The Water Cure

It sips its coffee and reads of its soldiers administering the “water cure” to rebels; of how water with handfuls of salt thrown in to make it more efficacious, is forced down the throats of the patients until their bodies become distended to the point of bursting; of how our soldiers then jump on the distended bodies to force the water out quickly so that the “treatment” can begin all over again. The American Public takes another sip of its coffee and remarks, “How very unpleasant!”

“But where is that vast national outburst of astounded horror which an old-fashioned America would have predicted at the reading of such news?” the World asked. “Is it lost somewhere in the 8,000 miles that divide us from the scenes of these abominations? Is it led astray by the darker skins of the alien race among which these abominations are perpetrated? Or is it rotted away by that inevitable demoralization which the wrong-doing of a great nation must inflict on the consciences of the least of its citizens?”

Responding to the verdict in the Glenn court-martial, Judge Advocate General Davis had suggested that the question it implicitly posed—how much was global power worth in other people’s pain?—was one no moral nation could legitimately ask. As the investigation of the water cure ended and the memory of faraway torture faded, Americans answered it with their silence.

And they are still answering it with their silence.

J.K.

Paraplegic Tipping

A new extreme sport is gripping America;

A Florida prison officer who dumped a paraplegic man out of his wheelchair in order to search him could be jailed after being charged with abuse of a disabled person.

Surveillance video footage showing the behaviour of Charlette Marshall-Jones, a sheriff’s deputy at the Hillsborough county detention centre in Tampa, caused national outrage when it was picked up by the news channels and posted on YouTube.

After repeatedly having asked Brian Sterner, 32, who has been paralysed from the waist down since a wrestling accident 13 years ago, to stand up to be searched, Deputy Marshall-Jones is shown tipping him on to the floor as if unloading a wheelbarrow. Other officers look on and one walks away smiling, as Mr Sterner is searched while still lying on the floor. Four officers, including Ms Marshall-Jones, have been suspended while the incident is investigated, and the deputy faces five years in jail if convicted of abuse. She was bailed at the weekend.

Mr Sterner, who drives a car fitted with hand pedals, had been arrested for a traffic offence. In a national television appearance, he said: “Hopefully, that’s what will come out of this, that this negative way of dealing with life and people will change.”

So far the first major event, broadcast primetime, has resulted in a 4 – 0 victory for the able-bodied. American wheelchair manufacturers are salivating as the demand for wheelchairs has skyrocketed in the last few days. Detractors are claiming that this new sport is little more than abuse, but their criticisms are being met with calls to “Shut the fuck up or we will kill you!”.

The American public’s imagination hasn’t been this excited since the glory days of the Hula Hoop, or at least since the first series of Rape an Ape resulted in a run on pet shops…

etc.

J.K.

Fat Pig The Third

Thanks to David for the link.

J.K.

Fat Pig Part Deux

New Charges Against City Cop

ABC2 has obtained new video of Baltimore police officer Salvatore Rivieri in action at the Inner Harbor. This time he confronts Billy Friebele, an artist from Washington D.C., who was videotaping at the Harbor last summer.

Friebele told ABC2 he was taping the reactions of passersby to a box he was moving with a remote controlled car. Officer Rivieri is seen on tape kicking the box off of the car and then kicking the car. The officer then orders Friebele to leave the area.

Rivieri is the same officer caught on a youtube video wrestling a 14 year old skate boarder to the ground. A spokesperson for the Baltimore Police Department declined to comment on this latest videotape. Officer Rivieri is suspended without pay pending the outcome of an internal investigation of the incident with the skate boarder.

(from here)

J.K.

Showing Remorse

When We Torture

After Mr. Hajj was arrested in Afghanistan in December 2001, he was beaten, starved, frozen and subjected to anal searches in public to humiliate him, his lawyers say. The U.S. government initially seems to have confused him with another cameraman, and then offered vague accusations that he had been a financial courier and otherwise assisted extremist groups.

