June 3, 2008


In case you woke up this morning forgetting to feel outraged

One of my fellow prisoners in Guantánamo was at sea on an American ship with about 50 others before coming to Guantánamo … he was in the cage next to me. He told me that there were about 50 other people on the ship. They were all closed off in the bottom of the ship. The prisoner commented to me that it was like something you see on TV. The people held on the ship were beaten even more severely than in Guantánamo.

Quoted in “US accused of holding terror suspects on prison ships” by Duncan Campbell and Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian, Monday, June 2, 2008.

posted by India in crime, history, international, news, war 

comments

5 Responses to “In case you woke up this morning forgetting to feel outraged”

  1. Tracy on June 3rd, 2008 at 8:36 am

    Wait a minute - we’re supposed to be outraged by high gas prices this month such that we stop paying attention to distractions like Guantánamo. Did you not get that note? It should have been included with your stimulus / rebate check.

  2. Daryl Scroggins on June 3rd, 2008 at 8:39 am

    America has not wanted to look at the bottom of its ship since the days of the slave trade.

  3. Cindy Scroggins on June 3rd, 2008 at 8:42 am

    Honestly, India, I wish I could wake up one morning without feeling outraged. I assuage my feelings by planning my retirement as a militant activist.

  4. India on June 3rd, 2008 at 8:50 am

    Tracy—you only get the rebate check if you actually file a tax return. We slackers who merely requested extensions on April 15 don’t get the Economic Stimulus Package—or the accompanying helpful memos.

    If I ever do get my rebate, it’s going to CCR.

  5. sc on June 3rd, 2008 at 11:01 am

    Yes, Gitmo is, in the most obscene way, a colorful distraction from larger and darker programs. I suspect that 80k figure doesn’t include, say, all of the torture we have outsourced to various contractors and governments. And, of course, the number of people who we have killed without first offering them the courtesy of torture, is unknown but certainly in the thousands. It’s not just Bush, Rumsfeld, Haynes, Mukasey, and Co. The programs are so large that thousands of rotten apples are involved.

    Outrage. Yes. And some other emotions. Nausea, paralysis, fear, dread, and projectile vomiting?

    I’ve been trying to channel some of my outrage by participating in this project:
    http://www.rejecttorture.org/

    Also, note that all of Taxi to the Dark Side, a level-headed introduction to some parts of our torture programs is on Youtube:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYu4QnZaOd0

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