Qué se ficieron ?

[KiwiGriff]

First was Hillel the Elder circa 0010ce highest authority of the  Pharisees at that time .
https://www.azquotes.com/author/25893-Hillel_the_Elder
2nd was Jesus  circa 0030ce Matthew 7:12  (New International Version)
https://biblehub.com/matthew/7-12.htm

Any way we really should not be polluting this thread with chatter.
It is for marking and remembrance of the horror men do to men .

[sidd]

Kafka continues:

" he consulted a lawyer at the agency’s Counterterrorism Center about how to make the threat without violating the Torture Convention.

He said he was advised to make the threat conditional.

So, before telling Mr. Mohammed “I will cut your son’s throat,” Dr. Mitchell said, he added a series of caveats. "

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/us/politics/khalid-shaikh-mohammed-threat-torture.html

I hope I never see any of these guys within my reach.

sidd

[sidd]

Pierce at Esquire: Mitchell and Jessen are without conscience

"Mitchell is our own monster, as is his running buddy, John Bruce Jessen. The two of them were allowed to be monsters by the American government of the time. The two of them were paid handsomely to be monsters by the American government of the time. The two of them were paid handsomely to create monsters out of other people, and they did that job remarkably well. "

"  One of them died in custody. Dr. Mitchell said at the time that it was “regrettable that one guy died and those other guys were treated badly.” But he said he and Dr. Jessen “were not responsible for it.” "

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a30691635/james-mitchell-cia-torture-program-testimony-guantanamo-bay/

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[TerryM]

^^
The repetition of the phrase "American government of the time" leads me to ask what differentiates the American government of that time from subsequent American governments that have continuously sheltered and protected these monsters?


America's closest allies are certainly aiding, abetting and sanctioning these monstrous institutional crimes if only by their silence.
 
Before Canada, or the UK, delivers anyone into the gaping maw of American 'Justice', an open discussion needs to be had regarding the isolation, torture, maiming and murder of suspects and convicts while in American hands. Canadian and UK judges need to be held responsible for their actions. The governments that these judges serve will eventually face the voters.


Terry

[nanning]

^^
The voters will never hold them responsible in my estimate.

For that to happen, a critical investigative open and free media is required. People don't know and have been brainwashed with 'american' propaganda for decades. Most news channels are guilty of censorship and give a lopsided world view.

We in the E.U. tolerate Guantanamo Bay but our E.U. leaders have to mention human rights when visiting e.g. China.
It is a shame that we in the E.U. are on 'their side', subservant to the U.S.A.: The axis of evil (they started this modern episode with Little Boy and McCarthy I think).
People have already forgotten about the very shocking wikileaks and NSA revelations a couple of years ago.

[TerryM]

^^
Unfortunately I agree.
Terry

[philopek]

^^
The voters will never hold them responsible in my estimate.

For that to happen, a critical investigative open and free media is required. People don't know and have been brainwashed with 'american' propaganda for decades. Most news channels are guilty of censorship and give a lopsided world view.

We in the E.U. tolerate Guantanamo Bay but our E.U. leaders have to mention human rights when visiting e.g. China.
It is a shame that we in the E.U. are on 'their side', subservant to the U.S.A.: The axis of evil (they started this modern episode with Little Boy and McCarthy I think).
People have already forgotten about the very shocking wikileaks and NSA revelations a couple of years ago.

+1 can't be put better than this plus the lot more that would be to tell that would fill book-shelves

[nanning]

Thank you for your words.

"+1"

Where's my +1?

[philopek]

Thank you for your words.

"+1"

Where's my +1?

sorry if I'm missing the point, the +1 was in reply to your post, the one i quoted. help me out, sometimes i lose track and sometimes others do 

however, it was your post that goes along with my exact way of thinking on the matter.

[nanning]

Thanks philopek. I thought that '+1' means 'a like given' and I didn't see that in the totals beneath my profile photo. Perhaps I've missed it. It's not important at all.
Have a great day my friend.

[sidd]

Clahchischiligi at the guardian: Age, hunger, disease and death in the First Nations

"a grandmother in her 70s, lives with her young granddaughter "

"Her grandmother sat slumped over the edge of a stained mattress. ... The girl had survived cancer and had lost her mother, while not yet 10 years old"

"On this hot summer day, the two were alone ...  no running water or indoor plumbing"

"the only reliable food she and her granddaughter can get – comes from the local senior center, which delivers a lunch they share Mondays through Fridays. On weekends, they fend for themselves."

