Such a degradation methods, the former US soldier said, were used on innocent men. Holdbrooks claims that it is the inmates’ religious perseverance in the face of pain and humiliation made him convinced that US was not fighting for the right cause.RT: What did you experience at the detention camp that changed you?Terry Holdbrooks: To be honest with you I would not even know where to begin with that. Initially seeing religion practiced the way that the detainees practice Islam is a really life changing experience in itself. I have not really seen any kind of any serious devotion, the faith like that growing up in the US.The torture and information extraction methods that we used certainly created a great deal of doubt and questions in my mind to whether or not this was my America. But when I thought about what we were doing there and how we go about doing it, it did not seem like the America I signed up to defend. It did not seem like the America I grew up in, I grew to believe in. And that in itself was a very disillusioning experience. There was a great deal of personal growth that took there as well.RT: Could you describe the relationship between the guards and detainees at Guantanamo back when you were serving (and how has it changed since then)?TH: I suppose that if we’re going to take a stroll down the memory lane, Brandon Neely was there first. He was there when it was camp x-ray. It was essentially dog cages, nothing more. It was dog kennels, I suppose you can say. When I was there camp Delta was in full swing. Delta housed about 612 men that would be the general population of the camps.RT: Were you given any orders as how to treat the inmates?TH: Our interaction with the detainees was such that we were told not to talk to them, not to treat them as humans, to not engage in conversation with them whatsoever. And the army sort of made a mistake by allowing somebody who is inclined to sociology and to studying people by leaving me with individuals from all over the world unsupervised for eight hours. I was very low in rank so I was delegated all the work, while those who were higher in rank were sitting in the air-conditioned shacks, nurturing their hangovers. So the instructions I was given were simple – don’t interact, don’t talk, they are not humans.RT: There have been reports of torture and other human rights violations happening at the prison camp. Could you tell us what you saw?TH: We can begin with experiences I had the pleasure of having. Myself, Eric Sarr and another Guantanamo guard were involved in this. Eric was a linguist and he was working with an interrogator.We took the detainee into interrogation and throughout the interrogation the interrogator took off her clothing. She essentially gave the detainee a lap dance, tried to arouse him and then let him believe that he had menstrual blood on him. We then took the detainee back to his cell and were told that he was not allowed to have shower privileges nor fresh water for days. The idea behind this being that if he could not clean himself he would not be able to pray, if he could not pray, he could not practice Islam. Essentially it was an idea to break him down spiritually.Omar Khadr and a number of other detainees, I remember hearing just few moments ago Shaker Aamer, they were privileged to something we called the frequent flyer program, where we would essentially move them every two hours. Whether we were moving them from camp Delta to camp Echo or moving them from Bravo block to Charlie block, be it a little move or a big move, the idea is that every two hours they would be moved and they would not be able to sleep. This was essentially to wear down their psyche and make them more probable to give out their information during interrogation. But what has questioned me ever since I first saw it, it seemed that most of these men were innocent and as numbers are starting to show, we’ve sent over 600 of them home, so they must have been innocent; if we knew that we were purchasing men that were innocent, why were we trying to interrogate innocent men? What were we hoping to get from them?Some of the tactics I saw practiced in Guantanamo, I just want to never want to relive again and then a great deal of regret takes place and then I did not take the most productive use of some years after Guantanamo. I tried to drown away some of those memories and that is something you cannot do. You have to confront it. … Read More
‘Dash for gas’: Fracking flares to light up the British countryside
Around 32,000 square miles – or 64 per cent of the British countryside – could potentially be affected by the flaring, British media reported.The news has been met with opposition from environmental activists, who say that the burning of leaked gas – known as flaring – is environmentally hazardous, producing carbon dioxide as well as noise and light pollution.The practice is closely tied to the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing – also known as fracking. It involves blasting a combination of water, chemicals, and sand into shale rocks. While the aim is to force the rocks to release shale gas, there are some unintended side effects – the practice has already been linked to earthquakes and water pollution.Despite the concerns surrounding flaring, IGas CEO Andrew Austin says that it is necessary – and