The Cuba Agreement, Enforced Silence, Torture Inconveniencies and Torture Modalities

1. Pope Francis and the Cuba Agreement
President Barack Obama repudiated fifty-five years of U.S. efforts to roll back the Cuban revolution, declaring that peaceful existence made more sense than perpetual antagonism.

Prisoner exchange occupied a large part of the exchange. By September 2011, the Cubans had explicitly proposed swapping the Cuban Five for Alan Gross, a U.S. citizen being held for spying on Cuba. The Cuban Five were convicted in 2001 in a federal court in Miami. They were accused of committing espionage conspiracy against the U.S. The Cuban Five contended that they were monitoring the actions of Miami-based terrorist groups to prevent them from attacking Cuba. It took months of negotiation for the U.S. to convince Cuban negotiators that the only exchange that the White House could abide would be trading spies for spies.

Pope Francis had proposed a addressing the status of certain prisoners and imploring the two sides to resolve issues of humanitarian concern in letters he wrote to President Obama and Cuban leader Raul Castro. It was at the Vatican that the final agreement on prisoner exchange and restoring diplomatic relations was hammered out.

2. Enforced Silence by Florida Governor Scott
In a letter to the editor in the July 14, 2015 issue of  The New Yorker, W.E. Smith, professor of history at Hope University, points out that under the governorship of Rick Scott, doctors have been prohibited from asking patients whether they have firearms -- despite the well-documented health and safety risks associated with gun ownership. Scott has also tried to prohibit workers at county health clinics from discussing the Affordable Care Act with patients.

Twenty-one states have versions of laws making it illegal for workers at state-funded health centers to provide abortion services, or even counsel women about them.

3. Some Inconvenient Truths About Abortion
Despite a virtually total ban on abortions in Brazil, the abortion rate is higher than in the United States and more than 200,000 women  end up in the hospital each year due to botched abortions, whether self-administered or not. In Northern Ireland, the "use of contraceptives is widespread, emergency contraception can be purchased without a prescription and an unknown but not trivial number of women obtain abortion pills through pro-choice networks." Katha Pollitt doubts that "in a decade or two from now, women [in Northern Ireland] will be risking 14 years in prison for taking a pill that is available online and legal about everywhere else in Europe." [1]

Pollitt asks if it is  "a victory if women in states unfriendly to both conception and abortion have unplanned, unwanted babies? Is that the country we want?" According to the Guttmacher Institute, the two-thirds of women who use it (birth control) carefully and consistently account for only five percent of unintended pregnancies; also, seventy-five percent of women who seek abortions say they can't afford a baby now. "Moreover, [says Katha Pollitt] the political wing of the anti-choice movement has thrown in its lot with the conservative wing of the Republican Party, which has cut every social benefit it can."

4.) Torture Modalities
Torture Techniques Approved by the United States While Condemned in Other Countries
Type of Abuse                                                            U.S.Source
1;) Binding/Shackling of Limbs                                  Rumsfeld memo of 2/12/02
2.) Striping/Forced Nudity                                        Same as 1.)
3.) Solitary Confinement/Isolation                              Rumsfeld (Isolation for up to 30 days) and Gen.
                                                                                Sanchez memo of 9/14/03
4.) Threats of Dog Attacks                                       Rumsfeld, Sanchez and CJTF-7 memo of 10/9/03
5.) Excessive Heat/Cold                                           Same as 4.)
6.) Sleep Deprivation                                               Same as 4.) and 5.)
7.) Waterboarding                                                   CIA
8.) Blindfolding/Hooding                                          Rumsfeld
9.) Denial of Food/Drink                                          Rumsfeld, Sanchez, CJTF-7
On 6.), Rumsfeld approved twenty hours at a time; Sanchez and CJTF-7 approved up to seventy-two hours, with a minimum of four hours a day.

Countries That Practiced Such Torture Techniques With Corresponding Number
1.) China, Eritrea, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Libya, Pakistan; 2.) Egypt, North Korea, Syria, Turkey; 3.) China, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, North Korea, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey; 4,) None;  5.) Eritrea, Indonesia, North Korea, Turkey; 6.) Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Libya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Turkey; 7.) Brazil, Egypt, Syria, Tunisia; 8.) Egypt, Iran, Israel, Turkey; 9.) Burma, Iraq, North Korea, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Zimbabwe. [2]

Footnotes
[1] Katha Pollitt, "Inconvenient Truths," The Nation, October 12, 2015.

[2] "Torture: a Human Rights Perspective" (New York: The New Press, 2005)