"I’ve been a journalist for almost 20 years, and it was the first time I cried on assignment."

"a man in his 60s, lives in a dirt-floored shack with no running water, toilet, sink, kitchen – or electricity. "

"70, gets her water from a faucet outside her house. She has no indoor toilet ... she has no vehicle."

"The elders complained very little. It was as if they had accepted this way of life – living in desperate conditions, largely ignored by their community and political leaders. They were used to not being taken care of."

"the few people in the community who advocated for them faced retribution, I was told. If people talked to the media, they feared they would lose their jobs."

"none of the elders I spoke to had received a food donation. They lived too far away. They had no one to pick up the boxes for them."

"Some elders weren’t even aware the free food deliveries were happening. They had no phone, television or computer. Their contact with the outside world came from Navajo radio stations such as KTNN. Some had no contact at all."

"I’ve wondered whether they have enough to eat and whether anyone’s checked in on them. I’ve wondered if anyone else is wondering about them."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/06/navajo-nation-reservation-elderly-people-covid-19

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[sidd]

Neidig at the hill: a prison outside the law

"denied al Hela's habeas corpus petition challenging his detention at the facility."

"the most categorical denial of legal rights for Guantanamo detainees in nearly two decades"

"The Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that detainees could challenge their imprisonment by filing habeas corpus petitions in federal court."

"But Rao wrote in her opinion Friday that the Supreme Court decision said nothing about the claims that detainees could raise in such petitions."

"Al Hela was a businessman in Yemen who disappeared on a business trip to Egypt in 2002 and later rendered to U.S. custody. He says he was tortured at secret U.S. prisons before being sent to Guantanamo Bay in 2004."

"The U.S. government says that al Hela was associated with known and suspected al Qaeda affiliate organizations."

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/514170-appeals-court-rules-due-process-rights-dont-apply-to-guantanamo

Exceptionalism writ large.

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[sidd]

Nohara at bloomberg: a lost generation

"Japan’s 2015 census revealed there were 3.4 million people in their 40s and 50s who had not married and lived with their parents."

"Japan has an estimated 613,000 middle-aged hikikomori, a term usually used to describe socially withdrawn adolescents who hole up in their bedrooms"

"many were so deeply ashamed about their failure to become successful adults in the mold of their parents that our conversations were awkward and painful."

"“I thought even if I tried, it would be in vain."

"He holed up in his parents’ house. Days became weeks became months became years. "

“In my mind, I knew I was going nowhere and I’d better quit,”

 “Many parents are truly devastated with their children being withdrawn for a long time ... “We have to connect with them”

“This is the generation that was forced to swim in the murky water.”

"A 33-year-old man then says he’s been homebound for several years since dropping out of graduate school. A 46-year-old woman living with her mother says she’s too weak to work after being a shut-in for years. A 44-year-old man with a college degree wonders how long he can stand doing menial work, such as distributing flyers."

"A man in his late 70s talks about his son, who since failing a college entrance exam two decades ago spends his days in his room ... “Do you talk with him about what he wants to do in the future?”  ... they had once, but not any longer. When Kono asks if the young man has any friends, the older man answers, “None.” "

" his father used to hassle him about getting a job, but the two of them no longer talk about the future. He told me he’s more conscious that his parents are nearing the end of their lives: His father no longer drives, and his mother’s spine is bent with age. "

"To cut costs and protect older workers, businesses resorted to temporary contracts, which offer less pay and skimpier benefits. Those jobs are the first to be cut during a downturn but also the first to be added back during a recovery. A new underclass of nonregular workers was created, which today makes up about 40% of Japan’s labor force. Women represented 68% of this contingent in 2019"

"One 47-year-old man confided that he’d spent 17 years holed up in his room at his parents’ place after graduating from college. Another, 39, told me he spent years moving from job to job and now lives in a homeless shelter."

"After graduating from high school, he became a recluse. Sometimes he would venture into downtown Shibuya at night to people-watch. “There was power in Shibuya with so many young people,” he says. “That gave me comfort.”"

“I didn’t want to deal with people ... I didn’t talk with anybody other than my family. I didn’t want to think about my circumstances. I lived one day at a time.”

