No He Can't: Obama's Gitmo Task Force Blows Its Deadline

Three administration officials familiar with the process said the detention task force, which is jointly run by aides to Attorney General Eric Holder and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, did agree that the Obama administration should continue to claim the right to hold some Guantánamo inmates indefinitely as "combatants" under the "laws of war," without charging them either in criminal courts or in military commissions. That proposal is sure to prove controversial among human-rights groups, which say any such "indefinite detention" violates civil liberties and is virtually indistinguishable from legal claims made by President Bush.
But the officials say that, as much as the concept of indefinite detention is distasteful to the president and his legal advisers, there is simply no alternative for dealing with potentially dozens of detainees whom the administration doesn't want to release because they are thought to be too dangerous, but can't bring to trial for lack of evidence.

Civil libertarians on Obama's speech adressing Guantanamo: All bells and whistles

Barely four months into the job, read what constitutional lawyer Michael Ratner had to say to the Huffington Post on Obama, Guantanamo, Torture, and military tribunals:

"He wraps himself in the Constitution, talks about American values and then proceeds to violate them."
..."Though we'd do it differently then Bush. We will set up rules. Well no matter how you repackage Guantanamo, with all kinds of rules on top of it -- that is what he is doing, he is re-wrapping a preventive detention scheme and giving it some more due process. In the end, it still comes down to holding people -- much like Minority Report or pre-crime stuff -- for being dangerous, and that is not something that I think is constitutional or this country should be engaged in."
..."I always believe that democracy dies behind closed doors, and the fact that these photos are being hidden right now -- if anything, it makes people think that there is a lot being hidden right now and that there is much more to this."
..."What is unfortunately effective about Obama is that he is able to use a setting like the National Archives, talk about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and all that, get people to sincerely believe he is [committed to these principles] and then go ahead and in my view undercut the core aspects of those documents,"

Israel: Star Turn

By Steve Bell

We see what we want to see: Gaza is the unseen Guantanamo.
The fact that Obama wants to close Guantanamo in his first week in office is ironic. Because Gaza is Guantanamo multiplied by 2000, with a revolt, minus the food, the electricity. But sharing the same undignified existence under the law of the occupier-prison guard, in a prison forgotten by Humanity where only violence, coercion, and the absence of international law, reign. Why being ashamed by Guantanamo and not by Gaza ? This is western liberal hypocrisy...

Ex-MI5 chief: Response to 9/11 was 'huge overreaction'

In an interview with the Guardian, Stella Rimington calls al-Qaida's attack on the US "another terrorist incident" but not qualitatively different from any others.
"That's not how it struck me. I suppose I'd lived with terrorist events for a good part of my working life and this was as far as I was concerned another one," she says.
In common with Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, who retired as MI5's director general last year, Rimington, who left 12 years ago, has already made it clear she abhorred "war on terror" rhetoric and the government's abandoned plans to hold terrorism suspects for 42 days without charge.
Today, she goes further by criticising politicians including Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, for trying to outbid each other in their opposition to terrorism and making national security a partisan issue.

Read here the interview she gave to The Guardian

With Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, the official authorisation and public acceptation of torture in the name of security, the Iraq war which shattered an entire nation as well as hundred thousands lives and put the middle east in turmoil, and the politisation - not the criminalisation - of terror, I think we are way above an overreaction, we are in a delibrately planned large scale coup against civilian society conducted by a military-industrial cartel with the complicity and the responsibility of the citizen of the 'free' societies.

The case of Canadian citizen Omar Khadr

Omar Khadr's lawyers have released on the internet 8 minutes from a seven hours video, that was handed to them on Canada's supreme court decision, of their client being interrogated by Canadian intelligence agents at Guantanamo.

