Torture // Current

ITALIAN COURT CONVICTS 23 CIA KIDNAPPER/TORTURERS!

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/5/italian_prosecutor_in_case_against_cia In a... more

asherp
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3 days ago
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2 comments

Interview With The Men Who Stare At Goats Author and Psychic Spy Expert Jon Ronson

The Men Who Stare At Goats is a hilarious new film starring George Clooney, Jeff... more

AndreaKnoll
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3 days ago
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1 comment

Reverse Rendition, Anyone?

The headline screams: Italy convicts former CIA agents in rendition trial.... more

GeneKernan
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4 days ago
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CIA Agents Found Guilty of Italy Kidnapping

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8343123.stm "An Italian judge has convicted 23... more

rodstradamus
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4 days ago
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UK/USA made use of Uzbek torture Pt2

Former Brit Ambassador Craig Murray says UK and USA sent prisoners to Uzbek to be tortured

therealnewsnetwork
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5 days ago
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0 comments

Documents Detail Conditions Found at CIA Jails

the FBI and CIA were totally separate, and possessive re:their turf, but that changed... more

ryan8566
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8 days ago
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Brutal torture, beatings and extra-judicial killings by Palestinian security forces in West Bank

Britain’s human rights anti-Israel activists are intent on arresting Israelis for ‘war crimes’ – so much so that Israelis who have played prominent roles in military operations to defend their country against Palestinian terror attacks cannot set foot in Britain without running the risk of being thus arrested. Two days ago, Israel’s deputy foreign minister Danny Ya’alon was the latest to be targeted by such a move during a brief visit to London.

Yet Britain is complicit in the torture of Palestinians – by other Palestinians. So much so that – surreally – Britain is now sending British police and intelligence officers to the West Bank to try to stop a wave of torture by Palestinian security forces funded by UK taxpayers. The paper reported:

Yesterday a senior official from the semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority (PA), which runs the West Bank and its security agencies, admitted for the first time that torture, beatings and extra-judicial killings have been rife for the past two years, with hundreds of torture allegations and at least four murders in custody, the most recent in August.

... Support for the new department follows the disclosure by The Mail on Sunday in January that Britain spends £20million a year funding the forces responsible for the abuse. Most of their victims are accused of involvement with Hamas, the radical Islamist party that seized power through violence in the Gaza Strip in 2007. The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank is controlled by the rival Fatah party.

... In the region’s largest city, Nablus, Nasser al-Shaer, a former Manchester academic who was deputy prime minister in the short-lived Hamas Palestinian Authority government elected in 2006, said many of those released from detention in recent months were telling the same story – of torture, including beatings, being suspended from the ceiling and electric shocks.

Fatah are of course the party that Britain and the US represent as 'moderate' and legitimate partners in the 'peace process'.

Might we now see moves by 'human rights' activists to arraign British officials and politicians for having funded the torture of Palestinians by Palestinians? And if not, why not?

As Tom Gross observes:

Meanwhile, as Palestinian detainees are being tortured to death in Palestinian Authority jails, Palestinian prisoners (including convicted terrorists) in custody in Israel are studying for Israeli university degrees (at Israeli taxpayers’ expense) and also given cable TV, IPods and dental treatment – but international human rights groups criticize Israel, whose deputy foreign minister and former ambassador to Washington Danny Ayalon narrowly escaped being arrested in Britain for ‘war crimes’ yesterday.

And the world community that routinely and harshly condemns Israel even when Israel hasn’t done anything wrong, has failed to condemn the Katyusha rocket fired from Lebanon which narrowly missed an Israeli town last night. It is a strange world.Britain’s human rights anti-Israel activists are intent on arresting Israelis for... more

bielski
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12 days ago
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2 comments

Music Stars Demand Records On Bush Admin's Use Of Music For Torture

A group of prominent musicians are joining a campaign to close Guantanamo Bay and... more

atomiclegion
added this
18 days ago
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3 comments

Rage Against Guantanamo - Musicians call for closure

FROM THE NEWS BLOG: This week a group of musicians launched Close Gitmo Now, a... more

afitzgerald
added this
16 days ago
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31 comments

Torture Songs Spur Protest by Musicians

dozens of artists filed a Freedom of Information Act; will launch formal protest of... more

ryan8566
added this
18 days ago
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0 comments

Woman in W.Va. torture case says she lied

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - A black woman whose allegations of horrific abuse helped put... more

tcmfan08
added this
18 days ago
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0 comments

15 ways to be tortured..or do the torturing, either way...take notes

This post is fit for Halloween. I hadn't even heard of some of the torture methods on... more

Skyscraper08
added this
20 days ago
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0 comments

Children tortured, killed in Nigera. Why? For being Witches.

