President Obama has cut a swathe through the Bush-era National Security Program, forcing the CIA to close its secret overseas prisons and ban harsh interrogation methods. Russia Today’s Anastasia Churkina spoke to Human Rights lawyer John Sifton, who reveals the truth behind CIA secret prisons – the controversy, the lies, the torture, and the blacked-out [...]
October 28, 2009 | Filed under
TPRvideo |
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The 15th anniversary of the U.S. ratification of the United Nations Convention Against Torture passed last week with little fanfare and virtually no press attention from the mainstream media here. But according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), “U.S. policy continues to fall short of ensuring full compliance with the treaty.” For example, the organization said that an appendix to the Army Field Manual (AFM) can still facilitate cruel treatment of prisoners and detainees at home and abroad.
October 27, 2009 | Filed under
Torture |
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Well, that took a while. Nearly a year after George W. Bush’s Republican party was voted out of office, and at least five years after reports first surfaced that music was being used in “War on Terror” facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo as part of a package of “enhanced interrogation technique,” — which, in any world other than the reality-defying one inhabited by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, would have been defined as torture — several noted musicians have spoken out to condemn the practice.
October 25, 2009 | Filed under
Torture |
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Professor Shane O’Mara at Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience in Dublin has written an article which has caught the attention of the mainstream media. Associated Press reporter Pamela Hess described Prof. O’Mara’s article,”Torturing the Brain: On the folk psychology and folk neurobiology motivating ‘enhanced and coercive interrogation techniques’” as showing that the CIA’s “severe interrogation techniques appear based on… a layman’s idea of how the brain works as opposed to science-based understanding of memory and cognitive function.”
September 25, 2009 | Filed under
Torture |
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David Cole’s new book is two things: First, a collection of six of the previously-published “torture memos” written between 2002 and 2006 by lawyers at the Bush-era Office of Legal Counsel. Yes, the ones that used law to justify the “enhanced interrogation techniques” now so well known. And, second, Cole’s commentary on this distortion of the law and its implications for our society
September 24, 2009 | Filed under
Commentary |
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Foreign intelligence agencies have been holding back their liaison activities and their cooperation with the CIA because of the crimes associated with secret prisons, torture and abuse, and extraordinary renditions. It is quite unbelievable that CIA leaders decided to compromise the governments and intelligence services of the European community by locating secret prisons and using logistical facilities within their borders. It is very unlikely that any member of the European Union will cooperate with such CIA activities in the future.
September 23, 2009 | Filed under
Commentary |
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Seven former directors of the CIA sent a letter to President Barack Obama Friday asking him to take the unprecedented step of personally blocking an investigation authorized by Attorney General Eric Holder into cases where agency officers and contractors allegedly exceeded legal guidelines during the interrogations of “war on terror” detainees.
September 19, 2009 | Filed under
Law |
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The CIA said in court papers late Monday that it intends to withhold hundreds of pages of documents related to the Bush administration’s torture and detention policies on grounds that disclosing the information will threaten national security.
September 1, 2009 | Filed under
Torture |
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Did physicians and psychologists help the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency develop a new research protocol to assess and refine the use of waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques? This is the question being raised in a new report by a leading human rights organization. The group says that, if confirmed, it would likely constitute a [...]
September 1, 2009 | Filed under
Torture |
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As someone who has conducted evaluations of torture victims, the “evaluation” of high-value detainee Abu Zubaydah is a fascinating, if sickening, look at how the CIA goes about their kind of business. In the course of this article, we’ll learn more about how this “psychological evaluation” was used to further torture, making its drafting an [...]
September 1, 2009 | Filed under
Torture |
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