Torture Modalities

A Compendium of Torture found in: Torture: a Human Rights Perspective (New York: The New Press, 2005)

Reed Brody, "The Road to Abu Ghraib: Torture and Impunity in U.S. Detention"
p. 146 - "First, in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on the United States, the Bush Administration seemingly determined that winning the war on terror required that the United States government circumvent international law. " 'There was a before-9/11 and an after 9-11,' said Cofer Black, former director of the CIA's counter-terrorism unit, in testimony to Congress. 'After 9/11 the gloves came off.' Senior administration lawyers in a series of internal memos argued over the objectives of career military and State Department counsel that the new war against terrorism rendered 'obsolete long-standing legal restrictions on the treatment and interrogation of detainees. The Administration sought to rewrite the Geneva Conventions of 1949 to eviscerate many of their most important protections. These included the rights of all detainees in an armed conflict to be free from humiliating and degrading treatment, as well as from torture and other forms of coercive interrogation. The Pentagon and the Justice Department developed the breathtaking legal argument that the president, as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, was not bound by U.S. or international laws prohibiting torture when acting to protect national security, and such laws might even  be unconstitutional if they hampered their war on terror. The United States began to create off-shore, off-limits, prisons as Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, maintained other detainees in 'undisclosed locations,' and without any legal due process sent terrorism suspects to countries where information was beaten out of them."

James Ross, "A History of Torture"
p. 15 - "The  human rights treaties can be viewed as the culmination of a historical process recognizing the inviolability of the person. Today, no justice system formally permits torture and no government openly considers it acceptable. Yet day in and day out, far too many people throughout the world suffer a torturer's hands."
p. 16 - "But as the history of torture demonstrates, once torture becomes acceptable it ensures an ever-widening circle of victims."

Eitan Felener, "Torture and Terrorism"
p. 29 - "The growing resemblance between America's and Israel's approach to interrogation of terrorist suspects is not just confined to the striking similarities of the methods used -- hooding, loud noises, sleep deprivation, exposure to intense heat and cold. What makes Israel's case so relevant to understanding the implications of American policies and practices is that for more than a decade Israel was the only country in the world that officially adopted the use of physical force in interrogation of suspected terrorists."
p. 33 - (Henry Shue) - "The distance between the situations which must be corrected in order to have a plausible case of morally permissible torture and the situations which actually occur is, if anything, further reason why the existing prohibitions should remain and should be strengthened by making torture an international crime."
P. 39 - The GSS (Israel's General Security Service) may have tortured thousands, if not tens of thousands of Palestinians."

Marie-Monique Robin, "Counterinsurgency and Torture"
p. 53 - "Lessons from Latin America's dirty wars nay not have been learned by the United States and the rest of the world."

Cherie Booth, "Sexual Violence, Torture, and International Justice"
p. 118 - "Rape has been used to trash the spirit of political prisoners, to recruit  women into the internal spy network, and to break up families and communities."

Dinah Pokempner, "Command Responsibility for Torture"
"If we are willing to torture putative terrorists, we can no longer assert the universally of rights and instead must divide the world into those entitled to full protection and those deemed too dangerous for such a entitlement."

Jamie Fellner, "Torture in U.S. Prisons"
p. 182 - "If prisons were operated with a goal of rehabilitation -- and if prison officials were held accountable for their ability to contribute to that goal -- we would see far less mistreatment and abuse in prisons."

Kenneth Ross, "Justifying Torture"
p. 185 - "The Bush administration has  never repudiated the claim that the president has the power to order torture, nor did it commit to abide by the parallel prohibition of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment."
p. 195 - "Bush continues to 'disappear' detainees; continues 'rendering'; continues a vendetta against the ICC; and continues to abuse detainees."
p. 200 - "The Bush administration must reaffirm making human rights a guiding principle."

ADDENDUMS:
*Racism Polling - A Pew poll taken in August 2015 found fifty percent saying racism is a problem, whereas thirty-three percent saw it as a problem in 2010.

*Hear No Evil - In Wisconsin, the Board of Commissioners of Public Lands forbade workers in the agency (which oversees state forests) from 'engaging in global warming or climate change work' -- including  responding to emails about it."

"Florida's anti-climate change fatwa was uncovered by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, which interviewed numerous state workers who had been told not to use the words 'climate change' or 'global warming.' "