We've all heard the stories about witch trials: A man or woman is accused of being a... more

notsafeforwork
added this
21 days ago
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0 comments

British Court Orders Release of Gitmo Documents Showing Torture by US

An American document that allegedly describes the torture of a former Guantanamo Bay... more

Future_America
added this
21 days ago
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2 comments

Something is Wrong in America

Something is wrong in America and in a government of, by and for the people, we're the... more

uspublius
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22 days ago
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50 comments

Iran, the alleged death of Khamenei

The tyrant is alive or dead? Dictatorships always have something grotesque, just look... more

hyperion74
added this
23 days ago
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0 comments

Iran, la morte presunta di Khamenei

Il tiranno è vivo o morto? Le dittature hanno sempre un aspetto grottesco, basta... more

hyperion74
added this
24 days ago
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0 comments

Democrats stop release of abuse photos

House and Senate conferees last week approved legislation that would preempt the Freedom of Information Act and permit the Secretary of Defense to withhold from release photographs and other visual media if he determines that their public disclosure “would endanger citizens of the United States, members of the United States Armed Forces, or employees of the United States Government deployed outside the United States.”

The new provision, contained in the 2010 Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, was adopted to thwart a successful FOIA lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union seeking release of certain photographs documenting the abuse of detainees held in U.S. military custody. A federal appeals court ruled (pdf) last year that the unclassified photographs are not exempt from the FOIA and must be released.

The Obama Administration, prodded by Senators Lieberman and Graham and with the support of some senior military officials, petitioned (pdf) the Supreme Court last August to overturn the ruling. “The disclosure of those photographs could reasonably be expected to endanger the lives or physical safety of United States military and civilian personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the Administration argued. But Congress acted first, and Solicitor General Elena Kagan asked the Court (pdf) on October 8 to suspend its consideration of the petition.

Meanwhile, a new military policy prohibits reporters embedded with forces in eastern Afghanistan from photographing U.S. troops killed in action, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press revealed last week. See “Afghanistan Command Confirms Policy Against Images of U.S. Dead” by John M. Donnelly, CQ Politics, October 14, 2009.

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Do they think they're fooling anyone? Doesn't everyone already know that we torture people? Doesn't al Qaeda already use that as a recruiting technique? The only reason to bar these photos from release is to save some fascist's ass. No surprise that it's the Democrats doing it.House and Senate conferees last week approved legislation that would preempt the... more

Mulcahey
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25 days ago
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Panama faces probe over alleged torture

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has been asked to investigate whether Panama tortured an Ecuadorian citizen who was being held as an illegal immigrant, an official hemispheric human rights organization said.

Jesus Tranquilino Velez Loor was arrested November 11, 2002, and deported to Ecuador on September 10, 2003. During that time, he was held without receiving procedural guarantees, the right to be heard and the right to present a defense, said the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

"The case also involves the lack of investigation of complaints of torture presented by Mr. Velez Loor before the Panamanian authorities, as well as the inhumane conditions of detention under which he was held in several Panamanian penitentiaries," the human rights commission said in a release Tuesday.

The human rights panel, which is part of the 35-nation Organization of American States, said it referred the case to the court last week because Panama did not adopt sufficient measures to address issues raised in a previous commission report.

Velez Loor "was sentenced to a prison term for having repeatedly entered Panama illegally. ... Panamanian law provides that foreign nationals, who repeatedly enter Panama, without the necessary papers, will be imprisoned for two years and then deported," Panama said in a 2006 report.

Velez Loor admitted he had gone into Panama without proper papers or visas.

The commission said it received an e-mailed complaint from Velez Loor on February 10, 2004, "in which he claims to have undergone torture, forced isolation, and mistreatment at the hands of Panamanian police officers at two Panamanian detention centers without being given the opportunity to defend himself, without the benefit of any court of law, without being allowed to make a telephone call and while being deprived of all medical care."

Panama denied those allegations in the 2006 human rights commission report.

Officials at the Panamanian embassy in Washington did not return a telephone request Tuesday from CNN for comment on the latest development.

