Posted by Mike E on April 21, 2009
Thanks to Nickglais and his Democracy and Class Struggle blog. We will report more on these developments as information becomes available. And we will examine possible connections between the emerging confrontation with the National army and the preparations for a leap in land reform.
Key Point: A commitment that landless people will have land within six months. (Prachanda’s reports are in English, other parts of this video are in Nepali.)
Article > Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in communism, Maoism, Nepal, peoples war, Prachanda, revolution, UCP Nepal (Maoist), UCP Nepal (Maoist) | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Mike E on April 21, 2009
Forced out? CoAS Rookmangud Katawal
A series of events have sharpened the confrontation between the Maoists of Nepal and the high command of the National Army (which is the reactionary army formed to serve the now-overthrown monarchy.) The Nepali government, headed by Maoists, has demanded that the National Army submit to civilian control (and to a program of transformation and “democraticization”). This has been resisted at each point, exposing the Army’s class character and its anti-revolutionary intentions to a wide section of the public. Now, the Maoist government is pushing the matter — seeking to remove die-hard generals, and setting a date this summer for the completion of the demanded transformation. We may be in the opening moves of a crucial confrontation — with ongoing importance for future events.
Here are a series of short but relevant articles (pending more substantive analysis and statements from the revolutionaries themselves). They were originally gathered at Nickglais’ Democracy and Class Struggle blog.
The ruling Unified CPN (Maoist) has advised the government to suspend General Katawal from the post of army chief if his clarification is not deemed convincing.
A meeting of the party’s Central Secretariat held today morning at the Prime Minister’s official residence to discuss the government’s decision to ask General Katawal to furnish clarification had reached to this conclusion.
The meeting also concluded that the government had the constitutional rights to seek clarification from its army chief and also decided to hold a mass meet in the capital city today in support of the government’s decision to ask General Katawal to furnish clarification on the controversial issues related to the army.
* * * * * *
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Latest News: Lt General Kul Bahadur Khadka is soon to replace Rookmangud Katawal as the Chief of the Nepal Army say sources.
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The Ministry of Defense has given a 24 hour ultimatum to Chief of Army (CoAS) Staff Rookmangud Katawal to furnish clarification on three controversial issues related to the army.
The Defense Ministry has given this ultimatum in a letter it sent to the CoAS Monday seeking clarification on issues related to recruitment in Nepal Army (NA), retirement of eight army generals and boycotting of National Games by NA.
The letter has been formally registered at the NA Headquarters in Bhadrakali, Kathmandu, a ministry source said.
Accusing the CoAS of challenging people’s supremacy by repeatedly disobeying the government orders, a cabinet meeting on Sunday had decided to seek clarification from CoAS Katawal.
The defense secretary had personally called up the CoAS to acknowledge the receipt of the letter, according to reports.
The cabinet decision comes as part of a plan of the Maoist led government to relieve Katawal from his position, it is learnt.
Posted in communism, Maoism, Nepal, peoples war, Prachanda, revolution, UCP Nepal (Maoist), UCP Nepal (Maoist) | 33 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on April 20, 2009
Jose the red fox sent us the following piece saying that it might spark some discussion of its provocations. As always, posting this does not mean Kasama endorses the analysis. This originally appeared on Bash Back! News, April 14, 2009
Bash Back! News wrote they were posting this article “in response to the criticism we have faced, albeit by mostly straight white men, for publishing a communique in solidarity with Lovelle Mixon, a cop-killer and a police-described ‘Rapist.’ In short, there are those who are automatically guilty and those who are automatically innocent, those who are automatically heroes and, to use a term frequently applied to Lovelle Mixon in recent days, those who are automatically ‘monsters.’”
by Raider Nation Collective, Oakland.
