Ever since the torture report was released last week, U.S. television outlets have endlessly featured American torturers and torture proponents. But there was one group that was almost never heard from: the victims of their torture, not even the ones recognized by the U.S. Government itself as innocent, not even the family members of the ones they tortured to death.
Ever since the torture report was released last week, U.S. television outlets have endlessly featured American torturers and torture proponents. But there was one group that was almost never heard from: the victims of their torture, not even the ones recognized by the U.S. Government itself as innocent, not even the family members of the ones they tortured to death. Whether by design (most likely) or effect, this inexcusable omission radically distorts coverage.
Whenever America is forced to confront its heinous acts, the central strategy is to disappear the victims, render them invisible. That’s what robs them of their humanity: it’s the process of dehumanization. That, in turns, is what enables American elites first to support atrocities, and then, when forced to reckon with them, tell themselves that – despite some isolated and well-intentioned bad acts – they are still really good, elevated, noble, admirable people. It’s hardly surprising, then, that a Washington Post/ABC News poll released this morning found that a large majority of Americans believe torture is justified even when you call it “torture.” Not having to think about actual human victims makes it easy to justify any sort of crime.
That’s the process by which the reliably repellent Tom Friedman seized on the torture report to celebrate America’s unique greatness. “We are a beacon of opportunity and freedom, and also [] these foreigners know in their bones that we do things differently from other big powers in history,” the beloved-by-DC columnist wrote after reading about forced rectal feeding and freezing detainees to death. For the opinion-making class, even America’s savage torture is proof of its superiority and inherent Goodness: “this act of self-examination is not only what keeps our society as a whole healthy, it’s what keeps us a model that others want to emulate, partner with and immigrate to.” Friedman, who himself unleashed one of the most (literally) psychotic defenses of the Iraq War, ended his torture discussion by approvingly quoting John McCain on America’s enduring moral superiority: “Even in the worst of times, ‘we are always Americans, and different, stronger, and better than those who would destroy us.'”
This self-glorifying ritual can be sustained only by completely suppressing America’s victims. If you don’t hear from the human beings who are tortured, it’s easy to pretend nothing truly terrible happened. That’s how the War on Terror generally has been “reported” for 13 years and counting: by completely silencing those whose lives are destroyed or ended by U.S. crimes. That’s how the illusion gets sustained.
Thus, we sometimes hear about drones (usually to celebrate the Great Kills) but almost never hear from their victims: the surviving family members of innocents whom the U.S. kills or those forced to live under the traumatizing regime of permanently circling death robots. We periodically hear about the vile regimes the U.S. props up for decades, but almost never from the dissidents and activists imprisoned, tortured and killed by those allied tyrants. Most Americans have heard the words “rendition” and “Guantanamo” but could not name a single person victimized by them, let alone recount what happened to them, because they almost never appear on American television.
It would be incredibly easy, and incredibly effective, for U.S. television outlets to interview America’s torture victims. There is certainly no shortage of them. Groups such as the ACLU, Center for Constitutional Rights, Reprieve, and CAGE UK represent many of them. Many are incredibly smart and eloquent, and have spent years contemplating what happened to them and navigating the aftermath on their lives.
I’ve written previously about the transformative experience of meeting and hearing directly from the victims of the abuses by your own government. That human interaction converts an injustice from an abstraction into a deeply felt rage and disgust. That’s precisely why the U.S. media doesn’t air those stories directly from the victims themselves: because it would make it impossible to maintain the pleasing fairy tales about “who we really are.”
When I was in Canada in October, I met Maher Arar (pictured above) for the second time, went to his home, had breakfast with his wife (also pictured above) and two children. In 2002, Maher, a Canadian citizen of Syrian descent who worked as an engineer, was traveling back home to Ottawa when he was abducted by the U.S. Government at JFK Airport, held incommunicado and interrogated for weeks, then “rendered” to Syria where the U.S. arranged to have him brutally tortured by Assad’s regime. He was kept in a coffin-like cell for 10 months and savagely tortured until even his Syrian captors were convinced that he was completely innocent. He was then uncermoniously released back to his life in Canada as though nothing had happened.
When he sued the U.S. government, subservient U.S. courts refused even to hear his case, accepting the Obama DOJ’s claim that it was too secret to safely adjudicate. The Canadian government released the findings of its investigation, publicly apologized for its role, and paid him $9 million. He used some of the money to start a political newspaper, which has since closed. He became an eloquent opponent of both the U.S. War on Terror and the Assad regime which tortured him as part of it.
But all you have to do is spend five minutes talking to him to see that he has never really recovered from being snatched from his own life and savagely tortured at the behest of the U.S. Government that still holds itself out as the Leader of the Free World. Part of him is still back in the torture chamber in Syria, and likely always will be.
Nobody could listen to Maher Arar speak and feel anything but disgust and outrage toward the U.S. Government – not just the Bush administration which kidnapped him and sent him to be tortured, but the Obama administration which protected them and blocked him from receiving justice, and the American media that turned a blind eye toward it, and the majority of the American public that supports this. But that’s exactly why we don’t hear from him: he isn’t on CNN or Meet the Press or Morning Joe to make clear what Michael Hayden and John Yoo really did and what the U.S. government under a Democratic president continues to shield.
There are hundreds if not thousands of Maher Arars the U.S. media could easily and powerfully interview. McClatchy this week detailed the story of Khalid al Masri, a German citizen whom the U.S. Government abducted in Macedonia, tortured, and then dumped on a road when they decided he wasn’t guilty of anything (US courts also refused to hear his case on secrecy grounds). The detainees held without charges, tortured, and then unceremoniously released from Guantanamo and Bagram are rarely if ever heard from on U.S. television, even when the U.S. Government is forced to admit that they were guilty of nothing.
This is not to say that merely putting these victims on television would fundamentally change how these issues are perceived. Many Americans would look at the largely non-white and foreign faces recounting their abuses, or take note of their demonized religion and ethnicity, and react for that reason with indifference or even support for what was done to them.
And one could easily imagine such interviews quickly degenerating into a blame-the-victim spectacle. When Fareed Zakaria this week interviewed former Guantanamo detainee (and current detainee rights advocate) Moazzem Begg, Zakaria demanded that Begg condemn ISIS even though Begg kept explaining that he was “abused cruelly, inhumanely and degradingly” by the U.S. Government, that “pictures of my children are waved in front of me while I’m being beaten and tortured and abused by people who claimed to be the bastions of freedom and democracy and human rights,” and that “whatever the situation was, the Taliban and the ISIS, they didn’t torture me. They didn’t put me into dungeons. They didn’t beat me. They didn’t threaten to, you know, abuse my family. They didn’t do that to me. So I can only talk to my experience.”
What this glaring omission in coverage does more than anything else is conclusively expose the utter fraud of the U.S. media’s claims to “objectivity” and “neutrality.” Outlets like The Washington Post and NPR still justify their refusal to call these torture tactics “torture” by invoking precepts of “neutrality”: we have to show all views, we can’t take sides, etc.
But that’s pure deceit. They don’t show all sides. They systematically and quite deliberately exclude the victims of the very policies of the U.S. Government they pretend to cover. And they do that because including those victims would be too informative, would provide too much information, would be too enlightening. It would, for many people, shatter the myths of American Goodness and the conceit that even when Americans do heinous things, they do it with Goodness and Freedom in their hearts, with a guaranteed and permanent status as superior. At the very least, it would make it impossible for many people to deny to themselves the utter savagery and sadism carried out in their names.
Keeping those victims silenced and invisible is the biggest favor the U.S. television media could do for the government over which they claim to act as watchdogs. So that’s what they do: dutifully, eagerly and with very rare exception.
Photo: Fred Chartrand/AP
If you watch this video from 39 minutes and 13 seconds point you will see how the US Government controls. pre-packs, scripts and distributes the news.
Download the video and share it with as many people as possible
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WNUIgYp2Bo
“A Washington Post/ABC News poll released this morning found that a large majority of Americans believe torture is justified even when you call it “torture.”
Everyone of these “citizens” should be immediately taken to a black site(gulag)and waterboarded, among other things. Then we’ll see what their opinion is.
make the victims visible – good, but please rell us who is it on the foto? fotocredit only points to the fotografer, not to the fotographed
“One mans terrorist is anothers freedom fighter.Do you believe their is no reason for Muslim or whomever resistance against the modern forces of globalization,and the collapse of their societies in turn?I mean,they should take it up the chute and like it?Isis is just the same old cause and effect,as we repeat history repeatedly.” Dahoit
I do not believe killing teenagers in a discotheque is “resistance”. (Dolphinarium discotheque, 2001)
I do not believe killing civilians in a restaurant is “resistance”. (Sbarro restaurant, 2001)
I do not believe killing kids in a school is “resistance”. (Peshawar, 2014)
I do not believe massacring ethnic groups is “resistance” (Mosul, 2014)
I do not believe kidnapping kids and enslave them is “resistance” (Nigeria, 2014)
I do not believe killing civilians in a community center is “resistance”(Buenos Aires, 1994)
I do not believe blowing up a civilian building is “resistance” (New York, 2001)
Those who believe those crimes should be classified as “resistance” are as guilty as the criminals and should be named for what they are: uncivilized scumbags!!
Neither do I believe that having greatly surpassed the genocidal rate (on a societal prorated scale) of Nazi Germany during World War II is a “freedom-loving” thing, nor that because not a single “freedom of speech” newspaper publishes or questions their own government that makes it “the responsible thing to do” ™, …
Do you notice you are missing quite a few massacres there?
Do you really believe that state, high-tech terrorism endorsed by democratic, “freedom-loving”, “civilized” nations is fine, but terrorism by some crazy, “uncivilized”, fundamentalist lowlifes isn’t?
I am not sure what your point is. Angela Merkel should be held responsible for what the NAZIS did? Jimmy Carter should be held responsible for the My Lai Massacre? What is your point exactly? Tell me the terrorist acts that Obama or Hollande or Merkel are responsible for so I can start a peaceful demonstration in Washington in Paris or Berlin.
In case you are honestly asking that question …
What I mean is that the prorated genocide of the abusive invasion of the U.S. government and their f#ck the EU friends (including Germany) and acolytes in Muslim countries has greatly surpassed Nazi’s (including people exterminated in concentration camps, people who died due to famines, …).
When a nation/people chooses to start a war with another, it does it not only militarily, but economically and morally as a society/people. As a courtesy to truth, in order to try to enlighten (people who apparently think/talk like) you, here is the public data to check it yourself:
// __ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties
~
Third Reich in World War II (1939):
Population of Germany: 84,000,000
Deaths of German people: 8,000,000
~
Over 60 million people were killed, which was over 3% of the 1939 world population (est. 2 billion).
~
(Third Reich’s craze): 65,000,000 millions/8% prorated genocide: 8,125,000
~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~
// __ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
~
For troops in the U.S.-led multinational coalition, the death toll is carefully tracked and updated daily, and the names and photographs of those killed in action as well as in accidents have been published widely. A total of 4,491 U.S. service members were killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2014.[1]
~
// __ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_Census
~
US 2010 Census: Total population: 308,745,538
Total Deaths of US troops: 4,491
death as % of population US total (population/deaths): =(4491/308745538)*100 = 0.0014546%
~
prorated genocide as total deaths divided by the % of US deaths: 110,000 / 0.0014546
prorated genocide: 75,622,164
~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~
A simple division will let you see what I mean. That I will leave for you as homework. I assume you remember how to work with fractions.
~
quotient of prorated genocides by (US / Nazis) = 75,622,164/8,125,000
~
After you check that data and do that simple division you will see that the prorated genocide of the USG and their friends has been more than 9 times greater than the Nazis’ …
Now, not that Nazis had a “good side”, but notice that I am using conservative estimates when it comes to them and the lowest figures when it comes to “freedom-loving” massacres and abuses, because they are being done for the “greater good” (TM), right?
Do whichever “adjusting” and “considerations” about that data and still, how could you rationalize it?
Let’s not even go into the ethical dimension of those “simple” arithmetic calculations. When Nazis thought of themselves as the “chosen ones” and started doing their “freedom-loving” thing, they didn’t invade the poorest countries on Earth and messed with “savages” in Africa, Asia and South America. They threw instead their party home and went head on against the Red Army charging on even after the Red Army raised the killing ratio 1:1.
Why is it that the USG becomes “responsible” (TM) when it comes to countries such as Russia or China? How “responsible” is it exactly abusing people whom you very well and calculatingly know can’t defend themselves on an equal basis?
Could you explain to me now how is it that “freedom of speech” media in “‘the’ land of ‘the’ ‘free'” (which has the (second?) highest incarceration rate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_populations_by_country) doesn’t question any of this? In fact, all they do is talk about royal babies, the last time some celebrity farted, …?
I know, I know it is “different” (TM) when “we” do …
In ignoring the point of view of the victims, the US media is doing its job effectively. It does not function to influence against American hegemony, but to influence for it. As former US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski (yes, Mika’s father) wrote in “The Grand Chessboard” when discussing the effects of our influential educational, political and media institutions:
“…As in the case of the domestic American system…hegemony involves a complex structure of interlocking institutions and procedures, designed to generate consensus and obscure asymmetries in power and influence. American global supremacy is thus buttressed by an elaborate system of alliances and coalitions that literally span the globe.”
As for the debates in mainstream media, they are propped up to establish the acceptable parameters of discussion as to not undermine American hegemony. So even when interviewing a tortured victim, Fareed Zakaria must do his job and reinforce certain values in order to keep the conversation (and the conclusions to which one would inevitably derive) within the acceptable parameters. So just as one is concluding that institutions of torture are evil and unacceptable, you are reminded that ISIS is evil.
Thy tell you what to think about, then how to think about it.
Among the most powerful people in the US, are the social, military and political psychologists, sociologists and statisticians.
They spend every living minute dissecting, studying and analyzing the collective mind of America, and from past behavioral precedents, use algorithms to extrapolate likely behavioural responses that could be expected from the American mind when certain realities are ‘created’ on the ground. The media is their other hand. And the two hands seldom fail to sherpard the collective mind of the nation.
They know the power of fear. And exploit it to the fullest. We now know 911 could have been prevented but was allowed to happen. Because without it, the seeds of fear would have no soil to germinate their poison on. And when 911 happened, the fear guaranteed the collective consent to torture. But the real divident of that consent was its implication for accountability for actually torturing people.
If Americans as a nation agreed to torture before the tortures actually took place, then who would dare single out a few psychopathic individuals profiled in the Torture Report for prosecution for executing the sadistic acts when the majority of Americans granted them the permission to do so on their behalf to begin with? That is really why you will not see a single prosecution of the psychopaths. And as long as Americans believe that ISIS is probably hiding somewhere in Death Valley, in the company of Big Foot, you are likely to see more blank checks for torture from the American public.
If the polls cited are to be believed, America granted permission to torture detainees , and now, continue to agree that torture is justified. The tortures then, are truly the will of the American people carried out by those with severe enough moral deficits to lack the capacity to weigh torture as a practice against the values their own nation is founded upon.
