Journalists are increasingly paying the ultimate price for simply doing their job: The number of journalists killed worldwide spiked to the highest number in more than a decade, with nearly half killed in Iraq, according to an analysis by the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based independent organization that compiles information on the deaths…
Showing all posts tagged torture
Our ally tortures
The United States of America is a torturing nation. This story of a Yemeni man who suffered 19 months of hell is devastating (and yet the mainstream media still mostly calls such practices “enhanced interrogation techniques.) UPDATE: More on our torturing ally.
Just another day at the office
The United States, a torturing nation (sanctioned by the White House.) Welcome to the world’s only superpower. It still astounds me how many in the mainstream media refuse to condemn the use of torture. Their silence is little better than complicity.
Destroying evidence is what we do for breakfast
The current controversy over the CIA destroying vital evidence of its officers torturing terror suspects is causing justified outrage – though many establishment commentators seem to have no problem with the random use of torture to obtain pointless intelligence – but the US government has a history of such behaviour. American Torture expert Michael Otterman…
Doctors who torture
In times of war, medical practitioners are regularly asked to perform illegal acts. Most refuse. Some, tragically, do not: The Australian Psychological Society (APS) recently announced its position on members’ involvement in the use, participation or provision of advice about torture and other injurious practices.… Unlike their American counterparts, Australian psychologists have rejected any involvement…
This is what a real commentator looks like
Keith Olbermann unloads on the Bush administration’s use of torture (his directness is almost shocking in its honesty):
Try this at home
When a senior Bush administration official decided in 2004 that water-boarding was torture after he personally experienced the treatment – he was promptly silenced after this private revelation – we can confidently say that the world’s leading super-power is yet again proud of its torturing record:
Torturing for “freedom”
The Bush administration’s proposed new Attorney General Michael Mukasey seems to have a problem labeling water-boarding as torture. Water-boarding is torture. Period.
How far he’s come (ie. waking up to reality)
Leading conservative American commentator Andrew Sullivan, days after September 11: The middle part of the country – the great red zone that voted for Bush – is clearly ready for war. The decadent left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead – and may well mount a fifth column. Sullivan, today, after hearing…
Waterboarders are us
My friend Mike Otterman is the author of the fine book, American Torture, detailing successive US administrations’ role in the use and development of torture against perceived “enemies.” Over the last month he’s been travelling around America talking to a variety of audiences about the direction Washington has taken the country since 9/11. Torture is…