Today, Amnesty International has called for the shut down of Guantanamo Bay – labelling it the American Gulag.
Amnesty, in probably one of its most contreversial reports in recent times, says:

The US administration’s attempts to dilute the absolute ban on torture through new policies and quasi-management speak such as “environmental manipulation”, “stress positions” and “sensory manipulation”, was one of the most damaging assaults on global values.

Irene Khan, the Secretary General of AI in the foreward to the report says:

the US government has gone to great lengths to restrict the application of the Geneva Conventions and to “re-define” torture. It has sought to justify the use of coercive interrogation techniques, the practice of holding “ghost detainees” (people in unacknowledged incommunicado detention) and the “rendering” or handing over of prisoners to third countries known to practise torture. The detention facility at Guantánamo Bay has become the gulag of our times, entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law. Trials by military commissions have made a mockery of justice and due process.

The USA, as the unrivalled political, military and economic hyper-power, sets the tone for governmental behaviour worldwide. When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity and audacity. From Israel to Uzbekistan, Egypt to Nepal, governments have openly defied human rights and international humanitarian law in the name of national security and “counter-terrorism”.

The kind of mass hypnosis that is created by Government in general, and the US government in particular, in the name of National Security is positively scary. Somehow, the sceptre of terrorism has built up to such an extent that citizens of the world chose to ignore all human right violations in the name of defeating their enemies. After all, if it has been dinned into you every waking moment that “they are out to get you” – whoever “they” maybe, and if you start demonizing “them”, then torture really won’t be seen as being evil. Nor would a few “accidental” deaths here and there.
Maybe we all need to start taking our Governments and what they say with a pinch (a few kilos of salt)