1,770 of them.

Unless things change, the day will come when China tells us how to eliminate the use of torture, something unimaginable just six years ago. Shame on us as a country to allow this to happen.

You can read all about these changes by clicking here.

Eyes wide shut

Like most Harvard business school graduate, my life was focused on making my first million by 30, and having everything that came with it. Everything i did was entered around that... flying up the corporate ladder... making the right contact. Life had always been too busy for me to think anything outside my job and myself. Once in a while, news of AIDS in Africa or hunger in Asia caught my eyes, but the remote control was quick in bringing me back to my diet of 'sex and the city', and 'who wants to be a millionaire?'

life was speeding away without glitches, Until i met Stella at a party one evening. I must admit, she was neither an eye catching beauty nor a sexy blonde. Probably, We wouldn't even have had met, were it not for my clumsy hands dropping a wine glass. She was standing close by and spontaneously joined in to help me clean up.

In six months, we came a long way as friends. She was very different from other women i had known so far. To me she was a mystery, always unpredictable, and very unconventional. Usual girl talk of who did what or i want to be this and i want to be that wasn't her soup. She storied about her life in Kenya, where she spent three teenage years. She would talk about the friendly people, their simple living and their humble aspirations in life. It was then that i first realized there exists a world outside my knowledge. That was also the first time, i noticed that not everything is as nice as here... suffering, disaster, war... such words exist beyond the realm of dictionary.

It was her who taught me to think. To question myself, to ponder over life. 'Is life all about making money, owning the best house, and driving the best car? Is it about having the most beautiful wife, and having famous ppl as friends? Is reaching newer heights all that matter?' she once asked. 'Or is life about being content? Having that feeling of goodness after feeding a hungry stomach or helping a needy hand? Knowing you have helped improve someone's life?'.

Since then my life has changed dramatically, and i have come a long way. Not towards that coveted dream of making the million, and owning the mansion... but a towards a new dream. The true American dream of peace, prosperity and happiness for all.

'Why didn't i think of this earlier? Why didn't the cries ever touch my heart?' I questioned myself. 'Well its because someone didn't want you to. Someone wanted to stop thinking, stop asking questions. Someone wanted you to be too engrossed in life to ever think about it, to ever have time to appreciate it', answered my mind.

Will you too continue to live in defiance, like i once did? Or start thinking and be the true self you are born to be? The choice is yours!

[cross posted at scattered words]

Loose Change

You have to wonder, is all this arguing and reasoning of the (il)legality of torture really about torture? If, by all accounts, torture is the least effective method of extracting evidence..than what is really the purpose of it?
See HERE the 'reason' why it all started..the excuse..

the act of torture is horrendous.. I do believe that we also need to look at the big picture of intent. One difficult to imagine for some, but for those who have been noticing patterns, reporting by news media, blogs on the many many encroachments on true freedomes and constitional rights, and most importantly, the raison d'etre of Bush's foreign policy.. it comes as no surprise.
Think think think for yourself..
Ingrid

The Headlines are Enough to Make You Puke

Well, here I am, sitting in my garden on a lovely summer morning in Denmark and why should I give a flying fart about torture?

Well, first off, just reading the titles of the last ten posts on this blog was enough to turn my stomach to where I felt the need to visit the toilet in a reverse position to the normal when one needs to exclude wastes from the body -- that is I was about to puke.

Just the titles of the posts was enough to let me know that there are people out there who understand the degrading sickeness of state-sponsered torture.

Bascially torture is terror. Its only real use is to terrorize the body public. Torture, except for the rogue psychopath, exists, takes place, happens, only through the political will of whatever regime which decides to implement it.

Torture cannot keep you safe, information gained through torture is useless -- except to gain names of other people to put through the meat grinder.

The only "good" thing about torture is that, perhaps, it gives those who implement and order its use a feeling of potency, that is to say they get their rocks off -- something a little blue pill could do more efficiently.

Detainee 546

Detainee 546 at Guantanamo Bay is an Afghan farmer named Muhibullah. He was picked up by Afghan warlords and likely sold to the American forces in Afghanistan. Muhibullah is a Pashtu speaking farmer who is poor and illiterate. He is believed to be about 35 years old, although he is not really sure how old he is.

After being picked up by Afghan warlords he was put in prison and tortured. He was then handed over to the Americans and subsequently ended up at Guantanamo Bay. He does not allege that he was tortured in Guantanamo Bay. He was taken by the Afghan warlords because they were rounding up all Pashtu speaking people they could find to later sell to the Americans.

To give you an idea of the caliber of detainees the Bush Administration is holding at Guantanamo Bay, I will list for you the charges against him from his appearance, with the assistance of an interpreter, at the Combatant Status Review Tribunal [p. 64]:

• He is accused of being a night security guard between 1998 and 1999 for Syed Sha Aga, a Taliban commander in Kabul.


• He is accused of being a local tribal mediator for water disputes between November 2000 and February 2001, and between September 2001 and November 2001. He is not accused of being a fighter during this time.


• He is accused of attending a dinner with Kamal, a local Northern Alliance Commander under warlord Ismail Khan, the legendary Mujahideen commander.


• He is accused of acquiring an AK-47 from a man named Abdul Ghafar.


• He is accused of surrendering to the Northern Alliance in November 2001.

He was also earlier accused of being the Acting Governor of Shibarghan Province. The New York Times gives us a flavor of how his defense was handled:

At one review hearing last year, an Afghan referred to by the single name Muhibullah denied accusations that he was either the former Taliban governor of Shibarghan Province or had worked for the governor. The solution to his case should have been simple, Mr. Muhibullah suggested to the three American officers reviewing his case: They should contact the Shibarghan governor and ask him.

But the presiding Marine Corps colonel said it was really up to the detainee to try to contact the governor. Assuming that the annual review board denied his petition for freedom, noted the officer, whose name was censored from the document, Mr. Muhibullah would have a year to do so.

"How do I find the governor of Shibarghan or anybody?" the detainee asked.

"Write to them," the presiding officer responded. "We know that it is difficult but you need to do your best."

"I appreciate your suggestion, but it is not that easy," Mr. Muhibullah said.

The rest of his Tribunal appearance also followed a similar script.

Muhibullah admitted to working as a night security guard in 1998 and 1999. In his defense he stated that he was not fighting anyone and most villagers had to perform these duties for the Government. He also pointed out the obvious fact that at the time Afghanistan was not at war with the United States.

He admitted to being a local dispute mediator in the village and again pointed out the obvious fact that he was not a combatant. In fact, at the time he was picked up he was not aware who was fighting whom - he did not know if the Americans were fighting the Northern Alliance or the Taliban.

He admitted to attending a dinner at Kamal's house. He said he had gone to Kamal's house at his relatives' advice to seek assistance in safely getting back to his village. Instead, Kamal took all his money and belongings and threw him in jail the next morning. He was later tortured and then finally handed over to the Americans. He pointed out the obvious fact that he is accused of having dinner with his captor and having dinner with an American ally does not seem particularly sinister.

He claimed to not know anyone named Abdul Ghafar and categorically denied receiving an AK-47 from a man he does not know. Here is the exchange between Muhibullah and the Tribunal President [p. 67]:

4. The Detainee acquired a rifle from a Mujahideen fighter, Abdul Ghafar.

Muhibullah: I do not know this person. I do not know Abdul Ghafar. I do not know if he is working with the Americans or against the American Government. I did not have any rifle or any type of weapon from this person. If the Tribunal can explain this question to me in detail - who is this person, where or when - then I might know something. But with that point, I totally disagree because I cannot remember that person.

Tribunal President: That is fine. We have no further evidence.

Finally, Muhibullah explained that he had not surrendered to anyone. Surrendering suggests that he was fighting, and no one had accused him of being a fighter. He also pointed out that he, even by the American military's version of events, had gone to Kamal's house and had dinner with him. Kamal took him prisoner the next morning against his wishes. He explained that that does not amount to surrender.

After hearing Muhibullah's defense, the Tribunal decided that Muhibullah should not be released from Guantanamo Bay. Ultimately the tribunal decided that there was more reason to hold him than to release him. The factors that favored continued detention, according to the Tribunal, were [p. 82]:

• His association with the Taliban:
  
  
  • He is alleged to have surrendered to the forces of Ismail Khan.
  
  
  • He was a night watchman in 1998 and 1999.
  
  
  
  


• Training:
  
  
  
  • He received AK-47 and RPG training from his uncle. [Not mentioned at his hearing.]
  
  
  
  


• Intent:
  
  
  
  • He admitted to carrying an AK-47 while on duty as a night watchman.
  
  
  
  

I doubt if any respectable legal system in the world would find grounds to hold this man. However, the Bush Administration and its kangaroo courts at Guantanamo Bay have found cause to hold this poor man.

One has to wonder, if this is the level of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, how successful the Bush Administration has been in actually apprehending real al Qaeda terrorists.

[Cross posted at Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying]

It Pisses Me Off

It really pisses me me off when I hear or read speculation as to when it would be okay to use torture.

Perhaps I should call it the "Twenty-four Hours" syndome, because it always goes like this, "If Britney Spears ran out of toilet paper and we knew that the only way to get fresh supplies of ass wipe was..."

I jest of course, but I jest not about the ugliness of torture.

Torture is intended to destroy human beings, that is, that which makes us human. Every time a human being id tortured (and it is happening right now as I type these words) our common humanity is deminished.

Torture is terror at ground zero.

Torture is the abuse of a human you have under your control.

Can I say it any clearer?

An airplane skywriter, would that help?

The Suffering Must Not Be Anonymous

We are blogging against torture. Why? Because torture is barbaric and cruel, and has no place in a modern, civilised society.

I thought it was important to put some names to the agony, to make it a little bit personal, to help us understand more exactly what it is we are fighting against.

As a previous Blogathon post has noted, it is only be dehumanising the victims are we able to allow the practice to go on. It is therefore of critical importance that we do not allow this to happen. We must not let the suffering of people become mere stats on a chart.

Carlos Mauricio used to be a professor in El Salvador, before he was abducted and tortured by the deaths squads 22 years ago. He was hidden from the ICRC, taken “underground to a clandestine torture chambers”, where he suffered “two broken ribs from one of the beatings, and a damaged eye”.

Olga Talamante was a 24 year-old student when she was kidnapped in Argentina during martial law. “In my secret torture chamber — later it was confirmed to have been within the walls of the local police station — a slight turn of my head could bring on a new barrage of insults and fists...They took me to another room. I sensed several new people. I heard men's voices. They untied my hands and feet. They ordered me to take my clothes off. I hesitated, and they made it clear that it was not a request but a demand. Now naked except for the tape over my eyes, I felt hands sit me down on a bed and then push me back, spreading my arms and legs, tying them at each corner. If I know where I am, I can survive? The thought was less convincing. Electric currents were applied to the most sensitive parts of my body. All I could do was scream”.

Tito Tricot is a torture survivor in Chile. “No one can really understand what being tortured means until that fateful moment when you find yourself naked, blindfolded and tied up at the mercy of your captors. Your entire life is confined to that fragile moment when darkness becomes your enemy; yet at the same time the dark is your only ally, a refuge from madness. There is neither past nor future, only the present of screams, fury and impotence when you find yourself defenceless at the mercy of the torturer's rage and coldness. You never know when he is going to hit, shout, kick, hang, electrocute or kill you...The horror of the torture chamber will never go away, the military did not only torture individuals, but also the very soul of our nation. They did not only torture somebody for a few hours or a few days, they destroyed their life forever.”

The terrible thing about torture is that it sticks with you. It doesn't just happen and then it's over – people's lives are ruined by it.

Maher Arar was detained at JFK Airport in 2002. He was jailed, and then secretly transported to Syria, where he was held for a year without charge or trial in an underground cell, where he was tortured.

“Well, the false confession was, frankly, at the beginning. They wanted me to say that I’ve been to Afghanistan, which I ended up saying anyway. But what I’m referring to here, even by -- after ten months of that psychological torture, if they asked me to sign another false confession, and they told me, “Listen, if you sign this, we will take you to a different place where you could live as a human being,” I would have signed anything...You know, I’m completely a different person. I still have fears. I don't take the plane anymore. I don't fly. I lost confidence in myself. I feel overwhelmed. My -- there is some kind of emotional distancing between me and my kids and my family. They ruined my life. They ruined my life, and I have not been able to find a job. People try to – you know, some people I know, they try to distance themselves from me. It's -- you know, I don't know how to describe it. I don't think there is any word I could use to describe what I am going through. And I thought when I came back it would take me a month or two months or a year or two years to get back to normal life. It has been two years and four months since I came back to Canada, and there are things that are improved a little bit, but I’m still not the same person, and I’m still suffering psychologically.”

The following is a detailed account of the hideous torture one young woman had to suffer in Bosnia. She was treated afterwards in the United States. This is what the US should be doing in the world – using its power to help people, with compassion and understanding, not committing torture themselves (you will note that in most of the above cases, the US was involved on the side of the torturer).

“Fatima is a 44-year-old Bosnian female [.PDF]. She had arrived in the United States with refugee status after living in Germany for eight years with her husband and children. She presented with multiple physical and psychological symptoms. While in Bosnia, she was targeted as a Muslim woman by Muslim soldiers, due to her marriage to a Serbian. Fatima explained that her town had been subjected to several surprise visits by soldiers, and that her neighbours had been taken, beaten, raped and imprisoned for days at a time. Individuals living in mixed marriages, Muslim and Serbian, were targeted repeatedly, she explained. This caused a heightened arousal and fear among those individuals living within her community. One night, Fatima and her husband were awakened by soldiers who ordered them at gun-point to get dressed and follow them. The soldiers separated the couple. She explained that after her abduction, she was plagued with concern for her family’s safety. She was taken to a school gymnasium that had been converted into a temporary camp that housed many other women of varying ages. She was held captive for 20 days, during which time her concern for her family grew. She was given very little food or water and reported being beaten repeatedly. While imprisoned, she witnessed nearly every woman being dragged into areas of the room, and repeatedly raped and beaten by groups of soldiers. She painfully explained that she, too, had been victimised by five to six groups of men repeatedly during her imprisonment.

