Torture

Good Cop Beats Bad Cop, Research Shows; Study Explores Why Dialogue Yields Better Results Than Coercion

ScienceDaily (Feb. 2, 2011) — Even the most horrible criminals feel guilt, and according to new research from the University of Montreal, playing on that sentiment might be a good way to extract a confession. In order to gain a better understanding of why and how criminals admit to their crimes, Michel St-Yves, a forensic psychologist and lecturer, and lead author Nadine Deslauriers-Varin, both of the university's School of Criminology, worked with 221 prisoners from a federal penitentiary, analyzing the conditions under which they did or didn't confess.

By James Ridgeway

As things now stand, the United States appears ready to have Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak tossed out in exchange for his newly-named Vice President, Omar Suleiman, the Egyptian spy master. That is, maintain the status quo by swapping one dictator for another.

Of course, Israel must sign off on this deal aimed at assuring that Egypt can remain as America’s main base in the region, straddling as it does North Africa and the Middle East. Without that status quo, the U.S. would have to rethink its entire neo-colonial policies in the region.

But Suleiman looks like a nasty piece of work.

You don’t get much about him in the US corporate media, but Agence France Press has pulled together the basics:

In the right sidebar I have a number of links to many of the articles and reports, many also with backlinks, as well as in the archives of posts. My main interest was direct testimony of what was happening here, civilian and military counterparts, in the U.S. and that administration, plenty came out, as well as reading between the lines. The U.S. admin. and pentagon were the lead and the Brits followed in what they did. Have and will do same with any other Inquiries and hopefully those to come!

It all brings up the need, which should already have happened, of much more then an Inquiry here in the U.S.. The World waits while we don't do Accountability for what was done in 'Our Names' and continues!

Timeline - Britain's inquiry into the Iraq War

The United States is torturing an american soldier-citizen who has not been convicted of any crime. Pfc Bradley Manning is accused of leaking a video to WikiLeaks that shows the wanton killing of civilians by Amercian soldiers. He is being investigated for leaking the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs as well as a trove of dilomatic cables to WikiLeaks. VotersForPeace.US is working with the Bradley Manning Support Network (www.BradleyManning.org) to organize a show of suport for Manning and make sure the commander-in-chief takes responsibility for the actions of the military. Please join us in calling the White House this Thursday.

PLEASE JOIN US - PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY - SPREAD THE WORD - STAND WITH BRAD

http://votersforpeace.us/press/index.php?itemid=4663

National White House Call-in Day to Support Bradley Manning

Thursday, February 3rd, 2011

Whitehouse switchboard: 202-456-1414
(or Whitehouse comments: 202-456-1111)

By John Grant

It was a dark and stormy night and Scat Horbath was glad to be out of the weather in the Washington DC metro, where he was to meet the sinister Ali Ben al-Masseur in the last car of the Blue Train.

Al-Masseur ran the Brothers Of Islam Charity Center in Arlington, and he held the clue to a two-thousand-year-old secret that had been scratched in code into the bottom of John Hancock’s pewter chamber pot. The fate of the free world hung in the balance.

The doors opened, and Scat entered the nearly empty car. As the car moved off he became aware of the subtle smell of falafal. Then he saw his man, seated at the end of the car chewing as he read from a copy of The Koran.

Al-Masseur looked up and flicked his tongue, projecting little pieces of yogurt sauce into the air.

“So, Scat, we meet again.”

Archive Analyst Kate Doyle Featured in Granito: How to Nail a Dictator

New Film Showcases Spanish Genocide Case, Documents 20 Years of Struggle Against Impunity

January 28, 2011 - A new documentary film about human rights in Guatemala featuring National Security Archive senior analyst Kate Doyle will have its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. The film, Granito: How to Nail a Dictator, will be screened tonight at the Sundance Resort where Kate Doyle, Almudena Bernabeu of the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA), and film makers Pamela Yates and Paco de Onís, will attend the screening and speak to the audience after the film.

 

By Dave Lindorff

Looks can be deceiving.

When you see photos of Army Specialist Bradley Manning, the fresh, slightly pudgy-faced 23-year old private who has spent the last seven months in solitary confinement, first in Kuwait and later at the Marine base at Quantico, VA, enduring the tender mercies of military guards, you don’t get the sense that this is someone who could withstand a lot of pressure and physical and mental abuse.

Pvt. Bradley Manning, the face of a hero

Torture at 'Justice': Better Not to Ask

By Ray McGovern

On Sunday, I attended an informal talk given in a parish hall by the Justice Department’s Thomas Perez, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. His topic: “The way his work for justice is defined by his faith.”

