Tag: torture

Why Iran but Not The Saudis?

According to a New York Times article from Feb. 28th, President Biden decided the cost of directly penalizing Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), is too high, despite a United States intelligence finding that he directly approved the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the dissident and Washington Post columnist who was drugged and dismembered in October 2018. (You can find the pdf of the report here).

Heba Morayef, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, poignantly commented,

“More than two years after the state-sanctioned murder of Jamal Khashoggi his family still have no information about the whereabouts of his remains while high-level officials continue to escape justice, and are free to continue their brutal crackdown on peaceful dissidents.”

Khashoggi’s murder is not the first human rights violation ever committed by the Saudi’s, by far. According to Amnesty International’s “Country Profile” for Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom has recently escalated the repression of the rights to freedom of expression, association, and assembly. They have detained and prosecuted dozens of government critics and their families. And the authorities use the death penalty extensively, carrying out scores of executions for a range of crimes, including drug offences. According to a report by Amnesty International from 2019, Saudi Arabia’s courts even continue to engage in inhumane acts such as imposing sentences of flogging as punishment, sometimes for a thousand lashes or more. Even amputations and cross-amputations occur (where the opposite hand and foot are removed, e.g., right hand/left foot), which invariably constitute torture.

And this does not even begin to list the crimes against women that take place there. I’ve never seen such celebration in the “Free World” for something as basic as the right for a person to drive a car.

I list such horrid things today for one reason: I am pointing out how the United States government lectures the world on how Iranians commit human rights abuses while such terrible things go on in our closest ally in the region, MBS’s Saudi Arabia.

I am the last to admit that Iran is the land of freedom and democracy we claim to be here in the West. The special United Nations investigator of human rights in Iran presented a highly critical report in 2015 that describes a record rate of executions, a deeply flawed judiciary, and repression of journalists, dissidents, women and freedom of expression there. But that’s no evening news top story here in America. We have been force-fed that for decades.

Yet look what happens when Saudi Arabia under MBS commits such a heinous crime as murdering, dismembering and torturing a U.S. resident who merely criticized their regime. There is a tremendous double standard here.

And this most certainly has not just begun. According to this op-ed in the NYT from 2017, describing an address that Nikki Haley delivered to the U.N. about human rights abuses, revolves around the grossly pragmatic actions of the tiptoeing around dictators and tyrants Trump exercised during his disgraceful four years in power. And we all know these criticisms of Iran began the first days of the Iranian Revolution of 1979, when the Persian nation dared to defy world powers and take some amount of self-determination back from their colonizers. The installation of the Shah regime was the real crime there.

I know that there is a lot of criticism over the last five years or so of the Right’s “what-about-ism,” and I understand. I have seen Tucker Carlson on FOX News. But there is a thin line between “what-about-ism” and the pointing out of ridiculous levels of hypocrisy. The United States is in the latter, not the former on this one .

Links to “The Battle of Algiers”

If you have not seen Pontecorvo’s 1966 masterpiece, The Battle of Algiers, I both admonish you and, yet, envy you.

I admonish you in that you have not done enough research into revolutionary art to have found this film. Yet, I envy you because you have yet to get that first breath of excitement when viewing the film the first time you only have once.

TBA is an intentionally grainy, black and white film shot in documentary style with a revolutionary heart. It is directed by Gillo Pontecorvo dramatizing the Algerian urban guerilla fighters during the fight for independence against the French colonialists. It concerns the guerilla tactics used by the NLF (FLN) and French paratroopers sent to quash the violent uprising which lasted for those three years.

Independence would finally be won by the Algerians in 1962, but this film centers around three years of bombings, assassinations, and torture allowing the French forces to end the most violent phase of the fighting.

Below are two links you can use to view the film. Watch Now!:

https://youtu.be/f_N2wyq7fCE

https://www.kanopy.com/product/battle-algiers-0

“‘It’s Cold as Hell’: Inside a Brooklyn Jail’s Weeklong Collapse”: Treated Worse Than Animals

nyti.ms/2E41MeL

Pet owners who would treat their dogs or cats like this would be jailed for animal cruelty.

Tell me, will there be charges?

Frontline Must-See: “Secrets, Politics, & Torture”

080513_frontline_stack_card.380x212.jpg.fit.480x270This episode of Frontline entitled “Secrets, Politics, & Torture” is a must watch. It covers the entire CIA torture history since September 11th, 2001, and all that surrounded it in the political world.

