17 – Generally I agree re Wikipedia. I often look there first when I’m in a hurry, since it pops up at the top of many Google searches. If I assess the material is credible from earlier and other knowledge of the subject, I will use the link. In the case of the Istanbul Protocol, as someone who not only has read it and used it, but knows one of the individuals involved in drafting it, I thought I could make that assessment. It’s too bad I didn’t realize how much it might put you (and possibly other readers) off. A shame you never bothered to read the rest of the article.

Good luck with your search for “other interesting writings”.

Wikipedia is not credible, and any one purporting to do public intellectual work should stay a million miles away from it. I quit reading your post immediately, went to write this advisory, and now I’ll move on to other interesting writings.

Then……..NOTHING!

What happened, have Panetta and others in the CIA and Military leaned on O not to release these images?

Has anyone here heard any more about this? Inquiring minds want to know!

If people are interested in what it entails, I recommend looking at the PHR report Broken Laws, Broken Lives, which contains detailed reports on 22 ex-prisoners that were done according to the standards of the Istanbul Protocol.

I wish you luck on getting attention on Appendix M. The United States invented the use of incarceration as a punishment for crimes in the 1840’s, originally as a rehabilitation method (penitence). We’ve had extreme isolation in one form or another in our social DNA for punishment ever since, even though Charles Dickens (among others) documented people losing their minds to solitary confinement and sensory reduction back then. So it quite literally doesn’t bother most Americans, voices in the wilderness like Stuart Grassian notwithstanding. I have found it quite heartbreaking how little attention is paid to those torture techniques which break the brain but don’t result in blood flying around the room or people choking.

One of the most shameful parts of the recent history of ‘macho government’ has been to jettison the rehabilitation part. But the most shameful has been our attempts to export our abusive prison system to Afghanistan. The ICRC counts 12,300 prisoners there (end of 2008), before the war there were 600.

Your skill in assessing and presenting the moral center of this subject and discussion of the ongoing disastrous revelations of the poisoning of justice with lies are invaluable. Bion would be proud of your work.

In any case, I’ll be following it in weeks to come.

And albertchampion, don’t be so sure about Congress. Look what Levin’s committee accomplished. Political scandals have a life and energy of their own, and no one can say in advance what will happen.

Thanks,
Bob in HI