Source: Salon

BBC screenshot

by Glenn Greenwald
March 17, 2010

French documentarians conducted an experiment where they created a faux game show — with all the typical studio trappings — and then instructed participants (who believed it was a real TV program) to administer electric shock to unseen contestants each time they answered questions incorrectly, with increasing potency for each wrong answer.  Even as the unseen contestants (who were actors) screamed in agony and pleaded for mercy — and even once they went silent and were presumably dead — 81% of the participants continued to obey the instructions of the authority-figure/host and kept administering higher and higher levels of electric shock.  The experiment was a replica of the one conducted in 1961 by Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram, where 65% of participants obeyed instructions from a designated authority figure to administer electric shock to unseen individuals, and never stopped obeying even as they heard excruciating screams and then silence.  This new French experiment was designed to measure the added power of television to place people into submission to authority and induce them to administer torture. Read the full story

Traducción del artículo en español abajo

Article published in Amauta with permission from TomDispatch and the author

(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Aaron Escobar ♦ (the spaniard)™, safety superhero)

Source: TomDispatch

by Tom Engelhardt
February 15, 2010

Let me put American life in the Age of Terror into some kind of context, and then tell me you’re not ready to get on the nearest plane heading anywhere, even toward Yemen.

In 2008, 14,180 Americans were murdered, according to the FBI.  In that year, there were 34,017 fatal vehicle crashes in the U.S. and, so the U.S. Fire Administration tells us, 3,320 deaths by fire.  More than 11,000 Americans died of the swine flu between April and mid-December 2009, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; on average, a staggering 443,600 Americans die yearly of illnesses related to tobacco use, reports the American Cancer Society; 5,000 Americans die annually from food-borne diseases; an estimated 1,760 children died from abuse or neglect in 2007; and the next year, 560 Americans died of weather-related conditions, according to the National Weather Service, including 126 from tornadoes, 67 from rip tides, 58 from flash floods, 27 from lightning, 27 from avalanches, and 1 from a dust devil. Read the full story

(Foto editada por Jared Rodríguez/Truthout)

Artículo publicado en Amauta con permiso del autor

Se pregunta un informe de Naciones Unidas sobre las detenciones secretas

Fuente: t r u t h o u t
Traducción: Sinfo Fernández, Rebelión

por Andy Worthington
28 de enero, 2010

Un nuevo e importante informe sobre las políticas de detenciones secretas en todo el mundo, realizado por cuatro expertos en derechos humanos independientes de Naciones Unidas, concluye que: “A escala global, las detenciones secretas en relación con las políticas de contraterrorismo siguen siendo un grave problema”, y “si se recurre a ellas de forma sistemática y extendida, las detenciones secretas pueden alcanzar el umbral del crimen contra la humanidad”. Read the full story

Article published in Amauta with special permission from TomDispatch

Para leer versión de este artículo en español y artículo relacionado en español (Entre redadas nocturnas y prisiones secretas en Afganistán), ver abajo

(Image: Troy Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: ArtMakesMeSmile, DecadeNull, LoveMissB)

Night Raids, Hidden Detention Centers, the “Black Jail” and the Dogs of War in Afghanistan

Source: TomDispatch

by Anand Gopal
January 28, 2010

[The research for this story was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.]

One quiet, wintry night last year in the eastern Afghan town of Khost, a young government employee named Ismatullah simply vanished. He had last been seen in the town’s bazaar with a group of friends. Family members scoured Khost’s dust-doused streets for days. Village elders contacted Taliban commanders in the area who were wont to kidnap government workers, but they had never heard of the young man. Even the governor got involved, ordering his police to round up nettlesome criminal gangs that sometimes preyed on young bazaar-goers for ransom.

But the hunt turned up nothing. Spring and summer came and went with no sign of Ismatullah. Read the full story

Source: GRITtv

January 27, 2010

When he took office, Barack Obama promised to close the prison at Guantanamo within the year. This week, the anniversary of that promise brought a fresh round of protests at the capitol rotunda, since Guantanamo is still open. To mark another year of its existence, we thought we’d share some voices from those who’ve been inside. Thanks to the ACLU for this video.

