Decades after torture allegations were first leveled against former Chicago police commander Jon Burge, a federal jury has found him guilty of lying about torturing prisoners into making confessions. Burge has long been accused of overseeing the systematic torture of more than 100 African American men. Two years ago federal prosecutors finally brought charges against Burge--not for torture, but for lying about it. On Monday afternoon, after a five-week trial, Jon Burge was found guilty on all counts of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying about the abuse. He could face up to forty-five years in prison.
Students, Faculty Develop Site to Examine Role of 
I often think of the lobby gallery at the Whitney Museum as a place where visitors kill time while waiting for the elevator and where art goes to die. For now, it is a place where one goes to be tortured--or is it? In August 2002, two justice-department officials advised the CIA and President Bush on the use of "enhanced interrogation." At the Whitney, Jill Magid asks one to study their language and to experience the results. Is it torture? Ask, as the title has it, A Reasonable Man in a Box.
One may not feel very reasonable facing the projection on the far wall. One recognizes the object of terror from its curled tail and fur, although the roach-brown glow may evoke a New Yorker's familiar object of disgust. A scorpion of nearly human dimensions crawls along the floor, sometimes dipping or tunneling within. A reasonable man might find the promise of insects within the walls that much more frightening. Another wall holds selected or censored lines justifying torture of someone with pathological fear of insects. The rest of us will not be reassured.
The tortured legalisms are frightening enough all by themselves. The memo, signed by Jay Bybee and drafted with John Yoo, explains how to play upon a subject's expectations without taking responsibility for what the prisoner knows. And never mind what he experiences or how he reacts. Suppose the interrogator has silently substituted a mere caterpillar. Suppose the interrogator just happens never to have mentioned that the insect might or might not cause harm. See no evil, speak no evil.
![[Can the United Nations spell "U.S.A."? UN rights chief says torturers will face justice. (AFP)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/un-rights-chief-says-torturers-will-face-justice.jpg "un-rights-chief-says-torturers-will-face-justice.jpg")
Can the United Nations spell "U.S.A."? UN rights chief Navi Pillay says torturers will face justice. (AFP) | James MitchellTorture Connection:Â Designing and implementing CIA torture methods
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Communications Management Units (CMUs), nicknamed "Little Gitmo" by the inmates for the resemblance to the Guantanamo Bay prison, are coming under criticism for their controversial policies, constitutionality, and secrecy. 
The ACLU has released a document prescribing "generic" application of torture techniques authorized by Jay Bybee in return for a lifetime position on the federal court of appeals.Â
MELINDA TUHUS FILE PHOTO
Guantanamo Protestors (Image Credit: Rysak / WTTG)Saying that "In my opinion, the defendants were not properly charged in this case," D.C. Superior Court Judge Russell Canan today acquitted 24 activists of unlawful assembly in connection with civil disobedience this past January 21 at the U.S. Capitol. Press release here
John Eastman--the former Chapman University law school dean whose most famous education maneuver was bringing his pal and disgraced Bush torture memo author John Yoo to the private Orange institution to pollute future legal minds and defend himself--wanted to dupe voters by being listed as "assistant attorney general" or "special assistant attorney general" in campaign materials and on the June 8 Republican primary ballot. - OC Weekly
"And so while my campaign for Attorney General ends this morning, the campaign for our agenda does not. We must restore feudalism federalism, fight unconstitutional pension spikes, fight illegal immigration, protect marriage, defend small businesses from excessive regulation and litigation, and; comprehensively, restore the constitutional limits on government, to bring our state back." - John Eastman
The findings contained in the 27-page report, "Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Evidence of Experimentation in the 'Enhanced' Interrogation Program," is based on extensive research of previously declassified government documents that shows the crucial role medical personnel played in establishing and justifying the legality of the Bush administration's torture program.
For those who have closely followed the details that have surfaced over the years related to the Bush administration's torture program, some of the information contained in the report has already been painstakingly documented by Marcy Wheeler at her blog Emptywheel, and Truthout's own Jeffrey Kaye on his blog Invictus and in articles published on this web site and at Firedoglake.
On April 30, 2010, The UC Davis Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas organized an event to mark the fifth anniversary of its excellent Guantánamo Testimonials Project. Entitled "Guantánamo: A conversation this side of the wire," the event enabled, for the first time, a discussion to take place, before an American audience, between a former Guantánamo prisoner (the British resident Omar Deghayes, speaking by video-conference from the UK) and a former Guantánamo guard (Terry Holdbrooks, who converted to Islam and is now known as Mustafa Abdullah), and it was therefore enormously significant.
Maher Arar, seen in December 2006. (Fred Chartrand/Canadian Press)