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Earthlings is a feature length documentary about humanity’s absolute dependence on animals (for pets, food, clothing, entertainment, and scientific research).
Earthlings illustrates human’s disrespect for “non-human providers”, it is narrated by Joaquin Phoenix and features music by Moby.
Channel 4′s foreign affairs correspondent reports from Syria on the mounting body of evidence that the state is engaging in widespread acts of brutality against its own citizens. 
Between bursts of machine-gun fire and the crump of explosions – unmuffled in crisp mountain air – the starry sky above the Syrian frontier offers ethereal distraction. It’s 3am and the town of Tal Kalakh, less than two miles to the north – just inside the Syrian Arab Republic – is under sustained attack, its residents reportedly refusing to hand over a small band of defectors who have holed up there, trying to bolt for Lebanon to join the insurgents.
All around are mountains among which ancient armies have battled for millennia. And below, in besieged Tal Kalakh, a western outpost in the restive governorate of Homs, the Syrian army is once again hard at work, killing its own people. Tal Kalakh has felt the full force of violent repression many times since the Syrian revolt erupted back in March. One day, Tal Kalakh will doubtless appear on the revolutionary roll of honour. For now, this town of 80,000 people doesn’t even merit a mention in my guidebook.
“We don’t kill our people,” President Bashar al-Assad said last week in an American television interview. “No government in the world kills its people unless it’s led by a crazy person.” Those who dare oppose al-Assad do not think their leader crazy. Crazed, maybe. But today they see straight through him. They’re tired of the lies. They have seen too much.
Between late November and early December, I was one of just two foreign reporters granted an official journalist visa to this repressive police state. I spent nine days in Damascus, capital of al-Assad’s Republic of Fear, as a guest of the government. There, I encountered an angrily defiant regime, robust and resolute and unapologetic. Earlier in this Arab spring, I spent six weeks in Libya. There are echoes of Gaddafi in the personality cult surrounding al-Assad, but Syria‘s political and security apparatus is bigger and badder than anything Gaddafi could muster. I do not mean to belittle the suffering of Libyans, but Syria has four times the Libyan population and 10 times the menace.
Over the course of those nine days, I interviewed three government ministers, an army general and the mayor of a rebellious city. I heard nothing but denials that the security forces were shooting, shelling and torturing civilians. The government blames “armed gangs” and “terrorists” and invokes the spectre of Islamist insurgents, just as Gaddafi’s henchmen did. And like them, they see western-backed conspiracies. They talk of a media war in which Arab and western satellite TV stations broadcast “lies” and “fabricated videos.”
“Do you really think that we would accept torture?” I was asked by a seemingly incredulous Bouthaina Shaaban – presidential adviser and senior government minister – when I challenged her on the persistent allegations, most recently documented in great detail by the UN Human Rights Council’s Independent Commission of Inquiry. “Syria has no policy of torture whatsoever,” she said. “We do not have Guantánamo or Abu Ghraib. That is absolutely unacceptable by us. Absolutely unacceptable.” Every government minister complained of the outside world’s anti-Syrian agenda, which overlooked the barbarous excesses of “armed gangs” that, they claimed, had tortured, killed and often dismembered 1,400 Syrian soldiers.
Syria is party to the 1984 UN Convention Against Torture. This convention defines “torture” as any act which intentionally inflicts severe pain or suffering, physical or mental, with the intention of obtaining information, a confession or punishing an individual for something he or someone else has committed or is suspected of committing.
“It’s rampant,” says Nadim Houry, the Beirut-based deputy director of Human Rights Watch for the Middle East and North Africa, who has taken testimony on hundreds of cases of torture from Syria, “and, the odds are, if you’re detained, you will be ill treated and most likely tortured. We know of at least 105 cases of people who were returned from the custody of security services in body bags to their loved ones … and those are only the ones that we know of.” Mr Houry says he has evidence that tens of thousands of Syrians have been arbitrarily detained over the months.
“But we have also documented what I would call “meaningless torture” – if there is ever such a thing. They’ve got all the information but they want to teach you a lesson. I think that lesson is “you need to fear us”. And the striking thing that I’ve seen is that despite that torture, people are no longer afraid. The wall of fear has been broken.”
A short drive from the frontier, along hair-pinned mountain roads, past Lebanese checkpoints where friendly soldiers shiver, is a Syrian safe-house. There is no electricity. The place is crammed with refugees; there are children sleeping everywhere. In an upstairs room, next to a small wood-burner, a weathered former tractor driver from Tal Kalakh – who is in his 50s – winces as pains shoot through his battered body, lying on a mattress on the concrete floor. He manoeuvres himself on to a pile of pillows and lights a cigarette. He’s relieved to have escaped to Lebanon but he’s already yearning to go home. He can’t though. His right leg is now gangrenous below the knee; he can barely move. So far he’s had only basic medical treatment.