“There is a significant amount of information, both unclassified and classified, which supports continued detention of Sami al-Hajj by U.S. forces,” said Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, adding that the detainees are humanely treated and “receive exceptional medical care.”

Military officials did acknowledge that Mr. Hajj was not considered a potential suicide bomber and probably would have been released long ago if he had just “come clean” by responding in greater detail to the allegations and showing remorse.

Mr. Hajj’s lawyers contend that he has already responded in great detail to every allegation. One indication that the government doesn’t take its own charges seriously, the lawyers say, is that the U.S. offered Mr. Hajj a deal: immediate freedom if he would spy on Al Jazeera. Mr. Hajj refused.

Most Americans, including myself, originally gave President Bush the benefit of the doubt and assumed that the inmates truly were “the worst of the worst.” But evidence has grown that many are simply the unluckiest of the unluckiest.

Some were aid workers who were kidnapped by armed Afghan groups and sold to the C.I.A. as extremists. One longtime Sudanese aid worker employed by an international charity, Adel Hamad, was just released by the U.S. in December after five years in captivity. A U.S. Army major reviewing his case called it “unconscionable.”

Mr. Hajj began his hunger strike more than a year ago, so twice daily he is strapped down and a tube is wound up his nose and down his throat to his stomach. Sometimes a lubricant is used, and sometimes it isn’t, so his throat and nose have been rubbed raw. Sometimes a tube still bloody from another hunger striker is used, his lawyers say.

“It’s really a regime to make it as painful and difficult as possible,” said one of his lawyers, Zachary Katznelson.

Mr. Hajj cannot bend his knees because of abuse he received soon after his arrest, yet the toilet chair he was prescribed was removed — making it excruciating for him to use the remaining squat toilet. He is allowed a Koran, but his glasses were confiscated so he cannot read it.

All this is inhumane, but also boneheaded. Guantánamo itself does far more damage to American interests than Mr. Hajj could ever do.

To stand against torture and arbitrary detention is not to be squeamish. It is to be civilized.

I don’t know what I find more offensive; the treatment of this accidental captive, or the fact that he would have been released sooner if he had shown some remorse for what he did. But what exactly did he do, apart from being the victim of mistaken identity, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Did they object to his reporting from a stylistic point of view? Are his captors (as well as being barbaric monsters) incredibly demanding aesthetes? Or perhaps he has merely become an inconvenience, a side effect of some failed recruitment drive (it didn’t work out… it never happened… bury the evidence).

J.K.

Tragedy Comedy

(picture via my good friend Leoben Conoy).

Question; to laugh, or to cry?

Mohammed was waterboarded – subjected to simulated drowning – while a log of Qahtani’s interrogations was recorded that showed he was subjected to sleep deprivation, loud music, extreme hot and cold, and sexual humiliation. The military commission system does not allow the use of evidence obtained from torture, but the US administration has not accepted that waterboarding amounts to torture.

P O’Neill has this to say;

Of course, this will be described as a “trial” but as George W. Bush likes to remind everyone, he is the Commander-in-Chief of the US Armed Forces, meaning that everyone involved in every aspect of these trials works for George W. Bush. That’s why most countries decided a long time ago that executive branch trials are not a good idea.

J.K.

Fat Pig

Just saw this on Boing Boing.

“Obviously, your parents don’t put a foot in your butt quite enough, because you don’t understand the meaning of respect. First of all, you better learn how to speak. I’m not ‘man.’ I’m not ‘dude,’ I am Officer Rivieri. The sooner you learn that, the longer you are going to live in this world. Because you go around doing this kind of stuff and somebody is going to kill you.”

It’s looking increasingly likely that we will need to create some sort of constabulary to protect children from animals like this fat piggy. Some sort of force for good…

J.K.

Six Years Of Lawlessness And Barbarity

US accused of using ‘kangaroo court’ to try men accused of role in September 11 attacks
Fair trial pledge to 9/11 accused
Guantánamo six will have fair trials, insists Chertoff

It’s an election year; bring on the show trial!