The effects of violence were heightened as she felt betrayed by her own religious brothers. She stated that she was being punished for the person whom she had fallen in love with. It was very difficult for Fatima to discuss her past trauma. She became overwhelmed with emotion as she described the most horrific violation that she had experienced. One night, a group of soldiers randomly selected her as their victim and began their sexual assault. During this violation, she became aware that something was different about this night. The circumstances of the assault
quickly began to change. The soldiers who were attacking her began to hold her down and a new pain was introduced. As she looked down, the soldiers had begun tattooing and scarring parts of her body. She felt that these soldiers had decided that the pain and humiliation of rape alone would not be enough, and they wanted her to suffer as much indignity as possible by placing a physical reminder of this ordeal on her body. By placing their Muslim names on her body, they scarred and marked her, proving to her community that this could happen to anyone. They continued to beat, rape and tattoo her throughout that night. In the morning, when she looked at her breasts, arms and shoulders, she saw the names of the soldiers who had attacked her, forever embedded in her skin.”

So there you have it. Whenever you hear anyone advocating torture, this is what they mean. Either they don't know anything about torture or they are simply indifferent to human suffering.

[Cross-posted at The Heathlander]

Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror

“This, quite simply, is the most devastating and detailed investigation into a question that has remained a no-no in the current debate on American torture in
George Bush’s war on terror: the role of military physicians, nurses, and other
medical personnel. Dr. Miles writes in a white rage, with great justification–but he lets the facts tell the story.” –Seymour M. Hersh, author of Chain of Command

Random House released a title last month that should find a home on your bookshelf. Steven H. Miles M.D., an expert on medical ethics, human rights and international health care, wrote Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror and just the synopsis on Random House's website made my jaw drop:

The graphic photographs of U.S. military personnel grinning over abused Arab and Muslim prisoners shocked the world community. That the United States was
systematically torturing inmates at prisons run by its military and civilian leaders divided the nation and brought deep shame to many. When Steven H. Miles,
an expert in medical ethics and an advocate for human rights, learned of the
neglect, mistreatment, and torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay,
and elsewhere, one of his first thoughts was: “Where were the prison doctors
while the abuses were taking place?”

In Oath Betrayed, Miles explains the answer to this question. Not only were doctors, nurses, and medics silent while prisoners were abused; physicians and psychologists provided information that helped determine how much and what kind of mistreatment could be delivered to detainees during interrogation. Additionally, these harsh examinations were monitored by health professionals operating under the purview of the U.S. military.

Miles has based this book on meticulous research and a wealth of resources, including unprecedented eyewitness accounts from actual victims of prison abuse, and more than thirty-five thousand pages of documentation acquired through provisions of the Freedom of Information Act: army criminal investigations, FBI notes on debriefings of prisoners, autopsy reports, and prisoners’ medical records. These documents tell a story markedly different from the official version of the truth, revealing involvement at every level of government, from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to the Pentagon’s senior health officials to prison health-care personnel.

Oath Betrayed is not a denunciation of American military policy or of war in general, but of a profound betrayal of traditions that have shaped the medical corps of the United States armed forces and of America’s abdication of its leadership role in international human rights. This book is a vital document that will both open minds and reinvigorate Americans’ understanding of why human rights matter, so that we can reaffirm and fortify the rules for international civil society.

The San Francisco Chronicle published a review in today's edition of its newspaper and here's a sample of what it had to say about a story on a detainee named Dilawar:

"Dilawar was a twenty-two-year-old farmer and taxi driver, whom American soldiers tortured to death over five days at Bagram Collection Point in Afghanistan in December, 2002. When the soldiers put a sandbag over his head, Dilawar complained that he could not breathe. He was then shackled and suspended from his arms for hours, denied water, and beaten so severely that his legs would have been amputated had he survived. When he was beaten with a baton, he would cry 'Allah, Allah', which guards found so amusing that they beat him some more just to hear him cry. During his final interrogation, soldiers told the delirious, injured prisoner that he would get medical attention after the session. Instead, he was returned to a cell and chained to the ceiling. Several hours later, a physician found him dead."

"By then, the interrogators had concluded that Dilawar was innocent and had simply been picked up after driving his new taxi by the wrong place at the wrong time."

If that doesn't make you outraged, this quote should send your blood temperature to the boiling point:

Dilawar was far from alone: Miles notes that Army experts "estimated that 80
percent to 90 percent of arriving Abu Ghraib prisoners either had no intelligence value or were outright innocent."

Don't get mad at the Bush administration. Get even. Click here to read more about Oath Betrayed on Random House's website or order it from Barnes & Noble by clicking here.

Technorati Tags: Blogathon 2006, Torture, Human rights, Oath Betrayed

Torture: It's Fashionable in Belarus, Too

"These claims are bizarre...our police always act within the letter of the law. They are under more supervision than ever due to the world attention on our country these days." -- an unnamed Belarus official

The EUobserver posted an article last night about the increasing use of torture methods by Belarus police to obtain confessions from political prisoners. Here’s a familiar laundry list of methods used by them, as stated by Grodno region police investigator Pavel Melko in a letter addresed to the United Nations and Belarus opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich:

"A standing practice of using torture to extract confessions and evidence exists and is developing...[This includes] electric shock, smothering...poisoning by tear gas and neuro-paralytic agents, battery, straining of tendons, piercing of gums by an awl. Some cannot bear the tortures, faint, try to commit suicide. People, tired from tortures, leap out of the windows."

Political prisoners that have been subjected to these and similar treatments include opposition leader Alexander Kazulin, who was incarcerated earlier this month for five and a half years for "hooliganism". Kazulin’s wife gave her account of the May 25, 2006 incident that took place after the fraudulent Belarus elections:

"My husband walked up to the commanding officer smiling and with flowers in hand. But before he started talking, the officer ordered attack. They knocked my husband off his feet, started beating him up, and then dragged him away...then they started beating up the rest of us."

Does this sound like hooliganism to you? I didn’t think so. As for Mr. Melko, his whereabouts cannot be confirmed. According to the report, Melko may have sent his letter after he left Belarus illegally and may be hiding in Canada.

Click here to read the full text of the article.

Technorati Tags: Blogathon 2006, Torture, Human rights

VIII. The price is vulnerability.

In an article in the December 1998 issue of The Progressive, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb reported on the treatment given to a 23-year old Palestinian held on "administrative detention." The prisoner was "cuffed behind a chair 17 hours a day for 120 days . . . [he] had his head covered with a sack, which was often dipped in urine or feces. Guards played loud music right next to his ears and frequently taunted him with threats of physical and sexual violence.

found on CounterPunch.Org

We must withstand. If we open this Pandora's box there will be no end to the evil broth spilling out of it. Torture is not a means of 'information retrieval'. It is not at all reliable. The Cautio Criminalis written by Friedrich von Spee in the turn of the 17^th century already rejected torture as a means of interrogation.

Torture is a means of suppression. The War on Terror is a Never-Ending-War, as the definition of a terrorist is very obscure. It may be applied to some like the Red Army Faction who considered car-bombs as a means of political fight, or to a group in open Civil Disobedience. One has to be very careful nowadays to speak of freedom fighters: the Nazis of course would have considered the French 'Resistance' a terrorist group...

If we in the least ease the use of torture, we will end with three certain results:

1. the war on terror will not end. There will always be people who believe that not all oil belongs to America.

2. There will always be one more terrorist to be tortured legally: anyone of them might provide the information to prohibit a disaster. And if he doesn't know about the bomb itself he knows someone who knows someone who knows someone...

3. Why stop with terrorists?

And yes: there is a price for being HUman. The price is vulnerability.

Per

IX. HUman Beings are equal!

"I think it would be a mistake to ascribe moral equivalence to civilians who die as the direct result of malicious terrorist acts," he added, while defending as "self-defence" Israel's military action, which has had "the tragic and unfortunate consequence of civilian deaths."

John Bolton, US-Ambassador to the UN

HUman Beings are equal.

We all are equal. We are not the same though - but our individuality is a very, very common thing on Planet Earth. There are billions and billions of 'I'. Each and everyone striving for happiness.

If you have a religious or spiritual background you will find it very easy to accept that. The famous Sufi Master Shams of Tabriz once when asked who he was replied: 'Another of the many sons of Adam'.

If you lack this background – you've got a lot more acknowledging to do. But if you examine the matter properly you will arrive at the conclusion: No one is more important than anyone else.

They arrive at this planet in the same condition and if left to themselves will die very soon. So HUman Beings are Social Beings. We cannot survive without one another. We owe everything to someone else.

When we grow up and learn we keep taking from our forefathers and we add a teaspoon to it. Nothing more. If you properly examine your personal achievements you will have to concede, that without the others you'd be nothing and nobody. If you seem to be bigger than someone else it's only because you're standing on the shoulder of many.

There's no one more important than you. And you are not more important than anyone else.

A human being is part of a whole, called by us the 'Universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Albert Einstein

Breathe that in: Now there's no more room – Do as you will be done.

Past the seeker as he prayed
came the crippled and the beggar and the beaten.
And seeing them...he cried,
“Great God, how is it that
a loving creator can see such things
and yet do nothing about them?”
God said: “I did do something. I made you.”

Per

Debunking The "Ticking Bomb" Argument For Torture

Alan Dershowitz uses the "ticking bomb" scenario to justify torture. Though Dershowitz makes other equally flimsy excuses to justify torture, the so-called "ticking bomb" scenario is the one that has the most emotional appeal. This is also the argument trotted out most by torture apologists.

The "ticking bomb" scenario goes something like this: if a terrorist has planted a bomb (say, nuclear) in the middle of a major American city (say, New York) and you have managed to capture him but he won't tell you where he planted the bomb, what do you do? No, this isn't a question from the movie "Speed", but it is the torture apologists' favorite question. Would you torture the terrorist in the hope that he will tell you where he planted the bomb? Most people, when confronted with this hypothetical scenario, will likely choose torture to extract the information that will save millions of lives. It sounds so simple.

There are plenty of arguments that can be made to debunk this notion. The moral and legal argument is that if you allow torture in one circumstance, then you are liable to slide down a slippery slope that is very dangerous for a law-abiding society. However, I want to make a rather basic argument that is often lost when this emotional scenario is discussed. My argument is rather simple: torture in this circumstance is guaranteed not to work.

I don't say that torture in the "ticking bomb" scenario may not work; I say that it will never work. The reason is simple. If you are positing a scenario where a terrorist has already decided to kill millions of people, why would he cough up information to spoil his plans? Does it really matter how much you torture him? Does he believe that if he gives up the information you, the torturer, will somehow forgive him for trying to kill millions of people? He has a much better incentive to lie. By lying he achieves a two-fer. He not only ensures that the "ticking bomb" will go off killing the millions that he intended (including quite likely himself and his interrogators), he also ensures that the torture will stop (at least temporarily) while the hapless torturer and his cohorts follow the false lead. It's that simple. He has every incentive to lie and no incentive to tell the truth.

While Alan Dershowitz busily tries to reshape his argument, his grand experiment in torture will have killed millions of people. One could then argue that Mr. Dershowitz, by advocating a path that was sure to fail (and thereby denying law enforcement the other more effective alternatives currently at their disposal), would be morally culpable for the deaths of millions. Perhaps, Dershowitz the Torture Apologist, should consider that before he writes another one of his torture tomes.

[Cross posted at Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying]

The Mentality of Torture.

One thing is a certainty regarding torture, and that is the Torturer does not feel that what he/or she is doing is wrong. One can likely break down torture into many different types but the two that come to mind are a) torture in order to extract information from a enemy, and b) torture for revenge.

The torture cases we saw in Iraq seem to fall into the category of revenge. It is similar to a case that occurred in Brooklyn, NY Police Precinct where a African American man was tortured by having a broken broomstick shoved into his rectum. The Police Officer who did it was convicted of the act, but one must ask why he would do such a thing? In fact this Officer was a very highly decorated Cop, and no one would have thought he would have done this. I know this for I worked in the NYPD and met Officers that knew him. In the end it was determined that he was doing steroids to enhance performance. Highly aggressive tendencies go hand in hand with steroid use. This is no excuse for what he did, but when this Officer and some of his fellow Officers were executing a warrant he was "sucker punched" by the twin brother of the man they were looking to arrest. The subsequent brutal assault on the man in the bathroom of the Police Station was a gross act of torture motivated by revenge.

The first type of torture is a far more complex, and not so perverse one on the surface. I say so for this type of torture is often masked by the protection of a state, or its citizens. The torturer aggrandises his actions with patriotism. He weighs the value of one life, and favors the lives of thousands he portends to defend with his acts of torture. The real problem is that he does not merely portend to defend thousands against acts of violence, but actually does in some cases. Where does a person draw the line when you have in detention a person you know has vital information regarding planned military or terrorist actions. According to the Geneva convention you can not do anything but ask for name, rank, and serial number. These lines have been blurred regarding those detained for suspected terrorism. Bush's attempt to classify them as illegal-combatants has in effect taken then out of the umbrella protection of Geneva. Much of that has been reversed by the Supreme Court. I ask you if information that would advert another 9/11 type of terrorist action came from the torture of a detainee is it wrong? I would agree with you that it would be. The ends do not justify the means. However, we can see how those that commit torture can fool them self into thinking that the ends do justify the means. If you torture one man and save a thousand lives...how much more compelling can that be. Nonetheless, torture is the desperate act of those who can not get the information they need by other means.

Violence is the last resort of the incompetent. (Vulcan Proverb)

Cross posted on The Heretical Jew

Living In A Post 9/11 World Means Living Outside The Bubble

To this current US administration, living in a post 9/11 world means they get to do whatever they want without worrying about pesky laws or ethics. Forget checks and balances -- that's so 1776. Their vision of this new world is one where they can exact pre-emptive revenge.

Many of the changes in law limiting civil liberties that were made in the name of 9/11 had been sitting just waiting for the right opportunity.

Yes, you read that right. Opportunity.

Most of us only saw the tragedy and mourned for every life lost or changed forever, but a few saw it as a political opportunity to get the consent of the congress and the public before the numbness wore off.

They suddenly had political capital and they couldn't spend it fast enough.

Because of my experience as a rape survivor and my volunteering as a victim advocate, the 9/11 attacks didn't make me suddenly realize people can and will do evil things. I already knew that and I knew too many people in the world, including Americans, didn't need a jihad to give them a reason kill innocent civilians.

That also made me skeptical of those who demanded my blind trust. To me "I'm simply looking out for your best interests" is one of the scariest phrases invented.

