Where did 38 people go?

US accused on 'missing' prisoners

Thirty eight people believed to have been held in secret CIA prisons - or black sites - are missing, according to a report by a US human rights group.

The Human Rights Watch (HRW) report also details allegations of torture by a terror suspect who was held in secret custody for more than two years.

The group has asked US President George W Bush to reveal the location of these detainees and close all US black sites.

Last year Mr Bush said the prisons had all closed and had not used torture.

'Missing' prisoners

In a televised address in September, Mr Bush admitted that 14 detainees had been held at secret CIA prisons that used interrogation methods that were "tough" but "lawful and necessary".

"The United States does not torture," Mr Bush said at the time. "It's against our laws, and it's against our values. I have not authorised it - and I will not authorise it."

He said the prisoners had since been transferred to the US military camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the CIA was not holding any more terror suspects.

But in a report published on Tuesday, HRW has named another 38 people who were believed to have been held in secret CIA prisons, who are now missing.

Quoting US intelligence officials, The Washington Post says more than 60 people have been held in the prisons since 2001.

'Beaten and burned'

The group has called on the US to reveal the location of all detainees held by the CIA since 2001 and end its "illegal" secret detention and interrogation programmes.

Palestinian Islamic extremist Marwan al-Jabour told HRW he saw or spoke to a number of those named in the report while he was held by the CIA between 2004 and 2006.

Mr Jabour, who was arrested in Lahore, Pakistan in May 2004, also detailed torture tactics he says were used against him while he was in US custody.

He says at various periods during his 28-month detention Pakistani authorities kept him naked and chained to a ceiling. He says he was beaten, burned and handcuffed in stress positions.

During this time he was also reportedly interrogated by US agents for hours on end, but Mr Jabour says he was only tortured when the Americans were not around.

Mr Jabour admits that in 1998 he trained in Afghanistan in the hope of fighting in Chechnya. He also says he helped Arab militants who had fled Afghanistan for Pakistan in 2003, but he denies any links to al-Qaeda or terror activities.

EU threat

Meanwhile, the US has warned the European Union that ongoing inquiries into secret CIA flights within Europe linked to the black sites are threatening intelligence ties between Europe and the US.

The investigations "have not been helpful with respect to necessary co-operation between the United States and Europe," John Bellinger, legal adviser to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said.

Mr Bellinger also labelled a European Parliament report into the flights, released earlier this month, as "unbalanced, inaccurate and unfair".

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/6405089.stm

Feminism, Halloween, and Alice in Pornland

My Dad just referred me to this Ellen Goodman article about women, sexuality, and culture. I think you'll find it interesting.

COMMENTARY
These costumes would scare any feminist

By Ellen Goodman


Oh darn, I guess I'm not going to be able to wear that diaphanous costume with the teeny-weeny skirt and the plunging neckline after all. The "Garden of Evil Spiritina" is all sold out for this Halloween.

There's barely even time to get "L'il Bo Peep" — or should I say "L'il Bo Peep Show" costume — FedExed from my Web merchant. I could, however, get that "Hottie Little Red Riding Hood," bustier and boots, to come over the river and through the woods to this grandmother's house.

Welcome to the Halloween horror show. This is the time of year when mothers across America get another chance to rant about the culture that pushes daughters directly from Barney to "Jail Bait." This is when teens can surf the aisles or the Internet for those special costumes that are designed to help them fantasize about what they want to be when they grow up: "A French Maid." And when young women raised on "Free to Be You and Me" find themselves free to be either "Biker Chick" or "Blushing Bride."

Is there anything more depressing than the "Naughty Housewife" ready to go trick-or-spanking? Sure. It's the number of young women who will tell you fervently that as a post-feminist generation, they are liberated to make choices. And their choice for Halloween is "Alice in Pornland"!

It's enough to make the average feminist want to bite into that apple with the razor blade.