not nearly as bad for the environment as allowing methane leakages to escape into the air. What is fracking? Fracking is the term used for hydraulic fracturing – the technique of drilling and firing high pressure liquid into the ground. The “fracking liquid” consists of water, sand, and chemicals. The process is used to fracture shale rocks which then release natural, shale gas. It takes between one and eight million gallons of water to complete each job. Up to 600 different chemicals are used in the process. During fracking, methane gas and toxic chemicals can leak from the system and contaminate groundwater. Methane concentrations are 17x higher in drinking-water wells near fracturing sites than in normal wells. The practice has been linked to both earthquakes and water pollution. “Though unsightly, burning off methane is arguably a better operational option than simply venting it into the atmosphere,” he told The Independent. “Flaring is the normal thing in standard oil fields, that’s why when you fly across the North Sea you can see it. Flaring or not flaring is not the point, it is industry practice.”But while Austin maintains that flaring is normal and necessary, founder and director of Bristol Group for Water Research disagrees.“If there was no fracking there would be no need for flaring,” Chad Staddon told RT. He said that fracking is “adding to local water stresses by consuming huge volumes and also in terms of irremediable pollution of much of that water.”Fracking was made illegal in the UK for just over a year, after the first hydraulic fracturing to take place in the country was found to have caused two significant earth tremors. The government recently lifted the ban, deeming the practice to be safe as long as it was under close supervision.Although fracking has become normal practice in the US, shale gas production is only just beginning in the UK. Only one company has carried out any fracking so far, and that has been limited to exploratory drilling.IGas will become the second company to begin drilling for shale gas when it begins exploratory drilling at two sites this summer. If the test drilling is successful, IGas hopes to begin fracking at the sites next year.The controversial shale gas industry has been openly supported by Chancellor George Osborne, who says he hopes it will provide the UK with a cheap and secure energy supply.He recently announced tax breaks in his budget, aimed at encouraging a fracking boom. Osborne also hinted at financial incentives to help local communities overcome their opposition to projects.However, those very incentives have landed Osborne in a heap of trouble with environmental groups like Greenpeace, which has criticized the Chancellor’s so-called “dash for gas.” … Read More
Cop fired for using Trayvon Martin images in target practice
Sgt. Ron King of the Florida’s Port Canaveral Police Department allegedly offered paper shooting targets emblazoned with Martin’s image to two other officers, an internal review revealed. He was dismissed on Friday for possessing a number of such shooting targets. “Port Canaveral Police Department considers that behavior unacceptable,” John Walsh, CEO of the Port Canaveral Authority said. King reportedly acquired the paper targets online and brought them to a firearms training session. Martin, 17, was gunned down by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman in February 2012 in Sanford, about 50 miles northwest of Port Canaveral. Zimmerman claims that he shot the teenager in self-defense, and will stand trial for second-degree murder in June. The Martin family says that Martin was unarmed when Zimmerman shot him, and had left his father’s house in the neighborhood to go to a convenience store.”It is absolutely reprehensible that a high-ranking member of the Port Canaveral Police, sworn to protect and serve Floridians, would use the image of a dead child as target practice,” attorney Ben Crump said in a statement. “Such a deliberate and depraved indifference to this grieving family is unacceptable.” In an unexpected move, Zimmerman waived his right to a ‘stand-your-ground’ in March of this year, relinquishing the opportunity to convince the judge pre-trial that he had acted in self-defense. Had he succeeded, his actions would have been deemed self-defense and the murder charges would have been dropped. The stand-your-ground law allows Florida citizens to defend themselves with deadly force in public if they believe they are being threatened. Martin’s death sparked a wave of protest against the controversial law demanding that it be overturned. Under this legislation, Zimmerman initially managed to evade arrest. … Read More
Talkin’ SWAT on HuffPost Live
Last night I went on
HuffPost Live to discuss “swatting”
– the potentially lethal practice of faking an emergency call so
that a SWAT unit descends on a home where no crime is actually in
progress. The other guests included a California state senator, a
Florida SWAT cop, and a swatting victim. You can watch it here:
The conversation ranged a bit, but my basic role was to talk
about another way SWAT teams are overdeployed: times when they’re
sent to the “right” house, but not in response to the sorts of
dangerous situations that SWAT units were originally created
for. … Read More
Is a more egalitarian Western Wall coming soon?
