elio5 wrote @ Aprile 6, 2008 at 4:37 am

Peppino, innanzitutto ti consiglio di iscriverti a wordpress, cosi’ ti possiamo aggiugere come autore del blog.

Voglio puppblicare una mia ricerca sulle torture che gli Stati Uniti hanno effettuato durante la presidenza di Bush, a partire da Afghanistan fino all’iraq, e come scoprirete, in tutto il mondo
pero’…… e’ in inglese

Elio Antonio Di Muccio
Professor M. Prater
English
January 3, 2008

The Torture Decoy:
Misinformation within an Issue

Today’s cultural differences inevitably distinguish views on torture in different countries. Because of this, individual states have an innate urgency to manipulate global scale decisions. The dilemma over torture then spirals down to an even smaller scale: that of the individual.
The immense bureaucracy created in this spiral acts as a decoy: individuals of all capabilities are distracted by a constant desire to define torture, when instead they should be focusing on whether it is an effective procedure worth the suffering it inflicts, and under what circumstances. Further, the individual is then forced to face the question he identified; any procedure involving suffering is inhumane and should be accounted for.

International Law
I
nternational law on torture is defined by the widely respected UN Convention against Torture. It states, as the Economist reports, that “The UN convention says the pain inflicted must be ‘severe’” (2).
This defines a broad selection of imposed suffering as simply legal, which results in a gap that made the law faulty. Further, the gap is big enough to contradict the decisions made by the Geneva Conventions, the European Court of Human Rights, the US Army Field Manual, and a Supreme Court decision by the country of Israel.
Extraordinary Times
The first to take advantage of this gap are the United States of America. Most countries that say torture is a legal procedure are not the worldwide model for democracy. In order to secretly commit acts that go against its native values, the United States had to issue the 2004 Department of Justice Memorandum.
The memo asserted that the president had extraordinary powers for these extraordinary times such as the so-called War on Terror. Essentially, the government is convinced its people believe their values and human rights have to be sacrificed to ensure national security for a threat it caused itself. This scenario legalized what are now called “coercive interrogations”, and are identified as the infliction of short term suffering on a subject.
Ever since 2004, procedures such as sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, water dunking, prolonged stress positions, exposure to extreme temperatures, hooding, violent shaking and the use of attack dogs to intimidate subjects are considered lawful and justified. As President Bush mentioned himself, these procedures are “tough”, “safe, lawful and necessary” in extraordinary times (qtd. in The Economist).
The memo also states that any procedure leading to undefined physical injury, organ failure and to the death of a subject is considered to be torture.
Ironically, the memo contradicts the UN Conventions against Torture (which was ratified by the Senate in 1994), and goes against its nation’s values.
Ordinary Times Overseas
The European Union had a stricter and more detailed view on torture far earlier than the United States because of the growing tensions between the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland.
In 1978, the European Court of Human Rights investigated interrogation procedures performed by the United Kingdom in Northern Ireland after protests against the violation of certain human rights. The court ruled that methods of coercive interrogations are to be classified as torture, and are therefore illegal. Many of these outlawed methods include the ones considered lawful by the 2004 Department of Justice memo.

Inactive Activists

Human Rights activists’ main concern is that too many innocent people are suffering as a cause of the extraordinary times scenario. They are referring to the innocent detainees in the American prisons of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.
Michael Ignatieff supplied a solution to the problem the activists aroused by saying that “if a democracy wishes to keep physical torture out of its interrogation rooms, it has to grant detainees access to legal counsel and the possibility of judicial review”, and that “at all times, the identities and whereabouts of detainees must be available to judges and legislators, in camera if need be” (Ignatieff). Ignatieff’s debate argues that there isn’t enough public overview on the issue from citizens, and not enough supervision by officials and authorities. He also says that it is acceptable to torture a subject with public overview as long as we are able to legally prove that he is holding the information we need. I think this would prove to be successful by saving innocent detainees, but only if we are truly living in extraordinary times; if we are not, torture is not justified in any case.

Unlawful Methods

The current US Army Field Manual is contradicted by the Department of Justice Memo. The manual states that techniques such as “water boarding” are considered torture and banned by the Geneva Conventions.
Water boarding is a procedure also known as “simulated drowning”. It involves filling up the subjects lungs with water and unwillingly to extract information from him. It is a (cruel and disgusting) procedure now banned by the navy seals as well.
In support of the Army field manual is Israel’s Supreme Court Decision on interrogation methods.
Ironically, the court of a country in which terrorist attacks are a daily threat, ruled that scenarios such as the ticking-bomb one are non-existent and are not to be taken under consideration ¬¬¬¬¬– further determining that any interrogation method out of the ordinary is unjustified and illegal. This went to outlaw techniques such as hooding and violent shaking.

