Israel: the third strategic threat
Thomas Keenan
Eyal Weizman

Summary:
Israel's assault on an aid flotilla heading to Gaza is a decisive episode in the country's challenge to international humanitarian law and its advocates. But it may have unexpected results, say Thomas Keenan & Eyal Weizman
Many details remain to be established about the Israeli commando assault on the Mavi Marmara - the lead ship in a flotilla intent on carrying humanitarian aid to the Gaza strip - in the early hours of 31 May 2010. But whatever the investigation of the incident [1] ultimately reveals, the killing of nine human-rights activists bears witness to two related developments: the increasing politiciisation of humanitarian aid, and the growing sense of threat that the Israeli government seems to feel from human-rights organisations and international law.

CYA for the CIA

CIA Experiments in Torture

By STEPHEN SOLDZ

Over the last year there have been an increasing number of accounts suggesting that, along with the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” torture program, there was a related program experimenting with and researching the application of the torture.

For example, in the seven paragraphs released by a British court summarizing observations by British counterintelligence agents of the treatment of Binyan Mohamed by the CIA, the first two of these paragraphs stated:

It was reported that a new series of interviews was conducted by the United States authorities prior to 17 May 2002 as part of a new strategy designed by an expert interviewer….

BM had been intentionally subjected to continuous sleep deprivation. The effects of the sleep deprivation were carefully observed. [emphasis added]

The suggestion was that a new strategy was being tested and the results carefully examined. Several detainees have provided similar accounts, expressing their belief that their interrogations were being carefully studied, apparently so that the techniques could be modified based on the results. Such research would violate established laws and ethical rules governing research.