"In between jobs, the son holed up in his room. His frustrated father lashed out at him: “Move out! Work! Don’t be lazy!” ...  “I treated him terribly,” Kinjo says remorsefully. “Had I noticed earlier, maybe he wouldn’t have suffered.”               "

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2020-japan-lost-generation/

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[sidd]

Back to the future: Lawrence and Wells at stars and stripes

“When we started this, people asked why I was going, and my response was, ‘So my sons don’t have to fight this war,’”

"two decades later, deBoer’s son, Spc. Payton Sluss, also served in Afghanistan"

"While deBoer watched films with Afghan troops, Sluss watched their body language, his weapon at the ready, to ensure that they did not turn on the Americans who were training them and kill them."

"Michael Kreuger fought in the Pech Valley in 2010 and sometimes asked himself why he did. Eight years later, his son Trenton deployed to Afghanistan "

"The elder Kreuger, who left the Army as a sergeant, now hopes his grandson won’t also deploy to Afghanistan"

"Bajun Mavalwalla, 31, a former sergeant, and his namesake father also both deployed to Afghanistan."

"The elder Mavalwalla, 55, a former captain, said the country has made great strides "

"his son, who was barely a teenager when his father first went to Afghanistan, said he was disillusioned ... “I wanted to go out and help people, serve my country … (but) I just sort of contributed to this deepening mire,” "

https://www.stripes.com/news/years-after-they-fought-in-afghanistan-us-troops-watch-as-their-children-deploy-to-the-same-war-1.647659

As usual, predicted by America's Finest News Source:

https://local.theonion.com/soldier-excited-to-take-over-father-s-old-afghanistan-p-1819580201

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[sidd]

Blast from the past: we knew we didn’t need to do it

"The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude.” —Eisenhower

"revolts my soul" ---Hoover

"MacArthur, you see, was a soldier. He believed in using force only against military targets" ---Nixon

"The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace" ---Nimitz

"I was not taught to make war in that fashion"  ---Leahy

" they went ahead and killed as many women and children as they could, which was just what they wanted all the time" ---Leahy

"The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all."  ---LeMay

https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2021/06/05/who-opposed-nuking-japan/

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[blu_ice]

Makes sense because there is no military purpose for a nuclear weapon. Any scenario inevitably leads to escalation and Mutually Assured Destruction.

Since 1945 nuclear theorists around the world have tried to justify the weapons' existence. There are scenarios such as Russian "de-escalatory" nuclear strike where a nuclear weapon would be used against non-nuclear opponent in order to force their surrender. The idea is basically the same than the (post-war) justification for bombing Japan.  Although this may work once it will kickstart nuclear proliferation, as it did after WW2.

Therefore the only use is deterrence, a political weapon that everybody knows is impractical if not impossible to use in real world. However the expense is real as is risk of accident, misunderstanding or deliberate misuse.

[sidd]

Brewer at wsws: "exemplary"

"the director of the Michigan Office of Drinking Water was wrongfully fired in 2016. The official, Liane Shekter Smith, was awarded full back pay and compensation, amounting to $199,880."

"She infamously lied in an August 2015 meeting to two concerned Flint mothers whose children were lead-poisoned, telling them that the city’s water complied with federal standards."

" She was fired in 2016 after the criminal events of the Flint water crisis were brought to light."

"The arbitrator continued that her record in government was “exemplary.” "

“If Ms. Shekter Smith is not guilty, then no one is. She and her team were the key instigators of the Flint water crisis”

"all charges against the remaining defendants were dropped"

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/10/22/shek-o22.html

200K seems a small amount  to poison an entire town ...

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[sidd]

Pentagon exonerates itself:

"concluded that the U.S. drone strike that killed innocent Kabul civilians and children in the final days of the Afghanistan war was not caused by misconduct or negligence, and it doesn’t recommend any disciplinary action."

"I understand they reached the wrong conclusion, but ... was it reasonable to conclude what they concluded based on what they had? It was not unreasonable. It just turned out to be incorrect"

"the drone strike must be considered in the context of the moment"

"a mistake. It’s a regrettable mistake. It’s an honest mistake. I understand the consequences, but it’s not criminal conduct, random conduct, negligence."

