Torture - Articles - Zimbio

Vote in Congress TOMORROW!

Mon, 19 Jun 2007 21:03:30 GMT

posted by QuestionMain

Tomorrow, the U.S. House of Representatives will vote on whether to cut funding for the School of the Americas (SOA)/ WHINSEC. This notorious U.S. military training facility has had more than one name, but under its names, torture manuals have been used at the school, hundreds of its graduates of commited crimes including drug trafficking, torture, executions, and forces disappearences, all paid for by U.S. tax-payer dollars. The history is well documented and more information can be found on the SOA Watch website.

The vote is expected to be very close, so please contact your Representative in Congress and ask that they vote yes on the Rep. McGovern-Lewis (GA) amendment to cut funding for the SOA/ WHINSEC.

For more information, visit the SOA Watch Legislative Page at www.soaw.org/legislative

Israel's UK Ambassador Prosor still silent on Mohammed Omer assault case

Fri, 9 Aug 2008 00:09:00 GMT

posted by propal
Israel's UK Ambassador Prosor still silent on Mohammed Omer assault case

Press Release, 8 August 2008

http://tinyurl.com/64k4me

Friends of Mohammed Omer have reminded the Israeli ambassador, Ron Prosor, that
they are still waiting after 5 weeks for an explanation of the vicious
assault by Israeli security officers on the award-winning journalist as he
returned home to his family in Gaza. Omer had been visiting European capitals
after winning the Martha Gellhorn prize for journalism in war, which was
presented to him in London.

The group had asked Mr Prosor to persuade the authorities in Israel
to investigate the incident and, if there was any truth in it, to make an
apology to Mr Omer for their brutal conduct, compensate him for the injury
and in future respect his right to go about his work unmolested.

Mohammed Omer was hospitalised with cracked ribs and other injuries, and is
still in pain. He is one of an increasing number of Arab journalists abused by
the Israeli secret service.

Comments from the group......

Mary Bedforth: "It is shameful that a journalist should have been so
ill-treated by members of the Israeli special police and left injured. Has
Israel no regard for law and order and are those responsible being
prosecuted?"

David Halpin: "There are many examples showing that Israel does not respect
law and order. For example, see Physicians for Human Rights - Israel
"Holding Health to Ransom: GSS Interrogation and Extortion of Palestinian
Patients at Erez Crossing".
http://www.phr.org.il/phr/article.asp?articleid=603&catid=55&pcat=-1&lang=ENG
In this, PHRI explains how Shin Bet violates the Fourth Geneva Convention and
the UN Convention Against Torture, as well as criminal law, in the way it
threatens and abuses sick Palestinian patients by refusing them permission to
leave Gaza for hospital treatment unless they agree to inform or spy on their
countrymen."

Stuart Littlewood: "From the many reports it appears to have been a racist
attack, the sort of thing Mr Prosor and his colleagues often complain about.
I'm disappointed he has not responded to our concerns."

Tim Williams: "Being Jewish myself I am particularly concerned that Israel
lives up to its stated ideals of decency. Actions speak louder than words."

- ends -

Text of message sent by friends of Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer to
Israel's UK Ambassador Prosor

For the attention of

His Excellency RON PROSOR

Dear Ambassador Prosor,

We wrote to you over 5 weeks ago, on 29 June, asking for an explanation of
the assault and injuries inflicted on our friend Mohammed Omer by Shin Bet as
he returned home to Gaza via the Allenby Bridge crossing. He had been in
Europe as an honoured guest of Britain and other EU countries and is still
suffering physically and mentally from his ordeal at the hands of your county's
security personnel.

So far we have not received the courtesy of an acknowledgement let alone an
informative reply. We used the email address given on your Embassy website and
followed up with reminders on 1 July and 5 July. Given the extensive coverage
of the incident and wide international concern, an inquiry was presumably
carried out and we assumed that you would have shared its finding with us by
now.

We now seek a response, please, from an ambassador who very recently
expressed his great concern that Britain has become a hotbed of
anti-Israel views and begged for "values of fair play and even-handedness" to
be brought to the debate.

Sincerely,

(signatories)
Mary Bedforth
Barbara Mayhew
Nanny Brett
Anna Yandell
Felicity Arbuthnot
Tim Williams
Marshall Hopkins
Paul Maddison
Mark Brett
Stuart Littlewood
David Halpin

Redress Information & Analysis
Website - http://www.redress.cc
Newsblog - http://redressnewsblog.blogspot.com/

Redress Information & Analysis is dedicated to exposing injustice,
disinformation and bigotry and to providing thought-provoking interpretations
of current affairs.

Torture Nation

Wed, 2 Oct 2008 18:36:00 GMT

posted by lilnilhil
Following up on Digby..
Check it out..
This: http://news.aol.com/article/man-falls-to-death-after-being-tasered/188028
Led to this: http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/10/02/taser.officer.dead.ap/index.html

Tazers=uncool.
Cops are supposed to use them when suspects do not comply with orders and pose a risk to themselves or the cop, problem is Cops use them to gets suspects to comply more quickly, or they use them in instances where they just shouldn't.

It's my belief that once you open up the torture box, it can't be closed. Look at the brigade we're deploying to the U.S.A. (look it up!) complete with death rays to use on you and me and your radical sister who goes to lots of protests. The ghost of Abu Ghraib is here to stay. Wonder if someone will get the chance to ask Palin what she thinks. ..Wonder if Palin will get the chance to endorse more of these horrors..

