After reading the article: CIA prisons leak ‘to be probed’, I was overcome one specific emotion: unease (fear)… The fact that there are secret prisons and nobody knows about them scares the hell out of me.
Basically, if I was taken to prison for thinking our current government sucks (or for being too cynical or too naive), I would want people to know about it… and hopefully make a fuss… you know… maybe get to talk to a lawyer and not be tortured. Perhaps I’m asking a lot, but I was raised in a country where such things were valued as the baseline for decency and fairness… To think that I could instead be whisked off to a prison that people don’t even know about in a different country… well, I thought Jose Pedilla had it bad (and indeed he does), but at least we know where he is… well, we think we do – he’s not allowed to see a lawyer either.
Yes – i’m scared.
When I start seeing people getting pushed into cattle cars, what should I do? Run for Canada or see if I can fight the regime? (I’m not a very good fighter, to my knowledge… of course, I’m not a great runner either)
On a different and slightly more humorous note, here’s a funny piece about Kansas lowering it’s public education standards. Too bad, science used to make sense when theories were based on provable axioms…
Ehem! Surely you jest!
Have you forgotten about this little pearl of wisdom?
“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know.
There are known unkowns. That is to say, there are things we know we don’t know.
But, there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we don’t know we don’t know.”
Hmm, I don’t know, but methinks we should know.
I suppose that all depends on what context we are talking in. If one wants to get existential, nothing is known nor really knowable as the individual who is attempting to know something is relying on their consciences’ subjective interpretation of fallible sensory data… in fact I genuinely believe that… but to function in “the world”, accepting that 9.81 meters per second per second is standard for this planet and that the sun rises in the east makes being slightly productive a little easier… taking for granted that tests are possible and repeatable and one can expect particular results… basing scientific theories on predictable and repeatable test results makes sense. most of the science I’ve heard, make sense (to me) because there is a logical basis and ground rules that all systems and structures follow… systems building on other systems… Without the established groundwork, it becomes guesses and superstition… kind of like the funny interpretation of what the Kansas BOE is talking about doing.
I do tech support for a software company whose customers are scientists and engineers from Biotech firms to NASA. So it behooves me not to doubt hard empirical data or established scientific theories. The above quatation was intended to be a tongue in cheek reference to our trustworthy and fearless leaders, May God bless their souls, and before someone misunderstand, let me say that I thank “GOD” that I’m an atheist. The imbecils who propose to teach ID should be infected with antibiotic resistant pathogens, since they are too complex to have evolved, they must have been “created” with a purpose in mind. Why not let that purpose be fullfilled… Just Kidding!
agreed…
well as far as the CIA is concerned, i’d say secrets and them go waaaay way back. let me see, how about the overthrow of the democratically elected popular President Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran and replacing him with the Shah. that was done in 1952 in collaboration w/ the British SAS secret service and British Petroleum, in order to have a more friendly regime. then we have the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961 when they tried overthrowing Castro, a number of serious atrocities including support for the genocidal Pol Pot in Cambodia in the late 60’s and early 1970s, overthrow of populist socialist president Salvador Allende in 1968, and replacement of him w/ General Auguste Pinochet, who created one of the most repressive regimes in Latin America until finally deposed around 6 or 7 years ago. support for various repressive regimes in Central America, involving selling arms to Iran to support the insurgent campaign against the legitimate Nicaraguan government.
shall i go on?
the point is, the CIA’s purpose is to largely create, in a covert and mostly amoral manner, the kind of world where our form of ‘democratic’ change, aka imperialism by any other name, can flourish. so the idea is that they’re running an illegal prison system in countries where there’s less control and oversight than in the USA is entirely believable to me.
however lately, it’s a bit of a complex issue. the CIA has been a battleground between neoconservative elements and realists in the last few years, with the result that the neocons largely have won. a lot of older middle managers and deputy directors have resigned or been forced out. this has culminated in the White House appointing Porter Goss as director, to make sure the rest of the Agency ‘tows the line’ of the administration (meaning Cheney and the neocons).
This has resulted in the reminder of the CIA afraid to lose their jobs, stepping over the morality line even more than they usually do, and their policy increasingly dictated by civilian radicals at the Pentagon who believe it’s perfectly legal to hold someone for three years without charges as long as you can claim he’s a terrorist and deserving of this treatment because since terrorists have no morality, why should we? of course we should simply trust our govt when they say that even though they have virtually no legal rights and are completely at the mercy of an ad hoc military tribunal, their prisoners will be treated humanely, though not as the Geneva Conventions would specify (which even the Germans in WWII would never have considered). the same govt which lied about intelligence about Iraq since the beginning of the run up to our invasion (even though most of the CIA at that time was strenuously arguing that Iraq wasn’t in a position to threaten anyone). the same government who has verifiably been proven to have tortured prisoners in Iraq and in Guantanamo Bay.
if popular support rises up in outrage at treatments to prisoners in areas the media can access, and you, as the govt policy wonk in charge of pursuing the war on terror, convinced of your rightness in the matter, regardless of what the rules of morality or the Geneva Convention, or the UN says, want to continue that practice, what better way to do so than to ship your prisoners (because that IS what they are) to a more secret location away from prying eyes, where you have the freedom to apply ’stringent measures’ to gain ‘valuable information’ in your ‘war on terror’?
i think what scares us here is that, thanks to the influence of a few well-placed ex-Trotskyites turned militant Democratists (exporting democracy rather than Communism (as the Comintern had been intended)) and the hastily passed PATRIOT Act, means that in the good old USA that anyone, US citizen or not, can be ‘visited’ and detained by Homeland Security and carted off to one of those prisons for the mere suspicion of ‘terrorist acts’ against the US with no information, under no charge, and with virtually no rights at all. and who defines who is a ‘terrorist’? why, the very same govt which is doing the incarcerating – my how convenient.
you SHOULD be scared.
slight aside here – the neocons are decidely losing the policy battle due to a number of factors all building up, but believe me, this is not even the tip of the iceberg. the neocons are going to fight tooth and nail for control of the foriegn policy. this is a fight for survival – they know what’s at stake if they lose here, besides their careeers and the possibility of serious incarceration, and that’s nothing less than the US actually turning it’s back and heading into a period of what they like to call ‘isolationism’, meaning we may actually end up de-imperializing, including reducing the influence that certain governts currently have on our policy-making apparatus.
i for one think it’s more than high time we did this. we need to realize that our place as the sole superpower is slipping and we will have to share the stage soon with a number of up and coming figures. we can’t keep beating back everyone who has a chance of challenging us militarily, and we have no place fighting battles against countries on behalf of the influence from other countries. we have to learn to get along or eventually we will suffer consequences greater than we have experienced to date.