We began discussing this on a day dripping with hypocrisy. Local Fox affiliate KTVU is among many television channels broadcasting live and in its entirety the funeral for four Oakland Police officers who were killed in a pair of shooting incidents a week ago. News anchors speak at length, and with little regard to journalistic objectivity (a commodity which, dubious in general, disintegrates entirely in times such as these) about the lives of these “heroes,” these “angels,” and the families they leave behind. Trust funds for fatherless children are established, their existence trumpeted loudly at 6 and 11; one can only assume with such publicity that donations are rolling in. There is not a dry eye in the house, it would appear: the “community” has rallied around its fallen saviors.
Posted in >> GLBT, abuse, African American, anti-racist action, gay, gun control, Human rights, lesbian, police, Queer History, rape | 52 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on April 18, 2009
The following interview with Bill Martin was conducted for the journal of contemporary culture, Reconstruction 8.1, over email from Dec. 2007 through Feb. 2008. It took place before Bill’s break with the RCP.
“The role of the engaged intellectual (whatever model one wants to pursue), and for that matter of the protestor and the activist has been increasingly neutralized, in ways that most of these folks have not taken much account of – quite possibly in most cases for the reason that the whole thing is incredibly frustrating.”
<1> J. Ramsey: What do you see as the role and responsibilities of left public intellectuals today?
<2> Bill Martin: First, let’s try to understand the question and the fields that need to be defined. The things we have attempted to do before, as engaged intellectuals, are to speak out where and when that is possible, to express solidarity, to sign our names when that seems as if it would be helpful, to give money when we can and because those of us with university positions are relatively privileged, and perhaps at times to place ourselves in harm’s way, because this is sometimes the right thing to do and because some of us might have a certain status in society that might make other people notice the cause we are supporting and that might make us less vulnerable to attacks that people who do not have this status might not be able to endure. I would say two things about all of the foregoing. First, it seems that we do not have a lot of choice but to continue doing these sorts of things. Second, all the same, I think these sorts of things have less and less meaning and force as we go ever more deeply into this time of postmodern imperialism. The role of the engaged intellectual (whatever model one wants to pursue), and for that matter of the protestor and the activist has been increasingly neutralized, in ways that most of these folks have not taken much account of – quite possibly in most cases for the reason that the whole thing is incredibly frustrating.
Posted in Bill Martin, communism, J. Ramsey, Karl Marx, Mao Zedong, Maoism, philosophy, Slavoj Žižek, theory | 1 Comment »
Posted by irisbright on April 18, 2009
There has been a new round of college building takeover and arrest in New York City. Early in April, students again held an occupation at the New School, and on April 10 police were brought in to clear them out, arresting 22 occupiers.
Here are some materials on these events and the issues — starting with a video of the end. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in >> analysis of news, education, organizing, students, Vietnam, Vietnam War | 1 Comment »
Posted by Mike E on April 18, 2009
dedicated to our prankster jon
Posted in >> analysis of news | 1 Comment »
Posted by Mike E on April 17, 2009
The U.S. government has released some key memos justifying and codifying a global campaign of torture. The details are chilling, and the bizarre legal framework reminiscent of German Nazism (which also painstakingly tried to claim its crimes were legally justified).
These are just memos, and just a glimpse. Much remains behind the veil of secrecy. There is no list of victims. There is no map of global CIA torture camps. There is no documentation of the rendition system that delivered captives to torture. There is no list of the criminals who carried out the torture. No accounting of how many died under torture. No documentation of the degree to which these perverse torture rules and approved “techniques” were further expanded in practice (with a wink anda nudge from on high).
These are the methods on display in Abu Ghraib — which buried forever the lie that the horrors of that iraqi prison were just the acts of underlings. Here in black and white are the techniques approved by Justice Department “scholars” like the monstrous John Yo0 — sleep deprivation, confinement in confined painful positions, nudity, slapping and beating, use of animals to terrify and more. [Click here for the chart of approved techniques and legal justifications.]
And, in particular, the Obama administration is at pains to insist that no one will be prosecuted for these war crimes. The torturers will not stand trial (or even be exposed). Their masters in the White House (Starting with Cheney and Bush and Rumsfeld and on down) are to remain untouched.
