Skip to main content

THE TORTURE EMPIRE: FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA




I take back what I wrote yesterday about there being nothing new we didn’t know already in the torture report that is currently stuck at the US senate.

According to this news article, there is something we didn’t know about the US’s use of torture:
A former CIA analyst says the CIA’s torture techniques used during the presidency of George W. Bush were identical to methods used by Nazi Germany’s secret police and were at times more enhanced than enhanced.
In a phone interview with Press TV on Sunday, Ray McGovern said many people around the world do not know that the so-called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ used by the CIA after the 9/11 attacks were identical to torture methods used by the Gestapo and even the words ‘enhanced interrogation’ are literal translation of German words verschärfte vernehmung.
 
‘Enhanced interrogation’ techniques, McGovern said, “is a direct translation from the Gestapo manual ‘Verschärfte Vernehmung’; German words for interrogation, vernehmung, and verschärfte means enhanced or sharpened.”

Seems the Atlantic reported on this in 2007: http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2007/05/-versch-auml-rfte-vernehmung/228158/

So the analogy I have been using in my past blog posts about the Gestapo wasn’t hyperbolic, after all.

It is clear this torture report is the equivalent of the moment when 1940s Germany came face to face with the knowledge it was operating death camps. From sea to shining sea, the Americans have set up these camps that tortured people to death. There is no way around this—and the US government, and the international community, have to deal with it on an international level, taking all the black site locations into account. A lot of international people who cooperated with the Americans on these sites also have to be held accountable.
The question that the UN should be asking right now (if it was functional, and not filled with bureaucrats afraid of losing their jobs) is this:

Is the USA still operating these sites?: the answer is probably yes.

What else is the USA  doing NOW that continues this torture around the world?

And: has it added even more diabolical methods of torture unknown to the Bush cadets to their repertoire?

My sense is yes, they may still have these sites up, they are torturing people still, and it is very possible they have added even more torture to that “revived” by Bush and his criminal accomplices during 9/11 and after.

Apparently the UN chief has condemned torture in Syria. According to this article:
U.N. rights chief slams 'rampant' torture in Syria
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2014/Apr-14/253277-un-rights-chief-slams-rampant-torture-in-syria.ashx#ixzz2yrP7OPYI
 
Don’t worry, she’s not slamming the Americans, who started the civil conflict in Syria. She is slamming the rebels.

It is absolutely clear the UN is either asleep, or is unwilling to take up the responsibility for dealing with the worst crimes against humanity in this century.

The end of Nazi Germany came with military action taken by a coalition of forces that won decisively against the Nazis. The end of the American torture empire, it seems, will come when the dollar, already weakened by the unfortunately move to isolate the Russians in the world of finance, becomes even more marginal as a world currency. The Chinese and Russians are talking about cutting out the middleman—once the dollar stops being used as a currency of transaction in international trade, there will be a readjustment of world power, bringing more players into the unipolar world of today. And that is the only way to ensure the torture empire comes to an end.

People are already pulling out their money from the American stock market. The Dow Jones keeps falling, the SP 500 keeps falling. And despite Americna alarmism that the sky will fall if the US  markets fall, the sky doesn’t fall—the currency merely makes its way into the economies of emerging markets, where it balances out some of the unfairness of the past 100 years. There’s a fierce attempt to fight the slide of the dollar, with pressure on central banks to keep the American dollar up with regards to other currencies, but morally it has now become untenable for even the staunchest allies of the USA to keep propping up this empire of torture, as well as their hollow, debt-ridden currency. Taiwan, for one, should object to the central bank policy to to prop up the dollar—already individual investors are pulling out their money from all US related businesses and transactions.

Not only does the torture report have to come out. But the American government now needs to open up all its secret national security agencies to public scrutiny. The torture report is the tip of the iceberg— the time has come to open up all its agencies to the scrutiny the international community demands today in order to regain its moral footing in the world.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Bitter Truth: Talat Abbasi's Bitter Gourds

The stories are small, but with a spicy aftertaste that could be from nowhere else but the subcontinent. Talat Abbasi's Bitter Gourd and Other Stories is a collection of nugget sized, delectable tales laid out, in typical desi fashion, amongst the detritus of social stratification, family ennui, economic marginalization and diaspora. Gently dousing her stories with a generous portion of irony and satire, the Karachi born writer brings to the fore the small hypocrisies and the mundane corruptions of everyday life in Pakistan. Whether dealing with a birdman or a poor relation, a rich widow or an immigrant mother, Ms. Abbasi touches the mythic heart that ticks besides all these caricatures. The ghostly narrative influence of Virginia Woolf, with a pinch of Victorian lit thrown in for good measure, is discernable, although most of the voices are centered around the "how kind, how kind" echoes of South Asia. The book starts, appropriately, with a story about a feudal patro
Post a Comment
Read more

INTERVIEW: TOM ARENS

KHULA MANCH Tom Arens first came to Nepal in 1972 as the South Asian representative of World Neighbors, a small American INGO. He stayed for 28 years. He was one of the founding members of the Federation of NGOs. Arens talked with Sushma Joshi of the Nation Weekly about the changes he has seen in the development scene in Nepal, as well as his thoughts about the direction in which the nation should take in the coming years. What was Nepal like in 1972? When World Neighbors first started, we worked with The Nepal’s Women’s Organization and Paropakar. These were the only two established smaller NGOs. We started with small funds: $50,000-100,000 the first couple of years. The government was ambivalent about smaller non-profits, so we couldn’t get registered until 7 years later, when the Social Service Welfare Council was established. The Queen was the chair. The Council helped to give status to smaller non-profits and to facilitate our work. What was your first program? Our first program w
1 comment
Read more

Milk and rice

Sushma Joshi I am the youngest of seven cousins. When we were little, we used to play lukamari , or hide-and-seek, games in the garden. My eldest cousin sister, taking pity on me, would allow me to be a dudh-bhat (milk and rice) during our games. A dudh-bhat is someone too young to play the game adequately, but the older children allow this young one to tag along and never be “outed” from the game because they might cry if made to leave. So this means you are endlessly in the game, even when in reality you should really be out. Of course, being the youngest means you may always retain the status of a dudh-bhat even when you do grow up. In Nepal, as we know all too well, the hierarchy of age allows the young some privileges, along with the old. It appears to me Madhav Kumar, even though he's lost the game twice in two elections, is being allowed to be the dudh-bhat by his wiser and more tolerant elders. He is allowed to be in the game endlessly even though in reality he should real
2 comments
Read more