Torture Watch: January 2014
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-01-16 09:49:33 UTC
- Modified: 2014-01-16 12:07:19 UTC
Summary: Reports and analyses of so-called 'interrogation' techniques and their impact on society
-
Reporters Without Borders is relieved by yesterday’s announced release of Ahmed Al-Fardan, a photojournalist who had been held arbitrarily in deplorable conditions since 26 December. He is nonetheless still facing prosecution on a charge of “trying to participate in an illegal demonstration”: here.
-
European court rules that alleged torture in Riyadh jails did not breach Convention on Human Rights.
-
John Rizzo disputes former President George W. Bush's claim that the CIA sought his permission to use waterboarding and other techniques on Al Qaeda suspects.
-
In the years following Sept. 11, many Americans heard the term waterboarding for the first time — a technique aimed to simulate the act of drowning. Waterboarding was at the center of the debate about what the CIA called "enhanced interrogation techniques" — and what critics called "torture."
-
Former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who is serving a thirty-month jail sentence in the federal correctional institution in Loretto, Pennsylvania, has resumed writing letters from prison after the Bureau of Prisons failed to give him nine months in a halfway house to finish out his sentence.
-
To date, only one person has been jailed in connection to the US torture program. One man has been put behind bars for the part that the United States has played in torturing prisoners of war around the globe. On January 25th, 2013, John Kiriakou was sentenced to 30 months in prison. He reported to a Federal correction facility in Loretto, Pennsylvania in late February, 2013. Kiriakou was the only person jailed in connection to the US torture program, but ironically, John has never tortured anyone. His crime: he revealed classified information to a reporter confirming the use of torture as an official US government policy, specifically, the CIA use of waterboarding in interrogations.
-
Shortly after the Abu Ghraib photographs became public, Secretary of State Colin Powell described telling foreign audiences, "Watch America. Watch how we deal with this. Watch how America will do the right thing. Watch what a nation of values and character, a nation that believes in justice, does to right this kind of wrong." Powell assured them that "they will see a free press and an independent Congress at work," that there would be "multiple investigations to get to the facts," and that "the world will see that we are still a nation with a moral code that defines our national character."
-
On his second day in office, President Obama signed an executive order banning the use of torture in interrogation, and has consistently spoken out against torture. The president has adopted a policy of “looking forward, not backward,” but several members of the Bush administration and Bush-era CIA have looked backward in memoirs (such as CIA counsel John Rizzo’s forthcoming “Company Man”) and asserted that torture “worked.” Whenever the topic resurfaces, as it did with the release of “Zero Dark Thirty,” they jump into the spotlight to defend torture.
-
Zero Dark Thirty is torture porn.
I’m so intimidated by Homeland’s Emmys and fan loyalty, not to mention almost unanimous critical praise, I hesitate to connect this show and its reckless, self-confessed “bipolar” CIA heroine with Bigelow’s austere heroine with her taste for sadism. And – what a stretch, right? – to Hitler’s furies.
Homeland did three full seasons of multi-episodes. So it’s no spoiler to reveal that the heroine “Carrie” (Claire Danes), a creepy, ethics-challenged, guilt-scarred young CIA counter-intelligence employee, has a “crazy” womanly intuition that a returned Marine hero (Damian Lewis), who has been an Al Queda captive for eight years, is actually a sleeper double or is it triple agent?
-
Talking to Gordon Corera on Newsnight, he also said capturing and interrogating terrorists was a better method than killing people through drone strikes.
John Rizzo, who retired in 2009, was the CIA's chief legal officer for seven years.
-
There is a moment in John Rizzo’s new memoir when the longtime CIA lawyer has the chance to change history. It is March 2002, and Rizzo has just been briefed on the agency’s proposals for interrogating suspected terrorists.