Ted Bundy and the Green River killer are just a couple of the men who killed far too many, far too close to where I was when they were on the loose. Two more killers have been in the news this last week. The first man kept pictures of women suspected of being his victims. And here's the second:

Friends Stunned by Colo. Killer's Crimes

Browne said he shot some of his victims and strangled others, in one case with a pair of leather shoelaces. He knocked out one woman with ether, then used an ice pick on her. He put a rag soaked in ant killer over another victim's face and stabbed her nearly 30 times with a screwdriver. Colorado authorities said Browne, 53, claimed to have committed the killings between 1970 and his arrest in 1995. Investigators so far have been able to corroborate Browne's claims in six slayings three in Louisiana, two in Texas and one in Arkansas, Colorado authorities said.

and

Court papers paint a picture of a predator who loathed women and thought he was justified in killing them because they were cheating on their husbands and boyfriends in many cases, with him. Browne, who has been married six times, said he has been disappointed with women his whole life. "Women are unfaithful, they screw around a lot, they cheat and they are not of the highest moral value," he told investigators. Browne apparently had at least one close female friend in Woods, now 50. Woods said she never saw a violent side in Browne, who lived around the corner from her in the 1980s. Woods said she remembered Browne as funny and caring, but with one strange habit: without warning, he would look deep into her eyes, and declare, "You're my friend."

"He always said it that way. It was so weird," Woods said.

With people like this, I have a hard time saying we Americans are all good and those who share a religion with the 9/11 hijackers are all bad. More importantly, I'd already learned how to live with the constant awareness of my own vulnerability.

Life outside of the bubble might be scary, but we can learn to live there without a constant sense of paranoia. We can learn to have compassion for those who at first glance seem no different than cold-blooded murderers and who seem to have nothing in common with good people like us.

We don't have to react to the shock of what we see outside the bubble with a desire to get those we fear before one of them can get us.

But just think of what would happen to innocent American men if we women started practicing pre-emptive self-defense against any stranger who takes our picture or against any man we know who looks into our eyes and tells us, "You're my friend."

Marcella

Amnesty International: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld Action Letter Campaign

From the Amnesty International Online Action Center...their latest campaign against torture.

On June 29, the Supreme Court ruled that Common Article 3 of the Geneva
Conventions protected detainees in US custody. This ruling reinstates
fundamental human rights protections that the President sought to set aside by
Executive Order. The coming months will be critical in determining how the Bush
Administration implements the Court’s decision. Urge the government not to gut
these important safeguards through omissions or legislation.

Click here to let President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld know that you're concerned about their proposed legislation to restrict Article 3 of the Geneva Convention.

Technorati Tags: Blogathon 2006, Torture, Human rights

Support StopTheTorture.org

I wanted to use this post to highlight a religious-based anti-torture organization called Stop The Torture. Please support them by making a donation, or by posting this flyer in your home, workplace and house of worship.

They even have Honor & Shame pages to highlight who was against and supported torture. The Shame page looks like a Who's Who in the Bush administration. Check out their home page when you get a chance.

Technorati Tags: Blogathon 2006, Torture, Human rights

The Dark Prison

According to Human Rights Watch, the Bush Administration has operated a secret prison near Kabul, Afghanistan since 2002. The secret prison is affectionately known as "The Dark Prison". It has served as the drop off point for detainees captured in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East. Detainees are introduced to the art of torture here before being shipped off to other secret CIA torture stations or to Guantanamo Bay. The Dark Prison is the halfway house of the torture world. They practice the kinder gentler version of torture at The Dark Prison, leaving the more esoteric forms of torture to the more permanent CIA black sites.

The authorized kinder gentler torture techniques practiced by the CIA include (in increasing levels of discomfort):

1. The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him.

2. Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear.

3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.

4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions.

5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water.

6. Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.

These authorized techniques combine with creative freelance techniques to give The Dark Prison its reputation. Human Rights Watch has documented reports from detainees who have been guests there:

The detainees said U.S. interrogators slapped or punched them during interrogations. They described being held in complete darkness for weeks on end, shackled to rings bolted into the walls of their cells, with loud music or other sounds played continuously. Some detainees said they were shackled in a manner that made it impossible to lie down or sleep, with restraints that caused their hands and wrists to swell up or bruise. The detainees said they were deprived of food for days at a time, and given only filthy water to drink.  

...

It was pitch black no lights on in the rooms for most of the time.... They hung me up. I was allowed a few hours of sleep on the second day, then hung up again, this time for two days. My legs had swollen. My wrists and hands had gone numb.... There was loud music, [Eminem’s] “Slim Shady” and Dr. Dre for 20 days.... [Then] they changed the sounds to horrible ghost laughter and Halloween sounds. [At one point, I was] chained to the rails for a fortnight.... The CIA worked on people, including me, day and night.... Plenty lost their minds. I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and the doors, screaming their heads off.

On the upside, no detainee claimed to have been kept at the facility for longer than six weeks. The other benefit of being in The Dark Prison is that it is convenient to the airport:

Most of the detainees said they were arrested in other countries in Asia and the Middle East, and then flown to Afghanistan. Detainees who arrived by airplane said they were driven about five minutes from a landing field to the prison. Afghan guards told some of them that the facility was located near Kabul. Some detainees who were kept at the facility were transferred at various times to and from another secret facility near Kabul. The detainees said they were later transferred to the main U.S. military detention facility near Bagram, where many other Guantánamo detainees say they were initially held.  

The downside of course is that if you are unlucky to be an inmate at The Dark Prison, you are likely at the beginning of a long journey that will be punctuated by torture and more torture at other facilities around the world. You will either be "disappeared" or find yourself in Guantanamo Bay.

There is some speculation that The Dark Prison may have been closed in late 2004 in favor of the better-equipped facility in Bagram, Afghanistan. Nevertheless, this facility remains as another dark spot in the tortured legacy of George W Bush and his Administration.

When the Bush Administration has been relegated to the dustbin of history, we will look back at facilities like The Dark Prison and Abu Ghraib with shame and disgust. We will look back at this time in history as the period when America misplaced its humanity.

[Cross posted at Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying]

Dershowitz's Arguments For The Legalisation of Torture are both Nonsensical and Unnecessary

Professor Alan Dershowitz has always been one of the most prominent defenders of Israel, but more recently he has also become one of the most prominent advocates for the legalisation of torture.

What is the reason for this? Well, his argument goes something like this: torture happens, it always has and it always will. It happens in democracies, it happens in dictatorships, it happens in Iran and it happens in the US. Thus, he says:

“Every democracy, including our own, has employed torture outside of the law.
Throughout the years, police officers have tortured murder and rape suspects
into confessing -- sometimes truthfully, sometimes not truthfully.”

From this, he concludes that the choice is not between torture or no torture, but between whether we want torture to be regulated and happen within the law, or to continue as it is and be outside the law:

“Either police would torture below the radar screen of accountability, or the
judge who issued the warrant would be accountable. Which would be more
consistent with democratic values?”

Now, let’s review his argument: that because torture is inevitable, we should legalise it to at least ensure it is regulated and only happens in extreme, “ticking bomb” cases. There are several flaws in this argument even if we assume its premises to be correct. But first let’s examine the premises themselves:

I share Seth Finkelstein’s position:

“I stand in awe of Dershowitz's focus on legal authorization of torture as the
"real debate". All the moral and practical questions are swept away by his
assumption of inevitability. We are left only to consider how to deal with what,
if any, judicial procedures should surround torture.”

Dershowitz is making a huge assumption here – that torture goes on and will always go on, and cannot be stopped. He doesn’t justify this assumption at all, which is amazing since it underpins his entire argument. Without it, he has no case. I reject the assumption that we will never be rid of torture. Imagine if everyone had thought like this about slavery in America. Imagine an Alan Dershowitz pointing to all previous societies, to Ancient Egypt and Rome and the British Empire, and saying ‘look, we’ve always had slaves, and we always will do, so let’s atleast make the best of it’. That fact is that, by mass popular pressure, slavery was overthrown. You get rid of brutality and injustice by fighting for what’s right, not by giving in to resignation.

So Dershowitz is wrong to limit the debate to illegal or legal torture. The fact is that neither is consistent with “democratic values”. What is consistent with those values is a complete abolition of torture, and it is this that we must continue to strive for.

But let’s, for a second, ignore that grave flaw in his premises. What practical solution does Dershowitz offer for legalising and regulating torture?

“Under my proposal, no torture would be permitted without a "torture warrant" being issued by a judge.”

This “warrant” would “be based on the absolute need to obtain immediate information in order to save lives coupled with probable cause that the suspect had such information and is unwilling to reveal it.” In other words, a warrant would be issued in a “ticking bomb” scenario. What would the warrant authorise? It would allow torture, limited to “nonlethal means, such as sterile needles, being inserted beneath the nails to cause excruciating pain without endangering life” (I’m curling up at the thought).

The evidence extracted from this “excruciating” torture would not be permissible as evidence in court, but could be used to save lives.

So here already Dershowitz implicitly concedes the well-known fact that, using torture, it is possible to get someone to admit anything.

There are many flaws in this proposal. Firstly, let’s take a look at the “ticking bomb” scenario described by Dershowitz more explicitly:

“To prove that it would not, consider a situation in which a kidnapped child had
been buried in a box with two hours of oxygen. The kidnapper refuses to disclose
its location. Should we not consider torture in that situation?”

There is a problem with this scenario, often used as a justification for torture, is that it cannot be considered in isolation like that. The argument goes that the utilitarian thing to do would be to torture the kidnapper to save the child. In literal “ticking bomb” scenarios, the utilitarian case appears to be stronger – i.e. it would be morally correct to torture one terrorist to save the lives of thousands of people.

In fact, the opposite is true. Once you start allowing torture in certain circumstances – in this case for “ticking bomb” scenarios – what you are doing is making torture acceptable. Gradually, the situations in which torture is permissible will get wider and wider, and the use of torture will get more frequent. Sure, you will start with ‘torture is only acceptable if a terrorist admits he knows where the bomb is, but won’t tell you’. This then expands to include, ‘torture is only acceptable if you’re sure the terrorist knows where the bomb is, but isn’t telling’, and then to ‘only when you suspect the terrorist knows where the bomb is’. This will then get expanded to include ‘people who are associated with the suspect, and so who probably know something about it too’. Then the requirements of ‘suspect’ will get lowered, and so on and so on. The point is, torture will become acceptable. We will have gone from a society in which torture is a taboo and outlawed to one in which it is acceptable and commonplace. Thus, the utilitarian thing to do would in fact be to avoid torture whatever the scenario. As Harvey A. Silverglate so succinctly puts it: “This is a genie we should not let out of the bottle”.

Dershowitz himself acknowledges this point:

“We know from experience that law enforcement personnel who are given limited
authority to torture will expand its use”

...but doesn’t let this get in the way of his argument. He just moves on as if it didn’t exist, when in fact it destroys his argument completely, for a very simple reason: even if we accept Dershowitz’s premise that the real debate is between whether torture should happen legally or illegally, his proposal still wouldn’t hold up, because as he himself admits, there would still be illegal torture! It’s just that now, we would have both legal and illegal torture. Brilliant!

In a separate article, he provides a counter-point:

“By expressly limiting the use of torture only to the ticking bomb case and by
requiring a highly visible judge to approve, limit and monitor the torture, it
will be far more difficult to justify its extension to other institutions.”

This doesn’t make any sense. Currently torture is illegal, and so if the law or what a Judge says made such a difference to, as Dershowitz puts it, what goes on “in the back rooms of real police station houses”, then there would be no torture going on now, and so Dershowitz’s fundamental premise that ‘torture is inevitable’ would be false and his argument destroyed. If, on the other hand, the law and what Judges say makes no difference to what happens “in the back rooms”, then the argument that requiring Judges to authorise torture will restrict its use is false, since we have already established that, when it comes to torture, what Judges say doesn’t hold much water in the “back rooms”. Either way, Dershowitz’s argument is destroyed.

Dershowitz explains that torture is not banned by the Constitution:

“Any interrogation technique, including the use of truth serum or even torture,
is not prohibited. All that is prohibited is the introduction into evidence of
the fruits of such techniques in a criminal trial against the person on whom the
techniques were used. But the evidence could be used against that suspect in a
non-criminal case--such as a deportation hearing--or against someone else”

However, as Harvey A. Silverglate points out,

“Dershowitz fails to mention altogether another amendment — the Eighth, which
states quite plainly that no "cruel or unusual punishments [shall be]
inflicted." The modern-era Supreme Court has ruled that this standard, which is
inherently subjective, must be interpreted according to society’s evolving
standards of decency. It is likely that the pre–September 11 Court would have
ruled that techniques all would agree constitute "torture" would qualify as
"cruel" and (for our society, at least) "unusual."

Silverglate also argues very well another objection to Dershowitz’s idea:

“Second, we should think twice before entirely divorcing law from morality. There can be little doubt that until now, Americans have widely viewed torture as beyond the pale. The US rightly criticizes foreign governments that engage in the practice, and each year our Department of State issues a report that classifies foreign nations on the basis of their human-rights records, including the use of torture. Our country has signed numerous international treaties and compacts that decry the use of torture. We tamper with that hard-won social agreement at our grave moral peril.”

He also points out that our legal system already possesses methods for dealing with “ticking bomb” situation like the one Dershowitz proposed. He points to the famous ‘Regina v. Dudley and Stephens’ case to show how. Essentially, if a policeman were in the position where he really knew for certain that the terrorist possessed life-saving information, he could torture and then submit for trial. There are then various ways he can be acquitted, despite being obviously guilty. Thus, Dershowitz’s “torture warrants” are not only silly, but also completely unnecessary.

[Cross-posted at The Heathlander]

The Real World

"Human Rights Watch, the ICRC, Amnesty International, and the other self-professed guardians of humanitarianism need to come back to earth—to the real world in which torture means what the Nazis and the Japanese did in their concentration and POW camps in World War II."

Heather Mac Donald

VII. We Must Withstand!

Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.

Benito Mussolini

The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great
political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate
power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting
corporate power against democracy.

Alex Carey

Only in a society like ours the question of torture can be easily answered. We have one sole motivation: 'greed'. We all are subjugated by one master: 'I'. There's nothing else left and worse: after the deterioration of the 'I' there's nothing to provide for or care about...You can have it – you can have it only once – you can have it only now – go and get it.