For months, chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel Natan Sharansky has been working to broker a compromise between Jewish women who want to pray at Jerusalem’s Western Wall and the ultra-Orthodox rabbis who have called their presence an “abomination.”And a compromise may be on its way, as Jane Eisner at Forward reports:If implemented, the proposal, a product of months of deliberation, would mark a dramatic acknowledgement by the state of Israel that prayer at the Wall — regarded as Judaism’s holiest site and a modern-day symbol of national sovereignty — should include non-Orthodox practice in which men and women pray together. But it is uncertain whether the proposal will satisfy Women of the Wall, who for years have tried to hold full prayer services in the women’s only section and may see this compromise as a betrayal of their mission… Under the proposal, sources said, the area now known as Robinson’s Arch on the southern end of the Wall will be greatly expanded to create a prayer space roughly equivalent to the existing men’s and women’s sections. Egalitarian prayer is currently permitted at the Arch, which is an archaeological site, but that prayer is only available at limited times and with an entrance fee. The expectation is that the enlarged space would be free and open around the clock, as the Kotel is now, but that could not be confirmed. The plan also calls for the plaza surrounding the Wall to expand, so that visitors approaching the site in the Old City could clearly chose between praying at the egalitarian section, or the existing sections reserved only for men and for women. Still under discussion is governance of the new prayer area, but several sources said that they thought it would be run by something other than the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, the organization that currently controls the Kotel.Women of the Wall head Anat Hoffman has signed off on the proposal while expressing her reservations about its “separate but equal” premise, but the measure still requires approval from the Netanyahu government, “where it may face resistance from Orthodox groups unwilling to share authority over the holy site,” Eisner notes.h/t Adam Chandler at Tablet MagazineContinue Reading… … Read More
Detroit plunges into financial emergency
Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, told reporters Friday morningthat “There’s probably no city that’s more financiallychallenged in the entire United States” than Detroit. Thegovernor declared the crisis a financial emergency and started topave the way for an emergency manager to intervene and take controlof the city’s ledger.“Detroit can no longer afford to wait for a new wayforward,” read a brochure handed out to audience members duringFriday’s announcement. “An Emergency Financial Manager can morequickly and efficiently reform the finances in the city and stopthe cycle of overspending and one-time fixes.”Even with a bankruptcy filing a longtime looming, the city ofDetroit has tried relentlessly in recent years to pick itself upout of the red and find a way to reverse a downward spiral that hasseemed to only intensify amid growing cases of other localeconomies crumbling across the United States. Such attempts havebeen futile, though, with seemingly no solution existing for thecity’s woes: an earlier study determined the city faces a $327million budget deficit and more than $14 billion in long-term debtand persistent cash flow problems. Then on Friday, the governorsaid, “I believe it’s appropriateto declare the city of Detroit in financial emergency.”Gov. Snyder made his remarks today only two weeks after astate-appointed review team conducted a study that concluded withthe determination that “no satisfactory plan exists to resolve aserious financial problem.” Now the city’s mayor, David Bing,has 10 days to respond. From there, reports the Associated Press,Snyder could either revoke his decision or appoint an emergencymanager.Doug Bernstein, a managing partner of the Banking, Bankruptcyand Creditors’ Rights Practice Group for Michigan’s Plunkett Cooneylaw firm, tells the AP that filing for bankruptcy would be the nextlikely, but not necessarily guaranteed, step.”Is it imminent? Well not tomorrow,” he said. “Youneed to give a financial manager the opportunity to formulate aplan and let the plan have a chance to succeed or fail. It may notavoid a bankruptcy, but you don’t need to do a bankruptcytoday.”On his part, Mayor Bing issued a statement seeming to suggest hewas open to doing whatever necessary to save the faltering citythat was once America’s hub in regards to the booming automobileindustry and rhythm-and-blues music.”I think we have to learn to make the best out of a badsituation,” the mayor told the AP. “The state and the citywill have to work together to get us out of this.”In 2011, the capital city of Pennsylvania — Harrisburg — voted to file for bankruptcy aftera failed garbage-to-energy conversation program put the town morethan $300 million in debt. The nearby city of Scranton quite closeto soon following, and by this past summer three cities in California were all forced to do thesame.Since 2000, the city of Detroit has lost roughly 25 percent ofits entire population. The number of Detroit residents today isequivalent to half of the city’s population in the year 1950. … Read More
Why Are The Domestic Extremists All White?
The same government that hectors the country relentlessly about diversity is apparently very happy with a certain homogeneity when it comes to portraying “domestic extremists” on shooting targets: White older man; white young mother; white grandmother; white little boy. … Read More
