Carl,
I think that there is a difference between torture and some of the other
negative things that you mentioned in your post. Teasing and bullying are
not torture. Owning slaves isn't torture, although it is certainly possible
for the owner to torture his slaves. It's important to recognize the
distinction because we need to be able to hold people and countries
accountable for the torture of other human beings.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Friday, April 15, 2016 2:00 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Has Torture Become Normalized in Our Culture
It's Still Unbelievably Inhumane
Where does torture begin? With the Salem Witch Hunts? With our(White
Europeans) treatment of Black Slaves? Our Brain Damaged? The list goes on
and on. Torture comes in many forms. We tend to go to the violent end,
when expressing our shock to our American government sanctioned torture.
But we forget that torture comes from our earliest childhood. At least we
get a good start. As a former recipient of early torture, I know the hurt
that goes with being outcast and treated as different. With heavy bifocles
that gave me Owl Eyes, to the patched up, last years clothes and the pants
that came up the ankle, along with shirt sleeves to match. Until my last
years in high school, I was bullied, chased home stood against the school
wall and treated as a target, and ignored when it came to group activities.
That is a form of torture. Sticking someone in prison for a minor offense
and then black listing him for life, is another form of torture. Sending
the police and other agents to spy and hastle minority groups is also
torture. Dangling the promise of the "American Dream" in front of people
who can never attain it is also torture. Negative reinforcement in raising
our children, especially when taken to extremes, is also a form of torture.
What to me is of interest is the numbers of Americans who do get shocked
upon learning of our governments sanctioning of extreme torture.
Carl Jarvis
On 4/15/16, S. Kashdan <skashdan@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Has Torture Become Normalized in Our Culture It's Still Unbelievablyselves.
Inhumane
What should be horrifying to Americans has become old hat--or worse,
with Trump as torture's new cheerleader.
By Silja J.A. Talvi
AlterNet, April 14, 2016
http://www.alternet.org/print/civil-liberties/torture-culture-normal-a
merican-society-still-incredibly-inhumane
What if we called torture by another name Would torture begin to mean
something again
Torture sets out to break down the human spirit. Think about even a
small fraction of the ways torturers have destroyed minds, bodies and
souls throughout history. Narrow that down to what the United States
has done in the last several decades. If you can bring yourself to do
it, try to picture
actual acts of torture. Not televised, fictionalized,
made-for-entertainment
torture, but the real thing.
Imagine being wrenched, stretched, crammed, frozen, beaten, hung,
drowned, sexually violated, forced to defecate on yourself in the
presence of others,
mocked, thrown, pushed, chained to the floor, chained to the ceiling,
having
feeding tubes stuck down your throat or up your anus, being exposed to
ear-shattering volumes 247, not being allowed to sleep for days or
weeks on
end to the point of hallucination and suicidal ideation, having
electrodes attached to your genitals, being forced to wear a hood
while you are being interrogated, sexually violated and photographed,
being made to pose in sexual positions with other men, being
photographed in diapers, not being allowed clothing or blankets in
freezing temperatures, not being allowed to
urinate or defecate, not being allowed to eat or drink water for days,
not being allowed to see daylight or touch another person for months
or years, being shown pictures of your family and being told that your
wife and children will be raped, dismembered and killed.
All of that is American torture. Most Americans don't have the time
nor presence of mind to take it there. They have heard the word used
so many times that torture fatigue has set in. Tragically, many
supported the use of
torture
to begin with, which is why the likes of Donald Trump win favor by
advocating for increased and expanded uses of torture, instead of
suffering
losses at the polls.
By now, it is well-documented that the U.S. government and its varied
intelligence agencies, particularly in the post-911 era, have
committed egregious human rights violations in the form of torture
against suspected terrorists, many or most of whom have eventually
been released from the CIA's secret prisons and places like Guantanamo
Bay or Abu Ghraib because little or no evidence could be produced to
support any charges of terrorist activity.