But first, let us take that "choice" banner, attach it to our broomstick and fly east as far as London where there is another sort of masquerade going on. The story of the hour is not about young women uncovering their bodies. It's about young women covering their faces.

London has been in an uproar about a 24-year-old teaching assistant and Muslim suspended because she refused to remove the full-face veil. A minimal number of veiled women caused a maximal furor. Prime Minister Tony Blair decried the veil as a "mark of separation." Even the prime minister of Italy declared, "You can't cover your face; you must be seen. ... It is important for our society."

The young woman, Aishah Azmi, insisted that "Muslim women who wear the veil are not aliens." Then, in one of those wonderful ironies, she unsuccessfully appealed her suspension, arguing for the freedom to wear a garment that would have been imposed upon her in a fundamentalist Islamic country.

Have you noticed how much dress and undress matter? Even to prime ministers? Have you also noticed how many women believe they are making their own choices when they are actually caught in a cultural vise?

Here in America, our Halloween revelers have only the scantiest — and I do mean scantiest — idea of how the market has shaped the options that they regard as their own. Most women are only dimly aware of the how we internalize the liposuctioned, breast-implanted, celebrity-shaped images that define the "right" female body. They are even less aware of a culture that defines sexy as something seen rather than felt.

There in London, a young teacher wearing the niqab seems equally unaware that the mask she dons as an act of self-expression aligns her with the mullahs of repression. After all, in today's Iran the choices may be veil or jail. And in Afghanistan, women are choosing the burqa to save their lives. As Deborah Tolman, who wrote "Dilemmas of Desire," says, the stakes are astonishingly high: "If we can't cover it, we can kill it. That's the context."

Mullahs and marketers are not the same. Nobody is forcing an American woman into the "Sultry Witch" costume. Nobody is forcing a British citizen into a full-face veil. But there is something, well, scary when women claim the "freedom" to fit into such narrow constraints of sexuality.

Lyn Mikel Brown, co-author of "Packaging Girlhood," says, "We can't talk to girls about sexuality or desire but an entire media is pushing sexualization on them." Nevertheless, there's a fine line for girls between being sexy and being slutty. Halloween, Brown says, may be the one day "you can be a skank and get away with it." But what a way.

On the other hand, the niqab may identify its London wearer as a pious Muslim and proud dropout from Western sexual culture. But it does so by making her faceless. What a way.

Remember when we used to talk about role models for girls and women? At least one Web site is selling "Supergirl" costumes for teens. But what's that I read? She's "all grown up and is ready for some action of her own." This Supergirl comes with a bustier and hooker boots. She's definitely sold out.


Ellen Goodman is a columnist for The Boston Globe. Reach her at ellengoodman@globe.com.

Sent to be tortured

The United States "very likely" sent a Canadian software engineer to Syria, where he was tortured, based on the false accusation by Canadian authorities that he was suspected of links to al-Qaida, according to a new government report.

This AP article talks about the United States' practice of extraordinary rendition. It is illegal. The CIA does not get to make the laws. Come on.

What I really don't understand is this:

U.S. and Syrian officials refused to cooperate with the Canadian inquiry.

How does our country get to refuse to cooperate?

Lacking and Slacking

Here is an interesting BBC article explaining the international despair over Darfur. The most telling, paragraph, comes near the end:

Darfur has found itself a crisis that neither the UN nor the relatively new African Union can solve. The UN has lacked the will to intervene and the African Union has lacked the means.

How is it that we go into Iraq, but not Sudan? If preemption could possibly apply to a crisis like this, then sign me up for that ideology. We need to quit sitting on our hands. We need to quit letting a few pain-in-the-a Sudanese power-hungry leaders keep millions of people in unthinkably horrible circumstances.

Secret CIA prisons suck

If you haven't had a chance to read the news lately, let me bring you up to speed: President Bush announced that all the 9/11 terror suspects are being moved from secret CIA prisons in foreign countries to Guanantamo Bay where they will be brought to justice.