In a revealing sentence, the New York Times let loose a revealing fact today: “The United States prosecuted some Japanese interrogators at war crimes trials after World War II for waterboarding and other methods detailed in the memos.”
The release of the memos represents an attempt at a face lift — it is a promise to the world that the U.S. will carry out a different policy in its pursuit of enemies. It is a confession of the deep failure and isolation that resulted from the Bush “War on Terror.” But the larger picture reveals an intention to shield the perpetrators and cover up much of the crimes. And what is the point of that…. if not to leave in place, unbowed, ready, protected, empowered, those squads of CIA killers that the U.S. has in place around the world?
Posted in abuse, Barack Obama, capitalism, CIA, George W. Bush, Human rights, prison, torture, war on terror | 1 Comment »
Posted by Mike E on April 17, 2009
Tricky – “They call you council estate…they call you crime rate, the call you ‘can’t go straight’”
Sole notes:
The song ‘Council Estate’ is the first single from Tricky’s 2008 album Knowle West Boy (named in homage of the poverty-stricken Bristol neighborhood of his birth). Council estate is slang for government sponsored housing, the U.S. equivalent of the ‘projects’ for UK residents.
Posted in >> analysis of news | 1 Comment »
Posted by Mike E on April 16, 2009
Kasama published reports from the mainstream media on revolutionary actions — but with the cautionary note that they should not assumed to be accurate.On Saturday the attac from the PCP used dynamite and grenades, and their victims included a captain, a junior officer and 11 soldiers.
The assault, one of the deadliest by the Maoist guerrilla group in the past decade, also left one soldier missing and two more wounded.
“Most of the soldiers plunged over a cliff,” but the circumstances of the deaths and the fall off the mountainside were not immediately clear.
The ambush came only hours after one soldier was killed and four were wounded in another PCP attack on a military patrol in the same area ofAyacucho department, 550 kilometers (341 miles) southeast of the capital Lima.
The ‘defense minister’ said an army unit and a helicopter have been dispatched from Huanta city to help the survivors of the ambush and hunt down the Maoists.
Posted in communism, peoples war, Peru, revolution, Shining Path | 3 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on April 15, 2009
other versions>> Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in music, video | 16 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on April 14, 2009
Originally Posted by Chicago journals. In this essay, the word “liberal” is used in its European meaning — i.e. it means free market capitalist views.
“Will the financial meltdown be a sobering moment, the awakening from a dream? It all depends on how it will be symbolized, on what ideological interpretation or story will impose itself and determine the general perception of the crisis. When the normal run of things is traumatically interrupted, the field is open for a “discursive” ideological competition – for example, in Germany in the late 1920s, Hitler won in the competition for the narrative which will explain to Germans the reasons for the crisis of the Weimar republic and the way out of it (his plot was the Jewish plot); in France in 1940 it was Marechal Petain’s narrative which won in explaining the reasons for the French defeat .”
“There is thus only one correct answer to Leftist intellectuals desperately awaiting the arrival of a new revolutionary agent which will perform the long-expected radical social transformation – the old Hopi saying with a wonderful Hegelian dialectical twist from substance to subject: ‘We are the ones we have been waiting for.’ Waiting for another to do the job for us is a way of rationalizing our inactivity. – It is against this background that one should re-assert the Communist idea – a quote from Badiou:
“‘The communist hypothesis remains the good one, I do not see any other. If we have to abandon this hypothesis, then it is no longer worth doing anything at all in the field of collective action. Without the horizon of communism, without this Idea, there is nothing in the historical and political becoming of any interest to a philosopher. Let everyone bother about his own affairs, and let us stop talking about it. In this case, the rat-man is right, as is, by the way, the case with some ex-communists who are either avid of their rents or who lost courage. However, to hold on to the Idea, to the existence of this hypothesis, does not mean that we should retain its first form of presentation which was centered on property and State. In fact, what is imposed on us as a task, even as a philosophical obligation, is to help a new mode of existence of the hypothesis to deploy itself.’”