"launched the strike in an “earnest belief” — based on a standard of “reasonable certainty” — that it posed an imminent threat"

https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-kabul-bf24b4a670895ab1cc0b345ee9c90c74

"I do not understand how the most powerful military in the world could follow Zemari, an aid worker, in a commonly used car for eight hours, and not figure out who he was, and why he was at a U.S. aid organization’s headquarters."

https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/neiaclu-comment-air-force-inspector-generals-investigation-deadly-us-drone-strike

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[sidd]

Nozick and Moore at Kansas City: wrongly jailed for 42 years, gets "not a dime"

"Missouri’s compensation law only allows for payments to prisoners who prove their innocence through a specific DNA testing statute. That was not the case for Strickland"

"“I mean, what do I have?” asked Strickland, who now uses a wheelchair. “If they would tell me to roll out now, they’d take this chair. I’d have to crawl out of the front door. I have nothing; I have nothing.”"

https://www.kansascity.com/news/state/missouri/article253915738.html

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[sidd]

pilkington at the guardian: war's over, ain't it ?

"held without charge by the US for nearly 20 years, has petitioned a federal court for his release on grounds that America’s wars in Afghanistan and with al-Qaida are over."

"Zubaydah has never been charged with involvement in 9/11 and he was not even a member of al-Qaida ... was accused of offenses that took place in Afghanistan as part of a war that has now officially been concluded."

"Zubaydah, a Palestinian aged 50 whose name at birth was Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn, was the first terror suspect to be captured by the CIA months after 9/11"

"For more than four years he was held in CIA black sites in Thailand and Poland and subjected to some of the most brutal torture ever carried out by the US state ... the guinea pig for a program devised by two psychologists under contract to the CIA"

" waterboarded 83 times in one month, held for hours in the nude with his hands shackled above his head, deprived of sleep for days at a time, and stuffed into a closed box resembling a coffin."

"In a series of critical rulings, the nation’s highest court has barred detainees from being held perpetually without checks and balances, granted them the right to petition a judge in federal court, and stated that their “detention may last no longer than active hostilities” continue in the particular armed conflict in which they were deemed to be enemy combatants."

"Habeas corpus requires the state to go before a judge and either press charges against an individual or set them free, yet 13 years later the case is still unsettled and Zubaydah remains locked up without charge."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/03/guantanamo-abu-zubaydah-war-is-over-afghanistan-court-filing

They used to call it an oubliette.

sidd

[sidd]

E. O. Wilson is dead: interview with Johnson at bittersoutherner

“I always went looking for a private space,”

 “I had my creatures, I had my butterflies, my snakes, my nooks and crannies, and I was learning.”

 “Human beings are not exempt from the iron law of species interdependency. We were not inserted ready-made invasives into an Edenic world… The biosphere does not belong to us; we belong to it.”

“If we can hold to what we’ve been given, so to speak, by the rest of life in our own emergence as a species, then humanity can live forever. And Earth can be a paradise. There’s no reason we can’t think of ourselves as immortal as a species. And the planet, this biosphere, as immortal with us.”

“I’m an Alabamian who came up North to have work.”

“I always felt a responsibility to do something right that was religious in intensity,”

"it isn’t too late to avoid an Age of Loneliness."

https://bittersoutherner.com/2020/a-way-back-e-o-wilson

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[sidd]

Torture as training: Borger at guardian

"used as a living prop to teach trainee interrogators, who lined up to take turns at knocking his head against a plywood wall, leaving him with brain damage"

" no longer represented a terrorist threat"

"using two techniques without approval: using a stick behind his knees in stress position that involved leaning back while kneeling, and dousing with ice-cold water."

"was approved by the “enhanced interrogation technique” guidelines sent by CIA headquarters."

“naked for the proceedings.”

"Baluchi was being used as a teaching prop"

“all the interrogation students lined up to ‘wall’ Ammar so that [the instructor] could certify them on their ability to use the technique.”

"had difficulty determining whether the session was designed to elicit information from Ammar or to ensure that all interrogator trainees received their certification"

“abnormalities indicating moderate to severe brain damage”

"Ammar fabricated the information he provided ... he was afraid to tell a lie and was afraid to tell the truth because he did not know how either would be received"

"still awaiting trial."

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2022/mar/14/cia-black-site-detainee-training-prop-torture-techniques

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[sidd]

Martin at wsws: Albright is dead

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/03/25/albr-m25.html

I'll drink to that.

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[sidd]

Vlahos at responsible statecraft: ‘look good, feel good, and do good.’

"It doesn’t mean I took any joy in it."

