[BRIEF NOTE] Witnesses are dangerous
Nov. 2nd, 2005 07:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldRadio Free Europe is carrying a report about UN investigators being kept from conducting a thorough survey of a prison system.
This country is the United States; this prison system, Guantanamó.
Slavoj Zizek was right when he wrote, in his introduction to Alexei Monroe's Interrogation Machine: Laibach and NSK, that the creation by the Bush Administration of the category of the "living dead"--graced by the fortune of their survival with the merest ability to live, regardless of the conditions of their life--is profoundly dangerous for American civilization. For the rest of us, too.
Another of the UN rapporteurs invited for the visit is Leila Zerrougui -- an Algerian woman who heads the UN's Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. Zerrougui said she also will not agree to conditions that reduce the scope of the fact-finding mission to a guided tour group.
"We accept to go to a country when this country accepts to receive us," Zerrougui said. "But we go to a country with a minimum of standards. We can not force the door into a country. But if a country accepts to receive us, we have to be sure that we can conduct an objective, impartial and effective fact-finding mission. That's all. It is common sense. Even if it is not binding. But we cannot go to a country to have a guided tour."
This country is the United States; this prison system, Guantanamó.
Slavoj Zizek was right when he wrote, in his introduction to Alexei Monroe's Interrogation Machine: Laibach and NSK, that the creation by the Bush Administration of the category of the "living dead"--graced by the fortune of their survival with the merest ability to live, regardless of the conditions of their life--is profoundly dangerous for American civilization. For the rest of us, too.