It explains how torture techniques did not lead the CIA to any actionable intelligence and how the film “Zero Dark Thirty” is a piece of propaganda portraying torture methods as effective.

Must Watch! Here’s the link.

Frontline: “Secrets, Politics, & Torture”

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Please Leak CIA Torture Report!

1446d9b7-3c4d-45e0-8c88-f29afad5ccc6-460x276A good op-ed in The Guardian by Trevor Timm pleading that some official in the government release a full copy of the report on the torture of prisoners captured under the guise of the war on terror.

Though voted to be released by the Senate Intelligence Committee, a leak of the full report will be the only way to see all of the important info we as citizens need to know before the CIA takes a black marker to it.

The problem is that, as Timm lays out, is that the CIA itself will be redacting sections of the report themselves (along with other agencies) when the investigation was centered on the CIA itself.

Unbelievable.

Read Here.

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Only Question Remaining About Torture: Why Would Anyone Defend It?

The recent Washington Post article reporting some of the details of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the use of torture by the CIA tells us more of what we already have known for a long time: it never worked to produce any good intelligence in the War on Terror.

“The CIA described [its program] repeatedly both to the Department of Justice and eventually to Congress as getting unique, otherwise unobtainable intelligence that helped disrupt terrorist plots and save thousands of lives,” said one U.S. official briefed on the report. “Was that actually true? The answer is no.”…

“The CIA conflated what was gotten when, which led them to misrepresent the effectiveness of the program,” said a second U.S. official who has reviewed the report. The official described the persistence of such misstatements as among “the most damaging” of the committee’s conclusions.

The lies by the CIA to protect the program of torturing suspects was clearly consistent.  Much like the use of imaginary heroics to boost support for the war effort by the Bush administration (see their manipulation of the Jessica Lynch story), the CIA also propagandized their efforts to keep things moving in the wrong direction on torture tactics:

Detainees’ credentials also were exaggerated, officials said. Agency officials described Abu Zubaida as a senior al-Qaeda operative — and, therefore, someone who warranted coercive techniques — although experts later determined that he was essentially a facilitator who helped guide recruits to al-Qaeda training camps.

But the question remains: why would anyone, such as torture advocate and former CIA official Jose Rodriguez, continue to claim the program worked and, in essence, should be kept as a possible tactic to use in the future?

It’s clear that part of the reason is that some of these folks want to believe that their work and efforts were useful and made an impact on the intelligence effort.  No one wants to hear that their years of hard work, no matter how despicable, was useless or, even worse, counterproductive to the overall goal of minimizing terrorism.

There could, however, be another rather dubious reason: staying away from any possible penalty for their actions.  As the article points out very briefly:

The report also does not recommend new administrative punishment or further criminal inquiry into a program that the Justice Department has investigated repeatedly. (Emphasis added)

If we consider the lies and distortions the CIA dealt to their overseers, we have to question why they continued to use the program because, at this point, it almost seems as if they were just downright sadistic and wanted to hurt people.  And if that was the only logical reason to continue a program they knew was ineffective, they would certainly put themselves in a position to face criminal prosecution at some point.

Which now begs the question, will the Senate report ever be released to the public?  A portion of it may come out but it’s rather doubtful the whole report will be released since the embarrassment of the torture program’s ineffectiveness would be damaging to the entire government, not just the CIA.  The Senate has a reason to keep the whole of that report under wraps and it is likely they will do just that.

’16 GOP Hopefuls Sucking Adelson’s Teat, Torture Never Worked, Wormhole Travel!?, and Other Tidbits for the Day

GOP Presidential Candidates Puckering Their Lips for Adelson

The GOP hopefuls for the 2016 presidential slot are headed to Las Vegas this week in order to try to get as much of mega-donor Sheldon Adelson’s money…excuse me, I meant “speech” (since that what money equals to the Supreme Court), as they can for a possible run.  Strange, though.  I know some GOP voters and I don’t recall the candidates being as interested in their speech as they are Adelson’s “speech”.  I wonder why…

Put a dark cloak on Sheldon Adelson and all Star Wars fans will know who this really is.

He donated more than $90 million to political candidates and super PACs in the last election cycle. His total donations may never be quantified publicly because various politically active groups that operate as nonprofit organizations don’t have to report the sources of their funds.