Fuente: IPS

por William Fisher

NUEVA YORK, 22 ene (IPS) – El gobierno estadounidense de Barack Obama oculta pruebas de que tres muertes de prisioneros en la base militar de su país en Guantánamo, Cuba, declaradas como suicidios pero que no fueron tales, según abogados, activistas de los derechos humanos y expertos en seguridad nacional.

La inquietud recrudeció al publicarse en la última edición de la revista estadounidense Harper’s el testimonio de un informante según el cual los tres prisioneros, Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi y Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani, murieron por efecto de la tortura. Read the full story

Source: Harper’s Magazine

(Image: t r u t h o u t)

by Scott Horton
January 18, 2010

1. “Asymmetrical Warfare”

When President Barack Obama took office last year, he promised to “restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great.” Toward that end, the president issued an executive order declaring that the extra-constitutional prison camp at Guantánamo Naval Base “shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order.” Obama has failed to fulfill his promise. Some prisoners there are being charged with crimes, others released, but the date for closing the camp seems to recede steadily into the future. Furthermore, new evidence now emerging may entangle Obama’s young administration with crimes that occurred during the George W. Bush presidency, evidence that suggests the current administration failed to investigate seriously—and may even have continued—a cover-up of the possible homicides of three prisoners at Guantánamo in 2006. Read the full story

Source: Common Dreams

by Daniel Ellsberg
January 1, 2010

Mordechai Vanunu — my friend, my hero, my brother — has again been arrested in Israel on “suspicion” of the “crime” of “meeting with foreigners.” I myself have been complicit in this offense, traveling twice to Israel for the express purpose of meeting with him, openly, and expressing support for the actions for which he was imprisoned for over eighteen years. His offense has been to defy openly and repeatedly ,conditions put on his freedom of movement and associations and speech after he had served his full sentence, restrictions on his human rights which were a direct carry-over from the British Mandate, colonial regulations in clear violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Such restrictions have no place in a nation evincing respect for a rule of law and fundamental human rights. His arrest and confinement are outrages and should be ended immediately. Read the full story

The image of Uncle Sam is seen behind shattered glass at the military recruitment center in New York’s Times Square. (AP / Mary Altaffer)

Source: Truthdig

by Chris Hedges
December 28, 2009

Syed Fahad Hashmi can tell you about the dark heart of America. He knows that our First Amendment rights have become a joke, that habeas corpus no longer exists and that we torture, not only in black sites such as those at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or at Guantánamo Bay, but also at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan. Hashmi is a U.S. citizen of Muslim descent imprisoned on two counts of providing and conspiring to provide material support and two counts of making and conspiring to make a contribution of goods or services to al-Qaida. As his case prepares for trial, his plight illustrates that the gravest threat we face is not from Islamic extremists, but the codification of draconian procedures that deny Americans basic civil liberties and due process. Hashmi would be a better person to tell you this, but he is not allowed to speak.

This corruption of our legal system, if history is any guide, will not be reserved by the state for suspected terrorists, or even Muslim Americans. In the coming turmoil and economic collapse, it will be used to silence all who are branded as disruptive or subversive. Read the full story

Source: Ted Rall

Comic by Ted Rall

Since 9/11, We’ve Embraced Our Inner Coward

by Ted Rall
December 31, 2009
NEW YORK — Home of the free and the brave. Live free or die. Shoot first; ask questions later. Kill ‘em all, let God sort ‘em out. These were the mottos of a brash, impetuous, audacious-to-a-fault nation.

That nation is dead.

Once we Americas did brave things: We sat on boats, crossing the English Channel, knowing that most of us would die on the beach in Normandy. We sat at the lunch counter in the Deep South, waiting for white goons to beat us up. We also did brave things that were stupid: When the president sent us to Vietnam, some of us went, risking death. Others went to Canada, sacrificing everything for principle. We bungee jumped. We tried New Coke. Bravery can be dumb.

But it’s still brave. Read the full story