All the while, we have learned more and more about how the people
charged with torturing other human beings have effectively turned
grown men and women into fragments, hollowed-out versions of their former
forms of torture.
Worst of all, the U.S. and its multitudinous intelligence, law
enforcement and corrections agencies have rarely been held accountable
for this torture.
For most Americans, torture is not associated with punishment and long
prison sentences for violations of international human rights law.
These days, in fact, U.S. torture has a Teflon-coated wall of
complacent acceptance built up around it.
How else to explain the fact that Trump's proclamations about bringing
back
and expanding torture have not completely doomed his candidacy His
proclamations (and those of other current or former Republican
contenders like Cruz and Rubio) have been met with the cheers and
grins of die-hard supporters, accompanied by hysterical shouts of
approval and wild-eyed enthusiasm.
Trump has made repeated statements calling for revisions in the law
that would allow for expanded torture techniques, vowing that "we have
to beat the savages" and that the U.S. current ban on waterboarding is
a sign of weakness. On occasion, Trump has tried to soften his
statements and vow that
he would never instruct the military to break the law, but the March
terrorist attacks in Brussels had Trump back in fine form once again,
pronouncing that a captured suspect would have talked "a lot faster
with the
torture." Even as European media was flush with reportage that it was
not a
lack of torture but a lack of timely analysis and coordination on the
part of Brussels intelligence that helped the suicide bombers to
unfurl their deadly scheme, Trump's statement made it clear as to
where he really stands
on torture. As the Washington Times reported, CIA director John
Brennan is against waterboarding and opposed these tactics and
techniques [he's] heard
bandied about" by pro-torture presidential hopefuls such as Trump.
Make no mistake a Trump presidency would be a near-guaranteed return
to precisely those American torture tactics that have effectively
served as one
of the best recruitment tools imaginable for extremist terrorist
groups, while removing any shred of credibility from the U.S. as it
tries to exert pressure on other countries to ban legal and unofficial
2012.
In reaction to the 911 attacks, the CIA jumpstarted a global program
of abduction, imprisonment and torture in secret detention sites known
as black
sites.
In early December 2015, as most of the world was still consumed with
news reportage related to the November terrorist bombings in Paris,
Human Rights
Watch released a phenomenal, 153-page report that received only a
small fraction of the attention it should have received.
"No More Excuses A Roadmap to Justice for CIA Torture" brought to
light the
fact that absolutely not one person has been prosecuted in association
with
the myriad forms of torture committed in worldwide CIA-run black sites
as well as the foreign prisons to which CIA abducted and forced people
to endure torture at the hands of other perpetrators.
"We would be in a very different situation today if anyone had been
prosecuted," said Laura Pitter, senior national counsel for Human
Rights Watch.
In December 2014, a great deal of new information about the CIA
program came
to light, even after years of media coverage on the issue, in the form
of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report. The report
would have been even more of a goldmine of information were it not for
the fact that it
was so heavily redacted only 499 of 6,700 pages were eventually
released to
the public. Still, Human Rights Watch was able to conduct a great deal
of analysis, highlighting such findings as the practice of "rectal
feeding," by
which detainees were forced to endure a large tube forced into the
rectum, filled with pureed food, "without evidence of medical
necessity." In addition, HRW brought to light the practice of placing
men in unchanged diapers in order to heighten humiliation and
helplessness; the use of painful stress positions including being
chained to the floor, wall or ceiling, in some cases while enduring
excruciatingly loud music and freezing
cold temperatures, and forcing some detainees to stand for hours or
days on
end with broken bones in their legs and feet.
Mohamed Ben Soud, "US CIA Torture Is Unfinished Business," Human
Rights Watch.
Incredibly, even former Office of Legal Counsel Deputy Assistant
Attorney General John Yoo, the author of the infamous "torture memos"
that gave the greenlight for "enhanced interrogation techniques," has
stated that many of
the abuses described in the Senate summary exceeded the authorizations
set out at that time.