Before sunrise one morning, he told me, as troops laid siege to his town, he’d been shot twice by “shabiha“, pro-al-Assad militia. Unable to run, he had been rounded up, thrashed and driven down the road to nearby Homs with many other detainees, being beaten all the way. For the next few weeks, his bullet wounds were left to fester, he says, while he was subjected to torture so extreme that his accounts of what had happened to him left those of us who listened stunned and feeling sick. During his time in detention, he had been passed, he claimed, to five different branches of al-Assad’s sadistic secret police, the Mukhabarat.
In flickering candle-light, he told me in gruesome detail of beatings he’d received with batons and electric cables on the soles of his feet (a technique called “falaka“). He had been hung by his knees, immobilised inside a twisting rubber tyre, itself suspended from the ceiling. He had been shackled hand and foot and hung upside down for hours – the Mukhabarat’s notorious “flying carpet”. Then hung up by his wrists (“the ghost”), and whipped and tormented with electric cattle prods.
When he wasn’t being tortured, he had been crammed into cells with up to 80 people, without room to sit or sleep, he claimed. They stood hungry, naked and frightened in darkness, in their filth, unfed, unwashed. He recalled the stench and listening to the screams of others echoing through their sordid dungeon. He told of being thrown rotting food. And of the sobbing of the children.
“I saw at least 200 children – some as young as 10,” he said. “And there were old men in their 80s. I watched one having his teeth pulled out by pliers.” In Syria’s torture chambers, age is of no consequence, it seems. But for civilians who have risen up against al-Assad, it has been the torture – and death in custody – of children that has caused particular revulsion.
The tractor driver told of regular interrogations, of forced confessions (for crimes he never knew he had committed); he spoke of knives and other people’s severed fingers, of pliers and ropes and wires, of boiling water, cigarette burns and finger nails extracted – and worse: electric drills. There had been sexual abuse, he said, but that was all he said of that.
Having finished in one place, he’d been transferred to yet another branch of the Mukhabarat and his nightmare would start all over again. And as the beatings went on day in, day out, his legs and the soles of his feet became raw and infected. That was when they forced him to “walk on rocks of salt”. He told me, speaking clearly, slowly: “When you are bleeding and the salt comes into your flesh, it hurts a lot more than the beating. I was forced to walk round and round to feel more pain.”
He lit another cigarette, then said: “Although we are suffering from torture, we are not afraid any more. There is no fear. We used to fear the regime, but there is no place for fear now.” If the intention of torture is to terrorise, it has in recent months had the opposite effect. Each act of brutality has served, it seems, to reinforce the growing sense of outrage and injustice and has triggered ever more widespread insurrection.
I met other survivors in other safe houses and each account corroborated the other. A pharmacist, abducted by militia from a hospital to which he’d been taken after being shot. His experience of torture was every bit as bad as that of the tractor driver. The 16-year-old boy, beaten, electrocuted to the point he thought he would die, then threatened with execution. He was now having trouble sleeping.
Another man, placed in what he called “the electric coffin” – in which a detainee is forced to lie inside a wooden box, across two metal plates through which they pass a current. The 73-year-old man was mercilessly whipped, electrocuted and beaten because of his son’s known opposition activities abroad. He talked of hundreds of detainees pushed into cells, humiliated and naked. Another torture refugee told of a device they called “the German chair”, so named, apparently, because it was devised by the Stasi. In it, a detainee is bent backwards until he feels his spine will snap.
What emerged was a pattern of systematic brutality, a revolving door of terror through which thousands of people have passed in recent months. This is Syria’s torture machine. It is torture on an industrial scale.
While in Syria, we lived in a bubble, seeing nothing of the extreme brutality and killing for which the Syrian regime is so notorious. We were taken to mass rallies, where thousands of frenzied supporters kissed portraits of al-Assad for our cameras and chanted slogans in defiance of Arab League sanctions.
For two days we were not granted filming permits – and it’s probably no coincidence that one of those days was a Friday, the day on which hundreds of anti-government demonstrations are guaranteed to break out right across the country after midday prayers. One day, while we were legally filming on a street, our government minder – despite wielding official documents embossed with Ministry of Information double-headed eagles – was arrested by angry Mukhabarat agents. We never found out why this particular location was so sensitive. Our minder returned, visibly shaken, 15 minutes later. “We cannot film here,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Despite daily requests, we were refused access to cities such as Homs and Hama whose residents were posting videos on YouTube showing tanks firing at random into civilian areas. When we were finally taken to Dara’a, the southern city that had been the cradle of this insurrection, we travelled in the presence of four government minders and, when we attempted to talk to anyone, we found ourselves surrounded by Mukhabarat who instructed our interviewees to tell us everything was normal. It was very claustrophobic.