Looking into the mirror, can we all see a Mitchell in all of us? An Alfreda? Maybe not. Because what we see may be an image of ourselves too ugly to admit to. Meanwhile we continue to redefine ourselves in the most tragic of ways as we quietly part with our former noble self: the once majestic America most of the world once knew…
So pause before you lament the official reluctance to prosecute.We all have in a way, waterboarded and rectally fed the detainees. And are giving a not to current tortured of thousands of innocent Americans with exotic and revolutionary weapons systems in the continuation of the same diabolical mind control tortures.
And may the spirit of Christ be with all this season indeed…
A few news organizations including the Intercept have published images from my http://www.detaineeproject.org. To my knowledge the only place where one can see the faces and hear the stories of the victims of this policy. No mainstream American news organizations have contacted me.
Please also view my post: http://instagram.com/p/wd6KaPwGmF/ where, by my calculations, there are well over 100,000 with stories similar to the ones I heard in 2006 & 2007. If there is more evidence to support or refute my estimate I would be interested in hearing it.
From Democracy Now:
Should Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld & CIA Officials Be Tried for Torture? War Crimes Case Filed in Germany
Yes! Let the victims have a voice!
I Grew Up in Guantanamo and Time Has Left Me Behind. Fahd Ghazy has been illegally detained at the base since he was 17 years old.
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/i-grew-guantanamo-and-time-has-left-me-behind
What the hell are they always feigning imminence of danger. I’ve realized the same phenomenon at the shootings of Black citizens. No danger before the shooting, no danger when the victims were already dead, but the cops keep on … When there is no danger, then they create danger: 9/11.
It’s time people started taking Fox News seriously.
Another article by Dr. Colin Ross.
http://www.cchrint.org/2009/09/03/cia-mind-control-doctors/
Glenn,
You are making a mistake and blaming the Media.
The fact is, they are a propaganda arm of the rich and powerful. They would not be serving their owners and shareholders if they were to misuse their opportunity to broadcast by willfully sabotaging the conditions of employment. Whoever gave you the idea that they are any ethical than the terrorists they report about?
I used to be a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers – till I read the lies they wrote about the collapse of the WTC # 7. Since then I have canceled my membership. I cannot associate myself with people and organizations with no ethics.
-J
This is an oversimplification.
Things are a lot more complex.
As for Shariah, read Dr. Abou El Fadl’s book, Reasoning with God.
http://www.amazon.com/Reasoning-God-Reclaiming-Shariah-Modern/dp/0742552322/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418956318&sr=1-1&keywords=reasoning+with+god
The Nation alleging that CIA’s conduct was human medical experimentation, among other things.
http://www.thenation.com/article/193185/cia-didnt-just-torture-it-experimented-human-beings#
I have often pointed out that the terms “Islamic Terrorism” is an oxymoron as there is nothing Islamic about harming the non-combatants, including off-duty soldiers.
I have also pointed out that the term, “Islamists” is a made-up term that is politically manipulated and whose definition is fluid and people use it to defame even those Muslims who are peaceful simply because they disagree with them, or because these peaceful Muslims are simply engaged in some sort of lawful activism.
Moreover, no matter how good people’s intentions are, but when they use these terms, they nevertheless implicate Islam.
Well, here’s an interesting news report:
at http://www.dawn.com/news/1151634/russian-mp-urges-ban-on-use-of-islamist-militant-in-mass-media
I understand your point, but I will continue to speak of “Islamic terrorism,” for the same reason I write of the “Catholic Inquisition” or “Christian terrorists” that blow up abortion clinics. These people are Catholic/Christian if they say they are.
Reza Aslan is, I think, correct here, my emphasis:
They can be called, “Terrorists Who Claim to be Muslims”, or “Those Muslims Who Resort to Terrorism in the Name of Their Islam”, or “Muslims Who Commit Terrorism”, etc.
The word, “Islamic”, to us, means “According to Islam”.
While “Islam” is the name of the religion, a person who adheres to Islam is called a “Muslim”, not “Islamic”.
This is different from Christianity, where the word, “Christian”, is used both for “According to Christianity”, and to a person who adheres to Christianity.
Perhaps, that’s why many non-Muslims use the word “Islamic” to refer to a person.
Obviously, I can’t force anyone to use whatever term they feel comfortable with. However, there’s no question that the term, “Islamic Terrorism”, implicates all of Islam, as we have often seen in the form of increased Islamophobia.
The term, “Islamist”, is very much politically manipulated and does not have clear and consistent meaning. People are throwing around this term carelessly, as Tarek Fatah does all the time, even to refer to those Muslims who are peaceful and law-abiding activists socially and/or politically, but happen to disagree with Tarek Fatah.
Often, I have seen people, like Pat Buchanan, use the term, “Islam”, in one sentence and then use the term “Islamism” in another to convey the same meaning.
So, a common non-Muslim reading him, and others, think that the two terms mean the same.
I have seen people coming out to protest against the building of mosques and centers. They do not make any distinction between the made-up entity called, “Islamism” and “Islam”.
An “Islamist” is simply a Muslim with whom one disagrees. It is not used for those who are helping the West but nevertheless use Islam politically.
For example, the rulers of Saudi Arabia are not called “Islamists” by many Westerners, not that I have ever seen or heard, though their politicization of Islam is quite profound and their Islam (Puritanical Salfism) has infected many other forms of Islam around the world.
The bottom line for many Muslims, like myself, is this: ALL of Islam has been successfully implicated, by those Muslims who are evildoers as well as by many non-Muslims, and average Muslims are paying the price.
So, my attempts to post comments, like these ones, is simply to do our best to fix that, knowing fully well that the tide against us is extremely huge.
But we do shudder and cringe whenever we hear or read terms, such as, “Islamism”, “Islamists”, “Jihadism”, “Jihadis”, “Islamic Terrorism”, as our foreparents used to cringe when they were mischievously referred to as “Mohammedans”, and their religion was called, “Mohammadanism”.
Not on my behalf. Whenever there is a person or group who is demonized, I always think let’s have a look what it is really about. If people would be more relaxed, …
I get that, I do, and I agree. My point only went to the word “Islamic.” My grasp of the proper way to employ the word “Jihad” is too limited for me to comfortably use it, and whatever its doctrinal connotations really are it has been bastardized by anti-Muslim fanatics.
I think the easiest way to solve this problem is to divide muslims into two groups, those who believe in sharia law punishments and those who do not.
Dearest Mona ~
>”Reza Aslan is, I think, correct here, my emphasis:”
Nonsense. By that standard, Dick Cheney would be a law-abiding patriotic American. The standard of ‘Islam’ is measured by the utterances of it’s Founder. Heed not the idle contention of those who maintain the divine melodies contained therein can never be a testimony to the common people, inasmuch as they neither grasp their meaning nor appreciate their value.
Likewise, the faith of no man can be conditioned by anyone but his-self… else how could he be called to account for his conduct?
-Bahá’u’lláh, The Kitáb-i-Íqán, pp. 210-211
Reza Aslan seems to be more of a historian of religions than someone who has specialized in Islamic sciences, such as interpretation of the Qur’an and the Prophetic Traditions, Islamic Law, etc.
I’ve seen him lacking even the most basic knowledge of the Qur’an that one would reasonably expect even from a non-scholar who has taken the time to analyze its verses on a particular topic.
But he does have a point; if someone claims to be a Muslim, we can certainly accept that and consider them a Muslim on the surface.
However, this does not necessarily mean that some of their actions are Islamic, that is, according to the teachings of Islam.
So, if they harm non-combatants, and claim that it is Islamic, are we obligated to accept that at its face value and say that, yes, if you claim your action is Islamic we have no choice but to accept it, or should we provide our own analysis of how we do not accept their claim, that their action is un-Islamic?
I am convinced that harming non-combatants is un-Islamic, and I am comfortable that I can refute the claims of those Muslims who harm non-combatants, that their actions are Islamic.
So while they are entitled to claim their ugly acts to be Islamic, I am entitled to reject their claim, and I am quite familiar with the gymnastics they use to interpret the Qur’an and Prophetic Traditions.
When Reza Aslan says: “…a Muslim is whoever says is a Muslim. Anyone who says they are working according to Islam, we have to take their word for it. So, while it is true that ISIS doesn’t represent Islam because as I said nobody represents Islam, it’s equally true that ISIS is Muslim for the simple fact that they call themselves Muslim.”
I have a huge problem with this: “Anyone who says they are working according to Islam, we have to take their word for it.”
No, we DO NOT have to take their word for it!
There are no ifs and buts about is.
We consider ISIL’s actions to be Un-Islamic, period!
There’s absolutely no compromise on that!
He may have a point when he says: “nobody represents Islam”.
However, one can suggest that the Qur’an represents Islam, from there one can certainly provide their analysis of the Qur’an on certain topics and people reading it can make up their own minds; they can accept one analysis over another.
So, they can examine the analyses of these evildoers and then read the analyses that refute their claims and accept/reject whatever pleases them or makes sense to them.
When Aslan says: “it’s equally true that ISIS is Muslim for the simple fact that they call themselves Muslim”
We can certainly say that if they utter, “There is no god but The God, and Muhammad is His Messenger”, they fulfil the most basic requirement of entering into the club.
However, a scholar such as Aslan should know the difference between a person’s claim and their actions, that there is a huge difference between being a Muslim and being “In Islam”.
Reza Aslan is a sincere person, but he needs to know the difference between a healthy body part that fits nicely with the body in which it resides and cancerous tumors that do not belong to that body.
Not all interpretations of Islam are valid, as he has said often.
We can only communicate when we agree on the definitions of words.
This is somewhat easier when we are talking to ourselves, but when we are communicating with other people the debate tends to devolve from ideas to who gets to control the authoritative definition of words.
It’s as if ideas stand or fall not on their own merit, but on which grunts and glyphs are used to represent those ideas. Symbols eclipse their meaning and debate becomes not a forum for ideas and education, but a game of Scrabble where whoever controls the dictionary wins.
Art and propaganda exist in the space between ideas and the grunts and glyphs that represent those ideas.
There is the label, the jar, and what we put in the jar. These are three separate entities. Which is to be master?
We are all authoritative. We are all Founders. Even the followers. Although nobody follows. There are only those humble enough to give someone else credit for their own creation. Although giving credit to God might not be the best definition of humility.
We can only communicate when we agree on the definitions of words.
In the first place we are individuals, & to be humane has to happen from human being to human being. All these ideologies & constructs are something to hide behind for psychopaths & perverts.
” It would be incredibly easy, and incredibly effective, for U.S. television outlets to interview America’s torture victims. There is certainly no shortage of them. Groups such as the ACLU,Center for Constitutional Rights, Reprieve, andCAGE UK represent many of them. ”
I agree. And I understand the need to focus on the victims of the tortures in the report specifically, if the dialogue is to have any sense of scope. But in principle, all victims of torture by government agencies and the military should be heard, regardless of whether they are victims of the tortures in the report or not. It is the least the nation can do.
The torture methods in the report have largely been abandoned by the torture industry in favour of no-contact remote, electromagnetic, scalar and nanoparticle analogues, weapons systems that deeply intrude into the very physiological systems of the individual, manipulating and abusing any one of them at will. These remote tortures, are by their very nature, implementable anonymously, remotely and unaccountably.
When employing these technologies, water in waterboarding for example, is replaced with a steady, low blowing stream of super-fine particulate matter, directed at your nostrils, that generates horrific sensations of suffocating and drowning from particulate matter, not unlike suffocation experienced from sand particles in a terrible sand storm.
Sleep deprivation is now implemented as loud, startling sounds remotely delivered directly to the hearing centers of the brain just as sleeps sets in, keeping you in a wakeful state for as long as the damaged mind of the torturer wishes.
Pain is inflicted by directly irritating the nerves. Torture is about pain infliction. And nerves are the stuff of pain.
Humiliation is implemented by manipulating physiology, paralyzing bladder sphincter muscles for example, so that a torture victim pees in public or in bed. At least 2 remotely tortured individuals, one in England and another in Seattle, WA, reported being made to defecate in their pants in public. This is a very sick technique used to both humiliate as well as project the victim to the public as insane …
These are just a few of the abuses. The list of horrors is never-ending…
These are torture victims that also deserve to be heard. The list consists of medical doctors, lawyers, engineers, professors, homemakers, college students, children, pets ( tortured owners report aberrant behaviours suggestive of, and consistesnt with feeling pain ), at least one former FBI, former NSA contractor, inventor, a Pulitzer prize winning author, a dear journalist-friend of mine who is an incredibly smart individual working for a major magazine. The list has no end…And the tortures are round the clock, year in and year out. All are American. None are terrorists.
The world of the electronically tortured is full of mine fields – humanoids who are paid by the torturers as part of the psyops – to discredit the targets via deliberate online attacks on their characters. They also pretend to be targets … where they hope to ‘bait’ a potential investigator and lure them away from where they need to go.
Despite all the obstacles, all victims of torture still need to be heard. Yet the groups mentioned in the quote above appear reluctant or unwilling to act, too timid to upset the torture industry by doing the right thing: to bolden up and take the initiative and start lending an ear to its victims.
The Senate Report asserts that the torture of detainees failed to yield any intelligence from the detainees. Jeffrey Kaye’s article, highlighted by another commenter below, suggests a link between the tortures and MKULTRA, a mind control program infamous for its brutal abuse of persons.
All of this in turn supports my assertions that the tortures in the report had nothing to do with “ticking bomb scenarios” used to justify tortures.
For one thing, in a “ticking bomb scenario” (source of the concept attributed to Sri Lanka), there is an “imminent danger” present. No “imminent danger” can last for more than 10 yrs, the duration of captivity – and torture – of detainees in Guantanamo, without perverting the very meaning of the word, ‘imminent’.
The focus on brutal interrogations over intelligence elicitation, evident in the report, is a typical feature of mind control torture for brainwashing.
Humiliation techniques and obsession about destroying the brains of detainees is a feature of mind control as well. Training Zubaydah’s brain to physically respond to a mere raising of an eyebrow has all the traits of mind control.
Rectal feeding, a humiliating and diabolic practice with the potential to push fecal matter up the alimentary canal all the way to the mouth if enough pressure is used, is a feature of brutal mind control humiliation than a tool to extract information.
Just as the pumping of nanoparticles into the inner ear and then using them to apply electroshocks to the vestibulococchlear nerve deep inside, as they are doing to me now, is mind control torture that has nothing to do with national security.
Torture program linked to discredited, illegal CIA techniques
by Jeffrey Kaye @jeff_kaye
http://america.aljazeera.com/blogs/scrutineer/2014/12/18/torture-mitchelljessenmkultra.html?utm_content=general&utm_campaign=ajam&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=SocialFlow
Also the American POW’s who were tortured and sexually abused are completely ignored by the anti US military media. The pilots from the first Gulf War? Lot’s of them were abused. I had a buddy who saw one of our female pilots released at the end of the war. She was a mess. God knows what horrors that woman faced. One of the biggest enemies of our country is our liberal media.