The CIA black sites program operated from 2001 to 2009, which means
that the
five-year time period for charging a person with a crime has expired.
However, there is no statute of limitations for the filing of
"conspiracy charges," which are commonly used to put low-level drug
offenders in federal
prison for decades or lifetimes.
In addition, "it is not a bar to prosecutions for torture or
conspiracy to torture when there is a 'foreseeable risk that death or
serious bodily injury' (that) may result, or to prosecutions for the
types of sexual abuse
allegedly committed by the CIA program personnel," according to HRW.
In the case of the CIA black sites, it could easily be established
that a cadre of U.S. officials played a conspiratorial role in
creating and implementing the CIA program. According to HRW, this long
list of co-conspirators includes, but is not limited to Vice President
Dick Cheney,
President George W. Bush, Acting CIA General Counsel John Rizzo, Asst.
Attorney General for Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) Jay Bybee, OLC
Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, CIA director George Tenet,
Attorney General John Ashcroft, White House Counsel legal adviser
Alberto Gonzales, and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
In addition, said HRW's Laura Pitter, two CIA contractors should also
be investigated psychologists James Mitchell and John Jessen, who were
responsible for creating, enhancing and even personally implementing
many of
the torture techniques used at CIA black sites. The CIA psychologist
contractors earned no less than $80 million for their efforts, which
appear
to have pulled together interrogation, torture, humiliation and
isolation tactics and techniques from various military branches,
intelligence agencies, as well as U.S. supermaximum prisons.
Unfortunately, Pitter said, the Obama administration's Department of
Justice
has effectively refused to prosecute anyone involved directly or
indirectly
in the CIA black sites program. Former detainees have been
unsuccessful in bringing civil suits in U.S. courts because the Obama
administration has invoked grounds of state immunity and national
security to make sure lawsuits are dismissed even before plaintiffs
are able to introduce evidence
of abuse. New civil suits are underway, including an ACLU case filed
against
the Mitchell and Jessen.
To this day, the U.S. Justice Department maintains that its one and
only investigation into the CIA black sites program was
"extraordinarily thorough."
The investigation was led by U.S. Attorney John Durham, who looked
into 101
cases of detainee abuse and decided not to file charges against any of
the alleged perpetrators. He closed all of the 101 cases between 2011 and
survivors.
The assertion that Durham conducted a thorough investigation is
absurd, said
Pitter. For one thing, there were severe limitations on the evidence
available to Durham's team at the time, as this was before the
publication of the Senate summary. But one of the most glaring
inadequacies of Durham's
investigation was that no one on his team apparently bothered to speak
to a
single detainee torture survivor. "We know that he never spoke to the
detainees themselves," said Pitter. "He was just content to rely on
CIA documents."
On the other hand, organizations like HRW, the ACLU and Center for
Constitutional Rights, in addition to individual attorneys
representing plaintiffs, have conducted actual interviews of these torture
said.
Pitter was involved in interviewing some of the victims rendered by
the CIA
to Libya for torture. "You see retraumatization in these men when they
have
to recount what happened and remember the pain," she recounts.
"Emotional breakdowns can happen even years later, because many of
these guys have suppressed their memories for many years. They have
severe anxiety and flashbacks can overtake them at odd times."
A CIA cable included in the Senate Summary report described one
detainee as
"clearly a broken man... on the verge of a complete breakdown."
Pitter noted that the victims of CIA torture are incredibly grateful
that anyone seems to care about what happens to them. "They are truly
thankful for our efforts to try to get them some kind of justice," she
basic level.
Many torture survivors are plagued by flashbacks that can send them
spiraling into states of bleak despair, where memories of their
torture and
humiliation play over and over in their minds. Post-traumatic stress
syndrome, which is common in survivors of torture, war and other
traumatic events, can leave survivors unable to function at even the most
treat them.
