Watch "Torturing Democracy" online - it's your civic duty as an American

Please take the time to watch this movie, free online. Every American should, because we're all responsible.

Torturing Democracy

No political party would dare make torture a cornerstone of its rejuvenation if people really understood what it is. And lest we forget, we're not just talking about waterboarding, itself a trivializing euphemism for drowning.

If we want to know what torture is, and what it does to human beings, we have to look at it squarely, without flinching. That's just what a powerful and important film, seen by far too few Americans, does. "Torturing Democracy" was written and produced by one of America's outstanding documentary reporters, Sherry Jones...

"Torturing Democracy" begins at 9/11 and recounts how the Bush White House and the Pentagon decided to make coercive detention and abusive interrogation the official US policy in the war on terror. In sometimes graphic detail, the documentary describes the experiences of several men who were held in custody, including Shafiq Rasul, Moazzam Begg and Bisher al-Rawi, all of whom eventually were released. Charges never were filed against them and no reason was ever given for their years in custody.

The documentary traces how tactics meant to train American troops to survive enemy interrogations - the famous SERE program ("Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape") - became the basis for many of the methods employed by the CIA and by interrogators at Guantanamo and in Iraq, including waterboarding (which inflicts on its victims the terror of imminent death), sleep and sensory deprivation, shackling, caging, painful stress positions and sexual humiliation.

"We have re-created our enemy's methodologies in Guantanamo," Malcolm Nance, former head of the Navy's SERE training program, says in "Torturing Democracy." He adds, "It will hurt us for decades to come. Decades. Our people will all be subjected to these tactics, because we have authorized them for the world now. How it got to Guantanamo is a crime and somebody needs to figure out who did it, how they did it, who authorized them to do it ... Because our servicemen will suffer for years."

-- Bill Moyers

Dead Black Man Was Tasered Nine Times in 14 Minutes by White Cop

This is atrocious... tasers should be taken from cops... they use them too often, too easily. Even when it doesn't result in death, it is often used as an instrument of torture, thereby inflicting unconstitutional "cruel and unusual punishment" on unconvicted citizens.

Dead Black Man Was Tasered Nine Times by White Cop
By Steven D., Booman Tribune
Who happens to like using his Taser quite a bit. Read more »

Patriotism

We just celebrated Independence Day in the U.S., and everywhere people are debating what "patriotism" really means. As both major presidential candidates continue jabbing at each other on the subject, I was very touched by an article by Chris Satullo in the Philadelphia Inquirer titled "A not-so-glorious Fourth" – it may be a little after the fact, but I hope everyone reads it, as the message goes beyond the holiday itself.

Our great nation seems to be crumbling around us these days – morally as well as financially. Morally, as this administration has abandoned our high ideals and squandered our standing in the world by engaging in barbaric torture and pillaging our Constitution – all with the compliant approval of most of the media and Congress. As Mr. Satullo explains, we, the public, share in the blame as well, since we have not expressed sufficient outrage at these developments.

Financially, things are going downhill fast as well, but the case can be made that this was caused by our moral failings as well. Not because God is punishing us for our sins, but because there is a direct correlation between not playing by the rules and the long-term fallout that that causes. Financial institutions have been allowed to skirt the rules laid down after the Great Depression. And those rules have now been rewritten to accommodate the corporate behemoths that have grown so powerful, Congress seems to be their own private puppet theater. They pull the strings, and bought-and-paid-for politicians do their bidding.

Things must change, and fast, if we are to preserve this still-young democracy. And perhaps it starts with redefining "patriotism."