@ Mona
I do not read your comments. I move to the next comment as soon as I see your name.
lulz, Steb. My dissections of your mewling have you so undone you have to keep posting, OVER AND OVER, how much you ignore me. HAHAHAHA
@Mona
Steb
30 Nov 2014 at 8:45 pm
@ Mona
Your comments are irrelevant to me. I do not waste time with those who sympathize with terrorists.
One mans terrorist is anothers freedom fighter.Do you believe their is no reason for Muslim or whomever resistance against the modern forces of globalization,and the collapse of their societies in turn?I mean,they should take it up the chute and like it?Isis is just the same old cause and effect,as we repeat history repeatedly.
Greenwald is one of the last true journalists working today.
He deserves an “I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence.”
Let’s propose him!
“Independence” Are you sure what the meaning of journalistic independence means?
Here’s another thought re: possible TI coverage of the Torture Report, etc. :
How about interviewing some of the interrogators and all who OBJECTED to torture? Marcy Wheeler said some were interviewed by ABC and CNN, but didn’t provide any show or anything, and I asked in comments for more info, but got no response. One individual, though I can’t cite her name is the nurse, Navy,I believe who objected to forced feedings and was facing discipline.
It’s the Judeo-Christian way.
Came across this at MindJustice.org and thought it relevant.
“The media is complicit in omitting information necessary to make democratic decisions. A global dominance agenda includes penetration into the boardrooms of the corporate media in the US. A research team at Sonoma State University recently finished conducting a network analysis of the boards of directors of the ten big media organizations in the US. The team determined that only 118 people comprise the membership on the boards of director of the ten big media giants. These 118 individuals in turn sit on the corporate boards of 288 national and international corporations. Four of the top 10 media corporations in the US have DOD contractors on their boards of directors including:
William Kennard: New York Times, Carlyle Group
Douglas Warner III, GE (NBC), Bechtel
John Bryson: Disney (ABC), Boeing
Alwyn Lewis: Disney (ABC), Halliburton
Douglas McCorkindale: Gannett, Lockheed-Martin
Given an interlocked media network, big media in the US effectively represent corporate America’s interests. The media elite, a key component of policy elites in the US, are the watchdogs of acceptable ideological messages, the controllers of news and information content, and the decision makers regarding media resources.”
You can send a note to NBC’s Meet the Press at http://www.nbcnews.com/id/6872152/ns/meet_the_press-more/t/meet-press-mailbox/#.VJHMwsstGHs
“Many Americans would look at the largely non-white and foreign faces recounting their abuses, or take note of their demonized religion and ethnicity, and react for that reason with indifference or even support for what was done to them.”
Well, then, y’all should not be upset if your police kill minorities in the US. After all, some black people do commit criminal acts, so we must protect ourselves from them. If innocents die, well, that’s just collateral damage in the Land of the Exceptional and Home of the Fearful!
My apologies to all here. It was not my intention to make multiple posts of the same comment. The phone locked up and this was the result.
My apologies again.
No wonder you are attracting all the nonoes and the beams – you are using totally inappropriate devices like phones to browse. I’ll bet EC, AG and MW are also doing the same. MW goes a step further by posting his video blogs.
Use Tails USB flash drive to boot up. And use Tor browser. That way after some time you will get the ray-welding maniacs off your back.
For starters, I do not have a working computer. They virtual-rootkited every computer I owned.
I used Tor in the library and for a while it worked just fine. But lately they have managed to prevent its installation (the library admin did not do this, although it seems like they might be the culprits ), and if I manage to have it running, they promptly freeze it. A red ‘X’ appears over the onion-shaped Tor application icon on the upper left corner of the screen. And then they torture me with the vengeance of a truly deranged mind.
Logs of one such session are posted in the comment section of one of the entries on this website.
I do what I have to do to expose this filth…using a phone if need be.
Handling rootkits is the simplest thing on earth. Just take out the hard disk. Ask one of the neighborhood kids to do it for you, but you seem to be quite knowledgeable so probably can do it yourself. Otherwise, a lot of youtube videos will help you.
After that use a Tails USB disk to boot. You need to look after yourself, no one else will.
Thanks for this article GG. It took me back to days of the height of the Iraqi occupation when I sat glued to the TV ( I no longer own a TV ) awaiting one single journalist to say what I knew millions, if not billions of ordinary people around the world already knew : that the “insurgents”; the “terrorists”; the “jihadists” etc, were largely patriotic nationalists who were defending their country. The characterizations were intentionally designed to demonize a legal resistance against an invader so as to justify his subsequent abuse.
It was as if “patriotic”sentiment itself was the exclusive domain of the United States that no other national was entitled to feel or experience. No one in mainstream journalism seemed to wonder if Iraqis had a right to justifiably defend themselves against an invasion, the same way the United States would be equally justified if some nation were to dare invade her.
But then again I was not surprised. To deny a victim his entitlements was part of the overall approach and pattern of empathy denial by malignment and vilification, via derogatory-term tagging.
When a website in 2010 said Pat B********** ( this author) was from the Middle East, the pattern had been bent into a twisted lie in order to exploit the prevailing virulent and toxic sentiment against all Moslems, in order to justify my severe torture even though I had never set foot in the Middle East, have never been a Moslem, do not speak Arabic, am not Arab and continue to be African to this day.
Thanks for this article GG. It took me back to days of the height of the Iraqi occupation when I sat glued to the TV ( I no longer own a TV ) awaiting one single journalist to say what I knew millions, if not billions of ordinary people around the world already knew : that the “insurgents”; the “terrorists”; the “jihadists” etc, were largely patriotic nationalists who were defending their country. The characterizations were intentionally designed to demonize a legal resistance against an invader so as to justify his subsequent abuse.
It was as if “patriotic”sentiment itself was the exclusive domain of the United States that no other national was entitled to feel or experience. No one in mainstream journalism seemed to wonder if Iraqis had a right to justifiably defend themselves against an invasion, the same way the United States would be equally justified if some nation were to dare invade her.
But then again I was not surprised. To deny a victim his entitlements was part of the overall approach and pattern of empathy denial by malignment and vilification, via derogatory-term tagging.
When a website in 2010 said Pat B********** ( this author) was from the Middle East, the pattern had been bent into a twisted lie in order to exploit the prevailing virulent and toxic sentiment against all Moslems, in order to justify my severe torture even though I had never set foot in the Middle East, have never been a Moslem, do not speak Arabic, am not Arab and continue to be African to this day.
Thanks for this article GG. It took me back to days of the height of the Iraqi occupation when I sat glued to the TV ( I no longer own a TV ) awaiting one single journalist to say what I knew millions, if not billions of ordinary people around the world already knew : that the “insurgents”; the “terrorists”; the “jihadists” etc, were largely patriotic nationalists who were defending their country. The characterizations were intentionally designed to demonize a legal resistance against an invader so as to justify his subsequent abuse.
It was as if “patriotic”sentiment itself was the exclusive domain of the United States that no other national was entitled to feel or experience. No one in mainstream journalism seemed to wonder if Iraqis had a right to justifiably defend themselves against an invasion, the same way the United States would be equally justified if some nation were to dare invade her.
But then again I was not surprised. To deny a victim his entitlements was part of the overall approach and pattern of empathy denial by malignment and vilification, via derogatory-term tagging.
When a website in 2010 said Pat B********** ( this author) was from the Middle East, the pattern had been bent into a twisted lie in order to exploit the prevailing virulent and toxic sentiment against all Moslems, in order to justify my severe torture even though I had never set foot in the Middle East, have never been a Moslem, do not speak Arabic, am not Arab and continue to be African to this day.
Americans? – No, US-Americans.
> Americans? – No, US-Americans.
Glenn seems to like chewing that “American” word, but then what will he say? I think U.S. nationals or citizens is kosher enough, but it may feel most re-comforting knowing you are some “American”? It certainly has that star-trekky feel to it, doesn’t it?
Today Obama said in Spanish: “Todos somos Americanos”
// __ Full text of Barack Obama’s statement on Cuba policy changes
~
thestar.com/news/world/2014/12/17/full_text_of_barack_obamas_statement_on_cuba_policy_changes.html
~
Is this what Glenn means?
I remember when I live in (East) Germany that headlines in newspapers ran: “America attacks Nicaragua!” and my mind would go like. Jeez! Isn’t it enough for -gringos- to attack them?!?
The term “America” was used as kind of accident by association, since this was how the Italian(? I don’t think in those times there was “Italy” as a unified country) cartographer “Amerigo” Vespucci naturally signed/credited his maps.
~
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerigo_vespucci
deriving its name from the feminized Latin version of Vespucci’s first name.[1][2]
~
Most probably (my hunch), because in Latin (and derived languages) the encompassing concept was “terra” (land, earth) which is grammatically marked up feminine gender not as a “feminized” version of his name (as they (once again, wrongly) said in wikipedia)
Now, about “epithets”. No offense meant at all. Quite honestly, what would you call then gringos?
Besides being that “American” term a little confusing (since even Vespucci initially meant the whole land mass/continent) it has also been politically abused to exhaustion. The USG, naturally indeed, thinks they have the birth-given right (which they even see as some Godly sacrament, white-man burden kind of thing) to mess with every country in the so called “new world”, -America-, (the whole continent), from Alaska to Antarctica. That is why they say “America for Americans” (when they actually mean: “we (gringos) own the whole continent”) and why they called that political indoctrination school and terrorist training ground: “The school of the ‘Americas'”
If you ask anyone, from Canada (most of whom are anglos themselves) to the Patagonia, except gringos, they will tell you they find kind of funny calling gringos (The) “Americans”. In my case it feels like I am making fun of them. It feels quite a bit as if the French start calling themselves (The) “Europeans”. The French could do that, but they certainly will start making fun of them.
But then, what would they like to be called?; “ussies”? (to close to “ausssies”), “unies”? (it sounds too socialist for their taste (too close to that commie term which makes them flip out)), “worldies”? (I don’t think they would like that one even though they call their own sport tournaments “world series”) … so I don’t know which term to use that would sound right and non-offending/politically charged and other people will understand.
People call German people in Europe “Wurstfressers” and even though it is a bit offensive, they don’t mind it, because it is true that they are “(animal-like) sausage eaters” ;-). U.S. nationals who travel in the rest of the continent realize how self-ridiculing it is to call themselves “Americans”, so they say “I am from Florida” or “I was born in the Bronx” or they say “U.S. citizen” when necessary.
It’s amazing how almost all alternative media haven’t developed sensitivity for the issue. The USA seems to be the only country which acts like this. Some inability to share, some inability to respect or even appreciate others, but it’s a boomerang.
As to Obama’s “Somos todos Americanos”, I think the Cubans don’t want to side with the USA after the assault of the Bahía de Cochinos & after the construction of the awful prison in Guantánamo. Anyway I’ve read somewhere the USA send a paycheck to the Cuban government every year – in order to pay a rent, because they don’t own Guantánamo -, but Cuba sends it back.
Thanks, Glenn. Though this one seems to be exceptionally disgusting I thank you for putting it here. I continually feel justified for having “The Intercept” as my homepage.
The main stream American media is nothing except the propaganda branch of the US government. I have gotten to the point of totally disregarding anything it says.
US media hides truth in plain sight so often that sometimes it feels hopeless. An article like this should be sent to every newsroom in America. There are people — actual people — behind almost every headline. These people are hidden by words like “militant”, “protester”, “suspect”, etc. It’s as if editors intentionally dehumanize others, cackling villainously while rubbing their hands together. So … fine article, important article.
However I find several problems with the following paragraph.
1. “disappear the victims” has a precise meaning. It doesn’t mean “to dehumanize” but rather “to kill” (and more precisely to secretly kill opponents of a regime.) Misusing this term allows antagonistic commentators to cry “hyperbole!” and discount the quite obvious dehumanization process you accurately describe.
2. Part of the dysfunction of American media belongs not to a strategy of “rendering [enemies/victims] invisible”, but rather belongs to the philosophy of profit driven journalism. That is, media protects advertisers — and especially the executives and editors who can read advertisers’ minds. If feels more like human nature than sinister design (more “the banality of evil” than self-aware evil) which demands those who cover people tortured and killed by the home team as somehow deserving of their fate. Watch American sports. Different localities will protect their players while demonizing other localities’ players in the same way.
3. Opinion polls never represent truth. They cannot, by structure, by intent and by presentation. At best, they offer a version of a variable cultural reality.
For instance, the question “do you think enemies like those who perpetrated 911 should be tortured if authorities believe they have information about a possible plot” differs radically from the question “do you support the right of all people to have a fair and open trial.” Same issues, different framing. And here most intelligent people — executives and editors … and political strategists — know absolutely they automatically skew poll results when they commission, report and then present a poll that meets their expectations. Here the media managers are aware … and they just don’t care to tell the truth. They’re selling an image.
The main point of this article is still spot on. Victims of US aggression get little — if any — fair treatment from national media. The exact same dynamic exists in the spate of civilian shootings by police.
Authorities have an agenda and media have an agenda.
Neither speak for the dead — the victims of the State.
However, speaking for the dead should be the job of the State.
Sadly, as we travel deeper into these dark shadows of a growing authoritarian culture, year after year, even speaking in defense of victims will seem like an affront — soon a criminal affront — to authorities.
Wiltmellow,
Wow. Very insightful. And rock solid. Glen has such a talent for highlighting the underlying issues that we all sense but aren’t always able to organize consciously into words. You illuminate an entire level deeper, the sane, insider’s view understanding the behavior of the system/actors, without judgement or anger. Your writing complements his.
I agree with what you say, Wiltmellow, but I think Glenn was pointing out that the US media (and indeed the media everywhere) do not live up to the ideals that they espouse. That failure is understandable in countries where the media have no protection against government retaliation for “unwelcome” coverage, but it is reprehensible in the United States, where journalists have well-established protection and where several free-speech/free-media organizations have high profiles and good lawyers to pursue cases that arise. Sure, it’s no fun to be caught up in one of those fights, but that’s one of the things that media organization are supposed to do. That’s why they have protections. Instead, the media make sure to stay on the good side of the government so they’ll continue to have easy access to official spokespeople. It’s cheaper to fill the daily column-inches/airtime with stories that are handed out, rather than dig for stories the government doesn’t want reported.
Although live confrontational match-ups draw big audiences, no television producer seems to want to set up Dick Cheney against one of the victims of his torture policy.
So all that separates us from, e.g., the Nazis (according to Tom Friedman) is that sometimes we are proud to own our atrocities? He supports both torture and transparency. That’s what makes him great!
I don’t recall any German apologizing (other than the govt)for ww2 atrocities,(That are documented by serial liars)or in fact sticking up for those crimes.I have never read of any admissions of cc atrocities either,other than a captive facing execution.So Mr.Flat Earth is two up on da Nazis.
A strange world we live in.
Tvs?I’ve got too many,but all I watch is sports and TCM,the rest is mind melding bs.TCM bs’s too,between the flicks(and of course some flicks themselves),and on war holidays.
