The growing resort to torture inside the US is beginning to be
recognized worldwide.     It's use by government agents is becoming so
wide spread and accepted within policing agencies, that it is now no
longer a secret that can be denied.

The exposure to the camera of Rodney King being tortured by the LAPD,
is perhaps the key event that led to the US public beginning to
recognize that torture was not an aberration inside the US, but rather a
common place occurrence.

Other images have added even more focus on official government approval
of torture in the US.     Nightsticks rammed up the rectum of a
handcuffed prisoner in the jailhouse, with a colostomy being necessary
afterwards to save his life.    And there is the training film used in
Brazoria County, Tx. to show new prison guards that beating defenseless
prisoners was a standard condition of employment.

There seems to be a rush of new disclosures about prisoners being in
solitary confinement for long periods of time.     Almost a gruesome
contest of sorts, as the public hears of a longer period of isolated
confinement used to torture prisoners with each new report.

In fact, prison construction is being designed to implement the torture
of isolation into the very architecture of new facilities.      Air
conditioners are being removed in hotter climates; and opportunities for
exercise inside prisons are being eliminated.       Texas has even
experimented with using soy instead of meat to torture prisoners.
How ingenuous!

Within Texas, as in other states, incompetent or non-existent medical
care is used as a form of torture.    Leonard Peltier, is perhaps one
prisoner who was most famously abused in this manner, by not being
allowed to have jaw surgery that he needed to stay out of pain.

And the torture that knows no name because it is so horrible;  is
probably most widely known about but never mentioned;  we still don't
talk about it publicly.     It is the most widespread prison torture
within the US.      I am talking about how guards and police, around the
country, use rape as a torture to terrorize prisoners.      A little AID
in policing.

The pretend 'Drug War'  has been the catalyst of torture expansion
inside the US.     Just Say No To Drugs, (Just Say Yes To Torture)
campaign.     Officially sponsored, under the name of humanitarian
intervention!     More police assaults in military style, newer and more
colorful dress and equipment.

It's hard to resist using new toys, as the Seattle anti-WTO
demonstrators discovered.      Restraints to torture with, chemicals
sprayed into the eyes to torture with, variations on the rubber bullet
technique to cause intense pain.     Keeping people locked into
inconvenient position for extended time.    New gasses!

Even sound and light intensity has its place to torture victims that are
taken into custody.     How inventive our law enforcement officials have
become!     I believe that the show ... Cops....even  used music to
torture us with..... Bad Boy (favorite word of racist cops), Bad
Boy...What are you going to do, when they come for you?..... over and
over, and around in our heads.

New shock devices used in courts, for gung-ho judges to do almost
hands-on torture.     The re-appearance of the chain gang in the South;
the Southern White Establishment is so nostalgic for a return to see
Blacks tortured under the hot sun again!      White guards on horses,
'Blackies' in the field...... it's standard in a prison near Vidor.
Those ex-prisoners, would-be guards didn't have the horses; all they had
was the pickup truck.

Torture in the US?!    We didn't even know it existed.     But now,  we
have become officially recognized by Amnesty International for our
'mild' problem of government bad behavior.     We'll probably just have
to get used to it.      It's not like we're a Third World society, or
something.

Thank God we live in America!      Where there are protections under the
law.      And we are a society of law, as Right Wingers so love to tell
us...repeatedly.

Without law we couldn't be a civilization.      And without torture, our
law couldn't function is now the modern-day religious belief.      So
the more torture, the better the law!      Satanic prisoners should be
scourged of their sins, pilloried if they rebel.     Though the
vocabulary has changed somewhat.

Yes,  torture is governmentally sponsored in the United States of
America.     It's not like we've heard Clinton giving a speech, that
torture will no longer be tolerated!      We've become accepting of the
concept, that not even our Leftists often condemn torture.      I
believe brutality is considered to be the more PC word.

Imagine Ralph Nader making the elimination of torture in the US to be
the focus of his campaign!     Would the Green Party want him around
then?

Torture, torture, torture.      Yes, that's official US technique.
It's something we condemn elsewhere.      Yet we don't even recognize it
at home.      We have to stop prison labor in China first.

There's a growing movement against 'police brutality'.      But let's
start calling it a movement to stop torture instead.      A movement to
stop the manufacture and sale of torture equipment.     No more trade
shows with seedy foreign buyers attending.      No more trade shows with
'our' own seedy police departments, seedy military, and even seedy
department store guards attending (Here in San Antonio, a Mexican doctor
was murdered by one a few months back).

Maybe the Canadians might launch for us, a Society Against Torture in
The US.      If not, torture methods might cross the border, from
Detroit to Windsor, or Seattle to Calgary.     We need an international
campaign to expose our government to condemnation.      Torture must be
ended in the US.     The Europeans might rally to help us.

Torture really is more common in the US than we think about.      You
could become a victim of torture the next time you leave your house.
The most widely used drug addiction treatment is aversion therapy.
The fear of being tortured in prison is the favored technique.

Tony Abdo