Posts Tagged ‘torture’

Speaks For Itself

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

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January 6, 2010 12:35 am

Over the last decade I’ve become increasingly cynical about, and frankly afraid of Americans. Not all of them–I know they’re not all the same, and there are lots of them I love–but Americans in the aggregate. I had some hope that things were changing there last year, but when I read statistics like 58% of US voters favour the use of torture in gathering information–specifically in a case where there is no ticking bomb–I am more scared than ever. Factor in that the rate is even higher for younger people and I’m left wondering if there will be anyone left who understands that this isn’t how things should be. Those numbers about how many people think the US legal system is too worried about individual rights make me despair for humanity, and for the American voting public’s ability to read.

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October 5, 2009 11:47 pm

To add to the list of things I’m really unhappy with the Obama administration about: letting the torturers get away with blatant destruction of evidence. It’s one thing not to prosecute, it’s a completely different thing to de facto endorse the obstruction of justice, and consequently send the message that it’s OK for things to operate this way; business as usual. Gordon Hewart must be rolling in his grave.

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Not up to par

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

Like many other liberal people, I pinned a lot of hope on the dramatic change from a Bush administration to an Obama one as being the end of several policy directions that I saw as abhorrent. Unlike many people on “the left”, I was consciously being rational about my expectations. I knew that Obama intended [...]

CIA caught with pants down, by spiral notebook

Friday, May 29th, 2009

Organizations breed both bureaucracy and incompetence. I’m tempted to ask Trish to tell me why this is–I’m sure it’s something well known in her field, but it sure seems to be empirical fact: you create an organization and certain institutional pressures necessarily lead to behaviours that are rational at the individual level, but which result [...]

Putting it in context

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

If you think the fact that Feingold has to call out Obama is depressing, or that the failure to actually enact transparency over what happened with respect to torture under the Bush administration is depressing… well, you should probably stay away from Noam. Here’s a snippet from Chomsky’s recent article on the Torture Memos, which [...]

Noted Quotes

Monday, January 19th, 2009

A couple of quotations from my web reading recently: “I agree with you, Mr. Chairman, waterboarding is torture.” –U.S. Attorney General nominee Eric Holder (via) “Watch half a film. Ring someone up, ask them about their dreams. Make your life as patchy a discourse as possible.” –M. John Harrison, explaining something about writing “If only [...]

War Crimes And Justice For All.

Monday, December 15th, 2008

OK. Let’s start by quoting Glenn Greenwald, who I love to read at Salon, in an interview with Bill Moyers (himself much lauded around these parts). Let’s just quickly describe in the most dispassionate terms, as few of euphemisms, as possible, where we are and what has happened over the last eight years. We have [...]

Maybe this is a bit optimistic

Saturday, November 22nd, 2008

For a couple of years now, this image has run in the sidebar of this blog: If you didn’t know what that was about, you can click through and read the post from the time I put it up. Today, I’m taking it down. There are two reasons, and both of them amount to my [...]

November 19, 2008 1:02 am

The details of the story might not be all I am hoping for, but seeing a headline that says “Cheney and Gonzales Indicted for Prisoner Abuse” is certainly a step in the right direction. Let’s hope it’s one of the first pebbles in an avalanche.

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Closet Land

Monday, September 29th, 2008

While thinking about the use of torture by governments today, I found myself wishing I could just make everyone watch Closet Land1. Of course, I’ve lamented before about the fact that there is no DVD edition–at least no english one, although I did get my hands on a spanish one that at least lets me [...]

Raging Out: No One Cares About Torture

Monday, September 29th, 2008

It is now a matter of record that Bush, Cheney, Rice, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Tenet, and Powell were all directly involved in authorizing the use of torture. The group called itself the National Security Principals Committee. It held dozens of top-secret decisions in the White House. This according to an ABC News investigation, sourced with unnamed, [...]

I’ve been waiting to hear exactly that

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

“Our mission is to restore America’s influence and position in the world. We must use all the weapons in our arsenal, above all, our values. President Obama and Vice President Biden will shut down Guantanamo, respect the Constitution, and make clear once and for all, the United States of America does not torture, not now, [...]

Conservatives condone suspension of due process and torture of children.

Wednesday, July 16th, 2008

And then there’s this one, which makes me so angry I’m not sure I can even write coherently about it. A day after a report revealed Canadian officials knew of Omar Khadr’s harsh treatment by the U.S. military, Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Thursday repeated vows to leave the case in U.S. hands. … A [...]

Hypocrisy on parade

Friday, April 18th, 2008

There’s an evil tableau for you: the callous torturer stands up with blood on his hands and a lie in his teeth, while the priest draped in gilt reassures him of his righteousness. How often has that scene played out in history, I wonder? You know, I wouldn’t change a word in what Paul Myers [...]