blessed britons

“I am dying here every day, mentally and physically. This is happening to all of us. We have been ignored, locked up in the middle of the ocean for years. Rather than humiliate myself, having to beg for water, I would rather hurry up the process [of dying] that is going to happen anyway...
“The British government refuses to help me. What is the point of my wife being British? I thought Britain stood for justice, but they … abandoned us [British residents], people who have lived in Britain for years, and who have British wives and children. I hold the British government responsible for my death, as I do the Americans.”

— Shaker Aamer

mad world

The United States curreently produces more than 5 tons of carbon per person per year. Japan and Western European nations have per capita emissions that range from 1.6 tons to 4.2 tons, with most below 3 tons. In the developing world, emissions average 0.6 tons per capita, with China at 0.76 and India at 0.29. This means that to reach an 'even-handed' per capita annual emission limit of 1 ton of carbon per person, India would be able to increase its carbon emission to more than three times what they now are. China would be able to increase its emissions a more modest 33 per cent. The United States, on the other hand, would have to reduce its emissions to no more than one-fifth of present levels.

— Peter Singer

One World

rumsfeld

so far gone

Submitted by antarchi on October 24, 2007 - 00:43.

A horrible, shocking documentary:

Ghosts of Abu Ghraib

How on earth can we pull back from where we are, and how did we manage to get so far. By turning away, compartmentalising what is happening, by allocating it to 'politics' or 'war' or something else towards which we can look or not look and for which we bear no share of blame - by doing all of that we let it happen, on and on, worse and worse, and more and more impossible to halt.

he begged to commit suicide

Submitted by antarchi on April 27, 2008 - 16:07.

The brutality of SERE techniques was in evidence during the interrogation of Mohammed al-Qahtani, believed by some to be the missing 20th hijacker of the 9/11 attacks. From November 2002 to January 2003, interrogators and psychologists at Guantanamo experimented with ways to torment Qahtani into confessing. The methods used in his torture, which were directly authorized by then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, included months of isolation, sleep deprivation, forced nudity, and even a stint where a female interrogator allegedly performed lap dances on him. He begged to commit suicide. Qahtani ultimately "confessed" in June 2005, claiming that 30 other Guantanamo prisoners were Osama bin Laden's bodyguards.

— David Goodman

The Enablers