YAY! Right? Not so much.

Read between the lines...

• Why do secret CIA prisons exist?
• What occurs at these secret CIA prisons? If you think the Geneva Conventions are upheld, you are in lala land. In fact, if you think there is any oversight whatsoever, you are deluding yourself. Nobody even knew (until yesterday) who was in these prisons. We still don't really know.
• Why are they being transferred to Guantanomo Bay... a hellhole of injustice and despair? Over the last 5 years, 770 prisoners have been held there. Up until July of this year, the Administration has been adamant and very vocal in saying they don't think the Geneva Conventions apply to these people. There have been at least 44 suicide attemps - at least 3 successful. (Amazing, considering the circumstances.) Up to 200 prisoners at a time have gone on hunger strikes, and were then force-fed through tubes. No one held at Guantanamo has been charged.
• The court system that President Bush wants to use is, at this point, illegal. ILLEGAL. The Supreme Court struck down their idea a couple months ago, and said Congress had to authorize it first.
• The court system President Bush wants to use would allow for secret evidence. Evidence that the accused person would not know about, and maybe not even the accused person's lawyer. Is that American?
• The court system President Bush wants to use would allow for testimony gathered through coercion. Not torture, granted... but coercion. Do you see what a fine line this is? Do you see how problematic it is to accepted testimony that was extracted under coercive circumstances? Especially when these prisoners were interrogated in secret prisons. Who exactly is certifying that it was coercion and not torture?

In conclusion, let me just say, WHAT THE FREAK.

Let me put a little patriotic disclaimer here. Why do I care about terrorists' rights? What about the rights of the people who died on 9/11? And so on.

To me, terrorists are still humans. And if we want to operate in a undemocratic, inhumane, illegal, militant way... well that is just the kind of world we will create.

Prevent another Abu Ghraib

The White House is reportedly planning to ask Congress to approve legislation that would permit abusive interrogations. If they succeed, we will go down in history as the first nation to retreat from the hallowed Geneva Conventions, which prohibit cruel and degrading treatment.

Stop this misguided effort in its tracks. Write the President today and demand that he drop his bid to retain the right to abuse detainees.

Rewriting the Geneva Conventions

I hope George W. Bush is unsuccessful in his attempts at Rewriting the Geneva Conventions. This NYT editorial explains a little more about what the administration is doing and why it is abhorrent.

A really good video

Watch this video on child labor. It is sad but has a very encouraging ending. It's just a couple minutes long.

Some of you have asked why I have all those photos of little girls from around the world on my wall in my office. This is why. Well, it's part of the reason why. Millions of kids, and especially girls, have no access to education (or basic human rights for that matter). It is my reminder to make my education and my life somehow impact theirs.

The Office Season 2 DVD in September!

I don't know why I'm such a fool for The Office, but it really makes me laugh out loud like NO OTHER SHOW. I am trying so hard to resist buying the episodes on iTunes because I want to get the DVD when it comes out. So here's some news for you fellow Office lovaz:

Weeeeeell it won't let me cut and paste it. lol Read more for yourself aqui! That link also leads you to a few of the characters' MySpace pages. Slightly out of control but funny.

Organ theft

Yesterday at the gym, I watched (well, read the closed captioning for) a CNN special on human organ trafficking in China. Basically, people who can afford it and need replacement organs such as a liver or kidney, go to China. They don't realize it but their new parts are coming from Chinese prisoners. Often times these prisoners are in captivity for simple things such as tax-related crimes. Other times they are there for their political beliefs. And many have testified before the U.S. Congress that they've seen organs extracted from Chinese prisoners while they are still alive. While they are still bleeding and breathing.

Words can't express how sick and sad this report made me. You should have seen some of the images...

Anyway, I don't have time right now to research this and write an informed post, but here are a few links.

Sale of Human Organs in China

Harvesting and sale of body parts