"bashing their heads against a wall repeatedly and waterboarding them, to covering them with cockroaches while stuffed in cramped spaces like a coffin-like box, hit repeatedly with cords, cables and other implements, or subjecting them to extreme temperatures, while naked."

"don’t forget the rectal feeding"

"according to the CIA, Scheuer was indeed the image of professionalism"

"That is why the military can’t prosecute the 9/11 suspects at Gitmo — they were all tortured and at least one has brain damage."

"I raised my hand loud and proud and you know, I don’t regret it at all."

Read, if you have the stomach: https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/04/20/after-inspiring-zero-dark-thirty-she-wants-to-inspire-your-best-life/

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[sidd]

Rosenberg at nytimes: too small to waterboard

"The psychologist, James E. Mitchell, also told a military judge that the prisoner, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, was so scrawny that Dr. Mitchell and his interrogation partner, John Bruce Jessen, stopped waterboarding him after the third session at a secret site in Thailand in 2002 because they feared he might be hurt."

"At first, guards had to order the Saudi prisoner into the box, but in time, the prisoner “liked being in the box,” Dr. Mitchell said. “He’d get in and close it himself.”"

"The prisoner howled"

"Mr. Nashiri had been subjected to “rectal feeding,”"

"Dr. Mitchell testified that he would visit black sites where Mr. Nashiri was being held across his four years of C.I.A. custody ... to reinforce the prisoner’s cooperation ... He would remind Mr. Nashiri, he said, that he did not want to return to “the hard times,” an allusion to the era of “enhanced interrogation.”"

Read the thing, if you can stomach it

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/03/us/politics/uss-cole-waterboarding-torture.html

Rosenberg has been stellar in covering this case. Another article by her covering doctors torturing people is at

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/27/us/politics/cia-black-site-doctors.html

These are not doctors, they are torturers.

Wilkins at commondreams has more, and worse:

"Imagine the hell Mr. Nashiri experienced outside of that box that made him prefer being inside it."

"raped with a garden hose in a practice known as rectal hydration"

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/05/04/all-these-guys-belong-prison-cia-torture-described-vivid-detail-psychologist

My fucking tax dollars at work.

sidd

[sidd]

Grey at wsws: iraq redux

"we are not foreigners to the propaganda surrounding war"

"I was born in 2002 ...  after 1990, when the US and NATO placed sanctions against Iraq, essential food, water and medication was not able to reach Iraq for some 13 years. The medical devices were not updated. No medications, including epidural anesthetics, were allowed to be imported"

"When my mother gave birth to me, it was her first birth and she had complications ... She had an emergency C-section. I was born in breech, she was in labor for 12 hours without medication and during the procedure she was also unmedicated. So she felt every single cut of the scalpel, every single pain that came with childbirth through a C-section."

"The death toll we have for the sanctions, before the violent occupation that began in 2003, circles around 623,000. But Iraqi data analysts and physicians expect this number to be around a million."

"It does not include the slow death from famine, it does not include all the children and mothers who died in childbirth "

"when I was a couple months old, US soldiers barged into my family home and took seven of my uncles and my father and my grandfather to Abu Ghraib prison. They were held there for some time. They were tortured, electrocuted, sexually assaulted, whipped. My father lost an eye."

"released after several years and pardoned. They were told, “Oops! Sorry, wrong name.”"

"I essentially did not know I had a father until I was about seven years old."

"My family’s graveyard, the graves were destroyed. Some people were buried on top of others. There’s no space to walk. When you enter the graveyard you have to step on people’s graves."

"I am witnessing for the second time in my 20 years of living the propaganda that is being pumped out to establish mass support for a war."

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/05/24/yfsb-m24.html

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[sidd]

White at AP: Walk on water

"Michigan Supreme Court on Tuesday threw out charges against former Gov. Rick Snyder and others in the Flint water scandal"

“The Flint water crisis stands as one of this country’s greatest betrayals of citizens by their government,”

"Flint managers appointed by Snyder dropped out of a regional water system and began using the Flint River to save money while a new pipeline to Lake Huron was under construction. State regulators insisted the river water didn’t need to be treated to reduce its corrosive qualities. But that was a ruinous decision: Lead released from old pipes flowed for 18 months in the majority-Black city."

“So everyone who was involved in this manmade disaster by the government is walking away scot-free?”

