The freedom archipelago
The Medium Lobster tells you all you need to know about Guantanamo and the rest of the lovely archipelago.
On the same general subject, I noted with something a little like amusement (sans any actual laughing, since torture and detainment are really only so funny) this morning one of those strange same-planet-different-worlds things via Google News... the news stories collected on the Amnesty International gulag comparison thing had two general sorts of headlines—either: 'Amnesty backs away from Gulag comparison', or 'Amnesty stands by Gulag comparison'.
Curiously, the meat is the same in all the stories however: the Amnesty USA chief did say that no, Guantanamo and the rest of the extended system now attached to it don't do the same things to people as did the Soviet gulag (no starvation, for instance, and no forced labour)... but like the gulag, people are literally and apparently intentionally 'disappeared' into the system, and no one outside knows where they are. And there's torture.
The other comment that seems to have been used to justify the softened headlines in some press (so far in US and UK press, so far as I've seen) and brought the 'Amnesty still pissed' headlines in most of the rest of the world—the fact that the Amnesty USA executive director (one William Schulz) couldn't actually say with certainty that Rumsfeld himself or anyone else at a high level of the administration approved the torture and beatings...
And what we get from that is the headline Amnesty USA-'Don't know for sure' about Guantanamo...
Riiiight. That's the headline under the circumstances, fersure. And sure, they're 'backing away' to say that oh, okay, it's not exactly like the Gulag. 'Cos hey, Guantanamo has no salt mines, I guess.
Let's sum this up: An arm of the US govermnent is (a) torturing people. And (b) subjecting them to indefinite detention (explicitly so, actually, since they've been clearly and fairly publically saying that they don't actually have enough to bring these folks to trial, and are thus looking at new ways to keep them locked up notwithstanding that minor problem). And running (c) a constellation of prisons into which they're disappearing people, in a fashion Pinochet might have recognized...
And yet, somehow, the story is: 'the US government is not starving people or working them to death'.
Well, good. Goood. Nice to see we're keepin' the bar set nice and high.
On the same general subject, I noted with something a little like amusement (sans any actual laughing, since torture and detainment are really only so funny) this morning one of those strange same-planet-different-worlds things via Google News... the news stories collected on the Amnesty International gulag comparison thing had two general sorts of headlines—either: 'Amnesty backs away from Gulag comparison', or 'Amnesty stands by Gulag comparison'.
Curiously, the meat is the same in all the stories however: the Amnesty USA chief did say that no, Guantanamo and the rest of the extended system now attached to it don't do the same things to people as did the Soviet gulag (no starvation, for instance, and no forced labour)... but like the gulag, people are literally and apparently intentionally 'disappeared' into the system, and no one outside knows where they are. And there's torture.
The other comment that seems to have been used to justify the softened headlines in some press (so far in US and UK press, so far as I've seen) and brought the 'Amnesty still pissed' headlines in most of the rest of the world—the fact that the Amnesty USA executive director (one William Schulz) couldn't actually say with certainty that Rumsfeld himself or anyone else at a high level of the administration approved the torture and beatings...
And what we get from that is the headline Amnesty USA-'Don't know for sure' about Guantanamo...
Riiiight. That's the headline under the circumstances, fersure. And sure, they're 'backing away' to say that oh, okay, it's not exactly like the Gulag. 'Cos hey, Guantanamo has no salt mines, I guess.
Let's sum this up: An arm of the US govermnent is (a) torturing people. And (b) subjecting them to indefinite detention (explicitly so, actually, since they've been clearly and fairly publically saying that they don't actually have enough to bring these folks to trial, and are thus looking at new ways to keep them locked up notwithstanding that minor problem). And running (c) a constellation of prisons into which they're disappearing people, in a fashion Pinochet might have recognized...
And yet, somehow, the story is: 'the US government is not starving people or working them to death'.
Well, good. Goood. Nice to see we're keepin' the bar set nice and high.
posted by AJM at 3:30 p.m. (Permanent Link)
