What is torture? According to the dictionary it is defined as: “The action or practice of inflicting severe pain on someone as a punishment or to force them to do or say something. Great physical or mental suffering or anxiety.” With regards to torture, the 17th Article of the Geneva Conventions states: “No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not ...More »

Good morning from mentally ill headquarters located in Vancouver’s sunny Downtown Lower Eastside. Here at MI HQ we do our best to cover the day’s events from the perspective of the mentally ill prior to our mid afternoon tee-off times (and to think there was a time when I was younger that I had a 15 handicap – just ask Salros). Painting 2 Billion People With A Single Brush Sheldon Richman of The Future Of Freedom Foundation penned a piece yesterday entitled Why the Peaceful ...More »

First, from Keith Olbermann... Second, regarding what is and is not deemed torture. Last night I revisited the film In The Name Of The Father, the true story of Gerry Conlon and the Guildford Four and Maguire Seven. The film is based on Conlon's autobiography entitled Proved Innocent, which I highly recommend. For those of you that don't know the story, the Guildford Four were the first people detained under the prevention of terrorism act. This act allowed the British government to detain suspects for seven days ...More »

The International Olympic Committee has reversed its recent decision to disallow Iraq to participate at the Olympics. Unfortunately, only two members of Iraq’s Olympic contingent can attend, as the deadline for admissions for numerous events has passed, leaving only Iraq’s track and field athletes eligible. There’s nothing like training for the Olympics in one of the worst locations in the world only to be told that you can’t attend the games and then have that decision reversed too late for you to participate anyway. Had ...More »

The world’s most technologically advanced military keeps missing. When it comes to the barbaric act of stoning people to death, chances are there are more hits than misses. The Iranians plan to put that theory to the test. Others are merciful enough to wash clean their conscience by employing lethal injection. Death’s a franchise. In the UK a parliamentary oversight committed has come to the conclusion that the British government should no longer accept on blind faith American assurances that it doesn’t use torture. It’s a little ...More »

You know, I’ve been doing this long enough to know better than to link to right leaning blogs. By doing so initially in this entry I broke the golden rule, which is to stay on topic and not invite negative attention. Thus, I have amended this entry to correct my own ignorant oversight. One can only imagine what it must be like for an adult prisoner to endure US treatment at Guantanamo. But for Omar Khadr, who was sent to the facility when he was ...More »

Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba’s (Ret.) new report regarding human rights abuses in Iraq and elsewhere, initiated and published by Physicians For Human Rights, has lent credible gravity to the argument that officials within the administration are guilty of war crimes… “The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing "war crimes" and called for those responsible to be held to account. The remarks by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who's now retired, came in a ...More »

Somalia, the overlooked US proxy war that has somehow remained under the radar. In truth, the humanitarian crisis in the country is considered to be second only to the one in Darfur, and even then, the warning signs are looking just as ominous. As Mike Whitney put it recently… “In 2006, the United States supported an alliance of Somali warlords known as the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) who established a base of operations in the western city of Baidoa. With the help of the US-backed Ethiopian ...More »

The reaction by many US conservatives, including Republican Presidential hopeful John McCain, to the recent US Supreme Court decision to grant detainees held at Guantanamo the right of Habeas Corpus has been, dare I say, rather un-American. In fact, McCain has even gone so far as to call the decision the worst in the history of the Supreme Court. One wonders if Mr. McCain, and those who share his view, have read Thomas Paine’s Rights Of Man? Of those detained at Guantanamo, how many are innocent? ...More »

Yesterday, after literally millennia of its use as a ‘war tactic’, the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously to finally classify rape as a ‘weapon of war’. In this day and age rape is primarily employed as a terror tactic, and has, as such, been in direct contravention of the UN Declaration Of Human Rights since its inception. Of course, those that employ rape as a tactic don’t commonly adhere to the tenets of the UNDHR, so it’s somewhat of a moot point. Women and boys ...More »