 “We lock people up every day for petty crimes. Something like this has killed people. People died from the Flint water crisis.”

https://apnews.com/article/health-crime-michigan-indictments-rick-snyder-609f461af3bb2d7f10a40c5d663620eb

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[sidd]

Gunter at bbc: kafka at guantanamo, again

"Qasim had been in Guantanamo nearly half his life, aged 23 to 43. Like almost all the men sent there, he has never been charged with a crime."

"While he waits, Qasim will paint."

"when Qasim is transferred out of Guantanamo, in months or years, he will not, as things stand, be allowed to take his art. It will remain the property of the US government, which may store or destroy it. "

"Until the end of 2017, Guantanamo detainees were allowed to take their art with them when they were released, or give it to their lawyers to take out."

""Now they are not even allowed to bring the art to the meetings," "

""I live a different life when I am making art; it makes me live within my soul. It makes me feel free.""

"Since the ban was put in place, one detainee has been able to leave the prison with his art. The rule was waived for Ahmed al-Darbi - a confessed al-Qaeda member - in exchange for his co-operation testifying, the Pentagon said at the time. "

"Al-Alwi, the shipbuilder, has recently begun to paint too. He has created a series of four pieces he calls The Story of My Imprisonment. No one outside the prison has seen them, but he described them over the phone. He said he had painted a man standing alone on a beach, through various phases of his life, as the moon rose and fell. By the third painting, the man had died. In the fourth, a boat finally arrived at the shore."

""When the boat came, they did not find the man, but they saw the tomb and put some flowers next to it," Al-Alwi said. "They left a note that it was too late.""

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-62399826

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[sidd]

Everybody walked:  acquitted 68 people accused for the murder of 11 Muslims

" tried in the case included former state minister Maya Kodnani and Babu Bajrangi, a former leader of the right-wing Hindu group Bajrang Dal."

"Kodnani, a former minister of the ruling BJP, was also an accused in a case in which 97 people were killed in the 2002 riots. She was convicted but later freed by a higher court."

"riots in Gujarat left more than 1,000 people dead, mostly Muslims"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-65334381

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[sidd]

Bayoumi at guardian: you can see there was a person who existed before he was tortured

"a human experiment for interrogators who practiced brutal methods on him to gain “official” certification in using “enhanced interrogation techniques”.  "

"no journalist has been able to talk directly to Baluchi for the last 20 years"

"That this torture was state policy is a dangerous fact for the US government, and from the beginning prosecutors have tried to suppress any mention of it ... while seeking to admit statements made under torture into the record. "

"you cannot have anything that passes the sniff test for justice when people were tortured and disappeared for years"

"force-fed with “a plunger to force the food quickly” into his stomach and how a puree of “hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts and raisins” was shoved up his rectum."

"the facial slap, the abdominal slap, walling, the stress position of standing with his forehead against the wall, the stress position of kneeling with his back inclined toward his feet, water dousing, cramped confinement, and sleep deprivation in excess of 72 hours. "

"The lead interrogator explained that his way of using sleep deprivation was to keep Baluchi naked and standing in total darkness while blasting music by Eminem "

“The ‘goal’ was to bounce the detainee off the wall,”

"To gain “certification” as interrogators, student interrogators “lined up” to “wall” Baluchi, who was kept naked during the process. The trainees would take turns “walling” Baluchi but sessions typically “did not last for more than two hours at a time”, because “fatigue would set in for the interrogator doing the walling”. "

 “As my head was being hit each time, I would see sparks of lights in my eyes. As the intensity of these sparks were increasing as a result of repeated hitting, then all of [the] sudden I felt a strong jolt of electricity in my head. Then I couldn’t see anything. Everything went dark and I passed out.”

“there is no evidence of any significant or prolonged mental harm”.

"“I am well educated and speak several different languages, but I can no longer read or concentrate. It is difficult for me to write letters, and at times I can’t even track a conversation. I am always exhausted, yet I can’t sleep.”"

“When you sit with him and talk to him, you can see there was a person who existed before he was tortured,”

 “He can sort of access that person. He knows that person. He has memories of that life as that person. But he is a different person now, and this is very difficult to explain to people who have not sat in a room with a torture victim.”