Only in a society like ours you will find misers, shysters and apologist who can calculate and will the price of a human life. And consequently will tell you many lives are worth more than one. And only on an assumption like that you can seriously consider something like Dershovitzes 'torture warrant'. If we don't raise above the quagmire of corporatism we will not be able to detect the damage that is done to our wounded society even just by considering torture as a means of interrogation.

That something has the potential to be widely abused - and has been and is being widely misused - should not inevitably lead to its utter, universal, and unconditional proscription. Guns, cars, knives, and books have always been put to vile ends. Nowhere did this lead to their complete interdiction.

Sam Vaknin

Sounds nice – is bullshit. The American reluctance to restrict access to fire arms cannot be considered as the pure example of a successful policy. From a non-American perspective one might very well argue that the US-government is negligently omitting a ban on fire arms although they have proven to cause endless pain and suffering on human beings.

The damage legalized torture will inflict on our 'open' society need not be waited for. Will it be misused? Will it be grossly misused?

Until 1999 'mild physical pressure' was allowed in Israel to gain information from a suspect in order to safe lives, well actually hundreds of lives. In real life this turned out to widespread misuse.

We've got the answer.
We must withstand.

Per

Outlawed

"Outlawed" is a video created by WITNESS and tells the story of torture and extraordinary rendition practiced by the Bush Administration. According to WITNESS:

"Outlawed: Extraordinary Rendition, Torture and Disappearances in the 'War on Terror'" tells the stories of Khaled El-Masri and Binyam Mohamed, two men who have survived extraordinary rendition, secret detention, and torture by the U.S. government working with various other governments worldwide. "Outlawed" features relevant commentary from Louise Arbour, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, U.S. President George W. Bush, Michael Scheuer, the chief architect of the rendition program and former head of the Osama Bin Laden unit at the CIA, and Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. Secretary of State.

WITNESS is a human rights organization founded by Peter Gabriel that documents human rights abuses by using the power of video. I received a copy of this video when I attended the Extraordinary Rendition and Torture Teach-in at Georgetown University Law Center last month. It was an event organized by Amnesty International and others as part of Torture Awareness Month.

[Cross posted at Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying]

Abu Ghraib: The Las Vegas of Iraq

From Media Matters:

... nationally syndicated talk-radio host Jay Severin criticized President Bush for calling the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal "a mistake," stating: "[W]e took terror prisoners, and we treated them essentially to a week in Las Vegas. I have to pay good money to have that done to me." Severin added of Abu Ghraib: "I didn't see anything that equates with torture being done in Abu Ghraib. ... [E]xplain to me what it is that was so terrible at Abu Ghraib, but the facts don't matter anymore, you know, they walked around naked. Big deal."

After reading this, I have to ask what Mr. Severin uses as his safe word. Obviously this man is into some really sick games.

It's absurdities like this that not only make me question people's morals, but make me question their intelligence. For example, waterboarding isn't something you do behind a speed boat on Lake Mead.

Donald Rumsfield may write "I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to four hours?" but he knows very well, or he should, that the comparison is absurd. Detainees are not given offices without chairs. What this implies is a deliberate PR spin, like that used in campaign ads to give the public a nice cozy feeling about actions that can easily turn deadly.

If the motive for torture is military intelligence then doing anything that threatens the life of the detainees threatens the ends being worked toward. If the detainees' lives are treated casually then we have no choice but to believe that the motive is NOT military intelligence.

To use the example from an earlier blogathon post, V. I confess: I am!

'You hold a terrorist who knows the location of a diffusable bomb which, if exploded, will kill x million people. Do you have the right to torture him/her to find the bomb?'

If we say yes, how do we justify killing the sources of information so valuable that ethics must be thrown out the window?

From Human Rights First

Most troubling among all of these cases are those we describe as detainees tortured to death, a number we put at 8-12. These are detainees who were beaten, suffocated, or otherwise died in circumstances meeting the definition of torture set out in the federal law banning the practice, which criminalizes acts “specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering.”

Each of these deaths represents a setback in the war on terror. Either because we are losing valuable information or because these people were tortured simply to make us feel safer.

It isn't just those who have been charged with abuse who need to answer for the deaths of detainees, it is also those who created the environment where abuse is something people would pay for on a Las Vegas getaway and those who will buy that analogy because to do otherwise would be depressing.

Marcella (like my other posts this one will be cross-posted on my personal blog)

Psychologists To Assist In Military Interrogations

There could be a future civil war in America -that is, between members of the American Psychological Association over their role in military interrogations. An APA policy issued last year states that "while psychologists should not get involved in torture or other degrading treatment, it is ethical for them to act as consultants to interrogation and information-gathering for national security purposes." and it’s creating an uproar within their membership.

There is now an online petition with 1,300 signatures from APA members and other psychologists on it. Protest forums will be held at the APA’s convention in New Orleans next month.

There’s a few interesting tidbits in this Associated Press story. Check out this first passage:

News reports have said that mental health specialists who are helping U.S. military interrogators have helped create coercive techniques, including sleep deprivation and playing on detainees’ phobias, to extract information.

How come the U.S. military is using psychologists to do their dirty work instead of doctors? Consider the following item:

The American Medical Association last month adopted what many view as a stronger stand against physician involvement in prisoner interrogation, echoing a position held by the American Psychiatric Association, whose members are medical doctors. The U.S. military has indicated it will therefore favour using psychologists, who are not medical doctors and are not bound by the other groups’ policies.

That’s why the APA membership is in an uproar. So how come the leadership has changed its stance on assisting in military interrogations? Here’s what Salon.com had to say on Wednesday:

...six of the 10 people on the APA task force that drafted the psychologists’ policy have close military ties, including four who have worked at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib or Afghanistan.

Now it all makes sense. The Bush administration is not only changing the laws to suit their purposes, but like their PPO health plan they are choosing which health professionals to use to carry out their dirty work. We can only hope that the APA’s leadership comes to their senses by the time they convene in New Orleans on August 10th.

Technorati Tags: Blogathon 2006, Human Rights, Torture, Psychologists, APA, Interrogations

Jordan Is "Central Hub" of Secret Detention Centers

JURIST, one of my favorite reference sites, came out with a report on Monday that Jordan is a very important ally of the United States. According to a report from Amnesty International. it’s a "central hub" in a global complex of secret detention centers allegedly operated by the CIA and other foreign intelligence agencies. This map indicates that Jordan is one of several countries that Amnesty International identified that has a suspected CIA "black site".

There is so much information in Amnesty International’s report that it would be impossible to cover all of it with the rest of the posts left in Blogathon 2006, so I will concentrate on some of the parts relating to torture. Jordan’s General Intelligence Department (GID) allegedly has performed the following acts of torture on detainees held for interrogation. The most common abuses are:

- beatings, including being punched and kicked;
- beatings with sticks, cables, plastic pipes, rope or whips;
- severe and prolonged beatings upon arrival at a detention centre;
- beatings while made to run around a courtyard;
- "falaqa" – whereby the soles of the victim’s feet are repeatedly beaten with a stick, often while the victim is in a fixed, uncomfortable position;
- humiliation, for example being stripped in front of others, or being made to behave like a particular animal;
- being forced to stand in painful positions for prolonged periods – such as on one leg with both hands in the air;
- sleep deprivation;
- being threatened with extreme violence, for example, with rape, with electric shocks, with being attacked by dogs;
- being threatened that one’s family members will be sexually or physically abused;
- being insulted;
- being kept for prolonged periods in incommunicado detention – without visits from family members or a lawyer and often without the family being told of one’s arrest;
- being kept in prolonged solitary confinement.

In the nine-part report, Amnesty International is calling on Jordan to do the following immediately:

• End the use of incommunicado detention;
  
• Curtail the powers of the GID and ensure a separation of powers, in law and in practice, between the authorities responsible for the detention of suspects and those responsible for their interrogation;
  
• Investigate, promptly and independently, all allegations of torture or other ill-treatment and bring to justice any officials who commit such human rights violations;
  
• Cease Jordan’s participation in renditions and other secret transfers of prisoners and victims of enforced disappearance and disclose publicly the names and other details of all those who have been detained in or transferred through Jordan in this context;
  
• Ratify the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture (OP CAT) which came into force on 22 June 2006, and commit to permitting independent monitoring of all places of detention as required under the provisions of this protocol.

There is a lot more to this lengthy but damning report. It will likely take a half-hour or more to read but it’s worth checking out. One thing that you will take away from it is that there is an eerie resemblance between things Amnesty International has accused Jordan of doing and what the Bush administration is trying to do with the War Crimes Act of 1996.

Click here to read Amnesty International’s report titled Jordan, "Your confessions are ready for you to sign" Detention and torture of political suspects.

The War On Terrorism Exception To International Treaties

Two months after the United Nations Committee Against Torture released its report criticizing the Bush's Administration's use of torture, the United Nations Human Rights Committee followed up with its own report. The committee criticized the United States for its continued practice of torture and of using extraordinary rendition to send detainees to countries that practice torture. The Committee also criticized the Bush Administration's holding of persons secretly and without charge.

According to the Committee report:

The Committee was concerned by credible and uncontested information that the State party had detained people secretly for months and years on end. It was also concerned that for a period of time the State party had authorized interrogation techniques such as prolonged stress positions and isolation, sensory deprivation, hooding, exposure to cold or heat, and 20-hour interrogations. While the Committee welcomed the assurance that those techniques were no longer authorized under the present Army Field Manual, the United States should ensure that the Manual only permitted techniques consistent with the prohibition contained in article 7 of the Covenant, and that those techniques were binding on all agencies of government and others acting for them. The Committee also noted with concern shortcomings in relation to the independence, impartiality and effectiveness of investigations conducted into allegations of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in detention facilities in Guantanamo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and other overseas locations, and into alleged cases of suspicious death in custody in those locations.

The Committee was further concerned that the State party appeared to have adopted a policy to send, or to assist in sending, suspected terrorists to third countries for purposes of detention and interrogation, without the appropriate safeguards to prevent treatment prohibited by the Covenant.

Just as it did when confronted with the report from the UN Committee Against Torture, the Bush Administration defended itself by stating that the Human Rights Committee and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, whose implementation the Committee is charged with monitoring, do not apply to the War on Terror. Specifically the Bush Administration argued that the Covenant only applied when the State Party (United States) committed torture on its own territory. In other words, if the United States tortures a detainee on foreign soil, the Committee does not have jurisdiction. The Bush Administration's position was presented by Matthew Waxman, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Department of State:

The United States believed that the law of armed conflict – international humanitarian law – provided the proper legal framework regarding some of the questions raised by the Committee, Mr. Waxman noted. The United States was aware of the views of members of the Committee regarding the extraterritorial application of the Covenant, including the Committee's General Comment No. 31. The United States, however, had a principled and long-held view that the Covenant applied only to a State party's territory. Article 2, paragraph 1, of the Covenant stated explicitly that States parties were required to respect and ensure the rights in the Covenant to all individuals "within its territory and subject to its jurisdiction". That plain meaning of the treaty language was also confirmed by the Covenant's own negotiating record. It was in light of its principled and longstanding view on the scope of the application of United States obligations under the Covenant, that the United States had not included in its formal response to the Committee's written questions information regarding activities outside of its territory or governed by the law of armed conflict.

The Committee however was not persuaded by the Bush Administration's argument.

Having lost the moral high ground and having butchered the definition of torture, the Bush Administration is now left with making mind-bending arguments that defy common sense. Torture is torture only if it is practiced in the United States. Torture is not torture when practiced by the United States on foreign soil. This is the basis for the existence of Guantanamo Bay and an unknown number of CIA secret prisons across the globe. The Bush Administration has been getting a lot of bad legal advice. The only person who might perhaps have been impressed by these arguments is the late George Orwell.

[Cross posted at Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying]

VI. Civil and Human Rights?

The need for rethinking interrogation doctrine in the war on terror will not go away, however. The Islamist enemy is unlike any the military has encountered in the past. If current wisdom on the rules of war prohibits making any distinction between a terrorist and a lawful combatant, then that orthodoxy needs to change

Heather Mac Donald

Now here it is. The 'ticking bomb'. Imagine: (if you can't – watch 24!) they got him. 'Him' being the 'terrorist' with the necessary information to find and deactivate the bomb. He's held by the proper authorities and even sneeringly confessing. The hatred is sweating out of him and he's is cursing us with a 'holy war' and a 'dirty' bomb planted somewhere in our biggest cities?

What are we going to do? Adhere to the law – ask him whether he wants legal assistance – has the flight been OK and would you like to rest? Are we going to grant him all the civil liberties our forefathers have so long fought for? Are we willing to sacrifice maybe millions for Civil and Human Rights?

Per

V. I confess: I am!

'You hold a terrorist who knows the location of a defusable bomb which, if exploded, will kill x million people. Do you have the right to torture him/her to find the bomb?'

Instead of offering an answer to this question, I'm going to look at a question that follows immediately, but doesn't seem to have been asked. Suppose that you have used torture to extract information from a prisoner in the belief (correct or not) that doing so was justified by a "ticking bomb" situation. What should you do next?

My answer is that you should turn yourself in, and plead guilty to the relevant criminal charges. I think this answer can be defended from a wide variety of perspectives, but I'll take an intuitive one first. If the situation is grave enough to warrant resort to torture, it's certainly grave enough to justify losing your job and going to jail.

John Quiggin

The Confession (1999) by David Hugh Jones shows us Ben Kingsley as Harry Fertig who – in an act of revenge - kills the three people he holds guilty for the death of his child. After the murder he turns himself in to the police and of course asks for proper legal defence. The only task of his lawyer is to plead guilty. Harry Fertig insists on punishment. He has broken the law and for him it was G-d's law that's been broken. Their was no escape. He was the murderer who had only one way to make peace with his G-d: accept without the least bargaining the punishment immediately. Thy will be done!

Yes, I will not let the kidnapper get away with the information about my beloved. I will use every means at my command to extract the information needed and try and save my love.

I will commit a crime to save my wife... I will become guilty. And I will accept this personal guilt and accept proper punishment without mitigation. I want the kidnapper go to prison and I will accompany him.

Per

Dana Priest Appreciation Thread

This post is more than just an appreciation thread for Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Dana Priest. This is also going to be our crash course in the existence of CIA "black sites", or classified facilities whose existence is denied by the U.S. government.

