President Barack Obama has maintained a network of torture-prisons during his “war on terror”, including a secret prison in Afghanistan. President Bush and President Obama; different Presidents, same criminality.
Showing all posts tagged torture
Afghanistan has been given nothing but misery
Robert Fisk on the destruction of ancient cultures while the West talks about “democracy” and “liberation” at the barrel of a gun: Over the door of the Kabul museum today is a Persian quotation: “A nation stays alive when its culture and history are kept alive.” But is it possible to believe that even these…
Our good friends in Pakistan like to torture
Robert Fisk reports from Pakistan on the 8000 “disappeared” citizens during the country’s US-backed “war on terror”: There is evidence that Pakistan’s “disappeared” are moved around, between barracks and interrogation centres and underground torture facilities in different towns and cities. There are also terrible rumours – fostered, some say, by the security authorities – that…
How “illegal” immigrants are held by the civilised West
The voices of refugees around the world deserve to be heard. Instead, demonisation seems order of the day. Britain: Torture survivors seeking sanctuary in Britain are being wrongly held in government detention centres, despite independent medical evidence supporting claims of brutal violence against them in their home countries. According to Home Office guidelines, in cases…
Violence is a means and an end: an interview with Mark Danner
My latest article for New Matilda is an interview with leading American reporter Mark Danner: Leading US journalist Mark Danner calls a spade a spade and examines the political value of violence in this exclusive interview with Antony Loewenstein Mark Danner has some unusual characteristics for a mainstream US journalist. He has published in some…
The legacy of the war on terror (with a little help from torture)
A truly horrifying report from Britain about a man, Omar Deghayes, imprisoned for six years by the Americans, including at Guantanamo Bay, and never charged. He tells his story: It is not hot stabbing pain that Omar Deghayes remembers from the day a Guantánamo guard blinded him, but the cool sen…sation of fingers being stabbed…
The brutality of American exceptionalism
Former Bush administration lawyer John Yoo continues to be verbally attacked in the US. Imagine if this information emerged from any other country. The outrage would be utterly justified: The chief author of the Bush administration’s “torture memo” told Justice Department investigators that the president’s war-making authority was so broad that he had the constitutional…
Standing up peacefully against the tyranny of torture
There appears to be a recent surge in the US for civil disobedience against alleged war criminals. Recently the Israeli ambassador Michael Oren was heckled. And now another wonderful example of action against Bush administration lawyer John Yoo who is accused of finding creative legal ways to authorise torture:
London and Washington, a study in a shameful relationship
Britain has been trying for years to keep secret evidence that it allowed torture against one of its own citizens. But what’s the real reason Gordon Brown worked so hard to keep Washington happy? Simon Jenkins in the Guardian explains: Britain believes that publishing details of what interrogators did to its residents would lead Washington…
How Britain, under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, defends torture
There are times when the Western state is exposed as outright liars. The case of tortured British citizen Binyam Mohamed is a case in point. The details are astounding. Senior government officials, intelligence services and ministers all lied. We really shouldn’t be surprised. “Never believe anything until it’s been officially denied“, once wrote Claud Cockburn.…