Remind me again why money is considered speech and why this isn’t an obvious corruption of the idea of democracy?

Brazil’s Internet Neutrality

Many may not be familiar with the idea of Internet neutrality but it is far more important than most think.  Brazil’s government is taking action to make sure access remains equal to all and the potential for inequality is highlighted in the article:

“Without neutrality, the Internet looks more like cable TV, where providers can offer different service packages,” Brazilian law professor Ronaldo Lemo told TechCrunch. “Basic service would include email and the social networks. ‘Premium’ would let you watch videos and listen to music. ‘Super Premium’ would let you download. Today that sounds like an aberration, but without Net neutrality, it’s a possibility.”

Still No Evidence Torture Worked

People are allowed their personal opinions about whether the U.S. was justified in torturing terrorism suspects for information (we weren’t) and how moral that is (it’s not) but there is still one fact that has yet to be proven wrong: it never actually worked in fighting terrorism and, in all likelihood, inspired more terrorism against American targets.

The CIA misled the Justice Department. They told the OLC that it was only after subjecting Zain Abidin Mohammed Husain Abu Zubaydah to “enhanced” techniques that he “identified KSM [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] as the mastermind of the September 11 attacks” and provided information that led to the detention of José Padilla in May 2003. As detailed in the task force’s report, this chronology is false. Abu Zubaydah identified Mohammed as the Sept. 11 mastermind during FBI interrogation long before the CIA was authorized to torture him in late 2002 — and Padilla was actually detained in May 2002, before the CIA tortured Abu Zubaydah. Public record evidence also contradicts the CIA’s claim that its “enhanced” interrogation of Mohammed and several other detainees led to the discovery of a plot to fly hijacked airliners into a skyscraper in Los Angeles and the capture of a 17-member terrorist cell tasked with carrying out the attack.

“Too-Big-to-Fail” Bank’s Advantage Over Smaller Competition

You know how smaller government capitalists like to rave about alleged competition in the market being the key to any and all economic success?  They probably aren’t saying much about this:

The series of research papers, published on Tuesday by the U.S. central bank’s influential New York branch, suggests the biggest banks benefited even after the financial crisis from lower funding and operating costs compared with smaller ones...While the study did not pinpoint the reason big banks can borrow more cheaply, Wall Street critics say it is because investors believe the U.S. government would again rescue them in a panic...Fed economists estimated the funding advantage for the five largest banks over smaller peers to be about 0.31 percent, which they said was statistically significant.

In short, the big banks can still take bigger risks because they are confident taxpayers will save them.  Taxpayers will have to save them because they have no choice and the alternative is far worse.  This is simply another form of the upper echelon being propped up by government at the expense of both smaller competitors and taxpayers.

Travel Through Wormholes

An interesting science article from the BBC appeared on the possibility of traveling through wormholes in space.  Fascinating stuff but it might be just a little difficult for now:

As a very rough approximation, you would need the energy the sun produces over 100 million years to make a wormhole about the size of a grapefruit.

Worthwhile for the imagination, I suppose.  Maybe someone can figure out how to shrink us down to smaller than grapefruits to solve part of the problem.  Where’s Rick Moranis when we need him?

Doctors/Medics and Guantanamo Abuse

Guantanamo-Bay_KG4EMAre not doctors and medics required by oath only to aid and comfort their patients at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere?

Read Here.

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The Justification of Torture Gets Obliterated Part Four – False Confessions

Continued from parts one, two, and three...

The next section in the report addresses the “dangers of false confessions”.  Lots of interesting tidbits of info included here beginning with the fact many of the techniques for torture used by the CIA were derived from SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape), a child mostly of the Cold War but apparently not intended for what the agency used it for:

The SERE techniques…had their origins in Communist techniques used to extract false confessions…[T]hat model’s primary objective was to compel a prisoner to generate propaganda, not intelligence.

In other words, the methods torture advocates say are great for gaining intelligence were not actually derived for that purpose.  Should have been a clear indicator it probably wasn’t going to work out too well.  But it wasn’t and it gets worse.  They were also basing their decisions off of results of internal testing, which is problematic:

SERE trainees were given specific “secrets” to keep from “interrogators” in the training exercise, and routinely failed…SERE instructors often know in advance the information they are trying to solicit…SERE instructors likely believe they can tell based on behavioral cues whether someone is telling the truth, but scientific studies show that behavioral indicators of deception are faint and unreliable.