· Youth shown in despair and begging for help
· Canadian interrogators dismissive about injuries

The Canadian interrogators tell the distraught 16 year old khadr who asks for help and calls his mother that his cries are a non useful strategy. But at the same time, by trying to get answers from him, they clearly interrogate him as a child while dismissing his comlaintsand his suffering. The war on terror has clouded our judgement to a breaking point where we need a team of intelligence agents to confront a 'terrorist' who is a child.

Now this is a team that interrogates a child as a child but firmly believes that the child is a terrorist !

First released Video

Transcript of the released segment.

Pressure is growing in Canada to release Khadr from Guantanamo but our prime minister is intractable

Raw video from the Canadian press.

Canada ignores calls for Guantánamo youth to come home.

After More than Six Years, Al Jazeera Cameraman Sami al-Haj Released from Guantanamo Bay

The Torture Files: Prosecuting the Torture Theorists.

It is still pretty much a whisper but the whisper may one day become louder and wider. First Obama promised to review potential war crimes committed by Bush adminstration officials. And now, a new book on torture techniques written and approved by Bush adminstration officials is prompting some name people who participated in the elaboration of the torture procedures at Guantanamo.

"Haynes, Feith, Yoo, Bybee, Gonzalez and - at the apex - Addington, should never travel outside the US, except perhaps to Saudi Arabia and Israel. They broke the law; they violated their professional ethical code. In future, some government may build the case necessary to prosecute them in a foreign court, or in an international court."

Did you notice which countries are heaven for war criminals and torturers ?

The Trials of Guantanamo

Since its debut in 2002, Guantanamo bay detention center for alleged terrorists, operated by the US, drew criticism. Indeed, everything was outside the basic norms for Human and legal rights there from the beginning. But we were in uncharted territory, and everybody was willing to see terrorists tried. And so Guantanamo was, as were Bush's popularity scores, and the international sympathy for the US after 9/11, for those who supported the War On Terror but were unwilling to give up the rule of law and the basics for Human rights, a mere possibility for the triumph of natural justice on the debris of 9/11 and over the new world chaos. A possibility to discipline this chaos and quell our fears and our angst. And not to discard the skeptics, among them myself, despite all its initial flaws, Guantanamo was, for the believer, at the same time, a window of opportunity and a test. An opportunity to show terrorists and the world how free and democratic societies uphold their values and a test on the intentions of the leaders of the whole business of the War On Terror.

Unfortunately for both the skeptics and the believers, as much as the War On Terror has gone awry from the very beginning by displacing itself quickly from Afghanistan to Iraq, Guantanamo did not cease drifting into tragic nonsense, dramatic excess, torture memos, suicide of detainees, unhuman treatment of prisoners, psychological terror, lack of evidence, amateurish justice, resignation of military prosecutors, and the latest, political maneuvering of the prosecution and sentencing processes coinciding with national elections and in countries involved in The War On Terror like Australia and the US, or with how warm a country's relations are with the US, like Saudi Arabia.

I am sure everybody has heard by now about the recent resignation of chief military prosecutor Morris Davis. His comes in a string of other resignations from military personnel having served in the military court in Guantanamo, starting as early as 2005, or as when the justice set up there by the Bush administration started to move toward trying the detainees.

Colonel Davis for instance refused to consider as evidence testimonies acquired by waterboarding. He was uneasy with the secrecy of the tribunal. And he refused political maneuvering and direct intervention in the judicial process. He cites two cases as clear political maneuvering:
The hasty prosecution and sentencing, through a deal struck between the 'prosecution' and the defense, without his knowledge as chief prosecutor, but with the proper pressure from the Pentagon, of Australian David Mattew Hicks to 9 months in Prison, while the same charges have resulted in a 20 years sentence for John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban. As an insider to the process, colonel Davis told today's CBC's 'The Current' host Anna Maria Tremonti that the only explanation to this nonsense is that the Bush adminstration wanted to take the heat off Australian John Howard before the elections because the detention of Hicks in Guantanamo drew wide criticism against Howard. Colonel Davis told Mrs Tremonti some other examples of gross political maneuvering, over Guantanamo detainees and the due process of justice, made by the Bush administration and its politically appointed henchmen in the judiciary like Susan Crawford and William Haynes. Listen to the interview in The Current, part.2, here.