In November 2002, a newly minted CIA case officer in charge of a secret
prison just north of Kabul allegedly ordered guards to strip naked an
uncooperative young Afghan detainee, chain him to the concrete floor and leave
him there overnight without blankets, according to four U.S. government
officials aware of the case.

The Afghan guards -- paid by the CIA and working under CIA supervision in
an abandoned warehouse code-named the Salt Pit -- dragged their captive around
on the concrete floor, bruising and scraping his skin, before putting him in his
cell, two of the officials said.

As night fell, so, predictably, did the temperature.

By morning, the Afghan man had frozen to death.

The above excerpt is from an article authored by Priest. "CIA Avoids Scrutiny of Detainee Treatment" was published by The Washington Post on March 3, 2005, and although it never got the attention it deserved in the mainstream media, it sparked an international debate on the existence of "black sites". Priest also wrote "CIA Holds Terror Suspects In Secret Prisons", which was published by The Washington Post on November 2, 2005.

Both articles are important because they were the first to reference "The Salt Pit", the detention facility that Khaled al-Masri was detained at for five months in 2004. Take a few minutes to read the articles and I'll have more on "The Salt Pit" on a future post.

CORRECTION: Everything you need to know about "The Salt Pit" can be found in Ms. Priest's articles. Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: Blogathon 2006, Human Rights, Dana Priest, The Salt Pit, Torture, Extraordinary rendition, Black sites

Torture & Extraordinary Rendition Flights Are a State Secret

"Al-Masri’s private interests must give way to the national interest in preserving state secrets," U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis

In May, a German’s civil lawsuit against the CIA, former CIA director George Tenet and several private firms was thrown out by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on the grounds that it could expose state secrets.

Khaled al-Masri charges that he was illegally abducted in Macedonia on New Year’s Eve 2003 and flown by the CIA to a detention center in Afghanistan. He was questioned and abused for five months in a facility dubbed "The Salt Pit" before he was dumped on a roadside in Albania. His captors discovered that he was not suspected al-Qaeda operative Khalid al-Masri, never mind the fact that they do not share the same spelling of their first names.

What makes this case troubling is that U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III tossed out al-Masri’s lawsuit after the U. S. Government intervened in the case and filed a secret brief which said the lawsuit could expose state secrets. Although Ellis made no finding on al-Masri’s claims, he ruled that the lawsuit could not move forward.

In addition, German authorities have been stonewalled by the United States in their own investigation based on al-Masri’s civil lawsuit against the CIA. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and other officials have also declined to comment on the matter.

Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union representing al-Masri filed an appeal on Monday, and rightfully so. When did the use of extraordinary rendition flights and torture become a state secret? We’re not talking about Church’s Chicken stealing Colonel Sanders’ secret recipe of eleven herbs and spices for his fried chicken. We’re talking about a German citizen in good standing whose human rights we violated on the basis of mistaken identity.

That’s why we need to push for due process for all detainees in custody and put an end to rendition flights to secret prisons in countries that support the use of torture.

IV. Are You A Torturer Too?

In October 2002, Daschner [Frankfurt Deputy Police Chief] had threatened to inflict severe pain on Magnus Gaefgen, the kidnapper of 11-year old banker’s son Jakob von Metzler, if Gaefgen did not reveal where he had hidden the child. Gaefgen promptly admitted that the boy was already dead. Gaefgen was later sentenced to life imprisonment for murder.

Justus Leicht

It is always very easy to give general answers. The 'ticking bomb' scenario is not really ours: the bomb is always somewhere far away and our folks are not dying. So we are quick in demanding rights to be observed. Righteousness is more often a curse than a blessing. We want rights respected and others to face the reality of the loss of a loved one. Moral principles must not be shattered.

But let's fathom our sincerity. I pray beg you on my virtual knees to consider this as an exercise to be followed precisely. Go deep down inside your heart and feel the answer. Do not think about it. Do not be afraid. Be honest! After answering you will still be a good person – a good person who knows a little more about him/her self...

It is your spouse, your child, your brother or sister, your friend, that's been kidnapped and by chance you get hold of the villain. You know the victim's buried in an earth coffin – another two hours to breathe.

If you turn over the culprit to the police you will miss your chance – they are bound by law. This is your moment:

Will you see in him your Neighbour – your fellow human being that has to be treated with respect and - if you are Christian – with love? Will you open your heart and show him your most tender sorrow, become vulnerable and readily 'turn the other cheek'?

Will you be prepared to cry an Ocean of Tears?

Will you refrain from beating the shit out of him?

Per

The US is Practicing Torture by Proxy Around the World

I think Bush was largely on the right track when he stated, "If you harbor terrorists, you are a terrorist". Of course, just as with most other aspects of US foreign policy, this was completely hypocritical - the United States harbours many terrorists (and I don't just mean in the White House). For example, we have the four Cuban exiles who fled from Panama and were allowed to enter US soil - Pedro Remon, Gaspar Jimenez, Guillermo Novo and Louis Posada Carriles. Their crimes included firing a bazooka at the UN, particpiating in a car bombing in Washington D.C. and bombing Cuba's mission to the UN. Of course, the reason for the US giving them sanctuary was that they were all trained by the C.I.A. But anyway, the point is that the principle was, in general, a good one.

So why isn't the same with torture? Why not the maxim, 'if you collaborate with torturers, you are a torturer'. Well...I guess then Bush would have the same problem as before - he could not escape the conclusion that he and the rest of the administration are torturers. Why? Let's start with Israel. There's been a lot in the news lately about Israeli prisoners, after Hamas and Hizbullah together kidnapped three soldiers to try and negotiate a release of some of their prisoners currently rotting in Israeli jails. Well, I say its been in the news - in fact, there has been virtually no analysis of the legitimacy of Hizbullah's and Hamas' demand for the release of prisoners. It's sad that it takes an act of terrorism to force newspapers to recognise even the existence of the Israeli prisoner problem.

Currently, Israel holds around 9,000 Palestinian prisoners. 750 of these are held in 'administrative detention'. This means they are being held without charge or trial. Under international law, administrative detention is legal, but with certain restrictions. For example, administrative detention is not to be used as a form of punishment, but only to prevent acts of violence and other specific dangers to security. Israel is flagrantly violating this restriction, as B'Tselem reports:

"[Administrative detention is often used as a] quick and efficient alternative to criminal trial, primarily when they do not have sufficient evidence to charge the individual, or when they do not want to reveal their evidence. This use of administrative detention is absolutely prohibited and totally blurs the distinction between preventive and punitive detention."

Israeli abuse of the right of administrative detention means that for the hundreds of Palestinians trapped in Israeli jails, there is no way out. There is no ending on the horizon. It is this sort of endless, meaningless incarceration that has led to so many suicide attempts in Guantanamo Bay.
So what of the other 8,000 prisoners? Well, they have been charged, tried and convicted, but almost always on the basis of evidence extracted by torture. The US has been supporting Israel, both militarily, financially and diplomatically, for decades. Israel has also been torturing its prisoners for decades. B'Tselem reports:

"For years, torture was commonly used in General Security Service interrogations. After the Landau Commission made its recommendations, in 1987, the GSS interrogated at least 850 Palestinians a year by means of torture. The methods included violent shaking, binding the detainees in painful positions, and covering their head with a foul-smelling sack. All governmental authorities, from the IDF to the Supreme Court, took part in approving torture, in developing new methods, and in supervising them."

And it is still going on, as this report by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) shows:

"Based on official data, GSS agents interrogated thousands of Palestinians per year during the Intifada, and over 200 at any given moment. In July 2002, the GSS related to the press that 90 Palestinians were defined as 'ticking bombs' and were tortured (that is, were exposed to 'physical pressure'). Research by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel shows that the number tortured is actually much greater; and that GSS agents who interrogate Palestinian detainees torture them, degrade them, and otherwise ill-treat them routinely, in blatant violation of the provisions of international law, mainly in the following manners:
Violence: Beating, slapping, kicking, stepping on shackles; Bending the interrogee and placing him in other painful positions; Intentionally tightening the shackles by which he is bound; Violent shaking.
Sleep Deprivation.
Additional 'Interrogation Methods': Prolonged shackling behind the back; Cursing, threats, humiliations; Depriving the detainee of essential needs; Exposure to extreme heat or cold.
Secondary Methods: Isolation and secrecy; Imprisonment under inhuman conditions.

The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel estimates that a considerable portion of all interrogees, if not most, had been exposed to interrogation methods which include "severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental." In other words these methods, as applied, cause, at least in their combination and accumulation over time, the level of gravity and cruelty that constitute torture as defined in international law." [my emphasis added]

The United States and Britain therefore, by supporting Israel, are supporting the brutal and illegal torture of defenceless Palestinian prisoners.

That is not an isolated case. Let's take Saudi Arabia. The US has long had close military ties with the oil rich Islamic state - between 1990 and 2000, the Pentagon arranged the delivery of over $39.6 billion in foreign military sales to S. Arabia, as well as $394 million worths of arms to the regime directly through the State Department. Just recently, the Pentagon approved a $6 billion arms sale to the Saudi regime.

Torture in Saudi Arabia is well documented, and the perpetrators are protected by the government and high level officials, as this Human Rights Watch report from 2002 details:

"Blanket denials of torture from senior Saudi officials only compound the problem and perpetuate a culture of impunity among security forces...The practice of torture in Saudi Arabia is well-documented, and the government is legally obligated to investigate these recent allegations".

In fact, it seems Saudi practices have gone so low as to be on par with US behaviour in Guantanamo. HRW reports concerns that 15 Saudi detainees released from Guantanamo into Saudi custody will not get a free trial, and are at risk of torture: "The detainees certainly can't rely on the Saudi justice system to give them a fair day in court."

"Saudi Arabia has a long and recent record of torture and its trials remain patently unfair", it adds.

Then we've got Turkey. Throughout the 1990s, the US sold arms to Turkey - arms which were then used to oppress the Kurds. In 1999, the US State Department claimed that "Turkish armed forces are roughly 80 percent dependent on U.S.-origin equipment." The Clinton administration sold, in total, $4,927,223 worth of arms to Turkey over the period 1993-98.
This is what the Federation of American Scientists had to say:

"International human rights organizations, as well as the U.S. State Department, have for many years reported that the Turkish military and police are committing egregious violations of human rights against Turkey's citizens, sometime using U.S. weapons to do so. Among the documented violations are the widespread use of torture, police abuse, assassinations, and "disappearances." Terrible conditions, torture and beatings in Turkish prisons were brought to light by a large hunger strike staged in the fall of 2000."

Turkey is, in fact, the third largest recipient of US military aid, after Israel and Egypt (which sums it up quite nicely) received $37 million total US military aid last year - this year, the Bush administration has requested $28 million in total be earmarked for Turkey.

Washington sees Turkey as "a major coalition partner in the global war on terrorism, an active ally and partner in the reconstruction of Iraq and Afghanistan, and a pro-Western democracy in a troubled region."

Compare this with Amnesty International's description of Turkey in their 2006 annual report:

"Torture and ill-treatment by law enforcement officials continued to be reported, with detainees allegedly being beaten; stripped naked and threatened with death; deprived of food, water and sleep during detention; and beaten during arrest or in places of unofficial detention. Reports of torture or ill-treatment of individuals detained for political offences decreased. However, people detained on suspicion of committing ordinary crimes such as theft or for public disorder offences were particularly at risk of ill-treatment. Reports suggested that there were still many cases of law enforcement officials completely failing to follow lawful detention and investigative procedures and of prosecutors failing to ascertain that law enforcement officials had complied with procedures. Police also regularly used disproportionate force against demonstrators, particularly targeting leftists, supporters of the pro-Kurdish party DEHAP, students and trade unionists (see Killings in disputed circumstances below). Often those alleging ill-treatment, particularly during demonstrations, were charged with resisting arrest while their injuries were explained away as having occurred as police attempted to restrain them."

Not only is torture common in Turkey, but torturers are rarely punished, as there is a culture of impunity created by officials and the government.

Hopefully it should now be crystal clear that the US has no qualms whatsoever about funding torture worldwide. To know this is useful, for several reaons. Firstly, for all you US citizens out there: what is actually happening is that you are funding torture worldwide. It is your taxes that are used to arm and sustain some of the most brutal regimes on the planet. This infers upon you a direct moral responsibility to force your government to cease funding torturers. Secondly, it should help dispel the fundamental idea that many of us have, drilled into us from a very young age, that we are the good guys. That sure, we may make mistakes occasionally, but we'd never deliberately do anyone any harm. Once this myth is dispelled, it should come as much less of a surprise to learn that the Bush administration, aswell as funding and facilitating torture by others, also authorises torture by Americans around the world, thanks to the practice of "extraordinary rendition" - a disgraceful euphemism for abduction and kidnapping.

In short, we have a direct moral responsibility to stop the US government committing barbaric, cruel atrocities in the name of the US people, whether using American soldiers or by proxy.

The Heathlander

III. Why?

...the world in which evil regimes, like those we fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, don’t follow the Miranda rules or the Convention Against Torture but instead gas children, bury people alive, set wild animals on soccer players who lose, and hang adulterous women by truckloads before stadiums full of spectators; the world in which barbarous death cults behead female aid workers, bomb crowded railway stations, and fly planes filled with hundreds of innocent passengers into buildings filled with thousands of innocent and unsuspecting civilians.

Heather Mac Donald

Well, isn't that so! We don't think of anything alike and we don't do these things. It's them! We don't target civilians and if we hit them – like in Lebanon or Iraq or Hiroshima or Nagasaki – it's collateral damage. We didn't mean to do that – just couldn't help. And of course we are not responsible for those starving to death or the children going blind for lack of vitamin A. If we lend them money they have to pay back – that's what we all have to do: we must pay hour debts. It doesn't matter if there's no money left for social security, health care or education: Debts must be paid first – this is an imperative of The Divine Order of Money. For the last five hundred years we had 'a fair' trade with them – they had their chance – and see what they made of it. They attack us! Why?

Per

II. Do As You Are Done?

The realization that another person wishes to harm and hurt you cannot undermine genuine compassion—a compassion based on the clear recognition of that person as someone who has the natural and instinctual desire to seek happiness and overcome suffering, just like oneself.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama

These thugs knew no limit. They captured planes and flew them and all the passenger right into the emblem of Wealth and Trade in the American Century. Thousands of people died, tens of thousands mourned: they had all lost 'a loving mother, a kind father, an innocent child, a helpful friend' (Inayat Khan). A nation was shaken.

