n/a Hartwig, Maria; Fallon, Mark
Torture Journal,
09/2022
Journal Article
Odprti dostop
In this article, we argue that the government’s post 9-11 torture program was a big lie, in that the designers, executors and enablers knew all along that torture does not elicit reliable ...information. We review the government’s own research on the matter, and we discuss the ways in which methods known to be unreliable were implemented, most saliently at the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay. We review the secrecy and propaganda surrounding the scope and horror of the torture program at Guantánamo and black sites around the world, and how the government knowingly adopted the terror policies of the torture program, against their own knowledge, against international human rights, and against the law.
In the aftermath of 9/11, few questioned the political narrative provided by the White House about Guantánamo and the steady stream of prisoners delivered there from half a world away. The Bush ...administration gave various rationales for the detention of the prisoners captured in the War on Terror: they represented extraordinary threats to the American people, possessed valuable enemy intelligence, and were awaiting prosecution for terrorism or war crimes. Both explicitly and implicitly, journalists, pundits, lawyers, academics, and even released prisoners who authored books about the island prison endorsed elements of the official narrative.
In Selling Guantánamo, John Hickman exposes the holes in this manufactured story. He shines a spotlight on the critical actors, including Rumsfeld, Cheney, and President Bush himself, and examines how the facts belie the "official" accounts. He chastises the apologists and the critics of the administration, arguing that both failed to see the forest for the trees.
Darf man einen Menschen foltern, um einen anderen dadurch zu retten? Das absolute Folterverbot gilt als unverzichtbar für den Schutz der Menschenwürde. Dennoch sind Notsituationen denkbar, in denen ...Folter als letztes Mittel moralisch erlaubt sein kann. Zum Beispiel dann, wenn eine Entführerin ihr Opfer an einem geheimen Ort gefangen hält und sich weigert, dessen Aufenthaltsort preiszugeben, mit der Absicht, das Opfer in seinem Versteck sterben zu lassen. Ist die ermittelnde Polizeibeamtin nun moralisch berechtigt, die Entführerin mit Folter zu einer Aussage zu zwingen? Darf sie die Würde der Entführerin verletzen, um das Leben des Opfers zu retten? Wird nicht auch die Würde des Opfers verletzt? Und gibt es bei einer Würde-gegen-Würde-Konstellation andere Aspekte, die in eine Güterabwägung einfließen müssen?
Context: The presence of Annonaceae plants in the Hotel Guantanamo (Guantanamo), which do not belong to any of the species of this family recorded in the preliminary inventory of Cuban vascular ...plants encouraged researchers to study their identity, origin, and properties. Aim: To unveil the identity of the species, through a detailed study of its presence and record in Cuba, provide an analytical key to contrast it from the other akin taxa, and compile associated elements with the main properties that characterize it, including its practical use. Methods: Botanical methods were used in the study, such as working with collections, comparison of descriptions, and keys in specific catalogs, along with the scientific description and illustration. The adjacent population was surveyed to establish the use given to the plant. Results: The presence of Cananga odorata (Lam.) Hook. F. & Thoms in Cuba was confirmed. The taxon was described and illustrated, and an analytical key was established to contrast the species from the other representatives of this genus in Cuba. A few remarks were made on the usefulness of the plant for gardening and medicine. Conclusions: C. odorata must be included in the catalogs and specialized papers on the Cuban flora. Its usefulness for gardening and traditional medicine, and its antiviral, antibacterial, and antioxidant properties must be taken into account by the Cuban economic botany.
This article reads Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s Guantánamo Diary as an intermedial occasion to stage questions on the axis of in_visibility. The concept of in_visibility constructs the methodological and ...hermeneutical approach of the paper. The book is analyzed as an intermedial example through the lens of the archive structure where two distinct medial voices emerge—one textual, that of the Guantánamo detainee, and one visual, that of the black bars of redacted text that regularly interrupt and brutally abuse Slahi’s narrative. What makes the intermedial work extraordinary is the powerful encounter between visibility and invisibility, concepts that exchange their semiotic significance and are reevaluated. By analyzing the intermedial narratological techniques of Guantánamo Diary, this article describes the complexity of the in_visibility concept and destabilizes its normative connotations.
A la fin de 2013, l'Institut de Médecine comme Profession (IMAP) et les Fondations Open Society ont publié un rapport qui révélait que les politiques du Département Américain de la Défense et de ...l'Agence Centrale de Renseignement (CIA) ont institutionnalisé un éventail de pratiques par les agents de santé militaires et de l'agence de renseignement travaillant à la prison militaire de la Baie de Guantanamo, qui violent globalement les normes acceptées de l’éthique médicale. Il s'agit notamment de la participation du personnel médical à des interrogatoires abusifs, l'utilisation des informations médicales personnelles à des fins d'interrogatoire et le gavage des grévistes de la faim. Cet éditorial souligne ces pratiques continues et appelle à une action cohérente de la communauté médicale mondiale.
A finales del 2013, el Instituto de la Medicina como Profesión (IMAP, por sus siglas en inglés) y la Open Society Foundations, publicaron un informe que reveló que las políticas del Departamento de Defensa de Estados Unidos y la Agencia Central de Inteligencia (CIA) habían institucionalizado en la prisión militar de la Bahía de Guantánamo una serie de prácticas, por parte de los trabajadores militares y de la agencia de inteligencia, que infringían los estándares de ética médica aceptados a nivel global. Entre otras cosas se menciona la involucración del personal médico en interrogatorios abusivos; el utilizar información médica personal durante el interrogatorio; y alimentar a la fuerza a quienes están en huelga de hambre. Este editorial pone de manifiesto la continuidad de dichas prácticas y hace un llamado a la comunidad médica global para que se realicen acciones coherentes.
: The US government has presented Guantánamo Bay to the world through the lens of “exceptional sovereignty”. This argument holds that international law does not apply at Guantanamo because while ...America has “complete authority” over the base “ultimate sovereignty” rests with Cuba. Many accounts rightly critical of the abuses of power taking place at Guantanamo similarly understand it as something wholly abnormal—a literal “non‐place”. But in falling back on this argument both the American position and many of its critics have tended to “black box” what is taking place within the camp. In this paper I suggest that we ditch any sort of critique that says Guantanamo is somehow outside of the law and instead replace this line of argument with a critical history of the deployment of a particular sort of Executive power there. From this perspective, Guantanamo is better understood as a rather more normal part of the current imperial moment and connected up in various ways to American imaginations and materialisations of power. As a way of exploring some of these connections in greater detail, I examine the construction of Guantanamo as a particular sort of social space by drawing upon the accounts of those who have been there: former guards, detainees and their defence lawyers.
Contemporary sovereignty is updated within the field of governmentality, and exercises its power in an extralegal and extrahuman form on certain populations considered dangerous for social security. ...These practices lead to unlivable lives not only because they are outside the law, but also, and for the same logical reasons, because they are outside the frameworks that define what is human. Guantanamo constitutes the exemplary paradigm of the denial of the legal and ontological status of prisoners whose lives are suspended indefinitely. Among the conclusions drawn from this reflection is that the excess of sovereign power threatens the human life of those sectors considered to be dangerous, as well as community life which becomes reduced to risk, enmity and rejection.
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