News Quiz

Greetings. Are you keeping up?  Here's a quiz for you. Ready, set go:

1.  What agency had plans to track driving patterns of Americans on a large scale?

2.  Who this week said that the NSA surveillance was "constitutional and effective?"

3.  What state declined to stop honoring Dr. Martin Luther King and Robert E. Lee on the same day?

4.  The family of what teen killed by an NYPD officer reached a settlement with the city?

5. What judge is skeptical of the constitutionality and all of no-fly lists?

6.  Who called a group of protesters "low-life scum?"

7.  Who had their 1961 convictions vacated?

For answers, click on "Read more..."

We Must Reclaim our Humanity

Hello all - if anyone is reading.

I saw that these excerpts were appearing at The Guardian.  I hadn't so far read any.  Today, however, the excerpt's headline grabbed me and I had to read it.  It's from Guantanamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi, edited by Larry Siems.  This excerpt should be enough to bleed one's heart:  well-trained torture squad. 

Mr. Slahi wrote the diary while confined at Guantanamo, where he still remains.  Here, the editor discusses the case and the fight to get the diary published.

There's also a related story at The Intercept.  John Kiriakou who was jailed for whistle-blowing on waterboarding has given an interview.   It's worthwhile to read what this courageous man and true patriot has to say.

We must all take some responsibility for these despicable acts. How can we have allowed torture to go on in our names?  Let us remember the victims, and keep pushing for justice for all victims of torture.

UPDATE:  See this article from The Guardian.  I'm hoping that the full "torture report" doesn't get lost in obscurity and tucked away from FOIA requests.  We need this information to be on the public record.  As many have suggested (been discussed at TI for example) - why doesn't a Senator or Rep. read this into the record (it can even be done without reading all the thousands of pages...) Or maybe a staffer or someone could leak it.  It needs to get out.  We need to expose the criminals who tortured, those who authorized it, and those who developed such programs.  We need to expose them and to bring them to justice.

 

Introducing the Button to Your Right!

Greetings -

There are so many events and so much to be concerned about that it can be overwhelming.  Still we must try to make sure critical issues don't just fade away.

The msm has basically dropped covering torture and that Senate Committee Torture Report. We must not let this fade from memory.  We must continue to press for prosecutions of torturers and the authors and architects of these depraved acts.

Therefore, I am adding the button on the right - "Justice for Torture Victims".  It is my hope that this will remind us to keep up our concerns.  Clicking on it will lead to a resource page at the Center for Constitutional Rights' site.  On that page is a link to sign their letter to the Dep't of Justice calling for torturers to be prosecuted.  The page also has a summary of their efforts and links to many informational and media resources.

It is important that those responsible for torture be held accountable.  Without prosecution, there is little to stop such abuses from happening in the future.  Even the New York Times has called for prosecutions.  I've also found another couple of articles that are worth reading.  Here is one is by Dr. Jo-Marie Burt, whose vita includes being a Professor at George Mason Univeristy and Sr. Fellow at the Washington office on Latin America.  Here is another by Marjorie Cohn, professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law.

We must remember.  We must not let them stand alone.

This Must be Stopped

It was hard to come up with a title for this post. How can you rationally talk about torturers and apologists dominating the media?  How can you rationally talk about torturers, those who developed the programs, those who authorized these depraved acts, tried to rationalize them, and still defend them, NOT yet being held in any way accountable?

For starters, why has the media so obediently allowed torture apologists to dominate coverage?   And that article was even before Cheney was his despicable self on NBC's Meet the Press.  I have called ABC's World News Tonight and e-mailed the NPR News ombudsman about this.  Oh yes, and NPR as well as the Washington Post don't use the word torture here.  Shame on them for using euphemisms!  I told the receptionist at WNT that I objected to them having Brennan on to "defend the indefensible."

There is a new article up at The Intercept looking at the CIA officer in charge of one of the black sites operated by the CIA and the man who died there - frozen to death.  The death of Mr. Rahman is one of the worst cases uncoverd so far in investigations of CIA torture.

So let's get this straight:

• Detainees get tortured, with lasting effects I would imagine, and Mr. Rahman dies... but this CIA officer does well for himself
• Torturers, program architects and authorizers, and apologists for depraved acts walk around with impunity while John Kiriakou, the whistleblower, is the only one so far even prosecuted
• The msm, main source of news for many citizens gives plenty voice to torture defenders

While I'm left wondering...WHERE'S THE OUTRAGE?

I have been somewhat heartened by the diverse spectrum of citizens protesting police violence following the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, John Crawford III, and Tamir Rice.  We desperately need some of this adrenaline to spur some protests and action against torture.  We must fight to see that it never happens again. We must fight to see all those involved brought to justice.  We must fight to not let there be any argument about "if it works."  We must oppose it on absolute moral grounds.  We must fight the media who are by default, siding with torturers while they want to claim "objectivity."

So I do hope that you readers (if there are any!) will lift your voices against torture.  The FAIR article at the above link has some contact info for some major media outlets.  I also posted a list of phone numbers in the comments.  I'm also going to post that link here.  Let them know we are watching, listening, and oppose torture and its defenders.

media phone contact list

Guess What Day It Is...

Well, those reading this blog for some time or attuned to such issues will know that today is Human Rights Day.

But it is with a sickening feeling of outrage that I have to post today.  The Senate committee's torture report (executive summary, really)  was released yesterday.  Here is a link to the executive summary, still heavily redacted.

My feeling, anyway, is that torture is one of the most egregious human rights violations.  Let's remember that the U. S. is a signatory of the U. N. Convention Against Torture, as well as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.  Read through this discussion at Human Rights Watch and it should be pretty clear that torture is to be condemned and not to be permitted.  Ever.

At The Intercept there are so far three articles that are report related: I'll just give a link to the first one, an overview article by Glenn Greenwald, et al..  Please also check out the other two articles by Murtazza Hussein and Ryan Tate.

I have not read the report.  But just the pieces I've read in the articles covering it sicken me.  And this is the proverbial tip of the iceberg.  I really don't know how, with any sense of humanity, these acts of torture can be justified or condoned.

I'm also sickened by media pundits, politcos, and intelligence community members and apologists who are justifying such acts.  And the Exec. Director of the ACLU called for pardoning the torturers!  Honestly, how could he or anyone advocate that?  These evil acts need accountability if we're serious about really stopping such practices.  I sent them an e-mail decrying that proposal.

I don't know how torturers and their apologists live with themselves.  Maybe their consciences have been surgically removed or something.  But the rest of us must not let this issue (and others) go away.  More of us must say "Not in my name."  More of us must scream for the perpetrators of these despicable actions to face justice for what they have done.  More of us must not forget.  I'm sure the intelligence community (and most of the msm) would love for this to all go away.  So we must make sure our attention lasts more than a few seconds.  That it lasts past the next celebrity scandal.  This and other issues need us to be aware and for us to cry and push for action.  We must insist that America turn from its dark path.  We must drag it if we must, into light.

More Shame

Today The Guardian had this story of the CIA requiring doctors and nurses to participate in the mistreatment of detainees.  Here is also a link for more info about the report and the members of the committee who wrote it.

One commentator wrote that this story just made him or her sick.  As humans, we should all feel at least some of that emotion over the torture of other humans.  and outrage over the shame of health professionals participating in this in any way, shape or form.

Will those involved ever be held to account?  Those involved always seem to want to shield themselves from any consequences.  But at the very least we should all be raising our voices to see that such practice stop immediately and never resume.