Guantánamo

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A hellhole where torture scandals shook the world’s trust in US justice

By Tim Reid

gitmo.jpgOn January 11, 2002, a giant C141 military transport aircraft landed at the US military base in Guantánamo Bay after an 8,000-mile journey from Kandahar, in Afghanistan - a trip during which the 20 hooded, shackled prisoners inside had not been allowed to use the lavatory.

As the transporter came to a stop and its cargo door opened, it was surrounded by dozens of US Marines in face masks and bullet-proof vests, together with soldiers in Humvees aiming grenade-launchers and machineguns.

Slowly, the first “enemy combatants” in the Bush Administration’s newly declared War on Terror emerged. The men - in orange jump-suits and blue facemasks and with their feet and hands manacled - shuffled on to the tarmac and into Camp X-Ray, part of a detention camp that would quickly become a worldwide symbol of US injustice and abuse.

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Orwell in the Scanner

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In George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, “Thoughtcrime does not entail death. Thoughtcrime IS death”.

by Louise Whiteley*

restraing_chair.gifUnlike the contestants on Big Brother, the citizens in Orwell’s novel tend to hold their tongues, but ultimately surveillance of their actions is guaranteed to uncover any deviant thoughts they might entertain. Recently, neuroscientists have started to decipher the thoughts of individuals even in the absence of incriminating actions, as they lie still and silent in a brain scanner.

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) uses the magnetic properties of blood to infer the amount of oxygen in brain tissue, and thus indirectly the level of neural activity. This allows scientists to test hypotheses about where in the brain various mental processes are carried out, and, once particular brain areas or patterns of activity have functional ‘labels’, to work out which processes are active when the subject cannot, or will not, say what they are thinking. Researchers have been able to identify regions in the brain that produce a higher fMRI signal when subjects tell a lie, and media reports now speculate about a future in which this could be used to judge whether someone is dissembling in court. This future is in fact disturbingly close - a commercial company called ‘No Lie MRI’ is already “working to have its testing allowed as evidence” in the US, and the emerging field of neuroethics is calling for an urgent debate about the potential uses of such research in civil society and the military.

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The blood of innocents

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By Irfan Husain

islamic-women.jpgAISHA Ibrahim Duhulow was 13 years old when she was buried up to her neck in the Somali port city of Kismayu on Oct 27 and stoned to death by 50 men belonging to the Islamic group Al Shahab.

A truckload of stones was brought to the field where this murder took place. When a few members of the thousand-strong spectators tried to save the girl, Al Shahab gunmen opened fire, accidentally shooting a little boy.

It did not take long to kill Aisha. She had been accused of fornication, although according to her bereft father, she had gone to complain of being raped by three men. Her rapists remain at large, and there has been no attempt to apprehend them.

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Americans Murdering Their Judges, and the US Crisis of Judicial Corruption

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By Dr Leslie Sachs

prison-bars-image.gifIn the headlines are the appalling news stories of Americans carrying out murderous attacks on judges and their families. In a matter of days, one judge was shot and killed in his own courtroom, while another judge had family members brutally murdered in their home.

These news stories are, however, related to another news story, which is the most taboo subject of the American media - the expanding crisis of corruption among American judges and lawyers. At question is whether the deepening despair of Americans about their own legal system, is fueling some of these violent attacks on judges.

Much is written now about how America’s economy is resembling that of a banana republic, given how America is sunk in preposterous debt, and how the US dollar currency is sinking toward a possible collapse in the near future.

But there is another way that America is also like a banana republic, in that its legal system - contrary to its Hollywood image - has become a sinkwell of secret proceedings, the jailing of the innocent, and political misconduct; and how it is sullied with documented corruption, fake trials and court fraud.

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The killing of Anna Politkovskaya

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By *Sara Hall

annapolitkovskaya003.jpgThe murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya on 7 October 2006 has been remembered all over the world during the last week. Amnesty International believes that Politkovskaya was killed because of her work as a journalist. The trial of three men accused of her murder is set to start on 15 October in a Moscow military court.

Politkovskaya was relentless in her efforts to draw the world’s attention to the suffering of the people in Chechnya. Her reports were crucial in bringing about the first ever prosecution against a Russian police officer, guilty of serious human rights violations. While working in the area she was put in a pit in the ground by Russian forces and subjected to abuse and humiliation.

She was included in the Top 50 Heroes of our time compiled by the New Statesman in May 2006.

Her books, which have been translated into English, highlight atrocities in Chechnya, criticise Vladimir Putin’s presidency and the general stifling of civil liberties by Russia’s secret service, the Federal Security Service (FSB). She frequently spoke about theses issues to audiences worldwide.

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Anwaar’s articles appear simultaneously here at Truth Spring and at Soul Vibes in The Pakistan Tribune.


US loses its status as economic world power
DAVOS, Switzerland, 2008
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