How many more Palestinian Children have to die before the world speaks out and actually does something

Sun, 9 Jun 2008 05:36:00 GMT

posted by propal
Eight-year-old Palestinian girl killed by an Israeli rocket

Khan Younis, (PIC)-- The body of 8-year-old Aya al-Najjar was mutilated on Thursday afternoon by a rocket fired from an Israeli airplane while she was playing in the garden outside her house in the village of Khuza'a in the southern Gaza Strip.

The little girl had just finished her school exams and went home eager to play as she had no more revision to do.

She asked her mother if it was ok for her to play in the garden and the mother agreed.

An apache helicopter hovered over the place, Aya looked at it and carried on playing. Neither her nor her mother expected to be the target of a rocket fired from the apache.

It seems, however, that Zionist hate for everything Palestinian has no limits as Aya was hit directly with the rocket causing her young body to be shredded into little pieces.

Aya was not the first Palestinian child to be targeted by the IOF and will not be the last; Muhammad al-Dora, Iman al-Hams and Iman Hijjo are but three names, of Palestinian children killed by the IOF, in a list of about 1000 Palestinian children killed by the IOF since the start of the Aqsa intifada out of a total of 5000 Palestinians killed during the same period.

Sign The Petition
http://www.petitiononline.com/etgs1/petition.html

Can The United States Recover?

Tue, 15 Oct 2008 21:29:10 GMT

posted by kate9954
Is this the same country that I grew up in?

When I was twelve years old, my father gave me a battered paperback copy of Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers and told me to read it. Please don't confuse Heinlein's original book with the dreadful movie made from it decades later - there is simply no comparison, and apart from a character name or two, almost no resemblance. When I returned the book to my father, I told him I was going to enlist in the U.S. military on my 18th birthday. Dad, who was a lifelong patriot and the Major who had been in charge of all the A/V material sent back to the U.S. from the European theater in World War II, laughed very heartily at the daughter he loved - but he was not at all displeased.

I had the last laugh. The only change in my plan was from the U.S. Army to the U.S. Air Force. I raised my right hand and took the enlistment oath on my 18th birthday. It might be a good idea to review that oath once in awhile:

"I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."

I was proud to serve my country, and I humbly submit that I understood one portion of that oath as completely as any adolescent can only because I was well taught during Basic Training. "...according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice" is not in the least ambiguous. No military member has an obligation to obey an unlawful order, and no military member should ever do so. Many classroom and lecture hours were spent on teaching us what to do about an unlawful order, and sure enough, I had reason to exercise that training in my first year of service when my NCOIC gave me an instruction that clearly stepped over that very intangible line between appropriate military leadership and fraternizing with a subordinate. A simple and civil request for said instruction to be presented in writing resulted in an instant about-face - and in the long term, a much better relationship with said supervisor, a professional one based upon respect. It was an important lesson.

That nightmare moment, several years ago now, when I first saw the disgusting torture and abuse photographs released from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, I knew that the training I had received was no longer a part of basic military training. I believed, and still believe, that the decision to remove that training was dangerous, and I predict that in the long term, it will do far more harm to this country than good.

The problem is that this segment of our training did not produce the sort of little robots that our Decider-in-Chief has decided we need in this modern world.

I am sorry to say that I did not fully understand that portion of that oath where I swore to "uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic" until many years after I took the oath. Nor could I have imagined in September of 1972 that the worst domestic enemies our Constitution would ever face would one day inhabit Capitol Hill and the White House, not even with the example of Richard Nixon staring me right in the face.

I do understand it now, with absolutely chilling clarity. And like many of my contemporaries who also served their country, I do know that my discharge did not absolve me of that oath. Nothing this side of death can do that. I am no longer in the United States military, but I took that oath freely and without coercion, and I remain obligated to its terms until I take up residence six feet below ground.

This morning, I woke up to read in the Washington Post that the CIA, after receiving orders to torture suspects soon after September 11, 2001, had some very understandable concerns about the legality of these orders. It isn't my intention to disparage the service of the few remaining decent men and women in the intelligence services, but I do want to stress how weird and unusual it is for the CIA to have concerns about anything at all short of what would gag any self-respecting maggot.

There were several meetings held at the White House over these concerns. Please imagine this, if you can. The Director of Central Intelligence - George Tenet, by the way, at the time - is concerned about the torture of suspects. Condi Rice is there, and I am sure that Dick Cheney and President Bush were there. Who was it that actually said it was okay?

And how could anyone in the room agree with them?

What shocks me is not that the United States has used torture. We've done that for years. We taught half of South America how to do it even better at a certain infamous school in Georgia.

What stuns me is that we are no longer ashamed of it. In the past, any time even a hint of this found the light of day, we backpedaled like crazy.

Not this time. This time, when George Tenet asked for a memo to cover his patootie . . .

Someone actually wrote the memo. Someone actually said that torture was okay, and put it into writing. 35 years ago, my first NCOIC wouldn't even commit to writing his mildly excessive pressure in asking me for a date. But waterboarding is okay, and that's in black and white on a piece of White House stationery.

John McCain, the man who publicly fought against torture, later quietly voted for it. He is one of the two nominees for President we must vote on in about three weeks. How could this have happened?

Can we come back from this? Can we ever again be the country that I loved and served with pride and honor?

I don't know. You tell me.

I am sick at heart tonight.