The United States military announced yesterday that it was bringing death penalty charges against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and five other men suspected of orchestrating the September 11 attacks, and intended to try them under the Bush administration’s much-criticised military tribunal system, which is subject only to partial oversight by the civilian appeals system.

To be broadcast live on Fox News…

The decision to use Mohammed and the others as guinea-pigs in a constitutionally dubious legal proceeding is likely to trigger a firestorm of anti-American sentiment in the Islamic world and spark a fractious domestic debate in an already highly charged presidential election year.

Seems to me that a better way to test the water would be to have a show trial in 24…

“What we are looking at is a series of show trials by the Bush administration that are really devoid of any due process considerations,” said Vincent Warren, the executive director head of Centre for Constitutional Rights, which represents many Guantanamo detainees. “Rather than playing politics the Bush administration should be seeking speedy and fair trials,” he said. “These are trials that are going to be based on torture as confessions as well as secret evidence. There is no way that this can be said to be fair especially as the death penalty could be an outcome.”

Fair and balanced…

Speaking to the Washington Post, Vincent Warren, the executive director of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, which has represented many of the Guantánamo detainees, said the cases were “essentially show trials”. He said: “They are being used to justify six years of lawlessness and barbarity this government has been doing.”

The rogue states…

“Possibly putting someone to death based on evidence obtained through water-boarding, or after prolonged periods of sleep deprivation while being forced into painful stress positions, is not the answer,” said Jennifer Daskal, a lawyer for Human Rights Watch.

But it makes for compelling TV. America loves a lynching…

But Chertoff told the BBC there would be “full due process and defence lawyers and all of the fundamental rights that would bring to justice those [who] were responsible for one of the worst war crimes in world history“.

But the September 11th attacks occurred in peacetime, so Chertoff must be referring to the war crimes being committed currently in Iraq and Afghanistan. I wonder are these show trials actually intended for Bush, etc? i.e. is what Chertoff said an admission of guilt?

The Bush administration appears to believe that, politically at least, it can win the argument by stirring up the country’s emotions about the worst peacetime attack on its own soil.

The Bush Junta admits to engaging in demagoguery. As it was in the beginning, is now, and forever shall be.

J.K.

The Day The Music Died

Day of Shame

On February 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the United Nations to rally support for an invasion of Iraq.

His presentation contained little substance and numerous obvious flaws, and the international community was unimpressed.

America’s mainstream media, however, declared it “compelling.”

I haven’t checked my feed reader in a while (actually it’s only been a day or two, and I’m amazed at how many unread posts I’ve accumulated), so I’m doing a lot of catching up at the moment. I’m posting this a little after the fact, but it’s worth checking out (The day the music died).

J.K.

Twelve-Step Program

CIA admits waterboarding inmates
US admits waterboarding terror suspects

Who doesn’t enjoy splashing around in the sea, or going to the local public baths for a few lengths?

Waterboarding involves strapping a suspect down and pouring water over his cloth-covered face to create the sensation of drowning. It has been traced back hundreds of years, to the Spanish Inquisition, and is condemned by nations around the world.

Who doesn’t enjoy their lungs filling with water, the sensation of losing consciousness, the certainty of impending death?

In congressional testimony, CIA director Michael Hayden became the first administration official to publicly acknowledge the agency used waterboarding on detainees following the September 11 2001, terrorist attacks.

Well done Michael. You’ve made the first step in a long process of rehabilitation and recovery. But no mention of what high jinx they got up to before November the 9th? I wonder exactly when waterboarding became the CIA’s favored technique, and what techniques they used before it. Come now CIA + US, you must be honest with yourself if you truly seek redemption.

“We used it against these three detainees because of the circumstances at the time,” Mr Hayden told the Senate Intelligence Committee. “There was the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were inevitable. And we had limited knowledge about al Qaida and its workings. Those two realities have changed.”

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

J.K.