"the President of the United States is
not bound by laws banning the use of
torture and anyone he orders to torture
another could not be prosecuted"

Thieves Fall Out in the Bush
Administration Over American Torture in
Saddam's Torture Chambers, But It
Happened at Gitmo and in Afghanistan
Too. Don't Kid Yourself. 5/6

washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5733-2004May5.html
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India goes cool on privatisation

Corporate Mercenaries Create Sharing
Network

Under assault by insurgents and unable to rely on U.S. and coalition troops for intelligence or help under duress, private security firms in Iraq have begun to band together in the past 48 hours, organizing what may effectively be the largest private army in the world, with its own rescue teams and pooled, sensitive intelligence.

The CPA's program management office has sought bids for a project to coordinate security among the 10 largest prime contractors and their subcontractors working on U.S.-backed reconstruction projects worth $18.4 billion. But the bids are still under review. In the meantime, the office is "trying to get at least some level of intelligence sanitized from the military that could be given to contractors," said Capt. Bruce A. Cole, spokesman for the program management office in Baghdad. That has not happened yet.  The firms, stunned by the casualties they suffered this week and by the lack of a military response, have begun banding together to share their own operations-center telephone numbers and tips on threats, as well as to organize ways to rescue one another in a crisis.

"Each private firm amounts to an individual battalion," said one U.S. government official familiar with the developments. "Now they are all coming together to build the largest security organization in the world."

Is this a return of the c ondotteiri?

Putin 'halts' privatisation probe

Privatisation of WAPDA companies: PC to
pass Rs 100b in debt to buyers

More Appalling Iraqi Torture Photos
Emerge. Impeachment Now! It Won't Happen
But It Should. America is Disgraced and
an Islamic Backlash for the Bush Cartel
Corporate Culture of Torture and
Humiliation Threatens Our National
Security. 5/6

washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5623-2004May5.html
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The privatisation of war: 30bn goes to
private military; Fears over 'hired
guns' policy; and more 12/11

guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1103566,00.html
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Torture and Truth and The Logic of
Torture

Torture

"Regarding the Torture of Others"

Regarding the Torture of Others

There is more and more recording of what people do, by themselves. At least or especially in America, Andy Warhol's ideal of filming real events in real time -- life isn't edited, why should its record be edited? -- has become a norm for countless Webcasts, in which people record their day, each in his or her own reality show. Here I am -- waking and yawning and stretching, brushing my teeth, making breakfast, getting the kids off to school. People record all aspects of their lives, store them in computer files and send the files around. Family life goes with the recording of family life -- even when, or especially when, the family is in the throes of crisis and disgrace. Surely the dedicated, incessant home-videoing of one another, in conversation and monologue, over many years was the most astonishing material in ''Capturing the Friedmans,'' the recent documentary by Andrew Jarecki about a Long Island family embroiled in pedophilia charges.

An erotic life is, for more and more people, that which can be captured in digital photographs and on video. And perhaps the torture is more attractive, as something to record, when it has a sexual component. It is surely revealing, as more Abu Ghraib photographs enter public view, that torture photographs are interleaved with pornographic images of American soldiers having sex with one another. In fact, most of the torture photographs have a sexual theme, as in those showing the coercing of prisoners to perform, or simulate, sexual acts among themselves. One exception, already canonical, is the photograph of the man made to stand on a box, hooded and sprouting wires, reportedly told he would be electrocuted if he fell off. Yet pictures of prisoners bound in painful positions, or made to stand with outstretched arms, are infrequent. That they count as torture cannot be doubted. You have only to look at the terror on the victim's face, although such ''stress'' fell within the Pentagon's limits of the acceptable. But most of the pictures seem part of a larger confluence of torture and pornography: a young woman leading a naked man around on a leash is classic dominatrix imagery. And you wonder how much of the sexual tortures inflicted on the inmates of Abu Ghraib was inspired by the vast repertory of pornographic imagery available on the Internet -- and which ordinary people, by sending out Webcasts of themselves, try to emulate.

But it's not torture?

Torture Inc.

What is torture?

So, coincidentally, BoingBoing reader Tony sends in this timely reminder that real definitions of torture do exist. Here is one of them -- from the UN Convention Against Torture, which the US government ratified along with 70 other countries. Tony says, "Every time I turn on the TV or radio, the media and the government itself is talking about US military 'abuses.' Let's be clear: what's happening at Abu Ghraib is not 'abuse' but 'torture.'"

If I were thinking clearly last night, I'd have told my friend, "It's torture when they do it. It's abuse when our guys do it."
Link

Another Fan Of Torture Reveals Himself

The torture memoranda

Torture’s

chronicle.com/free/v51/i20/20a01201.htm#torture
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Contract to torture

torture is not an american value

I am joining a growing list of Americans who oppose the confirmation, of Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General.

As the prime legal architect for the policy of torture adopted by the Bush Administration, Gonzales's advice led directly to the abandonment of longstanding federal laws, the Geneva Conventions, and the United States Constitution itself. Our country, in following Gonzales's legal opinions, has forsaken its commitment to human rights and the rule of law and shamed itself before the world with our conduct at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. The United States, a nation founded on respect for law and human rights, should not have as its Attorney General the architect of the law's undoing.

In January 2002, Gonzales advised the President that the United States Constitution does not apply to his actions as Commander in Chief, and thus the President could declare the Geneva Conventions inoperative. Gonzales's endorsement of the August 2002 Bybee/Yoo Memorandum approved a definition of torture so vague and evasive as to declare it nonexistent. Most shockingly, he has embraced the unacceptable view that the President has the power to ignore the Constitution, laws duly enacted by Congress and International treaties duly ratified by the United States. He has called the Geneva Conventions "quaint."

[. . .]

With this nomination, we have arrived at a crossroads as a nation. Now is the time for all citizens of conscience to stand up and take responsibility for what the world saw, and, truly, much that we have not seen, at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. We oppose the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General of the United States, and we urge the Senate to reject him.

While it is vital that we defeat our enemies, we must not become them in the process. As a nation, we must stand united against Albert Gonzales and everything he represents. Torture is not an American value.

Hellboy and Tux Torture

A Privatisation Too Far: Mercenaries and Torture in Iraq