Some called it war – some called it crime and depending on the call would advise the antidote and cure.

The Christian world decided to trust a tribal statement: an eye for an eye won. There was not only the necessity to punish and revenge, but also precaution had to be taken to prevent any repetition of the incident.

And we were told: we had to make our world safer. We had to reconsider. The world 'after' was not the world 'before' – the rules had been broken by 'them' and anyhow: would these 'old' rules suffice to insure our safety?

If they brutally murdered our innocent – what were they to expect from us? What could they expect from us? Honestly! Do as you are done!

Per

I. Are They HUman?

We don't need any names, any places: we all remember the news, the pctures, the outcries. Atrocities well linked to the dictator – not to be seen in our Western so called 'democratic' hemisphere. We were used to a somewhat white HUman Rights record – only nitpickers were making fuss about things like sleep deprivation and started to call them 'torture'. So what? Didn't we all have to stay up late sometime and anyhow: what about China? It was for us to remind the others! Whatever there was to be said about us: sex, drugs, mass unemployment, exploding crime rates, decadence – we always had one final resort. HUman Rights. At least we insisted to believe...

But then the core had proven rotten. The heart of hearts of Western Values, the Apostle of Freedom, the Proliferator of Democracy and Protector of HUman Rights was caught pants down and forced to eat his own words of the last two centuries. We were shocked!

Soon we remembered: we had been warned. There was this thing going on called 'War on Terror' which we had to join or be declared terrorist. It started all back when appalling pictures of an unseen and unheard of attack were brought to our notice and we were informed: the world had changed.

The scale of evil had been shattered by hideous creatures. Their name was 'Terrorist'. We learned that they didn't care for HUman lives – neither their own nor ours. They also believed in chopping of hands, stoning adulteresses and decapitation.

Could they be called Human?

Per

The Iron Fist Fallacy

Those who commit or support torture, either abroad, or in the US -- as I commented on in Chicago Police Allegedly Tortured During Interrogations -- are making the incorrect assumption that responding to terrorism or brutal crime with brute force will make us stronger and more secure.

While there are times when force is needed, the ego-driven use of force (we good, they evil) will backfire 99% of the time and can turn us into the type of brutes we call evil. Once we (whoever the we are) begin torturing, those involved need to rationalize like mad in order to maintain the illusion of "we good."

We also need to turn on those among us who point out the flaws in what we are doing. We call them traitors or enemy sympathizers even when they are attempting to keep us from crossing the line or attempting to get us back over the line. There's a reason whistleblowers need protection. They are vital to any open system that doesn't accept might makes right.

The irony is that when we are out of line and need whistleblowers the most, we can rationalize ourselves into hero status. To keep that illusion going the last thing we want is someone to shout out unvarnished truths about our actions.

So what should replace torture? Simply eliminating torture won't do the trick. As many police forces have learned, crime prevention, community involvement programs combined with ethical treatment of suspects can do more to reduce crime than turning an area into a police state ever can.

If the only or most promising career path is crime, entering the U.S. illegally or terrorism, then a larger number of people are going to choose those options.

We all benefit (the good and the evil) by treating even the most evil people with respect for their humanity (and our own) and with a clear and fair accountability for all criminal or unethical behaviors.

But if the current iron fist policies seem to be working, why should we fix something that ain't broke?

We need to fix the problem before the iron fists contribute to further escalation of the violence. As police forces have learned, new criminals pop up as quickly as the "scum" are swept off the street. As many U.S. cities have also learned, one violent incident by the police in areas that feel attacked by the police can set off a riot.

Freedom may be messy, but true freedom isn't moments of anarchy punctuated by moments of brute force.

Think about it this way, if you were in the group or area that has been labeled evil, how would you want the good people to treat you? The answer to this question matters because the truth is that we are all in a group or area that somebody sees as evil.

Marcella

We Have Ways Of Making You Talk!!!

In the spring of 2002, the Bush Administration scored a major coup against al Qaeda. The third ranking member of al Qaeda, Abu Zubaydah, was captured in a daring raid in Pakistan. This surely was a major blow to the terrorist organization and a triumph for the Bush Administration in its War on Terror.

News organizations at the time breathlessly reported the capture of Abu Zubaydah, the "perfect terrorist":

The planes arrived shortly after 2am, the city's mobile phones were shut down, then the police radio went off air. An hour later the FBI was ready to strike.

In an upstairs room in a two-storey house in the Faisal Town suburb of Faisalabad, an industrial city in western Pakistan, a tall 31-year-old man was asleep. Around him, stretched out on pallets on the concrete floor, were a dozen associates: fellow Arabs, Afghans and Pakistanis. The only light inside came from a flickering computer screen and the winking of a fax machine. Just before 4am, on 28 March, the FBI went in.

The man, Zayn al-Abidin Mohamed Husayn, aka Abu Zubaydah, woke as scores of FBI men, shouting and throwing stun grenades, swarmed over the low walls enclosing the house and smashed their way inside.

While his colleagues tried to hold off the FBI with kitchen knives, Zubaydah tried to escape. As he ran, he was shot in the stomach, the groin and the thigh. The FBI took him first to Faisalabad's Allied Hospital and then to Islamabad, Pakistan's capital, 170 miles to the north.

This was the stuff of James Bond movies. The Bush Administration was ecstatic:

U.S. officials said they believe Abu Zubaydah can identify names, faces and locations of Al Qaeda operatives the world over and may also know where Usama bin Laden is hiding.

The White House confirmed the capture Tuesday, and while it acknowledged it was a "very serious blow" to Al Qaeda, it also said Americans were still threatened.

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer described Zubaydah as an operational planner and key recruiter for Al Qaeda and a member of bin Laden's "inner circle" who can provide a treasure-trove of top-to-bottom information about the terrorist group.

"He will be interrogated about his knowledge of ongoing plans to conduct terrorist activities. This represents a very serious blow to Al Qaeda," Fleischer said.

Soon, under "enhanced interrogation techniques", Abu Zubaydah started to sing like a canary. He was a treasure trove of information. He was involved in anything and everything al Qaeda. The Bush Administration had hit upon the mother load. This man was al Qaeda's James Bond and Austin Powers rolled up into one. He was al Qaeda's operational coordinator; he was a master of disguise; he was al Qaeda's chief recruiter; he had briefed the hapless shoe bomber; he had planned to blow up the U.S. embassies in Paris and Sarajevo; he was connected to the plot to blow up Los Angeles International Airport in 1999. He also gave great tips. He tipped off U.S. authorities about a threat to U.S. financial institutions; about "possible al Qaeda attacks on large apartment buildings, shopping malls, supermarkets and restaurants"; about Jose Padilla, the alleged "dirty bomber". In short, he was a super terrorist - sans the evil cape.

He was so dangerous he could not be kept at Guantanamo Bay for fear that he may use some al Qaeda mind meld technique to communicate with other detainees. So, he was "disappeared" into the CIA's secret prison system somewhere overseas. There he became a prime candidate for some of the cool torture techniques that the Bush Administration loved and cherished. But soon doubts started to emerge about the quality of Mr. Zubaydah's information.

Nonetheless, torture must go on. Enter John Yoo, a brilliant young lawyer working for the Justice Department. At some point, Abu Zubaydah had stopped being cooperative. So the CIA turned to the Justice Department for guidance on how to extract information from Zubaydah. That request prompted the now infamous "Torture Memo" from Mr. Yoo. Cool and fun techniques such as "waterboarding" were approved for the worst of the worst like Zubaydah. Once those newly sanctioned techniques were applied, Zubaydah was back to his old self again singing like he had never sung before.

Now, however, it has emerged that the reason Mr. Zubaydah's information seemed so unreliable at the time was because he is mentally ill. It turns out that Abu Zubaydah was not al Qaeda no. 3 like previously touted, but in fact he was a low level "travel agent" who arranged travel for spouses and relatives of al Qaeda members. He also had multiple personalities that were fascinated with what clothes people wore. Ron Suskind, in his book The One Percent Doctrine, lays it out for us:

Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be. CIA and FBI analysts, poring over a diary he kept for more than a decade, found entries "in the voice of three people: Hani 1, Hani 2, and Hani 3" -- a boy, a young man and a middle-aged alter ego. All three recorded in numbing detail "what people ate, or wore, or trifling things they said." Dan Coleman, then the FBI's top al-Qaeda analyst, told a senior bureau official, "This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality."

Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, he was al-Qaeda's go-to guy for minor logistics -- travel for wives and children and the like. That judgment was "echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President," Suskind writes. And yet somehow, in a speech delivered two weeks later, President Bush portrayed Abu Zubaydah as "one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States." And over the months to come, under White House and Justice Department direction, the CIA would make him its first test subject for harsh interrogation techniques.

So, a low level al Qaeda member who was insane was causing the U.S. law enforcement authorities to jump through hoops chasing phantom al Qaeda plots. Sounds to me like a sinister al Qaeda plot to tire all of us out!

But how could the most powerful nation in the world be given the run around by a mentally ill detainee? It does not seem possible. It turns out that the U.S. response was being driven by George W Bush's ego and his need to avoid embarrassment:

"I said he was important," Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. "You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" "No sir, Mr. President," Tenet replied. Bush "was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth," Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, "Do some of these harsh methods really work?" Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety -- against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, "thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each . . . target." And so, Suskind writes, "the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered."

This would be comic if not for the fact that the United States faces real dangers in this world. Instead of tracking real dangers down, the Bush Administration has been engaged in torturing a mentally ill man just because George W Bush did not want to lose face. There are many absurd reasons why tyrants and abusers torture people around the world - but this has to be one of the most absurd.

In light of the case of Abu Zubaydah, one has to ask how serious the Bush Administration is in defending this country? If given a choice between protecting the President from embarrassment and protecting the United States, which path will this Administration choose? And will torture litter that path?

[Cross posted at Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying]

The Internment of Juma Mohammed Abdul Latif Al Dossary

Juma Mohammed Abdul Latif Al Dossary is being held in solitary confinement at the Guantanamo Bay prison. He is alleged to have ties to the "Lackawanna Six", the six Yemeni-Americans that traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan for jihad training in early 2001. Two members reportedly told FBI agent Peter J. Ahern that Al Dossary gave a "fiery speech" at the Guidance Mosque in Lackawanna, NY. According to Ahern, the FBI is interested in learning whether Al Dossary has ties to al-Qaeda and helped fun the Lackawanna Six’s travel expenses.

To this day, Al Dossary has not been charged with a crime.

Since his internment, Al Dossary has made the following allegations of torture:

• In a letter dated in 2005, Al Dossary claimed that he suffered various abuses, including cigarettes being extinguished on his body, being made to walk on barbed wire and was urinated on by GI’s.


• Al Dossary’s father was diagnosed with terminal throat cancer in 2005. Since Al Dossary was denied access to letters from his family, he only learned about his father’s death during a visit with a Guantanamo Bay psychiatrist nine days later.


• In a note to his attorney last year, Al Dossary reported that medical treatment was withheld, the lights were never turned off in his cell.

British detainees Tarek Dergoul and Shafiq Rasul had cells in Guantanamo Bay prison that were nearby Al Dossary’s. This is their account of a beating Al Dossary received from guards:

When Jumah saw them coming he realized something was wrong and was lying on the floor with his head in his hands. If you’re on the floor with your hands on your head, then you would hope that all they would do would be to come in and put the chains on you. That is what they’re supposed to do.

"The first man is meant to go in with a shield. On this occasion the man with the shield threw the shield away, took his helmet off, when the door was unlocked ran in and did a knee drop onto Jumah’s back just between his shoulder blades with his full weight. He must have been about 240 pounds in weight. His name was Smith. He was a sergeant E5. Once he had done that the others came in and were punching and kicking Jumah…

"Jumah had had an operation and had metal rods in his stomach clamped together in the operation… [Smith] grabbed his head with one hand and with the other hand punched him repeatedly in the face. His nose was broken. He pushed his face and he smashed it into the concrete floor. All of this should be on video. There was blood everywhere. When they took him out they hosed the cell down and the water ran red with blood. We all saw it."

Do Dergoul and Rasul’s names sound familiar? Dergoul and Rasul were part of the Tipton Three and their story was made into a documentary you may have seen recently. It’s called The Road to Guantanamo.

You can find all of this information and more on Al Dossary’s entry in Wikipedia. Click here to review it.

Technorati Tags: Blogathon 2006, Human Rights, Guantanamo Bay, Juma Al Dossary, Human rights, Torture

Meanwhile, Back In Guantanamo Bay Prison...

"I am pleading you to do something for me - I feel I am on death’s bed." --Juma Al Dossary, Guantanamo Bay detainee, in a letter to his attorney dated June 12, 2006.

As you can tell by our mainstream media, there’s been a virtual media blackout on Guantanamo Bay since the Bush administration kicked out reporters last month. Today, I’m lifting the veil of secrecy over the prison and present to you an interesting article that was published in Wednesday’s edition of the Gulf Daily News.

The article is about 32-year-old Juma Al Dossary, a Guantanamo Bay detainee from Bahrain that has attempted suicide 13 times since his incarceration. He is suffering from a blood infection he may have contracted from a blood transfusion given to him after a March 11th suicide attempt. Since the blood transfusion, Al Dossary suffered from stomach pains and used to go to the bathroom as much as fourteen times a day. Doctors at the Guantanamo Bay prison told him that he has blood diseases and other problems. However, it doesn’t appear he is receiving adequate medical treatment because his physical and mental condition has deteriorated.

In a letter to his New York-based attorney dated June 12, 2006, Al Dossary made an appeal for the Bahrain government to send a medical delegation to the prison to give him a thorough physical and mental examination and to confirm that U.S. military doctors did not transfer dangerous diseases through blood transfusions. Despite being seriously ill, the U.S. military declassified this letter on June 25, 2006.

To this day, Al Dossary remains in solitary confinement, is not allowed to receive mail from his family, and still does not have his belongings.

In light of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s concern about protecting the Bush administration from violations of the War Crimes Act of 1996, why are we hearing stories like Al Dossary’s in the world media? More importantly, how come the mainstream media in the United States hasn’t made a single report on Guantanamo Bay since Bill O’Reilly’s visit to the prison? What are they covering up? Why is it taking so long for detainees to get adequate medical care? Why is it taking so long to press charges against Al Dossary? Why is the Guantanamo Bay prison still open after President Bush expressed his desire to close the facility?