Fantastic piece, Glenn. Concerns about the media giving such sway to torturers has been on my mind so much and has been percolating in many online articles and discussions as you could note by reading the comment threads of recent articles. What was especially good about your take is the idea of giving voice to the torture victims. Might not be the total solution, but it would be a start. And I totally agree with the other commenters who hope Laura and or other TI staff could do some documentary videos.
Some lines I liked best: “Most Americans have heard the words “rendition” and “Guantanamo” but could not name a single person victimized by them, let alone recount what happened to them, because they almost never appear on American television.” and “Whether by design (most likely) or effect, this inexcusable omission radically distorts coverage.” So true, so true.
And with other commenters I shake my head at a populace which would endorse these depraved acts and a gov’t which has treated Mr. Arar horribly (not even letting him speak in the U. S. – despicable!)
I’d better quit now as I’m running low on vocabulary to condemn what these —– weasels —– the epithet I’ve been using lately – have done.
Thanks again, Glenn. The coverage here at TI really is appreciated.
“but could not name a single person victimized by them,”
bunch of forrin muzzims no wun can’t say theyier names!
“U.S. TV PROVIDES AMPLE PLATFORM FOR AMERICAN TORTURERS, BUT NONE TO THEIR VICTIMS” Glenn Greenwald
FALSE!!!! (Pants on Fire)
I have learned about the US abuses of detainees in Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan by watching US TVs, including interviews with former Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram detainees.
Here a few examples since 2007!!!!
abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=7778310&page=1
abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=128975
nbcnews.com/id/41128834/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/t/i-wake-screaming-gitmo-nightmare/
pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/albania801/interview/poolos.html
I did not learn about US abuses in Guantanamo or Iraq or Afghanistan by reading the Guardian, or by listening to Mr Greenwald. It is not surprising that this false statement came from Mr Greenwald. Last summer he bashed US media for their “Israeli propaganda” while he was on US media bashing Israel a few days after CNN and others were broadcasting interviews with Palestinian leaders including Hamas leader Khaleed Meshaal.
“Many Americans would look at the largely non-white and foreign faces recounting their abuses, or take note of their demonized religion and ethnicity, and react for that reason with indifference or even support for what was done to them.” Glenn Greenwald
That is truth, but most Americans would not act that way. Most Americans would demand that everybody involved in torture be prosecuted. That is why Cheney, Fox News and Co. are working so hard to falsely portray the abuses as efficient policies against terrorism.
“And one could easily imagine such interviews quickly degenerating into a blame-the-victim spectacle. When Fareed Zakaria this week interviewed former Guantanamo detainee (and current detainee rights advocate) Moazzem Begg, Zakaria demanded that Begg condemn ISIS even though Begg kept explaining that he was “abused cruelly, inhumanely and degradingly” by the U.S. Government,…” Glenn Greenwald
The Taliban did not kill my kids, why should I condemn them? ISIS is not massacring Japanese, why should I condemn them? The Brazilian police is not abusing Mexican in Favelas, why should I condemn them? Mr Greenwald, the US or British government did not torture you, so why you worry about “non white and foreign faces” tortured by the US government? Human rights is an international matter. Conventions against tortures are INTERNATIONAL laws. So, if we are really supporting human rights as human being, then we should condemn abuses wherever they happen regardless in Guantanamo or Peshawar. It is very ironic that you mentioned dehumanization in your article and you do not find it rather strange that a victim of torture is not willing to strongly condemn other torturers (Taliban) who do not even attempt to hide their crimes.
After reading your whole comment, I’m left scratching my head. From personal experience I know that what you are thinking does not always translate well into the printed word. Are you angry that you found factual errors in the article or are you angry that a victim of torture blames his torturers and not the ones who weren’t torturing him? I can’t speak for Glenn, but I don’t think he supports torture in any context. Perhaps, as I’ve admitted before, I’m a bit thick at times and couldn’t ferret out your meaning, especially in the last paragraph. Please clarify, as it seems to me that you put a lot of thought and effort in your comment.
1) I am not ANGRY
2) I am not exposing errors. I am exposing incorrect statements that Mr Greenwald makes willingly in order to motivate his anti American crowd. I do not believe Mr Greenwald cares about people being abused or tortured. He is just searching for abuses committed by the US government so he can blame America as the worst evil “empire”.
3) If I was tortured in Guantanamo I would definitely be angry at the US government, specially Dick Cheney. I would be furious to see those responsible for designing that policy on international TVs with the strong confidence that they will never be prosecuted. However, I would also be angry at any government or criminal organizations that torture others because of my experience. That is why I just find it weird that a victim of torture would strongly condemn his torturers, but wouldn’t condemn other torturers simply because the other torturers abused other people not him. How would you react if any US citizen would state that he/she doesn’t care about US government abuses because the government did not abuse him/her but only foreigners?
Personally still a little confused, did you read the article that was linked regarding that quote? Begg mentioned he does think of those things, but he wanted to stay on point regarding -his- experiences with the US government and -his- personal human right abuses. He cleverly identified the interviewer was attempting to divert the discussion to focus on other people’s abuses by other groups. He’s refusal to be sidetracked seems reasonable enough to me. Are you suggesting he shouldn’t have stuck to his own story and had some kind of obligation to focus on matters he had no direct knowledge of?
“ZAKARIA: No, but I’m wondering, you’re very eloquent and you’re very intelligent. Why don’t we hear that eloquence and intelligence directed against the ISIS’ enormous human rights abuses which continue to this day?
BEGG: Well, what makes you think that I don’t talk about these things? I think — you’re again once again jumping the gun perhaps not knowing what my position on some of these organizations and individuals has been. But I do it in my own time and in my atmosphere and my own place so that I can be most effective. But I can’t let what was done to me by the United States — ”
I’m honestly not trying to stir you up, but are genuinely interested in understanding your perspective.
“Are you suggesting he shouldn’t have stuck to his own story and had some kind of obligation to focus on matters he had no direct knowledge of?”
1) I will not blame a victim of torture who is rightfully bashing the government that tortures him.
2) You stated he “had no knowledge of”. Well, this is an individual who actually proposed to negotiate the release of a British hostage held by ISIS last October. He has been in Syria, he lived in Afghanistan even stating that “The Taliban were better than anything Afghanistan has had in the past 25 years”
3) I think it was a legitimate and very fair question. If we are talking about torture, so why a victim of torture is not willing to condemn organizations that are torturing others? CNN did not ask him about Pinochet’s army torturing civilians in the 70’s-80s. Zakaria asked him about tortures that happened openly in the societies he lived or visited.
Stop confusing legitimate criticism and being reflective for being anti-American. Can you even hear the false paradigm you keep parroting? If being a “good” American means becoming passive, silent endorsers of torture, kidnapping, and illegal war then we should all being striving to be “bad.”
Can you direct me to any of my statements in which I endorse torture, kidnapping or illegal wars? I have stated before that the report on torture is worthless if the torturers are not prosecuted because they will torture again knowing they can get away with it through a government report stating yes, we did it and it was bad!
My point here is that certain individuals pretend they care about others being abused by the US government. The reality is that they just search for the abuses that the US government are responsible for to portray the United States as the most atrocious society on earth. They combine correct information with misleading and deceptive data to support their view. If Mr Greenwald has a legitimate concern about the lack of appearance of torture victims in US TVs, then 1) he should not use a deceptive title for his article 2) he should have asked executives in the main US TVs why it is the case. However, his goal is to present America as a cruel society in which the media cares more about torturers than the victims.
And like Moazzam Begg, you’d be disgusted that your torturers and their views were being treated respectfully by a reporter who then had the gall to want you to condemn other Muslims instead of focusing on the outrage that your tormentors were getting rich in think tanks, contracting or academe. You would be further outraged that, given these inequities, the nation’s bigoted media wanted you to instead focus on unrelated bad acts committed by your co-religionists — a diversion.
That person is a very poor citizen. But Moazzam Begg has no relationship to ISIS, such as citizenship. Does he also need to denounce North Korea so that the outrageous facts about his own torture and the criminals who participated in it get fully exposed? Maybe you could put together a list of all groups or countries who commit human rights abuses that a victim of U.S. torture must denounce before he is allowed to discuss his own case?
@Mona
Steb
30 Nov 2014 at 8:45 pm
@ Mona
Your comments are irrelevant to me. I do not waste time with those who sympathize with terrorists.
That’s very good, Steb. Then my first rebuttal to you will always stand, without the inefficiency of endless replying to your prattle.
@Mona, great point. Moazzam Begg know of what he speaks and Zakaria’s attempt to bait him into denouncing ISIS is just a cheap, news reader ploy to be “even handed” I’ll give you even handed. I believe all torturers should be tried and executed for their crimes, including the one’s in the United States.
What about the word ‘AMPLE’ confuses you, Steb? You gave 4 examples of mainstream US corporate media interviewing victims…since 2007…7 years.
There were more torture perpetrators and apologists interviewed LAST SUNDAY than that!
Tell me how many examples I have to provide you to prove that Mr Greenwald’s statement that US TVs has not provided a platform for victims of US abuses is wrong.
(some of my examples were from 2009, 2010. I meant since 2007 US TVs have interviewed victims of US tortures. THAT IS AN UNDENIABLE FACT THAT YOU CAN CHECK YOURSELF. Mr Greenwald is wrong.)
.
No minimally literate person could believe Steb’s comment, which is based on the blatantly false premise that I said no American torture victim has ever appeared on American television.
Not only did I not say that, I said the opposite. I even provided an example of an American torture victim (Begg) appearing on American TV (with Zarakia). And I repeatedly said things like this:
“But there was one group that was almost never heard from: the victims of their torture”.
And the very last line was this:
“So that’s what they do: dutifully, eagerly and with very rare exception.”
The argument – obviously – was that torture victims are very rarely interviewed on US TV, especially when compared to the platform the torturers get – not that they *never” are.
Who couldn’t see this besides Steb?
You are still wrong again Mr Greenwald. If you wish to go through into wording, so let’s do it then.
“U.S. TV PROVIDES AMPLE PLATFORM FOR AMERICAN TORTURERS, BUT NONE TO THEIR VICTIMS”
“NONE”. Please provide me and your readers the definition of “NONE” according to your understanding of the English language.
“Steb’s comment, which is based on the blatantly false premise that I said no American torture victim has ever appeared on American television.”
That is exactly what you mean in your title. This title is even worst than another one stating that the US has bombed seven Muslim countries. Your strategy to rally your anti American crowd consist of providing teasers that contain incorrect or misleading information. The fact that you mention the rare appearance of torture victims on US TVs does not erase the deceptive characteristic of your title, it just illuminates the illogicality of denying what is scientifically real.
Only an impaired, fuckwitted goose couldn’t see it, and at this moment, Steb is the only one of those participating here.
The title is meant to deceive the reader. It’s as simple as that. If Greenwald doesn’t want to be questioned for truthfulness, then get the fucking titles right, OK? Seems simple enough.
And here’s Craig to add a bit of his own fuckwittedness. Craig, the headline is true. Just as would be one that read: “EMTs Fail to Do CPR on Shooting Victims.”
Anyone with a double-digit IQ understands that the headline will be about a story in which, on some discrete occasion, some EMTs neglected to perform CPR on some shooting victims. By contrast, the headline does not communicate — to normal, reasonable people — that no EMTs, at any time, have ever given CPR to shooting victims.
#theyderpitisstronginthisone
I could understand this if it was one time, but it’s ongoing at the Intercept – deceptive titles to articles. If you don’t mean “none”, then don’t say “none”. Yes, it’s a lie (because it’s not true).
Thanks Mona
Being unaddressed and unrebutted, this answer of mine stands:
Steb: read yourself some Chomsky: http://www.plutobooks.com/display.asp?K=9780745333878
I do agree with you that “human nature” is a very fucked up thing, though. That is your point, right?
Catch you later,
CA
@Steb –
Greenwald’s statement is this:
That was a lazy reply. But the debate over torture is raging now, so now would be the opportune time to hear from the victims of torture – while the public’s attention is focused on the issue. The long-standing exclusion of these voices is most conspicuous and egregious during this special period when people would be most likely to listen. (Obviously. Just regretting the reply.)
You are still wrong again Mr Greenwald. If you wish to go through into wording, so let’s do it then.
“U.S. TV PROVIDES AMPLE PLATFORM FOR AMERICAN TORTURERS, BUT NONE TO THEIR VICTIMS”
“NONE”. Please provide me and your readers the definition of “NONE” according to your understanding of the English language.
“Steb’s comment, which is based on the blatantly false premise that I said no American torture victim has ever appeared on American television.”
That is exactly what you mean in your title. This title is even worst than another one stating that the US has bombed seven Muslim countries. Your strategy to rally your anti American crowd consist of providing teasers that contain incorrect or misleading information. The fact that you mention the rare appearance of torture victims on US TVs does not erase the deceptive characteristic of your title, it just illuminates the illogicality of denying what is scientifically real.
You wrote “Greenwald’s statement is this…..”. About the title? Isn’t it Greenwald’s statement?
The title is also part of the article. Providing misleading information in the title and then correct information in the main part is a clear attempt to deceive.
@Steb – He also wrote this: “That’s how the War on Terror generally has been ‘reported’ for 13 years and counting: by completely silencing those whose lives are destroyed or ended by U.S. crimes.” But, throughout, isn’t his meaning clear? Imo, if you want to make fair criticisms, you’ve got to respond to the meaning that’s intended. In other places – as he pointed out in his reply to you – he says “almost never” and “very rare” and he included the (counter-)example of Moazzem Begg in the column. So, it seems to me that if you want to find fault, at worst it can only be for imprecision in those two cases where his wording contradicts his clear meaning. Personally, I won’t bother making that criticism.
Barncat
The titles to some of these articles are meant to deceive the reader. For example, in an article published at the Intercept titled “SON OF STUXNET THE DIGITAL HUNT FOR DUQU, A DANGEROUS AND CUNNING U.S.-ISRAELI SPY VIRUS”, the author of the article Kim Zetter states:
“……If Duqu was the work of the United States or Israel, it meant that a NATO country or ally had compromised a fundamental part of the trusted infrastructure that made transactions on the internet possible, all for the sake of advancing a covert campaign…….”
The article is adapted from a book she wrote so even the author disputed the title of her own article. So that is a big “if” compared to the title – and deception by design. The title of this Greenwald article on the victims of torture is clearly meant to deceive the reader also. It may not seem like a big deal, but if you can’t trust the titles, why would you trust anything in the article?
Thanks
@CraigSummers –
I don’t think that’s what is happening here. I’m personally willing to interpret the “none” in the title as equivalent to a mere handful of “platforms” over the past seven years or more. “U.S. TV Provides Ample Platform for American Torturers, But Virtually None to Their Victims”? Maybe that would have been better. But, given that facts as presented here, I really don’t see enough of a difference to complain. Can you provide an example of Greenwald using a deceptive title that is more clear cut? That would help your case. Greenwald writes all his own titles, you know (as you would expect).
@ Barncat
We are not talking about advertisements to sell cars or credit cards. This is a matter that relates to very serious crimes.