Despite this, an astonishing number of Syrian people did approach us, subtly – and often quaking – to tell us that all was not as it appeared, that they detested the regime and that there were thousands out there like them. One man touched my arm as I stood in the midst of a mass rally in downtown Damascus, completely surrounded by the ranting and raging regime-faithful. As I looked round, he caught my eye and simply uttered the word “Bashar” as he drew his index finger across his throat, before melting into the loyalist crowd. If he’d been spotted he might as well have signed his own death warrant.
A road snakes up the barren rock of Mount Qasioun which overlooks Damascus and on a clear day, from 1,000m up, there’s a magnificent panoramic view across the capital. From this vantage point, if you know what you’re looking for, it is possible to pick out at least seven locations where you can say with a good degree of certainty that people are being tortured at any single moment. The thought spoils the view.
Each of the four main pillars of the Mukhabarat – military intelligence, air force intelligence, the political security directorate and the general security directorate – has its headquarters in the city. And each has sub-branches: general security has three – including the feared Palestine branch – and military intelligence has several, among them the notorious Branch 235. No one seems to know what the number means. Each of these agencies is an empire inside an empire, with bureaux the length and breadth of Syria. Since the revolt started, detention facilities have not been confined to known intelligence buildings; the Mukhabarat have used stadiums and football fields in several cities to detain and torture suspects. In smaller towns and villages, market squares suffice. The four main intelligence agencies are thought to be directly under the control of the president.
While al-Assad increasingly faces armed insurrection from those weary of life in his Big Brother world, the most potent weapon in opposition hands is the mobile phone. Grainy footage of violent acts of repression – and of those tortured and killed by the regime – has been uploaded and rebroadcast to a global audience of millions.
These videos make distressing viewing. In one, a mother is seen weeping over the body of her 27-year-old son who has been delivered home, dead, after a week in detention. He has marks and bruises all over his body and there is a bullet wound. “May Allah take revenge against all tyrants,” the woman wails. “On each and every unjust person, Bashar and his aides, my God, may You take revenge on him.”
Such footage has caused irreparable damage to al-Assad’s regime. But the government ministers I spoke to about these videos roundly dismiss them as faked or filmed somewhere else at another time. If verified, however, such footage would present important evidence of the crimes the regime now stands accused of by the UN Human Rights Council Inquiry. The sheer volume of such material – upwards of 30,000 videos have now been posted on the internet by Syrian opposition activists – spurred Channel 4 to commission a documentary investigation.
We employed a team of experts to forensically examine video footage, subjecting it to a strict verification protocol. We have independently checked, when possible, the sources of the material, looked for time-specific clues, then examined location details with Syrians from those places. Specific incidents have been cross-checked and corroborated by independent sources. Exiled former members of the Syrian security forces have checked vehicles, uniforms and military insignia. A growing number of these videos show soldiers actually committing acts of torture, openly filming each other. It’s chilling: not one of them appears to be worried about being identified.
Accents have been carefully listened to. And the records of those uploading video have been examined for consistency and reliability. We sought the advice of a specialist doctor from the charity Freedom from Torture. We employed a forensic pathologist, Professor Derrick Pounder, to examine grim video evidence of those whose relatives allege were killed under torture.
The result is a grotesque compendium of verified video material which we believe to present irrefutable prima facie evidence of crimes against humanity.
Talking me through this material, Pounder said the videos show “compelling evidence of crude physical violence, strangulation, homicide, shootings and general assaults. There is a very distinctive pattern of … physical violence in an extreme form,” he said. “It would suggest that what was happening was happening on a wide scale and it would suggest that what was happening was carried out with impunity … There is no consequence for them even if there is clear evidence of an assault.” So much for the UN Convention Against Torture.
One evening, when I was interviewing torture victims in a Syrian safe house in Lebanon, there was a great commotion. A Syrian army defector, who had commanded resistance in the district of Baba Amr in Homs – the city Syrians have dubbed “Capital of the Revolution” – was being carried into the safe-house by four men. He had been shot nine times and had somehow survived, but he was in terrible pain. He had recently been smuggled into Lebanon from Tal Kalakh.
The next morning, he was well enough to talk briefly. It was my first encounter with a former member of the Syrian security forces. He told me that mass detention and severe torture were commonplace. “When the army carries out a detention campaign,” he said, “they start to torture the detainee until the security services arrive. They then take him to the military security branch, which is like a human slaughter house. Most of the people taken there alive are discharged dead.”
