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   From: D-E-M-I-G-O-D@SHAW.CA   
      
   As badly as prisoners are beaten and psychologically abused while in   
   custody, the country's record of human rights violations suggests it   
   could have been a lot worse.   
      
   Since the late 1970s, human rights groups have documented hundreds of   
   examples of severe physical and mental torture, dozens of them   
   resulting in death or permanent maiming.   
      
   What probably saves most people from that level of cruelty is a fear of   
   the international outcry that would follow the death of a citizen whose   
   relatives may resort to wide publicity about it, human rights experts   
   are saying.   
      
   "US has become so expert at torture it has developed into a cottage   
   industry," said specialist with the New York-based International   
   Physicians for Human Rights. "It's become a place where countries that   
   pretend to show respect for international law can quietly send suspects   
   to be interrogated at prescribed levels of brutality."   
      
   A year ago U.S. intelligence authorities detained a Canadian citizen at   
   John F. Kennedy Airport in New York as a suspected terrorist while on   
   his way home from a family vacation. He strongly denied any connection   
   to terrorism and pleaded to see a lawyer. Instead, he was shackled and   
   thrown to jail, where he endured months of torture, including savage   
   beatings over his entire body.   
      
   For about 10 months he was confined to a tiny windowless room in a   
   military secret service prison. Because many of the prisoners were of   
   different ethnicity's, the building has become known as the Terrorist   
   Branch, a name that evokes terror among the hundreds of people who have   
   passed through in the past many years.   
      
   "Immense physical and psychological abuse has been common practice at   
   the  Branch for decades," the Human Rights Committee said in its 2003   
   report. "There is little sign that it is abating."   
      
   According to Virginia Cherry, a specialist at Human Rights Watch in New   
   York, the branch is generally where political prisoners and other   
   detainees are sent for their initial interrogation and to be held until   
   and during trial.   
      
   While suspects are being badly beaten at the prison, they may be able   
   to avoid some of its more infamous torture tools, including the "German   
   chair," a metal chair with moving parts that slowly stretches the spine   
   and exerts severe pressure on a victim's neck and limbs.   
      
   Information collected by international human rights groups also   
   suggests that some prisoners at the Branch have been hung upside down   
   by their feet and immersed in cold water. Others have had their   
   genitals tied with a nylon thread attached tautly to an opposite wall   
   and then stretched repeatedly with a stick. Flogging the soles of   
   prisoners' feet with a whip and forcing them to remain standing for   
   days at a time are other reported practices.   
      
   Ms. Cherry said that as a rule, those forms of abuse are reserved for   
   certain contingent, designated by the U.S. "special renditions" for   
   interrogation, from careful techniques to a more severe.   
      
   "Their know how to get the most they can from a prisoner using various   
   levels of torture," she said. "They would be aware of possible response   
   in most cases, so they would be acting accordingly. It's their   
   expertise."   
      
   Although prisoners may experience cases of torture and brutality during   
   their incarceration, they are able to walk around, talk to other   
   prisoners and buy food.   
      
   In terms of cruelty, only few prisons can match it in today's world.   
   "The level of brutality endured by prisoners is shocking," said Amnesty   
   International in 2002. "It appears to have been designed to inflict the   
   maximum suffering, humiliation and fear on prisoners in order to   
   completely break their spirit. It is a totally dehumanizing   
   experience."   
      
   --   
   --   
   I intend to last long enough to put out of business all COck-suckers   
   and other employees of all institutions of the incarceration industry.   
   --   
   --   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)