The Red Cross, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International or another independent organization needs to be sent to Guantanamo Bay to ensure that Al Dossary and the other detainees are in good health. This article is just the latest example why the Bush administration cannot be allowed to circumvent or alter the War Crimes Act of 1996 in any way, shape, or form. If Al Dossary dies and it is proven that either his blood disorder was caused by the blood transfusion he received or he did not receive adequate medical treatment during his incarceration, then this could have huge implications on the Bush administration.

I urge you to click here and read the Gulf Daily News article on Juma Al Dossary’s recent mistreatment at the Guantanamo Bay prison. I’m stressing the word "recent" because in writing this post, I’ve stumbled upon a treasure trove of information on Juma Al Dossary’s incarceration at the Guantanamo Bay prison.

In half an hour, I will post more information on my discovery. Stay tuned.

Technorati Tags: Blogathon 2006, Human Rights, Guantanamo Bay, Juma Al Dossary, Human rights, Torture

Words Words Words, now..the visual

Sometimes, reading gives you one form of input or knowledge. Sometimes, seeing is believing..
so, see for yourself:

STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT VIDEO

An almost 50 minute video you can pull up on another page while reading the blogathon

The reason to have legal parameters of conduct with prisoners

“Torture” to the general public has been a tough ‘sell’. During June’s torture month, when I tried to approach people to promote awareness, I did not receive much of a response, other than perhaps a generalized ‘yea, those bushies think they can get away with anything’ kinda thing. Have you wondered like me, how another person can inflict intentional pain on another that goes above and beyond any situation of self-defense? Well, wonder no more. In fact, depending on how long you’ve graced the earth, you will undoubtedly remember two famous experiments, one from the ‘60s, and one from the early 70s. I am talking about the Stanly Milgram experiment and the Stanford prisoner experiment. The first one came out of the question after Eichman’s trial as to how it could be, that millions of people just obeyed orders without questioning as to their morality. The second one, which received funding from the US Navy was intended to look at existing conflicts in theirs and the Marine Corps’ prisons.

Stanley Milgram and Philip Zombardo were friends in highschool and apparently, had the same interests. Milgram conducted his experiment at Yale in 1961, and Zombardo conducted his 10 years later at Stanford University. This is their difference. As Milgram deceived his study objects by making them believe they were inflicting excruciating pain to another human being, which most of them continued after another ‘observer’, authority figure suggested they could since they would take responsibility for it, it is really the Stanford Prison experiment that is more troubling. In that experiment, 24 young guys were divvied up in half, 12 playing the prisoners, and 12 playing the wardens:

The experiment very quickly got out of hand. Prisoners suffered — and accepted — sadistic and humiliating treatment at the hands of the guards, and by the end many showed severe emotional disturbance.

After a relatively uneventful first day, a riot broke out on day two. Guards volunteered extra hours and worked together to break up the revolt, without supervision from the research staff. After this point, the guards tried to divide the prisoners and pit them against each other by setting up a "good" cell block and a "bad" cell block, to make the prisoners think that there were "informers" amidst their ranks. The efforts were largely effective, and there were no further large-scale rebellions. According to Zimbardo's former convict consultants, the tactic was similar to those used successfully in real US prisons.

The experiment's result has been argued to demonstrate the impressionability and obedience of people when provided with a legitimizing ideology and social and institutional support. It is also used to illustrate cognitive dissonance theory and the power of authority.
In psychology, the results of the experiment are said to support situational attributions of behavior rather than dispositional attribution. In other words, it seemed to entail that the situation caused the participants' behavior rather than anything inherent in their individual personalities. In this way it is compatible with the results of the also-famous (or infamous) Milgram experiment, in which ordinary people fulfilled orders to administer what appeared to be fatal electric shocks to a confederate of the experimenter.

The experiment drew its share of criticisms. In 2003, two British psychologists, Haslam and Reicher, conducted , what they called, a partial replication of the study with the help of the BBC which broadcasted it as a reality show. Their findings were a whole lot different then the original Stanford experiment, and naturally, received its share of critique.
When reading through all the experiments and their findings, I think we can deduce that we cannot leave anything to chance, and have the absolute need and moral obligation to provide strict parameters of conduct when dealing with prisoners. I touched upon the effect, not only of the person receiving the abuse, but the person administering it in a post I did in May called "When a little bit of Soul slips through your fingers". If after reading this you are still not convinced that torture is immoral, inhuman, and illegal, I suggest you find yourself a nice little study to participate in.

Check and compare;
Stanley Milgram Experiment
Stanford Prison Experiment
Haslam and Reicher ‘The Experiment’

Ingrid, from the Blogger Round Table

Torture – What is the point?

Torture is nothing new to this century. It has taken place through out all of history. It has been present for every major conflict and it has always yielded the same results. Not once in all of recorded history has information that has been obtained in this fashion solved or ended a military conflict.

The point of torture is to obtain information from an indigenous people. To “know” inside information and have an advantage over the enemy. To acquire knowledge that would otherwise be unavailable.

Torture is any act by which severe pain, whether physical or psychological, is intentionally inflicted on a person as a means of intimidation, deterrence, revenge, punishment, or information gathering. It can be used as an interrogation tactic to extract confessions. Torture is also used as a method of coercion or as a tool to control groups seen as a threat by governments. Throughout history, it has often been used as a method of effecting religious conversion or political "re-education".

Torture is almost universally considered to be an extreme violation of human rights, as stated by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Signatories of the Third Geneva Convention and Fourth Geneva Convention agree not to torture protected persons (enemy civilians and POWs) in armed conflicts, and signatories of the UN Convention Against Torture agree not to intentionally inflict severe pain or suffering on anyone, to obtain information or a confession, to punish them, or to coerce them or a third person. These conventions and agreements notwithstanding, it is estimated by organizations such as Amnesty International that around two out of three countries do not consistently abide by the spirit of such treaties.

Who performs torture? Well if the anals of history are examined it is almost always performed by the aggressor. The faction or Nation that has invaded a territory with military force. Being a forigen land, the attaker must gain a foothold on the inner workings of the local resistance. I wonder if this has ever paid off in the long run?

Egyptians – Nope
Chineese Dynasties - Nope
Roman Empire - Nope
British Empire – Nope
Ottoman Empire – Nope
Soviet Empire – Nope
Middle East Conflicts – Nope
German Empire – Nope
American Empire - ???????

All of these aggressive occupations failed in the end. No matter how much torture, no matter how much coercion, no matter how much political re-education in the end it comes down to one thing failure.
Now for the rant part.

I cannot believe our great nation is pissing around toiling over the price of crap at Wal-Mart and the gas pump while innocent civilians are being abducted across the globe. My god in heaven, look at all the uproar there was about an 18-year-old girl missing in Aruba. Meanwhile entire families are being disappeared into secret prisons. Why are they secret? It’s no great surprise that if this got the amount of air time that Aruba girl received that “joe-six-pack” would have no choice but to become outraged. Hell that was one girl, sure she was an American and I am sure that plays into it to some extent, but COME ON America let’s wake up and smell the coffee.

We hear the example of, “if you knew one person had the knowledge to stop a nuclear bomb from going off, wouldn’t you torture them to find out?” Great example, but ultimately flawed. Can anyone point to one interrogation that this scenario played out? I’m sure if it had happened the government would be parading it on every TV station across the nation. “See we told you it’s worth the sacrifice.” This type of information has never come to light using torture as a catalyst. It’s a worthless means of gathering Intel. But guess what folks even though it’s revolting in nature and denounced by many, torture is the device that allows Joe to sleep sound at night. Knowing that we are doing everything we can including the torture of fellow human beings.

Ultimately this occupation will fail, as did al the rest that came before it. We will not win the war on terror. We will not free the Middle East and we will not have an advantage because we tortured the information out of a civilian population. The only thing torture is creating is a new generation of American haters. Make no mistake my friends we have become the Nazi’s of the 21st century and our children will pay the price for our arrogance.

Circumventing Article 3 and Other Atrocities by the Bush Administration

Before I begin, I want to say thank you to everyone for inviting me to participate in Blogathon 2006. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Robbie and I’m a writer and aspiring novelist. I currently have three blogs: Greetings From America’s Finest City (personal), Independent Opinions (politics), and The Round Table (Los Angeles Kings hockey weblog).

Now that the pleasantries are out of the way, let’s get this party started...

Right now, you should be outraged at the Bush administration for attempting to circumvent the War Crimes Act of 1996. When the Supreme Court ruled 5-3 on June 29, 2006 that President Bush overstepped his authority in ordering military tribunals for Guantanamo Bay detainees, they also in effect ruled that the Bush administration did not have the authority to torture them.

In response to that, the Bush administration has drafted legislation that would grant protections to U.S. personnel for past violations of the War Crimes Act of 1996, which defines a war crime as a violation or grave breach of any of the Geneva Conventions or the Hague Conventions of 1907. What really concerns them is Article 3 of the Geneva Convention, which states the following:

Article 3

In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:

1. Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.

To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:

(a) Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;

(b) Taking of hostages;

(c) Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment;

(d) The passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.

2. The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for.

An impartial humanitarian body, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, may offer its services to the Parties to the conflict.

The Parties to the conflict should further endeavour to bring into force, by means of special agreements, all or part of the other provisions of the present Convention.

The application of the preceding provisions shall not affect the legal status of the Parties to the conflict.

The penalty for violating Article 3 of the Geneva Convention, as stated by the War Crimes Act of 1996, is life imprisonment or death. The death penalty is enacted if the misconduct resulted in the death of one or more victims, which has happened in the Guantanamo Bay prison and in Abu Gharib.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has consulted with Republican members of Congress for their help in covering the Bush administration’s backside. They, along with U.S. personnel that carried out these atrocities should be very afraid of what they’ve done in the name of protecting our freedom. A 55-page report by Human Rights Watch called No Blood, No Foul (you can download a PDF of the report by clicking here) details soldiers’ accounts of detainee abuse in Iraq, including reports of the use of abusive --I mean "creative" interrogation techniques such as sleep deprivation, environmental controls, hot and cold water. (Due to time constraints I cannot list them all, so please click here to download the PDF file or click here to reference the publication online.)

If the Bush administration succeeds in weakening the War Crimes Act of 1996, not only will they get away with the atrocities against detainees in our prisons but an unintentional consequence will be the possible future mistreatment of captured U.S. military personnel. We don’t need a repeat of what’s going on between Hezbollah and Israel to remind us of those consequences.

You as a concerned American citizen, especially those of you who say we are governed by "the rule of law", must do what is morally right. Contact your elected officials and let them know what you think about the Bush administration’s attempt to skirt its responsibility to the War Crimes Act of 1996 and Article 3 of the Geneva Convention. We ratified those agreements and it is our duty to bring those who violated those laws to justice.

Technorati Tags: Geneva Conventions, War Crimes Act of 1996, Alberto Gonzales, Torture, Human Rights, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Gharib, Human Rights Watch

War Crimes Act of 1996 -- Oops We Didn't Mean Us

My name is Marcella Chester and I blog over at http://abyss2hope.blogspot.com As part of the Torture Awareness Month in June I wrote a post called Top 5 Reasons Why Torture Is Un-American

At the time I didn't realize that not only was it un-American, it was illegal according to U.S. law. Apparently some administration officials didn't realize it either.

From the Washington Post

An obscure law approved by a Republican-controlled Congress a decade ago has made the Bush administration nervous that officials and troops involved in handling detainee matters might be accused of committing war crimes, and prosecuted at some point in U.S. courts.

Senior officials have responded by drafting legislation that would grant U.S. personnel involved in the terrorism fight new protections against prosecution for past violations of the War Crimes Act of 1996. That law criminalizes violations of the Geneva Conventions governing conduct in war and threatens the death penalty if U.S.-held detainees die in custody from abusive treatment. (emphasis mine)

If this law is changed to pardon Americans, including officials who ordered others to violate the Geneva Conventions, it will send a message loud and clear to other countries around the world. And it won't be a good message. It tells the world that what really changed after 9/11 is our ethics.

How long will it take for "Give us your poor and huddled masses, yearning to be free." to turn into:

Give us your poor and huddled masses, yearning to be free -- and we'll interrogate (torture) them to find out how they are planning to destroy our country.

Marcella

Going After The Family

On April 29, 2003 Waleed bin Attash was arrested by police in Karachi, Pakistan. He is suspected of planning the attack on the USS Cole. He has since been "disappeared" into the secret detention centers of the Central Intelligence Agency. Six months earlier, his 17-year-old brother, Hassan bin Attash was arrested in Pakistan and handed over to American forces. Hassan is currently being held at Guantanamo Bay.

According to his lawyer, Hassan was initially sent to a U.S. run "Dark Prison" in Kabul, Afghanistan for about a week. He was then flown to Jordan on an extraordinary rendition flight. While in Jordan he was severely tortured  by Jordan's General Intelligence Directorate, or GID. He was interrogated about his brother, Waleed bin Attash. According to his lawyer, Mark Falkoff, one favorite torture technique of the GID was to "beat the soles of his feet and then placed them in salt water". Ultimately, he signed "whatever was asked of him."

Hassan was moved from Jordanian custody back to the "Dark Prison" in Kabul on January 8, 2004. He was moved again to a prison in Bagram before ultimately arriving in Guantanamo Bay in May 2004. He has been there ever since. To keep it all in the family his 70-year-old father was picked up and detained in Saudi Arabia under U.S. orders.

Of Hassan, his lawyer had this to say:

“I couldn't tell you whether he was guilty or innocent,” Falkoff said. “I have no clue because we haven't been able to talk to him about anything other than the abuse he suffered, and the judge in his case refused to require the government to justify his detention. I don't know what evidence the government claims to have against him or even the charges.”

Regardless of the his innocence or guilt, which apparently the U.S. government does not need to prove or pretend to prove, Hassan has been subjected to the grand tour of the U.S. torture archipelago. It now appears that his 70-year-old father has been subjected to the same. All of this because, it seems, of being related to an alleged al Qaeda operative. It begs the question why Osama bin Laden's brothers and family are not subjected to the same treatment. Instead the Bush Administration flew them out of the U.S. immediately after September 11th without even questioning them. Could it be that torture is only doled out to those who do not have money and influence?

It looks like we have learned a thing or two from The Sopranos. 