This maneuvering is being made with the sixtysomething remaining potentially chargeable detainees, from the initial 775 allegedly guilty but later proven innocent detainees, most of them have been freed from Guantanmo, and the others will be, one day, if the US can find them a homeland again, and if they are not dead of despair. These detainees were amassed with much zeal and little regard to anything else than political or financial motives by the Pakistani secret services in the wake of 9/11. Michael Winterbottom has made a great documentary style movie about the capture, detention, interrogation, and the liberation of three Britons , or the Tipton Three, who were held in Guantanamo. The testimonies of the Tipton three show how the Pakistani secret service collected men from mosque and delivered them to the US under pressure to create the impression that the War On Terror was a success in Afghanistan.

And so when we think of Guantanamo and the stain it has brought on our western society we will have to add one more shameful fact, not only we torture there, not only we disprespect Human life and the rule of law, but we have also created, with the manipulation of justice for political ends, a new form of slavery, political slavery, the slavery of those who don't have rights and who exist only in a unlawful and moral space created to serve our leaders' political ambitions and agenda. Old slavery was for economic and domestic comfort. This newly created form of slavery is a political comfort zone.
Who is Bush's god ? The one who speaks to him when he needs inspiration ? The answer is clear. It is Satan himself. And what did the Bush administration prove to the believers in the War On Terror like colonel Davis ? At best, that the War On Terror is a farce. I prefer not to think about the worse.

UPDATE, february 21st 2008: Ex-chief prosecutor at Guantanamo, Col. Morris Davis, to aid defense by appearing as a witness for political interference in the judiciary process.

Related:

Pierre Tristam: The courtly Gore of Gitmo
My review of Michael Winterbottom's 'The Road To Guantanamo'
Torture and Terror: Bush's and Bin Laden's victories, everybody Else's defeat.

When 'Savages' Embark on a 'Civilizing' Mission

When one embarks on a 'civilizing' mission, one never knows who will end up being the real savage.

The Osterley Times has an excellent post on the treatment of prisoners and 'justice' as delivered in Guantanamo as compared to the treatment of the 15 British army personnel by Iran.

Khaled Shaikh Muhammad: Providence Man

The Al-Qaida's mastermind 'testimony' is a grocery shopping list.

The Bush adminstration's failure everywhere in the 'war on terror' was waiting for its providence man. From prominent political figures in the US to buildings, strategical targets, Israel, and practically everything else, Khaled Shaikh Muhammed's might seems infinite and even more powerful than Dick Cheney's. Not only he is responsible practically for everything but he is the Deus Ex Machina, a proof that Al Qaida exists as a political and military organisation, and not a mere loose association of criminals, determined to wage a long war against USrael and the west, and worhty of the sacrifice of our young army men and women and of our civil rights and freedoms.

I am relieved, now we can sleep well. Except, I am not stupid. For to sleep well I need cross testimonies, facts, independant investigations, and an international tribunal. Aren't we all concerned by what has been portrayed to us over the years as an international network of terror ? So why is it the US only that has the right to interrogate and try Al Qaida's mastermind ? And I think all these passages masked in his testimony are a smokescreen. I mean, the man is in their hands, hidden from the entire world, they can make him say what they want, thanks to torture techniques approved by the Bush administration and micromanaged by Rumsfeld, so why blacken passages in his testimony ? Just to make the lie look truthful ?

Read here the complete testimony of KSM found on Angry Arab's site.

Slavoj Zizek on torture and Khaled Shaikh Muhammad

Tonight, we need a good dose of humour (read fellow blogger Stef's post 'Khaled Sheikh Mohammed 31 plots') as well as a good dose of healthy skepticism in watching the excellent Adam Curtis's BBC documentary 'The power of nightmares'. It is in three parts. Better start with part III, which is the most close to present events of the war on terror, and continue with parts II and I, all posted below.