Even more severe mental illnesses can develop in the aftermath of
torture, and average psychologists or psychiatrists are ill-equipped to
Specialists with in-depth knowledge of the treatment of severe torturea normal life again.
victims are even harder to come by in developing nations, from which
many of
the victims were abducted.
The Open Society Foundation revealed in 2013 that 54 governments
participated in some fashion in the CIA's rendition program, including
Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan,
Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech
Republic, Denmark, Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, Finland, Gambia,
Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, Indonesia, Iran,
Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Libya, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malawi,
Malaysia, Mauritania, Morocco, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Romania,
Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Syria,
Thailand, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United
Kingdom, Uzbekistan, Yemen and Zimbabwe. In some cases, an abducted
suspect
would be transferred to a secret CIA prison in a country like Romania
or Afghanistan, complete with CIA interrogators. In other cases, the
detainees
would be sent to prisons in Libya, where local police and intelligence
operatives would unleash their own forms of torture on the victims
without direct CIA "oversight."
In some cases, torture in the CIA's black sites resulted in death, as
in the
case of Gul Rahman, who died from hypothermia after being shackled in
Afghanistan, overnight, half-naked, to a concrete floor within a CIA site.
Permanent physical disability was common in many of the cases, as was
also true of Abu Ghraib.
In one of the more horrific cases reported, Abu Zubaydah was shot
three times during his capture. He was close to death, according to
the CIA officers at the detention site where he was held. The CIA
officers wrote up
a what-if scenario describing the possibility of Zubaydah suffering a
heart
attack or another serious life-threatening condition. "In the event
that [Abu Zubaydah] dies, we need to be prepared to act accordingly,
keeping in mind the liaison equities involving our hosts," noted the
CIA officers, who
then went on to add that if Zubaydah died, he would be cremated. The
memo went on to note that "regardless
"... In light of the planned psychological pressure techniques to be
implemented, we need to get reasonable assurances that he will remain
in isolation and incommunicado for the rest of his life."
The CIA officers went on to waterboard Zubaydah, inducing convulsions
and vomiting. During one waterboarding session, he became "completely
unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth."
Zubaydah survived, but it is hard to fathom that anyone who has
undergone this kind of torture would ever be able to live any semblance of
responsible for the detainees'
What is particularly ironic is that the U.S. was integrally involved
in creating the Convention Against Torture, but has failed to abide by
its own
treaty.
The Convention Against Torture makes it mandatory for governments to
prosecute suspects who are in their territory, regardless of where the
torture took place. The Geneva Conventions of 1949 also contain
similar provisions related to war crimes.
As such, the victims of torture at CIA black sites, or any number of
other U.S.-operated detention facilities in the post-911 era, should
have received
justice years ago in the form of compensation at the least-as well as
criminal charges filed against the perpetrators. Instead, they have
been left to suffer the emotional and physical consequences of the
abuse they endured without any compensation whatsoever from the United
States. However,
several other countries, NGOs and international courts of justice have
taken
action.
Most recently, in late February, the European Court of Human Rights
condemned Italy for the abduction of an imam by the CIA. Abu Omar, who
had received political asylum in Italy, was grabbed from a street in
Milan in
2003 as a part of the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program and
flown to Egypt for interrogation and torture. Omar was held for four
years without a
trial. In 2009, Italy convicted two Italians and 23 Americans for the
abduction, although all of the Americans were tried in absentia. The
court ordered Italy to pay over $127,000 in expenses and damages to
Omar and his wife.
Many other countries and NGOs have filed complaints, started
investigations
or pursued criminal investigations, including Spain, France,
Switzerland, Canada and Poland, among many others. Many of these cases
have revolved around trying to force the country in question to admit
it participated in the CIA's rendition program, with limited success.
Two detainees were actually successful with their charges that Poland
authorized a black site and that Polish authorities were directly
torture and unlawful rendition. A Polish court eventually ordered thewithheld."
country to pay Abu Zubaydah and another detainee roughly $112,000 in
damages.