During the Q&A after his talk, I had a chance to pose some questions:

Question: Thanks Tom, for making yourself available to us. You raise the issue of torture, and intimated that there is consensus among Catholics that torture is wrong. Polling conducted two years ago indicates that this is far from the case.

By Edward S. Herman and David Peterson

By an historical coincidence, both Julian Assange and Luis Posada Carriles were brought before Western courts around the same time in late 2010 and early 2011—Assange in Britain and Posada in the United States. The contrast in their treatment by the U.S.-Anglo system of justice and in their handling by the Western establishment media is enlightening.

Posada, now 82, is a self-confessed terrorist, Bay of Pigs veteran, School of the Americas graduate, and CIA operative who has been credibly placed at two meetings where the plan was hatched for the October 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed all 73 civilians aboard. He also has been implicated in numerous other terrorist acts in which people were killed or injured and property destroyed, and he played a role in the United States' arms-smuggling network in Central America that eventually came to light in the Iran-Contra investigations.

As well as those about the necessity of leaving Afghanistan, instead of helping them as once again promised, to smolder into a much more dangerous occupation theater and still no bin Laden!

Chilcots got the only show in town, we here don't do accountability for that done in our names, where we can read between the lines to get some of the answers while some are laid out directly by the testimony and released documents.

So why did we invade Iraq?

23/01/2011 - On Tuesday last week in Saddam ­Hussein’s home town in Iraq, a suicide bomber joined a queue of police volunteers and blew ­himself up. Sixty people were killed.

There's a large element within this Country that seems bound and determined to tear apart what this Country is suppose to stand for on the World stage as well as within. They also seem to want to stoke their fears by creating as much hatred towards us, thus enemies of, for a perpetual state of conflict outside of and within our borders. This is our legacy to the coming generations!

In January 2009, President Obama promised a clean break with Bush era detentions. Two years on, only continuity is visible

For those seeking accountabiity for the senior Bush administration officials and lawyers who established a global torture program in the "War on Terror," involving extraordinary rendition and torture in a variety of secret prisons, the news that the Polish Prosecutor has today accepted the claims of Abu Zubaydah, a former CIA "ghost prisoner," that he was a victim of extraordinary rendition and secret detention in P

Tony Blair returns to Chilcot inquiry amid protests

Demonstrators protest against the former prime minster at his second appearance before the Iraq inquiry

21 January 2011 - A month before the Iraq war began a million people marched through London. This morning, almost eight years later, barely 100 activists mustered outside the conference centre opposite Westminster Abbey as Tony Blair returned to the Chilcot inquiry for perhaps his last official involvement in the conflict's aftermath.

By Dave Lindorff

 
"The wranglers over creeds and dogmas are perhaps the most persistent of all agitators; the bedrock idea being that a wrong exists which must be found and exterminated."

-- Eugene Debs

"Get it straight, I'm not a humanitarian, I'm a hell-raiser."

--Mother Jones

Iraq Inquiry publishes transcripts from private hearings

17 January 2011 - Today, the Iraq Inquiry has published a number of documents. These include Lord Goldsmith’s witness statement, the transcripts of five private hearings, some correspondence and a number of declassified documents to assist public understanding of these transcripts and the witness statement.

Islamic scholar's experience sheds light on counterterrorism efforts in wake of 9/11 attacks

 

18 January 2011 - Saad Iqbal Madni looks decades older than his 33 years when he shuffles into the room, head down and eyes averted.

The Pentagon sank to a new low this week in their attempt to sell the Afghanistan War to the American people. At their Martin Luther King, Jr., Day observance, a Pentagon official actually claimed that if King were alive today, he might support the war.

This is simply not true. As shown in our new video, Dr. King could not have been more clear in his 1967 speech denouncing the Vietnam War:

 

Lawyer for Assange’s Sex Accusers Helped In CIA Torture Rendition

Jan 13, 2011 - Best-selling spy thriller author Thomas Bodström ─ an attorney who represents the two Swedish women making the notorious sex charges against WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange ─ knows better than most people that truth is stranger than fiction.

by Debra Sweet

Protests are planned around the country Tuesday to mark the beginning of the tenth year of the US detention center at Guantánamo, from which, it appears, some men will never leave.