“One should be careful not to read these lines in a Kantian way, conceiving Communism as a “regulative Idea,” thereby resuscitating the specter of “ethical socialism” with equality as its a priori norm-axiom… One should maintain the precise reference to a set of social antagonism(s) which generate the need for Communism – the good old Marx’s notion of Communism not as an ideal, but as a movement which reacts to actual social antagonisms, is still fully relevant. If we conceive Communism as an “eternal Idea,” this implies that the situation which generates it is no less eternal, that the antagonism to which Communism reacts will always be here – and from here, it is only one step to a “deconstructive” reading of Communism as a dream of presence, of abolishing all alienating re-presentation, a dream which thrives on its own impossibility .”
For the full article > Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in capitalism, communism, economics, environment, Marxist theory, revolution, Slavoj Žižek | 5 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on April 14, 2009
The Roots Present The Jam w/ Black Thought, Talib Kweli, Pharoahe Monch, John Forte, & Dice Raw
Posted in music, video | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Mike E on April 12, 2009
Kasama hopes to deepen our discussion and common understandings of the situation in Nepal — including by posting a series of documents over the coming week. The following analysis was recently written by the MLMRSG. It is available in PDF format here..
By the MLM Revolutionary Study Group
The central question in Nepal today is state power and the means by which it can be conquered and wielded in the service of the overwhelming majority of the people of Nepal. Does the present unstable Maoist-led coalition government represent the beginnings of a process leading to socialism, and a beacon and valuable resource for the worldwide struggle against capitalism and imperialism? Or is a disorienting political strategy being implemented that is unprepared for the next challenge and is blocking further advance of the revolutionary process?
At present, the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) is the largest party with a powerful mass base. It occupies leading positions, including Prachanda as Prime Minister, in what is essentially a bourgeois/feudal state backed by the 90,000 strong Nepalese Army and tens of thousands in the police force. While the Nepalese Army is confined to barracks, 19,000 PLA members have been housed for the past 2 1/2 years in cantonments (military camps), their arms are being held in the camps under UN inspection, and they are slated to be “integrated” with the Nepalese Army under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed in 2006—the precise terms of which are still in dispute.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in >> analysis of news, communism, Maoism, MLMRSG, Nepal, peoples war, Prachanda, RCPUSA, revolution, UCP Nepal (Maoist), UCP Nepal (Maoist) | 8 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on April 12, 2009
This is Alan Wald interviewed by Graham Barnfield about leftist writers rediscovered after years of Wald’s forensic detective work. (Thanks to Jay Rothermel for sharing this. )
Part of your last book Writing from the Left reads as a pledge to rediscover the lost authors of the 1940s and 1950s. How did you become interested in these writers?
My preoccupation with ‘lost’ leftwing authors of the 1940s and 1950s is a logical extension of my research on the ‘committed’ radical writers of the 1930s.
Many of the best-known ‘left’ authors of the Depression era were, in fact, formed as writers and intellectuals in the 1920s – for example, John Dos Passos, James T. Farrell, Josephine Herbst, and Langston Hughes. Even Michael Gold and Jack Conroy served literary apprenticeships in the 1920s.
This explains why I was particularly concerned in my first three books with the relationship of Marxism to Modernism, since ‘High Modernism’ was in full swing in the 1920s. But it wasn’t very long before I was asking myself: what was the trajectory of those who were very young in the 1930s, who perhaps did not reach their stride until after World War Two? I was also struck by the fact that so many of the ‘canonised’ texts of 1930s, such as The Grapes of Wrath, For Whom the Bell Tolls, U.S.A., Native Son, the Studs Lonigan trilogy, Waiting for Lefty, were by writers who later repudiated the particular kind of radicalism to which they adhered at the time when they produced their masterpieces.
Posted in African American, anti-racist action, comintern, communism, Communist Party | 3 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on April 12, 2009
This piece first appeared in the London Independent, January 4, 2009
by Johann Hari
Who imagined that in 2009, the world’s governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates?
As you read this, the British Royal Navy – backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US to China – is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as “one of the great menace of our times” have an extraordinary story to tell — and some justice on their side.
Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the “golden age of piracy” – from 1650 to 1730 – the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage thief that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda-heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: pirates were often rescued from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can’t? In his book Villains of All nations, the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence to find out. If you became a merchant or navy sailor then – plucked from the docks of London’s East End, young and hungry – you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off for a second, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the Cat O’ Nine Tails. If you slacked consistently, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.
Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied against their tyrannical captains – and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls “one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century.” They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed “quite clearly – and subversively – that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal navy.” This is why they were popular, despite being unproductive thieves.
Posted in Africa, pirates | 10 Comments »
Posted by onehundredflowers on April 12, 2009
Map of US Immigration Detention Sites
This was originally published in globaldetentionproject.org.
The United States maintains the largest immigration detention infrastructure in the world, which by the end of fiscal year 2007 included 961 sites either directly owned by or under contract with the federal government, according to the Freedom of Information Act Office of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) (Pavlik-Kenan 2007). Data collected by the Global Detention Project show that no less 363 detention sites were used during the period 2007-2009 (see Map of Detention Sites).
By 2009, the country’s total immigration-related detention capacity was 33,400, up from 27,500 in 2006 and 6,785 in 1994 (Roberts 2009; ICE 2007). The rapid growth of the U.S. detention infrastructure has been driven in large measure by policies aimed at deporting so-called criminal aliens, non-citizens convicted of certain crimes. But according to a March 2009 Associated Press investigative report, “An official Immigration and Customs Enforcement database, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, showed a U.S. detainee population of exactly 32,000 on the evening of [January 25, 2009]. The data show that 18,690 immigrants had no criminal conviction, not even for illegal entry or low-level crimes like trespassing. More than 400 of those with no criminal record had been incarcerated for at least a year. A dozen had been held for three years or more; one man from China had been locked up for more than five years. Nearly 10,000 had been in custody longer than 31 days—the average detention stay that ICE cites as evidence of its effective detention management” (Roberts 2009).
Posted in >> analysis of news, immigrants, immigration, prison | 1 Comment »
Posted by Mike E on April 11, 2009
Reporter Justine Sharrock uncovered details of the use of American popular music to torture U.S. captives. She describes which songs are used, and speculates on why they were picked (including Neil Diamond, Eminem, Metallica, Bee Gees, Bruce Springsteen,e Aerosmith, Britney Spears, Don McLean, Lil’ Kim, Limp Bizkit, Matchbox 20, Rage Against the Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tupac Shakur and a comedy tape by Janine Garafalo.
She also discusses that some musicians protested the use of their music for torture (including Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine). (See also article below in this post)
From the AP:
For many detainees who grew up in Afghanistan—where music was prohibited under Taliban rule—interrogations by U.S. forces marked their first exposure to the pounding rhythms, played at top volume. The experience was overwhelming for many. Binyam Mohammed, now a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, said men held with him at the CIA’s “Dark Prison” in Afghanistan wound up screaming and smashing their heads against walls, unable to endure more. “There was loud music, (Eminem’s) ‘Slim Shady’ and Dr. Dre for 20 days. I heard this nonstop over and over,” he told his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith. “The CIA worked on people, including me, day and night for the months before I left. Plenty lost their minds.”
Meanwhile James Hetfield of Metallica expressed a mix of pride and apparent marketing concern on the use of “Enter the Sandman” for torture:
”“If the Iraqis aren’t used to freedom, then I’m glad to be part of their exposure… [Enter the Sandman is] strong; it’s music that’s powerful. It represents something that they don’t like — maybe freedom, aggression… I don’t know… freedom of speech. And then part of me is kind of bummed about it that people worry about us being attached to some political statement because of that. We’ve got nothing to do with this and we’re trying to be as apolitical as possible, ’cause I think politics and music, at least for us, don’t mix. It separates people, [and] we wanna bring people together. So, so be it. I can’t say ‘Stop.’ I can’t say ‘Do it.’ It is just a thing — it’s not good or bad.”while others (Metallica) felt honored to be part of the “war on terror.”
for the list of songs: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in military, music, torture, war on terror | 9 Comments »
Posted by John Steele on April 11, 2009
Few things have been considered as immoral as doctors advising torturers. The use of medical training to refine and prolong torture has always been viewed as perverse and profoundly cruel.