While a platoon commander in the army he had accompanied officers in house-to-house searches for wanted men in Homs, he said. “When they don’t find their target, they either rape the women, or kill the children.” He named the officers in charge and his commanding officer. They were all Allawites, he said – members of the prominent Syrian Shia sect to which the president belongs. When they had failed to find one man on their wanted list, he claimed, they had taken his son, beheaded him and hung his head above the door of the family home. He related this account in a faltering manner as though struggling to find the words, and as he did so, tears rolled down his face. But he was so badly wounded, he couldn’t wipe the tears away. This, he told me, was what had prompted his defection.
I told him that the UN had just raised its estimated death count to 4,000 civilians killed since March. (This week they raised that to 5,000.) He looked at me in disbelief. He said the number was much higher. After four decades of al-Assad rule, one man is held accountable for this bloody-thirsty repression: the army’s commander-in-chief and the head of Syrian Intelligence – the president of the republic himself. And if al-Assad was to attempt to stop all this, could he, I asked Nadim Houry. “I don’t know the answer to that,” he said. “But I do know that he never tried to stop it.”
Source: https://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/13/syria-torture-evidence
By Jeffrey Kaye
It could have been big news, if U.S. torture weren’t so anathema to the press corps, such that reporting upon it is considered either a fruitless and unprofitable enterprise, or among most of those who do venture into such waters, the sine qua non for such reportage must be ignorance and/or cover-up for much of what the U.S. military and intelligence agencies do.
Consider that during the recent Senate debate over the Defense Authorization Bill — the one that passed provisions on indefinite detention that drew cries of outrage from a number of law professors, and stoked fear among government opponents — Senator Dianne Feinstein, while speaking against provisions of the bill that would subject U.S. citizens to indefinite detention also made some serious points concerning the torture-interrogation amendment offered by Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-New Hampshire). 
Feinstein announced that the much-heralded, and much forgotten review of CIA torture undertaken by the Senate Intelligence Committee, first reported by Jason Leopold back in April 2010, is wrapping up its investigation. But her comments went unregarded and unreported, as patience for such things as fighting torture is not the strong suit of American political discourse, nor is much expected anymore from a Congress that has so clearly lost its bearings.
But, nevertheless, the announcement is not without interest, as Feinstein told her colleagues:
As chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, I can say that we are nearing the completion [of] a comprehensive review of the CIA’s former interrogation and detention program, and I can assure the Senate and the Nation that coercive and abusive treatment of detainees in U.S. custody was far more systematic and widespread than we thought.
Moreover, the abuse stemmed not from the isolated acts of a few bad apples but from fact that the line was blurred between what is permissible and impermissible conduct, putting U.S. personnel in an untenable position with their superiors and the law.
That is why Congress and the executive branch subsequently acted to provide our intelligence and military professionals with the clarity and guidance they need to effectively carry out their missions. And that is where the Army Field Manual comes in.
It is not surprising to hear the torture was worse than already known. After all, the purpose of secrecy and the cult of classification, so assiduously courted by the current Administration, is to hide crimes. So one can only hope the Intelligence Committee will, when the review is truly and finally complete (and let’s hope it’s not another 18 months), that its findings will be released publicly. In fact, in a decent world, it would be demanded.
Lies that facilitate torture – Case-in-point: the Army Field Manual
One reason for the lulled non-murmur over torture is the outrageous lie that Obama, after coming into office, “ended torture.” He enshrined the Army Field Manual as the supposedly humane alternative to the Bush torture regime of “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Feinstein, who certainly knows better, is an exemplary model for such myth-making — “myth” because the Army Field Manual actually uses torture of various sorts, and even though about half-a-dozen human rights and legal organizations, and a number of prominent government interrogators have said so (see this Nov. 2010 letter signed by 14 well-known interrogators to then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates) — as her following comments on the Army Field Manual (AFM) demonstrate.
Here, Sen. Feinstein is polemicizing against the Ayotte amendment, which was ignominiously dismissed via a parliamentary maneuver, along with a few dozen other amendments, after an ostentatious Senate “colloquy” on the matter by Senators Ayotte and Lieberman (with Lindsay Graham chiming in at the very end). The amendment awaits its resurrection, seeking passage attached like an obligate parasite to another bill some months down the line. (The authorization bill is currently “in conference,” as a final version is worked out that reconciles both House and Senate versions. It is not unknown for provisions to be slipped in under such circumstances, and I wouldn’t count out yet Ayotte/Lieberman/Graham’s attempt to insert a new secret annex to the AFM, not until, like the undead, a stake is driven through its heart.)
Feinstein:
However, Senator Ayotte’s amendment would require the executive branch to adopt a classified interrogation annex to the Army Field Manual, a concept that even the Bush administration rejected outright in 2006.
Senator Ayotte argued that the United States needs secret and undisclosed interrogation measures to successfully interrogate terrorists and gain actionable intelligence. However, our intelligence, military, and law enforcement professionals, who actually interrogate terrorists as part of their jobs, universally disagree. They believe that with the Army Field Manual as it currently is written, they have the tools needed to obtain actionable intelligence from U.S. detainees.
As an example, in 2009, after an extensive review, the intelligence community unanimously asserted that it had all the guidance and tools it needed to conduct effective interrogations. The Special Task Force on Interrogations–which included representatives from the CIA, Defense Department, the Office of the Director of Intelligence, and others–concluded that “no additional or different guidance was necessary.”
Since 2009, the interagency High Value Detainee Interrogation Group has briefed the Select Committee on Intelligence numerous times. The group has repeatedly assured the committee that they have all authority they need to effectively gain actionable intelligence. As a consummate consumer of the intelligence products they produce, I agree.
Unfortunately, Sen. Feinstein is oddly correct. Between standard interrogation methods and CIA-derived interrogation techniques meant to break down a prisoner psychologically, they do really have all they “need.”
Feinstein never mentions the years-long protests about certain provisions of the AFM, many of them gathered in the document’s Appendix M, that have been found tantamount to torture — the use of drugs (so long as they don’t “induce lasting or permanent mental alteration or damage,” the harsh manipulation of fears and phobias, the elimination of wording from the previous version of the AFM that would ban stress positions, the use of isolation, sleep deprivation and sensory deprivation techniques. All of these are mingled in with a number of other basic interrogation techniques, but that doesn’t diminish the cruel irony of Feinstein’s IC-based assurance that that government interrogators “had all the guidance and tools it needed to conduct effective interrogations.” Guidance and tools, indeed.
Perhaps she could have quoted the letter to Gates, signed by Ali Soufan, Steven Kleinman, Jack Cloonan, Robert Baer, Mark Fallon, Malcolm Nance and others, which noted “the use of potentially abusive questioning tactics” in the Army Field Manual. Of course, these government interrogators softened their language (“potentially”?) and couched their opposition in terms of what hurts the national interest, versus what is wrong or illegal.
But when it comes to protecting the massive military-intelligence complex, such awkward facts as the use of cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment of prisoners, as well as outright torture enshrined in the Army Field Manual are not worthy of note. Even the many human rights groups who opposed the Ayotte amendment allburied any past critique of the AFM or its Appendix M in their polemics against Ayotte’s “classified annex” proposal. This is not the way to win a battle!
Honoring “our values”?
Feinstein concluded:
We cannot have it both ways. Either we make clear to the world that the United States will honor our values and treat prisoners humanely or we let the world believe that we have secret interrogation methods to terrorize and torture our prisoners.
But what about interrogation methods that are not secret, Sen. Feinstein?
I don’t seriously expect her to respond. Instead I ask readers, what kind of a country is it that has torture written into its public documents, and no one raises a fuss (or practically no one)?
The failure to take on the AFM and its Appendix M abuses in a serious fashion has led in a straight line to the political pornography of watching torture debated in Congress and among Presidential candidates, as well as a surge of political effort being made in some circles to make sure all such abuse is hidden forever behind a veil of classification. This failure is directly the responsibility of the human rights groups, who have not made it clear to their constituencies and the public at large how serious the problem currently is. While most of them are on the record of opposing the abuses described above, they repeatedly have pulled their punches for political reasons (as during the recent debate on the Ayotte amendment), and as a result, they must take the hard criticism when it comes, until, or unless they turn this around.
Source: https://pubrecord.org/torture/9912/feinstein-senate-panels-probe/
In this video I talk about the situation we are facing with the Department of Homeland Security.
Trust me when I say that I don’t like making this video.
I don’t like admitting when I am cornered by a force that I cannot defend myself against.
I am posting this so that you will realize what is developing in this country.
In Pakistan, like in many other South Asian countries, honor is a virtue that is not only valued but demanded from society, especially from women. Women who “dishonour” their families face severe consequences at the hands of a strongly patriarchal society who continues to see women secondary to men. 
A new report from the AGHS Legal Cell has found that violence against women in the form of burning and acid attacks is on the rise in the country. Women who are seen as dishonoring their families are often the targets of these attacks.
Walking in public with a man who is unrelated to you could elicit an attack for it is often presumed that the woman is committing adultery. Fleeing an arranged marriage or a relationship where a woman is unhappy or being abused is another common reason for the attacks.
