torture

Can Terrorism Destroy Democracy?

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It's hard to imagine that a country that promotes democracy and freedom at every opportunity has become the center of the debacle on human rights abuses. But such is the paradox of democracy, that those who strive to make the world a democratic union, often cause more damage than good.

The subject of terrorism has captivated much of the global political discourse since September 11, 2001. In a world that now fights an unrecognizable enemy, practices such as the torture of terrorist suspects has plunged human rights abuses to a new low. Today's feature film, Taxi To The Dark Side, investigates how the United States has blurred the line between interrogation and torture.

This is a picture of Maxwell Mazambani's buttocks. He was lucky because his colleague, Fibion Mafukidze, was killed. A press release on the attack describes what happened and his condition as follows:

Maxwell Mazambani, the MDC candidate for Ward Five in Gutu North in last year's council elections, is battling for his life at a Harare private hospital following brutal assaults by soldiers and Zanu PF supporters on 25 September 2007.

Mazambani, 32, was abducted from his home by a white Nissan pick-up truck that belongs to the wife of Finance Minister Samuel Mumbengegwi. The six soldiers abducted Mazambani and three others and took them to Eastdale Farm, an airforce base between Gutu and Chivhu.

One of the abductees, Fibion Mafukidze, has since died as a result of the assaults. Mazambani was later dumped in a bush near his rural home. Relatives discovered him dumped in the bush and took him to Gutu police station. He was later taken to Chivhu hospital before he was transferred to Harare on Thursday, 11 October 2007.

Mazambani is on a dialysis machine and cannot speak. He has deep tissue injury on the back. His kidneys are damaged and he has clots on the lungs.

Filmmaker Alex Gibney, who made the Why Democracy? film Taxi to the Dark Side (about murder, torture and abuse in US-run prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq and Cuba) wrote the following in response to today's New York Times report on the existence of a secret Justice Department memo endorsing extreme forms of interrogation of detainees.

The President and the Vice President of the United States appear to have an unquenchable thirst for cruelty. The proof is that their political myrmidons in the Department of Justice and in the office of the Vice President have gone to extraordinary and unprecedented lengths to make coercive interrogation and torture the official policy of the United States of America.

Today, an extraordinary article appeared in the New York Times, which revealed the existence of secret documents that chronicle the ruthless and indefatigable efforts of a small group of men inside the Department of Justice to maintain the ability of US personnel to continue to engage in torture or - if that word offends - a policy of intentional cruelty toward prisoners.

The Home of the Brave?

Not quite, as we who engage find out, on a daily basis.

From a rather expected and mainstream news source comes this-

Secret US endorsement of severe interrogations

The New York Times reports today that the US Justice Dept. issued a secret memo in 2005 that endorsed brutal methods of extracting information from detainees, in sharp contrast to the department's public stance on torture.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

This will come as no surprise to the subjects of Alex Gibney's Why Democracy? film, Taxi to the Dark Side -- at least those who didn't die as a result of torture.

DailyKos writer MCJoan suggests that the main result of this news should be the refusal of the US Senate to approve attorney-general nominee Michael Mukasey unless he publicly repudiates torture and vows that the Justice Dept. under his tenure will not sign off on torture as it did under his predecessor, Alberto Gonzales.