The Power Of Nightmares: Part III



The Power Of Nightmares: Part II (The links for parts II and I have died on Google but are available at Youtube in a much shorter version, 7 to 9 minutes out of the original 50' each)



The Power Of Nightmares: Part I

A Voice from Guantanamo's Darkness

Thanks to Candide's Notebooks who highlighted this extract from letters sent to his attorneys by a Guantanamo detainee. Published by the LA Times.
Read here my review of Michael Winterbottom's movie 'The Road to Guantanamo'.

My articles on Torture:
Are We Banalising Torture ?
Torture and Terror: Bush's and Bin Laden's Victories, Everybody Else's Defeat

This Other America: Part III, The Road Through Guantanamo

This picture was taken in the center of Guantanamo, a prosperous town of 200000 with a university, a military school and a hotel. Guantanamo is also a province.

It was tuesday, and my husband, after a half day work with his Canadian colleagues, was scheduled to visit with them the Cuban team offices on thursday afternoon. We had a day and a half before us and we thought that this unexpected free time might be an opportunity to visit Baracoa which is on the other side of the Island, north to Santiago, on the Atlantic Ocean. This is where Christopher Columbus touched the American continent for the second time on his first expedition, the first landfall being the Bahamas. We went around 5.p.m. to the hotel's travel agency to arrange for the trip and were told that they didn't have enough passengers to make the trip for the next day. We then inquired at another agency which referred us to an official taxi driver who was willing to do the trip only for us with a slightly higher fare and on the condition we can rest for the night in Baracoa and return on Thursday. He would make for us the reservation for the night in a licensed private house (Casa Particulare) in Baracoa and would stay for the whole trip at our service driving us around Baracoa. We checked his car; a 2002 Volkswagen Jetta with all the commodities and the suspension necessary to negotiate the mountain road in the Sierra Maestra between Guantanamo and Baracoa. Despite this, the journey to Baracoa during the last hour of the three hours and a half, 256 kms trip, will make me sick.

Wednesday

The next day, we were riding through the Cuban countryside on a road bordering the Caribbean until Guantanamo and then abruptly crossing the most eastern part of the Sierra Maestra to reach Baracoa on the Atlantic. Guantanamo is the only city between Santiago and Baracoa. The mountain road starts after crossing the city of Guantanamo and ends only in Baracoa.

After an hour drive and many stops to take pictures of the beautiful scenery, I told my husband that I was grateful because he decided to undertake such a trip. Santiago was a bit depressing as a city to watch and to walk in. In contrast, the countryside was luminous. The houses did not look more rich, more spacious, neither better, but as the decaying constructions were surrounded here by gardens and a luxurious nature, their cruel rusticity and modesty became more nuanced to the eyes. The road cut through gorgeous fields, giant trees, herds of lambs, goats, birds and cattles, under a blue sky. Forgotten are the grey buildings and the decaying houses of Santiago, the crowded wagwas and trucks transporting passengers, the old Cuban vehicles and motorbikes emissions and their suffocating smell, and the noise, omnipresents and companions to every dweller in Santiago. The villages roads were busy with schoolchildren. There are no yellow buses here. Public transportation is nearly non existent. There are semi public private arrangements for transportation but this is not affordable on a regular basis and by everyone. Children, dressed neatly in colorfoul uniforms indicating the school cycle, raspberry pink for elementary, walk to and from school, sometimes as much as 4 kilometers one way, in the morning, at lunch time, and in the afternoon.