A detainee who had been there for 9 years, Farhi Saeed bin Mohammed, was forcibly removed to Algeria last week, in spite of ongoing legal efforts to prevent his return. Psychologist Jeff Kaye explains the outrage in Obama’s “Stealth Transfer” Of Guantanamo Prisoner; Algerian Forcibly Repatriated:

By Kevin Zeese

The case of Private Bradley Manning raises legal issues about his pre-trial detention, freedom of speech and the press, as well as proving his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Putting aside Manning’s guilt or innocence, if Bradley Manning saw the Afghan and Iraq war diaries as well as the diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks what should he have done? And, what should be the proper response of government to their publication?

Drugging Guantanamo Detainees - by Stephen Lendman

From inception, most Guantanamo detainees were uncharged. On January 5, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) said:

"....the vast majority of the men at Guantanamo should never have been detained in the first place, and that over 550 have been released and are peacefully rebuilding their lives." Most of the 800 captured and brought there were lawlessly "seized in broad sweeps and sold to the US (for) substantial bounties." From the Pentagon's own records, "most (have) no link to terrorism."

For over seven years, CCR "organiz(ed) and coordinat(ed) more than 500 pro bono lawyers across the country" to represent detainees, and helped to resettle about 60 others still at Guantanamo "because they cannot return to their country of origin for fear of persecution and torture."

Friday, 1/7/2011 At Revolution Books New York, 146 W. 26th St., Manhattan.

A screening of the documentary film, "Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo" (directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington) will be followed by a discussion about the film, the state of Guantánamo on the 9th anniversary of its opening, and accountability for torture.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantanamo Files.
Scott Horton is law professor, columnist for Harper's Magazine, and known for his work in international and human rights law.

"Outside the Law is a strong movie examining the imprisonment and subsequent torture of those falsely accused of anti-American conspiracy."
Joe Burnham, Time Out

As featured on Democracy Now! , ABC News and Truthout.

The evening is co-sponsored by World Can't Wait.
A donation of $10 is requested for the film, talkback, drinks and popcorn, to benefit Revolution Books.

Don't deny detainees their day in court

Indefinite detention of post-Sept. 11 detainees without charge or trial is not the American way.

January 4, 2011 - The idea that every person deserves his or her "day in court" is a fundamental principle in the United States and many countries worldwide. Yet more than nine years after 9/11, the United States remains paralyzed not just about how to give the thousands of detainees in U.S. custody around the world their day in court but about whether to give them that day in court.

by Andy Worthington

The 9th anniversary of the opening of the “War on Terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay is on January 11, and, in the hope of raising awareness of the need for action to close Guantánamo and to secure fair trials or release from the prison for the 174 men still held, Andy Worthington, freelance investigative journalist, author of The Guantánamo Files and co-director of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” is traveling to the US to take part in a number of events during the week of this baleful anniversary, with the support of The World Can’t Wait and Witness Against Torture.

Sadly, two years into Barack Obama’s Presidency, and a year after the failure of his promise to close Guantánamo within a year, the outlook for the remaining 174 prisoners in Guantánamo is bleaker than it has been at any time since June 27, 2004, the day before the Supreme Court ruled that the prisoners had habeas corpus rights.

Defending Khadr shows Edmonton's mettle

January 2, 2011 - In a coffee shop near the provincial museum, Edmonton lawyer Dennis Edney let his cup of java get cold.

He was too busy describing Guantanamo Bay military prison and his meeting with a very controversial client, Canadian Omar Khadr, silent and in chains.

As we talked, Edney watched the e-mail on his BlackBerry. He paused to read another message attacking him for defending "that terrorist." Edney couldn't resist responding. He has turned around a lot of critics by explaining the need to fight for the right to a fair trial, he said.

By Jean Casella and James Ridgeway

As Christmas is celebrated in Incarceration Nation, it’s worth remembering certain things about the two figures who dominate this holiday.

As more than 3,000 American sit on death row, we revere the birth of a godly man who was arrested, “tried,” sentenced, and put to death by the state. The Passion is the story of an execution, and the Stations of the Cross trace the path of a Dead Man Walking.

Less well know is the fact that Saint Nicholas, the early Christian saint who inspired Santa Claus, was once a prisoner, like one in every 100 Americans today. Though he was beloved for his kindness and generosity, Nicholas acquired sainthood not only by giving alms, but in part by performing a miracle that more or less amounted to a prison break.

By John Grant

On December 18, David House, an MIT researcher, visited Bradley Manning at the Quantico, Virginia, military prison where he is being held in solitary confinement. Other than Manning’s attorney, House is the rare person allowed to visit him.

House’s report is quite thorough in pointing out instances where the military authorities are lying -- or to use philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s formulation, “bullshitting” -- about how the 23-year-old Army intelligence worker is being treated.

Here’s some of psychologist Dr. Jeffrey Kaye’s comment on House’s report: