Civil liberties - new material (59)
01 March 2005
Outsourcing torture, Jane Mayer. The New Yorker, 14.2.05. In 1998 the US Congress passed legislation declaring that it is "the policy of the United States not to expel, extradite, or otherwise effect the involuntary return of any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture, regardless of whether the person is physically present in the United States." Bush has told journalists that "torture is never acceptable, nor do we hand over people to countries that torture". This article describes in some depth several accounts of the rendering that Congress outlawed and that Bush denies, as well as the lengths the US administration has gone to cover-up its illegal practices.
Taysir Alouny, puesto bajo arresto domiciliario, insiste en su inocencia [Tayseer Alouni, placed under house arrest, insists that he's innocent], Gladys Martínez. Diagonal, 17-30.3.05, pp.4-5. This article examines the situation of Tayseer Alouni, the Al Jazeera journalist who faces charges of being a "relevant member" of a Spanish-based Al Qaida cell, in relation to which he is accused by judge Baltasar Garzón of "activities of support, financing, control and coordination". Alouni, who is currently on trial, was arrested in September 2003, before being released on bail because of his heart condition, re-arrested in November 2004 and released and placed under house arrest on 14 March 2005. This report includes testimony from Alouny's lawyer Luís Galán and describes his conditions in detention (without adequate medical care and in 20-hour isolation in a cell of 1.6 x 2.5 metres). It also looks at his journalism, particularly his interview with Osama bin Laden in October 2001, which Galán considers to be the underlying cause for the prosecution. Some of the evidence comes from the US, a country whose government is openly hostile to Al Jazeera. Much of the evidence against Alouni is based on mistranslated transcripts of telephone calls, examples of which are included in the article.
Torture's dirty secret: it works, Naomi Klein. The Nation 13.5.05., Article on the Syrian-born Canadian, Maher Arar, an early victim of US rendition, "the process by which US officials outsources torture to foreign countries". The "evidence" tortured from him in a rat infested Syrian cell was later discredited, but as Klein points out: "As an interrogation tool, torture is a bust. But when it comes to social control, nothing works quite like torture."
Big Brother: the spy in your shopping trolley, Steve Boggan. The Times, 28.4.05. Article on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), a technology that uses computer chips to monitor items at a distance. Boggan largely devotes himself to the commercial "benefits", while the case against is put by Chris McDermott, one of the founders of UK Consumers Against the Pervasive use of RFID in our Society. While proponents claim that "Retailers don't want to use this technology in any ways that the consumers don't agree with" McDermott criticises the end of the "anonymous transaction" and points out: "They say the item you bought can be linked to you only by the store you bought it in, and that the store is prevented by data protection legislation from sharing that information with anyone else. But only this week in the US, the personal data of 310,000 people was stolen from the database of the data broker NexisLexis. Imagine if that happened with your supermarket chain - the idea that the information wouldn't be used by unscrupulous people is ridiculous." See www.notags.co.uk
Break them down: systematic use of psychological torture by US forces. Physicians for Human Rights, 2005, pp.129. This report is the first comprehensive review of the use of psychological torture by US forces as an instrument in their "war on terror" in Afghanistan and Iraq and at the interrogation centre imposed upon Cuba at Guantanamo Bay. Counter