The human rights commission consists of seven members who act in a personal capacity, without representing any country, and who are elected by the OAS General Assembly.WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has been asked to... more

tcmfan08
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26 days ago
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No Mercy and Ample Ways to Die

Whenever people complain about violence in video games, my riposte generally involves the “Saw” film series, and that usually shuts them up pretty quickly.

In 2007 a minor controversy broke out when games-ratings boards in the United States and Britain effectively banned the original version of Manhunt 2, a survival horror game by Rockstar. After diving into the gut bucket to examine depictions of human mutilation in Manhunt 2 and “Saw II,” I found that the movie was far more realistic and disturbingly explicit.

But now comes the first Saw video game, released recently by Konami for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles. (A downloadable Windows version is slated for release later this month.) After spending more than 10 hours in perhaps the most depressing, least redeeming virtual environment I have ever visited, I can report that the Saw game proudly represents the franchise established by its big-screen predecessors.

If being tormented by a crazed killer named Jigsaw as you stumble around a dank, not-so-abandoned old insane asylum filled with freaks and shotgun traps is your idea of a good time, Saw is the game for you. On the other hand, if a highly polished, varied and interesting experience is what you’re looking for, Saw is not it.

Those two ideas are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but Saw is far more successful in conveying atmosphere than it is in delivering the intellectual and motor-response engagement of a fine game.

But does the game really qualify as “torture porn,” the moniker attached to films like “Hostel,” “Saw” and their sequels? Not really. As with more traditional pornography, live action with real actors is still far more graphic than anything whipped up by a computer. When it comes to tearing people apart and watching them writhe and howl in agony as they die in gruesome ways, Hollywood special-effects wizards are still far more advanced than digital-game technologies.

In the Saw game players rummage around in search of clues inside cadavers and toilet bowls full of used syringes. Human heads are routinely squashed, ripped off bodies and blown away by explosives. And yet the player is never treated to the sort of lush, saturated close-ups of oozing, gaping wounds that inspired critics to compare the films with sexual pornography in the first place.

Developers and publishers often lament that video games are unfairly held to a stricter standard than films when it comes to explicit content. That there is a higher standard for games is undoubtedly true. Movies routinely win commercial release with R ratings while including sexual and violent material that would be considered unacceptable in a game.

But is such a double standard unfair? Games, after all, are interactive. And with the power of interactivity come responsibilities on the part of writers, designers and developers that go beyond those thrust upon novelists and film directors. Perhaps part of that responsibility means consciously refraining from combining interactivity with the most explicit graphics possible.

With the Saw game, Zombie Studios seems to understand that. As gory as it may be, the game seems to exhibit a modicum of restraint on the part of its designers and artists.

But for all that, what makes a great game is not how it looks but how it plays. And it is quite clear that the Zombie team spent far more time on the visuals than on the play. From a game-play perspective Saw isn’t horrible, but it is not particularly interesting in more than a few spots. There are a handful of puzzle types, like lock picking and circuit rewiring, that are repeated over and over. And how many shotgun traps must one man disarm? Dozens? Hundreds?

Moreover, there may not have been a clumsier, less-responsive combat system in a major game in the last year. Every swing of a baseball bat, pipe or mannequin arm feels as if it is being forced through molasses.Whenever people complain about violence in video games, my riposte generally involves... more

hpseaton
added this
27 days ago
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0 comments

tagged w/ Torture

ITALIAN COURT CONVICTS 23 CIA KIDNAPPER/TORTURERS!

Interview With The Men Who Stare At Goats Author and Psychic Spy Expert Jon Ronson

Reverse Rendition, Anyone?

CIA Agents Found Guilty of Italy Kidnapping

UK/USA made use of Uzbek torture Pt2

Documents Detail Conditions Found at CIA Jails

Brutal torture, beatings and extra-judicial killings by Palestinian security forces in West Bank

Music Stars Demand Records On Bush Admin's Use Of Music For Torture

Rage Against Guantanamo - Musicians call for closure

Torture Songs Spur Protest by Musicians

Woman in W.Va. torture case says she lied

15 ways to be tortured..or do the torturing, either way...take notes

Children tortured, killed in Nigera. Why? For being Witches.

British Court Orders Release of Gitmo Documents Showing Torture by US

Something is Wrong in America

Iran, the alleged death of Khamenei

Iran, la morte presunta di Khamenei

Democrats stop release of abuse photos

Panama faces probe over alleged torture

No Mercy and Ample Ways to Die

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