[Cross posted at Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying]

Let the 2006 Blogathon Commence!

And so it begins…

I hope everyone’s feeling bright and refreshed. I’ve got my bag of chocolate raisins at the ready :)
This is just a welcome post / open thread – our first proper post will take place at half past. We will then blog atleast once every half hour for 24 hours – that makes 48 posts, or four each.

As we all know, our aim here is to raise awareness about Coalition torture and money for Amnesty International USA, which performs such a vital task in standing up for human rights.
Regarding the latter, a running total of the pledges we’ve received is displayed on the right, together with the list of sponsors. Don’t forget, you can sponsor us at any time throughout the Blogathon and for two days afterwards, by clicking here.

You can browse other Blogathon participants here, and listen to Blogathon Radio here.

Readers, please don't hesitate to comment on our posts. Engaging in discussion about these issues is the whole point of blogging, and plus it will help keep us poor sods awake ;)

Fellow bloggers - use the comments at the end of each post to discuss who will be posting next (as well as obviously discussing the post itself).

Well, that's about it. Good luck everyone, and let the blogging commence!

p.s. don't forget that at one in the morning, the Spell Checker is your bestest friend! :)

Thank you anon and good luck bloggers

Thank you to Anonymous for their pledge of $50! Anon advised me by email that instead of a link to their blog they would like us to link to their favourite comic The Pain by Tim Kreider. Consider it done.

Tonight is my last post before I have to disappear for a little while, and unfortunately I won't be here for the Blogathon. So before I go, I want to thank all of you who are going to be blogging and wish you luck. Great things happen when people come together for a common cause. A wonderful synergy has been created, and my expectations have been exceeded by the generous support of bloggers and sponsors alike.

I'm sorry that I can't be with you during the blogathon, but I know that I leave this place in capable hands. Good luck, have fun, and don't stay up too late ;-)

Thank you!

Thank you to Greg Hartnett for his generous sponsorship pledge!

We're now closing in on the $1000 mark and Blogathon Day, so please keep those links coming.

UPDATE:

- thank you anonymous for taking us over the $1000 mark! Keep 'em coming!!

- thanks to Candy Stern (my dear ol' mum) for her pedge of 25 bucks.

- thanks anonymous for your generous pledge of $24. It's really appreciated.

- thanks to, you guessed it, anonymous for your pledge of $50.

Thank you two pledgers

A beautiful photograph from The Fat Wizard's photostream, who is doing fantastic work blogging against torture.

Thank you to our two new pledgers:

The Peace Tree

Hermel's Drive-In

Thank you also to all of you who are promoting the Blogathon, including Future Geek, King of Zembla, Reports from Poisonville, and The Heretical Jew.

I suppose I should also thank Jeremiah Bullfrog, a country ninja who is also helping us in his own special way ;-)

The big day is looming

This Saturday at 14:00 GMT, we start our marathon blog against torture (well, not exactly 1400, since our first post will be around about 1430). It's my mum's birthday on the Sunday, and I'm thinking of making a donation to the cause in her name as a present :)

I have tried (twice) to contact Amnesty USA to ask them if it would be possible to make available someone to interview by e-mail during the Blogathon, but they have so far failed to reply. It's a pity and if you think you, armed with polite eloquence instead of my ogrish grunts, can do better, please try asking them yourself. It would make a great post.

For those of you who are staying up into the early hours, BlogExplosion are running a live radio show throughout the 'Thon, which might help you stay the course - if nothing else, drooping eyelids will be snapped wide open by a loud burst of heavy metal (and by the resulting crowd of angry neighbours in night-gowns knocking at your door). If you feel like listening, pop over to their homepage on the day and click on the link.

Alternatively, you could go listen to Blogathon Radio. It's being run by participants of the Blogathon, and should be a right laff. In fact, if I am not mistaken there may still be time for you to offer to contribute, by hosting the show for an hour or two, if that's your kind of thing. On the page linked to above, you'll also find details of how to send a small file of you bigging up our cause and directing people this way. This will then be aired on the Blogathon Radio during the event. I'm going to do one, and I'll try very hard not to make it totally lame.

As we all know, pre-writing of posts is not allowed. Preparing for posts, on the other hand, most definitely is. This has left me wondering whether or not it would be wise to start talking now about what each of us is thinking of writing about, to ensure we don't have double-posts or overlaps, or that sort of thing.

On the day itself, communication between us will happen through comments. We'll have to sort out who posts next, and all that sort of thing. When you arrive, let us know via a comment so we can say hi, and place you in the queue.

Also, don't forget that it is remains possible to sponsor us throughout the Blogathon, and for a full two days afterwards.

Lastly, a big part of the Blogathon is the community spirit. If you get a chance to take a break from frantically typing up your masterpiece before the next deadline, try looking around other participating blogs and commenting. It'll add to the spirit, and it will also lead to more people coming to our site (and hence, hopefully, more pledges).

I wasn't sure it would be useful to start discussing the order of posts now, since many people don't know when exactly they'll be able to make it and for how long they'll be able to stay, and in any event, we can decide it on the day through comments.

Well, that's all I can think of for now. Good luck, and see you all on the day!

----------------------

P.S. We are now up to an amazing $932 in pledges, thanks to a very generous donation from bfahmed. Thanks!

Suing the President: torture and signing statements

Thank you to all members new and old for getting the word out about the Blogathon. I am starting to sound like a broken record here, but I urge those of you who have not done so yet to put up just one post about our fundraiser. I have put my own money where my mouth is[1], and so have quite a few others, so you know that we are serious. For those of you who cannot donate money, a link is still greatly appreciated.
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The American Bar Association taskforce is recommending that Congress make it possible to sue the President for his use of signing statements (source).

A signing statement is a written statement that the President issues to accompany the passing of a new law. Historically they were generally used for rhetorical or political purposes ("this is a great law"), with no actual effect upon the law itself. However, in rare instances, they were used to point out areas where the law encroached upon the President's other prerogatives (Wikipedia).

Since the 40th President, signing statements have increasingly been used for strategic purposes, to not only protect the prerogatives of the presidency, but to also push preferred policies when those initiatives are lost in Congress.

The Reagan Administration ensured that courts would at least pay attention to the interpretation of the law in a signing statement. Both Bush I and Clinton after him continued to take advantage of the situation, using signing statements to reinterpret and control legislation that they had not been able to veto (Christopher, 2003).

Since he took office, George W. Bush has added over 750 signing statements to new laws. Amongst them is Bush's most famous signing statement, attached to the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which basically allows the President to nullify the torture ban when he sees fit. Until this week, Bush had never vetoed a bill, apparently because he had never seen the need to. Signing statements allow him to sidestep Congress, reinterpreting and even nullifying legislation as he sees fit (source).

A lot of ink has been spilt philosophising about torture as symptom of a decadent society, as an indicator of an authoritarian regime. Regardless of what one's political affiliation is, or even one's position on the torture policy, the use of signing statements should send a shiver down your spine.

Make no mistake about it, this is an issue that transcends political ideology. Consider a recent article from The American Conservative magazine

While Bush supporters speak glowingly of originalist interpretations of the Constitution, Bush's signing statements have far more in common with George III than with George Washington.

Clearly these actions are as much an affront to the conservative's traditions of limited government power and respect for American heritage as they are to the liberal's traditions of social justice and individual freedom. In a time of political division, this should be one issue that unites us: a firm opposition to torture policy, and vigorous defence of the institutions which protect us against it.

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[1]: $500. And no, I've never been accused of bashfulness before :-)

Two new pledgers! Thank you!

Thank you Donkephant for your generous pledge of $100!

Donkephant is doubly thanked for also offering to help out and for advertising our blogathon on his blog.

Thank you Subodh for your generous pledge. We would like to link to all of our kind sponsors, so if you have a blog you'd like us to link to, please drop us a line.

Thank you to the following blogs for putting links up to our Blogathon:

The Pony Express

Scattered Words

Hermel's Drive-In

Please let me know if I've missed anyone.

UPDATE:

Many thanks to Milkyway for his extremely generous pledge.

As far as I can tell, Milkyway doesn't have a website (if this is wrong, please tell me), so I have added him to the list of sponsors with the URL of Amnesty International USA.

How can we spread the word more effectively?

I have a proposition to make. We have some very generous alliance members, but I think we need more people advertising the blogathon. To remedy this, I would like to reopen membership of the alliance in exchange for a post advertising the blogathon. This has been the most effective tactic I have found for generating interest. It will also allow people who were too late to join, but who decided to host the blogroll anyway, to finally get a reciprocal link on the roll.

The more the merrier. If you have any thoughts on this, please leave a comment. If there are no dissenting opinions by the end of the weekend, I will go ahead and do it.

Keep spreading the word

A big thank you goes out to the following Bloggers Against Torture for advertising the Blogathon on their site.

Blogger Round Table

Wot is it Good 4

Ang's Weird ideas

Bush Out

Lulando

And Robbie at both his blogs: Independent Opinions, and Greetings from America's Finest City.

---

Jen's community spirit inspired me and got me thinking, apart from helping torture victims directly by donating to the NGOs, what else should be done?

We know that human rights abuse inspires retaliation against us, yet it is the soldiers who will reap most of what we've sown. I also recall The Man from Missouri saying that the one thing that doesn't get emphasised enough is the psychological impact of the policy upon the troops. As discussed here, the policy predates upon the vulnerabilities that we all share, and it leaves soldiers forever scarred. Again we do the wrong thing, yet they pay.

If the over-used phrase "Support the Troops" means anything, it is that we have a responsibility towards those who serve us. We are working to end this disastrous policy, but changing policy takes time. We should also be ameliorating the consequences for those who have to deal with the consequences in the meantime.

So say hello to Blogathoners Stale Betty. They are raising money for IFHF, a rehabilitation centre for combat veterans. I've dropped them a line, and sent them a token of our appreciation. Why not drop by and say hello?

You legend

Mash at Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying is too modest to tell you, so I'm going to dob him in. Thank you for donating a generous $100! We're floored :-)

Jen at Peaceful Waters is also doing the Blogathon, raising money for Lutheran World Relief. She showed beautiful community spirit by being our first pledger. Thank you Jen.

Thank you also to everyone who is getting the word out. Misneach and Wrote, thank you for starting early promoting the Blogathon on your blogs.


UPDATE: Oh. Mash is a good sport, but I see that doing that might be uncomfortable for some...

Forgive me for my over-excitement. I promise from now on that I won't publish amounts unless I have the sponsor's express permission.

But we still reserve the right to link to your blog and thank you (without saying exactly how much you gave), so if you sponsor us using your blogger name, be prepared to receive a lot of love :-)

The Blogathon 2006 Campaign - An Introduction

Hi, my name is Jamie and I usually live here. As all of you know, Bloggers Against Torture was set up to help ensure Torture Awareness month was just that; a month that raised awareness about torture, even (shock, horror) torture committed by the 'good guys'. Many people joined the alliance in support of basic moral and legal values, and throughout the month blogged about torture to try and help bring about a change.

Well, Torture Awareness month is over, but unfortunately torture is still common practice. As such, it is the job of alliances such as ours to ensure torture doesn’t slip off the agenda, and what better way to do that than the Blogathon 2006?

Essentially, Blogathon is an attempt by the blogging community to raise money for charity, by staying up for 24 hours straight posting at least once every half hour (and so a minimum of 48 posts). Participants are sponsored and all the money raised goes to their chosen charity.

So, this is the Alliance’s next campaign – to compete in the Blogathon 2006 to help raise awareness of torture and to raise money for our chosen charity, Amnesty International USA. As you all know, Amnesty does vital work in standing up for human rights worldwide and defending the otherwise defenceless.

The Bloggers Against Torture blogroll is huge, and so we have an advantage most blogs don’t have, in that we can all join in. 48 posts is a lot for one person, but for a hundred…some people on here could manage most of that by themselves!

So, without further ado, here are the rules for our Blogathon 2006 campaign:

1. We start blogging on July 29 at 14:00 GMT (or 0600 Pacific Time).

2. All the money raised goes to Amnesty International USA.

3. No pre-writing of posts is allowed.

4. All posts must be torture themed.

5. Contributors will be permitted to place a link to their blog/site in their post.

6. People who donate will also have their link displayed in the sidebar.

I will be staying up for the whole 24 hours. For those of you who wish to contribute, be it a single post or the entire marathon, please comment on this post and say so. You will then be given direct posting access to this blog.

For those of you who wish to sponsor our endeavour, you can do so here.

The Bloggers Against Torture Blogathon campaign is a team effort – that’s what this alliance is all about. So if you have any ideas or can help in any way, please share them with us.
The event should be a lot of fun, and it will definitely help raise awareness about torture, and hopefully some cash for Amnesty along with it.

OK then, let’s get started…

Support Craig Murray

Craig Murray is once again under attack. If you have your own webspace and feel strongly enough about the truth he has to tell that you would be willing to risk breaking the law, please consider mirroring these documents.

We cannot, by total reliance on law, escape the duty to judge right and wrong... There are good laws and there are occasionally bad laws, and it conforms to the highest traditions of a free society to offer resistance to bad laws, and to disobey them.
-- Alexander Bickel

Bloggers Against Torture who are hosting the documents: The Nether-World, A Big Stick and a Small Carrot, [add yourselves in the comments].

Yeah, yeah, our first open thread

Torture Awareness Month has now come to an end. I want to thank you all for joining and for your support. You all dominated the Technorati hits for the phrase "Torture Awareness Month", and acted as a valuable defence against the usual spin and misinformation in a month that coincidentally contain some pretty significant events. I want to thank the Americans in the group in particular, for being willing to admit an unsavoury truth, and for accepting the responsibility of the citizen to hold one's government accountable.

The blogroll has exceeded my expectations, and I'm delighted to see that many of you have made new friends and formed new connections. I have learnt a lot from the blogroll members, many of whom were been dedicated anti-torture bloggers long before this blogroll was formed. You are a valuable resource.



A painting from the exhibit Torture: Signs of Despair -- Signs of Hope that was held this month at the Martin Luther King Jr. Library in Washington, DC.


It is because of this that I would like to leave this open thread here for a few days and let you discuss what you want to do with the alliance. Torture Awareness Month is over, but I know that many of you will continue to write about torture on your own blogs. This alliance belongs to you. What would you like to see happen with it that would help you to your goal?

Blogroll

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