Crossing the eastern part of rural Cuba, and on the 256 kilometers distance that was our road in both ways between Santiago and Baracoa and around Baracoa area I became convinced that Cuban socialism might be a good solution for rural economies and rural societies. And may be this is true of all forms of socialism. The Cuba I felt in this part of the country was different from the city, it lived in a kind of a self sustained economy that didn't seem to be in an acute need of the world and that defied the embargos. The mountain road we traveled between Guantanamo and Baracoa was the gift of Fidel Castro to the people of his native area. A giant poster planted in Baracoa, citing Fidel, claims proudly: 'Llevaremos Baracoa al mundo' (We brought Baracoa to the world). There is exuberant life in Cuban rural areas, a joyful and decent life. I thought that the road will be empty except for few small villages. In reality, there were many villages on the road and sometimes small communities living in traditional houses with roofs made of Palm tree leaves. Every village had its dispensary and its school and its local committee for the defense of the revolution. Cultures of Bananas, sugar cane, chocolate and coffee alternated. Horses, dogs, and herds roamed free in the fields. In some parts, it looked like a green cowboy country. We stopped in the mountain at a three houses community living around a coffee plantation. A mother came out with her 6 month old baby. Outside, the family dog was guarding the porc and a Guyava leaves perfumed water was boiling over a fire. The woman explained that this is a traditional bath for babies to bring them good health. We took some pictures and promised to stop on our way back to buy coffee.

Before ascending the mountain road we had stopped at the Guantanamo local market in the center of the town. The activity in the market was as in other producers markets and there was a huge poster giving consumers the nutrients and calories found in the products. After leaving Guantanamo we drove near the entrance of the Guantanamo base controlled by Cubans and which is at 25 kms only from the US controlled base. The taxi driver told us that, according to treaties, the US must return Gunatanamo to Cuba in 2033. Here we have a solution to this shame I thought. Not sure, look to what happened to Panama. I had asked the driver previously if I can make a picture of the base entrance and he said that it is even forbidden to stop near the entrance. He promised that on our way back from Baracoa the next day we would choose a spot on the mountain road and take a picture of the actual US controlled base, which we did...I thought of Guantanamo prisoners and of the many innocent men sold by Pakistanis in the wake of the invasion of Afghanistan and held by the US in conditions which will be a permanent stain on our modern western consciousness for generations to come. I thought of these men held in cages under the caribbean sun, cut from the world, and I wondered that only 25 kilometers, and less if you think that the Cuban base stretches some 15 kilometers from the road toward the US controlled base, separate actually a world made of barbarism and cruelty from this exuberant and joyful nature. I felt anxious and started talking to the taxi driver to alleviate my own malaise. I told him my indignation and he told me that most Cubans feel the same. Cuban official television had covered every aspect of the US's shameful treatment of Guantanamo prisoners and their non respect of Human rights. The conversation extended to Cuban politics and, as most Cubans, the taxi driver was anxious for a little change, anxious for the economy to get better in his country, but for all the money and wealth of the world, and like most Cubans, he would not want to see Miami Cubans and US rule return to impose their will.

Our casa particulare in Baracoa had a terrace overlooking the sea and all the commodities. It was modest but convenient and our hostess was charming. Around Baracoa, we visited the beach where Columbus landed for the first time on the Island and where a replica of Columbus's cross was planted. The real one is kept in the cathedral in a glass box. It was reduced to a tiny cross by locals who thought that having a piece of wood from the cross was going to bring them luck. We visited the Yumuri area, a village, a river running into the ocean, a gorge, and a chocolate plantation, east to Baracoa. Our visit to the chocolate plantation was escorted by two improvised guides, two men, and 8 local women, who all hoped for a little tip. The two men tried to provide us with some cues into how they collect Chocolate and process it and tried to earn their tip by having such initiatives as climbing Coco trees and collect fruits for us and harvesting some Chocolate fruits for us to discover, while the women only complained to me about their living conditions. They told us that they work only three months a year, that their salaries were low. We must have left them with the highest amount paid as a tip in Cuba and we regretted that things had to be this way. We felt that tourism becoming important in the area, people were starting to change and to count more and more on an arbitrary income instead of trying to earn it the traditional way. Villagers in the mountain around coffee plantations were definitely different but there was no sustained flow of tourists there. The incident had spoiled my visit to Yumuri...