"Guantánamo has remained open through four presidencies"

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/16/ammar-al-baluchi-guantanamo-bay-torture

My fucking tax dollars at work.

sidd

[sidd]

Greenberg at tomdispatch: incommunicado for the remainder of his life

"a fuller picture of the places, people, nightmarish techniques, and results of that program"

"Alex Gibney once again gave us a film on torture, The Forever Prisoner, focused on a Guantánamo detainee, Abu Zubaydah, whose real name is Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Husayn. On him, the CIA first tested its harsh interrogation techniques, claiming he was a leading member of al-Qaeda, an assumption later disproved."

"the detainee for whom enhanced interrogation techniques were first authorized by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, relying in part on the Justice Department’s greenlighting of such techniques as “lawful” rather than as torture "

"hurled him into walls and crammed him into boxes and suspended him from hooks and twisted him into shapes that no human body can occupy. They kept him awake for seven consecutive days and nights. They locked him, for months, in a freezing room. They left him in a pool of his own urine. They strapped his hands, feet, arms, legs, torso, and head tightly to an inclined board, with his head lower than his feet. They covered his face and poured water up his nose and down his throat until he began to breathe the water, so that he choked and gagged as it filled his lungs. His torturers then left him to strain against the straps as he began to drown. Repeatedly. Until, just when he believed he was about to die, they raised the board long enough for him to vomit the water and retch. Then they lowered the board and did it again. The torturers subjected him to this treatment at least eighty-three times in August 2002 alone. On at least one such occasion, they waited too long and Abu Zubaydah nearly died on the board."

"Zubaydah lost his left eye while in CIA custody"

“all major players are in concurrence that [Abu Zubaydah] should remain incommunicado for the remainder of his life.”

"That history of torture won’t go away"

https://tomdispatch.com/blindmans-buff/

Greenberg has done sterling work over the years, she does not forget.

sidd

[sidd]

I'll drink to TerryM.

https://necrocanada.com/obituaries-2023/terence-william-edward-moran-2023/

Thanks,  John_The_Elder at https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,1392.msg380896.html#msg380896

sidd

[ivica]

I'll drink to TerryM.
sidd

let me join you
--ivica <

[be cause]

3 cheers ! Enjoy the transition , Terry .

[sidd]

Didn't kill him, can't try him, can't let him go: aljazeera on Ramzi bin al-Shibh

"is unfit for trial ... sustained abuse had rendered him lastingly psychotic ... remains in custody."

“They wrongfully tortured these individuals. We don’t stand for torture. Because of that, we’re denied a trial. We’re denied true justice,”

"A military medical panel last month diagnosed al-Shibh as having post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with secondary psychosis, and linked it to his torture and solitary confinement during his four years in CIA custody immediately after his 2002 arrest."

"forced to stand sleepless for as long as three days at a time while being naked, except for a diaper, and doused with cold water in air-conditioned rooms."

" would be expected to remain in custody while court officials waited for him to become mentally competent again — if that ever happens."

"variously subjected to repeated waterboarding, beatings, violent repeated searches of their rectal cavities, sleep deprivation and other abuse while at so-called CIA black sites."

" A Senate investigation concluded the abuse had been ineffective in obtaining useful information."

"US President Joe Biden this month declined to approve post-trauma care"

Read all about it if you have the stomach:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/22/cia-abuse-rendered-9-11-defendant-unfit-for-trial-us-military

sidd

[sidd]

Well, well, well.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19872410

I'll drink to that.

sidd

[gerontocrat]

Kissinger goes (good riddance) but there are so many to replace him, his views and his actions.

[gerontocrat]

Kissinger - this article says it all

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/30/henry-kissinger-chile-argentina-south-america

Latin America remembers Kissinger’s ‘profound moral wretchedness’

US statesman’s encouragement of Pinochet’s coup in Chile and his backing for Argentina’s military dictatorship left lasting stain

John Bartlett in Santiago, Uki Goñi in Buenos Aires and Julian Borger in Washington
Thu 30 Nov 2023 20.16 GMT
Henry Kissinger’s death has brought out some bitter epitaphs from Latin America where the legacy of US intervention helped saddle the region with some of the most brutal military regimes of the 20th century.

Nowhere has been the reaction been more damning than in Chile, where Kissinger was instrumental in the 1973 coup that led to the death of a democratically elected socialist president, Salvador Allende and the installation of a dictator, Gen Augusto Pinochet, and his military junta.