“SYRIA BECOMES THE 7TH PREDOMINANTLY MUSLIM COUNTRY BOMBED BY 2009 NOBEL PEACE LAUREATE” 9/23/2014, Glenn Greenwald
Mr Greenwald’s intent was not to present a statistical review of the number of countries bombed by the US, but to create the perception that the United States is bombing countries simply because they are predominantly Muslim.
“U.S. TV PROVIDES AMPLE PLATFORM FOR AMERICAN TORTURERS, BUT NONE TO THEIR VICTIMS”
His intent here is not to defend the victims’ rights to express themselves, but to create the perception that the American media is on the torturers’ side. The same American media that has been publishing pictures of victims and has been interviewing those victims for years.
If that’s what Glenn is saying, he’d be right. The U.S. would never go about bombing and killing people in a white, Western country the way it liberally does with Muslim nations. When we did it in Europe, it was after attack and formal declaration of war. Such niceties do not apply to the brown-skinned believers in a religion we demonize; we bomb at will.
You utter imbecile. You are telling the author he meant something he denies, — denies with vast support from his article. What chutzpah! In the very piece he writes of Moazzam Begg being interviewed on CNN.
I have often wondered if stupid people grasp through the fog of their limitations that they have been shown to be wrong, or if they really do never see it. When reading you, I wonder about that a great deal.
“……If that’s what Glenn is saying, he’d be right. The U.S. would never go about bombing and killing people in a white, Western country the way it liberally does with Muslim nations…..”
Really Mona? How about Serbia?
What about Serbia? It’s Eastern European, and primary religion is Eastern Orthodox.
And even at that, we do not liberally go about bombing and killing in Eastern European countries, pretty much at will, like we do in Muslim ones.
“…….What about Serbia? It’s Eastern European, and primary religion is Eastern Orthodox…..”
It’s 85% Christian – and white – so you are wrong. Regardless, when you take the world’s most important economic area, add the Arab Spring, the Islamic (fundamentalist) extremists drive for power and a bitter sectarian divide, there is going to be turmoil – just as you see throughout the Middle East. Greenwald has absolutely no depth in his articles in one of the most politically complicated regions on earth. Of course, if he did an in depth analysis of the region, he would have to rethink his simplistic views like drones are bad; this is a racist war on Muslims and this is the seventh Muslim country the US has bombed.
No, I am not. I had written:
Serbia is not Western. Nor do we “liberally” bomb white Eastern nations, the way we do Muslim countries, pretty much at will.
Mona
Here is what you said
“……If that’s what Glenn is saying, he’d be right. The U.S. would never go about bombing and killing people in a white, Western country the way it liberally does with Muslim nations…….”
You were wrong in the same way that as the title of this article. You really didn’t mean “none”, or you just may have forgotten about Serbia. However, you were wrong Mona – again. The US bombed the piss out of the Serbs – a white, European, Christian nation. So the answer was not “none” at all. In addition, not only did Serbia sign a truce, but the US helped create a new Muslim country in the midst of Europe. Interestingly enough, the rest of Europe didn’t threaten to destroy them, boycott them, terrorize them or attack them. Quite a different reaction than the Arabs, wouldn’t you say?
Thanks.
Which is to say, not wrong at all. You simply ignore — because you cannot rebut — this:
Give it up, Craig.
“…..Nor do we “liberally” bomb white Eastern nations, the way we do Muslim countries, pretty much at will……”
How you love to lie Mona and move the goal posts. You said (originally):
“…..The U.S. would never go about bombing and killing people in a white, Western country…..”
That’s ONE country Mona (not nations) – and Serbia certainly qualifies. Just because you were too dense to remember that the US bombed a white European, Christian country in 1999, you cannot just move the goal posts because you hate being wrong, OK? But you were. Simple.
Craig, I said WESTERN not EUROPEAN, and I said countRIES, not country. Serbia is not western; Serbia is one. Moreover, I spoke of “liberally” bombing countries, which we do not do to white countries, not even to Eastern European ones, since the quantity “one” does not constitute “liberal” numbers of countries; it is not even a plural, it is *a* country.
You do not like it being pointed out that the West, especially the U.S., bombs the crap out of Muslim countries, and otherwise meddles in them. Your strained efforts to misread my plain words do not divert from the point of the words. Muslims are pissed at the U.S. because we go about bombing, invading and otherwise meddling in their countries as we do with no other demographic.
I have yet to see any MSM report on the atrocities and destruction dished out to the people of the Taliban dominated areas by the totally corrupt and American whore Pakistani govt and military.And an in depth report on this attack on the children of the military that kills the Taliban and their wives and children.The Pakistani govt allows US to murder their citizens at will.Talk about a terrible leadership.And we aint seen nothing yet there.
Ah,its good to control the medium and the message.
“I have yet to see any MSM report on the atrocities and destruction dished out to the people of the Taliban dominated areas”
Will the Taliban guarantee the safety of journalists in the areas they control? How comfortable would be to let your reporters going to an area controlled by hardcore terrorists ready and willing to kill even children?
“American whore Pakistani govt and military”
The democratically elected government of Pakistan.
Great article. Thanks for your great information, the content is quiet interesting. I will be waiting for your next post.
How true. A case for the controlled media engineering (Bernays) or manufacturing (Chomsky) of consent. Lederer’s A Nation of Sheep provides a twisted landscape to this scripted reality in the puppet masters’ theatre of black war crimes.
How come The Intercept, like in this story, (sometimes? often?) doesn’t use photo captions (have noticed absence in other TI stories)? Who is the bearded man? Do I have to read the entire article to find out?
So why not get interviews with victims of torture here? I’m sure the Intercept has plenty of opportunities to talk to the victims. And besides, “it would be incredibly easy, and incredibly effective … to interview America’s torture victims”, so why not do it?
Mr. Greenwald
“…….And one could easily imagine such interviews quickly degenerating into a blame-the-victim spectacle. When Fareed Zakaria this week interviewed former Guantanamo detainee (and current detainee rights advocate) Moazzem Begg, Zakaria demanded that Begg condemn ISIS even though Begg kept explaining that he was “abused cruelly, inhumanely and degradingly” by the U.S. Government, that “pictures of my children are waved in front of me while I’m being beaten and tortured and abused by people who claimed to be the bastions of freedom and democracy and human rights,” and that “whatever the situation was, the Taliban and the ISIS, they didn’t torture me. They didn’t put me into dungeons. They didn’t beat me. They didn’t threaten to, you know, abuse my family. They didn’t do that to me. So I can only talk to my experience.”…..”
No one can condone the brutal torturing of innocent people by the US, or the death and injury of innocents in any war. Innocent people are always the victims. Unfortunately, in the drive for power, there will always be innocent victims like in Syria, Ukraine, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and so on. But Begg knows better. In fact, he can talk for the victims of the Taliban. The Taliban may not have tortured him, but there are plenty of innocent victims out there who were tortured and murdered by the Taliban. Just this morning, a school was targeted and attacked by the Taliban claiming the lives of 145 people including 100 children.
“……First the Pakistani Taliban bombed or burned over 1,000 schools. Then they shot Malala Yousafzai, the teenage advocate for girls’ rights…..Tuesday, the Taliban took their war on education to a ruthless new low with an assault on a crowded school in Peshawar that killed 145 people — 132 of them uniformed schoolchildren — in the deadliest single attack in the group’s history…..”
The Taliban have recorded numerous other assaults on innocents including the responsibility for 75% of the civilian casualties in Afghanistan. Needless to say, Muslims are the largest beneficiaries of Islamic terrorism. In that respect, the “dehumanizing campaign” by the American media is simply a recognition that war is a necessity when your enemies brutalize children, or they allow the terrorist training camps to flourish that were responsible for the murder of innocent victims world-wide (including 911).
What is really, truly amazing is that the Intercept continues to ignore such brazen brutality by people who even in peaceful times subjugate their populations. It’s merciless attacks on civilians designed to instill the most basic fears in a (Muslim) population which drives the American media – as it should. Our enemies are far worse than we are. Interestingly enough, you are complaining because of a lack of balance in the coverage by the US media, but you are clearly no better – on any issue. An innocent victim is an innocent victim no matter who tortures or kills him.
“…..Whenever America is forced to confront its heinous acts, the central strategy is to disappear the victims, render them invisible. That’s what robs them of their humanity: it’s the process of dehumanization…….This is not to say that merely putting these victims on television would fundamentally change how these issues are perceived. Many Americans would look at the largely non-white and foreign faces recounting their abuses, or take note of their demonized religion and ethnicity, and react for that reason with indifference or even support for what was done to them…….”
You are just rehashing the same talking points that you have for years. For example here is an exert from one of your previous articles;
“…..Every war – particularly protracted ones like the “War on Terror” – demands sustained dehumanization campaigns……..applied almost exclusively to Muslims…..It is worse than that: it is based on the implicit, and sometimes overtly stated, premise that Muslims generally, even those guilty of nothing, deserve what the US does to them……”
Muslims are the largest recipients of Islamic terrorism in the world. They attack us because we invade and kill Muslims is the biggest lie that you have perpetrated.
Craig, he reiterates these points because they matter, and they were falling on deaf ears, but now the tide is turning, in no small measure due to people like Glenn who refused to accept the status quo. I don’t understand how someone who can be as articulate and fair-minded as you sometimes are in your posts, can so willfully ignore the role our terrorism has played in exacerbating a situation that could and should have been resolved judicially. There is no higher ground when we behave like the terrorists.
Glenn’s work is so inspiring because he uses his expertise and training in the legal field to objectively (to the degree anyone can be objective) assess what happens when rule of law collapses. That’s always been the lens he has read/ reads this crisis through. And he was right. All of us who declared Cheney and Bush war criminals back in 2003 were right. But it’s taken more than a decade of dogged, persistent articles by people like Glenn, Amy Goodman, Chris Hedges, and too many others to mention, many of them here at the Intercept, to change the public discourse. The Guardian pages clearly illustrate that turning point. Even a year ago, those of us maintaining that crimes against humanity had been committed were the minority, and were often mocked for saying so. The articles this week have been flooded (many with more than a thousand posts) by those weighing in, the vast majority calling for investigations and trials.
Pointing out our wrongdoing doesn’t negate the wrong the terrorists do, but it should be clear to anyone with an ounce of logic that emulating the worst practices of those you purport to despise isn’t the cure…to anything. Implicit in Glenn’s work (at least for me) and often explicit is the assumption that we are and can be better than this. A call to change isn’t treason; it’s the only reasonable thing one can do when crimes are being committed. And virtually every international human rights agency has now weighed in and opined that there must be official investigations and accountability because torture is a crime, one of the worst, and we shouldn’t get a free pass because of the flag we fly under.
Thanks for your reply – and a good one at that although your characterization of Bush and Cheney as war criminals is absurd under the circumstances following 911.
MM – I would not trust the sincerity of Craig’s comment. My feeling is that Craig sees himself, by now, as occupying a necessary role of being the lone voice of dissent, in what Nate has referred to in the past as “the TI echo chamber.” I think Craig will pretty much disagree with anything he reads here. He thinks it’s his duty. But I don’t think he always believes what he’s saying. Maybe occasionally.
“……But I don’t think he always believes what he’s saying. Maybe occasionally……”
That’s fine Dabney. What position from my post do you think I would (actually) take?
I was referring to the body of your comments in general, and not addressing specifics. If I weren’t so lazy, I could put some time and thought into a response addressing specifics, and take everything apart point by point, but I’m not cut from the same cloth as you and Mona.
Well, if you find some time, put something together. I have mentioned in the past that I take a harder line at the Intercept than I would at say the Guardian depending on the writer. For example, I tend to defend Obama here (drone strikes), but criticize him (mercilessly) when I respond to a Democrat at the Guardian (weak, indecisive President). If you were to go back to my days posting at the Washington Post, there would likely be some changes in some positions. I would say that my positions regarding Israel have evolved significantly. Mostly because of the time involved with work, I don’t spend the necessary time to do more background reading.
Are you just bored?
“Muslims are the largest recipients of Islamic terrorism in the world. They attack us because we invade and kill Muslims is the biggest lie that you have perpetrated.” – CraigSummers
Craig – these don’t seem to be mutually exclusive. It’s not “either-or.” “Left” or “right.” There is both. And more victims and victimizers, unfortunately. That’s just the reality.
The entire point seems to be that denying evidence and reality is why we’re in this mess – and the only way out is to shine a light on it all and hear from all sides – not just the sides that suits some of us.
“I should like to know which is worse, to be raped a hundred times by Negro pirates, to have a buttock cut off, to run the gauntlet among the Bulgarians, to be whipped and flogged in an auto-da-fé, to be dissected, to row in a galley, in short, to endure all the miseries through which we have passed, or to remain here doing nothing?“ – Voltaire, Candide
Thanks Sillyputty
“…….The entire point seems to be that denying evidence and reality is why we’re in this mess – and the only way out is to shine a light on it all and hear from all sides – not just the sides that suits some of us…….”
Fair enough Sillyputty. It’s good to hear alternative viewpoints – and the Intercept does provide a different point of view. You have no argument from me on that. However, that doesn’t mean the point of view is correct (no matter who writes it at the Intercept). In fact, the article by Ryan Devereaux in the Intercept (“Down Outright Murder”: A Complete Guide to the Shooting of Michael Brown by Darren Wilson”) was a great example of advocacy journalism gone completely mad. In general, I advocate much different policies than Greenwald so there will be disagreement with him on a variety of issues. However, the criticism of the main stream media is a marketing tool. This has been used by Rush Limbaugh for years to gain popularity. And Greenwald and his staff has proven to be no better than the MSM on that account anyway.
Thanks
Of course, and as you well know, this “lie” is supported by the Defense Science Board’s 2004 report to the Pentagon, as well as by Malala Yousafzai and many other Muslims living in the lands where we torture, bomb and otherwise meddle. Muslims — violent and not — are also angry about our material and diplomatic force abetting Israel’s crimes against Palestinians.
You are a rabid Zionist, and like most of those types you obsess on atrocities in Muslim lands to divert attention from what Israel and the West do to piss off Muslims. As it happens, my Twitter feed is teeming with tweets from Muslims I follow from all over the world who are horrified and outraged by what the Taliban did in Peshawar. To a person, they also blame the West’s policies for Muslim anger with us; it really is possible to hold both positions.
It is not, of course, prudent to hold both positions if one is a raging Zionist, as you are. Hence, your constant focus on any atrocity committed in a Muslim country by Muslims: Craig “Whataboutery” Summers.
“……You are a rabid Zionist, and like most of those types you obsess on atrocities in Muslim lands to divert attention from what Israel and the West do to piss off Muslims…….”
Right. You mean the 200,000 or so (Muslims) killed in Syria? You mean the targeting and killing of (Muslim) children in Pakistan? You mean the abduction of (Muslim) children for play things in Nigeria? If I am seeking a diversion from Israeli and western policies, I couldn’t have found a better one than the Islamic greater Middle East.