In the center of Baracoa, there were many European tourists coming from nearby famous Holguin's beaches for a day or two in a pilgrimage to Columbus's shore in Baracoa. Baracoa is also surrounded by gorgeous mountains with different shapes, shades and heights. At the end of the day we went to the beach and returned to eat a cooked meal at the terrace of the private house we were staying in for the night.

On the road back, we took with us in the car a Cuban whom the taxi driver knew and who was a schoolteacher and director of a primary school. He was so grateful that he answered all our questions on the school system, something we were very curious about. In Cuba, every class has its own videosystem to help the professor in his teachings (actually we glanced at such a class in a school in Santiago that was located near the hotel) and a computer, even if the class is made of one pupil, something that happens sometimes in rural areas. Even University students don't have this density of computers at their disposal in Cuba. But this is a socialist regime which believes in the building of young minds. The teacher told us also that there is one teacher for every 15 pupils. Sometimes one for ten, depending on the work they have to do. The school in Cuba is interested in the children and their minds, something that may make carreer oriented and busy western parents jealous because they don't have these standards and this commitment from the school system which I believe is increasingly not interested in the young minds of our children but rather in getting rid of the children while meeting the obejctives imposed by our governments on making sure that education meets the Market needs. I volunteered in my children's school for 12 years and I was close to the parents preoccupations and increasing demands for the school to relieve them from the burden of the education of their children entirely while at the same time providing children with all what is necessary to succeed later in life, education, a good conduct, and a compliant character, a disproportionate demand, I thought sometimes. But I can tell you that a Cuban style school system is a dreamed solution for parents. However, while providing children with whatever necessary to grow up good adults without the help of their parents - it is commonly thought in Cuba that the school don't even need you to educate your children, it takes charge of the whole process- it may not provide them with what is necessary to succeed economically because it is not in the objectives of the system. Also, the structure of their school system must cost a lot of money if applied in our societies and our governments are not ready to invest heavily in education. The neoliberal market logic is such that it takes and does not give. While being very greedy to schools, teachers and the education system as a whole, it doesn't bother investing in education because, according to this logic, there is no direct causal relationship between education and the growth of material wealth. I wrote my children an email the day after this encounter reminding them how much, we parents, have to invest in a deficient school system in our countries in order to support their education and how Cuban parents were very much aided in this task by the school. While strolling through santiago, we passed along many music schools teaching children classical music. How many of us can afford, after paying for our children basic needs, to pay for music lessons which are not part of the regular curriculum at school ?

I also found Cuban children to be polite in general, calm, and well behaved.

At the dinner that evening I only ate the fried Yukas, the rice and beans. We prolonged the night on the terrace sipping a local strong coffee, discussing the day's encounters and visits, and listening to the sound of the chants coming from the cathedral. Many christian and other cult places are active in Cuba since 1995 but the Santeria remains the religion of the majority of Cubans. I remember that my father used to tell us about the strange rites of this religion he witnessed there as a child, rites involving sacrifices. At thirty past ten, the religious songs were replaced by the sound of music coming from the Trova house located near the cathedral, until late...

I woke up in the middle of the night and, from one of the room's windows I could glance at the eastern part of the Island where the Yumuri river joins the sea. I thought about the fate of the region's Natives who were exterminated by the colonisers and left no trace except some local legends. One of them is that the Yumuri river's name is related to the Sapnish 'Yo voy a mourir'. Natives, goes the legend, committed suicide by jumping from a cliff bording the river in an attempt to escape the cruelty of their Spanish masters while shouting: 'Yo voy a mourir'. Another legend is that the Spanish masters, having been informed of the intent of ther slaves, convinced them not to kill themselves by threatening to committ suicide in order to follow them to the other world and punish them...Cuba, and especially Santiago and Baracoa areas, became, in the sixteenth and sevententh centuries, central to all Spanish expeditions in the Americas providing the ships with food and slaves and receiving the mechandise collected from the rest of the American land and destined to Spain.