According to the report, from April to June of this year more than 220 women reported being burned, 40 of whom died as a result of their injuries which can be extensive. When acid is thrown in a person’s face, skin tissue melts on contact exposing the bone below the flesh that may also dissolve from the acid. If acid reaches the eyes, they are permanently damaged often leaving survivors with the use of only one or no eyes.
What’s worse? According to the report women are not being given appropriate medical care and few seek legal action after being attacked. Many cases are also not even reported to police so the actual numbers of victims are far worse than we think.
“Violence against women in Pakistan is endemic,” Nisha Varia, deputy director of women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch told The Media Line.” “We try to apply pressure so that the government recognizes these crimes, prosecutes the perpetrators and provides services to the victims.”
Acid and burn attacks are also not only isolated in Pakistan. It is also common practice in Bangladesh, India, and other South Asian countries. In Bangladesh, the Acid Survivors Foundation has been working for nearly ten years to eliminate acid violence in the country where there is currently an acid attack every two days. A similar organization also exists in Pakistan.
Violence against women exists everywhere. We know this. I also know that I can no longer sit idly as governments around the world fail to protect these victims.
It really blows my mind when I think of the countless ways mankind has found to inflict violence against women around the world.
Acid attacks are one of such violent forms of assault that is most common in countries like Cambodia, Afghanistan, India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. A
The perpetrators were after the family’s oldest daughter because her father had denied one of the men’s requests for her hand in marriage. The girl’s father said he rejected the man’s offer of marriage at the time because his daughter was too young. Forced marriage of young Afghan girls is not uncommon today which makes the father’s protection notable.
Rejected, the man and his brothers, who are suspected of being members of a local militia, broke into the house to attack the girls and their mother in revenge. The men involved in the attack have since been brought to the capital by the Interior Ministry for investigation and potential prosecution.
“The attackers defamed Afghanistan in the eyes of the world,” said the ministry’s spokesman, Sediq Sediqui. “It was the harshest violence they could ever carry out.”
He said that the Afghan police were warning “those who commit such brutal acts that they will be brought to justice at any cost.”
The Elimination of Violence Against Women law, which was passed last year, specifically prohibits chemical attacks against women. Such offenses carry a punishment of at least 10 years of imprisonment and at most life in prison.
Given the law and the ministry’s quick arrest, one would hope that the men will be adequately punished, but history has proved differently. Since Afghanistan enacted the law banning violence against women there have been 2,299 complaints of gender-motivated abuse registered with the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission from March 2010 to March 2011 only 7% of those crimes have been prosecuted.
This is very unsettling. Acid attacks are a violent and inhumane form of violence against women that should be prohibited and punished under the law strictly. We have such laws for a reason; let’s make sure they are enforced so less women have to suffer.
In 2004, the news that Americans had committed abuse and mistreatment in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo was shocking. Even more alarming, were the revelations that physicians, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals had assisted with interrogations that bordered on torture.
In the span of just two generations, the United States had drifted from condemning Nazi physicians at the Nuremberg Trials for their collusion with torture, inhuman experimentation and cruel mistreatment to justifying waterboarding in the pursuit of better intelligence. 
As a retired brigadier general and Army psychiatrist, committed to a strong military and national defense, I find these scandals to be most disturbing. The complicity of psychiatrists and other physicians clearly deviated from the fundamental ethical principles of the medical profession and military medicine. My generation of soldiers, who had served during the Vietnam War, vowed not to repeat the misdeeds of the My Lai massacres and rampant indiscipline we witnessed.
However, after the attack on the World Trade Towers, fear and anger dominated the country’s emotional climate and the principles of our profession were hijacked. The incessant drumbeat of political rhetoric that “the war on terror is a war like no other” and that “we must take all measures possible to stop the enemy” made it somehow easier for psychiatrists to apply their skills and training to exploit the vulnerabilities of prisoners. To this day, former government officials justify cruel and inhuman treatment of detainees at Bagram and Guantanamo with unsubstantiated assertions that their confessions led to the trail of Osama bin Laden. The public supported such conduct and the television show “24″ gained wide popularity as viewers were captivated by threats of violence and new gimmicks for bringing the bad guys down. Even the presidential candidates in 2008 were ambushed by questions that judged their fitness to be commander in chief by their willingness to torture a suspect who planted a “ticking bomb.”
But, there is no evidence to confirm the assertions that torture of prisoners has helped the war effort at all.
The plain fact is that nothing that has been claimed in the name of defending our country can justify cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of another man or woman. Torture, in any form - light or heavy - is not a tool of interrogation or useful for gathering good intelligence. It is a propaganda tool and degrades the perpetrator as well as the victim. This is not just the rhetoric of bleeding heart progressives. It is the opinion of over fifty retired admirals, generals and senior government officials convened by Human Rights First to discuss this issue, and our conclusions can be stated simply:
Torture has long been associated with political repression and with regimes without any semblance of an independent judiciary or media. The Soviet Union’s imprisonment of dissenters and forced use of psychotropic medication on them, the Khmer Rouge’s torture of thousands of people in Cambodia and the Augusto Pinochet regime’s brutality against prisoners in Chile all bear witness to the association between totalitarian or authoritarian regimes and their use of torture.