And so, it has been a major event when credible reporting has documented not only the scope of U.S. torture around the world, but the participation of medical personell in the operations.
The International Red Cross has an official role with regard to prisoners and detainees held as a result of war or international conflict: to monitor the conditions in which they are held. In order to be permitted to perform this function, the Red Cross promises to hold the results of its investigations confidential, reporting conclusions and recommendations only to the government which holds the detainees. Even so, many detainees in the U.S. “war on terror” were routinely hidden from the Red cross, including those in the CIA’s “black sites” as well as others.
Two years ago, though, when the Bush administration decided to transfer 14 “high value detainees” from their secret CIA prisons to Guantanamo, these prisoners were also made available to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which interviewed them as to their experiences at the hands of their captors.
The ICRC report on these interviews — concluded that
“The allegations of ill treatment of the detainees indicate that, in many cases, the ill treatment to which they were subjected while held in the C.I.A. program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture. In addition, many other elements of the ill treatment, either singly or in combination, constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”
This report was recently obtained by Mark Danner, a professor of journalism who has written often on the subject of torture by US agencies over the past six or seven years. The ICRC report itself is now available here, and Danner’s reports about it can be found here and here. The ICRC report tells us, of course, what we already knew full well, that this country has been involved in a very systematic, highly legalized practice of torture, sanctioned and directed from the highest levels of government, since very soon after 9-11. (Although of course the report is important for the official imprimatur it provides for that conclusion.)
But there is another aspect as well. As the following news story from the New York Times makes clear, medical personnel were also crucially involved in the torture and treatment of those held.
By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON — Medical personnel were deeply involved in the abusive interrogation of terrorist suspects held overseas by the Central Intelligence Agency, including torture, and their participation was a “gross breach of medical ethics,” a long-secret report by the International Committee of the Red Cross concluded. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in >> analysis of news, abuse, CIA, George W. Bush, Human rights, political prisoners, torture, war on terror | Leave a Comment »
Posted by irisbright on April 10, 2009
Kasama is posting this because of the damning exposure of U.S. torture here — and as always, this does not mean we endorse the particular analysis embedded in the piece. It originally appeared in the New York Review of Books, April 30, 2009.
By Mark Danner
Download the text of the ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen “High Value Detainees” in CIA Custody by The International Committee of the Red Cross, along with the cover letter that accompanied it when it was transmitted to the US government in February 2007. This version, reset by The New York Review, exactly reproduces the original including typographical errors and some omitted words.
“When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry…. These are evil people. And we’re not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek.
“If it hadn’t been for what we did—with respect to the…enhanced interrogation techniques for high-value detainees…—then we would have been attacked again. Those policies we put in place, in my opinion, were absolutely crucial to getting us through the last seven-plus years without a major-casualty attack on the US….”
—Former Vice President Dick Cheney, February 4, 2009[1]
1.
When it comes to torture, it is not what we did but what we are doing. It is not what happened but what is happening and what will happen. In our politics, torture is not about whether or not our polity can “let the past be past”—whether or not we can “get beyond it and look forward.” Torture, for Dick Cheney and for President Bush and a significant portion of the American people, is more than a repugnant series of “procedures” applied to a few hundred prisoners in American custody during the last half-dozen or so years—procedures that are described with chilling and patient particularity in this authoritative report by the International Committee of the Red Cross.[2] Torture is more than the specific techniques—the forced nudity, sleep deprivation, long-term standing, and suffocation by water,” among others—that were applied to those fourteen “high-value detainees” and likely many more at the “black site” prisons secretly maintained by the CIA on three continents.
Posted in Barack Obama, capitalism, CIA, civil liberties, George W. Bush, Human rights, military, prison, torture, war on terror | 2 Comments »