Outside our modest room in Baracoa, a thunderous rainfall had already started, eclipsing the sound of music coming from la casa Trova.

Tomorrow we will go back to Santiago where, before leaving for Havana, I will make two interesting encounters, one with a local Cuban Lebanecita, a third generation Lebanese, and another with a small community of Turkish Jews who emigrated from Turkey to Cuba, at the same time many lebanese left the troubled Ottoman empire of the end of the 19th century for the Americas. Maalouf's book 'Origins', which I was reading, will provide me with some key information to understand both communities and the diversity I was witnessing in the modern Cuban identity...

Link to part I

Link to Part II

UPDATE: I am updating here with an article presenting a different view on the thoughts expressed in this post 'Why Miami dances on Castro's grave'.

Read also from the link below (Le Monde, French) how Edmundo Garcia, A cuban exiled to Miami was fired twice by local TV stations under pressure from the far right Miami Cuban community for, well, not writing exactly as a journalist what the community wanted him to say and write...Dictatorships exist also in so called free countries and they are the dictatorships of pressure groups. The Cuban Miami community has created its own US bred dictatorship...

Les déboires d'un journaliste cubain à Miami, capitale de l'exil
LE MONDE | 10.03.07

©

The Road to Guantanamo

This is my movie week. I can watch the movies I want after having consented to see Casino Royale twice, the first time with my son who couldn't wait when the movie premiered this week (actually we watch it last Saturday), and the second time will be with my husband who wasn't able to join the first time because he is on call 24 hrs for a week until next Friday.

Having made this sacrifice, I asked the men in the house, who always conspire against me to rent action movies or comedies, to let me rent two videos, that they were reluctant to watch, only for myself.

Yesterday, I watched 'The Road to Guantanamo'. I knew that the movie was about the three Muslim Britons who were released from Guantanamo, the Tipton three, as they are called. Being familiar with the director's filmography, I knew that I was probably going to be subjected to some harsh scenes. Winterbottom is the director of an adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure where you can see Kate Winslet giving birth as if you were the midwife. He also directed the 'Butterfly Kiss', the story of a psychotic woman serial killer, as well as the controversial movie, 'Nine Songs', a love story where actors perform actually real sex scenes for the camera, and the well known 'Welcome to Sarajevo'. From Winterbottom comes also the smart 'Tristram Shandy', a real cinematographic tour de force, and 'In this world', the story of the journey of two men from Afghanistan to London as clandestine.

Winterbottom's movies have a great effect on me, they never leave me indifferent. Actually, at the end of 'In this world' I bursted into tears and I still feel a sting of sadness inside even now, two years later, when I think about the movie. I was prepared to all this when I turned the CD player on to watch 'The Road to Guantanamo'. My son joined and we had a little discussion before and I told him that it is O.K. to close his eyes if some scenes may be unbearable to watch.

The movie follows the Tipton three as they - initially they were four, one of them, Amir, will disappear- set to travel to Pakistan to assist their friend's marriage, from the moment they leave England to the moment of their return, describing their capture, the three prisons in which they transit before landing at Guantanamo, their interrogations and their release two years later. The story, played by actors, is interrupted by narrations from the real persons themselves. The movie is well constructed. And because it is a documentary style, even if it is acted, it is colder and less emotionally charged than other Winterbottom's movies. But the subject, being what it is, makes you tense as the story evolves and unfurls. At some point, my son bursted into a hsyterical laughter and I suspect this was to relieve some of the tension he flet inside. It was during interrogations. We knew that the most savage forms of physical and moral torture were to come during interrogations. However, the feigned or intended stupidity of the interrogators, unprepared as they are with false informations and assumptions about the 'Muslim and Arab mind', their stubborness, close to a certain from of despair, to extract something from the detainees, make a good basis for a comedy, if it weren't a tragedy that was the ordeal of these men. The interrogators looked out of touch with reality, lost, or worse, plain stupid. I remember that my husband's grand'mother who was in Ravensbruck during WWII for four years before being released, in a prisoner exchange process, used to tell us that laughter was helpful in the camps and that if you were capable of laughter at the absurdity of human cruelty you had more chance than others to live and even to overcome the trauma. At some point, a female interrogator asks the detainee if he is a member of Al-Qaida and he answers no and she repeats the question, all interrogators repeat over and over the same question as if they were trying by a magical formula or incantation to get what they want from the prisoner. And when faced with a definitve NO the interrogator, at some point, shows the prisoner a video of a meeting in Afghanistan featuring Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri and she tells him 'Look at the image on this video, it is you there'. The prisoner looks at the video and says 'No way, the date is 2000 and in 2000 I was doing community work in the UK, being on probation'.