As the human rights lawyer Leonard Rubenstein and I wrote in March 2010, “the medical staff at the C.I.A. and the Pentagon played a critical role in developing and carrying out torture procedures. Psychologists and at least one doctor designed or recommended coercive interrogation methods including sleep deprivation, stress positions, isolation and waterboarding. The military’s Behavioral Science Consultation Teams evaluated detainees, consulted their medical records to ascertain vulnerabilities and advised interrogators when to push harder for intelligence information. Psychologists designed a program for new arrivals at Guantánamo that kept them in isolation to ‘enhance and exploit’ their ‘disorientation and disorganization.’ Medical officials monitored interrogations and ordered medical interventions so they could continue even when the detainee was in obvious distress. In one case, an interrogation log obtained by Time magazine shows a medical corpsman ordered intravenous fluids to be administered to a dehydrated detainee even as loud music was played to deprive him of sleep.”
We cannot dismiss the psychiatrists and psychologists, who participated in interrogations in Guantanamo and helped devise the abusive practices, as mere rogues or outliers. They were actors on a much larger stage. They were swept up by a pervasive and persuasive attitude that subsumed the country and energized a military plan to “hunt down the criminals wherever they may be hiding.” The Department of Defense (DoD) issued policy accordingly and the Office of Assistant Secretary for Health Affairs contended that the legitimate objective of fighting terrorism trumps the ethical responsibility of the healing practitioner. In their eyes, “the ends justify the means” and a few brutalized prisoners were a small price to pay for protecting the citizens of the United States.
But, in truth, the use of torture and practices of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment detracted from the military mission and compromised the international stature of our country, while also undermining the effectiveness, credibility and ethical foundations of the medical professionals. To a certain extent, the administration realizes this. Now, ten years into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the White House has changed the national strategy and President Obama has insisted, “human rights is both fundamental to American leadership and a source of our strength in the world.” In his words, it “does not merely represent our better angels …” Standing up for human rights has come front and center both as a matter of national strategy and measure of human decency. Historically, the human rights stance against torture has been unequivocal, one of the few absolutes in human rights law: It is never permitted, never excused, never to be balanced against national needs or interests - even in cases of national emergency. Torture is also forbidden under the laws of war. It is considered a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.
This is important and good, but it is not enough. The political leadership of our nation does not have an appetite for investigating the misdeeds that were committed in the past ten years. A change for the better that is not informed by an honest assessment of the sins of the past is not likely to be either permanent or fully integrated into the power structure. Several human rights groups have called for a Commission of Truth and Reconciliation to spur corrective action. By this, they are referring to comprehensive programs that were undertaken in South Africa and in the former Soviet Union to bring to justice the perpetrators of misdeeds and examine the range of responsibility that society as a whole had for the injustices of the past. Mental health professionals understand the power of confession and repentance, for individuals, communities and institutions. Something is needed that goes beyond apology, regret or even a vow to do better. A Commission of Truth and Reconciliation is a step toward corrective action.
By reflecting on the ethical principles and traditions of the healing professions, a stronger case can be put forward against torture and mistreatment:
In 1947, our nation and its allies tried and sentenced the Nazi physicians who violated basic principles of medical ethics. In 2003, the political dynamics and national sentiment induced physicians and psychiatrists and other health care professionals to commit actions that violated core ethics. The healing professions can lead corrective action, help the country recover the “high ground” and prevent future lapses in professional conduct and policies that violated human rights. Human rights are vital to national security in the 21st century.
Much has improved since the dark days of 9/11, but our nation has been damaged. Where once the symbol of our great democracy was the Statue of Liberty - it has now become the image of that poor hooded man in detention with wires strung from his hands and feet. Our men and women on the front lines are endangered because of the increased risk of retaliatory measures. We are not safer because of these misguided policies and how we have acted as a country.
1. I have recent experience that confirms my opinions on the ineffectiveness of harsh interrogation techniques, their unethical nature and harmful consequences. In the past five years, I have been asked to assess several detainees and review the medical records of many more on behalf of defense attorneys. Many detainees subjected to harsh interrogation, as designed and approved by clinicians working for the CIA and DoD, still suffer with the prolonged injuries and adverse psychological effects of their treatment. The evidence of negative effects of the harsh interrogations has been compelling. Moreover, the information gleaned in interrogations that involved harsh treatment has not been allowed in court proceedings.