Who is to blame?

We are all to blame for the chaos we created around the issue. Officials made the mistake of putting detainees into the hands of untrained men. Those responsible for performing procedures or coercive interrogation are to blame for not acknowledging human rights, or the respect a human being deserves, no matter what part of the globe he’s from. This allowed them to commit cruel acts legally because that’s how they are instructed by their government’s war policy. If interrogated, officials could easily defend themselves by saying they were just following orders, just like it has previously happened in the Nuremberg Trials when Nazi war criminals were judged. The United States government is to blame for not prosecuting its officials and for not taking responsibility for their actions. Instead, they denied the proven fact that such actions ever took place.
We citizens are to be blamed for allowing coercive interrogations in places as near as Cuba. We are also to be blamed for allowing the president to declare some form of martial law with the use of the memo.
The result of the big decoy caused by the distraction of the general public is that untrained men are performing unlawful procedures that, as former Navy Instructor Malcolm Nance said, “If done wrong, by an unprofessional team or by an inexperienced team, can kill that person [detainee] quite easily (qtd. in Newshour 1). This is very likely to happen soon, if it hasn’t already happened.

The Ineffectiveness of Torture

To dim the full picture around the issue even further, many retired officials such as Malcolm Nance stated that:
[The] subject is going to want to make that [process] stop, physiologically and mentally. And as they are trying to make it stop, they will come up with whatever you are asking. Maybe they’ll agree with you or they will actually try to create some half-truth or a lie, in order to get you to stop the procedure (Newshour 2).
The techniques made lawful by the memo are ineffective as well, and a great deal of suffering is delivered to innocent targets for a useless cause.

A New Worldwide Measure against Torture

After the proof of what really goes on in jails such as Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, after the discovery of a process called “rendition”, or the deportation of targets to countries such as Egypt and Jordan where enhanced interrogations are legal – which enables the government to kidnap any individual, regardless of his nationality, in order to torture him — it has become clear to the informed public minority that action must be taken to support detainees. The lives of men, whether they are innocent or criminals, or whether they do or do not hold information that could save a great deal of lives, are at stake in the hands of our untrained and brutal officials.
Establishing justice would mean mending the gap in today’s international law, therefore rewriting the UN Convention against Torture outlawing specific interrogation procedures. It would also mean that people accountable for coercive interrogations must be trialed fairly just like the Nazis were in the Nuremberg Trials after WWII, in order to set an example for the whole world.
Conclusively, an increased public and political awareness around the issue wouldn’t hurt: it would result in an increased engagement of Human Rights Activists with better arguments and better resolutions.

Bibliography

Ignatieff, Michael. “Evil under Interrogation: Is Torture
Ever Permissible?” 15 May 2004. .
Newshour. PBS. WNET, New York City. 8 November 2007
Newshour. PBS. WNET, New York City. 8 November 2007
“Tortured Logic” The Economist 7 September 2006
.
“What on earth were they thinking?” The Economist 17 June 2004
.

  elio5 wrote @ Aprile 7, 2008 at 8:56 pm

Sparperetor fai una recensione su ‘La Casta” per favore. Io non disprezzo il precedente governo Prodi semplicemente perche’ era debole sin dall’inizio, ed ero convinto che non sarebbe stato capace di mantenere le promesse fatte durante la campagna elettorale. Per quanto riguarda il PD, lo apprezzo solo come un primissimo passo verso una sinistra unita, ma ancora lontanissima, visto che si e’ ancora troppo diversi; e poi ammiro tantissimo Di Pietro, ma piu’ come magistrato.

p.s. c’e’ il candidato per L’Unione Nazionale Consumatori che e’ della PROVINCIA DI ISERNIA SIIII!!!

  elio5 wrote @ Aprile 7, 2008 at 11:44 pm

Non lo so veramente. Non e’ l’unica cosa che funzionerebbe se fosse rispettatta; purtroppo sono costretto a dire che anche la costituzione funzionerebbe se fosse rispettata! Credo che l’unico mod oper saperlo sarebbe una testimonianza personale di un membro di un partito, o di un dipendente dei media, perche’ siamo bombardati di informazioni a tal punto che e’ impossibile per noi concepire chi viene esposto di piu’ in tv e chi meno. E’ ovvio pero’ che PD e PDL ricevono gran parte dell’attenzione.

  elio5 wrote @ Aprile 7, 2008 at 11:50 pm

Pero’ la Par condicio sponsorizza questo sito, perche’ noi ci siamo propio per questo motivo

  elio5 wrote @ Aprile 12, 2008 at 2:15 am

Mi avvalgo della facolta’ di non rispondere!

  elio5 wrote @ Aprile 21, 2008 at 5:15 pm

haha NO COMMENT