Oh, as Zionist propaganda, to deflect from the odious foundations and crimes of Israel, it is a neato diversion — giving them someone to Other and hate is almost always useful. Unfortunately for you, however, reasonably intelligent adults recognize it as a non sequitur. And that you, like so many of your Zionist ilk, are a liar.
Even getting more radical as time goes on. Cheered the killing of any Jewish infants lately, Mona?
Endorsing the killing of infants is a Zionist, particularly Israeli, thing Craig. Zionism makes people sociopathic, and I am neither a Zionist nor a sociopath. (Go ahead, ask me for Zionist quotes advocating or reveling in deaths of Palestinian kids.)
You are simply beyond help Mona – absolutely filled with hatred.
The post, lightly edited for accuracy:
“No one can condone the brutal torturing of innocent people by the US, or the death and injury of innocents in any war.
But I’ll keep trying.
Innocent people are always the victims. Unfortunately, in the drive for power, there will always be innocent victims in lots of places.
Ok, that was really pointless.
The Taliban didn’t torture this guy about whom I do not care, the US did, so let’s just change the subject.
What is really, truly amazing is that I continue to ignore the brazen brutality done in my name. The US subjugates Muslim populations. Its merciless attacks on civilians are designed to instill the most basic fears in a (Muslim) population which drives the American media – as it should. Our enemies are far worse than I am. Interestingly enough, that’s not true: I am clearly no better. An innocent victim is an innocent victim no matter who tortures or kills him.
Okay, that didn’t work out the way I wanted it to, so let’s change the subject again.
I’m going to rehash the same bullshit that I have for years. For example I am compelled to repeat again and again that, “Muslims are the largest recipients of Islamic terrorism in the world”, but in reality far more Muslims have been orphaned, maimed, and killed by the US than by Islamists.
That’s not working either; so here’s another new subject: The Pentagon Scientific Advisory Board has found that, “Muslims don’t hate us for our freedom; they hate us for our policies”, and Malala Yousafzai, the CIA, the NSC and every informed thoughtful person or group familiar with the issues has reached similar conclusions. I don’t believe that, so they must all be liars.” Damn, that isn’t working at all.
Thank you, well done.
Yes, this has become Doc’s assignment here whenever a Craig screed blots the page. Doc’s very gifted at translating the bilge.
Craig: read yourself some Chomsky: http://www.plutobooks.com/display.asp?K=9780745333878
There’s a historical perspective you should drill into.
Yes, Muslims ARE murdered by other Muslims more than any other people and that’s really shitty of them. But what the West is up to is really shitty of “us” and if we’re gonna change something, we should start with “us”.
Personally, I dislike ALL brands of religious fundamentalism.
Catch you later,
CA
“Needless to say, Muslims are the largest beneficiaries of Islamic terrorism”
—————
First of all, the term, Islamic Terrorism” is an oxymoron. There’s nothing Islamic about harming innocent non-combatants, including off-duty soldiers, as far as the Quran and other traditional textual sources are concerned.
Second of all, while there are political reasons for these evildoers to harm innocent non-combatants, if they use THEIR religions to justify their evil acts, their religions are the products of an entity called, Puritanical Salafism, which is an entity that emerged as a result of the marriage between two trends within Islam: Wahhabism and Salafism, in the middle of the last century, and is NOT considered TRADITIONAL by many.
Wahhabism and then Puritanical Salafism emerged in Saudi Arabia, which then infected Islams all over the world, like a cancerous tumour.
Guess who was instrumental in creating Saudi Arabia and who has been supporting and nurturing it?
The roots of this cancerous tumour are in Saudi Arabia. So the treatment needs to start there.
Thanks Sufi
I don’t disagree that killing innocents is not Islamic, but I’m not the one you have to convince.
This is why we should despise our family and friends. You are much more likely to be killed by someone you know. You are much more likely to be abused by someone you love.
And for good reason. The only thing more suspicious than loyalty is love. Even god was killed by those closest to him.
This is the liberation of war–we can kill those we don’t know.
” Ever since the torture report was released last week, U.S. television outlets have endlessly featured American torturers and torture proponents. But there was one group that was almost never heard from: the victims of their torture, not even the ones recognized by the U.S. Government itself as innocent, not even the family members of the ones they tortured to death. ”
The victims of US torture are the most important witnesses to their own crimes. They know exactly what was done to them. And likely even know facts that were too devastating to even appear in the CIA memos.
What they may have to say- if allowed to say it – may be far more gory and devastating to the stature and what shreds of moral qualities the US possesses after Abu Ghraib events, than what is in the torture report itself.
Although victim testimonials may not move the average American who has long been conditioned to accept such practices if the latest polls are to be believed, the rest of the normal world remains an important jury whose judgement may not be welcome to those cheer-leading the abuses, and an audience the US still has to contend with. And may severely diminish the torturers and their supporters by sheer role contrast.
Suppression of victim testimony then becomes crucial in containing such damage, especially in the light of the fact that some were innocent. Racial and religious prejudices help blunt arguments for hearing the victims voices even before those arguments can be made. The victim is thus dehumanized; rendered invisible and seen only as a faceless name of no consequence.
Some defendants kill their witnesses. Others deny them a voice. In this case, the victims have been silenced. And killed too.
A while back, Chris Hayes had a former Guantanamo Prisoner on the morning show, which preceded his promotion to prime time. The guy described in vivid detail what was done to him and proceeded to knock America for the very reasons expressed in Glenn’s Article above. Hayes took a beating for having the guy on his show and MSNBC has never ventured near that territory again.
PLEASE, keep on reporting on the despicable torture we condoned, supported, and carried out. This cannot end with the summary report and the airing it has been given by the corporate media. God help us. Speak up people.
Today’s report by Physicians for Human Rights.
http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/reports/doing-harm-health-professionals-central-role-in-the-cia-torture-program.html
For whatever it’s worth.
There’s also this from PHR.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/PHR_other/fact-sheet-rectal-hydration-and-rectal-feeding.pdf
On point to Glenn’s article inasmuch as the American public, however jaded, might not see this as Goodness and Freedom.
From the Goodness and Freedom file, Glenn, some fun facts. 59% of the American public think it’s justifiable, but that expands when they’re Christians.
http://religiondispatches.org/christians-more-supportive-of-torture-than-non-religious-americans/
‘Good christian men, rejoice..!!’
thx,`nobz
Thanks, Coram. Sobering numbers all around; it will be interesting to see if the continued coverage helps change the view on torture. The overlap between “Xians” (no Christ in that view) and torture is telling. What an indictment of how bastardized their sense of religion is.
Paging Dr. Pavlov. Paging Dr. Pavlov. More on the PHR report from the Guardian.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/16/cia-torture-report-physicians-human-rights-report
The important effect of all this is that U.S. citizens are diverging more and more from mainstream civilized thought. The Ugly American is slowly being changed into the Dangerous American by the U.S. governments propensity for managing information and perceptions.
Spellcheck, “uncermoniously.”
I really had to keep myself from crying about this one.
I admit that I need someone like Greenwald to place this information and these trains of thought in front of my nose, because I am unable to inform myself about these subjects without getting lost via internet search.
It is in the essence of torture that most of the victims don’t want to speak about it publicly. Providing them with a platform doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense unless / until the tables are turned toward punishing the perpetrators. And when will that happen? Following along Friedman’s lead (not literally though) ‘truth dig’, a leftist news site, just declared John McCain and Diane Feinstein ‘truth diggers of the week’.
It is in the essence of torture that most of the victims don’t want to speak about it publicly.
There are plenty of victims of US torture who have tried to speak publicly about it. Maher Arar, whom I saw speaking to Greenwald prior to the event in Ottawa, tweets about torture daily. As noted in the article Khalid al Masri and Moazzem Beg have spoken out as well.
Providing them with a platform doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense unless / until the tables are turned toward punishing the perpetrators.
You have this exactly backward. The table did not begin to turn on the Vietnam War until the public learned more about the lies the government told and started to see the ugly images of Vietnamese who were being ravaged by what we were doing to them. The truth is what begins to turn the table. Not a continuation of the lies.
The ugly images would include the 1970 “tiger cage” exposé in LIFE, with pictures taken by Tom Harkin, then a congressional aide.
http://www.historiansagainstwar.org/resources/torture/luce.html
This: “The truth is what begins to turn the table. Not a continuation of the lies.” – Pedinska
But the lies continue anyway, don’t they?
Yes, until the pendulum swings back towards more truth. And then, as history shows, it swings towards lies again…It’ll never be perfect, but it can always get better.
pendulum? seems more like a ratchet to me.
NPR’s Kelly McEvers had really great front-line coverage of civilian casualties from US drone strikes in Yemen. http://www.npr.org/2012/07/06/156367047/yemen-airstrikes-punish-militants-and-civilians I’m not defending their continued refusal to use the word “torture,” but in the past they have had good (and rare) coverage such as this.
Glenn Greenwald I wish you included this question in your article:
When Iran performs rectal dehydration on its captives and freezes them to death , will US media call it enhanced interrogation?
“not just the Bush administration which kidnapped him and sent him to be tortured, but the Obama administration which protected them and blocked him from receiving justice”
This. If I hear one more person say that “we should send Bush & Company to The Hague” I’m going to lose it. We have a president and his associated Attorney General who are very capable of holding torturers accountable. These people who continually point to some supranational entity that we are not a member of to dispense justice are simply giving cover for a cowardly administration that is complicit in torture due to their complacency.
Majority support torture? –
Majority of Americans also support harsh prison sentences only when shown pictures of nonwhite inmates.
Complaints to NPR can go here: http://help.npr.org/npr/includes/customer/npr/custforms/contactus.aspx
Hi there Neopergoss –
I’ve already written the obmudsman TWICE about their featuring Brennan and Cheney. Don’t know if it will do any good, though.
Interesting Tweet from Mr. Greenwald, possibly related to this article:
@LatinoVoter @ChrisWarcraft Pointing to the flaws of others to distract from one’s own is the sign of a deeply immature mind.
Let’s see what else is in the news…“Children massacred in Pakistan school attack”
…Taliban leader Abu Bakr al-Cheney takes credit for the attack, pledging that he’d “do it again, he’s got no problem killing the innocent, it got results, it kept us safe”
I don’t know…this Cheney sounds as bad as the American one, when are they going to learn, bullets don’t work against Malala:
“Wearing a shawl that once belonged to assassinated Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, she spoke of forgiveness and compassion, even for the people who had tried to murder her.
“They thought a bullet would silence us, but they failed. Nothing changed in my life except this: Weaknesses, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born,” she said. “
http://www.unicef.org/education/bege_69820.html
As with racism in the years after slavery, the victims of torture are officially sub-humans and don’t have anything to say that matters – if they weren’t, we’d have to acknowledge that Americans did horrible crimes that need to be prosecuted, and we’re not willing to do that.
Is there a list of programs that have featured torture-defenders? We should mount pressure on those programs to feature victims of torture. We could specifically demand they interview Khaled El-Masri and his lawyers from the ACLU. Reference to that case:
https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security-human-rights/now-can-torture-survivor-khaled-el-masri-have-his-apology
It’s not exaggeration to say torture by the US gov’t would not be possible without the cooperation, desensitization and justification of the US media. They are crucial enablers.
@ Glenn Greenwald,
I am as outraged as the next guy about the state of America’s corporate media. But isn’t this a once in a lifetime opportunity for The Intercept to lead the way in giving a proper voice to the “silenced and disappeared” victims of torture and demonstrating what meaningful journalism is all about?
Why doesn’t The Intercept, with an accomplished documentary filmmaker as one of its founders, record and publish a series of interviews (and a documentary film if feasible) on all of the victims, the ones it can find and are willing to tell their stories, of America’s torture regime? I doubt it could hurt any pending legal cases that may be in the works globally on behalf of any of the affected individuals. And once a month publish one of the interviews.
Hell, if The Intercept has some budget left for making new hires, I’d gladly come on board, get my passport in order, and you could send me anywhere in the world to meet with these individuals armed with a set of questions, a translator if necessary and a one person film crew. And I’d do it if Intercept would cover my air fare (coach), meals and lodging (cheap)–no salary or wage required. It would be a privilege helping to record the story of America’s victims of torture. I’d even argue it is of the utmost historical importance and the victims deserve to have their story told by the Intercept.
They also deserve to have their story told with as few people “profiting” off their story as possible unless whatever profit is/may be generated is disseminated to the victims to assist in any treatment they may need or financial assistance in moving on with their lives, and that of their families’, to the degree that is ever possible.
Maybe it’s just me, but I think The Intercept is in the perfect position to force their stories into the mainstream consciousness assuming that’s possible.
I really like this idea, although if they don’t do it, it likely has to do with not having time due to the huge amount of material they’re busy trying to cover.
That said, if Pierre Omidyar is trying to figure out the next arm of First Look Media, perhaps he could consider an arm that produces provocative documentaries. 2016: Obama’s America” is the second-highest grossing political documentary of all time, and that was based on crazy-pants talking points about Obama. Just imagine how amazing an expose would be that got into the real issues.
Fine idea, and I’ve read that they do intend that Laura Poitras develop a video component of the reporting here. The torture victims would be a very good start for that project. Poitras has been busy completing “Citizenfour” and then touring with it. Hopefully she can now turn to this.
rrheard
“……Why doesn’t The Intercept, with an accomplished documentary filmmaker as one of its founders, record and publish a series of interviews (and a documentary film if feasible) on all of the victims, the ones it can find and are willing to tell their stories, of America’s torture regime?….”
Why not publish victims of torture – regardless of who does the torturing? Isn’t this about human rights? Or you simply don’t care about the ones who are tortured by Assad, Putin, Khamenei, Hamas and so on? It’s not hard to figure out what drives you politically……
” It’s not hard to figure out what drives you politically…… – CraigSummers
No. Really, it is. Because, you see, the question was asked in context of the article.
This is, how shall I put it (and not to speak for him) perhaps rrheard’s “pigeon-hole” on this specific question or topic.
This type of discourse (asking or presenting specific ideas and answering them specifically without labeling or pigeon-holing) actually makes it very hard to figure out what drives anyone for that matter, without asking specific questions and getting specific answers on many other specific topics as well.
As a matter of fact, CraigSummers, I’d bet that even your pigeon-hole is bigger than that. And that’s no label.
“Once you label me you negate me.” – Søren Kierkegaard
@ Craig Summers:
It is about human rights. It is about the human rights of those that America, my nation of birth and citizenship, violated. It isn’t about your false relativism and misdirection employing the “hey but they do it too why aren’t you complaining about them” schtick.
I care that others are tortured by their governments as a human rights matter. But I have little if any ability to opine meaningfully (for lack of knowledge about particular individuals affected or policies), or to alter in any meaningful way, a foreign government’s actions with regard to its own citizens. I do have some ability, however insignificant in my individual capacity, with regard to my own nation’s policies and actions.