I got the impression that what helped the Tipton three is their youthfulness and a history of youth conduct disorders, at least for two of them, that had them on a police file for minor offenses but which acted both psychologically, as an inside rebellion that helped them sustain the pressure, and operationally as a proof of the fabrication and lies the interrogators had made up in the case the US had to bring against most of the detainees of Guantanamo. But not all people will have this chance. I cannot help but think about the remaining detainees in Guantanamo who, under the new law for military tribunals, will have no access to a lawyer to challenge their detention and their treatement, no access to the charges brought upon them, sealed forever away from the rest of the world, and from Humanity, and at the mercy of their torturers.

Winterbottom had admirably succeeded in intertwining both the drama and the absurd bringing us a good documentary film about the number one shame of our modern time: Guantanamo.

Are we banalising torture ?

Before the present talk about torture in our societies, torture existed. There were some 'rogue states' and regimes torturing their political prisoners to extract information or to break their will. People and media and leaders in the 'free world' used to protest loud and regularly about torture, sometimes exert sanctions against nations practising torture.

This is how institutional torture was perceived after the signing of the UN convention against torture in 1987, it was seen as a shame, a moral stain tarnishing and sullying nations and citizens.

Since the 'free world', the world that 'does not torture' neither 'condone torture', started his 'war on terror', torture talk changed. First it was a murmur. Then a multitude of facts started to make the murmur louder and louder. We, citizens of the 'free world' , learned that our governments are making transactions with states who torture. We also learned, that in 'remote' prisons, in 'remote' countries, hidden from the eyes of international organisations who used to watch and to report to us about torture in the 'other world', torutre was actually taking place and performed by people who belonged to us. We also realised that our governments were talking openly about torture, not trying to understand it and to eradicate it but to redefine it. We realised that high profile experts in the legal, medical and scientific spheres, were working day and night trying to provide expertise to our governments on how to make torture more efficient, more scientific, more knowledgeable, more invisible, going as far as to defend it in certain circumstances, to convince us that this is an evil we couldn't escape, for the sake of 'our freedoms'. So the open talk on torture is becoming all about its justification in our 'free world'.

Our governments continue to torture. And with the debate about its justification, it is no more secretive, shameful, brutal and forbidden. It is around us, it is between us, it is with us, it is intractable. It is something we are starting to talk about, like other things, organise an action day so we may feel good about it, like action day against mental illness or action day against tobacco or earth action day or mother's day or car free day and so on...

In this spirit and with the idea that torture is here to stay with us, bloggers and Human rights organisations are launching a 'Torture Awareness Month'*. I was asked to join, I find the idea awkward for all the reasons I listed above. I refused, then I accepted and now I really feel unconfortable with the whole idea.

*I agree with the bloggers initiative and I don't think that the initiative in itself is banalising torture but it is the result of the banalisation of torture by our 'democratic' and 'free' regimes. Should we accept this banalisation ? How should we act as to repel forcefully this banalisation ? I don't have right now the correct answer and this is why I joined the intitiative.