-
The Russian foreign ministry has said the investigation on the so-called CIA “black sites” in Poland and Lithuania has lost its steam.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Representing and Speaking for Animals
- If I ever choose to take this matter to tribunal with animals-centric NGOs on my side, it'll get some press coverage for sure
- Slopwatch: Fake Articles About "Linux", Slop Images in VentureBeat, Linux Foundation Spam Made With LLM Slop and Slop Images
- The only relief or upside - if any exists - is that the pace of slop was down a bit this week
-
- Financiers and Sponsors of the Slop Hype (Pyramid Scheme Waiting to End, Bubble That Will Inevitably Implode)
- It's also burning the planet
- Slopwatch: Fake Articles About "Linux", Google Helps Ponzi Schemes and Slopfarms in Google News
- Slopfarms are a real pain
- Gemini Links 29/08/2025: Retiring at 62 and URL Filtering HTTP(S) Proxy on Qubes OS
- Links for the day
- Links 29/08/2025: Lisa Cook Sues Convicted Felon and Backdoor Mandate in UK Resisted
- Links for the day
- Links 29/08/2025: Arti 1.5.0, War on Public Health (CDC), and Slop 'Bros' Made to Pay for Their Mass Plagiarism
- Links for the day
- No, 4Chan is Not Fighting for You by Lawyering Up Against Ofcom (UK)
- Don't mistake proto-fascists for people who "fight for you". They don't.
- Downlplaying the Impact of "UEFI 9/11" is a Losing Strategy
- we won't publish much whilst on holiday
- In Many Places in the World Vista 11 "Market Share" is Going Down, Not Up
- In some countries Windows is already down to third place or lower
- More Microsoft-Connected Layoffs, at Least Third Time This Month! (Also Another Death on Campus)
- Microsoft as a "gaming" company is where studios, projects, games, and even developers come to die
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, August 28, 2025
- IRC logs for Thursday, August 28, 2025
- Gemini Links 29/08/2025: Poems, Games, and Java 25 Performance
- Links for the day
- Links 28/08/2025: Greenland 'Interferences' by US and Skinnerboxes to Get Banned in Korean Schools
- Links for the day
- Richard Stallman (RMS) Talk in Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress Will be Remote
- This past week RMS received lots of accolades online
- The Register MS (Run by Microsoft Operatives): Free Software is Putin, Hence Evil and Dangerous
- The current editor in chief is an American Microsofter, the previous one went to work for Google (US)
- Links 28/08/2025: Chatbots Distorting/Fabricating History and Also Driving Suicide
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 28/08/2025: Back in Japan and Why "Hacker News" Sucks
- Links for the day
- A Much-Needed Wake-up Call to Users of Wordpress.com, Blogspot, Substack and All Those Other Outsourced (and Centralised) Platforms
- There are several lessons in there
- The UEFI 9/11 - Part II - Campaign of Censorship and Defamation Against Critics
- In dictatorships, humour serves an important role. It's tragic.
- Open Source Initiative (OSI) Resists Software Freedom, Even by Attacking Its Own
- The OSI is compromised
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 27, 2025
- IRC logs for Wednesday, August 27, 2025
- Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com, Slopfarms in Google News, and More
- Some readers of ours end up sending us links that are from slopfarms, not realising those are slopfarms
- Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Katrina Memories and Google Versus Software Freedom
- Links for the day
- Links 27/08/2025: Police Against Media Freedom in the UK, Energy-Hungry Countries Targeted by China
- Links for the day
- Microsoft Windows Fell to All-Time Lows in Egypt This Summer, Vista 11 Adoption Decreases While GNU/Linux Increases
- Vista 11 is going down rather than up
- Links 27/08/2025: Microsoft Demoralises Staff With Slop Demands, Leaving Mastodon Explained
- Links for the day
- 12 Hours Ago The Register MS Published a Fake (Paid-for) Article, But This One for a Change Did Not Promote a Ponzi Scheme
- There are also Free software alternatives, but they don't pay The Register MS for "synthetic" so-called 'journalism'
- More People Need to Call Out and Put a Stop to Serial Sloppers
- Unless slopfarms are stopped, people will read and share Microsoft propaganda made by chatbots
- Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Headphones and Tartarus
- Links for the day
- Morale at Microsoft is Terrible (Proprietary Plagiarism Machines Have No Future, LLM Slop is a Bubble)
- The slop sceptics/critics are going to have lots of "told you so" moments
- GNOME "governance issues, staff reduction, etc." amidst Albanian whistleblowing and women trafficking
- Notice the connection to Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) and GNOME
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 26, 2025
- IRC logs for Tuesday, August 26, 2025