Source: https://www.truth-out.org/healers-torture-and-national-security/1323104751
A Tibetan Buddhist monk protesting Chinese policies immolated himself publicly in a Tibetan area of Sichuan Province in southwest China on Monday, an outside advocacy group reported. It was the second such act in the area in the past five months and appeared to reflect resistance to increased Chinese repression of loyalty to Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.
The monk was heard calling, “We Tibetan people want freedom,” “Long live the Dalai Lama” and “Let the Dalai Lama return to Tibet,” after he drank gasoline, doused himself with it and set himself alight on a bridge in the center of Daofu, a town in Ganzi County in Sichuan, according to the advocacy group Free Tibet. The group is based in London, but has a network of contacts in Tibet and Tibetan-populated areas elsewhere in China.
Xinhua, China’s official news agency, reported the death of a monk in Daofu, but did not provide details. 
Ganzi, known in Tibetan as Kardze, is overwhelmingly populated by ethnic Tibetans. It has been an area of chronic tensions for the Chinese authorities, most related to the country’s Han ethnic majority.
China’s government regards the vast Himalayan region of Tibet as an integral part of China and is sensitive to expressions of support for the Dalai Lama, who fled into exile in 1959 and who has accused China of stifling Tibetan culture. The Chinese consider the Dalai Lama a subversive advocate of Tibetan independence, although he has said he only wants greater autonomy for Tibet.
Stephanie Brigden, the director of Free Tibet, identified the monk who killed himself as Tsewang Norbu, 29. She said he was protesting what she described as the harsh treatment of Tibetans following the March 16 immolation by a monk from the Kirti monastery in Aba, or Ngaba in Tibetan, in the same region of Sichuan. She said the repression worsened further when Tibetans in Daofu and elsewhere defied a government ban on celebrating the Dalai Lama’s 76th birthday on July 6.
“We’ve basically seen an escalation in the clamping down,” she said in a telephone interview. “It is not just limited to this area.”
In a news release, Ms. Brigden said her group had “grave concerns” about what could happen in Daofu in the aftermath of the monk’s immolation, and at his monastery, Nyitso. She said that telephone and Internet access had been cut and that the group had “received reports that the army has surrounded the monastery.”
The resilient support for the Dalai Lama among China’s five million Tibetans has taken on increased significance with time. The Dalai Lama has said he may choose his own successor, deviating from the practice in which senior lamas identify each Dalai Lama’s reincarnation after his death. In response, Chinese authorities in Beijing have said they have the authority to name the next Dalai Lama. They have been seeking to promote their own handpicked successor, the Panchen Lama, second only to the Dalai Lama in the Tibetan Buddhist hierarchy.
The so-called Chinese Panchen Lama, who has spent most of his life in Beijing, went on a politically significant trip last week to a town that is home to a cherished monastery in a Tibetan-populated area of Gansu Province, where he was expected to study and meditate for weeks. Experts on Tibet said the trip appeared to have been part of the Chinese government’s attempt to give the Panchen Lama more legitimacy among monks and other Tibetans by broadening his exposure outside the capital.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/world/asia/16tibet.html?_r=2&partner=MYWAY&ei=5065
Millions of dogs each year are used as test subjects in order to study the effects of harmful pharmaceuticals, toxic household cleaners, and chemical-laden cosmetic products. A group known as Animal Rescue Media Education is dedicated to not only attempt to rescue science-lab dogs, but they also try and find them a home. In one of their largest rescue missions, the organization successfully rescued 72 beagles. With 32 already adopted by the time the press started picking up the story, the remaining 30 dogs were being nursed back to health.
In this touching video, watch as 9 rescued beagles are released from their cages for the first time. This is not only the first time they’ve seen sunlight, but the first time the animals are walking on solid ground.
“We’ve been told they lived one per cage in rooms of 10 beagles, but they never had any physical interaction with one another,” Smith said. “They’ve been in kennels since they were rescued about a week ago, but aside from that, they’ve spent most of their lives locked up.”
It is very easy to disregard animal testing as a real issue just as it is very simple to ignore international slave labor — it oftentimes simply does not affect you until you see it first hand. When you read product labels stating that the item was not tested on animals, it may mean very little to you.
Videos like these provide a wake-up call to the very cruel reality of animal testing and other forms of animal abuse.
It is important to consider how many other important issues are also disregarded due to the lack of immediate effect — particularly when it comes to your health. Perhaps the high-fructose corn syrup in your diet may not immediately harm you, but it may lead to disease later down the road.
If you are interested in adopting one of the dogs or supporting the organization responsible for rescuing the beagles, you can view their adoption page.
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