Moreover, I’m more concerned about what little pressure can be exerted to correct my own nation’s immoral/illegal actions because they are not a reflection of what I want my nation to stand for and the ideals by which I desire it should be governed. Further, I’m not so conceited as to believe I have the capacity to fight another peoples’ battles against their nation’s practices or leadership. If they ask for America’s help in ending torture in their nation then I would gladly lend whatever minimal assistance I am able.
But first and foremost I have a responsibility as a citizen of this nation to struggle for and defend the rule of law and moral policies–in this nation.
If you don’t understand that, or are being willfully obtuse to those obvious ideas, then it is easy to discern what is “driving” your “politics.” IMHO.
@ Craig:
And assuming you really are equally “concerned” about all instances of global “torture” presumably you wouldn’t have any problem with interviewing the Palestinian victims of Israeli torture would you? That is if those tortured by “Assad, Putin, Khamenei and Hamas” are also interviewed. Because one cannot care only about the torture committed by one’s countrymen, by definition (yours anyway). If one “truly cares” and doesn’t have a “political agenda” then the only way one can have a valid “interest” is if one equally condemns all torturers globally (and presumably throughout history) and gives equal time and energy to causing the cessation of torture. Does that mean the citizens of nations who didn’t participate in America’s global regime of torture have a right to condemn America’s actions or are they obligated to ferret out every instance of torture on the globe and give them all equal time? Is that about your position on things, Craig? If so are you consistent about that in your life with regard to all issues that concern you whatever they may be i.e. you only criticize or have an interest or opinion on those things where you are able to criticize all nation’s practices equally in real time?
Fabulous idea,RR. Love it and hope it happens.
BTW, outside of the US, many places are interviewing victims. The Guardian had an article up the same day the report came out interviewing a man who had been tortured and kept illegally at Gitmo for years. Needless to say, he’s a living wreck…the psychological damage is so heinous it’s the kind of thing you don’t come back from.
These people have earned, in the most brutal terms imaginable, the right to be heard; that vast intransigent block of Americans who refuse to acknowledge the horror of torture might be moved to a better place. I hope The Intercept makes that documentary.
During the Vietnam War, the public did get to see the suffering of US victims, on network tv, on a regular basis. And it did have an effect: by 1970, a majority believed that the war was a mistake. On the other hand, fifty years later, after everyone had plenty of time to view and contemplate the images of the unimaginable destruction and (long-term) suffering, a majority (57%-38%) of Americans still believed that the nuclear attacks on Japan were justified. The difference is explained by the fact that people are considering the end (the motive) when passing judgment on the means (as the Washington Post recognized).
The motive behind the Vietnam War was never very clear or convincing. The Gulf of Tonkin incident (even taken as initially reported) was hardly comparable to Pearl Harbor or the attacks of 9/11. As a motive for war, “halting the spread of communism”, on the other side of the globe, was hardly as compelling as “preventing another 9/11″ is today. Both the nuclear attacks on Japan and the torture that was committed after 9/11 are being justified because they directly “saved American lives” (whether that’s true or not). There is no way to reasonably apply that same justification to the Vietnam War.
The point is that, whereas it’s necessary to expose the suffering of the victims of torture, it wouldn’t be sufficient alone to produce a significant change in public opinion. Note that the same majority that is approving of the torture is also acknowledging that it was “torture”. The torture occurred in the context of the “War on Terror”, and whether or not people approve of it will depend to a large degree on whether (and how strongly) they support the “war”. The same goes for civilian casualties caused by drones.
No argument about any action undertaken as part of a war can be made effectively outside the context of the war. Ultimately, it’s the justification(s) for the war that must be challenged. Torture could prove to be an exception to this rule if those who oppose it absolutely were willing to strictly adhere to the moral and legal arguments, but that would require the sort of principled stance that is pretty much extinct on the “left”.
Of course it can, and is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_war#International_treaties_on_the_laws_of_war
That’s just a cloud of silliness. Some far-fetched slam at the abstraction called the “left.”
I didn’t say no argument could be made, I said no argument could be made effectively. A majority is justifying the torture apart from its legality. They know it’s illegal – they are acknowledging it was “torture” – and they are willing to overlook it. They believe the (intended) end justified the means. Many want to excuse the illegal actions of Snowden for the same reason. In the case of torture, however, I did say that it may be effective to strictly adhere to the absolute legal and moral arguments.
Most moral calculations reduce to the ends justifying the means. e.g., notions of “proportionality.” Demonizing an Other who doesn’t look the same as us will facilitate approving atrocities against them. The cure for that is removing the ability to see them as wholly Other, as for instance by interviewing torture victims and letting them describe the torture they endured and the aftermath of living with that experience.
In sum, the ability empathize must be restored.
I agree with every word of that! I said “it’s necessary to expose the suffering of the victims of torture”. But I was explaining why “it wouldn’t be sufficient alone to produce a significant change in public opinion”.
“During the Vietnam War, the public did get to see the suffering of US victims, on network TV, on a regular basis. And it did have an effect” – barncat
Absolutely. Having watched that coverage, this was one of the most striking differences I noted with our “War on Terror” – no real independent coverage or information of what we did while it was occurring, and no reality of the costs of war by seeing our fallen soldiers brought home, week in and week out.
This same propaganda of non-disclosure shields all of our corporations, the military industrial complex, and the politicians that they have hired to maintain the status quo. Those in charge realize that unless American’s see it directly, they likely won’t believe it – and even when they do se it directly (Eric Garner, Ferguson, etc.) they’ll believe the main stream media narrative because that’s all they are being fed.
Unfortunately, unless and until Pierre or some other oligarch buys a main stream media company, the corresponding broadcast time/time-slots, and the theater distribution capabilities to defy the current media paradigm and makes it somehow palatable to the general public, the status remains too much the same.
On that note, kudos to The Intercept, et .al for covering the previously uncoverable – which is helping more than ever for us to see what our American exceptionalism has been just too timid to share.
“Alas! My dear… unless you have been raped by two Bulgarians, stabbed twice in the belly, have had two castles destroyed, two fathers and mothers murdered before your eyes, and have seen two of your lovers flogged in an auto-da-fe, I do not see how you can surpass me; moreover, I was born a Baroness with seventy-two quarterings and I have been a kitchen wench.” Voltaire, Candide
Sillyputty — that’s a great Voltaire quote which I just found a use for on Twitter.
Mona – It does have a lot going for it, doesn’t it? I can’t wait to see it tweeted effectively.
Now this is cool:
“#illridewithyou: support for Muslim Australians takes off following Sydney siege
The hashtag appears to have come from a Facebook post from Rachael Jacobs who was riding on a train, and noticed a Muslim woman quietly take off her head covering.
In her post she said: “I ran after her at the train station. I said ‘put it back on. I’ll walk with u.”
Another woman took to Twitter and wrote: “If you reg take the bus b/w Coogee/Martin PL, wear religious attire, &don’t feel safe alone: I’ll ride withyou. @me for schedule.” “
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-15/illridewithyou-hashtag-takes-off-following-siege/5969102
JLocke, it’s an amazing story; I mentioned it yesterday on TG, too. Hundreds of thousands of Australians ( a place that had already seen a sharp spike in anti-Islamic sentiment before the attack) have signed up and offered to ride or walk with Muslims. Those are the kinds of solutions we need: ordinary people reaching out to each other, refusing to buy the hate-bait, finding the quiet ways to make a difference. I heard the woman who made the initial offer interviewed, and she talked about being propelled to follow that woman and offer help. Those are the impulses we should follow.
It was the only uplifting story in a day filled with horrific news (the Pakistani massacre was unfolding at the same time) and remains the most inspiring I’ve heard in ages…
Fact: There is no crime if there is no evidence.
An obvious omission is what Jose Rodriguez stated in a recent interview that the videotapes of torture were destroyed [isn’t destroying evidence a crime in itself?] to prevent The Mainstream Media from getting hold of the evidence of torture to show the world.
Recently watched I live in Fear, Kurosawa’s exploration of the psychological toll on Japan of our continued
nuclear testing in the 50’s. Made think about the psychological violence of murder by sky robot, or of texting
children in an open air prison that there is nowhere to hide right before shelling them, or of ubiquitous
warrantless surveillance. Tom Friedman is right. America and friends are special. We’ve not only mastered the arts
of physical and psychological torture and mass surveillance, we’ve turned them into a thriving for profit
industry. Honestly, one can only stand back and marvel at the venality of such a system and its defenders.
Britain has died as an Empire. The USA! USA! USA!, Britain, and the British Commonwealth for the most part now deserve to die as nations. They have descended virtually to the level of Nazi Germany.
I have no doubt whatsoever that if the West started a holocaust style pogrom, the same offenders would still make the same excuses.
That is a beautiful photo of Maher Arar, but you should have seen the thin, ashen-faced man that stepped off the plane from his ordeal in Syria. He could have slunk away, into oblivion to heal — no one would have blamed him. Instead, he took the Canadian government to court, i.e., he forced a lengthy Royal Commission in which the government’s culpability in effectively turning him over to the Americans because he was a guy who knew a guy who knew someone on the terrorist watchlist.
We couldn’t make him whole again — after 9 months of torture and incarceration in a coffin-sized cell, how can anybody be whole ever again — but the Commission did award him several million dollars, which was the least Canadian taxpayers could do for him.
Arar tried his best to get the US government to acknowledge his innocence, but it gave him the finger. He’s still not allowed to accept speaking engagements in the US. So, really, it’s not surprising that Americans haven’t heard from any of the other victims. But there are documentary films — at least 3 good ones from a few years back. Maybe there should be a new one, one that specifically focuses on inmates of the black sites.
That’s the poisonous cherry on the cake of it. First, they torture him, then they deny him redress in our courts, then they also deny him even the ability to speak on our soil about the truth of what was done to him.
Barrett Brown sentencing is today And so I thought it would be timely and appropriate to post an article he wrote about Friedman titled, “Thomas Friedman’s Five Worst Predictions”
“Now, I don’t ask a lot of favors from the American citizenry and rarely even hit it up for money, but I was thinking that it might be kind of neat if everyone could stop pretending that Friedman’s prognostication deserves to be taken seriously.”–Barrett Brown – March 4, 2009
Free Barrett Brown!
Sentencing delayed again until Jan. 22, 2015. (How many delays have we seen now?)
http://boingboing.net/2014/12/16/barrett-brown-sentencing-delay.html
I also imagine these newspapers don’t print these stories for fear of being villified by an ignorant populace for denigrating “Murica”, making people feel uncomfortable and therefore, losing sales. It is always about money in the end. The world needs more newspapers like the Guardian.
“Mike Gravel to Senator Mark Udall: Make Full Torture Probe Public Like I Did with Pentagon Papers”
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/12/16/mike_gravel_to_senator_mark_udall
(I don’t think that Udall has it in him, but I would happily be wrong.)
“Psychological Torture is Enshrined in U.S. Law”: Complicity in Abuses Began Long Before Bush
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/12/16/psychological_torture_is_enshrined_in_us
Three segments on Democracy Now! today. One at a time, so bear with me. (If I post them all at once, the comment probably won’t post.)
“After Duo Created CIA Torture Methods, Did World’s Largest Group of Psychologists Enable Abuses?”
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/12/16/after_duo_created_cia_torture_methods
“U.S. TV Provides Ample Platform for American Torturers, But None to Their Victims”
By Adam Goldman and Peyton Craighill December 16 – “A majority of Americans believe that the harsh interrogation techniques used on terrorism suspects after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were justified, even as about half the public says the treatment amounted to torture, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.”
It is a chicken and egg, which came first scenario….and it is marketing 101. I swear to God, If Obama wanted to invade Switzerland, it would take six months of media vilification, one year tops, to get the public on board. (it depends on the starting point, if most Americans can’t find your country on a map, it’s closer to the six month end of the spectrum)
….Deep within the pentagon planning department….
General Maligant – “ Colonel Repulsky, The white house says we are attacking Switzerland, have you updated the contingency plans for “Operation Chocolate-Watch”?”
Colonel Repulsky – “Only just completed it this morning sir, here are our talking points”
General Maligant – “Ah yes, let’s see. WMD HIDDEN IN HOLES IN SWISS CHEESE ON WAY TO USA SAYS INFORMANT ‘KNUCKLEBALL’…very good, what else colonel?”
Colonel Repulsky – “There is this sir, UN INSPECTORS STILL UNABLE TO VERIFY SWITZERLAND CLAIMS THAT IT HAS NO NAVY”
General Maligant – “Excellent work colonel, the invasion plan is on schedule, carry on”
As the General leaves, the camera pans up to a sign over the door, it reads ‘WE MAKE OUR OWN REALITY’
Grateful for delineation of this reality to make it more apparent to those who haven’t connected dots yet. Now the msm has begun hailing their poll results saying Americans are okay with torture. I’d love to see this torture support correlated to hours of television watched.
And in an effort to educate on hidden technologies, here is the 1976 patent for ‘remote neural transmitting,’ — essentially the ability to capture, visualize and change an individual’s brain waves remotely using electromagnetic waves and antennas. The images are transmitted to a receiving station at a distance from the individual. Westinghouse has a patent related to this, and one of suspected perps in my building prior to consulting worked for
Westinghouse for years.
https://www.google.com/patents/US3951134
Indeed, what America seems “most exceptional” at is propagandizing its greed, imperialism and racism, to itself and others – as somehow “justice for all.”
And these temple pillars are strong, Samson, have you thought of letting your hair grow?
“It would be incredibly easy, and incredibly effective, for U.S. television outlets to interview America’s torture victims.”
“all you have to do is spend five minutes talking to him (Maher Arer) to see that he has never really recovered from being snatched from his own life and savagely tortured”
Can I suggest that the Intercept put together a video, say 6 torture victims who are asked to share their stories and say how torture has affected their lives following their release, 5 minutes each for a total of 30 minutes? That is something I would love to watch although I’m sure it would be incredibly difficult viewing.
“There are hundreds if not thousands of Maher Arars the U.S. media could easily and powerfully interview.”
It could be a regular feature.
This article made me cry. Dam you GG. Just when I think I am out you pull me back in.
I invite The Intercept to interview and feature David Hicks. An Australian tortured by America for its pleasure.
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/12/16/former-guantanamo-bay-detainee-david-hicks-vows-clear-his-name
In Part:
It wasn’t until David Hicks heckled Attorney General George Brandis at the Human Rights Commission awards last week in Sydney that the Senator became aware he was in attendance.
However, Mr Brandis ought to have been aware that despite later labelling Hicks a terrorist, the Adelaide born man has never been convicted of being a terrorist, nor a member of any terrorist organisation. In 2007, David Hicks pleaded guilty to providing material support for terrorism, and he says, that charge is now at the point of being overturned.
Hicks, the kid from Adelaide who converted to Islam and trained with the Kosovo Liberation Army as well as the Pakistan based Lashkar e-Taiba before it was designated a terrorist group, isn’t surprised by Senator Brandis’ assertion.
“Out of all the politicians, he’s the one who’s been the most personal towards me. In parliament, as shadow Attorney General, he was accusing Labour of being weak on terror and not taking action on proceeds of crime.