Kissinger was a man “whose historical brilliance was never able to conceal his profound moral wretchedness”, wrote Juan Gabriel Valdés, Chile’s ambassador in the US, on X, formerly Twitter.

The coup was seen a major victory by Richard Nixon’s White House, but it marked the start of 17 years of autocracy in Chile.

“Henry Kissinger was an incredibly important figure in the breakdown of Chile’s constitutional order,” said historian Gabriel Salazar. “He provoked the downfall of [Allende’s] developmental policies, and then the installation of the neoliberal economic model which is still in place today – that’s why we associate Kissinger with Pinochet here in Chile.”

Kissinger’s influence in Latin America spread far beyond Chile. He played a role in Operation Condor, which linked the military regimes in an intelligence-sharing network to hunt down leftwing dissidents.

“Henry Kissinger did not believe in the sanctity of self-determination. He didn’t believe in the sanctity of sovereignty for Latin American nations or the smaller nations of the Third World. He believed in superpower might makes right - realpolitik,” said Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst at the National Security Archive (NSA) in Washington, which pressured the US government into declassifying Kissinger’s voluminous records. The veteran statesman did not want them made public until five years after his death.

“He didn’t believe in the sanctity of human rights either, which led him to embrace repressive authoritarian regimes as strategic chess pieces in the global chessboard of the cold war,” Kornbluh added.

“Latin America was – for the arrogant policymakers of whom Kissinger was the top dog – our backyard. If we did not have control of what happened in our sphere of influence, Kissinger’s argument went, the rest of the world would not take our exercise of power seriously further away.”

Myriam Bregman, a lawyer in Argentina’s ongoing human rights trials and a candidate for the leftwing FIT party (Leftist and Workers Front) during Argentina’s presidential elections this year, described Kissinger’s legacy as “tragic”.

“Encouraging coups d’état in the region, justifying them, being aware that these coups implied a genocide against workers and students,” she said.

“His trip to Argentina during the 1978 World Cup leaves no doubt regarding his support for these dictatorships,” said Miriam Lewin, a survivor of the ESMA death camp that was close by the River stadium where Kissinger attended matches. “I could hear the cheering when goals were scored, from inside the concentration camp.”

Kissinger even boycotted efforts during Jimmy Carter’s 1977-81 pro-human rights presidency to stop the killing in Argentina. In secret meetings with the dictator Jorge Videla and top Argentinian diplomats during the 1978 World Cup games in Buenos Aires, Kissinger said that “in his opinion the government of Argentina had done an outstanding job in wiping out terrorist forces”.

In answer to a question about Videla during one of the World Cup matches, Kissinger said: “He’s a very intelligent, very dedicated man who is doing what is best for his country.”

The files published by the NSA make clear Kissinger’s central role in the Chilean coup. In 1970, he warned Nixon that Chile could become the “worst failure” of his administration, and that it might develop into “our Cuba” without US intervention. He chaired the committee that oversaw CIA operations to undermine the Allende government.

“I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people,” he said. “The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.”

Having failed to prevent his election, Kissinger became desperate to avoid Allende’s ratification of his presidential win. Days before the vote, President Nixon met with a rightwing Chilean media mogul, Agustín Edwards, owner of the conservative El Mercurio media group, to discuss blocking Allende’s path to the presidency.

They hatched a plan that involved the kidnap of Gen René Schneider, the then head of the Chilean armed forces, who was considered loyal to the constitution. The attempt was botched and Gen Schneider died three days later of the gunshot wounds he sustained when his car was ambushed on 22 October 1970.

The following day Kissinger dismissed the Chilean armed forces as a “pretty incompetent bunch”. Eventually however, the military did step in, using jets to bombard the presidential residence, where Allende died, apparently by suicide. Many of the soldiers involved in the putsch had been paid by the CIA.

El Mercurio, Edwards’ conservative daily which was closely linked to Kissinger in that period, announced the death on Thursday of a “key figure in 20th-century global diplomacy” on its front page. It did not mention his legacy in Chile.

[sidd]

Here's another: Ackerman at Rolling Stone

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/henry-kissinger-war-criminal-dead-1234804748/

I think Hunter Thompson would have done well at this obituary. Here for example is Thompson on Nixon: https://genius.com/Hunter-s-thompson-he-was-a-crook-annotated

or Gore Vidal.

But i must admit, Thompson outdid everyone else on the Nixon obit, including Vidal.

sidd