Stilgherrian » guantanamo

Pavlov meets Gitmo

Stilgherrian — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 00:58:26 +0000

Smoke alarm broken. Press button every 10 mins to avoid screech alert. Pavlov meets GITMO. Torture. Breakdown. Help me.

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

“War on Terror” Doublespeak

Stilgherrian — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 23:52:01 +0000

For some fine examples of how language is being manipulated in the War on Terror, try the Cato Institute briefing paper Doublespeak and the War on Terrorism. This 16-page report is very readable, and somewhat disturbing. Read on for some of my favourites…

Suicide attempts by prisoners are now “self-injurious behaviour incidents”:

When three men hanged themselves in their cells [at Guantanamo Bay], the camp commander, Rear Admiral Harry Harris, went so far as to say that the suicides were “an act of asymmetrical warfare” against the American military.

Yes, that’s right. A prisoner killing himself is an attack on America.

And prisoners held in military jails shouldn’t have access to the courts because:

According to Bush’s lawyers, the courts should not “second-guess” the president’s “battlefield” decisions… But when the government attorneys were pressed about their definition of the term “battlefield,” they said they considered the entire world to be the battlefield, including every inch of US territory… That is a profoundly disturbing claim because there are no legal rights whatsoever on the battlefield. Military commanders simply exercise raw power.

Thanks to Bruce Schneier for the pointer.

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

David Hicks, Australian larrikin

Stilgherrian — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 18:55:13 +0000

Whatever you think about the political issues, Australian David Hicks, currently a long-term guest of the US government at the exclusive Guantanamo Bay health resort, does seem to have a sense of humour.

As reported in Crikey today (though not included on the free-to-view website), Hicks has been stirring the pot in a typically Australian fashion.

Hicks obviously speaks some of the language of the people with whom he’s lived, trained and fired weapons, but many of his comrades had little or no English when they arrived at Guantanamo. So they begged Hicks for knowledge of suitably dark and vicious curses they could hurl at their infidel American jailers, something that would really annoy the Servants of Satan?

The guards were subsequently met with an enraged chorus from the “worst of the worst”: “Gidday mate howareyergoin’, gidday mate howareyergoin’, gidday mate howareyergoin’“

I wonder what the guards made of that!