Since the days of Abu Ghraib and the CIA black sites, laws have been
passed
to make it much more difficult for U.S. intelligence operatives or
soldiers
to legally commit acts of torture, Pitter said. Yet Guantanamo remains
open,
and the treatment of detainees is hardly transparent to the public.
Drone attacks continue, and the CIA and other intelligence agencies
have hardly disappeared from the realm of foreign intelligence
gathering and the detention of suspected terrorists. They are simply
far more careful about how they go about doing so and who knows about it.
This past February, the Pentagon began reluctantly to release a few
hundred
photos showing abuses of detainees held by U.S. forces in Iraq and
Afghanistan--out of at least 2,000 photos the ACLU has sought to have
released under the Freedom of Information Act. Just as in the case of
the Senate Summary on CIA black sites, in which a few hundred pages
were eventually released out of thousands, the ACLU's deputy legal
director Jameel Jaffer pronounced that "more important than the
disclosure is the fact that hundreds of photographs are still being
hooded captives.
The released images are, for the most part, closeup pictures of
unidentified
men bearing scars, cuts, bruises and other evidence of blunt-force trauma.
The Pentagon has taken redaction to a new art form, even to the point
of blacking out noses, eyes and other features, in a likely ploy to
make sure that victims of abuse and torture are unidentifiable.
According to expert briefs filed with the court, the images that still
have not been released are far more disturbing than those which have
been released, including images of sodomy and guns pointed at the heads of
The Pentagon releases are part of an exhaustive ACLU FOIA battle,
which has
been ongoing since 2003 and has resulted in what the ACLU calls a
torture database of more than 6,000 documents. The photos have been
the most difficult and contentious part of this battle, which finally
began to move forward when a Manhattan federal judge ordered the
Department of Defense to
disclose all photographs related to the ACLU's FOIA request.
"Unfortunately, America still hasn't accounted for its dark,
historical past. Not acknowledging for it in the past has had an
incredibly corrosive effect on the present day and has undermined the
ability of the U.S. to push
for human rights. It has done enormous damage," said HRW's Pitter.
The damage has taken many forms, not the least of which is the sheer
gall of
the U.S. government trying to persuade other governments to stop
torturing dissidents.
From an anthropological standpoint, one could also make the argument
that a
different kind of damage has taken place within American society.
Varied acts of torture are now commonly built into the plot lines of
innumerable television shows centered around glossy depictions of
American police and intelligence agencies. There, in the space of a
few minutes, torture is typically unleashed on a bad guy and the
intelligence hero saves the day with the information extracted.
The reality is that the results of torture have long since been proven
to be
both unreliable and misleading, and confessions derived from torture
are inadmissible in a court of law.
Torture has essentially become woven into the fabric of American
culture. It
is hard to foresee an immediate future for the United States in which
torture can be taken seriously for the horror and outright violation
of basic human dignity that it is. That bodes poorly for the survivors
of torture who are trying to seek restitution and apology, and also
for the modern-day incarnation of the American government, which seems
to have lost
sight of its moral center altogether.
Silja J.A. Talvi has been an essayist, author and investigative
journalist for the past 20 years. She has lived in Finland since 2011.
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/torture-culture-normal-america
n-society-still-incredibly-inhumane
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/silja-ja-talvi-0
[2] http://alternet.org
[3]
http://www.alternet.org/culture/major-poll-shocking-63-percent-america
ns-support-torture-would-they-if-they-understood
[4]
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/apr/10/cia-wont-torture-terro
r-suspects-regardless-presid/
[5]
https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/12/01/no-more-excuses/roadmap-justice-
cia-torture
[6]
https://www.hrw.org/video-photos/photograph/2015/12/01/2015-usa-tortur
e-devices
[7]
https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/12/01/us-cia-torture-unfinished-business
[8] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Has Torture Become ;
Normalized in Our Culture? It's Still Unbelievably Inhumane
[9] http://www.alternet.org/
[10] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