“He’s always had it in for me,” said Hicks, who says he was tortured before, during and after interrogations during his five and a half year detention in Guantanamo.
David Hicks is a white man RP3PO thx 1138 RT D2
The Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) article is written by Monica Attard
From https://twitter.com/AttardMon/status/458431144082415617
Monica AttardVerified account [email protected]
Hallelujah. Aaron Sorkin apologizes for The Newsroom http://www.buzzfeed.com/jaimieetkin/aaron-sorkin-wants-to-apologize-to-everyone-about-the-newsro …
Excellent coverage today of US torture, its modern history, and the American Psychological Association’s complicity @ http://www.democracynow.org
When Fareed Zakaria this week interviewed former Guantanamo detainee (and current detainee rights advocate) Moazzem Begg, Zakaria demanded that Begg condemn ISIS …
I honestly could not believe my eyes when I encountered that yesterday. As in: I went back and re-read the sentences, repeatedly. It genuinely left me just shaking my head WTF? The only way I can explain Fareed’s behavior to myself is that he must on some level, deep in his psyche, feel some personal responsibility for Moazzem Begg’s experience, and this demand wrt ISIS is defensive/protective in some way. It deflects some responsibility from himself onto Moazzem Begg. It’s a distraction; it’s interrupting something that’s happening in Fareed’s own head; it’s a kind of projection of ugliness off of himself. I just can’t rationalize, read as: make sane and rational, Fareed’s behavior any other way. It’s the kind of doubling-down that speaks to I cannot listen to you! I cannot afford to hear what you’re saying.
Get help Zakaria. That’s all I can suggest. You’re only half a human being right now; you are in fact sick.
I read that sentence a few times too.
Well, they could bring on victims…or even anti-torture advocates or someone who knows the laws and treaties that say we’re not allowed to torture, for that matter, but then we’d have to question why they only manage to find hawks and super-hawks whenever someone in Washington wants to bomb somebody. And then we might ask why they were all happy to tell us that Occupy Wall Street didn’t have any known point but somehow couldn’t find anybody to talk on camera or why none of the Tea Partiers were interviewed until they had a big-business interest behind them.
Must be that Liberal Media Bias I keep hearing about.
The ban on megaphones and amplification didn’t help OWS spread any message, not to mention they were fighting an uphill battle against America’s general hatred of the poor, and low wage, unskilled/underemployed workers as well as both major political parties who are in bed with Wall Street.
That Friedman piece was vomit inducing. I think people like him, Brooks and Zakaria might actually be worse than media which is blatantly biased like Fox News. Fox influences a lot of opinion in a bad way, but it’s easy for a large percent of the population to see that they are spewing garbage. Friedman on the other hand, is taken seriously by way too many people (including some of our elected officials). He’s much more stealthy at controlling how people think.
It is sickening that most people apparently do not care about, do not know about, and/or do not empathize with torture victims. Another great article, Glenn. Thanks for the real reporting.
Great points Glenn. I’d love to see Dick Cheney on the Sunday talk show circuit, having to sit across from victims with his retched talking points and get an earful.
‘Naturally it would result in unanimous preference for the victims’ ideologies. First usg would have to control every variable and manipulate the victims’ behavior and responses in real time to assure a favorable outcome, apparently that’s official “classified” policy.
Don’t worry, usg’s making sure everyone has enough western European genetics (and none of the “bad” stuff) so everyone will just ‘naturally agree, they’re working on it as fast as they can, give em a break.
Yeah, that made LOTS of sense…
Please pardon me, I’ve brain damage from being tortured so many times. Perfectly fair debate huh.
Sure you have.
Certainly, and within a few days of 9/11. Though I can only speculate if the timing was coincidental.
In other countries there’s very few that don’t believe when a u.s. citizen say’s they’re tortured, as they’ve all heard it a thousand times; generally people have better things to do. There’s lie detector tests, though of course nobody would ever think to apply them to a situation detrimental to usg, at least not without being sure they can draw whatever result they wanted.
Any place were there’s unsupervised western euro r1b’s we can assume by default there’s torture and rights abuses occurring and on some level participation in genocide; frankly it’s getting pretty old.
Is Obama protecting war criminals by not releasing torture photos?
I am experimenting with HTML in the comment – it might not come out because there is not a preview feature
What if the media showed these photos. Would that change the view of Americans?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/14/the-detainee-abuse-photos-obama-didn-t-want-you-to-see.html
Ugh, stomach churning just reading the descriptions of what these photos contain.
Obama’s logic that they would add no value is frankly bullshit. They may be the best means to prevent or deter something like this from happening again. It WILL endanger soldiers’ lives and result in captors treated Americans awfully but that is the price you pay for committing these actions in the first place. To hide them in the name of our security is corrupted thinking.
Nate has refused to see how anyone — Froomkin, Greenwald, me — could possibly express this opinion: “The blame for that [how absurd it is that we are still arguing about any of this] rests in two places.
“One is the Obama administration, for covering up what happened and trying to stifle any sort of national conversation on the topic.”–Froomkin
So Glenn has posted another list of the requested “X Y and Z” but for some reason Nate thinks that doesn’t count … or something.
“Refused to hear”
“Continues to shield”
Wrong. I asked for the basis for that statement in the context of the Senate torture report. Your sending me articles from years ago is not relevant to that. I have not seen any evidence of a coverup and no stifling of national conversation.
Also, it is odd for you to post your response here.
Not odd at all. You were praising the same language — only this time by Glenn rather than by Dan Froomkin — about the same subject that you refused to or were incapable of acknowledging from Froomkin. My post makes that clear, backed by the two links I provided, both of which were posted in this very article by Glenn. The links address what you continue to pretend not to understand.
quote”Wrong. I asked for the basis for that statement in the context of the Senate torture report. Your sending me articles from years ago is not relevant to that. I have not seen any evidence of a coverup and no stifling of national conversation.”unquote
Who cares wha nate thinks.
It is not the same language and to say so is dishonest. The only mentioning of Obama in this article are as follows:
1. “When he sued the U.S. government, subservient U.S. courts refused even to hear his case, accepting the Obama DOJ’s claim that it was too secret to safely adjudicate.”
2. “Nobody could listen to Maher Arar speak and feel anything but disgust and outrage toward the U.S. Government – not just the Bush administration which kidnapped him and sent him to be tortured, but the Obama administration which protected them and blocked him from receiving justice”
Now compare those to Dan’s comments which were in the context of the Senate report:
1. [The Obama Administration is responsible] for covering up what happened
2. [The Obama Administration is responsible for stifling] any sort of national conversation on the topic.
THEY ARE NOT THE SAME!
No Kitt. Hardly anything you say is ever really clear because you don’t listen to what I have to say or you ignore it and go off on some other tangent or provide irrelevant and unrelated information.
You expect to make your point with an article from 2006 and again discussing Obama’s decision to not prosecute Bush Administration officials? On the latter link, as I said before, Obama’s decision not to prosecute officials is worthy of objection, but the act itself is not a cover-up. You probably don’t care but Obama was the one who RELEASED the torture memos. Why would he release them if he was covering this up!? If you want to say Obama let them off the hook, that is fine, but he did not cover it up.
If one is going to make an argument of Obama covering up something, I think it would best be conveyed in the context of the abuse photos. I agree they should be released but let’s recall the sequence of events back in 2009. In April 2009, DOJ described its intention to release the photos by May 28. On May 13, Obama changed his mind after receiving pleas from two Generals that release would endanger U.S. troops. If Obama was going to release them in the first place, only to be convinced against it, is that really a coverup or just him being scared of the consequences? Even if I disagree with his decision, to call that a cover-up is a stretch. Was this Dan’s point? Dunno, that’s why I asked.
The White house Has Been Covering Up The Presidency’s Roll In Torture For Years–by Marcy Wheeler 03/13/2014 The//Intercept
I took a look, it says: “We can be sure about one thing: The Obama White House has covered up the Bush presidency’s role in the torture program for years. Specifically, from 2009 to 2012, the administration went to extraordinary lengths to keep a single short phrase, describing President Bush’s authorization of the torture program, secret.”
I suppose this could be what Dan referred to. Good job Kitt!
It also resolves Marcy’s inquiry into the single short phrase (i.e. the redacted screenshot within Marcy’s article), about the “Guidelines on Interrogations Conducted Pursuant to the [REDACTED].”
If you open a searchable version of the Senate Report and look for “Guidelines on Interrogation” you get several hits referring to the same document, but unredacted:
While it answers Marcy’s question, I’m not sure it reveals anything new. Marcy’s redacted version (https://www.aclu.org/files/torturefoia/released/082409/olcremand/2004olc12.pdf) if you go to page 3/4, had already shown Tenet’s signature and the date of signature, so that’s nothing new. Perhaps it is the part about a “Presidential Memorandum of Notification”? But again, Marcy’s article already acknowledges that the document was based upon Bush delegating authority to George Tenet.
So in the end, I’m left scratching my head at why the Obama Administration wanted to redact that part. It didn’t seem to reveal anything that wasn’t already known. And you’d think that if they were trying to hide something, now that the full title is out, shouldn’t Marcy and other experts be latching onto it and detailing its importance?
Here’s the deal, torture apologist: You’re saying that Obama and his administration has not, for the entirety of his presidency, ‘covered up what happened and tried to stifle any sort of national conversation on the topic of torture.’ I’m saying that he has, and that is exactly what Dan Froomkin also said. You’re obscenely enjoying knocking your own self out trying to prove otherwise to yourself. Too bad for you.
That’s all.
That’s the Kitt I have come to expect! I ask for clarification on something and next thing you know I’m a torture apologist. Good ol’ Kitt, always good for some middle school quality analysis and some cheap laughs!
I handed you tons of clarification. You chose to pretend it was all “middle school analysis,” even though most all of it was in fact posts written by highly regarded writers.such as Marcy Wheeler, Glenn Greenwald, Dan Froomkin etc. And thus, since you chose to continue being an apologist for Obama and his administration — they’re responsible for torture not being prosecuted and covered up — I correctly refer to you as a torture apologist.
That American opinion of torture was markedly more negative after the Abu Ghraib pictures came out, demonstrates your point quite nicely methinks.
The media is the end result of an evolutionary process whereby outlets which appeal to their viewers attract an audience and survive, while those which don’t disappear.
Americans like to be told how great they are. The media is just a reflection of that reality.
That’s one way to “rationalize” it. Though what would my media have looked like? Americans didn’t have a chance to view it or choose, a stolen intel apparatus made that decision for you. Certainly there’s ‘quite a few steps before it gets to the point where it’s in front of the GMO audience.
Trending towards self-flattery when you have the means to do so is always an issue, I think. MC Hammer syndrome, if you will – no one in a famous person’s entourage is going to give them a critical assessment and in contrast they’ll have many ‘haters’ who make a living shouting gossip and negative innuendo that’s equally unfounded, making it seem as if all criticism is just petty and vengeful. Finding the few sober voices in that cacophony is probably more than I could manage. Finding a source of ‘good criticism’ is actually extremely difficult, I think, because by and large people who criticize an entity – celebrity haters, the press, other countries, whoever – are already coming in with an agenda, and it’s not to constructively help the entity they are criticizing.
I think democracy is a relatively good fix for this situation, because at least then criticism is coming from a group that has ‘your’ (as in the country in its entirety) best interests at heart. Maybe not that of a particular group within a country. (I am a bit bothered, for example, by TI’s insistence on a sneering tone that American’s back-pat somewhat for disclosing acts like torture and debating them as a country. What is the point in taking that tone? It’s as if a kid comes to a parent and tells them that they did something in school today that they’re not going to like, but they at least wanted to come clean about it, and the parent screams that the fact that the kid thinks he’s soooo great for confessing is just further proof of what an irredeemable shithead he is. What kind of dynamic does that set up?) But presumably, for the country as a whole.
I would rather, of course, live in a world where there was good faith constructive criticism happening on all sides. I generally dislike a moralistic “Would you just look at how bad these people over here are” attitude no matter where it’s coming from. I don’t want to take a “Look at me, I’m Sandra Dee” purer-than-thou attitude criticizing those who have worked in national security, because you know what, I’ve never done it. If I had personally been responsible for safeguarding and saving American lives then maybe I’d feel comfortable judging those who have ‘been there’, but I haven’t. I have no idea what that would be like. Conversely, I am truly stymied as to why we can’t just say “Wow, I’m so sorry” to the people we tortured who were innocent, no matter where you fall in that debate. I think it’s that demonization-style thinking again – “You’re bad and anyone who looks like you or shares your religion or comes from your part of the world is implicit in that badness”. And even for those that weren’t innocent, I try to remember that something happened in that person’s life – the environment they were raised in, poverty they grew up in, unstable communities they lived in, whatever, that means that they, however misguided they were, were also a product of all those circumstances they couldn’t help. Finger-pointing and blame is probably necessary in the world to some degree, but I think the more important goal should always, always be finding better solutions to conflicts and problems. Anger and blame may be the thing that gets people to the table in the first place, but once they’re there, I think they become counterproductive. I like to think it’s possible that we could live in a world where humans could criticize each other entirely in good faith, with the intent of truly helping the person they are criticizing, not engaging in power plays.
I try not to adopt a sneering tone, but self examination may be counterproductive if one is not committed to actually making changes. For example, the alcoholic who expresses regret after a binge weekend may only be trying to feel better about themselves to provide the license to go out and repeat the behavior the next week. If there is no commitment to change, the self examination may be a trap leading to a repeated cycle of failures. Better approaches might simply be to lower one’s expectations of what constitutes acceptable behavior or to deny the problem exists (at least those approaches have generally worked for me).
“why we can’t just say “Wow, I’m so sorry” to the people we tortured who were innocent”
If that is how you see it, you answered your own question and can’t see it. If you meant something else, I apologize. This is not our first round of CIA abuses, and every time we are given assurances that it won’t happen again.
Glenn, I knew nothing of you before Snowden. Over the past year your excellent hardwork shows your patritatism. I’m proud of what you have done!
This piece is as if you reached into my brain and put my thoughts online. Our mainstream media are frauds because the U.S. is a fraud.
Currently the life experience is un-American in this country.
Glenn, I encourage you and The Intercept to correct this deficiency. Please interview as many former victims as you can, frequently and in depth. Something needs to be done so we can return to the rule of law in this country.
The available media follows specific racial policies to begin with, evidently implemented by illegal applications of stolen intelligence technology. There’s intentional input of racially political subconscious insinuations, as well as filtering out all non-aligned content which is basically anything that emanates from anyone else.
It’s not hard to pick it out, I literally can’t watch t.v. here for more than a couple seconds without noticing “issues” with the tempo, narratives, etc, in general it’s always just plain bad for you, nothing “good for you”. Most end up against their will rationalizing some absurd benefit to the situation,… as if they had a choice.
Honestly I couldn’t even see the t.v. before a “vaccine” injection (or some type of injection) when I was 2 or 3 years old… One of many illegal “injections”, Human Rights Abuse is all I’ve ever seen here.
Respect Glen, powerfully illuminating article. Thank you.