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I don't know exactly what to make of the Rumsfeld testimony yesterday, most of which I watched -- it looked to be an expression of irritation/embarrassment that _those_ pictures were leaked to the press with a promise that _that_ young woman would certainly be appropriately punished (I heard this morning on npr that charges have, indeed, been brought against her.).
What is missing here to my mind are two things:
1) We traditionally think of torture as a physical harm done to people -- thus the stress on torturers abusing people without leaving behind physical marks that might incriminate them. However, as I delve into the rapidly moving world of brain/consciousness studies, I find that traumatic experiences literally can destroy brain cells needed for normal functioning in one part of the brain (the hypocampus?) and expand those in the anxiety centers (amygdala) leading to permanent 'post traumatic stress'. Hopefully I have the right terms here. A Google reference follows at the conclusion of this posting. The point here is that torture of the kind being carried out widely by the U.S. both through unconstitutional confinements of aliens in our prisons, particularly in the NYC and vicinity area, as well as our Geneva Convention violations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo, is doing lasting damage to human brains -- and, thus, the capacity to function as a normal human being. The Constitutional phrase "cruel and unusual punishment," thus takes on radically new meaning in light of our latest knowledge about what makes and keeps us human -- and how our humanity is destroyed by the torture inherent in most imprisonment. Presumably we could use incarceration to rehabilitate criminals (as is done in some Western European countries), but we do not do so in the U.S. New York state has even ended off college courses for prisoners! Americans have been taught to see punishment as retribution to be inflicted upon evil enemies. See Princeton philosopher Peter Singer's book on Bush's ethic:
PETER SINGER LINKS. My work ... THE PRESIDENT OF GOOD AND EVIL. The Ethics of George W. Bush. by Peter Singer. ... www.petersingerlinks.com/ - 80k - May 6, 2004 - Cached - Similar pages
2) I was not surprised to learn from Peter Juviler of Barnard and co-chair of the Columbia Human Rights Seminar that when the U.S. Senate finally got around to ratifying at least the civil and political rights convention (only a portion of the full panoply of human rights proposed in the Universal Declaration of 1948), it boggled at the full characterization of torture and exempted the U.S. from including the restriction on "degrading" forms of torture -- manifestly that practiced in the grotesque pictures from Iraq. It should not be surprising that an all-American young woman would see her proper role to be that of carrying out her Commander-and-chief's directives against evil enemies.
The three citations following are:
a) The first Google item on the relationship and functions of the hypocampus and amygdala.
b) Peter Juviler's report on the Senate's exclusion of "degrading" forms of torture.
c) The Prison Watch Report on U.S. violations of prisoners passed along by Fran Giteles. [I include the third item with the recollection as a graduate student of having been included in a NASA sponsored simulated space shot back when (late 1950s run by Republic Aviation), which included both imposition of before and after pain tests by various techniques and sensory deprivation isolation -- I was told that some fellow students flipped and came screaming out of their isolation units with wires dangling. I only lost part of my hearing. During that same time frame a fellow graduate student reported to us at a conference that he had just participated in a CIA experiment using LSD on graduate students as a method for extracting information. Sadly it had induced extreme psychotic breakdowns in several of the participants.). In those days (as now, I gather) we graduate students would do almost anything to make a few quick bucks.] -- a) The relationship between the structure of the brain and the ... ... brain. Surface of the gyrus cinguli is removed so that you can see the Amigala and the Hypocampus, whose function I will discuss. ... www.toukoukyohi.com/society/relationshipbmb.htm - 9k - Cached - Similar pages -- b)Indeed the U.S. was among the 48 countries voting for the UDHR (8 abstained, none against ) in the U.N. G.A. December 10, 1948. The U.S. ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1992 but with several reservations or understandings. One reservation: Article 7 "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment....The U.S. Senate specified a reservation that the U.S. not be bound by the word "degrading." That of course widens the boundary of what the government takes to be permissible--to the extent that any of this matters!
Peter {Juviler]
--
c) April 6, 2004Editor Speaking Up The Star Ledger One Star Ledger Plaza Newark, NJ 07101-1200
When President Bush said that “what took place in that prison (in Iraq) doesn’t represent the America that I know”, I felt great sadness. Unfortunately, for the over two million Americans and countless undocumented immigrants living US prisons, this is the American that we know.
As a human rights advocate on behalf of prisoners in this country, brutality and humiliation is something with which I am more than familiar. Our offices receive thousands of complaints from US prisons each year from children in juvenile detention facilities talking about being physically and sexually abused. They tell us that children as young as 12 are placed in isolation. We hear from women in prisons testifying about being forced to engage in sexual acts, or as one woman put it, “this was not part of my sentence to engage in oral sex”. We hear from men who have been sprayed with pepper spray and then put out into the sun so the chemical agent continues to re-activate. I am currently working with a number of people who have been held in sensory deprivation cells in American prisons for over 20 years!
The AFSC has become so concerned about treatment of US prisoners that we have gathered hundreds of testimonies in a pamphlet , “Torture in US Prisons – Evidence of Human Rights Violations”. A number of children who have spent time in Essex and Union County detention facilities contributed to “Our Children’s House”, which provides poignant testimonies of their own cruel experiences. Over the years they have taught me that the Department of Corrections is more than a set of institutions, it is a state of mind, one which apparently has traveled overseas.
The conditions of confinement in American prisons violate the United Nations Convention against Torture and the UN Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. US prison practices also violate the UN Rights of the Child, which every other country in the world – except the US – has signed. In 2000, the UN Committee Against Torture noted egregious violations of international law going on in US prisons, including the use of electric stun belts and restraint chairs, prison chain gangs, sexual assault of women and detention of minors. Those violations continue to exist.
Unfortunately, the America that President Bush doesn’t know is the one many of us experience daily. My soul is shaken by the testimonies that come into our offices. The tragic abuse of the Iraqi prisoners serves to cast a bright light on shameful American prison practices. I am hoping that the current glare in which this country is being held will spur a cessation of human rights violations for people in prison throughout the country and extend globally for people in prisons everywhere.
Sincerely,
Bonnie Kerness, MSW Coordinator Prison Watch Project Work – 973-0643-3192 Home – 908-272-5389 -- "A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy) -- Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
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