It should be obvious that interrogators in the real world do not know the info they are trying to get from someone in advance.  And the false perception of interrogators’ own ability to detect the truth and lies makes the use of torture incredibly problematic, as I have noted previously.  If we can’t tell someone telling the truth from someone lying then there is no way to know when to start and when to stop torturing a suspect.  And that is probably the most important reason torture should have never been used to begin with.

The study then notes the problems with using sleep deprivation and how this has an adverse effect on memory and might even produce false memories which lead to false confessions in order to stop the torture.  This is followed by the most damaging evidence against the use of torture one might conjure: al-Libi’s link between Iraq and Al Qaeda and the possibility of chemical weapons changing hands in the relationship.

Al-Libi was at first cooperating with interrogators and giving valuable info.  Then he was sent to Egypt to be tortured because he denied (correctly) a link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein existed.

al-Libi claimed that during his initial debriefings “he lied…about future operations to avoid torture“…”the next topic was al-Qa’ida’s connections with Iraq…This was a subject about which he knew nothing and had difficulty even coming up with a story“…Al-Libi told debriefers that “after the beating,” he was again asked about the connection with Iraq and this time he came up with a story that three al-Qa’ida members went to Iraq to learn about nuclear weapons…the topic of anthrax and biological weapons. Al-Libi stated that he “knew nothing about a biological program and did not even understand the term biological.”

This info was quoted by Colin Powell at his UN speech prior to the Iraq War.  We, of course, would never allow info gained by torture in court cases in the United States but happily used some to start a war.  What’s not good enough for us is good enough for us to exert on the rest of the world apparently.

If the idea of using torture as a means for gathering intelligence hasn’t yet been buried forever, then the hammer is coming down very hard on the last nail on its coffin.  It never worked, will never work, and, the saddest part, we knew it wouldn’t work before we started using it.  Let’s hope the issue is forever put to rest for the betterment of mankind.

The Justification of Torture Gets Obliterated Part Three – Library Tower Plot

Continued from parts one and two…

The Zubaydah section is followed by the info on the plot to take out the Library Tower.  It starts with the absurd quote from Supreme Court Justice Scalia saying we wouldn’t convict Jack Bauer when he saved lives using torture.  Please Antonin, recognize that you are senile and should step down from the bench when you are making decisions based on fictional characters.  I hope he doesn’t make any references to the Ambiguously Gay Duo in his upcoming decision on gay marriage.

The study notes the Library Tower Plot has been held up as an example of the “ticking bomb” justification for the use of torture.  But this scenario has been absolutely shredded by researchers in the field, as I noted here, and even the Library Plot fails as an example of justification for torture, as indicated by the study.

After an introduction of the main people in the plot, we are given the “official” version from the Bush administration that the country swallowed as a successful use of torture to stop an attack.  It sounds like a great fictional story and that’s mostly what it turns out to be once the facts are presented.

It’s stated $50,000 was transferred from KSM to the group supposedly plotting the attack and this was a big piece of what helped bring all the suspects in.  But the truth is the money was used for something else and those arrested were eventually let go without charges.

Despite the CIA’s assertion that they would have “possibly,” or “eventually” participated in U.S. operations:

(Soufan) This “eventually” and “possibly” was the best analysts could conclude, despite 183 sessions of waterboarding. … The reality is that the al-Ghuraba cell wasn’t involved, which is why the U.S. didn’t request the arrest of its members and they were sent to their home countries.

Many of them were released after their return. Others were held for several years, but none was ever charged in connection with any plot against the United States.

As for the money and what it was used for:

If there were a ticking bomb that could have been defused by intelligence from Zubair, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and Majid Khan, it would have been in Jakarta, not Los Angeles. On August 5, 2003, a suicide bomber detonated a truck bomb outside of the lobby of the Jakarta Marriott Hotel, killing 11 people and wounding at least 81…the money was used to finance the Marriott bombing.

The study essentially says the plot to bring down the Library Tower may have existed but there was no certainty it was going to happen and it was, at best, a hypothetical plot with no actual movement as to making it happen any time in the near future.  There was no “ticking bomb” when it came to this and the release of most of those supposedly involved without any charges is a pretty clear indication the plot was simply used as propaganda for the cheerleaders of torture.